The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Osun going Ekiti way?

    Osun going Ekiti way?

    In Osun West, the hurly burly is done.  The battle is lost and won.

    So, you can understand the taunts, from the victorious camp, heckling Governor Rauf Aregbesola to fall on his sword.

    Why, even the comatose Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is taking its chances at some political resurrection!

    Still, why this emphatic defeat?

    For starters, it’s all about pork.  Aregbesola paid a hefty price for pressing a pork-starved army into battle.  The rebellious, brimming with outrage, simply joined forces with the enemy.  The loyal, but demotivated, just rolled over to be slaughtered.  No marks for guessing right: it was a rout.

    Then, the explosive question of salaries.  A piqued body of civil servants roared its anger over “half-salary”.

    The PDP opposition, like the tribunes in Shakespeare’s tragic play Coriolanus,  goaded them against the Aregbesola order.  “Half-salary, half-vote!” mocked the victorious shriek.

    But has Osun West taken a wiser decision than the old Roman rabble of Coriolanus?  That is doubtful.

    After the malevolent tribunes baited them to shoo off Coriolanus, the plebs condemned themselves to rolling in the dust before the same Coriolanus, now leading the invading Volscians, in an even more passionate plea to save their city.   Pathetic!

    Indeed, there are haunting parallels from the past, following the 2003 electoral ouster of Governor Bisi Akande.

    Governor Akande (1999-2003) was a victim of irrational voting.  Teachers, growling over salary matters and job losses — hardly illegitimate demands — poisoned the Osun electorate, en route to an electoral slaughter.

    But the bigger and sharper knife lay waiting for the voters, merrily vengeful. For the next eight years or so, the state became a stagnant pool, breeding only king-size mosquitoes and parasites, consuming all!   Again, hardly an illegitimate result, from vengeful voting!

    Also, empty sound bites, crafted to whip up emotion and deaden reason, have re-surfaced.

    In 2005, as the Oranmiyan movement raced against time to reclaim Osun’s soul, it was Tekobo (Lagos arriviste).

    Now, it is Ajele (viceroy), to the Osun emotive rabble; by those bent on sending Osun the wide and merry way.  That led to perdition in the past.  It may yet do so again.

    Yet, between Tekobo and Ajele, Osun had benefited from rare developmental governance these past seven years, unmatched in its history, even with the brutal economic downturn.

    Contrast that to those who beggared Osun in times of boom, and you’d probably see why the Osun opposition preen and strut, as grandmasters of deceit!

    Still, even if 2003 was so far away, what of the Ekiti experience of 2014?

    Three years ago, Ayo Fayose won an improbable victory, over Governor Kayode Fayemi.  Yes, Fayemi’s politics was soulless; and part of his problems too was a pork-starved army.  But there was no question about his policies — a developmental paradigm to rouse Ekiti from the death of Fayose’s first coming.

    Well, Fayose won and crowed.  But what has he done with his win, aside from yakking inanities, as undisputed though unfazed gubernatorial nuisance, to the chagrin of his electors?  Now, Ekiti is enduring its choice, perhaps as living example of crass electoral ingratitude to a government that wished it nothing but the very developmental best.

    Back to the Osun debacle — and it is a debacle on many fronts.

    The Adeleke victory signposts terrible omens for a new Osun Aregbesola is trying to reconstruct, from the post-Bisi Akande ruins. (See “Osun: threat to a new order,” 27 June 2017).

    Behold: the crowing victors are the old nemesis that, like locusts, gobbled up the land!

    Iyiola Omisore was there from the very beginning.  As deputy to Governor Akande, he was the progressives-contradiction-in-the-house.  After the Akande debacle, he was there, strutting, all through the Osun PDP years of the locusts.

    Take a good look at Omisore’s political persona, and what do you see?  A mirage of vanishing nothingness!  He is, indeed, fitting metaphor for the Osun lobby, committed to the democratic right to stake nothingness.  Unfortunately for Osun, they triumphed on July 8.

    Ademola Adeleke, the new senator, inherited a solid family name, for Senator Ayoola Adeleke, the paterfamilias, was a solid Awoist.  But Ademola’s sudden political emergence signposts a not-so-sudden corroding of the Adeleke progressive DNA.

    Isiaka, the late Serubawon, inherited his father’s progressive goodwill. But not the Awo developmental élan. For all his street verve, it is doubtful if he ever became governor again, as he had planned, he would have mustered the rigour needed to nurse Osun back to full developmental health, after the Aregbesola years.

    Ademola, the new senator, would appear even more neither-nor, given the optics he has beamed so far.  To hurtle from APC aspirant to PDP candidate portrays nothing but crass opportunism.

    And the soukous victory dance!  Not unlike excited King David gyrating before the Ark of the Covenant, earning the rebuke of his ill-fated wife, Michal.  But Senator-elect Adeleke appeared dancing before the mammon of treacherous politics, showing how an excellent private hobby could terribly go wrong in the public space.

    Then, the metamorphosis: from Jackson to election-time Nurudeen, then after, back to senior apostle!

    These are perfectly explainable complexities of the senator’s birth.  But in an Osun milieu that often ripples with empty symbolism, designed to confuse and confound, he freely defined himself among the unfazed orchestra of empty din.  He would swim or sink with that identity.

    Should Osun go the Ekiti way, the grand losers: public school children enjoying free school meals; the caterers and food vendors for whom the exercise is daily economic reflation; the crop and poultry farmers enjoying a near-captive market for their produce.  Indeed, the vulnerable –the proverbial “everyday people” of Osun.

    Of course, the futuristic infrastructure: schools, roads and bridges, crucial poles to vault Osun from a dreary civil service state and broaden internally generated revenue, would progressively crumble. With Ekiti, Osun would make its peace with a future Stone Age!

    Still, any lesson from history?  Yes, legacy.

    How many remember the great Obafemi Awolowo lost the first election, after embarking on his epochal free primary education programme, no thanks the NCNC’s scalding demonization, built on high tax and vanishing farm hands?  Now, in Osun, it is half-salary!

    But today, history and legacy have shut up the Awo electoral traducers.

    Like Awo, legacy and history may yet silence Aregbe’s traducers.

    But these Osun “everyday people” had better snap out of their reverie before, like Ekiti, embracing a second avoidable death, in a spade of 15 years.

  • Senatorial jeremiad

    “They call you a thief; yet you caper with newly stolen kids” — Yoruba saying, decrying unfazed notoriety

    The other day, the Senate rippled with jeremiad, built on self-pity.  But you could guess where everything was headed: crass blackmail.

    This eighth National Assembly,  clearly the worst, since the return to democracy in 1999, should know: right-thinking Nigerians would not triumph over tragic military rule, only to succumb to comic parliamentary stunts, that nevertheless essay fascism.

    Besides, why should electors suffer such tomfoolery gladly — or what do you call a conclave that attained high republican status and privilege by the vote, but profane that hallowed chamber with the outlawry of threats and intimidation, against the same citizenry that put them there?

    And why should the law be blind to parliamentary coup-making — or do they think parliamentary privileges cover acts likely to bring down the democratic order?

    How else does one classify the Eyinnaya Abaribe drama of “nominating” Bukola Saraki as “acting president”, when Acting President Yemi Osinbajo is not only in place, but well in the country when that senatorial rascality was brewing?

    And the voter contempt!  Isn’t that tantamount to that Igbo proverb, popularized by Chinua Achebe’s works, of the fellow deluded enough to challenge his chi (personal god) to a wrestling bout?

    Or again, how would you categorize the House of Representatives’ threat and muscle-flexing, over the Works, Housing and Power Minister, Babatunde Fashola’s exposure of their scandalous cannibalization of the budget, diverting scarce money, from crucial federal highways and bridges, to pitiable boreholes?

    What a pair!  The Senate is fixated with bringing down Ibrahim Magu, the fiery face of anti-corruption.

