The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Growing right wing tendencies in the USA

    Growing right wing tendencies in the USA

    The November 2020 presidential election in the United States that brought into office President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris was supposed to have settled for some time, the direction of politics in the United States at least for the next two or four years when congressional and presidential elections hold respectively.  But it has not settled anything. As of two weeks ago, the Republican convention in Texas still declared illegitimate the election of President Biden and former President Donald Trump continues to go round the country and to hold press conferences about how he was robbed of victory by entrenched interests in the United States who allowed unqualified people to vote him out of office and to manipulate voting machines to arrive at predetermined answers in favour of his opponent. Right now the Congressional committee probing the January 6, 2021  invasion of Congress while counting the electoral votes, a formal process to affirm the votes of the people about who becomes president, has more or less concluded that the whole thing was planned and directed by the power-hungry President Trump. It was him who engineered and directed a coup d’etat against the United States government which he headed in an attempt to prevent a peaceful transfer of power to his successor. Despite the damning conclusive series of evidence and testimonies including from senior members of his cabinet including the attorney general and members of his family, former President Trump has remained without remorse and he is threatening to announce his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election.

    In all this, he seems to have a large following and support from the majority of the Republican Party. The reason for this support is that Trump is saying what white Americans believe but are not willing to mount the rostrum to say and this is that the United States is a “white man’s” country and should avoid being swamped by Latinos, Blacks and Asians who, put together may in future constitute the majority. This scenario is being preached to poor white uneducated people whose only self-acclaimed advantage they have in a world dominated by knowledge industry is their white skin. These are the fighting forces for reactionary politics being unfortunately manipulated by the Republican Party of Donald Trump and increasingly by the Supreme Court of the United States.

    Unlike many liberal democracies all over the world, the United States is perhaps the only country that has a Supreme Court whose members are categorized according to the party of the president who nominated them. One would have thought that these judges should be neutral once they are confirmed to adjudicate on cases in the house of law technically and philosophically blind and without reference for one’s gender, color class or race. But in the America of Trump era, the Supreme Court has become the Republican court. The Supreme Court is made up of nine judges so that at any given point, they are able to make a decision without being deadlocked. Now that there are six Conservative (Republican) judges versus three liberal (Democratic) judges, the court’s direction has become clear. But no one expected that the Supreme Court would go back on judicial decisions of the past and that have become part of the law of the land in some cases for a hundred or fifty years and begin to unravel them. This is what the Supreme Court of the United States has been doing in the last one week and no one knows how it will end.

    Conservative politicians in the United States used to decry any activist role by the Supreme Court when it decided in the past against segregated schools which it determined could not be separate and equal and decided that public schools should be integrated in the famous Board of Education vs. Brown case of 1952 in which the Supreme Court headed by Justice Earl Warren ruled that separate schools were unconstitutional. Now in recent decision by the Supreme Court, separate private schools set up to undermine this landmark decision are now said to be entitled to state funding on the spurious grounds of the fundamental rights of the parents and the children in those schools. It is like asking the National Universities Commission and TETFUND to make annual allocations to private universities in Nigeria. The court also ruled against the state of New York in its law of asking anyone who wants to carry concealed fire arms to show “due cause”. The court ruled against this reasonable state law by saying the law permitting Americans to carry weapon cannot be bridged in any way or form by a state legislation. People are now legitimately asking whether Americans will now be allowed to carry “concealed weapons” on aero-planes. This judgement came the same week when the Congress of the United States after 30 years, passed a tepid gun law to restrict the purchase of guns fueling the epidemic of gun violence in the United States. The criticism of this decision had hardly died down when the Supreme Court again came down on the 50 years or so law that has permitted women to have access to safe abortion in the United States. The so called Roe vs. Wade law was based on the principle that a woman should have absolute control over her own body. Those who are pro-life on the other hand argue that the unborn child to be aborted also has rights. The question then was asked about when an embryo became a child and the answer was when a heartbeat can be scientifically detected. This has been an emotional issue with women and it is also tied up with the question of women’s rights versus the right to life which some religious bodies like the Catholic Church and Evangelical churches hold very dearly to the point that the Catholic bishop of President Joe Biden diocese threatened to bar the president from Holy communion because of his support for abortion rights.

    The question has also become a Republican versus Democratic Party issue and may have to be resolved politically if women who feel strongly about the issue can mobilize their members to change the political balance in both houses of the United States congress. As part of the creeping abandonment of liberal tendencies by the Supreme Court, it recently ruled for the return of prayers to school as part of peoples’ fundamental human rights.

    As a Christian and a church elder, I am for prayers ceaselessly but in the case of America, any tendency towards church control in an essentially secular state is not in the right direction. Even though I do not support anything about civil rights of LGBTQ people but I will not go as far as denying them their rights. But as implied by Justice Thomas, the Black judge on the Supreme Court, every settled decision could be opened to review in the future. The eroding by legislations in several state houses in recent times of the Civil Rights of 1964 is an indication that the President LB Johnson’s 1964 Civil Rights Act may be subject to Supreme Court review.  This will be a bad omen for civil rights of black peoples.

    The direction of America towards racism, isolationism, and militarism is not in the interest of world peace and harmony. The coming into power by centrist and left wing parties in recent past in Mexico, Canada, Columbia, Chile, and Argentina and possibly in Brazil with the return of Lula da Silva next year shows America as an odd man out even in the Americas not to talk in the rest of the world. The world cannot do without America and America cannot remain an island completely self-sufficient and cut off from the rest of the world and totally oblivious of the thinking of the rest of humanity and expecting itself to survive.

    One hopes that Americans will see the light and reverse course from the Trumpian tendencies and reactionary politics in its vital institutions of the Congress and the judiciary particularly the apex court – the Supreme Court of the United States.

  • Adieu, great dad

    Adieu, great dad

    GROWING up as a child under my father, Sadiku Okhifo Ogienagbon, who died on May 27 was tough. Though he was a father with a heart of gold, he took no nonsense from his children. Indeed, he brooked no nonsense from anybody. He was not easily intimidated nor awed by others no matter how big they were.

    He respected constituted authority though. I still remember that day some 40 years ago at the Ikeja GRA Praying Ground. I was in his Datsun 120 car when a big man in a Mercedes Benz car parked by my side and enquired: “where’s the owner of this car?”

    “He is on the field praying”, I answered. “Please, call him”. Without another word, I left to get my dad, leaving my kid brother that I was tending to, behind.

    My father followed me swiftly to the car and on sighting the chauffeur- driven man, who turned out to be his MD, greeted him thus: “Good morning sir”. It was the first time in my life that I would see him defer to another man in that manner.

    To everything the man said, my father always concluded his response with ‘sir’. On being informed that the prayers had been concluded, Mr Giwa-Amu, then Managing Director of Cadbury drove off, apparently in search of another praying ground to observe the Eid prayers.

    I recall this encounter with nostalgia as another Eid-El-Kabir (the Muslim festival of sacrifice) draws near. Giwa-Amu was to play a huge role in my father’s career growth at Cadbury, not because they were from the same state but because he found S.O., as he called my dad, diligent. Baba, as we his children called him was a workaholic. He worked as if he was going to die the next day.

