The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

State police is inevitable

After playing the ostrich for so many years, it has now become apparent that state police is inevitable. The call by Lagos State speaker, Mudashiru Obasa during the House of Assembly’s first plenary on July 11, on lawmakers of the Senate and the House of Representatives to “begin an amendment of the constitution to contain the creation of the alternative policing” should therefore only serve as a sad reminder of our past folly.

For close to 50 years, the south and other well informed Nigerians have called for the establishment of state police on the premise that ‘local problems require local solutions’. The hegemonic powers who wish to preside over an empire of slaves rejected such a call because of selfish political considerations.

More tragic, our military, a creation of the colonial powers, share the same mind-set with their creator and role model. Subsequently, when our military leaders including Obasanjo through Babangida and Buhari, men who were never trained to manage the affairs of society, fortuitously found themselves in power, they, like the departed occupying powers, arrogantly equated their periodic brain-wave to a viable policy alternative for a conquered territory.

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First was the delusion that 36 federating states and 774 LGAs created and funded from Abuja without objective criteria was best for a multicultural, multi-ethnic and heterogeneous society where groups were at different levels of cultural development. Their own selfish desire to maintain a strangle-hold on the people aligned with the northern leaders’ opposition to state police that could threaten their monopoly of power through control of law and order over their empire of slaves.

The revolt of the poor, uneducated and marginalized who have no say in how they were being governed bred terrorists, jihadists, bandits, kidnappers and armed herdsmen, that took refuge inside North’s huge ungoverned forests from where they visited violence on the people.

Nigerians had looked up to President Buhari, the man they massively voted into power because of his pan-Nigeria outlook, to end their nightmare. Buhari and his ‘loyal gatekeepers’ ignored the cry of Northern Elders Forum, the July 2021demand by northeast governors of Adamawa, Taraba, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe and Borno for state and community police just as they did to that of September 2022, northern governors and northern traditional rulers councils’ call for the establishment of state police to tackle security challenges in their region.

But while anarchy reigned supreme in the north, President Buhari’s “loyal gate keepers” appeared to be more interested in replicating the northern tragedy in the south. Or what other explanation can one give for relentless war waged by Shehu Garba (Buhari’s senior media adviser and Abubakar Malami (his Minister of Justice) against Governor Rotimi Akeredolu’s efforts to eject killer herdsmen illegally occupying reserved forests in his state, and Southwest Governors Forum’s efforts to set up Amotekun local security outfit to tackle kidnappings and killings by those believed to be invading immigrant herdsmen?

Buhari and his men continued to dig deeper into the hole even as his federal government which the northern hegemonic power depended on to maintain law and order was unable to perform. In the face of an impending anarchy, his vice president, Yemi Osinbajo admitted to their government’s heroic failure to end the nation’s nightmare. While admitting “Every Nigerian, is entitled to adequate security from the government for their livelihoods”, he confessed that their “Government fails in that responsibility” because “For a country of our size to meet the ‘one policeman to 400 persons’ prescribed by the United Nations would require triple our current police force; far more funding of the police force and far more funding of our military and other security agencies.”

But betrayed by Buhari’s government of hope, the nation continued to pay huge price for the folly of self-serving political leaders who insisted on imposing their world-view no matter how depraved and irrational on how Nigeria is governed despite admonitions and warnings by other Nigerian stakeholders.

For instance The Punch in an editorial had raised an alarm that “With 371,000 officers, the Nigeria Police Force are overwhelmed, and many parts of the country lack any permanent police presence. Insurgents of different stripes taking advantage of this have seized control of some hinterland territories, imposing brutal, bloody rule over the locals”. (Punch July 21)

Vanguard newspapers on its part has also argued that “federal-controlled police force in a diverse, complicated federation with an exploding population of over 200 million people, policed by 371,800 personnel, with up to a third of them attached to VIPs”, is not only injurious to the health of the nation, maintaining the military command structure in our federal system is undemocratic, anti-people and does not promote good and accountable governance.”

Our leaders continued to play the ostrich even with the periodic harvest of deaths in the north-central states of Benue, Plateau and southern Zaria where armed immigrant herdsmen in aid of settlers who lust over their host’s land, had embarked on inter-communal killings of poor subsistence farmers whose land is confiscated with survivors reduced to inmates of IDP camps. Peace has continued to elude the northeast and Buhari’s northwest region after his eight years of heroic failure. And of course the southeast remains restive with the ongoing intra-communal bestial and brutish killings which the perpetrators blame on federal government and its agents.

Now that we have seen the folly in the continuing objection to the establishment of state police, there can be no better period to allow the people take control over their own security through state and community policing than now.

It is a relief that we have a new sheriff in town that is answerable to neither ethnic, religious group, nor godfathers and owners of Nigeria. He has promised embark on what he believes to be best for our country. No one, including the leading lights of his party can therefore hold him to ransom or derail this noble endeavour

And it was just as well that it was his immediate constituency, Lagos State that reminded him two weeks back that his success or failure will be determined not by building roads and bridges like his predecessor or turning the economic fortune of the nation around but by his efforts at liberating individuals and groups from the tyranny of the state through devolution of powers.

People want to take control of their own security, decide education and the moral values to be imbibed by their children in addition to the water they drink, the air they breathe and the God or gods they worship without interference from dysfunctional Abuja. And since we operate a federal system, what federalism sets out to achieve is individual and group rights which can be defined in form of language, culture, and religion or socio economic status.

The president is not being asked to invent the wheel. He can easily borrow from the experiences of India, a more heterogeneous and populous nation and Canada, the first federation to adopt multi-culturalism as a policy that has shown how a plural society can manage its group differences.

He must start in earnest the mobilization of National Assembly members for the constitutional amendment required to institutionalize state and community policing. This will allow each of the country’s six geo-political zones protect its territory and its citizens from armed gangs from neighbouring federating states or from the Sahel region of the north and central Africa. There is no better evidence of anarchy than when a Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi will without restraints, declare Fulani from any part of Africa a Nigerian.

July 27, 2023
Managing the current economic hardship

Adams Oshiomhole, the APC Senator representing Edo North in the senate issued a statement last week pleading with Nigerians that his party the APC did not promise a miraculous solution to all the problems of our country within the first few months of coming recently to power under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This was a statement that came appropriately from the right kind of person who is close to the grassroots especially as a former leader of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC). Many Nigerians who are not used to hearing the truth of our current economic situation of a country borrowing money to subsidize consumption and even to pay salaries, have been complaining, some silently but others loudly, about how the Tinubu government is making their economic situation worse than before.

If one came from outside Nigeria, one can be pardoned for being uninformed about our situation before now. This government has not been in power for up to two months and people are behaving as if this government has been in power for years, not just two months. I think the government is not propagating its message effectively. Most people in this country are convinced that something radical has to be done to make our economy right apart from rushing to China and every willing lender to borrow money for infrastructure and salaries because our total income is not sufficient to amortize and pay interests on our local and foreign loans. Those benefiting from these loans and infrastructural development are not the peasants and the urban poor, but the hordes of bureaucrats and government employees in the states and national legislatures and the local government administrations. Unfortunately these are the same people complaining most. In my youth, there were about 11 permanent secretaries in the old Western Region covering most parts of Lagos State, the entire Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Edo and Delta- eight states ruled by one administration under a political leadership based in Ibadan with a cabinet of 11 or so ministers. Look at what we have today under eight governors and innumerable commissioners and hundreds of permanent secretaries and hundreds of thousands of civil servants running the most expensive administrations in the states and local government areas (LGAS). What was true of the old Western Region was also true of the eastern and northern regions. Nigeria suffers from a surfeit of administration! I am not suggesting that we roll the hands of the clock back. This will be difficult but do we need the excesses that we see all around in the fleet of cars being used by those who should use their own cars the way all of us are expected to do? This is the time to cut the fat out of government. It’s not going to be easy but we must be seen to be cutting back in all areas of government.

