The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Salute to bravery

    Salute to bravery

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

    He was in a world of his own. All alone. Without company, comrades and friends, his survival depended on himself and himself alone and of course, the grace of God. That is the life of a soldier. Such a moment comes when he has to solely devise ways of survival in the face of enemy attack. When he is surrounded and all alone, without any other person in the world, he works and walks, where possible, his way out of trouble.

    Where it is impossible to walk out of trouble, he comes home in a body bag or worse of all, his body may never be found for full military honours and burial. That is the hardest part of it all – the non-recovery of the body of a fallen soldier. A soldier who died fighting on his feet; doing all he could to protect the territorial integrity of his country and its people. How do you explain to his widow, where he was married; his children, if he had any and his parents, if they are still alive that the body could not be found?

    The nation was saved that agony last weekend. Inside the thick forest straddling Zamfara, Katsina and Kaduna states, a fighter pilot lurked in fear as the enemy closed in on him. It was a close shave with death for Flight Lieutenant Abayomi Dairo, the lone pilot of the illfated Alpha Jet which crashed in Zamfara State on Sunday. The gallant soldier was on an interdiction mission in a zone now notorious for banditry, killings and kidnapping. He had successfully straffed the bandits’ hideouts and it was time to return to base.

    In the course of the trip, the enemy took down his jet. He did not lose his nerves. He parachuted to safety as the plane hurtled into the deep recesses of the thick foliage never to be seen again. The bandits somehow knew that the pilot had ejected from the jet and a manhunt began for him. They could not lose the plane and lose the man, they thought. They must get something for their efforts. They gave the pilot a hot chase. Remember, this is their territory, which they know like the back of their hands. They believed that there was no way the soldier would outrun them on their own land.

    They forgot that a soldier is trained to adapt to any situation. A soldier is not a soldier for nothing. He is a soldier because of his ability to weather every storm. A soldier is at home whether on land, at sea, in the air or in the mangrove. In the surreal world of soldiery, it takes brain and brawn to survive when a fighter pilot is cornered. On July 18, Dairo was cornered, but his instincts saved him. He survived to fight another day. It must have been a frightening and terrible experience for the young officer. This was not a war movie, many of which he must have watched in training. Nor was it a simulation, many of which again he must have participated in, at the military academy to prepare him for a day like July 18.

    That fateful day, he came face to face with the hard reality of being a soldier. His nation is not at war, but it is waging a war to  contain insurgency and banditry in the Northeast and Northwest. Unfortunately, the problem is spreading to the Northcentral, with Niger State, being the most troubled in that axis. As I type this article on Tuesday evening, scores of pupils of an Arabic school, popularly called Ile ‘Kewu in the Southwest, are still in captivity almost one month after being abducted. Dairo might have embarked on his air interdiction mission as part of efforts to rescue these kids and other abductees. He nearly ended up being abducted too.

    Dairo escaped to tell his story. It was not an easy escape. He escaped from those vermins with the bare skin of his teeth. His escape is the stuff of which war films are made. A soldier whose plane had been gunned down and surrounded by the enemy baying for his blood. Lonely and armed with only his phone, he bagan his long trek to safety. The darkness and his instincts came handy in this true test of his military training. There could not have been a better war situation test than the one unfolding before him in real time. What he learnt in simulation would no doubt have helped him on how to claw his way out of that dire situation.

    As he darted here and there amid enemy fire, his breathing became fast and laborious. But he persevered as he knew the consequences of being caught. Gingerly, he trod through the bush, avoiding to step on dry trees that could give him away. Fate smiled on Dairo as he found his way to an army formation, where he was “fully rescued”. His escape brings joy to the nation, which has yet to get over the death of its army chief, Lt Gen Ibrahim Attahiru, and 10 others in an air force jet crash on May 21. Before then, two other military jets had crashed, killing some officers too. Dairo’s was the fourth jet crash in three years.

    His was not a crash as such. It was shot down by bandits. This tells us as a nation that we are underrating these bandits and insurgents at the risk of our soldiers’ lives. These hoodlums are well armed. For them to bring down a fighter jet means that they have a rich arsenal to draw from to meet any exigency. It is important that the government draws a lesson from the July 18 incident. The lesson?  That the insurgency and banditry war is far from over.

    A lot still has to be done for the sake of our soldiers. A “technically degraded” group, from my own layman’s view, should not have the capacity to down a fighter jet. These insurgents and bandits are still technically strong. From what happened on July 18, it will be foolhardy to think otherwise. This Dairo was lucky, another may not be that fortunate. May God continue to protect our troops.

     

  • Penny-pinching racism in sports in the western world

    Penny-pinching racism in sports in the western world

    By Jide Osuntokun

    The final of the Euro 2020 soccer competition between Great Britain and Italy was marred by racism which has been a growing cancer in sports in recent times mirroring the deep-seated racism in the wider society in the western world. The recent incident in London followed the loss by Britain of the championship match between her and Italy. The match ended in a 1–1 draw after expiry time and had to be decided by penalties. Anyone can lose a penalty and the whole thing is a game of chance. This is why only the strong-hearted players who can keep their nerves under control are chosen to take penalties. It was quite surprising that three blacks in the English team including a 19-year-old Bukayo Saka were chosen by their very experienced coach to represent their team. Alas, all the three misfired at the critical time thus causing England to lose the match.

    Before the final, the English public had been worked up to a frenzy about the cup “coming home” after the last time England won a major tournament- the World Cup -at Wembley in a controversial final against West Germany in 1966. Even the restless Boris Johnson, the British prime minister had promised to declare a national holiday the following Monday to celebrate England’s conquest of Europe harking back to Britain’s exit from the European Union. The loss of the match was therefore a blow to Britain’s pride and honor in the football world bearing in mind that the game of football was even invented in England. The loss was too much for the fans to bear and apart from the traditional hooliganism of British soccer crowds which manifested in their beating up the few Italian fans they could get their hands on, they then took to the internet calling for the blood of the “three black monkeys” who brought the loss on England.

    If any of the black players had been found, the mob would possibly have killed them. The fans then demanded that non-white players must never be fielded for the England’s team again. The English coach rose to defend his players, so did fellow players but the mob could not be placated and a mural in Manchester honouring footballer Marcus Rashford was vandalized with graffiti following England’s defeat. The seriousness of the situation was so much that both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition and Prince William issued statements condemning the rancorous racism shown by the English soccer fans.

    Mr. Boris Johnson’s condemnation of the racist effusions were dismissed by blacks as shameless hypocrisy because of Boris Johnson’s earlier comment that there was no systemic racism in Great Britain whereas, every black person has been a victim of  ”systemic racism “ in the country and the incident of racism has been on the rise in England since Boris Johnson and his patron, Donald J. Trump came to power in the western world riding  on the wave of anti-black  and anti-immigrant sentiments if not total hatred  for foreigners.

    Nationalism in the United States and Europe has been fueled by the feeling of nativist sentiments and white supremacist belief of threat against white privilege. Trump spent part of his four years of his presidency abusing black sportsmen taking the knee to protest against systemic racism in the USA and calling the white owners of their organization to fire them. He also used his presidential pulpit to abuse blacks to go back to the “shithole” countries of their ancestors. This pathetic feeling is not restricted to the Anglo-Saxon world but seems to cut across the whole world and it is present in Europe, Asia, in the Middle East, in the Americas, North and South, Australasia and on the African continent. People of darker hue, the so-called “visible minorities” seem to stand out wherever they find themselves and unlike other immigrants are not easily digested by the wider society with lighter skin colour. Even here there is broad spectrum of racism of mutual dislike between oriental people and Western and Eastern Europeans and their American cousins and it is within this context that one can locate antisemitism.

    The inferiority of the darker skins dates back to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade when blacks were reduced to chattels and beasts of burden used to build modern capitalism in the Americas both North and South and in Europe particularly Great Britain  as well as France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. Germany is excluded because of its late unification in 1870 and because it was deprived of its colonies in Africa and New Guinea after the First World War.  However, the Germans have done the right thing by paying two billion Euros reparation to Namibia for their massacre of the Hereros in Namibia between 1885 and 1900 when they were the colonial power in German South West Africa.