    Everyday he lived, he believed, was a bonus. He was not afraid of death, but the feeling of death always gnawed at the back of his mind because his father died young. He was prepared to go early too, if that was his fate. So, everything he did, every word he spoke to me was laced with this piece of advice: “you better sit up Lawal, you may not see me around for long”.

    That was when my head was high up in the air. I was too stubborn and not studious enough for my father’s liking. As his first child, just as he was of his own father, his expectations of me were high. “You must set the pace for your siblings and you can only do that by facing your studies. But here you are hiding your report card from me because you did not do well. What is happening to you? You were not like this in primary school. If I die now, you will suffer”.

    Eventually, he did not die young. I believe that my dad lived long because he was not destined to die young. My belief was reinforced by a robbery attack on him in 1982. He was driving into his Ikeja home when robbers opened fire on him at point blank range. They left him drenched in a pool of his blood as they attempted to escape with the bullet-ridden Peugeot 504 Estate Wagon.

    They abandoned the car after it got stuck in a ditch just down the street, a stone’s throw from our house and fled on foot. As shouts of “awon ole ni, awon ole ni, won ti yin Baba Lawal nibon”, (it is robbers, it is robbers, they have shot Lawal’s father) rent the air, people trooped out of their houses, as it was still dusk, to find my father on the ground moaning. With no other vehicle readily available, he was conveyed in his abandoned car to the hospital where doctors battled to save his life.

    The doctors removed several pellets from his body and said others in highly sensitive areas would have to remain where they were because removing them would be risky. After his discharge from the hospital, he left for the village where people said “pellets can be called out through traditional means”. Those who witnessed it, claimed that some pellets were also removed that way. Despite that, he still carried pellets in his body till he died at the age of 89.

    The end came 40 years after in the early hours of May 27. He died in his Alagbole near Lagos home and was buried in Imiokono Jagbe, Edo State, on May 28. He was the oldest man in Imiokono where he was installed the Odionwele six years ago. As we gather in Imiokono to celebrate the 40th day Firdaus and final funeral rites of our patriarch between July 4 and 5, I remember a father, who touched many lives and did everything for his children, especially me.

    My father saw me through thick and thin. He wanted me to turn out well because after his death, the headship of the family will fall on me. I thank God that I became closer to him in his last days on earth. How can I ever forget you, Baba. You were a father in a million. My siblings and I, your grandchildren and great grandchildren were lucky to have had you. Adieu, the husband of Aisetu.

     

  • Their Lordships’ revolt

    Their Lordships’ revolt

    Their Lordships were livid and they did not mask their anger. It was something that they had kept to themselves for long, waiting and hoping that things would be better. Perhaps, things will get better now that they have exploded. As Justices of the Supreme Court, they sit at the apex of the Judiciary. It is a position that many judges crave, but only a few attain.

    As the chosen ones, they know that much is expected of them because much will be given to them. They believe that they are fulfilling their own part of the bargain, but no corresponding response from the government. To them, such arrangement is faulty; the chicken should not come before the egg, but the other way round. Here they are, giving of their best when they are not provided with the best.

    ‘What can we do to draw attention to our plight?’ They must have asked themselves, knowing full well that it is a taboo for people in their position to go public with their case like other class of workers. Judges are conservative by nature and none is moreso than Justices of the Supreme Court. Their rules of engagement are full of many ‘thou shall not…’ and one of these is that they must maintain sealed lips in good and bad times.

    This is to say that judges must be seen and not heard. But what should a judge do when he is not provided with the working tools that he requires? Keep quiet and suffer in silence or buck the system? Their Lordships went for the latter and opened a Pandora’s box. Through their letter of protest to their brother-judge, the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad, the Justices reeled out their complaint. All is not well with the highest court in the land, they told him as if he did not know.

    The thrust of their complaint borders on poor welfare and dearth of working tools. Some of their grievances are non-replacement of bad vehicles, epileptic power supply at the Supreme Court, lack of drugs at the court’s clinic, sudden stoppage of foreign workshops and trainings, no provision of qualified legal assistants and lack of Internet facilities. The list is endless. It was a shocking revelation to many who thought everything was well inside there when the matter hit public domain.

    ‘If things are this bad at the Supreme Court, how will they be at the lower courts?’ People wondered. It was bad publicity for the apex court and CJ Muhammad is not happy with his fellow Justices for washing their dirty linen in public. If he were not the CJ, won’t he have signed the petition too? He should not think that he is insulated from the court’s larger problems which were made public by his colleagues. He should be grateful to them for taking that step, no matter how bad he may feel about it.

    His reaction on Tuesday was a reflection of how he feels about it all. The CJN reminded his colleagues that judges everywhere are to be seen and not heard, accusing them of doing something “akin to dancing naked at the market square with the ripple effect of the said letter”. With due respect, he seemed to miss the point there. His Lordship should not see this as a personal matter between him and his colleagues, but something that touches on their collective interest.

    As CJN, he should appreciate that such complaints would be addressed to him because he wears two caps. First, he is a manager and then, an arbiter like his protesting colleagues. His duty is to take the complaint up with the appropriate authority so that it can be properly addressed. It is not in any one’s interest for the Supreme Court to work at cross purpose, not now and certainly not in the future. It is better for the Justices to remain united and not be divided by the petition. And the CJN must lead in this regard. May the matter end well.

     

    Salute to bravery

    OtarighoFORTY-SIX year-old Ejiro Otarigbo won the people’s heart with his heroic act of driving a burning fuel tanker from a populated area to the bank of a river in Delta State on June 10 to avert a disaster. For 15 minutes, he manoeuvred his way through traffic to get to the bank of Agbarho River where he eventually jumped out of the burning tanker. It takes a lionheart to do what Otarigbo did. Any other driver would have long jumped out of the tanker to save his own life, leaving the hundreds or even thousands of others on the road that day, to their own fate.

    Otarigbo put his own life at risk to save others. He should be celebrated by his country for his calm disposition in skilfully driving the tanker through heavy traffic and safely steering it into the riverbank. His action showed rare courage in the face of danger, just the same way an illegal Malian immigrant climbed the balconies of a highrise Paris apartment in 2018 to save a boy from falling from the fourth floor. The French government immediately honoured him, and offered him a job and the country’s citizenship. This is how it should be.

    Otarigbo deserves that kind of honour and more. His feat should not go unrecognised by the Federal Government. Recognising him will encourage other Nigerians to rise above self and be of help and service to others always no matter the inherent danger. As this hero said in a newspaper interview, “whatever situation you find yourself in, make the best of it. I took that decision because I don’t want to be described as a ‘killer’. I don’t want to be called a name that is not mine”. How many of us think that way?

     

    What a name!

    Another word has entered the nation’s political lexicon. The word, placeholder, was used by a paper to describe the running mate of All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. What makes Alhaji Kabiru Masari a placeholder when Tinubu did not call him that? Masari’s name was duly submitted before the expiration of the June 17 deadline for doing so. Just because it was done quietly, the paper tagged Masari a ‘placeholder’.

    In a fitting response, Tinubu’s media aide Tunde Rahman said his principal followed the law in submitting Masari’s name. The running mate, he added, is at liberty to withdraw, if he so wishes within the timeframe allowed by the electoral umpire. So, why the fuss?

