The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • 2022 ended with a whimper rather than with a bang

    2022 ended with a whimper rather than with a bang

    Let us pray for a better country

    It is early in the year and I have been praying for the only country of which I am a citizen. I have had opportunities for becoming a citizen of one country or another apart from Nigeria but I gave the chance up either because I had absolutely no need for it or because I was certain all will be well for me and my children in the country of my birth and where I am somebody by the grace of God. In recent times I have sometimes wondered if I took the right decision on this issue especially when Nigeria legally permits dual citizenship.

    In recent times, it has become really embarrassing for me when I have had to wait for months while my passport has had to remain in the consulates of countries, I am trying to go to either for academic conferences or for family reasons such as visiting a child or grandchild. It seems foreign missions in Nigeria have taken a collective decision to frustrate Nigerians travelling to their countries by holding on to our passports on the grounds that they are investigating us before visas are issued. The reading public will be surprised that even I, a former ambassador is subjected to this humiliating treatment. Can we blame them? This is because our country has become in the words of President Donald J Trump a “shithole” country. Sometimes in 1999 or thereabouts, I wanted to travel to Germany, a country where I had served previously as Ambassador of Nigeria for five years and I was asked to bring all kinds of documents including letter of invitation, hotel booking and my bank accounts. I did and I was issued a two weeks one entry visa. I did not quite examine the visa when I took the train for a day’s trip by Euro train to Paris. The second day after the trip, I went to the airport to go to Germany. I was checked in and I had a £500 return ticket from London to Berlin. When at the last check in point before entering the plane, I was told that my one entry Schengen visa had been used and that I could not go to Germany. I was shocked and it was at that time that I realised that I had been issued a one entry visa by the German embassy in Lagos. I went through the humiliation of my luggage being removed from the plane as if I was a criminal. Of course this caused the delay of the flight to Berlin. I wondered what the people inside the plane would have thought about me another Nigerian involved as usual in one crime or another. Needless to say I lost the money for the flight since the cost of the ticket was not refundable.

    On return to Nigeria, I protested to the German embassy for the shoddy treatment. Anybody who knows me will attest to the fact that I don’t wear my status on my shirt sleeves. I am not the type who will loudly say “Don’t you know who I am?” I however felt so bad that I called Professor Jibril Aminu who was at the time chairman of the foreign relations committee of Senate. He sympathised with me and he said something that kept me thinking. He said “Jide, we should stop going to these foreign countries and stay in our own and this will limit the opportunities these people have to humiliate us”. I agreed with him but I said to myself that but for the fact that one had a child abroad, what will I be going anywhere for. This made me remember that as an assistant professor in Canada in 1970 at the University of Western Ontario, my resident permit was solicited for me by the university and all I had to do was maintain a residence for five years and I would have become a Canadian citizen with a passport that would have allowed me to go anywhere in the world without visas.

    Again in 1971, as a lecturer in the University of the West Indies, I was being asked to apply for a house loan and citizenship but I turned it down to hurry back home to go to the then University of Ibadan Jos Campus. Now at that time Nigeria was a great country and had the prospects of being greater so I was not doing my country a favour by rushing home. I actually wanted to be part of Nigeria’s march to greatness. I have not had any regrets since then because this country has given me opportunity to serve at some considerable height in the politics and administration of the country.

    In my evening years, things have turned sour for me and my country. This is no time to want to travel abroad. The cost of flying is extremely prohibitive. The so-called annual personal travel allowance (PTA) of  $4,000 are no longer available even when you have the Naira equivalent and your passport could be kept indefinitely in the vault of a foreign embassy waiting for issuance of visa. This is the current experience of an average middle class Nigerian. It seems we have lost our respect and no one wants us in their Lilly white country. We have become a victim of our sordid reputation as a country of criminals and the wretched of the earth no matter our educational attainment or previous national or international status. Yet compared with our colleagues abroad, we are in no way inferior to them but our skin pigmentation and the reputation of our country have condemned us to the status of the undesirable and the miserable.

    My people say poverty is not a crime but unorthodox method of getting out of poverty is certainly a crime. Peddling drugs and trafficking in people particularly women, fraudulent and all kinds of sharp practices such identity forgery and credit and insurance theft are crimes in which my people have been known to indulge in for instant wealth and monetary gratification. These are the issues that make countries and people despise us.

    If we want to get our country back, we must adopt the credo of calling what is bad a no-go area in our individual and national lives. The coming elections important as they are will not change the image of Nigeria unless we change our national character and avoid what has made us become a people and country to be avoided.

    A friend of mine asked me if I noticed that when traveling to Nigeria from abroad these days one hardly sees any foreigners in the plane unlike before when the first and business classes would be full of foreigners. It seems we are being avoided as if we are lepers and yet this is the biggest economy in Africa.

    My prayer is that this country will be great and grand again. The struggle for greatness has to be a collective one. We as individuals must not only be the best we can be, we must also more or less challenge our country men and women to do the best for this country. If you see something wrong say something. If one is demanding for bribe and you know about it, call the culprits to order. If contracts are given and not executed, call our people to the streets to demonstrate against the contractors. If someone is impersonating another person to write examinations, call for a citizen arrest of such an evil person. If a doctor or a nurse ill-treats a patient, call such people to order. If a lecturer is late to class or demands sexual gratification, make a report of such lecturers to the authorities. If a student is seducing lecturers for marks, protest to the authorities and if government officials refuse to perform their duties call them to order through public protest or call the attention of the media.

    We must embark on a campaign of moral rearmament to save this country and to get our reputation as a great country back. People in Singapore and Malaysia do not need visas to go to Europe or the Americas because there is no reason in the world why anyone from those two countries would want to leave their warm countries to go and settle in cold forsaken Europe and the Americas. Yet we became independent countries around the same time. They also don’t have to go through the hassle of applying for so-called foreign exchange because their currencies are convertible. There was a time in this country when the Naira was king and was joyfully accepted outside our country and it was almost getting to the status of West African currency because it was traded in countries from Dakar in Senegal to Yaoundé in the Cameroons. Our country can become great again but we have to work hard for it and it is doable.

  • Lightning strikes twice

    Lightning strikes twice

    Never again will such an incident happen, the public was promised after the Kaduna train attack in 2022. Ten months later, a similar attack has happened in Edo State, leaving everyone appalled. Even, the government and the security agencies are flummoxed. How did the abductors strike again without the attack nipped in the bud?

    It is too soon after the March 28, 2022 Kaduna train attack for another one to happen. Sadly, this is what the nation is faced with, following the January 7 incident at the remote Tom Ikimi Train Station, Igueben, Edo State. The incident was said to have happened at Ekehen specifically.

    Ekehen is a village close to Igueben. Igueben and Ekehen may be coterminous towns, but Ikimi’s name has conferred a higher status on the former that earned it the train station’s name. What happened in that remote village on Saturday raises questions once again about security issues.

    How do the security agencies do their work? What are the lessons they learn from any attack? What do they do after studying the investigation reports? What is the place of intelligence gathering in what they do? When Kuje Prisons in Abuja was attacked on July 6, 2022, President Muhammadu Buhari blamed it on failure of intelligence and took his security chiefs to the cleaners.

    More than six months after the incident, hundreds of inmates who escaped from the prison have not been rearrested and no security chief is known to have been made to answer for what happened. The country has carried on as if nothing happened at Kuje. It has been business as usual, until another incident occurs to shake our leaders out of their lethargy. They are being woken up from the slumber they fell into after the Kaduna train abduction now by the Edo incident.

