The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Westminster has gone mad again!

    When Nigerian playwright, Prof. Ola Rotimi (God bless his soul!), wrote his hilarious play, Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, he certainly did not have Britain in mind.

    But is the Queen’s own country capable of the sick joke of a proposed visa bond targeted at former colonies in Africa and Asia: Nigeria, Ghana, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka?

    The hilarity is not in Britain’s right to control its immigration. That is legitimate and serious business. It is rather in its hypocrisy of comic pretence: playing dumb that its cruel empire past has caught up with it.

    So, the mortal fear of forfeiting three thousand Pounds Sterling, courtesy of a visa bond, would keep desperate economic barbarians off their former Metropolis, when the former colonies are in all but ruins? Ah!

    Coming from a Tory government, headed by The Right Honourable David Cameron, which name ironically sounds like Cameroun, another raped victim of German, British and French colonial greed, the policy has all the notoriety of Thatcherite racism.

    But did Westminster think that after decades of blind plunder under many fanciful names – Pax Britannica, British Raj, British Pacification of the Natives, etc, etc, – citizens of its former colonies would just melt away, while the colonisers live happily ever after?

    Meanwhile, the most pleasing irony: if at the height of British imperialism the chaffing colonies screamed “Africa for Africans!” or “India for Indians!” it is sweet comeuppance Britain now wants to bawl, “Britain for the British!”, but is too hypocritically restrained, stiff-upper lip tradition, to scream! Hence, Mr. Cameron’s proposed racist policy. But good to know the Brits also cry!

    Still, you must feel their anguish. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian-born Al-Qaeda terrorist who gained global notoriety as the “Underwear Bomber” despite his failed mission, used the Queen’s own city as his own Londonistan to savour hate sermons and hone his terror skills.

    Then, the evil Michaels: Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, Islamist twin-loonies ironically bearing the Christian name of the fiery archangel, and GOC of the heavenly hosts, Angel Michael. The loonies subjected the holy streets of London to the most profane slaughter of a British soldier, Drummer Officer Lee Rigby.

    The irony is these two loonies are ethnic Yoruba – in any case, their parents were; before getting lost in the Diaspora. Yet, in the Yoruba motherland, only the raven mad would kill in the name of religion. The Yoruba credo of religious freedom and faith liberality is long settled.

    So, how did Britain hap on this monstrous duo that caused universal pain and anguish, with their gruesome murder of that innocent British soldier?

    Because of this bone-chilling outrage, the Brits are perhaps more than justified to design policies that ban, from their country, African and Asian barbarians; the first of which is Mr. Cameron’s proposed visa bond.

    But perhaps if the colonised peoples too had had the muscle to repress the colonising Brits, with the invaders’ pacification (euphemism for mass murder of the resistant, which ran into millions), and the ensuing mass physical, psychological and spiritual dislocation over endless years, there would not have been brainwashed monstrosities like Abdulmutallab, Adebolajo and Adebowale. Nor would there be economic migrants.

    Chinua Achebe’s famous Things Fall Apart spoke of such spiritual and psychological disorientation, using his native Igbo as case-study. So, did Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiongo’s Weep Not Child, a classical match-up between greedy British ruffians and land grabbers using the missionaries as front and an equally determined though pitifully less armed locals, insistent on reclaiming their land; thus creating the classic Yoruba fabled confrontation between the happy killer and the merry suicidal.

    Even Brit, Edward Morgan (EM) Forster, in his A Passage to India, painted the snickering bigotry and allied evils of the British against natives in the so-called British Raj of India which, by the way, had as victims most of today’s India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the latter-day pariahs of callow Mr. Cameron’s new visa bond!

    Did Mr. Cameron think something would not give, after his ancestors’ brutal repression of other peoples, and making away with their wealth; and thereafter installing near-imbeciles to ensure the British gravy continued long after flag independence?

    True, the likes of Achebe used the dominator’s language to achieve global fame, a far cry from the self-fulfilling prophecy of congenitally challenged Africa and Africans, by the likes of Joseph Conrad and his Heart of Darkness. Wole Soyinka used this same English language to win the Nobel, the prime global literary prize. wa Thingo has enough literary clout to live in exile’s happy pain, as his native Kenya treats him like the Biblical prophet without honour.

    But to every Achebe, wa Thiongo and Soyinka, there are myriads of economic flotsam and jetsam, churned out by a disarticulated Africa and, to some extent, Asia. This is the global class that has come to plague Britain and it co-western imperialists. It is therefore a question of the Brits’ ancestors having eaten sour grapes; and their offspring’s teeth set on edge! That is Mr. Cameron’s generation; and that explains his bond!

    But not even Mr. Cameron’s visa bond would remove that plague. Still, a fairer international economic system could. If more Africans and Asians live and earn productive living in their home continents, then maybe Westminster would need less punitive visa bonds to control immigration.

    But the humongous western greed is yet to be sated; and Africa, mostly run by pre-programmed cretins, is not about to surrender its notoriety as global economic laggard. That is why Mr. Cameron must reveal his callowness by trying to bully his favourite African retards to join the 21st century Sodom and Gomorrah his country and Uncle Sam unashamedly lead; and daring any African moron, on the pains of aids, to raise his voice against same sex marriage, the West’s latest abomination!

    Still, a Ghanaian that goes flocking to Britain only has himself or herself to blame. Ghana is no El Dorado. But by somewhat gathering its best hands over time, despite the western hysteria that subverted Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and nearly aborted the Ghana dream, the old Gold Coast is well on the way to attain its manifest destiny.

    Not so for Nigeria, ruled from the beginning by Whitehall’s cynically programmed Uncle Toms. And that is bad news for Mr. Cameron’s visa bond. So long as there is economic paralysis at home, the economic barbarians from here would do whatever it takes to hang in there, visa bond or no!

    The bottom line? The Nigerian government must wake up. Mr. Cameron’s visa bond might well graduate into mass expulsion of Nigerians from Britain. Such reverse forced exodus forebodes nothing but ill.

    The angry and bitter repatriates would settle for nothing less than where they were coming from. Meanwhile the local misfits holding mediocre courts are absolutely incapable of upping their game. Before you know it, the happy-to-kill clashes with the merry-to- die!

    If a better Nigeria emerges from the smoke, then something good, though unintended, would have come from Mr. Cameron’s visa bond.

  • Abibatu Mogaji as exemplar

    Abibatu Mogaji as exemplar

    Chief Jerome Udoji, late patriot and exemplary civil servant, titled his no less exemplary memoirs, Under Three Masters. If Alhaja Abibatu Asabi Mogaji (16 October 1916-15 June 2013) were to write her own memoirs, what would she have titled it?

    Certainly not, Riding the Crest with Three Masters – the “masters” being the British colonial powers, the succeeding Civilian Order at Nigeria’s independence and the rampaging military regimes, shortly after.

    She probably would not have titled her memoirs that because of her trademark modesty and humility. But despite her unassumingness and quiet grace, Alhaja Mogaji, Iyaloja of Lagos and President-General of the Association of Market Women and Men, was servant to no one, except her market flock.

    She was no civil servant like the distinguished Chief Udoji, professionally bound to serve the government of the day. So, she never subordinated the interest of her market folks to any other interest, no matter how powerful.

    Therefore, if her quiet grace allowed it, she probably would have titled her memoirs, Partnering with Three Masters, a partnership that lasted all through her exemplary adult life, even with little or no formal education, culminating in a lifetime of service.

    Her direct testimonies, when she turned 93, courtesy of a fact-filled report by Emmanuel Oladesu, The Nation political editor: “I have seen it all. I have interacted with Zik, Balewa, Sardauna, Ironsi and Gowon. I have played my role and served my people. All I have been saying is that market women and the masses should be catered for.”

    The moral? Leadership is nothing, unless and until it is immersed in the interest of the led. Commonsensical, isn’t it? Yet, most of today’s power elite, legit politicians or military-era power rogues, seem not to understand this simple dictum. Common sense isn’t common, after all!

