Category: Olakunle Abimbola

Olakunle Abimbola

 

“…Long after the Coker Commission Report shall have been forgotten in the archives, as a spiteful document, the work of Chief Awolowo in Western Nigeria will remain a monument to brilliant planning and administrative genius” —  Prof. Hezekiah Oluwasanmi, Daily Express, 28/29 January 1963, as quoted in Obafemi Awolowo, The Travails of Democracy and the rule of Law, Adventures in Power, Book Two.

 

Between the immortal Chief Obafemi Awolowo and President Muhammadu Buhari, there are stark differences, differences that suggest the geometrical two parallel lines that can never meet.

The one was an unapologetic federalist whose view, first articulated in his 1947 book, Path to Nigerian Freedom, has birthed for Nigeria never-ending “restructuring”.

The other is a taciturn but near-implacable centralist, from a peculiar Nigerian political geography — and temper.

In the “North” of his era, Awo was the face of unrepentant southern conceit, nay arrogance.  Even sans a political “South”, the Eastern partisan elite, of that time, avidly bought into this slur to cage Awo, for short-term gain; which has turned long-term ruin.

In the “South” of today, Muhammadu Buhari is the emotive face of the North’s hated “feudal” conceit: the Fulani “born-to-rule” crowing, and the iron will to impose that subversive wish on the rest of the country.

Even without a political “South”, a South West-South East lobby, powered by hot intrigue, is collapsing everything to make this desperate construct stick, in a grand historical parallel, replicating a 1st Republic folly.

Will this putative West-East anti-Buhari gang-up end up any less ruinous than the 1st Republic North-East anti-Awo conspiracy?   Time will tell.

Still, not even these huge differences could cloak Awo-Buhari similarities; and how the polity of their respective eras react to them.

For starters, both Awo and PMB scaled respective elite envy and conspiracies of their day, to bond with their respective masses, on a scale most politicians can’t boast.

Awo was the unrepentant Yoruba man, who dared — and failed — to attain federal power.  Not for him the hypocrisy of good Nigerian, without first being a stellar Yoruba man, just to gross the vacuous tag of “de-tribalized” — whatever that means!

In a grand triumph of optics over content, “de-tribalization” became the frothy rock that smashed Awo’s ultimate ambitions.  It’s no secret Nigeria is today worse for it.

PMB is the Awo ethnic flip side: the northern “unelectable” that, nevertheless, has twice romped into elected power, after all previous “electable”, North or South, had left the country in ruins.

Despite this “great escape”, PMB’s Fulani essence, no thanks to rabid demonization, is sure-fire tool to clobber his tenure and scupper his legacy, much the same way as Awo’s vicious ethnic tag shut him from power — to Nigeria’s eternal loss.

Yet, in real terms, PMB is fairer to every part of Nigeria than many would credit him.

Yes, there is a lot of howling about “nepotism”, skewed appointments and all that; for which the growling elite mob, and their suckered masses, would readily lynch him.

However, “nepotism” here, most times, means unfair discrimination against otherwise qualified citizens, simply because they are real or perceived kith-and-kin of those in power.  The sheer sweetness — and romanticized harm — of emotive injustice!

As for skewed appointments, it could be suicidal confronting, even with sober facts, a raging, slanderous, close-minded mob, and its card-stacking media confederates. Still, that a counter-northern lobby has dubbed PMB a sell-out to the northern cause is quite instructive.

To be sure, that might be just another counter-acampaign to break the monopoly of the other agitation.  But it could also mean the man is fair to all, thus earning the ire of the greedy closet tribalists from both camps, moonlighting as people’s champs!

But in terms of project spread, there is absolutely no doubt about it: in critical game-changing infrastructure, PMB is fair to all, for there is no part of Nigeria not host to critical infrastructure folks could see, despite the lean financial times.

That can’t be said of previous regimes, that had a relative surfeit of cash yet blew everything on piffle, thus forcing the 2015 near-collapse.

But why this rather long Awo-PMB comparison and contrasts?  It’s for Yoruba nativists, being goaded into insane fury by anti-PMB propaganda, by so-called elders.  But these elements act not unlike the subversive Tribunes in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, that nevertheless baled when the trouble, forced by their mischief, dawned.

For the record, the East’s narrative, from Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s West African Pilot, to Chinua Achebe’s swan song, There Was A Country, down to Nnamdi Kanu’s lunatic posturing, has been an explosive combo of powerful Titans that can do no wrongs, and luckless victims crushed without mercy.

The North, under the commanding heights of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the northern Premier and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first Prime Minister but the Sardauna’s Lagos viceroy, little bothered about any narrative, since it could project power.  Even if it did, it stood little chance, for the bully South dominated the media.

Even today, PMB remains a victim of both: the near-reckless northern power projection, and devil-may-care, unscrupulous southern media domination.

It was only the Awo odyssey that truly captured the Yoruba political angst.  When the 1st Republic North and East, out of sheer envy, conspired to finish off Awo in 1962, the Yoruba masses bore the suffering with him.

When the irredentist Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA), second Premier of the West, elbowed the NCNC from the central power gravy, to corral a coalition with Balewa’s ruling party, pocketing the Remi Fani-Kayode-led NCNC western wing en route, the Yoruba were content to say good riddance to winning and losing hustlers, but stayed glued to their undiminished hero.

Nepotism!  Corruption!  Those were the same words used to slander Awo, by the likes of Chief Ayo Rosiji (Egba East), Chief E. O. Okunowo (Ijebu Central) and Chief A. Akerele (Oyo East), friends-turned-fiends and ex-Action Group MPs in the House of Representatives, while cooking the phoney Western emergency rule, that Rosiji declared was the political funeral of Awo, on 29 May 1962.

Ironically, nepotism and corruption echo today: the one to cudgel PMB and his presidential court; the other, PMB’s own zipping whip, against a thieving elite!

Still, a resurgent Awo would shrug it all off, in a compound Yoruba word: “Eebudola” — Yoruba for abuse-turned-praise, after the plot had thoroughly consumed the plotters, and sunk them all without trace.

Would that be the lot of PMB and his ethnic traducers, after the present excitement is history?  Time will tell.

For the Yoruba mind that bore Awo’s pains with him, however, it’s enough warning not to join the free-wheeling demonization of anyone, just because some hustler-elite have an axe to grind.

But even at the depth of that 1st Republic crisis, Awo never abandoned his federalist principle to fix Nigeria.  So, how come these latter-day Awoist agitators are slipping into escapist nativism, goading the naive to some Oodua Republic, their hoped-for post-Nigeria Utopia where, open sesame, everything would work like magic?

The hard limit of sweet fantasy!

At Nigeria’s greatest hour of need, a segment of the elite has not only declared selves AWOL, they are sworn, fair or foul, to rubbishing all the salvaging efforts.

But perhaps long after all these spiteful yammering and jabbering, history would laud PMB’s yeoman’s efforts to fix his country, in the worst of times, after the ruinous rule of the jackals.

By Olakunle Abimbola

COVID-19 makes.  COVID-19 breaks.  That could be a tad sweeping.  But it might also be the tale of two governors, truly told.

The one, pre-COVID-19, was building castles in the air; and charming anyone to come see the happy swindle.  Enter, Oyo Governor, Seyi Makinde, aka GSM.