    The usual noises are being made all over the place, following the incident, without anyone asking what was done to avert such attacks in future after what we saw in Kaduna. That incident should have told our security men something and that is: the nation could no longer leave its train stations not well secured. The Kaduna attack was a wake up call to the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC), police, Department of State Service (DSS), Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and related agencies to return to the drawing board to fashion out a strategy for averting train attacks.

    These agencies should have known that after succeeding in Kaduna, the perpetrators will want to try their luck elsewhere after biding their time. Criminals are good at planning and waiting, but these are not attributes peculiar to them. Security agents are expected to be better than them in those departments. If security agents cannot plan and wait, no matter how long, to avert crime, then the nation must be wasting its resources on them. I am not saying that this was what happened in this instance, but one thing is for sure, our security agents were once again, caught napping.

    The herdsmen who attacked the Ekehen station could not have done so on the spur of the moment. No criminal, no matter how daring he is, storms a train to kidnap passengers like a pickpocket stalking a commuter would do at a bus stop. It takes a lot of planning to attack a train. No matter the remoteness of a train station, passengers should not be left at the mercy of the elements and criminals. Unfortunately, this is what the NRC and the security agencies have done in this instance. Perhaps, they thought that what happened in Kaduna would only be limited to the north and would never occur down south. They now know better.

    Criminals have twisted minds, but they are sharp. They study every situation well before making their moves. They struck at Ekehen on Saturday because they knew that their chances of being caught were nil. This is a remote territory without security. So, who would stop them? They knew that before help could come after the alarm is raised, they would have long escaped. As usual, the Fidet Okhiria-led NRC and the security agencies are now trying to shut the stable after the horse had fled. I wish them well.

    My appeal is that they should stop playing with people’s lives. It is all the government’s fault. What has it done since the Kaduna incident to fortify rail stations? Security is not all about posting personnel to places. The government  should be thinking more of deploying technology in this fight against criminals. Where there are no security men, technology will come handy. Just imagine what a Closed-circuit Television (CCTV), if there was one, would have done in fishing out those behind the Ekehen train attack, who the security men are now combing the forests for.

    It is the height of irresponsibility by NRC for train stations to remain without state-of-the-art security, as we have seen in the Ekehen case, 10 months after the Kaduna train attack. This means that it learnt nothing from the Kaduna attack. Apparently because of  its laxity, lightning has struck the same place twice. Human lives are precious. So, the government and its agencies should place high premium on lives.

    Which is better? Securing lives to avert danger or engaging in negotiations with terrorists after every abduction? I prefer the former. Reason: prevention is better than cure.

  • OBJ: Haunted by the truth

    OBJ: Haunted by the truth

    Obasanjo wants our youths to forget the past: treasonable felony, Tiv riot and its handling, first military coup and its aftermath, second military coup, araba, pogrom and the civil war” and move forward in mutual forgiveness. Haunted by their past follies, Obasanjo and his fellow  ‘mainstreamers’ who live in denial, want our youths to forget yesterday as if tomorrow is not the summation of yesterday and today. No wonder they stopped teaching of history.

    But I think our youths need to know the truth. And since it is only the truth that can heal us, some facts of our recent history are worth re-stating for the health of young Nigerians.

     We are a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society.  Some of our ethnic nationalities including some ‘cannibals inhabiting some hilltops, the anti-social tribes and some naked warriors of the jungle’, as Hugh Clifford (Governor of Nigeria 1919-1925) pointed out, were at different levels of cultural development. It was for this reason, the British colonial policy which he espoused during his 1920 address to Nigerian Council was for “a regional government that secures for each nationality each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality and its own chosen form of government which have been involved for it by the wisdom and the accumulated experiences of generation of its forbears”.

    The dominant Yoruba political ethnic group in the west embraced federalism, the dominant Igbo ethnic group in the  landlocked east,  wanted a unitary state since they thrive wherever they find themselves while the Fulani hegemonic power in the north wanted a confederal system  where their socio-economic and political control of conquered 14 Hausa states would not be threatened. The British, using stick and carrot approach, forced the three dominant ethnic groups to adopt the 1957 Independence Federal Constitution. 

    But for his commitment to oppressed minority groups in the north and east whose quest for self-actualisation he supported, Obafemi Awolowo, as opposition leader had to pay a price for his audacity. NPC/NCNC coalition started with their sponsorship of a bill that will empower the prime minister to declare a state of emergency as well as detain without trials anyone considered a threat to the health of their government.

    With Attorney-General and Minister of Justice Dr T O Elias’ advice that, “if the constitutional authority of the regional government has broken down, the person to determine this, is parliament, only parliament”, a parliament  that did not declare a state of  emergency in a region where an insurrection had to be put down by the military, was stampeded to declare a state of emergency in the Western House over throwing of chairs by a handful of S.L Akintola’s supporters.

    Realising the federal government had no power to interfere in the affairs of a region, two “Bills For an Act to make provisions for a Commission of Inquiry to probe the National Bank of Nigeria Ltd’ and the other entitled ‘Commission and Tribunals of Inquiry Act 1961’ that empowers the prime minister to institute commission or tribunals of inquiry on any subject” were passed by the coalition on July 20, 1961. On July 21, 1961, just a day after, a Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of National Bank, the major financier of Western Region’s economic and political activities was set up.

    For the coalition partners who did not want to be questioned as to how Nigeria was run, Awolowo as opposition leader must be put out of circulation.  An opportunity came with his London lecture where he had called for “the abrogation of Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact, the removal of vestige and influence of Britain and call on federal government for a well-defined economic objectives and development programmes”.  Minister of Defence, Muhammadu Ribadu insisted the lecture was subversive and “has certainly gone beyond reasonable limits and borders on treasonable action”.

    What followed was ‘Coker Commission of Inquiry’ described  by Awolowo as ‘cruel quasi-judicial machine, deliberately constructed by the powers-that-be for the oppression, persecution and total destruction of a political rival… its conclusions were  a parade of naked and unabashed injustice, inequity and inhumanity dispensed under the auspices of a tyrannical reign, a reign of terror, of arrest and search without warrant, of restriction and detentions of persons without any specified charge”. (Awolowo: Adventures in Power: The travails of democracy and the rule of law”. PP 296 -297)

    And the charge:  “Awolowo between 1960 and 1962, conspired to commit felony to wit; to levy war against our sovereign Lady, the Queen in order to intimidate or overawe the Governor General”. With seven out of the 53 prosecution witnesses’ testimony, Awolowo was found guilty and imprisoned for 10 years.

    Then darkness fell on the nation. His political foes confronted themselves over the outcome of disputed 1962/63 census headcounts and the rigged 1964 federal election. The ensuing constitutional crisis forced each group to seek the support of the military.

    The younger military officers, mostly of Igbo ethnic group who carried out the January 1966 military purge, killed all eight northern military offices and  assassinated  Prime Minister Balewa and Ahmadu Bello. No Igbo political leader or any of their over 30 military offices was killed. Ironsi, of Sierra Leonean father and Igbo mother who emerged as new Head of State was caged by Igbo politicians who misled him into promulgating Decree 34 of 1966 that turned Nigeria into a unitary state.