The president in agreement with the legislature and the state governments must declare a state of ECONOMIC EMERGENCY. The people must be carried along through the press and the various civil society organizations that mean well for the country. This is the time to cancel the humongous pensions for governors and other outrageous allowances that our economy cannot support. There is nowhere in the world where participation in government is the surest pathway to becoming stupendously rich as in Nigeria.

I am not advocating that governors should swear to an oath of poverty but all reasonable Nigerians just cannot agree to the current pensions and allowances that rubber stamp legislatures have been manipulated to give to former governors by cunning and clever governors on their ways to retirement sometimes after being in office for a mere four years! The present constitutional arrangement borrowed from the richest country in the world – the USA, is just not suitable for a poor third world country like Nigeria whose federal budget is not more than the budget of the FIRE DEPARTMENT of New York State. When taken together, the salaries, allowances and constituency allowances of our federal legislatures are a scandal to good governance anywhere in the world including even the United States of America. It is this overloaded government cost and the widespread corruption in government that have ruined and impoverished our country.

Anyone who cares should visit the hostels of our students in secondary and tertiary institutions and would be surprised that students living in such places cannot become responsible citizens when they grow up. In many of our institutions of learning, toilets, where they exist, are no longer functioning. Even some staff toilets, where they exist, are not functioning. I am just highlighting the areas I am most familiar with. All areas of our national lives require reforms and rehabilitation. This is why we have to prioritize the areas of need and our plans to deal with every sector incrementally.

This is why I think there ought to be committees looking into administrative reforms including pensions for all sectors including the military, educational reforms not just at any particular level but all levels from kindergarten, primary, secondary and tertiary levels as well as the apprenticeship system of training mechanics, electricians, bricklayers, carpenters, tailors, barbers, drivers and other kinds of artisans without which a country cannot run. If we have thorough examination of all these levels of education, we may be able to build an enduring peace and development in our country.

We also need to discuss the long term development of our country. We should ask ourselves whether the current structure of our country is working. This is not something that can be done in a hurry but we should begin to think about it and set in motion what to do about the multitude of states and 774 LGAs. We need to begin to realize that government is about people. If the people are not happy then it follows that government is failing and we should do something about it. Tinubu did not create all these problems but they have come to a climax under him.

But let us begin doing what is doable with our present economic situation in our country in such a way that we can carry everybody along the path of rectitude and reforms. Let us cut down on the cost of government. We can start the reforms immediately at the federal level. Do we need more than the constitutionally required 36 ministerial appointments? Why then have more as we are usually inclined to do?. Ideally, we should reduce the size of the federal legislatures and have a unicameral legislature but under the present constitution we cannot do it. But do we need to lavish so much on its members? Do we need to have constituency budgets for hundreds of members? No one is saying our MPs should not look well but not at the expense of the development of the country. Our MPs cannot afford to be seen as a plague on the country. What applies to the federal government should also in the same sense apply to the state governments. It is already crystal clear that the 36 or is it 37 states, if Abuja is taken as a state as the constitution says, are just too many. For the future, we should reflect on possible six zonal structures that would be viable rather than the unwieldy 37 state structure. In the meantime the governors should be advised to run lean administrations whose existence should be justified on the basis of how they touch the lives of the governed. Let the people perceive that government is working for them. The present state governments must be the centres of government activities and action while the federal government should only be seized with the question of the national and external security of our country including institutions like the army, police, foreign affairs, the national currency, the central bank, customs, communication and immigration that bind the country together while the federal government ensures that no state will be allowed to descend below irreducible minimum of development .

The important thing is perception. No government can finish the job of government in one fell swoop. The job of government is continuous and cannot be done in the life of one administration. But whatever government that is in place must carry the people along and spread the pain. There must be no disconnect between the government and the governed. People are not stupid and can be trusted if they are given all the information available to government. The development and growth of information technology makes provision of information an imperative in today’s world. The unlettered have children who can explain complex issues of the economy to their parents but those in government must not expose their soft underbelly of conspicuous consumption while asking the ordinary people to shoulder unbearable burden.

July 27, 2023
For minds unfettered

Nationhood thrives as political theatre. And Nigeria offers one big stage to be entertained, informed and misinformed. The process, in recent times, assumes the course of indoctrination by courtiers.

The latter manifests as our most malignant affliction. Comprising journalists, politicians, NGOs, and various shades of rights activists, their machinations are oft inimical to nationhood, individuality, and growth – ultimately because they are deployed as weapons of adverse programming.

This may no doubt resonate as far-fetched to individuals and groups profiting from the status quo, especially the press and civil societies. That is understandable. It is in the nature of bacterium responsible for a pandemic to deem itself the next best thing to happen to earthlings.

For a people programmed for conquest, Nigerians carry on with unabashed ignorance and arrogance. Arrogance is pitiable. But ignorance is expensive and quite scary. Yet Nigeria soldiers on unperturbed by the ramifications of it all.

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This is what happens when a nation becomes unmoored from reality. It retreats into a fictive nirvana. In this predetermined cosmology, reality is redefined to suit dubious whims and facts are manufactured to soothe relative bias.

If Nigeria seems unmoored from reality, it’s because our lives and national discourse are dominated by fabricated events. From exaggerated grief over insecurity, misgovernance, and national disasters to celebrity gossip and pageantry of political artifice, the country is sold to desperate narratives at home and abroad.

Whether it is the soaring price of Premium Methylated Spirit (PMS), the terrorist creed of violence resonant with brainwashed minors and young adults, or the virulent manifestations of partisan politics, the compelling nature of the grievances articulated and the pervasiveness of despair are wielded to justify the rationale for Nigeria’s creed of carnage and the country’s enduring portrayal as a banana republic by foreign governments and consulates.

A history of corruption and neglect at the federal, state, and local levels of government, among others, has equally morphed into a major source of widespread dissatisfaction towards politicians, the legal system, and law enforcement by the masses.

These sentiments thrive in greater depths across geographic and virtual space; as Nigeria rejuvenates from the intrigues of the 2023 polls, a wave of validation and reproof of the incumbent political class and the opposition seeking to dislodge it has produced a supercharged atmosphere of warring critics and apologists, cynics and anarchists.

Of the latter, majority parade flawed presence because they have no real persona and moral substance. Yet en route to the polls, Nigeria suffered their storm of spunk and slogans.

Several media houses and journalists pitched their tents with certain candidates, but at what cost? More news media and civil society groups parrot the official propaganda of foreign governments, consulates, and so-called non-profits pushing their ”enlightened self-interest” as “impartial observers.”

The participation of large segments of the press, academia and civil society pre and post-elections has been driven by funded partisanship but like Arundhati Roy would say, “I’m not against people being funded—because we’re running out of options, but we have to understand, ‘Are you walking the dog or is the dog walking you? Who’s the dog and who are you?”

The situation triggers existential questions about the quality of political participation before and after the elections. How do we determine real and funded patriotism? Are Nigerians inured to the precepts of partisanship astride the politics of reality and illusions?