    Africans were not the first people to be enslaved. Western civilization was built on enslaving of conquered people going back to Ancient Greece. The point I am making is that as soon as the slaves were freed and because there was to racial chasm between the slaves and enslavers, the damaging stigma of racism arising from slavery did not endure. But the modern racism against blacks in sports arises principally from the modern history of white domination in Africa through colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. The second reason arises out of envy of black success in sports and athletics and entertainment generally and the humongous revenue derivable from it. The other targets of white racism like the Asians are not as successful in sports as the blacks. Asians generally are proving themselves equal to the whites in science and technology. The fact of the Chinese, Indian, North Korean and the Pakistani states being nuclear weapons states have made the whites to respect these people.

    When I was a young man in Britain in the 1960s, the average Briton looked down on everybody but gradually one saw advertisements about vacant flats reading “Blacks, Chinese, Indians, Irish need not apply. Japs ok”. The British now accept the Chinese and Indians who are now major investors in Britain; they tolerate the Irish and still put the blacks at arms’ length. Until black people realise that power, both economic and military is what determines the status of people in the world, they will continue to be humiliated both at home and in the rest of the world.

    The residue of colonial domination of the Irish by the British is what is responsible for the British dislike of the Irish. This mutual antipathy still dominates British policy towards the Irish Republic and the Irish Catholics stranded in Northern Ireland are presumably anxiously waiting for unification with their kith and kin in the Republic of Ireland to put an end to British humiliation of their people.

    It is ironic that racists sometimes ignore common racial sameness but would emphasize cultural differences to build a wall against even people living in contiguous territory. This can be seen from the British treatment of the Irish as a wider definition of racism. The Anglo-Saxons generally looked down on the Slavic people who constitute the vast majority in Eastern Europe and on the Latin people in Southern Europe stretching from the French to the Italians, Spanish and Portuguese. In fact, northern Europeans sometimes look down on the Europeans in the south generally. The First and the Second World Wars were tangentially caused by racism of the Germans against the Slavic people. Today the rivalry between the United States and China are rooted in big power strategic competition and racism. For centuries the west feared the so-called “yellow peril” but nowadays the Western fear is not usually expressed in brutally frank racist slogan but it is understood by those deciding which country should be number one in the world. Even the United States which tend to see itself as upholder of liberalism does not totally accept its citizens of Asian origin whether Indian, Chinese, and Japanese.

    In Africa whether North or South of the Sahara, the evil of racism is well and alive. In the North, we have discrimination of Arabs against Berbers and blacks and South of the Sahara, racism and ethnic hatred are not distinguishable. The Hutu slaughtering of Tutsis in the inter lacustrine region around the Great Lakes in East Africa was rooted in racist sentiments in which one group calls for the wiping out of another. Even in other parts of Africa including Nigeria, our so-called problems of tribalism are forms of sickening racism which need to be cured and dissipated by education that emphasizes the common humanity of all people despite height, language, texture of hair and what food one eats.

    Racism is almost innate in man and no race can claim absolute freedom from it. It is only a matter of degree. Racism is a cancer to which no one or government has found a cure. Legislation may hide the evil but it will not end it unless there is an equilibrium in economic accessibility and power as well as physical  power that is diffused and not concentrated in the hands of a particular race.

  • Onochie and Buhari’s insensitivity

    Onochie and Buhari’s insensitivity

    By

    President Muhammadu Buhari has had almost nine months since his October 12, 2020 nomination of Lauretta Onochie, his Special Assistant on New Media as national commissioner for Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) to reflect on a decision that has been roundly condemned by Nigerians, civil society groups and those who have written petition pointing out Onochie’s membership of APC and the fact that someone from her state was already on the board of INEC.  Onochie on her part has not only admitted being part of the Buhari’s campaign organisation in 2015, an endeavor that earned her a place in Buhari’s government, she also admitted to deposing to an affidavit at the Abuja Federal High Court that she was a member of the APC.

    Unfortunately, President Buhari who doesn’t seem to understand that government is built around public opinion, or that public sentiments are everything; and that “Whoever moulds public sentiments goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions” as Abraham Lincoln once observed. He is hardly known for deeper reflection on national issues or for changing his mind on issues over which members of his ‘loyal gatekeepers’ especially Abubakar Malami, the justice minister has taken a position no matter how controversial or how injurious to the health of the nation.

    For instance, asked during his Arise Television interview about the southern governors ban of open grazing in their states, the president half-jokingly asked if the reporter wanted him to contradict his Attorney General and Minister of Justice. He then hinted he was going to revive old grazing routes.

    “I have asked to dig up gazettes of the First Republic. There are cattle routes and grazing areas. The routes and the areas are known.”

    It turned out such gazette only existed on Malami’s imagination as legal experts pointed out the grazing law the president was threatening to retrieve and foist on the whole country was a dead northern grazing law promulgated by Ahmadu Bello just for the north and lasted until the collapse of the first republic.

    But that was not the first time his chief legal adviser will demonstrate his incompetence or deploy mischief as a strategy. On another occasion, responding to 17 southern governors’ ban on open grazing and movement of cattle by foot in the states over cases of kidnappings and killings that have been traced to criminal elements amongst herders, Malami had said their decision was “against the constitutional right of freedom of movement for other Nigerians who are herders” and mischievously comparing the ban on open grazing to banning all spare parts dealers in the northern parts of the country.

    Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo and chairman of Southwest APC Governors’ Forum  had to remind him  that “Clinging to an anachronistic model of animal husbandry, which is evidently injurious to harmonious relationship between the herders and the farmers as well as the local populace, is wicked and arrogant.”

    Bala Mohammed of Bauchi in whose states like others such as Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina among many other northern core states where natives since Fulani conquest of 1806,  cannot access their own land without permission from Emir or payment of tax to the village Seriki  adding his own mischief had said  “Land is in the hands of the state and federal governments in trust but Nigerians don’t need the permission of governors or the federal government to settle everywhere”.

    The president was also misled by Malami on the issue of Amotekun – the southwest regional security outfit whose set up he said “runs contrary to the provisions of the Nigerian law.”  Again, legal experts declared such declaration was driven more by politics and mischief than law. Femi Falana, a human rights lawyer reminded him that “his  purported proscription of Amotekun is hypocritical and discriminatory on the grounds that the Civilian JTF operating in Yobe and Borno states is constituted by 26,000 well-armed volunteers who have been assisting the armed forces to combat terrorism in the north east region.”

    From the above record of manipulation of the president, it is not difficult to see Malami’s hand in the president’s current decision to swim or drown with Lauretta Onochie.  Unfortunately, the president’s men hardly care if foisting Onochie on INEC will amount to the president shooting himself in the foot. It appears their goal is to set a president they have long reduced into a sectional president against the people.

    But what does the president stand to gain from his current war against the people? With someone already representing Delta in INEC, the president cannot claim to be waging Delta State war.  In any case, in a state where election is war and contest is often a balance of terror among militant groups and their god fathers, Onochie is ill-equipped to change that narrative if the Niger Delta political elite decide to live by their reputation.  Although Buhari has hijacked APC for his cronies since he is not contesting in 2023, but it is not likely Onochie can single-handedly do much to help APC in view of the party’s betrayal of the people these past six years even if Buhari succeeds in foisting her on INEC.

    It is however hoped that the president who alone will be left to face his own demon after 2023 understands he has everything to lose.  While it has become apparent that those serving other tendencies in his government currently egging him love none but themselves and don’t really care about his legacies, he alone will face the judgment of history after his tenure in 2023.

    While the battle to foist Onochie on INEC rages on, it is also hoped the president will spare a thought about his unprecedented defeat of an incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. The feat was the result of Jonathan’s statesmanship and decision to choose nation before self despite the pressure of PDP, his party.

    The president should ask himself the type of INEC he intends to bequeath on the nation. Onochie as a loyal party supporter and President Buhari’s supporter can be rehabilitated elsewhere. But foisting her on the electoral body will be a betrayal as such will not only undermine people’s confidence in the neutrality of INEC but will also raise question of legitimacy for whoever succeeds President Buhari.

