The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Israel’s war on Hamas and hypocrisy of Europe and allies

    Despite admonition by their philosophers including Jean-Jacques Rousseau that “all men are born equal and free”, and Immanuel Kant who insisted human beings must be regarded as “rational beings equally worthy of dignity and respect” and their creation of a new god called democracy which presupposes  that “all people are equal and are entitled to equal respect”, man is neither free nor equal in Europe. And because they are in bondage, for them, it is the survival of the fittest where the strong survives and the weak dies (the law of the jungle).

    From their historical trajectory, not many will disagree that the west and its allies that often behave like bandits are duplicitous. We only need to cast our minds back to how, driven by hunger, they came to Africa in search of food, gold and honour. But having discovered our superior social organization, they chose to exploit our humanity by embarking on Trans-Atlantic slave trade that saw 3.5m able-bodied Nigerians shipped to their plantations in North and South America and the Caribbean. In the guise of ending the evil slave trade they started, they embarked on a war of survival of the fittest starting in Lagos through Benin to Sokoto. Their objective was continuation of exploitation through colonization.

    But if anyone is still in doubt that Europe and its cousins in America are governed by the law of the jungle, he should take another look at the ongoing Israeli’s one-sided war on Hamas and the daily massacre of women and children caged in an enclave called Gaza while the sing song of Europe and its allies is “Israel has the right to defend itself” even as the rest of the world who watched in horror called for an end to hostility.

    Even with the death of about 15,000 Palestinians half of them women and children killed through Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, refugees camps and UN and mission run schools where the victims sought refuge, neither stone-faced Netanyahu nor his western promoters remember Moses’ law of ‘an eye for an eye’ proportionality in the mission to avenge the killing of 1,400 Israelis by Hamas.

    To expose the hypocrisy of Britain and its cousins, let us now take a journey through memory.

    Israeli Arab crisis started when ‘Europeanised’ Jews, strangers to Palestine who were trying to escape pogroms and persecution in Eastern Europe started to migrate back to what was then the Ottoman Empire with the help of Zionist groups in the 19th century. The Balfour Declaration by the British government in 1917 in support of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine was followed by United Nations vote in 1947 to partition land in the British mandate of Palestine into two states – one Jewish, one Arab. Arab resisted the arrangement but in the ensuing violence, Israel with the help of America and Zionist movement prevailed and went on to expel about700, 000 Palestinians from their land captured by Israelis while Arabs that remained in Israel as citizens were subjected to official discrimination with their constituencies deliberately kept poor and underfunded.

     Israel has since its 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip anchored on the need for self-defence against a stateless caged people without an army, air force or navy violated about 28 UN resolutions. For 56 years, Israel with the support of US and Europe denied Palestinians the right to self-determination, the control over basic aspect of daily life which left youths with only a sense of hopelessness and frustration.

     Israel violated  (Article 1 of Universal declaration of human rights (UDHR) that says “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights; Article 2, that says “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration” . Article 4, which says  “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude”, Article 5 that says  “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and  Article 9 which says  “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile”. 

    Read Also: How Tinubu is fighting insecurity, by Gbajabiamila

    Israel  breached  Article 14& 51(1945)  for  her illegal annexation and occupation of Palestinians land by force in 1948 and 1967 wars and Article 49(6)(1949) which makes it illegal for Israel to displace indigenous people by building settlement to displace indigenous people on their land.

    The United Nations has accused the US of encouraging Israel to “pursue aggressive and expansionist policies and practices in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for vetoing about 40 UN resolutions against Israel”. Different UN bodies have similarly pointed out violation of human rights of Palestinians on a massive scale including ‘torture, imprisonment without charges or trial and confiscation, harassment at checkpoints, unwarranted civilian shootings, not punishing Israeli  settlers’ crime against Palestinians, unwarranted disruption of medical care, commerce, employment, free movement, destruction of public and private properties family separation etc.”,  while the US and Europe blindly supported Israel.

    But both were to express an outrage when Hamas, widely believed to be a creation of Israel that first recognised Mujama al-Islamiya as a way of undermining support for the PLO, played into the hands of Netanyahu who as opposition leader killed the Oslo Accord after the assassination of Rabin. Hamas launched an unprecedented assault on Israel on October 7, killing women, children, elderly and the disabled”. The murderous assault was widely condemned by the whole world except China and Russia that blamed the US and Europe for the tragedy.

    However, instead of taking responsibility for their failed policies in the Middle East, the US, the European Union and other Western countries not only condemned the Hamas attack on Israel, but also promised support in terms of logistics, intelligence, additional equipment, air defence missiles, guided bombs and ammunition, all against a rag tag Hamas fighters facing massive bombing and assault by hundreds of tanks.

    With no power, water, food, communication or safe haven in Gaza as dead bodies of unknown children are buried under rubbles of bombed hospitals, refugee camps or UN schools where they sought refuge, UK and US and their allies would not call for a cease-fire as they watch full effect of visiting law of the jungle on innocent Palestinians.

    Hypocritical  UK, US and France and other allies that are today providing arms, finance and logistics for a nuclear power at war with a people caged in an enclave with no escape route and  tolerated Palestinian 56 years siege, had no problem arming Ukraine against Russian invasion, manipulating a UN resolution on disarmament to murder Saddam Hussein even when as it turned out Iraq had no weapon of mass destruction and in sponsoring Resolution 1973 of 17 March 2011, the legal basis for military intervention in Libya ostensibly for protecting civilians but in fact designed to  kill Gadhafi.

    While to Britain and its allies, “all men are not born equal and free”, neither Libyan, Palestinian nor even Ukrainian civilians really matter. They are just tools in the pursuit of their national selfish interest.

  • The ‘shit’ it leaves behind

    The ‘shit’ it leaves behind

    A wolf disguised as a sheep will not be discovered simply because it bleats badly, but because of the “shit’ it leaves behind. No matter how lyrical Joe Ajaero waxes about his pummeling in Imo State, Nigerians must examine his claims with a quizzical mind.

    The diminutive leader of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has decided to punish over 200 million Nigerians for the beating he received from his kinsmen in Imo.

    The man who Nigerians labour to prop as the workers’ giant, has chosen to parade himself as the communal flyspeck bearing the plot of familiar predators in its droppings.

    Ajaero, while addressing workers at the NLC secretariat in Owerri, recently, was accosted by suspected thugs who beat him to a pulp. He emerged from the ordeal looking, like a poorly trained pugilist fresh out of a shellacking by an unforgiving opponent.

    Speaking at a press conference, in Abuja, he claimed that he was arrested by the police and handed over to thugs who beat him up, and threatened to kill him and dump his body in a river.

