The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olatunji Dare

  • Too many people have died

    Too many people have died

    In the week leading to Christmas, dozens of gunmen stormed Gumsuri, some 70 kilometres south of Maiduguri, killed more than 30 young men and abducted more than 100 women and children. Boko Haram has not claimed responsibility, but the operation, carried out along the road that leads to Chibok, bears its grisly signature.

    Chibok, as the world knows, was where Boko Haram abducted more than 200 girls from their school hostel last April. Their whereabouts and their condition remain unknown.

    Details of the deadly raid on Gumsuri did not emerge for four days. Boko Haram had sabotaged the mobile phone network in the area, and many of the roads are impassable.

    For Boko Haram, this was all in a day’s work.

    During the past six months, Boko Haram has killed at least 2,053 civilians, according to Human Rights Watch. From the data supplied by the African Studies Programme at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, in Baltimore, Maryland (no official Nigerian figures are available), no fewer than 29, 600 civilians have been killed in Boko Haram’s campaign of murder and mayhem since 1998.  More than one million have been forced to relocate.

    These figures are most likely undercounts.  But even at that, for a country that is not caught in the paroxysm of a civil war or ravaged by an epidemic or natural disaster on a Biblical scale, that is a lot of deaths and a lot of displacement.

    And the prospects are for more of the same, given Boko Haram’s fiendish zealotry and the token resistance that Nigeria’s armed forces have thus far mustered in their engagements with the insurgents.

    The military high command has taken a great deal of criticism for what many see as its desultory response to the Boko Haram challenge. As if in refutation, the military has been prosecuting its own rank and file on a charge of mutiny, the ultimate crime in its code.

    Fifty-four enlisted men were recently sentenced to death, having been found guilty of mutiny by a court martial. Some three hundred others are awaiting trial on the same charge, and the indications are that a good number of them will be found guilty and condemned to death.

    All this is coming at a time when too many people have died at the barbarous hands of Boko Haram that the armed forces were supposed to hold in check, if not vanquish altogether. To add to this the grisly toll by executing those solders found guilty of mutiny can only exacerbate the bloodletting without serving any useful purpose.

    This column has always stood resolutely and implacably opposed to capital punishment even as a sanction for the most heinous crimes.

    The support for capital punishment rests principally on the claim that it serves as a deterrent. Knowing that they stand to pay with their own if found guilty of a capital crime, only those possessed by a death wish would commit such a crime. Without such a deterrent, it is claimed, capital crimes would escalate.

    If this claim holds true, the homicide rates in the major industrial countries that have abolished capital punishment should have risen sharply. So should the volume of capital crimes in those states that do not practise capital punishment, or employ it only sparingly. But again, this has not been the case.

    Capital punishment, then, is no deterrent. It deters only those who have been executed: they will never commit another capital crime. But the same end can be secured with far less damage to the social fabric by keeping those convicted of capital crimes in jail for life, without the possibility of parole.

    The strongest argument against capital punishment is its finality. Once carried out, it cannot be reversed even if it turns out, as happens not infrequently, that the executed person was innocent, or that guilt was not established beyond a reasonable doubt.

    It will be objected that the military is a special case governed by military law, and that the foregoing arguments do not and should not apply.  I will argue that the military are part and parcel of the larger society and are, in democratic settings, subordinated to the civilian authority, which can properly set aside death penalties decreed by martial law.

    There are many reasons why the civilian authorities should vacate the capital punishment that 54 condemned soldiers now face for mutiny.

    The men had entered the military, prepared to die for their country in the expectation that their country would do its duty by them – house them properly, train them adequately, give them the tools of their trade, pay their salaries and allowances at the appropriate time, and care for them when they come to harm in the line of duty, generally look after their welfare.

    What do we find in practice?

    The barracks in which many military personnel live are just a shade less decrepit than those housing the police. Payment of salaries and allowances is often delayed, sometimes for several months

    It came to light at the hearings of the Oputa Panel that, more than 15 years after the Ejigbo plane disaster in which a generation of army officers perished, their families had not received their entitlements.  It may well be that, today, 10 years later, they are still waiting for their due.

    Several years ago, soldiers who served with ECOMOG in Liberia had to stage a sustained demonstration to get their entitlements released by their commanding officer. Those who returned from Sierra Leone and Liberia with serious injuries were abandoned to their own devices in squalid hospital wards.

    Former U. S. President Jimmy Carter was so moved by their plight that he brought in a planeload of medicines and supplies for their relief. The luckier war casualties shipped to Egypt for treatment had to stage strikes and demonstrations to get their remittances.

    The obsolescent weapons issued to our military personnel are no match for the munitions of those they are supposed to engage in battle. The Federal Government confirmed that much when it set out to raise a loan of one billion dollars to equip the armed forces to fight Boko Haram.

    Training and re-training have been put in abeyance. Professionalism has been compromised by those who should serve as shining examples. The corruption choking the larger society has corroded the esprit de corps of the armed forces. Budgets are drawn up, funds are released, but there is little to show for all that expenditure.

    The result has been widespread demoralisation. The refusal of a large number of soldiers to proceed on combat duty is a manifestation of that demoralisation. Under the military code, the refusal was an act of insubordination. They were certainly remiss in their obligations.

    But so are the military establishment and the Nigerian state, which failed to hold up their end of the bargain. To make the condemned men pay for their dereliction with their lives will amount to a travesty of justice and morality.

    Demobilising them – with dishonourable discharge in the most egregious cases — would be punishment enough. Too many people have died.

  • The memoir and the magistrate

    The memoir and the magistrate

    General Olusegun Obasanjo never does anything by half.  For him, it is the full Monty or nothing.

    Consider, first, the sartorial transformation he has undergone.  Time was when he went about his business in clothes that seemed to have been made by a journeyman carpenter.  Back then, he would not have won a competition for fine grooming even if he was the only contestant.

    Today, the finest fabrics and the most exquisite tailoring combine to make his wardrobe probably the most elegant among members of his generation and indeed any generation.

    If President Goodluck Jonathan is minded to look into how his estranged patron’s wardrobe has evolved quietly and almost imperceptibly over the past three years, he will find it a rewarding study in real transformation.

    Consider, next, the three volume blockbuster Obasanjo released two weeks ago by way of his autobiography.  Even without the controversy that has dogged My Watch since its release, and the rebuttals that have been issued by those chafing at its content, it is a landmark publication.

    Another memoirist would have released the first volume and spent some two years or longer working on the second, finally proceeding to work on the third and final volume, which would not go to the press for at least another two years.

