The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Twilight blues

    Twilight blues

    In “The Two April Mornings” by Williams Wordsworth, and its companion poem, “The Fountain,” a 72-year-old schoolmaster bemoans his youth as an energetic man. Virility is canonised only when lost.

    Youth is documented as distant narrative removes, nostalgia within memory: the first poem ends with Wordsworth recalling the schoolmaster’s memories. Masculinity is contemplated through the bleared lens of age. Apology to Paglia.

    In “The Last of the Flock,” we meet a full-grown, healthy man. But he is weeping in the road. Once rich, he has sold his fifty sheep to buy food for his children. Wordsworth turns the flock’s diminishing into a litany of dwindling manhood: fifty, ten, five, three, two, one, none.

    The poet’s arithmetic charts the shrinking of patriarchal domain and masculinity’s supple patch. As his property shrivels to the borders of his body, the protagonist, like Akara Oogun, Odysseus and Lear, diminishes to nobody.

    Are we prepared for that dreaded epoch when we may become nobodies? Are we prepared for that period when our shiny glories in the time of youth may command only a terse applause, a perfunctory nod, or the crisp tribute of a grudging hand clap?

    Are Olusegun Obasanjo, Muhammadu Buhari, Yakubu Gowon, Abdulsalam Abubakar, living that epoch? How does a man welcome the frightening reality outside the corridors of power, when the unforgiving measure of his deeds as a public officer and private citizen determines the tenor of his twilight?

    Forget public officers, are you, dear reader, prepared for that direful eventuality? The Wordsworthian male decline, like Sango’s domestication by Oya and Kleist’s male mastectomy in Penthesilea, is a surgical reduction of self that beggars reflection and urgent intervention among Nigeria’s male-folk.

    Wordsworth empathizes with the virile male of “The Last of the Flock” because he is suffering, and because his masculine identity is fast approaching vanishing point. For Wordsworth, a man becomes greater as he becomes less. Self-sacrifice and public martyrdom canonise him in the cult of female nature.

    As a man, do you attain greatness as you become less? Have you made any sacrifice worth canonisation by the cult of female nature? Would your name enliven high society and suburban poetry long after you return to dust? What quality of manhood do you pose to your wife (wives) and the Nigerian female? Would you wish your kind upon your daughter as a husband?

    What calibre of men steer the ship of the Nigerian state? Beyond dubious feminist treatises on men? Beyond our politicised, economic, sociological theories, who is the Nigerian male? What’s his value to the Nigerian state?

    Who are we, stripped of the veneer of professed spiritualism, feminism, chauvinism, masochism, intellectualism, among other isms and schisms that define us?

    The moral nihilism espoused by the misled male would terrify shayateen. It terrified Adorno thus his contention that radical evil was possible only by the presence of sinister men and the collaboration of a timid, cowed, and confused population; a system of propaganda and mass media that offered little more than spectacle and entertainment, and an educational system that did not transmit transcendent values or nurture the capacity for individual conscience.

    He feared a culture that banished the anxieties and complexities of moral choice and embraced a childish hypermasculinity. Such hypermasculinity has its logical fruition in Boko Haram, armed banditry, herder-farmer carnage, kidnap for ransom. It manifests in our lack of compassion for the homeless, the impoverished, the unemployed, and the sick. It seethes in our lack of respect for our wives, our sons, our daughters, and our persistent fear of being neutered by rebellious femininity.

    Resistance to these realities cannot take place without a degree of knowledge and self-reflection. We have to name these acts and transform moral outrage into concrete attempts to prevent such human violations from taking place in the first place, notes Giroux.

    But contemporary youths accept the system they inherited and find a comfortable place within it, biding their time to subvert and cheat it. Thus we shut our eyes to the venomous superstructure foisted on us – fuelled by insentient politics, retained by toxic economy, all borne of savage manhood, and sensationalised femaleness.

    In the system that we have created, treasury looters feign sickness, a handicap, and faint outright, in frantic bid to avoid public inquiry or any attempt to make them answer for their misdeeds.

    Such comical jaunts have attained a pedestrian taste of the splattering kind. It’s gross buffoonery, and yet a rite of pagan worship in Nigeria’s sorely spiritualised and bigoted political space – some rogue pastor or alfa, religious and ethnic group eventually threatens perceived detractors of their favoured son or daughter.

    Thus any blockhead or egghead may attain public office, loot the coffers, and collapse during a public inquiry or arrive on a stretcher. It never gets old. It’s pure radical evil that eroticises the horror banished by norms.

    Feminists blame the patriarchy but our problem isn’t the patriarchy but the trans-generational ideal of callousness. A matriarchy wouldn’t fare better in a society built on the belief that virility consists of the maximum capacity to circumvent and cheat the system. This has foisted upon us generations of savage citizenry.

    Savagery dominates our culture. It runs like an electric current, powering our politics, short-circuiting morals, and our comatose economy. It activates our reality television and trash-talks radio programmes while superintending a bigoted, pliant collective.

    Society blames it all on the man and the feminist-misandrist blames it on the “evil patriarchy.” Several males display an incapacity for moral choice thus retreating into an ostensibly ferocious collective that must be led and vilified, they argue. Heck! Let’s all blame the male for the tragic turn of the Nigerian enterprise.

    Grammy award-winning artiste, James Brown, released the album in 1966, “It’s a man’s world, but not without adding “But it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.”

    A man must live wary of the woman and vice versa. That’s tact. But to stew in such fear is to be inimical to self and society. The North American myth of the toothed genitalia gruesomely connotes such female power and male fear. Metaphorically, the female genitalia has secret teeth, for the male exits as less than when he entered, according to lore. Yet it takes a woman to make a man.

    The importance of women empowerment, their presence in leadership roles, and their representation in government could improve governance and reduce corruption only if they commit to the task shorn of corruption.

    The gravest challenge to our hopes and dreams as a nation are the messy political transactions prevalent at the grassroots and party arena. We can no longer shut our eyes to the venomous superstructure foisted on us, fuelled by insentient politics, retained by toxic social economy.

    More women suffer the scourge of tarnished awareness in this political high drama that renders their conscience, a pitiful hostage of its flesh envelope; “whose surges and secret murmurings they cannot stay or speed,” says Paglia.

    If the woman’s body is truly a labyrinth in which the man is lost, the Nigerian woman should loom formidably before him as negotiations intensify on the country’s next social, political hierarchies.

    The conflict of economies and social ironies notwithstanding, a new class of womanhood must emerge not as a corpse in future argument with itself, but as a heroic shiner of light and hope on Nigeria’s dark aspects.

    This cosmos of ‘strong women’ are reliant on Atlas’ strength yet imperiled by his shrug. More is the pity.

     

     

     

  • Revisiting Zik’s diarchy option

    Revisiting Zik’s diarchy option

    With widespread hopelessness among confused Nigerians who are increasingly becoming unsure of what the future holds, the Nigerian governing political elite have become the scourge of the nation. It is today clear that their quest for democracy, the new value system in the run up to independence was just a means to an end. For them, it was the shortest route to power without war or allegiance to democratic ethos such as the imperative of a vigorous opposition, self-restraint, treatment of citizens with respect and respect for laws and facts.

    It was not as if Nigerians ever had any illusion about the real motive of governing political elite.  “Given a choice”, as Obafemi Awolowo once observed, “between the educated elite, the traditional rulers and the British imperialists, they would choose in reverse order’’, because with the latter, they were assured of justice whose absence today is the major source of social dislocation in the nation.

    Driven by greed, Nigerian governing political elite embarked on massive economic sabotage, and opulent brigandage resulting in what Arthur Nwankwo describes as ‘reckless confrontation politics.’