Indeed, at Oyo’s zenith of the governor as shaman (dubbed “audio governorship” by his no less harsh critics), GSM was “threatening” to surpass, in six months, whatever Abiola Ajimobi, his predecessor, had achieved in eight years!

But then came COVID-19 which, with a fearful burst, flattened everything.  At first, GSM made a partisan jeer at it all.  Then, he allegedly cropped the virus — allegedly, because not a few of his partisan traducers claim even that was another “audio” stunt.

Then, one year after, COVID-19 offered the craven apologia: the virus and its ruthless disruptions, had accounted for Makinde’s rather slim report card.

To boot, COVID-19 has provided, to date, the most devastating anti-Makinde quip! Olodo, Ibadan, harbours Oyo’s biggest COVID-19 isolation and treatment facility.  Accented one way, Olodo could mean “owner of mortar and pestle”, which really is the correct name of that settlement.  But otherwise, it could also mean Olodo: blockhead!

So, the governor’s cyber-foes have adopted the more irreverent slant, in a savage pun of a photo capturing the governor’s official COVID-19 activity at that facility, courtesy of the governor’s own avid cyber-warriors.

Enter, the iconic (turned iconoclastic) photo: GSM as “Olodo Ibadan” (Ibadan gubernatorial blockhead)!  Propaganda gives, propaganda takes!

So early, Makinde’s restless propaganda chicken is coming home to roost!  Still, he has his job cut out, now that one out of a four-year term is gone!

Well, Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu (BOS), Makinde’s Lagos counterpart, has taken a less upbeat route, with diametrically opposite, startling results.

Whereas COVID-19 has, well, crippled GSM, it has given BOS rare wings to soar; not by jingling propaganda, but by trackable deeds.  COVID-19 makes, COVID-19 breaks!

Yet, BOS was a victim of an often fickle electorate, that yearns for the governor as shaman; failing which they push a democratic right to, no end, traduce and abuse.

BOS took over at the nadir of the Akinwunmi Ambode collapse; and the urban decay that held much of Lagos in thrall.

Lagos was an extensive and oppressive garbage dump, no thanks to Ambode’s failed bid at refuse-clearing reforms, a chore that gobbled his second term, but which not a few claimed equated fixing what wasn’t broken.

To be fair though, that could just be glib counter-jive by party powers and principalities, who wrestled Ambode to a vicious pin-fall.

Then the roads!  They were in a complete shambles, no thanks to Ambode’s loud dissonance, from a hurried retreat from power, leaving a long trail of dead dreams.

To make matters worse, it was the height of the rainy season, hopeless for road repairs.  But who cares?  If BOS couldn’t face the heat, he had better get the hell out of the kitchen!  Still, a governor is no shaman.

Then came the brutal taunts: Atoka of Lagos, Point-and-kill Governor, et al, all in  saucy mirth, at poor BOS’s expense!  That chilled the zippy, zap-py, zealous photos of his earliest gubernatorial days!

But then, came COVID-19, and BOS came onto his own — dramatically for the better, unlike GSM’s, whose story changed for the worse.

Before then, however, Lagos was becoming progressively cleaner, but hardly anyone noticed.  No, not as clean as at the apex of the Babatunde Fashola sanitation reforms; but far cleaner than at the Ambode collapse.

In truth, BOS would have to ruthlessly deal with that era’s lingering decadence — Lagos denizens turning high road medians into refuse dumps; and waste-clearing trucks forced to work by this absurd “new normal”.

Until the governor clamps down on those involved, Lagos might not achieve the relative cleanliness of the Fashola days.  On that, BOS can use Neighbourhood Watch/Amotekun secret cells to nab and make big scapegoats, of these environmental criminals.

Still, the real deal was dealing with COVID-19!  It earned BOS soaring respect.

Yes, Lagos remains the national epicentre.  As at May 30, Lagos lugs 4, 755, out of the national COVID-19 burden of 9, 855 (48 per cent).

Prof. Akinlola Abayomi, the Lagos Health commissioner and “field commander” of the fierce Lagos anti-Coronavirus campaign, says that might be because Lagos had done more tests than any other state, including the FCT, and its federal might.

Yet, there is hardly any panic, matching the local scale of the pandemic — or any visible panic at all.

On the contrary, thanks to BOS (“Incident Commander”, in Lagos COVID-19 lingo) and his able cabinet’s deft response to the virus, many Lagosians thumb their nose at the pandemic, with their seeming near-contempt for COVID-19 safety protocols, in their daily hustle.

As Fashola did with Ebola in 2014, a sure-footed BOS is leading Nigeria’s gubernatorial challenge against COVID-19, in concert with the corresponding federal agencies.

The real good news, however, is systemic: Lagos has, from 1999, continued to hone its civil service and political bureaucracies, for quality service delivery, in good and bad seasons.

No, Lagos is no utopia — far from it.  There are still a whole lot to be done.  But with Ebola and COVID-19 handling, it is moving in directions not a few would wish the Federal Government had moved, since 1999.  Had that been, Nigeria could have been far better prepared for this COVID-19 blitz.  But it could have been worse!

Still, there is life after COVID-19, which suggests other areas BOS should face, as he goes full blast into his second year.

The Okada-Keke Marwa (indeed, general yellow buses) menace isn’t done and dusted.  Fredrick Oladehinde, the Lagos Transport commissioner, has revealed the roadmap to shutting, for good, Okada and Keke Marwa from Lagos roads.

That is welcome — and should be vigorously pursued. Too many Okada and Keke Marwa rascals still ply major highways, even belting against the traffic.

The strategic solution, however, would be to take the market away.  That would be by rail, which can, at a burst, move thousands, particularly at the busy opening and closing business hours.

With rail sweeping away the commuter market, no one would tell these ultra-micro shuttle players the market had closed.

Which is why BOS should ensure the 2021 completion and operation deadline, of the Lagos rail Blue Line.  Then, quick work should follow on the proposed Red Line and others, aside from the Mile 2-Badagry end of the Blue Line, all by PPP funding.

Talking of deadlines, BOS should also complete the Epe-Odo Ajogun road project, halted at Mojoda, though Odo-Ajogun, border town with Ogun State, is only the next town, in concert with the laudable philosophy of completing all Ambode-era projects.

Has COVID-19 made BOS and sunk GSM?  No.  For both, one year is gone, out of four.  So, it’s time to rally: either to consolidate winking success, or fob off looming failure.

BOS should be especially careful.  At this stage of own tenure, Ambode was near-cruising, having fobbed off his initial challenges.  But that didn’t stop his miserable crumble, no thanks to avoidable hubris.

BOS can’t afford such miserable encore — at least for the sake of his Lagos electors.

Olakunle Abimbola

 

From its apex, the Nigerian judiciary, slowly but surely, cascades down the nadir of polite society.

But only it can’t see it: trapped, as it were, in its own frothing, intoxicating and all-consuming legalese.

Supreme Court, supreme hubris, supreme joke?  That is clearly irreverent.  Indeed, it is harsh.

But the supreme crunch would dawn, when even the most placid and reticent, of genteel citizens, start upbraiding the Supreme Court, as some supreme curse.

That would be the day!  We hope — and pray — that day never comes!

Still, that would seem the troubling route the courts are heading, if the apex court continues to hoist crass technicality, over and above substantial justice.

