The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • All for a ticket!

    All for a ticket!

    At the end of the day, only one person will pick the ticket. Who the person is among the many contenders who have thrown their hats in the ring remains unknown. The pretenders among them know themselves, but until the wheat is sifted from the chaff, they are all considered serious.

    The presidential race will be interesting in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). The pretenders know that they have no chance in the party’s primary holding between May 30 and June 1. They are in the race not to win, but to stop the emergence of the most popular aspirant among them as the party’s standard-bearer.

    Every Nigerian of voting age who believes that he has what it takes to lead the country is free to vie for president. The space is wide enough to accommodate all. As the day breaks, so does the number of aspirants rise. The aspirants are coming out in ones and twos to woo delegates many of who see the race as an opportunity to make money.

    But, the aspirations of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and APC National Leader Asiwaju Bola Tinubu seem to be shaking the polity. Many people are shocked that Osinbajo can even think of contesting against Asiwaju, who made him politically.  Asiwaju and Osinbajo are no strangers to each other. They have come a long way since Asiwaju, as governor, appointed Osinbajo his attorney-general and commissioner for justice in Lagos State between 1999 and 2007.

    Osinbajo was a member of the inner caucus of the Tinubu executive council (EXCO) who put his legal expertise at his principal’s disposal. The many legal battles won by the Tinubu administration had the imprimatur of this professor of law. So, when he joined the race after Asiwaju had made his own intention public, his action set tongues wagging.

    People have not ceased talking about Osinbajo’s action. To some, he should not have decided to run since Asiwaju is in the race. But his supporters believe that he does not owe anybody allegiance. The aspirant himself also said his allegiance “is only to Nigeria”, adding that it would amount to betrayal if he did not contest after being vice president for some seven years now!

    The VP is not leaving anything to chance. He is fighting tooth and nail to wean himself from Asiwaju. In his bid to cut off from his political roots, he and his aides are trying to rewrite how he became VP. Rather than give credit to Asiwaju who made him politically, Osinbajo is changing the narrative all because of a presidential ticket. Power is sweet and having tasted power at that high level, Osinbajo is determined to cling to it at all costs no matter the cost to his relationship with the Tinubu political empire.

    This is why today he is changing the same story that he related in public nearly six years ago over how he became then Candidate Muhammadu Buhari’s running mate in 2015.  Observers find it hard to believe that Osinbajo could twist that story because he has decided to slug it out with his mentor over the APC presidential ticket. Osinbajo could not have forgotten suddenly what he said about how he  became Buhari’s running mate. But if he has, we will help him refresh his memory. At a function in Lagos in November 2016, he publicly acknowledged the role of Asiwaju in his nomination.

    “I was nominated by the leader of our party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, under who I served as a commissioner in Lagos State”, he said. What has happened between then and now that made him change the story? Answer: the contest for APC presidential ticket. Before now, many perceived Osinbajo, a pastor and professor, as different from your  typical Nigerian politician that can do anything and colour the truth for selfish political reasons. Has politics and the desire for power changed the VP?

    How do you reconcile his 2016 story with the one he is now telling the world that: “I was working on a case in Abuja on December 18, 2014 when at about 1a.m., I received a call from Rauf Aregbesola… that I have been nominated as Buhari’s running mate and I said is that how you nominate people?” Indeed, the quest for power can make a man to do anything, whether he is a cleric or an intellectual does not matter.

    Osinbajo was in his 2016 story merely corroborating what Lagos State Commissioner for the Environment Tunji Bello earlier wrote about his nomination. In an article rebutting the account of John Paden, author of Buhari’s biography, on Osinbajo’s nomination, Bello said Asiwaju nominated Osinbajo, adding: “I do not know how the author came about his story, but he totally got it wrong because what he wrote basically is based on falsehood that reeks of deliberate misinformation and mischief”.

    Truly, it was deliberately written to mislead people. What is more, instead of coming out to correct that wrong narrative, Osinbajo kept quiet because it was part of the plan for the presidential ambition which he had been nursing long before now unknown to those who mistook him for someone in whose mouth sugar will never dissolve. What about the transfer of his voting centre from Lagos to Ogun State? That was also part of the plan to enable him be closer home than Lagos to avoid antagonism. He, however, forgets that in politics 1 + 1 is not always 2. The VP still has a lot to learn.

    Bello, who corrected that lie, should know because he was involved in the process. I know some will snigger: what do you expect Bello or this reporter to say? My simple response is: the truth is the truth, you can never hide it. Those who are relaying other stories today have their reasons for doing that. Even Osinbajo knows the truth about his nomination, but is constrained from saying it because of his vaulting ambition. He does not want to jeopardise his chances in the presidential primary. Sugbon igba wo ni maku oni ku. I leave the interpretation to you.

     

    Born on strange land

    •The face of innocence

    THE circumstances under which some people are born are intriguing and exceptional. The birth of that baby girl in the den of those who abducted her mother and 62 others on March 28 in a Kaduna bound train fits in this mould. The baby came to the world in the thick forest straddling Kaduna to Niger states. She was not born in the comfort of a maternity home, nor surrounded by her mother’s close relatives. But the abductors were compassionate enough to allow doctors to attend to her mother. If they could be that humane and caring to bring in doctors for the safe delivery of the girl, they can go the whole hog and let the baby and her mother go.

    For the sake of the baby too, they can release all the remaining hostages. The belief is that a new baby brings joy, hope and forgiveness. Quarrels, no matter how serious, are also settled with the coming of a new baby. May this baby’s birth bring closure to the Abuja-Kaduna train attack saga.

  • Pa Ayo Adebanjo and Igbo Presidency

    Pa Ayo Adebanjo and Igbo Presidency

    The Fulani hegemonic power in the north shares with their southeast counterparts with whom they have since independence ruled the country as a reluctant suitor and ever-willing ‘beautiful bride’, some parallels.

    First was their shared world view described by Awolowo as a “cow held down by some hands while being milked by a few  powerful people” or as finely put by John Campbell when they metamorphosed into current PDP, “an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria simply as essentially club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils”. This shared philosophy made it easy for Awo and his democratic socialism to be condemned to prison by power wielders swearing he would be too old to question how they governed Nigeria by the time he returned, if he ever did.

    There is also a shared strategy of riding to power on the backs of their underprivileged compatriots. For instance, because Mrs Ransome-Kuti accused Zik of mismanagement of funds during their London trip, Yoruba suddenly became enemies of Igbo. And for supporting Ernest Ikoli, an easterner from Bayelsa against Akinsanya, his fellow Ijebu compatriot, during Nigerian Youth Movement election, Awo became a tribalist. And that was enough to drive Igbo’s Lagos urban immigrants into a frenzy of buying off cutlasses in Lagos market in readiness for war with their Yoruba hosts with whom they had lived peacefully before Zik’s brand of politics.

    Of course Awo’s message of one man one vote as antidote to continued serfdom was considered an affront to the northern oligarchy and ridicule of Islamic faith, charges that led to series of attack and killings of opposition party members in the north.

    The current locking of horns between the two rivals over power shift in 2023 has only rekindled their age-long rivalry. What was new however was Pa Ayo Adebanjo’s last week decision  to trade his life-long struggle for federalism for an unproductive intervention in the unending war of  two selfish groups that separately regarded Nigeria as a conquered territory for stateless West African Fulanis or  a no man’s land, ‘the god of Africa had ordained Igbo of Nigeria to dominate’.

    As if one can decree who gets power, Pa Adebanjo last week roared “If you want peace in Nigeria, the Southeast should produce the next president (because) Olusegun Obasanjo had done it for eight years, Yemi Osinbajo would be vice president for eight years from 2023, Goodluck Jonathan was president for six years” adding “All those who say the Southeast cannot be president, ask them what the Southeast has done? “ Are they not part of Nigeria? Is the Southeast not part of Southern Nigeria?