    First to appeal to the military for support following the constitutional crisis associated with the massively rigged 1964 election was Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and those that struck on January 15, 1966 were the young idealistic military officers that identified with his nationalistic fervour and progressive politics while those that struck in July 1966 in what they described as vengeance coup were military officers that identified with the conservative political tendencies of the north.

    But Zik was the first to appreciate the price the governing elite must pay for luring the military into politics albeit inadvertently. He had, as chancellor of the University of Lagos, therefore, used the occasion of Samuel Jereton Mariere Memorial Lecture, organized by University of Lagos students on October 27, 1972 to call for the establishment of civilian military government (diarchy) just for a period of five years until when the military government hand over as promised in 1976. It was his opinion that: “In a developing nation like Nigeria, where the military, like Adam and Eve, have tasted the forbidden fruits of political powers, it will be imprudent to overlook the constructive role the armed forces can play in stabilizing a nation that has just emerged from colonialism and a bloody civil war”.

    But Zik who was shouted down and roundly condemned had the last laugh. As against five years he had advocated, by 1979 when Obasanjo handed power over to civilian, the military had been in power for 14 years of Nigeria’s 24 years of independence. The second republic was short-lived as it was toppled on December 31, 1983 by Buhari, followed in quick succession by Babangida, Abacha and Abdulsalmi, with the military monopolizing political power for additional 16 years (1983-1999).

    But the worst was yet to come. After compounding our crisis of nation-building, the new power holders that emerged in 1999 were military-bred new-breed politicians that bred nothing but corruption and behaved more like an army of occupation sharing spoils of war in form of oil wells, national assets kept in their custody for the future of our children, and turning our country to importer of labour of other societies.

    But the greater tragedy seems to have come with President Buhari’s mismanagement of our crisis of nation-building. With today’s total disillusionment  among a disoriented Nigerians, with those in power pretending to be unaware of impending  apocalypse if the country implodes, perhaps the time calls for a revisit of Zik’s diarchy option we once rejected with derision.

    Perhaps the first compelling reason is the lesson of history. We remember with nostalgia the giant strides made by the Gowon regime of 1966-1972 which can at best be likened to a diarchy. The star-studded regime could boast of visionary and nationalist leaders like Obafemi Awolowo, Aminu Kano, Joseph Tarka, Tony Enahoro Pa Edwin Clark and other astute politicians from all over the country that laid the foundation for what was to become the enduring legacy of military regimes in Nigeria. These include refineries, textile industries, assembly plants, Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Third Mainland Bridge, Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Sagamu –Benin (East-West road), Lagos-Badagry and their equivalents across the nation.

    But more than this, the governing political elite have since the birth of the fourth republic shown they are incapable of institutionalising justice through constitutional engineering. The nation achieved unity in diversity through constitutional engineering between 1922 and 1957 because of there was the colonial master whipping everyone into line. Because the colonial master served as umpire, representative of ethnic nationalities trying to hold the nation to ransom out of sheer mischief were easily called to order.

    The 1963 Republican Constitution, the first without some big brother whipping us on line was self-serving. The only people that benefitted from the exercise were leading members of the governing elite notably the president who from Governor-General became titular President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and the Prime Minister who took control of the judiciary.

    Murtala Muhammed’s 1979 attempt at constitutional-making was like working to the answer. They adopted the American federalism model, a product of their civil war experience that celebrates the values of a strong centre that can effortlessly subdue internal insurrection and withstand external  threat without taking into account that America with shared value is different from a multicultural society like ours, where different groups are at different levels of cultural development.

    Babangida with his characteristic conceit tried his own variant of diarchy  designed for self-perpetuation along the line of other sit-tight African leaders; Abacha’s intervention  was to  prepare him for self-succession, while  Obasanjo’s half-hearted efforts at constitution-making collapsed over his failure to secure a third term. Abdulsalami Abubakar’s 1999 constitution, regarded by many as a military decree was drafted by some conscripted public servants who never presented their draft for public debate until the inauguration of Obasanjo after the 1999 election.

    Unfortunately, President Buhari that the nation turned to in 2015 for salvation continues with his characteristic sense of self-righteousness to do what he thinks the people want while ignoring their demand for political restructuring which many believe is the only way to avert the coming apocalypse. Except for the period of the civil war, Nigeria has never been as divided and suspicious of each other as today.

    As we today grope in darkness, unsure of tomorrow, perhaps there can be no better time for a revisit of the Zik diarchy option. First, there is the lesson of history as shown above. Nigeria’s governing political elite have since 1963 not treated Nigerians as citizens but as subjects. From 1999, they embarked in in fiscal brigandage, freely sharing the national patrimony kept in their care for our children.

    As we today grope in darkness with the nation enveloped by a heavy darkling cloud, it is obvious our suicidal governing political elite who seem ready to pull down the edifice on their heads need help.

    And short of inviting our colonial masters back as once suggested by frustrated one-time governor of Ogun State,  the late Olabisi Onabanjo, a revisit of the Zik’s diarchy option could serve as balance of terror for serial betraying Nigeria’s governing political elite.

  • Time to stop the fratricidal war in Ukraine

    Time to stop the fratricidal war in Ukraine

    It’s almost a month since President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops’ invasion of Ukraine after fighting the same country for the past eight years leading to Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 and now the detachment of the Donbas  region of Eastern Ukraine made up of coal-bearing Donetsk and Luhansk regions which had been in rebellion for the past eight years sponsored by Russia on the grounds that Russian speakers were being persecuted in what president Putin called the emotive word “genocide” without a scintilla  of proof. Right from 1991 when the USSR dissolved into 15 “independent” states, nationalists in Russia, the dominant centre of power, had dreamed of somehow recreating the Russian empire which stretched from its European centre of Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok on the extreme Siberian east and down to the Caucasus, making the empire part-European and part-Asian with many nationalities, religious and racial group spread across 11 time zones. When Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the new Russia from 1991 to 1999 handpicked Vladimir Putin after eight years of his shambolic and drunken leadership, the world did not know what to expect of the diminutive former KGB operative. Putin came into office in 2000 determined to bring back the glory of Russia and to put it back to the status of super power which he felt his country belonged in spite of the denigration by the United States which began to openly say Russia was a medium power. By that time, the Russian navy was almost non-existent and the Russian economy was largely dependent on export of gas and crude petroleum to Western Europe like most countries in the Middle East and North Africa and including Nigeria. It was the case of a former super power despite its thousands of nuclear war heads reduced to watching the United States arrogating the role of international policemen and restructuring the international system according to its own rules and designs. This was manifested by the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Organization (NATO) and the military intervention in places like the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and threats of intervention in Venezuela and Iran without consideration of the interests of other powers like Russia. With the privilege of hindsight, the period after 2000 should have been used by the USA and its European allies to help Russia adjust to its reduced status without humiliation and help the country develop a consumer-based economy linked closely with the West and not taking the advantage of the weakness of Russia to expand its military alliance to the gates of Russia especially realizing the purpose of NATO was to stop the westward ingress of communism into Europe. NATO’s continued expansion into the frontiers of Russia gave the alliance an offensive rather than a defensive posture. The placement of intermediate missiles in some of the new member states like Poland, Rumania and Bulgaria upset the Russian government and tilted the balance of power in favour of NATO.

    This is the background of the Russia’s wicked attack on poor Ukraine, a small 41 million people country, justly struggling to be free and to be allowed to find an independent place in the comity of nations. The mistake Ukraine made was its decision to want to join NATO in order to preserve its independence which strictly on its own merit was a wise decision but in the context of being a culturally related country by history and traditions and sharing long borders with Russia, was a wrong decision especially when the United States began to have more than unusual interest in the independence of the country.

    The NATO members knew admitting Ukraine into its organization was a redline for Russia. This was why they denied the country’s admission into NATO. Ukraine should have sought neutral status like Austria, Finland and Sweden. This would have been acceptable to Russia and Ukraine in the fullness of time could have even become a member of the European Union perhaps with Russian acquiescence.