    Ahmadu Bello University students who saw this as a ploy  for a take-over of Nigeria by Igbo elite, already  controlling the military, bureaucracy, universities and other government parastatals, embarked on demonstration later hijacked by hoodlums who carried out mindless killings of innocent Igbo northern urban immigrants.

    The July 1966 vengeance or Araba coup led by Murtala Mohammed and Yakubu Danjuma led to the death of Ironsi and Adekunle Fajuyi , his host in Ibadan as well as many Igbo military officers. With Yoruba land which had less than 50 foot soldiers turning to theatre of war, Yoruba leaders called on Gowon for evacuation of non-Yoruba soldiers from the west, a demand Gowon obliged.

    Yoruba was however to be dragged to the war when Ojukwu, instead of defending his Biafra under siege from northern front, started bombing strategic locations in Lagos, followed by sacking of Benin where he planted an Igbo administrator before setting out for invasion of Lagos but was stopped in Ore.

    After the war, those who threw Nigeria into darkness from 1962 to 1970 regrouped to form a coalition of NPP/NPN in 1979, with Ojukwu the Biafra war hero returning from exile to join the coalition. In 1983, the coalition rigged the presidential election in what was described by Walter Ofonagoro as ‘‘landslide and sea-slide victories in opposition strongholds”. In 1999, they came under PDP umbrella and proclaimed Obasanjo, rejected by his Yoruba people where he lost in his polling booth, a messiah.  For 16 years, they ate with their 10 fingers.

     Indeed as against Obasanjo’s hypocritical cry of Igbo marginalisation,  Alabi Isama in his ‘Tragedy of Victory,’  insists the Igbo and the Hausa/Fulani jointly ruled Nigeria between 1959 and 2015 when the former  lost her ‘beautiful bride’ position to Yemi Osinbajo.

    Crafty Obasanjo only cares about Obasanjo. He probably knows his endorsement and appeal to ethnic and religion sentiments by Obi who jumped from APGA to PDP and from PDP to a faction of factionalised Labour Party may not be enough to secure him the presidency in 2023.  But Obasanjo, if only to remain relevant doesn’t appear to mind  goading uninformed youths towards embarking on our own equivalent of American January 6 storming of Congress by Trump election deniers or last Sunday storming of government building by pro-Bolsonaro protesting election results in Brazil.

  • 2022 ended with a whimper rather than with a bang

    2022 ended with a whimper rather than with a bang

    I don’t remember how the year 2022 began but I remember whatever the excitement attended it did not last long before Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia invaded Ukraine, a sovereign but weaker country on the spurious pretext that the country wanted to compromise Russia’s security by moving towards the European Union and NATO.

    Later on, he added that he does not only want to protect and defend the interests of Russians at home but also the interest of ethnic Russians abroad. This means, if necessary, invading neighbouring countries such as Moldova, Georgia and threatening the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. This had disastrous consequences on the whole world.

    The disruption in global trade caused inflation all over the world and food inflation particularly in the third world because of increase in the prices of grains, vegetable oils, hydrocarbons as well as cost of shipping and insurance. The upshot of all this is the added threat of global insecurity and the constant nuclear rabble rousing by President Putin and his aides. The war is still going on and no one can say yet how it will end. The world lived under the trepidation of a possible nuclear Armageddon till the end of December.

    December has come and gone but the month witnessed a harvest of deaths. On a personal level, I lost my brother-in-law, Tunde Adekoya who died in his flat in London. Tunde and I were friends before I ever met her sister, Biodun, who later became my wife. She passed on almost 20 years ago leaving an unbridgeable void in my life. Tunde’s death brought to me pains of the past. He was a great guy handsome like “abiku” as the Yoruba would say and he unfortunately put a lot of importance on his good looks. Beauty is ephemeral and no matter one’s beauty, age has a way of weathering it!

    I pray Tunde’s restless spirit will find eternal rest in the bosom of father Abraham.

    It was about the same time that Tunde died that I received the news of the death of Professor George Obiozor, a very dear friend. Obiozor and I have come a long way. We shared the same views about the need for our country to go back to true and fiscal federalism by a total restructuring of this benign country if it wants to survive. Gorge up till his last breath dismissed the thought that Nigerian unity was “non-negotiable “. I agreed with him and would go further that there is nothing sacrosanct about any human institution that cannot be tinkered with.  Neither the Nigerian constitution nor the Nigerian state itself is a papal bull endowed with any notion of infallibility. So we have to renegotiate this constitutional order or grundnorm  under which we live because we are all free and we would not allow any human contrivance to hold us in slavery.

    George Obiozor got his PhD in 1974 in the Ivy League University of Columbia in Political Science in New York. George was a student of power in the Nigerian sense. This was why right from Shehu Shagari’s regime through Babangida, Abacha, Jonathan and Obasanjo, he remained relevant crowning his political promenade with his election as president of Ohanaeze Ndigbo. Unfortunately he had not yet made his mark there before he was snatched by the cold hands of death. He served as Director General, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs. He at a time served with me as adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was also briefly adviser to military president, Ibrahim Babangida on international affairs. Under President Obasanjo he was ambassador to Israel and later to Washington, United States.

    George was gregarious man who was never shy to say anything as he saw it. He was also a demonstrable man who would even hug a military president in the public without a second thought about its appropriateness. George, to put it mildly, lacked the suavity of a typical diplomat and was not moved by any linguistic put on or affectation in his use of the English language which he wrote very beautifully. His political hero was Ozumba Mbadiwe, cabinet minister “extraordinary and plenipotentiary” under Shehu Shagari with whom George shared the bombast of English expressions.

    Most of us his friends will miss his candour and straight forwardness which is missing in political discourse in Nigeria. With George you at least know where he stands. He once told me that when political appointments are made in Nigeria, the first instinct he had was to find out whether there were Ibo names and how many and in what ministry or agency of government. If we are honest, don’t we all feel the same in these days of ethnic and religious chauvinism and irredentism?

    The last time I saw this remarkable man was at a lecture he invited me to give on “Nigerian nationalism “under the auspices of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo at the NIIA on November 21, 2022. I did not know that was going to be last of him I would see while alive. Rest in perfect peace, George and those of us sill on this side of the divide will never forget you in our struggle to build a just and equitable country.

    Some prominent global figures from the world of religion, journalism and sports passed on towards the end of the year. No one who had ever lived in the United States in the last 40 or so years would not remember the domineering figure of Barbara Walters, whose interviews on television lifted up or pushed down politicians in America. She blazed the trail for female journalists in the United States. Because of her gender, top politicians had to be polite to her and so she got away with asking difficult questions without batting an eyelid. She was courted as royalty by public figures who were afraid of being put on the spot by her penetrating questions to which most aspiring politicians were subjected to.  Barbara Walters, the inimitable and unforgettable Iron Lady of television journalism died at the ripe age of 93. Apart from Walter Cronkite, I do not know of any other television personality that can be compared with her; certainly not the uppity English man David Frost.

    Pope Benedict the XVI, the Pope Emeritus, the very first pope to retire and to live in a monastery in the Vatican died at the ripe age of 95. Pope Benedict was a conservative theologian who believed in the sacrosanct traditions of Roman Catholicism and tended to look at any deviation from it as heresy. The point of questioning the practice of celibacy was a no go area. He was not particularly excited about the unity of Christianity and he believed the doors of the one holy apostolic and Catholic Church was open to all believers. He was not an apostle of ecumenism. He had many enemies within and without the church and some of these dug out the fact that as a child he was drafted into the youth brigade of the NAZI party in his native Bavaria, Germany, an event which he apologised for and pleaded that he was as an innocent child. In his last testament, he begged whoever he may have wronged in life to forgive him and hoped that the Almighty God will accept him into His abode in heaven.

