The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • A damsel in distress 

    A damsel in distress 

    It has been one long night for some families since the unfortunate March 29 Abuja-Kaduna train attack. The train was attacked by hoodlums a few metres to Kaduna. Some passengers were killed and some abducted. In the past few weeks, the abductors have released more passengers having earlier allowed some to go at intervals, after paying ransom.

    These victims’ freedom did not come cheap. They paid hugely for it in millions of naira. How they or their families raised the ransom in these hard times did not matter to the hoodlums. All they wanted was money, tons of it. At the last count, they have collected up to N900 million, with the government clueless on how to end this saga, which  enters its 149th day today.

    The government played into the hoodlums’ hands. It met almost all the hoodlums’ demands, including releasing some of their detained relatives and giving the best of medical care to the wife of the one who gave birth to twins. The government did not get anything in return. This is not our concern here today. This column is pained by what is happening to the remaining 23 victims and their families.

    The fate of one of them, Azurfa Lois John, especially, hangs in the balance. Whether she will be released, even if ransom is paid, is uncertain going by the desire of a leader of the kidnap gang to marry her. This is not the first time that such a thing will be happening. It first happened to Leah Sharibu, one of the Dapchi, Yobe State schoolgirls, who were kidnapped in 2018.

    Interestingly, the Dapchi kidnap happened under this administration, which as opposition party, made a song and dance over the 2014 Chibok, Borno State kidnap of over 250 schoolgirls under the Jonathan government. What does this tell us? It tells us that no matter the party in power, nothing has changed as far as security is concerned. To some analysts, things are even worse now than they were in 2015. As it was with Leah, so it seems it is going to be with Lois, if something urgent is not done to get her out of captivity.

    The news of the kidnap gang leader’s intention to marry her was broken by Malam Tukur Mamu after the release of another set of kidnap victims last week. Mamu is the intermediary between the kidnappers and their victims’ families. Mamu warned that except something urgent was done, the unnamed gang leader will marry Lois. Lois is a simple girl who has found herself in this unfortunate situation which she never planned for. None of the victims ever planned for this.

    Indeed, nobody ever makes such plan. We all pray to go out and come back safely. All those on board that illfated  train were on different missions that night. Some were returning to their Kaduna base, others were going to do one  business or the other. The last thing on their minds on March 29 was falling into kidnappers’ hands. But that day, the thing they feared most happened and now Lois risks being married off without her consent. The gang leader’s design on her means one and only one thing: the girl must become his wife. Is that how to marry a wife in our culture? No, it is not. In this instance, force or coercion and not culture is the word.

    Can the man be stopped before he has his way? According to Mamu, it can. “This is to alert the Federal Government and especially, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) that I can confirm through credible information at my disposal that if urgent action is not taking to immediately secure the release of the youngest victim of the train attack, 21-year-old Azurfa Lois John, the abductors, as they have done in the case of Leah Sharibu, are planning to marry her any moment from now. One of the top commanders is said to be in love with her”. The key words in his statement were “urgent action”. The safety of Lois should matter not only to her family, but also the government and the society.

    The government should be the most concerned because it is its responsibility to ensure the safety and security of its citizens. The society too must show concern as it cannot just watch and allow evil to be perpetrated because nobody knows who may be next. It can be anybody. The family is understandably worried. It needs the government and the society now more than ever before to get through this heartwrenching period.

    Lois’ elder brother Bali Moses’ plaintive cry that the family cannot raise the ransom for her release should not go unheeded. Who knows the ransom may be what is standing between her release and her planned marriage to the gang leader. If the government and kindhearted Nigerians move in now, this orphan girl can be saved from becoming the wife of a man she never planned to marry. Hear Moses: “We received the news of the abductors’ plan with shock. One, our parents are late.

    “The abductors had before now reached out to us demanding for ransom, and because we are orphans, we could not raise the money. They asked us to meet Malam Tukur Mamu for negotiation. Now our fear is that we don’t want our sister’s case to be like that of Leah Sharibu. We want her to live in freedom as a law abiding Nigerian and fulfil her dreams. We are appealing to the Federal Government to help us secure her release so that our sister can come back home as soon as possible”.

    This touching appeal has not stopped ringing in my ears since I read it. It should also touch a chord in the heart of the affluent in the society to make them rally round this family of four orphaned siblings and save the only girl among them before her brothers lose her forever. The government has the biggest role to play in this matter because of its obligations to its citizens. It is in situations like this that we really know whether we have a government that cares for the people. With the Moses family’s plea, the ball is in the government’s court.

    The ball had always been in the government’s court. But Lois’ case has made it more imperative for the government to go out of its way, do whatever must be done and ensure that she does not become a wife and mother against her will in captivity, just like Leah. There is no way every true parent’s heart will not sink at this girl’s travail. May the Lord uphold her.

  • Get over yourself

    Get over yourself

    Capitalism is neither wicked nor cruel when the commodity is the ‘whore’ – brothel or white-collar ‘whore.’ Nigeria is neither ‘doomed’ nor ‘forsaken’ when the ‘national cake’ is shared among the loudest activists, shady politicians and public officers.

    Profit is neither vicious nor impure when victims of the multinational’s exploitation are voiceless, impoverished host communities, and the bleeding heart rights activist, ‘social influencer’ or crusader-journalist eventually earns courtship and seasonal inducements by the transnational culprits.

    Government is neither tribal nor unjust when the Igbo, Hausa, Ibibio, Tiv, Jukun, Yoruba, Fulani groups, to mention a few, have their lands and treasures forcibly splayed for kindred “activists” and “saviours” to plunder.

    Values are neither degenerate nor effete when it’s the ‘emancipated’ youth having sex in a public toilet of a ‘reality’ TV show; sexual slavery becomes hip when ‘future leaders’ are presented as meat and body parts on the ill-conceived ‘reality’ show.

    When reality differs from our fantasies, let’s cut to the chase and blame the government for everything. Right? While we do so, let us remember to blame Muhammadu Buhari and his “under-performing” cabinet and cliques for our elevation of fatuity as enchanted condition.

    We should blame government for our smutty politics, the drab one too, while we conveniently forget that our erotica of the left-wing is the graveyard where our ‘woke’ clans slither to die in eternal wokeness.

    Dworkin was wrong to imagine that the Left cannot have its politics and whores. For some Nigerian leftists or progressives, if you like, politics and whoredom unfurl in perfect sync.

    Nigeria’s whoredom proliferates by her youth. The latter, having learnt to manipulate protest into performance, emerge as a rising political bloc. Dirty artifice, hitherto an exclusive preserve of questionable politicians, becomes the tool by which they renegotiate their claims to social spoils.

    Yea, Buhari, no matter the frequency of his bursts of feeble ‘savvy’ and implied strength, will never curry the favour of his most virulent critics. This, unfortunately, shall be his lot until push gets to shove a la 2023 general elections.

    Nonetheless, Nigeria has got you and me to save her from the ravage of familiar predators, plundering her treasure trove for sport. Who knew pillage could be so elevated as recreation, and that coffer rapists could attain the honour of national heroes?