    But the police spokesman in Imo, Henry Okoye, claimed that the police went to rescue Ajaero and take him into “protective custody.” The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, has since removed the Imo Commissioner of Police, Mohammed Barde, thus arousing speculations that the police did a shoddy job.

    Perhaps IGP Egbetokun would order an investigation of the crisis, to determine if the police truly erred, and punish erring personnel to forestall a repeat of such misconduct.

    On the flip side, pundits adduce the pummeling of the NLC boss to his immoderate flirtation with politics. Ajaero, apparently miffed by the loss of his favourite candidate, Labour Party (LP)’s Peter Obi, seems bent on scuttling the fragile peace and stability of the country.

    The NLC has declared a nationwide strike, in protest against the brutalisation of Ajaero, in Owerri, soon after ordering the closure of essential services in Imo, including electricity, thereby throwing the state into darkness.

    There is no gainsaying the NLC has morphed into strange forms under Ajaero’s leadership; the body’s pre and post-2023 election conduct, for instance, resonate extreme partisanship and anarchic tendencies peculiar to political actors with poor spirit of sportsmanship.

    Few people would forget in a hurry, how the NLC boss, Ajaero, openly flirted with and endorsed LP candidate, Obi, during the 2023 presidential elections. In flagrant violation of non-partisan ethics obligatory of the NLC, Ajaero campaigned for Obi and forced the NLC to release an inglorious official statement calling for “all workers across the country to vote for Labour Party in the 2023 Presidential election.”

    Ajaero also in his May Day speech attacked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), accusing it of conducting a flawed election to favour Tinubu and claiming Obi won the election.
    His claims of Obi’s touted victory depicted him as yet another emotive actor eager to hurl Nigeria into anarchy by declaring a candidate, who came a distant third, the winner of the February 25 presidential elections.

    There is no gainsaying Ajaero turned himself to Obi’s mouthpiece on several occasions. En route to the polls, he applauded Obi’s promise to remove fuel subsidy but condemned President Bola Tinubu for daring to implement such a measure.

    Ajaero’s anti-democratic stance hardly proffers solutions to the country’s myriad of problems. His ill-fated jaunt in Imo, for instance, further established him as a reject of his own people. On the eve of a governorship election in Imo, Ajaero tried to force an industrial strike on the State, claiming the Governor Hope Uzodinma-led administration owed workers as much as 20 months’ salaries. Governor Uzodinma has since declared that he was “not owing anyone.”

    It is noteworthy that Ajaero has failed to invalidate Uzodinma’s claims with facts and figures thus validating suspicions about his true mission in Imo.

    Read Also: BREAKING: NLC gives six conditions to call off strike

    Governor Uzodinma accused Ajaero of polluting the NLC with Labour Party politics. Of course, he enjoys an inalienable right to support any political party of his choice but he has no right to impose his partisan politics on the labour movement.

    The NLC does not belong to the Labour Party and vice versa. Ajaero’s partisanship clearly jeopardises the integrity of the NLC. It has brought the labour union to disrepute.

    It is worrisome to see Ajaero sully the entire labour movement by pushing his partisan LP agenda as a workers’ agenda. By his conduct, he has established himself more as an LP goon than a national labour leader. His antics furnish the venom of aggrieved candidates and supporters of the LP, who had at various times, tried to instigate anarchy and a military coup d’état.

    Mayhem is the anthem that we should shun. It is the fruit of dissent that we must be wary of and I will continue to say this hoping the prospective tools – the youths – by which the masterminds hope to actualise their selfish plots, would listen.

    The biggest misconception about insurrection or whatever the anarchists choose to call it, is that it would help actualise their allegedly stolen mandate.

    It’s all dirty, greedy politics. The anarchists want the youths to fly the flags of their rebellion against the rule of law. They want everyone to brandish a bumper sticker that bellows: “Death to the Federal Republic of Nigeria!” simply because they lost an election, albeit deservedly.

    Sadly, these anarchists enjoy the “obedience” and support of several youths whose minds cannot discern their selfish plots. Thus the latter waste their passion recycling hackneyed rage and engaging in bootless pursuits at the end of which they accomplish nothing.

    Eventually, the smokescreen and noise of platitudinous chant begin to peter out and the anarchist realises that his or her rhetorical talisman is actually a paltry plated coin, not fit to pass around as a contemptible kobo. When a man becomes too accustomed to artifice, and disguising himself to others, he suffers a loss of self. Will Ajaero reclaim himself? Where is the self-professed “bleeding heart patriot” who – as a factional labour leader – backed out of a planned strike by the NLC?

    Where is the Ajaero, who condemned and rebelled against the indefinite strike action planned by the Ayuba Wahab-led faction of the NLC in 2016 on supposedly principled grounds? What has happened to the Ajaero who opened himself, like a tickled palm, to the courtship of the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari, in order to spite the Wahab-led faction of the NLC? Addressing newsmen in Abuja, Ajaero said his faction could not be part of Wahab’s industrial action because it was called at the wrong time and with wrong motives. He also accused Wahab’s faction of asking the government to write off the N2 billion loan the group collected, in 2012, to buy buses claiming that the strike action had “already been sold out before it took off.”

    Ajaero said, “We thought we should have managed this in the interest of Nigerians but from the look of things, it appears we have to go our different ways.” Seven years on, Ajaero has mutated into a markedly different character. If truly, there is a perfect rout of characters in every man, Ajaero looms like an actor’s trunk, full of strange creatures. The NLC leader brings bodacious theatre to his brief.

  • Nwabueze and his many crusades

    Nwabueze and his many crusades

    Our educated elite, often driven either by greed for power or appetite for mischief, are the scourge of our nation. This was perhaps why Obafemi Awolowo took one look at his colleagues in the run up to independence and concluded that ‘given a choice between Nigerian educated elite, the traditional rulers and the colonial masters, Nigerians would choose in reverse order because with the latter, Nigerian are assured of justice.”

    The death of Prof Ben Nwabueze, one of our most celebrated constitutional law scholars, last week at the ripe age of 94 provides another opportunity to once again examine the travails of Nigeria and Nigerians in the hands of those who were supposed to be the nation’s pathfinders.

    From the onset, our challenge as a multinational and multicultural society was  how to fashion out a federal constitution whose essence is ‘unity in diversity’ (Preston King 1981), using ethnic groups as building block as opposed to geographical diversity. To tackle the challenge, our founding fathers and the colonial masters  embarked on various pre-independence constitutional re-engineering efforts culminating in the  1922 Clifford Constitution which introduced elective principles that encouraged formation of political parties, the 1946 Richard’s Constitution which promoted national unity by  bringing together the north and  southern Nigeria  for greater participation in the discussion of their own affairs for the very first time since  1923;  and 1951 Macpherson constitution which introduced House of Representatives with regional representatives of 68 members from the north and 34 each from the west and east.

