The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Fascism at the door?

    Fascism at the door?

    When soldiers, in a democratic republic, start waylaying newspaper vans and seizing newspapers, the tragic story of Sophocles’ Antigone comes to mind.  Antigone is the classic folly of raw power bringing self-ruin.

    Creon, king of Thebes, played god by decreeing a dead man must not be buried because he was a traitor.  Antigone, the dead Polyneices’ sister, defied the king and buried his brother, because the order was contrary to natural laws.

    In the ensuing grim drama, Creon lost his son, Haemon, who was Antigone’s fiancé.  Haemon committed suicide because Antigone hanged herself to escape being buried alive — another cruel decree by King Creone.  He also lost his wife, Queen Eurydice, who killed herself when she learnt of her son’s suicide.  Ironically, as at the time of the twin-loss, of son and wife, Creon had reversed himself!

    Tragic — but just? — desert for a human playing god?

    As Creon over-reached himself in Antigone, the Nigerian military is over-reaching itself in the current grim drama against the Nigerian media.

    Never, even with Nigeria’s seedy political history, has the army dared, under a civil dispensation, to launch a brazen war on the media, as it started on June 6 and continued till June 8 — and beyond?

    On the highways, soldiers waylaid newspaper vans, like some armed robbers in uniform, impounding newspaper parcels and wilfully subverting legitimate businesses.  That is a crime under our laws — and that some thugs in uniform committed the crime does not make it less so.

    True soldiers, during armed enforcement of outlawry called military regimes, often descended on journalists; and even closed down media houses.  But even during those bandit regimes, the press never laid down to be slaughtered.  It challenged and fought the barbarians every inch of the way, culminating in their eventual defeat, and a march-back to the barracks in 1999.

    The military velvet ranks can tell, to the marines, their reasons for the clampdown: that some unintelligent intelligence has indicted newspaper vans as new carriers of Boko Haram ordinance.

    Doyin Okupe, a presidential spokesperson, has also weighed in: his boss, the president, knew nothing of the crime.  But in any case, he added, for security, citizen’s rights to free speech and legitimate business must crash.  But of course, it was the usual Okupe-istic cant!

    With Dr. Okupe’s attempt at implausible deniability, how will the Jonathan presidency navigate this latest constitutional abomination?

    Shame that, as there are no bad soldiers but bad officers in the army, the commander-in-chief is so derelict his soldiers brazenly attack the press, one of the key pillars of democracy, free speech and free society — and in flagrant breech of the Constitution?

    Still, on constitutional violations, Jonathan logs an abominable record of assaults on democratic institutions.

    A National Judicial Council (NJC)-Presidency combo, willy-nilly, got rid of Justice Isa Ayo Salami, for nothing but doing his job.  Now, with the development in Rivers, the same NJC is resorting to self-help, after failing to have its way in court.

    When Jonathan’s cronies lost out in the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) election, the presidential brigade decreed the numerical supremacy of 17 over 19.  The result: an NGF split.  Since then, it has been lose-lose in the NGF camp.  States get 40 per cent less their due allocation.  Yet, there is no united governors’ rank to fight this grave injustice.

    Rivers Governor, Chibuike Amaechi, battled a federal armada of impunity to a standstill, finally forcing the Abuja aggressor and Mbu Joseph Mbu, its viceroy, to flee.  Mbu and his masters have gone on to further disgrace by attempting — but failed — to ban continued public protest for the release of the Chibok girls.

    But Mbu’s misadventure would appear to have galvanised another felon-in-uniform in Ekiti, as a Mobile Police unit reportedly tear-gassed Governor Kayode Fayemi, tried to disarm his security details and the MOPOL leader, in the reported presence of Ekiti State Commissioner of Police, Felix Uyanna, declared (as reported by The Nation of June 9): “Who?  I mean what governor?  Who is governor when VP is in town?  I don’t know any governor.  I have order from above.  That is all.”

    Call it the voice of Jacob and the hands of Esau, and you probably are not wrong.  Vice President Namadi Sambo was quoted to have threatened war, as regard the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections.

    Now, two weeks shy of the Ekiti polls, a local MOPOL commander is threatening war against a sitting governor, in his own pocket coup.  How low can a purported democratic government sink into infamy?  But an anti-media war is one neither the Jonathan presidency nor its misguided army could ever win.

    Still, President Jonathan and his court must pardon the media for ignoring their body language to forget about the Chibok girls, so that the president can formally declare his second term transformation from anomie into anarchy.

    Tony Anenih had earlier snorted: Is Jonathan expected to go, gun-blazing into Sambisa forest himself, to free the Chibok girls?

    Mbu Joseph Mbu has pressed into service his notorious lawlessness: by the police muscles conferred on me, I, with immediate effect, ban any further #Bring back our girls protest!

    Hired thugs had tried to alter the offensive #bring back our girls Chibok battle cry.

    And the president himself had virtually abdicated: telling protesters to direct their message to Boko Haram, and not to him, the president of the Federal Republic.

    But sorry: that the Jonathan presidential court is shirking its duty — for which it is paid at a premium — does not mean the Nigerian media would shirk theirs.  The president and his men — and women — can get testy, grumpy and irritable all they like.  But as long as the Chibok girls are still in terrorists’ den, the media will tell them to do their work.

    As for the velvet-rank military wayfarers, cooking anti-democratic brews or simply obeying unlawful orders to “deal with the press”, it is time to pry into painful institutional memory.

    Back in 1966, the first set of coup makers alleged some military rednecks were politicians’ tools, obeying criminal orders, particularly concerning the Tiv riots.  Some of those officers were felled in the first coup.

    But the military was the worse for it.  That initial self-destruction, coupled with toxic government takeovers, had brought down the military down from its high heights to its present low, leaving many to doubt if it could even curtail Boko Haram.

    As for President Jonathan, Frederick Lugard’s adventure is instructive.  At the very beginning in 1916, Lugard got James Bright Davies, publisher-editor of Times of Nigeria, gaoled for what even the colonial government’s Chief Justice said was “justifiable journalese.”  By that, Lugard felt he would pocket the press.

    But the media did not only vanquish Lugard, it also defeated his vicious native power successors.  The Nigerian press will not defeat colonial despotism and military dictatorship only to succumb to civilian fascism.

    There is fascism at the door.  But like Antigone’s Creon, the seed of its self-destruction is in its rash actions.  Nigerians must push Jonathan’s fascism to self-destroy.

  • Enter the Serbians

    Enter the Serbians

    A Yugoslavia-Nigeria parallel is instructive.

    The final trigger for the break-up of Yugoslavia was Serbian ultra-nationalism.

    Now comes Nigeria’s season of ethnic ultra-nationalism: Oduduwa and MASSOB’s Biafra (active: because they push carving Nigeria into new countries) and the North (passive: because  it insists on the failing status quo).

    On Josip Broz Tito’s defunct country, Wikipedia writes: “Yugoslavia was a country in South East Europe during most of the 20th century.  It came into existence after World War I in 1918 …”  It broke up in 1991, after 73 years.

    Lord Frederick Lugard amalgamated northern and southern Nigeria in 1914.  Though Nigeria hit its centenary this year, 2014, there is no guarantee, with the escalating tension, Wikipedia would not write on Nigeria in the past tense, as it does on Yugoslavia now.

    Yugoslavia’s World War II (1939-1945) dead was around one million. Tito’s Yugoslav Partisans fought the (guerrilla) war to secure Yugoslavia’s integrity against carve-up threats from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy).

    Nigeria’s Civil War (1967-1970) casualty tally was also around one million dead. Nigeria fought the war to thwart the Igbo attempt to break away.

    According to Wikipedia, the rise of nationalism, coupled with religious differences between Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks prompted the collapse of Yugoslavia.

    Nigeria now appears locked in religious antipathy, aside from the Boko Haram mass slaughter; and ethnic nationalism is on the upswing.