  • Ekiti gubernatorial election

    Ekiti gubernatorial election

    Out of almost one million registered voters and more than 700,000 people who collected their voter cards less than 400,000 actually voted in the gubernatorial election in Ekiti state last Saturday June 18. This is a couple of thousands less than those who voted in the last election in 2018. Is this the result of voters’ apathy or fatigue or feelings that not much would change?

    There was an apocryphal story about the 1993 election which Moshood Abiola won. The story was that some peasant farmers in Ekiti on the morning of the election were accosted on their way to their farms. When asked why they were going to their farms and abandoning their civic duty, they retorted that they thought there would no longer be elections after Obafemi Awolowo had died and that elections died with their favourite politician! This is not likely to be the case this time because even the rapidly declining population of farmers in Ekiti knows that there had been post-Awolowo elections in Ekiti. The decline may be explained in that many fake electors registered. This is the pattern all over Nigeria. When there is a census either for population, school enrolment, city planning, electoral roll and even for vaccinations against diseases, there are always attempts to cheat through over registration because individuals and states always think there is money to be made.

    I remember a case of a northern state which returned a figure of 2.5 million children under five years when the federal government was planning enrolment of children into its UBE program. The governor of the said state felt ashamed when he was told the entire population of his state was about 3.5 million and 2.5 million of them could not be under five years! Perhaps in the next population census, the federal government should link it with tax revenue and one will be surprised that our ballyhooed population of over 200 million would come crashing down to about 100 million which I believe is more like the real and actual figure of our population. I have travelled all over this country from  Owo, Akure, Ado Ekiti, Ilesha, Oshogbo,  Lagos, Ibadan, Oyo Ogbomosho, Ilorin, Jebba, Mokwa, Kontagora, Kaduna, Zaria,  Katsina, Kano, Bauchi, Maiduguri down to Yola, Jalingo, Makurdi, Lafia, Jos, Akwanga, Keffi, Abuja, Lokoja Benin, Asaba, Onitsha, Enugu, Aba, Port Harcourt, Owerri, Calabar, Uyo,  Badagry, Abeokuta, Sokoto and so on. The point I am making is seeing is believing. We deceive ourselves by all these fabricated and inflated census figures.

    Now back to the Ekiti election. It is heartening to know that Ekiti now appears to be solidly back into the progressive camp of Nigerian politics. I know that people may say there is no difference between the PDP and the APC but for whatever it’s worth, some of us would like to think the APC represents the progressive wing of Nigerian politics. There is a linear connection between the pre-independence Action Group party ( AG ) of Obafemi Awolowo  to the UPN, the SDP, the AD, the ACN and now the APC. This is arguably true but whatever it is, this is the general belief in the Southwest of Nigeria. The brief domination of Ekiti by Ayo Fayose and his party, the PDP has now been exposed as an aberration backed by presidents Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan using federal might to impose their political party on our people.

    I have nothing against Fayose; he is actually a jolly good fellow. But I detest his politics of hedonistic crudity of so-called “stomach infrastructure” in which he reduced himself as governor of a state to buying roasted plantain and roasted corn and wolfing them down with palm wine with the plebeians on the streets of Ado Ekiti as a system of government. Ekiti people are too educated to allow this humiliating parody of democracy to be their contribution to the evolving Nigerian special variant of democracy. Thank God, Kayode Fayemi has shown the world who we  really are and by the current election, he has buried forever, the odious and degrading governance system that elevated gruffness and aggression rather than reason and polished discussion as the best way of ruling a people, even if they are poor.

    In the 16 local governments in the state, the APC won in 15 conceding to the PDP Effon Alaaye where Bisi Kolawle the PDP flag bearer comes from. Bisi Kolawole has graciously conceded the election to Abiodun Oyebamiji, the APC candidate. This is a civilised way of doing things. Segun Oni unfortunately wants to challenge the election in a law court. This is his right but to what end? He should just accept his defeat and go home to rest after mounting a glorious challenge to the status quo. In the interest of the state, I suggest Governor Fayemi, the leader of the APC should visit Oni and make up with him. There is no doubt that Oni has a reasonably sizeable following in the state who believes he represents honour and integrity close to the attributes  for which Ekiti  people of my generation were famous for. Even though Segun Oni has moved from PDP to APC and now to SDP, he should settle down and remain in a party to which his people are ideologically inclined to and certainly it will not be the PDP judging from their political antecedent.

    It is now left for me to congratulate the newly elected governor who will be sworn in come October. One hopes he will concentrate on whatever his predecessor has not been able to finish in terms of infrastructure. I pray that in the last year of Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency, the Ado – Akure road will be dualised  jointly by both Ekiti and Ondo states  but  the cost of which will be reimbursed by the federal government to facilitate rapid linkage of the economies of the two agricultural states producing cocoa, the second foreign exchange earner for the country. The new Ekiti governor should also consolidate on areas of increment in internal revenue and foreign and local investments and adding value to our produce and whatever mineral resources that God has put under our soil including granite which can be used for flooring of houses when polished. The problem of Ekiti is not establishing tertiary institutions; we have enough and our sons and daughters can also find their ways to federal institutions all over the country by the dint of hard work and competitive ability. Our problem is job creation and providing the right infrastructure of roads, water supply, security and electricity that will facilitate rapid development through industrialisation, value addition to local produce and employment. We should also under the scheme of innovation that should be located in the governor’s office, find a way of converting our high cerebral intensity to material production.

  • Much ado about Muslim-Muslim ticket

    Much ado about Muslim-Muslim ticket

    Nigerian opinion leaders like playing the ostrich. The argument about Muslim/Muslim ticket has suddenly become ‘the issue’ with pastors issuing warnings and failed political leaders threatening fire and brimstone in an attempt to hide under religion to cover up their failures.

    But we must not lose focus of the problem. The nation’s scourge are herdsmen terrorists, bandits and kidnappers who hide under religion to wage war against the nation, sacrilegiously torching churches and mosques to massacre worshippers and attacking subsistence farmers and confiscating their farm land. They took control of our ungoverned as well as reserved forests from where they visit violence on our highway travellers and train passengers, kidnapping Christians and Muslims without discrimination for ransom.

    It got worse under Obasanjo/Atiku Christian/Muslim ticket. It today threatens the survival of our nation under Buhari/Osinbajo Muslim/Christian ticket. Those heating up the polity over Muslim/Muslim ticket are therefore only begging the question.

    We must not forget how we got to this sorry path. Our problem is neither Christianity nor Islam. It is the exploitation of the religious sentiments for political gains which started in the north, populated by Hausa/Fulani, 95% of whom profess Islamic faith.  It became an art with Uthman Dan Fodio’s conquest of the Hausa states between 1804 and 1808 in the guise of promoting orthodox Islamic practice to a people that had embraced Islamic faith since the 11th century. But to prove it was a ruse to grab political and economic power, of the 11 Emirs, Dan Fodio, the revered Islamic teacher appointed after the pacification the Hausa states, only one was Hausa while the rest were his brothers, cousins and others of Fulani extraction.

    Their defeat by the British did not change the narrative. While they lost to their British conquerors, political and economic power, they retained their control over religion, a more potent instrument of domination described Karl Marx describes “as opium of the people”, which ‘drugged, numbing their senses and disposing them to put up with their wretched existence so that  they would be rewarded in a ‘mythical’ after life”.

