The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • The poet’s verdict: Danjuma, Tinubu

    The poet’s verdict: Danjuma, Tinubu

    In “Piano and Drums”, Gabrial Okara, the poet — or in any case, the protagonist — suffers a serious dissonance: to stick with the vitality of the drums of his nativity (African culture) or be lured by the seductive though destructive lure of the European piano — but end with putative cultural death!

    Cultural death is, of course, the most lethal for the living dead: for without your culture, what are you?

    Performance poet, Akeem Lasisi and his performing songbirds suffer no such dissonance.  Their earlier works, Wonderland: Eleleture, the sweet Udeme and the epochal Ori-Agbe, in celebration of Wole Soyinka, our own WS, at 80, were a splendid mix of the piano and drums for poetic euphony and vitality.

    Way back, in the late 1960s to late 1980s, during the musical hegemony of the duo of Ebenezer Obey and Sunny Ade, and the Abami Eda, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s Africa 70 and Egypt 80 ruled the roost of Afrobeat (Fela’s own piano and drums musical brew), the debate between always ensued between “praise” and ideological music.

    Juju, where both Obey and Sunny excelled, was often dismissed as happy-go-merry, praise music without any ideological core.  Afrobeat, on the other hand, was trumpeted (and not unfairly) as ideological music that spoke truth — nasty truth — to power, no matter the huge cost.

    Indeed, costly it was: for Fela really did bear a lot of brunt in military-era savagery; by a ruling military order, scared stiff by Fela’s fearless and formidable moral authority, even if the soldiers-in-government controlled all the hideous instruments of state coercion.

    So, from Eleleture and Udeme, solid socio-political poetic commentaries, is Akeem Lasisi the poet veering into “praise” poetry, as his poetic telescope zooms on two eminent citizens, Gen. Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma (rtd) and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu?

    Not quite, though the listener would make his or her own judgment.

    One quick observation, however, on From General to Manager, Lasisi’s tribute to Danjuma.  In this work, Lasisi’s trademark African drums (to borrow again from the Okara image) are mute.  Only the European piano raises its plaintive voice.

    The poet should perhaps have, as he is wont, given the Danjuma work some Jukun musical background.  That would have steeped it in African nativity; and added more vitality to its performance and rendition.  Sure, that would have needed some arduous research.  But the final product would have been much more pleasing — and entertaining.

    Still, that hardly distracts from this work: a fair, if poetic assessment, of the public persona of Gen. Danjuma, from when he first burst on Nigerians’ public consciousness as a young military officer, to his exploits as chief of Army staff and virtual guarantor of return to civil rule in 1979, under Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo as commander-in-chief, his foray into business thereafter, brief return to politics during Obasanjo’s second coming as elected president from 1999-2003, and his philanthropic activities happily ever after!

    “If I deny you a place in the Muse’s house,” the poem opens, “The Zuma rock will break its stony silence/The Niger and Benue will find their liquid tongues/From Mokola to Trinidad battalions will rise/Millions of IDP children will join a flood of SAPETRO staff/The Congo will rise and sing your praise …”

    Mokola and Trinidad battalions, the Congo, SAPETRO workers and millions of IDP [internally displaced children] are all allusions to Gen. Danjuma’s rich vein of past and present life: the early regimented times, peace keeping at the Congo, another era as oil investor and community charity in troubling times, tending Nigerian children displaced by the murderous Boko Haram fanatics, by virtue of chairing a presidential fund-raiser to care for the displaced.

    One life?  Ay, but with a texture of many rolled into one!  That would appear why this allusion echoes another in the scriptures — that bit about nature, animate and inanimate, rising to applaud the virtues of the Christ Jesus, even if spiteful humans demurred.

    Indeed, Gen. Danjuma burst on the public consciousness, as somewhat an enforcer of northern political hegemony, given his reported roles in the July 1966 counter-coup.  But over the years, he would appear to have morphed into a revered Nigerian patriot.

    Hear the poet’s parting shot: “Danjuma, teach me a cardinal lesson/to dodge invisible bullets in the market square/Give me the magic wand/To coast to victory in our Civil Peace [Note the clever pun on Civil War?]/From Barracks to the board room your breed is rare/From General to Manager your gut is high.”

    In the Lion Speaks to the Poet, the Lasisi tribute to Tinubu, the parting shot is reminiscent of the concluding lines in J.P. Clark’s poem, “Streamside exchange”, a deadpan response that further confounded the child-protagonist, over its mother’s return prospect: “You cannot know” replied the river bird, “And you should not bother;/Tide and market come and go/And so shall your mother.”

    But while the Clark river bird deadpanned, the Lasisi Lion revealed the “secret” of Tinubu’s stunning political triumphs — which has reaped him bitter and implacable enemies; and his rare talent at nurturing future leaders — which has earned him due praise, even from grudging quarters.

    “When others were saving for the rainy day,” the Lion roared in full glory, “I picked my cutlass and sharpened my hoe/I tilled and planted for the rainy day.  The dreaded season has finally come/They are chasing my crops with their anxious cash.”!

    That is as clinical a poetic response as any to the thick peer envy against Tinubu, from political opportunists who hate to sweat, yet love to be the first to swoop on the groovy.

    Why, it even echoes another Obafemi Awolowo quip: When others are busy chasing after women of easy virtue, I was always at my desk, forging out solutions to Nigeria’s problems!  Awolowo was, after all, the most meticulous politician of his generation, if not, so far, in all of Nigerian history.

    As to the old issue of piano and drums, the Lion has both aplenty.  The poem itself runs on cutting wit: “But is it really true,/That everything golden belongs to you?”  And a couple of hyperboles, perhaps to underscore ridiculousness of it all: “They say Aso Rock now belongs to you/That you are the new owner of Disney Land …?”

    But this piquant piano soars on the wings of African drums: a traditional Yoruba genre that thrives on ote (intrigue) and efe (biting humour), twin-concepts the Yoruba devastatingly deploy to wrong-foot adversaries.  That sure would be music to Tinubu’s friends; but pure poison to his fiends!

    In General and Lion, Lasisi has entered uncharted waters in his glorious poetic career: that of a poet making definitive judgment on active, if not outright controversial, citizens in the public space.

    Will he retain his poetic rigour?  Time will tell.  Meanwhile, like Ori-Agbe that toasted Prof. Soyinka at 80, General and Lion epitomise praise clinically — and poetically — earned.

     

     

  • Buhari’s hard road

    Buhari’s hard road

    Muhammadu Buhari has a lousy luck.

    At this first coming in 1984, Major Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, as military head of state, had to endure the head-splitting headache from the hangover of President Shehu Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria (NPN) freeloaders, in Nigeria’s Second Republic (1 October 1979 – 31 December 1983).

    At his second coming in 2015, Muhammadu Buhari, as elected president of the Federal Republic, faces no less splitting headache.  The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) dynasty had from 1999 under President Olusegun Obasanjo progressively decayed, such that the rot, under President Goodluck Jonathan, climaxed in a well-deserved fall; and loss of power.

    Just as in 1984, in 2015, the party is over.  It is left to President Buhari to clear the mess, with those who caused the problem most trenchant about the imperative to do so.

    But before he could even clear that mess in 1984 — no thanks to his junta’s fatal failure to communicate its own actions — reactionary forces overthrew him in a palace coup.  With them, Nigeria went to seeds.  But preserving the Buhari mystique came out of that personal tragedy.

    In 2015, what would it be?  Would reactionary forces short-change the administration again?  No one knows for sure.  One thing is certain though: from the impulsive bent of yore, epitomised by the with-immediate-effect temper of the ruinous military years, Nigerians would tend to have become more tempered.

    Besides, it is democracy.  Except there is perfidy from the parliamentary front — and nothing is impossible — it is a democracy.  Other things being equal, a fixed term of four years is guaranteed, within which the president is expected to unfurl his policies and implement his programmes.