    A “Croatian spring” protest in the 1970s, which condemned Yugoslavia as a Serb hegemony, led to Yugoslavia’s 1974 constitution.  It slightly watered down Serb influence by granting federating republics more autonomy.

    But the Serbs (self-proclaimed special breed) resented that  constitution’s “threat to national unity” (read Serb dominance). Much later, Slobodan Milosevic, Serbian communist leader, attempted to cancel the 1974 reforms and re-impose Serbian sovereignty over other ethnic nationalities, particularly Croats (who incidentally were the late Tito’s people, though he lived and died a Yugoslav national icon; and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo).  That move proved fatal for Yugoslavia.

    Nigeria’s status quo ensemble has a ready cant: “Nigerian unity is non-negotiable”; as it tries to block campaigns by ethnic nationalities and other lobbies to restructure the country.

    But remember: agitations by “ethnic nationalities” were fair reactions to Nigeria as a northern hegemony.  Like Serbia, the North fancies itself a special power breed, with near-divine right to rule.  Add the merry-go-round national conferences (Abacha 1994-95, Obasanjo 2005 and now Jonathan, 2014), just to buy time, and what you see is intransigence.

    If such intransigence proved fatal for Yugoslavia, could it prove any less for Nigeria?

    Even a more eerie parallel: “In 1986” Wikipedia wrote, “the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts drafted a memorandum addressing some burning issues, concerning position of Serbs as the most numerous people in Yugoslavia.”  Six years later, Yugoslavia was history.

    In 2014, a northern think-tank collective authored the North’s position paper to the ongoing National Conference (NC).

    The paper told “Northern Nigeria, the backbone and strength of Nigeria” to use its “extremely understated” population to maintain the status quo, and even roll back to five per cent, the 13 per cent paid to Niger Delta as oil derivation!

    Was this a virtual chapter from the Serbian Academy paper?  And, in six years’ time, would Nigeria stand strong and united, guaranteed by a northern spine, as the northern elite hope or, like Yugoslavia, have fallen to pieces, as the Serbian elite perhaps now rue?  Nobody knows.

    What is clear is that since that Northern NC document was made public, Nigeria has been gripped by virulent ultra-nationalism, reminiscent of the last days of Yugoslavia.

    First, Femi Fani-Kayode, the gentleman who never does things in half-measure, has gone dramatically poetic on Yoruba ultra-nationalism:  “Give me Oduduwa or let me die”, he thundered in a now famous article, trending on the social media.

    Another set of Yoruba groups, at the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park, Ojota, Lagos, declared with no less finality: “Regional autonomy … or nothing”.  But the groups said while they had no intention to impose their will on others, they would resist the imposition of others’ will.

    Across the Niger, the Movement for the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) in Owerri, Imo State, led by Ralph Uwazurike, wanted Nigeria split into six republics, along the present geo-political zones.

    Chief Uwazurike talked of “deep-rooted hatred among major ethnic nationalities in Nigeria”, the mistake of 1914’s Lugard amalgamation, “irreconcilable disdain existing between Islam and Christianity” and “a failed state called Nigeria”.  He also dismissed Igbo mainstream politicians as parasites who mouth “one Nigeria” because Nigeria is their corrupt “cash cow”.

    And drama of dramas: Uwazurike not only donned, with matching ceremonial cap, a blue outfit his supporters called “the navy blue Biafran uniform”, he also came accompanied with two MASSOB representatives in UK and Europe!

    The Yoruba and Igbo groups were also devastating in their politics of memory.  MASSOB hailed May 30, the day in 1967 Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu declared the ill-fated Biafra Republic, as a “watershed” that boldly questioned the “mistake” of Lugard’s amalgamation, but remained the true path to Igbo liberation even 47 years after.

    The Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) also thumbed down May 29, Nigeria’s official national Democracy Day, as a date of infamy.  First, May 29, 1962: date phony emergency rule was imposed on the old Western Region, marking the beginning of the end for the First Republic.  May 29, 1999: the Army Arrangement (apologies to late Fela), that sold (un)civil rule as Democracy.  And — ARG did not cite this one — May 29, 1966: anti-Igbo pogroms started in the North.

    Meanwhile, from up North came dire news: Boko Haram had killed an emir and sent two other scuttling into the bush for dear lives!  The symbolism is scary: the creeping collapse of the northern community where the emir was something of a demigod?  Now, if the North cannot secure its own spine, how can it be a backbone for a failing Nigeria?

    Even from the South West, some dissonance.  The Yoruba declared “regional autonomy or nothing” in Lagos.  Yet, Lagos, at the NC rejected regionalism and upheld the artificiality of Nigeria’s current 36-state structure!

    And that comic piece about creating Ijebu State as trade-off to guaranteed Igbo security nationwide!  Champions of regionalism still hankering after Ijebu State?  Comic confusion indeed, in the Yoruba camp!

    Ethnic nationalists giving up on Nigeria can be excused.  Its unsustainable structure is unravelling fast.

    But the Lagos NC rebellion shows it’s no use being gung-ho about Nigeria’s collapse.  If and when it happens, the balkanisation might just be total — as Serbia and Montenegro’s failure to keep Yugoslavia’s name on the map has shown — and no single geo-political zone might be sure to stay as one.

    That is why the North must moderate its empty conceit on “national unity” and the opposing camps, their delirium on Nigeria’s collapse.

    Genuine restructuring, on productive federal lines, remains the best option.

    Otherwise, Nigerians might just be fated to Niger-nostalgia (when recalling former Nigeria) and maybe The Economist would coin Nigersphere (as it has coined Yugosphere), to refer to the space Nigeria now occupies.

  • Baba’s new racket

    Baba’s new racket

    “A bi omo l’Owu, o ni ako tabi abo ni, ewo ni yio se omo nibe?” (“A child is born in Owu and you ask, male or female: which will be a proper child?) — Wale Adebanwi, “How (Not) to be a Proper Yoruba”, Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo and Corporate Agency.

     

    Their Baba is off to some new racket: in Jigawa Governor, Sule Lamido, he is well pleased as Nigeria’s new president, come 2015.  He said that himself.

    But some deep throats have added the racket is a twin-gambit: Baba that pushes for Alhaji Lamido in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), may also be pushing for Kano Governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, of the rival All Progressives Congress (APC)!  It is dawn of a great presidential straddle!

    As the Yoruba would say “Eyi je, eyi o je” (roughly, “head you win, tail you win”, perfect hedge!). It is the high-octane power equivalent of playing the lottery, Baba Ijebu!

    Despite the fiasco of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s earlier attempt at presidential selection, it would appear morning yet on his presidential creation day!

    Nigerians endured the ruins of the Umaru Yar’Adua presidential months; just as now, they are grand victims of the infernal anomie of Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential years — both courtesy of the former president.

    Still, for Baba, it would appear one era, one gambit; as he appears to have moved on to new conquests!  Might this power restlessness result from a missed past opportunity (as his foes jeer) or a patriot’s elixir to fix the future (as his friends cheer)?

    Ripples, though no foe, is inclined towards the former!  And the reason is clear.  Baba left office with no worthwhile aftermath.  The Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, it of suspect moral provenance, is stark brick-and-mortar showcasing the vanity of power, that would decay and die with time.

    Even in his native South West, political mainstream, which the old soldier tried to impose as alternative to the progressive mainstream, has spectacularly collapsed — with Baba and disciples hollering, “We’re alive!” from underneath the gurgling flood; or from the rubbles of collapsed power dream.

    Contrast that to the odyssey of Chief Obafemi Awolowo.  Awo never gained the Nigerian presidency, a failure Obasanjo mocked in his book, Not My Will.  Yet, his winning ideas on productive federalism have powered political and economic restructuring, that could still save Nigeria from looming disintegration.

    Awo is dead — since 1987— yet his ideas live.  Obasanjo is alive, yet his ideas are dead.  That biting paradox probably explains Baba’s fixation with making and unmaking presidents, thinking such arid thinking would breed a legacy.  No, it won’t.  It only breeds vanity.