    There was also the Oliver Lyttleton 1953 inspired London Conference that institutionalised federalism and regionalism, 1954 Lagos Conference which recommended the regionalization of public service and judiciary and resources allocation based on derivation, the 1957 London Independence constitutional conference which granted self-government to the west and east and recommended the setting up of the 1958 Willink Commission to look into the complaints of minorities’.

    Despite these giant strides in constitutional development, the first republic collapsed because of constitutional crisis initiated by a segment of the elite who in an effort to outfox each other contrived the military coup that dragged our ill-equipped and less educationally endowed soldiers into politics.

    In power, they developed a messianic complex. And limited by the nature of their training, the military command structure, and handicapped by their little knowledge of how to manage society, their antidote to what they perceived as excesses of the strong regions was a strong centre even in a multi-ethnic society. Regarding themselves as custodians of a constitution abused by the political elite, they assumed they could fashion out a vision of a new and better society. We have since been moving in circle because the closer they moved towards that vision the farther the vision receded.

    One man that could have prevented the tragedy of May 1966 was Professor Ben Nwabueze. He was one of Nigerian most accomplished students of society. He has been described as a constitutional colossus, an accomplished intellectual who according to Professor Williams “dazzled everyone by the amazing fecundity of his mind and imagination, the sheer forensic brilliance of his argument, the dialectical rigour of his submission and the rousing aplomb and finesse with which they are put together.”

    Read Also: Nwabueze: The legal Titan and his legacy

    Unfortunately the brilliance of Nwabueze, credited with the drafting of military unitary Decree 34 that in one fell swoop frittered away the gains of 44 years of constitutional engineering by our colonial masters and our founding fathers, did not reflect positively in the affairs of Nigeria or that of his Igbo people who have had to pay huge price for Ironsi’s 1966 folly.

    If the first republic collapsed because Nwabueze and his fellow Nigerian leading elite’ greed for power, their role in frustrating efforts to return to “Nigerian path to freedom” through other constitutional reforms since the seventies have not been any less treacherous.

    Gowon’s 12 state structure based on major ethnic groups aligned with Obafemi Awolowo’s concept of state creation as a philosophy for development and unity in diversity, but that changed with the 1975 take- over of power by Murtala Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo who immediately foisted a 19-state structure without rhyme on the country.

    It was to get worse with the country increasingly becoming federal  only in name but unitary in reality especially with Ibrahim Babangida’s creation of eleven states (Akwa Ibom and Katsina) on September 23, 1987, and  Abia, Enugu, Delta, Jigawa, Kebbi, Osun, Kogi, Taraba and Yobe on August 27, 1991. Abacha’s with the creation of six additional states: Ebonyi, Bayelsa, Nasarawa, Zamfara, Gombe and Ekiti, in 1996, took the total number to an unwieldy and unviable 36 sates.

    A journey through memory and by his own admission shortly before his death, Nwabueze admitted he was closely linked to the nation’s self-inflicted tragedies. His intervention in 1966 led to the July 1966 revenge coup, the attendant pogrom on the streets of northern cities and the civil war in which his Igbo people paid heavy toll.

    His advice to Babangida according to Prof. Omo Omoruyi’s “The Tales of June 12” led to the annulment of MKO Abiola’s pan-Nigeria 1993 mandate and the foisting of interim contraption by Babangida and Obasanjo on the country as well as Abacha’s five years’ war against Nigeria and the Yoruba led NADECO opposition.

    It is also on record that with Nwabueze as Abacha’s Minister of Education, Nigerian universities were shut down for about nine months during which lecturers received no salaries. And as Abacha’s confidant, he was also said to have made some inputs into the 1989 constitution often dismissed as Abdulsalami’s Decree 24 that has made the country ungovernable since the beginning of the 4th republic.

    Nwabueze equally admitted that as a member of the Constitution Drafting Committee set up by the military government in 1978, he was not “only a member but chairman of one of the sub-committees that produced Chapter 2, the fundamental objectives and one of the cardinal flaws in the constitution is the concentration of powers in the centre.”

    With no lesson learnt from the 1966 forced unity fiasco, Nwabueze claimed he and his colleagues at the Constitution Drafting Committee were so overwhelmed with “this patriotic feeling that we needed unity and the most effective way to achieve unity of the country is by having a very strong central government”.

    For this reason, he claimed they “took away 50 per cent of the items on the concurrent list and gave it to the centre…We looked at the residual matters, these are matters exclusive to the states, we took a large part of it, close to 50 percent; we took it away from states and gave to the centre and the result is the almighty Federal Government”.

    Prof Ben Nwabueze, the nation’s most celebrated constitutional scholar, more than anyone else knew that the concept of ‘an almighty federal government’ in a federal set up was an aberration.

    He was the chairman of The Patriots, a group of eminent Nigerian citizens. He was a Nigerian elder statesman and ‘a constitutional colossus loved for the sheer forensic brilliance of his argument’. Back-tracking on some issues he once held dear did not diminish his standing among those who literarily worshipped him. Interrogating the end of his many crusades that brought only disaster to Nigeria and his Igbo people is therefore not designed to spoil the joy of those who believe he was beyond reproach but merely as record of history.

  • Joe Ajaero v the state

    Joe Ajaero v the state

    What Joseph Ajaero, president of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), was assaulted in Owerri, the Imo State capital, is no longer news. What is in the news is the strike called by NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) over the incident. As condemnable as the attack is, labour pundits are wondering the need for a strike. When did an attack on a labour leader become an industrial dispute?

      By their action, NLC and TUC have shown that not only the government can abuse power. Sadly, labour which should be an example in the use of power, is engaging in what it normally accuses the government of. There are many labour matters that should engage NLC and TUC attention.

    Read Also: BREAKING: NLC president Joe Ajaero arrested in Imo

      The Ajaero issue is a private matter between him and his attackers. An injury to him, as Felix Usifo of TUC claimed, cannot be an injury to all. If it were, labour would have spoken up and gone on strike for the thousands of workers daily abused in many companies nationwide. Usifo should note that we are not in an animal farm where some animals are more equal than others.

      This strike is not in furtherance of workers’ interest,  but that of Ajaero, who should be allowed to fight his battles on his own terms. Ajaero can bring a civil suit against those who assaulted him without dragging Nigerian workers into the case.

  • Tinubu, NJC and Supreme Court

    Tinubu, NJC and Supreme Court

    There is nothing more urgent now than the filling of the vacancies in the Supreme Court.  The retirement of Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammed on October 27 increased the vacancies in the highest court in the land to 11. With Muhammed’s exit, the court has only 10 Justices left, and this number is only enough to constitute two panels of five justices each to hear appeals that are not constitutionally-related.

