By Olakunle Abimbola

 

A crucible, fired by too many wrongs from the past, is kilning the country.  In that searing, scalding oven, even elders are wont to talk rot.

That recalls The Crucible, that 1953 classic, by famed American playwright, Arthur Miller.  Set in 17th century Salem, in the Massachusetts Bay colony, with its witch hunts, the play echoes the Joseph McCarthy US communist purges (1950-1954).

The Crucible’s major themes include reputation, hysteria, power and authority, guilt, portrayal of women, deception, goodness and judgment.  But add amnesia, were The Crucible to be set in contemporary Nigeria!

Robert Clarke, SAN, 82, appeared on Channels TV and told the Federal Government  to hand over to the military — to “restructure” the country; and stave off Nigeria’s collapse in six months: an Armageddon he swore to, by the grave of his doting father!  Hysteria, the emotive handmaiden of treason?

But deja vu — have we not seen such before?

In January 1966, even after Nigeria’s first-ever military coup had all but failed, Nwafor Orizu, then acting president, announced a “voluntary” transfer of power to the military.

On 17 January 1966, the no-less-tragic Major-Gen. Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, “accepted” Orizu’s “invitation”; thus unleashing the plague of military rule.

Might Nigerian history have dramatically changed, had Dr. Orizu summoned the most senior cabinet minister, to act as Prime Minister, and shut out the military, given that  Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was still missing?

Nobody knows for sure, if we were not to commit the fallacy of getting wise after the fact.  For one, though, there was uproar over the 1965 general elections, casting a huge legitimacy pall on the Balewa government.

For another, the Western Region, whose denizens more or less strutted the media, had tried and convicted the Balewa government — not without cause — of the anarchy in the “wild, wild West”; and were puritanically baying for blood.

Still, Orizu’s bad judgment provided the first grist, for the latter-day dubbing of that putsch as an “Ibo coup” — and the cascade of tragedies that followed, cresting with the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970).

Then, phases of tragic military rule, in painful slow motion: Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi (and regimental fumblers); Yakubu Gowon (age of innocence); Murtala-Obasanjo (emotive purges that killed the civil service); Muhammadu Buhari (very first taste of harsh military rule); Ibrahim Babangida (evil genius of SAP and archangel of socio-economic collapse); Sani Abacha (ruthless graft machine); and Abdulsalami Abubakar (snapped the power-poisoned military from their misery).

Chief Clarke was 27 in January 1966, when Dr. Orizu committed that “original sin”.  But here, he is pushing an encore, on Channels, some 55 years later!  Culpable amnesia?

Still, Chief Clarke is only a fitting metaphor for unbridled but fashionable unreason, which nevertheless elicits thunderous cheers, from the ultimate putative victims!

Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s declaration of Biafra, in May 1967, elicited a wild flourish, as some Utopia long-delayed.  Yet, that has bred nothing but generational bitterness, a  poisoned collective psyche, and perpetual gnashing of teeth, as eternal victims!

You could spot a similar recklessness, among the uppity Yoruba, in the rash ranks of the Oodua Republic lobby: that fashionable folly of swearing — at the grave of your father! — that frothing emotion and brainless zest are indeed rigorous strategy!

Whoever knows what time and cold ash of reason would bring these dreamers?  Even if Yor-Exit succeeds: a Yoruba version of South Sudan perhaps, where the glorious revolution consumes own children, with old whipping boy, Nigeria, out of reach?

Still wild carping, in all its glorious hysteria, comes with the territory, in a season of high stress.  At the turn of New Year 2021, Nigeria’s spiritual futurologists came with a near-uninanimous vision of “coup” — the holy spite, from their sacred souls!

The fiery Father Matthew Kukah, Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto, also hinted at that grisly business, in his patriotic railing against the present order.

But his rabble of excitable followers, co-questers for the quick fix, always swear: Kukah hates the regime less; he only loves Nigeria more — not unlike Shakespeare’s Brutus that loved Rome more than he hated Caesar.  So, why not an 82-year-old SAN canvassing a military coup, bang on public TV?

Still, banditry, insurgency and kidnapping are a whiplash from the past: viciously hitting back are those disinherited and dispossessed, by past heinous policies and humongous greed — consolidated, rather than dissipated, by the Olusegun Obasanjo-led civil order, after eons of ruinous military rule.

Of course, President Muhammadu Buhari has own faults.  For one, the much diffused insecurity crisis is a near-irremovable stain on his tenure, like Lady Macbeth’s hands, stained with Banquo’s blood.   Besides, Buhari came highly recommend to smash the rampart insecurity that shooed away Goodluck Jonathan.

But aside from that regime culpability, neither helped by the Buhari penchant to let things fester before acting nor his coolness towards re-federalization, the president would appear not unlike Eman, the scapegoat in Wole Soyinka’s tragic play, The Strong Breed — who sacrificed all, for his ungrateful, unfeeling, insensitive fellow villagers.

Buhari it is, who has called the bluff of the Nigerian thieving elite, without anyone pinning, on him, any venality of his own.  That can’t be said of he, of the infamous Presidential Library, built with controversial “donations”!

Buhari it is, whose anti-sleaze war, with the Ludo-playing judiciary hardly permitting, has tried to call to account, the greedy elite, whose unconscionable graft bred the current plague of banditry and allied insecurity.

