The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • President Buhari at 80

    President Buhari at 80

    Nigeria’s military politicians whether in military camouflage (khaki) or ‘babanriga’ who have jointly controlled political power in Nigeria for more than half of the nation’s 62 years of political independence during which they changed the course of our history, remain the scourge of the nation. Turning 80 last week, Buhari joined his fellow octogenarian military adventurers including Yakubu Gowon, Ibrahim Babangida and Olusegun Obasanjo that have since 1966 laid a siege on Nigeria.

    In a documentary tagged “Celebrating A Patriot, Leader, an Elder Statesman” to mark his 80th birthday anniversary last Friday, his family, friends and party associates poured encomiums on him. For Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Buhari is “a forthright and an exemplary leader”. To Ibikunle Amosun : “he is a nationalist and a man with a good heart”  while to Ebonyi’s governor David Umahi,  “Buhari is a detribalized person that means well for Nigeria”. Bola Tinubu praised him for his “life of commitment, dedication, patriotism, and honesty” while the Oba of Benin, Ewuare celebrates “a man of integrity and transparency who has done a lot for this country, for the youth, and for the traditional institution”. And finally his eldest daughter, Fatima Buhari praised him for his humility, loyalty, integrity and honesty” virtues she said they have also inherited from their father.

    While all the above opinion leaders cannot all be wrong, we cannot also fault Bishop Mathew Kukah’s claim that “we bear scars, and deep sorrow, for our children and loved ones still held in the forest by bandits, that our nation is today more vulnerable, that corruption has become a Leviathan, and that our nation has been adjudged as the poverty capital of the world”. And since the buck stops at the president’s table, he also takes responsibility for our “failure to qualify for the World Cup, our Falcons’ loss of their title, and the loss of titles by our seemingly invincible champions, Anthony Joshua, Kamaru Usman and Israel.”

    But since a part cannot be holier than the whole, we need to first locate the source of our nation’s tragedy. The military from onset was doomed to fail. As custodian of the nation’s constitution, it suffers from a messianic complex because they believe it is their historic duty to sanitise society when politicians lose people’s trust.  This was why they became easy victims of manipulation and lured into politics, by Igbo political elite and their Hausa Fulani rival, engaged in a zero-sum struggle to control Nigeria. Finding themselves in an uncharted terrain, an ill-trained military embarked on a search for a new vision of society. The closer they moved, the more blurred the vision became. Being ill- equipped to manage forces of social dislocations in a multi ethnic and multicultural society, they moved from disaster to tragedy.

    Like those the gods want to destroy, instead of returning to the source of the nation’s nightmare which was the impulsive trading off of our federal constitution for a unitary constitution, they started to address the symptoms of our crisis of nation building. Instead of seeking elite consensus, they resorted to coercion.  Gowon and Obasanjo declared war on universities and the bureaucracy, the two institutions without which society decays. Under Babangida , journalists disappeared in broad daylight on the street of Lagos while Dele Giwa was killed by parcel bomb in his study. Under Abacha, NADECO opposition members who called for a return to the ‘Path to Freedom” were either killed on the street of Lagos or chased out of the country. Buhari jailed journalists for reporting the truth.

    And removing Buhari from office, Babangida had said “Buhari was too rigid and uncompromising in his attitudes to issues of national significance, efforts to make him understand that a diverse society like Nigeria required recognition and appreciation of differences in both cultural and individual perception only served aggravate those attitudes”.

    Unfortunately, 30 years after he was deposed and after three failed attempts at presidency before clinching power in 2015, little has changed.  Rejecting popular public opinion and that of the party on whose back he rode to power, Buhari behaves like a feudal lord. He was to become a slave to his own sense of self-righteousness as bandits and foreign herdsmen make the country ungovernable while our educated youths fled the country in droves.

    But Buhari continues to play the victim. Last week, complaining about lack of appreciation of his efforts he had said: “Our main issue is to do the infrastructure, make people aware that they need to work hard to live well. They just want to enjoy life without earning the respect of their community and so on.”  Buhari shares the same affliction with his other military adventurers who thought by fighting a civil war they foisted on the country, they can decree unity.

    I sympathise with President Buhari who is a product of the nation’s faulty political leadership recruitment process.  Like Gowon, Babangida and Obasanjo, he is not trained to manage society  and that perhaps explains why as military head of state or elected president, none of them understands that no class or an elite group can control the behaviours of people in a nation with divergent interests where some want lawlessness where their own freedom inhibit those of others.  The immediate instinct of a soldier used to giving orders, to circumstances that require elite consensus is coercion and not debate, bargaining competition or institutionalized fighting.

    The war declared against Nigeria by our military adventurers since 1966 goes on. Leading the recent crusade is Obasanjo who spent between $8b and $16b on the power sector without result; and who in the name of privatization, presided over the sale of Nigerian total investments of over $100b for $1.5b to PDP cronies; shared properties kept in their care for future generation in the name of dubious ‘monetisation policy,   rigged the 2007 election to impose an ailing Umaru Yar’Adua, his friend’s younger brother as president and finally, arm-twisted serving PDP governors and government contractors to donate  N7b towards building of Obasanjo Presidential Library while the National Library in Abuja remained an abandoned project.

    And for looking the other way while those serving other tendencies in his government  encouraged immigrant herdsmen and bandits to unleash terror in  Benue, Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Niger and other parts of Nigeria, President Buhari also carries his own historical burden. He also kept his peace while his ‘loyal gate keepers’ openly encouraged infiltration of reserved forests in the south by killer immigrant herdsmen.

    But history will also remember Buhari for the construction of the Second Niger Bridge, the reconstruction of Lagos–Ibadan expressway and the completion of Lagos –  Ibadan rail line which for 15 years remained PDP campaign promise.  He will also be remembered for signing into law the Electoral Reform and the petroleum industry bills first initiated some 20 years ago.

    But I think in spite of Buhari’s personal and leadership failings, history will be kinder to him than his fellow military adventurers including Chukwuma Nzeogwu who  ‘invited the wrath of the gods’; Aguiyi Ironsi who destroyed our federal constitution; Ojukwu and Gowon who while working for their civilian masters, threw the nation into an avoidable civil war; Murtala Mohammed, whose impetuosity led to the death of many federal soldiers in Asaba; Babangida  whose ‘Structural Adjustment Programme’, destroyed our budding industries, turning our nation to importer of labour of other societies and  Obasanjo who because of what Pa Bisi Akande described as his “fake nationalism, his precarious patriotism and his vaunting ambition to be the centre of our universe” embarked on a wholesale centralisation of our institutions including overloading of the exclusive list just to continue living in denial.

  • Remember when we grew food in our gardens

    Remember when we grew food in our gardens

    There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm, notes Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac: one is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other, that heat comes from the furnace.

    For the benefit of the superficial Millennial or Gen Z-er, the Curmudgeon paints a more fascinating picture of the source of all wealth. And in the true spirit of his portraiture, I’d say: Imagine yourself a ghommid, standing smack in the centre of Nigeria’s groundnut pyramids, animal ranches, and cocoa plantations, several decades ago.

    You take your ghommid’s shears and cut down surrounding flora to make a clearing for a farm. As the crops flower and animals fatten, you harvest the best grains and herd all the supple livestock into a giant pile, wave a magic wand, and it’s all turned into industry, buildings, and people spattered across gated high society and sprawling boondocks. You name this ‘progress’ and feign mutation from ghommid to giant.