    Finally the last on my list of unforgettable people who passed on in 2022 is Edson Arantes do Nascimento known globally as PELE.  There is nowhere in the world where the name of Pele is not known. Indeed Pele brought glory and recognition to Brazil as no other person in the country’s history. Pele made football a global game because every person wanted to be like the man with those two wonderful feet and mental aptitude to score goals even from impossible angles. He helped his country to win the World Cup thrice and laid the foundation of the reputation of Brazil as a country with the best reputation in football. Politicians courted him and he was once appointed a minister so that politicians could bask in the glow of his glory.

    Unlike Muhammad Ali, one of the greatest athletes that ever lived, Pele did not wear the fact of his black race on his sleeves. He let his feet do the talking. He avoided the issue of race like a plague but his skill and ingenuity made white Brazilians a little bit more tolerant to their black citizens and gave the wrong impression that race was not an issue in Brazil as it is  in the United States and the Anglo Saxon world and the European and Asian world. He has been unfairly criticized for not being vocal and aggressive on the race issue but people have different approach to issues and Pele’s strategy remains his own unique way of dealing with an eternal issue. Pele would be remembered for his contribution to global peace through sports.

    During our civil war he came to Nigeria to show us how football is played and seriously hoped his coming would have facilitated the coming of peace. Of course peace came not because of Pele but the thought of it by this great man adds to his overall legacy of greatness and the place of sports in global peace and governance.

  • 2023: Time to decolonise the press, Nigeria (1)

    2023: Time to decolonise the press, Nigeria (1)

    If there is another storm that Nigeria should be worried about, it’s the conduct of buccaneer newsmen and women. The latter, comprising fortune-hunting men and women, soullessly maul journalism into an appendage of terrorism.

    There are too many clowns pretending to be leader writers, investigative journalists, and opinion moulders. In the end, their conduct manifests like a perversion of Keats’s doctrine of the heart as “the teat from which the mind or intelligence sucks its identity.”

    The media may be taken for Nigeria’s heart – Nigeria’s conscience to be precise. Yet several online and traditional media run the risk of functioning as tools of toxic imperialism for foreign press and so-called global superpowers. In several ways, the former (Nigerian press) validates the latter’s (foreign press, super powers) presumed hierarchic authority.

    A few news media endeavour to fulfill the role of the transient ethicist by paying lip service to journalistic objectivity and professionalism. But all they do is merely illustrate a pitiful embowered passivity.

    In a grisly mannerist metaphor, most journalists’ self-professed perspicacity protrudes from their frames like cruelly twisted lips – curled serpents, disconnected from their souls. The serpent lips are forever attacking society’s breasts with the presumed intent to nibble and feed. Nigeria is the doomed Cleopatra giving suck to their asps.

    Few Nigerians clearly understand the magnitude of doom imminent upon the country. The cult of ignorance persists, knifing through Nigeria right now, ripping all that should bind us apart – both in physical and cyberspace.

    This cult thrives on self-loathing, anti-intellectualism, and base sophistry – derogatorily dismissed as otellectualism in Yoruba parlance, to connote the presumed intellectual’s acquiescence to be corrupted by what the Yoruba term as ‘ote’ translatable as ‘perfidy’ or ‘treachery.’

    This strain of anti-intellectualism and self-loathing blows like a constant storm, rifling through our sociopolitical and cultural lives, nurtured by the false notion that freedom of speech means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’ or that ‘my malevolence is just as good as your benevolence.’

    The malady is broadcast and sustained by the traditional and online press, it manifests in physical and cyberspace in real time. In these public spaces, everybody becomes a wilding, trading bitter realism, infantile whim, and pseudo-idealism with awful relish.

    The guts and sinews of every stereotype and theme-park hatred are validated via mind-numbing sloganeering, toxic bigotries, sophistry, and outright lies.

    A casual visit to Facebook or Twitter manifests as a pilgrimage of sorts; the esplanades of public discourse unfurl to a sordid, cutout version of anarchic thinking, replete with ethnoreligious bigotries and the hassle of incomprehensible logic.

    Then, there are the strange movements and morbid ideologies – all fostered and marshaled from bizarre platforms. In this public wilderness, everybody takes sides, “investigative journalists” and “leader writers” inclusive. Everyone mutates from philosopher to savage pawn and vice versa; they all speak impressive and atrocious lingo. Call it our patois of rebuke and immoderate assemblies. Here you encounter Nigerians of vast mental stripes. 

    Once you get past the facade of slogans and artifice, it’s mostly the same defiant, virulent passion driving the mob. And it is all brokered from within and outside the country. More is the pity.

    Shady media offer their platforms for dark propaganda and disinformation. Where journalists are driven by supposedly noble intent, they are too blinded by personal bias, ignorance, devilry, and greed to submit their practice to the stirrings of professed noble intent.

    As Nigeria approaches the forthcoming elections and its promise of a new dispensation, journalists and the news media must unite to provide ethical and patriotic guidance. The overall intent must be to salvage Nigeria.

    It might seem a hard task amid dire predictions of doom propagated by foreign press and consulates, as often directed by their governments and security handlers, but the onus rests on the Nigerian press to decolonise local news and editorials of negative foreign influence.

    Much of Nigeria’s contemporary history is partly mythology, partly a product of selective recall, and partly interpretation of what transpired. What is recorded, however, is seldom that which actually took place – as exemplified by the doctored reports of the #EndSARS 2020 conflict, for instance. No thanks to media bias and the devilry of several other agents of destruction.

    The conflict, like most disturbances of its nature, underwent different recall, interpretation, and retelling by the major actors and spectators – people who experienced it and people who heard about what had transpired.

    The narratives of participants in the crisis, like those of most other participants of previous historical events, differ in the rendition of what actually took place.

    History is in the telling. Thus each generation modifies actuality into written history according to its needs and interpretation, building on selective recall and distortion.

    Having dodged the bloody missiles of the #EndSARS protest, the enemies of Nigeria moved to quash the dreams of nationhood and survival by fanning the embers of several other crises.

    The nature of disinformation and outright lies fabricated about the goings-on in northeast Nigeria by certain international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) in connivance with foreign press further affirms their destructive intent in the country.

    A spurious report on alleged forced abortions and killings of children of Boko Haram insurgents after they were reportedly grabbed from their mothers by the Nigerian army, resonates with unpardonable craftiness and intent to destabilise the region and Nigeria, in the long run.

    It is to the country’s credit, however, that the local press has approached the poisonous and serialised narratives with caution.

    Against the backdrop of the incident, INGOs in the country are working dark elements within certain foreign consulates in Lagos and Abuja and their home countries (whose agenda they are implementing) to report the Nigerian government and military service chiefs as war criminals to an international court. The intent is to blacklist Nigeria and further truncate the country’s war against terrorism.

    Another curious angle to the plot against Nigeria manifested in the cheeky account of a so-called “humanitarian” agent and friend when she told me recently in Maiduguri that her country, a purported “superpower,” would influence the removal of the blockade preventing Nigeria from purchasing the weaponry needed to crush terrorism if the country repeals its law criminalising same-sex marriage.