    On both scores, Pa Adebanjo started on a wrong premise. Obasanjo, although rejected at home by his own people, is unarguably one of Nigerian smartest politicians who had invested wisely for future higher dividends.  His imposition on the Yoruba and the nation in 1999 was his dividends for loyalty to the Fulani who just as they are obsessed with vengeance never forget little favours. He protected the interest of the Fulani as military Head of State and went on to install one of them, Shehu Shagari, president to spite Awo, his better-prepared fellow Yoruba candidate in the 1979 presidential election.

    We can say the same of President Jonathan who once declared that besides God and his biological father, Obasanjo was the next most important influential figure in his life. Osinbajo is on record as admitting he did not only cut his political teeth under Bola Ahmed Tinubu but that Tinubu nominated him as vice president. The three politicians cited by Pa Adebanjo therefore earned their positions.

    Of course Igbo deserves to be president of Nigeria. They are not second class citizens. There have invested heavily on PDP between 1999 and 2015 and therefore entitled to reap where they have invested. But politics is not cash and carry business. It needs a long period of gestation.

    Twice Buhari went into the presidential contest, and twice he was abandoned in the court by his Igbo vice presidential candidates who took up appointments from the victorious party. But as part of long-term planning, Yoruba invested on serial loser and un-electable Buhari in 2014. They rebranded him after three heroic failures into a winning candidate in 2015 and 2019. Buhari mismanaged the victory just as he betrayed APC manifesto that swept him to power. Who then if one may ask Pa Adebanjo is better prepared to succeed Buhari but the architect of the betrayed dream?

    I am also not aware anyone has said Ibo cannot lead the nation. But just as inimitable late MKO Abiola advised, we cannot shave someone’s head in his absence, I think Pa Adebanjo should first establish if the current efforts of Igbo aspirants, in view of recent Pa Clark’s curse on Igbo who would settle for vice president to any northerner, is real or for negotiating for the VP slot. Igbo politicians, from our recent historical experiences often prefer the VP slot that allows them to chop without responsibility.

    In 1959, Zik, the foremost nationalist who ‘elezikified’ the Nigerian press that saw the end of imperialist rule was destined to become Nigeria post-independence Prime Minister. His NCNC party came first followed by Awo’s AG with Bello’s NPC coming a distant third. Instead of a coalition with Awo who offered to be his Minister of Finance, he chose to become a junior partner in NPC/NCNC coalition.

    For their pains, Igbo political elite as pointed out by Akintola during the 1964 NNA and UPGA confrontation, controlled, Balewa’s key ministries of  finance, external affairs, education, economic development, agriculture etc. and major government institutions including military, police, railways, Nigeria Airways, University of Lagos, University of Ibadan, Yaba College of Technology etc.

    In 1979, Awo with Umeadi as easterner vice presidential candidate lost his deposit in the East. Igbo elite preferred Shehu Shagari/Ekwueme ticket that allowed them to also grab the senate presidency, the House speakership and key government ministries. Ojukwu, the celebrated Igbo civil war leaders returned from exile to consolidate the Fulani-Igbo partnership.

    In 1993, only one Igbo state supported MKO Abiola in his historic landslide victory. The Igbo elite massively supported Tofa/Sylvester Ugoh ticket. And when NRC lost, Arthur Nzeribe, Justice Ikpeme,  Justice Minister Apamgbo, Uche Chukumerije and Walter Ofonagoro  and Ojukwu himself who was deployed by Abacha as envoy to de-market Abiola in Europe, joined forces with northern Fulani leaders led by Gen. Shehu Yar’Adua to support Babangida’s annulment of the election.

    The triumph of Yoruba without firing a gun but through use of their intellect after six year war with many of their leaders assassinated or driven into exile turned out to be a pyric victory as Igbo political elite joined hands with their Fulani rivals to impose Obasanjo, rejected even in his own polling unit by the Yoruba as president.

    You will probably assume  the bitter struggle was over Sylvester Ugor’s lost VP  until you realize the public face of Obasanjo presidency were the Andy Ubas, Ngozi Okonjo-Iwealas, Chukwuma Soludo, Stella Oduahs, with ex Abia governor Uzor Kalu reported as joking about  “Obasanjo’s presidency as Igbo presidency”. In all these, the impoverished Igbo did not feature anywhere.

    In view of the above historical facts, even if Pa Adebanjo succeeds in confirming Igbo are indeed ready for the mantle of leadership, he will have an uphill task convincing his discriminatory Yoruba voters to support Peter Obi, the most eloquent of the Igbo crowd, a self-confessed importer of wine, who wants to double GDP in four years without first telling Nigerians how to tame his fellow Igbo importers of the labours of other societies, the reason the naira today exchanges for $1 to N580 as against $1 to N0.78 in 1982.

  • Teach us to number our days…

    Teach us to number our days…

    Unlike nowadays, most people of my generation did not have the luxury of celebrating our birthdays until we were in higher school or in the universities. This was because the disposable incomes of our parents were limited and, in the ranking of priorities, celebrating birthdays came perhaps last. As we wended the journeys of life, we began to count our years if not our days just to know how far we have gone and what we needed to do to realize our ambitions.

    In my generation, the age of 21 was regarded as important landmark in our journey of life and by that time most of us were in universities pursuing academic studies that were to set us in professional or academic trajectories we had chosen or that were chosen for us by our parents, older siblings or our teachers who knew our academic strengths and potentialities. It is not like today when parents merely advise their children the line of professions they should pursue based on their children’s academic records. Children are not bound to follow their parents’ advice. It will even be seen as retrogressive for parents to force their children to pursue a certain professional line based on the parents’ preference rather than on the interest of the children.

    In spite of these, many parents still insist on what their children should study based on the principle of who pays the piper dictate the tune. It is however agreed that a person has reached a certain level of civilization when a child of a professor of surgery comes to his or her father to announce that music was his or her preferred area of interest and study and rather than for the mother or father to be unhappy, he or she goes to celebrate the child and to proudly announce to his or her colleagues how wonderful the child is. We have not reached that level yet but we are getting there if we are to judge by the growing number of highly successful academics and professionals whose children are becoming musicians and are rapping their ways to financial success!

    Shall I say this is not my experience. Perhaps in the fullness of time, one of my grandchildren will in future become a musician! Who knows?

    When I was in Christ’s School Ado Ekiti, we had no career counsellors. Our future path finders were our teachers the example of who we wanted to follow. This meant we wanted to be graduate teachers of Physics, Mathematics, History, Geography, Biology, Chemistry, English and even Latin. I did not encounter French until I got to Ibadan Grammar School Higher School course. Some of my classmates through the examples of old boys of our school felt they too could become medical doctors. As far as I can remember, no one thought he could become a lawyer, an accountant, engineer or any professional.

    At the age of 21, I wanted to become a professor like those who were our teachers at the University of Ibadan. Thank God I had raised the level of my ambition from secondary school teacher to that of a university teacher. This ambition was of course predicated on my performance as an undergraduate student. In whatever ambition one had, one did not include the divine or what I call the “God factor” in it. I am always happy for the young generation of Nigerians to whom the God factor is very important. I am not suggesting we shirk our responsibility as many do and expect so-called breakthroughs through the intervention of God without our working hard to realize our ambitions. Didn’t Saint Paul tell us who does not work shall not eat? There must be a sense of balance in the human and divine factors. Yes we must pray at the same time we must work; this is the meaning of the Latin phrase of “Ora et labora”. Education in my youth was seen as a way of access to the proverbial bread basket. Our parents or grandparents had to trade or farm to feed their families. My father before I was born had to go all the way to the then Gold Coast now Ghana to work in the manganese mines in Nsutta while moonshining as a pastor on Sundays. Education was not for education’s sake nor was it a civilizing agent to burn out the impurities associated with raw minerals. It was generally regarded as a struggle to put bread on the table for the family. In my childhood, this was the way we approached our studies. When I was in the University of Ibadan, one elderly classmate (we had classmates old enough to be our fathers) described his quest for a degree as” ija oye” meaning the fight or struggle for a degree!