    In all the 22 years of Putin’s power in Russia including of course those years his sidekick, Dmitry Medvedev (2008-2012) served as president at Putin’s pleasure, Putin was determined to defend and possibly reincorporate what he called Russia “Near abroad” back to Russia motherland. This dangerous policy could possibly include dismemberment of countries like Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia in the Baltic and Kazakhstan in order to bring back into Russia, their Russian-speaking people. Putin had militarily intervened in Georgia in 2008 and supported Russian-speaking people in breakaway South Ossetia. Russia militarily supported Transnistria part of Moldova to breakaway from Moldova between 1990 and 1992 and Russian troops have remained within internationally recognized boundaries of Moldova and Georgia without respect for international law. This aggressive tendencies of Putin have also influenced the North  Atlantic Treaty Organization’s determination to challenge Putin and possibly stop him in Ukraine by arming Ukraine to resist the Russian aggression and to possibly weaken Russia through economic sanctions that it will not be able to continue its wars of aggression in the various former territories of the former USSR which he seems to be determined to put under Russia in a new reconfigured empire without respect for the wishes of their people as long as he satisfies the desire of the minority Russian-speaking people in those countries. His policies are reminiscent of the reasons of language and ethnicity that led Adolf Hitler into Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia during the crisis leading to the Second World War.

    There are politicians in Europe who now see accommodation with Russia as “appeasement” with which Europe dealt with Hitler until his appetite for territories became insatiable. It is simply amazing how leaders of NATO and Russia used the imagery of the crisis in Europe in the 1930s to justify their current policies. Putin talks about denazification of Ukraine while the West sees him as almost a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler who must be stopped before he plunges the whole world into a Third World War, a war in the words of President J.F. Kennedy “the living will envy the dead” because the global atmosphere would have been so poisoned by radioactive fallout that those who didn’t die in war will wither away painfully gradually afterwards as victims of cancers and other withering diseases caused by radiation.

    What is the way out? My suggestion is that President Joe Biden should be prevailed upon to ask Ukraine to accept the status of an internationally-guaranteed neutral state and foreswear ever joining NATO. Russia should be prevailed upon to sign an international treaty guaranteeing Ukraine’s and the independence of the Baltic States.

    The sanctions imposed on Russia should be gradually lifted, subject to Russia’s good behaviour and respect for international law and norms of international relations based on peaceful and diplomatic negotiations and resolution of inter-state problems without resorting to violence. The global economy has become so intertwined that if a major country like Russia is delinked from it, it will have major repercussions globally. Secondly pushing nuclear-armed Russia into economic doldrums and its people into poverty will create instability and possible irrational behaviour by its leaders which will not augur for world peace. It is a cliché to say the world has become a global village. We cannot continue to think as if we were in the 19th century of politics of balance of power when in fact we are now in a century of balance of terror when careless mismanagement of crisis can possibly lead to thermonuclear war in which no one would survive and there will be no victors but all of the world’s people will be vanquished.

    It is not too late for the Russian war in Ukraine to be wound down and Russia and the West commit themselves to rebuilding the infrastructure and houses damaged during the war in a joint enterprise to bring aggressors and victims and their supporters together. All other lingering issues that could possibly lead to conflict should also be brought to the table while a solid Russo-NATO treaty of understanding should be signed. The way for world peace is really through trade and economic relations which as far back as the 18th century Adam Smith had suggested and which we saw  positively in the globalization of the last century which  Donald Trump and the neo-conservatives in the United States had done their damned best to undermine to the detriment of global peace and the promotion of “war parties” in the major countries of the world and prevention of “perpetual peace which is the highest political good according to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

  • Judiciary lost

    Judiciary lost

    SHE TOOK the decision without batting an eyelid as she voided Section 84 (12) of the Electoral Act. Her Ladyship, Justice Evelyn Anyadike of the Federal High Court, Umuahia, Abia State, did not stop at that. She further ordered that the provision, which President Muhammadu Buhari considers ‘offensive’ be expunged from the Act when gazetted. It was an order made per incuriam, as lawyers would say. This means that it was made in error. How?

    One, because Anyadike acted contrary to the provisions of the Constitution, by directing that the provision be expunged from the Act, when she does not have such power. Two, all the interested and necessary parties were not before the court. It is a well known fact that you cannot shave a man’s head behind his back, as the late MKO Abiola used to say, the way the judge did.

    She granted the request of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami (SAN) to invalidate the section, without hearing from the National Assembly, which amendment of the Act led to the court case. How and when the case was filed remain unknown. The making and signing of the Act have a controversial history. It took the President ages to sign it into law after it was amended by the National Assembly. The first controversy was over the mode of primaries to be adopted by parties in picking candidates for elections.

    The lawmakers recommended direct primaries, where all party members will participate in the selection process. The President kicked, claiming that it was against the spirit and letter of the Constitution which granted individuals unfettered right to make that decision. He said there should be options for people to choose from. The National Assembly acceded to his request, by including indirect primaries and consensus as other options of picking candidates in the Act.

    Still, the President was not satisfied. He sat on the Act for days again, before eventually signing it with the caveat that the ‘offensive’ Section 84 (12) be tweaked. The National Assembly promised to consider his request to take another look at the provision, which says that political appointees cannot participate in parties’ primaries without first resigning. It was a way of checking the executive (the President and governors) from flooding the primaries with their appointees to do their bidding. The Senate cut the carpet from under the President’s feet by retaining the provision as it is when it sat on March 9, while also ignoring a court order stopping it from further working on the law. The House of Representatives has yet to reconsider the provision.

    All these were in the public domain. The executive was miffed. It perceived the Senate’s action as a breach of the Gentleman’s Agreement between the President and the lawmakers. Malami gave a hint of what to follow, which the public ignored when he said the executive would explore other options, including legal redress, in order to have its way. No one ever imagined that it would go to court, as it were, through the backdoor. Before the ink  dried on the paper on which the decision was written, Malami announced with glee that it would be enforced to the letter.

    His words: “The Act will be gazetted factoring the effect of the judgment into consideration and deleting the constitutionally offensive provision accordingly. The provision of Section 84 (12) of the Electoral Act 2022 is not part of our law and will be so treated accordingly”. As a senior lawyer, Malami should know better. This is not the end of the case and he should not be in too much hurry to gazette Anyadike’s order, warts and all, when the judicial process has not been exhausted. It is befuddling that his office is lending itself to this kind of shenanigan. As attorney-general (AG), he should be more interested in upholding the rule of law instead of using it to achieve selfish ends.

    Can we really blame Malami when the judiciary is spineless? Who is an attorney-general before a judge? Yes, he holds a high office, quite alright, but that does not give him the right to act as a judge or dictate to a judge how he should do his work. Unfortunately, this is what we are witnessing in this case, where the AG, the chief law officer of the nation, went to court surreptitiously, so to say, to obtain an order just for the executive to have its way. The courts are there for all – the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the leader and the led. They are not meant to be used to oppress the weak, the poor and the led.

    This is what Malami has done in this case in collaboration with Anyadike. A judge is the master of his own court. He does not take directives from any lawyer, be he the AG or not. He does not look at a lawyer’s face or status. He applies the law the way it should, without fear or favour, affection or illwill. Anyadike failed this litmus test in her handling of this highly sensitive and contentious matter. She cannot say that she has not been following developments over the Act since the National Assembly began its amendment. So, when the matter came up before her, she should have asked the plaintiff’s and sole defendant’s lawyers certain questions.

    Her first question should have been: are all the interested and necessary parties before the court? She did not do that. These are some of the things people point at when they say many of our judges today are compromised. They refer to the times past when the judiciary lived up to expectations. They recall with nostalgia that a Justice Dolapo Akinsanya, a Justice Roseline Omotosho, a Justice Modupe Omo-Eboh or a Justice Rose Ukeje, in their own time would not sit on the Bench and make the kind of order that Anyadike made based on the sort of application before her.