    Not Obasanjo, and not for him that kind of leisurely pace.  He could not, to do a riff on the author’s style, tarry to stamp the era sharply and indelibly with his wit, wisdom, peeves, prejudices, insights, revelations, revisions, disclosures, afterthoughts, rationalisations and evasions, all spiced with rumour, gossip, putdowns and plain abuse.

    That, after all, is the quintessence of the political memoir.

    I have not read the memoir.  I have not even set my eyes upon it.  Everything I know about it has been gleaned from the newspapers and online publications.  And what I have gleaned from those sources suggests powerfully that, like its author, it is as blunt as a punch to the nose, and as subtle as a sledgehammer.

    I would not have said many of the things Obasanjo is reported to have said, or I would have said them differently. But then, I am not Obasanjo.  In matters of this kind, he operates by his own rules, untroubled by consequences.  If anything, he actually revels in the consequences, seeing them as conclusive evidence that he was dead on target

    And see how reactions to the memoir have poured forth.

    Even before it rolled off the press, President Jonathan, who must have been informed that Obasanjo gave him a thorough scalping in the book, reportedly appealed to the author to delay publication until after the presidential election scheduled for February 2015.

    Obasanjo refused.  As everyone who has worked with or for him knows, and as Dr Jonathan ought to know, Obasanjo is not the most obliging of persons. To his credit, Jonathan took Obasanjo’s refusal for an answer and moved on.

    Police Inspector General, Suleiman Abba, must have been attending to more important issues while all this was going on.   Otherwise, drawing on his acclaimed expertise in constitutional law, he would have deployed his men to block publication by all means necessary, even without instructions “from above.”

    In the end, it took a fugitive from the American criminal justice system with the improbable name of  Kashamu Buruji to do what Jonathan could not do  Buruji, a dual citizen of Nigeria and Benin Republic, had sought an injunction to block publication of My Watch, claiming that it contained libellous material that was the subject of ongoing litigation.

    Buruji had not read the book. Neither had the presiding judge, Mr Justice Valentine Ashi, of the Abuja High Court. Yet, amazingly, Justice Ashi granted the petition.

    This is a classic instance of prior restraint, or pre-publication censorship, and it is inimical to the freedom of speech and press consecrated in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Its application had been derogated back in 18th Century by the great English jurist, Sir William Blackstone, in his monumental Commentaries on the Laws of England – the laws from which our judicial system derives.

    “The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state but this,” Blackstone wrote, “consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his temerity.”

    More than three centuries later, in the famous 1972 case of the Pentagon Papers  centring on publication of classified documents detailing the origins of America’s involvement in the Vietnam, the Supreme Court of the United States held that recourse to prior restraint carries a “heavy presumption” of unconstitutionality.

    It is in truth shocking, therefore, that in 2014, a High Court in Nigeria would grant a petition to block publication of a book that the petitioner – and the judge – had not read, on the speculation that it might contain material prejudicial to a defamation lawsuit the petitioner had filed in respect of the same matter.

    But Justice Ashi was not yet done.

    The book had been published before the injunction, and arrangements for its public presentation completed.  Obasanjo, being Obasanjo, went ahead with the presentation anyway, quipping that public presentation and distribution were not enjoined, only publication, which had been completed.

    Whereupon Justice Ashi, citing Obasanjo for contempt, ordered law enforcement officials to impound unsold copies in circulation and block further distribution until Obasanjo will have purged himself of contempt.

    In a narrow, technical sense, the contempt citation may well be warranted.  But the seizure ordered by the court is clearly an overreach.

    The material at the heart of Buruji’s petition has been discussed widely in national newspapers and newsmagazines and on the Internet for months. Just Google “Buruji,” and everything Obasanjo has been saying about him and everything he has said about Obasanjo in return literally leaps at you from the computer screen, as well as the narrative of Buruji’s entanglement with the American criminal justice system.

    Mr Justice Ashi therefore acted in vain, and arguably in error, when he granted Buruji’s petition to block publication of My Watch. If the memoir did further harm to the reputation Buruji is claiming than the publication that is the subject of his ongoing defamation lawsuit against Obasanjo, he was free to demand aggravated or punitive damages.

    Justice Ashi also overreached when he ordered confiscation of unsold copies of the controversial memoir. The book raised no national security issues, and the matter before the court involved only civil law.

    On both counts, his ruling was an assault on the freedom of the press as expounded by Blackstone.

     

    Re:  Mainstreamers at Work

    Chief Ebenezer (Ebino Topsy) Babatope was grieved that I characterised him as a “mainstreamer “and as an authority on “mainstreaming” in my December 2, 2014, column, “Mainstreamers at work, again.” He says he has never belonged in that group and does not subscribe to its ideology.

    I sincerely apologise for attributing to him views he does not hold and opinions he has never expressed.

    Babatope has paid a fearsome price for his political activism spanning five decades. There was no imputation in my article that his current political affiliation stemmed from pecuniary calculations.

  • Dear General Muhammadu Buhari

    Dear General Muhammadu Buhari

    I count it an honour to be included among the “very influential and patriotic Nigerians” to whom Your Excellency addressed your letter Ref GMB/PE-2007/1, of May 29, 2006, regarding your intention to seek the ticket of the ANPP for the 2007 presidential election.

    You have since secured the ticket, and your presidential campaign is approaching full throttle.

    Congratulations

    From my current abode in the United States, I have been following the electioneering campaign and related developments as reported in the Nigerian newspapers and other information sources on the Internet. I have nothing but high praise for the single-mindedness, the energy, and the passion with which you are pursuing the quest.

    I owe you an explanation and an apology for employing this public medium to respond to your letter. Although it was addressed to me directly and could therefore be considered private communication, it was entirely about public issues. It was also addressed to me, I believe, because I am a public affairs commentator. Besides, since so many issues would be contending for your attention, I was not sure that if sent a private reply, your campaign staffers would bring it to your notice.

    As your candidacy and the support it has been garnering became a subject of heated controversy, I decided that this was the best time to respond, and to do so from this public platform. If this is a breach of protocol, I offer Your Excellency my remorseful apologies.

    In the letter under reference, you identified with remarkable perspicacity the challenges that lie ahead for whoever aspires to be Nigeria’s next president – establishing and nurturing democracy, fashioning appropriate institutions to ensure good governance, and building a just society.

    I am heartened that if elected, you will not abandon the disconnected majority of our compatriots to the not-so-tender mercies of the market, but will seek and maintain a proper balance between the caprice of the market and the judicious application of public policy. They in turn will also find very re-assuring your determination to bring about improvements in literacy, public health, nutrition, employment, and physical security.