That would appear clear, from that court’s May 8 voiding, via 7-0 verdict, of the 5 December 2019 conviction of former Abia Governor, Orji Uzor Kalu (OUK) and Ude Udeogu, the Abia State Government House director of finance, during the OUK governorship (1999-2007).

True, the Supreme Court only ordered a fresh trial, based on the technicality that the judge ought to have quit the case, though nearing conclusion at the high court, the moment he was promoted Justice of the Court of Appeal.

That such technicality could knock off a long-drawn case, that rippled with so much litigant bad faith to stall and escape justice, earned the ire of not a few.

But much more: that casual but costly technicality could have dealt a near-fatal blow on the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015.  Yet ACJA was enacted to checkmate cynics that apply procedural stalling, to escape justice.

ACJA, therefore, inspired the fiat, from the president of the Court of Appeal, that empowered the judge to complete the case.

But now, no thanks to the Supreme Court’s May 8 verdict, the courts may yet endure a deluge of appeals from past convicts, armed with fresh anti-ACJA technicality, hot, fresh and smoking, from the apex court itself.

Talk of a Supreme Court, bristling with supreme pride, crowning itself the supreme cog, in the war against procedural bad faith in Nigerian courts — hardly the apex court’s finest hour!

Though the danger of unravelling courts looms larger, as the seconds tick and days pass, the ghoul of a self-distracting judiciary would date back, even if faintly, to the early years of Nigeria’s flag independence.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in The Travails of Democracy and the Rule of Law (Adventures in Power Book Two), recorded Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, the first indigenous Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), as making reckless partisan comments, at a 1960 special luncheon to inaugurate Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe as Nigeria’s Governor-General.

There the CJN, and the dominion’s new Prime Minister, formed a tag team to dismiss the office of Leader of Opposition as some parliamentary scam, to the chagrin of the international community present, as Awo returned fire, tit-for-tat.

On 29 November 1960 (less than two months after independence), Dr. Taslim Elias, a future CJN but then federal minister of Justice and Attorney-General, bossed debates in the House of Representatives, on how the central parliament could summarily shut down — and take over — a recalcitrant region (read Western Region), using the law as a mere accomplice.

That appeared a parliamentary simulation of the 1962 phony emergency in the Western Region, brewed in that same parliament, which would signal the beginning of the end for the 1st Republic.

A controversial 1963 Awo conviction, CJN Ademola’s post-conviction manoeuvres to procure Awo a cynical pardon for humiliating partisan terms, and a January 1966 coup that buried that republic, didn’t exactly leave the judiciary smelling like roses.

Yet, when Dr. Elias (as second-term AG and federal commissioner for Justice, under Gen. Yakubu Gowon) was, in 1972, plucked from his twin job as Professor and Dean of Law at the University of Lagos, and made CJN, it was the legal gown come to boss the judicial town!  But then, both gown and town boasted high societal awe.  Hardly any more!

Still, at his removal in 1975, as part of the post-Gowon purge, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, the new junta’s second-in-command, said of CJN Elias and his sack, in Not My Will, Obasanjo’s immediate post-regime memoirs:

“His legal competence was not in doubt and we also acknowledged that he was a great academician,” he wrote but “his management competence and integrity to administer the judiciary was called to question, especially as a result of the apparent muddle, confusion and ineptitude by the judiciary previously.”

Now, the notoriously narcissist Obasanjo, he of tumbling and often meaningless adjectives, is fairly slammed for conflicting executive rashness with supreme wisdom, for most of his long power years.

CJN Elias was clearly a personal victim of that hare-brained headiness, that drove the Murtala-era purges. That would explain his rash sack, and near-instant push, for the World Court at The Hague, of which Elias would later become president.

Yet, as a class, the judiciary that Sir Darnley Alexander, then Chief Judge of Cross Rivers State, was picked to head was a tad lower in public estimation, compared with 1960.

Then came the 2nd Republic, and the Supreme Court, and its twelve-two-thirds controversial verdict, helped to give that short-lived republic (1979-1983) a huge legitimacy challenge, which it never really surmounted; just as the courts were part of the Babangida June 12, 1993 presidential annulment mess.

All through these periods, however, a section of the judiciary, galvanized by the exploits of the likes of Chukwudifu Oputa (JSC), Kayode Esho (JSC) and Dr. Akinola Aguda, one-time Chief Justice of Botswana, fine jurists in whom brilliance and character cohered, rallied to stay the course.

Still, with 1999’s democracy return would come new decadence, with the judiciary slipping further into the bog; and the courts, no more than bugs, in the mind of many.

That climaxed with the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) conviction, on 18 April 2019, of former CJN Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen, for false asset declaration.  Now, the CJN as convict, was a new low!

But that wasn’t even the news.  The dreary news was that the flower of the Bar and a section of the Bench rallied, via procedural technicalities, to shield one of their own from justice.

That was in violent breach of the solemn social contract that catapulted them as sacred votaries, in the immaculate shrine of Justice.  Indeed, until things turned nasty, a section of the Bar, with some roaring silks, was goading the embattled CJN to ignore the CCT!

But it was ACJA that saved the day — not because the CJN was convicted but because justice was served.  It wouldn’t have made any difference, had the CJN been discharged and acquitted.

Rather, the heart-warming lesson was never again, in our land, would crass technicality obstruct or trump justice!  But see how pyrrhic the Supreme Court has made that seeming breakthrough, with its supreme hubris — sorry, verdict — of May 8!

Each time the judiciary ruffles societal feathers, with controversial verdicts, some all-knowing lawyers come barging in, with frothing and arcane technicalities — bravo!

But the Supreme Court, by its verdicts, should ingrain substantial justice, rather than glory in technicalities. Any contrary path is nothing but expressway to self-ruin.

By Olakunle Abimbola

After Corona Easter, comes Corona Ramadan.  The globe and its major faiths are locked in the vice grip of COVID-19!

If science is slow at grabbing a vaccine, are faiths any faster in procuring a cure?

Indeed!  COVID-19 is proving a ruthless faith iconoclast as any other, shunting aside traditions, hitherto observed for eons!

No thanks to social distancing and crowd control, Easter 2020 endured subdued celebration of significant landmarks: Palm Sunday, Passion Week, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday — beyond virtual caricatures, by the richer congregations.

Ramadan 2020, now on its last lap, is hobbled by a similar fate.

That has bucked much of its communalism, its fast-season faith advocacy, its proud holy Ramadan lectures, its Iftar, shared dinners, after fasting from sunrise to sundown — and who knows, if it lingers?  It’s eid prayers (and post-Ramadan gaiety and merriment), all big crowd pullers, in the name of the faith!

Like Easter 2020, Ramadan (and Eid-el-Fitri) 2020 would be like no other.

Now, a pared down Ramadan, perhaps much more than a pared down Lent, holds practical problems.

On the doctrinal plane, Lent seems comparatively subdued as Ramadan is unabashedly boisterous.  As kids, we used to tease our Muslim friends about “their noise” at Ramadan, contrasted to the “loud quiet”, during the Christian Lent.

Indeed, in our mind of childhood, we verily believed a Christian that publicized his fasting, even during Lent, wilfully starved himself, with absolutely no spiritual reward.

And pronto, with childhood innocence that harboured neither bile nor spite, we dismissed Ramadan as one noisy racket — with Ramadan-push inflation to boot! — en route to rating the Lent, up and above the Ramadan!

