The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Paramole!

    Paramole!  That about captures the essence of Asiwaju Olorunfunmi Basorun, who turned 80 on October 15; and marked that epoch with a biography: Paramole O Koro Iwosi: Asiwaju Reuben Olorunfunmi Basorun, authored by The Nation’s Soji Omotunde.

    “Paramole” is the Yoruba for rattlesnake, which though is famously tranquil, strikes with fatal devastation when rattled.

    That was exactly Basorun’s public service essence.  Teasers:

    It was the low blues of military overthrow of the 2nd Republic (31 December 1983); and the popular fib that everyone, in the overthrown old order, was a thief.

    This reconstructed dialogue ensued between a cleared Basorun and the Police at CID Panti, Ebute-Meta, Lagos.  Basorun had gone to re-claim his international passport.

    Basorun: “Where is my US$ 1, 900 armed policemen took from my official GRA, Ikeja, quarters?”

    Police: “We have spent it on a number of things, including imprest.  But we have small change left — in Naira”!

    Basorun (taking the Naira wad and putting it in his jacket pocket), roaring: “Now, you say we politicians are rogues!  Why should you spend my money?”

    Police (mumbling): “It was not our fault …”

    Basorun (bawling): “Whose fault — the Army’s?  Shame on you, all!” — and he stormed out of Panti.

    Indeed, Paramole ko ‘ro ‘wosi — the rattlesnake brooks no insult!  How Basorun earned that cognomen was no less dramatic.

    Dada Adepari Paramole, his grandfather had, in his native Igbogbo, announced, with grim gaiety, that newborn Olorunfunmi would hasten his departure.  Pronto, a few weeks later, Grandpa Paramole died!  Enter, Olorunfunmi, the Paramole incarnate!

    No less gripping, was Albert Adewamiwa Ogumuyiwa, his biological father’s early death; and his mother, Abigail Bosede Ogunmuyiwa’s betrothal to Pa Yesufu Adeniji Basorun, a World War II veteran, then domiciled at 47, Oluwole Street, Lagos.

    The denizens of Oluwole would later be resettled at Ogba, Ikeja, segment of “new Lagos”; after Ebute Meta, Yaba and Surulere.

    Ogunmuyiwa died when Olorufunmi was five.  The boy knew his father as much as a close five-year old would; since he always accompanied the parent to his farm.  But the Ogunmuyiwas’ loss would appear the Basoruns’ gain, since the boy had to formally take his stepfather’s name.

    But at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Reuben Olorunfunmi Basorun would tangle with another Basorun, Alhaji Shittu A. Basorun (no blood relation).  The older

    Basorun threatened to scuttle his subordinate’s promising career, for inadvertently sighting the senior’s pay advice — a fulsome £100!

    CBN headhunted the younger Basorun on 5 January 1959, following his dazzling prowess in Mathematics, during his secondary school years, at Eko Boys’ High School (EBHS).

    Still, the youngster survived that initial threat — thanks to fasting and prayers, from a white garment church.  He would, much later, rise to become the spiritual head of one of such churches, The Gospel Church of C & S.

    Nevertheless, that initial battle would trigger his Paramole spirit, to fight for his right, and those of his colleagues’ at CBN, no matter the odds — and triumph, most of the times.

    Basorun would lead a strike — drafted when the initial leader was pressured out by the Gowon military government — for better welfare for CBN staff, until the Gowon government passed a decree outlawing such.

    He also wrote an unsigned, though hand-written letter, to protest CBN staff injustices, causing the Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi first military government to formally warn the CBN management against such conduct.

    Later, he would lead a group of four to write daily letters to protest being looked over for promotion, when lesser qualified staff were promoted, during the Clement Isong CBN governorship.  Though the others soon chickened out, he continued the daily protest letter, for which he was threatened with a sack by Governor Isong.

    But then, came the Murtala Muhammad coup, the sack of Isong and the appointment of Mallam Adamu Ciroma as new CBN governor.  Ciroma finally addressed the problem and Basorun (with other cheated but qualified staff) got his promotion as Assistant Director, thus attaining the CBN executive rank.

    That vaulted him into some instant CBN staff champion — “For any problem,” his fellow staff would crow, “call Basorun”!

    When he exited CBN in 1979, to join the elected Lateef Jakande government, as secretary to the Lagos State Government (SLG), he had attained the post of Deputy Director.

    Even with punitive postings to Maiduguri and volunteering to go run the Jos branch of CBN during the Araba crisis of 1966, at the apex of the Igbo pogrom in Northern Nigeria, he had rendered stellar service to the apex bank.

    That was aside from, as part-time student, earning professional epaulets as chartered banker, chartered secretary, and a BSc in Business Administration from the University of Lagos.  He would, post-Second Republic, study Law at the same Unilag; later proceeding to the Law School, Lagos, to earn a BL.

    Indeed, Basorun’s  punitive posting to Maiduguri nearly scuttled his Unilag BSc programme, but for the understanding of his Dean, Unilag’s Faculty of Business Administration, Accounting Professor, Michael Adeyemo.

    Yet, Basorun responded with nothing but excellent service to his bank.  It was no wonder then, that his latter days at CBN, under Olabiyi Durojaiye (later Senator) and Ola Vincent as Governor, was much more enjoyable.

    Paramole got to know Alhaji Jakande, in his bid to checkmate a perceived marginalization, by Ikorodu indigenes, of other natives of Ikorodu Division.

    Jakande referred him to Femi Alokolaro, a Lagos lawyer, who was coordinating Jakande’s — and Chief Awolowo’s — Committee of Friends in Lagos, the precursor to 2nd Republic Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), that won power in Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Bendel and Ondo (LOOBO) states.

    But no sooner than he joined the Committee of Friends than he became one of the brain boxes of that spectacular 2nd Republic Jakande government.  He was that government’s first SLG.  This biography also opened an intimate window into that government’s policy thrust.

    Indeed, that Basorun inevitably was made “secretary” to almost all organizations he belonged to — Lagos-wide; and in his native Igbogbo, where he has amassed tremendous community value — underscores his unstinting and meritorious service:  Jakande’s SLG, secretary to the Ikorodu Division arm of Committee of Friends; and to umpteenth Igbogbo development unions: cooperatives, community banks, etc.

    But despite the Jakande link, Basorun joined the PRIMROSE — People Resolved Irrevocably to Maximizing Resources of State for Excellence — anti-”Baba sope” [the patriarch has decreed] rebellion, against the Jakande order, in 1991.

    Paramole is as much about the personal, political, community and spiritual history of His Eminence, Olorunfumi Basorun, spiritual head of The Gospel Church of C & S, Orile-Iganmu, Lagos; as it is about the formative history of CBN and a whistle-stop history of Political Lagos, from the 2nd Republic (1979-1983) till date; and the dynamics of Igbobo’s development — at least from the subject’s agile eyes.

    It’s a treasure everyone curious about Nigerian political history must have.

  • Return of the party?

    The Akinwunmi Ambode saga, of a conceited governor duelling with party forces and losing all, may yet strengthen party discipline and supremacy, in Nigerian politics.

    That would appear the first time, as similar past bids had led to, first: intra-party elite feuding; then, messy party fissures, and finally, catastrophic consequences for the polity.

    The classic, of that ruinous trend, was the Obafemi Awolowo-Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA) Western Region bust-up, that first tore apart the Action Group (AG); and later tore to pieces the 1st Republic (1960-1966).

    But before using history to put the present in proper perspectives; and projecting, other things being equal, the probable future of party supremacy, a brief comment on Governor Ambode and Jide Sanwoolu, the new Lagos All Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial candidate.

    Contrary to gushing emotions, Ambode is no devil any more than Sanwoolu is a saint.

    The Lagos governor just stumbled where other governors — and even 4th Republic presidents, if not most chief executives of state since independence — had made hay: making themselves imperial lords over the organ that fetched them power.

    As president, Olusegun Obasanjo did it.  The present Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) angst issues partly from his willy-nilly re-sculpturing of PDP, in his own grim image.