    A good many of our compatriots will, I am sure, contest Your Excellency’s assertion that it has been resolved for all time that Nigeria should remain “a single, indivisible, political entity.”

    I can almost hear them ask: “When was the question resolved, where, and by whom?

    The presumption that this question has been resolved, Your Excellency, lies at the heart of some of Nigeria’s most intractable problems. It has bred in some ascendant groups an overweening sense of entitlement, leading them to treat other groups with condescension, to expropriate them and generally relate to them as if they were colonial subjects.

    This attitude has in turn moved disadvantaged groups to demand, with increasing militancy, a negotiated re-structuring of Nigeria, based on equity and justice.

    There is no room for complacency on this important issue, Your Excellency. The unity and indivisibility of Nigeria should never be taken for granted. Unity has to be cultivated and nurtured in the crucible of justice. Without justice, there can be no unity. When the system is seen to be working for justice, not thwarting it, Nigerians will unite behind common purpose, including preserving Nigeria as a single indivisible political unit. Without justice, that goal will remain an aspiration at best.

    I was somewhat encouraged on this score, Your Excellency, by the accent you are placing on social justice in your campaign. The hope must be that, under a Buhari presidency, this accent will at all times animate the process as well as the outcomes of public policy.

    But there is one section of your letter that I find troubling. I crave your indulgence, Your Excellency, to quote the relevant paragraph. It reads: “The first challenge, Nigeria to be or  not to be, has been settled once and for all in favour of Nigeria, despite the occasional picture of impending doom by harbingers of war, unguarded utterances and sensational reporting.”

    This may be nothing more than the speculation of an overwrought imagination, but I hear in the phrase “unguarded utterances” and “sensational reporting” faint echoes of Decree Four, the most repressive press law ever enacted in Nigeria. At the very least, the phrase suggests that Your Excellency still regards contrarian speech and “sensational reporting,” howsoever defined, as irritants that stand in the way of good governance.

    If this is a misreading of your thinking, I hope Your Excellency will quickly disavow it. For that perception runs deep among those who are implacably opposed to your candidacy and those who are merely ambivalent about it. They acknowledge that your Administration meant well for the most part. But they remember all too well how Decree Four, Decree 2, and indeed the posture of your Administration, created a climate of fear and rendered thought socially hazardous.

    Two incidents captured this climate of fear most poignantly. The first was the jailing by a military tribunal of two journalists, Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, for publishing a news story that failed the exorbitant test of not being “accurate in every material particular” – a standard unattainable even in particle physics. The story at issue had no bearing on national security, and the factual error that sealed the doom of the two reporters did not call into serious question the integrity of the reporting.

    The second was the firing-squad execution of three young men convicted of drug peddling by another special tribunal invoking a law passed after the offence was committed. Retrospective punitive laws are always reprehensible. It would be hard to find anything more odious than laws that prescribe death by retroaction.

    This record cannot be prettified, Your Excellency. It is no answer that these incidents occurred under a military regime. Nigeria was not a military barracks, nor was it an occupied territory.

    Unlike some of the people who claim to speak for you or to advance your cause, you have not tried to dodge the facts. You have not sought by vile tactics to assail the honour of those who insist that you confront the record. It remains for you to acknowledge, even if only in the antiseptic language of officials whose policies have gone frightfully awry, that “mistakes were made,” and to enter a solemn pledge that you will never embark on nor permit such measures again.

    Those measures may well have been discussed and approved by the Armed Forces Ruling Council over which Your Excellency presided. They were undoubtedly backed by law. Still, their application did not adhere to the rule of law. Rather, they belonged in the discredited practice of “rule with law.”

    Every barbarous measure the white supremacist regime in South Africa embarked upon was scrupulously backed by law; hence, they claimed, the rule of law operated in the enclave. But the world community was not fooled. It declared apartheid a crime against humanity.

    Your iron self-discipline, your Spartan lifestyle, and your capacity for following up and following through, your large appetite for work, your concern for the disconnected, and your reputation for integrity, will stand you in good stead in the testy days ahead, and if you win the race, in the years ahead.

    But you need to reach out, Your Excellency, to the human rights community, to those who have expressed strong opposition to your candidature, and those who were gravely injured by some of your policies.

    Play Mandela. Play Yakubu Gowon. Start with Nobelist Wole Soyinka, if only because he is the most outspoken and the most influential among your critics. Seek him out during your impending campaign tour of the Southwest, not to appease but to engage him. And be sure reach out to Umaru Dikko, whom you should have no difficulty locating.

    My apologies once again, Your Excellency, for addressing you through this public medium.

    I thank you for your time and attention, and wish you all the best in the race to Aso Rock.

     

    • First published in The NATION on February 6, 2007, this article is reproduced today for its contemporary resonance.

     

     

  • The implosion that never was

    The implosion that never was

    Of the gubernatorial primaries that took place across the country last weekend, the one in Lagos was decidedly the most watched.

    The news media framed it not as a contest among the 12 aspirants seeking the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket, but as a titanic clash of wills between former Lagos State Governor and National Leader of the APC Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and his successor, Babatunde Fashola (SAN).

    Tinubu, the media reported unequivocally, had chosen and was set to impose a candidate on the party in the person of former Lagos State Accountant-General Akinwunmi Ambode, and Lagos being the stronghold of the APC, all that remained was the coronation.  Yes, a primary would be held, but it would be a mere formality; the result was already known.

    APC’s National Legal Adviser, Dr Muiz Banire, appeared to have given some impetus to the “imposition”  in a rambling interview he gave the online journal Premium Times several weeks ago, leading some to quip that, with a legal adviser like Banire, which political party needs a well-placed insider to foul its nest?

    Ambode himself unwittingly gave stories of his alleged preferment some credence when, on the the eve of the primaries, he was reported to have urged other contestants to withdraw from the race because he had already won.

    Fashola, the media reported just as unequivocally, was seething with resentment that, whereas it was left to governors in other states to handpick their successors, he was allowed no say in determining who would take over from him.  There was no better time than now, at the end of his non-renewable tenure, to assert himself.

    To that end, the reports went on, he had picked his own candidate from among the aspirants, to do battle with Tinubu’s candidate at the primaries.  He would match Tinubu Naira for Naira, dollar for dollar, and Lagosians, nay Nigerians, would get to see the real Fashola, not the person who had been forced to operate in Tinubu’s shadow for roughly eight years.

    If he was persuaded that his candidate had been cheated out of victory by hook or crook, Fashola would not hesitate to dump the APC and take shelter under Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP’s) umbrella, not minding the consequences. If that happened, the PDP would capture Lagos. Fashola, many media outlets  reported breezily, was set to beard the Lion of Bourdillon in his redoubt.