The jostling over reality and illusion becomes most intense in an oppressive clime where both distort to preserve the status quo of exploitation or repudiate it.

Hussein Bulhan addresses a similar anomaly in his treatise on metacolonialism as the latest modification and presentation of colonialism in the more savoury euphemism of globalization – which enlarges the distortion of events in memory because written history is mostly about the valour and benevolence of the European coloniser.

The media, many of whom are aligned to the doctored history of the presumed sophistication, unassailable civilisation and god complex of the metacoloniser soullessly propagate the latter’s imperial agenda to a society unmoored from its roots.

Students suffer this indoctrination in school, and libraries preserve it, norms and statutes freeze it in time, and the media disseminate it. In short, our material world exudes, reflects, and perpetuates the reality and illusions of our coloniser.

The narrative valorises the coloniser and morphs into a potent weapon of subjugation while it invalidates and vilifies much about the new Nigerian colony along with our culture, epistemology, ontology—indeed our very existence as human beings.

Nigeria thus exists to fulfil the needs and conveniences of its contemporary colonisers aided by the media and other cultural agencies of imperialism deployed by the colonisers. To this end, journalists, novelists, musicians, actors, dramatists, activists, health workers, NGOs, academia and religious institutions are “empowered” and deployed as ”self-discerning social actors” by the colonisers. But in truth, they are expendable and misguided tools used to further Western hegemonic plans (enlightened self-interests).

Local news media, academia, and female movie makers, in particular, are beneficiaries of such sullied fodder. They, in turn, fulfill their role as pathogens, dispersing the spores of a cultural and political pandemic thus exacerbating our regressive state.

A citizenry shackled to such stricture is forever susceptible to subtle and pronounced state capture. They are unquestioning, passive, and weak before the colossal might and influence of their colonisers. This is the Nigerian predicament.

A flawed persona, skewed intellect, lack of pride and moral substance have rid too many self-confessed patriots of grit and foresight. Consequently, they play court sycophant and pawn to foreign interests. Together, they constitute a medium of wheedling and imposition of pathologic rites and culture to the detriment of Nigerianness. They elevate belly and bum over fealty and forelock in a flagrant rite of political intercourse.

The elections are over thus the imperative to seek more altruistic means of political participation. Journalists, in particular, must seize the moment to regroup and recommit to a viable media practice founded on humane principles of professionalism, nationhood, citizenship, and nativism.

To achieve this, we must purge ourselves of inclinations to redefine our reality according to foreign interests: the Western plot to recolonise Nigeria – and Africa in general – is being funded and fathered through foreign consulates, cable TV, sponsored terrorism and humanitarian agencies.

The bid to stifle Nigerianness or redefine it in tune with obscure, pathologic civilisations from abroad must be resisted henceforth. The story of the colonised often remains untold due to censorship and social amnesia enforced in crude or subtle ways, notes Bulhan. It’s about time Nigerians penned their own stories, not as politically-correct content, but as the unimpeachable, national narrative.

The local media must quit winnowing out our reality to reject all that some foreign actors deem too radical or proof of idiosyncratic compulsion to challenge their dominance or excavate a long-forgotten past too uncomfortable to recall.

It’s about time the media espoused progress relatable to the Nigerian reality. To what end are finely crafted homilies and treatises on the youths’ newfound political awareness if they won’t inspire their creditable and constructive participation in the political process?

It is never enough to parrot some foreign consulate and non-profit’s fosterage of Gen-Z’s virulent politics, particularly their disregard for historical context. What are the likely consequences of such toxic partisanship?

Progressive citizenship requires more evolved and purposeful engagement in politics than wanton theorising and spouting on barrel heads to be seen.

July 27, 2023
Who is afraid of Tinubu’s APC

Last Sunday’s resignation of Abdullahi Adamu as APC chairman and the takeover by APC deputy national chairman (North) Senator Abubakar Kyari, signalled the end of the reign of Buhari mafia in APC. This development is expected to bring relief to APC and by extension Nigeria. Buhari, widely accused of provincialism ran a government of “delegation by abdication” where his ‘loyal gatekeepers’ mafia, were believed to serve other tendencies other than his pan Nigeria agenda. To please the mafia, Buhari ignored his major party programmes such as restructuring, power devolution, local and community policing, menace of cross border herdsmen, mindless killings of subsistence farmers in the middle belt region and importation of labour of other societies by unpatriotic Nigerians. He tolerated the mafia even as they pursued divisive policies such as state funded RUGA projects for immigrant Fulani herdsmen from neighbouring West African countries or fixated with controversial Water Resources Bill already pronounced illegal by the judiciary.

President Tinubu on the other hand is a democrat with a more cosmopolitan world outlook. That he enjoyed massive support across the nation during the last election, scoring over 25% in about 30 states against his Labour Party candidate whose ‘stolen mandate’ is wildly promoted by the ‘Obimedia’ even after securing 25% in only 15 of 25 required states and trailing behind the other two parties with 3% in Bauchi, 1.5% in Borno, 5% in Gombe, 0.2% in Jigawa 1.6% in Kano, 0.6%in Katsina, 1.9% in Kebbi, 6.6%in Kwara, 12% in Kogi and 14% in Adamawa, is evidence enough that Tinubu is in a better position to mobilise towards an elite consensus that is needed here as elsewhere in the world for resolving crisis of nation building.

Unfortunately the heartache of “Obimedia’ since the exit of Adamu has been fear of Tinubu mafia. It is perhaps lost on them that political parties are private properties of a handful of people who often constitute themselves into a democratic oligarchy. Members of the party oligarchy expect dividends commensurate to their investment.

By virtue of his election as president, Buhari became the major shareholder in APC. Unfortunately, because Buhari did not see APC beyond instrument for securing power, he side-lined other major investors in APC after his election. It was not until the eve of his second term re-election bid he remembered Tinubu. Tinubu ignored his past humiliation by Buhari mafia and recruited Oshiomhole who was able to end Saraki family fiefdom in Kwara, Okorocha’s attempt to turn Imo State to a family empire and ensure APC victory in other states where parry was in disarray.

But Buhari mafia took over APC as soon as he was re-elected. Oshiomhole was humiliated out as chairman of APC despite the support of 14 out of 20 NWC members with three absentees and three neutral. The party was once again handed over to Buhari mafia headed by Mai Mala Buni, as the interim chairman of the party’s Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention planning Committee. Buni was more interested in scheming out Tinubu from contesting the 2023 election even if it meant selling dummies to Godwin Emefiele, the sitting CBN governor, Dr Akinwumi Adesina of ADB and ex-President Goodluck Jonathan.

And as the 2023 election drew near, the much postponed APC party convention finally produced Abdullahi Adamu, a two-term PDP governor of Nasarawa and two-term PDP senator who joined the party in 2019 as the consensus chairman endorsed by President Buhari.

It was obvious Adamu was on a mission. For him and other members of Buhari’s mafia, it must be anyone but Tinubu. Watching their macabre dance, Tinubu chose Abeokuta to remind them in his famous “Emilokan’ (it is my turn) declaration, that as a major investor in APC, it was time to reap his dividends. There, he for the first time regaled his audience with what had transpired between him and Buhari before 2015. After weeping openly following his three heroic failures, Buhari according to Tinubu swore not to contest again. Buhari could not have forgotten it was he, Tinubu who visited him in his house assuring him of Yoruba nation’s support if he runs again. It was however based on the understanding that it would be the turn of Yoruba after his two terms. Since he never approached Buhari for contract or ministerial appointment during his presidency, all he wanted was for Buhari to honour his agreement.