    The bêtise of such heedlessness manifests around us in real-time. The eye and mind elect narcissistic, bigoted personae as galvanizing objects, and then formalise the relation via votes at election time.

    Ignorance is the first rung of the ladder leading to death. It precedes the plunge to nothingness. Nigeria must be guided by this truth en route to the 2023 polls.

    Yet the malady persists in our psychology of youth participation in politics, which highlights a lust for instant and unearned gratification. This explains why some youths, goaded by sycophancy and a false sense of worth made frantic gestures to become Nigeria’s president at the last general elections.

    Their ambition had little to do with being visionary and competent for the job. It was arrant narcissism.

    A curious form of what clinical psychologists would call maladaptive self-love seems to have crept up on the Nigerian youth. Little wonder hordes of youths, unquestioningly, submit as tools and canon fodder for violence and destruction – for a fee – at election time.

    It also explains perhaps why otherwise promising youth would scorn morals and reason, and submit as lab rats in a corporate-sponsored experimental porn cum reality show.

    There is no gainsaying youth participation in politics thrives on the pursuit of material gain and status by circumventing the cycle of honest endeavour.

    A recent study carried out to examine personality traits and narcissism as predictors of pathological selfies among undergraduates of a federal university establishes narcissism as a major driver of neurotic lust for selfies among students.

    A similar lust sprouts by the notion that young presidential candidates in the 2019 elections were simply bidding for face-time. “They know they cannot win, they only wish to register their presence en route to the 2023 elections,” argued their apologists.

    The argument also persists that many contested in order to land plum compensations or jobs in the cabinet of the eventual winner from the big parties.

    Several young candidates at the 2019 general elections, no doubt, emerged to take political selfies, and this portends the most dangerous case of self-love, given that thousands of voters hinged their destinies at the mercy of their aberrant lust.

    Another study reveals narcissistic facets in narratives of Nigeria’s advance fee fraud letters. The paper analyses a sample of 100 advanced fee fraud letters or Nigerian scams by fraudsters otherwise known as Yahoo Boys. Analysis of the scams highlights a Machiavellian-narcissistic approach to human behaviour and morality.

    It presents scams as narratives that give us various perceptions about the youth in the present era. It draws a set of moral principles and values that are explicitly declared by fraudsters similar to the young candidate’s platitudinous chant.

    A similar approach is adopted by many a Nigerian revolutionary and woke youth. To them, political participation and protest are simply facets and scenes in their performance theatre. Their strategy involves starting a ruckus until government drags them by force or persuasion to the negotiation board.

    As soon as favourable terms are reached, they withdraw to enjoy their loot and ‘elevated’ status in silence. When confronted about their sudden silence, they will brazenly say: “When you are eating, you don’t talk.” It’s called table manners.

    Activism to them is hardly about ideals. It’s an artificial construction, a performance to seduce fearsome power. To withstand providence’s scourge, they reinvent themselves as rights activists, advocacy-journalists, social influencers, sociopreneurs, mediapreneurs’ – apology to such ‘practitioners’ plying honest endeavour.

    Eventually, the shady among them, would get storm-tossed and drown in karma’s retributive deep. The duplicity within is what we should fear. It is the root of our predicament. And it thrives on narcissism.

    Vicelich writes, that, narcissists “behave like four-year-olds: it’s all about them.” They don’t recognise personal boundaries, they hog conversations, crave constant validation and take criticism extremely badly.

    “They want your attention, they need things right now – it’s all about instant gratification – and they really have an undeveloped sense of self,” she says, thus diagnosing the tantrums and naivete of several Nigerian aspirants.

    They can be charming, flirtatious company too, notes Hinsliff, but they see others largely as extensions of themselves and can be controlling, cruel or critical of anyone they feel reflects badly on them.

    Honest criticism wounds their fragile egos and they may become violent, broken or commit to drugs. Some simply commit suicide. This is, however, not an attempt to make light of the disconcerting suicide culture or its triggers and dangerous manifestations.

    Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter supply them with oodles of their ‘fix’ as measurable ‘likes’ and ‘shares.’

    In his Metamorphosis, Ovid narrates the story of Narcissus making it clear that he will live a long life “if he does not discover himself.”

    Narcissus, it’s worth remembering, eventually died of loneliness and sorrow sprung from his distorted perception of self. He got destroyed by extreme self-love and maladjusted behaviour.

    It’s about time we understood that the most underrated act of progress and selflessness, even if built on self-love, is the ability, occasionally, to get over yourself.

  • National carrier: Buhari’s parting gift

    National carrier: Buhari’s parting gift

    President Buhari has a credibility deficit. This is on account of his long list of unfulfilled election promises including ‘belonging to no one, belonging to everyone,” tackling insecurity challenges, reducing pump price of fuel, making our refineries work, enhancing the value of naira by forcing Nigerians to eat only what they produce, restructuring the country for competitive growth and development, and setting up a national carrier, which back in 2014 he announced from far away Britain would take off with President Jonathan’s fleet of about 11 aircraft.

    This was not visited until July 18 2018, three years after assumption of office when the name, logo, colour scheme, structure, and types of airplanes of Nigeria’s national carrier were unveiled, again, from far away Farnborough International Public Airshow in London. His aviation minister claimed about $308.8m had been set aside to cover running costs, acquisition of 30 aircraft, five of which he said were scheduled to arrive Nigeria by December 19 2018 for its take-off.

    The national carrier issue was buried for over four years until it resurrected again last week, less than nine months to the end of the Buhari administration. The hope of Nigerians has once again been raised with an announced end of this year take-off date for a new private sector driven ‘Nigeria Air’ with three aircraft manufactured by Airbus and Boeing; 7,000 jobs, according to the government, would be created through its operation of 40 domestic, regional and sub-regional routes and 41 international routes.

    But there are many skeptics who are apprehensive about government in a highly sophisticated airline business currently experiencing challenges even in market-driven economies. It is also of no relief that Nigerians have over the years witnessed the monumental waste in Nigeria Airways, National Shipping Line, the four refineries, Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Company, Nigerian Railway Corporation and other mismanaged public enterprises including PHCN, Banks, oil companies, Insurance, hospitality industry etc. These were national assets valued at over $100b but cornered by those in government and their fronts for a paltry $1.5b between 1999 and 2015.

    However, a journey through memory shows that our problem was not with public enterprises or the adoption of Keynesian macroeconomic model in place of market economy by our founding fathers for the purpose of national development. Our tragedy was the take-over of our country by ill-trained military adventurers.

    Babangida, a military adventurer who hilariously conferred on himself the title of “president’ while not forgetting to also describe himself as “the evil genius,’ went on to impose on Nigeria a widely rejected Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which opened our country to importation of all manner of goods from across the world. Pretending to teach Nigerians democracy, he derailed our political socialisation process by ‘banning, unbanning and banning’ old politicians during his fraudulent eight years of ‘transition without end,’ after which he annulled the most credible election in our nation’s history.