    Devoted leadership builds mutual respect, trust, reverence and awe (in that order); and eventually climaxes in “soft power”, which often trumps hard power, even with the office that drives it; and the coercion that enforces it.

    The potency of soft power, otherwise called influence, is again reinforced in this reported open discourse with Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, self-named “military president”, on the eve of his Abuja departure, at the commissioning of Third Mainland Bridge, again courtesy of Oladesu’s report: “Ibrahim and Maryam, as you are going to Abuja, you should not forget Lagos. You should not forget us because you are part of us.”

    Sure, Alhaja Mogaji was much older than the Babangidas. But it took more than mere age for a barely lettered matriarch to talk with such intimacy to a “military president” and spouse: the one, not only in government but also in power; the other, with larger-than-life influence on her husband’s government. Behind that intimacy must be the “soft power” of one who had something the power-consummate couple badly needed.

    Now, the IBB era adds interesting dimensions to this discourse. IBB’s was the age of “settlement”, a euphemism for cynical “buy-offs” of any dissonance, otherwise labelled subversive generosity; before the notorious military head-butting of irredeemable irritants.

    The goodly Mrs Maryam Babangida, of golden memory, and her First Lady activism, adds an even fresher perspective. Gen. Babangida, for all his posturing as “military president” had no mandate, except one stolen at gun point. The exquisite Mrs Babaginda, therefore, needed to rally the populace for her husband, by doing some public good. Enter then, Maryam Babangida’s Better Life for Rural Women.

    For the Babangida couple to succeed in their power striving, they needed Mama Mogaji’s extensive market network, her mobilisation acumen and her moral authority over her flock.

    The general needed to keep the masses under his thrall happy, as every benevolent dictator is wont to do. The general’s wife needed to energise her rural women’s programme that had a distinctly urban temper; thus earning the snicker of many.

    However the symbiosis worked out, it would appear Mama Mogaji did not sell her soul, or the essence of her market flock, to help the Babangidas. That could not be said of most that fell for IBB’s subversive charm.

    But Mrs Babangida’s intervention pushed First Lady activism into harsh public glare: a force for good or evil? That depended on which side of the divide you stood. Still, the principle was clear-headed enough: IBB had no mandate; and Mrs Babangida, with panache, did what she had to do to gain her husband badly needed legitimacy – and even her bitterest enemies would admit she had class.

    But reverse that position: an elected president with a formal mandate – what does his spouse add to the menu? That is the paradox of Patience Jonathan’s First Lady activism; in the context of spousal support in public office. By unrepentantly blundering into the public space with unguarded comments and illiterate power projection, Mrs. Jonathan diminishes her husband’s legitimacy, harvests him needless enemies and earns the presidential office citizens’ resent, if not outright contempt.

    But the grandest paradox of all: the Babangidas were military usurpers that nevertheless consummately understood the dynamics and metaphysics of power. The Jonathans are supposedly democratic players, but are at sea with the nuances of democratic power, to earn respect, authority and influence.

    But the most telling contrast of all, that made Alhaja Mogaji an exemplar in “woman” power: whereas both Mrs Babangida and Mrs Jonathan parasite on hubbies’ “hard” power – for public good or evil – Mama Mogaji wielded the most potent of powers, “soft” power, with an enduring grace and generosity of mind that earned her deep affection and respect till she breathed her last.

    That should be abiding lessons for Nigeria’s power Philistines, as rude and crude, as the nouveaux-riches of poet Mathew Arnold’s England (1822-1888).

    Nor did Mama Mogaji speak to women alone, which makes an interesting link between her political durability and her son, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s political emergence.

    In the heat of the Action Group (AG) schism in the early 1960s, Mama Mogaji pitched her tent with the Awolowo bloc, against the Ladoke Akintola bloc, which though gained power by federal conspiracy, lost the soul of the Yoruba. She therefore reigned with the progressive majority in Awo’s post-1966 political heaven than perish with the Akintola fallen angels.

    In the heat of the 12 June 1993 presidential election annulment crises, Tinubu broke ranks with the Shehu Yar’Adua People’s Front (PF) faction of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) that signed away MKO Abiola’s historic mandate. For aligning with truth and justice, not many remember the Asiwaju’s political nativity was in one of IBB’s many wayward tricks he dubbed “political new breed” – whatever that meant! In contrast, many of his superiors, back then, politically perished with the anti-MKO conspiracy.

    As Senator Oluremi Tinubu, Mama Mogaji’s remarkable daughter-in-law, busy building her own log of stellar public service, always prays, Mama has ended well; the envy of many a public figure. But how many of them can pay Mama’s stiff price?

    Mama Mogaji, exemplar of the public good, you have ended well. Now, rest well in the bosom of your creator.

  • What does APC want?

    What does the All Progressives Congress (APC), the new party, which just approached the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to consummate its merger, want – power? What else would any political party want?

    But if it is power for power’s sake, the party has a disturbing mirror before it.

    For 14 agonising years, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has bellowed “Power!” has been intoxicated with power and has been completely charmed by power. Yet, its terrible lot is a classic example of power as dysfunction.

    So maddened by power is PDP, that two of its best performing governors are interlocked in a party-fatal vanity war.

    Akwa-Ibom’s Godswill Akpabio, credited with some stunning infrastructure development in his state, heads the reactionary bastion spurred on by presidential hubris; which insists the ruling party must prey on its members, no matter how much of assets such members are perceived.

    Rivers’ Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, an underdog giving the PDP Jonathan establishment a bloody nose, despite graceless presidential muscle-flexing, heads the other column (dubbed rebellious or progressive, depending on which side of the divide you stand), which insists party membership must not equate presidential zombies.

    When two elephants fight, the saying goes, the grass suffers. Inside the PDP Power Babel however, it is the reverse: the power-crazed elephant buckles, when the grass gets too hot under its unfeeling limbs!

    With suspended Sokoto Governor, Aliyu Wamakko, launching a scud missile of “incompetence”, at embattled Bamanga Tukur, PDP national chairman, whose counter-missile of “indiscipline”, cracked back at Wamakko, the combat is on! The Nation of June 15 reported nine northern governors, out of 15, had backed Wamakko against Tukur.

    Even among the ranks of these northern governors, things appear to be falling apart: two, Benue’s Gabriel Suswam and Bauchi’s Isa Yuguda, have reportedly pulled out, obviously suffering some post-Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) election defeat syndrome, after backing a wrong horse!

    And for Jonah Jang, phoney “NGF chair”, the cruel irony of power without authority coldly mocks his “summon” to a meeting, of governors outside his moral authority. See what impunity does to the mind? As the Yoruba say: can a thorough reject raise a tune and expect his peers to back that tune?

    For PDP, therefore, it is morning yet on self-destruct day! By the time the smoke clears, the party might well be buried under the rubble of own hubris!

    That is what power without purpose does.

    So, what direction should APC take? That of power with purpose.

    The Nigerian state suffers great debilitations that need more than just power to cure. For starters, the present Nigerian presidency is unsustainable. Neither is Nigeria’s troubled federalism, no more than military unitary contraption, in false “democracy” cloak.

    So, while working on its rainbow coalition so vital for success for a Nigerian power elite so prebendal at heart, even while sloganeering along progressive-conservative divides, APC must codify a nationwide charter of demands, based on felt local needs.

    These felt needs must reflect what different parts of the country, using the six geo-political zones as windows, want as a matter of urgency: a sort of core demands, to offer the tottering Nigerian state a rebirth.

    Of all, it would appear the South West is the most vocal, as to what it wants in a new Nigeria: fiscal federalism, regional integration, and political restructuring to make for productive federalism as opposed to the present central parasitism, perhaps using the geo-political zones as new federating units.

    All these, of course, would entail paring down the humongous powers of the Nigerian president; and transferring most of the Nigerian state’s tasks to the regions – but backing such tasks with adequate cash.