    The only serious threat to their iron grip on those treated as serfs through exploitation of religion sentiments, came from Awolowo who in the late 1950s tried “to bridge the educational gap between that region and the western and eastern region” because   he saw “the lack of education as a stumbling block against political enlightenment of the whole northern region”. But Awo lost the 1959 election because ‘the voters could not make up their own minds and make their own choices. Rather, the innocent people of the north had to be dictated to by emirs and the elites who feed them on a regular basis”.

    Although he was jailed by vindictive hegemonic power in the north partly for attempting to liberate those kept under servitude in the name of religion, he however predicted that “sooner than later, the leaders of the north will see the repercussion of their selfishness and carelessness in their attitude towards western education” when the northern youth start asking their leaders some hard questions.

    The exploitation of northern poor in the name of religion continued unchallenged under successive northern civilian and military leaders including Babangida who unilaterally dragged the nation to Organisaton of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the fourth republic northern ‘political sharia’ promoters. For instance, Ahmed Sani of Zamfara State, claiming implementation of sharia will ‘assist the state to achieve  social and economic transformation” on October 27, 1999 launched the sharia system in contravention of section 10 of the 1999 constitution which bars the federal government or the state government from adopting of any religion as state religion.

    Other states including Bauchi, Niger, Katsina, Kano, Sokoto, Kebbi, Gombe, Adamawa and Taraba soon joined Zamfara political sharia train. In fact, some of the hypocritical northern governors sponsored youths for indoctrination under Osama Bin Laden then hiding in Sudan with not a few radicalized graduates returning to form the nucleus of today’s insurgent groups.

    The introduction of Sharia law according to one observer had only “forced people to withdraw into the womb of their religions since people’s religion and ethnicity today determine access to power, resources and privileges”. In Zamfara where it all began,  Yerima and his successors after 20 years, left  a legacy of a state under siege and in ruins where most schools  have only a teacher each,  where the state lost 20 doctors because of the state inability to pay salaries leaving 20 doctors to the state’s 23 hospitals according to one time Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole.

    The story is not much different from other Sharia states where some of the eight million of out-of-school northern children have become easy but angry recruits for radical graduates of Bin Laden School of terrorism.

    The chicken finally came home to roost as predicted by Awolowo. The neglected angry young men who found relevance only in terrorism are today making the north ungovernable. Overwhelmed by the new challenges, the response of some northern leaders was either playing the ostrich or, make some deliberate effort at exporting the northern self-inflicted problem to the south.

    In government we have President Buhari’s ‘loyal gatekeepers’ and outside government the likes of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who in a statement issued on March 11, 2019 claimed that Nigerian Fulani herdsmen, rated by Global Terrorism Index as the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world, coming after Boko Haram, ISIS and Al-Shabab, “are peaceful and live in harmony with other ethnicities”.

    We have Miyetti Allah Kautal  Hore who while threatening ‘more blood will flow in Benue if the ranching law is not rescinded’ during his May 30, 2017 Abuja World Press Conference’ called on Fulani herders in all of West Africa to come into Benue to help them reclaim their land’. We can add Alhaji Sale Bayeri who while demanding for an un-hindered grazing access in areas he identified as ‘trouble spots’ spread across 75 local government areas across 21 states warned that “the Boko Haram insurgency would be a child’s play if herdsmen and farmers’ conflicts are not resolved in a way that is acceptable to all sides”.

    The good news however is that on the side are equally influential Fulani leaders. Here we have the tribes of  Governor Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna  who is not only addressing the problems of Nigerian herdsmen but has also called for elimination of bandits and killer herdsmen he describes as “non-Nigerian Fulani from Niger, Mali, Chad and other such places”. We have Aminu Masari of Katsina and Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano who are rehabilitating herdsmen from their states.

    The solution to or current challenges is not going to come from a northern vice presidential candidate from northern 5% Christians but the 95% Hausa/Fulani Muslims and their leaders with pan-Nigeria outlook. With those identified above, Nigerian stakeholders can start from where Awolowo stopped by blackmailing northern political sharia states to embark on free and compulsory education for their youths.

    Police as a vital state institution often defines a society. Nigeria stakeholders can have new partners in these new northern leaders to instituionalise community policing that can draw a balance between public safety, social order and individual liberty and freedom, hitherto frustrated by those holding President Buhari hostage.

    And finally, since the national question is what often defines identity and loyalty, with President Buhari’s failure to seize an historic opportunity to become a statesman by restructuring the country, I think there is now a window of opportunity for Nigeria’s stakeholders to join hands with these new northern leaders towards saving our country.

  • Seeking the Nigerian lyric

    Seeking the Nigerian lyric

    Patriotism thrives on cultural standards. The songs that every Nigerian knows by heart, the lore of nationhood, and the politics of suburban, boondocks poetry manifest the kernel of Nigeria’s culture and the substance of her sovereignty.

    A similar dynamic undergirds our political and literary traditions. Politics thrives on literary culture and vice versa. What shouldn’t we do for an evergreen story? What shouldn’t we give? Evergreen storylines make up the fabric of our collective narrative; when progressively spun, they are endlessly fascinating, yielding fresh insights through the imagination of the writer or filmmaker, who milks history and recalibrates reality to espouse a positive national lyric.

    What is the Nigerian lyric? What is our reality? Nothing worth celebrating perhaps. In search of the proverbial elixir, we have drunk water from an unnamed stream and filled our bellies with toxins.

    The superiority of Western democracy is one of the supreme constructions of imperialism and the poisonous elixir of Nigeria and her neighbours on the African continent.

    Nigerians elevate it with obsessive love. It is the magic pill to the nation’s ceaseless headaches. Demagogues exploit its hackneyed tropes in a torrid caress of the vanities and base sentimentality of the gullible masses.

    Politicians chant its praise. Social commentators extol its virtues in their vituperation in the mainstream and new media. Everybody is a sucker for its perceived benefits.

    But the West must never be blamed for our collective ignorance – the United States in particular. The latter’s democratic enterprise is one of the most profitable constructions in its bid to “make America great again,” at any cost.

    It is both music and philosophy, a sensory stream of thought feeding generations of writers, political activists, filmmakers, politicians, gender rights activists, academia, and so on.

    We must understand, however, that Western democracy and foreign policy, while deliberately presented as two tines on the same fork, are sustained by oft deceptive ideals and contradictory precepts of influence, crudely wedged into the nuclear powers’ global dominance stratagem. It is imperial politics without heart: ideologically deficit, dangerously manipulative, and Janus-faced.

    Democracy and foreign aid do for America, for instance, what painting and sculpture did for the Italians. They are potent tools for wooing and recolonising the world. A few good minds with an intuitive grasp of the hard-edged imperialist designs of the Western agenda are spuriously labelled as conspiracy theorists.

    Those who would die embracing and entrenching exotic doctrines must understand that there is no way this could be achieved without horror, given the marked differences in culture, temperament, and histories defining different nations of the world.

    It’s about time we identified values complementary to our precepts of humane governance and development. We cannot dwell, for instance, like Americans or Brits in Nigeria. We can only assimilate aspects of their culture complimentary of ours. We must always synthesise from the most humane sociopolitical cultures around the world.