    As we speak, Ibikunle Amosun, the Ogun governor, seems lost in that same imperialist fancy, vis-a-vis abject party conquest.  His Excellency thunders down his own Hobson’s choice as Ogun APC gubernatorial candidate, the party’s official candidate be damned!

    But before you roast Amosun as Judas-in-chief to the party cause, most of his fellow governors, across the party aisle, are steeped in similar imperious fancies.

    So, what Ambode had done — but got brutally clipped — would appear standard 4th Republic gubernatorial megalomania: an all-too-common chronic executive disorder.

    Sanwoolu would do well to learn from Ambode’s fall, though there is no guarantee, that  as governor, Sanwoolu himself won’t tread that route; if he feels he could get away with it.

    But the party also owes itself — and the people — a duty to always wield the big stick on the errant, executive or legislative.  Still, there must first be a party, in the real sense of the word; and a deliberate and sustained culture of discipline, among its hierarchs, and rank-and-file.

    No less vital: the Lagos APC must realize, and factor into its Sanwoolu gubernatorial sales pitch, that Ambode, on the performance lane, wasn’t a ringing failure.

    Though the refuse leprosy plagues his government, for its costly conceit of trying to fix what wasn’t bust, rural Lagos — witness Epe and rural Alimoso — would remember  Ambode with especial fondness.

    Perhaps since the Lateef Jakande governorship (1979-1983), no governor had treated rural Lagos as royalty, as Ambode.

    But urban Lagos too, sans the refuse plague, won’t forget him in a hurry, if he fully delivers on his legacy projects, especially the Lagos Airport access road and the Oshodi mart interchange, both now under construction.

    So, the Lagos APC must brace itself for some pro-Ambode sympathy votes, even if the governor himself seems to have embraced fealty to his party, despite his personal loss of a second term that, otherwise, he could have richly deserved.

    That tracks the discourse back to the Awolowo-SLA titanic feud, for the soul of the old AG.

    Put that side-by-side with the Bola Tinubu-Ambode-Lagos APC stand-off, and you could well trace some parallel. suzerainty

    Still, as West Regional Premier, SLA called his party’s bluff; and tried to impose, on it, executive suzerainty.  Since then, such executive conceit has plagued Nigerian politics.

    However, as defeated aspirant though sitting Lagos governor, Ambode’s submission — if it holds all through — could well re-birth the supremacy of the party, over its nominees, executive or legislative.

    Incidentally, legislators’ scorn for party platforms has also cruelly flared in the free-for-all treachery and anti-party contempt of Bukola’s Saraki’s 8th National Assembly.

    But back to the SLA-Awo-AG 1962 party imbroglio — the AG diktat to SLA, as captured  by Prof. Akin Osuntokun, in his 2010 work, S. Ladoke Akintola: His Life and Times, published by Mosuro Publishers:

    “…that this joint meeting of the Western region and Mid-Western Executive Committees of the Action Group requests the Deputy Leader, Chief S. L. Akintola, to resign forthwith the offices of Premier and Deputy Leader of the Party, failing which appropriate steps would be taken to relieve him of both posts, but, that if he resigns, the leader should give consideration to the continued availability of his services to the Party in another sphere.”

    Now, the Tinubu directive to party stalwarts, on the virtual eve of the Lagos APC gubernatorial primaries, was far less sweeping or total.  But the message was unambiguous: the governor should move or be moved, for he had derailed from the party gubernatorial masterplan.

    Yet, events leading to the AG-SLA crisis were far different from what triggered the Lagos APC Ambode ultimatum.

    The one was a party split, almost right through the middle, between the Awo and SLA tendencies.

    The other was an alleged Ambode nastiness, to party members whose sweat romped him into office; among these, irate powers and principalities, determined to force a rebellion, were their object of vile hate not summarily removed.

    But the reaction, from the media and the public, would appear similar to 1962: split between the two camps, though not in equal measures.

    Back then, according to findings in Osuntokun’s book, some newspapers, notably West African Pilot and Daily Service were gung-ho on the SLA cause; while Nigerian Tribune and Daily Express tilted to the Awo cause.

    Though Daily Times was adjudged neutral, many swore it tilted towards SLA, courtesy of the Great Babatunde Jose’s personal sympathies for SLA, while Daily Sketch would join the fray in 1964, as a domestic answer to Tribune, Awo’s personal paper.

    The public, then as now, are also divided between both camps, with not a few even fingering personality clashes (which indeed, could be part of the problem), instead of the more rigorous location of contrasting tendencies in a party collective.

    That is why, just as many posited the AG crisis emanated from Awo’s refusal to hand over real power to SLA, a rather shallow thinking also arose that Ambode’s troubles issued from Tinubu’s alleged over-bearing attitude towards the governor.

    But whatever the crisis’ reading or misreading, according to fixed biases, the Ambode response has been markedly different from SLA’s.

    Instead of playing Samson, as SLA did; and risking the roof to fall and bury the collective, Ambode seems to have embraced his sad fate with stoic grace.

    If that holds, and his party goes on to triumph at the polls, Ambode’s personal tragedy could well turn renewed hope for party discipline and supremacy.

    That could mean the return of the party to boss the Nigerian political process.  That surely, cannot be bad for Nigerian democracy, despite Ambode’s personal angst?

  • Crunch time

    Olusegun Obasanjo’s endorsement of Atiku Abubakar, for 2019, has left Nigerians with a stark choice.

    Do you want to go back to 1999, and endure a meltdown as you did in 2015 — a meltdown that the endorsing duo actively baked, during their presidential decadence (1999-2007); but which finally collapsed on the feckless Goodluck Jonathan, in 2015?

    Or buckle down to build a new country, which ethos is hard work; unlike the Obasanjo-era money without sweat, that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential years so notoriously epitomized?

    That is the stark reality facing Nigerians, thanks to the excitement of October 10.

    But more than the buzz of Obasanjo’s Atiku volte-face, the optics, temporal and spiritual, were rivetingly gripping!

    Obasanjo and Atiku somewhat serenaded each other as the Alpha and Omega of the first ruin (1999-2007).  They are quite unfazed to signal their readiness to marshal the second.

    From 1999, when the rot started, to 2015, when the rubble buried fall guy-in-chief Jonathan, the template was quite enchanting: holy platitudes to feed the multitude, hefty pork to sate the cronies, and everyone lived happily ever after — until, yet again, the plebs realized they had been scammed!

    And like the Obasanjo-Atiku temporal partnership, the spiritual patrons, of the old ruin, are no less ecstatic, about midwifing the new plague.

    Holy Father Matthew Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, point-blank told Nigerians to forget the stifling corruption of the Jonathan era, just because the man lost election and quit.

    Since irate Nigerians told the holy priest to keep his immaculate advice, Kukah has been cooking thick, bubbly gall against the Buhari order.

    Then, on Jonathan’s behalf, the holy boss at Winners Chapel, Bishop David Oyedepo, was threatening and blessing: woe upon the Jonathan fiend; bliss upon the Jonathan friend!

    But then again, the election came and the boss at Winners lost — even after the desperate Jonathan ensemble had played a ferocious Christian versus Muslim card, aside from the reckless rain of dollars!

    Since that loss, however, the holy man has gone apoplectic: naming Christian bastards, locating Muslim infidels and prophesying who will die and who will live, in a scandalous descent into graceless politics, bang on the pulpit!

    From his Zaria redoubt too, Muslim cleric, Sheik Abubakar Gumi, has gushed with scalding, eye-shutting fury, in anti-Buhari holy vitriol.

    Gumi’s friends swear his is only the fierce manifestation of holy dissent.  Others, not so taken in, point at some probable personal beef.

    But whatever has propelled Gumi’s explosive bile, it’s hardly undemocratic — at least on the personal, if not on the religious, lane.

    Which was why it was rather amusing to see the bitter trinity gather, pushing forth a new political god, Atiku Abukakar, all preen, pride and joy — again, on the personal lane, hardly undemocratic!