    Such is the relationship between cities and the countryside, the modern and out-of-date, the dwindling past, and the silicon age. We must understand, however, that mortal Nigeria as the metaphorical giant is nothing but a dispensable minion in the economics of life.

    Silicon Valley, the Millennial and Gen Z’s most astute retort to the declining world foisted upon all by the older generation has done too little to improve our fortunes.

    Ultimately, the burgeoning I.T. sector fosters ephemeral growth, rather than give relief, it delivers a Siamese bundle of utopia and dystopia in one birth.

    Young Nigeria, like the rest of the world, is besotted by this twin grotesqueness for its dazzle and espoused freedoms, and understandably so.

    More fascinating are the manifestations of the now ubiquitous start-up and fintech. A peculiar thing is happening: where the government fails to show up, foreign financiers or angel funders, if you like, are extending their interventions with curious funding.

    Of course, nobody sees anything wrong with this. How could anyone deem such interventions scary in a world where oligarchs maul promising youths into armed bandits, career assassins, political hooligans, murderers, arsonists, and so on, while they embezzle public funds to entertain their wives and educate their children abroad?

    Thus the argument is that angel funding is great for the economy. These seed monies – irrespective of their slush equivalents used for funding regime change and dubious political springs worldwide –  are filling a crucial void in empowering youths who would otherwise be unemployed and left out of the loop of social interventions.

    Not all ‘seed money’ is a slush fund; a few agricultural startups have sprouted from the seeds of angel funders with stakes in diverse sectors of the agricultural economy. Some of their interventions subsist in the production of palm kernel oil (PKO) which is still currently inadequate for the companies that use it as raw material.

    Then there are those that support farmers’ scale-up from peasant farming to commercial farming by providing extension services, quality seeds, access to finance, access to mechanization, and general advisory services on new and innovative methods in farming.

    These appreciable interventions deserve sustainable partnership between the government and the so-called angel funders of Nigeria’s silicon valley. But technology, like the crude oil boom, is Janus-faced, often manifesting as development’s womb and tomb.

    Little wonder silicon valley subsists as the playground of nerds and mindless herds on a leash. It is also the modern arena of the surveillance state, our private perversions and mob wars: government and the governed, husbands and wives, parents and children, lovers and their sexual nemesis, politicians and electorate clash like gladiators – their mismatched whims the tools of shredding and seizure.

    The history of technology has often been characterized by a debate between enamored romantics and dismissive skeptics. Neither divide, however, projects a convincing response to the opportunities and challenges that new technologies present; both in turn often exaggerate or downplay the impact of technology, and this leads to entrenched positions and polarization.

    Such entrenched positions can be harmful even if politically correct and more media-friendly than the highly differentiated analysis fostered by reality and careful, longitudinal research.

    Advocates of technology integration in agriculture must understand the discourses that drive it and, in some cases, harm its acceptance, and find a balance between the technological innovations that can be sustained by sound policies and those driven more by Machiavellian interests.

    Technology is useless if it isn’t humane and doesn’t improve life. Given the soil’s contribution to all life and wealth, technology must be deployed to enhance its healing and restorative properties by which disease passes into health, age into youth, and death into life.

    The wellspring of wealth is agricultural surplus, the ability to feed more than one with the labour of one. Agricultural surplus built the groundnut pyramids of the north and the cocoa plantations of the southwest.

    Agriculture became the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy and the foundation upon which the pioneer nationalists launched their agitation for independence.

    Nigeria was a leading agricultural economy in the 1950s, being the largest producer of palm oil, groundnut, cotton, and cocoa globally. The sector employed over 70 percent of the labour force and accounted for as much as 62.3 percent of the nation’s foreign exchange earnings.

    World Bank data reveal that agriculture contributed over 60 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Even so, the sector grapples with a poor land tenure system, deficient irrigation farming, climate change, and land degradation. Others are low technology, high production cost and poor distribution of inputs, limited financing, high post-harvest losses, and poor access to markets.

    These challenges have stifled agricultural productivity, affecting the sector’s contribution to the country’s GDP. It has also led to increased food imports amid skyrocketing population and declining levels of food sufficiency.

    For instance, between 2016 and 2019, Nigeria’s cumulative agricultural imports stood at N3.35 trillion, four times higher than the agricultural export of N803 billion within the same period.

    Of its 92.4 million hectares, Nigeria boasts 82.0 million hectares of arable land; so far, just 34 million hectares of it have been cultivated. With population explosion and government’s renewed drive to boost food security, agriculture has become increasingly crucial to our survival as a nation.

    But caught between the womb walls of the crude oil creeks and the silicon valley, Nigeria lives imprisoned in starvation’s bower. The country asphyxiates amid deathly oil spills, stolen crude oil, misgovernance, and the tinseled serpents of silicon valley.

    We live in dire need of irrigated farmlands but our people shed more blood to irrigate the seasons; think farmers-herders clashes over grazing pasture and arable land.

    Yet Nigeria is lost to her silicon valley treats. What do we eat when the dazzle dims to a dwindle, as the oil boom did, and all innovations do, eventually? Like Cadmus sowing dragon’s teeth, shall we plant yesterday’s corpses and harvest them as fresh food for our bellies?

    The first supermarket, Kingsway Stores, appeared in the Nigerian landscape in 1948. Since then Nigeria has showcased dazzling groceries across a burgeoning wholesale-retail complex.

    Against the backdrop of it all, the old farm fades into patterns and cycles of strife. Remember when we grew food in our gardens, forests, and farm settlements? Remember when fresh harvest nestled in our pantries, the basement, and our backyards?

    Today, it’s beyond the reach of everyone.

  • The years of yore: Reflections

    The years of yore: Reflections

    Chinua Achebe in his Nunc Dimitis and reflecting on the decline of Nigeria sorrowfully moaned about the present as contrasted with the immediate post-independence Nigeria by saying “There was a country” apparently in contrast to what we all are living through now. A country that has seen its prestige and influence whittled down by corruption and incompetent political leadership. Yet at independence, the sky was the limit. This was after the national rally of all our people demanding freedom in what the most articulate of our leaders, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe called national Risorgimento. We may not have been involved but we were very much aware that our future was being determined. We knew we had to work hard to inherit what Dr Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana called the political kingdom.

    Unfortunately the euphoria of independence was terminated shortly afterwards because of the fissiparous political tendencies and intolerance that culminated first in the breakdown of law and order in the Western Region and the Middle Belt Region of Nigeria ultimately leading to the coup d’état of January 15, 1966. Since then, the forces of division and political and religious brinkmanship led to a civil war from 1967 to 1970 during which more than a million people died directly from military operations, collateral damage and starvation of civilians.

    Rather than resolving the question of division in the country, the civil war has in fact exacerbated the problem. The growth of the national economy following the rapid rise in crude oil production and price led to the injection of billions of petro dollars into the economy. With this came unbridled corruption and materialism in the country. With the size of the economy came the struggle to seize political power by all means possible by both the military and political leadership of the country. No means was considered illegitimate in the struggle to the detriment of the country nationally and internationally. The apparent wealth of the country attracted international attention to the country. The military leadership rose to the occasion by funding the struggle for decolonization and fight against racism in Southern Africa and also supporting worthy causes in the African diaspora particularly in the Caribbean. Those were the golden years of Nigeria’s diplomacy.