    The president in spite of his valiant efforts and sacrifice seems overwhelmed by many of his inherited problems – management of our diversity, the economy and general insecurity in the land. In 2015, he similarly inherited an INEC praised by Nigeria’s stakeholders and hailed by local and international community for conducting free and fair election.

    This feat was possible because President Jonathan chose the nation above self despite pressure from his party, the PDP that urged him not to conceded defeat. If the president cannot improve on the INEC Jonathan bequeathed on to him, he should at least not undermine it.

  • Abduction of our children from school has to stop

    Abduction of our children from school has to stop

    By Jide Osuntokun

    Our children are our future and it seems to me that our future is being gradually threatened by what is happening to our children, particularly our female children who are regularly abducted from their schools particularly in the northern part of our country with our governments and everyone who should do something totally prostrate before the agents of evil who are doing this to our country. Recently, these evil people, call them what you will – terrorists,  bandits, kidnappers, herders, cattle rustlers, ethnic supremacists – I refuse to call them jihadists, because that is what they are not. Islam does not hold these kinds of people as worthy in the presence of Almighty God.  It seems these people doing this nefarious business of kidnapping school children have embraced the doctrine of Boko Haram that sees western education as haram (forbidden). It seems for convenience sake that these bandits are just using the Boko Haram credo as a way of camouflaging their thievery and paedophilia.

    Or is it that the criminals in the Northeast and the north-central and northwest and all over the country are simply one and the same and should be treated as such? These are simply criminals and paedophiles that should be visited with the full weight of the law when they are caught. In a serious country, these types of criminals would be hanged by the neck until they are dead. But alas since this madness began in Nigeria, no one has been taken to court and speedily dealt with. Sometimes I wonder what our overpaid and over pampered legislators are doing at state and federal levels of government that they cannot legislate for special courts to  be set up to treat the cases of these criminals.

    We are witnessing a whole generation of our youth particularly in the north being wasted. Can anyone imagine a worse humiliation than terrorists telling governments at state and federal levels of administrations not to worry about kidnapped underage girls of 12 to 15 years that they have been married off? This was the cold message these people sent to the government of Kebbi over the kidnapping of school children some two weeks ago. The international media is giving prominence to this horrible news in order to present us as savages just to underscore the western racist impression that blacks are not truly human like the rest of humanity. In this kind of environment, one wonders who will want to associate with us or invest in our country unless the rate of return on investment is so huge as to justify dealing with people who are still evolving in the last stage before becoming Homo sapiens.  This humiliation is what is at stake at this moment of our lives.

    In his recent interview on ARISE Television, President Muhammadu Buhari wondered what the local governments, state governments and traditional institutions are doing while children in their areas are being kidnapped while they are all shouting about the failure of his government to protect the people of Nigeria. Earlier in the year while commiserating with the people of Niger State where hundreds of school children were simply marched into the forests, General Bashir Magashi, the defence minister said the people should protect themselves and not wait for soldiers and police alone to do the job. One may dismiss the plea of the minister and the president as coming from desperation. But their thinking probably has merit if we the ordinary people and our local, state and traditional governments draw the right conclusion from what the president and his minister said. The president has thrown down the gauntlet; it is ours to pick. The traditional institutions draw five per cent to 10% of the federal vote going to the LGA (local government administrations). Certainly, they should be able to fortify their immediate neighbourhood and protect their institutions. Obas and emirs are being kidnapped right from their palaces with little or no resistance. What chance has the ordinary citizen got if their homes are invaded and members are taken for ransom?

    The president’s challenge is worth taking with some seriousness before it is too late. If the traditional rulers become easy targets, then perhaps they should not exist! God forbid! I hold the traditional institutions in high esteem. I am a chief of the Alaafin of Oyo and I certainly will want the traditional institutions to survive like in other advanced countries in Europe and Asia as links between the past, the present, and the future. The challenge has been thrown to them and these traditional institutions should raise defensive and well-armed forces as existed in the past to take care of themselves and their kingdoms.

    Responding to the defence minister’s challenge that we should all defend ourselves reminds me about the stories of valour of my grandfather and great grandfather my father used to tell us his children. My father himself was no pushover when it came to valour and courage.  In Yoruba culture, a strong man cannot  be easily overcome by just anybody! We should all take the minister’s challenge seriously by each adult of means, applying for permit to carry firearms for hunting and protection. We have this right as citizens as long as we get police licence. If herders can carry openly AK-47, so should we. We are also armed by the minister’s call for citizens to defend themselves, a call like a levee en masse, some sort of a citizen army.

    Will it not make sense to any man to defend himself rather than watch ones’ girls and wives raped by some stinking herder? There was the story of a man who was kidnapped along Akure -Ilesha road with his wife and nine-year old daughter who were both raped and when he pleaded for his young daughter, one of the herders threatened to rape him also!  What an abomination? The situation has gotten so bad that I think what my friend Honourable Eddie Mbadiwe said some years ago about licensing people to carry concealed weapons need further consideration and elaboration.

    As for the LGAs and states, the president has thrown down a challenge to them and it is left to them to react. There is nothing strange in state and LGA police. This is what happens everywhere in the world even in smaller countries like Switzerland and Belgium which are federal states like Nigeria. In the USA, there are not only state, county and city police, there are also state police. Even universities have police in the United States. It is simply inconceivable for anyone to imagine only federal police say in Canada and the USA. Even in relatively small United Kingdom, there are layers of police from city to county to the four nations of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland apart from Scotland Yard. I mention all these places not to give the impression of suggesting over militarization of our country. The point is that without peace, there can be no development and without development, there can be no peace.

    Serious countries invest in their security unlike what is happening here in Nigeria. We have to face the issue of our security squarely. Our state governments that can afford state police should go ahead and establish their well-armed police forces and present the federal government with a fait accompli of their police forces and ask the federal government to go to court to challenge them using the president’s challenge as a call to action. There is no point all states waiting for united action. This is a waste of time; after all, we are still a federation, if in words only, and not a unitary state where all actions must conform to some order of uniformity.

    Some critics of my formula which is actually Buhari’s formula may pose the question: where will the state get the money to pay their police? The answer is police tax and through fiscal restructuring eventually. The other question is – what will the federal police and the military be doing if LGAs, state and traditional institutions are involved in security? The answer is that the federal police will take care of interstate crimes while the military will secure the state from external enemies as is done elsewhere. Of course they will also be available to help secure peace internally when law and order break down as they have in Nigeria.

    There can be no complaints about too much security especially now that we are being told that our security institutions are under manned. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. If we want to be safe, we must secure our country and our homes by every and all means possible. It is as simple as that.

  • Another viral reset

    Another viral reset

    By Olatunji Ololade

    Amid COVID-19’s torment, terrorism, and armed banditry, Nigeria fosters her tradition of descent. This country has resorted to her old ways; like the androgynous drag queen, ‘she’ has gifted the rapt visionary at lust’s easel with the whistling bum on her girder.

    “Come defile us!” Nigerians urge, even amid the threat of a supposedly deadlier variant of the coronavirus. This minute, Nigeria intones basement giggle, like the proverbial ghommid plundering beneath nationhood’s sandcastles.

    Through rising insecurity and the government’s gift of misgovernance, industry breathes nationwide, clerics rejoice and chant preachment of relief. Freedom cheers in a blanket of extreme poses; like the proverbial paramour, she offers the worm with the apple and invites private glances to her public pleasures.

    But while other states may consume the worm with the apple, Lagos eyeballs it as a false fruit of rebirth. The city fears becoming food for worms hence Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s decision to re-institute full compliance with all protective protocols; compulsory use of masks in all public places, social distancing, temperature checks, provisions for hand-washing and sanitisers, and a maximum of 50 percent occupancy in enclosed spaces.

    Governor Sanwoolu has warned of a possible third wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the state, and Nigeria by extension, stressing that the number of confirmed cases, which had earlier reduced to one percent average as of the end of June, has suddenly increased to 6.6 percent rate as of Thursday, July 8.

    While he did not say whether the new Delta variant, which has been described as the most transmissible, has been found in Lagos or not, it is noteworthy that how Lagos handles the situation may impact the fate of the country.