    I don’t know how Tinubu came to be called the Lion of Bourdillon.  To be sure, there is an agreeable cadence to the title, and he does live on Bourdillon Avenue, in Ikoyi, Lagos. Other than that, the term would seem misplaced.  He does not have the muscular build of a lion.  He does not roar. More often than not, he is soft-spoken

    But I digress.

    Just to show that he meant business, Fashola, it was said, had dispatched state officials to Ambode’s residence on the eve of the primaries to bundle him out of the place on the grounds that, as a private individual, he was not entitled to live in government quarters.

    These were the tales doing the rounds in newspaper newsrooms, in gossip magazines and on the misnamed social media, all travelling at the speed of the Internet, not forgetting peppersoup  joints and commuter buses,  all of them claiming to derive from “authoritative” or “informed” or “reliable” sources, and all of them “speaking on condition of anonymity.”

    Thus was the stage for a titanic clash of wills between Fashola who, reports said, had resolved grimly to bring down the house down if his candidate did not emerge from the primaries clutching the APC’s gubernatorial ticket, and Tinubu who was just as determined to take out any obstacle in the way of his candidate securing the same ticket

    The die was cast.

    I was troubled and conflicted.

    Troubled, because my mind raced back to the impasse arising from the selection of the SDP gubernatorial candidate for Lagos State, in 1991. That conflict paved the way for the NRC candidate Michael Otedola to win the governorship by default.

    With Lagos State in the hands of the NRC that had called for the annulment of the 1993 presidential election won by the SDP candidate Bashorun Moshood Abiola and supported it enthusiastically, the resistance to that infamy was less than optimal.

    Could that happen again, and perhaps throw up an Obanikoro who as Minister of  State for the Army routinely deployed soldiers to terrorize crews working on public projects in Lagos, or horrible thought, a rampaging Fayose who operates on the principle that statesmanship consists in smashing things up and turning the clock back?

    Having lived in Lagos on and off since 1963, I found those prospects really troubling

    I was also conflicted because, as one who has identified with the progressive cause in all his adult years and can claim some familiarity with Tinubu and Fashola, what should I do amidst reports that the twain were at daggers-drawn, with frightful consequences for the progressive agenda?

    Pretend that I had no inkling of all the tales that were being peddled – tales that might well turn out to contain a grain or two of truth?  Call their senior aides to find out what was going on, given that Tinubu and Fashola may not be reachable in the charged political atmosphere?  Or call them, hoping that you might be lucky to get through and that they would open up.

    When you reach a certain age in our culture, it translates into generational capital you can draw on. If in addition you have acquired some professional standing, you feel entitled to raise issues, confident that in those circles that really count, your bona fides would not be questioned.

    So I called Tinubu and Fashola.

    Tinubu’s position is already on the public record.  I have nothing to add to it.

    What Fashola told me — and this was before Tinubu’s statement was published— tallied in all essentials with that statement.

    The contest, they have said, was never about individuals.  It was about Lagos State, its future, and the well-being of its residents.  No aspirant was shut out of the contest.  The process was fair, and the outcome unexceptionable.  The clash of wills on which the imminent implosion of the APC was grounded was the confection of talebearers.

    The loser in this narrative is the PDP that had stoked the fire assiduously with help from its proxies, persuaded that an implosion in the APC would be its sure path to power in Lagos State.

    Now, Chief Olabode George and company will have to devise another battle plan.

  • Mainstreamers at work, again

    Mainstreamers at work, again

    These Mainstreamers – they never give up.

    They have been at this game since the First Republic, canvassing that the way for the Yoruba nation to achieve self-actualization under the Nigerian sun is to eschew the diversity undergirded by the federal arrangement and insert itself in a political mainstream, the better to secure a bigger allocation of the country’s resources and political appointments.

    In one breath, and with admirable high-mindedness, they proclaim that the Yoruba cannot all subscribe to the same political tendency. In the very next breath, they seek to corral the Yoruba into what they regard as Nigeria’s political mainstream

    The group appears in many guises and disguises but the goal is always the same:  to deliver their kinfolk from their addiction to opposition politics and thus rescue them from the marginalisation the group claims has been their unhappy lot of the Yoruba since independence.

    They returned briefly to the spotlight last week, this time as Concerned Yoruba Leaders, under the aegis of the Yoruba Unity Summit, which is at bottom PDP in the Southwest, plus the usual professional mainstreamers and “monarchs” who command  little allegiance and even less authority in their domains but nevertheless bask in the delusion that they represent and speak for their “subjects” – a delusion that those courting them are only too willing to cultivate and nurture with blandishments.

    This latest outing was staged in Ile Ife, the cradle of the Yoruba, in the Oduduwa Hall of the Obafemi Awolowo University, an institution dedicated to learning and culture.  There, gathered for common purpose under the beatific shadow of The Great Progenitor, were his legatees and his children, that purpose being to cajole President Goodluck Jonathan into granting the Yoruba a bigger slice of the spoils and preferment of national office in return for their block support for his re-election.

    Or maybe it was the other way round:  The Mainstreamers would deliver the block vote of the Yoruba Southwest to ensure Dr. Jonathan’s re-election, and he in turn will, as he phrased it, “take care of the Yoruba.”  The one was offering what it does not possess to secure what the other cannot provide.

    The rump of the participants comprised “monarchs” from Ekiti, formerly Fountain of Knowledge and Land of Honour, now Land of Stomach Infrastructure, bused to the venue by the great apostle and promoter of Yoruba unity, Governor Ayodele Fayose. And the conference was treated to a riveting disquisition on Mainstreaming by no less an authority than Ebenezer Babatope, who has been espousing the subject with the same zeal with which he used to espouse socialism and Awoism before he saw the light.

    Dr. Jonathan, trust him, rose magnificently to the occasion. He told his hosts how, almost four years later, he was still in shock that his efforts to ensure that a member of the House of Representatives from the Southwest was anointed Speaker – fourth in the national hierarchy- — was sabotaged by politicians from the self-same Southwest who cared more about ideology than the progress of their own people.

    I cannot vouch that this is the kind of progress the Mainstreamers had in mind.

    After all, the previous Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, is better remembered for threatening to unleash the military— as distinct from ordinary riot police — on the people of Ekiti to mainstream them under the canopy of the PDP, and for accumulating great personal wealth under cloudy circumstance, than for anything he did for the Yoruba nation, for Ogun State, or for that matter his hometown, Abeokuta.

    As Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro is remembered only for mobilising armed soldiers to terrorise contractors and crew working on projects being executed for the public by the APC-controlled Lagos State Government, claiming without fear and without research that the sites belonged to the Federal Government.