    The idea that these were the golden years of the country is of course debatable but there is no doubt that the presence of Nigeria was felt in the places where it really mattered. But the unstable political situation at home and the coming and going of political leaders vitiated the success of Nigeria’s diplomacy. In the meantime, the forces of division at home continued and have resulted into the weaponisation of religion and state capture through ethnic irredentism.  The weaponisation of religion has led to the rise of jihadist movements in the northern part of the country apparently encouraged by some religious fanatics who have now lost influence with those whom they initially inspired to rip the country apart because of religious cleavage. Now it seems the falcon of religious fanaticism cannot hear the falconer. This is where we are today and the days of glory of the past have become a dream and recovery of a once glorious past is now a forlorn hope.

    On individual level, after independence, we worked very hard especially those of us in secondary schools. Our goals were to enter the universities in Nigeria. Initially there was only the University of Ibadan but later on, real universities were established in Ife, Zaria and Nsukka by the three regional governments.

    The emphasis is on “real universities” unlike the present mushrooming universities more like high schools masquerading as universities! The federal government then added the University of Lagos to Ibadan as a federal institution. People entered these universities through serious competition and there was no question of entering them through who you know or through the back door. Something like that was unthinkable then. The number of students in these five universities was quite small and not more than 50,000 in all. Jobs were also available in industries, commercial houses, governments at either state or federal levels, the police and armed forces and in the universities either as administrators or trainee academics and the teaching profession. Salaries were moderate and sufficient for one to move on gradually up the social and material ladders. Everyone bade his or time and there was no rush to accumulate wealth through fraudulent means. It was a time of contentment.

    At a social level, young people went to parties in each of our parents homes when we had something to celebrate like birthdays and examinations successes. We were not religious but we went to church and mosque. Boys generally dated girls for the fun of it and I believe girls did the same. We broke each other’s hearts through this regrettable action. Many of us today on reflection regret this. When we began to get married, we still continued with our reckless and irresponsible behaviour.

    I remember the culture of “Idawo” or “bathing a new baby” which pervaded Lagos life in the 1970s during which men gathered round to party when madams went to deliver babies in hospitals. Before their return, friends of the husbands would quickly assemble in the new father’s house with female friends to celebrate in the absence of the owners of the homes. I don’t know how and from where this culture came but it was a common phenomenon in southern Nigeria at the time. Most of the time it was a harmless letting down our hairs but it should never have been tolerated. Incredibly our wives knew about this frivolity and simply bore it with equanimity. We lived what to me was a riotous life but to what end and for what purpose?

    When I remember these things, I am always happy that the present generation does not indulge in such frivolities. The 1960s were culturally rich in music and the arts generally. There were great musicians like Bobby Benson, Victor Olaiya, Roy Chicago, Eddy Okonta, Rex Lawson, IK Dairo, Fela Ransome –Kuti (Anikulapo- Kuti) and many others. This was the era of African writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and host of others who populated the African Writers Series of Heinemann publishers. Perhaps we were influenced by the joy of living characteristic of those years. But we were not materialistic. We were content with owning a car and waiting to own a house in due season. We did not witness the mad rush for money until after the civil war and petrol dollars overnight came into our country and both country and citizens became raging mad!

    The age of corruption began with the end of the civil war but it did not become the monster it is now until 1979 when the military handed over power to civilians and it appears the civilian government was bent on beating the record of the military in its primitive accumulation of wealth.  From 1979 to the present, corruption has become the norm in public and private life. Common national patrimony is usually cornered by a few in what has been appropriately named state capture in South Africa. The sad consequences of this situation are that with the collapse of morality has come the collapse of security. The poor people in the country have become hooligans, kidnappers, brigands, highway robbers, cold-blooded killers masquerading as jihadists and herders and are demanding for their share in the national wealth which has been appropriated by a few in the name of the many unlettered and uneducated masses who only matter during  time of elections because of their votes.

    We seem to be boxed in and we don’t know what to do. Some of us know we must restructure the country and follow policies of redistribution of wealth through social welfare schemes which will be better done at the sub national level rather than through the leviathan of an unfeeling and unaccountable federal bureaucracy.

    We now know the futility of our past actions. The rich cannot sleep because the poor are awake because of hunger. The rich cannot travel on the roads for fear of being waylaid. The many houses the rich have corruptly acquired are lying fallow because the economy has collapsed and there are no more paying tenants. In short the rich can no longer enjoy their legitimate or illegitimate wealth.

    May I commend the story of John D. Rockefeller the founder of the famous Rockefeller family who was burdened down by his enormous wealth and was dying of an un-diagnosable illness. He was given a few months to live and he decided to give most of his wealth to endowments, universities, charities and cultural centres. After doing this and to his amazement, he lived for years before his final call. This is my advice to all those burdened down by the weight of earned and unearned wealth in our country.

  • DSS v Emefiele

    DSS v Emefiele

    For many watchers of the early morning programmes of some popular television stations, the drama unfolding before them on air last Monday was puzzling. A different programme was running when the dramatic press conference suddenly came on.

    A crowded hall of people appeared on set. On the top right hand corner of the screen was the catchline: LIVE, meaning that the event was being transmitted as it was happening in Abuja. Initially, I could not make head or tail out of what was going on. Someone was addressing a press conference, yet it appeared as if it was a voice-over (where you are hearing a voice without seeing the face of the speaker). It looked surreal.

    At the bottom of  the screen was this statement: “International Press Conference on plans to derail Buhari’s economic policies”. Who are these people? What are they up to? I wondered as I tried to see if I could identify the speaker or those with him. The crowd facing him was also part of the game. They were together. These were no newsmen, I concluded, as I watched and waited for what will happen next after I had abandoned what I was doing to fully concentrate on what was unfolding before me. “Here before me is a court process, with number … filed on December 7, 2022…” , the speaker said.

    Who is this man? I racked my brain to place him, all to no avail. Then, he nudged the crowd into action. “Raise your placards, let the world see what we are talking about”. “They are after Godwin Emefiele, the central bank governor, because of the redesigning of some naira notes and the policy on cash withdrawal limit”. “President Muhammadu Buhari must not allow them to use DSS to hunt Emefiele”. The man went on and on. So, this was all about Emefiele! What is it about this central bank governor that he is at home with controversy?

    Central bank chiefs worldwide are not seen, but heard. Their work and not political jobbery does the talking. Anyway they are supposed to be apolitical as long as they hold that sensitive post, and are expected to quit if they wish to go into politics. But Emefiele wants to have his cake and eat it. Since his botched presidential dream, reliable sources claimed that he has been working covertly to deal with all those who opposed him. Is that why he ran into trouble with the Department of State Service (DSS) whose guest he was said to be a few days ago.

    His brush with DSS has nothing to do with politics, it was learnt. It has to do with revenue realised from stamp duty charges running into trillions of naira which a member of the House of Representatives, Gudaji Kazaure, from Jigawa State, claimed had been tampered with by some people in government. Who should keep the collection? The Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST), the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) or the Accountant-General of the Federation. Since stamp duty is a tax on written or electronic documents, it should like all other taxes, be collected by FIRS. But because of the row over who should be the collector, CBN was mandated, to in the interim, be the collector.

    This has not gone down well with some interested parties, who have been alleging mismanagement of the collection by CBN which should have kept the revenue in an escrow account until the resolution of the dispute. DSS seems to have found out certain things about it and other related revenue matters for which it sought Emefiele’s attention. Emefiele honoured DSS’ invitation, but was allowed to go following ‘orders from above’ after he raised the alarm that he was kept waiting for hours without being attended to. He also reportedly sought to know if there was an order for his arrest and detention.