    And because it is democracy too, the administration must have a vigorous and vibrant communication segment, as an integral part of every policy and programme.  Fifth columnists are no monopoly of military rule!

    That, of course, leads to the newly appointed federal cabinet; and the comments, more or less based on trivia, that have accompanied its birthing.

    Take Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, former governor of Lagos.  Not a few have proclaimed him a “prime minister”, a rather literal (if not outright mischievous) definition of his three-in-one heavyweight portfolio of Power, Works and Housing.

    Others have gone to proclaim Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, former Rivers governor, as another “super minister”, in view of his no less challenging Transport portfolio, under which is Aviation and Maritime, not to mention rail.

    Aviation is the hub of a modern economy, maritime is the cash cow, given the normally huge revenue from ports in a globalised economy that thrives on international trade; and rail holds the key to truly modernising the Nigerian local economy, both in the mass transit of people; and mass movement of heavy bulk, at tolerable costs, and with least cost to road infrastructure.

    Trivia aside, a federal cabinet today, without Fashola and Amaechi would have  been inconceivable, except they were not members of the ruling party.  This is simply because the duo would appear the very best, given their achievements during their tours of duty in Lagos and Rivers states, among the Gubernatorial Class of 2007-2014.

    But that is the trivial part of it.  The serious side is that the two are charged with tough infrastructure duties that would make or mar the administration.  With a projected 2016 budget in the N7 trillion to N8 trillion mark, it would appear a budget of reflation.  Public works, either indirectly by contract or directly by direct labour, would dominate economic activities.

    And power!  Imagine what a lit up Nigeria would do, to social and business health!

    So, should either Fashola or Amaechi (or both) fail, Buhari would be perceived to have failed.  So long for the vanity of prime or super ministers!

    The focus on infrastructure, agriculture and solid minerals, by the Buhari administration, would appear obvious by the manning of the two other ministries.

    Audu Ogbeh, the French major turned practical agriculturist, would appear both symbolic and practical.  Symbolic, because he appears to reinforce the zero-tolerance for sleaze that the Buhari Presidency appears to push.  Since Mr. Ogbeh’s entry into Nigeria’s public life, he has earned a rare reputation for consistency and integrity.  And practical, because since he had made farming his vocation, he had developed some private expertise, from which public policy can benefit.

    His major challenge, however, would be how Mr. Ogbeh is able to leverage his experience and personal temper to build on the modest achievement of the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency, in which agricultural showman and designer minister, Akinwunmi Adesina, now president of African Development Bank (AfDB), held sway.

    In Solid Minerals, however, Kayode Fayemi would appear a curious pick.  In Foreign Affairs, he would have been a shoo-in, by virtue of his training and intellectual activism.  Still, he comes to the job with a federalist’s temper; and keen intellect.  A federalist’s temper is key; for over-centralising mining would appear a perpetual drag on exploiting solid minerals.

    Dr. Fayemi’s huge challenge, however, would be convincing a traditionally centrist-minded president to see reason in urgent laws liberalising mining, such that states can enter into that sector, with proven foreign partners, as economic growth areas, to deliver cash and value.

    It would appear therefore that infrastructure, agriculture and solid minerals would be the hub of this government’s economic policy, in its bid to diversify the economy and deepen the local economy.  This is not a bad idea, especially if the pivotal ministers stay on top of their game and deliver.

    Talking of delivering ministers, the advent of Mr. Fashola as power minister has marked the nose-diving of power supply.  The authorities say the fault is from the transmission network, alleging some sabotage.

    But if one were to use a Biblical allusion, the dip would appear not unlike Satan tempting the Christ to show his power, when during the week of temptation, he took Jesus to a great height and taunted him to perform a miracle, since he was  the son of God expected by all!

    The parallel?  Well, Fashola the golden boy of Lagos, entered with some anonymity — Fashola who?  But as minister, his fame was already founded on the solidity of his achievements in Lagos; and the razor-sharpness of his thinking.

    So, he faces huge expectations bordering on the magical, which could easily snowball into a crisis, especially as he operates in tasking times.  Yet, crisis time is when proven performers prove their mettle, particularly with a united administration behind him.

    That is why those who trumpet him as “prime minister” would do well to see the quantum of his job; and spend less time on the triumphalism founded trivia.  Besides, such would only make him needless enemies, within and without the administration.

    Let everyone therefore focus on value.  That way, there would be less time for needless yarns that can only confuse, confound and distract.

    The Buhari road is too rough, and the pains of longsuffering Nigerians too high, such costly distractions.

  • To you, Biafra romantic

    To you, Biafra romantic

    From the communiqué’s chilly symbolism, of date and place of issue, it was clear: history was about repeating itself, but this time as grand farce.

    On 15 January 1970, the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) formally ended, though actual fighting did on January 13.  In Port Harcourt, to this day, the vexed issue of Civil War Igbo “abandoned property” remains a sore point.  Yet, from the same Port Harcourt came, on 15 January 2012, the communiqué.

    A nationwide Occupy Nigeria protest, over oil subsidy removal, had paralysed the country.   But from Annkio Briggs, a Niger Delta environmental activist who signed in as president, Agape Birthrights and convener, Niger Delta Occupy Niger Delta Resources (NDONDR), came the ringing declaration.

    It was a clear defiance of, if not outright cynical pun on, the Occupy Nigeria demonstrations.

    “We call on all our Niger Delta peoples, for the sake of our future,” it read in part, “to look to our nearest neighbours, the Igbos, for immediate and strong alliance to enable the Niger Delta nations and the Igbo nation to face the obvious change that will come to Nigeria, in strength, justice, brotherhood and truth.”

    And the rather sinister threat: “If Jonathan, a Niger Delta son is not good enough to govern Nigeria, the oil in his Niger Delta is not good enough for Nigeria.”

    It was the beginning of the end, though most did not see it then.  A newly elected president just lost his legitimacy.  A pan-Nigeria mandate, barely nine months from the 16 April 2011 presidential election, just doomed itself with fatal ethnic posturing.  Some three years later, after the full plot had played out, a president finally lost his presidency.

    On 15 January 2012 (42 years exactly after the Civil War ended), Ms. Briggs’s new presumption was baiting an old one.

    In 1967, Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu and other Eastern war-time leaders presumed an Igbo secession from Nigeria was sure to resonate with the other Eastern minorities.  That appeared to have driven the old Biafra campaign — after all, a strip of sea, off the Eastern Nigeria coast, is called Bight of Biafra.

    In 2012, it came reversed: NDONDR’s communiqué presumed a putative Niger Delta (read Ms Briggs’s Ijaw) secession should be a sure hit with the majority Igbo!  And the sabre-rattling from a section of the Ijaw, threatening war and destruction should Goodluck Jonathan fail re-election, nicely keyed into that gung ho  narrative, which certainly was not without sympathy in the South East.

    With Jonathan’s loss, is that driving the new Biafra campaign?  Are a section of the Ndigbo, electoral confederates at the 2015 presidential defeat, harkening the call of Ms Briggs to firm up some political confederacy, that might just ruffle some Nigeria feathers?

    Will it work this time round?  Or would it be yet another costly — and fatal — presumption?

    Over the old and new Biafra campaigns, the sound bites bear eerie similarities.

    No power in Africa, boasted Ojukwu at the height of the mass hysteria in 1966/1967, could vanquish Biafra.

    In Ireland alone, Nnamdi Kanu brags in 2016, Biafra scientists in the Diaspora could forge enough war heads, much more lethal than the crude Ogbunigwe that gave the Nigerians a bloody nose in the last ill-fated campaign, even as his Radio Biafra belt out bigoted and hate messages.

    No wonder then: as the excitable, if not the outright gullible, back then serenaded Ojukwu and his leadership, a mob on Biafra streets is swooning to Kanu’s message of hate and boast.

    So, why would two generations of a people, with less than 50 years interval, approach a failed gambit anew, almost exactly the way they had approached the original?  Wasn’t any lesson learned down the age?