While President Buhari never denied Tinubu’s account of events, it was Abdullahi Adamu, his imposed consensus APC chairman who insisted Tinubu must be punished for his outburst.

However, Tinubu with the support of 11 honourable northern governors won the primary in spite of Adamu and the mafia. Although Buhari told the governors he should be allowed to pick his own successor, we have no evidence he supported any of the five who later presented themselves for the primaries. And when confronted by the 11 governors following Adamu’s declaration of Ahmed Lawan as APC endorsed candidate, Buhari denounced Adamu who nonetheless went on to insist that he was not mad to have made such an announcement without the president’s prior approval.

Then few weeks to the 2023 election, Tinubu alleged the fuel subsidy crisis scarcity and currency swap which overnight turned Nigerians to beggars was targeted at him by Buhari mafia. While Buhari and Adamu said nothing as Emefiele disobeyed Supreme Court ruling, Tinubu went to Abeokuta once again to declare that people were resolved to vote in spite of the mafia’s artificial fuel scarcity and confiscation of people’s monies, even if it required walking long distances to their polling booths.

Adamu probably forgot that with Tinubu’s victory, the president automatically becomes the leader of the party. With a new sheriff in town is a new mafia. According to reports, it was the fear of humiliation by Tinubu’s mafia that forced Adamu following his unrestrained open opposition to list of the principal officers of the party announced by the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio and Speaker, Tajudeen Abbas as endorsed by Tinubu to resign last Sunday evening.

But much is expected from Tinubu Mafia who I hope understands our crisis of development since 1999 can be linked to absence of strong political parties that can serve as modernization agents as we had in the first republic and as obtains in other multi-cultural societies such as India, Canada, Australia and Germany.

It was for the same reason, PDP, described by John Campbell, former US envoy as ‘an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria that came together for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’ derailed Obasanjo’s promise to provide “stable electricity, attain agricultural revolution, end massive importation of foreign goods as well as fight corruption”, just as it derailed President Yar’Adua’s Seven-point Agenda and President Jonathan’s ‘Transformation Agenda’.

In August 2013, the All Progressives Congress unfolded its own eight-point cardinal programme- devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health care, rural health programmes etc. It failed because of lack philosophical foundation or ideological orientation

Nigerian governors are answerable only to themselves and while lawmakers have become law-breakers awarding themselves mouth-watering allowances because of absence of strong political parties.

Since we cannot give what we don’t have, to understand the relationship between the political actions of citizens and the political process in a democracy, we need strong political parties for monitoring of behaviour of party members.

Finally Tinubu’s election provides for him an opportunity to build an elite consensus needed to address our crisis of nation-building. It is hoped his new APC mafia understands elite consensus on common values is best negotiated through strong political parties.

July 20, 2023
Empire of delusion (2)

In Voltaire’s Bastards, J.R. Saul analyses how the mortal inkling to stifle divinity and demote the Creator bolstered the earthly race to perfect the image, leading us to the present point.

The enthrallment with celebrity has brought us to a whole new state of mindlessness, no doubt. Sometimes, this frantic quest for renown assumes a perilous turn as was the case, of late, with Tembu Ebere aka Town Cryer.

The comedian, in a recent interview, disclosed that he went ‘partially blind’ for 45 minutes during his attempt to cry for one hundred days and break the Guinness World Record (GWR) or the longest crying marathon ((cry-a-thon) by an individual.

Ebere said he suffered partial blindness after he experienced “headaches, puffy eyes, and a swollen face as he forced himself to cry, in order to set a record.

The Cameroonian skit maker, who is based in Lagos, announced his quest in the wake of Hilda Bassey’s successful outing as the new cooking marathon champion, after dethroning Indian chef, Tata Landon, who set the previous world record of 87 hours, 45 minutes in 2019. The GWR vetted Bassey’s 93 hours, 11 minutes as the new world record.

Ebere is simply one of the curious characters that crawled through the womb-wall of Nigeria’s vanity complex, in the wake of Bassey’s feat.

The astronomical rise in attempts to set new world records spanning frivolous feats – from the longest kissing hours (kiss-a-thon) and massage sessions to the longest crying marathon (cry-a-thon) among others – prompted the GWR to react via a tweet, asking that Nigerians must first apply and have it confirmed by its team before attempting to set any record.

As Nigerians hustle to outdo each other at breaking and setting frivolous records, the nagging question persists: “To what end?”Yet the hustle persists as more youths commit their imagination and passion to extreme and featherbrained quests.

Thus this minute, conversation degenerates into mere gossip and heartfelt dreams manifest as perfections of perversion across the social and mainstream media. Everybody is a sucker for celebrity; everybody wants to be “high society.”

The current enchantment with renown has assumed a worrisome dimension. It is the stalest repetition; public lust for celebrity provokes worry – you begin to wonder why too much passion is squandered in pursuit of too little substance.

The hankering for renown spirals across social platforms and pervades the public arena, insignificant as the spores of the toadstool yet impinging on the surface of the Nigerian mind, poisoning it, till it becomes not much in expression and thought. Superfluity meets superfluity; when our lives cease to be inward and contemplative, dreams manifest as perversions, interaction degenerates to mere tittle-tattle and society relapses to the filthiest of averages.

The interaction between the public arena and the celebrity hopeful channels primal fantasy even as it skirts the borders of a business transaction. The result ultimately manifests in celebrity or the flipside of renown.

Nonetheless, the proverbial 15 minutes of fame thrive by the same tired artifice, the same choreographed ruse, the endless denials of lust by fame junkies that never seem to peter out.

The hustle thrives by vintage artifice. It is a stylised ritual. Everyone is part of the con – celebrity hustlers and the audience. Together, they perpetrate a public pantomime of pain, and a fervent yearning to get one up the system perceived to have denied them so much – and given too much to the devious band constituting the political and business class.

Any story of an individual breakthrough is welcome as a hard-earned retaliation against the system. The jazzy, sensational backstory of each emergent celebrity is what drives the mob to a frenzy.

And the most powerful narrative of today, the most potent story across Nigeria, is one of bankruptcy and impoverishment; it is one of enslavement of a desperate and abused working class to a heartless employer and political class.

Through the burning banality of it all, many immerse in the illusions of the arena, and embrace whatever delusions make it easier to live their reality or pervert it to their whims. For most, succour subsists in the belief that however bitter their reality, the illusions of renown will dull its pangs.

Yet every celebrity is a media creation. While some may be deserving of the exaltation liberally accorded them, not a few are undeserving of the hero worship they enjoy and so desperately seek. It is hardly the fault of the celebrity, however, that the press and society, in general, have chosen to accord them immeasurable hero worship despite their glaring deficiencies.

It takes more than lust and newsworthiness to create a celebrity. The vast, interlocking web of resources and institutions involved in creating and maintaining a single celebrity is astounding. From media outlets to fan clubs and agents, from media products to gossip columnists, a celebrity is never solitary, but often the result of hundreds of backstage orchestrations.

It is even all the more disturbing to watch our fascination with celebrity gossip slide into precisely the kind of ruthless pursuit of its subject to which we claim to be ostensibly opposed. Despite the evils of an inordinate hankering for fame, the addicted gladly explain their obsession away as some kind of virtuous curiosity.

