The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Yoruba ronu

    Yoruba ronu

    The 2015 election is just another set of elections in Nigeria’s Fourth and longest running democratic republic, right?

    No.  It is rather an acid test — and rude challenge — to the fundamental ethos of the Yoruba South West.

    But why the South West?  Why not Nigeria?  Well, a Nigeria establishment that rewards Sani Abacha’s gargantuan sleaze with a posthumous centenary award, tolerates Olusegun Obasanjo’s costly megalomania and suffers gladly Goodluck Jonathan’s glaring vacuity, needs its head urgently examined, even as it unravels and grinds to its inevitable end.

    In contrast, the South West has a rich legacy in the Obafemi Awolowo phenomenon: people-centred governance, modernising vision, systematic development, all yoked in an overarching progressive template, robustly pushed by an electorate that hugely reward performance but promptly punish governmental failures.

    This golden legacy is at peril — under President Jonathan and his Peoples Development Party, PDP’s scorched earth, win-at-all-cost and by-whichever-means South West strategy, en route to 2015.

    That is why Yoruba ronu (Yoruba think), the great Hubert Ogunde’s clarion call and battle cry during the Western Region political crises of the First Republic (1960-1966), must be pressed into service yet again.

    Ekiti ronu (first published on these pages on 22 October 2013), made a grand intervention during the mess before the Ekiti crash.  Now, in Ekiti, the barbarians are at the city gate.

    Order has turned chaos.  The courts are prostrate, made so by the same state coercion constitutionally meant to make them inviolate.  Talk of security, paraphrasing Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, leading to conspiracy!  It is yet another from the desperate Jonathan (un)presidential bag of tricks.  With an eye on 2015, the administration must embrace outlawry to cripple Ekiti court processes, in aid of a governor-elect with a penchant for outlawry.

    Even the traditional order, the Ekiti royal fathers, are bawling, shrieking and screaming, beckoning on the barbarians to come in, post-haste, and smash up their civilisation!  Ekiti’s humpty-dumpty is smashed.  Not even all of the king’s horses and horsemen could put humpty-dumpty together again!

    This Jonathan prehistoric ploy may have started and shown its ugliest manifestation yet in Ekiti.  But the tell-tale of the desperate agenda is clear in other South West states.

    Ekiti birthed with the illogic that sterling performance deserves electoral drubbing.  That is Kayode Fayemi’s fate.

    But the noxious gas from that thinking is already choking the neighbouring Oyo State, with tested and failed former governors, Rashidi Ladoja and Adebayo Alao-Akala, two relics from the failed mainstream era, passing themselves off as new messiahs.

    Why, Mr. Alao-Akala even reportedly tore up ballot papers at an intra-Oyo PDP congress, a sad echo of former President Obasanjo’s heroics at the election for the Owu royal stool, in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

    True, many claim — and not without merit — that sitting Governor Abiola Ajimobi’s toxic tongue is the principal trigger of the problem.  That is very sad.

    Still, it is alarming that the penchant to scorn solid performance (given the governor’s unparalleled record in infrastructure and the environment, in stark contrast to the stone age performance of his predecessors turned putative opponents), for empty demagoguery, ala Ekiti, appears a-foot in Oyo.

    Another strain of the Ekiti debacle: decry solid performance but toast glaring failures and push them for additional terms, is playing out in Ondo State, where the Iroko, Governor Olusegun Mimiko, has shipped himself, his party and every furniture in his government into the PDP.

    It is a gripping irony: Iroko stands for nothing but crass personal convenience.  So, the person of nothing just cancelled out Labour Party (LP), the platform of nothing, ever ready to whore with any character of nothing, but with enough cash to flash!

    The Ogun LP may have decried the Mimiko treachery and the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) distanced itself from it.  Still, LP’s notoriety as a cash-and-carry platform — ideology be damned! —  was firmly secured, well before the Ondo meltdown.

    But Mimiko’s reason for his grand subversion is even the more interesting gist.  He went back to the PDP that stole his vote because he wanted to help President Jonathan win re-election — this same Jonathan whose government boasts perhaps the most incompetent record in Nigerian history, with its eternal scandals; and its painful deficit in both hard thinking and compassion; as proven in the Chibok girls kidnap case?

    In pristine Yorubaland, such pro-Jonathan pitch would earn instant electoral shellacking.    But in the Jonathan dream Yorubaland for 2015, the people must bite the bullet of electoral self-ruin.  Worse: in Fayose (Ekiti) and Mimiko (Ondo), the eastern-most recesses of Yorubaland appear yoked to the Jonathan nightmare!

    Errant regimes, for own selfish manoeuvres, often try to clone new Yoruba leaders.  Oladipo Diya, as Sani Abacha’s high flying No. 2, was busy pushing Dr. Bode Olajumoke’s Imeri Group as the regime’s anointed Yourba leaders, even while doing verbal gymnastics of standing on, by, above and below June 12.  But it was genuine Yoruba leaders, bent on actualising Moshood Abiola’s presidential mandate, that stood up for Diya, when he entered the Abacha coup trouble.

    Even then, Jonathan’s version of the politics of new Yoruba leadership is nothing but sinister.  PDP’s South West gubernatorial choices are instructive: Ayo Fayose (Ekiti) — he of mob tactics and unfazed anarchist, given his role in the Ekiti courts bedlam; Iyiola Omisore (Osun) — he of perpetual scowls and threats, coarse reputation and sinister public image; and, to come, Buruji Kashamu (Ogun) — alleged fugitive from American laws over alleged drug offences!  Just as well Kashamu has denied any gubernatorial ambitions!

    This dark profile the Omoluabi Yoruba would not touch for all the money in the world.  Yet it is what the Jonathan PDP deliriously push, as dark messiahs to fetch the president Yoruba votes!  Indeed, the barbarians are at the city gate!

    Even worse is the fierce assault on the long-settled religious amity in the South West.  Traditionally, the Yoruba have a pantheon of gods, under the Almighty Olodumare, which adherents freely embrace. Before Jonathan’s better-forgotten presidency, Christian-Muslim divide played absolutely no role in Yoruba politics and politicking.

    In Second Republic Lagos, Action Governor, Alhaji Lateef Jakande governed with his Muslim Deputy, Alhaji Rafiu Jafojo.  Back then, nobody noticed the religious hue of that ticket.  Now, 31 years after, about everybody still applauds its superb service delivery.  Ditto for Ogun: where the Christian pair of Olabisi Onabanjo and Sesan Soluade ruled; Oyo, with the Christian pair of Bola Ige and Sunday Afolabi; and Ondo: with Adekunle Ajasin and Akin Omoboriowo, both Christians.

    Now, in the South West of 2014, that paradise appears lost.  En route to Goodluck Jonathan’s 2015 troubled electoral vision, Lagos is buried under the din of the religious colour of its putative electoral ticket, not the reasoned and rigorous probing of its ability to deliver!

    Political barbarians, led by an unscrupulous president and a visionless party that has run down the country and brought Nigerians sheer misery, are bent on destroying the settled political ethos of the South West.

    That must not happen.  Yoruba ronu!

  • Ekiti and doom foretold

    Ekiti and doom foretold

    Obuko de, oorun de” is the sententious dismissal, by the Yoruba, of not unexpected knavery.  Where does the obuko (billy goat) go without its overpowering body smell?

    “To be thus is nothing,” Lady Macbeth warned her regicidal husband in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, “but to be safely thus.”

    It was shortly after Macbeth’s murder-usurpation of King Duncan.  But not even the phantom promise of Macbeth’s three witches, with Lady Macbeth’s own concentrated evil, could steel the mind of this most evil of women, against the ultimate futility of evil.

    Add a third, another Yoruba saying: “Nwon pe l’ole, o ngbomo eran jo” (They call him a thief, yet he capers with a newly stolen kid), and you would probably get the full impact of the macabre drama now gripping Ekiti State.

    Ekiti, Kayode Fayemi’s branded Ile Iyi, Ile Eye (Land of Nobility, Land of Honour), had plumbed from the apex dream of a philosophical king to the violent nadir of a plebeian’s stupor.  A people’s collective folly, and happy self-ruin, never haunted so early in the day!