    Obasanjo, who envied bureaucrats and intellectuals, did not believe in leadership training. He boasted about achieving on a platter what leaders like Awolowo, who “burnt the midnight oil to study and proffer solutions to Nigerian problems,” described as one of the world most distinguished administrators of his era by a former British Prime Minister, could not achieve in a life-long struggle.

    But the nation paid dearly for the shortsightedness and folly of Obasanjo and Murtala Mohammed, who in 1976 jointly destroyed our bureaucracy, then the best in Africa, our universities and Teaching Hospitals, including UCH, one of the best five teaching hospitals in the Commonwealth.

    As an elected leader in 1999, Obasanjo’s “I will listen to God and not my advisers” gaffe was to haunt his administration. His effort at refurbishing the refineries was sabotaged by his PDP men that got the contract and went on to create artificial scarcity that forced him to sign the PPPRA Bill that increased fuel importers from four to about a hundred. The same “PPPRA with staff strength of 249, supervised by an unwieldy 22-man strong board, earning   scandalously whopping salaries and allowances of N57.9 billion,” became a vehicle through which PDP stalwarts and their children according to House report forged documents to defraud the nation “to the tune of N1.7trillion in one year.”

    Obasanjo tried to salvage NEPA (PHCN) but was outmaneuvered by his better equipped ministers. His expenditure of between $8b and $16b on the power sector produced only darkness. His successor’s N300b intervention fund was meant for packaging PHCN as DISCOS and GENCOS before selling the same to themselves.

    Nigeria Airways suffered a similar fate. It was Babangida and his “army of anything is possible” that in the name of commercialisation destroyed and replaced it with privately run Albarka, Okada, Oriental, Concord, Harka, EAS, Triad, Harco, Savannah, Belview, ADC lines, many of them owned by traders, government contractors, retired military and police officers and even fishermen.

    Obasanjo’s efforts at reviving the national carrier through an arrangement with Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic was frustrated by his PDP men. Air vice Marshall Dike committee which recommended a sum of N48b for the upgrading of Nigeria’s four international airports soon emerged. He approved N19.5 billion out of which Professor Babalola Borisade as Aviation Minister, according to Fani Kayode, his successor, spent N8.4b, while he spent N3.8b leaving behind N7.2b for Princess Oduah, his successor.

    But Stella Oduah went to CBN, insisting on a review of the fund because, according to her “It was obvious the aviation industry was about to die unless we do something urgently.” That was the genesis of ‘N330b aviation Intervention fund. Of the N300b, N232.6b was said to have been paid to 21 participating banks with UBA taking N35b on behalf of Jimoh Ibrahim’s ‘Air Nigeria.’  The Senate Committee on Aviation however directed CBN to recover the N35b extended to Air Nigeria. (Joke Kujenya , “Untold story of Aviation Mystery Fund”: The Nation, March 9, 2014).

    No one, however, was held accountable for the monies received by other banks that went under during Sanusi’s tenure as CBN governor. But what was not in dispute was that by 2015, the Airline stakes holders who can also pass for PDP stalwarts, that led the crusade for government bail-out were owing AMCON over $700m debt.

    It is apparent from the above that public enterprises did not fail us but our incompetent leaders and governing elite.  If we, therefore, don’t want to be slave to our past, with foreign airlines swindling Nigerians about N3.7b annually and our public officials frittering away taxpayers’ money on such foreign airlines like the British Airways that charges, before the current travail of naira, about $10,070 for a First-Class return seat from Abuja to London, the need for a national carrier has never been so imperative.

    And with Nigerians unable to travel freely by road and rail for fear of bandits, Fulani terrorists and local criminals kidnapping in their name, and with private airlines owned by traders, retired soldiers and policemen, going under, a national carrier as Buhari’s parting gift will be welcomed by Nigerians who cannot wait for him to return to Daura.

  • A tall tale

    A tall tale

    IT CAN only happen in Nigeria. Sadly, we are fast becoming notorious for such weird stories. First, it was the swallowing of money by a snake in an office in Makurdi, Benue State in 2018. The cashier, who kept the $100,000 cash, stunned the world when she claimed that it was swallowed by a snake. She said the cash was in a safe in her office when the snake crawled in there and swallowed the money.

    A cash-eating snake! It was hard to believe, but that was the story of Philomina Chiese, a worker with the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). By the time she was testifying in court in 2019, the story had changed. She said she never claimed that snake swallowed the money which naira equivalent then was about N37 million. Where then is the money? As I write this early yesterday, the cash has yet to be accounted for and nothing has been done to the cashier.

    It will not surprise Nigerians to hear that Chiese has been transferred to another state and given higher responsibility so that she can continue her good work of keeping public funds! Now, we are confronted with a related story.

    This time, it is not about money swallowed by another reptile, but of cash vouchers allegedly eaten by termites. How the insect got to those documents in the container they were kept is, as usual, shrouded in mystery. Again, this story, which just came to light, is traced back to 2018, the same year that snake swallowed JAMB money.

    The termites allegedy ate up vouchers covering N17.158 billion expenditure by the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) in 2013. The termites’ havoc came to light at the Senate Public Accounts Committee’s consideration of the 2018 Report of the Auditor-General of the Federation (AuGF).

    Termites are classified as workers and soldiers and in their colonies are fertile males called kings and one or more fertile females known as queens. And wait for this, they are known to mostly feed on dead plant materials and cellulose, generally in the form of wood, leaf litter, soil or animal dung. Interestingly, vouchers are not known to fall into the category of what termites eat. Termites can destroy buildings, that is why the Yoruba refer to them as ikan afi were were je ile (that is they eat up houses little by little).

    The termites, in this case, were not said to have invaded any house. They reportedly swarmed the container where the vouchers were kept to destroy the documents. Can termites eat up a container which is not made of wood? Typical of state actors, the ‘past and present managements’ of NSITF are passing the buck over the destroyed vouchers. For the Senator Matthew Urhoghide-led panel to do its job well, it must see and verify those documents in order to justify the N17.1 billion spending. The auditor-general queried the expenditure because it had no voucher backing.

    According to the AuGF, the money was transferred by NSITF from its Skye and First Bank accounts into various untraceable accounts belonging to individuals and companies between January and December 2013. The AuGF raised 50 queries, in all, against NSITF on the mismanagement of the funds. These funds, as time will tell, may not be public funds but money belonging to longsuffering workers who are putting something aside from their meagre salaries for their retirement. I am fervently praying that this is not so.

    Whether it is pension fund or not that is in contention here, everything possible must be done to get to the bottom of the case. How can an agency like NSITF spend over N17 billion without supporting documents? Who approved the spendings? What was the money used for? Who was the head of the agency in 2013? This issue is more serious than the way some people are looking at it. So, it is not a matter to be handled lightly.

    Someone must take responsibility for what happened. It is not an issue that should be treated under the bland tag of ‘management of NSITF’. Management of NSITF? What does that mean? On whose desk does the buck stop? The managing director or whatever name that the agency head goes by, I suppose. This is the man (or woman) that should be put on the spot. Where was he when over N17 billion was being spent in his agency? He must answer this poser.