    To them, human lives are worthless compared to a minority’s sexual inclinations. They do not consider it sheer wickedness to deny Nigeria access to weapons needed to fight terrorism simply because it asserts its inviolable right to ban same-sex marriage.

    More reason for Nigeria to re-examine its engagement with certain “superpowers” and their “humanitarian” agents vis-a-vis its distaste for such an agenda. Instances like this, among others, require local journalists and the Nigerian press in general, to be more critical of Nigeria’s engagement with foreign interests, and the quality, and nature of the latter’s interventions in the country.

    Vast segments of Nigeria’s press personify Hersh’s political hobbyist stereotype. They are disproportionately educated and may flaunt several merit awards, titles, and postgraduate degrees.

    They espouse professionalism of the soapbox; a wanton game in which they debate Nigeria’s big issues on abstract merits – often mouthing off their “superior” logic or sounding off for clout in social space or on foreign-sponsored think tanks and ‘Twitter spaces.’

    Their assemblage thrives on pseudo-realism; their ability to doctor, propound, and market spurious experiences as predetermined by foreign governments and INGO sponsors. In reality, they are toxic to politics and harmful to the country.

  • 2023 OBJ and the challenge before our youths

    2023 OBJ and the challenge before our youths

    Precisely because history is not taught in our schools, our youths who hardly read but spend most of their time on social media have become targets of heretical doctrine by leaders like ex-president, Olusegun Obasanjo, driven in the main by his “fake nationalism,  precarious patriotism and his vaunting ambition to be the centre of our universe”(Akande).  

    Last Sunday, about eight years after publicly declaring himself a statesman, he threw himself once again into the murky waters of partisan politics by publicly endorsing Peter Obi for the 2023 presidential race. Although he says none of the leading contestants is a saint, he however says “in terms of ability and performance, vision and character, Obi is the only one to take Nigeria back to where it was at the height of my Presidency and immediately after”.

    First, Obasanjo’s choice of Obi should not surprise anyone. For Obasanjo, nationalism is not driven by altruism. He just wants to remain the only star in the firmament.  He cannot support Tinubu for the same reason he did not support Awolowo in 1979. It is obvious that a leader whose protégés include Ayo Fayose and Gbenga Daniel wants to remain the only Yoruba star.

    Obasanjo also always reap where he had sowed very little. He wrote My Command without acknowledging sacrifices made by 3rd Marine Commando commanders before he came to claim victory.  He wrote Not My Will to disparage Obafemi Awolowo who he said could not achieve what he, Obasanjo, got on a platter of gold without admitting he was a beneficiary of the goodwill Nigerian reserved for slain Murtala Muhammed. MKO Abiola paid the supreme sacrifice for democracy and for eight years he did not acknowledge Abiola heroic sacrifice. Femi Falana, Tunde Bakare  and some Yoruba waged war against pro-Yar’ Adua group led by James Ibori  that attempted to deny Vice President  Jonathan his constitutional rights, but Obasanjo took all the credit as president’s godfather.  Obi’s victory or loss will not diminish Obasanjo’s status as a nationalist. 

    Now let us interrogate Obasanjo’s era he wants Obi to return Nigeria to.

     Between 1999 and 2003, Obasanjo tried to turn Nigeria into a one-party unitary state, rigged four governors of southwest states out of office and deployed military tactics to destroy AD and ANPP opposition parties. During the 2007 elections, the level of rigging was so scandalous that the main beneficiary, President Umaru Yar’Adua, according to Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, had to inaugurate the Uwais Committee to review Nigeria’s electoral system. Obasanjo waged endless wars against his hand-picked presidents – Yar’Adua and Jonathan – who he traded for Buhari and his APC in 2015. Their sins: trying to ensure the buck stops at their table.

    Obasanjo’s government institutionalised corruption.  First, Nigerian got no relief from contracts worth billions of naira awarded to PDP stalwarts for the refurbishment of our refineries. Then lawmakers who claimed they were anxious to recoup funds they expended on election through sales of their properties created artificial fuel scarcity to railroad Obasanjo into signing into a controversial law which increased the number of fuel importers from about four to over a hundred. And this became an instrument through which children  of PDP chieftains defrauded  the federal government to the tune of about N1.7 trillion in the name of fuel subsidy ‘without importing a pint of fuel” in the words of Audu Ogbe, PDP’s onetime chairman.

    National Assembly probe confirmed that between $8b and $16b was expended in the energy sector under Obasanjo before it was unbundled and all generation and 10 distribution companies sold to known leading PDP stalwarts in 2013.  Nigeria’s total investments of about $100b between 1960 and 1999 were also sold in the name of privatization to PDP stalwarts under Obasanjo for a paltry $1.5b according to a National Assembly probe report. And when there was little left to sell during Goodluck Jonathan years, federal landed properties dating back to the colonial period across Nigeria were sold at give-away prices to PDP stalwarts in the name of dubious monetization policy.

    Finally, following the monumental stealing that took place during Jonathan administration, both Chukwuma Soludo, Obasanjo’s CBN governor and Ngozi Okojo-Iweala, Minister of Finance predicted a recession and hard times for whoever took over from Jonathan in 2015.

    One is not sure whether with the above baleful legacies, Peter Obi actually agreed with Obasanjo that the way forward is a return to Obasanjo years of the locust. It is perhaps on account of this fear as well as efforts to protect our youths from Obasanjo’s false narrative that two critical Nigerian otherwise conservative voices have reacted to Obasanjo’s assault on our sensibilities.

    First was Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, a former Nigerian External Affairs Minister who said he finds the idea of someone “who created problems for us and then come back and present (himself) as a problem solver” difficult to swallow”. There was also a former member of the House of Representative, Usman Bagaje who admonishes the youths to first “examine the record of anyone making recommendation”, adding “I can’t find his endorsement trustworthy because I was  at the National Assembly when he attempted to extend his tenure by changing the constitution”.

    Still playing the ostrich Obasanjo has also identified those he claims “are preaching division, segregation, separation, and want to use diversity for their own self and selfish interest as enemies of the nation”. He also  “wants the youths to forget our different wrongs or mistakes of the past: treasonable felony, Tiv riot and its handling, first military coup and its aftermath, second military coup, araba, pogrom and the civil war, all in the 1960s”.

    Unfortunately Obasanjo and his military adventurers have continued to live in denial instead of confronting the truth.

    Our nation has since 1966 been haunted by the derailment of the federal arrangement which our founding fathers believed was best for us as a multicultural and multi-ethnic country.  Sadly, Obasanjo was part of Gowon’s regime that first “created 12 states without a rhyme”. He and Murtala Muhammed then went on to calibrate the nation into 19 states without objective criteria.  He had influence on Babangida regime that increased the number to 30 unviable states to please cronies.  It was Obasanjo military regime of 1976-1979 that amended Decree 13 of 1970 and Decree 9 of 1971, which took away states residual functions to the centre, and became the foundation for Decree 21 of 1978 which increased the exclusive list from 45 in the 1960 constitution to 68 in the 1999 constitution.

    Obasanjo’s LGA as third tier of government was not informed by a desire to develop the local areas but aimed at central control. This perhaps explains Chukwuma Soludo’s observation that “Nigeria is the only federal system in the world where the centre funds LGAs that do not report to it”.