How innocently childish — comparing faiths founded on different doctrinal pivots!

Still, from that childhood bias has come ample respect, in adult years, for sundry faiths: Christianity and Islam — and even the much traduced African traditional faiths.

Though illogical institutional biases — no thanks to colonial and sundry hegemonic narratives — have traduced African faiths, we know every faith (African, Asian, Judeo-Christian or Arab) is a spiritual pathway, to further appreciate God Almighty, and grapple with nature.

But away from faith pride and prejudices!  Back to Ramadan 2020!

Ramadan segues into day-to-day realities, and the eminent place of compassion and empathy, in it all.

Life may be two-fold: rich or poor, plenitude or scarcity, love or hate, satiation or starvation, high or lowly.

But Ramadan pushes rare egalitarianism powered by common humanity; hinged in the spiritual but made practical in the secular, all owned by the community, over a 30-day stretch.

Hunger may be a clear personal, nay biological, need.  But when more than a proportionate poor grapple with it, it becomes a clear social menace.

Fasting may be the quiet tapping into the pangs of hunger, for spiritual fortification; and seeking heavenly munificence.

Ramadan, however,  propels that strictly spiritual chore as boisterous communal business, mandatory for all Muslim adults, except those with medical conditions, those with travelling commitments and females with monthly cycle challenges.

It could, therefore, well be a spiritual guide come to manage all-common human and communal challenges.

From the daily Tarawih Ramadan evening prayers, otherwise known as hashr (which, somewhat corrupted, the Yoruba faithful call “ashamu”), to sahuur, the pre-fast meal (which the Yoruba call “sari”), to Iftar, the after-fast dinner, everything is public; everything is boisterous — a happy celebration of the faith, in a season of common hunger, by the rich or the poor.

Proudly public too are the Ramadan lectures; Koranic recitations, household and communal, which drive the Ramadan season injunction for deep introspection; the Tefsir Koranic tutorials in neighbourhood mosques, between 12 noon and 2 pm, when Ramadan hunger pangs probably bites most; and sundry Islamic proselytization, which comes with the fast territory.

To be sure, all these still go on at Ramadan 2020, at least in some virtual form.  But for the first time in contemporary living memory, the soul of the season, the ardent and devout community of the faithful, is markedly absent.  It’s a Ramadan like no other!

Yet, Ramadan could have been tailor-made for such a global health emergency, and vanishing opportunities, in the unfolding COVID-19 economic (dis)order — Ramadan, with its free-wheeling charity, its injunction to share, and its spiritual solutions to practical problems!

For one, Ramadan-era palliatives (palliative! — again that COVID-19 season lockdown  buzz word!), in foodstuff donations from the well-heeled to poor neighbours and kith-and-kins, have been greatly constrained by the adverse impact of Coronavirus on personal pockets and the general economy.

For another, hardly anyone is talking of Iftar, that free-giving after-fast dinner, as the pre-2020 globe had known it. The Shiek Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the largest mosque in UAE according to Wikipedia, feeds no less than 30, 000 people every Ramadan evening.  But not this year.

Even at the White House, the American president often hosts Iftar in honour of American Muslims in their holiest month; just as Nigerian presidents, governors and community leaders, extend such Ramadan gestures to their constituencies.

But who hears of such grand Iftars in Ramadan 2020?  Everything is banished by COVID-19 social distancing!

Saudi Arabia, that often harvests a huge deluge of spiritual tourists, for the Ramadan Umrah (lesser Hajj), announced well in advance there wouldn’t be such this year.

Even if it didn’t, with folks shuttered in home countries and air travel enduring a vicious slump — again, no thanks to COVID-19 — it’s a moot point how many could have made such prayerful sorties, no matter its assumed spiritual bounties.

Talking of Hajj, it’s not clear if COVID-19 wouldn’t junk the main Hajj, that precedes the Eid-el-Kabir feast, with its ram-slaughtering, and free-wheeling fun and gaiety.

Yet, both the Ramadan and the Hajj are among the five pillars of Islam, even if the Hajj is only mandatory for Muslims who can afford it.  If this trend continues, 2020 could well be the first year, in living contemporary history, that the yearly Hajj would be cancelled.

But even before the Hajj, the Ramadan eid, the 2020 Eid-el-Fitri prayers, may be the first to be celebrated, not at the special communal prayer grounds, but in individual homes — again, no thanks to ravaging Coronavirus!

Might that then be the strategic ploy behind the easing of lockdown, by some northern states, with the Ramadan inching to a close?

That would be understandable political gamble, kowtowing to the religious sensibilities of their Muslim citizens.  Yet, it would be a reckless and needless health risk, for Coronavirus might just flare for the worse, after months of lockdown to curtail it.

But however that balance is navigated, Nigerian Muslims have earned praise, for how they have adroitly navigated Ramadan 2020, despite the challenge COVID-19, that sheared it of its boisterous, communal soul.

Olakunle Abimbola

 

Government unusual” was somewhat patented by former Osun Governor, Rauf Aregbesola (now Interior minister), to capture a willy-nilly push for development, of a state, stagnant for far too long.

Somewhat, that phrase captured it all: the high and the low; the whoop of victory and the moo of defeat; the abuse and the praise; the honest truths and hare-brained lies — all spread over an eight-year roller-coaster!

That left everyone winded — government unusual!

Yet pre-COVID-19, that idea came slightly before its time, given the near-paralysis that virus has infected governance, business and the general economy.

Banks, supposedly awash with cash, are pressing the early panic buttons, with retrenchments and rumours of retrenchments.

The government too whimpers.  But unlike the Mexican soap, The Rich Also Cry, it can’t wail.  Yet, it lugs a crushing emergency burden!

The banking woe captures the general business throes: from trading to manufacturing; from insurance to sundry sectors.  Even agriculture: some Enugu farmers were, the other day, lamenting COVID-19 lockdowns were stifling yam planting.

Why, even the media, that with holy scorn mocked the Aregbesola-era “afsa” (half-salary), thundering with white rage, seem set for similar COVID-19 grill and grist!

The media front howls with tales of virtual business model collapse; and ripples with a revenue free fall, less than two months into the Coronavirus blitz.  Yet, it’s early days!

And the churches?  Some growling holy fathers appear progressively unimpressed!

Though the majority grimly keep faith, pious shrieks, from holy hunger, are tearing through critical quarters: some churches might be no more than sacred marts!  So, denied of worshipper market traffic (as it has been these six weeks past), they could well gasp and wilt — Holy Moses!

Still, tax or tithe, the season calls for fresh and radical thinking.  Government unusual!

That takes the discourse back to the Osun genesis.

Osun, by 2010, was the classical “civil service state”, a euphemism for structural — and perpetual — under-development.  So long as Abuja takings paid the civil servants; and their salaries drove regular low-key commerce, everyone was happy.

But then came Aregbesola and his braves — including current Governor, Gboyega Oyetola, then gubernatorial chief of staff — that wanted much more.

Their new policy activism hungered for a much more diversified investment in  infrastructure (physical and social): roads and bridges, rural and urban; and even glittering new schools, with requisite learning tools, on a scale Osun had never seen.

It also thirsted for a much more varied direct people-investment: the school feeding programme (for the government to bond with the future generation, from the majority poor and vulnerable, perhaps?), ramping up health facilities, and willy-nilly job creations, driven by the volunteer ethos, for jobless graduates and allied youths.