    The Japanese, Chinese, Bhutanese, Arabians, Europeans, Americans, Ghanaians, Rwandans, to mention a few, all have different aspects of their governance traditions and cultures that are worthy of emulation but not until we sieve and winnow them to make their preferred aspects amenable to our politics, economy and socio-cultural institutions. We must always remember that the Libyans, Afghans to mention a few, wildly embraced a dandy dream of freedom, but instead, they got trapped in a sinister nightmare. To date, they are paying dearly for it.

    Back home, it’s even scarier to note that our arts and literature have become very weakened in our bid to entrench American and European Renaissance in our cultural frames. More worrisome is our artists’ rabid deconstruction of Nigerianness.

     

    Writers and filmmakers, for instance, struggle to acculturate the Nigerian landscape with defective foreign mores. Thus they corrupt their presentations and stifle the possibility of attaining homegrown, practicable solutions to oft politicised conflict. Nonetheless, they have a dedicated industry of cheerleaders and courtiers – journalists and so-called influencers – whose job is to romanticise their follies as the valiance sorely needed to reinvigorate Nigeria’s creative sector.

    Themes glorifying repulsive gender wars, mindless youth rebellion, and the orchestration of social hierarchies are aggressively projected and patronised to the detriment of rational, progressive, and didactic art. This hurts us immeasurably.

    While creative industries in America, Britain, China, India, Korea, Malaysia, Russia, and France, to mention a few, commit genii and capital resources to constantly recreate and embellish their political narratives, with progressive outcomes, the Nigerian creative sector obsessively weaponises and projects vulgar themes of citizenship and romance.

    The chthonic projection of Western depravities and virulent awareness has become a thing among local artists. We see it sprout across genres: drama, prose, poetry, and beyond. It seizes mainstream and indie filmmaking, corrupting Nollywood inside out, as you read.

    Otherwise brilliant and perceptive filmmakers denounce patriotism and attack all it means to be Nigerian. Ultimately, they corrupt the artistic vocabulary of Nigeria’s literary arts, turning it into a meditation on society’s debauched nature as Nigeria’s secret truth. They celebrate degenerate spirit using aggressive cues of prurient art, promiscuity, gendered storms, and toxic sexuality.

    While the consequences of such dross manifest in real-time, Nigeria welcomes from abroad, more insolent corruption of its media space by degenerate reality shows like the BBN without putting up a fight. The damage to the cultural psyche is incalculable.

    The United States had always appreciated the depth and promise of the arts, and entertainment sector. Thus the US government and Hollywood’s symbiotic relationship. Washington DC provides intriguing plots for filmmakers and the latter reciprocates by glamourising the political class and reinventing America’s exploits on the global stage.

    Between 1911 and 2017, more than 800 feature films received support from the US Government’s Department of Defence (DoD). These included blockbuster franchises such as the Iron Man, Transformers, and The Terminator.

    On television, over 1,100 titles received Pentagon backing – 900 of them since 2005, from Flight 93 to Ice Road Truckers to Army Wives. The inclusion of individual episodes for shows with a cult following, like Homeland, 24, and NCIS, as well as the established influence of the White House and FBI, further establishes that the American government methodically supports thousands of hours of entertainment.

    Aside from the profitable impact on the US entertainment sector, the entertainment partnership and offerings are oft deployed to foster a positive image for the United States on the international stage, while offering its citizens ample channels to exorcise their post-9/11 demons.

    Films and literature could be used to foster national healing and patriotism. And they may also be used to destroy a people and ruin nations in pursuit of global good or the “enlightened self-interest” of a dubious superpower.

    With very few exceptions, like Tunde Kelani and his Mainframe Studios, Nollywood churns out too many rabidly wrought revenge-fantasies in which the Nigerian female perpetually scores retribution over her treacherous male; lest we forget the increasingly base novel and TV plots by which Nigerian audiences are lured to nurse innate demons of toxic sexuality, ethnic intolerance, religious bigotry, virulent feminism, and sexist rage.

    It’s about time the government partnered with the arts sector to reinvent the Nigerian story while channeling humane governance and patriotism. This is not a call for government censorship of progressive art. Rather it’s a call for institutionalised support via public-spirited funding and ideological partnership.

    It’s about time we refined the subtleties that make the Nigerian dream the fantasy of thieves, slatterns, and blinkered murderers.

     

  • Numbers, faith and ability

    Numbers, faith and ability

    The burning national issue today is who becomes the running mates of the presidential candidates of the two leading parties. The national discourse became intense after Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s emergence as the standard-bearer of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). It is as if the whole country was waiting for him to pick his party’s ticket so as to raise the tone of the debate. Is it a debate, as such?

    In the true sense of it, it is not. At the same time, it cannot be called noise of the market place. Call it the ventillation of a wish, and you may not be wrong. The wish of people who feel strongly that the candidates and their running mates must not be of the same faith. Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar is the presidential candidate of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He is a Muslim like Tinubu. The two of them are in the race with 15 others, who cut across the Islamic and Christian faith.

    So, voters who believe that the contestants must be from a  particular faith have a large pool to pick from. Let us look at the other candidates and the faith they profess. Former Anambra State Governor Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) is a Christian. Former Kano State Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) – Muslim; Christopher Imumolen, Accord Party (AP)- Christian; Hamza Al-Mustapha, Action Alliance (AA) – Muslim; Omoyele Sowore, African Action Congress (AAC) – Christian; Dumebi Kachikwu, African Democratic Congress (ADC) – Christian; Peter Umeadi, All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) – Christian; Yusuf Dantalle, Allied Peoples Movement (APM) – Muslim.

    Yabagi Sani, Action Democratic Party (ADP) – Muslim; Okwudili Nwa-Anyadike, National Rescue Mission (NRM) – Christian; Kola Abiola, Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) – Muslim, Adewole Adebayo, Social Democratic Party (SDP) – Christian; Malik Ado-Ibrahim, Young Peoples Party (YPP) – Muslim; Dan Nwanyanwu, Zenith Democratic Alliance (ZDA) – Christian; and Sunday Adenuga, Boot Party (BP) – Christian.

    From this wide field, the electorate are free to make their choice. Those who think that they will be better off with a Christian as the president are free to vote for such a candidate in the February 23, 2023 election. Those who prefer to go with a Muslim are not also inhibited from making that choice. We are faced with this faith issue in the forthcoming election because of the way we have taken religion in our daily life. We tend to see issues from the myopic prism of not only religion, but also region.

    We believe that only people of our faith and ethnic nationality can be of benefit to us. We have jettisoned competence on the altars of religion and region. This is highly unfortunate. Where we come from and the God we serve have now come to determine us as a people. Are we no longer serving one God, whether as Muslims or Christians?

    In a country of over 200 million people where talents abound, thoughts, ideas and the innate qualities of man to bring out the best in him, even in the harshest of conditions, have been thrown overboard for these twin issues of religion and region which have been dividing us as a people. Yet, as a nation, we crave development.

