The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • The Senegalese democratic revolution

    The Senegalese democratic revolution

    Senegal has always been French’s demonstration of colonial success in West Africa. During the First World War, the French in 1917 made the Senegalese Blaize Diagne a member of the French Republic’s cabinet in charge of recruitment of troops from the French Colonial Empire particularly in Africa. This would have been inconceivable to British authorities. This was to indicate that metropolitan French people and the people in the French empire had equal rights and responsibilities as expected from the French colonial policy of assimilation of all colonised people into the French culture and civilization. Even though most of these troops came from outside Senegal, they were all called “Tirailleurs Senegalais”. The number of them who fought in the war against the Germans on the Western Front was close to about a quarter of a million. The impact on them and their suffering is captured in the anti-war novel by  Erich Maria Remarque entitled in German Im Western nichts Neues translated as All  quiet on the Western Front and published in 1929. The suffering of these black troops is vividly captured by their portrayal of being so cold that they smoked ceaselessly and the ember of their cigarettes provided easy targets for sharp shooting troops on the German side.

    The point I am trying to make is Senegal of all colonial territories occupied a special place on French minds. Until after the Second World War  L’Afrique Occidentale Francaise (French West Africa) was administered from Dakar the capital of Senegal until local politicians in some places such as the Ivory Coast began to resent this fact.  Senegal itself was not economically viable and it depended on the resources of the other French West African territories particularly the Ivory Coast to survive. It depended on groundnuts exports and its climate was too hot to permit the kind of crops on which France’s other colonies thrived. The few colonial administrators and merchant class and the petite bourgeoisie in Senegal were not large enough for the French policy of assimilation to have the expected impact because the vast majority of the peasants were outside the loop of French cultural influence of assimilation. Nevertheless the critical mass of the assimilated educated people were almost always loyal to the French and separating from France was totally outside their considerations. 

    Read Also: Emefiele and company

    When French West Africa was dissolved to permit local development, the economy of Senegal depended largely on subsidies from France and this largely influenced the politics of Senegal before and after independence.

    The father of independent Senegal, Leopold Sedar Senghor (1960-1980) had served in the French post Second World War government that he was given the assignment of writing in prose the Fifth Republican constitution. He was so good with the French language that he was honoured with elevation to the French Academy, the first African to be made a member of the L’Academie Francaise. Leopold Sedar Senghor was so totally absorbed with the French culture that when the likes of Sekou Toure of Guinea and his colleague Modibo Keita of Mali advocated in the 1960s for colonial independence from France, Leopold Senghor wanted a policy of “Association” with France. In short, he managed to put Senegal on a conservative path that the Senegalese presidents who came after him toed the French line in international and African affairs with Francophone economic and military dependence on France including stationing of French troops on African territory and keeping of Franco African reserves in Paris and having currency that was tied to the French Franc. His successors Abdou Diouf (1981- 2000)  Abdoulaye  Wade ( 2000-2012) Macky Sall (2012-2024) did nothing to upset the apple cat of subjugation to France even when they claimed to be  one kind of socialist or the other and when the French president, General Charles de Gaulle was testing atomic bombs in the Sahara, even Leopold Senghor  who was a brilliant  but complicated politician ,poet and philosopher, refused to completely champion African interests. This is particularly so in his involvement with the negritude movement which celebrated things black particularly culture without drawing the conclusion of the absurdity of black subordination to whites economically and politically.

    Senghor’s contribution to the negritude movement started by Aime Fernand David Cesaire from Martinique in the French Caribbean, Leon – Gontran Damas and himself was a complex idea of separating politics and culture and the discrimination against black peoples while glorifying things black without pointing out genocide against African culture being wiped out to be replaced by French culture through the colonial policy of assimilation.  Restricting negritude only to cultural life and not the politics of France in the 1930s and after was not embraced by admirers of the idea of negritude because followers later drew their conclusions despite what the likes of Senghor felt. This long preamble is to put in context the politics of Senegal now.

    The present politics of Senegal illustrates the sharp turn from those unabashedly subservient to France and those who feel they have to break free from the past. Even though President Macky Sall struggled through the tempestuous period of his presidency against opponents and even those in the camp of Abodoulay Wade, President Macky Sall wanted his supporters to remain in power  and used every trick  in the game to support his prime minister  Amadou Ba was the government party candidate but the people especially young people led by Bassirou Diomaye Faye  (44) and his alter ego, Ousmane Sanko (47) were in prison for months while Bassirou Faye was released a few weeks  from the prison to contest the recent election that made him president; his boss  Ousmane Sonko, barred from contesting and promptly threw his support for Bassirou Faye  his lieutenant who was also supported by ex-President Abdoulaye Wade  in the several times postponed elections . The new president who has now appointed from prison, Ousmane Sanko as prime minister has demonstrated the unity of direction of the new democratic revolution. The prime minister has appointed a cabinet of young people to tackle 20% unemployment problem facing the country. This new regime of Bassirou and Ousmane  has  emphasised a cultural departure from previous presidency by showing off in dress and culture by embracing even personal things like the young president having and publicly showing off his two wives .The country is also on the cusp of becoming energy sufficient producing its own gas and petroleum and publicly calling on France to stop meddling in African affairs almost echoing what leaders of Niger, Mali , Guinea and Burkina Faso have been saying under their new military regimes.

    What is happening in democratic Senegal is a lesson from which the whole of West Africa can learn from. We cannot remain static in the way we do things and expect different results. We must embrace our youth and listen to them because the future belongs to them. We need to be united in a racially polarised world and be inward looking in order to solve our problems and to resolve our ethnic and religious differences. Senegal is luckier than many other African countries in the sense that it is ethnically united despite the years of rebellion of the people in Casamance against the central government. For all of us in West Africa and Africa as a whole we have more in common than what separates us. Senegalese democracy is well established moving from governing party to opposition winning elections. Senegal and Ghana remain the flag bearer for democracy in West Africa and Africa as a whole .We can only wish Senegal under its two new leaders success and warn them of outsiders trying to sow a seed of discord between them emphasizing what may ideologically separate them.

  • Impeachment as game plan

    Impeachment as game plan

    Impeachment is one word that some executive members of government do not like to hear because of its implications, even though it is provided for in the 1999 Constitution (as amended) for a reason. There is nowhere the word, impeachment, is specifically mentioned in the Constitution. The Constitution talks about removal from office of the President or vice president and a governor or a deputy governor for gross misconduct vide Sections 143 and 188. So, how did the word creep into our political lexicon?

    It is a term borrowed from the American presidential system of government which we copied in 1979 during our first missionary return to democratic rule. It is a tool to check the excesses of the President or the vice president and a governor or a deputy governor. Much of these days, however, deputy governors have been falling under the impeachment hammer because their governors cannot tolerate them.

    The governors want their deputies to be lackeys taking instructions from them and acting like zombies and when this is not the case, they resort to impeachment. Impeachment is not a vendetta tool. The President is not supposed to use it via the National Assembly to bring down the vice president and a governor is not expected to deploy it too against his deputy through the House of Assembly.

    Since impeachment is a serious business which ends the tenure of a president or vice president;  and a governor or a deputy governor abruptly once carried out, it is, therefore, an instrument to be used responsibly and only when necessary. It is not to be thrown at the President or the vice president; a governor or a deputy governor as it catches the legislature’s fancy.

    It should also not be brandished by the lawmakers at the instance of the President or of a governor against the vice president or a deputy governor whenever there is a disagreement between occupants of the executive mansion.

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    The framers of the Constitution never envisaged the way impeachment is being used today. The Constitution clearly states how and when the President or the vice president and a governor or a deputy governor can be removed from office.