    How to source that cash? Not by sharing a centrally collectible pool as is the present practice. It is rather by each region working its own resources, but paying some agreed percentages to the central government. This is no innovation. It was what powered the federal Constitution at independence.

    Steve Osuji, fellow The Nation columnist, always passionately writes on the “Igbo question”. But can the South East codify the Igbo question into some sort of negotiating charter with the rest of the country? That is what APC must work at. This is absolutely important, for no power elite with enlightened self-interest would shut from central power one of its most enterprising blocs and hope to live in peace.

    Beyond the vicarious feel of “power”, the South-South, like the South West before it and indeed, like the North before both, must admit producing the president does not improve the lot of its masses, beyond satisfying the greed of the few in the power cockpit. So, what are that region’s felt needs? Beyond “resource control”, meaning some 100 per cent retention of petro-dollars, the South-South should write its own charter.

    The North is generally the bastion of conservatism; which often translates on its insistence on “unity”: a euphemism for retaining the status quo, which the departing British skewed in its favour. Even then, its willy-nilly loss of power and influence, since the tragic presidential election annulment of 12 June 1993, has shown that gravy could not go on forever.

    So, what does the North want? Whatever it is, there is an urgent need, however future Nigeria is structured, for a deliberate and sweeping emergency plan to tackle mass poverty and mass ignorance (which feeds mass insurrection under religious and other cloaks) in the North East, aside from the felt needs of the North East elite and people.

    North Central? Christian-Muslim tension is explosive here. That accounts for the radicalisation of the Northern arm of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). Besides, the many peoples of North Central are eager to project and express cultural, ethnic and religious pride, in the framework of a truly federal Nigeria.

    The North West, ever so privileged under the present Usman Dan Fodio-inspired system, need not lose its proud heritage. But it must come to terms with changing times; and balance its conservative Islamic temper with the religious rights of minorities, to forge a new, fair and equitable Nigeria.

    The North, as a bloc, must come up with proposals on how to mine its own mineral resources, propose fair derivation for its sweat (as counterpoise to South-South’s “resource control”), and further hone its agriculture to earn foreign exchange. It must, as a rule, wean itself from hankering after proceeds from South-South’s oil, under whatever justifications, when it could build and drive its own wealth.

    If APC collates these regional charters, and it wins power, it would be primed to tinker the right restructuring: mainly, paring down the humongous powers and the vast but idle resources that now come with the Nigerian Presidency; which nevertheless fuel corruption, fund subversion, and drive structural under-development. Even before formal restructuring, APC would have specific developmental tasks to tackle.

    But if the party succumbs to the expediency of a North-West/South-West power grab, without addressing the structural stress of a quaking Nigerian federation, it will further drive Nigeria to the precipice. History would blame it for the final beginning of the end.

  • June 12 and ghost of MKO

    June 12 and ghost of MKO

    In the beginning, he bawled while others hee-hawed: “Abiola won fair and square.” That was 1993. Before the latest crisis, contrived by power greed and cant, he also thundered: “There would be consequences!” That was 2011.

    Between 1993 and 2011, the damning voice of Mallam Adamu Ciroma, clear, loud, harsh, austere but honourable, hangs over a polity that prides itself for infamy.

    It is the living equivalent of the ghost of Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola, the man who won the one and only true pan-Nigeria presidential mandate, in Nigeria’s troubled political history. That ghost still ravages this country, exactly 20 years tomorrow, after that historic election – and shows no signs of abating.

    O yes, Goodluck Jonathan also claims a pan-Nigeria mandate of a sort. But from the intra-Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) legerdemain that preceded it and the electoral gerrymandering that hallmarked the 2011 election, it is clear Jonathan’s claim is only history repeating itself as mere farce.

    The irony must be clear: a consummated pan-Nigeria mandate ought to lead to a can-do release, a derring-do spirit that liberates and pushes the nation, like reeds in front of sweeping winds, into happy and unbridled development.

    But Jonathan’s mandate has produced the exact opposite: a vast slaughter slab that aptly captures the 21st century equivalent of Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature, where life is hard, nasty, brutish and short, even when many an ardent Jonathan backer screams “political Boko Haram!”.

    MKO won a clean presidential mandate – the cleanest in Nigerian history. But he spent his whole four-year term in gaol, between 1994 and 1998, in Sani Abacha’s gulag. When MKO’s gaoler suddenly expired, not reportedly in the most honourable of circumstances, MKO too had to pay the supreme price, as a so-called “equaliser”, to finally settle a contrived power crisis that had lasted the whole of five brutish and bloody years!

    Seriously, how can a country boast such swashbuckling injustice, against a citizen whose only high crime was winning a free election, and not expect dire consequences?

    The latest consequences of that long running injustice is the Boko Haram scourge, for which many an excitable mind would love to conk Mallam Adamu as some Northern irredentist, set against the emergence of a “southern” president.

    How Ciroma’s open stand against injustice, against his own people (as was clear from the summary repudiation of the PDP zoning formula that propelled Jonathan himself into the vice-presidency), in a federal Nigeria rippling with fierce competition for power, can only emerge in a Nigerian polity that ripples through and through with lazy thinking.

    But emotive demonization or no, the severe beauty of Ciroma’s stand lies in its consistency.

    Prof. Omo Omoruyi, director-general of the Babangida-era Centre for Democratic Studies (CDS), verily believed a northern-inspired “geo-ethno-military-ruling-clique”, with its pre-1993 power arrogance, masterminded the June 12 presidential election annulment. But Mallam Adamu cried foul, even if his moral protest could not stop the evil and its terrible aftermaths.

    So, when a constellation of southern power hustlers, led by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, self-proclaimed “father of modern Nigeria”, bore false witnesses for Jonathan on the PDP presidential zoning policy, to deny the North of its right, was Ciroma supposed to keep mum? He rightly pressed his right to be heard. With the total crisis that is Goodluck Jonathan’s uneasy tenure, he has been painfully proved right.

    But much more instructive for a power-drunk northern elite, who pushed their luck too far on June 12, thus pushing with it, into the Atlantic Ocean, their British-aided illicit power domination: Adamu Ciroma is a living witness, and indeed protested, against his kith-and-kin, when power waywardness pushed them to the June 12 harakiri.

    Now, his golden voice is still here, pushing their right to clambering back into the power chamber, if the latest and desperate tenant of Aso Rock allows. Even then, it must be clear to all that the untrammelled lollies of pre-1999 power halcyon years are gone for good!

    It is all the making of MKO’s ghost, the latest karma on the Nigerian political plain!

    Even before MKO’s death, karma was already reaping bountiful harvest of those who, for real-politik, betrayed June 12.

    Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’adua would stake some claim to a martyr of Nigerian democracy, dying in controversial circumstances in Abacha’s gulag, after conviction for trumped up coup charges. But had his People’s Front (PF) faction of the victorious Social Democratic Party (SDP) not conspired to sign away MKO’s mandate, Yar’adua probably would still be alive – and perhaps consummated, after an Abiola presidency, his ambition to become Nigeria’s elected president.

    Yar’adua is dead and rests in peace. But not so many, who live long but hardly happily ever after, in the rank of the political living dead, after the June 12 crime.

    Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, since his “step aside” after the do has found out he could not possibly ever “step back”, no matter how long he lives – and may Allah gift him long and healthy life yet. He would bear, to his grave, the guilt of June 12 and its subsequent but avoidable tragedies.

    Olusegun Obasanjo and Anthony Anenih are a serious study in passive and active political irrelevance, two gerontocrats yoked to the same fate, all thanks to their role in the June 12 saga.

    Obasanjo, the other day, took a swipe at Jonathan, his estranged godson, that whoever could not perform as president should give way; an eerily similar putdown, almost word for word, he gave luckless Umaru Musa Yar’adua, on his fatally ill bed. But just as Obasanjo was pushing the cause of Jonathan at Yar’adua’s expense, he is now pushing the cause of Sule Lamido, Jigawa governor, at poor Jona’s expense!