    But Baba is too far down the long road to nowhere to turn back now.  Nigerians have him to thank for the crises of the Yar’Adua, and chaos of the Jonathan eras.  But not even that would banish, from his mind, a phantom future hope in Lamido or Kwankwaso — not unlike some Don Quixote that shuns reality for fantasy, in all comic chivalry.

    In Obasanjo’s case, it is fond fantasy that power vanity can land legacy.  But longsuffering Nigerians are the unhappy guinea pigs.  Just as well for a people who suffer fools gladly!

    Still, Obasanjo is as much a powerful symbol of a puppet gone unhinged as he is of a puppeteer run out of town.  That drives the matter right back to the opening quote, and Wale Adebanwi’s concept of proper and improper Yoruba, in his new book, Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria, in the context of fierce contestation for power in Nigeria.

    The putdown quote on the Owu newborn is hardly extant.  It was used in the context of intra-Yoruba sub-ethnic rivalry of the 19th century, which climaxed in the Kiriji War (1877-1893).

    But it does offer clear illumination on Obasanjo’s portraiture, in Yoruba Elites, as “improper Yoruba” — at least from the eyes of the South West progressive mainstream, that Awo inspired and nurtured.

    That perception was hardly lost on the northern oligarchs, as they shopped for their own Yoruba, to placate the proper Yoruba for the rash annulment of MKO Abiola’s presidential mandate.

    They wanted some executive puppet to hold power in trust, until the North regained it.  Obasanjo perfectly fitted that bill.

    But in power, the puppet ran his northern puppeteers out of town.  Obasanjo claimed he did it for “Nigeria”, for which his flatterers pronounced him “Father of modern Nigeria”.  The emotionally swindled and confused claimed he did it for his fellow Yoruba — even if Obasanjo is of an improper hue! — or for some fuzzy “South”, as if political Nigeria has a “South”!

    The truth is Obasanjo did it for nobody but himself.

    But Karma-like, what goes around comes around.  Yesterday’s puppet that threw off his puppeteers is today’s puppeteer, thrown off by his own puppets.

    Obasanjo’s first power nemesis was the ill-fated President Yar’Adua.  His current nemesis is President Jonathan, who might be confused about anything but his sworn determination not to be Baba’s puppet.

    That explains Obasanjo’s present over-drive to plant new puppets in either Lamido or Kwankwaso.  But if the fatally ill Yar’Adua and the clueless Jonathan can throw off Baba’s yoke, why would hardy Lamido and Kwankwaso not do so, even if the gambit succeeds?

    On the corporate plane, the North’s ploy to endure no more than eight years of powerlessness, before bouncing back for another eight years, spectacularly backfired — and Obasanjo, from his vantage commander-in-chief fort became the North’s traducer-in-chief.

    First, the grand irony of grim payback in realpolitik: as the North located in Obasanjo their Yoruba man, Obasanjo located in the ill-fated Yar’Adua his core northerner — to boot, with his full northern aristocracy!

    And when Obasanjo’s Umoru’s health gave way, the former president, to pave the way for Jonathan, the new hoped-for puppet, shrilly denied the existence of any zoning formula.

    The snag is: Jonathan won’t play the presidential puppet; and Baba is done with hyena laughs!  Now, Baba has hinted Jonathan indeed signed a one-term pact.

    Maybe he did.  Maybe he didn’t.  But falsely crying wolf in the past is making it hard to believe there is really now a prowling wolf!  That dead end could well have pushed the latest “Baba shopping” for presidential candidates.

    Those adept at emotive reaction to crises, only after they are fully brewed, should note this — and perhaps call the former president to order.

    The present anomie bordering on total anarchy, creeping failure of the Nigerian state and even looming disintegration of the country are fallouts of Baba’s Hobson’s choice of Yar’Adua, whose failed health produced the disastrous Jonathan.

    Even in Baba’s very word, Jonathan is clearly “overwhelmed” — an accidental president whose (mis)handling of things could turn his country into an accident of history.

    What future disasters await Baba’s present presidential gambits — and how much more can Lugard’s crumbing empire take?

  • Awo, followers ex-rayed

    Awo, followers ex-rayed

    Contrast life from the “mantle of Awo” to instant death from the “terrible mantle of Akintola”, and all the drama, the manoeuvre, the crass opportunism, the intrigue, the gallery play and the banana peel (apologies to the late Chuba Okadigbo) of the Yoruba “lifeworld”, which drives its politics, hit you in full Technicolor!

    As in John Keats’s long poem, “Hyperion”, an old order is dying.  A new order is waiting to be born.  The pain of death coheres with the mirth of life.  There is pre-renewal tension in the land!

    That is the long and short of this wonderful new book, Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo and Corporate Agency, by Wale Adebanwi, a Nigerian don and scholar’s scholar, who teaches at the University of California, Davis, in the United States.

    But beyond the “Kiriji War” for Yoruba political ascendancy, among Awo’s disciples, Yoruba Elites also symbolises the nationwide “civil war” for or against Awo’s ideas.  That war opened before independence.

    Though Awo died in 1987, the war — over the best philosophical plane to propel Nigeria to its manifest destiny, between federal and anti-federal forces — will rage on: until Nigeria finds its feet as a productive federation; or makes difficult peace with the present mediocre template, particularly at the centre.

    Before Awo’s death, the Yoruba archetype of political hero and anti-hero was well established. The meltdown of the Action Group (AG), the  party that catapulted the old Western Region to untold glory, settled all that.

    Awo was the undisputed hero, aside from being the signifier of the modern Yoruba nation and unifier of the once badly fractured ethnic group.

    Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA), his estranged former deputy, became the anti-hero, plunging like the Biblical Lucifer, the brilliant child of the morning and the most favoured of angels, from his celestial throne into the pit of hell.

    In the Awolowo Vs Akintola battle of perception and counter-perception, the idea is that the Awo column, with its solid legitimacy, was one solid and united phalanx.  Not true!  Yoruba Elites x-rays the how’s and whys.

    Even while alive, the fierce manoeuvre to inherit Awo’s throne was on.  SLA’s perceived treachery is well recorded by history.  But SLA branched out on his own, leading conservative elements out of the old AG.  That was the First Republic, when Awo was still evolving.

    Post-First Republic, when Awo had been formally canonised Asiwaju Yoruba (Yoruba Leader), the battle to inherit his mantle assumed fiercer levels.

    Alhaji Lateef Jakande (Baba Kekere), the populist and hugely popular Second Republic governor of Lagos and Chief Bola Ige (Arole Awolowo), the razor-tongued, sharp wit, public intellectual par excellence and governor of old Oyo State (now Oyo State and State of Osun) were the top contenders.

    But both stumbled, allegedly, according to investigations in Yoruba Elites, for being too much in a hurry to inherit the “Awo mantle”, even while Awo was still alive.

    But the real “Kiriji War” started after Awo’s passage, when each combatant or even blocs of combatants tried to corral what Dr. Adebanwi called the “politics of heritage” or better still, politics of Awo’s memory, to seize political ascendancy.  And you would be amazed at the warring camps!

    The biological Awos appeared divinely settled on milking the political franchise of their great paterfamilias, no ideological questions asked.

    Then, there were close confidants of Awo, led by the pair of Pa Olaniwun Ajayi and Pa Ayo Adebanjo.  Alleged traducers-in-chief of the late Bola Ige, Ige himself verbalised the Ijebu Four, a put-down tag which added the late Pa Abraham Adesanya (later to become Afenifere leader) and Pa Solanke Onasanya, to the pair of Ajayi and Adebanjo.

    The quad was regarded as leading the Ijebu Mafia, against other blocs, in the contestation for Awo’s political throne.

    While both Ajayi and Adebanjo were reportedly jeered at, by Second Republic Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) governors as the Park Lane ensemble — non-political office holders always with Awo at his Park Lane, Apapa, Lagos residence — the pair has, after Awo’s death, transformed into fierce guarantors of the Awo franchise.