    It does not include using the tool to settle personal scores between the President and vice president or a governor and his deputy. Unfortunately, this most important tool which should be used as a weapon of last resort has been reduced to that. The framers of the Constitution never meant that it should be abused the way it is being done these days by some governors. Any little misunderstanding, they get their Houses of Assembly, which are beholden to them to impeach their deputies.

    The end-result of any dispute between a governor and his deputy is predictable, if not resolved amicably. The deputy governor is impeached by the lawmakers. A governor and his deputy are not supposed to be sworn enemies; they were conjoined right from when they entered the race. The governorship ticket is incomplete without a running mate who eventually becomes deputy governor if they are elected.

    What happens after election, in most cases, is a different ball game. The joint ticket becomes single and the duo stop acting jointly, leaving room for outsiders to see through the crevices and cause further damage. People who started out as friends will no longer see eye to eye as the public saw in the case of Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki and his former deputy, Philip Shaibu. Obaseki and Shaibu joined forces to defeat their political leader, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, at the Edo governorship polls four years ago.

    This should have strengthened their bond, but unfortunately what united them then has now divided them. You cannot build a political alliance on quicksand and expect it to stand. The impeachment of Shaibu on Monday marked the climax of the rift between him and the man he fondly called ‘my governor’ when the going was good. As witnessed in past related cases, Shaibu’s impeachment was hurriedly done to pave the way for the coming of the new man, Omobayo Godwins, in whom Obaseki is well pleased, for now..

    There is no dispute about the power of the national and state legislatures to impeach the president or the vice president; a governor or a deputy governor. What one is saying is that the legislature should not lend itself out to be used by either the President or the governor to deal with their deputies during a feud. To some pundits, a deputy governor is a spare tyre, but the Constitution which created the office never intended it as such.

    The political class, the governors especially, reduced the stature of deputy governors so that it would become a sinecure office. Their deputies must kowtow to them or be impeached. Since they have the Houses of Assembly in their pockets, nothing can save a troublesome deputy, except their lordships, the governors change their minds and allow the deputy to “go and sin no more”. We cannot continue to run our democracy on the whims and caprices of some power-sottish governors.

    The Houses of Assembly must rise above the kind of pettiness that some governors have introduced into our politics. It is their job to check the governors and ensure that things are done properly. The impeachment of a deputy governor, if necessary, must follow strictly the constitutional process and should be done without the governor’s influence. Even though I weep not for Shaibu, it is a shame to the Edo State House of Assembly that his impeachment bears Obaseki’s imprimatur. The lawmakers will deny this, but nobody will believe them. They know the truth too.

    Shaibu may be gone for good, but what happens to the integrity of the House of Assembly, which shamelessly did the bidding of the governor? Our Houses of Assembly must retrace their steps and face squarely the task of making laws for the good governance of their states instead of taking sides in political duels between a governor and his deputy. They should remember that what goes around, comes around.

    • EID MUBARAK, DEAR READERS

  • Emefiele and company

    Emefiele and company

    Nigerians are said to be very forgiving of their leaders no matter the level of betrayal. Many however believe this is the effect of illiteracy in some parts of the country where governors openly celebrate the betrayal of their people who they claim don’t read newspapers. Others attribute this to the fact that a great many Nigerians suffer from collective amnesia. But one betrayal Nigerians are not likely going to forget in a hurry was the avoidable agony they were subjected to by Godwin Emefiele and his principal, President Buhari in the run up to the 2023 election.

    That the anger and anguish of many Nigerians are yet to be assuaged was experienced by yours truly in a supermarket a few days back. A woman following a seamless transaction with her ATM card triumphantly declared: “It is just as well Godwin Emefiele is in prison”. An intervention by the cashier to the effect that Emefiele was not in prison attracted a despondent “he should be taken back to prison where he should be left to rot away”. As she walked out of the supermarket, she spoke of the agony her family went through when Emefiele confiscated their life savings in 2023.

    Except that power sometimes leads to self-delusion, it was hard to imagine how Emefiele thought he could ignore constitutional provisions to contest the presidency of Nigeria as a sitting CBN governor.  But intoxicated by sycophants’ eulogies and deceived by a segment of the media, he went to court to defend the indefensible. When he became sober, opportunistic Emefiele, who initially secured his job because of his sympathy for PDP decided to go down with APC.

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    Emefiele on the eve of an all-important general election confiscated people’s life savings in the name of currency swapping. He then ordered the destruction of the old currencies even when he knew many locations in the country were yet to be saturated with the new notes. Unable to stand the sufferings of their people, some governors sought and secured relief from the Supreme Court. Emefiele ignored the Supreme Court ruling. All he wanted was anarchy and social dislocation that would hurt the ruling APC in the 2023 election

    The problem with Emefiele was that he was a round peg in a square hole. He was ill-equipped but President Jonathan unable to stand Sanusi Lamido’s criticism of monumental corruption going on in PDP, replaced him with a more pliable Emefiele. In fact, Emefiele was described by Kingsley Moghalu, a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, as “the worst CBN Governor” in the nation’s history”. He is without debate the worst and most damaging central bank governor in Nigeria’s history – incompetent and ill-prepared for the role and from all available information from his actions, doubtlessly severely integrity-challenged.

    Emefiele’s case is not helped by the report of Jim Obazee on the infractions that took place under his watch as CBN governor.  One of the 17 allegations by the Obazee’s report was that Emefiele employed surrogates to obtain shares in a new-generation bank. Other grave allegations as contained in the report submitted to President Tinubu on December 20 last year include Emefiele’s alleged unauthorised funding of 593 offshore bank accounts, fraudulent cash withdrawals from the CBN vault, gross financial misconduct involving the former governor and his deputy governors, and substantial fixed deposit holdings amounting to £543.4 million. It was on account of the above grave allegations Emefiele was arraigned at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Maitama, Abuja, in January on a 20 count-charge bordering on corruption and forgery.

    Last Friday, April 8, Emefiele was once again dragged to Lagos High Court by EFCC with the following charges: “That Mr. Emefiele directed to be done in abuse of the authority of your office, as the governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, an arbitrary act, to wit: allocating foreign exchange in the aggregate sum of $2,136,391,737.33 without bids, which act is prejudicial to the rights of Nigerians.”

    Count two, also of abuse of office, alleged that “Godwin Emefiele between 2020 and 2021, in Lagos, “directed to be done in abuse of the authority of your office, as the governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, an arbitrary, act to wit: allocating foreign exchange in the aggregate sum of $291,945,785.59, without bids, which act is prejudicial to the rights of Nigerians”.

    In the third count, Mr Emefiele was alleged to have, in 2021, in Lagos, “directed to be done in abuse of the authority of your office, as the governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, an arbitrary act, to wit: special allocation of foreign exchange in the aggregate sum of $1,769,254,793.16, which act is prejudicial to the rights of Nigerians.”

    In count four, the sum involved was $370,872,893.01. Emefiele’s co-defendant, Mr Omoile was accused of “about the 17th of November, 2020, whilst acting as an agent, accepted from Raja Punjab through Monday Osazuwa, the total sum of $110,000, for Godwin Ifeanyi Emefiele, gifts as reward for allocating foreign exchange by the Central Bank in favour of Raja Punjab’s employer.”

    Although the buck stops at Emefiele’s desk, but the special investigation report indicated Emefiele, he did not work or act alone. He and the four deputy governors worked hand in glove. And this cannot be otherwise because deputy governors’ duties include “sustainability; foreign reserve adequacy; improving the transmission mechanism of monetary policy; achieving depth, safety and soundness in the financial sector; and managing capital flow and ensuring that key economic and financial policy reforms are focused on fiscal and debt”. This is why Nigerians expect the four CBN deputy governors to have their own dates in court.