    Between outgoing Governor Fayemi and Governor-elect, Ayodele Fayose, Ekiti’s evolving tragedy is out in bold relief.

    The one cannot lift the people to his dizzying heights.  In a moment of mad rage, the people threw Fayemi out of power — and with a vengeance too!

    The other must pull the people to his base trough.  In a moment of mad passion, laced with subversive joy, Ekiti Kete nose-dived into Fayose’s rough-and-tumble netherworld.

    Wherever Plato the Greek is right now, his eyes must be sparkling with mischief: for in Ekiti, 21st century Nigeria, both the folly and wisdom of his philosophical king theory have validated themselves.

    In Dr. Fayemi, the distant, all-knowing philosopher king, with a permanent chip on his shoulders for the manifest goodness of his deeds, has proved a misfit — indeed, a disaster.  His sterling performance in office earned him sterling thrashing at the polls; with the people blind to their future and, like Roman plebs, howled after “stomach infrastructure”, blind, deaf and dumb to solid evidence of infrastructure to a soaring future.

    But in Ayo Fayose also, Plato’s fear of democracy petering out into mere mob-ocracy, is painfully playing out.  The man that won a glorious election under the law, though with plebeian tactics, has resorted to inglorious means, nay brazen outlawry, to consummate his mandate; using mobs to sack the courts.  Pray, if the courts stay sacked, which institution of state would swear in Fayose on October 16?

    Yes, yes, Fayose and his promoters claim he was set up.  Maybe — for you cannot put anything past the politician: and even the best of politicians is still a politician.  Maybe not.

    Still, it is instructive that, after four short years, the grand re-entry of Fayose into Ekiti politics also marks the grand re-entry of hooliganism into Ekiti, in its most virulent form.  Obuko de, oorun de!

    With all due sensitivity to the feelings of the dear ones they left behind, the late Busari Adelakun, the inimitable Eruobodo, and Lamidi Adedibu, the kingpin of amala-and-gbegiri politics, in all their chequered career as dreaded grandmasters of rough-and-tumble politics, were meek as lambs in the hallowed precincts of courts.

    Yet, the highest either attained in formal office was a commissionership — Eruobodo was commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs under Governor Bola Ige in old Oyo State (now Oyo State and State of Osun).

    Ayo Fayose is Ekiti governor-elect.  Yet, that putative high responsibility of state — to which he is not even new, having been governor once (2003-2006) — did not stop him from storming the High court precincts in Ado Ekiti, ferocious thugs in tow!

    And after all the defilement and travesty, all Fayose could essay was empty bluff and bluster, thinking he could bluff his way out of trouble.  Is there no more shame in this land?  Is there no more honour in Ile Iyi, Ile Eye?

    Which one is more annoying: Fayose’s eternal yakking that he crushed Fayemi in all local governments — isn’t that a notorious fact? — and his lobby’s clearly unintelligent comparison of the fracas at the Ado Ekiti High Courts complex and elsewhere?

    Fayose carries on with the bluster of a student who eternally brags that he worsted all during a qualifying examination, as cheap bluff against crippling fears he would be worsted by all during the real course.  Must a governor-elect, charged with most un-gubernatorial conduct, eternally remind everyone that though he was tiger at the polls, he lacks the brains and temper to serve as governor, even before gaining office?

    And the brainless comparison between Fayose’s mob sacking the Ekiti judiciary, simply because a judge ruled he had jurisdiction over a case; and the public assault and battery of another judge, simply because he reminded Fayose to act civil and gubernatorial.

    The cheek of it: these low-lifers in the public space even childishly accused Justice they had mugged of bias, in a case they would rather stall, out of blind panic!  Ingenious, isn’t it?  Indeed, the guilty are always afraid!

    Back to the pseudo-comparison between the Ekiti court bedlam and others in the land.  Did the Kogi case, cited by the Fayose lobby trying to question the shutdown of Ekiti courts, involve a party to a case sending thugs to sack a court in session, chase out the presiding judge and shred court records?  Did it involve a gubernatorial thug  that allegedly supervised the assault and battery of a judge?

    Unfortunately, those who should know have even weighed in on the side of anarchy.  Ripples thinks of no other than the reported claim by David Mark, president of the Senate, that nobody can stop Fayose’s swearing-in.

    Nobody should do that, to be sure.  But even if someone did — assuming without conceding, as lawyers would say — must the complainant embrace jungle justice as Fayose clearly did?  And is Senator Mark endorsing such infamy?

    Let Mark and other deluded players in the Jonathan Presidency beware of Somalising the polity.  In Somalia, there is no president, no senate president, no governor, no fancy professional, no nothing.  Everyone is ruled by the rabble bearing arms, and low-lifers call the shots!

    For Ekiti Kete, it is a serial tragedy of doom foretold, if totally avoidable.  From hubris-smitten “progressives” that left a fatal chink in their armour; to a “man of the people”, far worse than Chinua Achebe’s fictional Chief Nanga, MP, taking full advantage of the mess, with the full support of plotting and colluding federal authorities, for short-term partisan gains; and finally, a people who merrily cut their noses to spite their faces.

    Enter, the Ekiti Rehoboam!  Compared to the whip of his inglorious first coming, from which he exited in disgrace, Fayose appears set to tan his dotting people with scorpion, starting with the Ekiti court ruckus: the ominous morning presaging a hopeless day.  But then, that is the beauty of democracy!

    Ekiti Kete, it is morning yet on howling day!

     

  • Double whammy from the master poet

    Double whammy from the master poet

    I cannot afford the arrogance of the saved,” quipped a character in Kole Omotoso’s 1978 novel, To Borrow  a Wandering Leaf, “that have a comprehensive insurance cover in Jesus” — or something to that effect.

    In this age of meretricious religiosity and zombie-like conformity, such religious irreverence would stun even the creatively gifted, with their penchant for literary licence.  But in that other age of brutal questioning, mass anger, self-reproach and alienation, it was near-standard literary fare.

    Still, this is no cross-age literary criticism, between then and now.  It is only that the Kole Omotoso sarcasm could well be a fitting declaration by one of the two poetic albums, just released by Akeem Lasisi and the Songbirds, proud practitioners in poetry, music and culture.  Indeed, it is glorious double whammy from the master performance poet, that Akeem Lasisi has become.

    The first, Ori-Agbe (for Wole Soyinka), is a tribute to Wole Soyinka at 80.  This work would appear made.  For one, its subject, our own WS, has secured his place in the canon of just and equitable humanity; and of literary classics.  For another Ori-Agbe is perched on Soyinka’s glorious epoch.  Whenever that landmark comes up for mention, Ori-Agbe is destined to bob up.

    Udeme, the second work, cannot afford the “arrogance” of Ori-Agbe, with its bona fides!  That would appear to explain the literal blazing of Udeme’s five tracks, a virtual blast across all poetic and literary emotions — “Udeme (Constituency Project)”, the title track; “House of Memory (For Omoba Yemisi Shyllon)”, “Mo n bo (Free my Smiles)”, “Gongosu (Basket of Chaff)” and the dark and heavy “Iremoje (For Ken Saro-Wiwa)”.

    “Udeme”, on the surface, is a love ditty; an ode to a rare beauty, served in a languid and extremely danceable form, reminiscent of juju musician, Ebenezer Obey’s Miliki (easy life) genre; supported by a video that is simply a knock-out.

    In that video, Udeme, fair-skinned knock-them-dead beauty, and epitome of grace, float-dances, like a butterfly; over the loving airs of Edaoto’s flirty, sensual and caressing voice.  Edaoto (Lasisi’s perennial collaborator), in his ultra-expressive vocals, and armed with his guitar, is the perfect troubadour, in total devotion to his queen.  Lasisi, the “politician”, sighted Udeme and caught the bug — at least in the video — and started speaking in tongues!  A poetry-musical collabo never took off so dramatically!

    But don’t get carried away, for the poet could well be preparing an ambush!  True, Udeme’s sparkling eyes would put impudent street lights to shame; and the poet decried the digging of boreholes, since Udeme was the “well of life”.

    Still, there is something mildly sinister about the poet’s diction.  For starters, he would rather “wriggle” his way into the “Senate House” (to make Udeme his sole constituency project). That suggests stealth — and what is stealth in a democracy but manifest bad faith?  Later, wriggle, gave way to “dig”; and finally to “rig” — and there, you have it!