    Don’t know what the Muslims call such bliss.  But in Christendom, it would appear the closest to a secular Rapture!

    Yet, by Obasanjo’s own umpteenth rail, even once swearing God would never forgive him if he held otherwise, Atiku was nothing but a power knave!

    But all that has changed, in a blinding flash, en route to political Damascus: Saul has turned to Paul.  All hail new Saint Atiku.  Obasanjo has forgiven.  Nigeria has forgotten.

    Even the halo of holies, around the new partisan saint, with the doting kiss of all faiths, is rather impressive: the Ebora Owu, with nevertheless twin but fierce accreditation to Christendom Nigeria; then the bishopric pair of Kukah and Oyedepo; the one Catholic, the other, Pentecostal; finally, the Muslim Shiekh, Gumi — Allah Akbar!

    Factor in the cathedral of Rapture, the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library — first in Africa! — proud jewel of Baba Iyabo’s second coming; and you’ll probably know how and why the old order, spiritual patrons in tow, are primed for new, lucrative business!

    Well, the old, ruinous order have shown their hands.  The battle line is drawn.

    It’s left to the redemptive faction of the elite, banding with the long-suffering masses, to take the gauntlet; and prise our country from the vice clamp of these noxious forces.

    But why should anyone hearken to this war cry?  Maybe a bit of history would help.

    At every crucial juncture, Nigeria had always started with its wrong foot.

    At independence, Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, with zealous cooperation from the East, would rather cage Obafemi Awolowo, with his uppity Western Region, than build a country driven by justice, equity and fair play — until all collapsed in a military take-over.

    Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, Nigeria’s first military head of state, slammed a Unification Decree that junked Nigeria’s federalism.  Perhaps, it was honest nationalist passion gone awry.  Or ethnic short-term gain, turned long-term fiasco.  But the progenies of Decree 34 of 1966, now huff-and-puff, singing the magic of “restructuring” in 2018!

    History could be a ruthless judge!

    As midwife-in-chief in 1979, this same Obasanjo, as exiting military head of state, saw to the willy-nilly installing of the goodly President Shehu Shagari, even at the expense of short-circuiting the Electoral Act process — witness the twelve-two-third judicial crisis.  But when that 2nd Republic (1979-1983) also collapsed, in military rule, he was the first to wash off his hands.

    Now, discounting his perfidious role in Moshood Abiola’s aborted mandate of 1993, which also aborted that 3rd Republic, this same Obasanjo became the beneficiary-in-chief in 1999, after the Abacha plague had brought everyone to their knees.

    But what did he do, as first president of the current 4th Republic?  A fit of personal megalomania, sitting on the throne of presidential imperialism.

    O, not only that: a ceaseless, virulent and scalding demonization of an alleged power vermin — this same Atiku Abubakar, that Obasanjo just re-canonized on October 10, with their Lords Spiritual in tow!

    As Obasanjo preened from his throne, infrastructure nation-wide not only totally collapsed, corruption and free-wheeling sleaze assumed a post-industrial scale.

    This explosive combo explains the crippling poverty of today, which ironically these same powers and principalities are turning a campaign issue, to scam the unwary.

    And when the debacle of 16 PDP years collapsed on the luckless Goodluck Jonathan, in 2015?  The Ebora savagely danced shaku-shaku, to thumping Bata beats, in the open streets!

    The saving grace here is that Jonathan took the fall — not the republic for the umpteenth time — for the Obasanjo-Atiku era of unprecedented decadence.

    It can only be hubris playing a tragic trick — or how do you explain Obasanjo presenting Atiku, yesterday’s rotten vomit, as tomorrow’s exquisite cuisine?

    Obasanjo, Atiku, their spiritual fathers and the spite-hobbled Afenifere belong to the past. The 2019 elections must bury them all; and consign them to a rich corner of history’s garbage.

  • Ebonyi: from dust to salt

    Its founding fathers, at its creation in 1996, crowed it was the “salt of the nation”, after its abundant salt deposits, in the Okposi and Uburu salt lakes.

    But at the nadir of its huge infrastructural hole, its neighbours sneered it was the “dust of the nation” — no roads, anywhere in the country, boasted a cascade of dust more than Abakaliki, the Ebonyi capital!  A pun never sounded more devastating!

    Nevertheless now, with a developmental rebound, the extant Ebonyi order is pushing to make it the tourism hub of the nation — an enchanting destination of choice, after which Nigerian travellers and foreign tourists would soon lust.

    It’s all the salt-to-dust-to-lust story of Ebonyi at 22!

    Indeed, Abakaliki streets, on the night of September 28, had the magical look of a vast grotto.

    The roads not only gleamed with streetlights, they also sparkled and twinkled with low roadside lights, such that visibility was excellent, navigation enchanting and driving, purring.

    Many times you had to pinch yourself: when is Santa leaping out of this vast grotto, with his jumbo Yuletide gifts?

    In this nightly incandescence, the dust of the nation, slowly but surely, may well be morphing into the pearl of the nation!

    Still, that grotto was no open sesame; and Governor David Umahi, no Ali Baba, snapping his fingers, conjuring up sheer magic, less than four years in office.

    At least, that was the impression the upbeat governor gave, at a special media chat, televised live, to mark Nigeria at 58, and Ebonyi at 22.

    It was rather, the result of a sustained developmental upscale, across almost every facet of Ebonyi life: roads, with more stress on concrete, less on asphalt; flyovers, safe water provision, power, with a special bent on solar; agriculture, and even processed solid minerals.

    Indeed, processed solid minerals drive the Umahi government’s concrete road activism, thanks to huge limestone deposits; and its renewed efforts to process Ebonyi’s natural salt, also in fulsome deposits, into some industrial products.

    Yet, as show-grabbing and eye-popping as Ebonyi’s bevy of roads and new bridges are, they have elicited harsh criticisms, from the governor’s local political foes, who accuse him of “wasting” scarce resources on prestige projects, while shunning the basics.

    What does it profit Ebonyi, such foes probably growl, that Abakaliki fountains sparkle with water jets, while residents there lack sparkling drinking water?

    But Governor Umahi, unfazed and unrepentant, just countered: ”Tell those who criticize me for building roads and bridges that the beautification of Abakaliki, the state capital, has just started.”  The packed State House auditorium exploded with cheers!

    That declaration somewhat echoes Chinua Achebe’s 1975 collection of essays, Morning Yet on Creation Day!  Indeed, in Umahi’s Ebonyin, it is morning yet on renewal day!

    In the governor’s logic, beautification births city beatification, since solid investment in tourism infrastructure offers Ebonyin a future bliss, in tourists-driven new jobs, earnings and wealth!

    For starters, the governor, with infectious passion, talks of a Muhammadu Buhari Glass  Tunnel; an Ebonyi version of the famous Dubai Mall; a specialist medical facility, projected as an Ebonyin hub for medical tourism; and an ecumenical centre — “biggest and best” — to serve as magnet for faith tourism!

    That President Buhari’s name somewhat bobs up in Umahi’s tourism vision, speaks to his rather liberal and accommodative politics, sans needless confrontation, powered by ethnic jingoism — a clear breath of fresh air.

    Besides, a Goodluck Jonathan Boulevard, cohabiting with a Muhammadu Buhari Glass Tunnel, may well be teaching the rest of Nigeria principled collaborative politics, without compromising fealty to politicians’ partisan platforms.  That appears the Ebonyin governor’s prime political philosophy.

    At the core of the Umahi infrastructural activism is the primacy of cement.  That triggers an urgent need to leverage Ebonyi’s vast limestone deposits, already drawing the attention of three Nigerian cement majors: Ibeto (new investors in Niger Cement, Nigercem), Lafarge and Bua, all soon to set up shop in the state.

    Little wonder then, that the governor reeled out a list of roads, in different parts of the state, most of them eight-inch deep concrete works, in advanced stages of completion.

    Though the governor admitted the entry cost of cement roads could be higher, its long-term durability, with minimum maintenance, makes them an absolute bargain.