    It is also on record that in 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari constituted an Economic Advisory Council (EAC) to replace his administration’s Economic Management Team. It was headed by Professor Doyin Salami, a doctoral degree holder of Queen Mary College, University of London who had earlier served as a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria and had been a member of the Federal Government’s Economic Management Team.

     There was Bismarck J. Rewane, a chartered member of the Institute of Bankers of England and Wales and a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Bankers with over 30 years of experience as an economist, banker & financial analyst. There was also Chukwuma Soludo, a former CBN governor. He earned a first-class degree in Economics, backed up with a with a PhD and post-doctoral training in some of the world’s most prestigious institutions, including The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC; University of Cambridge, UK, University of Oxford among others. 

    Professor Shehu Yahaya, another member was a macroeconomics lecturer at the Department of Economics at the University of Sussex, UK. He was a former Executive Director at the African Development Bank. There was also Professor Ode Ojowu, former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s adviser who had held positions at the International Monetary Bank and the World Bank.  Mohammed Sagagi with a PhD (Economics) from University of Warwick was another member. Salisu Mohammed BSc (First Class Hons) in Economics from University of Maiduguri and went on to bag PhD in Economics from Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom

     Iyabo Masha has worked with the International Monetary Fund since 2003 in Washington D.C. Metro Area Assignment has taken her to more than 10 emerging markets (Asian and African countries). She worked at Central Bank of Nigeria’s Research Department and was also the immediate past IMF Representative for Sierra Leone).

    That these accomplished stars could not sound the alarm when things began to go critically wrong cannot but leave Nigerians in wonder.

  • That boorish truth by Adelabu (1)

    That boorish truth by Adelabu (1)

    Insolence flaunts gruesome majesty, like the forepart of the Agbanrere. Even its hindquarters is painful to glimpse – horrid and menacing in its burly immensity.

    But while insolence may be forgivable in the rage of an underserved citizenry, it rarely suits the demeanour of a public servant. It becomes a misdemeanour, for instance, when a Minister of Power accuses Nigerians of being wasteful at power consumption, in his frantic bid to justify an outrageous hike in electricity tariff amid epileptic power supply.

    To make up for his inability to articulate intelligently, the reasons for the punishing increment, the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, resorted to gutter tactics, lambasting the citizenry for indiscriminately leaving their refrigerators and air conditioners on while going out.

    Although he could have adopted a less disdainful approach in communicating his views, Adelabu chastised the longsuffering and underserved electricity consumers, whose livelihoods are threatened and their lives destroyed by persistent power outages. No thanks to the managerial ineptitude of successive Ministers of Power.

    We relive Adelabu’s rant with a stunned combination of amazement and disgust. Call it his daemonic aria, a flight of feral imagination. If public governance thrives like musical theatre, Adelabu’s recent falsetto could be his cipher, the fault in his organ valve rendering his crafty melody a frantic fustian dross.

    It was painful to watch the portly minister blame Nigeria’s electricity problems, in part, on what he described as Nigerians’ wasteful consumption habits.

    The minister said this in Abuja, last Friday, while briefing journalists about the recent increase in electricity tariff by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).

    Adelabu brazenly accused Nigerians of being wasteful at power consumption, blaming this on the country’s electricity affordability.

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    He said, “A lot of people will come back from work, they want to have dinner, or they want to see their colleagues down the road, they switch on the AC for the room to be cooling before they come back.

    “Some people will be going to work in the morning, a freezer that you left on for days, they will still leave it on when all the items in the freezer are frozen and 5, 6, 8 hours of their absence will not make it to defreeze (sic), they will still leave it to be consuming power just because we are not paying enough.

    “We have all been overseas before; we know how conscious the power consumers are about electricity consumption.”

    If diplomacy is truly the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power, Adelabu undoubtedly needs a trunk full of gloves.

    His recent statement is unforgivably gauche and insensitive. His resort to sophistry to justify the extreme increment in the cost of electricity tariff, from the previous rate of N66 per kilowatt (kW) to N225 per kilowatt (kW), is abominable.

    Last Wednesday, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) approved an increase in electricity tariff for customers under the Band A classifications.

    The regulator said customers who receive 20 hours of electricity supply daily will pay N225 per kilowatt (kW) from April 3. The new rate is about triple the previous rate of N66 per kilowatt (kW).

    If there is a less insouciant means of communicating the increment and the wisdom behind it to electricity consumers, Adelabu would be oblivious to it.

    Thus he resorted to inflammatory speech. Should Adelabu convert public office to a conveyance of disdain towards the masses? Watching him berate electricity consumers is akin to seeing Olohun Iyo disappear to the lure of the proverbial fatal chorus.

    The tragedy of his outburst subsists in its brutal contrast between his smirking vanity and the sudden melting of his features beyond recognition. Call it his holocaust and apocalypse.

    Prowling at ground zero, Adelabu incinerates on the altar of insensitivity, self-intoxicated in the electric moment before lightning strikes and his mystique reduces to rubble.

    Adelabu knows that the outrageous increment of N66 per kilowatt (kW) to N225 per kilowatt (kW) barely addresses the many afflictions of the power sector. Even at that, power stays erratic for consumers categorised on the so-called Band-A divide.

    Just recently, the national electricity grid collapsed for the first time in 2024, on Adelabu’s watch, thus hurling Nigeria into complete darkness.

    The power generated on the grid slumped, on a Sunday, at about 11:51 am, falling from about 3,852mw at 6 am to as low as 59mw at noon.

    The grid managed by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) had 20 power plants completely down, with just Ibom Power online.

    That 200 million Nigerians still depend on less than 5,000mw to power their homes and businesses, while the country loses about $29 billion annually (IMF estimates) to power outages should worry Adelabu.

    Yet he insists that he speaks the bitter truth, lambasting Nigerians tongue-in-cheek, to excuse his managerial inadequacy.

    In reaction to his disdainful remark, not a few Nigerians have taken him to the cleaners, berating him for his insensitivity.

    Nonetheless, the grandson of prominent First Republic politician, Adegoke Adelabu, insists he speaks the truth.

    He said, “The bitter truth we all need to tell ourselves as Nigerians. A few people are just privileged to sit on the high table. We’re on the same level, we must be able to tell the truth to ourselves.”

    In the spirit of truth-telling, Nigerians may also tell Adelabu that he is yet to assert the brilliance and ingenuity anticipated from a Nigerian Minister of Power.

    His ‘bitter truth’ fails the test of integrity and empathetic statesmanship. His conduct was a great disservice to the efforts of President Bola Tinubu to present governance with a human face.

    If there was any wisdom in Adelabu’s rant, it probably got buried in his snarl of spittle and disregard for the citizenry and electricity consumers whose interests he was appointed to protect and serve, among other responsibilities.

    Adelabu, a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in charge of operations, resigned from the CBN to contest unsuccessfully the 2019 governorship election in Oyo State.

    He reportedly led the finance team on the CBN re-engineering and corporate renewal project and later left the firm in 2000 as an Audit Manager and Senior Consultant to join First Atlantic Bank as the Financial Controller and Group Head of Risk Management and Controls.

    Adelabu has also held various other positions while in First Atlantic Bank, including the Chief Inspector of the Bank (2002) and Group Head of National Public Sector Business (2003).

    Upon assuming his new office, he assured that the federal government would empower Nigerians through stable and accessible electricity. To achieve the feat, he said the ministry would leverage the Nigerian Electricity Act 2023 to boost power supply in the country.