    But Ripples must enter this caveat.  The Yoruba, Hausa, Tiv or Igbo have a right to choose where they want to belong.  That is trite in law and in human rights.

    Besides Nigeria, though a legal territory, is no god that must, willy-nilly, be worshipped.  To earn legitimacy, it must deliver justice and equity to everyone within its confines.

    Still, there is a clear difference between agitating for legal rights — of association and determination — and baiting war.  The flock of demonstrators in some South East and South-South cities, who call themselves the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), would insist theirs are peaceful rallies. That is not untrue.

    But what of Kanu’s explosively emotive broadcasts?  Are they peaceful rallies too?  Yet, both have a common nexus: Biafra, with one feeding the other.  Should push get to shove, and things do turn messy, are both set of actors ready for the grim consequences?

    By the way, did Kanu ever hear of Rwanda’s Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLMC), the Hutu hate organ that led Rwanda to perdition, on the genocide road to Kigali?  If his hate radio leads the romantic Biafra to stark misery, Kanu would have his day in the International Criminal Court (ICC), just as the Rwanda RTLMC sponsors.

    But isn’t it high time Igbo elders, particularly the class that saw war in 1967-1970, intervened and pulled their people back, from needless demagoguery courting avoidable tragedy?

    Back in 1970, a boy called Azubike joined some other boys in primary five, at St. David’s Anglican Primary School, Okesuna, in the Lafiaji area of Lagos Island.  Azubike’s eyes shot out like a frog’s — and always riveted at some imaginary but constant objects.  It was a grim and telling testimony: this boy had seen the horrors of war!

    And still talking war: if the old Biafrans felt justified to war because of the pogroms in the North, resulting from the first coup of 15 January 1966, what would they say is driving this present excitement: that their favoured lost in an election?

    Nigeria, as Ripples knows, is a canvass for equal-opportunity injustice, where no one can claim any modicum of innocence.  Indeed, often component parts band together to force down brazen injustice on the extant victim.

    1966/67: the northern pogroms and the resulting war.  Yet, every other part, even the Biafra minorities, banded together to unhorse the Igbo secessionists.  The emotive war cry: to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done!

    1993: MKO Abiola, a Yoruba by birth but pan-Nigerian by temper, won the freest ever pan-Nigeria presidential mandate.  Yet, when the IBB junta annulled it, about everyone else conspired to sustain that criminality — not the least the Igbo political elite.  Why, the late Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Eze gburugburu Ndigbo, even openly boasted his Abacha-era constitutional conference “mandate”, was superior to Abiola’s!

    2011: Despite Umaru Yar’Adua’s death in office, and Jonathan succession, via a doctrine of necessity, the North by the PDP zoning arrangement, should have produced a candidate to complete its zoned quota of eight years.  Yet, “zoning is undemocratic” and allied cant rented the air — and the South East was not especially quiet in the row.  Even former President Olusegun Obasanjo, first beneficiary of zoning, was loudest in declaiming that political reality.

    Nigeria is a huge canvass of injustice.  What it needs is robust determination to end these injustices; not some romantic escapism into Biafra, which itself forebodes needless danger.

  • Ambode, history beckons

    Ambode, history beckons

    Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, now harried to perform or bounce, may well ponder the gubernatorial history of Lagos.

    Two cases, one ending in peril; the other in glory, but both boasting no sparkling starts, should capture the governor’s attention, as he navigates this teething stage of his governorship.

    The one, Governor Michael Otedola, of blessed memory.  The other, Governor Bola Tinubu.

    Sir Michael Otedola, ever before his gubernatorial years, was an Epe folk hero of profound community value.  He was the quintessential entrepreneur, who swarmed his immediate community with scholarships and allied philanthropy.

    Even when the Lagos progressives, in 1991, feuded to the death, and could not agree on a common candidate, an aggrieved faction trusted Sir Michael enough to invest in him their grand plan: punish the uppity Dapo Sarumi faction of the then Social Democratic Party (SDP); but also make a progressive proxy of Otedola’s conservative National Republican Convention (NRC) government.

    For Otedola, it was a prescient name come true: “Ote” (intrigue) among the bickering progressives, had “dola”: become sheer fortune, for this lucky conservative!  But all too soon, it became a damp squib.  Though his electioneering war cry was That Lagos May Excel, Lagos instead grinded to a near-standstill under the luckless Sir Michael.

    True, the June 12 protests badly distracted the Otedola government, Lagos being the epicentre of the mass 1993 presidential election annulment dissent.  Still, when Gen. Sani Abacha, in a November 1993 coup, ended the still-birth Third Republic, Sir Michael’s had become among the worst gubernatorial tenures in Lagos history.

    Governor Tinubu’s debut was no radically different.  Asiwaju Tinubu came six years after Sir Michael.  The misfiring military had, in utter disgrace, exhausted their self-imposed historic role.  But everyone still lay in the ruins they left behind.

    So, Governor Tinubu took over a Lagos in sheer paralysis.  True, Col. Buba Marwa, the last military governor of Lagos, had made his own mark, a giant of a sort, among the military Lilliputians.  His Operation Sweep anti-crime squad had elicited copy from neighbouring Oyo, which named its own squad Operation Gbale (“sweep” is “gbale” in Yoruba).

    Indeed, it was in this politics of perception that the Tinubu government made its first public gaffe, renaming Marwa’s Operation Sweep as Rapid Response Force — before someone, somewhere remembered you couldn’t possibly have a force within a force!  So, the name was changed to Rapid Response Squad.

    But the crime crisis was just one among the many crippling challenges.  All over Lagos were mountains of refuse.  Even the waste-management public-private-participation (PPP) model, which eventually solved the problem, became the butt of cynical media jokes, as newspapers mocked the harassed government with choice pictures of bagged refuse, by road medians, awaiting clearance. “Tinubu’s bouquets”, they dubbed these ugly and smelly polythene bags!

    Meanwhile, Lagos roads were in a complete shambles.  Though Governor Marwa somewhat weaned himself from the “no bitumen” of the Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola era, the approach was still artificial patching, when an overhaul and complete reconstruction would do.

    Then, the Lagos Bar Beach overflow!  That became so consistent and persistent that the most brilliant idea of the Federal Government, under President Olusegun Obasanjo and Works Minister Tony Anenih, was sand-filling.  So, contractors ended up sandbagging their own country, but with the problem unsolved.  The Lagos environmental problem was complete and daunting.

    In the midst of all of these, the ever-impatient people and media went to town, dismissing the new Tinubu government as long in slogans but tragically short in substance.  That prevailed for no less than two years, during which the Tinubu government perfected its tactics and strategies.

    By the time the government took off in its third year, however, the next six years, in the two terms of eight years, would climax in glory.  Though Tinubu started rather slow, he ended rather well, even if the state was still a vast work-in-progress junkyard, since the bus rapid transit (BRT) corridors were under construction.

    This long historic tieback is imperative to emphasise that the present agony of Governor Ambode — an impatient and bad-tempered citizenry, goading him to perform or get the  hell out of the way — is not novel.

    Otedola went through it and wilted; though his four-year term was truncated after only 21 months — less than half way.  But Tinubu went through it and triumphed.  But again, he enjoyed two democratic terms of eight years.

    The question: which path would Ambode tow?  That is where history beckons.

    In “Ambode and King Solomon’s complex” (June 9), Ripples somewhat set a putative agenda for the new Lagos governor.  But he warned that the governor’s tenure would enjoy neither the restless drama of Tinubu’s entry and exit; nor the sheer excitement of Fashola’s entry and exit.  Lagos, that piece noted, was now much more settled; and less prone to drama and titillation.

    In order words, Ambode must creatively manage the humbug of his entry to somewhat make it sparkle; and give the ever excitable Lagos, backed by an often mischievous media, something to chew.

    So far, little of that has happened, though there is little proof the governor has been idling away.  Still, clearly the Ambode governorship would appear nowhere near where Ambode wants it to be.

