The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olatunji Dare

  • Remembering our doyenne

    Remembering our doyenne

    Twenty-two analogue years ago, on February 1, 2003, or thereabouts, I wrote for one of the newspapers a piece welcoming Dr Hamidat Doyinsola Abiola (HDA, hereafter) to my demographic neighbourhood on her 60th birthday, little knowing that she had actually preceded me to the precinct.

    When she turned 80 some three years ago, her status as the doyenne of the Nigerian Press (I use that old-fashioned term advisedly) was affirmed by President Muhammadu Buhari in a stirring birthday tribute.  Asiwaju Bola and Senator Remi Tinubu called her a valued friend and associate in advancing progressive causes. Dele Alake and Tunji Bello, who had served under her as editors for the Concord newspapers, called her, reverentially, “our Editor-in-Chief.”

    It is in the latter category that HDA’s renown will reverberate down the ages.

    Her last address was the sprawling Concord Newspaper Group where she presided as Editor-in-Chief and chief operating officer.  At its height, the Group boasted six titles in its stable, and had on its staff some of the best-known Nigerian journalists. 

    In its reach and efficiency, its distribution network was unsurpassed.  If just one newspaper was on the newsstand in the most far-flung corners of Nigeria on any given day, it had to be one of the Group’s titles.

    In a male-dominated industry, leading such a conglomerate was no mean task.  But HDA played that role for years and carried along a team comprising members of perhaps the most querulous occupational group in Nigeria.

    It helped that she was the wife of Concord publisher, Chief Moshood Abiola, but it took much more than that to stay at the top of the game.  HDA did not just walk into the role. Long years of academic and professional immersion had prepared her for it.

    Graduating from the University of Ibadan in the 1960s, HDA entered journalism as a writer and columnist for the Daily Sketch, in Ibadan.  From there she went on to the Daily Times as part of the pioneering graduate team that its visionary leader, Babatunde Jose, had recruited to raise its intellectual appeal to match the appetite of an audience that had grown much more sophisticated than the leading newspaper of the day.

    It was in keeping with that programme that the Daily Times sponsored HDA for doctoral studies at the State University of New York, in Buffalo, in upstate New York.  Before that, she had earned a Master’s degree from the highly regarded journalism programme at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, Wisconsin.

    With the communication doctorate under her belt, the first by a Nigerian woman, she returned to Nigeria and served on the Editorial Board of the Daily Times, which Dr Stanley Macebuh had transformed from a routine expedient to the newspaper’s cranium.

    Then, Moshood Abiola and the Concord Newspapers happened, in the aftermath of the 1979 General Elections.  HDA relocated uptown from Kakawa, to Ikeja, the operating base of the Concord Group, shortly thereafter becoming editor of its flagship title, The National Concord.

    The Concord Group unapologetically pulled for President Shehu Shagari and the ruling NPN, despite their unpopularity in places where Nigeria’s core newspaper readership resided.  Abiola’s endorsement of sharia grated against the sensibilities of Christians, leading some church officials to order a boycott of the Concord titles. 

    Moshood Abiola was also widely regarded as an apologist for the military regime. That did little to enhance the standing of the Concord titles.

    Through it all, HDA kept the newspapers in a stable, holding pattern. She came into her own when Moshood Abiola severed his links with the ruling party and became a less strident proselytizer.  The Concord newspapers grew in appeal and respect.

    A far greater challenge lay ahead.

    It came when Moshood Abiola entered the 1993 presidential race and won the presidential ticket of one of the two officially recognized political parties, the Social Democratic Party, SDP.

    Like the rest of the private press, the Concord newspapers saw through the duplicity of Babangida’s political transition programme and took a leading role in exposing it.  The regime exacted a heavy price.  A banning order put its weekly newsmagazine African Concord out of circulation permanently.

    The Concord titles were handed a separate banning order along with The Guardian and the Punch during the debacle confected to prevent Moshood Abiola from being declared winner of the 1993 presidential election.  When the ban was lifted after a year, the operating climate had become unsustainable.  The Concord titles limped on for a while, shadows of what they once were.  Then, they expired.

    Abiola’s struggle to claim his electoral mandate thrust HDA into a role for which nothing had prepared her:  spouse of an embattled president-elect fighting for his life under a brutal military regime, and editor-in-chief and chief operating officer of her husband’s mass-circulation newspaper.

    In the Abiola household, there was an unspoken but clear division of labour among the wives. Kudirat Abiola was the popular face of NADECO, the umbrella organization of progressive elements campaigning to retrieve Abiola’s mandate;  outgoing, outspoken, and defiant right up to the moment she was gunned down in broad daylight by government-sponsored assassins on her way to yet another strategy meeting on how to retrieve the June 12 mandate.

    The thoroughly apolitical and sedate but engaging Adebisi Abiola kept the home front humming.

    HDA was the intellectual face of the struggle, the discreet mobilizer who maintained and used effectively a network of influential persons in Nigeria and abroad.  She brought to this task acute political intelligence, a cosmopolitan outlook, a steely disposition, and mastery of the emerging communication technology. 

    At the height of the annulment crisis, she prepared — full disclosure: I assisted in the effort — a monthly newsletter on the political situation in Nigeria she sent to key officials of the United Nations, the United States, the Organization of African Unity, and the Commonwealth.  From the feedback, we were satisfied that the effort was not wasted.

    The June 12 struggle took a fearsome toll on HDA.  Kudirat’s assassination was a clear signal that nothing and nobody was off-limits in General Sani Abacha’s desperate plot to foist his brutish rule on the nation.  The regime’s officials kept her under suffocating surveillance.  They drew her into enervating mind games.

    Not long after Kudirat’s assassination, a bullet issuing from an undetermined origin would have struck HDA on the head right in her living room at the Abiola Residence in Opebi, had she not shifted her position some two minutes earlier.

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    The stakes were prohibitive.  HDA was as vulnerable as a sitting duck. Yet her resolve was unshaken.  She helped keep the struggle alive until the President-elect was done to death, very conveniently across the coffee table from a United States delegation visiting ostensibly to facilitate his release from the military regime’s custody.

    Nor did HDA confine her exertions to the Boardroom or political networking.  She imparted her knowledge, skills, and insights to journalism students at the University of Lagos, among other institutions.  She deployed her resources and her influence to promote worthy causes nationwide.  A generation of Nigerian women counted her as a role model.

    HDA’s sacrifice in the epic struggle for democracy has not been officially acknowledged, much less honoured.  Recognition has instead flowed to fringe actors, and even to some who did everything in their power to subvert the will of Nigeria’s sovereign electors.  Her entry into the eighth decade of her life provided an opportunity to redress this neglect.  They fluffed it.

    I feared that something was amiss when I heard nothing from her after my tribute on her 80th birthday, on which I drew for this piece, was published.  My anxiety deepened when my phone  calls to her Lagos and London coordinates went unanswered, time and again.  It was so unlike the punctilious doyenne, an embodiment of the social graces.

    Dr Hamidat Doyinsola Abiola died two weeks ago following a protracted illness, her life fulfilled and her place in Nigeria’s intellectual history assured.

    Hail and farewell.

    It remains for the Federal Government to honour her immense contributions to the struggle            for the restoration of democracy in Nigeria, the advancement of women’s rights and media professionalism, not forgetting her discreet philanthropy, with the posthumous conferment                                of the Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON) or a higher distinction

    •Dare contributed this piece from Caledonia, Michigan, USA.

  • Samuel Ayodele Olowosulu (1941-2024)

    Samuel Ayodele Olowosulu (1941-2024)

    This is a day I had been dreading for some three years. 

    By his 80th birthday, on August 21, 2021, he had lost his sight. Thereafter he was frequently in and out of the clinic for emergency treatment.  But he fought on bravely, his body wracked by pain, but his sharp mind, his acute intelligence, and his engaging sense of humour unimpaired.