    DSS’ response was to rush to court to file its now rejected application. That was bad planning and strategy. You do not spoil a good case without a well thought-out plan. This is the bane of all our security agencies, and not the DSS alone. They always get ahead of themselves in their undue haste to solve complicated cases which should be handled with tact, patience and sound reasoning. They believe in the use of brute force where what is needed is cool-headedness and fair-mindedness.

    It must be stated unequivocally that nobody is above the law, no matter the position they temporarily hold as president or governor. Holders of these two offices are only exempted from being tried while in office. They can be investigated and their prosecution, if need be, done once they leave office. Emefiele does not fall into the category of governors that enjoy immunity. He can be investigated and tried as CBN governor, if there is a prima facie case against him. So, there was no need for the DSS to go to court without making full disclosure of who he is.

    By employing stealth, it gave the impression that it has something to hide. You cannot accuse a man of terrorism and economic crimes bordering on national security, without giving the court the particulars. That is trying to obtain justice by ambush; it is a wrong and condemnable tactic.

    Why ask the court for an order to arrest Emefiele, if DSS has sufficient reasons to do so, as averred in its affidavit? Who is the Emefiele that it sought to arrest? Of course, it can be no other than the CBN governor? So, why did DSS not make that averment? Why hide the fact? Did it do so in the national interest? Or was it just fishing until it gets something to nail the CBN boss with?

    DSS did not handle the matter well and it fell into the hands of Justice John Tsoho, Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, who handled the case. Justice Tsoho wanted a loophole to refuse DSS’ request and he got one in the unclear papers it filed. Who is this Emefiele you are talking about? Is he the same person seen with the President the previous day? If he is, then the President is not aware of what he is doing? So, the judge created an alibi for Emefiele in order to truncate the case against the CBN governor.

    Being seen with the President is not and cannot be enough reason for throwing out the application. That Emefiele whose identity he said was shrouded in secrecy was seen with the President does not mean that he is the same person as the respondent in the DSS’ application. I agree with His Lordship that the ipse dixit (something asserted but not proved) of the application standing on its own is not sufficient proof to allow DSS have its way, but he also breached the same rule by fishing for reason(s) suo moto (on his own) outside the processes before him to reject the motion.

    What is the court’s business with seeing anybody with the President, especially one that is linked with a case before it? Is it the law for DSS to obtain the President’s consent before arresting a CBN governor? Surely, this is not the end of this case. In the coming days, the public will hear more about it. So, the court and DSS must handle it with the seriousness it deserves. The court, especially, should bear in mind that nobody is above the law.

  • OBJ’s infidelity; Adebanjo’s insincerity

    OBJ’s infidelity; Adebanjo’s insincerity

    With friends like Obasanjo and Adebanjo as the battle for 2023 rages, Igbo nation needs no enemies. Announcing his endorsement of Peter Obi for the 2023 presidential contest while rounding up a speech  at  the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Award Night  recently, Obasanjo  had while looking  and moving towards where Obi was sitting said “president of Nigeria”, before leading Obi to take over his (Obasanjo) seat  adding while walking away ‘my job is done’.

    Obasanjo and Adebanjo, have since publicly endorsed Peter Obi for the 2023 presidential contest, “for equity justice and one Nigeria”, claiming our “problem right now is not ethnic, sectional or religious”. For them “Obi is the man” because he “has been running issues-based campaigns while Tinubu’s people have been abusing people”. With Obi, they are set ‘to amend all the evil things that the President Buhari government has done’.

    First, their endorsement counts for very little especially among Yoruba’s discriminatory voters who ignored them in 2015 and 2019 because they are regarded as victims of common Yoruba predilection: “B’adiye dami loogun nu, ma de fo leyin”.  Malevolence appears to be part of their DNA. They just don’t have the generosity of heart to forgive anyone that crosses their way.

    Secondly, since an Igbo adage says ‘it is only your true friend that tells you your mouth is smelling’, the duo who cannot criticize Igbo political elite’s brand of politics that uses Igbo poor and urban dwellers for political leverage, a strategy that started when Zik, the most influential Igbo figure of the 20th century, returned to Nigeria in 1934 to join politics, cannot be true Igbo friends.

    History confirms Igbo political elite only recruit the support of their poor who look up to them for direction to shout marginalization whenever they fall out of favour as the beautiful bride. They were ready to pull down Balewa’s government after NPC ended what was in the first place a marriage of convenience by sacking NCNC ministers in 1963. Similarly, the 1979, NPN/ NPP alliance collapsed in 1982 when NPP minister were asked to resign. But there was no talk of marginalization when Igbo political elite controlled all the juicy positions in Obasanjo and Jonathan administrations.  Nigeria only became a zoo tormented by IPOB and Niger Delta Avengers when Igbo political elite lost out in 2015 and President Buhari proved he might “have no malice in his bones” (Adesina), but surely has  nepotism as his bone marrow.

    In any case, if Obasanjo loves the Igbo, he had an opportunity to demonstrate that in 1979. The collapse of the first republic and the ensuing civil war was the result of struggle to control the soul of Nigeria by Igbo and Hausa/Fulani, their arch rival. Obasanjo had a choice between Dr Azikiwe as leader of those who lost out and Shehu Shagari as part of Balewa administration that had ruled for about six years before the first republic was terminated. But he chose the latter.

    Now let us interrogate Obasanjo’s “I believe in equity, justice and one Nigeria”, and his false claim that we can erase the past as if tomorrow is not the sum total of yesterday and today.

    It is not all Nigerians that suffer from collective amnesia. Some can still recall that in 1993, Obasanjo’s kinsman, MKO Abiola won a pan-Nigeria mandate. General Babangida, in a moment of madness annulled the most credible election in our nation’s history. Obasanjo, claiming MKO Abiola was not the Messiah Nigerians were waiting for, joined Babangida to foist an illegal contraption called Interim National Government which served as a prelude to five years of brutal war by General Abacha against Nigeria.

    Obasanjo, imposed as Nigerian president by “Nigerian Army of anything is possible” and their backers, to assuage the raw feelings of the aggrieved Yoruba was to become the main beneficiary of Abiola’s supreme sacrifice. But for   eight years, Obasanjo danced on Abiola’s tomb. Ironically, it was Buhari, widely believed to have been a victim of MKO Abiola and America that deposed and replaced him with a pliant Babangida that at the end acknowledged Abiola’s heroism.

    Obasanjo cannot be part of the solution.  As Einstein admonished ’Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the height of insanity”. Having realised their search for a new vision of a good society was a mirage, rather than Obasanjo and his other military adventurers returning to our independence federal constitution, they started addressing symptoms with their introduction of NYSC, Unity schools and quota system on admission into tertiary institutions and the bureaucracy.

    Besides destroying PDP, AD and ANPP through his mainstreaming misadventure, at the onset of the fourth republic, Obasanjo singlehandedly imposed ailing Umaru Yar’Adua on Nigeria just as he did ill-prepared Jonathan. He was to later endorse Buhari to spite Jonathan. His current endorsement of Obi many believe is a continuation of his silent war against Bola Tinubu over his struggle for workable federal arrangement in line with aspirations of his Yoruba people who by nature are federalists.

    On tribes, Obasanjo has continued to play the ostrich by  pretending not to be aware that efforts at side-lining  our ethnic nationalities, the building block of our country as elsewhere in African societies, is  the source of social dislocations in Africa. We are a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society, a fact acknowledged by successive Nigerian rulers and leaders from Lugard, 1920,  Clifford 1921, Oliver Stanley 1945, Richards in 1946 and Macpherson in 1957 and of course Awolowo who admitted “Nigeria was a geographical expression” in 1947 and Balewa who “submitted Nigeria was a British intention” in 1948.