    Also in the fray, for Awo’s progressive mantle, were post-Awo era politicians, some products of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s “new breed” politics, led by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

    Though Tinubu earned his stripes in the war zones of re-validating MKO Abiola’s June 12 mandate; and has inspired a breed that has replicated, in concrete terms, Awo’s progressive heritage in the present South West, the old guard still regards them as ideological grand pretenders and rank outsiders in the Awo patrimony.

    Yet, in the relay of grim comedies in the book, about everyone took a hit.

    Awo himself fell for the subversive praise of IBB, in the letter (ghosted by Chief Olu Falae, then secretary to IBB’s government) that — not incorrectly — declared Awo the issue in Nigerian politics.

    That letter also fetched Falae a toe-hold on the progressive heritage, so much so that he got preferred over Ige in the D’Rovan Hotel, Ibadan, Alliance for Democracy caucus presidential candidate (s)elections of 1998.

    The Awo family fell for the subversive generosity of IBB in secretly accepting 120, 000 pounds sterling for burial expenses, even as the late Bisi Onabanjo, Second Republic governor of Ogun State, publicly but innocently boasted Awo would frown at such.

    And the whodunnit that followed Ige’s AD presidential ticket ouster, put the trio of Chief Olusegun Osoba, Dr. Femi Okurounmu and Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi on the spot!

    In accounting for Ige’s final vote, both Osoba and Okurounmu said they voted Ige at D’Rovans, but the author appeared to have his doubts.  Akinyemi said that final vote was his.  The author appeared to believe him.  But Ige himself didn’t, reportedly, till his death, accusing Akinyemi of treachery!

    And the partisan efe (wit) on the stumps!  Otunba Gbenga Daniel (OGD) became Ojiji Omo (sudden child) to partisans ridiculing his reported sudden claim to Sagamu as paternal home to gain the Ogun governorship.  But the crafty OGD renamed himself Ogidi Omo (precious child).

    Still, neither Ojiji nor Ogidi would appear to have mattered to the Awo dynasty.  OGD delivered on the Awo franchise.  While it lasted, he was in return vested with Awo’s reincarnation.

    Ige’s terrible hubris drove him to a tragic end.  But he escaped the “terrible mantle of Akintola” allegedly laid out for him by the Ijebu Four.

    Yoruba Elites, published by Cambridge University Press, is a classic on Awo and progressive politics in Yorubaland and Nigeria: the glory, the intrigue, the drama.  Though it is worth every inch of its N20, 000 launch price, it risks being read only by the financial “holies of holies”.

    But this pearl of a book should be mass produced for mass readership, if its illuminating shaft must not be buried under a bushel.

     

  • Chibok and power sans responsibility

    Chibok and power sans responsibility

    The Chibok girls kidnap crisis (unplanned negative publicity) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) for Africa held in Abuja (planned for huge public relations mileage) have combined to show the vacuity in Nigeria’s public space.

    Until global outrage took the Chibok affair from their effete hands, the Jonathan power family would not be bothered about what the hullabaloo was all about.

    At the very genesis, when the girls had just been kidnapped, President Goodluck Jonathan was busy dancing Azonto in Kano.  For all he cared, his own repeat presidential quest was all that mattered, not some allegedly missing girls.

    At mid-plot, the president was at his clueless worst, telling a hurting country that he had no idea where the girls were, in his latest presidential (mis)chat.

    With the permanent grimace on his face, even with the paddy-paddy questions thrown at him, even the president seemed embarrassed by how simplistic he sounded and how watery his grasp of issues appeared.

    Indeed to parody James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, it was, with all due respect to the man and his high office, a highly embarrassing portraiture of a president as simpleton!  No wonder: The Economist, high brow but highly chauvinistic Western voice, just declared: “Jonathan is hurting Nigeria.”  It hurts, but it is the bitter truth!

    True, at his best, President Jonathan’s forte is not analytical rigour.  But the Chibok crisis, vis-a-vis his obsession with a presidential encore, has brought to the fore his low emotional intelligence.  How can a personage lack both rigour and compassion, yet insist on retaining power — power for what?

    But apparently, all of these are a mere claptrap to the Jonathan power ensemble, even with its female wing.

    For starters, Kema Chikwe, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national women leader, let it slip that she doubted the authenticity of the claim that the girls are missing.  Interpretation: it’s all politics to discredit Goodluck and his future power endeavour.

    First Lady, Patience Jonathan, pushed this claim to an abject nadir with her tragi-comic circus on television, making herself a butt of global jokes.  The lexical challenge of the First Lady is well rumoured.  Still, her lexical anarchy on that TV show confounded not a few, especially those who, like Ripples, had always thought Dame Jonathan’s reported lexical hiccups were satanic exaggerations.

    Even then, that was not the most damning.  It was rather Mrs Jonathan’s crass presumptuousness that having authority flows from being authoritarian.  On what law, in the Constitution or outside of it, is the office of the First Lady founded?

    And if that office is founded on the genteel convention of honouring a presidential or gubernatorial spouse, what part of that convention empowers the beneficiary to summon fellow citizens to summary TV trials?

    Or order arrests of fellow citizens because Her Royal Majesty, the First Lady disagrees with their constitution-guaranteed right to assembly and protest, as Mrs Jonathan was alleged to have done to two Chibok female protesters, on the excuse that neither was the biological mother of the missing girls?

    And Dame Jonathan’s stentorian tone on her TV show, something to the effect that the First Lady has summoned you to help you find your missing girls!  So, it’s their girls now?

    Whatever happens to the presidential duty of protecting every Nigerian, which has gifted her the privilege of First Lady?  Or is it a case of privilege without responsibility?  Indeed, Wole Soyinka’s laconic quip that you must first be a lady, before becoming first lady, is pregnant with meaning!

    If the presidential spouse believes the Chibok girls were a Borno, not her husband’s problem, what would she say of the global clamour for the girls’ release  — sympathisers howling louder than the bereaved?

    Of course, Dame Jonathan’s ill-fated show would appear designed to shield her husband from the charge of culpable lethargy, but put the Borno Governor Kashim Shettima on the spot, to make inviolate her husband’s presidential re-run.  Just as well, it blew in her face!

    President Jonathan, of course, has re-found his voice and is brimming again with Dutch courage, since more serious governments, and the global community, have mercifully decided to do his job for him.  But let the one with the child-like glee be informed that there are always serious fallouts  from surrendering your sovereignty because of sheer incompetence.

    Still, presidential incompetence did not start — and the way things are structured now, will not likely end — with Goodluck Jonathan.  For all his fierce projection of power, former President Olusegun Obasanjo is hardly made of more stellar quality than President Jonathan.

    Still, it is to Jonathan’s eternal discredit that Nigeria under his charge suffered the ignominy of surrendering its sovereignty to foreign powers because of creeping state failure.  What Nigerian students gained in the anti-Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact protests of 1962, Jonathan has gleefully surrendered in 2014!

    That is Nigeria’s good luck of giving power to Goodluck!  In no time, Uncle Sam would hoist his flag here, with the triumphant message: “Nigeria, latest bastion of global sodomy, under curious universal human rights guaranteed by America”!  It would be a hefty price to pay for freeing the missing girls of Chibok!

    Though no price should be too severe to pay for freeing those Chibok innocents, for they have no hand in the manoeuvre that has landed Nigeria in this sorry pass, whoever is in charge must take the can.

    Still, from the WEF for Africa, which Nigeria just hosted, has come impressive vignettes of Nigerian excellence.  Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, minister of Finance and coordinating minister for the Economy, showed impressive grasps of issues.  So, did Omobola Johnson, Jonathan’s minister of Communications Technology, and former Accenture country managing director for Nigeria.

    Even before, Akinwunmi Adesina, minister of Agriculture, the one of designer suits, designer eye glasses, designer rings, designer moustache and even designer elocution, has proved his mettle, even if not a few think his suave policy showmanship does not quite equate robust policy implementation.

    On the media front, Reuben Abati had proved himself a patrician when the issue is public intellect, with his commentaries in The Guardian corralling rave reviews; and millions of readers lapping them up as the de-rigueur in progressive thinking.