    If you are the head of a place, it is an unwritten rule that you must take responsibility for everything that happens there. To whom much is given, much is expected. As the Yoruba will say, ao le f’enia j’awodi koma le gbe adiye (if you are a leader, you must use the power conferred on you).

    So, NSITF Managing Director Dr Michael Akabogu must do well to address the issue head-on. What is the meaning of: “…I told the past management officers on the need for them to help us out in answering this query…”

    His response is not good enough. Why can he not contact his predecessor? Or was there no MD before him? The AuGF too did a shoddy job by not inviting the then MD and his or her finance and accounts chief over this matter. The Uroghide panel should not fall into the same pit by looking for an amorphous management. Someone was in charge then and that was the MD. Get him and light will be thrown into this matter. If this is not done, then the probe is all a charade.

  • Adieu, Prof. Akinlawon Mabogunje

    Adieu, Prof. Akinlawon Mabogunje

    Akinlawon Mabogunje,? Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Ibadan, and renowned social scientist of global recognition, changed mortality for immortality on the 4th of August 2022 in Ibadan, Nigeria. He was 90.

    He was born on October 18, 1931 in Kano, in the then Northern Nigeria where his father was a civil servant in the colonial administration of Northern Nigeria. After primary school in Holy Trinity Anglican Primary School, Kano, he was moved to Ibadan where he completed his primary school. He then entered Ibadan Grammar School, an Anglican school. After finishing at Ibadan Grammar, he worked for some time before entering the University of Ibadan in 1954. The University of Ibadan from its inception in 1948 to 1963 was a college of the University of London.

    After graduating from Ibadan, Mabogunje went to the University of London, where he earned a doctorate in Geography in 1961.Thus began his academic career, and he became a professor a decade or so after his appointment as a university lecturer. He was an eclectic academic with interest in history, politics, urban development and governance generally, but particularly local government administration.

    I first came across this scholar of phenomenal and prodigious originality when I read a book on Owu written by him and Professor J.D. Omer-Cooper who was then at the Department of History at the University of Ibadan in the 1960s when the department was involved in the development of an authentic African history to balance the academic offerings in the department which emphasised world history and particularly, English, American, and Commonwealth history while neglecting African history. Even though he was not an historian, Mabogunje played some part in adding to knowledge of the African past albeit from the prism of urban geography.

    He remained throughout his life concerned with the development of African conurbations and the limitations of African technology to handle their social problems. He was always advocating the need for urban planning in the rowdy cities of Nigeria particularly Ibadan, Kano and Lagos.

    He participated in the studies leading to the establishment of Abuja as a federal capital but was not too happy at the rapid growth of the city through the massive drifting into the place of rural people from all over Nigeria thus making it difficult to have a planned growth and development.

    Going hand in hand with his interest in urban development was also his interest in local government administration, rightly believing that if development is to be meaningful it must begin at the local government grassroots levels. He was not a believer in the homogenised local government reforms enunciated by the military, which imposed an artificial uniformity on the whole country without paying attention to the traditions, sociology and politics of the people. The failure of the so-called reforms imposed by the military was due to lack of patriotic attachment to the arbitrary LGA created by military fiat. It must have been frustrating for the professor that despite his closeness to the corridors of power, most of the time his views were not taken seriously in the government policies of the period.

    He was not just a typical academic who buried himself in the library or laboratories as academics are wont to do.  Mabogunje, from the time of the Action Group government of Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1951, up to the time of Obasanjo’s government of 2007 and beyond, had access to people in power. Perhaps it was the political structure of the country that made it difficult for the views and scholarship of Mabogunje to have a permanent imprint on the governance system of Nigeria, particularly in his strongly held beliefs in proper and sustainable local government administration.

    Just to show that he was not an armchair theoretician, he and his late friend and colleague, Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, a distinguished economist of his time and former vice chancellor of the then University of Ife, tried to apply their ideas on the local government administration and socio-economic development of Aboyade’s hometown, Awe, near Oyo. They also jointly set up a consultancy and research outfit in Ibadan which involved research, consultancy and training after they both retired from the University of Ibadan. The impressive building is what remains of the vision of both Aboyade and Mabogunje, perhaps because of the premature death of Aboyade.

    Professor Mabogunje has also been involved in the affairs of Ijebu Ode, his homeland, and has served as honorary adviser to the Awujale, the paramount ruler of Ijebuland. The fruit of his partnership, in an advisory capacity to Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona, was the establishment of a micro finance institution in Ijebu Ode and the founding of the Oba S.K.  Adetona Institute of Governance Studies at the Ogun State University (Olabisi Onabanjo University). He was one of the brains behind the setting up of Ogun State University at Ago- Iwoye and functioned as the pioneer pro- chancellor and chairman of the governing council. Political meddling and paucity of funds limited his role and vision for the university to which he recently donated his entire library as his parting gift.

    Professor Mabogunje will be remembered at home and abroad as a distinguished geographer who devoted his entire life to urban studies and the application of academic knowledge to development.  He won the highly prestigious Vautrin Lud prize (2017) for his contribution to geography and urban and regional studies.

    Nowadays geography is hardly studied in its purest form but as an adjunct to Regional and Urban planning in universities here in Nigeria and abroad. Whatever it is, like most scholars advising people in government, his knowledge-based advice was not always utilised to improve governance. It was not his fault since many people in government did not see beyond the moment and momentary material gains and immediate reelection.

    He had participated as a consultant to the National Census Board and the Civil Service Review Commission, among other services in a life of service. Towards the end of his life, he became like most of us academics despondent about the future of Nigeria. He was very categorical that unless the leaders of Nigeria buy into the necessity of wholesale restructuring of the country, Nigeria will not make it and the country will collapse under the burden of over centralisation.

    Professor Mabogunje spoke at public lectures on topics including   politics, development and health; and the centrality of health and education were usually at the head of his remedy for the illness of underdevelopment in Nigeria.

    He will be sorely missed, particularly, his rather peculiar accent and his intellect. He was a man of faith married to one wife, retired high court judge, Mrs Titilola Mabogunje. His children are also distinguished in their various professions, which include in the case of his first child, academics at the highest level of medical scholarship.

    Professor Akinlawon Mabogunje: sun re o, Erin wo , Ajanaku sun bi oke!

  • PDP, Atiku and the Wike web

    PDP, Atiku and the Wike web

    For the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), these are not the best of times. It is easy to see through the facade, despite putting up a front of all is well. The party is torn between two of its leading members who were among those that took part  in its May presidential primary. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar won, with Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike coming second.

    Wike left the convention ground unhappy. He felt and still feels betrayed by some of his associates who he thought had his back. The primary, Wike believed, was his to lose. He did everything that could be done to win. The right people were mobilised and the needed resources put at their disposal. Rivers is suffused with oil cash. Thus, he was not short of funds to fight for the presidential ticket.

    Yet he lost. His loss was due to a last-minute arranged marriage between the Atiku camp and the northern bloc of PDP, which was not ready to play the zoning card. Since the party chairman, Dr Iyorchia Ayu, is from the north, the initial plan was for the south to produce the presidential candidate so that no region is marginalised in the sharing of offices. The Presidency in the south! Some from the north felt alarmed by the thought. Right there at the convention venue, they quickly aligned to stop Wike from getting the ticket.

    Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal, who is Wike’s good friend (are they still buddies?) came in handy for the anti-Wike plot. He agreed to work with Atiku and consequently asked his delegates to vote for the Waziri Adamawa. That was the game-changer and when the votes were collated, Atiku won hands down. It did not stop there. Wike’s defeat was rubbed in when Ayu led a delegation of party leaders to Tambuwal’s home in Abuja to thank the governor for the role he played at the primary.

    “You were the hero of the convention”, Ayu told Tambuwal amid backslapping, handshaking and guffaws. The visit was uncalled for. If Ayu had taken Wike’s feelings into consideration, he would not have embarked on the visit. Added to that was the mishandling of the choice of a running mate for Atiku. Atiku has since settled for Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa. Atiku’s choice rattled Wike, who had often said he would never be running mate to anybody. So, why is he brooding?

    Wike believes that PDP owes him a lot for keeping the party strong in Rivers. He has not hidden it that he is not happy with PDP and Atiku. All efforts to reconcile him and Atiku have so far failed? At Monday’s commissioning of the seventh bridge he just built in the state, Wike, in his characteristic manner, fired salvos at his real and imaginary enemies. For effect, he invited his Lagos counterpart Babajide Sanwo-Olu for the commissioning. His shots were telling, pointed and direct:

    “If you say Rivers does not matter, Rivers will tell you that you don’t also matter at the appropriate time. If you don’t like us, we will not like you. If you like us, we will like you”; “I am fully in charge. I am not that kind of governor people will go to Abuja and hold meetings against…”; “Nobody will use our votes for nothing… Politics is no longer voting for somebody; it is about what you will do for Rivers people”; “Those who looted Rivers’ treasury will not be supported to become the state governor”.

    How will Atiku and PDP handle Wike? Ignore him and risk losing Rivers in 2023 or manage him till after the election? Does he really have the state in his pocket? When the chips are down, can he determine who wins the state? These are hard nuts for PDP, in particular, and Atiku, especially, to crack.

     

    Long Bridge dawn cracker

    It was the crack of dawn on Tuesday.  As usual, we left home early in order to beat the traffic on the Long Bridge which returned after Julius Berger, again, partitioned another portion of  the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway for its seemingly endless work. We were four in the car and we were chatting heartily when we noticed people running helter-skelter. They were coming from behind us. Instinctively, we knew the bad boys were at it again. The traffic jam’s return is a return to business for them.

    The prayer-warriors in the car started binding and loosening. After initial hesitation, one of us called a friend back in our small community at Journalists’ Estate Phase 1, Arepo for help. The call woke her up, but she became alert on being told what was happening on the Long Bridge. It was 6.17 a.m., or so. With the traffic moving slowly, we knew the consequences of the marauders catching up with us. We heaved sighs of relief when we eventually got out of the traffic snarl.

    We did not witness the incident firsthand. But from the way people were running, it was certain they were being pursued by something terrible. It is time for the police to, once again, raise their presence on the bridge. With Berger back to disrupt traffic flow, for the umpteenth time, under the guise of working on the road, the police must keep vigil there. Motorists’ safety matters now so that they can live and use the road after its rehabilitation.

     

    End-of-story

    On Friday, at about 5.15 p.m., my phone beeped. On checking it, it was an alert from Sterling Bank, informing me of the return of the N7000 debited from my account on June 1 after a failed Point-of-Sale (PoS) transaction at a filling station. It is not good enough that it took the bank over two months to refund me. Friday was August 5. Such a long drawn process for dispute resolution of whatever kind is not good for the image of any bank.

    From my findings, it is not only Sterling that is guilty of this practice. All the banks are. My mailbox is today full of complaints, like mine, against almost all the banks. Yet, we have a central bank that should call them to order.

    But, how can it do its job when its governor is more interested in knowing whether or not he is eligible to run for president?

  • Menace of the herd (2)

    Menace of the herd (2)

    The Nigeria Police Force (NPF) morphs to our public spirit; the random policeman on the street is a fragment of society’s freckled personae – he is symptom and disease, predator and prey to Nigeria’s cult of self. He reflects our private instincts and void of citizenship.

    Deep down, society knows this, but like the proverbial bride flaunting dubious innocence, she makes a vulgar show of recalling and canceling him at will.

    Think of society as the flawed mother, whose fertile womb sprouts with the corrupt policeman, doctor, accountant, journalist, banker, politician, soldier, street urchin, political thug, terrorist, and unemployed youth, to mention a few.

    Apology to the incorrupt, but motherhood blankets existence. Thus the police constable, sergeant, and inspector are spawns of our social conscience.

    The most lurid portrait of Nigeria’s engagement with her police is discernible in the 2020 #EndSARS protest. On the 12th day of the protest, while the streets pulsed with mayhem as irate youths bayed for the blood of uniformed men, a riotous mob chased after a police officer until he tripped over a boulder and they pounced on him.

    They ripped his shirt off and rained blows on him, chanting “#EndSARS! #EndSARS!” Recounting the grisly experience, an eyewitness, who is also a policeman, held that from a distance, those who attacked his colleague didn’t look like protesters.

    Fearfully, he retreated behind an empty food kiosk and watched the mob batter his colleague till he was drenched in blood. Instantly, he tore his shirt off his body, ripping the buttons as he did, and he slipped out of his trouser. He would be naked but for his improvised undies comprising a t-shirt and cycling shorts. He balled his left hand into a fist and rolled the uniform around it. Then he tucked it in a refuse bin behind the kiosk and walked away, coolly, in brisk, urgent strides.

    Several metres ahead, he turned to look at the scene. He could not make out his colleague in the distance but he felt contrite leaving him to the mob. He was equally ashamed for discarding his uniform. He knew he could “purchase” another uniform. To date, he doesn’t know what became of his lynched colleague. He never bothered to ask.

    Even if he knew, there was nothing he could do. Still, he rued his helplessness and his inelegant resort to dump his uniform in the bin. He regretted fleeing while his colleague fell to the lawless horde.

    The melee resulted from the demonstrations triggered on Thursday, October 8, 2020, by videos circulated on social media, showing highhandedness and extrajudicial killing by officers of the disbanded Special Anti-Robbery (SARS) Squad.

    Over the next two weeks, protests were held in various states across the country, and by Nigerians in the diaspora, calling for reform and an end to police brutality. Eventually, groups of hoodlums seized the opportunity to unleash staggering violence on police personnel. This was widely celebrated by segments of Nigeria’s presumed intelligentsia, criminal and righteous divides.

    Few people would forget in a hurry, the viral but cringe-worthy video of a police officer getting clobbered by a mob, in front of a burning police station at Orile, Lagos. The officer reportedly jumped the fence in order to escape being caught in flames as the mob set fire to the station, in protest against the alleged high-handedness of the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) heading the station.

    Unfortunately for him, he leapt into the hands of the mob. They pounced on him and beat him to a pulp. Amid the mayhem, a thickset youth stabbed him in the eye. The officer careened with the dagger stuck in his eye, bleeding profusely. As he reeled blindly, his assailants took turns hacking into his already bloodied frame with machetes. Eventually, he keeled over and the mob descended on him maniacally, finishing him off.