Buhari it is, though with resources whittled down three-fold from the Obasanjo-Jonathan era, has launched the most ambitious infrastructure revamp, in roads, bridges and rail, since 1999.  But for his pains, it’s ceaseless torrent of insults, from the same folks whose future he’s trying to secure!

The media that should put things in proper perspectives appears well and truly beyond redemption.  But the media’s problem would appear structural, honed from past worst practices, of ceaseless and glorious carping.

If you doubt, just content-analyze past security crises — under Obasanjo; under Umaru Yar’Adua; under Jonathan.  You’ll find a media bristling and yakking hysteria in all seasons, sans any institutional memory!  Any wonder then, Channels would proudly thrust, on its viewers, an 82-year-old SAN, virtually calling for a coup — after all the military woes our learned silk had lived through?

The president and his (wo)men should double down on the present challenges.  However it plays out, Buhari would need no gaming machine, masquerading as a Presidential Library, to remind the people of his tenure.

His infrastructure uptick, in the worst of seasons, his radical push for food security and his campaign for integrity and productive work ethos, would loom large enough — as eternal testimony against the present hysteria to muddy the waters.

By Olakunle Abimbola

The Ides of March are come,” a jocular Caesar, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, ripped at the Soothsayer, en route his fatal walk, to the Theatre of Pompey. The Soothsayer had earlier warned Caesar: “beware the Ides of March”.

“Aye, Caesar; but not gone,” riposted the Soothsayer.  The Roman biographer, Suetonius, identified the man as Spurinna the Seer.

Before the Ides of March 44 BC was gone, Caesar was history, as 60 conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, stabled him to death; triggering a bitter civil war in the Roman Republic.

Well, this is no foray into the Classics or into Literature.  It is rather an alert for Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu (BOS), the high-flying governor of Lagos, on the mid-term storm that snared Akinwunmi Ambode, his predecessor, and blitzed his second term dreams.

Gazing at mid-term, Ambode was riding high, doing wonderful foxtrots with projects and enjoying a wonderful and blissful press — until mid-term, he announced he was fixing what wasn’t broken: the Lagos refuse and waste management system.

That, for Ambode, was the beginning of the end.  Could mid-term then, for Sanwo-Olu, be the beginning of the beginning?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

But that is only if BOS can avoid mid-term “traps”, which like the Ides of March that cut short Caesar’s life, incinerated Ambode’s second-term dreams, even if he wasn’t the worst governor in town.

Costly but avoidable mistakes!  They could make political life short and nasty; much more than Hobbes’s state of nature, where life is “nasty, brutish and short”!

Governor Sanwo-Olu’s 91-second video clip, Sanwo-Olu: 731 Days and Beyond, inspired this piece.  In it, BOS pledged “a duty of accountability” to the Lagos electorate, as his tenure races towards the 731-day mark — mid-term, of his four-year tenure.

What struck you most, aside from the background collage of videos and still pictures, showcasing the administration’s accomplishments in very troubled times, was how collegiate BOS sounded.

He referred to his ruling collective as “my colleagues and I in the cabinet”; and pledged  mid-term full disclosures, by cabinet members, climaxed by the governor’s briefing.

Just as well, that collegiate temper!  It not only gives a glimpse of some intra-regime peer checks-and-balances, even if the buck stops on the governor’s table, it also seems an acute reflection of what caused Ambode to stumble.

Indeed, the Achilles heel of the former governor would appear that penchant to go solo, both in day-to-day executive action; and in grabbing regime glory, thus alienating peer trust; and plaguing the ruling ensemble with avoidable dissonance.

So far, BOS appears to have avoided that pitfall.  But so is power and its dynamics, as they play on the psyche of the top dog, that that danger is almost always on the cards.

Still, by appearing to run with collective glory against personal triumph, Sanwo-Olu, in nearly two years, has adroitly plucked screaminging “low-hanging fruits”, which his predecessor, because of his solo temper, left to fester.

Take Lagos Homs, an ambitious home-ownership, owner-occupier scheme, a flying legacy of the Babatunde Raji-Fashola era, that Ambode simply abandoned.

Had the former governor picked up where Fashola left, Lagos Homs would, during his tenure, have become a Fashola/Ambode legacy, sealed and delivered, in the best tradition of regime continuity, since both governments belonged to the same party.

With BOS, it is different.  Even during those early but stormy days, when the governor got blitzed as “Atoka” (Yoruba for idle “pointer”); and ridiculed as “point-and-kill governor” (after that picturesque bukateria slang that describes the making of sizzling pepper soup from live fish), BOS focused on Lagos Homs, amid a general commitment to completing all Ambode-era ongoing projects, instead of lunging into new ones.

That earned the governor the collage of achievements in his 91-second video: Lagos Homs, Pen Cinema flyover and adjoining works, a slew of medical facilities in Gbagada and Igando General Hospitals, the Oshodi transport hub-cum-plaza, with the Oshodi-Abule Egba bus rapid transit (BRT) track — most of them carry-overs from the Ambode era.

That was admirable asset from the previous government, duly earned by keeping the eye on the ball, and shunning fatal distractions, from cheap solo glory.  Ironically, BOS’s early ridicule resulted from the liability side of that same account: the rotten state of Lagos roads, a seedy Ambode legacy, worsened by the rainy season.

Much of that liability is much improved now, even if Lagosians always think of the rainy season with dread, with the way rain water appears to shred the tar.  Still, both sides of  the Oshodi-Cappa segment, of Agege-Motor road, are still an eye sore.  BOS should get his men to fix it and other failing sections.