    I remember the late Adamu Ciroma, former editor of New Nigerian newspaper, former Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Minister of Finance, and Agriculture among other offices he held with his Bachelors of Arts General degree, described the purpose of education for most Nigerians of his time as to avoid hard work or to avoid work at all! This is of course an exaggeration.

    The earliest Nigerian graduates paved the way for independence in Nigeria and provided the administrative infrastructure to sustain the modern state of Nigeria before the present anarchic chaos that has become the fate of Nigeria. When my generation attained the foundational structure on which we built our future careers, our eyes opened to the various possibilities available to us. I had the opportunity to turn down offers of administrative positions in the western and federal civil services after scaling competitive examinations because I had, at the same time, offers of scholarship for post-graduate education in the University of Ibadan and in Russia and Canada at the same time.

    Even up till that time, I was still not numbering or counting my days because I thought I had a life time of lazing around and waltzing through life attending parties and boozing my way through life until age caught up with me. I began to think of getting married and having a family of my own. Even when I got married my friends and I continued in our ways of being married and still living carelessly if I may put it in a diplomatic way, while hiding the sordid lifestyle we led. Of course, we were still in our 30s and we never still thought of death. Death was what happened to old people and we were not old, at least not yet!

    We got involved in activism in politics and social life. For me I was involved in agitation during the Yakubu Gowon days for the creation of the old Ondo State with friends like Ladipo Adamolekun and Kole Omotosho by writing in the papers about the merit of our position. I must say the idea of further splitting the Western Region was not popular at that time. Our position was based on the need to accelerate development as well as for political equity in the fact of splitting of the former constitutive regions in the North in particular into states sharing the federal resources on equal basis with the old regions. In retrospect, I wish we were fighting for true or fiscal federalism and Yoruba unity instead of miniature and atomistic states we are now saddled with. Whatever activism we were involved in was at intellectual level characteristic and expected of academics in our time. Academics were still respected then and their opinions were taken into account by policy makers. It is not like today when academics are busy with bread and butter politics of salary increase and agitation for payment of “Earned Academic Allowances”. Even at that time in our 30s, we had no ambition of public office. We were still going about celebrating the arrival of our new babies and those of close colleagues. When these babies came and our wives were in the hospitals suffering from the pains of child birth, we would quickly hold frivolous parties in the homes of the fathers of the new babies to welcome the babies in the absence of mother and child! We called these parties “Idawo” to which our wives were not invited but girl friends were. Some of our wives permitted and indulged us in these irresponsible behaviours. The reason for this tolerance was that “boys will be boys”. In actual fact, many of these parties were innocent “get-together” and not always irresponsible behaviour by congenitally polygamous Africans. Happily, this irresponsible behaviour by adults behaving as adolescents has died a natural death unmourned and unremembered.

    I started numbering my days when my children were teenagers finishing high school and entering universities. It dawned on me that the days of merry-making were over and that I had to plan not only for my future and that of my children and that I must make hay while the sun shines and plan for retirement. I started thinking of building a house and not just of upgrading my car from Peugeot to Volvo and from Peugeot to Mercedes’ Benz and Citroen in those days when N6000 and N8000 would buy you brand new Volvo and Mercedes’ Benz respectively.

    The days of just making it were gone and the days of ambition set in especially when one began to see contemporaries in the civil services both federal and state and the armed forces become “movers and shakers” in power  in the country. One began to press buttons. Personally, I have never lobbied for any appointments in life. If there was a job advertised in the universities and I felt I was qualified, I applied for it and in most cases, I was shortlisted, interviewed and got the jobs with the exception of the vice chancellorship of the University of Lagos which the then Minister of Education, a colleague, told me that the job had been given to someone even before the advertisement!

    Whatever one has achieved in life in my own case was due to divine beneficence and also my hard work. By the time one thinks he has settled down, then age and the ailments attached to aging begin to catch up on one. At 80 God has been favourable to me. Whatever is left of my life, I live at God’s plan and mercy.

    Let me use the opportunity of my column to thank my children, grandchildren, the Osuntokun family, the Editorial Board of The Nation, former students, colleagues, friends, my church clergy and Pastor Tunde Bakare for his wonderful lecture, generosity and time in honouring me. God bless you all.

  • 2023 and lesson of history for the Yoruba

    2023 and lesson of history for the Yoruba

    And what happened when we were united? We got to the zenith, to the envy of all. But the moment we departed from the source of our strength – truth and righteousness as espoused by Orunmila, our illustrious forebear, we were infiltrated by those operating below the level of ‘Afenifere’ worldview which celebrates egalitarianism.

    Oliver Stanley reminded our compatriots living in denial in 1920 that Nigeria is “a collection of self-contained and mutually independent native state separated by difference of history and tradition and by ethnological, racial, tribal political social and religious barriers”. A few of the groups identified by Hugh Clifford, Nigeria’s colonial Governor General, include ‘the anti-social Mumuye of Muri Province, the unfriendly inhabitants of the Mama Hills and ‘the naked warriors of the jungle’ and the ‘Hausas of Zaria who he said are different from the Bantu tribesmen of the valley of the Benue’, just as the Scandinavians in the Baltic are different from the Slavs of Bulgaria”.

    Hugh Clifford in in his address to the Nigerian Council on December 1920, therefore articulated a British policy designed to produce a ‘regional government that secures for each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality and its own chosen form of government which have been evolved for it by the wisdom and by the accumulated experiences of generation of its fore-bearers’.

    At the Lancaster House Conference, while the North wanted a loose federation and the East, a unitary system, the West insisted on a federal arrangement which guarantees  ‘individual and group rights defined in form of language, culture, and religion or socio-economic status’. They presented a road map “Nigeria Path to freedom”.

    To bring out the heuristic value of the work with self-government in 1952, they embarked on policies woven around our culture such as Yoruba communalism. Some of the dividends of their investments include the Western Nigerian Television Service (WNTV), the first in Africa launched on October 31, 1959, Liberty Stadium, free education programme, which today makes the region one of the most educated part of Africa, Water Corporation, Housing Corporation, Cocoa House, the first skyscraper in Nigeria etc.

    The travails of the Yoruba however started the moment our Afenifere leaders decided it was time to extend what they believed was good for the west to the rest of the country. The effort was unfortunately misinterpreted by leaders of the north and east as imposition of Yoruba values by Yoruba arrogant leaders.

    Akintola‘s first attempt at mobilising Kano youths was not without disastrous consequences with about 44 mostly Igbo traders killed by misdirected Kano youths. Not even self-evident facts presented by Awo that “the Action Group government in the West was spending nine and a quarter million pounds on education with over one and half million in schools as against three million pound  of NPC in the North with a quarter million students” impressed his audience.

    Ahmadu Bello, whose law was order, was infuriated that he was forced out to address those he and his other northern ruling oligarchy regarded as serfs and for this, they swore never to forgive Awolowo for his audacity. He was so confident of victory without campaigning that the Sunday Express of December 20, 1959 at page 2 reported him as saying “I shall divide Nigeria into two and hand them over to my lieutenants just as  Dan Fodio divided the conquered north among his two sons.”

    In Sokoto, Awo’s helicopter was not allowed to land in any public space. When the helicopter shared leaflets from the air because his campaign permit was cancelled, he was accused of desecrating the Emirs’ palace.