    But the senatorial cheer leaders are comics who have a lot to hide; and are so  desperate they won’t mind tormenting their voters as unfazed corruption ambassadors, baring their fangs from the highest legislative chamber.

    And the House of Representatives?  So reckless it could only throw tantrums and issue threats, when faced with solid allegations of wilfully moving the people’s money from solid gold to buying mere tinsel — a monumental betrayal of trust.

    Why, even in venality, there ought to be some class!  How did Nigeria come about such a notoriously anti-people conclave?  What tragic paradox!

    Still, in the senatorial sound and fury, only one voice was startling.  That of Sola Adeyeye, the hardy senator from Osun central.

    Prof. Adeyeye had built a solid reputation as the quintessential Yoruba Omoluabi, boasting nobility and good breeding of the finest crust.  Needless to say, his rigorous and acute mind seems eternally in tune with the yearnings of his people.

    But the same Adeyeye that spoke so passionately in defence of the Senate, over its ignoble war against Magu, seemed to have capitulated to peer emotions — sad!

    Indeed, it was a classic study in reputation suicide — with all due respect to the senator’s democratic rights and parliamentary privileges — for the Senate he waxed so poetic on, could hardly be trusted to do anything without base motives.

    This wrong-headed war against Magu is prime evidence, for those most vociferous against the EFCC chair would appear stained elements, having not a few things to hide.

    Dino Melaye?  Without malice to his private reputation, the Ajekuniya exponent is a classic of how not to be a senator — and his current recall process is again prime evidence.

    Ay, the Kogi senator insists it is all targeted at giving a dog a bad name to hang it.  Maybe.  But how many would dispute that bad name was self-inflicted?  Not the acting president, who at another polite company good-naturedly jabbed at his Ajekuniya video, condemning his audience to a quake of laughter!

    George Sekibo talks of the imperative for senatorial integrity.  But could he, in all good conscience, vouch for the integrity of his own election, having just been sacked by the electoral tribunal in Port Harcourt?

    Abaribe was a victim of a vile executive plot, in a vicious power-play that ousted him as deputy governor to Orji Uzor Kalu in Abia.  But the pitied victim of yesterday won’t even bristle from broaching what appeared the testing of waters for a vile parliamentary coup against the president and the acting president — an attempt so vile it set the Senate against itself!

    In the chamber of Abaribe and company, therefore, the health of a fellow Nigerian, nay the president, is fair game for power gaming!  Tragic.

    You could, of course, say the senatorial trio of Melaye, Sekibo and Abaribe have been sacked with stacked cards, well outside the immediate subject of discourse.  Maybe.

    But that was the same tactic they pushed in their dire threats, posturing on alleged need for institution building, senatorial integrity and inviolability of the law — all noble concepts recruited as sop for base emotional blackmail.

    At the end, the Senate of Bukola Saraki, by its threat to boycott its job, radically declared to retain its plum privileges, but shun the dutiful responsibilities that should earn that gravy.  Predictable!

    But lest we forget: the Magu affair has absolutely nothing to do with the sanctity of the law or the robustness of democratic institutions.  Rather, it is one bad faith cancelling out another.

    A concert of the corrupt found a willing ally in the 8th Senate.  In their panic, they attempted base parliamentary muscling to throw off the Magu nightmare — and fob off their looming nemesis.

    The executive, by sighting a constitutional lacuna, pulled the rug off the feet of this plot.  So, a sleight of hand to champion corruption is cancelled out by another sleight of hand to crush it.  But sensing they might be licked, the senatorial lobby resorts to juvenile threats, unbecoming of the apex legislative chamber of the Federal Republic.

    Still, that would appear only the surface of a multi-layered plot.

    With the Fashola budget challenge, the National Assembly may not be averse to a sterile controversy, to divert public attention from their monumental breach of trust: pushing scarce funds from vital projects like the second Niger Bridge and Lagos-Ibadan Expressway to erecting boreholes and rural health centres — their distinguished sweetheart projects!

    Now, who does that?

    Dr. Saraki clearly defined himself by selling his party to gain the Senate presidency.   You could say that was politics and politicking, soulless or sincere.

    But what is beyond pardon is erecting a senatorial fort for corruption, in a regime whose chief campaign push was total war against corruption.  That is an anti-people sin and monumental betrayal beyond pardon.

    Saraki and co remind the literary-minded of John Milton’s Lucifer in Paradise Lost.  Better to reign in hell, he growled at the acme of his hubris, than serve in heaven.  Not a few angels fell for the subversive beam of the Brightest Son of the Morning.  But they all ended in dank hell!

    Another election is less than two years.  Those who love Nigeria should, with vengeance, vote out these Luciferian senators, who would rather reign in political hell, than serve in political paradise.

  • Restructuring buzz

    It’s a “restructuring” buzz out there.  But it’s not unlike blind folks feeling different parts of an elephant.

    Is “restructuring” like this elephant — a simple case of different perspectives?

    Or a deliberate, sinister couching of differing motives, under a reigning political buzz word?

    To be fair, restructuring “franchise holders”, the Afenifere segment of the Yoruba political mainstream, have been consistent; since the very beginning.

    It started with a Benin Republic-like Sovereign National Conference (SNC), of the pre-June 12, 1993 annulment era; when Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s political transition programme was transiting nowhere, beyond a deliberate cul-de-sac.  Remember the late Alao Aka-Basorun and his braves?

    After Babangida’s rash annulment of June 12, that clamour flared into an impassioned crusade over the “national question”, all through the  no-war-no-peace era of Gen. Sani Abacha.

    Even after the return to democracy in 1999, with (apologies to Fela) the Army Arrangement that thrust Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo into the presidential chair, the Afenifere — indeed, all of the Yoruba political mainstream — still pushed for SNC (if they wanted to be politically irritating) or “restructuring” (if they wanted to be nuanced or coded).

    If indeed restructuring is “a national appeal whose time has come”, according to IBB, an arch-opponent now turned swooning proponent, then the Afenifere grandees are entitled to their prize.

    But while pristine “restructuring” was clear — at least to the Afenifere camp: remaking Nigeria along ethnic lines to form some cultural federalism, the latest strain, even within the camp, is not so clear. “True federalism”? Confederation? Or only the last station before a final push towards Oduduwa Republic?

    Given the sabre-rattling among some Yoruba ultra-nationalists, the atavistic romanticization of Yoruba mores and ethos and the impassioned ethnic hate from a section still very bitter at the election loss of 2015, it is not easy to say.

    One thing is clear though: the South West’s strain of “restructuring” would appear the most thought-out — not because the people there are smarter than the rest, but because they had been in the “true federalism” trenches, longer than any other.

    South East’s “restructuring” is even hazier, when placed side by side, with the neo-Biafra campaign.

    Until the northern counter-expulsion threat, neo-Biafra had assumed outright secession — a rather grim encore of the 1967-1970 Civil War debacle, with nevertheless a hoped-for different result.

    IPOB and MASSOB may well be romantics, whose street ardour could be far-removed from reality.  But to borrow Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, they would appear the Ndigbo id — that raw, unrestrained and untamed innermost craving, about a people’s political bitterness, against Nigeria as constituted.

    But the IPOB wild caper was morphing into a reckless tempo, prompting an irritated “northern youths” to issue a no less irritating fatwa.  Thus, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the South East civil face, had to step in.

    The political schizophrenia, in the South East’s “restructuring” was clear from the latest statement of John Nwodo, the Ohanaeze president.  He admitted a section of Ndigbo wanted secession; another section wanted a restructured Nigeria.

    The trouble is: Ohanaeze and IPOB/MASSOB epitomize the split in the Igbo political persona.

    The elite Ohanaeze represents the political aristocrats, who had been part and parcel of the gravy since 1960; and after the Civil War — faithful collaborators with the Northern power elite, which IPOB now lampoons.