    As Lagos grapples with the tally of the afflicted, Sanwo-Olu dreads COVID-19’s re-enactment of its Italian, American alchemy. Lagos must neither splay nor split to a merciless ravage of its innards lest it becomes yet another mutilated bower.

    Since government lifted the nationwide lockdown, a lot of Nigerians have barely managed to get by; many businesses have collapsed due to COVID-19 contractions; industry hasn’t fully resurrected and large segments of the citizenry struggle to reclaim all that was lost and stilled – even as armed bandits brazenly cash out via brazen kidnap for ransom plots.

    While the government’s intervention efforts focused on the poor, presumed middle-class segments have lost their jobs, suffered arbitrary salary cuts, and lack of access to welfare relief and subsidies that could help them cope with the economic hardship foisted by the pandemic.

    A 2019 World Bank report shows that Nigeria created about 450,000 new jobs in 2018, partially offsetting the loss of jobs in 2017 but more radical estimates indicate that over 18 million youths were unemployed by the end of 2019.

    If COVID-19 has taught us anything, however, it is that faith may flourish amid private homesteads, far from the commercial offices and pulpits of merchant clerics.

    There is no gainsaying Nigeria stirred with an impulse for commerce and drama, post-lockdown. As the country resumed to familiar bustle and grind, however, we forgot most of the lessons availed us through the lockdown.

    There is no gainsaying COVID-19 has its benefits; aside from its merciless ravage and termination of livelihoods and lives, it taught families, societies, and nations to immerse and hover at the edge of a hitherto forbidden locus of experience. It taught us to read. It taught many to rediscover love for printed and digital literature. It taught us to hold our breath, and let words into our core, amid the rapid currents of life.

    The virus is spellbinding. It affixed Nigeria to a seat. It hurled roving parents into a stagnant spell with their wards. It fixed a book in several hands and ignited a hankering for news among the old and the young.

    The pandemic gave us order. Although the order was not necessarily just and kind, it taught individuals to seek knowledge at the core and periphery of civilization. It taught us to read to save ourselves and the collective. Every superficial and profound remark, article, or paragraph by a journalist, writer, reporter, and novelist, in traditional or new media, became food for thought.

    Through the lockdown, many people rediscovered life’s essentials, far from the guttural cry and antics of the maddening herd. It taught many to remodel their lives around a new normal. For some, the new normal manifested as a routine walk in the park, in the company of loved ones; for some, it was family game time and movie hour. For some, the new normal unfurled in an intense love of books and visionary literature.

    One would think that as the lockdown was lifted, development stakeholders, multinationals, the media, artistes, local and international NGOs, schools, and the manufacturing sector, to mention a few, would unite to give stimulus to society’s shrunken arteries. Wrong.

    Freed from the lockdown, Nigeria stirred to the lure of pagan sex and violence (saddening, sensational murder-rape stories), decadence, and chaos. No sooner than the lockdown was lifted than the camera seduced society to more decadent faculties.

    Faced with the threat of COVID-19’s new delta variant, Nigerians rush into the hovel of reality show drama, where plot and dialogue become insolent word-baggage. This minute, the most eye-intense of genres restores pagan antiquity’s cultic fanfare. If previous reality shows perpetuated fables of lust and disintegration, the ongoing edition commemorates the internment of the pre-adolescent mind in a grave of delusions.

    More participants on the shows personify a deep cry for help; like Hoyle’s misdirected mortals, they will learn from avoidable mistakes, not from examples.

    COVID-19 made humans of us all and the lockdown thrust in our faces, the stark imagery of our mortality. The grim truth leered at us from the pages of literature, newspapers, and the Holy Books. Yet Nigeria returns to its beaten path: reality shows, deathly politics, sponsored violence, and cutthroat commerce.

    The average citizen re-emerges as a non-person, subject to mass cheering and shunning; like a participant in a reality show, he lives life like a lottery. In pursuit of the sweepstakes, his imagination is once again let loose to roam, uninhibited, but his body is bound in ritual restriction.

    He becomes a daemonic tool, a sacrificial totem maddened by intoxicants: alcohol and human milk, fluid of slovenly genitals – the paraphernalia of shows like the BBN.

    Would anybody read anymore? “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books,” Neil Postman wrote: What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

    Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble puppy.

    As Huxley remarked in “Brave New World Revisited,” the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

    In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. Apology to Postman.

  • Too hot to handle

    Too hot to handle

    By Lawal  Ogienagbon

     

    WHATEVER the media is today, it was yesterday. And I daresay, it will be tomorrow. The media has its duty cut out for it; it is the voice of the people and more importantly, that of the voiceless. Those in this category are many. To be voicelsss does not have to do with class or wealth. You may be blessed with all the riches of this world and yet remain voiceless. You may play in the big league and still remain voiceless.

    There are certain things money cannot buy. It cannot buy health. It cannot also buy you freedom if you cross the line with those in authority. But, in most cases, when people talk of the voiceless, the hoi polloi come to mind. The wretched of the earth, as Frantz Fanon put it. The rich and the poor have a common friend in the media. The media does for others, what ordinarily, it does not do for itself. It fights people’s battles. For a profession that carries others’ woes on its head, you will expect the media to go to the ends of the world for its distressed members. For where! It neglects its own to the consternation of the world. But try to trouble the media as a group, then you have another think coming.

    From time immemorial, the media has guarded its integrity and independence jealously. The media sees it as a sacred duty to discharge its obligation fiercely and fearlessly. A fearless media and a government, whether military or democratic, which has something to hide do not see eye to eye. The media was a pain in the neck for the military in its days in power. It threw everything at the media, including obnoxious laws, but the Fourth Estate of the Realm remained strong. Things were supposed to be better under democracy. They were and are still not.

    In 1964, the Tafawa Balewa administration, through the Newspapers Amendment Bill, tried to tamper with the independence of the media. It failed woefully. We are in another era and in another democracy, and history is about to repeat itself. Ironically, it is those close to the media that usually plot against it. In 1964, it was the Information Minister, the flamboyant T.O.S. Benson that led the onslaught against the media  with the repressive Newspapars Amendment Bill.

    Fifty-seven years later, another Information Minister Lai Mohammed is working through a proxy to exhume  the Nigerian Press Council (NPC) in order to get back at the media for its ‘harsh’ criticisms of the Buhari administration. The proxy, a lawmaker from Oyo State, Olusegun Odebunmi, who knows nothing about the workings of the media, purportedly initiated a private member’s bill to amend the NPC Act, which since it was promulgated in 1992, had been in the archives, and the National Broadcasting  Commission (NBC) Act. The other day on television, Odebunmi was saying the NPC Act was long overdue for amendment to strengthen it to achieve its purpose. I just laughed at his ignorance. He should do his research well. Besides its Director-General and his staff, the NBC has nothing else going for it.

    The law did not fly from day one because it was enacted to serve the selfish end of the Babaginda regime. It was meant to stifle the critical press, which was giving the junta a tough time. Even, the darkgoggled Abacha did not find the law useful in his nearly five years in office. Although Mohammed and the President’s media aides have since denied having a hand in the resurrection of the law, their denial sounds hollow. Reason: the Presidency says all enquiries about the bills should be directed to the ministry, which on its part, points finger at the National Assembly.

    The not-so sleek Odebunmi gave the game away when at the public hearing on the bills, he described them as “ babies of the government”. For the avoidance of doubt, Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila and Senator Ajibola Bashiru should note that the media is not afraid of regulation. The media has been regulating itself for decades. The Nigerian Press Organisation (NPO), which comprises the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), drew up its Code of Ethics.

    The code stipulates the dos and don’ts for journalists.

    It does not end there. There are rules on who is a journalist, the qualifications to be a journalist and how media houses should operate. It also sanctions erring journalists, and intervenes in disputes between journalists and others, but leaves room for legal redress if the aggrieved party so desires. What is NPC bringing to the table that is new? Nothing. It only wants to confer the information minister with power to determine who is a journalist, what he writes, how he writes it as well as oversee the operation of the media generally. He would also be in charge of licensing media houses. The meaning of this is not lost on the discerning. You can only be licensed if the minister likes your face. And they say this is not the road to gagging!