    They would have asked: “Learned counsel, why is the National Assembly not here? Why is the electoral commission not here? Don’t you think they should be in this matter? I don’t think we can go on without them being joined in this case?” They would have asked these pertinent questions because the subject-matter of the suit concerns them. But not so this Justice Anyadike, who believes in using the law to help the government rather than the society.

    The National Assembly passed the Act, which will guide the electoral commission’s activities. That makes it both an interested and a necessary party which must be compulsorily (emphasis mine)  joined in the matter. The National Assembly’s absence in the matter is fatal to the plaintiff’s case because those already involved in the suit cannot receive complete relief without it. Second, because of its interest in the matter, its absence can either impair the protection of that interest or leave some other party (like INEC , in this instance) subject to multiple or inconsistent obligations.

    Our judiciary has a tradition of excellence, which today is being eroded by judges who are not ‘fit and proper’ to be on the Bench. Ever before the coming of the Technical Aid Corps (TAC), under which brilliant Nigerian professionals are sent abroad to work, our judges did that kind of job in many parts of Africa unsung. They built and developed the judiciary of many sister African countries. Some of them, like the late Justice Daddy Onyeama, the late Justice Taslim Olawale Elias and Justice Bola Ajibola, who turned 88 on Tuesday, also served at the International Court of Justice, at The Hague.

    Elias rose to become the World Court president. But he and Onyeama will be turning in their graves, seeing what has become of our judiciary today. Judges like Anyadike should not be allowed to destroy this legacy. The people should not stand idly by and watch this legacy being rubbished by the shenanigans of politicians and greedy judges, who prefer filthy lucre to honour and good name. What will it profit a judge to become wealthy through avarice but lose his integrity? Let our judges ponder over this poser.

  • Chidinma Ojukwu: A murder suspect’s dubious makeover

    Chidinma Ojukwu: A murder suspect’s dubious makeover

    Murder suspect, Chidinma Ojukwu, was recently crowned ‘Miss Cell 2022’ at the Kirikiri Correctional Centre (KCC). Her new crown is hardly the issue, but that the KCC authority deemed it worthy and wise to celebrate her crowning across popular media. That was a judgmental mishap no doubt. Its sheer disregard for fairness and humane ethics.

    The prison authority’s dubious antic is an affront to justice – given that the new prison queen is on trial for the murder of Super TV boss, Usifo Ataga.

    Public reaction to the travesty flirts with chagrin and emotion cultism. The latter trumps the former, of course, in the Nigerian arena of emotional theatrics. Sophistry is exploited and extolled to unimaginable levels.

    The murder suspect’s handlers cum apologists employ the same tired cliches, the same choreographed gimmicks, like the endless counts to two – by the referee in staged wrestling matches – that never seem to get to three, without the pinned wrestler leaping up from the mat to continue the fight.

    Picture Chidinma as the wrestler, on top, pinning down a prostate Ataga, and the Kirikiri Correctional Centre (KCC) as the referee. Only that, this time around, Ataga won’t leap from the mat to continue the fight. He was tied, tortured and stabbed to death multiple times, according to the deceased’s family, and Chidinma’s initial confession.

    The emergence of Chidinma, a murder suspect, as Kirikiri’s beauty queen was in dubious attempt to curry public empathy and influence her court trial; the pantomime was poorly orchestrated.

    The National Spokesperson, Nigeria Correctional Service, Francis Enobore, justified it as part of the services of the correctional facility to ensure that inmates are in ‘sound and good spirit.’

    Such a cockamamie excuse is unbecoming of Enobore and the prison service that he represents. If the intent was to fulfill the prison service’s claim to being a correctional centre, then it has failed woefully.

    By engaging in Chidinma’s PR jaunt, it re-established the KCC as a grotesque resort, where humane ethics are stifled and savagery is celebrated.

    The pageant manifested as a morbid ritual; public incineration of morals and elevation of Chidinma’s unsavoury pirouette to empathy, or sentencing that resounds as a feeble pat on her wrist. She’d seek complete acquittal perhaps if the trial stacks in her favour.

    The lurid, detailed justification of her image-laundering theatrics by the prison authority is abominable. Expectedly, it drove Nigerians to momentary frenzy; the resultant battles in the physical and social arena give debators on either side of the divide, a temporary, heady release from their mundane lives.

    Thus, for a moment, one of the most viral stories in social space, was that of ethical ruin, recklessness, and perversion of Kirikiri prison, a ‘correctional’ facility, to a  heartless, thoughtless regressive facility.

    The prison management by its action, opened itself to sensational interpretations; it could be averred, for instance, that the Kirikiri prison authority acting with cohorts, sought to sneakily suppress the import of the allegations against Chidinma – a murder suspect who is on trial.

    They do not care that before her curious recant, Chidinma had previously confessed to murdering Ataga, stating that she strangled him before stabbing him to death. Speaking to journalists, she said she was able to murder Ataga because he became weak after taking three wraps of Rohypnol while she took one wrap.

    In another interview with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), she admitted to tying him up while he was weak before stabbing him to death.

    Affecting contrition, Chidinma said in her initial confession: “I regret killing Mr. Ataga. I don’t know what my future holds but I don’t want to die. Please, I don’t want to die because of this case. I have not killed before.

    “I totally regret everything I did and I am sorry. Mr. Ataga’s family, I am deeply sorry for what I did. If I had my life back, I wouldn’t do anything like that. I am deeply sorry and I hope you forgive me…I am also begging his family to forgive me, especially his children. Ah! God, what have I done?” exclaimed, the murder suspect, burying her face in her palms.

    Chidinma has since recanted. In a subsequent video, she said she knows nothing about Ataga’s death. “I didn’t injure anybody. I don’t know who must have come into the apartment, and did that… I don’t know who that person is. I don’t know what happened. I did not kill him,” she said.

    She betrayed better comportment and a conscious attempt to be likable. The murder suspect’s handlers seek to dissolve the iron frame of emotive scorn and remould it into empathy. Working with prison conspirators, they sought to erase notions about Chidinma as a femme fatale, and amend her into some Faerie Queene. So doing, they seek a feminizing and biased deconstruction of justice.

    They’d seduce justice’s blind, puritan bequest with obscene empathy. Rather than counsel caution and contrition to the accused, they pen innocence and emotional purity into her narrative. They lace it with subtle eroticism too. Hence, Chidinma’s spruced, sensual makeover at the prison pageant. And what better period to prosecute such a frantic agenda than the week of International Women’s Day.

    It’s curious how vested groups seek to pass her off as a likeable,, innocent figure. To the feminist avenger, she is the vulnerable “little girl” of 21, who found herself at the mercy Ataga and was “forced to protect herself” by “tying him up” and “stabbing him multiple times” to death.

    So vulnerable was she that she made away with the deceased’s bank card, and withdrew money from his account to pay “fees” and “start up a business.” Heck! She was a poor, “little girl” of 21, fighting back against evil patriarchy.

    To the disgruntled wife, Chidinma is the unassuming, “innocent girl,” gentle as a dove, and defenseless as a lute before the touches of the wind. Not a few women are quick to her defense irrespective of “the facts.”

    It’d be really nice to see if they would be so combative and ireful in Chidinma’s defense if the victim were their beloved son, father, uncle, nephew. I’d love to see Chidinma’s sponsored and passionate groupies hold fast in her defense if a similar tragedy befell their loved ones.

    If it were Andrew Nice Omininikoron, the BRT bus driver arrested over the alleged abduction and murder of 22-year-old fashion designer, Bamise Ayanwole, who got crowned in a beauty pageant, would Chidinma’s apologists be so understanding?