    You might not agree with each and every one of these Jonathan aides; but in their individual capacities, you somewhat felt they could hold their own against the very best in the world.

    So, how does such excellence cohere with the unbridled mediocrity that is the Jonathan presidency?

    The tragic paradox of Nigeria is that leaders lag behind their followers; yet are expected to offer direction.  When a laggard is captain, how can the team compete?

    But this structured mediocrity is no accident; and Jonathan, Chibok et al, will probably not be the last power guinea pig, served as the latest new deal.

    To avert Nigeria collapsing under its own violent contradictions, it is time to look beyond the power puppets and gun for the puppeteers.

  • North and the ogre of Rehoboam

    North and the ogre of Rehoboam

    The conceit of Rehoboam, son of Solomon; and the conceit of some Arewa elements need bold comparison, if Nigeria must escape self-imposed catastrophe.

    The Bible says the hubris of Rehoboam, son of the great Solomon, was to fulfil Jehovah’s prophesy to Jeroboam, son of a nobody called Nebat.

    Still, a version of the same Bible recorded that Rehoboam hearkened the voice of “worthless young men”, against wise and seasoned elders.

    So, the scion of the wisest man of all time embraced the greatest folly of all time: promising his people more pain but expected them to clap?

    And how does Rehoboam’s self-sealed fate compare to the Greek, King Oedipus, in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, or as locally adapted, King Odewale in Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are not to Blame — two tragic heroes fleeing a supposed curse, only to end up with that fate, because vengeful gods had decreed it so?

    Rehoboam’s hubris — arrogance and unconscionable pride — split the united kingdom he inherited, into Judah and Israel.  But the base of that empty pride was injustice of the most brazen kind.

    The Jews, at least according to the Bible, are a divine race.  But not even that perceived divinity could, in ancient Israel, hold together their primal nation, in the face of clear injustice.

    So, if injustice can smash Israel, the divinely favoured, how would Nigeria fare, Lugard’s mere creation of colonial greed, for the sole economic pleasure of the British?

    Like Rehoboam’s, the arrogance of the Arewa demand at the ongoing National Conference (NC), unfurled by its delegates in a 47-page document, is stunning, the stuff of which clear hubris is made.  How can a region that contributes least to a common wealth insist its words must be the Nigerian dicta?

    But to start with, there is pretty little difference between the power elites of the North (particularly the segment hooked on old patriotic freeloading) and the Niger Delta.  With the ascendancy of Goodluck Jonathan, both have resorted to the threatening language of power; and seldom the civil language of reason.

    That is why, for instance, old man Edwin Clark would bait his presidential protégé to “sack” North East governors, under the guise of dismantling democratic institutions for Boko Haram emergency.  Now that Boko Haram is making Nyanya, Abuja, its new satanic play ground, do we now call for the dismantling of the Presidency, to proclaim an emergency?

    See the vacuity of the language of power — no reason, no rigour, no justice, no equity, no fair play, not even common sense: just contemptible flexing of muscles, because it feels the other party could be vanquished?

    Though the North’s NC demand document is reportedly authored by the medley of northern governors, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation — hardly a profile that fits Rehoboam’s “worthless young men” — its demands match the biblical experience in sheer recklessness.

    Are these seasoned patricians not beyond the rashness of Rehoboam’s callow youths?

    Fitting enough, the document opens with sheer conceit: “Northern Nigeria, the backbone and strength of Nigeria” — how so?  Still, self-delusion is no crime.  But the document went on to brag about its “extremely understated” population.  So, population quantum, even of the laggard by all objective parameters, is something to brag about?

    Then, nice try: the Arewa as “accountant-general of the federation”, tallying who has got what since 1999!  South-South: N17.74 trillion (six states).  Northern states: “only” N10.53 trillion (for 19 states).  Combined South West and South East: N8.79 trillion (11 states).

    So now, what?  A pan-Nigeria gang-up against the Niger Delta because their majesties, The North has hinted so?  A pitiful appeal to pity, not because of what is said, but what is left unsaid.

    Will the weeping Arewa and its hoped for snivelling ensemble push for anything less than even 50 per cent derivation, were they to bear oil and its massive environmental poisoning; with the proverbial irresponsibility of the Nigerian state?

    True, the Niger Deltans could be thoroughly annoying with their bleating of “our oil, our oil”.  And true too: it might not be totally unfounded, the North’s document’s insinuation, that a South-South lunatic fringe might be toying with the idea of annexing the oil wealth for the locals’ sole pleasure.

    Still, is this speculation enough for the North to insist on rolling back derivation to five per cent, forgetting too soon that its pre-12 June 1993 brazen excesses, which climaxed with the reckless annulment of Nigeria’s best ever presidential election, forced the increased derivation on the country?

    And the so-called Article 76 on territorial waters, of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea — how does that law relate with extant municipal conventions, and even common sense, so much so that a part of the country thousands of miles to an oil deposit would question the primacy of host communities over such deposits?

    But of course!  A North that told hideous lies about selling off its groundnuts and cotton wealth to “solely” win the Civil War (1967-1970) cannot be trusted with comprehensive conscience on such matters.

    Indeed, if the Civil War claim is true, why the Yakubu Gowon joker of carving the then four regions of East, Midwest, North and West into 12 states?  Was it not to seize, from Biafra, the minority oil producing areas of the former East?

    Again, the most tragic thing about the North’s latest manoeuvre is mass distraction.

    The ruling party and leading opposition feud over the papers of a crashing house.

    The Middle Belt, whose Christian segment always chafes at the slightest hint of Islamic domination by the core North, stay blissfully quiet, even if it is listed as part of the 19 northern states that authored this latest insouciant and reckless document.

    And the over-fed and over-pampered NC committee members on restructuring?  They are busy putting white coating, like the Biblical whited sepulchre, on the extant centrist structure that could yet be the grave of Nigeria.

    But let the tiny northern hegemons behind all of this get this for free.  The very hubris that pushed the North to its plunge after the rash annulment of June 12 will yet bait it, by its provocative demands, to fragment Nigeria.

    Should that happen, no region would rue Nigeria’s break-up more than the North — not the innocent masses who are only pawns, but its freeloading elite.

    Besides, such catastrophe would not be a poor King Odewale running away from a curse only to end up living that curse, but a rash Rehoboam bringing ruin upon himself.

    Unlike the Jewish nation that survived the Diaspora, however, Nigeria will be totally blotted out.

    So, those who love Nigeria had better speak up now on the side of justice and equity before it is too late — or  forever be mute.