    For a man who flaunts such an impressive trajectory, his recent tirade against electricity consumers leaves too much to be desired.

    His acerbic chant seeks to divert attention from the policy lapses, institutional corruption, technical limitations, regulatory failure, and his administrative ineptitude at according those issues the relentless exercise of the mind and will required to resolve them.

    Adelabu should attempt humility for a change. He could start by picturing himself as an iced fish seller, a tailor or a steel fabricator whose livelihood is dependent on a stable power supply; would he still affect the venom he displays to rationalise the unjustifiable billing, on his watch, amid epileptic power supply?

    Would he still submit to power and its infernal seductions?

  • Against fair weather patriots

    Against fair weather patriots

    There is no wisdom in appointing Nigerians who have ‘Japa’ to man sensitive public offices in Nigeria. This is akin to luring the proverbial skunk from its forest grove into our royal bed chamber, if it doesn’t sully the quilted sheet with its faeces, it will ruin the palace with its stench.

     Those who would ‘Japa’ to escape the ‘hell’ Nigeria has become should never be allowed to superintend our healing, ultimately because they lack the character and competence, native intelligence and maturity, selflessness and integrity, patience and sense of responsibility required to manage our healing process.

    It was disheartening to see a Governor’s recent appointee scoff at his fortune, stressing that he never needed the appointment – even though he barely survived as a canned fruit hawker and cab driver who squatted with friends in the United Kingdom.

    If we must invite a Nigerian from the Diaspora to serve as the country’s Petroleum Minister, one primary requirement should be his previous employment in a similar capacity. The same logic requires that only a seasoned General can become Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS).

    That said, it is often ill-advised to appoint an overseas cab driver, who is contemptuous of Nigeria, as a federal minister or director of a public agency. When Nigeria needs cab drivers with international experience, we may recruit such individuals. Our public offices are best reserved for patriots who keep faith in the Nigerian enterprise. It’s about time we stopped appointing leeches into public office. When the going gets tough, they simply pack up and leave. Nigeria’s public office is not a rehabilitation camp for fair-weather patriots.

    This is not to forestall, however, the likely benefits of appointing Nigerian expatriates, who have a lot to contribute to the rejuvenation of public governance and accountability. But where do we draw the line?

    We have seen governors appoint internet fraudsters and human traffickers as cabinet commissioners. We have also seen supposedly first-rate technocrats flaunting Ivy-League certificates earned abroad, sully our public offices. So, it’s not by the class of degree or the school that produced them, an individual’s academic or professional honours hardly translate to excellence in public governance if he is corrupted by arrogance and greed.

    Yet we have Nigerians doing well back home, despite the odds. They are the type that stay the course when the going gets tough. They do not bend and sway to every favourable draft nor pack up and leave at the onset of a storm. They stay back and withstand its flurry, surviving with tact, perseverance, faith, goodwill and native intelligence. They understand that only by salvaging what we have and who we are can we achieve our Nigerian dream. These are the ones deserving of public office.

    Still, it’s everyone’s prerogative to either stay or flee from perceived hostility in our homeland. But hostile politics and economies aren’t caused by phantoms or poltergeists. They are the result of our lack of humaneness and frantic avarice.

    The looters prowling our streets and corridors of power did not fall from outer space. They are the fruits of our mother’s wombs, sired with seeds from our fathers’ loins. They are the monsters we raised in our families.

    Modern Nigeria is a product of the joint efforts and inactions of our families, schools, worship houses, the streets and the media.

    Japa nomads taking the education or scholarship route, eventually find that their admission into elite schools overseas was purely a business decision by the schools and their host countries. The benefits are ploughed back into their host society.

    By the time they graduate, they are superbly conditioned for the drudgery of second or third-rate employment overseas. Some occasionally secure first-rate employment. But the very smart ones among them relocate back home to seek employment with Nigerian or multinational firms who prefer their foreign certificates.

    Many return to Nigeria as agents of metacolonialism. Hence the preponderance of journalists, writers, teachers, economists, social workers, engineers, and health workers, to mention a few, who function as glorified stooges of the so-called developed nations of the world.

    The faithlessness and moral corruption that makes Japa possible is similar to the one that drove African enablers of the transatlantic slave trade. This degeneracy remains largely unchallenged.

    To prevent its recurrence, we must hinder the social mechanisms that render people capable of such. And this can only be achieved through education. The Nigerian school must begin to impart more than money-making soundbites and status-conferring skills.

    Our schools must begin to teach values and history with a didactic bent. If they do not, another transatlantic slave trade is possible; we have seen it happen in Libya, where Europe-bound Nigerian youths were bound and gagged, raped and murdered by African slave drivers cum human traffickers; it happens every day to thousands of Nigerians crossing to Europe through irregular migration routes from Agadez through Tripoli to the Mediterranean bight.

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    President Bola Tinubu must understand that it is not enough to seek foreign investment and cooperation from abroad; such initiative, while appreciable, could be doomed by a lack of quality personnel and citizenship required to nourish whatever benefits accrue from his nation-building enterprise.

    If Nigeria truly seeks sustainable socio-economic growth in the long run, we must groom generations of men and women capable of nourishing and preserving the Greater Nigeria enterprise.

    Nigeria needs patriots amply groomed to understand that the most important achievements aren’t measurable by a title or figures. The true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers, and as Deresiewicz writes, only a small minority have seen their education as part of a larger intellectual journey or have approached the work of the mind with a pilgrim soul.

    Nigeria must furnish an educational system driven by the sweat and exploits of such pilgrim souls. The country’s education curricula must be overhauled to impart a Nigeria-centred educational experience that could resonate with the progressive social re-engineering of the country.

    It doesn’t matter what quality of degrees are acquired if the recipients are furnished to operate like mindless robots, praise junkies, fortune hunters and crowd pleasers.

    William Hazlitt noted at the beginning of the 19th century that men do not become what by nature they are meant to be, but what society makes them. European society, according to Hazlitt, violently wrenches and amputates her citizenry thus making them unfit for intercourse with the world, something in the manner that beggars maim and mutilate their children, to make them fit for their future pigeonhole in life.

    This imagery of beggars maiming and mutilating children is discernible in the fate of the Nigerian kids birthed abroad; some are shipped overseas as regular or illegitimate migrants purportedly to grant them access to a better life.

    The lure of Japa validates Bulhan’s theory of metacolonism. The syndrome has taken so much from us, including our loyalty, language, history, and the cultural values that bound our community together.

    All that is left is our sense of attachment and moral responsibility borne of nostalgia. Yet Japa has corrupted even that.

    These days, I look at my children and wonder how much of Nigeria and their culture they will get to keep. How much of their Nigerianness will matter in the long run?

  • Ibadan and urban renewal

    Ibadan and urban renewal

    Ibadan is an historic city founded around 1830 by migrants particularly Oyo migrants after the collapse of the Oyo Empire in the 1820s because of internal problems and external attacks from jihadists who were Muslims of Fulani, Hausa, Nupe and  Oyo origin and in many cases led by Yoruba Muslims and political malcontents whose ambition trumped group interests. Other migrants came to Ibadan as a result of the Owu wars precipitated by the attack on the Owu kingdom by the Ife and Ijebu between 1821 and 1826.