    Chidinma is a murder suspect, whose rendition of Ataga’s murder, from her repentant confession to her spurious recant, peals like a hair-raising fright story.

    Nonetheless, the Nigerian prison authority is working so hard to pass the murder suspect off as an epitome of beauty and morality. Thus it seized the celebration of the International Women’s Day to parade her as a chaste jewel, a diamond rediscovered in prison dirt.

    It doesn’t matter that she had admitted to killing Ataga before her spurious recant at the intervention of her lawyers and coaches, it doesn’t matter how grisly the image of her cat-walking in the prison pageant would seem to Ataga’s bereaved family, the Nigerian prison service would rather we believe that it was simply doing its job, marketing a murder suspect – who is currently on trial – as a fashionista, and a redeemed, angelic, beauty queen.

  • Nigeria: What a country!

    Nigeria: What a country!

    Things got so bad that I told my friends and all those who usually call me to wail and cry about our country to save their breath because no matter what we say to each other merely create unnecessary heartburn without changing the situation we complain about. Without burying my head in the sand like an ostrich and thinking all will be well, I want to spend whatever is left in my life thanking God for His protection over me and my nuclear and extended families. I also pray for the leadership of my Christian faith here in Nigeria and all over the world and I pray for the political leadership of my country so that they govern in the interest of the people and that they should remember we came to this world naked and that when we die we will not take our earthly possessions with us.

    I am old enough to know that accumulating wealth to be passed on to our children does not always end well and in fact it is most likely to end in grief. When I read what a former federal minister of works said about all leaders of Nigeria from president to all political appointees being thieves and that he had confessed to President Muhammadu Buhari to arrest him and others and force him and others to vomit what they had stolen, I told myself that perhaps chicken has come home to roost and that this may be the beginning of national moral rearmament! If this courageous confession forces our thieving leaders to have a change of heart and reverse course, this man would have started a revolution whose end we may not be able to predict.

    Our country has reached the crescendo in our song of moral turpitude and this is manifesting in the apparent revolt of the disinherited and disenchanted who have decided to take laws into their own hands through violence against society unfortunately against poor fellows like themselves merely eking out wretched existence surviving minimally on poor rations sufficient to keep bodies and souls together and afraid to commit suicide by starving themselves to death. These other members of the lumpen proletariat and peasantry are the ones being butchered and killed by the fury of the roving killers of hired herders, brigands, highway robbers, doped religious fanatics and their fellow travelers. If they knew how to organize themselves they are sufficiently many and angry to threaten the state and to render the country ungovernable.

    It is now very difficult for the rich to enjoy their wealth some of which may have been honestly earned. A knowledgeable friend of mine always laughs when some economists suggest that Nigeria should create an environment favourable for private sector-led growth. My friend says there is no private sector in Nigeria and that the so-called private sector is in fact dependent on what it steals from government for private appropriation. I understand what he is saying because all what one has to do is to look at the so-called captains of industry in Nigeria, one will find out that their wealth can be traced to government. It is either through currency round-tripping, tax holidays, unpaid customs duties, prior knowledge of government policies, sale of government property at giveaway prices and other protection governments grant to these fronts of those in power thus helping to create oligarchs as in Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe in general. The privatization policies of our governments in recent times did the transfer of national property into a few oligarchs. The justification for privatization is that private people will run their businesses more efficiently and also create more jobs for the youth. There is no evidence that these two expectations have been met. Rather the companies sold have been stripped and exported out of the country. The cases of Ajaokuta steel mill and Ikot Abasi Aluminum complex are examples how privatization has not been borne out by their end results. We also have cases where minerals have been appropriated by favoured people and ports along our coast have been privatized into private hands while governments have been reduced to mere toll collectors. The result of all these shenanigans is the total collapse of morality and ethics and all or most appointments are for sale or on the basis of man know man as they say in Nigeria, the result of which is the total abandonment of careers open to talents on which the success of capitalism which we have embraced depends.

    Some days ago, a train running from Lagos to Ibadan suddenly stopped in the bush. When commuters asked whether armed robbers had gravitated to stopping trains, they were told the train had run out of fuel! Apparently, the skyrocketing price of diesel has affected the railway corporation of Nigeria to the point of running the so-called new trains on shoe strings. When questioned further the people running the corporation claimed the fuel gauge was faulty. The obvious inference is either there are no trained engineers to run the corporation or they were sold refurbished trains as new with apparent collusion of Nigerian officials to us. Whatever the case may be, this is a terrible embarrassment and national humiliation to this benighted country.

    For almost two months, we have not had regular supply of petrol at the fuel pumps. The little amount we have is being sold at sellers’ price. Diesel is now selling at N600 per litre. Electricity has collapsed because there is no natural gas to fire the turbines. The gas people say gas production is hampered by lack of electricity! Lord have mercy! What is going on? Where is the government in all this? The president before leaving on health vacation said he was happy the price of crude oil is now very high but his minister of state said for more than six months, Nigerian oil production has been 1.3 million barrels a day rather than the 1.8 million barrels allocated to it by OPEC. He immediately explained the reason for this shortfall as being due to lack of investment. Now who is to do the investment but government? Is government just collecting revenue and sharing it without thought of investment and just waiting for foreigners to do the investment? It is elementary mathematics to know why things are like this in the energy sector. If a barrel of crude oil sells at $125 per barrel, it follows that the price of refined petrol would have gone up. So whatever advantage derivable from high price of crude petroleum is lost by the high price we purchase refined products since we have no local refineries to refine our crude oil. Can one ask what has become of government’s perennial awards of contracts for rehabilitation of the four non-working refineries in Nigeria – two in Port Harcourt, one in Warri and the other in Kaduna?

    May we ask Aliko Dangote what has become the fate of his own refinery or has government buying into it brought in viruses of non-performance to it? May God help us and yet I said I want to be at peace with myself. How can one be at peace when I am writing this article while perspiring without electricity and diesel is at unaffordable price to fire my old generator? Sein Oder night sein: Das ist die fragge!

    I sometimes wonder why some people are interested in becoming president of Nigeria in 2023? Whoever becomes president after the current one must become a magician ready with a magic wand to solve the accumulated problems of this country or else he will be driven out of office by angry Nigerians who are bottled up with anger and ready to explode!  What afflicts the country is a legion of problems. It is not just the economic problems, huge as they are, it is also not the social and infrastructural problems, daunting as they are; it is also not the problem of the collapse of primary, secondary and tertiary education sector, irredeemable as they seem to be. Neither is it the problem of insecurity, intractable as they appear to be. The mental and psychological problems are not easily identifiable but they are there. People have lost hope in the country. They no longer believe in the future of the country for them and their children. Even those who are holding apparently good jobs are looking for how to harm the country and to loot wherever they are working and to exit the country. How does one explain managers in banks at near 50 years old jumping the sinking and stinking ship of state and relocating abroad to wash plates in hotels or work as mortuary attendants?

    In short there is no patriotism not to talk about nationalism. I have lived for almost 80 years and I have never seen Nigerians give up on their country like this. I honestly don’t know what to do and I daily join people of my age to lift up this country up to God for divine intervention.  I believe God in his infinite mercy will respond to our collective supplication. But we as individuals must do something. We must change our ways and join this man who has courageously confessed that he and all of us have sinned against the masses of this country and we must ask God for forgiveness because it is by doing this and swearing not to do so again that Nigeria will attain its destiny and lead the much-despised people of Africa to continental restoration and restitution and acceptance by the rest of the world as human beings and not savages!