    Aside road, another core project is power.  Solar-powered electricity, the governor announced, would soon bath, in streetlights, all of Ebonyin’s 13 local governments; each, for a cumulative stretch of 10 km.

    But even this project is a putative work-spinner for local artisans.  From this month, solar panels, to power the project, would be manufactured in the state, courtesy of some Chinese investors, thus employing hundreds of Ebonyi youths.

    But even with the infrastructural upgrade, the Umahi governorship is not about taking its eyes off Ebonyi’s famous rice cultivation and processing.

    To boost general agriculture, the governor announced an ambitious fertilizer project that would make Ebonyi the fertilizer capital of the whole of the South East.  And wastes, from Abakaliki’s rice mills, would also come handy, to generate off-grid electricity for some communities.

    But away from brick-and-mortar and tourism lure and lustre, Ebonyi’s social infrastructure, with a special focus on education, also takes a centre stage.

    Though Ebonyi already funds free primary and secondary education, the state is putting in place 13 primary and 13 secondary model schools — one each, in its 13 local government areas.

    Science-driven, the governor hopes to turn these schools into nationwide reference science primary and secondary academies.  Requirement for entry?  Strictly merit.

    Much higher at the tertiary level, the governor not only talked of a policy to peg fees for tertiary education, he also told the gathering that 10 per cent of every kobo Ebonyi earns goes into funding grants and subventions, to its tertiary institutions.

    Reeling out more achievements during the telecast — flood control and management; community security via neighbourhood watches; low crime rate, resulting from positive youth engagement; resolving community feuds and border disputes at the Ebonyi-Cross River border areas; civil servants’ special rice cultivation scheme, among others — the governor oozed a rare bonhomie, to turn Ebonyi into the very best, in every sphere.

    But that geniality vanished, each time the discourse turned to the local political opposition.  Neither the governor, nor his local traducers, take prisoners!

    But that is no surprise.  It’s virtual election eve and the governor is running for second term.  Indeed, all politics is local!

    But no matter Abakaliki’s local political in-fighting, Ebonyi appears a place to watch in developmental politics.

    If the current momentum is sustained, history may yet mark up the Umahi era as Ebonyi’s Renaissance.

  • Osun: hubris trumps hubris

    In Osun, hubris just trumped hubris — alleged arrogance of performance, trumping bumbling hedonism, venality and vanity.

    It was an ultra-close call — and it wasn’t pretty!

    Up till the last second, the wide and merry way to Ekiti, Ayo Fayose’s Ekiti, was beckoning — satanic allure, charm, magic, force and all.

    But as in Ekiti, Osun’s escape came from the Biblical rejected stone; which became the crucial pillar, in Gboyega Oyetola’s win.

    Dayo Adeyeye, a run-away progressive, in Ekiti, nicked the Kayode Fayemi encore.

    Imagine what could have happened, had Adeyeye not broken ranks with Fayose, thus exiting with the bulk of his Ise-Orun votes?

    In Osun, it was the much vilified Iyiola Omisore that made the difference.  Whatever his controversial political biography, history would record his critical support, which tilted the scale, when it mattered most.

    Otherwise?  Like Fayose’s Ekiti, Ademola Adeleke would have vaulted Osun right back into the Stone Age.

    Or how would you fancy a 58-year old, that flunked his school certificate examination in 1981, but is linked to an alleged examination forgery in 2017, for the same O’ Level certificate, even as a sitting senator of the Federal Republic, gunning for a South West governorship in 2018?

    What people vote such a persona, and hope all would be well?  That is the depth of Osun’s narrow escape, with less than 500 votes — the closest in Nigerian gubernatorial election history!

    Still, like Ekiti, which plumbed the Fayose debacle, the Omisore intervention may yet prove very costly — except both sides strictly stick to the terms of their deal.  But more on that presently.

    The Osun see-saw is clearly a grim metaphor of acute retardation in Yoruba political thinking.  In a South West that prides itself unrepentantly progressive, basking in the infallibility of the Obafemi Awolowo vision, a reactionary incubus is setting in — and its long shadow seems getting longer by the day.

    In 1999, an Ademola Adeleke candidacy, in any South West state, would have been the butt of derision, to be furiously guillotined on Election Day.  Yet, an Osun of 2018 nearly saw a headless dancer, that articulated near-nothing, almost coasting home to victory.

    But give it to the Yoruba conservatives.  In their desperation for election wins, they don’t mind throwing any jerk at the electorate.  That is why the Osun PDP would look over an Akin Ogunbiyi, and pick an Ademola Adeleke.

    Fayose was governmental poison, sugar-coated and packaged as stomach infrastructure champion.  But  Adeleke’s paralyzing profile, of a gubernatorial vacuum, appears even worse than Fayose’s infantile tomfoolery.

    That should plumb an all-time low — at least, in the Yoruba South West.

    Yet, all that seemed not to matter.  The Afenifere, in Omisore’s Social Democratic Party (SDP), seemed ready to cut a deal with Adeleke, ideological warts, barrenness and all.  At that fatal moment, their ancestral feud with Bola Tinubu triumphantly trumped their fealty to Awo’s developmental ideology!

    It took an Omisore, pariah in good times, comrade in grudge times, to puncture their delusory ballon; and show a far keener sense, of both history and posterity.

    Long before, much of the South West media had turned livid with scalding, plebeian hate, against a sitting governor; and profaned the public trust in their care, with personal hostility; and institutional rascality and vendetta.

    No thanks to this rabid hysteria, from an otherwise respectable society turned so despicable in their professional misconduct, outgoing Governor Rauf Aregbesola, had become the devil-in-chief, fit for severe roasting.

    Yet, compare and contrast to neighbouring Ekiti, and the callous conspiracy would appear clear.

    Even on the skewed passion on salary defaults — a pan-Nigeria crisis fraudulently shaped as exclusive Osun “wickedness” — proclaim Aregbesola guilty as charged.  Yet, did Ekiti’s Fayose who, in his cheap theatrics, had earlier joined in the Aregbe roasting, do better?

    Now, contrast Fayose’s parlous infrastructure re-stock to Aregbesola’s record, in futuristic roads, bridges and eye-popping schools, among others.

    Which of the two would history remember to have dug deep and made a brilliant difference, even at a time of acute adversity?

    It is eerie, indeed, that Osun’s September 22 election nearly repeated history, ironically at the dawn of an earlier epochal developmental push, in the old Western Region.

    The great Awo had launched the free primary education programme.  But some elite back then, as some Osun elite now, thumbed down the project, in a blitz of fearsome propaganda, led by the opposition National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC).

    The next federal elections, Awo’s Action Group (AG) lost — and urban Ilesa and Ife, proudly NCNC bastions, gloried in the AG loss.  On September 22, most of Ijesa, urban or rural, would have gloated over an APC loss, just as urban Ife went SDP.

    But whatever the present hurts, just like the great Awo, history would be far kinder to Aregbesola.

    He has put in place quality infrastructure to make the next set of Osun youths very competitive, via quality education.  He has also laid a solid infrastructural foundation that, if continued, could, in a short time, vault Osun from the puddle of “civil service state”.

    Moreover, he more than any politician of his generation, has demonstrated fierce fealty to South West integration, as a key engine of Nigeria’s re-federalization.

    Awo would later call his electoral loss, for doing the right thing, “eebu d’ola” (insult-turned-praise).  For his developmental work in Osun, across many strata of society, Aregbesola’s swan song won’t be much different.

    But that doesn’t, in any way, suppose he didn’t make his own mistakes.  He did.  Not a few, friend or foe, would continue to pepper him for leading his party from a near-thumping majority in 2014, to a cliff-hanging win in 2018, aside from a net-loss in his native Ijesaland.  Still, it could have been worse!

    That takes the discourse back to Alhaji Oyetola, the governor-elect.  If it were a parliamentary poll, the Osun mandate would birth a “hung parliament”, with neither government nor opposition having a clear mandate.