    How can our country grow, if we continue to think in terms of religion and region? Who says a Muslim or a Christian must be the President or Vice-President? Can’t a traditionalist or an atheist, for that matter, also aspire to lead the country if they have what it takes to do so? At this juncture of our life – Nigeria will be 62 on October 1 – we should be looking for capable hands to lead the country, whether they are believers or not; Igbo, Yoruba or Fulani. In the past 61 years, we have had either a Muslim or a Christian as our leader, either in agbada or khaki, but what have we got to show for this leadership?

    Nothing! Many of them left the nation high and dry. This is why till today, we are still searching for a true leader who will take us out of the woods. We should not spoil the search with religion or region. We have an opportunity of a lifetime to make the right decision in next year’s election. Before us are 17 candidates seeking to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023. Our civic duty is to sift the wheat from the chaff. Little wonder that bookmakers have reduced the contest to a two-horse race between Tinubu and Atiku. Indeed, the duo have political antecedents which others cannot boast of.

    But they cannot run alone; they have to do so with running mates, who must be known by tomorrow to fulfil a vital component of the race. If they fail to meet the deadline, they will be disqualified from running. No serious candidate will want to be disqualified at this stage after coming this far. Tinubu and Atiku are in a dilemma over picking a running mate within the short time left for them to do so.

    They are confronted with many choices, with input from several sources. However, they have the last say on the matter. What should engage their minds is the quality of their choice and not that person’s religion or the region he comes from. Most importantly will be the person’s electoral value. Does he have what it takes, that is the numbers, to help the candidate win the election?

    A running mate is what and who he is; he is not the candidate. He is running as an appendage of the candidate and only becomes a face, if the candidate wins. That is when he becomes vice-president-elect on the strength of his principal’s election. Tinubu should not allow himself to be pushed to pick a liability as his running mate on the grounds of religion. As a strategist and thinker, I trust him to make the right choice.

    I am not saying that religion does not matter. It does; but it is  not all that is required to be a running mate. Whether a Muslim-Muslim, or Christian-Christian, or Muslim-Christian ticket, all the people are yearning for is a running mate that can complement the candidate and make a good team in government, if they win.

    Tinubu cannot afford to make any mistakes now that he is looking the State House right in front of him, as someone put it on Tuesday. Truly, numbers, faith and ability count in electoral matters, but as Asiwaju well knows, ability trumps all others. He should go for the man with the ability to do the job. May God guide him aright.

  • Inflation and the global economy

    Inflation and the global economy

    When too much money is going after too few goods and services, we call it in layman’s language inflation. This is the current situation all over the world. The reasons vary from country to country. In the Western world, the reasons vary from too much money in circulation as a result of governments’ reaction to current problems of the coronavirus and scarcity caused by interruption in the global supply chain especially in a globalised world where several component producers are spatially located be it in the production of industrial components or food.

    In Nigeria, we are victims of several reasons chief among which are the same disruptions in global supply chain as it relates to our imports, insecurity arising from poor governance and incompetence. We import substantial amount of food such as wheat from Russia and Ukraine and possibly from India which has now forbidden Indian wheat farmers from exporting their wheat. We also import rice despite the noise about home-grown rice. We import vegetable oils from several places particularly from Ukraine and some Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia which also stopped selling to outsiders in order to satisfy domestic demands and needs. Our vastly deprecated national currency cannot buy much because of the unpatriotic actions of our politicians who have driven the value of our currency down because of their mad rush to acquire for political use the little foreign exchange that should normally go to the productive sector of the economy.

    Our most serious problem is our importation of refined petroleum while our four refineries remain idle while at the same time our government continues to pump financial resources into their so-called rehabilitation. The situation of making refined petroleum available is killing the economy because refined petroleum is costing much in the international market because of the rising cost of crude oil. Yet our government continues to be forced to sell to the driving public at prices vastly below the cost of its purchase and transportation. The situation is so bad that all our revenues from crude oil exports in addition to non-oil exports do not suffice to buy the refined petroleum we are consuming.  The result is that while all OPEC countries are being asked to increase production so as to lower the global price of our kind of crude oil which is selling over $100 per barrel, we are not even able to produce the 1.8 million barrels of our OPEC quota. We are exporting currently about one million barrels or less a day because vast amount of our production is stolen thus discouraging the oil majors from further investment in Nigerian oil sector. This sounds crazy but it is the truth and we are having to borrow money from abroad and raising federal bonds to finance oil imports. On top of this is the general insecurity in the country leading to farmers not being able to go to their farms because of Boko haram/ISWAP and Fulani terrorism creating local supply chain disruption even when the food is available because only intrepid businessmen and women dare travel.

    The few imports substituted industries still existing have their levels of production reduced because of the cost of imports of raw or semi-finished materials which the exchange rate of the dollar to the Naira has forced on them. Unfortunately in our case, we don’t have the resources to splash on workers to cope with all these challenges and even if we have, the question of how many Nigerians are in salaried employment will arise.

    Our economy is so undeveloped that we cannot begin to talk about universal credit to all adults to cope with daily exigencies. Yet we must begin to think out of the box to solve our economic and political problems which are intricately interwoven with our security problems. This is why I find some of the ideas of Pastor Tunde Bakare in his bid for the presidency very attractive. He was talking about turning the six geo-political zones of the country into production zones with each zone demonstrating its unique character and comparative production advantages in relation to the others, so that this can then be added to leapfrog the country beyond our current pedestrian possibilities. This is an idea worth pursuing instead of our burying our heads in the sand of North/South political rotation of presidential power and sharing of offices.

    The “economy stupid” as President Bill Clinton said when he was running for the office of president of the United States. His approach to the economy based on building a larger market of the USA and its neighbours, Canada and Mexico and increased domestic production and larger share of the tax burden by the rich, led to the phenomenal growth of the economy and success of the Democratic Party in the USA. We can borrow from this by encouraging trade with our immediate neighbours and creating a co-prosperity neighbourhood.

    I am not talking about ECOWAS which for now seems remote.

    Inflation as I have said is a global problem. Its rate in the USA is currently 8.5 percent and is over nine percent in the United Kingdom. Europe is not doing much better. In Nigeria, it is over 15 percent. Perhaps the way out for us will be found in what happens in the rest of the world combined with what happens locally in Nigeria. Lending rates in the USA, Great Britain and Europe are going up incrementally. Governments there are trying to find a way out of the cost of energy by cutting down rates in other areas of the economy such as housing, health, insurance and so on. This may not be enough as long the war in Ukraine continues which has led to the high cost of energy particularly in Europe and tangentially in the United States. An hungry man is and angry man, the cost of food particularly in Europe would have to come down so also the cost of energy and the way these can come down is the end of the war in Ukraine. Germany the power house of the European economy is particularly hit because of its almost total dependence on Russian gas and oil which the EU sanctions have affected.

    Although the Americans are the loudest in crying about inflation and the cost of fuel and food because they are the least ready to bear any burden, but any visitor to American groceries and shops cannot but be impressed about the variety and abundance of goods on their shelves. The solution to the disruption in the supply chain of goods caused by the closure or reduced production at the plants of many suppliers due to the coronavirus pandemic is patience.  The end of the war in Ukraine and gradual lifting of the trade sanctions on Russia will also help. This may not be immediately but there is no doubt that the world will witness bottled up economic growth once there is no longer a disruption to global trade, renewed growth in China whose economy has stalled because of the Chinese penchant for locking down huge areas of the country as a strategy of total elimination of coronavirus, in contrast to the rest of the world that seems to want to tolerate and live with the virus while economic development and life continue.