    Yet, Gbajabiamila, without reading the bill (that was what he said), has concluded that the media does not want to be regulated. He added that he would not allow the media to run amok, claiming that he had seen many marriages collapsed, businesses destroyed, countries ruined and children hanged themselves because of “irresponsible journalism”. He forgot to add that he has also seen insurgency, kidnapping, rape, herders-farmers skirmishes become the order of the day because of bad press! It is a pity that Mr Speaker spoke like that. To Ajibola, the media resorted to “emotional blackmail” by using graphics, as contained in the front page adverts titled: INFORMATION BLACKOUT carried by the papers on Monday, to attack the bills.

    It was no blackmail, it was another mode of communication to state the media’s opposition to the bill. If he has been following the matter well, he should know that despite not being invited, the NPO appeared at the hearing on the bills to state its case. The media will not use blackmail; no, never, to fight these draconian bills. It will use the force of reason and sound logic. What is bad is bad; there is no other name for it. The NPC and NBC amendment bills are bad. There is no room for them in a democracy.

    By the way, Odebunmi should not be talking of “suspending the bill for further consultation”, he should be talking of withdrawing it. In retrospection, for the too trusting media, which sees a friend in all who run to it when they are contesting election, this is a big lesson. May the scales fall off the media’s eyes to know its true friends.

     

     

    Adeosun: The hanging poser

     

    The media was awash with reports of former finance minister Mrs Kemi Adeosun’s victory in court last week. The court ruled that she did not need a National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) discharge certificate to become a minister. The ruling was based on the civil suit filed by her. Of course, no Nigerian needs that certificate to hold public office. But, she presented one in order to get the job even when she never served. Her certificate which caused her resignation from office was never the issue before the court. In their reports, the media failed to put things in context.

    So, the question remains how did she get that certificate when she did not serve? Will the police look into the criminal aspect of this case, considering what presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said about it during the Isa Pantami brouhaha? Is that one still in government? Questions! Questions!! Questions!!!

     

  • The politics and the stink

    The politics and the stink

    By Olatunji Ololade

     

    This minute presents with the umpteenth scare in Nigeria’s grisly drama, perhaps. Few days after gunmen abducted infants, nurses and guards from the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Centre (NTLC) in Zaria, Kaduna, and subsequently kidnapped 150 boys from Bethel Baptist High School in Damishi, Chikun LGA of the same state, Nigeria cringes in anticipation of the next attack.

    Bandits have taken nearly 1,000 people from schools since December last year, more than 150 of whom remain missing. January unfurled cloaked in blood and sadism of clashing tribal characters.

    Herdsmen plundered subsistence farms up-north, crossing the middle-belt into Nigeria’s south-lands, to steal and murder impoverished families tilling the soil to eke a meal. They maimed rural fathers, murdered and raped mothers and daughters in righteous rage a la Boko Haram. The latter, characteristically, continued its campaign of violence and death in the north-east too.

    Thus at the start of the year, the dominance of despair seemed so complete and insurmountable, but the oligarchs, apparently unruffled, issued habitual excuses and ripostes to critics. As the carnage persists, shady separatists emerge from the woodwork, chanting frantic banality to the oligarchs’ insensate bromides. And Nigeria yields to hysteria.

    Politicians know the electorate through sadistic plowing; nailing them down by spikes of cash and bigotries, they catch their shrieks in a metaphoric calabash. The vessel is chillingly archetypal.

    The government’s gourd vine connotes its self-preservation: career politicians frantically seek re-election or a change of public office hence the insolence of outgoing governors dying to become senators, even in states where the electorate dies by their ineptness and brazen pillage in real time.

    The ruling class’ metaphoric calabash sheaths its exaggerated pride and self-idolatry. A poisoned chalice. Like the Biblical bawds of Babylon, they hold their gourds scummy with lust and amorality. At a previous general election, one governor, at the end of eight years of his maladministration and impoverishment of the state, sought to install his son-in-law as his successor, to continue his pauperisation legacy. Another with a curious kink for risible caps, fought to install his “chosen wizkid” as his successor in a badly governed state, where the electorate fought to escape his asphyxiating tenure.

    The insolence persists across political platforms; politicians pant to serpents interred in their possessed spirits. We have seen how such individuals and their bungling parties sadistically mauled sound to sight, sighs to streaming blood.

    It’s about time the Nigerian electorate divested the country of their murderous forms. Lest we end up as tissues and blood in their gourds. Nonetheless, the ruling class reflects our degeneracy back to us. They actuate rather than constrain our perversions.

    Boorstin would call this the mirror effect. The political class’ administrative hearse becomes the railcar of our death-tending impulses: terrorism, kidnap for ransom and armed robbery flourishes. And fraud, embezzlement of public funds persist in this government as its predecessors, though in tidier proportions.

    Notwithstanding the incumbent oligarchs’ failings, the electorate is poised to return them to power, come 2023. In a few months, voters will once again, fall victim to an ageless ruse repeatedly weaponised by the ruling class. Every politician seeking public office understands that the political arena is a theatre, where the most essential skill required is artifice.

    But that is simply one way to look at it. The political arena equally unfurls like a red light district, an expansive brothel, where electorate bodies are the stringed instruments hysterically plucked by politician-patrons.

    The governed, or electorate if you like, are sometimes mauled by career rapists cum sadomasochists in a frenzy, as reflected by the badly governed states.

    In this decadent theatre, politicians emerge as master harpists, making dark melody to the electorate’s torment. In anguish, the latter gains identity as  faceless natives: bleeding saps condemned to infernal dystopia.

    The discerning see through the artifice. They know the pleading candidate’s smile masks a scowl. They know that incumbent public officers and the opposition seeking to usurp power from them are birds of a feather, who use the media, among other tools of mass propaganda, to create faux intimacy with the citizenry.

    Politicians know they do not need to be competent, sincere or honest to win votes and elections, they only need to appear to have these qualities. More importantly, they know they must be adept at creating and establishing a false narrative of their sainthood and the opposition’s villainy. The consistency and emotionality of the story are paramount.

    And the narrative must be entertaining and wildly infused with absurd drama. Thus the scandalous affairs of paedophile, bribe-taking and machete-wielding governors, and a threesome-loving lawmaker caught pants-down, are inconsequential in considerations of their suitability for re-election. Rather than make them pariahs, it earns them empathy and votes.

    How do illiterate voters avoid the snare of such con men? The answer lies in the capacity of the politically literate to teach the ignorant masses how to repel the scourge of predatory politicians. Yet the platforms for achieving such goals are non-existent.

    The electorate must make its way past the fraud and extortion of the seasoned politicians and younger aspirants who are out to lure the psyche into committing political capital – that is, electoral votes – to unsound judgement and investments.

    But to achieve this, the Nigerian voter must learn to identify false messiahs from the true patriots. As medieval royalty deployed court drama and conspiracies to divert the attention of their subjects from daily miseries, so do the ruling class divert attention from the real issues at the approach of the next general elections.

    It’s about time the electorate devised the plot of Nigeria’s political theatre; the real issues aren’t what the ruling class narrate to us. The real narrative is in everything they would rather not discuss.

    What is the nature of government expenditure on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the result of such spending? What is the real impact of the anti-corruption fight? Of government spending, how much is truly committed to education and health financing? Why does the government still pay itself outrageous salaries?

    What has President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration done differently from its predecessors, beyond the bounds of its statutory responsibilities? Do Nigeria’s two most prominent parties deserve a single vote? Why?

    The theme of the forthcoming elections, as advanced by the contenders, is that of salvation. Each candidate professes to be the virtuous of our world, by whose virtues Nigeria will attain redemption. Yet there is no candidate with a plan to commit, at least 40 per cent, of Nigeria’s annual budget to health and education – split at 20 per cent each. None of the candidates can do that. None will do that.

    Of the contenders, none would agree to the surgical trimming of the National Assembly to a unicameral legislature, while legislative work is reduced to part time assignment.

    And even though their politics exude the stink of the night soil man, several voters would dance and sing, bicker and kill to guarantee them easy access to public office.