    “Policemen deserve worse,” many would say. Yet to recall the police killings in the wake of the #EndSARS protests is to explore a dark facet of Nigerian life. Pundits argued that the police had it coming even as the latter, admitted disillusionment, affirming that the incident has made them apathetic to their work ethics.

    With a staff strength below 400,000, the police, as the primary law enforcer and security agency in Nigeria, is expected to protect about 200 million Nigerians via 36 state commands grouped into 12 zones, and seven administrative organs including special units like the disbanded SARS and newly constituted SWAT.

    Over time, policemen have become predators in impoverished communities.

    They indiscriminately extort the innocent and criminals – often colluding with the latter against the former.

    The random policeman gleefully weaponises the law to detain people and seize property, unlawfully. Traffic violations attract extremely twisted penalties and extortion across the cities; such extortionate schemes fund police trucks and flesh the pockets of corrupt officers.

    The latter would cheekily tell you that they are doing the bidding of their DPOs and Commissioners of Police. Everyone’s in on the scam, they would claim.

    This perverse culture has turned every commuter into a perpetual victim or prey to the predatory police. More worrisome is the lack of effective checks and interventions by the state. Alex S. Vitale writes in his book, “The End of Policing,” that “Criminal policy is structured around the use of punishment to manage the ‘dangerous classes,’ masquerading as a system of justice.”

    But who belongs to the dangerous classes? Perhaps the incumbent oligarchs? The oppressed, impoverished majority? Or is it the criminal cabal comprising corporations, banks, government, and their enablers in the judiciary?

    Who are those weaponising the police against us? The oligarchs, the deceptive demagogue, social influencers, entertainers – most of your favourite celebrities to be precise.

    It is instructive that despite the hue and tenor of celebrity rants via #EndSARS, all the celebrities that mounted the soapbox to grandstand and earn cheap appeal, retreated behind their heavily gated communities, under the protection of the police as the protest degenerated to a bloodbath.

    While policemen and protesters were hacked to death across the country, these celebrity entertainers, like the business and political class, enjoyed the protection of the police in their private quarters.

     

    Memories of the #EndSARS killings continually trigger hostility, soul searching, and a measure of despair among affected parties. For many citizens, particularly bereaved families of slain policemen and victims of extrajudicial killings by the police, the memories are too ghastly for comfort.

    The resonance becomes even more chilling as partisan zealots spoil for a showdown at the Lekki Tollgate (the symbolic ground of #EndSARS) next month, amid security reports of impending terror attacks in Lagos, Abuja, and other parts of the country.

    Through our apprehension, have we a police force that would passionately protect public lives and property? Has Nigeria done enough to excite patriotic service from her police?

    Poverty, unemployment, inflation, and insecurity aren’t enough reasons to smash our fragile peace to smithereens. Partisan zealots must desist from any rally that could turn our fertile streets to scorched earth and pit the citizenry against the police.

    Through the mire of misgovernance and dehumanising service, the police are faced daily with the grisly choice to protect a cabal of political, business, and entertainment elite that treat them as dispensable dogs of prey, or a citizenry that persistently treat them as wildlings that must be cursed and killed.

    Their answer is predictable.

  • Ambassador Akporode Clark has finished his race

    Ambassador Akporode Clark has finished his race

    Ambassador Blessing Akporode Clark, CON, of the Bekederemo-Fuludu-Clark family of Kiagbodo town in the Burutu LGA of Delta State joined the saints triumphant on the 26th of July, 2022. He was 92.

    Ambassador Clark was educated like most members of his distinguished family at Government College, Ughelli, in the then Western Region. After his secondary education, the young Clark went to the University College, Ibadan, reading the general arts degree.

    On graduation, he joined the Administrative service of western Nigeria where he honed his skill in civil service laws, etiquette, integrity, honesty and probity. It was from there that he transferred to the Foreign Service on the eve of independence as one of the pioneers of Nigeria’s diplomatic service. He worked briefly in the office of the Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who for some time was his own foreign minister before relinquishing the post to Jaja Wachukwu.

    At several times in his diplomatic service, he served as a junior diplomat in India, the United Kingdom, and with Chief Simeon Adebo in the embassy of Nigeria to the United Nations. He was one of those who drafted the protocols of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

    Years later, he was appointed Ambassador to Ethiopia and Permanent Representative to the Organisation of African Unity in Addis Ababa. Thus began his trajectory in multilateral diplomacy. He served as Ambassador to Switzerland and Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations Office on Disarmament (UNODA) in Geneva.

    He crowned his diplomatic service by being appointed as Nigeria’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York. From there he joined the United Nations secretariat and served there for a decade. He headed the United Nations Institute for Namibia in Lusaka in the 1980s. He was in charge of the electoral process under the distinguished Finnish diplomat and later President of Finland (1994-2000) Martin Oiva kalevi Ahtisaari who brought Namibia to sovereign independence on February 9, 1990 after a century of subjugation, first under brutal German colonialism, and from 1919 under South Africa’s no less oppressive and racist administration under the League of Nations Mandate, which the United Nations inherited in 1945.

    Without the administrative sagacity of Ambassador Clark, the process for democratic election paving the way for the independence of Namibia would have failed because of western powers’ subversion and racist South Africa’s hostility to the entire process. Ambassador Clark, from his service as Nigeria’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and as a member of the staff of the United Nations itself, was one of the several personalities that played significant roles in the struggle against racism in Southern Africa, and for the eventual victory over institutionalised racism and settler domination in South Africa and Southern Africa as a whole. He was also a leading expert in disarmament.

    I got to know Ambassador Clark very well when I served with him from 1999 to 2015 in the Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations headed by the distinguished Chief Emeka Anyaoku.  It should be mentioned that we all served pro bono against the advice of the then president of the Nigerian Senate .This was a small group of about six or seven men and a lady that met quarterly with the president to review Nigeria’s role in the world and also submitted a written memorandum every time it met with the president.

    The body was set up by President Olusegun Obasanjo who is known for his thoroughness in the affairs of state of Nigeria. What usually struck me was the meticulous approach of Ambassador Clark in the preparation of our record, whether the minutes or the memorandum. I hope those records are kept for posterity so that the future generations can see the care some people took in steering the ship of state in the right direction.

    Ambassador Clark was a patriot who was unbending in the defence of the national interests. I remember a case in which the Council was asked to respond to the USA‘s request to locate the USA Africa Command in any willing African state. Ambassador Clark and his friend Chief Emeka Anyaoku were vociferous in rejecting any consideration of Nigeria as a possible location on two grounds of defence of our sovereign independence, and secondly on the grounds that we should not put Nigeria in a situation where we become the enemy of America’s numerous enemies.

    I personally saw it differently.  My position was that in an increasingly dangerous world Nigeria may need a patron defender and that there was no absolute independence in the modern world, citing the example of American forces all over Western Europe, in Germany, Belgium, Britain, and now in the former countries of Eastern Europe. My second point was that my experience as Ambassador to Germany showed me the tremendous economic benefits of American forces in Germany and also in South Korea and Japan in terms of technological transfer and transportation and physical architecture of those countries.