    To those who can only judge by appearance, the end seemed imminent.  But God works by a schedule that we cannot fathom.   And so, God kept Samuel Ayodele Olowosulu, my friend, counsellor, confidant, my brother from another mother, loving and dutiful husband, doting grandfather and great grandfather:  God kept him with and among us for another three years and three months.

    And then at the appointed time, God called him home, ending his pain and freeing him from the burden of memory.  Glory be to God.

    I knew and related with Samuel Olowosulu for much longer than most can claim – longer, I say with all due respect than even his grieving widow, Christiana.  We first met in 1957, as pupils in Class 7B, at St Andrew’s School, Kabba, under the tutelage of the late Mr J O Oluhaiyero.

    Some four months after we left school, fate brought us together under the same roof, he as a fresh employee with Rural Water Supplies in Kano, and I  as a vacationing student from secondary school in Zaria.

    Since then, we have been inseparable.  I spent my holidays with him, and he took good care of me from his slender resources, not minding that I was having the benefit of an education that he never had.  He was always a gracious, provident host.

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    Samuel Olowosulu lived a life of purpose and lived it well.  He lived a life of honesty and decency.  He retired from the civil service as head of a vast network of government stores that maintained equipment supplying water to the towns and rural areas of Kano State.

    Everyone vouched for his honour and integrity.  Not the faintest whiff of scandal ever cottoned unto his name.

    Whenever expatriate Nigerians in the United States meet, they talk invariably about the situation back home, and about the projects they are undertaking in preparation for their return, or just to make their visits comfortable.

    Tales of deception and betrayal are usually the stable of such discussions.  One after another, they would recount how the funds they sent home for building a house in the village or running a farm or some cottage industry were appropriated by the recipients, who would then use the funds to execute their own projects or to finance a prodigal lifestyle. 

    Fake pictures would be sent to the remitter to show how faithfully his funds were being deployed and his instructions carried out. But it was a scam through and through.

    So, when I told some colleagues that a friend and former schoolmate was supervising my building project in Nigeria, they shook their heads in sorrow and pity.  They said, drawing on the many tales of woe they had heard, that I would regret it.

    “No, I won’t,” I would retort sharply.  “On the contrary, I am counting my blessings.  And I would cite just two examples of how beautifully things were working for me.

    When we finished the decking, we had 60 unused bags of cement left. I knew absolutely nothing about the surplus.  Samuel Olowosulu returned them to the supplier for credit, with the understanding that at the next phase of construction, the supplier would send us 60 bags of cement, regardless of whatever price fluctuations might have occurred.

    After the work crew had helped themselves to the detritus from the scaffolding, he sold what remained for N35,000 and lodged the proceeds in the project account.  He deployed his advanced skills in storekeeping and project supervision to keep the work flowing.  His bookkeeping was exceptional.  He accounted for every kobo, though I rarely asked him to.

    You would never know that his formal education terminated in primary school.  Yet among his children can be counted a professor of pharmacy, and a professor of mechanical engineering.  He took advantage of every opportunity to improve himself through study and reading and learning, to the point that he spoke the English Language far more fluently and competently than many of today’s university graduates.

    His written English was just as competent, enhanced by his exquisite handwriting.  His overall grooming was impeccable.

    That is the man whose beautiful soul we are commenting to our Maker today (December 13).  We mourn, for his was of us and his memory is priceless.  But we also rejoice and celebrate, for he lived a life of honour and dignity and love and decency; a life of service to country and community and to family and friends.

    Hail and farewell, Samuel Ayodele Olowosulu.  Friend, counsellor, confidant, brother.

  • Prof. Olatunji Dare: In his farewell, we find him anew

    Prof. Olatunji Dare: In his farewell, we find him anew

    In the quiet hum of The Nation’s newsroom, about a decade ago, I first encountered Professor Olatunji Dare. His presence was commanding yet unassuming, his words pulsing with the wisdom of a lifespan devoted to fiery journalism. It was in the office of the then Daily Editor, Gbenga Omotoso. That chance encounter would serve as a prologue to an enduring regard for one of Nigeria’s finest columnists.

    Fast forward to a Wednesday night in 2022. Fresh off the euphoria of winning the Fetisov Journalism Award (FJA) for Outstanding Contribution to Peace, my phone rang. The voice on the other end was unmistakable—incisive, soothing, and profoundly encouraging.

    Professor Dare had called to congratulate me. He said he had been trying to reach me for two days. At that moment, he made me a promise borne of a genuine desire to see me excel – one that supersedes what any benefactor may profess. Although I haven’t yet taken him up on that promise, the goodwill and sincerity behind it resonate with me still – a testament to his unwavering support for young journalists and writers.

    His retirement from The Nation’s back page as he clocked 80 isn’t just the end of a column; it’s the dimming of a beacon that has illuminated the landscape of Nigerian journalism for decades. Some have questioned the relevance of columnists, arguing that the ruling class scarcely reads them. Yet, Professor Dare is one of those rare breeds, whose incisive takes command the attention of even the most aloof political players. His writings transcend mere commentary. They are the pulse of the nation, echoing through the corridors of power, into the hearts of the citizenry.

    The beauty of his prose subsists in its appeal to both his fans and critics. His words, whether revered or rebuked, command engagement. Throughout his illustrious career, Professor Dare shunned the hubris that often ensnares intellectual giants. He never saw himself as an oracle, despite his authoritativeness and prognostic gift. His delivery, always steeped in a rare cadence of humility, ennobles and edifies society.

    Little wonder he maintained his oracular tenors from his days as the author of Matters Arising to his recently rested column in The Nation, At Home Abroad. From his unapologetic yet constructive criticism of military dictatorship to his clinical and didactic engagement with civilian leadership, Professor Dare’s contributions to nation-building are invaluable. Foremost columnists—some of whom were his former students—have paid homage to his literary and academic brilliance as he celebrated his 80th birthday.

    In his departure, I find him anew. Each column he penned provides an avenue for rediscovery, a chance to delve into familiar issues with fresh perspectives. His farewell offers an opportunity for new disciples to find him and for old friends and acquaintances to relive his wisdom.

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    At 80, the instinct is to let Professor Dare take his victory lap, applauding respectfully for the incredible work he has done. Yet, selfishly, I find myself yearning for more. Perhaps it’s because I suspect he still has much to offer. However, it is important to respect his decision to step back, given the immense sacrifices he has made and his invaluable contributions as a leading writer and moral compass for society.

    It is instructive that in over three decades of public commentary, the former Chairman, Editorial Board of The Guardian Newspaper and weekly columnist of The Nation, he never betrayed an exaggerated sense of self-worth. He neither declared nor paraded himself as an oracle, a temptation that many in his position would find hard to resist.

    Back in the military era, when eggheads sprouted and flowered as the mystical roses of the Nigerian mire – and endorsed brutes wielding unmerited power as they made our chaste, walled garden unchaste – Professor Dare refused to hop on the sycophantic bandwagon.

    Unlike several intellectuals who paraded flawed presence, he asserted real persona and moral substance. Thus, he was closed to and defiant of the seductive whisper of the crooked. He understood that the process of co-option is often subtle and reductive of journalists who must pride their independence.

    Few can forget how he resigned from his former workplace after the newspaper apologised to the late military dictator Sani Abacha. Professor Dare rejected the newspaper’s bid to earn the good graces of the late tyrant, and instead opted to resign, stressing that a newspaper that had always advocated the rule of law should not enter into a bargain that muddied the rule of law. “Since I didn’t participate in the resolution of the crisis,” he reportedly said, “I think it will be unfair to those who did if I benefit from the gains of the trip.” Thus, he relocated to the United States, where he started life afresh at Bradley University and the authorship of a 14-year weekly column, At Home Abroad, in The Nation.

    He shunned ghostly, amoral clout, and its promise of instant gratification, knowing it will eventually vanish in the long run, amid the sullied system that goads journalists to become soulless lobbyists.

    Professor Dare deployed fiery intellect to mirror societal hypocrisy and misgovernance, moral corruption and injustice. He walked his talk in the interest of Nigeria and the populace.