    What to do?  Don’t panic or get distracted.  Don’t even get prickly.  Queries and comments, rational or irrational, come with the territory.  Governance, after all, is service, not over-lordship.

    Then, no unnecessary comparison and contrast with the Fashola tenure.  That would be sterile, and frankly, unproductive.  Ambode doesn’t need to wear Fashola’s shoes anymore than Fashola needed to wear Tinubu’s.

    Yet, when the history of post-Tinubu Lagos is written, Tinubu would pass as perhaps the most visionary, since he started the Lagos modernising project — after the no less heroic contributions of a previous two, of different eras: Alhaji Lateef Jakande (first elected governor) and Brig. Mobolaji Johnson (first-ever governor).

    Fashola, on the other hand, would pass as perhaps the most clinical and efficient in policy execution; earning national and global plaudits along the way.

    In this long continuum of exemplary Lagos governorships, Ambode has ample space to create his own niche, and make his own mark.  That is why he should, in the short run, focus on the very basics: roads, crime and traffic.  On roads, the governor is doing some work.  Witness: Ikotun-Egbe-Okota axis.

    But on crime and traffic, the report is not too cheery: umpteenth reckless Danfo and even BRT drivers; and lawless Okada riders invading major highways where they are barred by law, are turning Lagos into some Hobbesian jungle.  The governor needs to be uncompromisingly tough on these road outlaws.  Add the trailer/tanker drivers’ menace, and you can feel a splitting gubernatorial migraine!

    It is a teething stage in the Ambode governorship; and the way angry Lagosians react isn’t pretty.  But that is hardly unexpected.

    That is why Governor Ambode must dig deep to make his mark.  Governor Tinubu turned round his own early setbacks.  So can Governor Ambode.

    And Sir Michael?  That is no option.  Governor Ambode can and should scale his teething challenges; and ultimately get it right.

  • Pate’s pains

    Pate’s pains

    It was meant as high praise but it rubbed rather raw on Ripples.

    Lai Muraino Oso, the birthday commemorative lecturer enthused, was  a “highly detribalised Nigerian”.

    It was October 9 in Ikeja, Lagos.  Prof. Oso, Mass Communication teacher and scholar at the Lagos State University School of Communication, was 60; and the drone of small talks, at times causing an intrusive buzz that earned the lecturer’s sharp rebuke, was proof of a packed hall.

    Prof. Umaru A. Pate, Kaigamma Adamawa, and professor of Mass Communication at Bayero University, Kano, was at the lectern.  The lecture title: “Issues in Media and National Integration in Nigeria.”

    An expert in communication, to be sure.  Still, Ripples thought Prof. Pate fell prey to one of those great Nigerian clichés, even if his praise of the celebrator was well earned; and, given the diamond boy’s impressive bona fide, truly genuine.

    But detribalised Nigerian?

    “What does that mean?”  Ripples turned to a co-guest and table mate.

    “Someone,” the other volunteered, “unburdened by tribal and ethnic baggage or bigotry; and is nationalistic in his thinking.  Former President Olusegun Obasanjo,” he enthused, “is the most detribalised of all Nigeria’s past leaders.”

    “I see,” Ripples grunted.  “But how is someone ‘detribalised’ — cease being Yoruba, as in Obasanjo’s case, so you could be Nigerian?”

    That would appear contemporary Nigeria’s conventional wisdom.  That appears to have shaped Prof. Pate’s high praise.

    Still, must “tribe” be a bad thing?  Hardly.  “Tribe” is only an ethnic classification.  Just as in Britain, the English, Scot, Welsh, and Irish are tribes; in Nigeria, the Igbo, Hausa, Tiv and Yoruba are.

    Indeed, Chief Anthony Enahoro (God bless his soul), in his political memoirs, Fugitive Defender, recalled a virtual “tribal war” among the British expatriate teachers of the King’s College, Lagos, of his day — the English with his assumed superiority complex; and the Scot vigorously rejecting his perceived inferiority complex.

    Yet, the British overlords, beyond these cold wars, never hinted these tribes were sinister or subversive of the British national interest.  They couldn’t have been: for without the English, the Scot and the Welsh, there certainly would not have been the Brits.

    But the rules would appear reversed, with the Nigerian equivalent.  Nigerian “tribes” were sinister and subversive of Nigeria; though just like British tribes, they endure, among themselves, some tension.  Still, those British tribes are supportive of British integration as Nigerian tribes are subversive of Nigeria’s!

    It’s the same mindset of language politics that refers to English as English, but African languages as “vernacular”, suggestive of some phantom inferiority!

    But strictly, the Brits were a colonising power.  So, they would plot any stratagem to cement their imperialism.

    But Nigerians must see through it all; and avoid passing the negative prejudices down the ages, under the romance of “national unity and integration”, as Prof. Pate, with all due respect to his scholastic rigour,  would appear to have done, all through his commemorative lecture.

    Pray, how can you integrate Nigeria, when you start from the premise that the “tribes” making up a federal Nigeria, as far as the integrative process goes, are evil and subversive?

    And how can Nigeria be, without the intrinsic qualities of the Yoruba, Hausa, Itsekiri, Ijaw, Fulani, Tiv, Idoma and others that make up that geographical territory?

    So long for “detribalisation”!

    To be sure, making a patriotic fetish of “unity and integration” is an age-old Nigerian pastime.  But that pastime has also shown the futility of dreaming “unity” without rigorously working through the basic challenges: accepting that the 396 Nigerian ethnics (by the professor’s own statistics) are basically different peoples, in a federal Nigeria.

    These differences cannot be wished away.  But we can accept them and work through them to find common fronts.  Any other way is sweet but barren patriotic preachment.

    Take the media.  To insist on a Nigerian “national” media is sweet emptiness.  This is because as Nigeria is a federal state, its media would differ from one end of the country to another, depending on different attitudes, bents and cultures — without prejudice, of course, to common humanity, without which even a federal state, of differing peoples, cannot survive.

    That much was proved all through Nigeria’s media history.  Iwe Irohin  (Nigeria’s first newspaper, founded 1859)  was a missionary medium hinged on Egba and Yoruba cultural plank.  It couldn’t have survived otherwise.  The Anglo-African, Lagos’ first newspaper, wilted and died because of its cultural barrenness.

    The most successful early newspapers, Lagos Weekly Record, Lagos Standard and perhaps Times of Nigeria were published by Anglo-Africans, who had little affinity with the native Eko community.  Indeed, the Saro (freed former slaves from Sierra-Leone), the natives openly mocked as dual “parasites” — who feasted on the Eko natives “for trade”; and on the British colonisers “for culture”.

    But both LWR and LS cut a niche as bastions of African nationalism, which often even fired the imagination and awe of the Eko aborigines, especially when newspapers like Herbert Macaulay’s Lagos Daily News, the town’s first daily newspaper, fought community crusades, over land and water issues, against the British, to roaring cheer from the appreciative community.

    The long-and-short of all that is that the media have symbiotic relationship with their communities.  If therefore the Nigerian media now tend to stress local differences more than “national unity”, it is simply because too many issues are yet unsettled — most of these issues bordering on basic justice, fairness and equity.

    So, what media worth their name would leave those fundamental issues, and start parroting a hoped-for “unity” and “integration” that are, at best, some future Utopia — very sweet to covet, but hardly at hand?

    Ironically, by his very examples, Prof. Pate projected his own different outlook, even from fellow academics, from other parts of Nigeria.

    He dismissed 1st Republic federalism as “unitary regional structure”, what his counterpart from South West Nigeria would glorify as “true and regional federalism”, on which plank Nigeria should be “restructured”.

    On the other hand, he romanticises territorial fissures that Gen. Yakubu Gowon started, as a “process of national integration and cohesion”, which nevertheless folks elsewhere would lampoon as military era “unitary federalism”, which Gowon started with 12 states but which, at the last count, was 36.  That has progressively atomised the states, and made the centre too powerful and irresponsible, having great socio-economic implications in mass poverty and citizen alienation.