Beyond 731 days, it is clear continuation pays.  Another Ambode-era project, the 32-metric-tonne an hour, 115, 200-metric-tonne a year Imota Rice Mill, part of the Lagos-Kebbi (LAKE) rice collaboration, among other linkages, is nearing delivery.

If well managed, and well supplied with paddy and allied raw materials, it has the potentials of 250, 000 jobs.  It can also push 2.4 million 50kg bags of rice yearly into the market; and gross a projected N60 billion yearly revenue.  That, other things being equal, should brighten the Lagos economic outlook.

Of even more crucial prospects, as economic stimulator, is the December 2022 delivery of the Blue and Red lines, the first two in the seven-line Lagos urban rail.

Back at the Lagos gubernatorial debates, the then Candidate Sanwo-Olu spoke of completing, in two years, the two lines — the Blue Line, long-running from the Fashola era but abandoned by Ambode; the Red Line, hoped-for alignment, for most times, with the Federal Government’s Lagos-Ibadan-Kano rail.

BOS has not quite achieved that two-year target.  Still, it’s salute to fierce focus that delivery is viewed a year down the line, despite the highly disruptive COVID-19 global meltdown and the consequent slow-down in economic activity; and the best-forgotten #EndSARS free arson and killing: the torching of iconic Lagos assets, monuments and heritage, by barbarians masquerading as reformers.

COVID-19!  #EndSARS, with its “soro-soke” (speak-loud-and-clear) insults! — twin-crucibles that literarily melted but forged a better, humane citizen-governor in BOS!

The BOS mid-term video points at a rare promise of Lagos, despite the doom and gloom elsewhere.  Yet, the governor himself comes across as no muscle-flexing Leviathan; but only a suave leader of a focused team.

It’s no time to abandon that seeming collegiality, that has worked well these past two years.  It’s a smart way to push away the “ides” of mid-term — and beyond.

By Olakunle Abimbola

 

In his Easter strafing-from-the-pulpit, Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, swore glory had departed from his country, after the tragic story of Ichabod.

Ichabod’s birth was triggered by the news of the slaying, in battle, of his father, Phinehas; and uncle, Hophni, both notorious sons of Prophet Eli.

Eli too, priest-ruler of Israel, heard the shattering news, together with the Philistine capture of the Ark of Covenant, and instantly dropped dead.

This chain of tragedies forced Ichabod’s mother into premature labour.  She too would die shortly after childbirth.

But before she did, crushed at the death of her husband, brother-in-law and gentle father-in-law, she bitterly named the newborn Ichabod — meaning: glory has departed from Israel!

That was Bishop Kukah’s parallel at Easter: glory had departed Nigeria.

The Reverend Supo Ayokunle, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) president, just joined Father Kukah in his dire jeremiad.  He prayed Nigeria would not be like Chad, where bandits killed the president!

In times of crisis, Freudian slips, malediction and benediction come with the frazzled territory!

Blessed are those imbued with holy ire!  They spew sacred toxins, yet the people feel beatified by their blessed curses!

Read Also: Presidency, Kukah clash over ‘Nigeria a killing field’ claim

 

In truth, Nigeria is in a security bind; and neither patrician nor plebeian would appear safe.

News of gruesome deaths from an attack, by terrorists, on the Omuoma country home of Imo Governor, Hope Uzodimma; and bandits’ heartless killing of three of the kidnapped 23 of Greenfield University, Kaduna, shows the current insecurity is no respecter of anyone, noble or rabble.

Still, these terrible news are part of a mix.  Kidnapping, banditry, insurrection and terrorism are a direct product of past corruption and injustices.

But as that tragedy plays out in lost lives, hewn limbs, a lot too is going on to correct these past injustices.  That comes with the massive investment in infrastructure, physical and social, in a period of acute cash: to re-start the economy, knock off the economic bases of these social crises, and offer citizens fresh hope and relief.

Which is why Father Kukah’s hectoring and Reverend Ayokunle’s subversive prayers rather echo the Israelites’ complex: that gruff sub-zero tolerance to any discomfort, should all-powerful Jehovah not act on the double; taken out as scurrilous attacks on their leaders, spiritual or temporal.

That prolonged their 40-day Egypt-Cannan journey to 40 years.  Even after David had established Israel, that “stiff-neck” (in Bible-speak) would disperse them all into the diaspora (from 8th to 6th century BC), which horror climaxed with Adolf Hitler’s Jewish holocaust during World War 2 (1939-1945 AD).

But back to Father Kukah’s glory-had-departed theory — which segment of the elite can throw the first stone?

CAN and the Christian lobby?  In fairness CAN did a bit to counter President Olusegun Obasanjo’s narcissism and vain glory, which earned it the sharp rebuke of “CAN my foot!”, from the messianic Baba Iyabo.

But post-Obasanjo, particularly under President Goodluck Jonathan, CAN and the Christian lobby had churned out a slew of court Rasputins, in unvarnished support of that spendthrift government, that earned a lot but blew everything.

The Muslim lobby?  Those snared selves during the June 12 crisis; backing ringing injustice in the IBB cancellation of the MKO Abiola mandate, though both were professed Muslims; and the winning ticket was a Muslim-Muslim one.  That prolonged ruinous military rule by six long years!