    For this and many other reasons, friends, family, colleagues, and former students converged on Radisson Blu Hotel, Ikeja GRA, Lagos on July 17, to celebrate a man who has spent his life speaking truth to power and mentoring generations of journalism greats. A recipient of several national and international academic and professional awards, the Emeritus Professor of Communication from Bradley University, Illinois, United States, has significantly contributed to public discourse in the country and beyond through his incisive columns in national newspapers and research papers in reputable journals. His satirical writings have been the subject of academic research in tertiary institutions within and outside Nigeria.

    President Bola Tinubu, in celebrating Dare, extolled him for his commitment to journalistic integrity and ethics, even when he faced adversity and repression during the military era. Professor Dare defies description and elicits awe for his brilliance, strength of character, and the courage of his convictions.

    If Professor Olatunji Dare’s life were a book, it would be a literary masterpiece, interlarded with patriotism, satirical genius, progressive scholarship, and a life devoted to the preservation of nationhood. His life is a saga of serialised valour, each chapter brimming with contributions that have shaped generations of writers and thinkers.

    Professor Dare deconstructs and illuminates the grey areas of governance and citizenship with painstaking, resilient introspection. His retirement is not just the end of an era; it is a poignant reminder of the power of words and the enduring impact of a life dedicated to truth and justice.

    Perhaps because he humanely engages with the issues and relates it to the people, Professor Dare attained noble repute, unsullied and deeply respected from the grassroots to the glitzy corridors of power. In retirement, he assumes a prideful place in the pantheon of Nigeria’s finest satirists, patriots and statesmen.

    As he steps away from his role as a columnist, we honour not just his contributions to journalism but also the profound impact he has had on our lives. Professor Olatunji Dare, at 80, remains a beacon of wisdom, a testament to the enduring power of insightful, humble, and impactful journalism. In celebrating his legacy, we are reminded that the adventures of our souls in knowing him—first through his engaging writing and then through personal encounters—have been nothing short of transformative.

  • A farewell to columnism

    A farewell to columnism

    If you don’t find “columnism” in the dictionary, you have my word that I did not make it up.

    I first encountered the term in an essay for The New York Times by the lexicographer, William Safire.  Following him, I have used it in this space to denote the art and craft of writing a newspaper or magazine column.

    But I did so with not a little wariness.  In the war of attrition between the Babangida regime and  the progressive section of the news media, I feared that the inventive managers of its duplicitous political transition programme might replace the second letter in “columnist” with the first letter of the English alphabet, in the process transmuting the term to “calumnist”  and damning practitioners the noble art of columnism to wear a term of reproach through the life of the regime and beyond.

    Columnism has been my preoccupation, on and off, but more on than off, for some 30 years.  But as I hinted last week, it is time to go.  This is the final installment of “At Home Abroad.” the brand name of the column since this newspaper debuted some 14 years ago.  In its previous iteration on different platforms, the column ran as “Matters Arising” and furnished the title of a selection from my collected journalism between 1985 and 1993.

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    Writing the column has been a great honour and privilege.

    At a time like this, one is expected to reflect on one’s adventures in the business and share with fellow practitioners in general and the younger ones in particular nuggets of the best practices one has learned over the decades.

    It is incomparable, this privilege of inflicting one’s views and biases, and prejudices on others week after week on the issues of the day, issues large and small, with no direction other than the broad editorial policy of the journal, the enduring examples of some of the finest practitioners of the craft dead or living, the laws of defamation, the dictates of decency, the moral law within you, and the values that have shaped you.

    It is in fact more than a privilege:  it is a trust that must be earned and constantly re-earned.

    The trust carries with it a corollary duty:  to deploy your gifts, skills, insights and judgment to help shape the standards of sense and sensibility; and to produce a picture of reality on which sound public policy can be founded.  The columnist must not get so absorbed in the privileges and trappings that he or she loses sight of this overarching goal.

    The most accomplished columnist, working under the tyranny of deadlines, with unfolding situations and incomplete or faulty data, can be permitted his or her mistakes.   But it is inexcusable for the columnist to be irresponsibly wrong, or to persist in error after a truer picture of the situation has been provided.  The columnist is thus obliged to refresh his or her knowledge, update the available information, cultivate a multiplicity of sources, eschew oracular pronouncements, and instead, cultivate humility.

    The political columnist is concerned with power, its use and abuse.  To write about it in a manner that commands respect and trust, he or she must be in a position to observe power closely, to go beyond appearances, or what one of the greatest practitioners of the craft, Walter Lippmann, called “the foam of events.”

    To write competently and confidently about the use and abuse of power from a distance, you have to be stationed up close.  But not so close that you cannot see clearly.  You have to maintain an “air space” between you and the authorities.  Watch out for the seductions of power that come in many guises and disguises, and never put your trust fully and uncritically in princes and principalities.

    You can be harsh, even brutal, if that is what the situation demands.  But never write from malice or hatred, for they undermine that charity that is the foundation of the good society.

    That is what I have distilled from the reflections and reminiscences of some of the best exemplars of the craft.  I have tried to apply them to my work.  How well I have succeeded is for the reader to judge, but I can say that they have served me well, just as they have served the sources from which I derived them and will doubtless serve those who diligently seek to apply them.

    Retiring the column is not the same thing as retiring from journalism.  On retiring from the University of Ibadan, the eminent historian, Professor Jacob Festus Ade-Ajayi noted that he was only retiring from the teaching of history at an academic institution, not retiring from history.  Like the great man, I should make clear that I am retiring from columnism, not from journalism.

    From time to time I will, as a contribution to the national policy dialogue, write on issues that move me or amuse me or faze me or irritate me, but not under the AT HOME ABROAD rubric.  The frequency will be determined by circumstances. I count it an honour that this newspaper has accorded me that privilege.

    In my writings over the decades, I have won many friends and admirers.  Many of them remember and remind me of things I wrote long ago and now remember only dimly, and they do so largely from appreciation. I thank each and every one of them.  I know I did not always live up to their expectations, yet they kept faith with the column week after week.

    The column has also attracted its fair share of critics and antagonists.  When the paper still provided facilities for instant comments without mediation, the column was the haunt of one anonymous troller who could never bring himself to see or say anything good in it – or in the columnist for that matter.  Within minutes of the column being posted, he is there excoriating him remorselessly and imputing the basest motives to him.

    The last time we heard from him, he accused me of cowardice and dishonesty for not naming a public figure whose diverting convocation address in one of the universities I had shared with readers.  When someone in the attentive audience pointed out that the public officer in question was named in the article, this unrelenting antagonist rejoined that it was my fault that I had not followed the elementary canons of newswriting  — who, what, where, when, etc.

    With antagonists like that, you can never win.  I wonder what became of him when The NATION shut down the instant-response ap on its website.  He had one thing going for him, though:  he was knowledgeable, and his prose was admirable.

    Together, admirers and antagonists kept me on my toes much of the time.  I often had to reckon with or anticipate what the latter would say.   

    My written evaluations of submissions by my students, I realized years later in a different setting, must have gnawed at their self-esteem, especially in my early years as a university teacher.  It is not enough to say that I meant no harm.  It is a measure of their large heartedness that they rank among my best admirers today.  They all constituted a crucial part of my education.  I learned from them even as I sought to teach them.

    It remains to thank the proprietors, managers, editors, staffers and operatives of The Nation Newspaper for the courtesies and kindnesses they showered on me from the day I first set foot on their premises.

    For now,  au revoir.

  • A preface to a valedictory

    A preface to a valedictory

    Not unmindful of the insight of the poets that there’s many a slip between the cup and the lip, I make bold to assert what is already out there in published tributes and scheduled events: I will be turning 80 tomorrow (Wed, July 17).

    No matter how you slice the calendar or reckon the passage of time, that is a lot of years, exceeding by a full decade the proverbial three score and ten granted to man, according to Holy Writ.  But I never saw myself included in the select group destined to reach that milestone.