But the snag was there wasn’t enough cash to drive these new programmes.  Yet, those investments, particularly in ambitious road networks, and other key physical infrastructure to open up the state’s economy, could not wait, if the state were to secure a vibrant future tax base.  The resort was the debt market.

But again, the snag: public debts (no thanks to past abuses) are easy tinder for popular hysteria.  The cheaper Sukuk (Islamic bond), on the other hand, are easy grist for counter-Christian thunder, merrily amplified by media confederates.

Yet, those were the two areas Aregbesola was compelled to play, thus causing quite a bedlam!

Now, link the Osun 2010 story to the national front in 2015, and you’d be surprised at the rich parallels.

Governor Aregbesola took over a structurally stunted Osun economy.  President Muhammadu Buhari inherited a self-clobbered economy — no thanks to free-wheeling rent, flamboyant sleaze and reckless imports of what could be produced at home.

Rice is the classical example.  But it’s no more than a sick metaphor for a deluded people, that proudly ceded their food security to foreign hands.  Yet, Nigeria boasts hectares of arable but uncultivated land — people unusual!

True, there had been days of plenty, under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, when oil revenue virtually shot through the sky.

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Yet, all that cream vanished, in six short years under President Goodluck Jonathan, in a galloping reign of preening sleaze, even if it is only fair to say Jonathan was no more than a fall guy undertaker, on whose head the frenetic heist of the previous 16 years miserably collapsed.

So Buhari, faced with a near-empty till, had to resort to hard choices.  But that would send the ample beneficiaries, from the structural mirage that was the import-economy, with their media associates in tow, screaming, screeching and wailing!

Enter, the cliche “incompetence”, to dismiss Buhari’s economic policies, simply because it faced down the produce-nothing-import-everything mentality of the post-structural adjustment programme (SAP) years since 1986; and replaced it with a new war cry: “grow what you eat; eat what you grow”!

Like Osun too, Buhari attacked the deficit infrastructure with rare venom: with Babatunde Fashola, his first-term “triple” minister of Works, Power and Housing, and Rotimi Amaechi, Transport minister, throwing themselves into the job like maniacs.

But again, little cash to back the new vision, hence a resort to the debt market — and little wonder: just like Osun, the media hysterics on Sukuk-powered “Islamization”!

Despite the social safety nets, as the national schools feeding programme, N-Power job volunteer scheme, the Market-moni loans to the lowliest of trades, and even direct cash transfer to the poorest and most vulnerable nationwide (the first such pan-Nigeria intervention by any federal government since independence), the growl of “incompetence” and screech of “hunger in the land” hit fresh decibels.

Sure, there is hunger in the land, a recurring grumble, if you scour the newspapers since 1999.  Yet, with the COVID-19 devastation, and without Nigerian rice (metaphor for post-2015 record farm output) what would have been Nigeria’s hunger status today?

With closed borders all over, where will those foreign rice come from — and at what stupendous cost?

Back to Osun: without the painful developmental push, of 2010 to 2018, how could that state have faced this virulent COVID-19 challenge?

The pains and gains of government unusual, in a country of people-unusual!

On the ecclesiastical front, though many a mega-assembly screams and screeches, the Buhari era temper only cautions churches to be wary of those hefty tithes and plum offerings. Most could well be thick fat of corruption!

COVID-19 reinforces that caution, given the shameless poverty of the spirit many a cleric has exhibited, because of a temporary halt in church traffic, to save the flock, that ooze the fat, from rampaging COVID-19!

For the gasping media?  Replace herd emotion with hard thinking.  Serve what the people need, not necessarily what they want.  Utility journalism, rather than herd sensationalism, stands a better chance to secure an all-season market bond.

So, President Buhari should stick to his strategic vision of the economy. Government unusual, from the old West under Awolowo, Lagos under Bola Tinubu and Osun under Aregbesola, is seldom popular with anyone.

Yet, the pains of yore secured the gains for the present — and will, the future.

By Olakunle Abimbola

Compassion, not Abba Kyari, presidential chief of staff, died on April 17 — and it is distressing how children of hate, offspring of spite with unfazed bile, are celebrating its demise.

Hardly had Mallam Kyari’s passage hit the waves than a Facebook friend blitzed with a post:  “I am not mourning,” he crowed, “I will not pretend to mourn.  I will not mourn [a] man who held my country hostage till his death.”

“Unfazed heart of darkness!” Ripples riposted, the first to do so, but only to earn a gruff counter: “Pretence is worse evil,” to which Ripples returned, much more alarmed: “Evil presumptiveness is even more damning. Not every heart is dark!”

Along these exchanges, another friend chipped in, with what appears gentle reason.

“You don’t have to mourn,” he cautioned.  “[But] don’t gloat and talk about it,” to which our friend roared, perhaps nervously defensive: “Don’t tell me what to talk about!”

Of course, it was early days!  Soon, our friend got bolstered by fellow offspring of hate, even as many alarmed others queried his humanity.  The post grossed three shares and 48 non-verbal reactions.

Our friend won’t be denied his democratic right to rabid hate on Facebook, even as he, in holy anger, dubbed those who disagreed “hypocrites”, for rejoicing at Sani Abacha’s death in 1998 but demurred to roll out the drums at Abba Kyari’s in 2020!  Some morbid unreason, driven by even more reckless presumption!

Another — not a friend but whose post was splashed on another FB friend’s wall — even composed a full-length article, bearing his full name and “copyright”.

He took licence for bucking the traditional injunction of not “speaking evil of the dead”, and thoroughly ridiculed the late Kyari — don’t the dead stay dumb? — and triumphantly dismissed the Buhari Presidency as a band of criminals!

And what did this immaculate crusader, burning with holy ire, offer as irrefutable proof?  Stock anti-Kyari conspiracy theories; and an MTN bribery allegation, on which he offered no further proof, than the media romours already in the public space.

That anyone, not to talk of a sophisticated adult (rippling with “copyright”!), would affix his name to that crap beggars belief.  But then it was FB, with its limitless and gullible rumour-crunching millions!

Still, first thing first: beyond basic fairness and humanity, Ripples has no dog in the Abba Kyari fight.  So, the idea is to rigorously interrogate the issues, for or against.

First, the emotive Abba-Abacha comparison, with which these bristling blokes try to draw — and snare — the naive.

Fact: Abacha’s was a killer regime.  Fact: Abacha was a thief, whose humongous sleaze led to the indirect death of many (no thanks to poor physical and social infrastructure), or consigned them to avoidable poverty, which remains a plague till this day.

Fact: Abacha not only sustained the “killing” of the popular will, as borne out of the June 12, 1993 presidential election annulment crisis; he clamped the winner, Basorun MKO Abiola in gaol, where he spent his entire “presidential term”, and thereafter died in suspicious circumstances, a month after Abacha himself had passed on.

President Muhammadu Buhari, in 2018, tried to put a closure to that tragedy by rehabilitating MKO and naming, effective 2019, June 12 as the yearly National Democracy Day, as against the Olusegun Obasanjo-era May 29.

Now, what are the allegations against Mallam Abba?  That Kyari was a consummate  power player who allegedly hijacked the presidency and made himself the ruthless locus of power.

On that, he appears fairly charged.  Wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari, had cause to rail against him for alleged over-bearing influence on hubby, as part of an alleged cabal.