    This Igbo elite had contributed their own fair share to the Nigerian debacle.  The music only changed after the loss of 2015 — the first time the Igbo elite would back a wrong horse, and the appointments and other gravy dried up.

    IPOB/MASSOB, on the other hand, belong to the bitter and angry rabble, who nevertheless see their nemesis not in their own ethnic collaborators with the soulless pan-Nigeria power machine, but in some hated Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba.

    Until the dissonance between these two Igbo faces are harmonized, South East’s “restructuring” would be hazy indeed.

    Beyond the threat to “make Nigeria ungovernable” should Goodluck Jonathan lose, and the vicious walking-the-talk with the Avengers’ creek bombing campaigns, the South-South has been largely quiet in articulating its own “restructuring.”

    O, Ann Kio Briggs, the Ijaw rights stormy petrel of the creeks, was reported to have declared Nigeria should break; and every part should go its way.  But her fiery voice lacks the scalding credibility of old.  If it was muted all through the Jonathan misrule, it can’t gather any plausible ring when her Niger Delta kin is out, beyond the democratic right to be bellicose.

    Like the Niger Delta, the North’s Middle Belt has been largely quiet too, beyond repudiating presumptive “capture”, in the neo-Biafra map.  It would be nice to hear from these denizens, who often prided themselves the glue that kept Nigeria together, even at great human costs.

    But about the most sensational new converts to “restructuring” are two political survivalists: IBB and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.  The one would wish his past humongous contribution to ruining Nigeria would fade away.  The other would declare himself open to any cause that could keep burning his presidential lamp.

    Surprisingly, IBB appears very radical in his “restructuring”: a Federal Government with powers over just foreign policy, defence, and the economy, eerily close to the confederal arrangement the Emeka Ojukwu-led Eastern Region called for in 1967.

    Atiku too appears more radical, at least in the context of the normal present-structure-or-nothing stance of the core North, pushing for present states arranged as provinces under new federating units: the present six geo-political zones, even while the core North, as a group, keeps its official thinking very close to its chest.

    The big question, however: when the chips are down, can this duo hold firm, with their public perception of being as slippery as an eel?

    At the end, restructuring would appear an economic issue, couched  in politics.  Indeed, it would make no sense if the present sharing of the central but poisoned pork, didn’t give way to regions baking own wholesome meals, and feeding the centre.  Any other way would appear hot air.

    Still, one final but uncomfortable truth: what has climaxed as present “restructuring”, started as wilful refusal to accept the result of a democratic election, by political blocs that lost.  That was the trigger in the South East, South-South and in the Afenifere camp of the South West.

    What started as wilful distraction is ending up as the ultimate political blackmail.  That explains the toting of the Jonathan National Conference, by the lobby that attended it, as the wonder elixir to totally cure Nigeria of its political pathologies.  Some Trojan horse!

    But if you gang up against an “Hausa-Fulani” president, would you need another round of “restructuring” crusades to prevent the Hausa-Fulani too from ganging up against you, when you yourself become president?

    Just think about that!

  • Osun: threat to a new order

    Osun: threat to a new order

    An Osun, it is a birth pang of sorts.  An old order is dying — and frankly, no sane mind would mourn its passage.

    But a new order is struggling to be born.  Again, until it is delivered, safe, healthy and strong, no sane mind can afford to be sanguine.

    It’s a dramatic juncture of two extreme possibilities: either to consolidate the emerging era of conscious safety nets, by a compassionate state, to shield the most vulnerable; or take a tragic roll-back into the prebendal past, where state resources were captive to the few fat cats in government — and their cronies.

    All that is playing out in the make-good senatorial election, billed for July 8.  It is to replace the late Senator Isiaka Adeleke, aka Serubawon, the first elected governor of Osun and two-time senator of the Federal Republic.

    Interestingly, in the rumpus to fill that void — and elections here are always a rumpus, simply because barren folks often hide behind empty bluff and bluster — is an Adeleke brood, Ademola Adeleke, literarily sworn to, willy-nilly, succeeding his elder brother.

    To face him is Mudashir Hussain, a Tekobo (Lagos arriviste) by defensive but bitter local political gossip, but a legislative veteran in his own right.

    Hussain represented Oshodi-Isolo, Lagos, as Alliance for Democracy (AD) member in the House of Representatives (1999-2007), before he joined the Aregbesola-led long trek to salvage Osun, back in 2007.

    After losing to the elder Adeleke in the controversial election of 2007  —  an election not a few insist could be the worst in Nigerian history, in which Rauf Aregbesola himself got his governorship mandate stolen —he defeated the same Adeleke, as sitting senator, to became an All Progressives Congress (APC) Osun West senator in 2011.

    But Senator Hussain would yield his place to the same Serubawon, an election-eve trade-off to the defector from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), after Serubawon’s sinister confrontation with the Omisore group.

    By Serubawon’s own words, the Omisore group threatened to kill him, with Jelili Adesiyan, then President Goodluck Jonathan’s minister of Police Affairs, allegedly raining stiff blows on Adeleke, at the PDP state secretariat at Osogbo, to underscore that threat.  That sent hurtling the mighty Serubawon.  For once, the fearsome one that sent folks scuttling, himself dived for cover!

    It’s an irony of the no-holds-barred clawing for power, in these climes, that the younger Adeleke is back in bed with the same noxious forces that nearly politically gassed his brother.

    In “The politics of death and the triumph of truth”, Niyi Akinnoso, The Punch columnist, did full justice to the soulless manoeuvres  of the younger Adeleke: the dirty politics of poison over a sudden family tragedy, the media amplification of that theory, the attempt to sully the waters over the coroner’s probe, the politics of intra-APC disqualification and re-qualification, and the eventual Ademola Adeleke scurry to the Osun PDP, the same party and people his late brother fled from for dear life.

    In that piece, Prof. Akinnaso did a clinical, if furious, putdown of Otunba Adeleke, for his desperate tactics.  To be sure, that was well earned, with all facts available.

    But lo!  Politics is often a utility business, with morality as the least consideration. Remember the Machiavellian quip about the end justifying the means?  The only catch though, is that a politician would forever live with how he defines himself.

    Take Iyiola Omisore, furiously remaking his image and rebranding his political essence on Facebook, and other social media channels.  Not bad — after all, Saul, the ultimate anti-Christ turned Paul, the Christian neophyte-without-equal!

    But would that, open sesame, wipe off Omisore’s past, any more than all the waters of the Atlantic would blot out the blood in the hands of the evil Lady Macbeth, in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth?

    With his first steps in politics, the younger Adeleke has defined himself.  It is a democratic right he would float or sink with.

    That, however, is not the problem.  The problem is what Adeleke and his new company epitomize: the right to pushing emptiness, as a democratic alternative to substance.

    That is almost beyond pardon, especially in a state experiencing seven straight years of developmental governance, after nearly eight years of ruin and stagnation.

    But because an old order is dying and a new one is not fully born, these poster boys of democratic barrenness jerk awake at each electoral cycle, to rattle-dazzle the gullible, with a rich lather of empty emotions.

    In the past seven years, despite a deliberate orchestration of the contrary by the Osun opposition and their media confederates, the news coming from Osun has been decidedly developmental.

    Only from June 15 to 17, UNICEF midwifed a study tour by 16 states, to understudy Osun’s social safety nets, for possible implementation in these other states.  The states: Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Benue, Katsina, Delta, Lagos, Ondo, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Enugu, Adamawa, Kano, Bauchi and Rivers.

    Lagos is to Nigeria what California, the “Golden State”, is to the United States — the biggest economy around.  Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, Rivers and Ondo are oil royals, far more endowed than Osun.  Kano is the northern commercial nerve.

    Yet, all these states went, under UNICEF’s proud banners, to take a tutorial on what mighty developmental strides puny Osun had attained, with its meager resources, to protect its most vulnerable!