The Judiciary?  In two cases which could have marked a big victory for the anti-graft war, Nigeria’s all-wise higher courts merrily pushed technicality to trump substantive justice, thus springing high-calibre convicts, in a cynical gaming of due process.

One of the two now claims the state cannot retry him, though he was duly found guilty before getting off through crass technicality.  What audacity!

The media?  The press galloped, everyone in tow, after “Fulani herdsmen”, after every crime.  But as all went on a wild goose chase, the real bandits and kidnappers got more organized and more emboldened.

But a more clinical media would have figured that outgunned felons, fleeing the Boko Haram vortex but escaping with small arms, could cause big trouble for the five other geo-political zones.  That is the costly present reality.  A stiff price to pay for sweet, crime-pushed ethnic profiling!

The Muhammadu Buhari Presidency?  Security is not its greatest scorecard right now.

Read Also: Soyinka: Kukah’s position on state of nation in order

 

To be fair, the Boko Haram menace appears somewhat reduced, safe for terrorists’ attacks on civilian soft targets; and sabotage of military formations.  Yet, that initial insurrection has snowballed into massive kidnappings in the South West, insane banditry in the North West, further herder-farmer tensions in the Middle Belt and IPOB-powered Igbo-on-Igbo violence, aside from wanton attacks on police stations and patrol troopers in the South East and South-South.

So, Father Kukah’s theory appears a shared plague; not an  exclusive government contagion, meriting puritanical finger-pointing.  Still, the buck stops on the government’s table.  If the president doesn’t act fast, it risks insecurity defining its tenure.  That would be unfair, given the hard work the government does in other areas.

Which is why the president and his (wo)men could (and must) do much better — formalizing state police to start with; and moving fast to federalize the political economy, such that states have greater control of their resources.  Both would give security and the economy a sweet jab in the arm.

Still, President Buhari is doing much more than any president since 1999, to attack the root of the crisis: investing in crucial infrastructure to re-create the real sector and reverse mass poverty.  Aside from welcome strides in agriculture, the massive investment in various other sectors is clear: power transmission lines, gas pipeline network, rail modernization, bridges and roads nationwide — despite scarce cash.

While a General Muhammadu Buhari throttled the Lagos Metro Line and a President Olusegun Obasanjo killed the Tinubu-era Lagos Independent Power Programme (IPP) and tried to stonewall Lagos urban rail, a Saul-turned-Paul President Buhari is giving fresh life to the Lagos rail dream.  By removing the rail right-of-way bogey, two Lagos rail lines, Blue and Red, are due for delivery by December 2022.

Such rail and general infrastructural forays should enjoy due and fair attention, to drive up hope in a difficult time, even as there is abiding concern on the security situation.

Anything short would doom even the most legitimate query as serious frivolity, reminiscent of the Israelites’ penchant for eternal jeremiads.

That balance is where critics, temporal and spiritual, can do far better.  It is their bounden duty too, to  co-mobilize a stressed people, towards post-crisis sanity.

By Olakunle Abimbola

The Hijab, and the excessive love or hate it evokes, underscores the tricky cohabitation the colonial Brits left Nigeria’s public space.

The colonial bureaucracy was basically Western — and Christian: days of work, dress of work and the entire panoply of colonial officialdom.

Yet, the British successors, in the new Nigerian order after independence, were Muslim-led, northern politicians.

Prime Minister, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, adroitly navigated that delicate balance: Muslims working within a Christian frame.  But Muslim rights activists, down the years, were bound to challenge that status quo — skewed in their view.

That is the root of the present Hijab “activism”.  But contrary to impassioned Christian-leaning media commentaries, there is nothing sinister about it. It’s just a manifestation of citizen rights, though in the religious sphere.

But back to the fundament of a Christian-leaning public order.  Its most obvious pointer, now nevertheless “normal”, is simple: you rest on Sunday; work on other days.

Sunday is the official Christian worship day (though Saturday is the Seventh-Day Adventists’, a Christian sect).  How Saturday got freed, as extended “weekend”, is another testimony, to the powerful Christian lobby, in Nigeria’s public space.

In contrast, Friday is the Muslim worship day.  Yes, the public sector and businesses have somewhat squeezed out the Jumat worship time, from work hours on Fridays.  But that is nothing compared to Sundays, which Christians have all to themselves, to do as they please.

Yet, challenging that skew gets the questioner tagged as “Muslim fanatic”.  That is systemic bullying — and is hardly fair, in a multi-religious democracy that claims to be secular.

Yet, that is the illiberal temper Christian-leaning commentators tap into, when the Hijab question crops up: branding themselves sweet saints, up against repellant sinners.

The holy Father Matthew Kukah just did his seasonal tirade, linking Hijab to the “political” Shariah that swept through the North, from Zamfara State; from 27 October 1999, though Zamfara’s criminal Shariah came into force on 27 January 2000.

True, the mischief of “political shariah”, while a southern Christian was elected president, was clear.  But how does that vitiate the fundamental right of the Muslim girl to wear the Hijab, if she so desires, as part of her innate identity, and projection of her faith?

Of course, the Holy Kukah, well adept at muddying the waters, virtually decreed both are one and the same; sure his “speaking truth to power” zealots would swallow his polemic without thinking.  It’s such a ringing abuse of pulpit and public platforms!

Then, celebrated columnist and revered voice of print journalism, Ray Ekpu, penned a one-sided piece on the Kwara Hijab controversy.