    Besides, the poet’s plea to “import from near and order from far”, until Udeme’s wardrobe turns a marketplace, conjures the infamous Imelda Marcos, she of a thousand pairs of shoes.  That the mass importation would be done at the expense of Oritamerin and Dugbe markets in Ibadan, clear metaphor for Nigerian commerce, suggests a wilful de-marketing of the local economy, just to satisfy the trivia of the powers-that-be.

    “Udeme” is wonderful music and great love poetry.  But it could well be great paradox:  Nigerian rulers love their trivia; not their people.  That is why, for their Udeme, they would de-market local commerce; and short-change the people.

    If Udeme’s outside sweetness appeared to hide its gall, “Gongosu” is unsparing in its ringing denunciation of Nigerian misrule.  For starters, Gongosu Edidare, out of Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irumale, one of D. O. Fagunwa’s Yoruba classics — is a character as wise as he is foolish.

    That, to be sure, would pass for Nigerian leaders: the one that vaults children and wards to foreign universities at the slightest hint of “ASUU’s hassles” and its perennial strikes; the president that seeks salvation in a “German ward”, while, in local hospitals under his charge, “health is a miracle performed by death”.

    “Gongosu” boasts brutal symbolism.  The voice of children jeers at the folly of adult Nigerian rulers, who ironically evince stupid wisdom.  Then an adult voice, warns of the Burdened One (with corruption, election rigging, etc).  But the Burdened is not even aware of his handicap!  Then, the furious voice of youth, brilliant and articulate, lampoons the order for being “anti-pen”; speaking of “seasons” (of perennial neglect), speaking of “treasons” (of anti-youth plots); and ruing the brilliant signing a pact with the “poverty god”.  Harsh putdowns, indeed, that should simmer the Nigerian order!

    If Gongosu is harshest of the Udeme tracks, “Iremoje”, a dirge for Ken Saro-Wiwa, with its brilliant use of Ijala, the Yoruba hunters’ chant, is clearly the darkest.  Saro-Wiwa never wanted anything spectacular, just basic justice.  But that only fetched him brutal death by hanging.  Of course, a nation that hangs its conscience gallops to its doom!  Though the poet somewhat feigns intimidation bearing his grave message, “the dog must not be denied its barking right,” even “if the head of the elephant is no load for the minor.”

    “House of Memory” is a toast to the art collector as private custodian of institutional memory.  It is a sweet ode to Yemisi Shyllon, a known art collector; and lover and sponsor of culture.  “Mo n Bo”, [I’m coming] is a love ditty, also remarkable in its ambivalence.  Its music is trivia, what in Lagos Yoruba parlance would pass as “S’aje”.  But the poetry is as deep and powerful as any could be.  Again, Akeem Lasisi at his ambivalent best!

    Ori-Agbe (back to the biggest masquerade that always brings up the rear) may be assured of its place in the pantheon of poems, just as its subject, Wole Soyinka, is assured of his place in the pantheon of humanity.  But that takes nothing from the quality of the commemorative poetry, even if the work appears to labour under the weight of the epoch.  But it is fitting testimony to the abiding Soyinka essence: justice, fairness, equity.

    Lasisi, once again, further consolidates his brand: poetry as powerful social conscience.  But when will Akeem Lasisi, with kindred spirits like Beautiful Nubia, and even Lagabaja, jam together?

    That would be the day, for the cultured Nigerian mind!

    It’s good to be back, dear readers.  Thank you for keeping faith.

     

  • A bridge too far

    A bridge too far

    For federal electoral bandits, Osun proved a bridge too far on August 9.

    And in the spirit of routed bandits, a mobile policeman in Ode-Omu, reportedly in the convoy of exiting Jelili Adesiyan, Police Affairs minister, allegedly shot at a crowd celebrating Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s victory, injuring one Idowu Mufutau, according to an August 11 report by The Nation.

    In combat metaphor, Osun must rank as Nigeria’s electoral equivalent of the 18 June 1815 Battle of Waterloo (then in Holland, but now in Belgium).  As the all-conquering Napoleon met his doom in Waterloo, federal election-fixers met decisive defeat in Osun.

    This write-up’s title is straight from World War II lore.  A Bridge Too Far, a 1977 film adapted from a 1974 book of the same title by Cornelius Ryan, captured the epic collapse of the audacious attempt, by the Allies, to halt World War II in 1944.

    That air-borne operation was to capture a couple of bridges, chief among them Arnhem, in German-occupied Holland; and therefore cut off German defences.  But Arnhem proved a bridge too far, leading to horrendous losses in the Allied camp.

    Closer home, it was at the Osogbo battle of 1840 that the Ibadan forces halted the Fulani jihadist push into Yorubaland.

    Some 174 years later, Osogbo was again at the centre of the defeat of another imperialist power push.  Ironically, at the epicentre of the August 9 Osogbo rout was a “Jihadist” — at least from poisoned and bigoted partisan view — who led his people to stand firm against electoral capture, by any means possible, by President Goodluck Jonathan and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).  It is a classic example of glorious history repeating itself — but this time, not as farce!

    It is tribute to the in-your-face dissembling of the Jonathan Presidency that the president’s congratulatory message to Governor Aregbesola tried to put a spin to electoral robbery gone awry.

    After bland congratulations, came the real message: “The outcome of the election has also given a lie to the false, unfair and uncharitable allegations that measures put in place by the federal government for the Ekiti and Osun State elections were partisan and designed to achieve a favourable outcome for his party”.  Really?

     

    When Iyiola Omisore, the PDP candidate, walked his talk that hooded security operatives would be unleashed on his opponents, mum was it from Jonathan.  When a hooded soldier (captured on the front page in the August 7 issue of The Nation) helped to thwart organised Labour’s last endorsement rally for the governor, mum was it from Jonathan.

    When PDP partisan and Defence minister of state, Musiliu Obanikoro, invaded with his soldiers, with the body language of Mission-Crush-the-Opposition, mum was it from Jonathan.  That some of the soldiers still acted professionally made the point that the problem was not soldiers per se,but unscrupulous political masters, prompting them to muscle the vote.  At any rate, involving soldiers in elections is proven democratic suicide.

    When Jelili Adesiyan, Police Affairs minister, Obankoro’s tag-team partner and Omisore’s close ally put on his own show — hooded DSS men, pre-election shooting into the air to create panic, and even the election eve glorious capture of Lai Mohammed, APC spokesman and Sunday Dare,Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s spokesman, mum was it from Jonathan!

    Nor did the president find his voice after the hooded security operatives’ attack on former Governor Isiaka Adeleke, and wide-spread attacks to cripple other opposition leaders.  Yet, the president deceives himself he guaranteed a free, fair and credible vote!  He can tell that to the marines!

    Truth be told: Governor Aregbesola triumphed despite clear federal booby traps; and the not-so-veiled mandate for men in uniform, genuine or fake, to commit electoral crimes, and steal the Osun governorship.

    Besides, when will someone tell Nigerians hoods are now part of the Nigeria military’s accoutrement?  That is the abominable nadir Dr. Jonathan has sunk the presidency in his temporary care!

    Prof. Attahiru Jega’s INEC tried its best on election day.  Voting qua voting, it organised a decent poll.  But it must stop playing dumb to rigged pre-election processes.  As Ripples insisted after Ekiti, you can’t have a free election when a party to the process is unfairly harassed and detained.  As it was in Ekiti, so was it in Osun.

    The PDP desperation for power is well known — though that is no exclusive vice of the federal ruling party.  Neither hidden is President Jonathan’s almost unconscionable longing for 2015, despite demonstrable suspect competence.  But the real danger, for the country’s goodwill, is the mass falsehood, bigotry, hate and spite sown all round.

    Many Nigerians, particularly a South-South/South East column, rabidly cheer on Jonathan, even as he embarks on hideous constitutional abominations.  This is ominous.  Since independence, such uncritical babble often precedes Nigeria’s descent into the abyss.  Everyone must rise to save this president from himself.

    A normally reasoned reader, responding to “For Osun, for Democracy, for Nigeria” (last week on this page), declared himself convinced the Osun people were eager and ready to trade Governor Aregbesola for Mr. Omisore.  Ripples just responded: “Okay o, we shall see”.