    There will be a problem where the appeal is a constitutional matter because the panel must consist of seven justices. Where that is the case, the court will face the problem of having no Justices available to hear other appeals. Should appeals remain in the court’s docket because there are no enough hands to handle them? Should the number of Justices of the Supreme Court (JSC) be allowed to deplete that much before vacancies are filled? How did this happen?

       It is disturbing that the court has not had its full complement of  21 Justices, as stipulated in the Constitution, for years. It is unacceptable for the apex court to be starved of Justices at any point in time. The Supreme Court is not only a court of law, it also formulates policy. Under its functions, it shapes the nation’s socio-political development. The court’s October 26 verdict on the last presidential election dispute showed how important it is to the polity.

       As a matter of urgency, the vacancies in the court must be filled to enable it continue to function optimally. No less a person than the President weighed in to the matter on Monday at the opening of the All Nigeria Judges Conference of the Superior Courts in Abuja. President Bola Tinubu addressed a pertinent issue in his intervention. He suggested that practising lawyers too be considered for appointment into the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. The President was not saying something new. There is a school of thought which believes that, that is the way to go.

        It happened in the past when Taslim Elias was appointed Chief Justuce of Nigeria (CJN) from outside the bench. The practice in recent times, however, is to appoint Justices from the Appeal Court to the Supreme Court. Despite calls on the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC) and National Judicial Council (NJC) to cast their nets wide in the search for newJustices of both courts, they have stuck to the tradition of looking within for such appointees. Whereas the Constitution throws the job open to all qualified lawyers.

    Read Also: Afenifere disowns Adebanjo over Supreme Court judgment on Tinubu’s victory

       A person shall not be qualified to be CJN or a JSC, unless he is qualified to practise as a legal practitioner in Nigeria and has been so qualified for not less than 15 years, says Section 231 (3) of the Constitution. So, if the Constitution makes the job open, can NJC and FJSC limit their pick to only those from the appeal court?

       It is high time NJC and FJSC stopped this practice which appears to be a violation of the right of all practising lawyers qualified for the job. The bodies may cite fairness or otherwise to those career Justices, if they are bypassed in picking a new CJN, by bringing in someone from outside, so to say. But the Constitution allows that. Thus, NJC and FJSC cannot continue to follow convention in respect of this matter.

        It is a patent breach of the right of legal practitioners with 15 years post-qualification call interested in becoming JSC or even CJN, if they are not considered by NJC and FJSC, all because they are not ‘insiders’. The Supreme Court deserves the best brains and they can be either ‘insiders’ or ‘outsiders’ as envisaged by the Constitution. So, it is not a matter of convention, but of law. The Constitution should, therefore, prevail in filling the vacancies in the Supreme Court.

       As the Constitution states in Section 1 (1): “This Constitution is supreme and its provisions shall have binding force on all authorities and persons throughout the Federal Republic of Nigeria”. What else is there to say than for NJC and FJSC to obey the Constitution. It is those they recommend that the President will send to the Senate for approval. The ball is in their court. I rest my case.

  • What is America’s national interest in the Middle East?

    What is America’s national interest in the Middle East?

    It used to be said that America’s national interest in the Middle East is mainly the access to reasonably priced petroleum which is widely located in Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and other states like the UAE, Kuwait and Iraq. The Persian state of Iran also produces large amount of petroleum and has vast amount of crude petroleum deposits. Of course since the removal of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran in 1979, by Ayatollah Mohammad Ruhollah Khomeini, Iranian oil has been out of reach of the Americans. Now that petroleum is becoming not so popular as fuel because of concern of climate change, it is reasonable to suggest that the presence of petroleum is no longer a major commodity of attraction for America in the Middle East. After all, the USA virtually walked away from the Orinoco valley in Venezuela which harbours the largest amount of crude oil in the world because of political problems.

    The USA itself has vast amount of untapped crude petroleum in Alaska in the Gulf of Mexico and other places in America. The scientific innovations surrounding the use of liquid hydrogen and the adaptation of the internal combustion engine to electrical vehicles has reduced the need of petroleum to drive automobiles. There is therefore bound to be a quantum reduction in the use of hydrocarbons in the world if not now certainly in the future. Of course hydrocarbons at least for the next thirty or so years would continue to be a commodity of high value but the reduction of the significant need of hydrocarbons  means a radical decline in its value. It therefore follows that if the Middle East is going to remain relevant to America, it must be because of some other reasons. The location of The Suez Canal linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea must be an important consideration for interest of a big power like the USA or any other power because whichever power has the command of the sea controls the world.

    The Middle East is almost at the centre of the world linking the Mediterranean Sea, Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean together. The Middle East is the centre of human civilisation and home of the three monotheistic universal religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and whatever anybody may say, religion for a long time to come, will remain a potent force in human history and action. Because of considerations of security, the United States and the other major powers of the world like China, Russia, India just like Britain and France before them will continue to have serious interest in what goes on in the Middle East.

    When war broke out between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Israelis early in October, most people were surprised about the speed with which the countries of the western alliance namely the USA, Britain, France, NATO and the EU rushed to Israel to declare that that they would support Israel militarily and financially.  Was this as a result of collective Western guilt of the various acts of antisemitism culminating in the holocaust or because of joint Israel- American military and intelligence research, understanding and investment? The USA virtually transferred the executive branch of its government to Israel with its president, foreign secretary and Defence secretary meeting with Israeli war cabinet to plan the country’s strategy of attack against Gaza and to decide what the country would need to execute its attack on Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7. Those of us who are keen observers of international relations knew that the love affair would not last when other vital interests are threatened.

    Read Also: APC North America hails Tinubu’s marching order to ministers, Supreme Court victory

    After about a month of Israeli bombing of Gaza, the rest of the world began to question the disproportionate collective punishment visited on the Palestinians by the Israelis. It got so bad that the Arab leaders refused to meet with President Joe Biden who wanted to go to Jordan to meet with them. They refused to meet with him because they alleged that the “Arab street” would be hostile to such a meeting. This is a case in which “public opinion” trumped diplomacy. This is also a case where American dollars liberally donated to Kingdom of Jordan and to Egypt annually had no effect on the behaviour of the political leaders of those countries and the American president had to return home to Washington shamefully.