Aside from misreporting the Court of Appeal verdict (endorsing a Kwara High Court decision on the matter), Mr. Ekpu would have been absolutely blameless, had he front-loaded his Christian bias — legitimate and understandable, being a Christian himself.

But he made it out as if his view — a Christian partisan’s view: again, hardly illegitimate — was the view: correct, universal, commonsensical and cosmopolitan; making the Muslims’ equally legitimate, but contrary position, crude, backward, outdated and savage.  That’s not true.

But that is the grand pretence, laced with conceit, that the Christian-leaning lobby always push, on the Hijab, which they don’t understand; or even bother to, just because they boast formidable media penetration.

That hypocrisy comes with an additional fraud: an illiberal lobby, baiting the reasonable and the unprejudiced, in the best of liberal traditions, to impose their skewed, hardly liberal view, as the received wisdom of high and polite society.

To be clear: on the Hijab, there is no saint or sinner.  Each partisan only hustles for own faith, in the gullible market of public opinion; each belching to the converted, during seasons of inter-faith disputes.

But that doesn’t mean folks should not push for basic fairness, even as the partisans exchange fierce and sporadic fire.  That can’t be done unless you penetrate the genesis of it all.  That is why this fore-backgrounding is vital.

So, drained of any religious bias either way, the Kwara Hijab controversy is not as complex as it appears.  But that is if you eliminate the basic misconceptions that skew the discourse and poison the exchange.

First, there is nothing “secular” about any school uniforms.  Christian missionaries were pioneers in founding schools.  But that deal came with proselytizing the Christian faith.  So, if Christians founded those schools, their uniforms couldn’t have been “secular”.

That logic applies to every mission school, Christian, Muslim or neither — neither because in Lagos, Gaskiya College (founded 1962), balked at the conventional uniform and essayed something different.

But back to Kwara.  Those schools, which now claim to be “Christian”, are so because the government was gracious enough to retain their original names, in honour of their founding missionaries, after pumping public cash into running them.

That was the crux of the Court of Appeal verdict on the matter.  But that they are public schools, in a secular state, doesn’t cancel the religious rights of the multi-religious citizens, that people the schools.

Still, constitutional rights are an equal opportunity business.  They cover the crow of the Christians — over the school’s name, history and evolution — without swallowing the right of the Muslims, now part of the school’s evolutionary tapestry, being now a public school, open to all.

That is where the Muslim girl’s right to wear the Hijab, if she so desires, fits pat.  Yes, the optics might be disturbing, to the deeply religious.  But mutual respect and sensitivity would blunt all that. But alas! Tolerance is no great strength of either side!

Still, before folks duel to the death, what really is the difference between the Hijab and the hood worn by the Catholic nun — or even by the local Aladura zealot?  All came from a common Semitic tradition, which here translates to either Christian or Muslim.

But that the Aladura sect — among the first wave of African Pentecostals, during the intra-church African nationalism blitz of the 1880s — adopted the practice, speaks to its resonance with the native population.

Five years after Amasa Firdaus insisted on her hijab, and caused a storm delaying her call to Bar by one year, Britain which legal system Nigeria copies, just trashed the wig for hijab-wearing female barristers and judges.

“Hijab-wearing barristers are exempt from wearing the traditional wig in court,” said a BBC report of March 30, “but there isn’t any guidance on what this should look like.”

The hijab is no threat to anyone.  It only projects the religious identity of its wearer — hardly a crime.  Enough of Christian illiberalism in the Nigerian public space.

By Olakunle Abimbola

 

Twenty-one out of 69 years, and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is somewhat what Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (IBB) called the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo, at Awo’s death in 1987: the issue in Nigerian politics.

Well, 21 years is counting from 29 May 1999, when this 4th Republic dawned.

But the fundament of Tinubu-in-Nigerian politics goes right back to the stillbirth 3rd Republic (January 1992 to November 1993), when Tinubu was an elected senator, in IBB’s troubled diarchy.

That was an era!

The IBB “new breed” dummy; the June 12 reclamation storm; the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) exile, as part of the MKO Abiola mandate revalidation strategies; the pro-/anti-June 12 bifurcation of the Dapo Sarumi-led young Turks of Lagos; the IBB defeat and scurry out of power; the Abacha menace; and the eventual triumph of democratic forces in 1999: the progressives might have won the war; but the conservatives grabbed power and its spoils!

What an era!

The IBB “new breed” could well have been a clever fob, by a cunning political soldier.  But the clash between the old and the new may well define Tinubu’s political odyssey.

Tinubu and other young professionals-in-politics, arrayed under Dapo Sarumi’s PRIMROSE tent, grabbed Babangida’s “new breed” offer to challenge the late Alhaji Lateef Jakande’s “Baba sope” (Baba has decreed) Lagos progressive order.

But at 69, rumoured on the cusp of the highest political prize of his garlanded career, Tinubu, the dashing young Turk of yore, but now somewhat “Baba sope” himself, faces challenges — twin challenges, in fact.

One, from the younger elements, as Sarumi and co, did to LKJ in 1991, forcing a hideous stalemate that gifted the conservative National Republican Convention’s Sir Michael Otedola (may God bless his soul) the Lagos governorship.

Two, in intra-Yoruba politics, from elders with suspect electoral value, who nevertheless aren’t quitting — and won’t quit — just because Tinubu is making hay.

That priestly gadfly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, just dubbed that gerontocratic bloc the “Shakabula” ensemble.