     Multiplication of government departments and bureaus ‘merely to find jobs for the boys’ according to Obafemi Awolowo, has made “the work of government to “become unduly complex, inextricably tangled, extremely unwieldy and wasteful and productive of disharmony and discontent among the people”

    To end our nightmare, we cannot escape restructuring our country into a viable federal arrangement, an enterprise that requires an elite consensus.  The challenge before our youths beyond Obasanjo’s hypocrisy, ethnic and religious sentiments, therefore is to see who among the contestants fills the bill. 

     Democracy and the federal arrangement are like Siamese twins. One cannot function without the other.

  • Two for 1 kobo

    Two for 1 kobo

    WHEN last did anyone see the kobo? It has been long, right! The kobo was not phased out. It was not withdrawn from circulation by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). It eased itself out of the system when it became a rejected legal tender.

    Under the law, the kobo remains a legal tender, but hardly can it be found in circulation because it has lost its store of value, as economists would say. It has become archival material; a museuem piece to be put on display. Once a legal tender loses value, it becomes worthless. It is not worth the paper it is printed or the coin it is minted. This is sadly the fate of the kobo, which many of us cherished as kids.

    We could buy sweets and biscuits with it; as well as guguru and epa (popcorn and groundnut) as the coins, if we had two or more, jingled in our pockets on our way back from school or to the playground. It was also fun betting with the kobo. All these are now in the past. The kobo is now dead as dodo. If anyone holds the kobo today, they won’t get it to spend.

    Before it is even out of your pocket, you would be bombarded with questions, such as, where did you get it? Is it still in circulation? In a jiffy, some of those around will collect it from you, look at it with nostalgia and tell the younger ones about the legend of the kobo and its enormous value in its heyday. The kobo became extinct when the public all of a sudden stopped accepting it. It began with traders, who felt that the money had lost its value as there was nothing that they could sell for one kobo.

    The rejection spread so fast that even the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company, NSPMC, (is it still functioning?) was forced to stop minting the kobo. The kobo attained its legend when secondhand cloth dealers around major bus stops in Lagos started using it as a sales gimmick. “Bend down and pick your own”, they bellowed at the roadside, “two for one kobo”. I recall the fate of the kobo as I mused over the endorsement of the presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

    If people had followed Obasanjo’s body language since virtually all the candidates turned his Abeokuta, Ogun State home to a Mecca of sorts to seek his blessings they would have known where he was going. Obasanjo, like another former leader, likes to play god over the affairs of the nation. They want to be consulted before contestants throw their hats in the ring and where this is not done, they feel slighted. On this score alone, they are ready to work against such a contestant.

    So, it is in the enlightened self interest of a contestant to go to Abeokuta or the Minna Hilltop residence of former self-styled military president Gen Ibrahim Babaginda in Niger State for blessings to show the world that they have the backing of these ‘kingmakers’. Politicians are suffering for what they created with their own hands. What are the political antecedents of Obasanjo and Babaginda that they must be consulted by presidential candidates who wish to win the election ?

    Neither Obasanjo nor Babaginda is a politician in the mould of former Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, the late Maj. Gen. Shehu Yar’Adua, who, with the help of others built the political machine known as Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) some years after retiring from the army in 1979. Yar’Adua worked with highly experienced politicians to become a political colossus in his lifetime. He built political bridges across the country as he nursed the ambition of becoming president.

    He was done in by the maradonic Babaginda who banned him and other politicians from the contest then. At best, Obasanjo and Babaginda are military politicians, that is politicians in uniform, not grounded in the politics of the real world.

    Obasanjo was like a lost needle when he came out of prison in 1998 and was offered the Presidency on a platter. He was running from one politician to the other across the country begging for endorsement after weaning himself of the statement: “how many presidents do you want to make of me in my lifetime”?

    Some eight or nine years later, that same Obasanjo had become so used to being president that he did not want to leave again. It is the same Obasanjo that endorsed Obi on January 1 in his letter to ‘’young Nigerians’’. Who else, but those who do not really know him? When endorsements, as we see them now, become two for one kobo, they lose their worth. Look at those endorsing Obi. Pa Ayo Adebanjo, Obasanjo and Niger Delta chieftain Chief Edwin Clark.

    Who are they politically? How many votes can they give Obi in their respective regions? Can their endorsements translate to votes for their preferred candidate? The answer is capital NO. They have exercised their rights to back the candidate of their choice. That is where the matter ends.

    It is now left for the electorate to exercise their rights to vote for the president they want on February 25 and this Obasanjo, Clark and Adebanjo have no control over. I have nothing against the trio, I only blame candidates who run to them to be anointed despite knowing full well that they have no electoral value whatsoever.

    Their endorsements will have no effect on the poll. Mark my words.

  • 2022: Charting a moral recourse

    2022: Charting a moral recourse

    As the year winds to a close, chaos maintains a pervasive influence in Nigerian life and across the world. Amid the uncertainty triggered by persistent insecurity and the global coronavirus pandemic, more and more, we realise how deeply intertwined humanity is with the whole of the created world – humans, plants, and animals inclusive. And how deeply our survival is dependent on good governance, social and health security, and the resiliency of humankind.

    Notwithstanding, a surfeit of incidents imbued the year with unavoidable grayness and colour.  The impact on Nigeria’s minors and youth population, in particular, is worth urgent attention.

    There can be no doubt that persistent insecurity and misgovernance triggered throughout the year, an apocalyptic drift of minors – mainly boys –  to Nigeria’s suburbs and metropolitan areas. They were not only looking to make a quick buck, many of them were seeking to become filthy rich, in the blink of an eye.

    The viral video, in January, of three teenagers looking to learn internet fraud aka ‘Yahoo Yahoo’ in Edo State, accentuated the slew of horrors that haunted the Nigerian landscape in 2022.

    In the two-minute video, the boys, between ages 14 and 15, appeared stranded as they told an interrogator in pidgin: “We wan come hustle.” Their preferred hustle, they revealed, is the “Yahoo hustle.” At further probe, they reaffirmed their initial claim, stressing, “…but not Yahoo plus.”

    Earlier in January, Police Superintendent, Asinim Butswat, spokesperson of the Bayelsa State Command confirmed the arrest of three teenagers for attempted ritual killing. Butswat identified the suspects (surnames withheld) as Emomotimi,15 years, Perebi, 15 years, and Eke, 15 years. They were all boys and natives of Sagbama in Bayelsa.

    The trio allegedly accosted one Comfort, 13, “hypnotized” her, and afterward led her to Emomotimi’s apartment. There, they reportedly cut her finger and sprinkled her blood on a mirror for ritual purposes. The ritual was supposed to make them rich. But for vigilant village youths, Comfort would have been history, perhaps.

    A more jarring note knelled on January 29, in the exploit of the quartet: Wariz Oladehinde, 17,  Majekodunmi Soliu, 18, Abdul Gafar Lukman 19, and Mustakeem Balogun 20, who were arrested in the early hours of Saturday by men of Ogun State Police Command for allegedly killing a girlfriend of their friend for money-making ritual.  The boys were arrested following a report at the Adatan divisional headquarters by a security guard, that the suspects were seen burning something suspected to be a human head in a clay pot.

    On interrogation, the arrested suspects confessed that what they were burning in the clay pot was the severed head of the girlfriend of their accomplice.