    But not many people remember that Lamido, as SDP national secretary, was complicit in signing away MKO’s victory. It could well be superstitious, but it would appear the MKO ghost that has pushed Obasanjo into passive irrelevance of spiteful endorsement, when his previous endorsements have been absolute disasters, is waiting in the wings!

    Anenih, the SDP national chairman that signed away MKO’s win, is busy at his own active irrelevance, prescribing antediluvian, anti-democratic theories of automatic tickets for a party about to break up. Clearly, Pa Anenih is stuck in the past: the same old strong arm tactics that clearly made the fixer, is set to finally fix the fixer!

    But in the latest PDP rumpus, Anenih is in good company: the fixer as party undertaker, in cohorts with a desperate president as party undertaker! The ghost of MKO may yet smash the PDP, a retreating military Trojan horse, wilfully installed to sell a democracy dummy and dispense raw power and impunity, in lieu of the real thing that June 12 epitomises.

    Still, to avert a president as party undertaker doubling as a president as country undertaker, another word of wisdom from Prof. Omoruyi: “The death of Chief Abiola ought to lead to a renegotiated Nigeria to make a true federal system.”

    That is the way to go for a Nigerian rebirth in the spirit of June 12.

     

  • Echoes of June 12, portents of 2015

    Echoes of June 12, portents of 2015

    The May 24 Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) election, lost (by President Goodluck Jonathan and his storm-troopers) and won (by Rivers Governor Chibuike Amaechi and his coalition underdogs) has sent dangerous ripples through the polity: echoes from a reckless past; portents of a dire future.

    The usual culprits? Cavalier injustice and brazen impunity. Add Governor Amaechi’s suspension from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), after routing the presidential forces, and you view, in full Technicolor, the face of avowed non-democrats running Nigeria’s pitiable democracy!

    For bringing the name of God into clear fraud, mimic NGF ‘chair’, Plateau Governor, Jonah Jang, evinces the Biblical Jonah, snoring in the belly of the whale. But the whale of this Jonah, a former Air force general, would appear his military past, from where he pathetically jangles. Despite his high gubernatorial office, he becomes an embarrassment to everyone with his phantom NGF chair.

    Wake up, Jonah! It is democracy, not military imposition! And in democracies, election winners assume office while losers stand down! Even as bad as June 12 presidential annulment crisis was, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida did not brandish loser Bashir Tofa as winner, after annulling MKO Abiola’s win. Yet, that is the phony throne Jang jangles about, invoking God’s munificence, in His very temple! Indeed, the Christian God is longsuffering!

    What ails Akwa Ibom’s Godswill Akpabio, for proudly leading the gambit to turn winner into loser, and loser into winner? Gubernatorial megalomania powered by presidential impunity? The telling irony is clearly lost on the governor: a God’s will purporting to subvert the will of God for that of mere man. Is the voice of the people not that of God?

    To purport to cancel an election the PDP Governors’ Forum chair and his gang lost was the height of impunity. To purport to install the loser in place of the winner was the height of insanity, bordering on absolute contempt for the mental health of other Nigerians. And to resort to empty bluff, brandishing a pre-poll signed list that rippled with fraud and forgery, was the height of power delusion. Why, even gubernatorial buffoonery should be made of saner stuff!

    Of course, Ondo’s Olusegun Mimiko completes the triad. But then, when two or three are gathered; and the discourse is political intrigue, be sure Iroko would be there! His friends call the Iroko game real-politik: no friend, no foe, just permanent interest; and the end, to echo Prof. Wole Soyinka, must justify the meanness! But his foes counter it is nothing but seasoned perfidy.

    With Mimiko, a losing NGF vice-chairman hilariously pronounced one by outgoing vice, Anambra Governor, Peter Obi; not on the strength of the election result but on the whim of bad losers, the real Iroko political persona storms out of the shadows.

    Governor Obi himself is a tragic symbol on more fronts than one. But the irony is also clearly lost on him: how can a grand beneficiary of justice to reclaim his stolen governorship be such a proud votary of swaggering injustice in this NGF case?

    But of course! If Mr. Obi could organise a nocturnal convention of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to thwart an anticipated negative court ruling, it can be legitimately argued that his latest NGF posturing reflects the man’s true political essence.

    But Governor Obi presents an even more troubling essence, both as déjà vu and as political symbolism. In raising Dr. Mimiko’s hands as the new NGF vice chair, sans election, Mr. Obi prattled about South East governors working together. That was no crime, except that the present “working together” for injustice echoed a dire past one.

    During the June 12 crisis in 1993, South East governors, with the exception of Chukwuemeka Ezeife, the then Anambra governor, worked together to subvert democracy for clear infamy. Dr. Ezeife belonged to the victorious Social Democratic Party (SDP), while the others belonged to the defeated National Republican Convention (NRC). Indeed, so boisterous was Okwesilieze Nwodo, then Enugu governor, that he swore he would commit suicide should Abiola be installed president!

    Twenty years after June 12, all South East governors, except Imo’s Rochas Okorocha, are proud and preening members of the united column of brazen injustice, purporting to deny Amaechi of his NGF win, on no less infamy. Why, even as the original June 12 gladiators manufactured post-election fibs about Abiola, this column of bad losers are manufacturing post-election fibs against Amaechi! Indeed, history is repeating itself as farce!

    The South East provided some of the finest and most committed defenders of June 12: Eastern Mandate Union, EMU’s Arthur Nwankwo, former Lagos Administrator, Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu, Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, and the late Chima Ubani of the Campaign for Democracy (CD), to mention a few.

    Still, as it was with June 12, it is now with NGF: all the South East governors, except one, have jumped, without thinking, into defending brazen injustice. Why do a section of the South East political elite give the impression that, when the chips are down, they would rather go with expediency than side with equity and justice? And how does that penchant strengthen their hands to earn justice for their people, one of the most traumatised, in the hellish Nigerian state?

    Reuben Abati, ex-Guardian and chief presidential spokesman, has claimed President Goodluck Jonathan had no hand in the NGF imbroglio. He can tell that to the marines! But even the marines must be interested in how Abati, the thundering Guardian columnist would have reacted to the claim of Abati, the thundering presidential spokesman! Still, Abati the presidential oracle has spoken. Who can say no?

    But some questions: who was paranoid about Amaechi seeking NGF second term? Jonathan. On whose behalf did Godsday Orubebe fire the first shot? Jonathan. Who staked his presidential prestige on stopping Amaechi at all cost? Jonathan. Who told PDP governors he could no longer work with Amaechi as NGF chair? Jonathan. Under whose perceived charter is Akpabio, emergency viceroy to smash Amaechi, as emergency PDP Governors Forum chair? Jonathan. Who told the Kalabari to warn Amaechi to shun NGF second term? Jonathan. And who bosses the Police, so pathetically partisan in the Rivers PDP crisis? Jonathan!

    A final question: is the NGF routing of the Jonathan troops a pointer to what will happen in 2015, if Jonathan is worsted in the presidential poll? Would the commander-in-chief, ala Kenya’s Mwai Kibaki, order the electoral chief to announce him willy-nilly, just as Akpabio and co are purporting to install Jang as winner of an election he soundly lost, even as the PDP threatens Amaechi, the winner, with impeachment or worse?

    More darkly, would Nigeria split on account of Jonathan’s loss, as NGF has now split on account of the loss of Jang, Jonathan’s poodle?

    These are troubling questions. But for a country of “anything goes” as Gen. Saliu Ibrahim a Babangida-era chief of Army staff described the army of his day, they are not illegitimate ones.

    Everyone had better start girding their loins for the seemingly impossible!

     

  • Praise Chinua! Bury Chinua!

    Praise Chinua! Bury Chinua!

    Cheer and jeer greeted ‘There was a Chinua’, the Achebe obituary published on this page last week: cheer for perceived comeuppance and jeer for bitter pains over the alleged disrespect to the memory of a departed icon. But the message was clear: everyone would be judged by his own professed standards – so be fair to all. It’s a hot war out there. Don’t be caught by zipping bullets!