    In Onitsha, he had to seek the help of the Governor General, Sir James Robertson before his helicopter could land under police protection. When he could not campaign and decided to distribute campaign leaflets from the air, the NCNC members claimed he was ‘shitting on Igbo heads”.

    After the election, Balewa got the Holy Quran as Sardauna’s lieutenant in the north and Zik, a horse as the one that held sway for the Sardauna in the south. As for vanquished Awo and his AG, they were slated for destruction.

    In November 1960, barely a month after independence, for opposing the  Anglo-Nigerian  Defence Pact during a debate in the house, Minister of defence, Mohammed Ribadu  had asked the Balewa  to take note that “unless this man Awolowo is put in gaol the country will not have peace”, to which the prime minister answered “I understand”.  Ribadu later added – “There is a limit to the function of criticizing and when it is used as an excuse to introduce subversion, then it has certainly gone beyond reasonable limits and borders on treasonable action”.

    By April 16, 1961, the idea of introducing a preventive detention system, undoubtedly with Awo as the target was mooted by Balewa, Okpara and Ahmadu Bello at a meeting which had Akintola in attendance.  Dr Okpara later made the decision public claiming “Subversion was prevalent, weapons were being smuggled into the country; the nation must be able to defend itself”.

    There was also the move to illegally take over the National Bank which they believed funded Awo’s campaign. Again, Akintola stood up for his principal protesting through the Daily Times that “it was a reprisal against the government of the Western Region for no other reason other than it is controlled by the AG”.

    Then Ahmadu Bello and Zik changed tactics. Akintola, the instrument Awo used to fight the north and the colonial masters into a standstill must be captured.  Balewa had resisted his return to the Council of Ministers because he had nothing but contempt for the north. He had derailed the Council of Ministers meeting for three months because Awo said he had no replacement for him and indeed no other Yoruba man was ready to take over from Akintola. For Fulani leaders that capture victims through marriage, business or political office, capturing Akintola who was imposed without election and sending Awo to detention camp was fair game.

    With his public presentation of a ceremonial sword during his visit to the Niger Canoe regatta at Pategi, by Ahmadu Bello, Akintola replaced Dr Azikiwe as the leader holding southern half of the country in sway for him.

    Attorney General Teslim Elias, prepared ground for the declaration of state of emergency and detention of Awo. Educating parliament that Section 60 and sub section 80 of the constitution empowered them to decide what constituted breakdown of law and order, Balewa and Zik’s parliament agreed  throwing of chairs by some lawmakers was ‘break down of constitutional authority’ while an insurrection in the north suppressed by the military was not.

    What goes round comes around. In 1964, Okpara could not campaign in Ogbomosho. In Bauchi, he was forced to hold a meeting outside Bauchi town mud-walls. He got to Kaduna’s Hamdala hotel where he had made payment only to be told the hotel was filled up.

    Zik, outwitted by title of head of state with Bello declaring “he will oppose head of state possessing any real power if that person might be southerner” (Trevor Clark page 594) lamented “what is happening in Nigeria today does not inspire me to be optimistic that we shall survive as one nation”.

    As it is often with powerful Yoruba leaders accused of treachery against the people, Akintola literarily committed suicide confronting armed soldiers that invaded the government house in 1966.

    Sadly, despite our past hero’s heroic failures, our current actors have been unable to match the legacies of our 1952-82 teams especially in the west.  Little relief is coming from youths whose today’s battle cry is “crucify elders and banish tribes” without understanding that the two world wars in Europe were tribal wars, the reason every nationality, no matter how small, is today a nation state in Europe.

  • The Jonathan bubble

    The Jonathan bubble

    Almost eight years after he was voted out of office, former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) may be on his way back, if he and those in the vanguard of his return have their way. For a year now, speculations have been rife about his return. Those calling on him to come back see him as the one that can rescue the country. Really? Rescue Nigeria from the same wreck he caused before leaving office after losing the 2015 election.

    Perhaps, those campaigning for Jonathan’s return were not in Nigeria between 2010 and 2015. They might have been living on the moon then, going by the way they are behaving today. There is no way those who lived in Nigeria then would join any group or gang up with politicians to beg Jonathan to come back to the same office which duties they said then he could not perform.

    Jonathan lost the 2015 election to President Muhammdu Buhari because he failed in all the parameters of governance used to assess him. The then main opposition party, All Progressives Congress (APC), capitalised on the failure of Jonathan and the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to woo the electorate and win the election. Jonathan created the record of being the first sitting president to lose an election. This says a lot about his tenure. It shows that the people were disenchanted with his administration.

    But the change they voted for has not really changed anything about the country. All the indices of development are still down, just as they were under Jonathan. Not a few are rueing the ‘mistake’ they made by voting out Jonathan. Their discontent apart, is this enough for any person, group or politician to beg for Jonathan’s return? What does Jonathan now have to offer that he did not give when he was in office? Ironically, the same APC, which wrested power from him and PDP,  started what today has given vent to the Jonathan-must- return campaign which reached a crescendo when some agitators stormed the former president’s office in Abuja last Saturday.

    There was no name APC and its chieftains did not call Jonathan in 2015. The disenchanted public too joined in calling him those names. He was described as clueless, weak and not fit to be president. If you saw how things were then, you won’t blame them. Just as if you look around now, you would praise him. Again, is the glaring failure of APC enough reason to invite Jonathan to come back? It is not. APC is unwittingly admitting its failure with its covert romance with Jonathan. How can a ruling party, no matter its shortcomings, court its leading foe to the extent of planning to hand over power back to him on a platter?

    Before its exit, the Mai Mala Buni-led Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CEPC) toyed with the idea of bringing Jonathan into the party, with the purpose of dashing him its 2023 presidential ticket. Jonathan is a Southerner. He held office briefly as president between 2010 when former President Umoru Yar’Adua died and 2011, when their joint first four-year term  expired. In 2011, he contested in his own right and won. His bid for a second term failed when he lost to Buhari in 2015. APC’s plan to field Jonathan in 2023 is believed to be a northern agenda.

    According to pundits, Jonathan, by virtue of having held office between 2010 and 2015, is only entitled to a single four-year term, which will expire in 2017, if he contests and wins. In 2017, the argument will start all over again on which region the Presidency should be zoned to. Of course, the North will carry the day since Jonathan would have completed his two-term constitutional quota, thereby ruling out his region ,the  South of contention. It is this selfish agenda that is behind APC’s unholy romance with Jonathan. Though the CECPC denied romancing Jonathan to join APC for the 2023 race, many found it difficult to shake that belief.

    Reading the handwriting on the wall, PDP and its voluble Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike, who is now in the presidential race, advised Jonathan not to have anything to do with APC. Will he listen? Time will tell. For now, Jonathan appears carried away by the attention he is getting over 2023. He is not bothered that not too long ago, Nigerians were ready to boo him on the streets for not running the country well. Under him, insecurity was the order of the day, infrastructure development was nothing to write home about and everywhere you turned poverty stared you in the face. People are now saying that things were better then compared to now.

    Hence, the agitation, in APC quarters, for Jonathan to return which he is comfortable with. When the Youth Compatriot of Nigeria (YCON) called on him to run in 2023, he was over the moon as he responded to their request. “Yes, you are calling me to come and declare for the next election. I cannot tell you that I am declaring; the political process is ongoing. Just watch out”, he told the agitators whom he broke his breakfast meeting for to receive. “Just watch out”! That statement is loaded. Watch out for what? His declaration? Will Jonathan swallow the bait? I believe that he is too wise to do that. My people say if you are being deceived, you should not deceive yourself.

    But you never know with politicians. They will see deception all over the place and still fall for it because of their selfish interests. Those begging Jonathan to come and run are not doing so because of their love for Nigeria or because he is the most competent and capable man for the job. Has he forgotten so soon?   The same people crying: “Goodluck, declare now. We are sorry, Goodluck don’t abandon us, come back. Goodluck, please come. Goodluck, we love you”, were the ones shouting “crucify him, crucify him” not too long ago.