  • Obasanjo and his legacies at 85

    Obasanjo and his legacies at 85

    Nigerians, including even his political foes will readily admit Obasanjo, a gift to Nigeria and an African pride, is undoubtedly an accomplished active player in international politics. Vice President Osinbajo, despite accusing his administration, that of Yar’Adua and Jonathan of not funnelling about  $783b into improving the nation’s infrastructure described him during his  80th birthday,  as “as a world statesman and a gift to humanity”. At his 85th birthday celebration last week, Senate President Ahmad Lawan described him as a “pan-Africanist and global figure”. Dr Akinwumi Adesina, president, of African Development Bank (AfDB) praised him for his “selflessness toward causes in Africa as well as global issues” while President Buhari spoke of his “strong network nationally and internationally”.

    Obasanjo remains a pillar of the African Union, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the prominent member of African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), designed to promote democracy and good governance. He has “served as chairman of the Group of 77, chairman of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, and chairman of the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee”. Even at an advanced age, he remains in the forefront of international mediation efforts in Angola, Burundi, Namibia, Mozambique and South Africa.

    Last week celebration of his 85th birthday reflected his international stature. The theme of the lecture is Africa and the establishment of Africa Narrative society to promote the following values:

    That truth must be known and propagated for the purpose of authentic history of the past, to prevent repeat of mistakes of the past;

    To continually make ourselves essential contributors to the world civilisation, world ethos, world development and world preservation;

    To ensure governance and system of administration that makes use of all available human resources and talents;

    To cherish and uphold our past and present in the way that will enhance our future and strengthen our participation in the global decision-making process.

    Accomplished scholars from all over the world participated in the discussion of Obasanjo’s central narrative: “that every village, town, nation or region has its socio-cultural peculiarities that are best suited for the emergence of its leader and the colour of its governance”.

    But the question arises as to whether charity should not begin at home since all politics is local. This question becomes relevant because the focus of Obasanjo’s central thesis is not different from the colonial master policy on Nigeria which Obasanjo and the military who believe they know what the people wanted without asking them truncated.

    The departing imperial powers had canvassed for a home-grown system patterned and informed by the experiences of group’s forbears which would allow them develop at their own pace without interference from others. Towards this end, they bequeathed onto us a workable federal arrangement which self-proclaiming messiahs who falsely claim ‘they sacrifice their present for our future’, truncated.

    They have continued to dig deeper into the hole instead of returning to the “path of Nigerian freedom; never taken. This perhaps explains why Obasanjo even at 85 has continued to insist that the answer to Nigerian crisis of nation building which he says finds expression ‘in sentiments, euphoria, ignorance, incompetence, ethnicity, nepotism, bigotry, sectionalism, regionalism, religion or class” is through federal character principle.

    If  “Since 1999, we have changed from one political party or another we have manoeuvred and manipulated to the point that election results are no longer reflections of the will of the people and we seemed to be progressively going back rather than going forward politically, economically and socially”; And if he “casts a cursory look at some of the people running around and those for whom people are running around; If EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) and ICPC (Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission) will have done their jobs,  supported adequately by the judiciary, most of them would be in jail”; President Obasanjo and his military messiahs should look at the mirror. We can only reap what we sowed. The current class of politicians starting from 1999 were all military-baked ‘new-breed’ politicians some of whom even attended school of democracy, instituted by those who destroyed our political socialisation process.

    The rational thing to do if we dig ourselves into a hole is to find a way to escape.  But instead, Obasanjo celebrates the virtues of federal character which he says was responsible for “steady and uncompromised process of nation-building that have stood us in good stead.” Top on the list was voting Shehu Shagari into power with Alex Ekwueme from “Biafra” as No. 2 in 1979, less than ten years after attempted cessation by ‘Biafra” when, it took America decades to achieve the same feat after her civil war. But if the experiment was so successful, how come the issue of marginalisation is what is fuelling agitation for a sovereign state of Biafra by marginalised Igbos?

    Next on his list was his 1999 imposition by northern hegemonic class and the military to spite his Yoruba home base that rejected him. But if climbing the palm tree from the top which was what Obasanjo did in 1999 was normal, why did he in 2003 fall back on ethnicity, massive deception and outright rigging to secure the base that rejected him 1999 when his second term was threatened?

    He also credited the federal character principle with his imposition of ailing Yar’Adua and ill-prepared Jonathan as president and vice president in 2007 and the later as president in 2011. But it is on record that the late Yar’Adua was appalled by the level of massive electoral fraud that brought him to power that he had to set up the Uwais Commission to forestall the reoccurrence of the 2007 tragedy.

    It is also on record that Obasanjo’s perfidy in  scheming incompetent  and ill-prepared Shehu Shagari who  was only ready for the senate into power, erased what would have been part of Obasanjo’s enduring legacies including  the setting up of  four refineries connected by about, 4,500 kilometres of pipeline across the country, the reorganization of the Nigerian Airways which in 1979 had about 33 aircraft, setting up of car assemblies plants in Lagos, Kaduna and Enugu, government policy on patronage of locally assembled vehicles  and of course the depletion of huge external reserve he had built up before leaving office in 1979.

    As for Jonathan, he is remembered more for selling the country to PDP stalwarts that Obasanjo described as “pen robbers’.

    Perhaps, the worst part of federal principle as implemented by the military and Obasanjo was the sharing of oil-wells and our national patrimony to favoured individuals through Babangida’s commercialisation that heralded an era of importation of labour of other societies even as our own graduates roam the street and Obasanjo privatization through which the nation’s investment of over $100b was according to House probe sold to privileged members of the governing elite for less than $1.5b.

    If after 60 years of trading “the path to Nigeria freedom” for federal character principle that has destroyed meritocracy in our bureaucracy and tertiary institutions leading to division and mutual suspicion among our people, for Obasanjo to now be “counting on the patriotic commitment and desires of well-meaning Nigerians to start the process of forging a part out of darkness into light of salvation and a new glorious dawn” is in itself an admission of failure.

  • Political god

    Political god

    MAKE no mistake about this – the headline is not to profane the name of God. It is to draw attention to the misuse of God’s highly-revered name by those who should know better. Many pastors like to play god, using their calling, that is if they are actually called, and the platform of their churches to hoodwink the gullible.

    The name of God is a strong tower, says the Bible. What this tells us is that the name is not like any name that can be taken and used just for the fun of it. To these pastors, the name has become a business tool to be used at will.

    But, the Lord’s name is not to be merchandised. It is for the saviour and the winning of souls for heavenly kingdom. Yet man, especially pastors who see themselves as God’s representatives on earth, because they own or lead a church, use the name to mislead their sheep, who refer to them as daddy. A daddy is a guide and a guard, who leads his children not unto temptation, but protects them against the vicissitudes of life.

    These men of God turned gods of men, under the claim of shepherding their sheep, now seek to guide their political thoughts, their conjugal life and other aspects of living.  They worry less about societal decay, but are concerned more about who meets the biblical definition of “a cheerful giver”. God loves a cheerful giver, no doubt, but the giving must come from the lawful earnings of the giver and not filthy lucre, which in most instances some of these tithes, offerings and donations are from.

    Pastors collect them and bless the givers without asking for the source of the money. Many of these one-time big givers have run into trouble today, with the churches looking the other way and moving on with the current cheerful givers. The churches are the same; they are only different in name. A memo from one of them has thrown up a political storm because it came from the least expected quarters. Yes, because the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) is seen as a sedate and solemn Ministry.

    The memo was straight to the point. It stated what was expected of members in the unfolding political dispensation. With members worldwide, RCCG may not have the huge numbers that the Catholic Church boasts of, but its presence in 180 countries is significant. It is this huge membership that it wants to cash on towards the 2023 election. Why its sudden interest in the 2023 election? Some may say, the question is a no-brainer and they will be justified. Led by the highly-respected Pastor Enoch Adeboye, RCCG boasts of members in high places.

    Many in power, including Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo count among its members. Osinbajo is also a pastor in Redeemed and was one of the close aides of Adeboye before he became vice-president. Adeboye was instrumental in Osinbajo accepting to be President Muhammadu Buhari’s running mate in 2015. They come a long way and their closeness was brought home after Osinbajo’s plane crashlanded in Lokoja, Kogi State, in February 2019.