    God help Lagos State and its residents if he succeeds in his gubernatorial bid.

    It may well be that the fault was with Bankole and Obanikoro, not with Dr. Jonathan.  In whatever case, the man does not to nuance.

    To return to the Yoruba Unity Summit:

    They could have staged the conference with overarching symbolism in the expansive quarters of the Ife monarch, guardian of the O’dua flame and a key participant at the Summit. They could have staged it with no great loss of symbolism in any of the event centres in the ancient city. Instead they chose the faded but still fetching campus of the Obafemi Awolowo University.

    The university has never been a citadel of the cant and humbug that were being peddled at the Summit.  The Mainstreamers could not have swooped on the campus or invited Dr. Jonathan along without the knowledge and consent of the university authorities, who should have known that the suffocating security presence that usually went with such conferences would create tension and disrupt campus life.

    Apparently, the authorities did not care, and neither did the Mainstreamers.

    Where students at the Obafemi Awolowo University saw wanton provocation, not a few of the summiteers saw an opportunity for reinforcing their stomach infrastructure, a goal rendered all the more urgent by the collapse of the Naira.

    And many indeed were the summiteers who returned home with the tensile strength of that part of their anatomy greatly enhanced, I gather.

    The horrific carnage at the Kano Central Mosque that claimed more than 100 lives and left more than twice as many injured occurred on the same day that Dr. Jonathan landed in Ile-Ife in a military helicopter to woo the Mainstreamers for his re-election bid, and barely a week after he declared in London that it was a sure sign Nigeria had Boko Haram on the ropes when that nihilist group had not overrun another town in one week.

    Even so, he responded to the carnage with characteristic swiftness, ordering the security services “to launch a full-scale investigation and to leave no stone unturned until all agents of terror undermining the right of every citizen to life and dignity are tracked down and brought to justice.”

    If the security services had the capacity to do that, would the carnage have occurred in the first instance?

    But again, not even Dr. Jonathan’s most implacable critics have ever accused him of giving a damn about nuance.

     

    Niyi Osundare, NNOM

    The 2014 Nigeria National Order of Merit could not have gone to a worthier recipient than Niyi Osundare, globally acclaimed and much-garlanded poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist, distinguished teacher and public intellectual of the first rank, a man of great moral stature who leads by personal example rather than by precept.

    In Osundare, we find consummate literary craftsmanship, social vision, and a passion for justice and human freedom distilled into a voice of reasoned engagement that is all the more powerful for being modest. In a lofty cause, you could not wish for a more formidable ally. In an ignoble venture you could not have a more uncompromising adversary.

    Amidst the gloom that has encircled and now threatens to choke Nigeria, this award has largely being spared the corruption that rules the land. It is a reassuring testament that Nigeria can still be true to its highest ideals.

    Akoyejo (or “gatherer of prizes,” loosely translated from the Yoruba): The Nobel, next.

  • The making of a police state

    The making of a police state

    One year and five days ago (November 19, 2013), my column, “The road to a police state,” appeared in this space.

    “Just to be absolutely certain that I wasn’t missing something,” the column began, I inspected President Jonathan Goodluck’s Transformation – or is it Transformative?—Agenda before writing this piece.

    “The Agenda, I can report with the highest confidence, does not include turning Nigeria into a police state.

    “Yet, that is what has been happening lately, sometimes brazenly and sometimes insidiously.

    “With each passing day, Nigeria bears closer resemblance to a state in which the activities of the people are strictly controlled with the help of a police force or “security agents,” in place of regular operation of administrative and judicial organs of government based on publicly known legal procedure.

    “That is the definition of a police state.”

    At that time, Mbu Joseph Mbu, then Rivers State Police Commissioner, was at every opportunity countermanding Governor Chibuzor Amaechi and carrying on for all practical purposes as if he was leader of a disloyal Opposition.

    The police had brusquely terminated a meeting that seven governors and officials who broke away from the PDP were holding in a private house in Abuja

    Kitted as for battle, the police had sealed off the conference room of the Nicon Luxury Hotel in Abuja, where the Socio-Economic Rights Accountability Project had planned to discuss Nigeria’s freedom of information law, with scheduled speakers from Europe, the United States and Nigeria.

    The courts had ordered the re-instatement of former Osun State governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola as PDP national secretary, finding that his purported removal from that office was ultra vires.

    But no sooner had Oyinlola served notice that he was set to resume work at the PDP’s Wadata Plaza national headquarters in Abuja than battle tanks and police armed for combat blockaded the place. It was almost as if Boko Haram’s high command had just served notice that its men had landed in the neighbourhood.

    In the run-up to the gubernatorial election in Anambra, the police command in Imo State announced with breathless excitement the arrest of 180 “thugs” and “hoodlums” and “bandits” from Osun on their way to Anambra for the purpose — what else – of rigging the poll.

    The police claimed to have recovered from them voter ID cards and other election documents, not forgetting “other dangerous weapons.”   A far more credible source insists that the 180 were accredited election monitors belonging to the Justice and Equity Organisation.

    In another manifestation of the drift toward a police state, agents of the secret police subjected APC chieftain Nasir El Rufai to false imprisonment. His crime? He was in the Anambra State capital, Awka, to monitor the poll.

    In all this, not a word of caution, much less disapproval, came one way or another from Dr. Jonathan, or the so-called Presidency.

    Today, a year later, those developments seem almost benevolent compared with some of the things that have happened lately. The constitutional state is in full retreat, supplanted by the police state of Dr. Jonathan’s design.

    It is no longer the case that Nigeria is well on the way to becoming a police state. Nigeria is a de facto police state.

    Even before taking office as governor of Ekiti on the platform of the PDP, Ayo Fayose led a band of thugs to the precincts of the High Court in Ado Ekiti to beat up judges and tear up court documents, the better to prevent the court from entertaining a law suit challenging his eligibility for the contest. The assailing mob was given safe escort by the police.

    President Jonathan and the country’s chief law officer, Bello Adoke, saw nothing, heard nothing, said nothing, and did nothing. It suited them perfectly.

    Next, Fayose purported to convene a meeting of the state Assembly, at which seven of the 26 elected members of the legislature purported to have impeached the Speaker in his absence, and to have cleared some nominees for executive positions at state and local levels.

    That kangaroo session was facilitated by the police.

    President Jonathan, to whom the police are answerable in the final analysis, heard nothing, saw nothing, said nothing, and did nothing. Neither did the chief law officer in his administration. How could they when it redounded to the advantage of the PDP?