    The pledge by Ben Ayade, the APC Governor of Cross River State, to step down for Jonathan if he joins the race is proof that something is in the offing in the party about fielding the former president in 2023. Forget the dogon turenchi of the governor, who claimed that he was asked to join the presidential race by Buhari, the kernel of his statement is that those high up in APC are seriously considering bringing in Jonathan to run on the party’s platform.

    Everything lies in Jonathan’s hands and not with the agitators and their likeminds. He will, at the end of the day, be responsible for whatever action he eventually takes and not the band of jokers begging him to run. What will his decision be? The people are on the lookout, to borrow his words.

  • Osuntokun @ 80: Cheers to a father and friend

    Osuntokun @ 80: Cheers to a father and friend

    We often meet people in a place, at a time and under conditions that are nothing short of an augury perfectly arranged by divine providence. As we go on in life, we get to fully appreciate the impact these people made in our lives while they were around. They play different roles – some as mentors or models, some partners, some friends, and some become fathers. I consider it a huge honour to be writing about one of such men who became a father. I am happy to be celebrating Professor Akinjide Idowu Oladepo Osuntokun (born April 26, 1942) – a man whom I admired first from a distance and even more so from the privilege of a personal relationship. The fine points of prof’s life – his background, sterling accomplishments in academia as a first-rate scholar of history and international relations, as well as the details of his time in public service are well known. This is a celebration of the professor that I know personally on this very special milestone he has attained by the grace of God.

    My first personal interaction with Professor Osuntokun was divine. At the time, I was in my final year and had the unique opportunity of serving as president of the Redeemer’s University Students’ Association (RUNSA). I had cause to pay a courtesy visit to prof at his office in the company of the RUNSA vice president who was his student. That meeting did two things. First, it afforded me the opportunity to meet a man about whom I had heard so much since my first year in school. I had also watched him speak at a number of events in the university. He was, to me, the kind of professor anybody would want to be like  – easy going, warm, humble and accessible and refined (both in speech and style). I remember this really nice shirt he had on with his name beautifully inscribed on the cuff. I really thought that was suave! There were not so many with this level of panache. There is a sense in which one would tell that most of his students truly admired him. And why not? They knew him. He had no airs.  Like many, I was in awe of prof’s personality and credentials. He was the kind of person a young student would be happy to be seen with. I had always looked forward to the opportunity of meeting with him. And there was my opportunity. Second, it was the beginning of my relationship with him.

    It is important to say this here, that in my final-year leadership engagements at the Redeemer’s University, there was no one whose company I found more stimulating than prof’s. In many ways, he was a father to a great many students. But to me, he was more. He was a friend, and I truly enjoy the life experiences, advice, and even jokes he has shared over the years. There was something about our meetings. If I had only a two-hour break between classes and I stopped by prof’s office, there was the likelihood that I would be late for the next class. I was often caught in a dilemma where I had a class in a few minutes but didn’t want to leave. There was always something to talk about, and there was so much I was learning. These conversations shaped me, and through the years, I’ve been more than grateful for them.

    I remember in 2016. I developed a very strong interest in Chief Obafemi Awolowo. I informed him about this interest, and I could tell he was quite interested. He shared some history and insights, and suggested that I visit Booksellers in Ibadan to get a copy of Awo’s autobiography. He also wanted me to speak with the owner of the bookshop whom I must thank, once again, for warmly receiving me and for suggesting that I also pick up a copy of Chief S.L Akintola’s biography which, coincidentally, prof authored. I got the two books with my first National Youth Service Corps allowance. Pages into Chief Akintola’s biography, I remember calling prof to disagree with how he had described Chief Awolowo, as “aloof and uncommunicative.” What did I know? I was speaking from a place of bias, but we had a good conversation about it.

    In April 2017, prof. called to extend an invitation to attend his birthday/retirement celebration party. I was moved by the thought and was very happy to attend. The quality of people in attendance to honour prof was truly phenomenal. And to be in the midst of these people, as a much younger person, was a big deal. As I found the opportunity to ‘greet’ prof on that evening, he found the time to introduce me to some of his guests seated at the same table. That gesture was truly humbling.

    Prof and I are generations apart but that hasn’t detracted from the warmth and convenience in engaging with him. I truly enjoy his company. I often get a sense that I become a better man with each encounter. One of my best Christmases was spent with prof. I would never forget that evening of December 25, 2017. The things he said that night would remain with me. There have been many beautiful highlights since then. The stories and jokes are quite something. There is this one of a picture with Her Majesty, The Queen hung on the wall of his Redemption Camp home. One of his grandsons asked: “Oh, grandpa, you know the Queen!” Of course, prof knows the Queen. Then he asks: “Does the Queen know you?” Prof was a member of a delegation visiting the palace. It’s very likely that’s all she knows! I also remember the stories of the troubles he went through to get the attention of the young lady who became his wife. He has shared some experience of his time in public service, as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Germany (1991-1995), and as a member of the five-man Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations (1999-2015). Every now and then, he would make reference to his six-month detention by the Abacha regime.

    We talk a lot about everything – my plans, a relationship that didn’t work out, a lecture he is to give somewhere, his concerns about travelling, his views on the leadership crisis – everything.  A call would often go on for more than 30 minutes. On at least four occasions, we have spoken for over an hour discussing Nigeria, his frustrations at the sordid state of affairs, and how we can get back up. It would seem that he has given up but he continues to write about these issues in his column in The Nation. There is still hope. Since 2018, I have had the honour of reading his writing, each week, before it is published. Twice, last year, prof was kind enough to yield his page to me as Guest Writer. The gestures are really encouraging and I can’t thank prof enough for the support through the years. Thanks to prof’s direct nudge, I have had the privilege of meeting some very distinguished Nigerians. Reading these people is one thing, but meeting them is altogether different. It often leaves a profound impression, particularly on those who are both public-spirited and passionate about the power of personal example.

    Prof is now an octogenarian. I believe I can be excused for not having any words of ‘advice’. Interestingly, I wish that prof would do more TV interviews to share insights on the emerging dynamics in global affairs. I also hope that he is able to finish that updated biography in good time. We have talked about his intention to write one; one that would capture his years at the Redeemer’s University and post-retirement. I wish him the very best in this effort. He deserves all the celebration for the exemplary life he has led, gratitude for his service, and praises for the inspiration he continues to provide. He is, without any hesitation, one of the biggest influences in my life, and someday when my story is written, prof’s special place would be reserved. I’m proud to say that I know prof, and even prouder that prof knows me. This pride, I’m sure, is one that many who have met prof in their journey can relate to. Prof has paid his dues. He has inspired many. He has served his country and his God. I have all the joy in the world in wishing prof a happy 80th birthday, with the very best wishes and prayers of renewed strength and sustenance by God’s excellent spirit.

    • Akinnuga writes from Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State.
  • Boy apocalypse: Beyond the applause

    Boy apocalypse: Beyond the applause

    The thing about a gun: it’s easy for a child to get trapped in the sickle curve of its blind trigger. Yakubu, 10, is a testament. Since he learned to squeeze his first trigger, he’s been enamoured with the gun. His weapon of choice, the Russian Kalashnikov, AK-47 rifle. It didn’t matter that it was the deadliest gun in the world. He was only too ecstatic to wield it. Armed with the gun, he hushed boys to sleep with bullets in Sambisa. He shot hot lead into their parents in Baga. He watched blood drip through their perforated innards to soak the bleached sands of Kalabalge. He abducted peasant girls and housewives too. The 10-year-old dispersed corpses into Borno’s scorched earth. But he “did it all to survive.”