    It was not unreachable.  One had seen a parent live into the late 70s and another into the mid-80s, in full possession of their faculties.  One had even encountered JV  Clinton, a sprightly septuagenarian, who had served as editor of one of Zik’s newspapers in Port Harcourt, and was writing a scintillating column for the Sunday Times in the 1970s.

    But he was regarded as a curiosity.  It was as if he had no business being in that line of work, or indeed in any line of work for that matter.   He was thought to belong more in a retirement home than in a newspaper studio.  No reference to him was considered judicious unless it was prefaced with his age.  That was an insidious disclaimer that signaled to the reader:  “What you are about to read or are reading was written by a man in his 70s. 

    Caveat lector.  Beware, reader.

    The sage, Obafemi Awolowo, had reached 70 when the 1979 Constitution was being prepared.  Despite his unrivalled mastery of federalism and his matchless record of achievement as Premier of  Western Nigeria and Federal Commissioner for Finance in the civil war years – or because of them – they pivoted on his age in a bid to render him ineligible for the Presidency in the making.

    Age 70 was attainable, I thought then.  But was it desirable, despite the many individuals in that bracket who functioned productively and were making vital contributions to society?  Of that, I was not sure. 

    Even if attainable, age 80 was not for me.

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    But here I am just one day short of that milestone, writing a weekly column.  If I am viewed today as many viewed JV Clinton in the 70s, I guess I would say rather diffidently that I am not the only one guilty of that aberration, if aberration it is indeed and not grace.

    The late Duro “Double Chief” Onabule wrote a weekly column for the Sun well into his 80s.  Dan Agbese clocked 80 earlier this year, and his column remains a model of wit and clarity.  The historian Akinjide Osuntokun clocked 80 several years ago, but his column on national and foreign affairs is an engaging distillation of his deep insights.

    What can one say of Wole Soyinka who, at 90, has maintained the creative spark that produces cultural forms in a profusion and texture that will faze even the most gifted persons half his age?

    I recall that on his 80th birthday, his son Olaokun remarked that the family had become increasingly concerned about his frequent travels to distant places unaccompanied.  If he has given up the habit, I doubt whether he has made any other concessions to ageing, or what I should in Kongispeak call superannuation.

    I did not sleepwalk into maintaining the column to age 80.  If age is but only a number, that number climbs to a point where it weighs you down and slows you down and leaves its mark on you.  Year after year, I thought of retiring the column. Year after year, my resolve failed.

    Though tasking,  it keeps one’s writing skills alive.  Writing it attunes one to the issues of the day, and makes one think through the consequential as well as the idiosyncratic.  It enjoins judgment and a nice sense of discrimination.  The fan mail flatters the ego, but the column keeps you grounded.  It wins you more friends than it cultivates adversaries.   It helps pay offshore bills and brings some collateral benefits.

    But one must draw the line when what was for several decades a delight is gradually becoming a chore, when the challenge of finding new ways of saying what needs to be said and saying  it elegantly becomes less insistent, and when the urge to simply fulfill all righteousness for the day has begun to subvert the imperative of doing superior work.

    I am back to that point in my Bradley University years when I used to forward impatiently to the end of the class, unlike in previous years when students had to remind me that the hour was up and that they needed to head to the next class.  I suspect I have passed it.

    These days, I hear the keyboard whispering:  Why not go with what you have and move on to something less exacting?  What exactly are you trying to prove?

    Two spinal surgeries and a cumulation of the pathologies of ageing accelerated this development.  They have also contributed in large part to my failure to fulfill a solemn, public pledge I made ten years ago at a book launch and lecture to mark my 70th birthday.

    Asked why my wife was not present to share the joy of an occasion that belonged in equal measure to both of us, I explained that she had to stay back in Peoria, Illinois, to look after our autistic second son,  then 35 years old.

    I first became aware that autism was in all probability a significant public health issue in Nigeria during a sumptuous lunch in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in April 1991.  Emeka Izeze, editor ofThe Guardian and I were on assignment with the Secretary-General of the OAU, Dr Salim Ahmed Salim, on the eve of that year’s Guardian Lecture he was scheduled to present.

    A Nigerian ambassador in the OAU Secretariat was our host, and the party included a senior career diplomat at the Nigerian Embassy in Addis, and a Nigerian technocrat serving with a UN agency based in the Italian capital, Rome.  All five of us were gathered in the same room and dining at the same table for the first time.

    I do not recall the drift of the conversation, but we discovered that four of us had autistic children and were struggling grimly to cope.  The odds against this occurrence must be galactic.  On the spur of the moment, I vowed that I would one day embark on a mission to raise awareness about autism in Nigeria and help mobilize resources to combat its blight.

    The 2014 ceremony at which I spoke for the first time in public about my son’s autism seemed to me as good an occasion as any to return to my 1991 epiphany in Addis Ababa and the response it had called forth.

    And so, I announced that on my retirement from teaching the following year, I would devote my time to serving the autistic.  But I did not reckon with the fragility of life after 70.

    Nothing had prepared me for the rapid onslaught of one medical challenge after another. Two back surgeries.  Then Covid 19, with its severe restrictions on travel even for the robust and agile. Then the loss of the project file and working file papers in my luggage on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt en route Lagos.   All in all, a near-perfect calendar of woes.

    Still, it is for me a matter of shame that the project never got off the ground.  It is not dead, but my involvement at this stage can only be peripheral. 

    I have on deposit N6.5 million, comprising the N3 million donated by Governor Kayode Fayemi and Governor Adams Oshiomhole at the 2014 event, plus accrued interest.  It will be handed over to a bona fide legatee my solicitors are working on locating, plus my personal bequest.

    The column will take a valedictory bow next Tuesday.

  • Beyond muddling through

    Beyond muddling through

    I have been reading Babatunde Raji Fashola’s monograph, “Nigerian Public Discourse:  The Interplay of Empirical Evidence and Hyperbole,” a copy of which he couriered to me at my request.

    Fashola, a Senior Advocate, needs no introduction.  He is the high-achieving former governor of Lagos State, who had the unenviable task of sustaining and building on the solid legacy of his predecessor, Asiwaju, now President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    At the end of his second and final gubernatorial term, Fashola was only in his late 40s.  I recall telling him at a private meeting that retirement from public service should be the last thing on his mind.  I was sure that he would be drafted to take charge of some overarching scheme of our national life, or headhunted to make his services and expertise available in a larger, international context.

    It came as no surprise when President Muhammadu Buhari, who must have been impressed by Fashola’s conduct of the affairs of Lagos State, and by his conduct and poise at their encounters, tapped Fashola to serve as Minister of Work, Housing, and Energy.

    The Energy portfolio has been the graveyard of many a political career.  To insert it as just one element in Fashola’s near-omnivorous remit reminded me of the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.”  The reward for uncommon achievement is an even more formidable assignment.

    But even for a person of his great energy and commitment to the task at hand, and especially for a person with a predilection for a hands-on approach, the remit proved too large.  The Energy portfolio was excised, and he handled what remained, to the best of his great ability.

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    The insights and the nuggets of wisdom in Nigerian Public Discourse are distilled from his sojourn in the public as executive governor of Lagos State and Minister Plenipotentiary in Buhari’s Administration.  But some of  reminiscences informing the volume are rooted in the Lagos of his childhood.

    Then, it was widely believed that the Lagoon and the Atlantic Ocean had to be hermetically sealed, one from the other, because any contact, would result in an explosion of nuclear proportions.  In reality, the barrier separating them was erected for ecological reasons.

    It was also widely believed, not just in Lagos that Indian athletes were banned from international competitions because of their extraordinary feats, such as beating the Nigerian team 100 -0 in a soccer match.  No record exists of the encounter.

    Legend also credited the great soccer star Teslimi “Thunder” Balogun with a shot so powerful that it went through the torso of the doomed goalkeeper and exited at the other side. Following this horrific development, according to one version we heard far, far away in the interior, Balogun was barred from taking any shot at goal with his left foot and compensated with a large sum.