There is no such thing as virtuous curiosity. In respect of the subject matter, our interest often does violence to its object. On the flip side, it leaves the society stuck in a revolving cycle of spectatorship that believes in its own virtue even as it corrupts itself – a perfect representation of Jacqueline Rose’s “perverting of curiosity in motion.”

And even our so-called superstars have learnt to profit albeit fraudulently from society’s perverse curiosities about their affairs. From Chaucer’s early poem, “The House of Fame,” whose hero-poet wrestles with the fame bestowed on him by society to Martin Scorcese’s film, King of Comedy, in which an amateur comedian jokes to a national television audience that it is “better to be king for a night, than schmuck for a lifetime!” celebrity worship continues to fester.

Even amid skyrocketing inflation, financial ruin, and insecurity, the obsession with celebrity thrives by the junkie’s smirking depravity and the sudden melting of inhibitions of the Nigerian public. It’s like the holocaust and the apocalypse.

Society stands at ground zero, incinerated by external and internal invaders. The press, on its part, plays a pimping pawn; by constantly lending its platforms as channels to solicit secondary pawns comprising celebrity hopefuls cum fortune hunters, eager to do anything to achieve renown.

Such characters simply cheat themselves of a learning experience; they circumvent a slow, steady, educative path to acclaim, to self-intoxicate in accidental celebrity. Unknown to them, the instant fame and opportunities in which they luxuriate are merely flash currents in the electric moment before lightning strikes, and they are reduced to rubble: celebs, glitter and all.

A glance behind the glitter usually reveals something more than a colourful paradise. It invalidates the deceptions of fame and instant wealth. It is akin to what Saul Bellow likened to picking up a dangerous wire fatal to ordinary folk or rattlesnakes handled by hillbillies in a state of religious exaltation, in his novel, Humboldt’s Gift.

Many who grasped these super-charged wires and serpents have been found to incandesce in acclaim for a little while, and then they wink out, which leads to a more profound suspicion of celebrity.

July 20, 2023
Empire of delusion (1)

There is no mindlessness without its incarnations. Thus the celebrity culture amasses its mob even in Nigeria. This minute, it pulses in the enterprise of social windbags, hack writers, and a fawning, infantile, audience.

The events of the last few weeks ultimately affirm the infantilism of the Nigerian mind. Following Hilda Bassey’s much-hyped cooking marathon (cook-a-thon), more curious characters have crawled out of the womb wall of Nigeria’s vanity complex.

Bassey, 27, cooked for 93 hours 11 minutes at the Amore Gardens, Lekki, Lagos, from Thursday, May 10, till Monday, May 13, 2023. Her theatrics trended on both traditional and new media as a timely distraction for a citizenry rendered sullen by the toxic state of affairs of their homeland.

Celebrities thronged the venue of Bassey’s cook-a-thon. Even the Lagos Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu deemed her worthy of his support hence he put on hold the duty of governance and showed up physically to cheer Bassey to victory. Who knows, the governor’s advisers are spiritedly urging him, as you read, to host Bassey and co-opt her expertise in connecting with the youths.

Many have labelled Bassey ‘courageous’ and ‘heroic’ for using her culinary skills to achieve global renown courtesy of the GWR. The latter eventually pronounced her the new cooking marathon champion, vetting her 93 hours, 11 minutes as the reigning world record. Doing so, the Nigerian chef dethroned India’s Tata Landon, who set the previous world record of 87 hours, 45 minutes in 2019.

Bassey, a calculating celebrity hopeful, presented with a fanciful backstory preceded by a host of syndicated interviews and a highly romanticised narrative about how she goose-stepped over life’s odds. Her intricate yarn culminated in her 93-hour-11-minute-cook-a-thon.

Predictably, she attained instant celebrity, even before her pronouncement by the GWR as the new cook-a-thon champ. In the eyes of her teeming fans, Bassey became a folk heroine. Left to them, she earned her stripes, the attention of the government and a few billionaires.

Bassey is seen as the fortune hunter who walked away with a pot of gold while her peers across the country lost their jobs, and saw their savings and retirement funds evaporate in a maelstrom of skyrocketing inflation. While small and medium-scale enterprises fought off foreclosure, Bassey made a killing in the kitchen by doing what she knows best: pulling the strings of celebrity.

The Akwa Ibom native emerged as the dandiest puppeteer in town. As often happens in a celebrity plot, the line between her public and fictional personas blurs. Yet Bassey is no teetotaller in the celebrity theatre. Having honed her savvy over the years, she has finally put it to good use. She made it work for her purpose. What’s not to love about that? Tell it to her teeming groupies.

In time, Bassey would feature in a few movies and music videos; she could even write a best-selling memoir perhaps. Already she has raised funds for some widows, according to her publicity team. It’s all part of the artifice.

The 27-year-old achieved instant renown and motley endorsement deals with some business organisations. Moved by her exploit, her home state, Akwa Ibom, held a grand reception in her honour, celebrating her as the next best role model for youths in her state.

A curious thing, however, occurred en route to Bassey’s acclaim; more frantic chefs rolled out their utensils with intent to displace her even before her record was vetted and she was pronounced the new cook-a-thon champ by the GWR.

As soon as it became obvious that Bassey was on to a big break, several other celebrity hopefuls within and outside Nigeria set pot afire to break the record Bassey hadn’t even made. First were the chefs: between June 9 and 13, Damilola Adeparusi aka Chef Dammy entered the kitchen in Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State with the intent to best Bassey’s record by cooking for 120 hours. She did 120 hours but the GWR invalidated her record because she failed to follow due process by applying first.

Lest we forget Adeola Adeyeye aka Chef Deo whose 150-hour cooking marathon from June 30 to July 7 followed the due process of application set by GWR, then, at the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE) a computer science lecturer, Joshua Bature proposed a 150- hour teaching marathon which he calls ‘aca- a-thon.” He got an October 16, 2023 date from the GWR.

In Ekiti, a curious character called Sugartee proposed a 72-hour kissing marathon which he labelled “kiss-a-thon.” He looked good to go until the state government banned the event and dismissed it as “unhealthy, absurd and an attempt to denigrate the image of Ekiti State.”

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Treasure Joseph of Benue disclosed her wish to set a record for the longest video on Instagram with a target of 125 hours while Oluwatobi Kufeji proposed a 200-hour singing marathon which he dubbed”Praise Worship-a-Thon.”

And in an Instagram post, Tembu Daniel, the Cameroonian skit maker (based in Lagos) also known as Town Cryer, announced his quest to break the Guinness World Record (GWR) for the longest crying marathon ((cry-a-thon) by an individual by crying nonstop for 100 hours.

Joyce Ijeoma fainted around 1 am and had to be resuscitated while trying to set a 125-hour record for body massaging. And in neighbouring Cameroon, Danny Zara, apparently infected by Nigeria’s GWR bug invited “strong men” for a 200-hour free sex marathon (sex-a-thon).

Stardom and the obsessions it ignites are merely a distraction; celebrities are essentially media creations. They live scripted reality. They are figments of hack writers’ imaginations and yet grow to command other people’s imaginations.

Celebrity, in essence, epitomises our guilty secrets. It excites the grossest manners of bringing to the limelight, various perversions we would not easily admit. Thus the ample reasons stardom is electrifying and undignified at the same time.

A more critical approach to the drama of exhibition essential to the Nigerian youth’s quest for instant celebrity would be to consider it from a historical perspective. “It is far from honouring him who made us, to honour him whom we have made,” avers Montaigne.