    The Owu kingdom had through ambition tried to overwhelm its neighbours the commercial town of Apomu  from 1812 which had probably received Oyo’s clandestine support precipitating  almost a century of internecine wars in Yorubaland in which  various sub ethnic groups tried to resolve the question of Oyo imperialism in Yorubaland against independence of various sub ethic groups like the Ife, Igbomina, Ijesha, Ekiti, Akoko, Egba, while the Ijebu and Ondo  were marginally touched by the various wars. In the process, new centres of power such as the new Ibadan republican imperium replacing the Oyo Empire and rising on its ashes to become a formidable force in Yoruba land. Others like the Ilorin in the northern part of the Oyo Empire formed a new centre of power with Islam providing cement unifying the Ilorin Kingdom later becoming an emirate on the lands of the northern half of Igbomina, the Ibolo, the Erin, northern Ekiti and other northern Yoruba groups.

    It is a complex story which has been expertly dealt with by people more versed in Yoruba history than myself like the late professors, J. Ade-Ajayi, Adeagbo Akinjogbin, Emmanuel Ayankanmi  Ayandele,  J. A Atanda , and professors  Banji Akintoye, Tony  Ijaola Asiwaju  who are very much alive and  before all of them, the venerable Samuel Johnson whose history of the Yoruba blazed the trail. The Yoruba people are the most studied and written about in the whole of Africa.

    I thought I could write a short preamble to this piece on Ibadan without going too much into Yoruba history but alas, I still have to say something because the past foreshadows the future. Suffice it to say that Ibadan is the child of Yoruba history and it came from the crucible of the Yoruba internecine wars which actually began 1797  with Oyo/Owu attack on Apomu and terminated with the British defeat of Ilorin in 1897  when it was defeated to end the armed interregnum between Ilorin and Ibadan .

    Ibadan‘s cosmopolitanism is epitomised by the fact that its first Bashorun was Lagelu, a warrior from Ile Ife. Ibadan has grown without the benefit of physical planning from the 19th century to the present. The few attempts to impose some kind of planning on the town in the 1950s by building the Bodija Estate was like a drop of water in the mighty ocean. There has been one or two estates at the outskirts of Ibadan but they have been too little and too late. The main sprawling city, a conurbation without industries, has remained a collection of settlements and villages linked together and competing with each other and only linked together by culture but with each lineage with having its own different histories.

    In this disparate origin and growth lies Ibadan’s strength. It welcomes all and sundry while expanding in all directions sharing boundaries with Egbaland and Ijebuland and culturally related Iwo, Oshogbo, Ife and Ede and Owu territories. Originally where Ibadan is today was part of Egba territory. The cosmopolitan origins and growth of Ibadan has been limited to Yoruba peoples and non-Yoruba groups though existing within the confines of the city are infinitesimally few. There has never been any argument about who owns Ibadan and ownership of Ibadan has largely been domiciled within the numerically superior Oyo/Owu group of its founders.

    Today, Ibadan remains the largest city in tropical Africa followed by Lagos, Kano and Ogbomosho. Political enumerators may say something different sometimes saying Lagos and even Kano are larger and more numerous than Ibadan but objective observers know the truth. Yes Lagos may have more people crowded in its small territory but Ibadan remains the largest city in Nigeria and one can drive for fifty miles within Ibadan. This size has been a hindrance to its development. When it was the capital of the entire Western Region stretching from Ikeja to Warri, there were  enormous resources to redevelop it but the government of the day had more things to struggle with such as universal education, health and social welfare and besides, Ibadan was the centre of the NCNC opposition to the ACTION GROUP government from 1951 to 1960 so there was no incentive for massive redevelopment of Ibadan apart from building the Bodija Estate and expanding the various GRAs (Government Reservation Areas).

    Since 1963, the resources that fed Ibadan has dwindled and now Ibadan is the mere capital of Oyo State while Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti states now have their own capitals in Ikeja, Abeokuta, Oshogbo, Akure and Ado-Ekiti to cope with. Despite this fact, Ibadan remains the cultural capital and second home of great number of the Yoruba elite outside Lagos. This means we all have a stake in its development and quite a substantial number have property in the city.

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    This writer is an Ekiti man by birth but an Ibadan man by domicile. Some members of my family have been in Ibadan attending the government college since 1940 while I was in the grammar school for my HSC in 1961 and 1962 and the University of Ibadan in 1963. A member of my family built the Bodija Housing Estate. I say all this to show I am not just a “Johnny just come” to Ibadan, I am as good as a “son of the soil”. I have therefore a stake in the health and prosperity of Ibadan.

    Ibadan today is the capital of Oyo State. The city has I think 16 Local Government Administrations (LGAs). If the resources are well managed, there is no reason why the roads today should be so ragged and poorly maintained. Road maintenance is neither neuro-science nor rocket science that we need to go and import experts to help us. Lagos has always maintained its road without resort to foreign expertise. When jobs are given to Julius Berger Construction Company, the job is done by Nigerian artisans.

    It is true that Lagos has more money than Oyo. Yes this is true and this is because they are more ingenious than Oyo. Thank God, Oyo is now trying to collect “Land Use Charge”. I suggested this to the Oyo government more than 20 years ago when Lagos introduced the measure. Introducing it now is too late and too little. With the suffering in the land, this is not the time to impose new levies and new taxes. Yet Ibadan, Ogbomosho and Oyo city roads and others must be maintained.  Government just have to find the money to do the job. The disillusionment with our government is so pervasive that anything that can be done to raise our spirits is in the right direction. Driving out of our homes and returning home on moon craters like roads are very dispiriting. There are so many things that make people unhappy in Nigeria of today. Our money is almost worthless; we have no pipe borne water, no electricity, no roads, no security, no health facilities, no security, no food, no sense of purpose, and no financial security. Please let our city roads be mended. The cost of tyres is sky high and all of us car owners and commercial travellers and even pedestrians need good roads. Kidnapping gangs wait for their quarries at the bad portions of the roads to grab people.

    There are a million and other reasons why roads maintenance is important. Let Oyo State government come to Ibadan and help us. Government is about people. It exists for the happiness of the majority of the people. If it cannot do this, it ceases to be a government and the people have a right to look elsewhere.

  • 288 hours in a dungeon

    288 hours in a dungeon

    Hooded and armed to the teeth, they stormed the Lagos residence of Segun Olatunji, editor of FirstNews, an online publication. Even with their uniform, you cannot be too sure that they are really who they claimed to be. But Segun had no choice. He had to follow the soldiers all the same.

    To have refused to go with them would have been tragic. In such a situation, it is good to err on the side of caution. Be calm and allow the other party to have its way. A living dog, it is said, is better than a dead lion. Segun gently sought to know why they came for him. “Just dress up and follow us”, the leader of the team barked at him, in the presence of his seven-year-old son.

    His wife and one-year-old son also witnessed the drama, right there in their living room where Segun and his seven-year-old boy were watching television before the soldiers marched in the woman and the baby in her arms. It could not have been a sight to behold. How do you explain the open display of guns and other weapons of war around kids and a woman, who the military knows are shielded from such ugly sights?

    Anyway, they were less bothered by such niceties of treating women and children politely. They were on a mission to fetch the head of the family and they were ready to discharge it without respect for their rules of engagement. They took Segun away with them, pushing his wife and son out of their way, as the woman asked no one in particular where they were taking him to.

    On the street, the neighbours had gathered to watch the unfolding drama in the Olatunjis’ apartment. They discussed in hushed tones as they wondered what the editor might have done to warrant the invasion of their neighbourhood. Nobody could challenge the invading team. As Zik once said only a mad man would confront the person with a gun. The crowd yielded way as the invaders zoomed off with Segun in their convoy of vehicles. A convoy just to pick an harmless citizen! It makes no sense at all to go to any citizen’s home in that manner when he is not a security risk.