     

     

    Excellent piece, in your accustomed depth, thoughtfulness, grasp of the subject matter and lucidity. I can’t resist saying excellent indeed. Well done and thank you. – +2348034004252.

    Achebe started well, capturing the minds of all literate country men and women with the classic novel, Things Fall Apart. But he started faltering with the tribal-induced The Trouble with Nigeria; and destroyed whatever remains of the respect other ethnic nationalities, other than his Igbo tribesmen, had for him. He died a dyed-in-the-wool hater of the Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani nations. To Achebe, only his tribesmen deserve to dominate and others must not complain.

    His is a good lesson to all our so-called elders. If they cannot add nationalistic value to the Nigerian state before their departure from this planet, they should hold their peace. There was indeed a Chinua! There goes another tribalist and an Igbo irredentist. – Adeniyi Olasunmade, Lagos.

    Your article, ‘There was a Chinua’ was apt, blunt and educative. Thanks. – Chief T. A. Odofin, Ofada, Ogun State, +2348103113512

    I am an avid reader of The Nation just to keep abreast of the Yoruba opinion on every issue under the sky. Your column today did not disappoint. – +2348055105774.

    All of you are living to hate Achebe because he documented the truth to the world about the sins of Awo. You can only heal your conscience by stating your facts to contradict his own. ‘There was a Chinua’ you said and I ask: would there ever be an Olakunle? – Amadi Ibeleme, +2348066516467

    It makes no sense for an Achebe to claim ignorance of events he witnessed. My father told us stories of how Hausas slaughtered his Igbo friends in Zaria in 1966 – same story Achebe told [in There was a Country]. I have read the remarks he made of our dear sage, Pa Awo. But Achebe wrote with conviction. He didn’t spare Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, neither did he spare Ojukwu. – +2348132634663.

    I just finished reading your piece, ‘There was a Chinua’. I do not, with due respect, really understand what you want to portray or achieve with it. To me, you have done what you accused others of – tribalism. Let’s learn to write positively about our fallen compatriots. – Kelvin, The Polytechnic, Ibadan +2348033660174.

    Your piece on Achebe this week was excellent! – Wale Adebanwi.

    Your piece on Achebe registers on the superlative scale. Salute! – Tade Ipadeola, +2348038023412.

    Truth is always bitter but it must be told. Achebe was a statesman. No amount of calumny can prevent it. – +2348038762465.

    The tribute given by Labaran Maku, the Information minister, on behalf of President Goodluck Jonathan, that Prof. Achebe was a nationalist to emulate by Nigerians must be a product of a brainless intellectual. Achebe was a literary genius worldwide. But he was also a chronic tribalist. His writings are good attestations. – Larry Adebisi, Lagos, +2348060227434.

    ‘There was a Chinua’ – that piece today was great. – Jimo Akeran, +2348023096362.

    Just read your ripples on Achebe – my sentiments exactly. Your conclusion is on point – insightful. But what to do to avoid that Nigerian harm? Sovereign national conference. – +2348023157882.

    How sad that you too are a victim of Yoruba tribalism. Why are you so bitter with a dead man for chronicling an event that he witnessed, the way he saw it? Though you tried rather fruitlessly to balance your write-up as all professional writers should, you failed to disguise your hatred for Achebe and the Igbo tribe. You stopped short of openly mocking Achebe at death. The title of your article was even cheeky, the comparison between your tribesman, Soyinka and Achebe gratuitous and, at this mourning period of the fall of a great Nigerian, very indiscreet and insensitive. I got off with the impression that you had a score to settle with Achebe; and his death offered the opportunity to do it. – +2347030398497.

    ‘There was an Achebe’ is vintage your provenance. But one could read the complex driving your striving, as your views therein are not necessary. In fact, they are uncalled for on this solemn occasion. I am looking forward to the day your Yoruba compatriots would rise above certain innate instincts. – Peter, +2348093912933.

    I am ashamed to know that you are very illogical in your war against Achebe. As a Yoruba, I have read There was a Country and believe Achebe spoke against injustice to all. There was nothing wrong in the way he defended his people, after all, they have suffered the most in Nigeria, against their wish. Please have some respect for the late icon. – Sarah Isijola, +2348132634663.

    You truly have come to bury Chinua, not to praise him. Thanks for a thoughtful piece. Never mind that it didn’t sufficiently explore the psychology of Igbo chauvinism and ‘victimhood’. – Femi Macaulay, +2348020339050.

    That was a wonderful piece on Achebe. You have called a spade a spade. You should not be deterred by some reactionaries over such a factual presentation. Kudos. – Niyi, Lagos, +2348023377135.

    Genius and gerontocrats have one thing in common: set minds. You hardly can convince them or make them see reason from a different perspective. So it was with Achebe. I think the Federal Government and those who want a posthumous recognition for him should let him be. Otherwise, he will turn in his grave. Achebe had defined his part as an Igbo irredentist – a truly Igbo of Nigerian extraction. – Olumide, Kaduna, +2348057277770.

    Your article, ‘There was a Chinua’ was good but deficient. I want you to bear in mind that other Nigerians see the late Awo’s politics as insecure, insensitive and rancorous. – +2348033334562.

    Your ‘There was a Chinua’ is thought provoking. It has set me on a spiral of thoughts and wonder about our national figures. How many are nationalists? When shall we place Nigeria as a collective over and above our tribes? Until we see ourselves first as Nigerian before our tribal sentiments, all efforts towards nationalism will keep raising local champions, rather than Nigerian nationalists. – +2348071023711.

    I couldn’t have agreed with you more – ‘There was a Chinua’ – Achebe died a frustrated and bitter man, as well as a jingoist. – Wale Osoba, +2348023264597.

    Achebe’s book, ‘There was a Country’ is a hard and bitter pill to swallow. It takes a strong will and courage of a lion to damn the consequences of saying the truth. Achebe did the best thing by telling his people the truth of the Civil War. If Awo was a god to the Yoruba, that had nothing to do with the right of the Igbo man to say exactly how he perceived him. – Barrister Orji, Port Harcourt, +2348030961855.

    I wish I can write like you. You are too good and very familiar with national issues, thus helping people like me to know. Please keep up the excellent work. – Ogoo, Abuja, +2348054727240.

  • There was a Chinua

    There was a Chinua

    I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him – Mark Anthony, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

    Between Things Fall Apart (1958), his first work and There was a Country (2012) his last, Chinua Achebe (1930-2013), the world-acclaimed novelist for burial on May 23, defined himself: an Igbo man from Nigeria, not a Nigerian from Igbo land.

    That was no high crime against Nigeria, a country that is no nation but passionately craves doting nationalists.

    Though English, the coloniser’s language, provided Achebe his vehicle to global fame, the professor, in Things Fall Apart, told a grim tale of how British colonialism smashed the Igbo pristine world: all too clear in the personal tragedy of Okonkwo, that has held the world spellbound for more than 50 years – and still counting.

    But There was a Country was even more censorious of Nigeria than Things Fall Apart was of Britain.

    If Things Fall Apart was a dignified, taut and divinely crafted creative prose that won about everyone’s attention, empathy and awe, There was a Country, a non-fiction that nevertheless bordered on the fictional, with its wild, sweeping and bad-tempered claims; and ringing denunciation of pan-Nigeria sinners doing in the meek Igbo saints, belonged more to the world of the virago than of the grand old sage, where Achebe rightly belonged.

    Not a pretty sight, to be sure. But that was Achebe’s brutally frank (some insist, impassioned) reaction to Nigeria’s ever-unfolding crisis of nationhood, with its penchant for injustice as national ethos; and the insouciance to dominate, with its happy-go-merry march to self destruction.