    America hopefully learnt a lesson that even-handedness and diplomacy would have paid it better rather than relying on arming militarily, the state of Israel against a ragtag Palestinian terrorist group like Hamas. America has also deployed vast amount of military assets like sea power, combat aircrafts, and several marines warning states in the Middle East not to get involved in the conflict. Ironically, it is the USA that has been bombing so-called Iranian backed groups in Southern Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen on the pretext that American troops in the area were being attacked. It seems America wants to draw into the conflict, Iran so that a joint Israeli-American airpower may jointly remove Iranian troublesome presence in the Middle East. The United States seems to have forgotten the warning of former American president, General Dwight Eisenhower that the United States should guard against allowing the country to be taken over by the military industrial complex. War does not solve all problems and by abdicating other means of political resolution of the problem between the Palestinians and Israelis, a great lesson was missed. The war party in Israel and the United States and their representatives in Congress seem to want to plunge the Middle East into general conflagration.

    The United Nations has been rendered ineffective because Israel has the support of the UK and the United States, two permanent members of the Security Council and have regularly vetoed any action that would have made Israel realise that there are better ways of solving the Middle East problem without its regular resort to war and sabre rattling. The result of this is that once rendered ineffective and redundant in the Middle East, the UN will remain like that in other theatres of military conflicts like say in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine which poses existential threat to global peace and human survival.

    If the Israeli-Gaza war continues for long, it may radically affect the moral standing of the USA and her allies and increase racial conflict in the world with Arabs feeling that their lives do not matter in relation to those considered superior to them. When racism is added to religious fanaticism, a terrible brew which the world will be forced to drink will be the result with terrible consequences. The carefully designed Abrahamic/Ibrahimic diplomatic outreach between Israel and the Arab states has become the victim of the military policies of Israel and America in this Gaza-Israeli conflict and will be difficult to resuscitate. The economic consequences of this war if it metastases into general regional conflict will have dire consequences in the world. It is already affecting medium oil producers like Nigeria and Angola whose markets are being taken by cheaper oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia sold at discount because of the uncertainty of the times.

    It is certainly not in America’s interest to plunge the whole world into war fuelled recession. It is simply concerning that with generous aid of $5 billion annually, America cannot shape Israeli foreign policy in such a way that it will synchronise it with overall American policy and interest in the Middle East without sacrificing Israeli security.

  • No perfect nation to be born

    No perfect nation to be born

    There is no perfect nation to be born yet Nigeria is deemed an ultimate hell to every newborn. Thus the rat race by most Nigerians to Japa. In 2013, an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report ranked the country 80th out of 80 countries assessed in its Where-to-be-born-index.

    No thanks to the Economist’s sister publication, most Nigerian kids may mature knowing they had been born where the neurotic tick-tock of midnight silences the whispers of dawn.

    From birth through adulthood, each poor child glides down maturity like a greased pole to hell. The scriptural hell, we are told, shall be consequent at a future date: the judgement day.

    But here in Nigeria, we make our matches from mayhem and distil sulphur from sadness, ultimately to make our hell.

    Predictably, the EIU report inspired doomsday forecasts about the country; foremost columnists and newspapers penned damning editorials affirming the report. Child advocacy groups plotted to squeeze international donors of grants that would never get to their touted recipients.

    Amid the preachment and plots, a crucial voice died without recourse; the voice of the Nigerian child.

    If there has been any change since the EIU’s damning report, it is barely discernible. Warren Buffett, probably the world’s most successful investor, once said that anything good that happened to him could be traced back to the fact that he was born in the right country, the United States, at the right time (1930).

    Ten years ago, Nigeria ranked 80th out of 80 in the EIU ranking. What is the fate of the Nigerian newborn in 2023?

    To speak for the newborn and generations unborn, we must learn to speak ‘humane.’ We must evolve a national ethos and culture of citizenship to reinvent our country as a nation fit for every human segment, children in particular.

    For a start, Nigeria must stimulate growth in its education and health sectors.

    In June this year, President Bola Tinubu pledged that his administration would commit more resources to the education sector, promising that, every Nigerian child, regardless of his or her background, would have access to quality education. 

    Speaking while receiving representatives of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) at the State House, in Abuja, he said, “If we all believe that education is the greatest weapon against poverty, then we have to invest in it. If you eliminate poverty in one family, you can carry the rest of the weight. Poverty should not prevent anyone.”

    A 2022 UNICEF report states that Nigeria accounts for approximately 20.2 million out-of-school children, the second highest number of unschooled children globally after India. Tinubu’s promise to increase the education budget to 25 per cent of the national budget is thus commendable. But this budget, if truly implemented, must address issues of administrative corruption,  inadequate funding and infrastructure decay, brain drain, and incessant strikes by academic unions.

    On Tinubu’s watch, the education system must be re-envisioned to address the disparities that make education incompatible with job market realities. More importantly, a remedial education summit must be convened by the Federal Government where issues of impracticality and redundancy can be addressed; there, the curriculum must be reviewed and recalibrated as a Nigerian-centred syllabus driven to reflect global learning and cater to the immediate and envisioned realities of the country’s labour market and socioeconomic milieu.

    The Tinubu administration must also cater to the health needs of children, revamp healthcare services and institutionalise incentives for health workers, to arrest brain-drain within the health sector.

    A few months ago, the Special Adviser to the President on Health, Salma Anas, stated at a health summit in, Abuja, that President Tinubu has pledged to increase the annual health allocation to 10 per cent of the country’s total budget. 

    But a few days ago, the President of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), Dr. Dele Abdullahi, urged Tinubu to allocate at least 15 per cent of the 2024 annual budget to the health sector.

    Abdullahi’s plea is worth consideration given the state of the sector; just 24,000 licensed physicians currently cater to the over 200 million population in the country. This negates the WHO minimum threshold that a country needs a mix of 23 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 10,000 population.

    Foreign Trade Statistics by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) also reveals that the country is heavily dependent on foreign drug manufacturers thus subjecting the citizenry to the machinations of the mercantile and much dreaded big pharma.

    Between the third and fourth quarter of 2021 alone, Nigeria imported anti-malarial drugs worth over N110 billion. This requires urgent reinvigoration of Nigeria’s local drug manufacturing capacity.

    Tinubu’s administration must also work with State governments to prioritise child protection by ensuring a comprehensive and enforceable legal framework and policies that safeguard children from all forms of exploitation and violence including child trafficking, sexual abuse, substance abuse and rehabilitating survivors.

    All these measures would be, however, inconsequential if Mr President fails to evolve and sustain an effective monitoring and evaluative mechanism to prevent sabotage.

    Read Also: Tinubu leads ministers, others to Saudi-Africa

    It is never enough to allocate resources towards the implementation of a policy or programme, can Mr President guarantee the progressive buy-in of every member of his team?