    Apart from safety net programmes like OMEAL (the school feeding programme, which the Federal Government is adopting), OYES (youth volunteer and retraining programme, to tackle unemployment) and O-REHAB (focused on care for the destitute and the mental health-challenged), the whole state is a huge work-in-progress, in solid roads and futuristic schools, on a scale never witnessed before.

    That is the new Osun, struggling to consolidate.

    The old Osun?  A daily plague of ruin: run-down schools; cratered roads; dysfunctional polity, where thugs were lords of the manor;  a relay of contrived crimes to trap political opponents; and, of course, unfazed haven of institutionalized ignorance, and cavalier global capital of destructive rumours!

    Indeed, the grim modern equivalent of Hobbes’s state of nature: an Osun where life was nasty, brutish and short.

    So, the July 8 election is between Hussain and Adeleke, for the Osun West senatorial seat?  Only on the surface.

    The real battle is progressive and reactionary forces gunning for the soul of Osun, as prelude to the 2018 gubernatorial elections: either to further deepen the developmental strides of the past seven years (which would be wise); or slip back into the ruin of the past (which would be tragic).

    Talk of the delicate tendrils of a new order, of hope and promise; tangling with the dry stubs of a dying order, of ruin and stagnation.

    That, then, is the stark choice before Osun West voters — and one false step, it just might be back to the past of ruin, from the emerging future of hope.

  • Wanted: a Third Force

    “The civil war was a disaster, the failure of reason and the triumph of egoism and narrow-mindedness” — Sam Amadi, in a 4 September 2002 piece published in This Day, headlined “Nigeria: enter the Third Force”

     

    The first casualty of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) was reason.  But mutual hurt sharpened the knife for that grand slaughter.

    The Igbo pogroms all over the North followed the 15 January 1966 coup.  That coup overthrew the North-led civil order. But it enthroned Major-Gen. Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, after the so-called “Igbo coup”.  The pogroms badly hurt the Igbo — as it would any other people.

    But the pogroms too were a result of reported taunting, by some Igbo in the North, of the northern locals.  The taunts were over the northern leaders, felled during the first coup.  That hurt the North — as it would any other people.

    The counter-coup of 29 July 1966 gorily settled scores — a Northern coup cancelled out an Eastern one, with all the grisly killings.  But it only roasted the collective Nigerian psyche.

    No surprise, the counter-coup only signalled the final descent into political Hades — the Civil War, which followed Eastern Region Governor, Lt-Col. Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s 30 May 1967 declaration of the ill-fated Republic of Biafra.

    Before that tragic denouement, however, the drums of war beat with deafening intensity. Ojukwu was canonizing his Biafra Army as so formidable “no force in Africa” could vanquish it — a tragic bluff.

    Yakubu Gowon, also then a lieutenant-colonel though also head of state and supreme commander of the Nigerian Armed Forces (before the Aburi Accords in Ghana pared that title down to commander-in-chief), was also positioning the coming slaughter as a “police action”, to rein in the break-away rebels of the East — a sinister threat.

    Less than three years later, tragic bluff had sized up sinister threat — and no less than two million, victims on both sides, lay dead!

    Even as that tragedy was brewing, only Wole Soyinka, then 33, of all the intelligentsia then, was unimpressed by the war-mongering.  He would try to prevent war at all cost.  Hence, he called for a Third Force, neither for Nigeria nor Biafra but against avoidable carnage.

    His reward?  Detention without trial, almost all through the war, by the Gowon Federal Military Government.

    But his contemporary writers?  Ken Saro-Wiwa, of the Ogoni South-South minority, opted for Nigeria.  Indeed, after the liberation of Port Harcourt from the Biafra forces, he was administrator of that city.  But the country he opted for later consumed him under Sani Abacha, a young military commander when Saro-Wiwa was PH administrator.

    Chris Okigbo sided with his Igbo folks, though using his poetry to lament the blood and gore.  He was consumed by the war.

    Chinua Achebe, Soyinka’s most famous contemporary, also sided with his Igbo folks; and was soon drafted as Biafra’s war-time envoy.  He survived the war and even joined Aminu Kano’s People’s Redemption Party (PRP), during the 2nd Republic (1979-1983).

    But his unrelieved Civil War bitterness would come in There Was A Country, his 2012 “Personal History of Biafra,” a classic example of the swan song as ogre.  That book is believed, by not a few, to power the philosophical push for the present neo-Biafra campaign.

    That ogre may yet consume the naive.  But the old man is safe in his grave.

    The Achebe angle neatly ties the present to the past, with its avoidable tragedies. History is threatening to repeat itself.  But it may well be a costly farce.

    Already, there are eerie parallels: check out Ojukwu of 1967 with Nnamdi Kanu of 2015.  The one bluffed and blustered out of plain hurt.  The other does, out of free-wheeling bigotry and hatred — as the  callow youth, in that Yoruba proverb, that mistakes potent herbs for a delicious vegetable soup.   But both are  hardly the epitome of sober introspection.

    Check out too the Igbo-Hausa/Fulani ethnic baiting and counter-baiting, culminating in the sensational diktat, by the so-called “Northern youths”, for the Igbo to quit the North before October 1 — or else!  That, in response to IPOB’s gospel of hate and threat — lunacy and counter-lunacy!

    As in a theory in basic creative prose, you know the true character of a person when under crisis.  In the crisis of the moment, about every ethnic group is betraying its own maladies.

    Some elements in the Niger Delta have given their own counter-order: not only should northerners quit their enclave, those that have oil well interests should also scram.

    Even in Yorubaland, some atavistic elements are celebrating the sweet prospects of their great utopia: the immaculate Oodua Republic where, open sesame, Ibadan domination would vanish in Oyo State; the Ijebu-Remo rivalry, in Ogun, would disappear; and the “Lagos-for-Lagosians” lobby in Lagos would, Saul to Paul-like, morph into happy-go-merry pan-Yoruba nationalists, with zero condescension towards the ”ara-oke”, the Yoruba upcountry denizens!

    It’s an emotive season of anomie, which shows how little the Nigerian mule, warts and all, is appreciated by these ultra-nationalists!  Indeed, as crooned Don Williams, the American country music ace, some folks don’t know what they’ve got until it’s gone!

    Kudos to Acting President Yemi Osinbajo for his systematic way of diffusing the tension by his ongoing meeting with leaders of the different ethnic groups.

    But one point must be made, if you must come to equity with clean hands: you can’t blame the northern reaction to torrential threats and insults without first condemning, in the most vigorous of terms, the South East source of that torrential hate.

    Still, to forestall tragic history from repeating itself, a third force against reckless ethnic ultra-nationalism is imperative.

    Despite all the ethnic bellowing and muscle-flexing, it is reassuring that a parallel counter-voice, from all ethnic divides, is challenging this emotional foray into Golgotha.  Those voices — Igbo, Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, Ijaw, Idoma, Tiv, Kanuri, et al — should coalesce and face down these divisive voices.  More of such sane voices should speak up.

    In 1967,  Wole Soyinka went solo, when the rest of Nigerians were going mad on ethnic hate.  Their eyes did not clear until two million people lay dead.

    In 2017 — 50 years later — surely we have learnt enough from our tragic past to avert yet another?

    That is why the Soyinka spirit of 1967 must inspire a determined pan-Nigeria Third Force to defeat this ethnic madness.

    If Nigeria is sick – and indeed, it is — fix it!  Restructure, if you must.  Ensure justice, equity and fair play reign.

    But sure, balkanization cannot be the solution?  That would create new problems for the illusory el-dorados to follow.

     

    Poetic Extra

    June 12

    June 12!

    And a culprit is long dead.
    But his memory 
    is a septic tank of sleaze,
    memory worse than no memory!