The battle for Nigeria’s soul may be won and lost on the screen and between the lines of the printed spoken word. The word denotes newspapers, magazines, the audiovisual but never the book – except it’s a tome rippling with filth. Screen alludes to the traditional (TV) and new media.

Living in a world of words and images, we have grown from people who used words and painted images to depict reality to folk who deploy images to deny and escape reality.

We have learnt to interact in varnished dialect; amid the racket of voiced imaging and painted words, a pagan illusion triumphs over our moral eye and mind. It is fitting, therefore, that heathen idolatry subsists among us in the absence of national heroes and heroines.

It is the latter that we should seek but Nigeria ditches her heroes to create gods from filth. In our lust for deities, we romance and spread fickle idolatry.

We all have gods, Martin Luther said, it is just a question of which ones. In Nigeria, our gods are celebrities thus religious belief and practice, business, economy, advocacy and politics, are modelled around the idolisation of personages.

In contrast, China prospers by native intelligence despite her love of celebrities. Likewise Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and Korea. These countries’ socioeconomic and technological progress were built on a sturdy foundation of autochthonous intelligence and wisdom.

July 13, 2023
Threat of runaway inflation

The whole world is confronting an inflation spiral that varies from country to country. From the United States to China, the two economic super powers are facing inflation that they are historically not used to. The European Union and Great Britain have had like the USA to raise central bank rates many times in recent times. Interest rate in the central bank in Nigeria has always been so high that commercial banks have charged punitive rates to borrowers making it extremely difficult for small businesses to thrive.

Inflation is no longer an economic issue or issue of high finance; ordinary Nigerians unfortunately are living through it. We cannot certainly blame the present government that is still at its formative period. There is no cabinet yet to help the president navigate his ways through the tortuous and slippery way this particular government has to go especially after the ruinous years of the preceding government. Unfortunately, the present government is the one carrying the can of this rampaging inflation that is affecting all of us.

I was in Ibadan over the weekend and I had a craving for yams because I have not been able to eat yams for the past month because of the outrageous and excessive price the yam sellers in Lagos demanded. I drove to the market to my yam vendor in Ibadan and she said I would be very pleased with the fresh yams she had. I was indeed pleased that at last, fresh yams had finally arrived in the market.

I used to think I could pick yams that would be good either for pounded yams or just as boiled yams good as breakfast delight. I even know the names of yams such as “efuru” “elentu” “Odo” “Aro”. My yam vendor is an Ibadan lady who had no knowledge about yams as an Ekiti man like me would have. So when I asked her what kind of yams she had, she said it was called “Gambari”. I asked which kind of yams was that? She said they were from Ekiti. I laughed and laughed thinking whether to an Ibadan woman, Ekiti people were “Gambari” which was what Yoruba call Hausa and all our Northern compatriots. Of course I immediately knew what she was saying. The yams were from Ekiti State where Ebira people from Kogi are farm hands growing the yams. After the rigmarole of the name of the yams, she brought out six yams costing N14,500 almost N2500 per yam! I could not believe this but the lady said her price was not subject to negotiations. She said she would not sell a bad stuff to me since I always bought yams from her. I had no reason to doubt her and paid and headed home phoning my friends about the cost of yams!

People may be wondering why I was in the market haggling over the price of yams. The reasons are straightforward. Since my wife passed on to eternity, I have had to do things not expected of men. Secondly my caretaker does not like yams or their derivatives and if I must bear my yam-eating father’s name, I had to go to the market to buy the precious thing myself.

The price of yams surprised me but I can understand why the price was so high. The cost of transportation has tripled since the price of gasoline has virtually tripled. This has nothing to do with the dollar/Naira rate. Most Nigerians understand that the subsidy palaver just has to end because unscrupulous Nigerians had fed fat on the scheme to the detriment of those who knew nobody in government. Nobody however expected that the impact of its removal would be so devastating as it now appears.

On Sunday when I went to church, the roads did not have the hustle and bustle characteristic of Ibadan roads on Sundays. In fact I was worried and I asked the newspaper vendor near my house if all was well. He quickly said there was no problem and that Christians were worshiping from their homes just to save money and taxi drivers were off the roads because there were no passengers to carry. This was the result of deregulation of the downstream oil industry and the merging of the official and unofficial rates of the dollar which in the long run economic analysts say is necessary for economic growth and seamless trade relations with our trading partners since we do not have a convertible currency. It is now clear to even illiterates that the cost of energy is the ultimate key to economic development. If the people generating electricity and those who are distributing it threaten to raise the unit cost of electric power, it is because they too are dependent on either hydrocarbons or hydroelectricity which are somehow related.

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We are entering a stage in which we must count the cost before we embark on any project or journey. It is not only the cost of food, energy and power that have become high globally, the cost of drugs are almost unsustainable. I was in Canada towards the end of last year and I needed to buy some drugs and I could not believe that they cost almost five times their cost in Nigeria. The reason was obvious. Canada has what Americans derisively called “socialized medicine” a system introduced into the English-speaking world by the Clement Attlee’s post Second World War Labour government in Great Britain that goes with the sobriquet of “National Health service”. The British copied this from the Bismarckian government of imperial Germany dating back to 1870. This involved paying high taxes on almost every service or transactions to pay for medical services available to all residents who are taxpayers. Since I was not a Canadian, I had to pay the market price of drugs because I had no medical insurance.

We have been playing around with medical insurance in Nigeria but our medical services remain primitive and undeveloped. The key to affordable medical services is local production of generic drugs for common diseases such as malaria, headaches, stomach disorders, respiratory problems and so on.

What can government do to fight the rampaging inflation in Nigeria? In one sentence, we must produce what we eat, what we wear, what we need to maintain reasonably good health and what we need whether for transportation, communication and security. This is a tall order. No country is totally self-sufficient. The old adage is still true that no country is an island sufficient unto itself. No country at the same time must be totally dependent on others. A country like that is inherently weak and at the mercy of those who supply it with what it needs. Our country however must plan not to depend on others for most things. There is no reason on earth for us to import textiles, food, and most domestic utensils. We must import advanced machinery in order to be self-sufficient. This should be the plan of the Tinubu government if it is to be taken as a serious government.

The recently announced reduction and cancellation of taxes on some goods and services are policies in the right direction. But it can hardly fight the kind of food inflation facing Nigeria. The solution may take a long time to put in place and the people may not be ready to wait. Public transportation has to be improved upon. Commercial vehicles traveling between states and cities can be provided cheaper fuel in designated fuel stations run by local and state governments hopefully with strict supervision so as to avoid corruption and misuse. This will reduce the cost of food and a full belly is not likely to cause trouble! Once this is done, we must bring in price control mechanism to fix the cost of commercial transportation and the cost of food and other resources. The plan of railway resuscitation should be updated and fast forwarded so that food can be moved from areas of production to the cities. One of the reasons why food is expensive is the rural banditry caused by the Boko Haram insurgency which has lasted too long. Government should do whatever it takes to put an end to this rebellion.

The problems facing this nascent government are not insolvable. Unfortunately the poor people need to be helped immediately so that they do not lose interest in the ability of their government to find solutions to the myriad of problems they are trying to cope with. The most immediate problem is food availability at affordable cost. We have faced this problem before and we should look back into our past and revise the old methods of bulk buying of food from wherever they are located to solve the present problems even if for a short time until things get back to normal production of what we need to eat and how to cheaply transport what we produce to areas of need.