    Still, neither Prof. Pate nor the opposite school is wrong.  They are simply right from their own perspectives.  Yet, all are Nigerians claiming the best for their country!  That is Nigeria’s complexity at a simple glance.  You won’t achieve “unity”, if you didn’t appreciate and factor in that diversity.

    But Prof. Pate, clearly a Nigeria unity-centric, did well to beam light on these issues.  But equal-opportunity rigour demands Nigeria unity-sceptics too clinically cut-and-thrust with him, without risking the toga of being branded “sectional” in their thinking.

    It is even more meet that it’s all happening in commemoration of Prof. Oso at 60, that pan-Nigerian academic and scholar, one of the few braves that haven’t given up on the troubled Nigerian university system.

    But the good scholar need not be “detribalised” to consummate his “Nigerian-ness”!

  • Wike’s wake

    Wike’s wake

    To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus

    Our fears in Banquo stick deep,

    And in his royalty of nature

    Reigns that which would be feared — Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 1,   Shakespeare’s Macbeth          

    Given this opening quote, there appears an eerie parallel between the historical tragedy of the Scottish impostor king, Macbeth (as dramatically captured by William Shakespeare); and the looming gubernatorial tragedy of Nyesom Wike, the embattled Rivers “governor”, whose “election” was judicially annulled on October 24.

    Put the quote in contemporary Nigeria.  Put the words in the mouth of Patience Jonathan, the pesky, tempestuous spouse of former President, Goodluck Jonathan.  Drop “Banquo” for “Amaechi” — and this is what you get: Patience, the godmother, to Wike, the godson:

    “To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus/Our fears in Amaechi stick deep,/And in his royalty of nature/Reigns that which would be feared“!

    Ay, in the original, the impostor Macbeth, spoke in painful soliloquy, after he had killed King Duncan, his benefactor; after being goaded into regicide by the puffy promises of the three witches; and loads of satanic prompting from his no less evil wife.

    At the end of the day, however, it took more than slaying Duncan to sit pretty on the Scottish throne.

    Still, the Nigerian adaptation isn’t totally out of place.

    Politically slaying Rotimi Amaechi, former Rivers governor, was central to the egregious Rivers election rigging, which the Rivers State Election Tribunal, sitting in Abuja, just confirmed.

    Patience Jonathan would appear the grand dame of that anti-Amaechi plot.  Between Amaechi and the former first lady, there was no love lost.

    Her husband, President Jonathan, the naive but no less opportunistic, “Macbeth”, who hoped to greatly profit from Amaechi’s political liquidation, by subtle appeal to base South-South sentiments; while the less subtle Dame went on overdrive, the “home girl” exploiting explosive Okrika (read Rivers) base appeal.  Okrika is her hometown.

    Wike, of course, then as Jonathan’s education minister of state, was the not-so-legit viceroy (just as Macbeth was the legit Thane of Cawdor) assured to become outright illegitimate governor (just as Macbeth committed regicide) — but only if he could pay the price!

    The tragic result was a wanton and gory harvest of lives and limbs in the name of election — perhaps the bloodiest in all of the 2015 general elections.

    Even before the Tribunal verdict of October 24, international observers had dismissed the “election” as free slaughter; just as local observers concurred it was “war”.  Yet, “Governor” Wike and his fatally deluded agents of impunity kid themselves they had a “mandate”!  Some mandate!

    Wike’s gubernatorial meltdown is, therefore, a sweet testimony to the futility of impunity — not only during electioneering and elections, but also in day-to-day governance.

    This is particularly so in a federal setting, where a president abandons extant rules; and essays presidential imperialism, as Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Jonathan clearly did during their tenure.

    Recall: the crush-Amaechi-at-all-cost campaign created political anomie in Rivers, well ahead of the elections.

    Remember the illicit pressing into service of Mbu Joseph Mbu, who as Rivers Police commissioner, attained notoriety for gross subordination.  He claimed that as a “lion” he had tamed the “leopard” Governor Amaechi — perhaps to muted applause from Jonathan’s Aso Rock!

    While Mbu was busy playing the partisan, if not outright lawless, policeman, Wike was the proud Abuja viceroy in Port Harcourt, in whom Aso Rock was well pleased!  And the two, unfazed poster boys of untrammelled impunity, made quite a tag-team!

    Despite a paralysing Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike, which fell under his purview as education minister of state, Wike would rather growl and talk wike, wike on the rough and tumble of Rivers politics — again, to apparent Aso Rock cheer!

    This then was the heart-rending situation, from which Rivers pre-election anomie sunk into the abyss of election-time anarchy; all premised on brazen “federal might”, the Nigerian contemporary political equivalent of the three witches’ gaseous promise to Macbeth.

    But just as the witches’ pledges evaporated fast, like the morning dew melting at the first touch of the sun, Wike’s assured cover of “federal might” (no thanks to Jonathan’s parlous loss) has exploded with an iridescent pop — leaving the tragic “governor” to grope at mocking emptiness!

    And yet, he and his deluded ensemble crow: we hold — and will never surrender — a mandate freely given!  But by who — one is tempted to ask?

    A whole family wiped out just because they had the ill luck of insisting on their democratic right to associate and vote in an election?

    A whole community sacked, and who became election-time refugees in the bush, simply because the Wike Army of Brutal Election Enforcement were on the prowl?

    Or yet tens and hundreds of the fatally traumatized aged, condemned to untimely deaths, just because their youths had the audacity to exercise their democratic rights?

    After all the legal and forensic grandstanding, even up to the Supreme Court on appeal; and the emotive and atavistic play in the streets, towards a patently evil cause of electoral banditry, judicially proven: will all the waters of the Atlantic wash the marauders’ hands clean of blood and blot?

    The evil Lady Macbeth, at the end of her tether, in troubled sleep-walking, answered that question — in resounding negative!

    To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus!

    Nyesom Wike’s gubernatorial wake (never mind the Peoples Democratic Party’s hysterical bluff and bluster) should be a wake-up call to all: never again must Nigeria tolerate flagrant electoral banditry, routine in some parts of the country.

    But relieving Wike of his gubernatorial loot should only be the first step.  The next logical step is trying and gaoling every INEC official implicated in this grand and ultra-violent electoral heist.  That should send the right message.

    Though about everyone seems to have partisan inclinations, true democrats should bother less about partisan electoral winners and losers, though victory is sweet and defeat painful.  Rather, they should ensure the process wins, by making elections free, fair, transparent and credible.

    If this is achieved in the Rivers re-run, the process would have won; and everyone — winners or losers — with it.

     

    Quote: “Wike’s gubernatorial wake should be a wake-up call to all: never again must Nigeria tolerate flagrant electoral banditry, routine in some parts of the country”

     

  • Age of doubt

    Age of doubt

    It’s scepticism all round, over President Muhammdu Buhari’s long-awaited list of ministers; and Nigerians do appear to suffer the syndrome of that Yoruba figure who, sick and tired of seeing phonies, permanently shut his eyes, in vigorous protest.

    But pray, in that period of voluntary blindness, what if the very original wanders by?

    That passionate sense of doubt somewhat echoes William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), the Irish playwright, poet and cultural nationalist, who won the Nobel in 1923.

    He won because his poetry voiced deep Irish dissonance, when his people chaffed under British imperialism, cultural and political.

    Still, he has had quite an influence on Nigeria’s literary temper.

    Yeats’s “The Second Coming”, provided the title for Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, perhaps the most famous book to come out of Nigeria — an indeed, all of Africa.

    Besides, Nigeria and its shambolic governance over time, could well be the political equivalent of the Yeats poetic chaos, of the falcon not hearing the falconer.

    Even then, his quote that opened this piece — the best lack all convictions, while the worst/are full of passionate intensity — could well have been penned to dramatically capture Nigeria’s current high age of doubt.