    How else can one characterise the situation in which the Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba, presumes to determine that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, fourth in the order of hierarchy among elected officials forfeited official protection when he defected from the riling PDP to the APC?

    Even by Nigeria’s standards, it is ominous indeed when the police take it upon themselves to pronounce on constitutional matters and then proceed to act on the basis of that pronouncement.

    Neither President Jonathan nor the chief law officer of his administration is perturbed by this development. They probably instigated it anyway, jointly or severally.

    National Security Adviser Sambo Dasuki felt obliged to deny through a spokesperson, that he had ordered Tambuwal’s arrest. He would have been more reassuring if he had asserted when he should have asserted that, under the constitution, he has no power to order anyone’s arrest without the due process of law.

    Any hope that the withdrawal of Tambuwal’s security detail was just another aberration evaporated when the police invaded the precincts of the National Assembly, their object being to prevent Tambuwal from attending a meeting of the House that Dr. Jonathan and the PDP were staging for the purpose of impeaching him.

    A scandalised public was still wondering what the country had been turned into when the secret police broke into the APC’s Data Centre in Opebi, smashed up stuff, arrested some staffers, carted off as server, computers hard disks, and a truckload of documents, persuaded,                 State Security spokesperson Marilyn Ogar said that the facility was being used for cloning permanent voter registration cards and other “unwholesome activities.”

    The invaders had gone there not to investigate an allegation but to inflict injury on the Opposition, to cripple its preparations for the general elections.   Only President Jonathan and the PDP stand to profit from the heist, a reckless abuse of state power on a scale almost beyond belief.

    As usual, the President and the chief law officer of his administration saw nothing, heard nothing, did nothing, and said nothing.

    Watching many legislators, distinguished and merely honourable, negotiate the wrought-iron perimeter fence of the National Assembly with the nimbleness and agility one thought were the preserve of professional athletes in their prime was about the only redeeming grace to the execrable events I have detailed here.

    I gather that not a few of them have since learned what politicians of the First Republic learned the hard way: Never wear a three-piece traditional ensemble to a political event. Leave the agbada at home, in the car, or fold it neatly and tuck it under the arm.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Gradgrind in Abuja

    Gradgrind in Abuja

    Suddenly, Nigeria is literally drowning in an avalanche of facts and figures on every aspect of the National Condition.

    There was a time, not long ago, when you could hardly hold on to anything about Nigeria’s condition as fact.  Not even something as basic as the country’s population.  According to some of the more reliable authorities, if you hived off 25 million from whatever official figure was in circulation, you might be getting close to the true figure.

    No one could tell how much crude oil was being lifted offshore or onshore and by whom, how much of it was refined locally, how much of the refined product was being consumed locally, now for how much was refined petroleum was being imported.

    Consumption was said to be so heavily subsidized that if pernicious support was not ended immediately, the entire country would have to go into receivership. Yet, they could not define just what the subsidy consisted in.

    And, of course, the book keepers had no idea of just how much petrodollars was accruing to the exchequer after all the thieving that routinely creamed off fully 40 per cent of production, according to knowledgeable foreign sources.

    All that is now history.

    Where previously an acute dearth of facts made planning almost impossible, we now have something close to superfluity of data. Wild and usually self-serving guesswork is out. Certitude and precision are in.

    It is almost as if the Dickensian character Thomas Gradgrind leapt out of the pages of Hard Times and landed in Abuja just before the Great Declaration, seized the machinery for data collection, storage, analysis, retrieval and reporting, and overhauled it so that it can keep pace with the Transformation gale sweeping the country.

    Dr Gradgrind’s intervention has in effect, transformed the Transformation Agenda itself from  a ritual chant into an actuality that can be measured, weighed and gauged.  In this age of empiricism, how can you claim that anything is being transformed when you cannot measure and weigh and gauge the changes resulting from transformation?

    It is only fair to note at the outset that Dr Gradgrind, stern schoolmaster that he was, would have shaken his Victorian head at the overweening ambition of the marathon speech in general, and especially the lexical incontinence that ran through it.

    “Dear Compatriots,” it began. By the fourth paragraph, the Eagle Square audience, comprising a sizable crop of rented cheerleaders from all over the country, had been transformed into “distinguished ladies and gentlemen.”   I can almost see the face of the Rt Hon (or is it His Excellency) David Mark turn quizzical, as if he was trying to figure out what that assemblage could have in common with  members of the Senate, of which he is President.

    As the speech progressed, Dr. Jonathan abandoned that line and went folksy, calling the audience “my people.”  It was as if he was back in Otuoke, trading banter with the locals over a barrel of the local brew. Later still, he injected some element of endearment into his oration, and the audience became “my dear people,” as in this oratorical gem:  “We have moved forward.  Only forward!!! my dear people. Forward!!!”

    It got more collegial when the audience became his “fellow Nigerians.” It got positively fraternal when he called the audience “my brothers and sisters.”And so on and so forth.

    But where it mattered most, you could not fail to notice the guiding hand of Dr. Gradgrind in the Great Declaration, the history-making event at which Dr. Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe  Jonathan, who, unknown to Nigerians until he revealed the fact several years ago, is also an Awolowo by adoption – announced that he would be seeking re-election in deference to the supplications and yearnings of 17.8 million Nigerians.

    Not ghosts, mark you, but actual living adult Nigerians in the fullest possession of all their faculties, precisely 17.8 million of them, not more and not fewer, according to those who orchestrated the event.

    Here is one gem, emblematic of the Gradgrind touch:

    Access to potable water rose from 58 to 67 per cent in the four years from 2010 to 2014, coinciding neatly with Dr. Jonathan’s term.

    Those who doubt this will do well to consider the boom in “pure water” sales all over the country  Such is the abundance that even those misguided elements who were demonstrating in Lagos against the plan to cut gasoline services had access to free bottled water.

    Here is another:

    Sanitation coverage rose from 32 per cent to 41 per cent, again between 2010 and 2014. I claim no familiarity with the term but I suspect it refers to garbage and sewage disposal across the country.

    Even the jaundiced opposition will have to concede that a government that can keep track of and painstakingly document “sanitation coverage” nationwide and not just in Abuja, cannot be  written off as “non-performing.”

    And yet another:

    In 2009, average life expectancy was a dismal 41 years. Today, five years later, it stands at 52 years.  If this is not life more abundant, as the jaundiced critics are sure to contend, it is certainly life more elongated.

    Nor is that all the good news on the health front. “Some of our hospitals now perform open heart surgeries, kidney transplants and other challenging operations as we reposition our health service to end decades of medical tourism that drains our scarce resources,” Dr Jonathan declared.