But back to LKJ.  The LKJ setback had to do with change and grace.  In Greek mythology, the Titans yielded with grace, though ringed with pains, to the more nimble Olympian set of gods — the supreme metaphor for how to quit with class.

LKJ did — both after his “Ase” (diktat) stalemate with Sarumi’s PRIMROSE forces; and later, his Abacha ministerial meltdown, at the high noon of the NADECO June 12 war.

At both times, not a few among his own generation of Awo-era Titans, leered and jeered as his fall.  But they forgot: even with his one-term Lagos governorship, LKJ’s place in history was assured — beyond, for life, mere parasitizing on the Awo name.

On this score, Tinubu shares a lot in common with LKJ.  With a two-term Lagos governorship then, might Tinubu’s place in history be secure?  The jury is still out.

But it’s hardly a hyperbole to say this 4th Republic, in which Lagos continues to be a national showcase, is an explosion of Bola Tinubu and his ideas, under the rubrics of Awolowo-school progressive ethos.

On the Lagos front, that puts Tinubu in a class of only two others: the revered Brigadier Mobolaji Johnson (BMG, of blessed memory), Lagos first-ever governor at the state’s creation in 1967; and of course, the iconic and near-incomparable LKJ, its first elected governor, welfarist czar and classic man of the people.

BMJ laid Lagos’ solid foundation of excellence.  LKJ made welfarism the anchor of Lagos policy.  Tinubu reengineered resources to make Lagos a formidable player, in Nigeria’s skewed federalism — men of history, that three-some, at critical junctures, of Lagos storied evolution.

On the national progressive front, Tinubu is no less storied.

As Lagos governor, he further integrated Awolowo’s welfare progressive policies, much entrenched in the Yoruba South West.  He pioneered the payment of pupils’ WAEC examination fees, a youth-friendly education policy other governors would later copy.

He would also battle, to a standstill, the conservative bully tactics of imperial President Olusegun Obasanjo, in the core areas of states’ rights in a skewed federation; the sanctity of the vote; aside from duelling on fiscal federalism, in a democracy emerging from eons of military rule, but still dominated by military men, with a centralist mindset.

For these early battles, fought at the courts, Tinubu had, as his legal GOC, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, now sitting Vice President but back then the Lagos Attorney-General and commissioner for Justice.

By their nimble triumphs, in these constitutional matters, both ran rings round the bully though awkward federal Leviathan.

But for those sweet victories, Tinubu and Lagos paid stiff political prices: the most heinous, perhaps, being the brazen seizure of Lagos council funds, in a fit of Obasanjo presidential outlawry, despite a clear and loud Supreme Court verdict.

Besides, the trajectory of Nigeria’s present democracy would have been utterly different, had Tinubu’s Lagos allowed itself to be “captured”, in the PDP Obasanjo South West electoral(?) blitzkrieg of 2003.

From the lone survivor, after the summary despatch of all AD progressive governors of the South West, Tinubu pulled off the most sensational political comeback in Nigerian history: first Edo (though in the South-South), then Ondo, then Ekiti, then Osun.  By the 2011 election, Oyo and Ogun were back in the progressive fold.

By 2015, the PDP conservative Leviathan had sunk, not unlike the Titanic: yielding federal power to progressive forces — again with Tinubu’s imprimatur — for the first time in Nigeria’s electoral history.

Now, how could the driver-in-chief, of all of these momentous pushes, in a spade of 21 short years, be traduced, by some, as villain-in-chief of Nigerian democracy?

If conservative losers grouch, understandably from extremely sour grapes, how hollow and shallow do griping Tinubu’s fellow progressives sound — even to themselves?

Or the coterie of the bilious Yoruba, pushing the bluster of Yoruba self-determination, to hide a blather of hate; and using peer envy as partisan slaughter, tarring one of their very best as the people’s arch-enemy, when objective facts, in the public space, point to the contrary?

Might that be the umpteenth manifestation of the Yoruba “curse”, that seasonally dooms the Yoruba to prey on their very best, at crucial junctures of Nigerian history?

The Jagaban at 69, prime revelation of Nigeria’s 4th Republic, also epitomizes the classic clash between futuristic and atavistic forces, not the least in his rambunctious Yoruba home front, in the fierce contest to shape evolving Nigeria.

Let that contest be settled on the high altar of cutting-edge ideas, in the best tradition of developmental democracy; not at the smelly dump of base hatred and envy.

Wishing the Asiwaju of Lagos the very best at 69.

 

By Azubike Nass

This writer had many times argued that the problem is governance failure at all levels (federal, state and local), since Nigeria became independent in 1960.

In the 1940s, the British colonial government gazetted Cattle Routes and Rural Grazing Areas (RUGA), as well as established the first cattle ranch at Obudu (in present-day Cross River State).  All were designed to forestall clashes between herders and farmers, which were already showing signs.

From 1960, no realistic indigenous efforts were made to improve on what we inherited, even when so many things, including demographics, were rapidly changing.

Exception: Chief Obafemi Awolowo started a modern ranch project in present-day Ekiti State, with imported special-breed cows and infrastructural layout for dairy business, beef production and marketing.

His overall plan was to make open grazing out of fashion, while the Western Region would become self-sufficient in cow meat demand.  When Awolowo left office as Premier of Western Region, that project died a natural death.