    So doing, the Nigerian voter creates a plenum from which he 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. his minute presents with the umpteenth scare in Nigeria’s grisly drama, perhaps. Few days after gunmen abducted infants, nurses and guards from the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Centre (NTLC) in Zaria, Kaduna, and subsequently kidnapped 150 boys from Bethel Baptist High School in Damishi, Chikun LGA of the same state, Nigeria cringes in anticipation of the next attack.

    Bandits have taken nearly 1,000 people from schools since December last year, more than 150 of whom remain missing. January unfurled cloaked in blood and sadism of clashing tribal characters.

    Herdsmen plundered subsistence farms up-north, crossing the middle-belt into Nigeria’s south-lands, to steal and murder impoverished families tilling the soil to eke a meal. They maimed rural fathers, murdered and raped mothers and daughters in righteous rage a la Boko Haram. The latter, characteristically, continued its campaign of violence and death in the north-east too.

    Thus at the start of the year, the dominance of despair seemed so complete and insurmountable, but the oligarchs, apparently unruffled, issued habitual excuses and ripostes to critics. As the carnage persists, shady separatists emerge from the woodwork, chanting frantic banality to the oligarchs’ insensate bromides. And Nigeria yields to hysteria.

    Politicians know the electorate through sadistic plowing; nailing them down by spikes of cash and bigotries, they catch their shrieks in a metaphoric calabash. The vessel is chillingly archetypal.

    The government’s gourd vine connotes its self-preservation: career politicians frantically seek re-election or a change of public office hence the insolence of outgoing governors dying to become senators, even in states where the electorate dies by their ineptness and brazen pillage in real time.

    The ruling class’ metaphoric calabash sheaths its exaggerated pride and self-idolatry. A poisoned chalice. Like the Biblical bawds of Babylon, they hold their gourds scummy with lust and amorality. At a previous general election, one governor, at the end of eight years of his maladministration and impoverishment of the state, sought to install his son-in-law as his successor, to continue his pauperisation legacy. Another with a curious kink for risible caps, fought to install his “chosen wizkid” as his successor in a badly governed state, where the electorate fought to escape his asphyxiating tenure.

    The insolence persists across political platforms; politicians pant to serpents interred in their possessed spirits. We have seen how such individuals and their bungling parties sadistically mauled sound to sight, sighs to streaming blood.

    It’s about time the Nigerian electorate divested the country of their murderous forms. Lest we end up as tissues and blood in their gourds. Nonetheless, the ruling class reflects our degeneracy back to us. They actuate rather than constrain our perversions.

    Boorstin would call this the mirror effect. The political class’ administrative hearse becomes the railcar of our death-tending impulses: terrorism, kidnap for ransom and armed robbery flourishes. And fraud, embezzlement of public funds persist in this government as its predecessors, though in tidier proportions.

    Notwithstanding the incumbent oligarchs’ failings, the electorate is poised to return them to power, come 2023. In a few months, voters will once again, fall victim to an ageless ruse repeatedly weaponised by the ruling class. Every politician seeking public office understands that the political arena is a theatre, where the most essential skill required is artifice.

    But that is simply one way to look at it. The political arena equally unfurls like a red light district, an expansive brothel, where electorate bodies are the stringed instruments hysterically plucked by politician-patrons.

    The governed, or electorate if you like, are sometimes mauled by career rapists cum sadomasochists in a frenzy, as reflected by the badly governed states.

    In this decadent theatre, politicians emerge as master harpists, making dark melody to the electorate’s torment. In anguish, the latter gains identity as  faceless natives: bleeding saps condemned to infernal dystopia.

    The discerning see through the artifice. They know the pleading candidate’s smile masks a scowl. They know that incumbent public officers and the opposition seeking to usurp power from them are birds of a feather, who use the media, among other tools of mass propaganda, to create faux intimacy with the citizenry.

    Politicians know they do not need to be competent, sincere or honest to win votes and elections, they only need to appear to have these qualities. More importantly, they know they must be adept at creating and establishing a false narrative of their sainthood and the opposition’s villainy. The consistency and emotionality of the story are paramount.

    And the narrative must be entertaining and wildly infused with absurd drama. Thus the scandalous affairs of paedophile, bribe-taking and machete-wielding governors, and a threesome-loving lawmaker caught pants-down, are inconsequential in considerations of their suitability for re-election. Rather than make them pariahs, it earns them empathy and votes.

    How do illiterate voters avoid the snare of such con men? The answer lies in the capacity of the politically literate to teach the ignorant masses how to repel the scourge of predatory politicians. Yet the platforms for achieving such goals are non-existent.

    The electorate must make its way past the fraud and extortion of the seasoned politicians and younger aspirants who are out to lure the psyche into committing political capital – that is, electoral votes – to unsound judgement and investments.

    But to achieve this, the Nigerian voter must learn to identify false messiahs from the true patriots. As medieval royalty deployed court drama and conspiracies to divert the attention of their subjects from daily miseries, so do the ruling class divert attention from the real issues at the approach of the next general elections.

    It’s about time the electorate devised the plot of Nigeria’s political theatre; the real issues aren’t what the ruling class narrate to us. The real narrative is in everything they would rather not discuss.

    What is the nature of government expenditure on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the result of such spending? What is the real impact of the anti-corruption fight? Of government spending, how much is truly committed to education and health financing? Why does the government still pay itself outrageous salaries?

    What has President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration done differently from its predecessors, beyond the bounds of its statutory responsibilities? Do Nigeria’s two most prominent parties deserve a single vote? Why?

    The theme of the forthcoming elections, as advanced by the contenders, is that of salvation. Each candidate professes to be the virtuous of our world, by whose virtues Nigeria will attain redemption. Yet there is no candidate with a plan to commit, at least 40 per cent, of Nigeria’s annual budget to health and education – split at 20 per cent each. None of the candidates can do that. None will do that.

    Of the contenders, none would agree to the surgical trimming of the National Assembly to a unicameral legislature, while legislative work is reduced to part time assignment.

    And even though their politics exude the stink of the night soil man, several voters would dance and sing, bicker and kill to guarantee them easy access to public office.

    So doing, the Nigerian voter creates a plenum from which he 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.

  • Our founding fathers and current state of affairs of our country

    Our founding fathers and current state of affairs of our country

    By Jide Osuntokun

     

    Who were our founding fathers? We do not need to go beyond Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello even though our first and last prime minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa could be included in the list but he was inconsequential in the power play in the politics of Nigeria. He was his master’s voice and that master was Ahmadu Bello. The family backgrounds of these three people determined to a certain extent their attitude to life and to the Nigerian state that was their destiny to create and nurture. Nnamdi Azikiwe was born in Zungeru in what is present Niger State in 1904 where his father, Chukwuemeka Azikiwe worked as a clerk in the Railways Department. The elder Azikiwe had some smattering of mission education and he could read and write. It was because of absence of a fulfilling life and means of profitable existence that he went in search of some meaning to his life in what would have been terra incognita to most of his people. Nnamdi’s father sent the young lad first to his relatives in Onitsha apparently to be well grounded in Igbo culture before he was again sent to Hope Waddell Institute, Calabar, the only school of a grammar school type in the eastern part of the country. He eventually landed at the Methodist Boys High School in Lagos where he benefited from the basic western education that prepared him to seek the golden fleece in the USA as he himself described in his autobiography “My Odyssey “.

    While in Lagos, he imbibed Yoruba culture and mastered the Yoruba language on top of the rudimentary Hausa he picked up in the north. In essence he was a true Nigerian by birth and experience. While in America where he spent more than a decade, he went from one black college to another raising funds to educate himself and even engaging in professional boxing for money that saw him through Storer College, Lincoln University until he graduated with a Master’s degree in political science in the Ivy League university of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1933, the first African to achieve that feat.