July 13, 2023
If a finger brings oil…

The Mmesoma Ejikeme story ended dramatically on Saturday, just the way it started some two weeks ago. It was a futile journey to nowhere for the girl, who attended a mission school, where high standards and morality were expected to be best practices. The way she behaved until she changed her story did not show that the school went through her even though she passed through the school.

Until she confessed to the investigative panel raised by the Anambra State Government to look into the propriety of her claim of being the highest scorer in the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME), Mmesoma openly accused the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) of attempting to deny her of her due.

What due? Her gullible father fell for her story, like many others from their part of the country who were also quick to denounce JAMB for vilifying the poor. When did a candidate’s social status become an issue in external examinations? It will be an understatement to say that the trick Mmesoma tried to use was new in the 45-year history of JAMB. It was not, the only thing novel about it was her initially widely-reported allegations that JAMB wanted to cheat her by not recognising her as the highest 2023 UTME scorer.

She wanted to appropriate the feat achieved by another candidate, Nkechinyere Umeh, who incidentally hails from Anambra like her. The Mmesoma story turned out this way because of those who wept more than her over the barefaced lie that she cooked up in order to win a prize by fraud. Rather than scrutinise her story, her sympathisers were busy colouring it. They ethnicised, religionised and politicised it. All the three main factors that have divided us as a nation were called to play because of a common cheat.

Some eminent persons from her state like Oby Ezekwesili and Osita Chidoka, two former ministers, led the band as if exam malpractice was an honour. Chidoka, despite puncturing the lie in the story of Mmesoma, who wrote the exam in the Computer Based Test (CBT) centre owned by his foundation, introduced the last presidential election which his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost, into the matter.

it was a classic case of speaking from both sides of the mouth. What is the connection of the electoral umpire, INEC, with Mmesoma’s case? They are poles apart. All the claims by Chidoka, his party, as well as the Labour Party (LP), the European Union Election Observer Mission and others that INEC did not discharge itself well are mere allegations until proven in court.

INEC cannot be crucified on the basis of these allegations. The issue in contention is not the February 25 presidential poll, but result falsification by a 19-year-old girl. It is shameful that some people can still defend her despite confessing to altering her result from 249 to 362 in order to better her kinswoman, Chinyere’s score of 360.

Her action showed a girl, who is streetwise despite her innocent looks. As a former education minister and a so-called due process czarina, Ezekwesili should have condemned her once JAMB came out with the report of its investigation. She did not, and after the girl’s confession, instead of publicly apologising to JAMB, which she once oversaw, and Nigerians, she called for counselling for Mmesoma. All she wanted she claimed was to see the matter properly investigated by an independent body apart from JAMB.

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Ezekwesili should know better. JAMB is empowered to investigate such incidents and apply sanctions. Upon investigation, it can refer the case to the police for further probe and prosecution, if it so wishes. That JAMB has plugged all loopholes for cheating is no longer news. It is now harder to cheat in UTME than for a needle to pass through the camel’s eyes. The counselling that Ezekwesili is calling for can only come after Mmesoma’s trial. As ‘Madam Due Process’, isn’t it Mmesoma’s trial that she should be campaigning for instead of seeking a slap on the wrist for the girl?

It is bad enough that Mmesoma was involved in such a criminal act; it is worse that her kinsmen and kinswomen, who should know better, are closing their eyes to the offence, citing irrelevancies to muddle up issues. She and other candidates were warned before the exam. Under its Exam Malpractice Code 2023, JAMB warned:

Due to the way JAMB is structured now, it will be very difficult for anyone to cheat and easier for cheaters to get caught. It is not even worth it. (emphasis mine). Rather than heed this warning, she tried to be clever by half and she was caught. Instead of rebuking her, her people are running their mouths. Have they forgotten what Chinua Achebe wrote in Things fall apart that If a finger brought oil, it soiled the others?

It was on the basis of this proverb that Okonkwo, the hero in the book, and his family were banished from Umuofia for seven years for killing his clansman, Ikemefuna. So, why should Mmesoma not bear the consequences of her own action?

July 13, 2023
IPOB as symptom of greater disorder

IPOB’s ‘sit-at home order on Mondays’ has been in force since 2021. It has been largely successful with most Igbos including Peter Obi, of the Labour Party who refused to campaign on Mondays during last February election, obeying the order. David Umahi who as chairman of southeast governors’ forum tried to assure us of Igbo’s choice of Nigeria over IPOB’s dream-Biafra was reminded by the non-state actors ‘that neither Igbo’s elected governors nor Igbo elite can decide the fate of Igbo’.

As if to prove who truly wields power in the south-eastern states, Owerri metropolis was shut down just this last Monday 12 July 12 with markets, banks, schools and supermarkets closed as residents continued to observe the seven days sit-at-home directive by a separatist leader and Finland-based Simon Ekpa.

Finally, the chicken has come home to roost. Igbo political class has used IPOB for political bargaining just as they have done with their poor including their urban immigrants since independence.

An interrogation of demands of IPOB and Igbo political elite will easily show it is a case of ‘voice of Jacob, hands of Esau’. First, IPOB which resented being branded terrorists in the words of Chilota Duru, one of its chieftains, was “borne out of the desire to address marginalisation of southeast people in the country”. According to him, “ it is unfair that we are the least in terms of states in Nigeria; that successive administrations have continued to make appointments without regard to the federal character; that allocation of projects are not even, and that we also have right to aspire to the highest office in the land, among others”.

These demands are not different from Igbo political elite’s quest for “inclusiveness, equity and justice”. During the Enugu 2017 economic summit attended by governors, academics, traditional and religious leaders, businessmen and women etc., the economic stagnation and development economic and development was linked to ‘allocation of political offices and citing of industries’. At the summit, former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku recommended restructuring for economic stability and unity of the country.

Ike Ekweremadu, three times deputy senate president in the fourth republic, speaking in Abuja in 2021 at the public presentation of the book “The Audacity of Power and the Nigeria Project: Exclusion of the South East in Nigeria’s Power Politics and the Spectre of Biafra”, authored by Godwin Udibe and Law Mefor had said: “But the worst disadvantages suffered by Ndigbo are not just those imposed by structural imbalances, but by “political representation, federal employments and political appointments, arising from the imbalances and wilful injustice.”

Although at another forum, Ekweremadu spoke of the ‘discarding of true federalism put in place by the founding fathers of Nigeria”, the real issue is that Igbo elite want to be part of any government. The Igbo don’t believe in federal arrangement. They only mouth it when they are out of government.

It is instructive that when Igbo political elite had an opportunity to consolidate federalism during their January 1966 short-lived victory over their rivals, they misled Ironsi to promulgating Decree 34 which turned the country into a unitary state after eliminating military and political leadership of their Hausa Fulani rival. Is it also instructive that Nigeria was not regarded as a zoo run by Fulani and supported by their Yoruba stooges when the Igbo political elite took total control of the Obasanjo and Jonathan administrations from 1999-2015?

IPOB that has been waging Igbo political elite’s war is a creation of southeast politicians just as Fulani terrorists and bandits are creations of Fulani ruling hegemony in the north. Incidentally, these two ethnic groups shared common world view of how Nigeria should be run. From the onset, one preferred a unitary system where the potential of their highly mobile urban immigrants can easily be harnessed for political gains while the other wanted a confederacy where there would be no restraint on how they treat subjects of their empire of slaves. The latter with the assurance of the British colonial power was eventually persuaded to key into a federal arrangement they would always control by virtue of their population.