    “If I didn’t do those things, they would have killed me,” he said, explaining his ordeal as a former captive and combatant of the Boko Haram (BH) terrorist group. Now 16, Yakubu regrets his membership in Boko Haram.

    His life would probably pan out differently had he escaped the clutches of the insurgents, when they laid siege to his village, in Gwoza, in July 2016. That sad incident put paid to his childhood and his dreams of attaining soccer renown.

    Growing up, Yakubu dreamed of playing professional soccer. He yearned to play for El Kanemi Warriors of Borno, and afterward, English Premiership’s Chelsea FC. He clung to his dreams even when quick with monsters.

    At school and on the sandy pitches of Gwoza, he was fondly admired as a ‘standing 10,’ a skillful midfielder, who teased the passion and shrieks of many a soccer lover with his aplomb.

    The future seemed rosy, gilt-edged, until the sad incidence of his abduction.

    On that fateful day, the boy died in Yakubu, so did his spunk and promise as a soccer maestro.

    Boko Haram stormed his village and burned his home. They shot his parents in the head and stabbed his brother in the neck killing them. Then they whisked him, his brother’s wife, and six of his childhood friends to their enclave in Sambisa forest, he said.

    There, they forcibly conscripted him and his friends as child combatants. He said, “Few days later, they transferred us to Shababu Ummah, in the Chikungudu forest, in Kalabalge. There, we spent four months learning to use daggers, swords, and machine guns.”

    And Yakubu knows his guns. He knows when and how to shoot to merely wound flesh and bone. He knows when to crack the cranium, and go for the kill, delivering the headshot.

    Sometimes, the casualty hits too close to home, like when he aimed his rifle at his best friends, Idrissu, 11, and Ilyasu, 13.

    “They stole dried fish and tried to escape. They were my childhood friends but I was their leader. I was told to punish them. So, I shot them in the head,” he said.

    Aside from the two that he shot in the head, four of his remaining friends, Abdullahi, 10, Bashir, 12, Salihu, nine, and Hassan, 13, were killed during encounters with the Nigerian Army.

    Shooting his childhood friends in the head; hardly anyone ever gets past that, let alone a child. But Yakubu shrugged off the incident, describing it as two out of his 22 kills.

     

    Beyond the applause

    The above excerpt from my story, “The boy who swapped football for bullets,” highlights the fate of the boy insurgent; like his bandit counterpart he constitutes a national eyesore.

    Child insurgents like Yakubu have become Nigeria’s worst nightmare. He is the shaft of comeuppance impaled in the heart of the country’s northeast-northwest regions, and our national psyche. Variants of his stock are bred nationwide, from southwest’s Awawa, Osanle Boys, and One Million Boys to mention a few.

    Life as a child insurgent or bandit oft becomes heated and extremely dangerous but the likes of Yakubu are ready to die with the gun. In their reckless, macabre life, peace is overrated and school, a terrible bore.

    Their loaded rifles spit nutriment to their malnourished minds. In their world, bullets glow like ‘dabino’ and a rocket launcher excites their thirst for mayhem.

    Strife has poured into them its metal and chaos in queer doses. And they have learnt to give them back, first, in bitty slugs of rampage. Then, in mammoth dispensations of carnage and bloodlust.

    It was no doubt cathartic for me to have won journalism’s biggest prize, the Fetisov Journalism Awards (FJA)’s Outstanding Contribution to Peace category with my story on Yakubu, Damina, and fellow child insurgents.

    But it is by no means a drop in an ocean of the much-needed intervention required to salvage the country from the onslaught of underage boys bred into gunfighters and cold-blooded killers by teen and adult handlers within Boko Haram and among armed bandits.

    I dedicate my win to The Nation newspaper and its team of brilliant, resourceful journalists and media managers. Aside from The Nation’s team, Nigeria flaunts some of the finest journalists and a great deal of humane journalism spanning multimedia platforms; still, there is so much left to be done.

    In our part of the world, news stories generally focus on the point at which something has happened, such as breaking news or a planned event. That point in the arc of a story is like the peak of a mountain.

    We should rather practice journalism that focuses on the entire arc, which means paying attention to the up-slope when people are wondering what will happen, how it will happen, why it will happen, and the down-slope when people want to understand the significance of the event.

    We must aspire to a journalism practice that forewarns and resolves issues, the type that explores the genesis of a conflict or situation, its immediate and future impact on the subjects or characters involved, and the possible solutions to it.

    We must avoid the pitfalls of bias that goads journalists to take sides even before ascertaining the truth of the matter. Journalists ought to highlight the fate of the Yakubus of our world as victims rather than sensationalise their misfortune, treating them as villains and freaks of nature.

    Those who make it out of the terror camps are ostracised by their families and neighbours, who recoil from them calling them ‘Serpents.’

    Yet there is a reason Boko Haram and armed bandits’ creed of violence and wanton genocide is resonant among brainwashed minors. The compelling nature of the grievances articulated, and the pervasiveness of poverty justify the boys’ rationale for embracing a creed of carnage.

    A history of corruption and neglect at the federal, state, and local levels of government, among others, is a major source of widespread dissatisfaction with politicians, the legal system, and law enforcement.

    These sentiments thrive in greater depths and concentration in the north, where armed bandits, insurgents, and their sponsors, cash in on the situation. Boko Haram offers them a passport to paradise, telling them that their religion is under threat; together, with bandits, they manipulate the sentiments of little boys and teenagers, luring them with food, money, freedom to abduct and rape girls of their choice and women old enough to be their mothers.

    As the anti-terrorism war intensifies in Nigeria’s northeast and northwest regions, Boko Haram, despite massive surrenders by insurgents to military forces, replenishes its ranks with a steady stream of boy combatants, moving child abductees cum combatants through neighbourhoods and forests, using military trucks and passenger vans, to boot camps holding thousands of boys on the watch of adolescent trainers.

    This is how fragile the situation is.

  • The Chrisland sex fiasco

    The Chrisland sex fiasco

    The Chrisland School child porn is a reality check; another frightful glimpse into our infernal core. The school’s underage sex debacle is a spear of consequence impaled into Nigeria’s sanctimonious psyche. It spools the mathematical grid of our defeat by chthonic lust and Nigeria’s retreat into bestial nature.

    Nigeria stirred to a rude shock as the video hit cyberspace soon after the mother of a supposed rape victim, aged 10,  posted a video accusing the school of a cover-up. The video of the distraught mother claiming her daughter was raped during a school trip to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

    In the video shared by one Ubi Franklin, she claimed that Chrisland had sought to cover up the matter, lamenting that the school suspended her daughter once it found out that she was aware of the gravity of the alleged abuse.

    In an indefinite suspension letter signed by Chrisland’s Head Teacher, G.I. Azike, the school said the alleged victim “with a few of her counterparts willfully participated in a game they called ‘Truth or Dare,’ a game which led her and a few other co-learners to carry out the immoral act after the lights out instruction was given.”

    But soon after the mother of the alleged rape victim posted her complaint, a video of her 10-year-old child materialised in cyberspace. In the said video, the minor reportedly ‘rode’ another minor, a boy, in an adult sexual act that has been widely described as ‘Cowgirl.’

    Many were quick to blame it on failed parenting even as they excitedly shared the video. Soon after the clip went viral, the Lagos State Government warned that sharing or receiving images depicting child pornography is an offense under its laws that can attract a sentence of up to 14 years.

    Unbelievably, more videos of the Chrisland School 10-year-old girl have emerged online. The child who reportedly posts her self-recorded videos on an app called Likee, titled her page “madness and cringe.”

    Her handle called “bhadgurl4k (bad girl fuck) already has over 24,000 likes. She has posted over 526 videos with 4,134 followers as of Easter Monday.