    That just shows the ultra-tight rope Oyetola has to walk; and somewhat maintain a delicate balance.  It is good he has pledged an all-inclusive government, driven by mass consultation.

    On immediate expediencies, he must consummate, to the letter, the Omisore deal.  Otherwise, he risks an election-time ally turn an implacable foe.

    Besides, such unconsummated deals, in Ekiti, gave Ayo Fayose political resurrection, that almost doomed all Ekiti to collective death.  To boot, it also turned Omisore against the Adelekes, when it mattered most, after their Osun West collaborative senatorial triumph.

    But on no account should Osun’s developmental strides be halted: the school feeding programme and other social safety net schemes, road infrastructure and futuristic schools — within budgetary limits of course.

    That is the hard road to gubernatorial greatness — beyond the short-term lure of belly politics.

  • Again, rule of law bogey

    President Muhammadu Buhari’s first term started with the bogey of rule of law.  It is ending with the bogey of rule of law.

    Just how taut can you stretch that bogey, faced with nation-threatening decay?

    Nigeria, at independence, didn’t quite put its best leadership foot forward.  Still, it wasn’t all doom, for not a few projected its huge potentials, which they linked to the fortune of Africa.  If Nigeria soared, Africa would not sink.

    But then, decadent leadership, with indifferent followers, all but sank all that.  The endless debacles saw the eventual collapse of the 1st Republic (1960-1966).

    Then came the era of military rule, even with the civilian interregnum between 1979 and 1983.  With or without the rule of law, the military era too, witnessed progressive decadence.

    The surface of that decadence was crippling corruption.  But its core was the total collapse of the value system, such so that there was hardly any sense of right and wrong.

    Then came the 1999 re-entry of democracy.  While leaders mouthed rule of law and citizens’ economic rights, governance itself collapsed into a den of robbers.  Its sole business appeared the sole pleasure of those garrisoned in there and their cronies; not the welfare of the collective that put the government there.

    The nadir of this dysfunction, a logical pile-up from the Olusegun Obasanjo years, was the Goodluck Jonathan presidency; and the rot that oozed from it at its fall, after its 2015 election loss.

    That rot provoked an outrage that many times threatened mob justice, by a good segment of the population that counted themselves cheated.  But that would have been a tragic extreme.

    Still, how do you rein in such putrescence, when those who pulled off the great heist, courtesy of an illicit trove, now wave “rule of law” at your nose, not because the rule of law is undesirable but as a bogey to escape justice?

    So, at the sight of that bogey, do you just surrender, knowing full well it is disaster assured?  Or you tweak things a bit to make the rogue class far less comfortable?

    How was it done in other climes? Ancient Greece, since it shaped modern Western thinking, remains a classical guide.  Of course, France and Britain also offer some clue.

    Athens, which under Pericles (495-429 BC) became the best of everything in antiquity, much earlier in 7th century BC, was buried in decadence.  Yet with progressive reforms, by a triad of lawgivers, Draco, Solon and Pericles, Athens reinvented itself.

    At its nadir of decadence, when Draco became lawgiver (7th century BC), it was shock therapy.  Draco, riled by the paralysis wrought by the old oral laws, wrote down the laws, for the first time in Athenian history.  The Draco codes were decidedly severe, just to stamp out the decay.  Hence, the English word, “draconian”.

    Then came Solon, in another epoch (6th century BC).  His was an era of liberalization, toning down the harshness in the law of Draco.

    Considered among the seven sages of antiquity, Solon’s liberalism laid the foundation for democratic Athens.  Still, without Draco’s severity, Solon’s liberalism would have been impossible, for liberalism, built on decay, is foundation for further decadence.

    For Athens, all came together for good under Pericles (495-429 BC). That was the Athenian Golden Age, otherwise called Periclean Athens.

    During that epoch, Athens was the clear leader in democracy, philosophy, the theatre, mathematics and the sciences — thus fore-shadowing what the Western Hemisphere, led by the United States, would look like in the modern era, even if Athens’ key rival, Sparta, would also offer some prototype for modern USSR (now defunct).

    Indeed, no thinker of note considered himself complete until he bench-marked his mind against peers in the great Athenian academies, forerunners of today’s universities; or working in affiliation with them.  To boot, Athens had become a great naval power!

    So, an Athens that was practically buried in own decadence, before Draco applied his shock therapy in severe laws, had, under Pericles, soared to become the exemplar in everything — democracy, scholarship, liberal thinking and even military might.

    Yet, irony of ironies: all these were grounded in Draco’s severity!  Just imagine, how might Greece have panned out if, given the decay of Draco’s time, someone was still pussy-footing with “rule of law”?  That is a lesson for Nigeria of today!

    But leaving the ancients for the not-so-ancient: England and France.

    England’s rebirth came with the reformation of Oliver Cromwell, “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland” (from 1653 to 1658, when he died), after the execution of Charles I (1649).  The monarchy was restored with Charles II, from 1660.

    Unlike England that regained its monarchy, thanks to Cromwell’s bloody reformation, France lost its monarchy forever, after the French Revolution (1789-1799).

    Though Napoleon Bonaparte would later impose some imperial throne, as Emperor and head of the French Empire (1804-1814), the French monarchy never really made it back.  Charles Dickens, in his A Tale of Two Cities, captured the mood of revolutionary France.

    So, apart from Athens, England and France also endured some meltdown, no thanks to a decay in the monarchy, at a stage in their history. That jolt shaped the rebirth that made them the countries they are today.

    Again, at these times, would anyone have been crowing about the rule of law?  When you rape the rule of law, the rule of the mob takes over.

    To Nigeria, the nasty experience of England and France is instructive: mouthing the rule of law, without linkage to the sad realities of the moment, even as some shock therapy, could just bait a future disaster.

    Nigeria must be careful not to tilt just into that cauldron.

    Now, this submission in no way backs or excuses citizens allegedly languishing in DSS cells, without trial.  That should have no place in a democratic setting, particularly after decades of military rule.

    The government should therefore move fast to either try all those involved, or free them, if there is no valid case against them.

    It is rather to impress it on everyone, not the least the “rule if law” campaigners, to realize the country, no thanks to past bad choices, is going through a very painful era.

    A clique of robbers, ensconced in past governments, had stolen the country blind, causing mass poverty, no thanks to the greed of a few.

    As double jeopardy, this ensemble has enough cash to buy the most unscrupulous and unconscionable of lawyers, who for a fat fee, think little of getting these crooks off the hook, even if they are not in doubt about their culpability, if not outright guilt.

    It is such brazen social injustice that ruptures the tiny thread that holds societal trust; and sends the state into a whirlpool of catastrophe.

    So, this cynical “rule of law” lobby is up to no good.  It is nothing but another rogue rally to escape justice, and further embitter the cheated and the dispossessed.

    Something must give in a society in free-fall decadence, transiting to some form of accountability.  Any departure from this natural path might just be a danger to everyone.

    Every people have to tweak their laws, at a time of high decadence, as redemptive tool.  That is what Athens’ rise from decay to glory has taught the world.

  • Restructuring, distemper and dystopia

    Restructuring” proponents — classicists, neophytes or even rank opportunists — love to have Vice President Yemi Osinbajo for dinner, over his Minnesota, USA, address, to diaspora Nigerians.

    In “restructuring”, these lobbies have conjured up a utopia where, as in the fairy tale, everyone would live happily ever after!

    Dare to differ, and they work themselves up — with the ready, teeming and merry army of the gullible — into a rabid distemper.

    That distemper, in a high season of high-wire posturing, brands non- or even partial conformists, as high enemies of the people; that bait a future dystopia.

    That is the strait-jacket the current restructuring orchestra are framing a post-Minnesota Osinbajo!  It is nothing but cheap blackmail.

    Yet, barring any fixation with a trending cliche, the Vice President is no less right than the impassioned restructuring ensemble.

    That is simply because, from the beginning, he has been in on a strain of “restructuring”, even if his own core track, dating back to the Bola Tinubu Lagos governorship (1999-2007), is fiscal federalism.