    Awolowo’s family background was not as dramatic as that of Azikiwe’s. He was born in Ikenne in 1909 by an Abeokuta Muslim woman married to David Sopolu Awolowo, an Ijebu -Remo father who was a devotee of African religion before becoming a Christian. His son, Obafemi started schooling in a Christian mission school and that changed the young man’s educational and religious trajectory because he could have been raised a Muslim like his sister. If that had happened, the course of Nigerian history may have been changed. If Awolowo had grown up a Muslim, would he and Ahmadu Bello have been so antagonistic to one another as they grew up to be or perhaps their common religion would not have influenced their politics? That is one of the ifs of History. Obafemi Awolowo after primary education in Ikenne and Abeokuta found his way to Methodist Teachers College Ibadan where he trained as a pupil teacher. The basic education he had there prepared him for self-education until he graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in commerce by private tuition. Not satisfied with this, he borrowed money to send himself to London to study law during the Second World War. He strongly believed he was destined for leadership position in Nigeria without any proof but absolutely trusting in his faith and some kind of mystical belief in his destiny of greatness.

    Ahmadu Bello was born into the Usman Ibn Fudih family in Rabeh near Sokoto. As Shakespeare famously said, some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them. In the case of Ahmadu Bello, and within the context of Nigerian politics, he had greatness thrust upon him. He had his primary and Islamic education at home in Sokoto. He had no ambition outside serving as a district head in one of the districts of the Sokoto emirate. But he and sons of prominent traditional elite in northern Nigeria were drafted to the Katsina Teachers College  by the British colonial administration to be trained as teachers to introduce western type of education to northern Nigeria in order  to disallow what the British colonial authorities thought was the unwieldy and inappropriate Christian  mission education in southern Nigeria. These products of Katsina College included people like Kashim Ibrahim, Isa Keita, Ahmadu Bello and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who were to play significant roles in the evolution of modern Nigeria.

    After graduation as teachers, these people were buried in the administration of educational institutions in their districts with occasional forays abroad for short courses to advance their knowledge and careers. Only Abubakar Balewa spent a year in London for Higher Teachers Certificate in Education. Ahmadu Bello did not bother to go beyond teachers college not because he did not have the brain but because he found acquisition of western education and certificates unnecessary in a Nigerian environment where his leadership position was guaranteed and preserved by the accident of his birth. He used to ridicule his southern colleagues who in their speeches quoted foreign authors to demonstrate their educational versatility and wondered why they couldn’t just say what they wanted to say without boring people with what someone in a distant country had said some centuries before!

    From this skeletal picture of the formative years of our leaders were laid some of the problems of today. Azikiwe’s sojourn in the United States despite that country’s rampant racism left positive influence on him and imbued him with his republican beliefs in how education can bring out the best in men and women. This was further accentuated by the traditional Igbo belief that every man is king in his own house, a belief which made no room for a hierarchical society of kings and citizen and serfs. Awolowo also believed in the power of education and through deprivations and hardship, he acquired western education as a preparation for the arduous task of future leadership. His embrace of western education was to influence his bull dog tenacity in seeing his people in Western Nigeria go to free primary and compulsory education as from 1955. But Awolowo was unlike Azikiwe or perhaps more like him in bending his educational attainment to upholding the hierarchy and chiefly traditions of his Yoruba people.

    Ahmadu Bello right from the word go even though seeing the British “always as friends” nevertheless saw them as religious foes. He rather looked towards the Islamic world for solidarity and inspiration. The English were useful up to a point because they held the keys to future power in Nigeria but Ahmadu Bello either feeling they were too far behind their contemporaries in Southern Nigeria or that he genuinely believed that the future lay in the world of traditions and Islam tried to hold the North together with its minorities which he hoped to convert or force into Islam if and when the British left Nigeria. He was not totally committed to national unity and he agreed with Awolowo that “Nigeria was a geographical expression “ and there were no Nigerians as there are French, Germans  and Russians. How prophetic in view of what is happening today. Ahmadu Bello at every critical time of crisis as in 1953 and in 1959 constitutional conference threatened to withdraw the north from the federation. All the major ethnic groups, the Hausa Ibo, and Yoruba threatened to dissolve the federation in the crisis between 1966 and 1967. So what is new today? Our founding fathers would not have been surprised by our present political division. They would have said since we deviated from the specially crafted political architecture they gave us in 1960, we deserve what we get now.

    Am I accusing these leaders for the problems of today? Certainly not. But as political leadership was very critical to the evolution of modern states especially in Africa, we could not have had founding fathers of our country so different from one another and expect a happy ending. Our problems date back to 1900 the amalgamation of the southern provinces and 1914 the second amalgamation done by the British for the British without considering the conflicting interests of the various peoples of Nigeria. The absence of consensual leadership merely cemented the natural bifurcation of Nigeria and whether we can bridge this divide lies in the  kind of enlightened and committed leadership ready to reorganize this country based on fairness, justice, equity and equality. It cannot be done by force. This is the judgment of history. Without that it is walk in the dark for our country.

  • In the face of tyranny

    In the face of tyranny

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

     

    The man dies in him who keeps silent in the face of tyranny  – Prof Wole Soyinka.

     

    The girl died. At 14 or even 25, which her mother has confirmed as her real age, she died in her prime. Her death resonated not only in Lagos where she died, but across the country. The mention of her name, Jumoke Oyeleke, anywhere today will readily elicit the statement: the sales girl that was killed by the police!

    Although, the police have since washed their hands of her death, the public finds it hard to believe them. Jumoke was like any other neighbourhood girl struggling to survive. Last Saturday, as usual, she was out hustling when the unexpected happened. She was hit by a stray bullet allegedly fired by a policeman who was chasing some Yoruba nation agitators.

    Was there any need for the police to chase the agitators round the streets of Ojota like common criminals? We will come to that presently. Suffice to say that Jumoke was not one of the agitators, though she was Yoruba. She was just starting life and in order not to be a liability to others, she worked as a sales girl in a shop close to her house. She was in her mistress’ shop that fateful Saturday when the worst happened. Jumoke died in earnest.

    She went to look for her daily bread when she became fodder for the police. Her family will forever remember July 3 for it was the day that their joy was snatched away. July 3 was meant to be a day of peaceful gathering, an assembly where agitators of Yoruba nation were to openly canvass their case.

    The arrowhead of the campaign is Sunday Adeyemo aka Sunday Igboho. Before the Lagos rally, Igboho had led similar campaigns in the five other Yoruba states of Ekiti, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo. Despite warnings by these states that he should not come there with his trouble (that is the raw Yoruba way of putting it), Igboho still went to those places. The rallies went well because the authorities managed the ‘trouble maker’ well.

    Igboho may be seen as a ‘trouble maker’ by the security agencies, but among his people, especially the masses, he is perceived as a saviour. The reason for this is obvious. He has stood up for them where the same security agents who are hounding him about, could not do anything when their lives were in danger. Where the security agencies allowed herdsmen to roam freely in Igangan, Oyo State, killing, looting, raping and destroying farms, Igboho rose to fight for his people and drove the invaders away.

    The security agencies, particularly the police and Directorate of Security Services (DSS) seem to have misplaced their priorities. If not, they will not leave the substance to chase shadow. Igboho wanted to hold a rally in Lagos and all hell was let loose by the police and DSS. The tragic fallout of that rally was caused by the police. If such rallies could hold in other parts of Yorubaland without hitch, why should the Lagos case be different?

    You know what! It was different because of bad policing. Instead of securing the Gani Fawehinmi Park, Ojota venue of the rally to ensure a peaceful event, they went there with a show of force. By so doing, Hakeem Odumosu, the police chief, thought he could intimidate the rallyists. It was a wrong approach since they were not coming to foment trouble. An intelligent approach would have been to engage the rally planners and get them to give an undertaking to be peaceful.

    But no, our security personnel must do everything with force. This was why they rolled out armoured tank and other vehicles to Ojota a day before the rally. They also paraded the streets with their tank and vehicles to send fear into the people. Did it work?

    No, it did not. The rally still held to the shame of the police that applied force, wrongfully, to stop it. The same happened 48 hours earlier when DSS operatives stormed Igboho’s Ibadan residence, armed to the teeth, as if they were going after a criminal. They went away with some cats under the belief that Igboho might have turned into one to evade arrest!

    Our security agents are a funny bunch. Where they should apply force, they do not. If only they could go after insurgents, bandits, kidnappers and other hoodlums with the same zeal that they usually go after Sunday Igboho and Nnamdi Kanu, the country will be a better place. To be seen as working, they prefer to go after those they consider government enemies. Is agitation for self determination an offence? Is the criticism of government an offence?