    Does he possess the courage to defy human and structural elements of sabotage? President Tinubu must never shy from wielding the big stick and instituting punitive measures against persons, groups or institutions that may work against the realisation of the highlighted policy goals.

    To reinvent Nigeria, his administration, irrespective of its established and perceived shortcomings, must be inclined to rid the corridors of power of moral lesions, like avarice, selfishness and conceit.

    On Tinubu’s watch, we must quit being shameless and grand in disarray. We must redefine progressive consciousness to mean a lot more than cutthroat politics, political promiscuity, dubious programming and financial recklessness of the executive and legislative arms of government.

    Nigerians are caught in a perpetual cycle of disillusionment caused by successive administrations’ penchant for mortgaging their hopes and future, by diverting funding that may be used to stimulate and power development, to fund their reckless and selfish lust for bulletproof vehicles,  unjustifiable allowances, among other illicit perks.

    Previous administrations have shown that beneath their platitudinous chants, they never truly cared about Nigeria or the country’s future, our children.  

    Perhaps it’s because public office is obscenely lucrative at all levels of government. Some of the incumbent ministers and lawmakers, for instance, have amassed obscene wealth from their tenure as state governors; their wives and children live in an alternate reality, a gated Nirvana. Their kids don’t attend the same schools as our children. They don’t attend the same clinics as we do.

    President Bola Tinubu must appreciate his position for the wonderful opportunities it offers; beyond his hard-fought victory, the status quo provides a priceless opportunity to reconnect with broad segments of the electorate in realistic terms and convert them to ambassadors of the Nigerian enterprise.   

    Nigerians expect him to lay the foundation for the fortune he promised. They expect him to midwife national prosperity built “on a fast-growing industrial base capable of producing the most basic needs of the people and an export track to other countries of the world.”

    They expect him to deploy humane governance to resolve insecurity and socioeconomic crises.

    They expect him to rebuild Nigeria as the best nation to be born.

  • The United Nations and the Israeli-Gaza war

    The United Nations and the Israeli-Gaza war

    The United Nations General Assembly ( UNGA) one of the principal organs of the United Nations , recently passed an almost unanimous resolution calling for immediate ceasefire in the ongoing military operations in the Israeli-Gaza conflict because of the thousands of largely civilian Palestinians and particularly children and women and the elderly being bombed out of existence by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) following the October 7 massacre of 1400 Israeli civilians and soldiers peacefully attending a fete just across the Gaza fence on the border with Israel as well as the kidnapping over 200 hostages by Hamas commando forces. It was obvious that Israel would have to retaliate to keep alive and credible its military superiority over the Palestinians and the wider Arab world in the Middle East, a superiority that has been demonstrated over and over in several military contestations since 1948.

    The question now is whether Israel has gone beyond proportionality in its retaliation. The UN Secretary General says it has. It should be said that the war is not a fair conflict between two conventional forces but between a powerful Israeli force made up of an army, navy and a modern air force and a ragtag Hamas combatants. It is the most unequal contest one can imagine anywhere. The problem is that the two people are fighting a just war. After the Spanish Inquisition, pogroms, holocaust and various anti-Semitic discriminations all over the world except in Africa, the Jews are entitled to a homeland even if their claim to Palestine belongs to biblical past while the Palestinian claim belongs to recent historical past. The two peoples are fighting what can be called a just war if any war can be so described.

    When the Israelis were attacked on October 7, they occupied a high moral ground in fighting back. After shedding thousands of human blood deemed out of proportion from the tragedy of October 7, the whole world is beginning to question the justification of a war largely against millions of defenceless women, children and old men simply because they are associated with the Palestinians who committed crime against the Jewish state. The United States which unusually committed itself to the Israeli cause leaving no room for possible arbitration has now found itself running around the Arab world and Israel itself asking for “military pause” rather than a ceasefire in the conflict. The backing of Israel by the United States has left it only supported by its western alliance while the rest of the world in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Russia are supporting the Palestinians.

    Of course, it does not really matter the number of countries supporting the Palestinians because what matters is the critical force of those supporting Israel. But the question of morality hangs very much on the side of beleaguered Palestine. Israel has also unfortunately acquired the enemies of the United States because as a hegemonic power, America despite what good it does for the world has many enemies. The way the Americans with its open diplomacy are telling the whole world what fiscal and military support it is giving to Israel has alienated itself and Israel from the whole world.

    This is the situation the United Nations has to deal with. It is natural for people to feel sorry for the underdog in a conflict and this is the situation in this conflict. The UN through the massive support for the Palestinian cause by the General Assembly has left the Secretariat of the UN no other choice than to manifest the support of it for the Palestinians. It has several offices and agencies ministering to the need of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank of the River Jordan. A large number of them or almost a hundred have been killed by Israeli bombs and artillery shells. Even though the Security Council, more or less the executive council of the world body has found itself deadlocked because of the rivalry between the USA and Russia and China cannot outrightly force a ceasefire on the two parties to the conflict, the Secretary General has found it necessary to issue statements asking Israel to avoid committing war crime and genocide against the Palestinians. This is a serious accusation which the Israeli government finds very onerous.

    From emotional arguments in the General Assembly and much more in the Security Council, the Israeli delegation has had to wear the yellow Star of David and to say that when six million Jews were killed in concentration camps in Europe, the whole world kept quiet but that they have said “never again” will they allow themselves to be slaughtered without response. This is a powerful argument which the world cannot ignore. The response of the world must be to find a workable territorial architecture in the Holy land to allow a secure and defensible Israel while at the same time finding a territorial arrangement for Palestinian self-determination. It will require swapping of territories and other arrangements that would guarantee statehood for unarmed Palestine whose security would be guaranteed by the Security Council. There are countries in the world that do not have armed forces and which saves large amount of money for development. Countries like Costa Rica, Kiribati, Dominica Andorra, Lichtenstein, Monaco and some of the small principalities in Europe do not waste significant resources on unnecessary armed forces. So a Palestinian state that only maintains internal peace with police force will not be unique in the world while Israel will continue to protect itself with its forces both nuclear and conventional. This suggestion will not be easy to work out but it is doable and workable. There is however no viable alternative.

    Read Also: Atiku appeals to voters in Kogi, Imo, Bayelsa to vote PDP candidates

    Other suggestions such as a secular Israel-Palestine in which Arabs and Jews are free to live side by side and practise their religion will not work. What is primary consideration for the Jews is that they must control the security of the state, a state that is available to all Jews to run to when they are physically threatened. There is also the talk of the West Bank and other pieces being merged with the Kingdom of Jordan since the present Kingdom of Jordan is inhabited by almost 50 percent Palestinians. The Kingdom of Jordan would not agree to forfeit its identity in an extended Palestine- Jordan state. Some have suggested that the Palestinians could be assisted to settle in other Arab states. There is evidence to suggest that the Arabs are not amenable to this. This is not a serious suggestion because it will not fly because it does not meet the psychological needs of the Palestinians who see the land of Palestine as ancestral home where their ancestors are buried.