    As Lagos attorney-general and commissioner for Justice, Osinbajo bloodied the nose, in the courts, of the Obasanjo Presidency (1999-2007), a government in which, by the way, Atiku Abubakar, now posturing as new restructuring Prince, was No. 2.

    At Minnesota, therefore, Vice President Osinbajo only stayed glued to his core belief.

    Still, give it to the restructuring classicists, Afenifere: restructuring has always been their core agenda; just as it is a pristine South West rally, spaning no less than three political generations.

    It birthed with Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s ethnic federalism, which he espoused in his 1947 classic, Path to Nigerian Freedom — that durable fundament of Nigerian federalism, to which the 1st Republic never fully conformed.

    With military rule’s over-centralization, which came with charges of internal re-colonization against military-era northern czars, Awo’s pristine theory mutated into the “national question”.

    That spiked when Gen. Ibrahim Babangida started dribbling everyone, and the late Alao Aka-Basorun, and fellow braves in 1990, attempted Nigeria’s own sovereign national conference (SNC), following Republic of Benin’s feat of that same year, which birthed, for it, a new constitution.

    The latest strain, of that mutation, is the current restructuring buzz.  The June 12 injustice, against Basorun MKO Abiola, had reinforced the clamour for SNC to re-federalize Nigeria.

    That dovetailed into the questioning, by progressive elements, of the legitimacy of the 1999 Constitution, calling for an SNC to correct the fraud.

    That campaign, near-exclusively South West, would rage all through the Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan presidential era, peaking in an election-eve National Conference gravy in 2014, which sucked the Afenifere into Jonathan’s 2015 electoral agenda.

    So, though the Afenifere were restructuring classicists, their election fiasco, in the Jonathan camp of 2015, has left them with “restructuring” as sole ticket to continued political relevance.

    To worsen matters, a faction of the South West progressive mainstream, of which VP Osinbajo is part, are top partners in the Buhari Presidency.  So, it’s perfectly understandable if the Afenifere and allies gore Osinbajo to have, on restructuring, “betrayed” Awo, his great grandfather-in-law.

    Again, that is nothing but arrant blackmail.

    But somewhat, Afenifere’s “restructuring” has gathered some nation-wide moss, no thanks to severe pains, from severe economic changes; and some shared resentment against the so-called “Hausa-Fulani”, in the Nigerian power mix.

    Without necessarily discounting the excellent re-federalization prospects of pristine restructuring  — which, by the way, Ripples had earlier written umpteen articles to canvass — anti-Hausa/Fulani resentment (by southern elements) and progressive posturing (by northern elements, essaying a power capture) power the latest restructuring strain.

    Indeed, a rather interesting mix, this new restructuring orchestra!

    First, the South East political elite that, right back to the Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi first military regime (January to July 1966), had helped to promulgate the Unification Decree 34 of 1966.

    That decree not only dismantled the 1st Republic’s regional federalism, it also helped to erect — and milk, with the now hated “Hausa-Fulani”, over the years — a dysfunctional centre.

    That elite, as unfazed neophytes, intoxicated by the giddy wine of new belief, are new ”restructuring” radicals!  Instructively, Prof. Ben Nwabueze, who in 1966 was a Unification  Decree young Turk, is now the wise and wizened Solon of new-found restructuring!

    The trio of Nwabueze, the late F. C. Nwokedi, a federal permanent secretary and the late C. C. Mojekwu, attorney-general of the defunct Eastern Region, were linked to Decree 34, itself a near-wholesale lifting of the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) 1951 manifesto, which craved a unitary Nigeria.

    Then, the South-South lobby!  Throughout Jonathan’s six presidential years, that elite was too busy, trying to foist minority domination, over the majority — ”restructuring” be damned!  — on this same flawed centre.

    Yet, the Jonathan era offered the most golden opportunity to push that campaign.

    The northern “neo-progressives” complete this new sweetheart coalition.  Among those, former VP Atiku Abubakar fancies himself as some self-crowned Pericles, Nigeria’s answer to the czar of progressive thinking in ancient Athens!

    That is rank opportunism, given Atiku’s funereal quiet over restructuring during the Obasanjo power years.  Besides, when did the peripatetic Atiku start standing for anything durable, beyond his perpetual flux of political parties, to chase illusive power?

    Beatified, the Afenifere high priests, with near-divine swagger, are sweating in the “restructuring” high shrine: canonizing some; excommunicating others.  That would explain the “we-have-endorsed-Atiku-no-we-have-not” mix-up!  It’s excellent election-eve fever!

    Still, all these restructuring-buzz-as-sweet-lollies, to lull adherents into some magical future, issue from a debacle: too much central cash chasing absolutely no value.

    The result is crippling corruption, which the Buhari Presidency has been condemned to battling.

    Now, Osinbajo’s Minnesota message seeks to uproot that debacle of over-centralization: you must radically tweak things, so that every kobo chases radically increased value.

    That is the long and short of the Vice President’s case.  That can’t violently jar against “restructuring”, can it?

    So long for election-eve buzz!

  • Osun: to make or to mar

    Reading “Re: Osun: Looking back, looking forward” (The Nation, August 14), former Osun Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola’s riposte to “Osun: Looking back, looking forward” (Republican Ripples, August 8), you can’t but treat, with renewed respect, the Okuku prince.

    Oyinlola felt Ripples was unfair, by that unflattering analysis, which asserted Oyin left Osun in ruins.

    He launched a trenchant counter, reeling out his government’s achievements — Osun State University, Osun Government House, Osun House, Abuja, ending the Ife-Modekeke bloody feud, etc.

    But the renewed respect is not for his claims.  Those, anyone can juxtapose with the Aregbesola era — and judge the better or the worse.  It is rather for the civility of his riposte.  That’s how public discourse should go.

    Oyinlola, a past PDP governor, at least flaunted some achievements.  But Ademola Adeleke, PDP candidate for September 22, and future governor if he wins — what might he flaunt after?

    Bland and banal — witness the big question over his education; and legitimate worries over the analytical quality of his mind — his campaign message is shallow and hollow.

    Indeed, his banality powers a ghoulish sense of entitlement, that cynically throws the dead in your face.  Or why else does the late Serubawon’s silhouette tag every Ademola gubernatorial poster or billboard, like some benign ghost?

    This ghoulish appeal is desperate political necromancy taken too far!  Can’t the PDP candidate convince the living without resort to some morbid cant?

    Besides, his many layers of gubernatorial abstraction: first, the ghost of Isiaka; then, the huge shadow of Deji, another big brother though mercifully living; finally, the mirage of Ademola!  Pray, who are the electors voting — some eerie trinity of a phantom governorship?

    Candidate Adeleke, beautiful dancer, lugs too much emptiness to suggest he lacks the rigour to govern a post-Aregbesola Osun.

    Another ex-PDP, Iyiola Omisore, bristles and bustles, as Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate.  And to be fair, not a few swear, he runs an innovative campaign.

    Still, Omisore comes with crippling baggage. For starters, the Bola Ige apparition just won’t go away.

    Then, the Baba Alagbado of four years ago, crunching double cobs on the hustings to impress the gullible he was Osun’s Ayo Fayose, now plays the well-heeled policy wonk, hot, fresh and smoking from Barcelona, hawking the wonkiest ideas on public-private sector-participation (PPP)!

    Even the Saul to Paul conversion, in a blinding flash en route to Damascus, couldn’t have been more stunning!

    Still, the glue yoking these two violently contrasting folks, in a single persona, hints at some Jerkyl and Hyde.  It’s a befitting tribute to Himself, the unfazed political fantasist, whose eyes twinkle with hyperboles!

    Another ex-PDP,  Fatai Akinbade, a decent guy those who know him swear, holds the African Democratic Congress (ADC) ticket.  Since he was secretary to the Oyinlola government, perhaps the Oyinlola-era “achievements” would serve him in good stead.