It is on record that their rivalry led to the collapse of the first republic and the ensuing civil war. The victor and vanquished, driven by selfish interest as against a desire to serve the people regrouped in the second republic with their alliance of convenience collapsing under the weight of massive corruption and electoral fraud in 1983. And when they again regrouped between 1999 -2015, their ‘family quarrel’ over sharing of political offices, proceeds of fuel subsidy scam and our national patrimony in the name of privatization and monetization policies threw them asunder.

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The Fulani for the greater part of our recent history control the economic and political power in the north. Their strength, they often claim is their high population whose only say in how they are governed is four year-periodic participation in elections which never change the objective relationship between the oppressed and their oppressors.

Igbo political elite control commerce. A recent Daily Trust newspaper survey showed that Igbo control commerce in 31 of the nation’s 36 states. Ike Ekweremadu has also told IPOB members that Igbo control of commerce in the country is one major reason Biafra is not a viable option for the Igbo.

The question however is at what cost is importation of labour of other societies to Nigeria? Manufactured products, many of them substandard or faked, are shipped to Nigeria while uneducated Igbo youths are lured to Nigeria’s major cities as urban immigrants to hawk such goods with a promise some of them could become Cosmas Maduka (Coscharis) who started from the streets.

More tragic for the Igbo states ravaged by violence is that proceeds of importation of labour of other societies are not repatriated back home to create employment for the restive youths. Instead of ploughing back their huge profits to develop Igbo land, they are busy buying off Lagos Island, Banana Island and Atlantic City while demonizing other Nigerians as enemies of ‘industrious’ Igbo.

But it is not lost on informed Nigerians that when Igbo controlled the centre during the first republic, some of them only built ‘palaces of the people’ in the midst of their people’s squalor while between 1999-2015, Igbo political office holders with access to state funds rather than invest in the east, were building private estates in Abuja, private palaces in Lagos or acquiring a $12m brazier.

IPOB like Fulani terrorist and bandits are symptoms of greater malaise that threaten the very survival of our nation. Our enemies are the greedy politicians who created an environment for IPOB, Fulani terrorists and bandits to thrive.

President Tinubu already has his job well cut out. We must replace the current superstructure with a federal constitution that will liberate groups and individuals from the tyranny of the state. Beyond what may appear as ethnic profiling despite the fact that this is our true story, we must be ready to tell ourselves the truth. As frustrated Awolowo declared at the 1957 London Constitutional Conference after failing to secure freedom for those under oppression in their own land including today’s besieged Middle-Belt states, “no one is free until we are all free”.

July 13, 2023
Time to focus on sub national governments

Sometimes in 2013, the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) which was established in 1913 celebrated its centennial In London. I was then the chairman of council and pro chancellor of Ekiti State University and I was privileged to have led our delegation to the conference celebrating the occasion. It was a grand occasion and we were invited to a cocktail in the Buckingham Palace by her majesty the queen, Elizabeth II who has since joined her ancestors to put it the African way.

The thing I will never forget was the lecture given to delegates by MO. Ibrahim, the billionaire Sudanese who made his money from his investments in communication, particularly from mobile phone companies. This man has endowed a yearly price called the “Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African leadership” worth $5million, the largest in the world, larger than the Nobel prize of $1.5 million, to be awarded to an African leader who after serving his legal term of appointment, leaves office quietly without charges of proven corruption.

He gave a thought provoking lecture which was at the same time very funny perhaps because of his poor command of the English language. I remember him saying “it is only in Africa that a 90-year old president would be running for another term of five years to do what? Perhaps to die in office so as to qualify for state burial?” He ridiculed Africa as being riddled by ethnicity and that a man like President Obama, born by a minority group like the Luo would probably be driving a bus if his father had taken him back to Kenya when he returned after his studies in the United States of America. He said so many things about why Africa was not doing well and we all laughed heartily because of the way the man said it.

This reminds me about the title of the small pamphlet of the beloved Nigerian journalist, Peter Enahoro “You’ve got to laugh to cry”. One could see from the lecture that Mo Ibrahim was hurting from the failure of Africa and one can imagine what he would be saying now about his native country, the Sudan. He then told us why he set up the prize in order to encourage sit-tight African rulers to leave when the ovation is loudest. He said he just did not understand why a leader who had been in office for two terms of four years each would want to ask for extension.

At that point, I remembered what a father of a Nigerian governor told his audience while campaigning for the re-election of his son, when he said when a school child has failed an examination, should be made to repeat the class so that he could do better; the audience laughed and even though unimpressed still voted for the non-performing governor! Our first president in this country the late president, Nnamdi Azikiwe said African presidents get used to the luxury of office that they don’t like to go back to their poor beginning and that rather than leave office they were prepared to die there or to steal more than they will ever need so that they and their descendants will never be poor again!

Laureates of this prize include Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, (Honorary recipient in 2007) Joaquim Alberto Chissano, (2007) from Mozambique, Festus Gontebanye Mogae (2008) from Botswana, Pedro de Verona Rodrigues Pires, (2011) from Cape Verde, Hifikepunye Pohamba (2011) from Namibia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (2017) from Liberia, Mohamadou Issoufou( 2020) from Niger.

From the list above, no big country with their political and ethnic complexity has ever won the prize and perhaps would never produce a winning president. Missing from the list are Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, (DRC) Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, CAR, Algeria, Libya, Ethiopia. I am surprised that none of the former presidents of Senegal, Ghana, Zambia and Malawi has ever produced winning former presidents. Morocco, a monarchy will never win and the way things are in Nigeria, we may never produce a winner because of the complexity of the politics of Nigeria. Countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, CAR, the DRC, Angola and Algeria are inherently weak and countries like Guinea and the Cameroons where President Biya has been in office for more than 40 years suffer from France’s authoritarian legacy.

The hopelessness of Nigeria’s situation made me to ask a question at the well-attended forum whether Mo Ibrahim could consider sub national governments in Africa for his prize. I had in mind Babatunde Raji Fashola that was nationally adjudged to have performed excellently well in the governance and development of Lagos State. I then explained to Mo Ibrahim that as it stood and still stands, the dice was loaded against Nigeria. I then added that if he doesn’t consider political performance at sub national level, his prize would not genuinely reflect the African reality. He indulged me by listening and his short answer was that I should go back and ensure that my president does well and leave when the ovation is loudest and not try to impose a successor on his country. I sat down amidst laughter of my colleagues coming from every corner of Africa.

I still feel leaders of some states with substantial budgets like Lagos, Rivers, Delta, Kano, and Ogun comparable with budgets of some independent countries in Africa should be assessed for their performance and the improvement their leaders make in the lives of their people by the development they achieved while in office. The Nigerian people instead of focusing on the federal government to solve all their problems should focus on the states as centres of development. I am convinced that if states manage or are forced by the pressure of public opinion to husband and manage their resources and dedicate them to developing their states, there will be less pressure on the federal government. Sufficient funds may have to be devolved from the federal government to the states governments to facilitate more and better development.

One point I was happy to have made at that conference is that Nigeria has some good leaders who have done very well at the state level and who the electorate if given the chance would have asked them to stay on because of their perceived performance. If Muhammadu Buhari had performed well by running the country without running it down the way he did, pandering to the forces of religion, regionalism and ethnicity, he probably would have qualified for the prize on account of not staying beyond his welcome. His performance on all counts leaves much to be desired and on that basis he would not qualify for the prize. I wish he had justified the confidence many of us including myself had in him when we voted for him three times until he became president in 2015, but regrettably he was a let-down and a disappointment.

July 6, 2023