    But how could rational humans trade solid emerald for broken Sprite bottles?  And any normal Yoruba person choose Omisore over Aregbesola — Omisore, with his terribly flawed persona?

    Another elderly citizen declared himself custodian of God’s judgement about to descend andwipe out the extant political order in the South West, starting with Ekiti; and ordained to continue in Osun.  That partisan wish is hardly a crime.  It is a democracy after all!

    Still, the old man is always driven by spite, bigotry and deep hatred for particular personalities that Ripples did not bother with a response.  But Ripples thought: God is no spiteful tin god, of the old man’s dream, that rewards beneficence with ingratitude.  That played out perfectly in Osun, negating all efforts to steal the vote.

    PDP’s Omisore ran an ultra-negative campaign: blackmail, threat, spite, dissembling and ill grace; not telling anyone what he would do, but swearing how much of the present benefits he would destroy.

    Governor Aregbesola, on the other hand, even while mobilising to face head on the federal vote-stealing Leviathan, pointed to what he had done and what he would do, if re-elected.  Incidentally, two programmes: free train rides to Osun during festivities and Walk for Life just dovetailed into the electioneering period.

    Alas!  No one could accuse the governor of electioneering stunts, since the two programmes had started from the inception of his government.  That was salute to belief and consistency.

    Still, with his renewed mandate, the Ogbeni must learn to eschew needless controversies that hand his enemies the ammo to demonise his person, his programmes and his government.  A renewed mandate is a call for more hard work.

     

     

  • For Osun, for democracy, for Nigeria

    For Osun, for democracy, for Nigeria

    At was interesting how President Goodluck Jonathan and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) flexed their muscles on the hustings at Osogbo, on August 2: the  sheriff is in town; opposition, dive for cover!

    Sure, the president was all sanctimonious about security agencies enforcing free and fair elections.  But if the Ekiti model is anything to go by, hardly anyone is fooled.

    Still, it is instructive: the eerie parallel between the build-up to August 9 and the 14 April 2007 Osun governorship election; which the PDP stole and was only retrieved after three long years of fierce legal battle.

    A few days to that 2007 election, under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s do-or-die electoral charter, soldiers staged an intimidating drill, on Gbongan road in Osogbo.  Viewed from the then Action Congress (AC) Candidate Rauf Aregbesola’s four-storey Oranmiyan House campaign headquarters, the drill snaked for no less than one mile, a swash-buckling manoeuvre clearly designed to shock and awe.

    A few days to August 9, under President Goodluck Jonathan’s electoral militarisation diktat, men of the Department of State Security (DSS) have staged a similar drill, some of them hooded, firing into the air to scare people.

    Are men bearing legal arms allowed under the law to wear hoods?  Then, the wanton shooting — is it allowed, and under what circumstances?

    Just as well, even with cracking gunshots, some partisans still trooped out, shouting party slogans and waving party symbols — in clear defiance of a perceived federal pacification force.

    Back in 2007, no less than 12 lost their lives in election-related violence, in perhaps the most egregiously rigged election in Nigerian history.  Back then, the federal fist of mail could not stop — but merely looked away from — the vote robbers, in their widespread criminality on election day.

    Still, the PDP lost the election.  It would take three long years to prove it: and in those years, mandate thieves unleashed a reign of terror: the hideous rape of an Ilesa secondary school girl; the murder, at an Ilesa fuel station, of a local industrialist; the military occupation and pacification of Ilesa and Osogbo, for daring to protest brazen electoral robbery; and the routine trotting, into the Ilesa gaol house, of opposition leaders on trumped up charges, for the simple reason they were the teeth of the legal challenge to the electoral steal.

    Another parallel: after that electoral heist, Ebenezer Babatope, the famed Ebino Topsy and PDP chieftain, claimed that while AC won in urban centres, PDP won in rural areas, in a crass revisionism of the electoral trend of the Obafemi Awolowo days.  The snag was: Osun is a state of big towns, the largest conglomeration of urban centres in the whole of Yorubaland.

    Of course, the same Ebino is already talking of Mr. Omisore “surprising” Governor Aregbesola on August 9.

    But on what basis might he do that: superior articulation of electoral manifesto?  Superior record of meritorious public service than the governor’s?  A PDP superior record of performance, both in Osun or at the federal level?  Or just a hoped-for federal might’s guarantee to fiddle the vote?

    Still, no crime: everyone has a democratic licence to choose their heroes!

    Mr. Omisore, the PDP candidate allegedly boasted to rural folks during his campaign that non-Yoruba but uniformed goons would flood Osun during the election to aid his cause, suggesting such goons would be part of his federal armada.

    For all you know, that could well be empty bluff and  bluster.  Still, it is worrisome that the DSS shooting ensemble involved some hooded folks.  Is this a sinister confirmation of Mr. Omisore’s alleged boast?

    Besides, DSS raided TSN/RSM office in Lagos.  A few days later, the marketing research firm released figures of a study that suggests Governor Aregbesola would win by 73% and Mr. Omisore would trail with 19% of the votes.

    Between these two events, the Omisore camp had, through text messages and other means, circulated a claim that a USAID poll had given Mr. Omisore the lead with 58%, with Governor Aregbe credited with 30%.

    This claim, however, is a bare-faced lie, as USAID has disowned the purported poll.  “No USAID poll was taken in Osun,” Premium Times quoted Rhonda Watson, acting public affairs officer of the US Consulate in Lagos, as saying.  Brainless lying, yet again, from the Omisore camp!

    Now, why would DSS invade the premises of a private marketing research firm doing legitimate business?  Some intelligence suggesting subversion?  Conducting polls is now a crime? Or just part of the Omisore-threatened federal bully tactics?

    The federal authorities should provide answers and fast.  Otherwise, they face legitimate charge of trying to rig the election.

    Still, mum is it from the camp of Prof. Attahiru Jega, the INEC chairman.  Prof. Jega had defended the security over-kill in Ekiti, blissfully forgetting soldiers’ harassment of Rivers Governor Rotimi Amaechi and other APC partisans, while other PDP partisans had unimpeded passage, even if two, Jelili Adesiyan, Police Affairs minister and Musiliu Obanikoro, Defence minister of state, had clear motives to put the state organs under their charge to partisan uses.

    Even if voting appears “free” on election day, it couldn’t pass as fair — and ultimately free — if the process leading to it was crooked.  That is the point INEC should address, and make itself heard in the run-up to August 9, instead of clinging to the sophistry of soldiers not impeding physical voting, even if they were complicit in mass arrest of opposing leaders, as they did in Ekiti; and as Mr. Omisore is allegedly threatening they would do in Osun.

    Between Aregbesola and Omisore, the choice for Ripples is very simple.  Every politician claims popularity; but right-thinking members of society know, between the two, who is popular and who is well and truly notorious.

    But if the Omisore camp can lie that USAID conducted a poll that never was, have a straight face to insist on that blatant lie even after USAID had dismissed that claim, and thereafter go ahead to try, sour-grape wise, to discredit the TNS/RMS poll which suggested Mr. Omisore would be guillotined, you could clearly see the manifest villainy of the Omisore ticket.  But that is left for the Osun voters to decide.

    Still, it is well and truly tragic that post-Awolowo Yorubaland would suffer gladly the foolery of an Omisore candidature, even as a local government councillor!  Yet, Ayo Fayose (Ekiti) and Iyiola Omisore (Osun) are Goodluck Jonathan’s model Yoruba leaders!  Indeed, only the deep can call to the deep!

    Beyond candidate preferences, however, a free and fair Osun poll, both on the day as well as regarding processes leading to it, is a vote for Osun, a vote for democracy and a vote for Nigeria.

    Nigeria badly miscarried when its earliest rulers killed democracy; and the succeeding soldier-politicians also slaughtered, on the altar of political poison, the military as a credible and respected national institution.

    A further smashing of democracy, ala a brazen steal at Osun, may well complete Nigeria’s unravelling process.  That would be tragic, indeed.

  • Pharaoh on the prowl

    Pharaoh on the prowl

    Honestly, Goodluck Jonathan, president of the Federal Republic, never intended to be a Pharaoh, or Nebuchadnezzar, or an army general, or a dictator. He openly said so.