    Although Obasanjo said he would feel diminished to be called a Yoruba leader, he nevertheless envies Awolowo, a Yoruba leader he had dismissed as being unable to achieve through a life-long struggle what he Obasanjo achieved on a platter of gold. Obafemi Awolowo, who took pains to study Nigerian problems and proffer solutions, reminded us that one cannot be a good Nigerian without first becoming a good representative of his people. That perhaps explains the secret of the success of our founding fathers who started by first serving their people as local council chairmen.

    But we understand why Obasanjo, his fellow military adventurers and our ‘new breed politicians’ that breed nothing but corruption, insist they are Nigerians first. Such fraudulent claims guarantee a harvest of political and economic dividends.  Obasanjo who lost his ward election but became twice elected President of Nigeria after serving as a military Head of State would never have become a local council chairman if we were to be running a parliamentary democracy where his fate will be decided by his constituency.

    Of course we also now know it is only the conclave of those who pretend to be Nigerians first that secured lucrative oil well licenses, cornered Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b for a paltry $1.5b and shared properties including the Senate President and Speaker of the House’s mansions kept in their temporary care, in the name of dubious monetization policy.

    As against Obasanjo’s theatrics, infidelity and insincerity of fair-weather friends, what the Igbo nation needs is rapprochement with themselves in “order to escape imprisonment in Lugard’s Nigeria” (apologies to Chinweizu).

  • Ekweremadu: Worth of Nigerian citizenship

    Ekweremadu: Worth of Nigerian citizenship

    Weep not for Ekweremadu . The betrayal of this three-term deputy president of the senate, and deputy to the second in line of succession to  the presidency is a metaphor for the rest of us regarded as citizens only during elections but as subjects or even refugees thereafter. Ekweremadu, put in detention by the British in spite of his rights and privileges, has been left to fight his own battles alone in the last six months. On the other hand, this past week, America and Russia by prison swap of even condemned criminals have demonstrated the essence of citizenship.

    To secure the freedom of their citizens, they put in everything even when those they are negotiating with refuse to engage constructively in negotiations or try to hide under their country’s judicial process. The first demonstration of such commitment was Biden administration’s prison swap of Trevor Reed, a former Marine who was held captive in Russia for more than two years. He was traded for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot then serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for cocaine smuggling conspiracy.

    Late last week, the Biden administration after six months of negotiation was also able to exchange Victor Bout, a convicted Russian arms trafficker, known as the “Merchant of Death”, regarded by  American CIA Director Bill Burns  as “a Crip”  who was serving a 25-year US prison sentence, to secure release  of American Brittney Griner also serving a 10-year jail term in Russia prison for bringing cannabis to Russia.

    But Ekweremadu, abandoned to his fate by his country, was neither an arms dealer, a ‘merchant of death’, nor a drug pusher. His only offence was wanting to save the life of his sick daughter. In this regard, according to him, he had informed the UK High Commission on December 2021 in a letter that one David Nwamini was undergoing medical investigations for a kidney donation to his daughter, Sonia Ekweremadu, who is in need of a kidney transplant, and said both Nwamini and Sonia will be at the Royal Free Hospital London.

    But something went wrong with the arrangement while in London.  Nwamini then escaped and sought police protection claiming he was 15 years old, tricked into London for the purpose of organ harvesting without his consent. Ekweremadu was subsequently arrested along with his wife on June 23 and kept behind bars after being charged with wanting to make payment for the procurement of an organ for their daughter.

    Although experts claim the offence is bail-able, but when Ekweremadu was brought before the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, on August 4, he was denied bail on the suspicion he might jump bail and fly back to Nigeria. Nigeria did nothing.

    As for his fellow PDP colleagues, notorious for deadly family quarrel over sharing of offices and looted resources, it was time to settle old scores. His rival for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) ticket for Enugu West Senatorial District in the 2019 general elections, Chief Ogochukwu Onyema is seeking declaration that his seat in the Senate be declared vacant Ogochukwu Onyema.

    A Yoruba idiom common to all Nigerians admonishes us to fist deal with the external aggressor before venting our anger on the victim. But EFCC, without restraint, dragged Ekweremadu to a Federal High Court, Abuja, which ordered an interim forfeiture of 40 landed property, including  10 property in Enugu, three in the United States of America, two in the UK, one in Lagos, nine in Dubai, the United Arab Emirate and 15 located in the Federal Capital Territory linked to him.

    But what was the hurry? Why is Ekweremadu being singled out since we all know when it comes to acquisition of properties in Abuja, no lawmaker can throw the first stone. Even Senator Dino Melaye, who has never done any work in his life before joining Obasanjo as adviser on youths and later the league of highly paid Nigerian lawmakers often advertises his big mansion with an array of expensive state-of-the-art cars. Former Senate President, David Mark, former Speaker Dimeji Bankoe and former Senate President Anyim Pius Anyim among others, are all embroiled in Abuja property scandals.

    If Citizen Ekweremadu, a part owner of Nigeria, can waste away in British detention for six months, without an indictment, we can understand why no one gives a thought to the plight of those regarded as subjects who on the average spend at least five hours on Lagos-Ibadan expressway’s long bridge every day since August this year when Julius Berger declared war on Nigerians that ply the road.

    Julius Berger: The nightmare on Long Bridge continues

    Thousands of vehicles conveying passengers and goods from all parts of Nigeria, with some travelling overnight continue to spend between five and eight hours trying to snail their way to Lagos through the long bridge daily. Instead of finding solution, it is the victims that are often blamed for their impatience with some suggesting that those who drive against traffic should be subjected to psychiatric test.

    But dear compatriots, let me start by sharing my experiences while caught-up on the bridge last week Wednesday and Thursday. Trying to move out of Lagos at 7 am last Wednesday, I spent over one hour and 30 minutes between Berger bus stop and OPIC exit.  The problem was that many motorists and residents emerging from OPIC/Channel TV axis blocked the road while trying to cross the express road to join the Lagos bound traffic that had by then already extended beyond Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church.

    The solution is simple if only successive Ogun state governors especially after the exit of Olabisi Onabanjo and Olusegun Osoba, regarded those on whose back they rode to power as citizens.  Lagos-bound motorists exiting OPIC estates should have been channelled under the bridge to the other side of Kara ram market.

    It is just that these self-serving Ogun governors are immune to sufferings of those they see only as subjects. For instance, that road was started by Gbenga Daniel who stopped it shortly after securing his own newspaper Compass office and what he called Journalist Rendezvous. Ibikunle Amosun came and made promises.  For eight years he did nothing. And today with a sea of heads that greets one at OPIC, Arepo and Journalist Village bus stops every morning and with women holding their children hands and risking their lives on motor bikes that drive against traffic towards Lagos, I cannot stop wondering how Governor Dapo Abiodun is able to sleep daily.

    While marooned in the traffic-gridlock, for five hours on the long bridge on my way back to Lagos, I was able to count about 25 SUVs with police escorts driving against traffic towards Lagos. The following day, I joined hundreds of commercial vehicles taking the unpaved side lane of the bridge. Even with the bad state of the road, we were at the end of the bridge in 15 minutes. Were Nigerians regarded as citizens, Julius Berger would have fixed that potion of the side lane to reduce daily agony of motorists.