  • Ode to Lai Ashadele

    Ode to Lai Ashadele

    As Lakunle Ojo, he was among the iconic cast of Village Headmaster, weekly tele-drama of the 1970s and 1980s, that featured the likes of Oloja of Oja (Dejumo Lewis), Chief Eleyinmi (later Oba Funso Adeolu, of blessed memory), Bassey Okon (JAB Adu), Sisi Clara (the late Elsie Olusola) and Councillor Balogun (later Oba Wole Amele, also of blessed memory).
    Those were the days!  Even in Lagos, you could count the number of television antennae on roof tops; and colour television was unheard of.
    Lagos Island of the early 70s was a close-knit community. So, from the famous Channel 10, Village Headmaster was something of communal celebration, with its talking drum signature tune sending everyone scuttling to the nearest television set.
    Pa Lai Ashadele, as Lakunle Ojo, was among those stars neighbourhood children in Lafiaji, Lagos, whose parents did not have the rare fortune of owning TV sets, huddled together to watch.
    As we all “giraffed” through the window, stretching our necks as long as possible to catch the action, the hosts regarded the kids as some pests.  But since Village Headmaster was sheer communal pride, they tolerated the weekly pestilence for the 30 minutes or so the drama ran.
    Ripples remembers, quite clearly, as he and other kids gawked at these larger-than-life stars. You could then imagine his wonder when Pa Ashadele bobbed up on Republican Ripples and declared himself an avid reader!  Pa Ashadele for real?
    But mutual creative tension, between writer and reader, has since cooled that initial excitement. The weekly impassioned argument is on how best to fix our country.
    Now, Pa Ashadele may be an avid reader. But he is no one’s favourite reader — if “favourite” means uncritical acceptance and blanket endorsement of a point of view. On his views, he takes no prisoners.
    Many a Nation columnist (Sanya Oni, for one; Waheed Odushile, for another) has complained of Pa Ashadele’s ringing condemnation (if he disagrees); and fulsome celebration (if he agrees).
    With Ripples, the relationship is bitter-sweet. He regards Ripples as a gifted but partisan writer, always at the beck and call of some “paymasters”.
    Ripples regards him as a closet conservative, maybe a tad reactionary, who thinks little of pressing into service, the African dictatorship of the elderly, if only to have his way.  The result is always fearsome exchanges, with both sides taking no prisoners.
    But beyond all that is mutual admiration and respect, even if the exchanges are often combustible stuff!
    Pa Ashadele did not like “Poisoned chalice” (April 22) one bit and he came blazing.
    “Abimbola,” he opened as he usually does, “are unity rallies campaign stunts to breach the electoral law?  Should government close shop because sponsored beasts wreaked senseless havoc at Nyanya? So, what is the big deal in Jonathan attending to official assignments after a mishap?  Your insinuation that Jonathan bribed delegates at 2011 PDP presidential primary is libellous and unfortunate. Your use of words like “unthinking at best, callous at worst” on the first citizen is an abuse of the moral and cultural values of the Yoruba.  Sad!  You were not suggesting Olubadan’s centenary birthday should have been cancelled? Would Jonathan’s absence have brought to life victims of Nyanya’s bombing? Why place the mayhem now on PDP zoning instead of a presidential aspirant who promised to make Nigeria ungovernable under Jonathan’s presidency? Your call for truce is sensible.”
    Ripples charged right back.
    “Thanks for your response sir,” he retorted, “but I regret to say, to use judicial imagery, I found you no witness of truth. So, if those who perished in Nyanya were relations, would you be so sanguine about Jonathan’s scandalous misconduct? As for ‘bribing’ nomination delegates, I didn’t insinuate anything. The president said it with his own mouth.  Pray sir: when did self-indictment become libellous? As for a truce, how do you do that when you don’t even admit Jonathan’s crass opportunism, with Obj’s conspiracy, brought us to this mess?”
    To which Pa Ashadele fired back, all sarcasm: “Thanks for calling me an apostle of untruth, in coined legal parlance.  If you consider your position altruistic, who am I to take it otherwise? Pardon my failure to realise that some are usually wiser than all others; on all issues.”
    Though Ripples recognised the appeal to pity in the sarcasm, he struck a conciliatory tone: “Baba, I’m sorry if I sounded curt but I didn’t intend to be rude. Some elite deliberately cause trouble and the masses, who were never part of it, get killed. I’m just angry!”
    On “Scrapping a toxic presidency” (March 4), Pa Ashadele was game as always: “Abimbola, a first reader of your piece would have been hoodwinked that it was some masterpiece. But it soon collapsed into vilification of set political characters, in tune with the veiled modus of intention of The Nation columnists, in favour of their political masters in APC. It went awry at eventually dehumanising chosen targets, to please the author’s bosses.  Kudos to faithfulness and dependability!  Toxic leadership is not limited to the presidency. A simple responsibility of managing a newspaper column, with all the powers to churn out anything at the columnist’s whims, could fall foul of “toxic prints” — still “TP”. Going to equity?” he concluded with a flourish,  “watch out!”
    To which Ripples fired right back: “You know sir, you’re right: toxic leadership also includes toxic readership, which comes with toxic fixations about paymasters, hack writers  and preferred partisan tempers, borne out of toxic imaginations! With all due respect sir, your hatred for certain tendencies is bordering on the bigoted. Please let yourself go!  Otherwise, all you will bring to the table are imaginary demons which, believe me sir, are toxic!”
    But Pa Ashadele was not done: “Abimbola, if my hatred for certain tendencies are bigoted, yours are ‘trigoted’ — and by that all you bring are true demons that call for toxic reactions to their masters’ ploys. ‘With due respect’, no one has absolute control over reasons. It takes maturity to accommodate others’ views.  Imagination precedes actualisation. Have a swell day and greet your wife o!”
    “Hear! Hear! Hear!” Ripples snapped back. “But of course, tolerance or intolerance of others’ opinions is mutual!  Nice day, sir.”
    To which Pa Ashadele simply screamed in his text: “Abimbola o o!”
    And so, it is, week in, week out — for there is no Republican Ripples piece that Pa Ashadele does not painstakingly read and react to in long texts. And as he does for this column, he does for other columnists of The Nation.
    To Pa Ashadele, kudos.  Though he is no ideological friend of Ripples, his passion and his engagement are gripping, when he could have retired to his comfort zone, in his winter years, keeping mute. Wish him many more years of verbal jousting and cross-shellacking!
    See how citizens, victims all, tear themselves apart because of the nasty choices of our bad rulers?  Still, it’s morning yet on Misrule Day!

  • Poisoned chalice

    Poisoned chalice

    What was that all about — President Goodluck Jonathan’s unthinking rally in Kano; and Governor Rabiu Kwakwanso’s alacrity to sweep away the president’s supposed ill-fated footprints from his territory?

    Even as no less than 75 innocent Nigerians perished in a terror attack in Nyanya, Abuja, and same terrorists abducted at least 100 secondary school girls in Borno State, the president must go on a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) “unity rally” in Kano — and less than 24 hours after this twin-tragedy?

    No less blameable: Jonathan must stand on his presidential dignity to thumb his nose at the Electoral Law, which spirit, if not letters, the president and his party serially and cynically breach by the so-called “unity rallies”? Is the president then above the law that created his office?

    And Governor Kwakwanso — what, beyond partisan grandstanding, did he mean that the people of Kano would not welcome the president? Could “the people”, de jure or de facto, have stopped him, given the Federal Government’s monopoly of the security agencies?

    And the high drama of sweeping away the president’s footprints! That was hilarious politics to be sure! But that hilarity brought both the offices of president and governor to high lows, given the bitter partisan exchanges between the two.

    Unfortunately, the president did himself and his office no credit by unabashedly romping in the sewers at the Kano rally. He childishly suggested he induced voting delegates (euphemism for bribery?) at his 2011 presidential nomination; and went ahead, with child-like naivety, to bomb the governor for alleged non-delivery on the gratification!

    Doesn’t this president know that both who gives and takes bribes are culpable?

    To keep what he has, President Jonathan must rally in Kano — unthinking at best, callous at worst. Meanwhile, the country mourns the victims of the Abuja bombing; and parents of the abducted girls are a nervous wreck on the fate of their loved ones, again kidnapped from a government-owned school!

    Perhaps the most damning to the Jonathan Presidency, on this latest terror attack, is a two-picture montage now making the rounds in the social media. Picture 1 shows the British High Commissioner in Nigeria donating blood in aid of the Abuja blast victims. But picture 2 shows President Jonathan making merry at the Olubadan centenary. The contrast is devastating!

    Now, the president visiting the Olubadan on such an auspicious occasion was no crime. Indeed, it was duty. But the timing was awfully wrong. The president’s friends could argue he postponed it by a day, to visit the scene of the blast and see some of the victims in their hospital beds.

    But the merry smirk on the president’s face at the Olubadan’s, combined with his gaiety on the hustings in Kano, were so out of tune with the country’s dolorous mood that one begins to wonder, with all due respect, at the quality of his sense of judgement. It was a most reprehensible escapism, that was anything but presidential!

    Why does the president give the sorry impression that Nigeria and Nigerians are nothing but winning in 2015 is everything? And over what — the poisoned chalice that he now drinks from?

    Yet, warts and all, President Jonathan would rather keep what he has!

    And Governor Kwakwanso, and the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), would fight tooth and nail to have what the president has — that same poisoned chalice!