    I, of course, deferred to my senior colleagues on these issues. Now with our countries overrun by terrorists, I wonder if we chose the best option. In the classical academic way of looking at these things it can also be argued that American forces may not have made any difference in our security situation if the local Nigeria’s military was not ready to save their country.

    Ambassador Clark, in my estimation, remains an example of a patriot who served for the benefit of his country. Throughout our service at the Presidential Council on International Relations, we served pro bono without any pecuniary benefits whatsoever. Even when our chairman tried very hard to get us plots of land in the FCTA, the then minister Bala Muhammad dodged and dodged our chairman but secretly gave a plot of land to a member from the north who told me she already had a plot.

    Such things never bothered Ambassador Clark who felt vanity upon vanity was all vanity. He was a jolly good person to work with, and despite our age differences he remained my friend sharing with me many stories of his life including his health problems and his Christian struggle of faith.

    He spoke to me in March or so asking me to come round for a visit and to help him for placement of a child in a clerical institution to train as a pastor. I am happy to have acceded to his request.

    For many years, he helped to run the Yakubu Gowon Centre in Abuja, rescuing it from previous thieving characteristics of Nigerian Non-Governmental Organisations. His knowledge of African diplomacy and experience in India, Egypt and Morocco would form a volume if one were to want to document this.

    I got one of my post-graduate students at Redeemer‘s University Ede to write a master’s thesis on Ambassador Clark. Professor John Pepper Clark wondered why his brother did not deserve a doctoral dissertational assessment, and I replied that my department at the university then was only approved for master’s degrees. The young man did a fine job which requires elucidation and further research. I hope the Clark family will see this academic exercise published as a book for future young Nigerians to learn from.

    Ambassador Clark has run a glorious race of life and he now awaits the crown of glory.

  • Constitutional re-engineering and conspiracy of leaders

    Constitutional re-engineering and conspiracy of leaders

    With only nine states voting on the 44 review Bills focusing principally on mundane issues like prisons, railway, airports, legislative powers, etc. without addressing the nation’s structural defects (Onyedi Ojiabor, The Nation August 7, 2022), it is now apparent President Buhari with a pan- Nigeria mandate with his APC clear majority of 22 governors, 66 senators and about 211 House of Representatives members, is not the messiah the nation was waiting for.

    For the informed, our problem is political. Pervasive poverty, corruption, insurgency, banditry, infrastructural decay in all sectors including education and health are but its symptoms. But instead of our political ruling elite listening to Kwame Nkrumah’s admonition – “seek ye first, the kingdom of politics, every other thing will follow,” all they have done since the run up to independence has been to exploit our crisis of nation building for political gain.

    To betray the nation, their adopted approach was constitutional re-engineering. And their tactic began with living in denial about the heterogeneity of our nation while falsely swearing in the names of their ethnic groups on whose back they periodically rode to power.

    It was ironic that the much criticised invading imperialist powers during their active involvement in constitutional re-engineering,  between 1914 and 1957,  demonstrated their commitment to Nigerians by insisting on a federal structure to protect groups and individuals from greedy political power seekers they correctly predicted would plunge the nation into a ‘turmoil of warring groups’ after their departure.

    This became a self-fulfilling prophecy in 1962, barely two years into independence, when Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Alhaji Amadu Bello pulled down one of the legs of a tripod holding Nigeria together.

    Unlike the giant strides recorded in areas of political development and associated social stability and economic prosperity between 1914 and 1957 when the departing imperialist powers who clearly understood it was in the enlightened self-interest of Britain that the new Nigerian state worked for all, our own political leaders, with faith neither in Nigeria nor the masses in whose name they falsely swore, wanted a Nigerian state that  was,  in the words of Awolowo, ‘held down by some while being milked by a few powerful people.’

    It was Lugard’s 1914 constitution which established a Legislative Council that for the first time provided a forum for our mutually suspicious diverse ethnic nationalities to discuss as Nigerians. This was in addition to the modernisation of our feudal native administrative system. Criticism by our political elite that they were not allowed to participate in the affairs of the country led to Hugh Clifford 1922 Constitution, which introduced the elective principle and encouraged the birth of political parties – Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), the Peoples Union and the Lagos Youth Movement (LYM), later changed to Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM).

    But today, looking back at how Akinsanya , Zik and their group sowed seeds of discord by resorting to lies to mislead followers that looked up to them for leadership and direction in order to destroy The Nigerian Youth Movement, it is not difficult to agree with critics who insisted those power seekers were driven by anything but altruism or nationalism.

    The 1946 Richards Constitution was in response to West African Student Union (WASU) for self-government for Nigeria and other British West African countries and a federal system of government for Nigeria, sentiments echoed by our political power seekers. But they turned around to insist that a widely accepted Constitution that institutionalised regionalism was an imposition without consultation.

    In response, John Macpherson, to lay a solid foundation for his 1951 constitution, allowed our aspiring power holders to consult widely, starting from the villages, and rounding it off in Ibadan in 1950.The fallout from the debate confirmed the duplicity of our political leaders.

    At the Ibadan conference, the Western Region had insisted that the Yoruba people in Ilorin Province i.e. Offa, Kabba and Igbomina should be returned to Western Region and that the Igbo in Benin and Warri provinces should be returned to the Eastern Region to correct Britain’s arbitrary division of the country into provinces without consultation.

    But the North that saw an opportunity of exploiting the population of the affected areas for political bargaining during census and election not only opposed any alteration to existing boundaries but with the support of the East, successfully demanded the excision of Lagos from the West, and the allocation of fifty (50) percent of the total seats in the House of Representatives to the Northern Region.

    The ghost of that concession continues to haunt Nigeria. It was the joker successfully deployed by the British umpire during the 1957 London constitutional debate to whip in line, the Yoruba delegation that had staged a tactical walk-out over the status of Lagos and demand of minorities. They returned only to be told by the umpire that Ahmadu Bello and Zik (united by their conspiracy over status of Lagos and denial of self-actualisation quest of minorities) jointly representing more than half of the country’s population had formed a quorum in the absence of Awolowo and his Yoruba delegates. The two controversial issues became fait-accompli.

    Northern new inheritors of power not only see every proposed constitutional amendment only from the northern prism, they have used the 1951 formula to federalise everything including the education of our children, the road we pass through , the air we breathe and even the water we drink.

    The first constitution solely presided over by Nigerians after the London debacle was  the Republican Constitution passed into law on 19th September 1963, with “We the people of Nigeria; by our representatives here in Parliament assembled, do hereby declare, enact and give to ourselves the following Constitution.”

    But only Zik and Balewa got their power enhanced, with the former becoming President/ Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and with the abolition of the Judicial Service Commission, power to appoint the judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts on the advice of the Prime Ministers while the latter controlled the police through the IG.