    There are of course pronouncements and assertions of a higher order “made with such unwavering conviction that it becomes a formidable task to summon the courage to challenge them without appearing naïve or contrarian.

    Consequently, he adds, mere conjecture or personal opinions expressed with authority on a national platform assume the guise of an empirical fact that cannot be disputed.  With re-telling, they take on a life of their own, and it is only a matter of time before they become invested with the authority of indisputable facts.

    The goal of the volume, Fashola writes, is “to challenge some of our collective assumptions” on various aspects of our national life and “to inaugurate a new cohort of intellectuals, driven by forensic facts that are “credible and reliable.”

    That is the lawyer and jurist, the Senior Advocate, in Fashola.

    “Collective assumptions” impinging on governance and public policy abound.

    Examples:  Nigeria mired in a housing deficit of 17 million.  Nigerians subsist on one pre-Emefiele American dollar a day, and on probably one-third of that amount today.  Nigeria as the world’s “poverty capital.”  Nigeria’s national population situated between 200 and 220 million.  Fourteen million school-age children roaming the streets.  Nigeria generating no more than 4,000 KW of electricity.

    Is there any empirical evidence for them?  How did they develop?  What has kept them alive, despite their manifest wrongheadedness?  How were the metrics obtained?

    Fashola traced the categorical assertion about Nigeria facing a housing deficit of 20 million that subsequently ballooned to 22 million to the preface to the 2012 National Housing Policy signed by the serving Minister of Housing some three years before Fashola took office.  The Minister in question could furnish no firm basis for the assertion. 

    Subsequent iterations and reiterations, figures had been based on extrapolations, and no amount of housing delivery then seems to have made a dent in the deficit, which seems not to take into account a large number of unoccupied houses in the rural areas and even in many large cities, which in itself raises a question as to whether the problem is simply a housing deficit, or a deficit that must include as a solution the optimum usage of existing houses.

    What precisely is the problem at hand?   Without an accurate definition of the problem, we cannot be sure that we are indeed measuring what needs to be measured.  Without measuring what needs to be measured, we cannot be sure that we are proposing the appropriate solutions.

    The same problem arises with the assertion that Nigerians subsist on one U.S. dollar or less per day.  It fails to reckon with the informal support system that undergirds most African societies.  The average Nigerian, at home or abroad, is the keeper of his parents and kinsfolk, providing for their daily sustenance, shelter, school fees, medical expenses, etc., etc.

    Fashola does not mention this problem, but it is the same failure, the failure of precise definition, that has constrained attempts to ensure a regular supply of petroleum products at affordable prices in a country whose economy is driven largely by the oil industry.

    Are we dealing with subsidies that must be removed to reflect the true cost and generate larger revenues? Are we dealing with “correct pricing”?  What, at any rate, are the benchmark prices? Are we dealing with wastage of the precious commodity occasioned by mindless consumption? Are we dealing with petty smuggling, or with smuggling on an industrial scale?  Are we bogged down by a refining infrastructure that belongs in the pre-industrial age?

    These elements are intertwined, but the authorities sent an inordinate amount of time and resources casting unproven “subsidies” as the bogey of the industry.  More than three decades,  later, the problem is still very much with us.

    As Fashola defines it, “a minister’s task is to solve problems.”

    This definition flows from a clear, uncluttered mind.  No grandstanding; no contrived magniloquence.  Based on this perception of his task, he travelled as a city or municipal manager when he was governor of Lagos State, out to learn and apply the lessons learned to make Nigeria  a better place. The same outlook informed his travels as a minister plenipotentiary: to learn how problems he is grappling with have been tackled in other settings and to apply some of those lessons back home.

    In Nigeria, Fashola says, only the government is enjoined to rectitude and to eschew corruption in its various guises and disguises. The citizen, he submits, has the corollary duty of obeying and refraining from conduct that could compromise officials.  But the citizens hardly keep their own end of the bargain.

    I winced when I read the following, but do you know that you are supping at the high table of corruption whenever you invite a public official or politically exposed person to a fundraising or award ceremony in expectation of a financial benefit or patronage, confer chieftainly or other titles thus blurring the lines between merit and crude preferment?

    Or whenever you recruit young women to trawl the city soliciting deposits for banks and other financial institutions, and whenever you seek to influence contract awards and public appointments using underhanded tactics?

    If some of this has a familiar ring, it is because the text draws on some of Fashola’s public speeches.  The language is for the most part crisp. Unfortunately, some of the pages are misaligned, so that page p7 faces page 67.  This renders jarring here and there what is otherwise a pleasurable reading experience,  a summons to thoughtful, critical and evidence-based, procedure in the analysis of matters large and small.

  • Whither, America?

    Whither, America?

    As Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, more significantly the 258th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence; as they mark this evocative milestone of their history in the febrile run-up to the 2024 presidential election, there is no better time than this to reflect on where the Union has come from and where it is headed.

    The Declaration furnishes the template for carrying out the former task; the pronouncements of the Republican nominee and putative runner Donald Trump, in what the best authorities are calling the most consequential American election in more than a century, as well as his record as the 46th president of the United States provide a tapestry for the latter.

    From the outset, practice fell far short of theory, what with the enslavement of hundreds of thousands in the populace and its codification.  Gradually, some of its most horrid aspects were rendered untenable or unprofitable by revolt, social pressure, and technology, among other factors.  Its structured manifestations remained and were enforced by the system of laws and order.

    Even at the most brutal, the resonant clauses of the Declaration, its magniloquent phrasing, signified aspiration, and inspired hope.  The Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., envisioned in his immortal “I Have a Dream” speech, that one day, even “down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interpretation” and “nullification” —  that one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers . . .”

    That is already happening, even in Alabama.

    Today, 51 years later and 258 years after the Declaration of Independence, a key goal of which was to free the American colonies from the yoke of the English sovereign, there comes along a demagogue who would roll back the gains of the ensuing years and institute a renewed system of tyranny over them – with the consent and approval of a clamorous section of the population.

    There comes along a smooth-talking fellow who is all calculation and no introspection, a cult figure whose sole desire is to replace the rule of the Constitution with the tyranny of the Donald and to turn the Land of the Free into the Home of the Captive.

    In the ringing words of that storied Founding document: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

    “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

    “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. .  .”

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    Here are the particulars of the crimes and misdemeanors with which the colonies charged the British sovereign:

    He has obstructed the Administration of Justice.

    He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone

    He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people,

    For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

    He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

    He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.

    A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

    Therefore, having regard to the foregoing and other stated grievances, the people of the Colonies solemnly declared themselves “absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown. . .”

    “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant,” they declared “is unfit to be the ruler of a free people,”

    Now, these are precisely aspects of the Trump agenda, the policies, plans and he says he is seeking office to implement. Yet they are hailing him in many parts of the United States as a champion of the people and a liberator.

    If the adoring crowds and the approving polls and the bourgeoning financial support are any indication, every passing day heralds the possibility that Donald Trump might well be elected 48th president of the United States.  Joe Biden’s catastrophic performance in last week’s televised debate with Trump only enhanced that grim possibility.

    But Trump, not President Biden, is the reason America is heartily disliked and disrespected in those parts of the world where reason has not been supplanted by panic, and where human solidarity has not been overtaken by fear and loathing.

    Trump’s campaign is rooted in intimidation and grievance. He intimidates the courts.  He intimidates judges.   He intimidates law enforcement.  He intimidates immigrants and citizens.  He intimidates jurists and jurors.  He intimidates election officials.  He intimidates voters.  He intimidates lawmakers.  He intimates the armed forces.  He intimidates civil servants.  He has no respect for the classification system that undergirds National Security.  He intimidates the armed forces.

    He intimidates other countries and their leaders.  He intimidates regulatory agencies and their officials.  He disdains science and intimidates scientists.  He disdains due process and the rule of law.   He disdains the poor and the underclass.  He disdains those who look different, think differently and worship differently. 

    He disdains women and has nothing but contempt for their struggle to control their bodies.