Kaduna Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, not one to take prisoners, also nailed him for allegedly shutting out ruling party apparatchiks, who though spilled blood during electioneering, were allegedly blocked from the pork of victory.

Sympathizers to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo also alleged the late chief of staff had elbowed the No. 2 from the vortex of power and influence.

Besides, there was this spat, over an alleged power grab, in which National Security Adviser (NSA) Babagana Monguno alleged the late Kyari was dealing directly with the Defence top brass, sans the NSA interface.

Abba Kyari, to all of these allegations, kept mum.  From the taciturn president too was deafening silence.  So, as the allegations went undefended, it’s perhaps safe to assume, other things being equal, there was no smoke without fire.

Already partly mentioned: Kyari was linked to the alleged N500 million bribe, to ensure MTN got a lower fine, from US$ 5 billion imposed on the telco, for SIM registration irregularities that bordered on dire national security. But beyond media rumours, no concrete proof got proffered.

Incidentally, it’s rather interesting how these dire third-party allegations, measure against glowing tributes, by those Kyari directly worked with.

“My loyal friend and compatriot for the last 42 years — and latterly my chief-of-staff -” the president enthused, “never wavered in his commitment to the betterment of everyone of us.”  His tribute was titled: “He was the very best of us.”

In friendship and loyalty, Abba Kyari epitomized the Buhari strength and weakness. Buhari nicked presidential glory because he kept himself from the elite decadence, nay debauchery, of his contemporaries.  So, at a paralyzing national juncture, his integrity shone through and earned him the top job.

But that same self-restraint limited his network: in his native North and Nigeria-wide.  Thus, sundry adversaries and media confederates have framed him as a narrow northern irredentist — especially those wide-and-merry hustlers and ethnic supremacists, who can’t cudgel his integrity.

It’s doubtful, therefore, if a Buhari straight-and-narrow, could cohabit with a Kyari wide-and-merry, for nearly five years (not mentioning a 45-year friendship) — except, of course, all through, Kyari had hoodwinked the president!

But even if you pour cold water on this presidential serenade, Femi Fani-Kayode, arch-enemy of PMB and his alleged Fulani “cabal”, is singing a surprise tune on this one.

Then, Foreign Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama.  He spoke of a loyal friend of 43 years; a Kanuri Muslim as Best-Man to an Igbo Catholic, wedding a Yoruba Anglican, at Ido-Ani, Ondo State; a fellow scholar at both Warwick and Cambridge universities in the UK; and a quiet but conscientious fellow, nonplussed by allegations of sleaze.  “Abba” Onyeama wrote, “was a man of unimpeachable integrity.  Absolutely incorruptible!” That “incorruptibility” seems to explain the Buhari bond.

An over-generous tribute to a fallen friend?  Maybe.  Still, Onyeama’s tribute bucked Kyari’s media “cabal” portraiture, as some operator in the darkest pit of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave; a sorry northern irredentist that hated every soul outside his dark and ultra-narrow power cabal!

Besides, his Warwick, Cambridge and Harvard resume busted another southern stereotype: the northern “Aboki” as slothful, uneducated, and uncompetitive.  Brainless bigotry we impose on ourselves!

Still, do all these clear Kyari of all the allegations?  No.  But they teach us not to bow to utter demonization from third parties, who have mutual axes to grind; and not to fall for media stereotypes, particularly ones driven by ethnic bigotry.

That would appear the lot of Abba Kyari.  May Allah forgive his sins and comfort the family he left behind.

Olakunle Abimbola

 

“Through plagues and wars, even through upheaval and revolution, there has never been an Easter like this one” — Mark Edington, Bishop of Episcopal Church in Europe, American Cathedral, Paris, France.

 

Easter 2020!

No palm-fraught street parade, on Palm Sunday, to replicate the Christ’s Jericho-to-Jerusalem triumphant ride, on a donkey’s back.

No Good Friday replica of Jesus’ painful stagger, from Pontus Pilate’s court, to nailed death, at Golgotha.

No drumming, singing and dancing at dawn on Easter Sunday, as some Aladura (Cherubim and Seraphim) sects are wont, to “announce” the glad tidings, of the glorious Resurrection.

No mass happy-go-merry picnicking in “Galilee”, on beaches and other open relaxation hubs, to mark Easter Monday.

All is quiet on the global front.  It’s the making of Corona Easter, 2020!

Easter symbolizes the Resurrection: the Christian spiritual triumph of life over death.  But the dark mood of Easter 2020 suggests the gripping fear, of putative triumph of death over life.

Yes, the highest COVID-19 death ratio hovers just above six per cent of the infected.  The CNN global figure of 109, 691 (deaths) to 1, 787, 766 cases, as at April 12, gives a ratio of 6.1 per cent.  Nigeria’s 10 deaths to 323 cases (as at April 12) is three per cent.

But for acutely pain-intolerant humans, that is absolute catastrophe, bordering on nemesis.

That most of the dead have come from the more developed 1st World of Europe and 2nd World of America, even with their glittering state-of-the-art hospitals and fearsome scientific accomplishments, hallmarks the hubris — and humbling — of science.

With such grim stalker and global cleanser — 2, 000 dying within 24 hours, in New York, USA, on April 11 — science appears not potent enough a god to worship; the physical interaction of elements, and their cause-and-effect scientific rigueur, no angels to beatify.

As science buckles, providing no snappy vaccine answers to a pandemic that ravages the globe, spirituality soars.

So for now, it’s good old prayer to the rescue!  Hope, however, reigns eternal that science, sooner than later, would get it right; and the world would wrestle back its soul — and life!

Still, it is doubtful if that world would ever be the same again.

For starters, all-mighty America arrives this definitive epoch with clearly its weakest leadership in eons, with the tweeting and bumbling Donald Trump.

But in an April 9 letter, from the 116th Congress of the United States, Uncle Sam appears pouncing on Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus and his Geneva, Switzerland-headquartered World Health Organization (WHO), for allegedly hailing China, instead of nailing it (all Easter pun intended!), over COVID-19.

What exactly is Uncle Sam’s grouse?  That China has sorted out its COVID-19 headache, while America’s is peaking in a hideous migraine, despite America’s cutting-edge scientific feats?

And how does WHO fit into that mess — beyond the Achebe-speak of a bully that hungers for a fight, only after sighting a weakling he can trounce?

Is COVID-19 and its handling — or mishandling — signifying a putative shift in global hegemony, such that whereas the 20th was clearly American, the 21st could well end as the Chinese Century?

But as America reels in Trump-etizing alarm, of presidential befuddlement in its COVID-19 response, and the best of British blue bloods, royal and political, walk under the valley and shadow of Coronavirus, help comes from the most unexpected of quarters — China, no more than a big and sprawling joke 60 years ago; and Cuba, that speck of an island, off all-mighty America’s Florida coast.

Enter, Cuban doctors, many of them offspring of African slaves shipped to the Caribbean by the cruel 1st World in capitalist greed, nobly come to save Europe, old nemesis, in dire existential need!

It is Easter, at its most profound, in humility and humiliation!

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Christ, the Divine, humbled self to save the world but earned utmost humiliation.  But all that birthed soaring Christianity, which rules the global roost, much more than Judaism, its Jewish elder cousin, ever could.