    Still, that could be an albatross in other quarters, just as Oyinlola himself, as the first face of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s “third force”, sent not quite a few scurrying from that gambit.  ADC is the diminished result.

    Besides, the Obasanjo South West occupation era (in Osun, 2003-2010), with its sterile, painful and retrogressive memories, might just take the sting from the Akinbade candidacy — at least from the progressive-minded.

    Unlike the PDP and allied clans, pushing the PDP, SDP, and ADC tickets, the Action Democratic Party (ADP) candidate, Moshood Adeoti, is a dyed-in-the-wool progressive, and ex-APC (Aregbesola’s estranged former secretary to the Osun government).

    His progressive credentials dated back to the pristine Alliance for Democracy (AD) days; and dovetailed into that difficult era, when Aregbe’s Oranmiyan Movement was wresting power from the Oyinlola conservatives. Then, Adeoti was Osun Action Congress (AC) chairman.

    He was also a veteran of Ilesa prison, during those terrible days of mandate reclamation, when the Oyinlola government ferociously dug in; thrusting its fist of mail, to willy-nilly retain power it eventually lost.

    Whatever made Adeoti fall out with his APC comrades, he had better win the September 22 election.  Otherwise, he just might become Osun’s version of Chief Ebenezer Babatope: a progressive bawling and screaming, all alone, from conservative wilderness!

    Gboyega Oyetola, former chief of staff to the incumbent governor, is the APC candidate.  If he wins, he would be chief beneficiary of the Aregbesola legacy.  Truth be told, he stands the best chance of pushing those legacies higher, since he was part and parcel of it all, these past eight years.

    But as candidate, and even succeeding governor, he would also be peppered with the Aregbesola-era liabilities — mainly the salary back log and the ultra-emotive outcry over debts, if only to wish away the impressively visible infrastructural strides.

    Still, Oyetola must do more targeted and bloc campaigns, pitching specific interest lobbies, to build on the assets and deflate raw emotions on the liabilities.  Those who have pretty little to offer, on cutting reason, gladly shovel out hot emotions to scald the gullible.  To be elected, he must checkmate such blackmail.

    All things considered, however, Osun’s best bet would be to broadly continue with the economic policies and developmental politics of the Aregbesola years.

    Oyinlola might claim valid achievements.  But the fair-minded know they hold no candle to the Aregbesola years — penetrating infrastructure to open up the Osun economy; a novel schools feeding programme that has radically hiked primary school enrolment; a no less revolutionary youth volunteer scheme, OYES, that grooms volunteers for self-employment; futuristic schools and roads never witnessed before in Osun; and an aggressive rural-urban integration development policy, epitomized by RAMP — rural access and mobility project — championed by the World Bank and zealously embraced by the Aregbe government.

    Yet, at this crucial juncture, Osun is a throwback to that Yoruba folklore, of the magical orchard, and singing trees.

    While the noxious fruits burst out in sweet chatter — kami-kami-kami! (pluck-pluck-pluck me!), the wholesome remain near-mute, in self-assured restraint.

    A Yoruba equivalent of the biblical wide-and-merry, and straight-and-narrow; as the Osun retrogressive voices now make the most racket?

    The Osun gubernatorial electioneering is a cacophony of clatter!  Yet, the electors must make a choice.

    A wise choice would vault Osun from the puddle of “civil service state” (a euphemism for economic retardation), where the payment of salaries would be routine, since the expanded economy can cater for every legitimate need.  That is what penetrative infrastructure does.

    A foolish one?  Go no farther than the neighbouring Ekiti where, in four short years, Ayo Fayose has rolled his state, backward, into virtual Stone Age.

  • Renaissance man at 70

    Muyiwa Hassan, ace photo journalist now with The Nation but one of his former staff at the defunct The Anchor newspaper, thought he was springing a pleasant ambush.

    His photographic muse told him to create a giant, almost life-size portrait of Dr. Adewale Adeeyo, long, long before he turned 70, on August 27.  But he got the surprise of his life — Adeeyo flipped.

    “Muyiwa,” he remonstrated with his familiar, passionate loving anger, “I don’t hang giant photographs in my sitting room!  I’m no illiterate!”

    The man was grateful but pained.  Pained, because he would be loath to jettison a strong personal principle.  Yet, anxious not to hurt another, who just translated his love and awe, into his own idea of concrete honour.

    After much soul-searching, he hit a heart-rending compromise: according to Hassan, he found a place, for the giant frame, in his bedroom!

    Whether only illiterates are gaudy enough to adorn their sitting rooms with giant self-photos is debatable.

    But that impassioned protest spoke of the quintessential Adeeyo — debonair, avuncular, cosmopolitan, polite and refined; class, permanent and quiet, that need not be showy.

    Indeed, his sitting room, neither sparse nor expansive, nevertheless roomy enough, is a virtual harvest of African and continental art, crafts and sundry artifacts, some of them framed.

    Were Adeeyo to live in that epoch when the Church was fissuring, he would gladly have hugged the simple taste of the Protestant Movement, and shunned the ornate baroque of the Catholic mother church.

    That much was clear, as some 50 or so people — family, friends, business associates and well wishers — gathered in art-powered serenity, to offer Islamic prayers, ushering him into his 70th year, that Monday morning.

    But no matter their stations, everyone appeared at peace, gathered under the Adeeyo simple, serene but elegant code.  That is the quintessential Adeeyo, at peace with making friends across different spectrums.

    The ever loyal Hassan was there, clicking away to capture the landmark.  But so too, were the high and the mighty, across the professions, economic sectors and even the political rainbow.

    The Adelekes, Adedeji and Ademola, Adeeyo cousins from their Ede nativity, were there.  So was Mrs Funso Amosun, First Lady of Ogun State.

    Though no Muslim, The Nation’s very own Prof. Adebayo Williams also graced the prayers, apparently representing, at least symbolically, the literati and allies clans — a constituency the “birthday boy” can rightfully count himself to belong; with which, nevertheless, he loves to cut-and-thrust.

    That would explain his investment in The Anchor, a newspaper that, in its short life span, established a high intellectual hue.

    Much later, at the garden party, Wale Edun, The Nation Board Chairman and man of exquisite taste himself, would join the celebration.  So would Sola Adeeyo, the celebrator’s well-heeled nephew, and virtual neighbour.  And also, Adewale Maja-Pearce, famed Anglo-Nigerian with the piercing pen.

    At the morning prayers, aside from the clerics, from his native Osun and from Lagos, were two ladies with a striking resemblance.  Prof. Williams explained they were daughters of the late S.B. Bakare, one of the richest and most connected Nigerians of his time.

    I first got to meet Adeeyo, at The Anchor office suites, in Lagos.  The Anchor, then seriously unanchored, was reeling in a gale; and the staff, near-fatalism, believed only the “Chairman”, with steady hands, if not magic wand, would stay the course.

    He had been away overseas on medical emergency, following a robbery attack.  It was formative years for The Anchor, and not a few believed his absence, at that critical period, made all difference in the newspaper’s fortune.

    When he eventually emerged, atThe Anchor suites that early evening, he made quite an impression on the many, meeting him for the first time — his politeness, suaveness, exquisite dress sense, intellectual curiosity, freshness and, well, youth.

    That sense of “youth” would strike his guests even more, when in not-so-casual discourse, at his 2018 Ileya feast open house, he casually announced he would be 70 a few days hence!

    And intellectual curiosity!  That was what he brought to The Anchor Editorial Board, which he always found time to attend.  The Board’s inaugural chairman was the late Tunji Oseni, before the journalism icon became former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s chief spokesperson.

    Even after Alhaji Oseni left and Prof. Ralph Akinfeleye, of the University of Lagos, took over, the board was still a multidisciplinary dream team: Prof. Ayo Olukotun, Prof. Diji Aina, now vice chancellor, Caleb University, Bunmi Adetunmbi, rigorous development thinker and former senator of the Federal Republic, Wale Maja-Pearce, Ngozi Asoya, Osita Nwajah, now with EFCC, Tunji Adegboyega, now deputy chairman, The Nation Editorial Board, Dapo Aderionola aka Africa, and, of course, yours truly.