    He built a financial empire on fraud, tax evasion, and breach of promise and law.  He never saw a covenant that he did not seek to break or disavow.  He is a sworn enemy of stability and coherence.

    His quest for another term as president, he has made clear, is fueled by a desire to exact revenge and retribution on those who frustrated his carefully-laid plans to steal the election.  He and his confederates failed in more than 60 court challenges to substantiate their claim that the 2020 election was rigged for Biden.

    With the declaration that he cannot lose the coming race unless it was rigged for his opponent, Trump has laid the groundwork for a repeat of the January 6 2024 insurrection in which a mob he cultivated, nurtured and inspired, invaded the U.S. Capitol with murder on their minds, trashed it, and left in its wake blood and mangled flesh and broken bones and tears and thick layers of excrement.  Trump call them “patriots.”

    There was a time in America, and not long ago, when a person so uniquely unqualified would not have had a ghost of a chance of being elected president.  In the first instance, he would not even have entertained the thought, however fleetingly.  And if he was vain or temerarious enough to do so, he would have been checkmated at the threshold by the system of checks and balances.  Such a person could not hope to be elected to the local school board.  Today, they are cheering him on and serenading him with song and dance.

    Four years ago, he was sufficiently mindful of public opinion and morality that he had his media enablers “capture and kill” the so-called Access Hollywood tape, on which he was heard boasting that his wealth and celebrity licensed him to grab and drag women along by an unmentionable portion of their anatomy and that, in any case, they never objected.

    After last Thursday’s televised debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, one admirer declared that Trump was welcome to grab her by any portion of her anatomy anytime, any day, anywhere.

    That is a sign of the times.

    But the lady had better cool her ardour.  Trump’s people probably took notes.  And one of these days, their boss will call to collect or invite her to come deliver.

    • This piece was submitted before yesterday’s United States Supreme Court ruling that the President is entitled to substantial immunity from prosecution.
  • In the news: Two tabloid narratives

    In the news: Two tabloid narratives

    Two tabloid narratives – I am almost prepared to call them tawdry – obtruded from the counter-social and counterfactual media where they were “trending,” to employ the portentous pseudo-scientific term of that platform, into the mainstream of the news last week.

    The first cantered on a report that former President Olusegun Obasanjo had stopped by at President Bola Tinubu’s residence in Lagos to pay “Sallah homage” on the occasion of Eid al-Adha.   Told that Tinubu was not at home, Obasanjo had decided to pay a courtesy call on the First Lady Oluremi Tinubu, who happened to be available.

    The second concerns President Tinubu’s official visit to South Africa for the inauguration of  President Cyril Ramaphosa for a second term.  Pictures purportedly taken at the occasion,streamed with running commentary mostly in Igbo, showed Ramaphosa delivering a calculated snub to Tinubu, the type that should have roused even the most obidient disciple to patriotic anger.

    Observing all protocols, I start with the report of Obasanjo’s visit to Tinubu’s residence and the many questions it left unanswered.  The whole thing has the marking of a comedy or errors not untinged by elements of farce.

    Obasanjo, it is necessary to concede, is no respecter of the finer elements of social or political engagement.  But even he, I wager, will have sent word ahead that he would like to stop by to greet Tinubu.  And if word had reached him, Tinubu would have indicated that, much to his regret, he would not be available because of a previous commitment. 

    The more likely alternative is that Tinubu would have rescheduled any previous commitment just to receive and honour Obasanjo.  For it is not everyday that a former president undertakes a courtesy visit to a sitting president, especially when, between them, there has never been any love lost.

    The hardest evidence of the visit consists in just one picture, which serves only to deepen the mystery.  The ambience does not reflect the opulence and the lavish furnishing of presidential homes in Nigeria, official or private.

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    And the distance between guest and hostess seems curiously wide, suggesting a reluctance of both parties to engage no closer than was absolutely necessary.  That is the conclusion that a plain reading of their body language suggests.  Those gifted with a third or fourth eye may see it differently, of course.

    Even for an informal visit, the former president, who has in late life earned a reputation for dapperness, appeared rather casual.  And the First Lady seemed more demure than usual.  It was almost as if they had posed for the picture against their will and against their better judgment.

    One speculation doing the rounds has it that Obasanjo and Mrs Tinubu had met accidentally at a function in the home of a Lagos socialite known for elegance and haute couture, and that the picture in circulation was taken at that venue.

    Whatever the occasion, both seemed casually turned out.  If it had taken in some of the other dignitaries in attendance, the picture would have supplied a richer context.  Can it be that it originally included other guests,  and that they had been edited out of the published version for reasons best known to those who had made it available? 

    That would seem to explain the large distance between Obasanjo and Mrs Tinubu in the picture.

    Neither the former president nor the First Lady has disavowed the picture.  Neither the former president’s library nor the First Lady’s office seems inclined to provide some elucidation, thus perpetuating what is now shaping up as perhaps the most poignant political comedy of errors in Nigeria’s recent history.  Neither has disavowed it.

    Nor have Abubakar Atiku and Peter Obi, projected to be, respectively, the presidential and vice-presidential candidates of the united Opposition in the 2027 General Elections, cottoned on to it as the latest and most telling evidence that the 2023 presidential election was stolen from them severally and jointly.

    But give them time.

    The second narrative that “trended” on the antisocial and counterfactual media before leaping into the mainstream media in the period under review concerns, as I was saying, the reporting of President Tinubu’s official visit to South Africa for the inauguration of President Cyril Ramaphosa to a second term.   The celebration was in order, Ramaphosa having barely steered the formerly all-conquering ANC away from a rout in that country’s recent General Election.

    There, in a video clip, was Ramaphosa shaking hands enthusiastically with guests on a receiving line of African and foreign leaders, studiously avoiding the merest eye contact with Tinubu, who was looking on forlornly from the second row and was saved from further humiliation by an announcement summoning Ramaphosa back to the podium.

    An Igbo-speaking commentator, his guttural voice chafing with bitter disappointment at the fate he said had befallen Nigeria under Tinubu, helped the audience make sense of the proceedings. Reactions came thick and fast.

    Not a few regarded it as South Africa’s latest act of ingratitude to Nigeria and demanded the immediate expulsion of its High Commissioner and simultaneous recall of Nigeria’s High Commissioner from Pretoria.  It was one thing for South Africans to mistreat resident Nigerians. It was another for the government of South Africa to show such consummate disrespect to the President of Nigeria and Nigerians.

    Ingrates all, others chimed in.  Where would they be today if Nigeria had spared any exertions in freeing them from the vicious jaws of apartheid?

    Was it the case that Ramaphosa could not distinguish Tinubu from other dignitaries on the receiving line, despite his trademark cloth cap embroidered with the mathematical symbol of infinity as motif?

    Most unlikely.  In three reporting trips to South Africa – two in the time of apartheid and the third after the collapse of apartheid — I found its policy-makers and officials sell versed in virtually every aspect of life in Nigeria.  As I reported back then, it was as if the apartheid state had prepared to engage its most formidable adversary on the continent, based on the old international relations dictum:  Know your enemy.

    Still others called for the immediate confiscation and nationalization of assets of more than 100 South African-owned businesses in Nigeria, among them Multichoice, Shoprite, Standard Bank, and Clover Industries, to name a few of the better-known.  Even those calling for restraint said the least Nigeria could do was to carpet South Africa at the next summit of the African Union and demand an unconditional apology.

    They were all agreed that South Africa would not have embarked on such reckless conduct in the time of Sani Abacha, Muhammadu Buhari, or even Goodluck Jonathan.  Still, the point had been made.  The world now knows that though we have our differences at home, you cannot assail the Nigerian state and its President and escape without swift retribution.

    Nigerians were warming up for such retribution when a picture of Ramaphosa engaging in talks on bilateral relations and other issues of mutual interest with Tinubu during a courtesy call on Tinubu in Pretoria – the same Ramaphosa who had snubbed Tinubu with visceral contempt the previous day, in an event seen in real time across the world? 