    Adeboye has relived that incident on the pulpit on several occasions, telling congregants how God ministered to him to pray three times for Osinbajo after a visit: “Father, please save your son”. On many occasions too, he has regaled congregants with a vision that he got from God that one of his children will become so powerful that people will rise in his honour wherever he went. “One day, you will enter a place and everybody will rise on their feet for you”, he said to loud amens.

    Today, wherever Osinbajo goes, people rise in his honour. He only stands up for Buhari. To this extent, that prediction has come to pass. But the greater one is yet ahead, as Macbeth noted after he was pronounced Thane of Cawdor shortly after his encounter with the three witches in Shakespeare’s tragic play of the same name: Macbeth. The greater one that Macbeth referred to was being king of Scotland. Osinbajo too is a step away from the greater one – Presidency. This is why many believe that the RCCG memo is to help the political cause of Osinbajo, who has not publicly said anything about running for President in 2023.

    Is the memo to pave the way for Osinbajo’s declaration? Is it a way of telling members to rally round their own when the time comes? Is he interested in running? Has Osinbajo sought Adeboye’s spiritual counsel about the matter? If he has, what advice did Daddy GO give him? People are wondering why RCCG issued the memo, with the subject-matter: Office of Directorate of Politics and Governance. The memo announced the creation of that office and the appointment of Pastor Timothy Olaniyan to head it.

    The memo, signed by Pastor J.F. Odesola directed all pastors-in-charge of regions and provinces to appoint immediately provincial officers for their provinces and replicate same at all other levels of the church – zone, area and parish. Even, members of the church are wondering why RCCG is dabbling into politics. If it wishes to support the ambition of any of its members, can it not do so without throwing itself open to the criticisms of favouring one son over the other?

    What does the memo say of RCCG? Is it not the same RCCG which prides itself in following the leadership of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) in political matters? Did it take a cue from PFN before setting up its political directorate? It is difficult; too, too difficult to shake the public belief that the directorate was not created to help Osinbajo’s political cause. This is why other RCCG members who are also in politics are annoyed.

    To them, the church has by its action, disowned them and  cast its lot with Osinbajo, who has not even come out to make his intentions known. “The church has, unwittingly, spoken for Osinbajo, while treating us as pariahs”, one of the aggrieved men said. Daddy GO needs Solomonic wisdom to handle this matter to avoid a divided house.

  • Before dystopia

    Before dystopia

    In Oluwabamise Ayanwole’s fate, we relive once again, the infernal crud of the Nigerian personae. The 22-year-old hitherto barely known, scuds to the shore of national consciousness on a chthonian scallop shell, at her untimely death.

    Ayanwole, a tailor, went missing on February 26, 2022, after she boarded an Oshodi-bound Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) with number 240257, from Chevron Bus Stop, Lekki, en route to her sister-in-law, who was allegedly in labour.

    She became suspicious when the BRT driver, Nice Andrew Omininikoron,  told her to sit at the back despite being the only one in the vehicle. Ayanwole called her friend, urging her to pray for her while sharing her vehicle’s details.

    Her friend reportedly advised her to disembark at Oworonsoki instead of continuing to Oshodi in that circumstance. That was the last anyone heard of her.

    On Monday, Ayanwole was found dead, about nine days after she was declared missing. The BRT driver, Omininikoron, was subsequently arrested by the police, who have launched a manhunt for his accomplices.

    There is no gainsaying Ayanwole suffered a gruesome end, like a sacrificial lamb on Nigeria’s horror slab. Her fate inspires sensational headlines; its juicy content for our pagan altarpiece. Ayanwole, child, sister, friend, tailor, human, is reduced as you read, to spurious hashtags, frantic platitudes, and artifice.

    Soon after her body was found at the morgue of the Mainland Hospital, Yaba, Lagos, her distraught sister, Titilayo, insisted, despite police rebuttals, that Ayanwole’s private part was harvested, indicating that she could have been a victim of ritual killing.

    At least two of her pictures shared posthumously in news reports, show her face plastered with a cheery smile. Nothing hints at the grisliness that was meted to her in the end.

    In death, Ayanwole dominates our thoughts and our minds’ picture planes. She rises from insignificance in our national psyche to trumpeting petrifaction in posthumous acknowledgment.

    Ayanwole’s macabre slaying attains resonance in the wake of ritual killings perpetrated by teenage boys seeking stupendous and sudden wealth. Although the facts of her fate suggest that she was killed by adult assailants, it reinforces widespread fears about Nigeria’s insecurity.

    It reestablishes the ugly realities of our contemporary value system, including the get-rich-quick syndrome afflicting most Nigerians. The inordinate quest to acquire sudden wealth, at all costs, thrives by the belief that the spirit world is the true source of material wealth.

    Many Nigerians believe that no one could succeed in his or her career, without securing divine blessings, first and foremost, from spiritual beings.

    This mindset is fed by the notion that there are certain events in life that hard work or physical strength cannot achieve except one understands and possesses some spiritual powers, according to Dr. Suleman Lazarus, a sociologist with the London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom (UK).

    The situation is aggravated by a loss of faith in the country’s political and socioeconomic systems. There is currently no social welfare programme that offers health care assistance, non-discriminatory entrepreneurial loans, food stamps, and unemployment compensation, among others to eligible citizenry divides.

    The absence of such palliatives wreaked untold havoc on the citizenry at the outbreak of COVID-19, leading to increased crime, for instance. While government intervention efforts focused on the poor, the presumed middle-class segments have lost their jobs, suffered arbitrary salary cuts, and lack of access to welfare relief.

    At the backdrop of these challenges, the numbers of the unemployed sky-rockets. A 2019 World Bank report shows that Nigeria created about 450,000 new jobs in 2018, partially offsetting the loss of jobs in 2017. And while over five million Nigerians entered the labour market in 2018, the number of unemployed increased by 4.9 million in 2019. More radical estimates indicate that over 18 million youths were unemployed by the end of 2019. Many more have lost their livelihoods in the wake of COVID-19.

    Money ritual thus flourishes in Nigeria amid widespread poverty. By the end of 2013, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report on Nigeria’s poverty index revealed that about 61.2% of Nigerians were living on less than $1 (dollar) a day. With such a large percentage of Nigerians living in poverty, money ritual has become an escape route for the lazy.

    The situation is aggravated by the frantic fostering and aggressive cues from mainstream and new media. The latter projects unbridled lust and the degenerate mind mired in a grave of delusions as the new norm, while celebrating participants in the spectacle as they come into sudden wealth-based via misconduct, as the new national heroes.

    Treasury looters, Yahoo Boys (cybercriminals), drug barons, and their beneficiaries among musicians, actors, cross-dressers, and questionable “social influencers” are remorselessly celebrated as ingenious, proactive, and street-smart by the media, religious groups, and other sociopolitical institutions.

    Our level of permissiveness epitomizes a very deep cry for help, like Hoyle’s misdirected mortals, we are learning from avoidable mistakes, not from example.

    Ayanwole’s murderers were clearly working for a fee. They were probably motivated by the bromide: “Don’t diss the hustle.” If prosperity gospel, reality television, and motivational delusions won’t make them instant celebrities, then crime and money ritual will, as reflected in the case of Ayanwole, the Bayelsa teen ritualists: Emomotimi,15 years, Perebi, 15 years, and Eke, 15 years. The trio reportedly hypnotised and tried to use one Comfort, 13, for a money ritual. They cut her finger and sprinkled her blood on a mirror for ritual purposes, before their arrest.