    “These ‘analogue’ ministers”, quipped a columnist with The Nation.  But with all due respect to the democratic licence to differ, there appeared little digital proof in his own writing!

    Another snapped: a “breathe of stale air”.  But again, pretty little evidence of freshness, outside seeming group-think — hardly a crime, though.

    Yet another savaged the president with alleged “ancient thinking”, perhaps simply because Muhammadu Buhari doesn’t wax poetic in the neo-liberal lingo of growth sans development.

    But what did the likes of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the very epitome of cutting-edge technocracy in governance, do with the economy, aside from count empty beans?

    No matter!  Nigerians have been too much bitten in the past.  The age of innocence is lost.  They are in no hurry to trust anyone again — not even the near-ascetic and puritan  Muhammadu Buhari, who at least holds the high promise he won’t steal — or tolerate stealing — in office.

    Still, the rather mundane bases for the rippling scepticism is worrying.  Take the rather one-track debate of youth versus old age, from which has come the Audu Ogbeh example.

    Saraki, the father, as senate leader, announced Mr. Ogbeh’s name as nominated minister, in the Second Republic.  Now Saraki, the son, as senate president, is considering Mr. Ogbeh as putative minister.  Conclusive proof: Mr. Ogbeh is “recycled” and therefore “useless”!

    How about that for (il)Logic 101!

    First, there is something noxious about the creeping contention that age is useless, simply because a few senior citizens, over the years, had given less than a good account of themselves.  It all smirks of lack of enough introspection to think matters through.

    Take Mr. Ogbeh.  At 35 in 1982, he was made minister, in the Second Republic (1979-1983) under the Shehu Shagari presidency.  He was about the youngest in that cabinet.  But when that dispensation collapsed, and principal characters were probed for alleged sleaze, he came out smelling of the proverbial roses, despite his relative tender age.

    Then, the same Mr. Ogbeh, as Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national chairman, had a sensational but principled fall-out with President Olusegun Obasanjo, over the then Anambra Governor, Chris Ngige, kidnap saga, on which the president was hee-hawing.

    He got railroaded out of office, which, looking back now, was the beginning of the end for the ruling PDP.  But the career farmer from Benue State kept his integrity intact.

    Indeed, in an age where politicians flit across party lines, like some wayward witches on broomsticks, the moment he joined the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), he never looked back.  In the run-up to the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential win, he played his own part, once marshalling farmers to sell some million tubers of yam to raise money for Buhari’s presidential run.

    Now, what simplistic thinking would hold that such a proven man of conscience and integrity jars against a new order, promising rectitude, simply because he is now 68 and was minister at 35?

    Still, on age and youth.  The senior citizens today — Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Ahmadu Bello (all of blessed memory), Gen. Yakubu Gowon, Obasanjo, Gen. Theophilus Danjuma, Gen. Buhari, at his first coming as military head of state, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and  Philip Asiodu (he of the “super permanent secretaries” fame) — what were their modal ages when they gloried or fumbled in office?  Dashing youths or aged and decrepit?

    So long for the shallow, mutually exclusive, dichotomy between age and youth!

    And yes, the politician versus technocrat argument!  First, what was Awo, when he wrought great development wonders in his days as Western Region premier — politician or technocrat?  And what, indeed, was Babatunde Fashola as Lagos governor and Kayode Fayemi, as Ekiti governor?  Ay, what is Nasir El-Rufai now as Kaduna governor?  Or Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, then as Lagos governor or now as national leader of APC — politicians or technocrats?

    So long for another phoney dichotomy, when there is none!

    Indeed, there appears something eminently dishonourable about the so-called clamour for “technocrats”.  Where were these “technocrats” during the whoops of electioneering?  So, the so-called “politicians” are good enough for the rigours of elections, but only “technocrats” can excel in government?

    Like Tinubu, Fashola, Fayemi and El-Rufai, all technocrats in their own rights, that technocrat secretly salivating the gravy of office, solely on the strength of his “expertise”, should first scale the strictures of politics and politicking!  Insisting on reaping where you didn’t sow is as much a corruption of the ethos of politics, as sleaze is a corruption of the ethos of governance.

    Still, all this Babel of Doubt, reasonable or not, means just one thing: Buhari is condemned to delivering — and there will be no excuses.

    So, Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu (for the Presidency), and whoever becomes the Information  minister, aside from the new party spokesperson, given the imminent exit of Alhaji Lai Mohammed, have their job cut out.

    They will do well to open a vigorous communication segment to every policy and programme, to continuously engage the public.  They sure could do more of that, right now, to calm the voluble Buhari-sceptic army.

    At the end of the day, however, only results matter.  Obasanjo started well, in the opinion of not a few, with some promise of renaissance.  But all too soon, no thanks to his grave personal failings and contradictions, he ended a damp squib.

    Only performance, solid performance, can cure longsuffering Nigerians of their hard-earned scepticism.  In Nigeria’s contemporary history, only Awo and Buhari approached the presidential job with a prospect of human sainthood, and firm control over team.

    Awo never got the job.  But Buhari has.  So, it’s time the president leveraged his sparse personal baggage, push his ministers hard along the narrow and winding path, guided by superb policy and programmes, to deliver the goods — and keep Nigerians believing again.

  • Parliament wants immunity

    Parliament wants immunity

    Folks, your parliament wants immunity!

    But what is the assurance that immunity won’t breed parliamentary impunity, the most violent antipode to the very concept of democracy?

    Can you imagine a kabiyesi parliament — a parliament that cannot be questioned, even by its own electors?

    Yet, it is this much abused “democracy” that this self-serving ensemble mouth themselves as most authentic living symbols!

    Since 1999, when former President Olusegun Obasanjo roasted the National Assembly on the populist altar of “furniture allowance”, portraying the new brood of legislators as a band of unconscionable gluttons devoted to nobody’s welfare but their own, Ripples had always thought Nigerians unfair to their elected representatives.

    For one, President Obasanjo was scorching parliament and projecting himself as some people’s champion, too holy for a profane legislature to touch.  Yet, the president parliament must touch, by constitutional oversight.

    That populist ploy was, of course, dangerous Machiavellian gambit, subversive of rigorous checks-and-balances, on which presidential democracy is erected.

    For another, the president on the grandstand furiously excoriated legislative pork; but was stone quiet on the perks of his own ministers; and the brood of unelected others, in executive sinecure.

    Besides, Nigeria’s successive military coups had consigned the legislature as the least developed of the three governmental arms, since it was the only arm sacrificed during military rule.  For that sole reason, it deserved some empathy.

    Still, with Leo Ogor’s sensational announcement of immunity dreams for its topmost principal officers, Ripples just wonders if the National Assembly, not popular in the streets even in the best of times, is not bent on a self-destruct path.

    Mr. Ogor, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) member and Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, announced with glee the legislature was mulling over a constitutional amendment that would gift immunity to the Senate president and his deputy, as well as the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.  In the spirit of subversive generosity, the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) too was a putative beneficiary!

    The logic?  Well, the president (national) and governors (states), heads of the executive, enjoy the immunity clause.  So, why not “democratise” immunity, to include the heads of the other two arms?

    Indeed, why not, other things being equal?  But that is the snag: other things were far from equal.  Really, Mr. Ogor’s statement came across as some provocative sword of Damocles, from a parliament chaffing at the “insult” of docking Senate President, Bukola Saraki, for alleged corruption.

    Mr. Ogor’s seeming unstated illogic?  That the Constitution grants the president immunity, and the senate president none, appears “unacceptable” to parliament; and must be reversed forthwith.

    But wouldn’t self-help itself — and that’s what Ogor’s threat amounts to — be a cynical corruption of the hallowed trust of law making?

    Besides, when did legislative immunity become an issue — before or after Saraki’s Code of Conduct odyssey? Didn’t those chaffing now read the Constitution before they opted for the National Assembly, instead of running for president or governor, to enjoy immunity?