    Subsequent constitutional re-engineering by Nigerians only got worse with politicians and their military fronts treating Nigerians as a conquered people. The 1979 presidential system only reflected the mindset of a junta that threw out the parliamentary system to satisfy their quest for a strong centre. Babangida and Abacha self-serving constitutional confabs were designed for self-perpetuation, Abdulsalami in 1999 foisted ‘decree 24’ in the name of a federal constitution.

    Obasanjo’s N1b (N932 million) 2005 CONFAB collapsed under the weight of his third term agenda while the report of Jonathan’s N7b constitutional re-engineering was never implemented because it was a product of political subterfuge.

    Buhari who failed to fulfill his promise to restructure the country to ensure justice, equity and sense of inclusiveness has admitted his failure and expressed his desire to return to Daura even as the ship of state is moving dangerously towards the precipice.

    The challenge today is, therefore, before the Council of State and leaders of our ethnic nationalities, the real owners of Nigeria. If they don’t know where we are going, they will remember the spot where Nigeria’s path to greatness was derailed.

  • Menace of the herd

    Menace of the herd

    The cult of self commands our politics. It thrives on the sinister quirks of sociopaths: superficial charm, grandiloquence, and conceitedness; a need for constant adulation, a penchant for violence, crass sentimentality, sophistry, the inability to feel guilt or remorse, and the inclination to kill.

    This is, of course, the ethic promoted by our dysfunctional social complex. It is deeply cultural and hardwired into the Nigerian psyche.

    It is the ethic of unfettered fanaticism, the principle of partisan zealots. Ask Sam Omatseye. For the umpteenth time perhaps, the celebrated lyricist, journalist, and chairman of The Nation’s editorial board, has received death threats; this time from the murderous mob rooting for a presidential aspirant.

    This is our reality. A society in which the social space inhibits the growth of diverse, independent voices; a space where citizens foster a vicious, poisonous echo chamber that reinforces selfish whims and doctored truths.

    Any truth that conflicts with our views of ourselves is deemed maleficent, unfair and untrue. Any perspective that bashes our bigotries and imparts unpleasant truths to us, is deemed abhorrent.

    The death threats to Omatseye and the subsequent threats issued by his aggressors to citizenry holding uncomplimentary views of their preferred candidate, among other things, reveal us to ourselves.

    Nigeria thrives on the cult of self hence our affliction by murderous citizenship and mob tyranny. The cult of self would be our greatest undoing. Already, its manifestations are rife. It is the misguided belief that one is always right and everyone else got it wrong; it is the conviction that homicidal bias and personal interest, mistaken for individualism, are the same as patriotism and democratic rights.

    In fact, homicidal bias, discernible in our distaste for the view of others, has become the highlight of our perverse citizenship and inclination to stifle others.

     

    The cult of self, wielded by mob tyrants, foster their desire to impose their views and vanities on others. It enhances their threats to unleash death and mayhem on anyone or any group courageous enough to campaign for and vote for any other presidential aspirant aside from their preferred candidate.

    Violence and angst, a sense of victimhood and monopoly of protest, become their justification for threatening and inflicting chaos on anyone whose opinion challenges theirs.

    It is this perverse culture – accentuated by material impoverishment and poverty of the mind – that birthed us terrorism, armed banditry, and the highly lucrative kidnap for ransom sub economy. The cult of self afflicted us with the triggers of these monstrosities, that is, the soulless leadership and business class who mindlessly looted the nation’s treasury, trashed the economy and masterminded nationwide mayhem in furtherance of their selfish interests.

    There is little difference between the cyber-terrorists running our political space amok, and the bloodthirsty hordes of Boko Haram or the armed bandits quietly laying siege to our hitherto peaceful communities.

    The war up north has finally found its way to our doorsteps down south. We can no longer embrace aloofness as our armour against the fierce winds of chaos.

    The fragile peace of the south that we once coveted and celebrated with a smirk was after all, an illusion. It diminishes against pervasive terror.

    But how have we responded to this looming apocalypse? By gas lighting it and immersing in morbid rites of escape, like the cult worship of a political idol and his totems of dubious rhetoric.

    “The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition,” wrote C. Wright Mills.

    In Nigeria, the political celebrity, among others, is the major beneficiary of our dysfunctional social complex.

    Yet millions of Nigerians embrace ignorance even as the toxic underbelly of their political celebrities cum the oligarchic enterprise is hurled in our face; just recently, a viral video of two new governor-elects of rival political parties doing a celebratory dance in a shared private jet made the rounds. It was apparent that the duo shared a tight bond immune to the ravage of acrimony and toxic partisanship pervasive of their neighbouring political spaces.

    Reality asserts the political class’ clinical approach to politics and their commitment to it as a game, where you either win or lose – only to retreat, realign and try another day.

    Little wonder that supposedly sworn political enemies have been seen to unite by their children’s marriage, or betrothal to each other’s daughters. Outside the circuits of their gated commune, ignorant electorate clash and bawl, maim and kill each other in a manic fit to further the interests of their respective political messiah.

    This malady is borne to the point where a man who couldn’t muster a convincing explanation of his ambition to lead, let alone a visionary manifesto, is maliciously shoved to our consciousness as the best President Nigeria could ever have.

    The malaise aggravates whereby a man or woman gets celebrated as a national treasure due to his or her ability to loot public office and deceive us. Then there are those we celebrate for their ability to dribble and score goals on the football pitch, or breast the tape faster than others in a track and field event. Of course, the latter in particular shouldn’t be faulted for exciting a cult following among mostly superficial beings addicted to entertainment as escape from our self-inflicted woes.

    On the flipside, however, the teachers responsible for furnishing Nigeria with all manners of genii, visionaries, technocrats, sports champions, and nation builders, and the security operatives responsible for protecting our lives and property, are treated with disdain by the citizenry and the state.

    The policemen, soldiers and the press, who are burdened with the task of protecting us from the worst from abroad and among us, are persistently humiliated and tortured by the Nigerian collective.

    The institutionalised degradation of our teachers, security operatives and the press offers public spectacle until their humiliation and debasement hits too close to home and our comfort zones.

    The lingering ASUU strike that has rendered several youths “useless” and frustrated, the humiliation and debasement of the striking lecturers; death threats to journalists amid institutionalised harassment of the press; and the disdainful treatment of the nation’s armed forces currently hit too close to home.

    Recent intelligence reports suggesting that the federal seat of power in Aso Rock, Abuja, and Lagos State among others, are on the radar of some persons planning terror attacks across the country and the widespread apprehension of the citizenry and political class are instructive.

    At this crucial period, who are those we look to for solace and security? Is it our celebrity politician, reality show vixen, pornstar, sports star, actress, musician or social influencer?

    Who are those we look to for direction and reassurance that all would be well? From whom do we seek conviction and extract a promise that we’d be safe? Is it the menacing herd prowling the social media and public space, hurling invective and death threats at anyone with differing political views? Is it the virulent horde wishing anarchy on Nigeria from home and abroad?

    The chaos of naira decline, looming food crisis, and the threat of cyber-bullies rarely prick the illusions that warp our consciousness like the incumbent threat of nationwide terror attacks.

    To deal with the latter, we look to the police. This is quite instructive.