    In May, social media was agog with videos of Nigerian girls having sexual intercourse with dogs. Amid public criticism, another video of a girl having sex with a dog emerged. The new footage materialised amid the trend of ladies sleeping with animals for N1.5m in the Lekki area of Lagos. Previously, a teenager cum self-confessed bestiality enthusiast, Veegoddess, had come out to defend her action, insisting that she only slept with a dog and didn’t kill anybody.

    The teenage TikTok user in Lagos went viral after claiming she slept with a dog for N1.7 million, stressing that she did not think it was a big deal to have sexual relations with a dog.

    “What is the big deal there? I only slept with a dog, I didn’t kill somebody. You, in your life, have done worse, and besides, have you seen N1.7 million before? As if it’s a big deal. And mind you I’m not infected or anything. Stop dying on the matter, I’m enjoying the money,” she said.

    Read Also: Movie makers tasked to promote morality, indigenous culture

    The video post incited harsh criticism from the public, she recanted in another video stressing that she was “just catching a cruise.” 

    On Thursday, September 15, John Eka Ewa aka John Lyon, a so-called Abuja big boy, was arrested by the police for allegedly belonging to a kidnap syndicate responsible for several high-profile abductions in Bayelsa and other parts of the Niger Delta.

    Until his arrest, Lyon, 36, channeled renown by flaunting wads of cash on social media and motivating his followers to “hustle” and work hard. He posted pictures of himself with police orderlies at a political function and a church programme, where he is seen singing intensely and praising God.

    He equally brandished an interior design business in Abuja as his source of wealth. Then his cover got blown as a N70 million ransom was allegedly traced to his bank account.

    In a viral video after his arrest, Lyon, handcuffed and only in boxers, is seen kneeling on the floor and weeping profusely. He confessed to being a kidnapper claiming that he had only kidnapped two victims. But a man in the video who claimed to be one of his victims insisted that Lyon had kidnapped more than two people.

    Ewa’s tears offered a simple yet poignant proof of the powerful bond between crime and retribution, cause and effect. The viral video of the suspected kidnapper kneeling and pleading for mercy, in abject tears, boomed as a jarring reproof of the masculinity and celebrity culture that fostered him.

    The situation requires more drastic action than threats of punitive measures from policymakers and law enforcers. In Ewa, the teen ritualists, and the girls who slept with dogs for money, we saw  manifestations of our dysfunctional families.

    Dysfunctional families result from a lack of morals, an accentuation of poverty, and gender wars to mention a few. Call it a manifestation of flawed choice, an ultimate human dilemma, precipitated by survival instinct in a blemished system. The gravest challenge to our hopes and dreams as a nation, beyond the messy political transactions prevalent at the grassroots and party arena, every minute and hour of every day, are the scandalous, toxic dramas rocking the boats of Nigerian families and ravenous relationships.

    The Nigerian youth’s enthrallment with easy riches is a consequence of the get-rich-quick syndrome pervasive in their roots and immediate society. The malady perpetuates a fable, not of hope, but disintegration. It resonates in wildly covetous youths’ frenetic cry: “Mad o!” in admiration of pestilent quests and attainments by fellow youths – their celebrity heroes and Yahoo Boys (internet scammers) inclusive.

    The situation is aggravated by the frantic fostering and cues from mainstream and new media. Popular culture’s celebration of grotesque and increasingly infantilised versions of masculinity aggravates the malady – from Nollywood’s neurotic man-boys to the bestial and slacker dudes of feminist-misandrist literature.

    Partnership and parenthood, responsibility, and security are projected as stultifying rather than instrumental to adult blooming. The gender wars aggravate this trend, thriving on the insecurities that drive the sexes apart.

    The stakes are too high to ignore. If we care about our society, we must begin to pay as much attention to boys as we pay to our girls. The ruckus of degenerate manhood, misandry, and toxic feminism, however, furnish a popular culture that offers youngsters dumbed-down versions of gender and rhetoric around parenthood largely predicated on the father’s dispensability and his absence.

    Parenthood, fatherhood, in particular, must be redefined as an experience of success rather than failure; involvement rather than absence. Masculinity must be redefined beyond the embarrassingly brutish, effeminate, homosexual, brash, criminal, and incurably dumb.

    At his arrest, Lyon cried, “Forgive me, make una forgive me, my wife just born sef, a boy.” And that is in a sense, some new tragedy.

  • Not the best times for the world

    Not the best times for the world

    Globally these are perilous times. There is no major country in the world that is not facing challenges in some cases existential challenges for that matter. Nigeria indeed faces existential challenges and whoever dismisses this is not being honest with the people or he or she is not putting on his or her thinking cap.

    Is it America the most powerful country in the world that is not faced with possibility of internal collapse under the yoke of fascism from the right and resistance from the left and conflict including nuclear conflict with Russia, China or North Korea? Britain is hobbled down by internal political divide and economic decline following Brexit. The continent of Europe is facing existential challenge following the war of Russia on Ukraine. The economic consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine on the whole of Europe and the rest of the world have been very devastating.

    Inflation has surged all over the world from the OECD economies to us in the developing and underdeveloped world. The cost of energy in Britain and Europe has doubled leading to complaints by people against their governments. In Britain, almost all industrial unions including doctors and nurses are on strike. The same phenomenon is leading to depression in France and political negativity in Germany. Since the end of the Second World War, Germany is facing challenge of internal subversion by fascist forces who want to expel those who are not Germans by blood and also are determined to restore some kind of a Kaiser (emperor) to bring back the glory of Germany. Russia is under an armed-fisted nationalist dictator in the person of Vladimir Putin who wants to restore the Romanov Empire bringing all Russians at home and abroad under one armed country.  If allowed, this will change the political map of Europe and possibly Eurasia with possible conflict with the forces of NATO and resurgent nationalism in Germany with its own determination to become a great power again with the possibility of a nuclear armed fist. China also wants a unification of all Chinese including those in Taiwan under the communist dictatorship in Beijing.

    America has publicly said it would defend Taiwan in the case of China’s invasion of the island. If this were to happen it will have serious reverberation all over the world. There are Chinese people all around Southeast Asia. Will the new Chinese nationalism extend to Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Outer Mongolia?

    China has once fought Russia along the Usuri River Valley just as it was involved in military skirmishes on the Indian/Chinese border. With its increasing economic power, will India remain restrained in its perpetual conflict with Pakistan over divided Kashmir? India and Pakistan despite the poverty of millions of their people are two nuclear weapons states that are more likely to fight a nuclear war because the problem between them is not just territorial but religious. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world, second to that of Indonesia but the Indian Muslims are overwhelmingly dominated by their Hindu overlords. The rising Hindu irredentism may sooner or later collide with Muslim fanaticism in India and neighbouring Pakistan with disastrous consequences for the whole world. One hopes however that with rising prosperity in India will come voices of restraint not presently found in the Narendra Modi’s Bhratiya Janata Party of the Hindu faith.

    The reckless nuclear ambitions of North Korea and its constantly sending missiles across the Sea of Japan may lead to call for rearmament in Japan. In fact this call is already getting vociferous. The former American president, Donald J. Trump indeed suggested that he would welcome Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear deterrence instead of hiding under American nuclear umbrella. This is yet to be the dominant American policy but if Trump or Ron Desantis, the Republican governor of Florida were to become the victor in the 2024 American presidential election, anything will be possible. In the tinder box of the Middle East, Iran wants to match Israeli nuclear power by developing its own. If this Pandora box is open, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and resurgent Iraq may feel compelled to develop their nuclear capability in a situation reminiscent of the Persian/Arab control of the Middle East and North Africa in medieval times.