What has any other government, at whatever level, done since then?  What did the long years of military government do about that?  What did Presdent Olusegun Obasanjo’s civilian government (1999-2007) do to address the problem?  Virtually nothing — and the problem kept festering and intensifying.

President Goodluck Jonathan initiated a solution that was not practicalized: N100 million was pronounced to support state governments willing to build cattle ranches/farms, by whatever name called.  It was later reported that only a small fraction of the money was released in 2014; and the state governors that collected it applied the money for political campaign of the season.

It was also revealed that the old gazetted grazing areas and other routes had been appropriated by highly placed political and traditional leaders across the states.  The herders continued to roam the forests and grasslands, uncared for; and their trade unregulated — and often clashing with farming communities.

Present President Muhammadu Buhari’s government came up with its own Livestock Transformation Agenda, designed to end open grazing and boost livestock production and its value chain.

The team that produced the programme was headed by then opposition party Governor of Ebonyi State, Engr. Dave Umahi.  Participating state governments were to be given incentives and support by the Federal Government.

At the moment, some states (mostly in the northern part of the country, where cattle rearing is predominant) are keyed into the programme, making slow progress in building ranches.  About 90 per cent of herders are of Fulani ethnic group.  There are Fulani in other North and West African countries.

None of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) consume less than 2, 500 cows a week.  That is 10, 000 cows a month minimum consumption.  Lagos State  alone is recorded to consume 10, 000 cows per week.

That means even the southern states that don’t have indigenous herders and may not be interested in building ranches, would still require some arrangements for transporting and holding cows brought into the states for sale and consumption (including veterinary care).  So, it is not enough to pronounce ban on open grazing without the government making a realistic alternative plan.

Read Also: Ortom and insecurity conundrum in Nigeria

This huge cow market (demand and supply) in Nigeria is a major attraction for marauding cross-border herdsmen (mostly of Fulani stock).  Some (not all) of these guys are seasoned ex-fighters from many internecine conflicts that ravage North African countries.

Bestial brutality is fun to them.  Their temperament and emotions are as dry as the vast North African Sahara Desert.  They are seasoned arms smugglers.

Nigeria has about the highest prevalence of cattle rustling.  It is a diverse and syndicated business.  The herders are often shot dead and their cows led away.  They have virtually no form of institutional protection.

Because Nigerian cattle market and value chain (if any) had long remained archaic and unregulated, it has remained a conducive ground for free-floating criminal herdsmen.

Global statistics on proliferation of small arms and light weapons put Africa as a flashpoint; and Nigeria as a worse case.

So, illegal arms are all over, in the hands of sundry criminals, cult groups, anarchist gangs, and highly placed people in positions of authority and influence.  In fact, many Nigerian politicians are well practised in mobilizing and arming violence-prone youths, as thugs to fight election wars.

These are the arms usually not carried openly but kept in hidden places until needed.  So, how do you disarm all — and not only the herdsmen?

In the protracted conflict, the farming communities are victims because because cows graze on their farmlands.  The herdsmen are also victims because they are not provided where to graze and they don’t hold lands.

They are only a minority and easily chased away from where they live; and their cattle (their life investment) easily stolen.  They, therefore, resort to living deep in the forests, from where they mount reprisal attacks in a cycle of unending conflicts with farming communities.

This is the root cause of banditry situation in many places.  Reprisal attacks go on between both sides.  But in terms of achieving publicity for their victimhood narrative, the herdsmen are disadvantaged.  They are generally not savvy in packaging their victimhood for public sympathy.

Easy resort to hate speech, ethnic profiling and denigrating name-calling, can never offer solution to the problem.

President Jonathan was there yesterday.  President Buhari is there today.  Tomorrow, it could be someone from the South East or South West.  As long as the problem is not realistically and methodically addressed by the stakeholders, so long will it continue to fester and intensify.

Those who refuse or reject efforts to holistically address the problem, and rather threaten hellfire and doom, should be sure that they are well prepared for a complex war, with no fixed frontline.

I rest my case.

• Nass, a retired colonel from the Nigerian Army, writes from Enugu.

Promise of Kebbi

In its rice pyramids, Kebbi rises. Yet, around that state and its rise of rice, its North West neighbours are secu-
rity-challenged: Zamfara, Kaduna; and to a less extent, Sokoto.

Not so faraway, in the North Central belt, is Niger, also making ugly headlines, in kidnapping-for-ransom, of helpless school children; and innocent travelling folks.

Nasarawa, Niger’s zonal kin, may yet join renewed insecurity chain, given squeals by its governor, that fleeing Boko Haram terrorists are regrouping in three Nasarawa local governments, bordering the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of Abuja.

That Kebbi can thrive in rice, despite the serious security challenges plaguing its neighbours, is a pointer to two conflicting visions: one points to doom; the other, to success.

Ripples thinks either could be a deliberate choice — if folks howl less; and think more.

By Olakunle Abimbola

The Sunday Igboho-Yoruba elite romance brings to mind the fox and cock in Yoruba folklore.

The fox always pounced on the hen.  But each time it sighted the cock, it bounded for dear life.

“Wait!” the rooster, one day, cackled at the panic-stricken fox, already belting away.  ”Why do you always flee from me?”

“Because,” it pointed to the roaster’s head of fire. “That can burn!”

“Fire?” the cock was surprised.  ”On my head?  This is no fire!  It’s only my comb!”

“Is that so?” The fox crept towards its newfound quarry — and pounced.  From that moment, the cock became sweet game!