    That board celebrated many Nigerian and African feats, hinting at some African Renaissance, at the turn of the millennium: Agbani Darego’s historic 2001 Miss World win in South Africa; and the late Kofi Annan’s Nobel Peace Prize win, which he shared with the United Nations, as its sitting secretary-general, also in 2001, among others.

    It also helped to ventilate local political grievances, as when the late Muhammed Lawal, military-era state administrator and then sitting Kwara elected governor, came calling in late 2002.

    He swore, with solemn vehemence, that with his bruised manly honour and hurt military pride (he was a retired naval general), he would fight — and stop — the creeping Saraki “imperialism” in Kwara.  He was in a political battle of his life, even as the Baba Oloye, Dr. Olusola Saraki, with no less vehemence, counter-swore to unhorse the governor and mount, in his stead,  Bukola, his son.  Saraki won. Lawal lost.  But could the political history of Kwara have changed, had Lawal won?

    Those were exciting days, very early in this 4th Republic!

    But whether at The Anchor Editorial Board or in his serene home, Adeeyo cultivated a crop of young and brilliant minds.  Many of them, since The Anchor days, have since morphed into younger and doting friends.

    At home, the ensemble is either meeting some VIPs: The Anchor men of ideas come to cross-fertilize the powerful (wo)men of policy, local and international.  I remember meeting, for the first time, Prof.  Agboola Gambari at the Adeeyo home.

    Or, at his yearly Ileya and Itunu Aawe receptions, during the Muslim feast of Id-el-Kabir and post-Ramadan fast, Id-el-Fitri, where ideas, open and free, cascade, over choice food and drinks, as the coterie discuss and debate.

    But beyond that, you savour even more, intimate private visits, where Adeeyo shares, with his younger friends, his vast experience, on the Nigerian reality.

    From that one-on-one, you always come out better and grateful, for it’s an invaluable trove of the good, the bad and the ugly!   But then, isn’t that what life itself is all about?

    At 70, aside from an eternal thirst for knowledge, Adeeyo epitomizes God’s munificence, sans greed or venality; wealth without conceit, success without airs, but comfort with compassion.

    That is refreshingly rare, in a Nigeria plagued by money without value.

  • Changing times, awry temper

    The tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction” — Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (8 May 1895-9 December 1979), American Catholic priest.

    Fulton J. Sheen, the American Catholic priest whose beatification is only a matter of time, gifted us this opening quote.  He could well have been living in — and speaking of — present-day Nigeria.

    Add the opening of the full quote, and the moral gargoyle, that today’s Nigeria has become, glares at you in all its cold menace:  ”The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision.  It is a silent acquiescence to evil”.

    That captures the many critical segments of Nigeria today, especially the religious elite; whose forte ought to be moral radicalism, if not outright puritanism.

    Now, when you link the Sheen opening quote to “The Second Coming”, that famous poem by the no less famous Irish, William Butler Yeats, the resonance is startling: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”.

    Again, that is today’s Nigeria: the upright keep mute, while the roguish rattle without end.  Yet, the polity teems with folks easily swayed by cant.

    But might culpable moral ambivalence, if not outright indifference, be a function of about every society, going through critical but painful change?

    The partisan spat between Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and embattled Senate President Bukola Saraki on the defection question was a media feast.

    Yet, not a few must have completely missed Tinubu’s posit — true in all its evidential proof — that the country is going through a critical phase: where old ways are, willy-nilly, yielding to new.

    Many, of course, with sundry motives, would rush to controvert that claim, and query whether that “new” way is indeed better or worse, in the best tradition of the liberal press, that holds great stock by fairness and balance — a great and noble tradition, to be fair.

    But even that runs the risk of becoming otiose: a cheap medium for the evil to rant, not because it is right, but because it’s a democratic right.

    Yet, a democratic right to do what is patently wrong is nothing but absurdity. That is the danger of mechanical balancing — that artificiality to be seen to reflect all sides, when common sense clearly demands you praise the good; and raze the bad.

    Democratic right to do what is patently wrong?  That is the crippling absurdity of Saraki and supporters, rippling with humbug on why a minority senator must retain the Senate presidency.

    They, of course, know that has absolutely no basis in logic and common sense, not to talk of morality, pristine mores codified into formal laws.  But more on that presently.

    Right now, suffice it to say mechanical balancing is the clear grave of any national consensus towards development and progress, particularly at grave junctures as now, when you transit from the wilful ruin of 2015 and before, with all its pains.

    But that is the comfort zone, where much of the media, now snooze in false bliss.  And spurred by this moral cowardice, a reckless breed, on radio and social media, has barged in with vacuous controversy — a euphemism for the suspect, the abominable and the repugnant — in the name of democratic right!

    Talk of the honest cowering with no power of conviction, and the crooked bristling with passionate intensity!

    Still worries, earnest or roguish, would appear natural in a changing society.  That the past was horrible, and the present woeful, would appear not enough motivation for many — if not most — to hug change!  The human fear of change is real!

    Today, the Romantic phase of English literature could have turned admirable trove, historical, emotional and intellectual.  Yet, back then, in 19th century England, when the industrial revolution was “ravaging” the English life, the fear of the unknown, and acute anxiety it ensued, forced that impassioned rally for Nature, against Nurture.

    You could feel that in the pathos of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the leading poetic voices of that era; in the gripping melancholy of John Keats, he of the many personal challenges and family tragedies; and even in Thomas Hardy’s novel, Tess of the D’Ubervilles, the passionate debacle of Tess, the novel’s ill-fated heroine.

    Yet, that change, two centuries later, has shaped better living across the board, even if Nurture has brought own universal peril. The radical altering of Nature has brought climate change, with its grievous health hazards.

    So, as Nigeria moves from a past of free-wheeling gravy, that suited a few but ruined the most; to a future of applying scarce public funds, to “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”, in the famous words of Jeremy Bentham, the old parasites won’t go down without a fight.

    So, you can feel their media clatter, since the democratic space seldom boasts a consensus on manifest goodness; as everyone tries to push his view and discredit others’.

    That cannot — and should not — be stopped.  But after fair and equitable media access, to every shade of political opinions, public good takes over.

    That vaults the media — of conscience — from the democratic right to personal-institutional preferences and partisan sympathies, to the sacred altar of journalistic duty.

    And it dare not subscribe to any standard lower than Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, which takes duty as rather serious business!

    Neither, for that matter, should any judge or priest, or anyone whose job comes with the privilege of lording it over others.  Only that sense of rigorous duty can reimburse the society for that golden privilege.

    From that, a vigorous sense of right-or-wrong, would evolve; from the present neither-nor moral placidity, that gifts the evil the audacity to rattle.

    It is at this key juncture that the media appears flailing, if not outright failing. But the religious order suffers the same, if not worse, debility — talk of the Sheen damning verdict:  ”The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision.  It is a silent acquiescence to evil”!

    That brings the discourse back to the Tinubu-Saraki spat.

    With a more exerting public ethos, Saraki and confederates wouldn’t have dared to test the sterile controversy of a minority senator staying on as Senate president.  Anything but honorable resignation would have been infra-dig, if not outright political apostasy.

    Neither would the polity buzz with macabre toast of parliamentary defections, when what that execrable fraud deserves is nothing but sweeping lambast.

    Also, the changes Tinubu referred to: the slew of pro-poor policy injections into the polity and sundry developmental projects — Trader Moni loans to the lowest cadre of market folks; the schools feeding scheme, novel as a federal policy; and the renewed rail activism — ought, as duty, to compel serious media attention: critiquing, analyzing and trading ideas on how to push the least kobo to the best value.

    That is what serious media do — jousting with the government on serious policy issues.  Besides, grappling with such would banish, from the public space, current inanities.

    Nigeria’s navigation of change, difficult and painful, ought to come with a strong moral component, across the board. That could make the crucial difference between a past lost and a future regained.