    But then, move over, Pharaoh; move over, Nebuchadnezzar; move over, army general, move over, dictator!  In vicious projection of presidential power, Dr. Jonathan is putting you all to shame!

    This is one Pharaoh that knows no Joseph when an enemy, real or perceived, must be crushed!  Beware, Pharaoh is on the prowl!

    It is not unlike the biting philosophy of the anonymous philosopher, off one of the balconies of Teddar Hall, across the road from the Kunle Adepeju Students Union Complex, at the University of Ibadan campus of the early to mid-1980s.  This man of wit always put his thoughts across by chalk on board.

    During the Second Republic (1979-1983), when corruption tore the roof under President Shehu Shagari, the philosopher quipped, with devastating pun: Shall we then all go and Sha(re)gari at State House Ribadu(n) Road?

    “Riba” is slang for bribe.  “Dun” is Yoruba for sweet.  Ribadu Road, Ikoyi, was the Dodan Barracks seat of the president, rechristened to reflect the democratic interregnum.  “Gari” is a Nigerian staple — fantastic pun!

    But the Jonathan metamorphosis, despite an earlier public declamation, has more to do with another from the campus philosopher’s rich repertoire: He was mercy-ful.  But then Mercy left him.  So, he became merciless!

    No pussyfooting, this president has become merciless!  So enemies, beware, quake and fear!  With the impeachment gale sweeping through opposition camps, that warning is rather trite.

    Fine, the Adamawa case is rascality versus counter-rascality.  The opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) poached the Adamawa governorship from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), at the height of the PDP meltdown.  What APC gained by defection power therefore, PDP has regained by executive clobber!  Rascality cancels out rascality, chikena!

    But there is no moral high ground here.  Before PDP got a dose of its bitter pill, poaching by illicit defection had been its virulent patent, to illegally decimate the opposition.  Indeed, what goes around comes around!

    Still, if rascality begot rascality in Adamawa, the ongoing case of Nasarawa is one-way rascality — rude, bounding and brazen.

    The 2011 elections gifted Nasarawa political schizophrenia: a Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) governor in Umaru Al-Makura; and a  PDP-dominated legislature.  So, no one can accuse Governor Al-Makura of taking a PDP mandate to the opposition, after his party and others formed the APC.

    So, the ongoing impeachment process to unseat Governor Al-Makura is nothing but in-your-face outlawry to steal a governorship, ironically by supposed lawmakers across the partisan divide.  Yes, the legalistic-minded would argue: Alhaji Al-Makura’s deputy would still be an APC governor, so there is no question of a PDP steal.  Besides, if the governor isn’t guilty of “misconduct”, he need not fear removal — pure, undiluted cant!

    And if anyone still doubts where the darts are coming from, the Nasarawa legislators’ “private visit” to Aso Rock, offers a clue — as if there is need for one!

    Of course, all these presidential rascality would crash.  It always does.

    President Olusegun Obasanjo, during his own time as democratic maximum ruler, aided and abetted many of such manufactured impeachments, the most hideous of which was Oyo Governor, Rashidi Ladoja, who must be removed because he would not share his security vote with Lamidi Adedibu, the late amala-and-gbegiri politician, Ladoja’s estranged godfather and Obasanjo’s beloved “garrison commander”, before whom an elected governor must bow and tremble!

    It all blew in Obasanjo’s face, with Ladoja’s judicial recall to office, even if, by his peculiar politicking, Ladoja has proved rather undeserving of that democratic grace.

    But the eventual crash would come, not necessarily by a court voiding the impeachment process, but by the wilful destruction of democratic institutions by power brigands.  Indeed, yesterday’s power recklessness is today’s Boko Haram!

    By  the way, the only way brazen criminality against governors, by hostile federal forces, is succeeding is because the central government has a monopoly of security forces.  The moment that becomes history, the federal bully would know it has a helluva battle in its hands.  That, would be the day!

    This reckless projection of federal illicit power is bad enough.  But it pales into nothing, compared with the future it dooms.

    Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s military government was so corrupt it was believed that government raised sleaze to the pedestal of the fundamental principle of state policy.  Bad as it was when it was happening, it was its blighting of the future — now — that has been so devastating.  Now, there is a merry and complete loss of values.

    By the same token, the Jonathan Presidency has begun to impose a new set of democratic  travesty: after Ekiti, a new culture of an irrational electorate is afoot: punish hard work but reward sloth; punish brilliance but reward dullness; punish solid performance but reward clear demagoguery!

    Where will this crass irrationality lead a democratic republic, or even the Nigerian state itself?

    The president, head of an ultra-dull presidency that could hardly boast any groundbreaking policy or innovation, appears to have developed zero-tolerance for gubernatorial brilliance; just to divert attention from his own parlous record; and also shift attention from serious electoral issues to emotive power play that would impress the gullible.

    That would explain why Oyo’s Adebayo Alao-Akala, an ideas vacuum in his first tour of duty as Oyo governor, whose grandest philosophy appeared the neck-chain to wear, the face powder to dub or the perfume to wear, has re-found his voice, merrily declaring himself the next Oyo governor — despite the stark difference between his parlous record and the glittering  performance of Abiola Ajimobi, the incumbent.

    Of course, Mr. Alao-Akala is pitching the Jonathan dream electorate: elders without wisdom, youths without gumption and the middle-aged happily blundering between these two extremes of the brain-dead!

    But the most tragic, in the run-up to the August 9 Osun gubernatorial poll, is the Iyiola Omisore boast.  The PDP candidate brags he would win in all local governments.  Yet, he frantically flees from debates, the latest of which was “Manifesto Hour”, the July 26 programme, organised by the International Republican Institute (IRI), to be broadcast live by the Osun State Broadcasting Corporation (OSBC).  Other than demonising Rauf Aregbesola’s visible accomplishments, he has not articulated  programmes of his own.  And, of course, the eternal bad-tempered threats!

    So, on what basis would he win the election?  On the basis of the present federal paralysis under Jonathan; or the past Osun paralysis when PDP ruled the roost; and Omisore himself was senator at the centre?  O, perhaps on a third: that federal might would fix it!

    Why, a Premium Times online report even suggests the Jonathan federal armada might be pressing the panic button by reportedly directing operatives of DSS to “invade” TNS-RMS, a Lagos research and marketing firm, contracted to do an opinion poll on the Osun election.

    The “invaders’” fear?  That the poll’s results might favour Aregbesola!  These are unusual times indeed!

    The Jonathan presidency may have resigned itself to flexing muscles to scare; rather than thinking hard to deliver on its presidential chores.

    But patriotic Nigerians must tell this Pharaoh: his choice is expressway to self-ruin.

  • Coriolanus of Osun

    Coriolanus of Osun

    Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, in Shakespare’s historical Roman play, Coriolanus, was a young general.  The play was written c.1605 but was set in 509 BC Rome, just after the expulsion of the last of the Tarquin kings.

    In today’s Nigeria, politics and demagoguery have contrived to throw up another Coriolanus, in Iyiola Omisore, the PDP gubernatorial candidate for the August 9 election in Osun.

    It is a classic case of history repeating itself as outlandish farce.

    Coriolanus was truly noble, heroic and intrepid, so much so that his glorious capture of Corioli, a city of the Volscians, Rome’s mortal enemies, earned him the agnomen, Coriolanus.

    He was a soldier and no meddler.  Soldiering was what he was and ever wanted.  To boot, he had noble contempt for the Roman plebs with their reeking breaths — and an over-size pride that curried nothing but self-destruction.

    Still Volumnia, his mother, wanted her son to transit to politics and run for consul.  But for Coriolanus,  the path to consul was the beginning of the end.

    When, to win the consulship, Coriolanus needed to show his war scars, and fresh Corioli wounds, to earn the sympathy of the plebs of stinking breaths, goaded to rebellion by subversive tribunes, Coriolanus fatally blew his tops.  That pretence was simply too much for his noble soul!

    The result: banishment from Rome; a Coriolanus-Volscian siege on Rome, aborted only by plaintive pleas from Mother Dearest, Volumnia; and Coriolanus’ eventual murder at Antium, the Volscian capital.