    Nature, according to Lucien Fevre’s ‘theory of environmental possibilism’ always advises rational man on choices of survival options which can only be ignored at one’s peril. Therefore, except you are a robot, if a journey of 10 minutes is going to end in five hours, a rational man seeks a rational choice which does not preclude taking one-way. It is governments and their agents paid to prevent such natural instincts that are on trial.

    It will therefor appear those who need psychiatrist test most are those who are indifferent to human suffering.

  • The patriot journalist

    The patriot journalist

    The best way to destroy toxic citizenship is to debauch its currency: fear.

    Fear is what we should conquer; the fear of dissent, the fear of poverty, the fear of speaking out, and of being excluded from the government’s popular gravy train, and the fear of being ostracised by the tyrant mob.

    Fear breeds insecurity, venomous entitlement, hate speech, online bullying, ethnoreligious conflict, racial bigotries, lawlessness, and a wild lust for inordinate acquisitions by corrupt citizenry and leadership.

    Fear as a currency must be rendered worthless; its index of transaction must be shattered for Nigeria to progress. But for this to happen, Nigerians must evolve.

    True, we live in a curious world, where morality manifests as a utopian ideal. The honest and industrious are bankrupted while looters, thieves, gangsters, terrorists, looters, kidnappers, liars, and lobbyists – to mention a few – laugh all the way to the bank.

    In this dystopic clime, the prescript of equality and free market oft touted as the surest paths to nationwide prosperity have been exposed as a pathetic con game.

    Some are aware of the con but their awareness hardly translates to concerted efforts to evade its lure. Perhaps because every Nigerian is at once a grifter and a victim of the con.

    For instance, behind the cynical herd’s agitation and caustic reproach of the political class, lurks a postscript rife with emotive shingles that often drives many to embrace variations of the oligarchy they condemn.

    Many more stand ignorant and proud, like a half-conscious mutter of men, chanting ‘humanity and freedom’ only to forsake the cause for a token or fleeting sentiment at election time.

    This is the tangle of witlessness and resignation that requires us all to become better patriots. If we look carefully inwards, we will find that beneath our toxicity, selective morality and utter cowardice stirs gruesome airs and a quest for self-preservation.

    Time and over again, a few critics and self-appointed leaders of thought have decried our ethical fraudulence, cutthroat politics, and lack of guts; such curious kinks of the Nigerian electorate, unfortunately, do exist at a grievous price and must be reckoned with. Yet these shameful twists to our psyches make us even more vulnerable as fair game to a predatory political class.

    The patriot thus becomes society’s courier of dissent against raptorial hierarchs – whatever his calling, he must assert himself in the interest of Nigerians’ peaceful co-existence, unity, and progress.

    If I could relate this to my field of endeavour, I would interpret the role of a journalist as a patriot. The latter must immerse in his role with unflinching courage and without prejudice. In so doing, he manifests as society’s shield against arrogant class hierarchs and mob tyrants.

    There is no gainsaying that the advent of internet technology has birthed shades of journalism advanced by curious crusaders operating from various platforms.

    Whatever the journalist’s platform, his practice must manifest fertile consciousness.

    His passion is neither funded nor fathered by greed; he establishes his practice immune to the lure and patronage of corrupt local and international actors. He understands that they are all spawns of the same ogress womb, carnivores of the same badlands.

    To the citizenry, he is a hero. To the government, however, he becomes a scourge. He must understand why the masses depend on him to be their voice while the government depends on him to smother the citizenry’s voice.

    To achieve its strategy, the government lures him through the state’s revolving doors onto the corridors of power. The patriot journalist, functioning as society’s conscience, however, rebuffs such overture.

    He understands the essence of his role as a policy analyst, governance watchdog, and peacemaker. Nigeria needs him to continually unmask the pious frauds of leadership and citizenship. We need him to constantly remind us that the ultimate aim of governance should be to lift the impoverished out of poverty and not to cushion their stay or relapse into it.

    Thus as he asserts himself in the Nigerian enterprise, he must never take umbrage if society and peers seek to thwart and malign him. He should never flinch even if mistaken as yet another vessel for our errant demons.

    Like the unappreciated hero, he would be periodically abandoned, assaulted, and stigmatised for lacking the bigoted’s essential traits: narrow-mindedness, base sentimentality, and hankering to traverse gloomy straits.

    Yet he is immune to the lure of sullied money, funded outrage, dubious fidelity, and expedient inertia.

    He does not surrender and seek fulfillment in the collective lowing of the herd nor does he seek to mould individuals or social segments into a compliant collective for the benefit of the mob or political class.

    He does not personify the political hobbyist stereotype. Thus he scoffs at politics of the soapbox, a wanton game in which participants debate Nigeria’s big issues on abstract merits – often mouthing off “superior” logic or sounding off for clout in social or political space.

    His journalism scorns pseudo-realism -that is, the inclination to doctor, propound, and market spurious lies as truth – even though it’s harmful to the country.

    Nigeria would do better if its journalists redirected their platforms and practices to serve the people and heal the country. To reestablish its relevance and repair integrity, the mainstream press and new media must detach from ideological voyeurism and fault-finding – a tactic of assault and defense that has over time become the nemesis and tomb of many a promising newsroom.

    For so long, journalists have united to market cunning and rhetoric, for and against shady segments of civil society and the political class; it’s about time they united in the interest of the electorate.

    The general run of the masses thrives and vie daily against insurmountable odds, fostered by misgovernance and errant citizenship. Many do so without any real awareness of the actuality of forms that define their existence. It’s the press’ duty to make this explicit to them.

    Plato’s allegory of the cave was equally meant to explain this. In the allegory, he likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. Plato’s allegory speaks to our individual and collective fate as a nation.

    For Socrates, all virtues were forms of knowledge thus to train journalists to cover a conflict and write a story is to educate them in skill. However, to train a journalist to resist inducement and assert the ethics of his profession against a hostile political economy is to educate him on values and morals. A journalistic culture that disregards this vital interplay between morality and power condemns itself to death.

    Such existential truths are scorned by modern professionals – even while identifying as patriots. This disconnect subsists across professional and government circuits, civil society, and academia.

    But given the press’ crucial role in nation-building, journalists must begin to acknowledge the impact of fancy, soulless journalism on rural poetry and suburban lives.

    The Nigerian press must quit functioning like products of a cultural void, the casualty of a system that establishes the media to serve as mob muscle or lapdog of the political class.

    The true purpose of journalism must be to improve lives, not assert the whims of social cannibals. It must be far removed from a system that bullies the populace to pacify and please authority.

  • 48 hours…still counting!

    48 hours…still counting!

    IT WAS  a command and like all commands, it was direct and sharp. Within 48 hours, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) was to do all it could to end the protracted petrol shortage. The ultimatum was issued by the Department of State Services (DSS)  on December 8  after a meeting with stakeholders in the petrol distribution network.

    More than 48 hours after the expiration of the ultimatum, nothing has changed. Petrol is still hard to come by. The few outlets that have the product are selling at cutthroat prices, with queues stretching from the stations into the streets, disrupting traffic. What was the essence of the DSS’ ultimatum? To show that it was concerned with the plight of motorists who keep vigil at petrol stations? To prove that it could force marketers’ hand over the matter?

    Whatever its reasons for issuing the ultimatum, they did not work and they were not expected to work. DSS acted as if the product was there for the asking and all that it needed to do was to apply some force and pronto, the country will be wet with petrol. Things do not work that way. DSS was only trying to be clever by half by resorting to that strong arm tactic in full public glare. What its counterparts elsewhere do is to do its homework  behind the scene to achieve desired results.