    Another lives,
    perfumed by the high
    and the mighty.
    But what oozes from his chamber
    is the rot
    of the living dead!

    But MKO, their victim
    lives, though long dead!
    Each year, this day,
    he comes alive:
    pleasure to the righteous,
    pain to the hideous,
    but a deep gash,
    on the soul 
    of a nation
    that kills its best!

    June 12!

    Lagos, 13 June 2017

     

  • Vandals at the court gate

    Stained judges, preening from the Bench, are akin to barbarians sacking the Rome of Justice.

    Yet, that’s the path of self-ruin the National Judicial Council (NJC) is treading.

    Vandals at the gate of Rome — that echoes the Goth siege to Rome, preceding the 410 AD sacking of the city.

    By 476 AD came final eclipse: the Barbarian Flavius Odovacer, of Germanic descent, sacked Romanus Augustulus, the last emperor of Western Roman Empire; and named himself king of Italy.

    Why did the Rome, of Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony and Augustus Caesar, it of the famously proud citizen-army, wilt so badly?

    Once lean and vigorous, Rome became soft and soggy.  Its citizens, pumped full of empire gravy, became too soft to fight.

    So Barbarians (non-citizens), soon peopled its army, as fighting serfs.  In due course, the conqueror became the conquered — thus ended classical Rome, after 500 years; though its Middle Ages variant would not expire until 1453, when the Ottomans killed Constantine XI Palaiologo in battle.

    The Judiciary, under the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen, appears merrily baiting a Rome-like ruin.

    Like Ancient Rome, the Nigerian judiciary of Taslim Elias, Chukwudifu Oputa, Kayode Esho and other greats, hitherto a glittering star among peers, is getting so flabby it doesn’t even recognize its core of straight-and-narrow.

    In a throwback to the classical tragedy, severe gift from Greece and Rome, the judiciary, suffused with sleaze and rumours of sleaze, is about committing institutional suicide. For that, however, polite society would pay a hefty price.

    Proof?  Look no farther than the June 1 National Judicial Commission (NJC) order, that indicted judges return to their courts.

    Emerging from its 82nd meeting, the NJC, with CJN Onnoghen presiding, had ordered heads of courts to recall judges, indicted for alleged sleaze but yet to be formally charged, six months after the media brouhaha over a “sting” operation by DSS.

    That looks more like a grudge call against DSS and the judges’ pre-trial media-roasting; than a wise decision to preserve the sanctity and integrity of the judiciary.

    The beneficiary judges: Justice John Inyang Okoro (Supreme Court), Justice Uwani Abba Aji (Court of Appeal), Justice Hydiazira A. Nganjiwa and Justice Adeniyi Ademola (Federal High Court) and Justice Agbadu James Fishim (National Industrial Court).  The high court has discharged and acquitted Justice Ademola, though the prosecution has signified it would appeal the verdict.

    With no prejudice to the innocence or guilt of the affected judges, that they sit in almost every cadre of courts is a piquant symbol of how much the judiciary has fallen in public perception, as some rarefied house of graft.

    Which makes it all the more surprising — NJC pushing all that aside, and assuming an arch-legalistic view, on a matter that has scaled the narrow precincts of the courts into a burning moral matter, in the public space.

    All the judges may well be innocent.  Indeed, the Nigerian court system presumes they are, until duly convicted by a competent court.

    But the courts themselves are no fiat from space.  They are a creation of society: a set of legal Leviathans created by law, to adjudicate disputes and punish crime. Remove that societal moral cover, and all the courts, with their arcane procedures and scholarship, become hollow jokes.

    If that would affect judges and lawyers alone, it would be fair comeuppance for NJC’s rashness.  As the Yoruba would say, you don’t counsel a wilful child against growing crooked fore-teeth.  The paralyzingly ugliness would impress him soon enough!

    Rather, it is the sad case of a wayward child, whose rascality soon entraps his community in avoidable ruin.

    The moment the docked — many of them hardened criminals — start a tragic huff, taking His Lordship on a biting tutorial in moral rectitude and integrity, polite society would have lost it!  Sad!

    Still, it is amazing how NJC actions, since the era of CJN Alloysius Katsina-Alu, continue to reinforce the good old aphorism that a fish rots right from the head.

    Under CJN Katsina-Alu, NJC was the illicit special duty vehicle (SPV), used to hound a straight-and-narrow jurist, Justice Ayo Salami, from his Court of Appeal presidency.

    His crime?  His court’s audacity to return stolen governorships from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) vote-heisting machine, to which the normally feckless Goodluck Jonathan presidency took terrible exception, and for which an innocent and dutiful man must pay with his career.

    Under CJN Onnoghen, the NJC appears being forged into another SPV to give judges, facing allegations of graft, some judicial bolster, under crass legalism.

    It’s way down the nadir, from those lofty heights of 2007, when former CJN, Muhammadu Lawal Uwais, beatified the NJC with that singular honour of recommending the electoral chief, a power his Electoral Review Panel wanted taken from the president.  What forlorn hope, given NJC’s later actions!

    Their Lordships, with the equally misguided Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), which pushed, and has been trumpeting support for this outrage, probably fancy themselves hoisting their own brand of judicial dictatorship, over long-suffering and long-abused Nigerians.  What hubris!

    The Buhari presidency do should everything lawful to redress this outrage.  Neither should the rest of society rest, until these judges are kept from court, pending the time they are cleared by the judicial system.

    That is the due process they swore to.  That is the due process they must abide by.  Any other way is not only unwise, it is a fast track to anarchy.

     

    Biafra, Oodua and allied acolytes (6 June 2017)

    Reader: Good morning.  I’ve been reading your pieces in The Nation for long; and in fact came to the conclusion that you’re the only one of its columnists, who is not a hatchet writer.  But today’s piece shattered that assumption.  You also crossed the line by simply being disrespectful of Okurounmu’s age, even if he was a demagogue.  It’s obvious you took sides with Tinubu in this issue of 2014 national conference.  This is sad and not to your credit. You could still canvass your opinion on the old man’s interview without insulting him.  Cheers — Olakunle Tajudeen

    Ripples: Thank you for your remarks.  But you know, the issue is in the public space.  Elders should be wise and not say stuff that would endanger their people, even when they themselves feel they are secure.  Yoruba youths live everywhere, not the least in the North.  When an elder dubs a whole people “Yoruba enemy”, then some counter voice of reason should prevail.  I didn’t insult the old man.  I only faithfully described what he did.  If he was innocent, that shouldn’t rankle anyone.  As for supporting or opposing Tinubu, that’s no crime the last time I checked.  But if you have been reading my pieces as you said, you should have known I’m a person of conviction, and names, to me, don’t really matter.  Only logic does.  Still, thanks for your comment.

  • Biafra, Oodua and allied acolytes

    It’s a season of supremacists; and Biafra, Oodua and allied acolytes preen, strut, caper and crow!

    It is not unlike that Yoruba proverb: at the fall of Ajanaku, the mighty elephant, knives and daggers of different hues go ga-ga!

    Is the Nigerian Ajanaku, sired since 1914 by Lord Frederick Lugard, about to buckle — and all the buzz, dire signs of the free-wheeling knives to come?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

    One thing is clear, though: in the excitement of the moment, the mirage of instant desire swallows cold reality.  It is excellent wine for the trending feast of wild passion.  But the sure hangover would be no less telling — and galling!

    Which brings the matter to  e-maps, springing up on the social media, pronouncing emotive, post-Nigeria republics.

    The problem, however, is less the emotion.  It is more the crass presumption.

    Neo-Biafra, despite the fiasco of 1967-1970, the pre-defeat rollback at the Midwest and the post-defeat Igbo “abandoned property” of Rivers, is still mapped as the Igbo homeland; plus all of the Niger Delta, east and south; and, to the west, the eastern fringe of the present Delta State.