    Lest we forget the Ogun State quartet: Wariz Oladehinde, 17,  Abdul Gafar Lukman, 19, and Mustakeem Balogun, 20, and Soliu Majekodumi, 18, who were arrested in the early hours of Saturday, January 29, for allegedly killing beheading Majekodunmi’s girlfriend, Rofiat; they were arrested while burning her severed head in a clay pot in a money ritual.

    On interrogation, the suspects confessed to the crime and led policemen to retrieve her dismembered body in an uncompleted building.

    From Ayanwole’s adult assailants to the Bayelsa and Ogun teen ritualists, a social crisis manifests. Their murderous lust dampens belief in the humane spirit and establishes disillusionment with the hard-earned perks of learning and honest toil.

    A societal pandemic has begun to occur: lost souls comprising teenagers, adults, wandering the streets of Nigeria’s major cities, day and night, like loose molecules in an unstable social fluid have begun to ignite. Our cities have become covens of immense cruelty where adults and teenagers take indulge in desperate diabolism to become rich.

    The interplay of materialism, toxic gender politics, and the absence of exemplary parental figures has foisted upon us a generation of ill-nurtured children, boys, and men, in particular.

    It’s about time Nigeria declared a national emergency on insecurity; the outlawing of terrorism, armed banditry, kidnap for ransom, and ritual killings, must be attained bite by more decisive punishments.

    The processes of interrogation, prosecution, and sentencing of culprits must be expedited to guarantee justice. Banks and forex dealers are major accomplices too; the government must institute legal means of freezing the accounts of Yahoo Boys among other “wealthy” citizens without a defensible means of income and punish their bankers.

    Security cameras and streetlights must be installed across the city’s hot spots. The police must reactivate a helpline, where concerned citizenry could report fellow citizens suspected of criminal activity.

    These steps, among others, must be taken immediately before things degenerate completely; and before Nigerians resort to jungle justice.

    The imagery of mobs laying waste to the lives and property of perceived money ritualists is anarchy we must never relive.

     

  • Transformation of my town

    Transformation of my town

    To me more dear
    Congenial to my heart
    One native charm
    Than all the gloss of the city
    The Deserted Village (Oliver Goldsmith 1770)

    Far from being deserted, my town, Ogotun Ekiti, except for the 1861 invasion by Ijesha over its support for Efon in its war with Ijesha when survivors of the invasion fled to Ikere Ekiti and Okeagbe in current Ondo State, my beloved village has today grown into a modern city retaining her position among the pre-independence 16 Ekiti pelupelu confederate Obas. Located at the foot of a range of hills that envelope the whole of Ekiti land, the town, with its admixture of inclement and mild temperate weather, remains serene, untroubled, captivating, magical and a tourist haven where one finds peace with God.

    Like most other Yoruba towns that traced their origin to Ife from where most Yoruba people dispersed to found their different kingdoms, Ogotun Ekiti   is defined by community life of cooperation and responsibility. Age groups come together  to contribute towards implementation of members’ projects such as building a new house, getting married or burying one’s parents.

    Of course, there is also the beauty and simplicity of the village; the purity, innocence, and honesty of its people; and the genuine goodness of their lives. It was a community where in the time past, the people displayed their wares at the junction of their farms and selling points and consumers or willing buyers picked items of their desire and dropped the exact cost which remained there no matter how long it took the owner of the produce to return.

    Growing up in the sixties and returning home after vicissitudes of life has taken me out of the town first to St. Joseph College, Ondo, through University of Ife, University of Lagos, and then, to United Kingdom, Russia and United States of America as citizen of the world, brought a nostalgic craving for the peace and pleasure of the past.

    The immediate refreshing and magical effects of spending two weeks at a stretch in my town after so many years was liberation from debilitating cultural imperialism.  I was temporarily free from unproductive debate about democracy, the  unworkable imported new value system that is  in all respects inferior to Yoruba concept of democracy; free  from the tyranny of imported religion that  pretends to convert the already converted as  our  ancestors  were worshippers  of  Olorun Olodumare, a monolithic God the subject  of Abrahamic religion of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; and of course from the western media notably CNN and  BBC  which strive to make self-inflicted crisis of  imperialist barefaced armed robbers  our problems in the name of globalization which further allows then to enslave our minds and pillage our land.

    For two weeks, one had sufficient time to reflect on our beautiful past as a community.

    I remember with nostalgia the celebration of the various festivals such as ‘oro omo owa’ (Omo Owa festival), an annual coming together of all the princes from the town’s ruling houses. It takes off with slaughtering of a big ram. Olokuboro Alobioje’s being a large family harbouring  men and women of all faiths, my father as the then Eleromo and  Christian of  Roman Catholic denomination would first invite the Reverend Father to pray for God’s intervention, followed by an Alhaji or Imam member of the family and rounded up by traditional prayer after which the ram is roasted for consumption. Eating and drinking was often followed by dancing and singing, blowing of ‘ekutu’ and beating of the talking drum to recite the “oriki” panegyrics of the princes.

    The celebration of Obalufon festival was unique. It is a participant crowd-pulling event involving curious children from all parts of the town. Obalufon festival often comes up at the thick of the raining season between the months of July and August. Most of us children back then saw it as show of power and struggle for supremacy between Chief Afuye and Chief Elegosi. Both, fully armed with charms, the tools of their trade and adorning magic regalia, would lead a group of other juju men, dancers and drummers from their respective quarters through designated streets in the town. The main attraction often was the young virgin bearing a burning fire from inside a pot   delicately placed on her head even as they danced to the pulsating beats of the drum even as it rained cats and dogs. Children often followed the groups around the town from morning till evening, curious to find out if any of the two rival’s flaming fire of the dancing virgins would be extinguished by the pouring heavy rain.  The celebration closes with a staged battle at a designated point in the town.

    Ogun is the dreaded god of iron, notorious for going to Ire Ekiti to drink palm wine. Its celebration was often more secretive.  Besides lifeless dog one sees strapped to the shrine, very little was known about other activities during its celebration. Curious about the real event at the shrine which is often shrouded in secrecy, as young primary’s school pupils, my cousin, now Evangelist Tunde Awopetu, our friend, Veronica Oyebode and I decided to sneak into the market in the night while the ceremony was going on. Unfortunately we were caught by Petu Ereja, the chief priest and his other officiating priests. We were chased by cutlasses-bearing young men as we dispersed in various directions. In the flight, I lost one leg of my shoe which was to become the incriminating evidence of our sacrilegious offence. The lost shoe was brought to my father the following morning by the Ogun chief priest who warned we would have become ‘eran ogun’ if not because the three of us were Omo Owa from different ruling houses.

    As we grew older, we have since learnt that Ogotun like most other Yoruba towns, accused  by ignorant European occupying powers of worshipping 360 gods are in fact not idol worshippers. The so-called gods according to the late Sophie Oluwole, a University of Lagos professor of African philosophy, are Orisas, i.e. those who had found special favour with God when they were alive as demonstrated by the level of their earthly achievements.  It is believed in Yoruba cosmology that these special favourites of God can, like the saints Joseph, Mary. Paul etc. in the Christian religion, intercede with Olorun Olodumare, the God of all gods.

    Two weeks re-union with primary and secondary school class mates, retired academics and bureaucrats and a few others who have chosen to return home after a tour of duty around the world was a rewarding endeavour, a source of social connection for bonded attitudes and values towards a strong community.

    And finally for those in the city who think the people in the rural communities are starving and unhappy and the World Bank with its disturbing claim that 75% of Nigerian live below $2 a day, the rural communities are neither starving nor unhappy. They may not have loads of cash but they have enough to eat and they eat well.

    There are fresh fruits: pawpaw, pine apple etc. A bunch of vegetable costing N100 was all we used to prepare a meal of pounded yam for about 10 people. The total figure for the lunch was about N2,000 coming to N200 per person for a full meal. And since dollar is not a legal tender in Nigeria, an average person with N1000 naira in the rural community is not starving.