    The solution to the shortage is not to come on air and tell the world that you have directed NNPCL and others involved in the petrol business to make the product available within 48 hours. Did DSS investigate the cause(s) of the scarcity before issuing the ultimatum? What were its findings? Was anyone implicated? Was the ultimatum based on marketers’ assurance that the scarcity was artificial and would be addressed in no time?

    DSS overreached itself by issuing the ultimatum. Certainly, there are security implications whenever a nation is faced with this kind of problem. Petrol is combustible and it can lead to conflagration in any society whenever it is hard to get. The product has been scarce for some three months now. Why did DSS wait for this long before intervening? Our security agencies are better at reacting to problems, instead of preventing them. There is little or nothing to do when you are always reacting to a problem.

    By then, it may be too late to tackle the challenge. Those who know believe that it is better to nip a crisis in the bud, rather than issue an ultimatum in vain after it has festered, as we have witnessed in this instance. DSS might have meant well. After all, like its sister agencies, it was set up to ensure peace, law and order in the society, not to wait until things get out of hand before coming up with a panicky solution.

    Its 48-hour ultimatum to NNPCL and others to ensure the availability of petrol was not and is still not the solution to this perennial shortage of petrol. The problem is deeper than that. DSS, it seems, is looking at it from the superficial level. It has to dig deeper to get to the root of the problem in order to solve it once-and-for-all. Even, if NNPCL and others had met the 48-hour ultimatum, it would not have guaranteed a sustained availability of petrol going forward.

    They would have met it to fulfil all righteousness, that is avoid DSS’s wrath, only for petrol scarcity to resurface a day or two later. DSS and its sister agencies need to put on their thinking cap and devise means of beating these petrol merchants in this game of creating artificial scarcity time and again, thereby making life miserable for the people.

    In its grandstanding way, DSS had vowed: “after the expiration of the ultimatum, we will commence a nationwide operation to ensure that the product is made available”. The ultimatum expired over 96 hours ago and petrol is still scarce. Is DSS aware of this?

     

    Making PVC collection easy

    THE  collection of the permanent voter’s card (PVC) began on Monday. Many voters have been trooping to the 774 local government headquarters to collect the card which will make them eligible to vote in next year’s elections. On the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) lies the responsibility of ensuring that all those who registered get their PVC within the scheduled time for collection (December 12 – January 22).

    Some are already complaining that it is stressful getting the PVC. It should not be. The PVC is not for governors, their aides and other public officers alone. So, INEC officials at the local government headquarters should not see it as an opportunity for photo sessions with their excellencies. They should be business-like in their approach and ensure that they attend to all that come for the card with decorum. No voter should be treated as a second class citizen. In this business, the voter is king and not the governor, who needs their vote to return to office.

    The way the Prof Mahmood Yakubu-led INEC handles the collection will determine the success or otherwise of the first leg of the exercise before it moves to the registration areas/wards between January 6 and 15 and back to the local government offices from January 16 to 22 for the final round.

  • Democracy and its weaknesses

    Democracy and its weaknesses

    There is excitement in our country as we move towards February 2023 when an election will be held to herald in a new government at the federal and some states’ level. This is normally seen as a process of democratic renewal and renaissance. My prayer is that we will have a transformation of our current situation and a new era will dawn in our country. I personally would have wanted we have a careful look at our current situation and honestly ask ourselves if the structure of government in Nigeria is responding to the myriads of problems we have in the country and if the answer is that there are lacunae in the superstructure which we need to close, we should be honest enough to close them.

    I am not one of those who will glibly say the question of unity is non-negotiable. Only fools will say a human institution based on disputed constitutional document is perfect and cannot be improved. In the United States of America whose system we appear to miserably mimic, there have been several amendments to the United States constitution after their own civil war that terminated in 1865. Even at the present, they are constantly amending their constitution.  In fact, there have been 11,000 proposed amendments to the constitution and only 33 have been ratified. The first 10 amendments known as the BILL OF RIGHTS were ratified in 1791 and the last amendment was as recent as the 33rd amendment in 2020 which aimed at curbing political interference by government and its large agencies and institutions. This was an unusual amendment which was ratified by voters directly rather than going through the tortuous amendment process. Some of these amendments came through judicial review of the constitution through landmark cases and legislative processes.

    In our own case, we cannot argue that the question of unity is non-negotiable when in fact we fought a bitter civil war to try and negotiate our association when dialogue failed. The fact that the federal forces won the war at considerable loss of lives and at a serious dent to our economy indeed prove that a permanent peace must be made to avoid a recurrence of our problems of association so that constituent bodies making up the federation would have a stake in keeping the union going. Our independence constitution which was negotiated between 1957 and 1959 is just too young to be seen as sacrosanct and immutable. Even the Act of Union between Scotland and England dating back to 1707 is now being challenged by the Scottish National Party through periodic referendums. Countries like the old Soviet Union (USSR), Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and nearer home, Ethiopia, the Sudan, Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau and Somalia have broken into independent states peacefully or by war. We learn from history in order to avoid repeating it.

    One of the problems I have with democracy is the recruitment process of leaders for which the people are then called upon to ratify through periodic elections. In Ancient Greece particularly in the city of Athens, democracy was through direct elections by free citizens of those who offer themselves for service. When Jean Jacques Rousseau was trying to suggest the democratic option to save man who though “born free but was everywhere in chains”, it was direct democracy that he came up with for his native Geneva. In other words, representative democracy is a poor copy of Athenian democracy. Even in representative democracy as practised everywhere, only the rich have the wherewithal to offer themselves to their parties and nations in selection and elections respectively. Political parties which do not necessarily evolve from all the people but from the few articulate educate citizens, the so-called critical mass as it were, are basic to the electoral process.

    It is doubtful if some political parties are democratic in their formation, operations and governance. Nigeria seems to follow the American paradigm where mostly rich people can be elected to federal and state congresses. A poor man cannot be elected to the office of a dog catcher in the USA which parades itself as a paragon of democracy. Here in Nigeria, those interested in contesting elections have the hurdles of finding nomination fees of millions of Naira before they can be considered. And when they win at the party level, they face the hurdles of the real election against opponents of other parties and the electorate that sometimes have to be cajoled or bribed to vote for the candidates that offer the best financial inducements.

    Political choice is also dependent on political party affiliation which means an independent candidate stands no chance in a million of winning elections. The result of these hurdles is that the people are usually presented not the best choices available. This is how repugnant candidates like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Victor Orban in Hungary  and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and going back to recent history, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini  emerged through the so-called democratic process. In the case of Hitler and Mussolini, once elected they remained in power until killed by opponents or through suicide in the ruins of their castle to self-glorification.

    It is obvious to me that democracy is not near perfect as a means of government. But it is probably the best system we have for guaranteeing to a certain extent, the freedom of the citizen and as Americans will say, eternal vigilance is the only way to guarantee freedom. If the people are not aware of their rights, a democratic ruler could easily metamorphose into a dictatorship. Periodic elections alone do not guarantee a democracy. Perhaps as important as election is, the rule of law is fundamental to the survival of democracy.

    As admirably advocated and argued by the Greek philosopher Plato in his book “The Laws”, the rule of law is critical to good governance in the absence of a philosopher king.  In most democracies apart from Great Britain, written constitutions form important grundnorm for democratic governance. Democrats have over the years embraced this credo in their search for democratic governance. The press, pressure groups, separation of powers, freedoms of religion and association are also of fundamental importance to democratic rule.