    And having made their choice, should they corrupt the process with self-help, not only cynically hinting that the law is an ass; but also that the processes leading to lawmaking is outright asinine, since legislators can corral powers to legislate for their short-term selfish interests, rather than for the perpetual good of the polity?

    Should they even pull off this gambit, how would it possibly save Saraki from having his day in court, even if his body language violently rails against that due process?  Could parliament, in all good — and democratic! — conscience, make the law retroactive to save the embattled senate president?

    Still, for all you know, Mr. Ogor could well have been speaking for himself, and no one else.  He could also be the quintessential honourable gentleman, as his House membership presupposes, incapable of cant.

    But he could also be flying a kite for an incipient campaign.

    Given his political trajectory, a scion of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a party splendidly undone by its own impunity, impunity would appear never far away.  From his PDP culture, therefore, a cynical push for legislative immunity, en route to legislative impunity, would appear coming with the territory.

    Still, the real story behind the Ogor immunity drama is the clash of vision between President Muhammadu Buhari and Senate President Saraki, on what governance should be in a season of change.

    In fairness, the crisis started from Buhari’s presidential naivety of declaring himself disinterested in whoever headed the Senate or the House of Representatives.

    But in fairness to the president too, no decent person would have expected Saraki’s vaulting desperation, which fired his brazen sell-out of his party — and its right to the deputy senate presidency — to the opposition PDP, to corral subversive votes, to land the Senate presidency.

    Now, the PDP sits pretty, not giving a damn if the new order fails.  Neither does Saraki, it appears, so long as he achieves his aim.  It’s all so reminiscent of the infamous quote of Lucifer, in John Milton’s Paradise Lost: “Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven”!

    Soon enough, if this crisis persists, rebel APC senators in Saraki’s camp, could just drop their neither-nor facade, and queue behind their master.  Whence then would he lead them?

    Remain Lucifer, still the proud Son of the Morning, in the ruling party (whatever its name)?  Or a full descent into Satan, in hellish opposition, stubbornly living the quip of ruling in hell, rather than serving in heaven?  Time will tell!

    This monstrous see-saw of change-but-no-change, therefore, drives this crisis.  The threat of legislative immunity is only the latest symptom, of the high-octane power play for the soul of change: the Buhari vanguard of change for real change; or the Saraki school’s change as mere illusion.

    But before the politicians get ahead of themselves, cooking deals and expecting the docile people to helplessly watch from the sidelines, let everyone know.

    For all his braggadocio, Senator Saraki only boasts the mandate of a third of a state, his senatorial district in Kwara State.  At the end of the day, the senate presidency, when the chips are down, is more a function of honour and of influence, than of power.

    On the other hand, President Buhari boasts a national mandate.  While to the tactful, soft power always trumps hard power, between the president and the senate president, there is little doubt as to who wields a bigger mandate.

    And lest everyone forgets: Buhari’s win was as much a victory for the opposition as it was redemption for the self-destruct ruling elite, which PDP was heedlessly rushing to the political gallows.

    A few months hence of Jonathan’s anomie, and maybe Nigeria’s present ruling elite would have been buried under the Nigerian rubble?

    That is why Buhari holds it a historic duty to enact the positive change his presidential win promised.  That is his contract with Nigeria.

    The Saraki dilution, via PDP intrusion, is not part of that solemn deal.  It is a terrible distraction that must be removed — and fast.

  • OGA

    OGA

    OGA — Otunba Gani Adams — he kept on calling himself that, each time he made a prize presentation, pronouncing OGA as the Yoruba would pronounce “chameleon”.

    Was the symbolism lost on him?

    It must have, particularly with his branded persona as a Yoruba cultural ambassador; juxtaposed with his election-time hustle as political activist — a Goodluck Jonathan activist — with a suspect cause.

    On this occasion, however, OGA’s culture persona came in handy.  In fact, it handed him the highest perk on the high table, as chief guest of honour and part-sponsor of the event.

    It was September 28.  First-year students, taking Traditional African Festival and Theatre (TAFT), a mandatory course at the Creative Arts Department of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), were enacting whatever they had learnt about Nigeria’s panoply of yearly festivals.

    On show, therefore, were Zangbeto (the famous festival among the Egun in Badagry, Lagos), Suharo (a festival among the Ijaw in Bayelsa State), Borri (which predated the Othman Dan Fodio Islamic revolution in northern Nigeria) and Ojude Oba (the yearly trado-community festival, though staged after the Islamic Eid-el-Kabir, among the Ijebu, in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State).

    Ripples was there, a doting father, to the call of a sweet daughter, Tolu, who said her lecturer, Steve James, who about everyone over there calls “Uncle Steve”, insisted parents and family should attend; claiming such would fetch 10 marks.  Tolu was among the cast of Borri, that eventually won the festival cup.

    Dr. Otun Rasheed, initiator of the TAFT practical pageant, explained the rationale for the festival.  He recalled how, as a student in the same department, the late Prof. Bode Osanyin taught him TAFT.  But each time his set of students were told to go witness — and maybe participate in — real festivals, they were scared off by fetish superstitions (even taboos) that if something or the other was done or not done, the result would be fatal.

    As a teacher himself, Dr. Rasheed initiated the TAFT festival since, he explained, many elite parents often shut their offspring out of traditional festivals, since they feel such are toxic to the cultural health of the children.  But he wanted his students to have a real feel of such festivals.  He had staged the festival (the TAFT examination practical) in the last 10 years.

    Mr. James, president of the Guild of Nigerian Dancers and a Unilag cultural officer, is TAFT’s present teacher, though he moves on, next academic session as a lecturer, to the Federal University, Lafia (FULAFIA), Nasarawa State.

    He told Ripples that since he wanted the festival’s 11th edition to be grand and memorable — he went in search of culture “icons”, which explained the OGA link.

    Ojude Oba’s performance earned third place (out of four) because they presented as near-life a performance as possible.  But art should add some dramatic spark.  For instance, the Ojude compere spoke in English, with a mixture of plain Yoruba.  But the Ijebu dialect could have added an opening spice of drama and humour.

    Then, the Miss and Mr Ojude Oba pageant should, perhaps, have come heavily caricatured — ladies with over-sized boobs; and men with deliberately awkward gaits, for example — which could perhaps have excited the audience; and marked the performance up.  Why these dramatic gambits were lost on the cast was surprising, for Olanrewaju Omiyinka, the veteran Baba Ijesa of Yoruba Nollywood, who has made a dramatic career caricaturing the Ijesa trait and tongue, played the sweetly costumed Awujale.

    But perhaps Omiyinka was only just another student; and the students had strict instructions from their handlers!  The only spark in the performance was Tunji Ameen, the fair-skinned young man who played the expatriate guest from the British High Commission.  His distinctly British accent got the audience swooning.

    Borri was action-packed, with frenetic music, sheer animation, superb choreography, energetic dancing, and raw action, of trickery and treachery, served in high-octane dance drama.  Its win was therefore no surprise.  Ripples, however, had not arrived when Suharo (4th) and Zangbeto (2nd) performed.

    OGA — Otunba Gani Adams — gave a good account of himself all through, serenading and being serenaded by, that polite company, in an often snobbish and supercilious campus setting.  He also pledged a bigger sponsorship for next year’s festival, aside from coming, next time round, with an entourage of traditional rulers.

    In giving out prizes, to four deemed best performers in each of the four groups, and the most outstanding coordinator, OGA’s Olokun Foundation bankrolled a prize-money of N25, 000 to each of the winners.  Now, that is no great sum.  But it could be the world to students, who still depend on others; more so when it came from acclaimed merit and hard work.

    OGA also presented plaques to the two lecturers vital to the TAFT festival: Drs Rasheed and Cornell Onyekaba.  He was in turn presented with a plaque, when Mr. James announced “only an Otunba can honour an Otunba” — and up bobbed “Otunba” Tunji Sotimirin, dramatist, theatre teacher and he of Konkere music fame, with his signature tasselled cap!