    Did you hear that, Germany, India, and France?  Your days of profiting from the health challenges of Nigeria’s top officials and their wives and surreptitiously siphoning state secrets  out of them is over

    For decades, Nigeria’s artery, the River Niger, was too silted for navigation.  It has now been dredged all the way from Warri, in Delta State, to Baro, in Niger State.  And in just the last three years, 1.6 million tons of cargo had been freighted across that waterway, and exactly 6.7 million passengers who would have had to take an expensive cruise to enjoy the pleasures of water transportation experienced the thrill right here at home.

    There is no vagueness here, no ambiguity:  1.6 million tons of cargo, not “more than one million” or “roughly two million tons of cargo;   not “more than 6 million” or “nearly 7 million, passengers,” as those in the business of fudging would have stated.  It doesn’t get more precise.

    Apparently, they haven’t heard in the Transformation Situation Room the latest about the inland port that was supposed to be built near Lokoja for which almost the entire contract sum has been paid.

    No construction is going on at the site.  The contractor has threatened to file a defamation lawsuit if the maritime authorities had the temerity to declare the site abandoned.  Meanwhile the maritime authorities cannot move against him because he is politically connected.

    It must not be supposed, however, that many of the other multi-billion Naira projects Dr. Jonathan was rhapsodising over have gone or are headed the way of the Lokoja port project The sprawling power project, for instance , is scheduled, finally, to deliver guaranteed electricity in “several months.”

    On the agricultural front, the picture is even more gladdening.  Irrigation projects set up across the  country by —who else — the Jonathan Administration, have in the past there years generated grain harvests of 3 million metric tons, with a cash value of N45 billion.  Again, very precise.

    There you have it.  The Transformation Train is streaking on transformed tracks across Nigeria as a speed that almost staggers the imagination.

    No wonder the Great Proclamation, with its intimations of even greater transformation ahead, was followed by a great deal of winning and dining at the Villa, according to an inside source.

    Well might one say, as Oscar Wilde said in another context:  In Abuja and with Abuja, nothing succeeds like excess.

     

  • Sleep-walking toward Mogadishu

    Sleep-walking toward Mogadishu

    They must be rejoicing in their fortified encampments in the Sambisa Forest and in the open savannah stretching from Bauchi through Borno to Adamawa, mocking and taunting a demoralised and ill-equipped national army, shaming some of its leading commanders by capturing, occupying and re-naming their hometowns.

    And it is not just on the battlefield that Boko Haram is prevailing. It is also proving superior in strategic thinking. It inveigled a desperate Federal Government and a weary national army into announcing and observing a ceasefire and assuring a traumatised nation that the Chibok girls were about to be set free, more than six months after they were abducted from their school hostels.

    Meanwhile, Boko Haram consolidated its hold on the areas it has occupied and, virtually unopposed, opened a new front with lightning speed, stamping it with its accustomed bestiality and fanaticism.

    It has been suggested that the group the Federal Government was negotiating with had no mandate to speak for Boko Haram or conclude any agreement in its name.

    If this is true, it would amount to a failure of intelligence with few parallels anywhere.

    Two years ago, President Goodluck Jonathan declared that Boko Haram would be crushed within six months. Like his deadlines for generating and distributing electricity to a nation that has been forced to make peace with darkness, it came and passed.

    When the UK, the United States, France, Australia and Israel promised logistic and intelligence assistance in locating and freeing the Chibok girls and containing the insurgency, an excited Dr. Jonathan stopped just short of declaring victory.

    They came, they saw, and have maintained a presence of sorts, but without achieving any significant results. The national army and the intelligence services are no better off, and the Jonathan administration is no wiser.

    Lately, Dr. Jonathan cajoled the National Assembly into authorising him to raise a loan of one billion dollars to equip the armed and intelligence services to fight the insurgency. He and his military advisers seem to have come to the painful reality that Boko Haram is not going anywhere soon.

    Boko Haram is in fact waxing stronger everyday, as Ambassador Ade Adefuye told a delegation of the influential United States Council on Foreign Relations yesterday, in Washington DC.

    In the midst of the unfolding disaster, no senior political official has resigned voluntarily or has been asked to do so.  The Commander-in-Chief has not deigned to go near the warfront to rally the troops and to give succour to the beleaguered population of displaced persons.

    But this has not stopped his rented cheerleaders from placing him on the same pedestal with Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and Nelson Mandela, men who led from the front, by personal example, risking or sacrificing everything for the causes they believed in and championed.  Must they insult and assault the memories of these great personages and the intelligence of the Nigerian public in their desperation to sell a gravely flawed candidate for re-election?

    In their interactions with the rank and file, some of Dr. Jonathan’s field commanders seem to have inspired mutiny rather than loyalty. One of them is the butt of jokes and jibes on the Internet. They say he is often so inebriated that, for the most part, he can’t figure out whether he is coming or going.  But he and his colleagues remain in command, carrying on business as usual under admittedly difficult circumstances.

    Their circumstances are not to be envied.

    The nation’s armed forces are yet to recover from the planned emasculation of the Babangida-Abacha years. To ensure his personal survival and the survival of his regime, Babangida took every measure conceivable to make it almost impossible for them to organise or execute a coup.  Military aircraft were grounded, tanks were put out of commissioned, and weapons systems were not upgraded. Advanced training became a favour, to be dispensed to handpicked aides.  Toadyism supplanted professionalism.

    Military formations with awe-inspiring names littered the landscape, but they existed only on paper for the most part.  To cite one notorious example, there were “amphibious brigades” here and there.  But when a Kaduna-bound military transport plane carrying more than 150 officers crashed into the Ejigbo swamps in 1992 some five minutes after take-off from Lagos airport, no military craft of any description got to the scene within 48 hours.

    The military had to rely on the equipment furnished by the civilian contractor Julius Berger to reach the scene, for salvage rather than rescue operations. All the passengers had died of suffocation.

    The civil war in Liberia and Sierra Leone gave Babangida an opportunity to ship out officers and men of units or formations whose docility he could not count on.

    Where Babangida was concerned with self-preservation, Sani Abacha was concerned with self-enrichment. And if looking the other way as Abacha indulged his overweening greed helped Babangida remain in power, so much the better.

    Thus, whether as Chief of Defence Staff or Minister of Defence in the Babangida regime and its doomed extension, Ernest Shonekan’s Interim National Government, gorged himself remorselessly on the defence appropriations. Military salaries and benefits went unpaid for months.

    According to the online archives of the military historian Dr. Nowa Omoigui, at such moments, the men of the military would shrug their shoulders in resignation and say “Sani ya chi,” literally, Sani has eaten (the money.)