    But so long for Rome and its near-boy soldier!  How does Iyiola Omisore, a former senator of the Federal Republic, compare to the original?

    For starters, while the tribunes, voices of the Roman rabble in the Shakespeare play, goaded the plebs to anti-Coriolanus passion, a Nigerian Tribune slants Mr. Omisore’s case — hardly a crime but hardly journalism virtue too — as positively as the Roman tribunes negatively twisted Coriolanus’.

    Then, the nobility-villainy continuum.  Coriolanus’ nobility was beyond doubt.  Mr. Omisore’s friends and acquaintances could well claim for him similar virtues, with their intensely private knowledge of his persona.  Still, respectable society would appear to cringe from Mr. Omisore’s public persona.

    Coriolanus, among the rabble, exuded fear, while the Roman nobility had nothing but admiration for the callow youth.  What Mr. Omisore emits, among the masses and the elite, could best be seen from the reported masked gunman captured on photo, trailing him at campaign stumps.

    But it is in the post-Ekiti Debacle frantic Fayose-wannabe that Mr. Omisore best replicates the Coriolanus vote comic.  To be consul, even after securing the Roman senate’s nod, Coriolanus was condemned to showing off his war wounds, for the votes of the rabble he despised with all his noble soul.

    Like the Roman Coriolanus, the Osun variant has, in frantic search of votes, also condemned himself to acting his newly acquired man-of-the-people demagoguery, ala Ekiti’s Fayose, with tragic comedy.

    Man-of-the-people Omisore jumps on the next available Okada to the next campaign stump.  But what comes across is extremely bad acting that craves cheap sympathy.

    Man-of-the-people Omisore stopped to grab popcorn from the roadside.  Yet, lurking behind him was the sinister shadow of a hooded gunman.

    Man-of-the-people Omisore sank his teeth in two roast corncobs, in double-handed felicity with the masses.  But what came across was a hideous scowl: some suppressed rage at pawning such personal humiliation for votes.

    In Nigerian political history, it is so reminiscent of an Ahmadu Bello, feeling dust in his nostrils, swearing to deal with Obafemi Awolowo for dragging him to beg for votes before his own subjects.  But the Sardauna was, at least, royalty!

    Man of the people Omisore did violence to basic dress sense; his own very cynical proof that he numbered among the masses.  Yet, what emerged was ludicrous self-ridicule that harvests more scorn  than love.

    Blind panic was never executed with a bolder face!

    And all this melodrama for what purpose?  Reported snorting at the people not to waste their votes, since it would allegedly not count; alleged threats that gwodogwodo (strange and ruthless soldiers and police) would be unleashed on election day, in a complete partisan militarisation ala Ekiti; and wilful bad-mouthing of glittering achievements by Rauf Aregbesola, the sitting governor, in the fond hope that the Osun people are deaf, dumb and blind to the obvious!

    And if all that failed — as they seem to be failing — play the religious card: Christians-don’t-vote-for-that-mullah, as allegedly ordered by Aso Rock and PDP hierarchs, as claimed by some news reports.

    For all you know, these might all just be high-voltage partisan allegations.  But with Omisore protégée, Jelili Adesiyan as Police Affairs minister and Musiliu Obanikoro, the Lagos prodigal, as Defence minister of state, the wondrous deeds of the duo in the Ekiti electoral blitzkrieg, and an unconscionable Jonathan Presidency that thinks nothing of throwing the security agencies into partisan fray, hardly any allegation sounds so fantastic.

    Still, not unlike Fayose before him, at least from media coverage of the Osun electioneering, Mr. Omisore boasts no cutting-edge vision or rigorous articulation of policy over the Aregbesola governorship — just a dark hint that federal might would fix it, no matter how dull or uninspiring his ticket comes across to the Osun voter.

    Ironically, the Aregbesola camp too, with the shock of the Ekiti debacle, was almost pressing the panic button: what with Mr. Fayose bragging he would lead PDP to “recapture” the South West; and Mr. Omisore staging his Fayose-wannabe burlesque.

    Still, Governor Aregbesola has hit back with a carefully choreographed mix of politics and policy, rolling out, mint-fresh, newly completed school complexes, commissioning of the school bus programme, launching a micro-business credit scheme with sheer pomp; aside from glittering infrastructure — thanks to the governor’s massive urban renewal programme; and no less massive suburban and rural roads.

    It is a classic case of a governor that has a lot to show in four years — and is not at all coy about showing them!

    And the campaign crowds?  Simply intimidating, perhaps sending raw panic to the other camp.  If Governor Fayemi could be charged with aloofness, which has proved fatal for his second term, Governor Aregbesola has proved himself a consummate man of the people, an effective mass mobilizer (and his massive rallies are proof) and a policy wonk cum visionary, all rolled into one.  All these, he has deployed against the staid Mr. Omisore, who looks even more pathetic by the day.

    Aside from the sorcery of federal might (beginning to echo the bubble of Shakespeare’s Macbeth’s three witches), the Osun Coriolanus continues to look like some luckless lamb led to slaughter.  He has neither the sharp mind to match Aregbesola’s policy articulation nor the personal effervescence to match the governor’s charisma.

    As the August 9 election draws near, how would the federal fixers fiddle this one, as Mr. Omisore is allegedly boasting?

     

  • Man of brilliance and character at 70

    Man of brilliance and character at 70

    About everyone Prof. Olatunji Dare has taught almost always enthuses: we owe him a debt of gratitude.  The academic, famed columnist and editorial writer, turns 70 on July 17.

    Lekan Sote, a columnist with The Punch, encountered Prof. Dare, then a graduate assistant, as a fresh man at the University of Lagos Department of Mass Communication in 1975.  Those were the closing years of the golden age of Nigeria’s academia.

    “The man taught me three things,” volunteered Mr. Sote, “how to write, why you must attend classes because you always pick up something new and how to network.”

    The networking lesson came after Mr. Sote came asking his old teacher for a job reference, even after he never asked after the don for many years.  The professor, feigning anger, threatened not to write the reference; but eventually, he did.  The moral: ask after people; nurture your network.

    Learning how to write was a routine teacher-student ritual, though it was no less refreshing.  It was no less refreshing because the young Sote would, via rejoinders, critique Dare’s newspaper contributions.  The teacher, after reading Sote’s piece would invite him over, commend him on his strong areas but still draw attention to weak areas that could make the contributions more logical than emotional.

    But the imperative to attend classes came at a stiffer cost.  Mr. Sote admitted some measure of truancy because he felt he was brilliant enough to always pass his examinations.  He passed this one, all right.

    Still, the professor gave him a reference, just to teach the hard lesson of intellectual modesty.  Harsh?  Unfair?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But Mr. Sote admitted that single lesson stripped him of his near-contempt for class instructions — and he always picked up something new!

    From the same golden 70s of the Nigerian academia comes the golden testimony of Joke Omotunde, another former student of Prof. Dare’s, a staff of the United States Information Service (USIS) for 23 years now.

    Mrs Omotunde’s first testimonial is to the rigour and brilliance of Dare’s teaching.  “For me,” she said, “he was my lecturer at the University of Lagos in the late 70s, a meticulous mentor to the core whose ‘grammar for journalists’ has helped me tremendously on the job I now do.”

    But in this age of brilliance without character, it is her testimony to the solid character of her teacher, even by a foreigner, that blows the mind, en route to her taking up the USIS job.

    “He was one of the three referees whose names I submitted when I was applying for the job of an information specialist,” Mrs. Omotunde recalled.  “Not knowing  then which organisation I was applying to, the then Public Affairs Officer of the USIS shortlisted me because a prolific writer, an upright journalist, Olatunji Dare, was one of my referees.  I scaled through the series of interviews because, to the American officials, a student of Olatunji Dare would be ‘worth employing’.  It is 23 years now, and I am still on the job!”

    In 1985, another student, Azubuike Ishiekwene, former editor of The Punch and now managing director of Leadership, drank from the Dare spring.

    Now, between 1975 when Mr. Sote was a freshman; and 1985 when Azu was, the Nigerian academia had rapidly declined, with the flux of the river of Heraclitus, which flows so rapidly you cannot “step in the same river twice.”