    And now he is ingratiating himself with Tinubu in an attempt to escape from the consequences of his contumely?

    “We no go gree, we no go gree.”  That was the chant that burst forth from the lips of irate citizens under the aegis of the League of Patriotic Nigerians who had been following the story as it unfolded in the counterfactual media.

    Your move, Mr President.

  • IBB and the ghost of June 12

    IBB and the ghost of June 12

    As events memorializing June 12, 1993, the day of promise he turned into a nightmare unfold each year, I find myself wondering:  What are former military president Ibrahim Babangida’s thoughts and preoccupations?

    Remorse? Contrition? Vindication?  Fulfillment?  Triumph?  Defiance? All of the above?

    We may never know until he releases his much-postponed memoirs.  We may not know even then.  He glories in duplicity and makes a virtue of inconstancy. 

    Why, in any case, did Babangida annul the 1993 Presidential election, the anniversary of which was marked last week with greater pomp and circumstance than in previous years, under the rubric of Democracy Day – an election that would have secured his place in the national pantheon?

    Thirty-one years later, he has not been able to give a coherent answer. Rather, he has been fudging and dissembling as is his wont.  He has said, among other things, that he annulled the election as a favour to Abiola, because Abiola would have been overthrown and probably killed, if Abiola was allowed to take office.

    Colonel (as he then was) David B. Mark, is on the public record as having stated that he would personally shoot – and presumably kill — Abiola if Abiola was installed president.

    The closest Babangida ever came to laying out his regime’s case for the annulment was his June 23, 1993 broadcast.  But as I will try to show presently, it is a threadbare case that falls apart when examined with the care reserved for archaeological specimens.

    Those, it is necessary to recall, were desperate days in Abuja – days of wild improvisation and frenzied experimentation.  The scheduling of the broadcast reflected that much.

    It was to be made at midday, according to an official statement.  It did not take place.  It was rescheduled for an hour later.  Still no broadcast.  The broadcast would now take place at 7 p.m, they said.  That hour came and passed, without the broadcast.

    It took place, finally, two hours later, at 9 pm.

    It was a sprawling, laboured speech, some 2,700 words long.

    The first part was an exercise in self-glorification.  Babangida said that the policies and programmes he had pursued — SAP, for example? — were sound “in understanding, conception, formulation and articulation,” and “comparatively unassailable,” and that history would certainly score the administration high in its governance of Nigeria.

    So much for the testimonial he issued himself. Thirty-one years later, the widely-held verdict is that Babangida was, and remains, the prime architect of the nation’s woes.

    The concern here is with the rest of the broadcast, in which Babangida laid out his reasons for annulling the election.

    In implementing its reforms, he said, the regime had to contend with social forces that had in the past impeded national growth and development, as well as new social forces that the programmes spawned. To resolve matters, he said, the regime was constrained to tamper with the rules governing the transition.

    Here, one positively must interject: Whatever happened to the “in-built” corrective mechanism that the regime and its palace intellectuals had forever advertised as a unique feature of the transition design?

    To return to the speech:  Tampering with the rules out of sheer necessity unwittingly attracted “enormous public suspicions” of the regime’s “intentions and policies.” Translation:  The attentive public concluded that Babangida was nursing a hidden agenda, the object being to perpetuate himself in office and in power.

    The transition Babangida continued, was about building a lasting foundation for democracy.  But “lasting democracy,” is not a temporary show of excitement and manipulation by an over-articulate section (the Lagos and Southwest media?) of the elite of the whole nation and the political process; lasting democracy is a permanent diet to nurture the soul of the whole nation and the political process.”

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    A further interjection, the last.  Democracy as “soul food?” As “stomach infrastructure,” in other words?  Shades of Ayo Fayose.

    The June 12 election, like the presidential primaries that were cancelled the previous year, Babangida said, did not meet the basic requirements of democracy:  free and fair elections, un-coerced expression of voters’ preference, respect for the electorate as the

    Final arbiter in elections, decorum and fairness on the part of electoral umpires, and absolute respect for the rule of law.

    But because the administration was determined to keep faith with the deadline of 27th August, 1993 for the return to civil rule, it over-looked the reported breaches. The breaches continued into the June 12, 1993 election on an even greater scale, but Humphrey Nwosu’s National Electoral Commission went ahead and cleared the candidates.

    There was also, Babangida continued, “a conflict of interest” between the government and both presidential candidates that would have compromised their positions and responsibilities were they to become president.

    The courts had been intimidated and had been subjected to “the manipulation of the political process by vested interests, to the point that the entire political system was endangered.  Under these circumstances, the National Defence and Security Council (NDSC) decided to annul the election in the supreme interest of law and order, political stability and peace.” (emphasis added.)

    Resting his case, Babangida declared: “To continue action on the basis of the June 12, 1993 election, and to proclaim and swear in a president who encouraged a campaign of divide-and-rule among our ethnic groups would have been detrimental to the survival of the Third Republic.” (my emphasis.)

    Everyone was to blame for the annulment: His colleagues, his advisers, the candidates the media, civil society, the courts, the election umpires, and the international observers.

    Everyone – except Babangida.

    Despite all the fudging, it is beyond dispute that the NDSC approved holding the election. Babangida admitted that much in the broadcast, perhaps unwittingly. In any case, the NDSC in whose name he claimed to have acted was for all practical purposes a phantom of his own making, whose authority he invoked only whenever it suited him.

    Was it not Babangida’s proxy, Arthur Nzeribe, and his so-called Association for a Better Nigeria that, to use Babangida’s own words, “intimidated and manipulated” the courts?

    In that subversive undertaking, were they not aided and sheltered by the regime’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Clement Akpamgbo, and by Babangida’s retinue of kept judges, shysters,and forensic cardsharpers?

    The alleged breaches of the electoral laws that vitiated the election, as Babangida claims, furnished an opportunity to disqualify and prosecute the perpetrators and clean up the process.  Why did he put up with them for so long?

    The public was primed to vote on June 12.  That date had been seared into its consciousness.  It was Babangida’s regime, not NEC, that created a climate of uncertainty around it.  Even so, 15 million Nigerians came out to vote.

    To invoke the “rule of law” to justify the annulment is to stand that concept on its head.  How can a regime that enacted retroactive laws not subject to judicial review claim credit for unwavering adherence to the rule of law with a straight face?

    Who among the candidates, by the way, encouraged “a campaign of divide-and-rule” among Nigeria’s ethnic groups, as Babangida claimed?   A candidate for national office employing such tactics would have known that he was committing electoral suicide.  The public would have rejected him emphatically.

    The resident palace intellectuals never missed an opportunity to tell the public that Babangida’s “place in history” was assured.  They pontificated that Nigeria’s history would be divided into two epochs:  the pre-IBB Era when all was dark and void and formless, and the IBB Era, when light and progress supervened and reigned.

    Recognising at last that his case for the annulment was porous through and through, and seeing June 12’s salience wax year after year even as whatever was left of his reputation waned and waned, Babangida changed tack.

    Since then, Babangida has been claiming that he presided over the “freest and fairest” election ever held in Nigeria, and should be accorded the fullest credit for that distinction.

    This schizophrenic claim does not square with his sweeping rejection, nay demonization, of the June 12 election.  Rarely do men and women in public life set out to quarrel with and reject their own signal achievements so viscerally, even if it was unwitting.

    The legal titan Professor Ben Nwabueze, who served as Secretary for Education in Babangida’s ineffectual Transitional Council, while doubling as a strategist in the evisceration of the June 12 election that was supposed to be the culmination of the transition, provides an important clue to Babangida’s disposition at that critical time.

    “His behaviour in the last days of his regime,“ Nwabueze wrote in the inelegantly titled June 12, 1993 Election:  Problems and Solutions, “left a rather strong impression of a man forced to quit against his will, of one un-reconciled to quitting in the last days of his rule and in the face of defeat, he cut a figure of someone unwilling to reconcile himself with composure to the adverse torrent of events, of an angry and bitterly disappointed man.”