    To seek to be different is not wrong. It is when a person crosses the line that he should be brought to book. Let Igboho and Kanu shout from now till thy kingdom come for Oduduwa and Biafra nations, no rational Yoruba and Igbo man will follow them. So, why waste precious security time on them. Our security agencies are unwittingly lionising them by pursuing them all over the place as if they are criminals. They should tell us what their crime is. If they cannot, they should let them be. By their actions, they have turned Igboho and Kanu into folk heroes.

    Now, we are being told that Kanu was successfully brought back home under an extradition pact. That was no extradition as the other jurisdiction is not known, except to Nigeria, which has something to hide. Extradition is never shrouded in secrecy. For Kanu’s return to pass the true test of extradition everything should have been done in the open. The law of extradition is clear on steps to follow. At best, Kanu was repatriated and not extradited. Let it be clear, I am no fan of either Igboho or Kanu, but a stickler for due process.

    Jumoke must not die in vain. She would not have been killed if the police had acted tactfully. Rather than admit their fault, they want us to believe that she was killed days before the rally with a blunt object. That was their autopsy report! But her family and sympathisers await the coroner inquest findings on how she died, when she died and what killed her. Until then, the police can keep their report to themselves.

  • Malami’s diversionary sting operations

    Malami’s diversionary sting operations

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    Unfortunately, the Buhari era is likely going to be defined by Abubakar Malami, his Attorney General and Minister of Justice. Malami’s  disregard for rule of law, disdain for public opinion and unrestrained use of power to prove that some Nigerians no matter how criminally minded are ‘untouchables’ are some of the reasons why many Nigerians including Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State now wonder if Buhari, who won a pan-Nigeria mandate twice is Nigerian or Fulani president.

    Malami shares the same mindset with Fulani supremacist  group like Miyetti Allah that often take responsibility for some of the heinous crimes committed by herdsmen across the nation,  Bauchi governor, Bala Mohammmed who arrogantly ask Nigerian ethnic nationalities to come to terms that immigrant Fulani herdsmen from any part of Africa are Nigerians and, Sheikh Gumi who freely move around  bandits camps our police and military claim are invincible only to advise government to pay salaries and grant amnesty to terrorists that engage in mindless killings of innocent Nigerians and trading in kidnapping of northern school children for ransom.

    And rather than prove his critics wrong, Malami has by his controversial selective sting-operations continued to give the impression that some Nigerians including indicted criminals, are superior to other Nigerians as long as they belong to the favoured ethnic group.

    Let us start with his November 2017 sting-operation which he personally executed. He had arranged a secret meeting through an unnamed third party with Abdulrasheed Maina, a fugitive offender in Dubai, United Arab Emirate (UAE). Not long after, Maina was reabsorbed into the civil service. Both the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HoCSF), Winifred Eyo-Ita and the acting chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), Joseph Oluremi  cited the AGF letter as the authority for Maina’s reinstatement.

    Following public outcry, Malami told the Aliyu Madaki-led House of Representatives ad hoc committee investigative hearing on “the disappearance, reinstatement and promotion of Maina” that “pension fraud was beyond Maina” while admitting however that “Maina was part of a syndicate that cuts across all sectors, including serving and retired public officers, members of the National Assembly, involved in cornering N3.7b monthly from pension funds”. He also spoke of “over 116,000 ghost workers responsible for N829m monthly spread across 29 bank accounts”.

    Malami abused his office to prove Maina who currently undergoing trial for the theft of about N2b pension fund was “untouchable’.

    Before this, was Malami’s October 7 and 8, 2016 sting-operation. Following DSS midnight assault on residents of Justices of the Supreme Court, Justices Sylvester Ngwuta and Inyang Okoro, both of the Supreme Court; Justice Mohammed Tsamiya, the Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeal, Ilorin Division, Justice Kabiru Auta of the Kano State High Court and Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court, Abuja were all arrested. Others equally arrested include Justice I. A. Umezulike, former Chief Judge of Enugu State and Muazu Pindiga of the Federal High Court, Gombe Division.

    The sting operation was condemned as an assault on the independence of the Nigerian judiciary by Justice Mohammed, the than CJN and chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC).

    The outcome of another sting operation by Malami was the invasion of the National Assembly by hooded DSS men to prevent adversarial senators and members of the lower house from gaining access into the legislative building. Malami, the all-powerful attorney general, ordered the sting operation without informing an embarrassed acting president, Yemi Osinbajo who in August 2018 ordered the termination of the appointment of ‘untouchable’ Lawal Daura the Director General of State Services (DSS)

    Malami deployed a lot of resources to the sting operation that finally caged leader of the proscribed secessionist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, who was allegedly captured and shipped to Nigeria in a chartered private jet. Kanu’s sins, according to Malami, borders on subversive activities that include “inciting violence through television, radio and online broadcasts against Nigeria and Nigerian state and institutions “. Others accusations include: “instigating violence especially in the Southeastern Nigeria that resulted in the loss of lives and property of civilians, military, para-military, police forces and destruction of civil institutions and symbols of authorities.”

    Kanu’s arrest was swiftly followed by another Malami master-minded sting-operation that resulted in DSS’ midnight invasion of the residence of the Yoruba activist, Chief Sunday Adeyemo, aka Sunday Igboho. The Public Relations Officer of the DSS, Dr. Peter Afunanya, told Nigerians that “Sunday Igboho and his group, in the guise of campaign for self-determination, have become well-armed and determined to undermine public order.” To justify their action, we were told their  haul of weapons include “seven AK-47 assault rifles, 30 fully charged AK-47 magazines and 5,000 rounds of 7.62 mm ammunition  some magic voodoo garments” .

    It is not difficult to understand why Malami deployed so much resources to capture Kanu who has not committed half of the atrocities that herdsmen and their sponsors walking freely around Nigeria committed.  Kanu like Igboho does not belong to the tribe of the ‘untouchables’.

    However, I  believe Kanu needed to be caged because he has become a threat  to the millions of his Igbo urban immigrants across Nigeria who like the Jews often attract envy from their host communities because of their success in trade and commerce.

    Kanu who was merely exploiting the ignorance of Igbo youths appears incapable of grasping the implication of governor Nasir E- Rufai claim that “Igbo occupy more landed area in the north than all the their five eastern states put together”. He was probably too ill-equipped to reflect on Senator Abaribe’s warning to Biafra agitators that “Igbo control property market in Abuja and Lagos, have the monopoly for importation of second-hand clothes as well as the electronics and ceramics markets”. Abaribe did not add that the Igbo political and economic elite capitalized on Babangida and Obasanjo’s disastrous economic policies that killed our budding textile, electronic,  pharmaceutical, battery and tyres industries to bring the nation to her kneels through unregulated importation of sometimes substandard variant of these  products.

    The arrest of Sunday Igboho was also a welcome development. Of course, the Yorubas are angry. They feel betrayed by Buhari’s mismanagement of our crisis of nation building.  But Igboho cannot speak for the Yoruba especially after our political and moral leaders have clearly stated Yoruba’s position. Prof Banji Akintoye and pa Ayo Adebanjo, two of Buhari’s foremost critics have said their intervention was to prevent Buhari from destroying our country. Obasanjo, the master mischief-maker has also said his crusade against Buhari’s government was to prevent the Rwanda option to our crisis of nation building.

    Above all, Malami’s sting operation has vindicated our leaders’ position. With Sheik Gumi and Bauchi governor lionizing foreign armed gangs in Yoruba’s reserved forests, Igboho cannot lead Yoruba to war with DSS  ‘haul’ of seven Ak-47 riffles, the ownership of which he even denied and some voodoo magic garments that are now in custody of DSS security operatives.

    But no one is deceived by Malami latest sting-operations which were nothing but attack on symptoms while he and his group continue to live in denial by opposing peaceful resolution of our national question, devolution of power, fiscal federalism, state and community policing. Workable federal arrangement is the only social system that can liberate groups and individuals from the tyranny of the state. Our problem is the dysfunctional suffocating centralized system that insists on controlling our lives, the water we drink, the air we breathe and the education of our children.