On the other hand, COVID-19 came, from virtual nowhere, to confound the capitalist haughty and wise; humble the military big and mighty.   But it relatively spares much of the Africa weak and crushed!

It’s early days though, and Belinda Gates, with the paternalistic shrill of a worried do-gooder, still dreams Africa, choking with deaths from COVID-19.

Right now, however, that apocalyptic vision appears far-off, even as COVID-19 scythes the rest of the globe.  Whether Mrs Gates’s fear would come to pass depends on our own attitude, to this clear and present danger.

That brings Easter 2020, and its local COVID-19 sundry follies, under the harsh radar.

Nothing, on this score, trumps Bauchi Governor, Bala Mohammed.  No sooner was he declared free of COVID-19 did he scuttle and slither, hand glove, face mask, et al, to a crowded Jumat service!

What the hell was His Excellency doing?  Pressing his democratic right to re-infection?  And with what thinking does he lead his people?  Blind faith that calls the Ummah to Jumat, when strict advisory warns they could all be in wilful danger of cropping COVID-19?

And what does the governor have in place, to cope with possible community transmission, the type blitzing Europe and America, even with their top-grade hospitals and top-notch medics?

Or Rivers Governor, Nyesom Wike, risking an Easter mass convocation of the faith, when he knew COVID-19 lurked?

Thank God, the Rivers led, calm and wise, seized the initiative from their leader, rash and reckless.  A similar acute followers, arresting sloppy leaders, played out in Rotimi Akeredolu’s Ondo.

Saved by the virtual bell, that two-some! Otherwise, we may now all be bracing up for crowd-induced, putative post-Easter COVID-19 crisis in both states.

Kogi, however, lacked that luck, as the faithful trooped out: Muslims for Jumat; Christians for Easter, with Jumat and Good Friday, fair potentials for double trouble!

Yet, Governor Yahya Bello, rumoured to possibly have contracted COVID-19 from Abba Kyari, presidential chief of staff, rushed out a keep-fit video, where he snorted, at a gym session: “I ain’t got no Coronavirus!  I ain’t got no Coronavirus!”  Could he, with his Easter grandstanding, have endangered his people?  Time will tell.

“On this disorienting Easter,” Bishop Edington, whose quote opened this piece, from his article, ‘The Easter of empty churches’, in www.theatlantic.com, “the moral claim of loving our neighbours, by slowing the spread of an eager and evil disease, takes precedence over the imperative to gather and celebrate.”

That common sense, in a season of global health peril, appears beyond the ken of many a Nigerian state governor.

 

By Olakunle Abimbola

When the COVID-19 public health emergency dawned, the opposition reflex suggested it was the sitting government’s problem.  Such posturing offered high prospects for political mileage; and free opportunities for sundry thunders.

But that’s probably true across the partisan aisle — show me a politician, after all, and that penchant to grandstand; that rank opportunism to game, is probably not far away!

Besides, the government here is the opposition there.  So, that mutual push to beat partisan manoeuvres, comes with the political territory.

Even then, there was something ultra-cheeky about how the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Nigeria’s leading opposition party, spurned the earliest advisory over social distancing.

It was perhaps the political equivalent of reaction to Noah and his ark.  Noah screamed and bawled: enter the ark; for with the coming flood comes certain death!

But the more he shrieked, the merrier they partied, the harder they haggled and the more total their scorn, at his grating.  Yet, alas!

In the earliest social distancing advisories, the PDP appeared to have located a partisan dummy, sold by a partisan shaman, to con a partisan enemy — a plot they were partisan-bound, to gloriously spurn!

So, they conjured up own emergency rallies, elective party congresses, local government poll campaign, or even empty pre-mature declarations — anything to work up a crowd; or scream fond exceptionalism, in a season of global health peril.  But alas!

Well, such partisan rascality is coming home to roost — and it isn’t at all pretty!  That grim error, of mixing politicking with governance, particularly where the opposition themselves are lords of the manor, is scowling at everyone!

The classic, of course, is the Oyo case.  To welcome Ekiti’s Segun Oni, in his latest crossover to PDP, the ever politicking Seyi Makinde, the Oyo governor, conjured up a “South West Unification Rally”.

Starry-eyed delegates came from Kwara and Ekiti; from Lagos, the budding local epicentre of Coronavirus; and even as far away as South-South Bayelsa, from where Governor Duoye Diri, flush from a judicial mandate, made an impassioned appearance.

An excited Makinde, regarding the wonders of his own wondrous politicking, even made a loose partisan joke about the virus.  To be fair, barely 24 hours later, he would recant and apologize.

Days later, however, Makinde would himself announce he had contracted the same virus he had dismissed as no more than partisan fib and bluff; and that he was self-isolating for treatment.

While in there — and Ripples heartily rejoices with the governor at his speedy recovery — Oyo COVID-19 cases have flared to 9, though the index case has, like the governor’s, been nursed back to full health.

Still, Makinde had better pray it doesn’t get much worse in the state.  Otherwise, he would have cropped a near-eternal partisan hobble.  Politicians, with elephantine memory for partisan mischief, forget nothing!

Still, whatever error you push Makinde’s way, his apology would come to his aid.  That cannot be said of other PDP governors, guilty of bad judgment, in this season of COVID-19.

On March 21, Rivers’ PDP at the Obi Wali Cultural Centre, in Port Harcourt, held its state elective congress when COVID-19 social distancing, which advised a gathering of no more than 20 persons, demanded a postponement.

Rivers Governor, Nyesom Wike, has apologized to no one — not the Rivers people, that the governor’s partisan choices put at risk; not the Federal Government, that days later,  Wike’s partisan grating would try to soil — but more on that presently.

Still, perhaps to slake his troubled conscience, he has gone on a manic shutting of Rivers’ “borders”: restricting state entry and exit to travellers — and what might that be?  A vigorous cure when easy prevention would do?  Or securing the prison gates, after the prisoners have bolted?

In neighbouring Cross River, the professorial state of Ben Ayade, and its budget of “Olimpotic Meristemasis”, it would perhaps appear a local government electioneering of “Olimpotic Meristemasis” — COVID-19 and social distancing be damned!

Though Mike Ushike, Cross Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (CROSIEC) chairman, announced on March 20 that the March 28 local government polls would hold, the state government, on March 24, announced its indefinite suspension, while locking down entry and exit points, among a general lockdown.

So far, there is no reported COVID-19 case in Cross River.  But who knows what harm those unguarded campaigns could have put folks in that state — and for a routine election that finally got postponed?

That takes the case to neighbouring Akwa Ibom. On March 21, obviously facing down local partisan alarmists, Governor Udom Emmanuel told his people there was no need to shut down schools, since the state had no COVID-19 case.

But viola! By April 2, all that dramatically changed: the governor was declaring a 14-day state-wide lockdown!  This followed a National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) announcement that a test just confirmed Akwa Ibom had 5 COVID-19 cases.

At first, the governor disputed the result — which made not a few to ask, not without wry humour: were they election results, that only the courts must pronounce?

In fairness, Governor Emmanuel took every precaution, save shutting down the state at earliest opportunity.  He also explained the cases were basically medics, put in harm’s way, by a patient.

Still, did the guilt, of possible bad judgment, force him to the comic disputing of a clinical result?  In which case, did the governor lean more towards politicking, and less toward governance, in his COVID-19 decisions?