It’s a powerful metaphor for surrendering your ace — and cropping catastrophe.

If the Yoruba polite society continues to cede space to such a crude soul, then soon the Igboho fox would gobble up the Yoruba elite rooster.

Can that still be rolled back?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But the prognosis appears dire — except folks change tack.

Still, let’s be clear.  Igboho as a person, crude bouncer or savior-vivre, is absolutely of no interest to this column — and this does not issue from any arrogance or empty condescension.

In truth Igboho, like Gani Adams, has somewhat made something of himself, despite his humble beginning.  You can’t, therefore, continue to permanently judge both men, by the shackles of tough nativity, which they appear to have admirably thrown off.

Besides, Igboho would continue to be the hero of not a few, particularly for his heroic, if crude, intervention; in the vexed armed herdsmen criminality, on the Ibarapa front of Oyo State; and the Ketu front of Ogun State, both in the Yoruba interior.

Neither would his stock likely fall, among the ranks of giddy Yoruba ultra-nationalists, high on their craving for Oodua Republic, the latest political opium in town — a cause an unfazed Igboho, even in cheering respectable circles, has declared himself a rabid proponent.

Now, the problem is not holding a political view.  That’s the democratic right of all.

The problem is a rude, crude and limited fellow, belching ill motives to traduce revered natural rulers; and threatening to kill or harm citizens who hold contrary views — citizens no less covered by democratic norms, in a republic founded on law. That ought to have triggered instant elite alarm.

Indeed, this Igboho crude intrusion on public consciousness; and his continuous stark commentaries, rippling with devil-may-care outlawry, should worry all.

Yet, not a few Yoruba elites have made peace with this dangerous bombast; like the cunning but ultra-foolish one, hiding behind a crooked finger.

As for the media, particularly the (anti)social media hue, it’s morning yet on hugging the sweet plague of sensation! The Igboho end clearly justifies the mean(ness) — to parody that cynical coinage, by our own WS!

Which brings to mind current shakabula happenings, in a high season of shakabula thinking, in the Yoruba country.

Flush from an alleged foiled arrest, for whatever reason, Igboho arrived Lagos, to hold court and claim kin with Gani Adams, who had had cause to earlier rebuke him for his stark penchant to hurt what Adams called the “struggle”.

The one serenading the other is no crime; since both are angling and hankering for elite admittance and approval.  A cross-serenade, therefore, hurts no one.

But what could hurt all is an emotive elite, flinging open own gates, in uncritical endorsement of the Igboho essence — push-and-pull, warts and all; just because short-term ethnic plots and conspiracies align.  It’s a short-sighted take the Yoruba polite society may yet rue.

Which was why Baba Ayo Adebanjo and his Afenifere rump, holding court with, and proudly touting an Igboho photo-op, appears a near-travesty, even by traditional Awoist standards.

For context, that was akin to the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo, admitting Eruobodo, among the most fearless and most celebrated of that era’s Action Group (AG) “stewards” (polite Awo-speak, for push-and-shove party fixers), into the innermost sanctum of the party — and making a giddy photo-op of it!

Indeed, Pastor Tunde Bakare’s shakabula (Dane gun) metaphor is proving not only robustly analytic but also eerily prophetic!

It accurately portrays the tragic collapse of Yoruba reaction to felt danger: from the clinical rigour of the Awo era, to the scalding emotion of this current post-Awo epoch.  That change holds little in stock, beyond strategic ruin.

But again, it’s less about Igboho, as a person.  It is rather about the grim metaphor, of Igboho’s grim essence; and the long-term ruin it holds for all.

It’s not unlike the tragedy of military rule in Nigeria, rupturing polite governance, and putting everyone in a bind.

The pristine military that took power on 15 January 1966, was not the most illiterate bloc in the country.  On the contrary, subject to the humble human development stats of that era, it still counted among the most elitist and most knowledgable in its field.  Certainly, it was the most adept at enforcing its command ethos.

Yet, it made so much hash of governance, that by the time it finally surrendered power in May 1999, it knew it had thoroughly subverted its core essence; and it craved a core rebirth.

The military, despite its strong points, was simply ill-equipped to rule.  But it took decades of collective ruin, before Nigeria could figure out that grim reality.

Still, what modern Nigeria took eons to find out, Ibadan, in its rustic paradise of plunder imperialism, never allowed to happen.

Even at the apex of his power, Ibadan resisted the ploy of Latoosa, its last official warlord-in-chief, to combine military and governance duties.

After vanquishing the powerful Iyalode, Efunsetan Aniwura, perhaps the last symbol of elite opposition against Latoosa’s bid to take complete control, Ibadan still told the fierce warlord that he couldn’t combine military duties with the Baale, as he craved.

To that Latoosa scoffed (according to accounts in Samuel Johnson’s The History of the Yorubas), that the Baale was a “woman”, since by Ibadan Constitution, the Baale didn’t go to war.

The Ibadan elite agreed, even if the Latoosa slur hurt.  But the constitution held.  The warlord faced war while the Baale faced civil governance.

This short blast from Yoruba history underscores that golden rule: in times of crisis, stark fellows and hot heads don’t call the shots.  They stay in the streets ready for orders, from more seasoned minds, who fully understand the issues.

That golden rule is what the Yoruba elite buck, with the sweet romance of yielding space to the likes of Igboho and Gani Adams, for short-term gains.

It could end in long-term tears.