    The post of the Secretary General of the United Nations is not an easy one. With the limited resources at its command and with wars and conflicts all over the world, the UN is as effective as the world powers want it to be. Whatever each UN Secretary General may personally wish and be inclined to do, the limitation of his office imposes on him/her what can be done. It’s an office which puts a lot of demand on the holder even up to making supreme sacrifice as was done by Dag Hammarskjold who died in harness in the Congo in 1961 during the Congo crisis.

    Israel must understand the position of the UN Secretary General instead of angrily reacting to it as if the Secretary General is anti-Israel. Banning officials of the UN to Israel is not the way to go because Israel may need the organization in the future. Israel must walk back its position in which it hitherto had support from the whole world which had so much to learn from it rather than delude itself on overwhelming support from America and inheriting America’s enemies as its own. Africa must make its voice heard as a neutral continent owing nothing to Israel which in the past collaborated with apartheid South Africa to make a nuclear bomb; neither does it owe the Arabs which for years before the Atlantic slave trade were involved in this nefarious trade. It is nice to state this so that the whole world can realise that like an elephant Africa has a long memory.

  • It’s justice according to law

    It’s justice according to law

    By now, the election should have been long forgotten and only referred to in the past tense. But we are still being dragged back because of the February 25 presidential poll. As the nation takes a step forward, it is pulled back by Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, who contested the election on the platforms of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), and lost to President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC). They were not the only losers. Others have accepted defeat and moved on.

       They are determined to take the nation back to the pre-election era. They want the nation to begin all over again! To them, all the institutions that were involved in the election stand forever condemned. As people who claim to be democrats, the least expected of them is to accept the verdicts of the courts which looked into their complaints. But no, they want to destroy everything and everyone associated with the election for selfish reasons. They forget that an election must be won and lost. The hallmark of a true democrat is to accept the outcome of a poll, whether favourable to him or not.

      Where he is dissatisfied, the forum for his complaint is the court, which the Constitution recognises as the tribunal for the purpose of resolving election disputes. This is so because election cases are sui generis, that is they are of a special nature and cannot be adjudicated upon like the other well-known common law cases. It is because of this that specific laws are created for them and a time limit set for their conclusion. Atiku and Obi know all these. They are veterans of the tribunal where in the past they won some and lost some cases. But the 2023 presidential poll was a ‘do-or-die‘ for them. They wanted to win at all costs.

       They know that in any election, it is not the wish of a contestant that matters, but the acceptance of the electorate. The electorate rejected them. Since the outcome of the poll, the nation has known no peace, not even after the Supreme Court threw out their appeals against the tribunal’s verdict which rejected their petitions. Just as they claimed that the election was rigged against them, they are wailing that the verdicts were also rigged against them. In a society where the judiciary has consistently stood for what and who is right, Atiku and Obi have sullied the reputation of our judges. They called their lordships all sorts of names, and if allowed they are ready to impale them on a pole.

      Did their lordships commit any sin for ruling against Atiku and Obi? Is it an offence to rule against a party in a case?  Were the Justices influenced in any way in their ruling? Do their lordships deserve the attacks heaped on their persons by Atiku, Obi and their supporters? Being a judge or justice does not detract from the fact that we are all humans. Their lordships, the Justices of the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC) and the Supreme Court, are human beings and are subject to the same foibles like us despite their high office. Their office demands respect, maximum respect. Atiku and Obi have been treating them with disdain. All because of an election which they lost hands down!

      They claimed to have won but could not prove how. Yet, they wanted the court to find in their favour. On what basis will the court do that? The court works with law and facts. Cases are decided on their strength. If a litigant has a good case and a good lawyer, he is on his way to winning. But if he has a bad case and a bad lawyer, there is no magic that he can weave to win. Even if his lawyer is good and the case is bad, nothing can be done about it than for it to be thrown out by the court. Their lordships have become toothpicks for Atiku and Obi for doing their jobs. Atiku was the first to run his mouth, on October 30, over the October 26 Supreme Court’s verdict. Obi followed suit on Tuesday. In essence, what he said was not different from that of Atiku.

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       What I found funny in all he said was his claim that the highest court in the land shut its eyes to “public opnion” in arriving at its decision. Public opinion? Are you shocked too? Yes, you heard right, public opinion. Public opinion has its values, no doubt. It helps leaders in gauging the mood of the nation so as to determine how to meet the people’s expectations. When it comes to law, justice, equity and order, public opinion has no place. Will a judge abandon the law and facts of a case before him and go with public opinion all because he does not want to hurt some people’s feelings? How will the party with a good case feel if at the end of proceedings, the court declares openly:

      “I am sorry; though you (calling the party by name) have a good case, but my hands are tied. I cannot rule in your favour because the opinion outside is that you cannot and should not win this case”. This was what Obi was saying in effect that their lordships should have done. ‘’Setting legal issues aside, the Supreme Court exhibited a disturbing aversion to public opinion…” So, Obi wanted the court to rule against the winner of the election because public opinion wanted it that way. By the way, who determined what that public opinion was? Who aggregated all the opinions of Nigerians to know that their wish was that the court should rule in favour of Obi and Atiku? Obi was living in delusion. He and Atiku are giving their lordships a bad name in order to hang them.

       What any court does while handling a case is to look at the law and not the weight of public opinion. No matter how weighty public opinion may be, it cannot be weightier than the evidence adduced and the law cited in the course of the case. The law is not philosophy, nor is it sociology; the law is the law and the court must apply it as it is not as it ought to be. What is public opinion when we are talking law? It is nothing but a sheer waste of the court’s time to ask that a case be decided on the strength of public opinion. Not even Lord Denning, as unconventional as he was, would do that. Courts do justice, according to the law, and not public opinion.

      To do otherwise will amount to grave injustice to a party. The law will no longer be law when it bows to public opinion. Do we want a nation of laws or of public opinions? I will go for the former because without laws, society will turn upside down. Obi and Atiku want such a society. But, the electorate said no with their votes.

  • The real Igbo enemies

    The real Igbo enemies

    Who do we blame for the siege mentality of Igbo people at home and abroad but Igbo political and intellectual elite who label anyone critical of their politics an Igbo enemy in order to cover up their leadership failure?  Since Zik’s return to Lagos in 1934 to fill the vacuum of a spokesman greatly missed by urban immigrants in a strange land, every political misadventure by Igbo political elite has been blamed on others.