    More tellingly, Nwabueze wrote of Babangida: “His mind, his motions and his actions seemed to have become somewhat disoriented, and no longer governed by disinterested, patriotic considerations. . .”

    Holed up these days in the opulent sterility of his Minna Hilltop mansion, Babangida has to lived with the misfortune of witnessing and contending with the day he had sought to eviscerate with manic desperation, become a potent national symbol, a point of reference, and a goal of our collective aspiration.

    He must be thankful for the occasional visitor, who is more often than not a political straggler or voyeur concerned not to pay homage but to take the measure of the much-diminished “evil genius,” and enduring lesson in the delusions of grandeur and the instability of human greatness.

    His confederates and enablers are gone for the most part.  Sani Abacha is gone,  So is Ernest Shonekan.  So is Arthur Nzeribe.  So is Clement Akpamgbo.  So is Uche Chukwumerije. So is Ben Nwabueze. So is Bassey Ikpeme.  So is Samuel Ikoku. So is Abimbola Davies (or Davis).  So is Hammed Kusamotu. So is Dahiru Saleh.  And so are many others of lesser specific gravity who willingly lent a hand or were suborned to turn what promised to be a great dawn into a nightmare.

    History has largely forgotten the bit players in the June 12 saga, condemned to live in its afterglow; and entertaining no compunction in gorging on its promise that they had tried to snuff out.

    Today, Babangida stands almost alone as the arch-villain of the piece, condemned to absorb the barbs, the arrows, and the jeers of those who stood resolutely at home and abroad for the right of the public to choose their rulers.

  • A tale of two Anthems

    A tale of two Anthems

    The National Anthem which ushered in Nigeria’s independence from colonial rule in 1960 and prefaced every important official ceremony until it was replaced in 1978 on the eve of the inauguration of the Second Republic, sprang back into life two weeks ago, literally and figuratively.

    The debate that resurrected it took just two days in the National Assembly.  While it lasted, many in the attentive audience compared the effort to revert to the old Anthem to a solution in search of a problem, as something ginned up by a legislature bereft of a sense of the nation’s priorities to create the illusion of momentum.

    The National Assembly voted unanimously in favour and President Bola Tinubu signed it into law in double quick time.  Goodbye, Arise, O Compatriots; welcome back, Nigeria We Hail Thee.

    Personally, I prefer the latter to the former. 

    There is a cadenced solemnity, an evocativeness, to Nigeria We Hail Thee that is missing in  Arise O Compatriots. The first time I heard Arise, I burst instinctively into something between a jig and a marching drill. Its rhythm called to mind the chants of the white-garment churches in the neighborhood and the parade-ground orders of the military that decreed it into being.

    It has been claimed that Nigeria We Hail Thee was composed one languid summer between dinner and bedtime by a British “housewife” – never mind the sexism – who could find no better use for her time.  But when it comes to the sociology of Nigeria, she is far more percipient than her critics.  To distill that sociology into 95 words arranged in three evocative stanzas is no mean achievement.

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    It has also been argued that reverting to Nigeria We Hail Thee smacks of atavism. But atavism has its uses.  In the evolution of the species and society, it serves as a mechanism of correction and regeneration.  Any wonder, then, that there is a clamour for a return to parliamentary government in place of the predatory assembly that now passes for the legislative branch?

    There is some irony in the return to Nigeria We Hail Thee which, remember, was the unofficial anthem of NADECO and the Opposition during the struggle for the validation of MKO Abiola’s election as President – an election annulled by military president Ibrahim Babangida.

    His successor, the loathsome Sani Abacha, warned darkly through a senior official, that singing the old anthem at any ceremony would be regarded as treasonous and punished as such.  But that did not deter the June Twelvers. It is a mark of the desperation, the mendacity of the regime that, even when activists sang the official National Anthem at their outings, “security reports” had it that they had sung the old anthem.

    I recall three such events.

    The first was an international conference of the Africa Leadership Forum (ALF), at the Gateway Hotel, in Ogun State. At the time, its president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, was a prisoner in Abacha’s sprawling Gulag.  I was chairing the final session when the security official – there was no mistaking his French suit and the jacket’s bulging pockets and the walkie-talkie — ordered us to disperse.

    I often wondered where the inspiration came from, but I asked the audience to rise and sing the official National Anthem as an affirmation of our faith in and commitment to Nigeria.  I have since realized that it came from an overweening sense of self-preservation.  Even under Abacha’s brutal rule, it seemed to me, they were unlikely to shoot people singing the National Anthem.

    The official who had looked so menacing when he walked in now stood at attention and executed a salute, while those his superiors regarded as unpatriotic, if not downright subversive, were singing the National Anthem lustily.  Much to my perverse pleasure and doubtless to the pleasure of many others, confusion, nay, bewilderment, was stamped all over his face.

    The second was a lecture (May 23, 1996) organized by the Lagos NUJ to mark the first year in prison of Kunle Ajibade, editor of TheNEWS magazine, who had been jailed, based on perjured evidence, for being an accessory to a coup that was for all practical purposes a phantom.

    Just before the event started, the intruder approached me and he said he had “orders from above” to preempt the “meeting.”  I told him it was not a meeting.  The “conference” must not be held, he reiterated.  It was not was not a conference, I replied testily. 

    Whatever it was, he said with a hint of exasperation, he had come with orders from above to stop it.  His back-up stood not too discreetly at the back.

    Could I see the order?  No sir, he said, barely concealing his surprise that anyone could have the audacity to make such a request.  How then do we know that you have such an order, and that it comes from the proper authority?

    Sensing that his patience was running out, I asked the journalists assembled to sing the National Anthem as an affirmation of our faith in Nigeria.  It was rewarding to watch him and his backup spring to attention and take a salute as we sang the anthem, after which we dispersed.

    The third occasion was nothing if not surreal.

    We were gathered at the Conference Hall of Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, in Victoria Island, Lagos  — judges of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal,  ambassadors, university professors and administrators, captains of industry, eminent political and literary figures — for the public presentation of Chief Bola Ige’s memoir, People, Politics and Politicians of Nigeria (1949-1979).  Odia Ofeimun and I were the designated masters of ceremony.

    The indications were unpromising.  The lights and the air-conditioning had not been switched on at the time the event was scheduled to start   The hall was musty.

    Soon enough, the inevitable security official surfaced.  Pulling me aside, he stated that the ceremony must not hold.  After some jousting, I led him to Bola Ige and asked him to repeat what he had just told me.

    Ige, who had no tolerance for humbug, was a study in composure.  Sweeping the audience with one arm, he did a roll call for the intruder’s benefit.   

    The former Chief Justice of Nigeria is here, he began. So is the Chief Judge (now President) of the Court of Appeal.  So are several Senior Advocates.  So is the Ambassador of the United States.  So is a former head of the Nigeria Security Organisation.  So is the vice chancellor of the University of Ibadan,  So is Chief Anthony Enahoro, one of the architects of Nigeria’s independence. . .

    “And you say you have orders from above that this ceremony must not hold?” Ige said, looking the officer in the eye.

    Yes sir, the officer replied tremulously.

    “You will have to make the announcement yourself,” Ige said.

    Just as the officer was finishing, I respectfully asked the audience to sing the National Anthem to affirm our citizenship and respect for the laws of the land.

    Not a few shook their heads in sorrow and despair as they walked out of the Auditorium.

    In each of the instances I have cited here, the “security report” claimed that I had been rousing disgruntled elements to sing the old National Anthem.  A solicitous inside source warned, per a well-connected uncle, that something nasty might happen to me if I did not leave the country at the earliest opportunity.

    It is a delicious irony that the 1960 Anthem, the rendition of which Abacha’s regime criminalized, has been restored as the National Anthem.

    Nigeria, we hail thee.  June Twelve, our Democracy Day, we hail thee.  To all Nigerians born on June 12, 1993, and its anniversary, Happy Birthday.  To their mothers, Happy Anniversary.