    Why, the most virulent of that delusion even annexed part of Idoma country, in the North’s Middle Belt, as part of neo-Biafra!

    As for “Oodua Republic”, it is the Yoruba homeland of the political South West; plus Edo,  Ishan and Auchi lands (the present Edo State), the Itsekiri country of the present Delta, and, of course, the Yoruba “diaspora” in the political “North” of Kwara and Kogi, up to Lokoja and Idah!

    At the height of this fantasy, romantics, Biafra and Oodua, were already swooning about some “South” — after IPOB’s Nnamdi Kanu’s reported threat of no election in the South East, until IPOB secured its Biafra secession referendum; and former Senator Femi Okurounmu’s call for a united southern phalanx against the “Hausa-Fulani” he seems to viscerally hate.

    How these romantics secured the consent of the non-Igbo and the non-Yoruba, mapped into “Biafra” and “Oodua Republic”, is not clear.  But pray, how is that different from the Lugard cobbling of Nigeria?

    In fairness to Senator Okurounmu he, with his Afenifere, are not new converts to restructuring.  Neither is Ripples.

    As he correctly noted in his two interviews with The Punch and Nigerian Tribune, restructuring has been the war cry of the South West, since Ibrahim Babangida’s rash annulment of the 12 June 1993 presidential election, which the late MKO Abiola won.  That argument holds today as it held then — restructuring could well be the elixir to save Nigeria.

    Still, pushing for restructuring is one.  Launching into hate, by passionately dubbing a whole people the “Yoruba enemy”, as Dr. Okurounmu did in his interview, is another.  That crosses the line from a civil campaign to crass demagoguery.  That was unfortunate, with all due respect to the Yoruba elder.

    Of course, the former senator got mixed up with pushing the legitimacy of his cause and marketing the Goodluck Jonathan National Conference, with its sop of pre-poll bribery and sundry baggage, that went awfully wrong for Jonathan’s re-election.

    That was fatal to his message.  To the acute, the medium simply slaughtered the message.  He clearly appeared to speak from the bitterness of backing a wrong horse in 2015, and, for political redemption, desperately clinging to the “restructuring” buzz.

    As it is true of Senator Okurounmu and his group, so it is of the avid new converts, of the South East/South-South, to “restructuring”.   Their campaign would appear fired more by an election loss than any intrinsic belief in their new crusade.

    Why?  Well, President Jonathan, with his vociferous South East backers, had ample time to “restructure”.  But why didn’t he do it, until his election-eve poisoned chalice, which lured the likes of Afenifere which, with the balance of political forces, had little or no electoral value, anyway.

    But you must congratulate Nnamdi Kanu for his newly demonstrated street value, among the Eastern rabble.

    Still, the “Biafra” sit-at-home order is nothing new.  After June 12, it became a yearly ritual in the South West, to force back the unjust annulment, while the rest of the country, particularly much of the South East, didn’t see what  the fuss was all about.  What goes around, as they say, comes around!

    Just imagine if everyone had squared against that heinous crime back then?  Perhaps the search for justice would have been swifter and easier; and the national question, maybe resolved by productive federalism, wrought from hard compromise.  But alas!

    How far can IPOB stay the course of yearly sit-at-home strikes?  Despite all the emotional huff over Biafra, it is a grand design to scuttle the Buhari mandate, lost and won.  June 12 was to revalidate the MKO mandate, fairly won.  Yet, it petered out as the years went by.

    Still, for this latest rash of southern supremacists, arrogantly crooning their own homelands would thrive should Nigeria buckle, the political North has itself to blame.

    The story of Nigeria is a torrent of injustices, arising from a skewed political geography that created a Northern sheriff, over and above the original two Southern regions of East and West.

    By playing the end against the middle, pre- and post-Civil War, the North headed a concert of powers, with the South East/South South in tow, against Western Nigeria, in perpetual opposition.

    But no thanks to Babangida’s recklessness, the North crossed the fatal line over the June 12 annulment.

    No evidence, perhaps, that Babangida acted on behalf of anyone to annul a pan-Nigeria mandate, freely given. From his self-perpetuation scheming, he seemed to have more than enough self-motivation.

    But there is more than enough evidence that the North’s power elite aided and abetted that crime, with the fond wish that the North’s political supremacy would stem the tide.

    Well, it didn’t.  And from that spot, the North lost its power invincibility; and started a sure and steady decline in power and influence.

    Still, if supremacy is bad for the North, it can’t be good for the South — and that is the point the Biafra and Oodua supremacists miss, busy flexing muscles about making it alone; while betting the North would be left in the lurch.

    If Nigeria must be saved — and it is imperative it is, for a united but workable Nigeria is far better than its balkanized parts — everyone must eschew hatred and bigotry.

    Rather, we should embrace good, old justice, which need we re-stress, by quoting Prof. Woke Soyinka’s eternal words, is the first condition of human dignity, nay existence.

    Besides, if Nigeria were to be restructured and saved, partisans across the divide must start talking with themselves.  But with all these ethnic cacophony, they only talk at themselves.

    That is a great pity, for Nigeria is at a crucial pass, which could make or mar it.

     

  • From old Biafran to new: war is nasty business

    From old Biafran to new: war is nasty business

    Correct the mistake of 2015. Vote out the corrupt legislators

    Today, exactly 50 years ago on 30 May 1967, the Republic of Biafra was born.
    “Now Therefore I, Lieutenant-Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Military Governor of Eastern Nigeria, by virtue of the authority, and pursuant to the principles recited above,” he announced in a broadcast, which thereafter triggered wild jubilations in the streets, “do hereby solemnly proclaim that the territory and region known as and called Eastern Nigeria, together with her continental shelf and territorial waters, shall henceforth be an independent sovereign state of the name and title of Biafra.”
    That set off a horrific civil war (1967-1970), in which millions, from both sides, perished, though Biafra, which eventually conceded defeat, was more hard done by.
    After, all appeared quiet on the Biafra front — until 2012, when the late Chinua Achebe released his swan song, There was a Country, a long tale of one-sided victimhood and suppressed bitterness, which would appear to have triggered the present neo-Biafra ferment. The loss of President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 election, who the South East solidly backed, provided the final push, sending the present advocates of neo-Biafra into a tizzy.
    But after everything, war is grim business.  Col. Azubike Nass, a retired officer of the Nigerian Army, who saw war as a member of the Boys Brigade, before later going on to train at the Nigerian Defence Academy, writes on Baifra’s 50th anniversary. Ripples dubs it, “From old Biafran to new: war is nasty business”.

    The write-up titled, “The case for Biafra”, credited to an American former government official, Bruce Fein, is most probably written by a young Igbo guy who never experienced the civil war and never read Nigerian pre-Independence history.  It is as if all he knows is limited to the current pro-Biafran propaganda on Radio Biafra and the trending, mostly anonymous, online propaganda messages.

     

    It contains a lot of emotional fabrications and demagogic falsehood.  The social media space is littered with a lot of junks and, in many cases, the persons mentioned as the authors have vehemently dissociated themselves from the writings.

    Just a few examples, in italics:

    1. “Britain asserted authority over Biafra, based on tyrannical doctrine”.  I ask: which Biafra existed in pre-independence Nigeria, and what areas did it cover?
    2. “Ongoing ethnic-inspired killings and persecution of Biafrans by Nigerian elected military dictator from the North touting Sharia law, President Buhari.” Rubbish.  Who are those the writer refers to as ‘Biafrans’?”  I am of Igbo ethnic origin and such talk is rubbish to me.
    3. “Prior to British colonization in 1906” and”1913, came the amalgamation of Nigeria into three administrative bloc areas.”  I don’t know where the writer got that piece of wrong history [amalgamation was 1914, not 1913]
    4.  The “British failed to offer Biafrans the right to self-determination,” and “Biafrians were never provided [with the chance] to vote for their independence, according to their freely expressed will and desire; and were never consulted on the project when Nigeria became independent in 1960”.  That is kindergarten rubbish!  Nigerian leaders, across ethnic lines, took part in the talks and negotiations (in Nigeria and in London).
    5. “After independence, Biafrans were left to the tender mercies of the Hausa-Fulani of the North and the Yoruba of the South in a unitary state.”  This type of fallacy borders on mental sickness.  It is a fact of history that Igbos (then commonly called Ibos, including Zik — Dr. Nnmandi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first ceremonial president) dominated the Nigerian civil service, the military and the police in the post-independence years before the first military coup and the crisis it caused.