    Even, if he is, is that the way to arrest him? Will such a person leave his flanks open, knowing full well that security agents can come for him at anytime? This is why our security operatives must always apply wisdom and be rational in their dealings with others, especially those considered ‘security risks’ so as to avoid bloodbath at the point of arrest. If Segun were to be a security risk, do they think he would have left himself susceptible to easy arrest like that?

    Why did they come for Segun? What did he do? Who complained against him? Should the invading team have gone to his home in that manner? Should state power be deployed against any citizen that way, even if he is a known security risk? I do not know the information that the invaders had at their disposal before that mission, but whatever it is, it does not call for the deployment of such force to effect an arrest. Intelligence officers do not act that way.

    Intelligence officers are circumspect and calculating. They keep watch over their target and close in on him as soon as the person is entrapped. They do not go about noisily announcing their arrival in a neighbourhood that they are about to make an arrest. They come in quietly and leave the same way without anybody knowing about their mission. In this instant case, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), from reports so far, does not have any cogent reason for arresting and detaining Segun incommunicado for 12 days.

    What is more. It initially denied having the editor in its custody until it was confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt that he was there. Why did DIA lie? What does it have to hide over this matter? Is it now an offence for the media to report about security operations or the activities of the heads of those outfits? That FirstNews did a story on the Chief of Defence Intelligence (CDI), Maj Gen. Emmanuel Undiandeye, is not enough reason to arrest Segun, even if the report is inaccurate.

    There are remedies in law for the CDI or any other person for that matter who feels offended by any publication. The CDI cannot by virtue of his position use the weight of his office to  clamp down on people that he feels have offended him. Doing so, as he did in this instant case, is an abuse of power. He cannot use his power to settle personal scores or to stifle free speech and freedom of the press. We are in a democracy and the CDI and others like him should learn to subjugate themselves to civil authority. The defence and civil authorities must work together to strengthen our democracy. In the nation’s interest, security agencies should cease from actions capable of undermining democracy.

    Segun was arrested in Lagos on March 15 and driven blindfolded to Abuja where he was held till March 27. His release did not come easy. It came after a long and tortuous search for him as the DIA, which took him away from Lagos vehemently denied having him in its custody.

    Even with the interventions of the Presidency, Office of National Security Adviser (ONSA), Defence Headquarters (DHQ), Nigerian Police, Nigerian Army, Directorate of State Service (DSS), Ministries of Interior and Information, among others, the agency insisted that it did not have Segun in its custody. Whereas, it did, as it eventually turned out.

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    If not for the persistence of the International Press Institute (IPI), Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), nobody knows what would have happened to Segun, who was held against his will for almost two weeks in a dungeon. What did he do to deserve such treatment? DIA has refused to say. One of its operatives that handed Segun over to NGE secretary Iyobosa Uwugiaren and Deputy Editor (Abuja) of this paper, Yomi Odunuga, under a bridge in Abuja on March 27, reportedly said he was held for ‘terrorism’ in response to a question.

    ‘Terrorism’? How? Where is the evidence that Segun engaged in ‘terrorism’? The DIA should not in a bid to cover up its illegal act give a dog a bad name in order to hang it. It should provide evidence, if any, of Segun’s involvement in terrorism. Otherwise, DIA and Undandieye should apologise publicly to Segun and pay him compensation for defaming and illegally arresting and detaining him for 288 hours, which is 240 hours more than the 48 hours constitutionally allowed for holding a suspect, without charge.

    By calling him a ‘terrorist’, Segun has been defamed by the DIA  and his right to freedom breached by his arrest and detention. With what the country is going through now, our security agencies should be careful not to compound things for the government. The DIA is not above the law. Its job is to execute the law and not to flout it. When it flouts the law, it must pay the price. It is high time the DIA and other related agencies learnt to work within the ambits of the law in a democracy.

    I agree with NUJ, NGE and IPI that Segun’s release should not be “the end of this matter”. They should hasten work on their ongoing consultations and see what can be done to right the wrong done to Segun. If they keep quiet now, we do not know what the DIA or any other related agency will be up to in future. It is Segun today, it may be any other editor tomorrow. As the saying goes: a stitch in time saves nine.

  • Triumph of Air Peace

    Triumph of Air Peace

    Air Peace, the Nigeria’s flag carrier commenced Lagos-London flight services last Saturday March 30 after seven years of test of endurance. Allen Onyema, the airline chief executive officer (CEO) deserves accolades for a hard-won victory which has also been hailed by many as victory for Nigeria and Nigerian air travellers.

    And to discerning Nigerians, it cannot be anything less.  To those who are passionate about our country, it is a victory over swindling of Nigeria of about N3.7 billion annually by foreign airlines including British Airways that was by 2014 charging non-competitive fare of $10,070 for a First Class return seat from Abuja to London while the same facility through Accra costs $4, 943. It is also a relief for Nigerians relieved of the burden of having to travel to Ghana, South Africa or Morocco in search of cheap foreign airline tickets. It is also hoped this victory will bring into a closure ex-minister, Stella Oduah’s battle against deliberate violation of Nigeria’s aviation laws by foreign airlines.

    And for those who have faith in our country, it is also a victory over local powers and principalities who cannot stand the success of their fellow compatriots but will rather cooperate with outsiders to kill their own “sun’ (apologies to Saro Wiwa) whether he be Chinua Achebe’s Okonkwo, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Congo’s Patrice Lumumba or Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo.

    The betrayal by Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), as narrated by Onyema during his ARISE TV interview was despicable.  And no less repulsive was the complicity of corrupt bureaucrats in the  avoidable  frittering away of N200m by Air Peace to secure the services of consultancy firms from IATA just as  the action of unpatriotic government officials  who deliberately derailed the commencement of services operations long after the Nigerian flag carrier had  “actually procured their three-triple seven because of this route’,  because they wanted to give it the blow that it deserved at that time” cannot be anything but loathsome.

    Onyema also did not forget to remind us of the international aero-politics which he admitted while speaking with ARISE Television on Monday, can be very dirty. He must  have been referring to having to clear his name over U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Georgia’s  November 22, 2019 press release alleging fraud and money laundering for moving more than $20 million from Nigeria through United States bank accounts out of which ‘over $3 million of the funds used to purchase the aircraft allegedly came from bank accounts for Foundation for Ethnic Harmony, International Centre for Non-Violence and Peace Development, All-Time Peace Media Communications Limited, and Every Child Limited.’. Added to this international conspiracy was the Gatwick authorities’ unusual demand of non-refundable 20 million pounds deposit, before Air Peace could start operation”.

    Last Saturday victory lap was anchored by Onyema who took a leading position in the private airline operators’ battle against government’s proposed national carrier they argued was detrimental to the survival of airline local operators.

    Buhari had in 2014 disclosed that President Jonathan fleet of about 11 aircrafts would form the nucleus of his planned national carrier.  It was not until July 18, 2018, that “the name, logo, colour scheme, structure, and types of airplanes of Nigeria’s national carrier were unveiled at Farnborough International Public Air show in London”. There we were informed about $308.8m had been set aside to cover aircraft acquisition and running costs for the airline’s take-off, with five of the projected 30 aircraft needed expected in Nigeria by December 19 2014. The new national carrier, we were told would operate 40 domestic, regional and sub-regional and 41 international routes. And that it would be a private sector driven ‘Nigeria Air’ in which government would own only 5% with Nigerians owing 46 per cent equity, while 49 per cent shares were reserved for strategic foreign investors.