    Investigation revealed that the videos were recorded in her home with an iPhone with the aid of a ring light. She tries to show off dance moves with erotic mannerisms in her posted videos.

    Greater tragedy subsists in the adult public’s morbid fascination with the Chrisland students’ sex video and the 10-year-old girl’s subsequent clips. On the pretext of condemning the kids’ sexual misadventure, several adults have shared the video with undisguised enthusiasm, drooling over the reportedly sordid imagery of the 10-year-old performing a sex act on her 13-year-old mate.

    If the participants happened to be the children of each sharer of the disturbing video, would they excitedly share it across social media platforms?

    Sadism manifests in the wanton sexualization of Nigerian society. More worrisome is the fate of the country’s children: adolescent girls are abducted, bought, and tortured in slave camps; it manifests in how little girls are forcibly recruited and sexually violated, often by numerous men on the watch of vicious madams, in sex camps cum baby factories where underage girls are groomed for rape, impregnation, and sale of their babies.

    The sadistic voyeurism triggered by the Chrisland school scandal is a consequence of society’s broken moral compass and a manifest descent of amusement fare.

    The kids are casualties of the corruption of societal values fostered by the mainstream media, unregulated cyberspace, and institutionalisation of perverse entertainment like the Big Brother Naija (BBN) reality show, among others. Disguised as modern entertainment, the show subsists as a rebuke to moral nature, an escape from the province of responsibility with its restraining womb walls and bowels.

    The show’s broadcaster via the digital satellite television feeds an amoral miasma, creating a world of fluid caprices, amid its carnage of incarnations.

    While it’s starkly convenient and arbitrary to blame the BBN producers for normalising filth as media fare, however, it must be acknowledged that greater fault lies with Nigerian parents who manifestly fail their wards every time they sit with them to watch and obsess about the sordid TV programme.

    Aside from the BBN filth, social media is rife with pornography; time and over again, teenagers and minors are persistently exposed to scandalous videos of revenge porn.

    Not a few kids were part of the obsession with the sex video of the singer, Tiwa Savage, which was supposedly leaked online in controversial circumstances. These children witnessed how the public hailed and commended the singer for being so “courageous” and representative of elevated feminism. Ultimately she was celebrated as a “superwoman.”

    Nobody imagined the scarring such perverse sentimentality could inflict on teenagers and minors who look up to Savage as their favourite diva and role model.

    And just recently, the sex video and nude photos of a fast-rising Nigerian singer, Ikuforiji Olaitan aka Oxlade, were also supposedly leaked accidentally on the internet.

    Such morbid fare and their attendant celebration by the public have continually misled teenagers and minors like the Chrisland students to embrace sexual misadventure.

    The Chrisland students, like most of their peers, suffer a delusive edge to their growth, a supposed sense of worth and ardour for maturation that defies convention. They are miners and hawkers of the perverse however fickle the depth and resonance. There is very little difference between them and the hordes of youths that make it into the fetishized brothel cum tabernacle of the BBN show.

    Like porn performers, they are victims of perverse pop culture and sex trafficking, who are forced to create sex scenes by abusers adept at mental and economic exploitation while using slovenly psychological tools to break down the inhibitions of the unsuspecting victims.

    There is no one to protect such minors from the aggressive cues and wild decadence insinuated into their psyches by the highly sexualised content to which they are exposed. The fault is with their parents who leave purveyors of filth like the BBN producers and venal celebrities to the task of raising their wards.

    Entertainers use porn to groom society, and youngsters, in particular, are dealt a gruesome form of psychological conditioning that leaves too many among them stirred, shaken, and receptive to dross.

    Despite its apparent dangers, porn addiction has become pop culture, cutting through swathes of conservative norms and social correctness. As it knifes through the country, cyberspace becomes a garish, raunchy boulevard; a theatre of libertine delight, fetishes, and rendezvous for voyeurs and porn stars.

    It also offers a negotiation point for the addicted desiring real physical action. The social space thus unfurls as an esplanade of taboos and fetishes that expands and contracts to temptation and patronage.

    Not a few minors are incurably smitten with the filth pervasive in modern entertainment and pop culture. They are fascinated by the core message, an innate claim that we’d all like to be porn stars at one point in our life or another.

    In Nigeria, porn has won the culture war by fusing with the commercial mainstream. Nudity, promiscuity, and random sex are mainstream chic.

    Modern Nigerian fashion takes its cues from porn. Music videos mime porn scenes, presenting females as porn-rats, or video vixens if you like. Everybody exploits porn for shock value including the producers of the BBN show.

    All these sever the exposed minors’ mental connection with moral roots. The so-called leaders of tomorrow are thus lured backward, away from menarche into the womb of regression.

    The solution, sadly, lies in proper parenting. But have we proper parents?

  • Looking beyond the 2023 elections

    Looking beyond the 2023 elections

    The 2023 general elections will be contested by deceptive personae, among others. Some of the aspirants are driven by delusions of sainthood and an inflamed ego.

    The career aspirants declare their right to Nigeria’s most coveted seat citing everything but merit. Some new kids on the block, however, seek to illustrate a dubious fable; chanting the ‘nottooyoungtorun’ mantra, they wear their naivete like a badge and brandish ebullience in replacement of substance.

    Together, they fulfill the purpose of a taxidermic decoy, like Spenser’s False Florimell.

    More old and young aspirants are out to incite and exploit the electorate’s frantic hopes in order to dash them. Like changelings of fickle principles, passion and integrity are changeful in their wake.

    The electorate must make its way past the fraud and extortion of such seasoned con men, who are out to lure the psyche into committing political capital (that is, electoral votes) to unsound judgments and investments.

    But to achieve this, the Nigerian voter must learn to identify the false messiahs and con men among the aspirants. These range from the stark pretenders to the supposedly powerful contenders.

    The most prominent among them justify their claim to power touting paper qualification, ill-gotten wealth, an army of thugs, assassins, and unparalleled deviousness.

    How do illiterate voters avoid the snare of such con men? The answer lies in the capacity of the politically literate amid the ranks of the country’s electorate – comprising the impoverished breadline and the middle class – to sensitise their kind, to repel the scourge of predatory politicians.

    But that is in the long run; no degree of push-back could work against such political elements at the moment. Like every other constituent of the country’s electorate, the true patriot and politically literate will watch helplessly as familiar tricksters scuttle the electoral process via vote-buying, filthy propaganda, hooliganism, and character assassination.

    Whoever wins the 2023 elections, across all levels of government, the flawed systems will remain in place; the patrons of the systemic anomalies are too powerful to be challenged – at least for the moment.

    It’s time to look beyond the 2023 elections. This is the time for the politically savvy to join or create a dependable platform and start conversations to educate and reorientate illiterate segments of the electorate.

    The average voter must be taught to understand, that, Nigeria’s most dangerous enemies are not Boko Haram, thieving bank chiefs, armed robbers, industrial monopolists, corrupt security operatives, and government puppeteers in the corporate business sector, but the criminal masterminds responsible for these maladies and the illiterate voter who would gladly pawn his vote for a token and ethnoreligious bigotries.

    The voter’s card thus becomes a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of such a voter. Knowing this, the fraudulent aspirant plies prospective voters with inducements, bigotries, and outright lies.

    The big truth, however, subsists in the buried narratives: that fictions of growth have a hollow underside; that Nigeria and constituent states must ultimately learn to live within their means; that regional claims of marginalisation have undertones of lies; that terrorism has its patrons in government and among the governed; that government size and spending has to be surgically pruned; that Nigeria has to move from a consumer economy to a producer economy; that power is finite and voter apathy and ignorance keep predators in public office, indefinitely.

    The theme of the forthcoming elections, as advanced by the contenders, is that of salvation. A few aspirants present themselves the virtuous of our world, by whose virtues Nigeria may attain salvation.