    The only apparent oasis of peace in the world is Australasia but racism in Australia has marred development there despite the country’s abandonment of its white Australia policy on immigration. The native aborigines are treated almost as sub humans while new immigrants of colour experience what a critic calls rancorous racism. New Zealand despite the 19th century treaty of Waitangi which accorded equal rights to the native Mâoris has problems of unfair treatment of its native population. The islands’ neighbouring  Australasia  in Oceania are threatened by sea rise as a result of global warming and are facing serious problem of the possibility of being overrun by sea water.

    Events in Africa and South America would pose no serious problem in the life of the world except perhaps prevent traditional flow of raw materials to the developed world and also disrupt normal flow of trade from the North to the South. But even there, it is not a case of perpetual peace. The cartographic map of Africa may change because most of the countries there are the imaginations of European cartographers who drew up the map of partitioned Africa without looking at the ethnic realities of the continent. This is why every election in Africa faces the challenge of tribal and ethnic jingoism and irredentism.

    Nearer home in Nigeria, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, fissiparous tendencies of secession always rear their ugly heads after usually inconclusive elections with rampant rigging dominating the polls. The radio and internet waves in Nigeria on the cusp of the 2023 elections are dominated by ethnic abuse and threats of violence if one particular party or the other wins the election. The result is fear of the unknown and the rich are already planning to exit the country on the eve of the election. Even before the election, security has become a rare commodity in the country. The poor seems to be in armed uprising in the country particularly in the North and the East with the northern revolt masquerading as a jihad while the one in the East is affirming the right of self-determination which the government felt it had dealt a death blow in the federal triumph over secessionist Biafra.

    The future is pregnant no one knows what it would bear. What is true of Nigeria is true of Ethiopia or any of the large African countries of various ethnic groups cobbled together by European imperialism. The problems of Africa are compounded by poverty and underdevelopment. The situation in Latin America is not as bad as in Africa. There are 52 countries in Africa whereas there are just 12 in South America. However the world is going to be confronted by massive migration from both continents because of their poverty arising from unfair trade and massive exploitation of their resources by unfeeling forces of capitalism headquartered in the North and unplanned population growth.

    The picture of the world that I have painted is a bad one but it can be changed if there is global effort to live in peace and to divert the trillions of dollars spent on armaments to global development and abatement measures on global warming in a win-win strategy. It is not going to be easy but it is doable particularly when everyone realises the futility of global nuclear conflict. If the disarmament movement of the post Second World War period can be renewed and reinvigorated and the basic idea of a borderless world shorn of ideology can be a global credo, then there is hope.  If there is belief in universal humanity and as the Germans would say “allies ist moglisch” that is to say all things are possible! 

    Mankind can still survive what appears an oncoming Armageddon.

  • Police: Friend or fiend?

    Police: Friend or fiend?

    Arbitarily demeaning and killing Nigerians is deeply woven into the very fabric of policing in Nigeria. It’s a long shot to wonder if that would change anytime soon, but the first step is not just realising that the Nigerian Police is NOT your friend, it’s realising the institutional, contextual and historical reasons why…

    -thenativemag.com

    PEOPLE from all walks of life are outraged over the killing of an expectant mother, Mrs Omobolanle Raheem, on Christmas Day in Lagos by a police officer. Their rage is justified. The cold-blooded murder should not have happened at all. It happened because the police have not learnt any lessons from such occurrences in the past. Police killings of citizens are not new. They have become part of us.

    But, this is wrong. The people should not live with something that is bad and sinister. Mrs Raheem was with her family when she was shot in cold blood by Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Dambri Vandi. This was not just a senior officer, but one that had gone through the mill having put in 33 years of service. If after 33 years, an officer does not know how to handle his weapon in public, what does that say of him? How will he guide those under him?

    A recruit or constable is not expected to be that careless with the handling of his weapon. Unfortunately, many policemen wield their guns carelessly. They carry it with the intention to kill. It is as if they are going hunting, with the hapless citizens as game. What then do we expect when the police treat those they are expected to protect as game?

    They huddle at road intersections, doing nothing. They pretend to be busy when in fact, all they are doing is extorting money from motorists. I am pretty sure that the ASP, who shot Raheem dead, was on such a mission that fateful day! What were he and his men from the notorious Ajiwe Police Division whose personnel also killed one Gafaru Buraimoh 18 days earlier, doing that early morning under the Ajah bridge? Were they after hoodlums or just maintaining their presence there to prevent crime?

    In any sane society, having the police on the road should put the minds of law-abiding citizens at rest. Their presence is enough to assure passers-by that they are secure and safe to go about their businesses. The reverse is, however, the case here. When people see police on the road, their hearts beat faster than normal, with some developing hypertension in the process. Motorists, whether their vehicle papers are intact or not, feel uncomfortable at the sight of the police. It should not be so.

    This has become the norm because of the reputation of the police. In eight out of 10 cases, they are on the road not to ensure that vehicle particulars are correct, but for what they can obtain from motorists. As soon as they see a motorist coming, they cock their guns, and at the same time wave the vehicle to stop. What a dangerous way of stopping a motorist. How can you be cocking your gun with one hand and at the same time, be stopping an oncoming vehicle with the other?

    It is out of the mercy of God that our roads are not littered with bodies daily as a result of our policemen’s nonchalance. To them, their weapons have become a licence to kill. Those who survive their brutality are maimed for life. As the nativemag.com noted in an article in October 2021, to mark the first anniversary of the #EndSARS protests, the police atrocities have continued despite that earthshaking demonstration.

    Ironically, the protest ended in brutality too! What was supposed to draw attention to police brutality became atrocious at the end of the day, with the police and troops chasing protesters all over the place across towns and cities. The protests were specifically against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), which had become notorious for stopping people, especially backpack-bearing youngsters on the road, claiming that they are Yahoo boys, and extorting heavy sums of money from them.

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    Two years after #EndSARS protests, nothing has really changed. SARS may have been scrapped, but police brutality has not stopped. The police still kill people arbitrarily and get away with the dastardly act. Will Raheem’s death change anything? Will her distraught mother’s cry pierce our hearts? Will her consolation only be in leaving everything to God as she was urged by Lagos State Police Commissioner Abiodun Alabi?

    God will do His own bit for sure, but will government ensure that justice is done so that the poor woman does not lose her only child in vain? Beyond the usual noises of condemnations and commiserations with the bereaved family, what are the assurances that this will be the last of such killings?

    President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned it and called  for the strongest punishment for the culprit(s).  The leading presidential candidates have also expressed similar sentiments. Inspector-General of Police (IG) Usman Baba and the Police Service Commission (PSC)  sang the same song.

    “The cop who fired the fatal shot will not go unpunished. The police will be reformed to ensure that this kind of killing does not happen again”. These are familiar refrains which the people have heard before. Their ears tingle from this singsong. All they want is an end to police brutality and the way the government does that is its business.

    The citizens are tired of being killed by fiends who claim to be their friends, as boldly displayed at complaints’ counters across the country in many stations: “Police is your friend”. How can your friend be your killer? It is absurd. My heart goes out to the bereaved family. May Raheem and her unborn twins find rest in the Lord’s bosom. May such killings not rear their heads in 2023. Happy New Year in advance.