    Unfortunately, Buhari had credibility deficit especially with Hadi Sirika last minute stampeding of Air Ethiopia as favoured strategic partners on terms the current minister whose official report is yet to be released said was unfavourable to Nigeria,

    Nigerians derived little joy from government past interference in the activities of the airlines especially the Stella Oduah’s ‘N330b Aviation Intervention Fund meant to address the financial challenges faced by airlines in the country” with N232.6b of it paid to 21 participating banks.  But records as at 2015, when Jonathan left government, showed that domestic airlines like Arik, Aero and Air Nigeria whose managing director led the crusade and got N35.5 billion government bail-out were owing AMCON over $700m debt

    The mishandling of Nigerian Airways, Virgin Nigeria, Nigerian National Shipping Line, the four public refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, of Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Company, Nigeria Railways Corporation” NEPA PHCN, banks oil companies, insurance, hospitality industry only increased Nigerians apprehensiveness about involvement of government in setting up of a national carrier or involvement of government in any business for that matter.

     And counting in favour of anti-national carrier, domestic airline operators and Air Peace this time around is the fact that they are not asking for government bailout. Their battle cry is that past government interference had been a disaster.

    But while we celebrate the success of Air Piece and the triumph of domestic airline operators, it is important to remind Nigerians youths who lack a sense of history and the rest of Nigerians, who often suffer from collective amnesia, that there is nothing wrong with public enterprises. The problem was with our ill trained military men and their thieving new breed politicians

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    Our founding fathers following in the footsteps of Europe adopted the Keynesian macroeconomic model which supports government intervention for the purpose of national development instead of depending on market economy to liberate our people from poverty.  And this paid off as most of the public enterprises established by our founding fathers brought rapid development until after the civil war.  For that season, public enterprises formed the backbone of our economy. In fact, it was the golden era of Nigeria when the naira was as strong as pound sterling and stronger than the dollar with Nigeria giving interest free loans to some African and European nations. Up to 1983, estacode for those visiting Britain who by the way needed no visa, was N500 (five hundred naira).

    Our nightmare started with Babangida’s ill-advised commercialization and Structural Adjustment Programme which saw many thriving federal and state-owned public enterprises sold to retired military personnel and their fronts who were never equipped to run such enterprises. Obasanjo and his military baked new breed politicians completed this betrayal when from 1999, they sold Nigeria’s total investment of about $100 billion acquired between 1959 and 1999 for a paltry $1.5 billion.

    From then on, public enterprises became the scape goat to cover up the greed of politicians. It was used as an excuse by politicians without vision to justify underfunding of public universities to allow those who have access to state funds set up their own private universities, sabotage public water supply, the mainstay of our urban centres in the 60s and 70s to pave the  way for a regime of private water merchants  and to destroy Nigerian Airways to justify the setting up of Albarka, Okada, Oriental, Concord, Harka, EAS, Triad, Harco, Savannah, Bellview, ADC airlines their today’s reincarnations.

    Onyema, like Dangote and other members of their tribe might be good corporate citizens, always aiding Nigerians in distress, celebrating Falcons, after victory and flying our national colours. But at the end, he is profit-driven business man running aviation business, perhaps one of the most sophisticated businesses in the world. He has to recoup costs of all the aircrafts he claims to own while the aircrafts must be certified globally.

    Onyema is not into charity. He is in business to make money. And making money under market economy means taking advantage of the less privileged that our abandoned public enterprises were designed to protect.

  • The Art of Nigerianness

    The Art of Nigerianness

    It’s instructive how blushes of the real world become real only when projected on TV or a cinema screen. Fantasy validates reality. Whatever the thrust of artwork, be it a culture in decay, a nation in decline, or civilisation taking its final gasps, imagination powers life in the fictional universe.

    A dead, forgotten race may attain rebirth on the pages of literary fiction, on stage or in a film reel. The scripted cosmos has its uses after all. Real life could be scary, often ill-fated and grim. Life is certainly not a feel-good flick with a PG rating, yet movies labour to document reality in acceptable montage – memorable scenes showing us that it is always possible for anyone to endure the ghastliest circumstances and yet survive.

    Art may be deployed to resuscitate a comatose culture or highlight broad, existentialist questions – staples of a deeply grounded, socially conscious didactic process. Through art, we may also challenge the superficial and deepest assumptions of Nigeria’s beleaguered economy and political culture.

    Art may be consciously deployed to save floundering sovereignty simply by stirring positive emotionality or reawakening patriotic fervour in the citizenry.

    En route to the February polls, Nigeria flailed to impassioned hope and jarring cynicism of political actors. Politics stewed to a scalding broth as rival parties, posing as patriots, split private terraces and public courts in vulgar gladiatorship. They did it for the culture.

    Indeed, patriotism thrives on cultural standards. The politics that Nigerians espouse, the lore of nationhood, and the lyricism of partisan poetry manifest the kernel of our sovereignty.

    A similar dynamic undergirds our politico-literary traditions. Politics thrives on literary culture and vice versa. What shouldn’t we do for an evergreen story? What shouldn’t we give? Evergreen storylines make up the fabric of our collective narrative; when progressively spun, they are endlessly fascinating, yielding fresh insights through the imagination of the writer or filmmaker, who milks history and recalibrates reality to espouse a positive national lyric.

    What is the Nigerian lyric? What is our reality? In search of the proverbial elixir, we have drunk water from an unnamed stream and filled our bellies with toxins. The superiority of Western democracy is one of the supreme constructions of imperialism and the poisonous elixir of Nigeria and her neighbours on the African continent.

    Nigerians elevate it with obsessive love. It is the magic pill to the nation’s ceaseless headaches. Demagogues exploit its hackneyed tropes in a torrid caress of the vanities and base sentimentality of the gullible masses. Politicians chant its praise. Social commentators extol its virtues in their ever-resonant “In saner clime” chanted across media platforms.

    But the West must never be blamed for our collective ignorance – particularly the United States. The latter’s democratic enterprise is one of the most profitable constructions in its bid to “make America great again,” at any cost.

    It is both music and philosophy, a sensory stream of thought feeding generations of writers, political activists, filmmakers, politicians, gender rights activists, academia, and so on.

    Hollywood, democracy and foreign aid do for America, for instance, what painting and sculpture did for the Italians. They are potent tools for wooing and recolonising the world. A few good minds with an intuitive grasp of the hard-edged imperialist designs of the Western agenda are spuriously labelled as conspiracy theorists.

    Those who would die embracing colonist doctrines must understand that there is no way this could be achieved without horror, given the marked differences in culture, temperament, and histories defining different nations of the world.

    It’s about time we identified values complementary to our precepts of humane governance. We cannot dwell like the Americans or Brits in Nigeria. We can only assimilate aspects of their culture that complement ours.

    It’s scarier to note that our arts and literature have weakened in our bid to entrench American and European Renaissance in our cultural frames. More worrisome is our artists’ rabid deconstruction of Nigerianness.

    Writers and filmmakers, to date, struggle to acculturate the Nigerian landscape with defective foreign mores. Thus they corrupt their presentations and stifle the possibility of attaining homegrown, practicable solutions to oft-politicised conflict. Nonetheless, they have a dedicated industry of cheerleaders and courtiers who romanticise their follies as the valiance sorely needed to reinvigorate Nigeria’s creative sector.

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    Themes glorifying repulsive gender wars, mindless youth rebellion, and the orchestration of social hierarchies are aggressively projected and patronised to the detriment of rational, progressive, and didactic art. This hurts us immeasurably.

    While creative industries in America, Britain, China, India, Korea, Malaysia, Russia, and France, to mention a few, commit genii and capital resources to constantly recreate and embellish their political narratives, with progressive outcomes, the Nigerian creative sector obsessively weaponises and projects vulgar themes of citizenship and romance.