    No doubt, Kano Governor Kwakwanso was spot on in his high moral criticism about the president gallivanting about on “illegal” rallies instead facing his job of tending hurting Nigerians. But the partisan base of the manoeuvre was all too clear — no crime, there!

    Still, with all due respect to the APC democratic right to contest for power, what is the worth of this poisoned presidency to anyone now? All the bitterness by innocent victims and galloping evil by the Boko Haram anarchists, will they just vanish because power has changed hands?

    Nigeria appears frightfully on the way to Kigali. A heightened recklessness may shoot it straight on the road to Magadishu! All too soon, the dire prediction that Nigeria would break up by 2015 does not look so fantastic after all.

    Can a power change of guard halt the creeping disaster? Maybe. Maybe not. But the omens are not so convincing — without a conscious and deliberate attempt at healing and reconciliation.

    That puts the ball right in the court of the ongoing National Conference. But that is if it rises above the suspicious circumstances of its birth; and seizes the moment to make history.

    Everyone is teary right now, but it is high time we started asking the hard questions. All this mayhem has its roots in the summary junking of PDP’s zoning, that gifted Jonathan the presidency, but clearly embittered a section of the North.

    So, where is former President Olusegun Obasanjo? He wanted to build a dynasty of puppets, so he could call the shots from behind. Though that scheme spectacularly collapsed and the puppet can no longer hear his puppeteer, the old general is cool and comfy at home. But not so the innocent victims of mass murder, who continue to pay with lives and limbs, in a plot they had no part!

    And Citizen Goodluck Jonathan? He is right there, in the virtual valley of the shadows of death! Even as president, he cuts the picture of abject power opportunism gone awry, a stiff price for a breach of agreement.

    What is his presidency worth, when everyday he is greeted with the slain being shovelled into trucks after each mass massacre, and the gnashing of teeth of the dying and the wounded, being rushed to hospital?

    The agonised public — where were they when the power dealers were cooking their anti-zoning brew? Didn’t they, back then, lose their sense of outrage, simply because the power plotters were their friends and kin; and the hurt victims, their foes and just “other people”? Did they not, Nigerian-style, pounce on the victim, while hailing the aggressor to ride on?

    And the embittered segments of the North — if really by their threat to make the country ungovernable, for a Jonathan that allegedly stole their power patrimony, they are behind this anomie — what do they intend to gain?

    Wipe out the whole country and later gain power over ghosts? Some northern rascals, after all, annulled June 12 and a Sani Abacha came to kill and maim the victims for their audacity to complain! A case of galloping injustice consuming its own children?

    As in the June 12 issue, the present crisis results from rogue politicians plotting dangerous power games and the people playing dumb when they should have shouted down the blatant injustice. Now, everybody is paying so dear!

    Nigeria needs healing. Today’s victims were yesterday’s aggressors. Today’s aggressors are tomorrow’s victims. Everyone has sinned and fallen short of glory. So, this madness must stop.

    The National Conference must seize the times and work on healing old wounds, aside from genuine federal restructuring.

    Should all this madness continue, sooner than later, it might just be “To your house, O Israel …”

  • `Xenophobic Lagos

    `Xenophobic Lagos

    Xenophobic Lagos — quite a mouthful, isn’t it?

    But it sort of echoes Victorian Lagos, a book by ace poet and literary critic, Prof. Michael J. Echeruo, on the Lagos of new settlers: Europeans; and repatriated former slaves from Sierra Leone and Brazil, from mid-19th century; as against the aborigines of Eko.

    The inspiration for this piece came from Femi Macaulay, co-columnist of The Nation, and scion of the Macaulay family of Lagos, one of those 19th century settlers.

    In two straight offerings, “From megacity to metacity” (March 31) and “Fashola and fallacy of failure” (April 7), Femi beamed his searchlight on the 6th Herbert Macaulay Memorial Lecture and Merit Award, held on March 22 in Lagos.

    Creeping xenophobia, by Lagos indigenes, oozed from both pieces, like some bad blood from a painful boil. It all issued from alleged marginalisation of Lagos indigenes, who complain of being elbowed out of opportunities in their own land.

    The March 31 piece was a pan-Eko complaint of marginalisation. The April 7 piece was an intra-Lagos partisan manoeuvre, hiding behind Lagos nationalism, to twist Governor Babatunde Fashola’s rallying cry: “Eko o ni baje” (Lagos won’t go to seeds) to “Eko o ni baje ju bayi lo” (Lagos won’t degenerate beyond this point); suggesting the governor has done nothing to improve Lagos. The absurdity of such a claim is patent. But then, politicians must play politics!

    Still, the irony of xenophobic sentiments issuing from a Herbert Macaulay merit award was clearly lost on the participants — the key words being “Macaulay” and “merit”.

    This is because back then in Victorian Lagos, the mainly Anglican Saro stock of the Macaulays, Sierra Leone returnees, who had their bastion at Olowogbowo; and the denizens of Popo Aguda, the mainly Catholic repatriates from Brazil, in the neighbourhood of Campos and Lafiaji, had a running battle with the aborigines of Isale Eko.

    Indeed, literatures back then dismissed the Saro, notorious for copying British attitudes, as “parasites”. The Eko aborigines accused them of double parasitism: parasites on the British, for culture (names, speech, dress mode and attitude); and parasites on the natives, for trade. And in that anti-Saro trade resentment, you could feel the Eko natives’ economic xenophobia.

    Indeed, Holy Johnson, the inimitable Bishop James Johnson, a prominent Lagos Saro, was caught between the crossfire of his Ijebu nativity and his Saro evolution.

    Echeruo quoted the no-nonsense clergy as testifying to the “stubborn dislike of my country men (the Jebus) to the Gospel and to English customs, particularly to long trousers, shoes and socks; and to umbrellas, which last I suppose only Royalty carried.”

    So, as the present-day Lagos Olumegbons, Oluwas and Bajulaiyes, Macaulays, Johnsons and Leighs, Damacios, Da-silvas and Perreiras rally in xenophobia, in an apparent economic resentment of non-natives, let it be known that they had not always been a happy and merry phalanx.

    If however, the Macaulays and Da-silvas have morphed from resented “parasites” of yore to earn the great Herbert Macaulay the platform of the Association of Lagos State Indigenes (ALSI) Memorial Lecture and Merit Award, it is because of the sheer quality they had, over the years, brought to the table. That is the spirit of Lagos.

    Perhaps, at this stage, Ripples’ Lagos bona fides are imperative. Born at Lagos Island Maternity, bred in the Lafiaji area of Lagos Island where he attended St. David’s Anglican School, by parents of Mojoda stock in Eredo, Epe, he is as Lagosian as anyone can be.

    So, this is no “atohunrinwa” (Yoruba for settler) voice, trying to claim Eko scalp as economic trophy. It is rather a voice for merit and excellence: for merit has built Lagos; and if it hopes to excel as a megacity or even meta-city, merit must continue to be its cornerstone.

    Still, some caveat. The claim that Lagos is a “no man’s land” is as patently idiotic as the claim that Mungo Park discovered River Niger. No matter how many settlers economic opportunities have drawn to Lagos, Lagos remains the jewel of native Lagosians.

    And those who, in the context of the United States, mistake Nigerian citizenship for ownership of Lagos, simply because they are long-time residents, wilfully miss the point. Whereas the United States is basically a settler country, Nigeria is basically a country of native communities.

    So inasmuch as Nigerian citizenship is to be treasured with all its rights and privileges, citizens have the responsibility to respect native rights, if equity and justice are the issue.

    No less misguided are Lagos natives who harp so much on Lagos’s insularity — with their “gedegbe L’Eko wa” mentality. Lagos is linguistically Yoruba, and cannot, in all good conscience and sound logic, be insulated from the Yoruba South West. That is the whole essence of South West integration which The Nation continues to champion but to which, some short-sighted Lagos elite continue to show discomfort.