    Once the Chinese economy starts growing again, it will lift the world economy and that of Africa up again. There lies the hope of Africa and Nigeria. Once the war in Ukraine ends, then we should be able to import wheat and vegetable oils. But we must tackle our domestic terrorism so that we can release the pent up force of economic and agricultural production which will be aided by peaceful mobility in the country.

    There will hopefully, be growth in the hydrocarbon sector of the economy if the amount of stolen oil can be reduced so that we will not only meet our OPEC allocated quota  but also reap from the vastly increased price of our oil products. Perhaps there is a need for better management of oil receipts and the huge amount coming in from diaspora transfers by young hardworking Nigerians living and working abroad. If we have a totally independent Central Bank unlike the present one whose governor is a politician and if the governor is not from any commercial bank but an economist very vast in international finance, then we may have a respected national currency that is not reduced to mere coloured papers as our currency has been reduced to by the current regime. Unfortunately the time for hope may be forlorn because of the politics of electioneering and political transition. Whoever takes over from the Muhammadu Buhari government would have a lot of job to do to return the country to political and economic normalcy.

  • Tinubu, cabal and southern politicians

    Tinubu, cabal and southern politicians

    It was a miracle APC survived the apocalyptic prediction of its imminent fragmentation under the weight of intrigue and contradiction which were in full display during its last week convention. Tinubu while savoring his well-earned victory after  brutal  two-nights of many knives convention in which all his opponents, treacherous  protégées and a cabal hiding under Buhari’s presidency to serve other tendencies were roundly defeated, assured all those who did not vote for him  have nothing to fear. Those who know the Jagaban as a politician with malice towards none know he meant every word of his solemn undertaking. Some of those who served as his foot-soldiers in the exercise were in no distant past his political foes and one should not be surprised if those who  betrayed him last Tuesday  are found brainstorming with him in his sitting room in no distant  future. Tinubu is therefore a political analyst’s nightmare because he alone knows how best to fight his own battles. All a keen observer of the Nigerian political process and its self-serving, political governing class can do therefore, is to put all the macabre dance and chilling scheming by aspirants and party leaders in those two nights of many knives in perspective.

    First the APC convention confirmed that our political governing class have faith neither in democracy which they see just as a method to buy their way to power nor in the party system which they see as nothing other than a vehicle to power. It also exposed the southern political ruling class  as a groveling self-serving gamblers and traders with no abiding faith in anything while their northern counterparts demonstrated that politics is not a dirty game but that what we have are dirty politicians for  whom in the words of Kashim Shettima, ‘anything goes’.

    First the public disrobing of the cabal at war against Nigeria.  Before last Tuesday when it climbed the tree beyond its leaves by underestimating Tinubu’s resolve to fight rough and an unexpected patriotic stand of northern governors, many of whom may not necessarily like Tinubu’s guts, against Mai Buni and Abdullahi Adamu’s attempt to foist Ahmed Lawan as APC consensus candidate fraudulently using Buhari’s name, the identities of the cabal that have held Buhari and Nigeria hostage for the greater part of seven years remained in the realm of conjecture. But last week’s APC vicious intra-party battle changed the narrative.

    But for the northern governors, with Buhari’s ‘government of delegation by abdication’, Adamu  and Mai Buni would have by their pursuit of selfish and parochial agenda created more social dislocations for a deeply divided society where an irresolute president  has mismanaged crisis of nation building. Sadly a trip through memory confirms this has been the pattern of the cabal’s operation in the past years.

    We all remember how Bukola Saraki by his own admission in 2015, literarily stole the senate presidency, with Shehu Garba speaking for a vacillating president saying  ‘the cure for headache was not cutting off the head’. The country was made ungovernable for four years after that. It was the same when church massacre (similar to recent Owo tragedy) was first carried out in Benue, followed by sacking, confiscation of community land and condemning of survivors of mindless killings to IDP camps. An unrestrained response of Buhari’s minister of defence was to blame everything on encroachment of pre-colonial and pre-36 states creation grazing routes.  Governor Ortom’s anti-open grazing laws was similarly criticized by the minister while ex-emir, Sanusi Lamido  from his far away Kano fiefdom encouraged Fulani immigrants in Benue to resist their host state’s anti-open grazing laws.

    It was not different when Governor Akeredolu of Ondo ejected AK-47 wielding criminal Fulani herdsmen illegally operating in his state’s reserved forest. Garba Shehu, Abubakar Malami and Bauchi’s Bala Mohammed viciously attacked Governor Akeredolu quoting the fraudulent 1999 constitution.  Similar strategy was also adopted when Shehu Garba purportedly speaking for Buhari, rejected the 36 states’ demand for state and community policing citing problem of funding and equipment.

    Now let us turn to the groveling consensus-seeking presidential aspirants. If Rotimi Amaechi, who long ago destroyed his political base had any preparation for his presidential ambition, it was humouring President Buhari. How about his claim the president is infallible, locating University of Transportation in Katsina and buying into the president vision of extending rail line to Niger Republic? For his pains, the cabal assured the Daura-turbaned Amaechi of becoming Buhari’s APC consensus presidential candidate.

    The ambition of Kayode Fayemi, the adopted son of the caliphate was also probably predicated on the promise of Mai Buni, his friend that he could emerge Buhari’s consensus candidate.  Although eminently qualified, it was doubtful he would have contested against a benefactor that helped him to retrieve his stolen mandate after three years and rehabilitated him when condemned to political wilderness by PDP and Fayose. Ibikunle Amosun who lost his political base to Osoba and Tinubu was probably also thinking of becoming Buhari’s consensus candidate on account of his closeness to the president. Dave Umahi of Ebonyi was also probably bitten by the cabal’s “consensus” bug.

    They discovered too late on the nights of many knives that they have all  been outwitted by Adamu and Buni who named Ahmed Lawan as President Buhari’s consensus candidate and outsmarted by Tinubu who did not just work hard to earn the trust of some northern governors but also took sacrifice to ‘esu’, the Yoruba god of confusion with the centre unable to hold between the cabal and their northern governors.

    Of course the cabal are the masters of the game. They planned for the future by honouring past promises. They proved as Nasir El Rufai has argued, ‘you can go to the bank with their words’. They also know southern politicians have prices. In the first republic, with promises of positions and contract, the Yoruba politicians turned truth on its head to nail their leader. In the words of Hubert Ogunde, they ‘invited the thief and also invited the owner of the farm’ to catch him. This time around with the promise of consensus candidacy, they suddenly realised Tinubu, their leader was dictatorial and ambitious and they prayed hard that God may bring him down. But swindled by Buni and Adamu, they sang a new song about Tinubu being their brother.