    That much was clear from the British-programmed Hausa-Fulani hegemony; the brief Igbo ascendancy that ended in Civil War (1967-1970) and fired the Achebe bitterness in There was a Country; the Olusegun Obasanjo me-first-others-never presidential philosophy, disguised as altruistic national ethos; and of course, the brainless muscle-flexing of Goodluck Jonathan’s current Ijaw presidency.

    The most casual of logical introspections, therefore, must reveal that about everyone is a victim in Nigeria’s vast physical, spiritual and psychological killing mine.

    Yet, what Achebe did in his swan song, There was a Country, was to pounce on co-victims in the Nigerian morass; and with the arrogance of a writer’s licence, tarred them as the Igbo enemy.

    Talking about victims, whoever thinks the Hausa-Fulani are not, even of their own past power rascality, must chuckle at the North’s frantic bid for power after Jonathan. Yet, their grand concept of power, untrammelled ethnic over-lordship served as “national interest”, of pre-12 June 1993 Nigeria, is gone and gone for good!

    Perhaps questioning Achebe’s judgment, by his last hurrah, would be going too far. But beyond clannish roar and the emotive whipping of ethnic flag to toast a master race allegedly stopped in its track, There was a Country did not show enough sensitivity to the plight of the Ndigbo still trapped, and the coming generation to be trapped, in the Nigerian debacle. It certainly did not win the Igbo new allies; nor prescribe a reasonable way out of the jam, beyond a shrill orchestration of the Igbo as victim, without admitting the vast ruin of pan-Nigeria victimhood.

    This, of course, is no unanimous verdict. To the Achebe-converted, There was a Country was a tribute to the master storyteller’s brutal candour, like The Trouble with Nigeria (1983) before it.

    But all too often, people come to be judged by their own professed principles; and there is but a thin line between brutal candour and bad grace, particularly when candour is brutally exercised on wrong occasions. So, it is with Prof. Achebe.

    When Obafemi Awolowo died and politically correct jiving was waxing poetic about giving him a “national burial” (even if Awo was only pre-independence Premier of old Western Region), Achebe cut the crap, insisting Awo did not deserve a national burial because he was a “tribalist”. Well, Achebe himself died not exactly a “nationalist”.

    Also, after Wole Soyinka, his great contemporary, won the Nobel, Achebe quipped: winning a European prize did not make Soyinka the Asiwaju of African literature. WS, a wordsmith that takes no prisoners, promptly countered: he had no intention to become the Ogbuefi of African literature! Was Achebe resentful of Soyinka’s win – and why the ethnic colouration?

    That, of course, dovetails into the sterile controversy over WS, Achebe and the Nobel.

    In sheer fecundity, Soyinka’s 34 titles in non-fiction, novels, drama and poetry tower over Achebe’s 20, though Achebe’s tally also includes classics in children stories, as Prof. Biola Odejide, a children’s literature expert formerly of the University of Ibadan, noted in her tribute to Achebe shortly after his death. Even in their primary fortes, Soyinka the playwright with 15 plays trumped Achebe the novelist with five novels.

    But Achebe possessed the arresting simplicity that ensured probably more people have read Things Fall Apart, his flagship classic, than all of Soyinka’s works combined. So, maybe the Nobel committee settled for fecundity over accessibility.

    That was their choice – and it had nothing to do with Achebe’s secured place in global literature, Nobel or no Nobel. In Nigeria’s often ethnic-powered discourse, however, things are not quite that simple and clear-cut.

    But judged from the prism of writer as robust social crusader (which the Nobel citation also noted), Soyinka is it. Beyond strident protests over Ndigbo troubles, Achebe was much more muffled over other Nigerian crises: June 12 crisis, Ken Saro-Wiwa state murder, among others. Soyinka’s The Man Died and You Must Set Forth at Dawn, fully document how Civil War activism sent the author to gaol; and how he rallied global conscience against the Abacha state murder of Saro-Wiwa.

    So, was Achebe roused to action not by injustice per se, but by injustice meted his native Ndigbo? That is no illegitimate poser!

    The literature of Achebe is simple, rigorous, clear and sweet; the majesty of an uncluttered mind that made Things Fall Apart such a classic; and set a benchmark for the African novel.

    But the politics of Achebe is far less edifying: partial, insensitive, rancorous and insecure – all in defence of his Igbo people and culture, against Nigeria’s internal colonisers: hardly a crime.

    The snag is, with all due respect to individual differences, the Igbo elite does not mind dominating others, yet are shrill to protest perceived domination by others. But to all these, Achebe appeared patriotically blind, deaf and dumb; even with his rather indulgent criticism of Igbo brashness and triumphalism. That made There was a Country so rankling.

    Between literature and politics, therefore, an author met own debacle: noxious gas from Nigeria’s institutionalised injustice, and the resultant fierce rivalry, robbing his golden mind of pristine equitability!

    So, there was a Chinua from Nigeria who could easily have been an icon of global justice. But he bowed out as a patriotic ogre against Igbo-tailored injustice – hardly illegitimate in Nigeria’s killing fields.

    Still, that was a much diminished place for his world-acclaimed genius. But it is yet another glaring example of the harm Nigeria does, even to its greatest minds.

  • Once upon a Nigerian state?

    Once upon a Nigerian state?

    When a coward sees someone he can beat up, he becomes hungry for a fight – Igbo proverb, courtesy Chinua Achebe

     Prof. Adebayo Williams, the inimitable and formidable verbal pugilist, in informal discourse, called it post-state cancer – so piqued is he with the ease with which under-class bands run rings round the Nigerian state; and triumphantly claim the scalp of the once-dreaded security personnel.

    In Goodluck Jonathan’s Nigeria, the state is well and truly demystified!

    Indeed, when the Igbo proverb quoted above is fed in the combustive mix, it conjures some gallows humour: ragtag groups, the latest of which is the Ombatse (ironically translated ‘Time is now’ – for total anarchy?), contemptuously flexing its muscles and taunting the fleeing Jonathan Presidency to bring it on!

    Already, the cult group, domiciled in Nasarawa State, has claimed a reported 47 scalps in confirmed deaths of police officers – including the missing Mohammed Momoh, which an online news publication claims is dead; but which local authorities could not confirm, beyond his missing status.

    Having worsted the Police soft target, is Ombatse now, willing and ready, awaiting the military big guns, like Boko Haram before it? Remember Boko Haram started with throwing bombs at police personnel and attacking police and prison facilities on get-away bikes locally dubbed ‘Okada’?

    And talking of Boko Haram, the Jonathan Presidency’s Amnesty-biko (Igbo for please) offer suggests the “e don beg me” hilarious episode, another tragicomic affair involving the late Afrobeat Kingpin, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and his gaoler, Justice Okoro Idogu.

    After a visit to an infirmary where Fela was inmate while still serving his prison term, for offences not a few believed the Buhari military government trumped up, Fela claimed the conscience-stricken judge had apologised to him – e don beg me!

    That claim triggered a chain of events that led to Fela’s release from prison. But it also landed the involved jurist in hot controversy. Justice Idogu bellowed his denial and innocence, amid a bedlam of condemnatory voices. But not a chance! His was a lone voice buried by a hostile din.

    But back from Fela and Okoro Idogu, where was the Commander-in-Chief, when the likes of Boko Haram, Ansaru and now Ombatse were flexing their muscles: slaying innocent citizens and dutiful security operatives?

    He was probably busy elsewhere flexing his own muscles; against real or imaginary political foes, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the Rivers governor, being the latest to be crushed. Indeed, when a bully sights one he can maul, he becomes hungry for a fight!

    Indeed, whatever is happening today, in this polity, makes a mockery of all those concepts in basic Government, none the least the concept of the state; and of course, the much maligned federalism. This two-some got a routing in this latest and bizarre Ombatse massacre.

    The pristine state is supposed to have overwhelming force – if not a monopoly of it – to impose its will: if you factor in the concept of the Social Contract, in which all citizens surrender their rights to the state in exchange for common protection.

    But at Alakyo, an Eggon village near Lafia in Nasarawa State, it was a lunatic fringe that got the better of the all-mighty Nigerian state.