    In Lagos — and indeed, other parts of the country — therefore, respect for native rights must be the starting point. Still, native rights do not translate to wilful denial of contributions of the so-called settlers.

    Take the case of Lagos Television (LTV), which at its earliest stages, pioneered 24-hour TV, through its Lagos Weekend Television (LWTV). The brain behind that innovation would appear Taiwo Alimi, a journalism elder and Ogun native, who Governor Lateef Jakande poached from NTA. But when the LTV brand found its feet, some Lagos elements suddenly discovered Alimi was not from Lagos!

    Contrast LTV to the defunct Eko Today, formerly Lagos Horizon, Lagos government-owned newspaper. The foundational editors, all ex-Daily Times, led by the late Tunde Odesanya, saw the paper through its teething stages. But when a native with a sense of entitlement took over, the newspaper went under.

    The impact of Rauf Aregbesola, now governor of the State of Osun, on Lagos infrastructural renewal of the Bola Tinubu years, is still there for all to see. He was no native. Yet, as Works and Infrastructure commissioner, he left indelible marks. Contrast him to Adeseye Ogunlewe and now Musiliu Obanikoro, natives who returned as federal ministers, to wage virtual partisan wars on their Lagos!

    Fortunately, Governor Fashola has, by his stellar performance, shown native Lagosians can boast the highest quality. So, this is not about demonising Lagosians and lionising non-Lagosians.

    It is rather about the inherent danger of xenophobia: for behind that patriotic fear hides blatant mediocrity, powered by a sick sense of entitlement and the resultant irresponsibility. That is a one-way road to decline that Lagos would take at its peril.

    So, let native Lagosians, as of right, take the best of opportunities of their land. But they must be the best men and women for the job. That is the Babatunde Fashola model.

    The narrow road to this destination is conscious and deliberate determination to train Lagosians to be the very best. Xenophobia, on the other hand, is primordial cry for lowering standards for those who cannot compete.

    What Lagos needs is merit to trump the rest, not xenophobia to block their way. That is the spirit of Lagos.

  • Common man, common woes, ticking bomb

    Common man, common woes, ticking bomb

    Why opponents of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), often shirk from engagement on ideas, could be gleaned from the March 29 colloquium in Lagos, meant to mark his 62nd birthday.

    It was tagged The Summit of the Common Man.

    On parade were some truly common, and not so common folks. But all were afflicted by the everyday problem in the Nigerian state that incorrigibly boasts the too common plague of shirking responsibility.

    It was the summit equivalent of Lagbaja, the musical persona. Lagbaja, the music man, is masked; the telling anonymity of the street folk that feels the pinch. At the Summit of the Common Man, the common man came well and truly unmasked!

    The roll call: Nasir Bala, Ron Mgbatogu, Bathsaida Home for the Blind — a struggling charity for the disadvantaged and rejected: the quintessential common man — Eric Dooh, Elizabeth Unah, Musa Ali, Adamu Baba, Yusuf Audu, and the unemployed chemical engineering graduate of Niger Delta University, Bayelsa, Sopriye Victor.

    This was a summit of telling symbolisms — how Nigeria has got it wrong; and more importantly, how Nigeria could get it right. It is like a well crafted novel or play: no overt preaching. But the message comes clear from its nuanced plot and rich imagery.

    Justice Isola Olorunnimbe said the opening prayers. He lunched off the Christian way, but with his cap on, after a hilarious joke about the imperative for brevity of prayers on such occasions. But in a jiffy, he made a seamless transition into Islamic prayers!

    That is a South West gift to Nigeria: why should adherents make enemies of themselves, when they pray to the same Almighty God, father of all humanity?

    Then Anglican Cleric, the Most Reverend Ephraim Ademowo, chaired the occasion. Yet, Tinubu is an APC chieftain, the party, by the propaganda of Olisa Metuh, spokesperson for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is an “Islamic” party. A Christian priest schmoozing with rabid Islamists? A quiet answer to the hare-brained Islamist charge!

    Ironically, that same day, President Goodluck Jonathan was holding a PDP North East zonal rally in Bauchi. Now, the North East has borne the bestiality of Boko Haram and its blood-thirsty insurrection.

    In the neighbouring Buni Yadi, Yobe State, the crazed Islamists brutally slaughtered innocents in a Federal Government College. The president never visited: to commiserate with the slain; or in solidarity with the troops, as commander-in-chief.

    Yet, there was the president in Bauchi, passing the buck, trading blames with North East governors and boasting his party would sweep the North East in 2015!

    Now, was this the normal real-politik issuing from political braggadocio or absolute contempt for the local voters? Still, contrast the Bauchi show with the Lagos summit, and how the APC used the occasion to sell its road map, and it is clear the hustings for 2015 are here.

    The federal ruling party brags, despite its parlous performance. The foremost opposition reasons, despite a discernible pattern of brilliance by its governors. It promises, indeed, a campaign of contrasts!

    But back from political hubris to the common man, the ultimate victim of that hubris. It is also back to the Lagbaja (Yoruba for “somebody”) metaphor.

    All on parade at the summit were just somebody — mere statistics: united in impotence, from tragedies and discomfort, as a result of the omission or commission by the Nigerian state.

    One was a communication royal, even passing through the great portals of Lintas-Lagos, an advertising aristocracy, if ever there was one. But in his grey years, after giving his professional all to his country, the retiree has nothing to fall back on but the hospitality of a church. A country that neither cares for its youth nor its elders is criminal-minded to expect any iota of patriotism.

    Then another, an uncommon common man: a university graduate, a former banker turned farmer. Now, this citizen is no robber, either of the pen or bullet hue. He is irrevocably committed to clean business. But alas! His country trembles at the sight of fertilizer rings. Though he works hard making losses, the fertilizer ring reaps while lazing away — and he is impotent, doing anything about it.

    Yet another fisherman, in the Niger Delta creeks, must lose his means of livelihood because of the almighty crude that spills all over. Now, no thanks to those spills, he is unemployed and perhaps unemployable. Now that his goose is cooked, his country has moved on to more urgent matters, than the plaintive cry of a local fisherman with poisoned ponds.

    The next four are caught in the Boko Haram tragedy in Nigeria’s North East. One lost his uncle, aside from wife that bore him six children. He lectures at the University of Maiduguri and the Islamists wanted him, the very symbol of Boko Haram — Western education is sin — but killed his wife in his stead.

    Another is a teacher in a secondary school, who on two occasions lost his students to the murderous Islamists. The two times his school was attacked, the security forces of his country were caught napping. Though he escaped with his own kids, the trauma of the slain youngsters, under the school’s charge, would live with him for the rest of his days.

    The next two would just not fold their arms, while Boko Haram made a devilish feast of the cream of the local manpower. So, they banded together with others to form the famed Civilian JTF — JTF after the military Joint Task Force. This cadre of braves somewhat succeeded in running Boko Haram out of Maiduguri, into the adjourning rural areas and bushes.

    As confirmed by the victim university and secondary school teachers, Boko Haram’s audacious assassinations have greatly reduced in Maiduguri metropolis, thanks to the Civilian JTF. These braves appear to have heeded the John Kennedy injunction: ask what you can do for your country — and done it. But pray, what has their country done for them?

    The unemployed graduate is the all too grotesque face of the Nigerian youth — hurting, angry, scorned and rejected. But after, even against all odds, she managed to found a beauty salon, came the 2012 “floods of Noah” that sacked everything.

    Now, she is back to where she belongs: the ranks of the unemployed — or, as they of the comfort zone love to snap and leer: the ranks of the university unemployables!

    Still, the Bathsaida Home for the Blind emerged perhaps the most profound image from the summit: a struggling charity that rehabilitated a youth that lost his sight because of inability to pay for a glaucoma surgery that cost N200, 000! The proud beneficiary and no less proud proprietor spoke at the summit. But where was the government and the big charities at the youth’s crunch time?

    The Summit of the Common Man showcased the common man, with common woes, feeding a ticking bomb. The government must do the needful to defuse that bomb.