    Of course the cabal knows the Igbo political elite more than they know themselves. If a group that created a permanent enmity between those who look up to them for direction and Yoruba, their chief hosts because Zik was prevented from becoming the premier of the West in 1952 when a Yoruba man cannot contest for local council councillor in Igbo land in 2022, why will they not swallow the bait they could reap where they did not sow in 2023? Kalu Uzor Kalu, Rochas Okorocha  and other Igbo contestants believe the cabal would persuade Buhari to declare one of them a consensus APC candidate as if Igbo votes alone could secure for them the presidency. But the cabal knows that for the Igbo, politics is the art of the possible. They didn’t waste time licking their wounds before falling over each other to join Atiku or Lawan. The cabal knows, in Igbo, the north has an ever ready and willing beautiful bride.

  • BAT 2023…The legend and the gloom

    BAT 2023…The legend and the gloom

    So, Bola Tinubu made history at the Eagle Square, in Abuja. Against all odds. Like a living time machine, bearing with him multitude of hopes through dimensions of intrigues and trials fostered by the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential race, he emerged victorious.

    Victory sprouted in fields of tumult. Yet through his ordeal, his mettle reclaimed the radiance of rebirth, like the proverbial patriot’s, sculpted of spunk and spittle.

    Ornamented in self-creation, he defied the muse of manic re-creators. Tinubu jolted dismaying detractors a conniving party leadership and perfidious proteges pitted against him with devastating might.

    Through their severe plots, he marched in virtual lockstep with his dreams, undisguised in candour and integrity of intent. His consequent victory and emergence as APC’s candidate for the 2023 presidential elections commands elegant tributes to his politics and the legion of allies cutting across the Niger and transcending to the land of the rising sun in the East.

    His victory reorders the chaos of the play. The old guards at the centre were right to be wary of him and his political army. His victory at the 2023 presidential polls will excite defiant idealism and command a new class of political patronage.

    Tinubu will cancel them out. This Sphinx devices and answers his own riddle.

    Against the shadowy cabal’s run of play, Tinubu manifests as both a titan and remarkable man of alchemy.

    In the flora of imagination, he is a hero, a villain, a mentor, and a political godfather. He is a father, a husband, a brother, an uncle, and grandfather. He is also a patriot. A human.

    In the estimation of friends and foes, the heart of his story is redacted and recast. Everybody defends or maligns Tinubu as politics and circumstances dictate – if this isn’t expedient belly magic, what is?

    We have seen recipients of his benefactive politics hurl caution to the wind and pay it forward with malice. Some mutate as foes.

    Amid the clashing contrarieties triggered by his presidential ambition, only Tinubu’s deeds could validate him or otherwise. En route to the 2023 elections, it fortified him against the wiles and conspiracies of established and hidden detractors – gifting him a convincing 1,271 votes in total to clinch the APC’s presidential ticket ahead of former minister of transportation Rotimi Amaechi’s 316 votes and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s 235 votes.

    What does his victory portend for Nigerian politics? Does he command humbling idealism, purity of intent, and fidelity to growth required of a candidate of his stature? Is his materiality progressive and borne of pragmatism?

    Facts don’t care about anyone’s feelings. The truth sprouts free of “stomach infrastructure.” Of the 2023 presidential aspirants, Asiwaju leads in stature and by his deeds. Nonetheless, he’s been frantically dismissed as infirm by parties threatened by his virtuosity and apparent bone strut.

    There is no gainsaying the two-time Lagos governor vies for the Presidency in dire times. He must appreciate this moment for what it’s worth – when the neurotic tick-tock of midnight silences our whispers of dawn.

    Few weeks after the Katari-Rijana train bombing by armed bandits, on Sunday, gunmen attacked the Catholic Diocese of Ondo, located on Owa-Luwa Street in Owo, the hometown of the State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, leaving about 38 parishioners dead and several others injured.

    Tinubu must fashion a convincing and fail-safe plan to improve security in the country, no doubt. He vies for the presidency amid terrorism, comatose oil refineries, substandard health and education, corporate banditry, and Yahoo Plus pandemic, to mention a few.

    Despite his experience, critics of his ambition angrily crucify apologists of his candidacy irrespective of his merits. It’s that delicate. Many tales about him suffer enormous exclusions. In the foundry of political imagery, so much is excluded from Tinubu’s bust that we can feel his silhouette straining against the charged atmosphere, in combat with arbitrary sculpting.

    Having bestrode the political scene, like a colossus for three decades, grooming leaders, his politics culminate in pursuit of his presidential ambition. Tinubu banks on his experience as Managing Auditor and Treasurer at Mobil, the oil company where he made his fortune, his professional training at American based-accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, then ‘Deloitte Haskins and Sells,’  General Motors, First National Bank of Chicago, Procter and Gamble, among others,

    His re-engineering of Lagos’ fiscal regime, as the state governor, from a paltry monthly internally generated revenue (IGR) of N700m to over N30 billion as at today; and his exploits as a fiery warhorse, member, and financier of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), that fought the military to a standstill following the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election, are appreciable.

    He has subsequently proved himself politically savvy and consistent as a  Senator on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the aborted Third Republic, the Alliance for Democracy (AD), the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the merger that resulted in the All Progressives Congress (APC).

    In politics, Tinubu flaunts a quintessential stone architecture, but the random troll wanted him to give it up for the use of a wily, lesser protege – even as the latter presented as less-than, initially playing ‘hide and seek’ with his presidential hope while sponsoring a flurry of attacks against his former benefactor.

    So doing, he and his team,  lionised Tinubu thus projecting himself as earthen ovule, and his manhood as quivering scorched egg.

    Tinubu’s politics, honed through his lieutenants’ hostilities and betrayal, assumes tactical elegance – his principles of political sportsmanship are made more concrete. They serve him as you read. Ultimately, he is elevated or “reduced” to his essence. He is a blessing to those who truly know him and a role model to his closet and open detractors.

    At 70, everyone wants a piece of Tinubu. Perhaps because he is the politician to beat despite the clamour for a younger candidate by segments of Nigeria’s youths. None of the whispered alternatives, however, is in his youth. Those who are could never win the 2023 elections.

    None has shown the intellectual rigour, emotional maturity, stamina, discipline, native intelligence, and character displayed by Asiwaju.

    Tinubu is ritualized personality, a streamlined pond, and a totem for sloganeering. He is detestable to his foes yet excitingly speckless to loyalists. The former squander expensive time maligning him, perhaps because their preferred candidate’s perfection is chiefly for display, not exploitable. He can only tickle their fancy from his social media balcony – his window of appearance.

    If all politics thrive by a window of appearance, Tinubu’s face is the sun of consciousness rising over his professed horizon. To his rivals and detractors, Tinubu is both exposed and enclosed, a torment and an idol. He is naked yet armoured, vilified yet ritually adored. Thus he must understand if, for instance, his democratic credentials are radically questioned by cutthroat rivals and embittered segments of the partisan electorate.

    He must appreciate too why he must soak it all in like a garbage dump, knowing it’s a prerequisite for a patriot seeking to serve Nigerians of vast bigotries, intellect, and stripes. He must respond in truth, patience, competence, understanding, and love.

    He must understand that his most bitter critics are essential to his pirouette to greater significance. If the presidency is divinely penned in his Qadar, no force in the world could thwart him.

    Of all his names, I am in love with his oriki, Akanbi, manifestly because I answer to it. An Akanbi is an Akanda Eda – inured to the odds, forged to triumph through tumult.

    Nigeria is in a state of war, a frigid blank zone under siege. It might take an Akanbi to liberate her.