Akwa Ibom’s flare from zero to 5 underscored that lack of strategic thinking, by many governors, on the Coronavirus pandemic.  In a very volatile situation, the fact that you have no present case doesn’t mean your people may not be at risk.

That takes the matter to the latter-day howling of Rivers Governor Wike, alleging “politicization” of the COVID-19 national “largesse”; in a state broadcast claiming his state had been short-changed.

But why does the governor grate like a Rip Van Winkle that has lost touch, so  sounding off key; nevertheless employing scalding emotions to contrast Rivers (with one case) to Lagos (with, as at April 5, 120; out of a total national count of 232), because Lagos received a N10 billion federal grant?

Does it not make common sense that you must deploy resources to a crisis epicentre, to stave off the mass infection of other areas?

Besides, these governors spurned earliest social distancing advisories, emanating from these same central authorities, flexing federal muscles — to be sure, no constitutional crime!

Why then this latter-day lament, of alleged if roguish claims, of being elbowed from the central COVID-19 “largesse”?  Talk of pseudo-federalists with a rentier mindset!

PDP are no devils any more than APC are angels.  But the disturbing partisan trend, in these troubled times, shows opposition could be played with more humanity, and far less rascality, for the general good of common Nigerians.

Olakunle Abimbola

 

IN a period of crisis, it’s often a wonder how the media often slinks in with herd fear, that leads nowhere but confusion and perdition.

Yet, it is expected to clarify it all, leading everyone to redemption.

Might the psychologists then be right: that a crisis exposes, with a jolt, innate temper unfairly screened by cultivated social pretences?

Media specific: might the 4th Estate be manifesting that notorious knowledge gap, of basic reportorial etiquettes it often gets away with at normal times?

Check that COVID-19 reportage in front of you.  It is either teeming with scary adjectives: “dreaded” or “killer” Coronavirus; or describing those down with the pandemic as “victims” or “sufferers”.

To be sure, those are routine in everyday jabbering in perilous times, among sympathy-filled folks; acute pain-intolerant animals, trying to bond with the afflicted.

But as reportorial tools, these adjectives become subversive sympathies, driving nothing but scare-mongering and blind panic.

In that blind but hard ride, a pandemic becomes a “scourge” or “pestilence”; and the multiplying patients are “victims”!

But victims of what, exactly?  Of breathing in contaminated air — for that is what Coronavirus basically is, since you inhale the virus, in the course of routine breathing?  How can you be victim of breathing, without which you are dead?

Or of touching surfaces, infected with the virus, and following that up with touching your eyes, nose and mouth? Ever wondered at the natural reflex of touching your own body — and the countless times you do that in a day?

Besides, if you are no victim of malaria, tuberculosis or even cancer, how can you be a victim of COVID-19?  Is it because it’s the latest pandemic, that you must howl in panic — a clear delusion, to be sure — to curtail?

After HIV-AIDS, and the havoc insensitive reporting wrought, the Nigerian media ought to have been better equipped for this one, in terms of compassionate reporting, via a carefully thought out reportorial and analytical register.

HIV-AIDS came with a severe sexual censure.  That gifted the free-wheeling moral police, bristling with holy Armageddon, the unfettered right to gloat, and the morbid mandate to flay.

If you sleep around, then deal with your comeuppance, they grated with severe triumph, much as if you do the crime, do the time! HIV’s main transmission mode is by reckless coitus.

Pronto, the skull-and-cross-bones became its instant symbol.  You mess around with HIV, you crop instant death, no story!

Those who cropped HIV became “sufferers” and “victims” of their own unrestrained libido, whose self-inflicted afflictions ought to be a dire lesson to others.  Some faith powers and principalities even introduced, as regular menu of their severe sermons, AIDS and sure peril.

The media more or less flew with that harsh, merciless and judgmental general temper.  For TV, skull-and-bones became standard illustration for HIV; with most — and this cut across all tiers of journalism — lumping HIV and AIDS as one and the same, which they were not.

Why, Nollywood also outed with many doomsday movies, one of which was the scary Goodbye Tomorrow. The film portrayed how a promising young family wilted and died because a spouse contracted the virus, and infected the other.

That fear-driven hysteria depressed thousands, that had tested positive to HIV; and sent even many more, that might have contracted the virus, scampering away from tests to clinically confirm their status!

That stigma of sex and holy condemnation, and foreboding to others unsure of their status, claimed many lives that otherwise could have been saved, had there been more restraint and empathy; and better institutional and group support.

It was not until international aid agencies launched specific programmes, in media advocacy and appropriate reportage, that the thick pall of HIV-AIDS began to disperse.

That intervention, rooted in aggressive projection of scientific facts, as distinct from popular HIV-AIDS myths, had a superlative effect — as calming as the old fear-mongering was apocalyptic.

That intervention also got most to know sex wasn’t the sole means of HIV infection (as the case of Arthur Ashe, the American tennis prodigy who eventually died of AIDS but got HIV by blood transfusion).

It also made the world realize that with proper diet and management, HIV need not end with AIDS (witness Earvin “Magic” Johnson, another American basketball prodigy, who never went down with AIDS, despite announcing, in 1991, his HIV status. Magic Johnson, now 60, lives, having finally retired a third time from basketball, after two come-backs).

Why this rather long tie-back to HIV and AIDS?  Just to draw attention to the imperative to appropriately report Coronavirus.

Right now, things are not that encouraging, starting with the notorious “Breaking!”, mostly in the social media.

Each time you see “Breaking!” (for breaking news), and it’s on COVID-19, be sure it is to announce — with glee — that another person high up in government hierarchy, federal or state, some business mogul or even some uppity “abrodian” (Nigerians globe trotters) had cropped the virus.

A frenzy greeted the announcement that Abba Kyari, the presidential chief of staff, had been diagnosed with the virus.  Now, many chirped, the president too must have it — aren’t the twain always together?  And if the president  is not announced to have had it, he surely must be hiding his status!

So the goading and insensitive game began — who are those Kyari had mingled with?  Kogi Governor Yahya Bello!  Yes,  Kyari was with him, during his mother’s funeral!  Ha, Aliko Dangote!  He too must go for a check pronto!  Vice President Yemi Osinbajo?  The ministers?  All of them must go for test o!

Somewhat, the presidential image makers succumbed to this herd unreason, by expressing joy that the president tested negative.

For private communication, that relief was understandable.  But for official communication in times of crisis, hardly so: for that presidential joy could turn blight for stigmatized other positive cases, and throw them into blind panic.

Yet, COVID-19 is no automatic death sentence.  For one, its common cold symptom, which could snowball into pneumonia if badly managed, has the hot climate here to contend with, contrasted to Europe’s bitter cold during winter.

For another, the respiratory complications, another key symptom hallmarked by violent coughing, has not recorded any fatality here so far, save the late Suleiman Achumugu, former Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC) chief, who went abroad to treat cancer and diabetes, before COVID-19 infection triggered an opportunistic crisis, that proved eventually fatal.

It might be early days yet. Still, there is absolutely no need to start stigmatizing cases of COVID-19, thereby throwing the general citizenry into panic, beyond the present awareness blitz to curb its spread.

The media, therefore, has a crucial role to play: report with tact, shun sensationalism and stigmatization, and be an epitome of compassion, in whatever news pushed out.

That is how the media can make a refreshing difference, and rein in a general hysteria, that could worsen, instead of improve, a crisis situation.