    The military barbarians were on overdrive, cannibalising the glory of Nigeria’s tertiary education; and, with maniacal zeal, implanting the rust iron that would blight its future; thus condemning the best of Nigerian intellect to a Diaspora brain drain.

    But even with all that storm, Prof. Dare would appear to have retained his essence: a strict but fair and conscientious academic — again, not unlike Parminedes, who contrary to the ever-changing theory of Heraclitus, his Greek philosophical cousin, insists nothing ever changes.

    Azu gave his impression of Dare in “The debt I owe”, published in his column in Leadership on July 11: how the professor disabused the mind of his freshman class of 1985 on fantastic notions about journalism; how Dare, with Chief Ajibola Ogunshola, the man who brought The Punch back from the dead, directed his uncharted steps at crucial junctures of his education and journalism career; how his old teacher pooh-poohed a piece of writing the student felt he could crow about but highly praised an improved later piece, encouraging the writer to get it published in a newspaper — his first ever!

    Azu’s experience is not that different from yours truly.  Ripples had, with a flourish, rounded off a Language Arts first degree at the University of Ibadan, and set his mind on being some future wordsmith.

    Again, it was the first class; and the then Dr. Dare asked his PGD Mass Communication inaugural writing class to do an essay on anything that caught their fancy.  Ripples conceitedly blurted, in the piece, his dream: wordsmithery.

    The script literarily bled: “Wordsmithery for what?” the teacher queried. “Have you ever heard the saying: scratch a journalist and you will probably find a social reformer?”  The moral: wordsmithery is useless, if media writing does not improve society.

    Over the years, these were the fine ideals Prof. Dare taught his lucky students.  More importantly, these are the ideals he pens in his writings.

    For some four decades now — in his classroom and in the public space as columnist and analyst — Prof. Dare has stuck to his principles; and demonstrated how to match brilliance with character, with stylistic panache and devastating rigour.

    Incidentally, the week that started July 13 opened with a flourish of birthdays, of truly iconic Nigerians, all in their winter years: Prof. Wole Soyinka (80, July 13), Chief Ajibola Ogunshola (70, July 14), Prof. Dare (70, July 17); and on July 10, Chief Henry Odukomaiya, famed newspaper technocrat and manager, had turned 80.

    But should one laugh or cry?  To be sure,  a harvest of laughter is assured for these senior citizens who, in individual accomplishments, have shown their country what it could easily have been but has not — no thanks to a unceasing relay of third-grade rulers.

    But there might be some cry too.  For starters, Wole Soyinka in his poem, “Abiku”, proclaimed the “ripest fruit” the “saddest”.  Even on the personal level, this makes some sense, since old age comes with frailty.

    But it is in the sociological level that this sadness becomes more acute, with the Nigerian education system in a shambles.  The temper that produced these titans, despite an indifferent Nigerian leadership over the years, appears in real danger.

    So, as we toast these senior citizens, role models all, are we seeing the last of the titans?  As far as Nigeria’s education and academia go, is this the last dance of the golden generation — even if Prof. Soyinka famously dismissed his generation as the wasted one, before the advent of the real wasted generation?

    Happy birthday to Prof. Dare, a man of brilliance and character.  May his protégées continue to uphold his legacy of banner without stain.

    That, in Azu-speak, is the debt we owe!

  • Jonathan: neither brilliance nor character

    Jonathan: neither brilliance nor character

    The Goodluck Jonathan presidency is neither brilliant nor boast much claim to character.  For evidence, look no further than its continuous bungling of the Chibok affair.

    Dr. Jonathan’s is an especially noxious strain of presidential parasitism.  Not for it, the presidential chore of freeing the Chibok girls, despite the arresting voice of the Oby Ezekwesili-led free-the-Chibok-girls lobby.  But all for it, the prospect of presidential lollies for four more years.

    By their body language, the president and his team would wish everyone forgot about Chibok; so they could “move on” to the far more important task of campaigning for — and winning — the 2015 presidential election: and why not?

    The man that romped into office on the vacuity of good luck is eager, willing and ready to make his second term case on the vacuity of bad luck.  Sympathisers to emotive vacuity abound!

    It is, after all, the high season of demagoguery, cynicism and spite.  Hard, rigorous thinking has since taken a flight of fancy!

    With its latest manoeuvre on the Chibok affair vis-a-vis electioneering for 2015, the Jonathan presidency’s indifference to honour just boiled over.

    The Nation, on July 3, reported a pressure group, which called itself GEJITES (which somewhat rings of Kegites, the merry palm wine drinkards club in Nigerian tertiary campuses), invaded the precincts of Unity Fountain, Abuja, with giant billboards of a smiling pair of President Jonathan and Vice President Namadi Sambo, virtually beaming down on Nigerians with their “good news”, these past four years.

    But Mrs. Ezekwesili’s comments on this latest manoeuvre is instructive: the fountain was a public facility.  All the BringBackOurGirls lobby wanted was the preservation of its constitutional right to free assembly and protest.  Well and truly said.

    The offence, therefore, is not really GEJITES supporting or opposing anyone.  Like the Ezekwesili group, it is their constitutional right.

    It is rather the cynical symbolism of trying to occupy the high shrine of the Chibok protest, and crowding out its message with some Jonathan tinsel; even as the president continues to show shocking impotence more than 80 days after the kidnap.

    Meanwhile, at the same precincts, the Chibok advocacy group were holding a press conference marking the 80th day of the girls in Boko Haram captivity, a message the president and his men are clearly loath to hear!

    So, from the First Lady’s Dia ris God o burlesque on live television, to suspected hired thugs smashing at peaceful Chibok protesters, to a lawless commissioner of Police outlawing what the Constitution has guaranteed, to the Police fending off save-our-girls protesters from Aso Rock, and now, billboard invasion of Unity Fountain claiming a phantom past and pledging a future of mirage, the trend is stark: the Jonathan Presidency lacks the brains to crack the Chibok kidnap conundrum.  But it also lacks the grace to admit its glaring handicap.

    Its forte?  Neither brilliance nor character.

    Still, which one is more comical: the fond attempt to blot out Chibok or the implausible deniability over GEJITES?

    Again, GEJITES did no wrong by supporting Jonathan.  The awry thing was their attempt to blot out a grave presidential failing which, in saner climes, would be fatal to Jonathan’s second term.

    So, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) could tell to the marines its claim not to know GEJITES.  That would be as plausible as Sani Abacha claiming not to know Daniel Kanu’s Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA), or even a first-term Jonathan claiming not to know Neighbour-2-Neighbour!

    To stamp Chibok from public consciousness, knowing that the girls’ parents (innocent Nigerian citizens that have the right to state protection under the law) are inconsolable over the tragedy is bad enough.  That is a clear presidential failure.

    But even more pernicious is hushing up Chibok as symbolism for grand cynical manipulation, as electoral strategy.  Just as the Jonathan presidency is trying to blot out the Chibok cries from public consciousness to hide presidential incompetence, the federal ruling party appears bent on its new-patented demagoguery.

    To be sure: no political party is free of demagoguery, if it can get away with it.  PDP tries to manipulate the electorate; and abuses “federal might”, as it did in Ekiti.  The All Progressives Congress (APC) too is not immune to playing to the gallery.  Politicians would try any trick to steal one on the electorate.

    Still, the debacle of Ekiti — short-term debacle for the losing APC, which may yet turn long-term debacle for the polity — and its aftermaths are well and truly scary.

    The APC lost though there was consensus Governor Kayode Fayemi delivered on his mandate.  So, if a governor “performed” but still lost, what is the future motivation to perform?

    On the other hand, the victorious PDP swept the polls on a virtually empty agenda.  If President Jonathan, with his jumbo resources, had run Nigeria the way Governor Fayemi, with his meagre resources, is running Ekiti, Nigeria would not be in the present terrible pass.

    If Governor-elect Ayo Fayose had done any innovative thinking and quality project implementation in his first coming, there would have been little need for the Fayemi aborted Ekiti renaissance, which Prof. Niyi Osundare, an eminent Ekiti son himself, sorely lamented in his trending poem, “The People Voted Their Stomach — Blues For An Arrested Renaissance.”

    Yet, the Ekiti voters thrashed Fayemi, with nary anything to look forward to in the Jonathan present, or to glorify in the Fayose past — except, of course, short-term emotiveness.  What is this then — the advent of an irrational electorate?