    Thus, for resisting internal colonialism in 1952 by Igbo at a period when Zik, an Onitsha Igbo was not considered a full-fledged Igbo man, Yoruba must be tribalists. For not following suit to declare the Republic of Oduduwa with just 50 foot soldiers in the army when Ojukwu declared the Republic of Biafra with 16 riffles, Yoruba and Awo were traitors and of course how else could Obi the messiah of Nigerian social media youths have lost the 2023 election during which Tinubu was said to have been foisted on Nigeria by “a concert of despicable forces” if not because of intense hatred for Igbo by Fulani and their Yoruba stooges?

    In my professional career and academic pursuit, I have been a great beneficiary of Igbo mentorship. But once one makes references to these historical facts that sometimes bring the past to pain, to some angry Ibo colleagues who hate the truth, you are an Igbo enemy.

    Let us start with Obi Nwakanma, Vanguard newspaper columnist who after dismissing my piece titled “Between Zik and Obi: Lessons of History, (September 22, 2022), as “revanchist drivel”, wanted me ‘to go back and take elementary courses in Nigeria’s political history”, a course I taught at the University of Lagos when he was probably in secondary school.

    Although he accepted there was a parallel between Obi’s 2023 ‘obidients’ and Zik’s 1940 supporters who believed in his infallibility, he however insisted that Zik,  who was the only non-Yoruba in the inaugural meeting of NCNC was the founder of NCNC and that  “it was not Igbo politicians who preferred the 1959 NCNC-NPC coalition”.

    I am not sure because of his above mind-set and rage, he paid any attention to my argument that: “Perhaps we again need to return to history to remind our angry youths how we got here and how the seed of today’s mutual suspicion was sown by self-serving Igbo political leaders.”

    “The trending videos of Obi’s angry supporters threatening expulsion of anyone who fails to vote for their principal from the east, mob action against Tinubu’s supporters in Alaba Market in Lagos added to shameless assault on the person of Asiwaju Tinubu through hate songs by Seadog confraternity, are all but sad reminder of the past when Lagos Igbo urban immigrants were mobilized to buy off all the cutlasses in Lagos market in readiness to battle their Yoruba hosts.

    Both Obi and Zik built their political fortunes in Lagos as leader of Igbo urban immigrants that freely deployed rhetoric to confuse their largely uninformed Igbo youths and unquestioning Nigerians.

    Like most young men of his generation, Awo used to follow Zik to his lecture venues until he discovered Zik was a fake god in spite of his rhetoric and endless railing against the imperialists.

    Unlike Awo, it was only after the formation of Egbe Omo Odudwa in 1948 which immediately came under Zik’s and his supporters’ vicious attack that the Yoruba aristocrats of the period saw Zik in his true colour, with the West African Pilot editorial September 8, 1948 declaring: “Henceforth, the cry must be one of battle against the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, its leaders at home and abroad, uphill and down dale.. There is no going back until the fascist organization of Sir Adeyemo Alakija has been dismembered”. This was followed by physical assault on the persons and the leaders of the Egbe and damage to houses and properties of some of them”. (Awo: The Autobiography of Obafemi Awolowo page 171].

    Yoruba political elite were to later shift their support to Awo and his Action Group in 1952 thereby frustrating Zik’s attempt of becoming the premier of the West. 

    Awolowo’s answer to the North’s ‘feudal system’ was for the West and the East with some support from Middle Belt taking over power. But greed-driven Igbo political elite preferred an NPC and NCNC coalition which offered nothing to ordinary Igbo on whose back they rode to power while Igbo elite secured all important appointments in Balewa’s government from finance, to external affairs, agriculture, control of University of Lagos, University of Ibadan, etc.

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    Commenting on my piece titled Ethnic leaders as scourge of Nigeria dated October 6, 2022 Steve Osuji wrote as follows: “My Oga in two great media establishments, The Guardian and The Nation, Dr. Oluwajuyitan by his writing, poured malice and hatred on the Igbo in a way never done by a supposedly enlightened mind. He told plain, blatant lies just to drag Igbo in the mud. He says Igbo campaigned for a unitary system for Nigeria. This is a historical fallacy”.

    Again but for his mind-set, I cannot understand his anguish over the following facts that: As the battle for 2023 draws near, Igbo political leaders, the ever-flirtatious beautiful bride of Nigerian politics that often behave like “a wife with five husbands” and their chauvinistic shrewd Fulani suitors, have started to do what they do best-polluting the environment with toxic diatribes.

    This warning followed a claim by Ohaneze’s Mazi Okechukwu Isuguzoro, that “the North is the bastion of ethnic and religious politics” with warning that “Nigeria will not be secured and united unless an Igbo president emerges” and Northern Elders Forum’s Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed‘s response that ‘if any group is known to play ethnic and religion politics, it is the Igbo’.

    I reminded the warring fair-weather couple that history finds both guilty. And the facts: In the December1954 Eastern Regional Election, NCNC won 72 out of 84 seats while their NPC suitors won 84 of 92 seats in their own northern stronghold. In the 1954 November election to federal House of Representatives, NCNC won 32 of the 42 Eastern seats. Similarly, ethnicity and religion determined the outcome of the 1959 election with east and the north winning their strongholds without opposition. The warring rivals are therefore not only tarred with the same brush, both see Nigeria only as a marketable commodity thinking only of what they can get out of Nigeria.

     Awolowo’s offence was that he provided alternative view on how Nigeria should be run having realized back in 1945, that “Nigeria is not a nation; but a mere geographical expression”, and was convinced “the best constitution for such a diverse people is a federal constitution”.

    But Zik and his group wanted a unitary system which will sustain Igbo internal colonization of the minority Ijaw, Efik, Ibibio, Anang and other minority groups in the east. It will also allow Igbo citizens to freely carry their trading activities unhindered to any part of Nigeria. What Ahmadu Bello wanted was not different from what Zik wanted- a Nigeria the north can control. He therefore at the 1950 Ibadan conference insisted on 50% of member of the federal legislative house.

    Because of their rivalry over identical worldview, the eastern leaders were believed to have lured the military into politics in January 1966 with General Ironsi’s Decree 34 of 1966 changing the country into a unitary state.

    The north seized the initiative from their Igbo rival in July 1966 and by 1967 the bitter rivalry led to a civil war. Unfortunately, the battle for the soul of Nigeria by the two rivals only left northern and eastern states a scorched land.

    Citizenship is not the answer to ‘Path to Nigerian Freedom”, in a country where an Igbo Bishop of universal Catholic Church from Anambra was rejected by Igbo people of Imo State.

    Dear angry young colleagues, “the fault is not in our stars”. Reaffirming facts of our history does not make one an enemy of Igbo. “