    What followed was another bout of serenading and counter-serenading, with OGA drinking in every sweet drop!

    Gani Adams has come a long way, from those early days as anonymous apprentice in Mushin, arguably the underclass capital of traditional Lagos; to the heroic days of Odua People’s Congress’s  contribution, if unorthodox, to the June 12, 1993 presidential election annulment struggle; the not-so-heroic intra-OPC street mugging and turf wars; and now a branded culture ambassador, vaulting an underclass denizen to role-model a bevy of Unilag undergraduates, on the culture plane.

    Still, not a few would sneer: Gani Adams, as campus role model?

    But OGA too could vehemently riposte, quoting a character in Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not to Blame: the cock grumbles he has no teeth, yet it swallows polished corn.  The goat that has teeth, what does it eat but raw leaves?

    Even as he struggled with his elocution, Adams’ basic educational challenge was glaring.  But how many of those not educationally challenged in that crowd — including yours truly — matched his singular recognition on the day?

    Besides Adams, by his careful distinction between traditional practice and fetish worship, showed an understanding of African culture well beyond the ken of many of the hyper-lettered in the elite class — many Christians and Muslims the Yoruba simply dismiss as “gba were m’esin” (madly fanatical in their adopted foreign faith).

    Surely, by his cultural activism, OGA does no wrong? And if an underclass denizen’s stock rises, to the extent that he proudly stands before a select campus crowd, does it not prove that the underclass or the elite are a function of accidents of birth, in a society that boasts no equal opportunity?

    Still, OGA must beware of the chameleon syndrome.  You can’t be a Yoruba culture ambassador, yet betray the omoluabi (well-bred) ethos — the best manifestation of that civilisation — by turning political racketeer during election time.

    Yet, that was what Gani did in the build-up to the 2015 election, with his OPC’s infamous invasion of Lagos, for the integrity-challenged Goodluck Jonathan presidency.

  • CONtroversy

    It perhaps was there all along; but with the criminal annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, CONtroversy made a brazen landing in Nigeria’s political public space.

    It is equal opportunity yarn: no moral, no conscience, no ethos, no decorum; just stiff, unconscionable bluff, doubly assured that impunity, in-your-face impunity, rules the roost.

    CONtroversy simply cons (or more accurately, badgers) the opposite party — often, the wronged — into submission!

    So, being such an amoral jungle, only the soulless bully, who presses into action the most outrageous of humbug and most audacious of lies, not to mention the most heartless of media spins, prevails.

    Again, back to June 12.  An election was held, the cleanest and freest in Nigeria’s history.  Somebody won: MKO Abiola (God bless his soul!).  Somebody lost: Bashir Tofa.

    But then some power criminals, under the military presidency of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, had other ideas.  Their fatal conceit?  That they could erase, without breaking a sweat, the electoral will of the 14 million Nigerians that voted.

    After galloping from impunity to impunity, surely June 12 would be yet another impunity Nigerians must drink in — or chuck it?

    Well, it turned a rather nasty pass, birthing the most fearsome intra-Nigeria war of attrition, that set the country’s South West against the power hegemonists: hustlers who represented no one; but who nevertheless grandstand as “northern”, and their cells nationwide.

    After five years, when the dust cleared, the military which had always usurped power and subverted government, had itself thoroughly self-subverted, so much so that it barely kept its integrity.

    That misadventure’s bitter after-taste lingered even longer: in the military’s disgraceful show against Boko Haram under President Goodluck Jonathan, only mercifully rolled back, since President Muhammadu Buhari’s take-over on May 31.

    For the North, it was even more politically galling.  For not declaiming a few power prodigals that — in the North’s name, real or perceived — criminally abused their uniforms, a region that assumed the conceit that power was its for the asking, risked a cruel shut-out.

    That explained the political entente fundamental to forging the present 4th Republic, with former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s arranged choice to “appease” the South West.

    Obasanjo, after a  failed attempt at an illegal third term, returned the favour.  He gifted the North his own choice of northerner, in the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, despite the open secret of his illness.

    The death of Yar’Adua, and the rise of Goodluck Jonathan — despite the illicit stonewalling by the so-called Katsina cabal — left the North, yet again, trapped in the thick jungle of power wilderness!  Not bad for a community that refused to call to order, a few wayward rascals, among its ranks!

    But Muhammadu Buhari, hardly a hit with the northern power elite, would change all that.

    So, for once, the northern power elite — indeed, the errant Nigerian ruling class — would rely on a personage they would rather not do business with, to salvage them from their own putative self-ruin.  Really, in the closing months of the Jonathan Presidency, this breed was getting endangered, for the polity was melting down!

    See where politics without ethos can land a people?

    At the core of this morass is the queer idea of solo infraction but vicarious guilt.

    ‘The Saraki saga, however it pans out, should teach everyone braggadocio does not pay, especially if you have a mighty lot to hide’

    A politician steals solo.  But when it’s time to do the time, his action attains an ethnic or religious hue, making his putative guilt vicarious, even if he represented only himself when he did the alleged crime.

    That explains the umpteenth lobby for a politician in distress, by his local potentates or religious orders, reported with glee in the media, as if it was the divine thing to do.

    Still, pathos is a universal emotion.  The fall of the vilest of leaders unleashes some deep pity: the fall of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, hanged on Eid-el-Kabir Day, 30 December 2006, for instance.  Or Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, felled by pursuing rebels, in the streets.

    Even in classical literature and Shakespeare, that tragic heroes die of their own follies didn’t dam societal pathos.  So, when Anthony in Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra gambled away his share of the Roman empire, on the loins of Eygpt’s Queen Cleopatra, he knew there would be terrible consequences — and indeed, there was.

    But Nigeria is less the universal humanity symbolised by pathos, but more of its abuse.  It is a country a public figure would deliberately challenge the law in a no-contest; yet when the law roars back in its full majesty, his community, that had played dumb during the rash challenge, would jerk awake to bawl “victimisation”!

    The Bukola Saraki saga is before a court of law.  Needless to say, controversy is at play, for or against.  Judgment will come, one way or another.

    But even as that plays out, a manoeuvre is already on — to fill the senate presidential seat, should Saraki finally fall.  From newspaper reports, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is set to pounce on the Senate Presidency.

    Again, the rule is not decency, not morality, not fairness, not even basic reason; just crass real-politik — read unconscionable audacity — for how would a minority party in parliament plot to seize the natural right of the majority, and will kid itself everything would be well?

    Meanwhile, the polity is near-funereally silent now, while this reckless stratagem goes on.  It is the bliss of the reckless dog, biting man.  But when the irate man starts biting that dog, the place will explode with pitiable screams of “victimisation”, “high-handedness” and allied epithets of cheap pity!

    Even the so-called “front runners”, in the alleged plot, are just a laugh: Ike Ekweremadu, controversial Senate deputy president, courtesy of Saraki’s brazen sell-out of his party for personal glory; Godswill Akpabio, even more controversial Senate minority leader and megalomaniacal former Akwa Ibom governor, and David Mark, former Senate president, who may yet keep a date with history for his alleged great deeds (or misdeeds!) of scuttling June 12, despite returning as one of the greatest beneficiaries of reinstated democracy.

    MKO’s ghost, after all, still hovers over the political space!  It took a whole of 16 years for PDP to self-destroy in its politics of soulless opportunism.  It should take even less for tigers of that ancien regime to politically perish too, should they continue in their old gbaju e (urban Yoruba street quip for audacious) ways.

    The Saraki saga, however it pans out, should teach everyone braggadocio does not pay, especially if you have a mighty lot to hide.  But then, that comes with the territory of political impunity, which has assumed a sickening political culture.

    President Buhari should leverage his personal integrity to crush this monster, even if his presidency uses the skulls of a few errant politicians to crack that evil coconut.

    Or Nigeria goes nowhere — for no country progresses without a moral core on which it anchors its national ethos.