    Again, the build-up to the Osun August 9 election is even more instructive.  If Mr. Fayose pulled off a win in Ekiti, without articulating any superior ideas to the incumbent’s record, Iyiola Omisore is also fancying his chances, against demonstrable performance by Governor Rauf Aregbesola.

    True, Mr. Omisore’s stiff play at the “man of the people”, ala Fayose, is well and truly comical: hiking Okada around, scowling down at two cobs of maize on a campaign romp, and buying popcorn at the corner stall, even as a sinister masked gunman hovers behind  — and in a country of law!

    It is tribute to the Jonathan presidency’s lack of scruples, when the matter is winning at all costs, that not his CP in Osun, nor anyone, is calling Mr. Omisore to order, as his masked gun people trail him on electioneering.  What sort of election would it be, were everyone to invest in masked gunmen?  A civil war by another name?

    And for the elite of spite busy demonising infrastructure and innovative thinking, selling the emotive masses the illogicality of “stomach infrastructure”, simply because their own politics of the belly is not at all assured, what the polity risks is even more massive poverty — for which economy grows without sound infrastructure?

    True, demagoguery ala Fayose’s Ekiti would thrive.  But what is democracy without development?

    Still, such self-destructive illogic would be a fitting tribute to the Jonathan presidency, which boasts neither brilliance nor character.

  • Ekiti: let the people win

    Ekiti: let the people win

    For the Ekiti and Osun elections, no prize for guessing the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) grand  strategy: Ayo Fayose would stage his adult delinquency stunts, Iyiola Omisore would scowl his sinister scowl and the petrified — and pacified — electorate would fall in line!

    It is bully tactics as perfect electoral recipe.

    A colluding presidency, pushing a failed president for second term, sure needs the destructive force of the twain, in its manifesto of fear and threat.

    It also fits perfectly into an historical pattern: whenever the South West is making progress, even amidst pan-Nigeria chaos, noxious forces, with their local office-seeking collaborators, would attempt a scuttle.

    It happened in the old West, shortly after independence.  It happened in the Second Republic.  Now, it is about to happen — in any case, the electoral invaders wish so — with President Goodluck Jonathan’s desperation to get a second term at all cost, using both Ekiti and Osun to establish some phoney toe hold in the West, despite a record of glaring presidential failure.

    The snag is: the first battle ground is Ekiti: happy graveyard of past all-muscle-no-brain federal vote fiddlers.  But the “invaders” are hardly fazed — for they have good, old “federal might” — illegal use of the police and other security agencies for partisan electoral ends.

    If you think this painted scenario is alarmist or even harsh, then you have not been closely following the Ekiti unfolding drama, in the run-up to the gubernatorial election of June 21.

    Flashback, June 8.  The local Mobile Police (Mopol) OC (officer-in-charge), one Gabriel Michael Selekenkere, reportedly threatened to “arrest” the governor, claiming “orders from above”.  His “orders”, specifically, was Vice President Namadi Sambo.  The VP was in town, the insolent policeman snapped.  So, the governor must dive for cover!

    But all of these are really not new.  Since Mopol junked its truncheon-and-shield for firearms, and assumed its notorious kill-and-go moniker under IGP Sunday Adewusi in President Shehu Shagari’s Second Republic (1979-1983), police pre-election rascality, in favour of federal electoral bullies, has become tales of the expected.  Even then, Selekenkere’s recklessness ploughed new depth in infamy.

    But there is also some satanic symbolism to it all, suggesting some inexplicable electoral death wish.  VP Sambo is the latest federal ogre.  But in 2009, it was VP Jonathan, then trying to earn stripes under Olusegun Obasanjo’s do-or-die electoral regime.  As Jonathan declared war on Ekiti then, Sambo is declaring war on Ekiti now.

    Still, between then and now, a lot has happened.  The 2007-2010 electoral conspiracy had come a-cropper, with Kayode Fayemi judicially regaining his stolen mandate.  Mr. Fayose, Ekiti’s enfant-terrible governor (2003-2006) had been thrown to and fro, out and in, and is now back gobbling his vomit as PDP candidate; and scowling face of unrepentant retardation in Ekiti.

    Olusegun Oni, principal actor in the 2007-2010 electoral judicial war, and dashing general of the fierce Ido-Osi re-run manoeuvre, has somewhat executed a Pauline conversion, back into the progressive camp.

    Not unlike Brutus who joined to kill Julius Caesar, not because he hated his imperious friend but because he loved Rome, many say Oni was part of that electoral steal not because he hated Fayemi, the winner, but because he loved Ekiti.  But saint or sinner, Mr. Oni is alive to the clear catastrophe of Fayose’s second coming, with its aridity of ideas, executive criminality and gubernatorial gangsterism.

    But alas, Opeyemi Bamidele, Labour Party (LP) candidate in Saturday’s election, appears headed in opposite direction as Mr. Oni.  The one heads for destruction; the other heads for redemption.

    Ripples’ frank opinion: the Bamidele defection is another manifestation of Nigerian progressives’ abject failure to manage prosperity, without falling upon themselves.  Mr. Bamidele was too rash.  Governor Fayemi and his court were too smug.  Things fell apart and the centre could not hold.

    Now, an election that ought to be a shoo-in, based on Dr. Fayemi’s demonstrable performance, is now the subject of some phoney speculation of “closeness”, because the proverbial wall has opened; and the treacherous lizard has entered.

    Still, on the electoral street, on both sides of the partisan divide, Mr. Bamidele is viewed much more emotively.  His LP is a PDP Trojan horse, a treacherous Jacob who voices progressive ideas but whose Esau arms are hairy and sooty with deeds of reaction and retrogress.

    If Mr. Bamidele fronts for LP and LP itself fronts for PDP (which just virtually yesterday ran Ekiti aground), even Mr. Bamidele and his new company would admit theirs is a treacherous enterprise which, given Mr. Fayose’s disastrous first coming and President Jonathan’s catastrophic current term, can only take Ekiti back to the Egypt it thought it had left forever.

    Of course, Mr. Bamidele’s foes in the Fayemi camp waste no time to trigger the Yoruba political cosmos of extreme saints and sinners, and put their former comrade-turned-antagonist pat in the hottest part of that sinners’ corner.

    Whatever happens, the notorious fact is that should the Ekiti election go awry, and the invading forces succeed to use the notorious “federal might” to rig the election, claiming a bogus victory but explaining the crime away with Mr. Bamidele, as a factor in splitting the All Progressives Conference (APC) vote, Mr. Bamidele would be installed on the throne of infamy which Mr. Oni just vacated.

    Still, the most annoying thing in all the electioneering hullabaloo is the PDP cynical posture that performance does not count; and that the electors are idiots.

    The president rode into town like some sheriff, his deputy bawling war, his police bullying everyone; implying such empty braggadocio is enough to sweep the polls.  But if Jonathan has ruled Nigeria the way Fayemi has ruled Ekiti, the country would not be in this mess.  Yet, there is so much hype about the partisan endorsement of a failed president.

    Mr. Fayose too blabs and roars.  But does he think the Ekitis would just forget four years of Fayemi’s systematic governance, and zombie-like, opt for the haphazard Fayose: his government by sub-human impulse and pedestrian thinking, which spectacularly undid them less than 10 years ago?

    From cynical water in 2003, Mr. Fayose has graduated to cynical rice and Okada bribes in 2014.  Some news sources, quoting Thai authorities, even claim the Fayose electoral rice is toxic.  If true, it becomes all the more interesting: Toxic candidate.  Toxic rice.  Toxic future!  It doesn’t get more diabolic!

    On Saturday, Prof. Atahiru Jega’s INEC has its job well cut out.  If it delivers free, fair and transparent election, the best candidate will win.  Ripples has no doubt that would be Governor Fayemi.

    But if it succumbs to the Anambra magic, and later turns round to rationalise brazen fraud, it would court untold trouble, given Ekitis’ past reactions to such shenanigan.  Federal electoral bullies, itching to use lawful force for lawless causes, had also better dust up their history books.

    Let the Ekiti people win on Saturday.  That is the only way to deepen democracy and ensure sustainable development.