    The projection of toxic consciousness has become a thing among local artists. We see it sprout across genres: drama, prose, poetry, and beyond. It seizes mainstream and indie filmmaking, corrupting Nollywood inside out, as you read.

    Otherwise brilliant and perceptive filmmakers denounce patriotism and attack Nigeria. They corrupt our artistic vocabulary, twisting it into a meditation on society’s debauched nature. Ultimately, they celebrate degeneracy via aggressive cues of prurient art, promiscuity, gendered storms, and virulent sexuality.

    While the consequences of such dross manifest in real-time, Nigeria welcomes from abroad, more insolent corruption of its media space through degenerate reality shows like the BBN without putting up a fight. The damage to the cultural psyche is incalculable.

    The United States has always appreciated the depth and promise of the arts and entertainment sector. Thus the US government and Hollywood’s symbiotic relationship. Washington DC provides intriguing plots for filmmakers and the latter reciprocates by glamourising the political class and reinventing America’s exploits on the global stage.

    Between 1911 and 2017, over 800 feature films received support from the US Government’s Department of Defence (DoD). These included blockbuster franchises such as Iron Man, Transformers, and The Terminator – mostly infantile reels.

    The entertainment partnerships and offerings are often deployed to foster a positive image for the United States on the international stage while offering its citizens ample channels to exorcise their post-9/11 demons.

    In 2022, Nigeria’s Nollywood made 1,923 movies, according to the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB), thus making it the second most prolific movie industry after Bollywood and before Hollywood; yet Hollywood made $7.37 billion, while Bollywood made $1.28 billion vis-à-vis Nollywood’s $203 million revenue in the same year.

    Films and literature could be used to foster national healing and patriotism. And they may also be used to destroy a people and ruin nations in pursuit of global good or the “enlightened self-interest” of a dubious superpower.

    With very few exceptions, like Tunde Kelani, Kunle Afolayan, Femi Adebayo, Nollywood churns out too many rabidly wrought revenge-fantasies in which the Nigerian female perpetually scores retribution over her treacherous male; lest we forget the increasingly base novel and TV plots by which Nigerian audiences are lured to nurse demonic sexuality, ethnic intolerance, religious bigotry, misandry, and sexist rage.

    It’s about time the government partnered with the arts sector to reinvent the Nigerian story while channelling humane governance and patriotism. This is not a call for government censorship of progressive art. Rather it’s a call for institutionalised support via public-spirited funding and ideological partnership.

    It’s about time we refined the subtleties that make the Nigerian dream the fantasy of thieves, slatterns, and blinkered murderers.

  • Inauguration of Academy of International Affairs

    Inauguration of Academy of International Affairs

    After months of existence the Academy of International Affairs (Nigeria) was inaugurated in the Rotunda of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja on the morning of Monday, March 25 in a ceremony chaired by the amiable General Yakubu Gowon, former head of state of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The academy is the brain child of Akinwande Bolaji Akinyemi, professor of political science, former Director-General of the Institute of International Relations and better known as former foreign minister under the military president of General Ibrahim Babangida in the 1980s.

    Professor Akinyemi is most remembered for his innovation in the foreign ministry especially for his policy of sending young Nigerian professionals under the Technical Aid Corps Scheme (TACS) to assist needy countries in Africa and the developing world, a rather ambitious scheme which the country in these days of scarce resources is finding difficult to fund. He also tried to suggest Nigeria’s membership in a new organisation of what was called “Concert of Medium Powers” more or less some watered down replacement of the then moribund Non-Aligned Movement. This suggestion was laughed out of court by people who felt Nigeria because of its apparent successes in championing the liberation cause in Southern Africa was beginning to punch above its weight internationally.

    Even from this short preamble in this piece, my readers can imagine the debate we have in the academy on issues that are already settled! That’s the nature of academia. Professor Akinyemi boiled in the argumentative tradition of academia and the executive tradition of political headship of a bureaucratic department is well suited to his role as president. Some of our originating membership have left; new members have been invited to join while some of our nominees did not receive approval. Whatever the case may be the academy has evolved from our collective efforts. The academy as presently constituted is made up of academics in the fields of international relations, politics, diplomatic history, international law and diplomacy, economics and retired ambassadors with advanced degrees and service in international institutions and posting to international missions, some former ministers and military generals with peace-keeping experience. Membership will definitely grow in the future as the academy settles down in its work of clinically looking at the operations of Nigerian foreign policy and how it can be improved. This academy is strictly speaking, an academy, independent of government and it will as it goes on, criticise the government, applaud it and make solicited or unsolicited suggestions when the occasion arises.

    I say this to clear the fog of some people thinking it is another government institution since it was launched in the rotunda of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It will also through lectures and symposiums raise issues that may be relevant to the overall development of our country. This will not be restricted to issues of foreign policy alone, but to the overall economic development of the country knowing very well the interconnected nature of foreign policy with domestic political and economic development.

    As if to signal its future direction, it invited a distinguished Nigerian professor,  Okechukwu (Okey ) Oramah, CON, the managing director and  chairman of the Board of Directors, African  Import-Export Bank  (Afreximbank) to give a lecture  titled –  The “AfCFTA Natural Resources And Development Capital Formation In  Africa”. The lecture had a serious impression on the audience which included representatives of the presidency and a statement from the vice president’s office said that the lecture will be subjected to clinical analysis for its possible inclusion in the various ingredients going into government economic policies.

    The cursory impression on me even before close reading is that the professor is suggesting that the failure of Africa’s development is due to scarce capital and over dependence on foreign capital and that the solution is to rapidly build up capital using our natural resources both agricultural and mineral which can then be deployed for the various development projects particularly building of physical infrastructure without which we cannot develop. This suggestion is not totally new but there is a counter political suggestion of using all available resources and other peoples’ resources such as loans to build up enough capital for investment.

    I agree with Professor Oramah’s suggestion because our political and economic leaders in the past were not totally committed to national development. When in 1983, I suggested in a public lecture by our then vice president, Dr Alex Ekwueme that Nigeria should borrow a leaf from the book of the government of the oil-producing Canadian province of Alberta by setting apart a portion of its oil proceeds as Sovereign Investment Funds  for future on the basis that no one generation should expend all the resources of the country, our vice president angrily retorted that the policy being suggested  by me had no practical application in Nigeria that was in a hurry to develop. There is now a sovereign investment funds which came too little too late in 2011 or thereabouts when Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was finance minister.

    The inauguration of the Academy of International Affairs Nigeria will be remembered for the personal comments and remembrances of General Gowon and his clerical Protestant Anglican root and how this connected him and Professor Akinyemi and his family and how religion has been a cement binding people of different ethnicity and region in Nigeria. Thank God for modern technology because those of us who were not in Abuja but are members were surprisingly asked to say a few words. Since I was not told beforehand, I mumbled a few words of gratitude to Professor Akinyemi, General Gowon who as Head of State ordered all university teachers who were on strike to pack out of university houses and rented accommodation. I was a lecturer in the University of Lagos then. This led to senior university staff’s decision to build their own homes outside the universities.

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    My brother Kayode of blessed memory was one of them. If I was told before, I would have told him how others and myself carried the torch of higher education to Plateau State when we were part of the staff of the University of Ibadan, Jos Campus thus opening up the minority areas of Nigeria to higher education with no personal benefit but the reward of being pioneers.

    Let me end this piece by saying serving in the Ministry of Foreign affairs at least in the past when we were engaged in helping in the liberation of Southern Africa was not a piece of cake. It came with considerable danger of possible assassination, sabotaged aircrafts by agents of South Africa, Portugal and Rhodesia and their Western sponsors. Some of us have personal stories to tell.