    How else could one explain the entrapment and massacre of 47 security personnel, purported on a mission to round up members of this lunatic fringe, who earlier even had had the temerity to capture a senior police officer, torture him and force him to swear an oath of allegiance to the Ombatse god? Is this 1st century Africa or 21st century Nigeria? The state-as-relic could not have been more starkly painted!

    Then the sight of His Excellency, Tanko al-Makura, the Nasarawa governor, slithering for cover at Aso Rock like some frightened snake, and bawling for help, was a wicked thumbs-down for Nigeria’s peculiar federalism.

    How does a governor enforce security when he has no control over the Police, the basic security agency? And what is Nigerian federalism worth if a governor has to scurry for presidential help on basic security? That, in full technicolor, shows the inherent absurdity of a state government without state police. Yet the gubernatorial fop is grimly humoured as the chief security officer (CSO) of his state!

    But even in all of this all-too-Nigerian tragedy, some new comic always emerges! Imagine, Ibim Semenitari, the Rivers commissioner for Information, while warning off presidential storm-troopers bent on putting her governor’s nose out of joint, reminding the political invaders that Governor Amaechi remained Rivers’ CSO! A peculiar CSO without troops? And a tiger proclaiming its ‘tigritude’ (apologies to Prof. Wole Soyinka) if ever there was one!

    Of course, al-Makura arrived to find the president, not unlike the fictional Chief Derin, the great one for junk trade missions abroad (in Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters), met his commander-in-chief, before whom every governor must bow and tremble, blissfully abroad in South Africa.

    Hardly a crime, to be sure. The South African trip could even pass for dutiful tour of duty, since it had something to do with the World Economic Forum (WEF). The snag however is that you find in Jonathan a gravely distracted president, who seems more consumed by plotting four more years of incompetence and impotence; than solving the grave security situation and sundry infractions he faces in his troubled current term.

    Of course elsewhere, a political jobber without; and a trashy talker within, have upped the ante by sabre-rattling of a peculiarly lunatic hue.

    To Kingsley Kuku, a presidential aide, 2015 is nothing but Hobson’s choice: vote in Jonathan or forget peace in the Niger Delta. To trash-talking Asari Dokubo, a former militant, deny Jonathan re-election and face war!

    And to Jonathan’s grand political godfather, Chief Edwin Kiagbodo-Clark, whose earlier libel of everything and everyone for the Jonathan cause paved the template for the all-muscle-no-brain bombast of the duo: the lads’ outbursts are regrettable – but whoever blocks Jonathan’s way is looking for trouble! Now, how are six different from half-a-dozen?

    Besides, Pa Clark let drop a costly Freudian slip: never mind Dokubo, he assured; Ijaw would not go to war. So, the Jonathan cause is not even a South-South cause again – it is an Ijaw agenda? Geez!

    Even to the Northern elite, at the fore-front of power-change: as Heraclitus the philosopher said, even they cannot step in the same river twice! Nigeria is so rapidly changed that old northern ideas about power are tragically out of date. It is time, therefore, everyone subscribed to new ideas.

    It is end times for Lord Frederick Lugard’s arbitrary forge, now lumbering into its centenary with utmost stress. How will the endgames be: peaceful or violent?

    Pa Clark suggests a national conference before 2015. That is hardly novel. But there is hardly any other way to renew and federally restructure the Nigerian union before it collapses on everyone. The ongoing spectre of once-upon-a-Nigerian-state is sure trouble before the final collapse.

    After the Jonathan debacle with all the vacuous power talk, Pa Clark’s suggestion shows at least some good can still come out of his house of Israel.

  • Lest we forget: this land was not always without honour

    Lest we forget: this land was not always without honour

    I have never in my entire public career, spanning nearly 50 years now, either given or received bribes, or any other form of gratification. I find doing so repugnant and personally demeaning – Dapo Fafowora 

    He called his memoirs, Lest I forget: Memoirs of a Nigerian Career Diplomat. But the book could well have been entitled, Lest we forget: This land was not always without honour – so trenchantly does his professed ethics rebuke today’s public service sewers.

    How many public servants today can boast Ambassador Dapo Fafowora’s claim above, made in his book, due for public presentation at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Victoria Island, Lagos, on Thursday?

    And if you think Dr. Fafowora’s declaration was that of a solo holier-than-thou, then consider this anecdote of 1959, which the young Dapo Fafowora witnessed, as a clerk in the Western Region Treasury.

    An accounts clerk going on leave had added 10 miles to the distance of his home town from Ibadan, hoping to gain five extra shillings to his leave pay. One Mr. Kemp, his boss, drove to his village to investigate the claim, found the distance was 10 miles short, and dismissed the clerk for five shillings fraud. For shame, that clerk committed suicide!

    Too good to be true today, when top bureaucrats accused of embezzling pension funds hire the best SANs to protect their alleged loot, superstar-style?

    Also consider the case of Ambassador Fafowora’s late father, Chief Olagunju Fafowora.

    As private secretary to the late Oba Akran of Badagry, a minister in the Chief Awolowo-led Western Region government, the minister had given the senior Fafowora 3,000 pound, to share among party hacks, without any particular list. Being no politician himself, Fafowora could not locate any politician; so he returned the money to his principal, reporting the failure of his Badagry mission.

    A bewildered Akran, expecting the man to have somewhat helped himself, told him he would never be rich! Not a few of his contemporaries also thought he was crazy. But the senior Fafowora placed his personal integrity far above a few pounds, which nevertheless was quite a trove in those days. So, if the junior Fafowora felt gratifications repugnant and personally demeaning, you at least knew where he was coming from.

    Then, the case of Pa Christopher Williams, Dr. Fafowora’s maternal uncle. He too was minister of Lands under the Awo Western Region government. But he resisted every pressure to allocate land either to himself or members of his family, pleading that the Action Group (AG) government frowned at such.

    In The Accidental Public Servant, Nasir El-Rufai committed no crime by allotting land to his spouse who, as he rightly argued in his book, was a Nigerian citizen, was qualified and had paid the requisite fees. But the difference between the two ministers, over different generations spanning some 50 years, is the decline in rigour over public morality.

    Still that past was no unanimous moral paradise, where everybody lived happily in probity. As Ambassador Fafowora would find out, his own personal probity would clash with institutional rot, fired by deliberate and systematic subversion of processes. That would lead to his sudden retirement at noon, when his career sun was most dazzling; and career halo most golden.

    Fafowora and other victims of that retirement gale (which belied all logic), by the new Muhammadu Buhari military government, were victims of ethnic paranoia in the Nigerian public services. The North, at independence, could clearly not compete with the South, in Western education-driven skills. Yet, the British had fed the northern elite with a strange sense of entitlement.

    But in fairness, the North’s fear was not unjustified; as the British themselves did not found Nigeria on any deliberate ethos of equity. In that crippling paranoia, the northern lobby succeeded in imposing the domination of the mediocre, which to survive, needed to eliminate real talents, which automatically became perceived threats.

    But could southern domination have been of the meritorious? Nobody knows. But even domination by merit would be equally intolerable, even with its surface benefits. Only equitable access and just treatment across the board would do. That painful moral must be gleaned from the lunatic retirements, which gale swept away the ambassador and the 80-plus career diplomats, among the finest in the country’s stock.

    For his retirement, Dr. Fafowora alleged a triangular axis of plotters: two dead, one still alive, in a chapter which he called ‘The Night of the Long Knives’. The late Lawal Rafindadi, director-general of the defunct Nigerian Security Organisation (NSO) precursor to today’s SSS, reportedly passed Fafowora’s name “in pencil” to Gen. Buhari, who reportedly approved in error, since the name was originally not on the retirement list.

    But even with the error, both the late Gen. Joseph Garba (a former foreign minister in the Murtala-Obasanjo military government) and Prof. Ibrahim Gambari (another foreign minister under Buhari) allegedly colluded to ensure the error was done deal. Fortunately, Prof. Gambari is still alive to shed light on his alleged role in the exercise.