    There are more junk details in that nonsensical write-up but I stop so far.

    One common feature of the misguided pro-Biafran agitation is to present a cocktail of doom-mongering, as if it were a recipe for realizing a false dream.  I witnessed the Civil War (1967-1970) first-hand.  I vividly remember the hunger and starvation, the picture of “kwashiorkor”, and the refuge camps.

    I remember how Biafra public enlightenment service on radio and other channels was encouraging people to seek out and kill lizards, rats, toads and frogs, as substitute for meat.

    Meanwhile, the very few well-placed senior officials and senior military officers and their families lived in relative comfort and smartly cornered the best of the best of stock fish (okpoloko) and conmeal donated by the international charities (the most prominent of which was the Catholic charity, Caritas).

    I remember that some clergymen entrusted with distributing available relief to the hungry and dying masses turned the whole thing into a heartless game of greed and fraud, with some of them hiding the relief foodstuff in dry wells and deny having them.

    I remember that by 1969, most of the senior leaders of Biafra had moved their families overseas while continuing to tell the masses that even the grass would fight for Biafra, and that victory was assured.

    I know of a few of Biafran military and civilian leaders who started acquiring property and building houses just some two years after the war, when most Igbos could still not feed twice a day — and more.

    I want to warn the misguided war-mongering youths and their supporting dubious elders that when they spark their dream war, they will get more internal factional warfare than they ever imagine.  It may be such that would require “foreign” peacekeepers to try  to bring some sanity.

    Not all of us can be cowed  into the false dream of Biafra.

    I experienced that civil war at first hand.  I was in primary five when it started and some of us, who were in the Boys Brigade, eagerly joined; and were made to be assisting soldiers on errands.

    I was initially among the most fanatical youths itching to fight and die for Biafra.  I was heavily swayed by the war propaganda; and my parents were struggling to keep me at home.

    But as I mixed with adult soldiers, and heard some muffled reports, my proving mind started doubting many talks we were fed with.

    After the war and after my earning my secondary school certificate, I set my eyes on the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), and succeeded in the second attempt.

    As an army officer, I was addicted to war history in general.  My contemporaries recognize me for that.  I am not a lover of raw sentiments and emotions.  I am known for that — even if my mother or father is involved.

    I have spent decades in the study of wars, ancient and modern, my starting point being the Nigerian Civil War.  I devote my life to the acquisition of knowledge in vast fields of human endeavour, unlike many, who may have rather spent their active years chasing contracts and money.  So, that explains my attitude towards this neo-Biafra campaign.

    Besides, having vigorously campaigned for a presidential candidate that shielded corruption and treasury looting, and that candidate having lost to an anti-corruption candidate in the democratic election of 2015, many appear unable to recover from the electoral loss.  The result is frustration and the release is the new “struggle” for Biafra!

    Therefore, reselling twisted civil narratives seem to have become the only consoling subversive daily occupation, as if that provides escape from reality.

    As a long standing seeker of knowledge in vast fields, and also as a soldier who had committed time to study wars and had tough combat experience in foreign wars, I don’t belong to the present Biafra mindset — a sort of escapist daily vocation.  I have more studies doing with my valuable time.

  • Edo: Renaissance afoot?

    Edo: Renaissance afoot?

    In Benin City, there is a sweet whiff of Lagos.

    In Lagos,  Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, like the Biblical David, came and fought all the battles, state and federal, to soundly establish the Lagos neo-political economy.

    Two “Solomons” after, in Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN (2007-2015) and Akinwunmi Ambode (2015-date), that “kingdom” is so solidly anchored.

    At 50, Lagos is the toast of everyone nationwide, taking public service delivery to dizzying heights, despite Nigeria’s stifling unitary-federalism.

    Everyone loves a winner, don’t they?

    In Edo, Governor Adams Oshiomhole (2008-2016) came, in his own biting though apt words, to “slay the Edo godfathers”.

    Those self-made “gods” not only shared and gobbled the common patrimony, they also beggared the metropole of the old Mid-West (created in 1963) to near-destitution.

    The comrade-governor was a political cross-breed: between a nation-famous Labour agitator (the street “rofo-rofo” skills of which he put to telling use, in his many Edo political battles); and the conventional, street-wise politician (with the abiding trust-deficit).

    But new governor, Godwin Obaseki, dawns with neither asset — nor liability — that comes with a political mix-breed.

    He is the quintessential “technocrat”, that set not a few drooling, with great expectations of immaculate policy; away from empty politicking.  That builds trust.

    But “technocrat”, in contemporary Nigeria, could also connote soulless opportunism.  The conventional politician must take all the electioneering heat, so the so-called technocrat could push his divine right, to play god in the government’s policy chambers!

    So, after the street-buzzing charisma of Oshiomhole, how does Obaseki ease into the fray, even after a gruelling electioneering for governor?  In other words, would Oshiomhole play the politics for Obaseki, just as Tinubu did for Fashola in Lagos?

    Not exactly, though there appears a clear parallel of continuity, ala Lagos,  of which Oshiomhole is the spiritual head.

    For starters, the new governor enjoys the buffer of consummate politicians: Deputy Governor, Comrade Philip Shaibu, ex-House of Representatives;  Secretary to the State Government (SSG),  Osarodion Ogie; lawyer-politician and Edo APC chairman,  Anslem Ojezua, as well as the robust political mobilization machinery of the Oshiomhole years.

    But behind that fount is a new politics-friendly nest, carefully woven to properly position the governor.

    Yes, Obaseki would retain his core as a policy wonk; but not the distant and cold type.  Rather, it’s the policy wonk that glows in Edo streets, bolstered with as much political buy-in as possible, factored into government policies, no matter how sweeping.

    According to Prof. Julius Ihonvbere, interacting with a select group of visiting top editors and columnists, this elaborate arrangement, anchored on the “Oshiomhole foundation, but in a different way and perspective”, comprises the governor’s personal representative, in every ward in the state.

    These ward gubernatorial special assistants transmit policy in the lingo the grassroots understand; and obtain prompt feedback to the governor.

    In the loop, of this political communication buzz, are the traditional party channels as ward, zonal and state chairs and their executives, special interest groups as the women caucuses, the party’s parliamentary caucuses, traditional rulers, local guilds, Labour unions, and religious lobbies.

    As a result, there is extensive party consultation at every policy baking session, closer party-government fusion for appointments, especially of would-be commissioners, and a robust strategic dialogue with the people, across party lines.

    That about sums up the elaborate political infrastructure, for a policy-wonk governor, to mainstream his policies and make them glow with popular appeal.

    Still, would-be commissioners, more than six months after taking office?  Whatever happened to the popular cliche of hitting the ground running?

    Well, going by inputs from top government and party hierarchs, the Obaseki government had indeed “hit the ground running” — but not by barging in on the public, but by rigorous thinking to conceive and re-tool, as prelude to sure-footed service delivery.