    Too little supports their messianic posturing. For instance, their platitudes fail to practically address the abysmal states of the economy, health, education, and transportation sectors. This is more pronounced in the case of the aspirants holding public offices. They fail to justify why they’ve been unable to assert the positive change and progress they promised throughout the two terms cum eight years of their incumbency.

    There is no aspirant with a heartfelt plan to commit at least 30 percent of Nigeria’s annual budget to health and education – split at 15 percent each. No president-elect has ever done that. No aspirant has ever promised that. None may do that. Those who pay lip service to such often do so to amass political capital and ultimately, win votes.

    Of all the aspirants, none would agree to the surgical trimming of the nation’s legislature, while legislative work is reduced to a part-time assignment. Yet several voters would dance and maim, bicker and kill, to guarantee their easy access to the nation’s public offices.

    The Nigerian voter thus creates a plenum, from which he/she would not escape for another four years. This would be blamed on ‘voter illiteracy’ at crunch time when reality bites harder, and the frenzied, ignorant voter of today relapses in sober awareness tomorrow.

    At the moment, there is fierce jostling for the presidential ticket within the country’s two major political parties. The cutthroat rivalry, dirty dealings, and betrayals highlight the importance of the stakes. Even so, it must be acknowledged that more aspirants fulfill the role of a spoiler, and some, a placebo, presenting as false contrary to the prospects of the aspirants with real substance and the capacity to truly improve the fortunes of the country.

    This minute, the press has been contracted to clothe dross as gold and ornament misgovernance as quintessential brass. This reinforces the failure of the media: more journalists have become praise-singers of the failed political class and common carriers of its propaganda. We’ve sort of given up being independent on our own, in order to survive.

    Through these maladies, Nigeria’s incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari, is expected to lead Nigeria to the execution of a flawless transition by the forthcoming elections. In his two terms of office, he was expected to conjure a magic formula to turn Nigeria’s fortune around. The jury bickers, in real-time, on the depth of his success or failure at this task.

    President Buhari was expected to channel dignified statesmanship and the latent strength to facilitate the emergence of Nigeria’s extraordinary league of detribalised, patriot leaders, within and outside the folds of the prominent parties.

    The latter would reinvigorate Nigeria’s comatose industries, eliminate terrorism, achieve a 24-hour electricity supply, revivify substandard health and education sectors, and truly fight corruption.

    But it was foolhardy to leave the task of finding them to Buhari alone; he hadn’t the facilities to actualise their emergence. He was too preoccupied fighting our home made fires perhaps.

    Again, we find ourselves at the desert end of our green pasture. There is no one left to lead the charge for our world’s lost splendours. For eight years, Nigeria entrusted Buhari with this task because he seemed our best hope of snatching Nigeria from the jaws of decline and devastation. He did his bit.

    But he won’t save Nigeria. Someone else will.

    But could Buhari prepare us for the one who would lead the charge for Nigeria’s lost splendours? The retired General from Daura couldn’t tease our practiced tremble to affect the bounteous tumult. This was because he lost too much ground to the elements he swore to neuter.

    This minute, Nigeria seeks for the umpteenth time, our romanticised revolutionary who would unburden our lives of rottenness and excess baggage.

    Nigeria seeks the one capable of standing like a man; the man whose current stoop and future sway perpetually stifles the prance of the predatory political class.

     

     

  • The almighty Section 84 (12)

    The almighty Section 84 (12)

    It IS not an issue that should generate so much heat. Political appointees abound all over the place and they know themselves and what they do. So, why the fuss? A political appointee is hired and fired by the head of the executive at the federal or state level. He does not seek appointment into the civil or public service in the same way as career civil or public servants. He holds his appointment at the pleasure of the President or governor.

    These appointees, however, work in the bureaucratic set up of the civil or public service. The only difference between them and the career civil and public servants is that they have a tenured appointment tied to the term(s) of office of their principals. They are unlike the career civil or public servants who leave after a 35-year service or upon attaining the retirement age of 60, whichever comes first.

    Career civil or public servants are subject to civil or public service rules, which guide their appointment, discipline,promotion and retirement. Political appointees, on the other hand, are in a world of their own, by virtue of being the President’s or governor’s staff. At times, they are deployed to work with Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). These staff of the President or governors have become people of interest in the countdown to the 2023 elections.

    The National Assembly led by Senate President Ahmad Lawan and Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila has barred them under Section 84 (12) of the Electoral Act from participating in parties’ primaries. The provision says: No political appointee at any level shall be a voting delegate or be voted for at the convention or congress of any political party for the purpose of the nomination of candidates for any election. The provision did not go down well with President Muhammadu Buhari. He delayed assenting to the law until he extracted a promise from the lawmakers to expunge the provision from the Act.

    The lawmakers passed the law without doing his bidding when it was returned to them. The executive then surreptitiously went to a Federal High Court in Umuahia, Abia State, to get the provision voided as well as an order that it should be expunged from the Act. The National Assembly, which was not joined in the suit, has since appealed the decision. With the elections drawing near and the parties getting ready for their primaries, the burning questions are: who is a political appointee? Section 84 (12) does not say. It assumes that he is known. Should such political appointees resign before the primaries, as stated in the Electoral Act, or the general elections, as contained in the Constitution?

    The definition of a political appointee can be deduced from the Constitution under which the National Assembly derives its power. The President’s contention is that Section 84 (12) contravenes the constitutional provisions on election matters. According to Sections 66 (1)(f), 107 (1)(f), 137 (1)(g) and 182 (1)(g), a civil or public servant must resign, withdraw or retire from service at least 30 days before election into the Senate or House of Representatives, a House of Assembly, the office of President and the office of governor.

    Herein lies the problem. Section 84 (12) talks of political appointees, while the Constitution mentions civil or public servants. Are political appointees civil or public servants as envisaged under the  Constitution? Can civil or public service be taken as one and the same thing? The second poser is imperative because of Section 137 (1)(g) of the Constitution which specifically states that a presidential candidate must quit civil or public service at least 30 days before election. For one, the Constitution talks of election and not primary which Section 84 (12) dwells on.

    Second, the issue is under which category do political appointees fall in the Constitution? Part II of the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution seems to answer the question. As a layman, I may be wrong. My own understanding is that they are public officers like their principals who appointed them. The schedule lists public officers for the purpose of the Code of Conduct as the President, Vice President, governors and their deputies, National and Houses of Assembly members and staff, all judicial officers and court workers, all ministers, armed forces, police and other government security agencies’ members, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Head of Service of the Federation and their counterparts in the states  and the workers.

    They also include ambassadors, high commissioners and missions’ staff abroad, workers of universities and other colleges and institutions and chairmen, members and workers of statutory agencies. It is evident that political appointees, like public servants, are subject to the declaration of their assets on assuming and leaving office under the Code of Conduct. Is it then just and fair to other contestants to allow these appointees to remain in office till 30 days before an election in which they are candidates before resigning?

    The lawmakers as politicians know the consequences of that. They know what their fellow politicians in the executive arm can do with their power and enormous resources in determining who gets a party’s ticket. This is why they came up with that provision, even though they too would act as the political appointees, who are busy declaring interest in one office or the other, if the shoe is on the other leg. Many are doing so, while still holding their political jobs, and their principals are encouraging them.

    The intention of Section 84 (12) is clear. It is to stop the use of executive power to frustrate the chances of strong and popular aspirants at primaries. Only those with bad intentions will oppose such law which is meant to create a level playing field for all aspirants. People should look at the message and not the messengers, who are fighting to protect their own selfish political interests by using their legislative powers to check the influence of the executive to determine the outcome of the shadow elections. Sadly, those who should know better and endorse the provision are shooting it down. But, the public looks up to the court to save the day and our democracy.