    In Dr. Fafowora’s view, Garba was a serial betrayer whose “perfidy was relentless and without any remorse”; thus echoing the Shakespearean quip of the evil men do living after them, while their good deeds were interred with their bones.

    Worse: the author also accused Garba of planting, to cover his allegedly confirmed perfidy, the yarn that Fafowora was wrongly retired because his name bore close similarity to another officer’s, listed for the exercise. So successful was that yarn that Prof. Jide Osuntokun quoted it in a tribute to the author! But Dr. Fafowora insisted that Magoro, another ranking member of Buhari’s Supreme Military Council, confirmed the retirement was the basic handiwork of Rafindadi and Garba.

    Thus, one of the golden boys of Nigerian diplomacy, pressed into service twice to fix ruptured embassies in Uganda and Turkey; and on specific request drafted as brain box as Deputy Permanent Representative at the United Nations, was shunted aside 20 years into service and 17 years before his due retirement – and at mere 43!

    His odyssey symbolised the prodigality, the waste and the lunatic self-bleeding that have turned the Nigerian bureaucracy a shadow of its once vibrant self – no thanks to the senseless purges of post-Gowon military barbarians, pioneered by Murtala Muhammad and climaxed by the grim Sani Abacha.

    Though Abacha was outside the scope of the work, Buhari gave a foretaste of Abacha-era savagery when he railroaded the late Prof. Ishaya Audu straight from a summon, as Nigeria’s UN Permanent Representative in New York, into gulag without trial for 18 months; released only after Buhari himself was overthrown.

    How did Nigeria get it wrong? This 549-page book, rich in anecdotes and even richer in sound knowledge of modern history to navigate diplomacy, might just offer a rich clue.

     

  • Much ado about NGF

    Much ado about NGF

    Abraham Harold Maslow (1908-1970), the American psychologist, spoke of a hierarchy of needs.

    While basic needs (breathing, food, water, sleep etc) occupy the base of the pyramid, self-actualisation (the creative swagger of a man/woman who has made good) perches at the summit.

    Between these two extremes are safety (innate security), love/belonging (family confidence and security) and esteem (societal appreciation and respect): and you need to climb through these rungs to gain the summit.

    This is, of course, no psychology exposé. But linking Maslow’s hierarchy to the twin main dramatis personae in the raging storm over the impending Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) election is rather revealing.

    Performance-wise, one has attained self-actualisation in his elected office. The other is languishing at the base, still fumbling over basic needs. But both are angling for future tours of duty – or, in any case, reportedly so. That accounts for the raging war over an otherwise innocuous election!

    Enter Rivers Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, sitting NGF chair.

    As far as performance goes, two-term Governor Amaechi, who nevertheless would end up spending less than eight years prescribed by law because of his delayed assumption of office (25 October 2007 instead of 29 May 2007), appears to have garnered enough swagger to aim for higher office.

    Remember former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s imperious diktat that Amaechi’s gubernatorial nomination had developed a “K-leg”; and also the legal challenge that eventually reclaimed the governor his seat, even if his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had brazenly replaced his name on the ballot with his cousin’s, Sir Celestine Omehia?

    Despite these setbacks however, Governor Amaechi has enough on ground to show (in model primary and secondary schools, healthcare, infrastructure, sports and security: ridding Rivers of the militants’ terrorist threat in kidnapping), to justify a future political ambition. He therefore appears made, with or without a second NGF term.

    So, why this contest-and-be-damned mentality in his camp? The NGF chairmanship, with its attendant networking, keeps alive Governor Amaechi’s reported vice-presidential ambition, a ticket media reports claim he hopes to share with Sule Lamido, the Jigawa governor. That sure does not sit well with Governor Amaechi’s political traducers.

    Enter then, President Goodluck Jonathan. He appears fixated with crushing Amaechi: and the controversial grounding of the Rivers government airplane would appear the latest indication.

    But between Governor Amaechi and President Jonathan, the contrast is stark.

    The one would spend less than eight years as governor; yet has an ample lot to show. The other, if his second term bid gels, would likely spend nine years as president – more than the required eight – but may have pretty little to show, if the morning shows the day, from his parlous performance so far.

    However, Dr. Doyin Okupe, with his presidential public affairs staff in tow, on a visit to The Nation the other day, believed it was only a matter of time before President Jonathan started dazzling Nigerians with tangibles.

    It would appear, therefore, a titanic (?) tussle between a clumsy “Oga at the top” and a nimble lower fry in the Nigerian Animal Farm (apologies to George Orwell), particularly with the president assuming the Obasanjo-era almighty president and “party leader” – a thorough and thorough corruption of the American presidential system.

    Yes, over there, the sitting president by convention is party leader. But that deference comes from reverence to the presidential office, which incumbent is no insufferable power brute, but a meek lamb of the constitution, created, nurtured and completely directed by the rule of law, never by brazen arbitrary power.

    In President Jonathan’s case, that misguided role is double jeopardy. The more fixated he is with crushing Amaechi, the more distracted he is from scrambling up Maslow’s pyramid by superlative performance, and the more he damns himself as unworthy of the 2015 presidential en core he clearly covets.

    But the president and his handlers appear for now too irate to think clearly.

    That explains the “Judases” metaphor of the rather tactless Godswill Akpabio, Akwa Ibom governor, on being made chair of the no less tactless PDP Governors Forum, a forum that could well destroy NGF itself. Like the Christ and Iscariot, the Jonathan presidential Judases are within, not without.

    No thanks to them, for one, there are emerging talks of many opposition governors pulling out of NGF. For another, there is counter-talk of Jonathan’s gubernatorial storm troopers either plotting to scuttle the NGF poll should Amaechi secure the number to win; or walk out after losing to paint the election as some farce – talk of (un)presidential bad faith!

    But in this presidential huffing and puffing, strategic thinking would appear to have taken a fatal flight. If not so, the president and his men ought to have carefully x-rayed the NGF power centres before plotting their moves. That apparent failure is all so reminiscent of the search-corrupt-and-destroy calamitous tactics of the Obasanjo third term gambit, as beautifully exposed by Nasir El-Rufai in The Accidental Public servant.

    President Obasanjo listened to political and careerist witches and wizards who told him what he wanted to hear. The result was a spectacular collapse of his third term pipe dream and the well-earned disgrace, even if the former president continues to live in denial of the debacle by hiding behind the proverbial finger.

    Is President Jonathan headed for the same ditch? That is hard to say, until you analyse the NGF power centres.

    The opposition NGF governors’ camp would appear a no-go area, even if Anambra’s Peter Obi and Ondo’s Segun Mimiko might go with the president. Incidentally, Governor Obi was reportedly at the dinner, at which the president allegedly told the attendees to go for Amaechi’s jugular.

    The PDP Governors Forum? That is a house divided against itself. Most of the president’s opponents are second-term governors who have less to lose than if they were seeking a second term. Besides, Governor Akpabio, the body’s chair, has been so tactlessly tactless it is doubtful if he can rally anybody for the president, beyond preaching to the converted (who seem to lack the number) and barking impotent threats at opponents.

    The Northern States Governors Forum? The body language of Niger Governor, Muazu Babangida Aliyu, the chair, speaks of a regal distancing from the president and his cause. In open balloting, how many of them would risk voting the Jonathan way, given how the traditional North feels about power in 2015? And how many, in secret balloting would, without prying presidential eyes? This is another house divided against itself but united by a primordial cause.

    But even if the president vanquishes Amaechi, what does he prove – that Goliath has slain David? Big deal! But at what cost?

    Really, all this furore over NGF election is much ado about nothing. It is a massive distraction all round.

    The president bullying the governor or the governor slaying the president does not remove the quacking basis of the Nigerian state. After all the noise of battle, the hoop of victory and the puncture of defeat, let us hope the combatants would not find themselves buried under the rubble of once upon a country!