    Everyone that interacted with the visiting journalists made this point: Mr. Ogie, current SSG; Prof. Ihonvbere, ex-SSG; Mrs. Gladys Idaho, Head of Service; Mr. Ojezua, Edo APC chairman; Joseph Eboigbe, Obaseki’s deputy in the Oshiomhole policy think-tank and now policy shaft in the new government; Edo Works Ministry’s Ferguson Enabulele, a key driver of the new government’s road policy, with its stress on the concrete technology and 100 per cent local inputs; and Dennis Oloriegbe, ex-LASTMA and Edo’s new traffic czar, as head of the new Edo State Traffic Management Authority (EDSTMA), among others.

    Indeed, since the November 2016 swearing-in of the new governor, Edo has morphed into a caravan of workshops, importing experts in different fields, from all parts of the country, to help forge a comprehensive policy roadmap for the new government.

    That strategic dialogue has not only shaped the new administration’s vision, but also envisioned the profile of the putative cabinet, and, in the new spirit of government-party close collaboration, given the party wards enough notice to shop for sharp minds, with stellar character, to fill the incoming cabinet.

    That charter, however, comes with clear-cut short, medium and long-terms goals, which a cabinet member must meet, or resign — or be fired.

    The policy thrust, according to these hierarchs, targets mass job creation through massive investment in large-scale agriculture, without sacrificing the interest of traditional small-scale farmers; a land-banking system, complete with data on soil texture, which matches crop cultivation with suitable land; enhanced security; gas-powered electricity; massive waterworks; affordable housing, massive road construction (“no economy without roads”, one of them quipped); and a vibrant traffic management system, complete with modern bus stops and termini, and well-trained traffic marshals.

    But the most exciting part of the Edo policy roadmap has got to be the new stress on technical education to raise a corps of skilled artisans — electricians, plumbers, carpenters, masons, auto-mechanics, and skilled road construction gangs — courtesy of a re-tooled Edo Technical College, complete with an industrial park that, the Obaseki government figures, would seamlessly absorb its products.

    Still on technical and artisanal competence, remember Sandra Aguebor, she of the famous Lady Mechanic Initiative (LMI) fame?  She has set up shop, with her girls, adjunct to Government House, the czarina of the garage that fixes vehicles in the Edo Government’s fleet!

    Surely, some Edo Renaissance is afoot?

    Maybe.  But that is if the Obaseki government walks the talk of its elaborate planning, in pin-point service delivery.

    Still, watch it, Lagos!  If its plan works out,  Edo is gunning for Number 1!

    That can’t be bad for pre-restructured Nigeria, can it?

     

  • The troika self-rouses

    Generals Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, all former military heads of state, rouse themselves at the scent of presidential ill health.  Rendezvous point: IBB’s Minna hill top mansion.

    Is that exemplary statesmanship for a nation in dire straits?  Or just an umpteenth season of cold power gaming?

    Even if the motive were clean, can a brilliant future lie in a rotten past, where this triad were commanding shapers?

    Of the three, the most tolerable is Gen. Abubakar; and that, strictly on account of his taciturnity.

    Whatever his faults during his brief shot at power (June 1998-May 1999), he has saved the polity insensitive and vacuous prattling that grate.

    Still, that hardly puts him in the clear; for MKO Abiola died under his charge, in the most curious of dramatic circumstances.

    Some claim MKO’s death was an alleged “final solution” that would clear the deck of June 12 malcontents, and re-start the country on a clean slate.

    What a costly illusion, proved grand delusion, snaring the taciturn general as among Nigeria’s troublers of Israel!

    Pray, if there had been an MKO presidency, would there have been a compensatory Yoruba presidency that drafted Obasanjo; and created the solid foundation for this present mess, despite the Ebora Owu’s huffing-and-puffing, over eight costly years, and ever after?

    With all due respect, until Abubakar comes clean on Abiola’s death, he loses any right to pose as part of any solution to Nigeria’s problems.

    That takes the tale back to the root of the debacle: IBB’s reckless annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election results.

    A colleague on Friday wondered why, despite the havoc IBB had inflicted on Nigerians, there was still an elite stampede at the wedding of his last daughter, Halima, at Minna, Niger State, on May 12.

    What would that be — endorsement or forgiveness? — he snapped, somewhat seething with revulsion; suggesting that IBB, by his past power rascalities, should have earned the fair status of a pariah.

    Still, IBB’s public troubles must not foreclose his private right to intensely sweet family rituals, of which marrying off a darling daughter is key.

    Besides, IBB is IBB; and his children are his children.  Though the deeds of the father often robs off on the children and vice-versa, visiting the sin of the father on the child is rather queasy, even if the Bible gave a divine stamp to that dire fatalism.

    Then, the question of bonhomie!  Indeed, with the possible exception of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first and last ceremonial president, perhaps no Nigerian leader, living or dead, boasts the IBB charm!  The self-named evil genius is such a charmer!

    Still, as all the waters of the Atlantic could not wash regicide off the vile hands of Lady Macbeth, in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, all of IBB’s charm could not blot out the guilt of his rash annulment of June 12, which eventually pushed a citizen to early grave, for winning a clean election, and earning the first truly pan-Nigeria mandate.

    That is where IBB’s intense family bliss, contrasts the intense collective angst, for victims of his annulment; which is pretty much all Nigerians that voted on June 12, whose sacred mandate he crushed.

    Besides, as IBB made merry  on May 12 with friends and family, MKO and wife Kudirat lay stone-cold in the grave, their five offspring complete orphans, for having the temerity to fight IBB’s reckless annulment!

    So, what was IBB thinking, embarking on that essence suicide?  The June 12 blunder may well haunt him to his grave — and just as well!

    That makes audacious and rankling, his hosting of the Minna meeting, over presidential health.  With all due respect and absolutely no intention of being nasty, it conjures, in arresting technicolor, the image of the vulture rousing to the thick smell of carrion!

    IBB is the fundament of a seedy past.  He cannot be part of a sane future.

    That brings the discourse to former President Obasanjo, but before then a military head of state, like IBB and Abubakar.

    First, despite his professed holiness, the reflex of rushing to Minna to meet with IBB, over Buhari’s health, reflects the rather low ethics of Obasanjo’s politics.  Yet, the Ebora Owu never tires of telling everyone, in words and in deeds, that he is the best ethical champion that ever happened on Nigeria!

    But from the philosophical to the bare basics: Obasanjo is directly responsible for the present mess President Buhari is trying to clear, even at the risk of his life.

    Like Nigerian federal leaders at independence, who took all the wrong steps to crash an otherwise promising polity, Obasanjo took all the wrong steps to stifle hope in the crucial first eight years of the 4th Republic (1999-2007).

    First, he went on a binge of megalomania which, truth be told, linked some decent economic reforms to his personal indispensability.  But while he pranced and preened over those “reforms”, to flatter himself as the “father of modern Nigeria”, the infrastructure stock collapsed, signalling the economic collapse now causing mass anguish.

    On the political front, he embarked on a deliberate and systematic destruction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the special purpose vehicle (SPV) that actualized the Army Arrangement (apologies to Fela) that gifted him presidential power.  By militarizing the PDP, he drove away almost all the decent elements, leaving behind only the mere chaff and yes (wo)men, nevertheless crippled by hubris!

    The failure of his third term gambit gave rise to new desperation.  First, the presidential enthronement of a decent but fatally ill gentleman, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.  His death, in office, put the North in a power bind.

    It has also made that region ultra-sensitive over Buhari’s health, and the disturbing spectre of deja vu, not helped by an ultra-insensitive media fixation, driven by ghoulish thinking.

    Then, the beginning of the end, for the Obasanjo political dynasty: the rise of the presidential vacuum that was Goodluck Jonathan, under whom everything just collapsed!  That made the second coming of Muhammadu Buhari an imperative for national salvation.

    So, with these parlous records, how can the triad of Obasanjo, Babangida and Abubakar self-rouse as ultimate do-gooders to fix a media-driven hysteria over presidential ill-health?

    They are the bastion of the seedy past.  So, they cannot be part of a newly minted future, after the harsh crucible of the present.