    I hope our hopes and expectations will be met next year when we transit from the present government to the new one. But there is no guarantee of getting the best people into office at all levels.

     

    Niran Adeniji @ 80

    Let me use this opportunity to congratulate a distinguished dental surgeon Dr Niran Adeniji, an old boy of Kings College and University of Lagos who turned 80 last Tuesday. Niran comes from Ibadan and Abeokuta and from two distinguished families of the Ejiwunmi and Adeniji of Ibadan. His brothers Tunde and Goke and two sisters Mrs Taiwo  and Mrs Thompson are like members of my own family. Papa Adeniji was a jolly good fellow who indulged us as youngsters in Ibadan and gave us the latitude of using his car to go to parties in Ibadan and surrounding  nooks and crannies without knowing how many of us packed ourselves in one car most of the time driving under the influence!

    Niran was an ace footballer in Kings College and a fantastic sports administrator on the national level. In recent times, he has developed interest in politics. One can only wish this gentleman to the core, good luck in his new interest. Congratulations brother!

  • Northeast bazaar (2)

    Northeast bazaar (2)

    (Nigeria’s humanitarian crisis as a meal ticket to foreign NGOs)

    There is a formula for writing the story of the northeast. If you are a Nigerian journalist, you stick to the script. You are expected to fawn and grope through lattices of horror and contrived apprehension to present a humane story, often tailored to the funding needs, schema, politics, and administrative ego of United Nations’ multilateral agencies and other international non-governmental organisations (INGOs).

    You may be tame or sensational in your reports but whatever you do, do not ever reveal the duplicity characterising INGO operations.

    Not a few journalists are familiar with the process; they are too awestruck by patronage from the INGOs perhaps, hence you never get to read of the treacherous politics and decadence sullying their operations across dystopic expanses of the northeast  – this of course is a discussion for another day.

    The recent press release by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reasserts the nature of its interest in Nigeria and West Africa. The organisation predicts famine in northeast Nigeria and Burkina Faso “if conditions worsen.”

    It reads, “In the West and Central Africa region alone, up to 69 million people are expected to need humanitarian assistance in 2023 amid concerns that north-east Nigeria and Burkina Faso, which are experiencing extreme hunger, could slip into famine if conditions worsen.

    “North-east Nigeria remains one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with at least 8.3 million people in need of assistance in 2023. The scale of suffering borne every day by women, men, and children across Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe States remains undiminished; urgent action is needed now more than ever. Addressing the needs of 5.4 million people will require close to US$ 1.2 billion.”

    This extract from the press release answers my poser, last week, about the body of INGOs domiciled in the northeast. “Has there been any improvement in Nigeria’s fight against terrorism?” I asked.

    “What is your exit plan?” I persisted, “When would the crisis be deemed abated? Are we going to sit here and still talk about this in the next 10 years? Should Nigeria be wary of any plot to incite in the country a social humanitarian crisis like NATO and foreign NGOs did in Afghanistan?”

    While the “humanitarians” cringed and refused to acknowledge any considerable progress in Nigeria’s military campaign against terrorism in the northeast, we must acknowledge that beneath their immoderate claims and shady riposte subsists more posers about Nigeria’s anti-terror campaign.

    A “humanitarian” agent 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. Nigeria must re-examine its engagement with certain “superpowers” and their “humanitarian” agents vis-a-vis its distaste for such an agenda. It is sheer wickedness to deny Nigeria access to weapons needed to fight terrorism simply because it asserts its inviolable right to ban same-sex marriage.

    And beyond the push to prosecute arrested Boko Haram insurgents, and rehabilitate abductees rescued from their strongholds, Nigeria must also devise a more inclusive and sustainable strategy to reintegrate rehabilitated insurgents into mainstream society, curb recidivism, and aid reconciliation of individuals and groups pitted on opposite sides of victimhood and villainy.

    Nigeria must address the issue of corrupt elements among security agencies and prevent them from sabotaging the anti-terror campaign. The federal and state governments should equally work with security agencies to secure the country’s borders, to protect the country from external aggression and continuous infiltration of otherwise peaceful border communities by foreign terrorists and mercenaries.

    The next president-elect has certainly got his work cut out for him. Irrespective of the victor at the February 2023 polls, all parties in the race as well as the entire political class, the press, and the citizenry, must unite to rout the seeds of discord blooming across the northeast and other conflict zones.

    It is disconcerting to see Nigerians ignore the crisis in the northeast. It should worry discerning citizens that the country currently hosts over 245 “humanitarian” groups in the northeast alone. It should also worry the entire country that these NGOs are taking as much as a 10-year lease on properties in the region – it’s a scary reveal of “humanitarian” expectations and mission in the country.

    What are they preparing for? An aggravation of terror to validate the spurious prediction of Nigeria’s disintegration in 2015? “If conditions worsen” as OCHA predicts, more than 245 NGOs would retain residence in Nigeria’s northeast; they would continually push to lengthen their stay in the region touting unverified data and specious justification.

    But hosting them is hardly the issue, Nigerians should worry about the end game of each “humanitarian actor.” While seeming disparate in mission and outlook, they are all bound to a common purpose: a dateless regime in the country.

    Asides from their professed “humanitarian” mission, there is a dark, seductive quality to the relief and ideologies promoted by these alien groups.

    Their incursion into any target country hardly resounds like an invasion. It’s usually well scripted to alleviate established and speculated miseries of supposedly terrified communities and underprivileged divides – including the oft shady, divisive gender and sexuality campaigns sponsored by several “humanitarian” actors.

    In the case of Nigeria, vast tracts of land in a fertile and resource-rich region (northeast) have been rendered uninhabitable for Nigerian households – no thanks to protracted terrorism.

    The northeast crisis mirrors the Afghan nightmare. Even so, Nigeria careens on a suicidal path as the citizenry flirt with rage and dangerous freedoms. Local NGOs and media, in particular, are used to aggravate the crisis.

    Social media have become a major source of warmongering for insurgents, separatists, and fake news aficionados; in truth, they are all terrorists. Those who spread fake news in a bid to incite carnage and hatred against any individual, tribe, social or religious group must be prosecuted as terrorists.

    It’s about time we learned from Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other victims of the ill-fated and obscenely romanticised Arab Spring. Yet no INGO or so-called superpower must be blamed for our inclinations to self-destruct.

    Neither terrorism nor the 2023 elections shall be Nigeria’s masque of the proverbial red death. No matter how seductive it seems to silence hope and amplify our woes, we must shun the enticement of artifice and doomsday predictions, lest we wring life totally out of our fragile nation.

    This minute, I retract narratives of Nigeria as a sand pit of carnage guzzling human blood to fertilise sprawling killing fields. So should every compatriot.

    Nigerians must understand that we all have a stake in sustaining the Nigerian project. An interplay of poverty and misgovernance birthed protracted terror in Nigeria; it is a no-brainer that a citizenry dogged by oppression and persistently offered the short end of the stick would eventually yield to wild inclinations and propel Nigeria to self-destruct.

    A similar perversion of governance and citizenship reduced Afghanistan to a prey at the mercy of imperial predators. Its occupiers’ stratagem resonated themes found all over the world, a conflict between definitiveness and dissolution of the state, until the bubble burst.

    Before “conditions worsen” in the northeast, Nigeria must redefine and redirect its partnership with foreign actors hostile to our bid to end the insurgency and heal as a nation.