    Somehow, perhaps thanks to Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, the admiral without a fleet —who was Babangida’s vice president, the Navy managed to keep its appropriations out of Abacha’s capacious maw. And so it was not unusual for the army to borrow from the Navy to pay salaries

    Back when he was chair of the Presidential Advisory Council, General TY Danjuma had warned Aso Rock that if it did not move vigorously against Boko Haram, Nigeria might go the way of Somalia.  That end-point is distant, but the process is underway. Boko Haram has set Nigeria on the long, treacherous road to Mogadishu.

    It is still possible to arrest the drift. Dr Jonathan must show focused and sustained political resolve, and so must the civilian leadership of the armed and intelligence services. The professional leadership of the armed and intelligence must show greater imagination and capacity.

    Everything must be done to boost the morale of the fighting forces. They must be given the tools they need to carry out their assigned tasks.

    In the final analysis, the insurgency is an armed response to political grievances. A lasting solution will therefore have to be sought in political accommodation rather than in military victory.

    To that end, the major political parties must begin to countenance the formation of a government of national unity after the forthcoming general elections.

     

     

  • Nigerian politics and The Matthew Effect

    Nigerian politics and The Matthew Effect

    Surveying the road to the 2015 general elections this past week, I have found myself thinking again about what sociologists call The Matthew Effect.

    The phenomenon takes its name from the Parable of the Five Talents in St. Matthew’s Gospel 25:14-30, where Jesus likened the kingdom of heaven to the fate of the servants who were given various sums of money to look after by their master on the eve of a long journey.

    Those who had been given the most substantial sums had invested and multiplied them. The one who had the least amount had simply buried it and returned to his master exactly what he had been given. No value added.

    The master, a hard, usurious fellow, angrily took away what he had given to the slothful servant and handed it to the servant who had multiplied his own endowment.

    Lesson:  To those who have much, more will be given.  From those who have little, even that little will be taken away and given to those who have much.

    In its own way, The Matthew Effect accounts for how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, or how, according to the contemporary sociologist Daniel Rigney, advantage begets further advantage.

    The Biblical parable is about faith and the spiritual realm, but The Matthew Effect, a coinage attributed to the Columbia sociologist Robert K. Merton, applies strikingly to the material realm, and even to the realm of knowledge.

    On the material plane, it explains the iniquitous distribution of public resources in Nigeria – how, to cite a notorious example, the office messenger in Aso Rock has to fend his family            from his meagre earnings, whereas President Goodluck Jonathan, even allowing for the prohibitive cost of that incomparable executive delicacy, cassava bread, can appropriate close to a billion naira in public funds as culinary expenses.

    The Matthew Effect also helps explain why the janitors who clean the halls and offices of the  National Assembly are responsible for clothing themselves, whereas the legislators receive from the public purse more than three times the monthly wage of a janitor as “wardrobe allowance” for every month assuming the stipend has not been raised to keep pace with inflation.

    And it explains why those same legislators get a hefty monthly “hardship allowance” for the  unspeakably dangerous work of  rubberstamping proposals from the Executive Branch and staging endless hearings, and whereas there is no such perk for their drivers who live in the God-forsaken parts of town and battle their way to work early and close only when it pleases the master for a little more than the minimum wage, if that.

    Much of the jockeying for 2015 and the likely outcome is easily explained by The Matthew Effect. Now, governors who have reached the term limit are now being importuned by “their people” to retire into the Senate and live happily and prosperously ever after. Where the people are not moving quickly enough to beseech them to take opulent retirement, the governors are positioning themselves for the transition.

    And as sure as Nigeria is Nigeria, advantage will beget more advantage.

    And as the re-election campaign fortunes of Dr Jonathan and Senate President David Mark show eloquently, those who already possess a great deal will be given much more.

    Take David Mark first.

    Since the end of the civilwar when he was appointed “Abandoned Properties” czar in the old Rivers State, his has been a steady march from one gold mine to another – military governor of the old Niger State, minister of Communications, in which capacity he declared that telephones were not for the poor – never mind his denial some 20 years later – and president of the Senate since 2007. He reputedly owns two swanky courses in the U.K., and perhaps another one or two elsewhere.

    If he has any problem with money at all, it is how to spend it. By one account, he has made enough money to last him and his progeny till the end of time.

    And yet, the grateful people of Benue South Senatorial District could not leave it to him to purchase the PDP’s nomination form for re-election. Nine local government chairmen, drawing no doubt on their federal handouts, plonked down an unspecified sum to get him the document, which he humbly accepted at his Otukpo country home, tears of gratitude streaking down his face.

    Mark rose magnificently to the occasion, assuring his visitors and the crowd that had gathered outside his home, in a speech prepared for the moment, that he would be willing to lay down his life for the sustenance and stability of democracy and for the creation of Apa state if they asked him to do so.

    Ah, the nobility of sacrifice!

    The usual suspects will no doubt be scoffing that this was sheer grandstanding, an empty               and therefore meaningless gesture. We will never know, since “his people,” much to their disappointment, chose not to put Mark to the test.

    This is obviously a different David Mark from the one who had during the “June 12” crisis of 1993, vowed to personally shoot President-elect Moshood Abiold to death if Abiola was allowed to take office.

    Not even the passage of more than 20 years can fully explain how, in the one instance Mark threatened to liquidate the winner of a democratic election rather than allow him take office, and in the other he declared that he was prepared to lay down his life for the sustenance and stability of democracy.

    Nor has there even been in the Mark camp the appearance of a road-to-Damascus conversion.

    With the vast resources of Nigeria under his control, to say nothing of his official remuneration that, however large – it is apparently a state secret – is dwarfed by all manner of allowances and discretionary spending, Dr Jonathan may not be the sixth wealthiest African head of state. But he would have to be the most improvident African head of state if he cannot come up with N22 million to purchase his campaign reelection form.

    His teeming admirers, ranging from half-starved youth corpers to shadowy organisations founded and funded by the so-called Presidency, would not even let him rummage his bedroom or cocktail bar for some pocket change to cover the transaction. At the last toting up, they had raised nearly five times the amount needed for the form. PDP governors and Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria, widely believed to be a proxy of the Jonathan Administration, contributed N22 million apiece.

    Compare and contrast the electioneering fortunes of Dr Jonathan and Senator Mark with that Texas State University-based-poet, writer and public intellectual, Ogaga Ifowodo, seeking to represent the Isoko Nation in the National Assembly. He reckons that he needs some N57 million for the entire campaign – from seeking the nomination to mounting and running a focused race right up to polling day, and has said that much in a letter addressed to the Nigerian public.

    Dr Ifowodo is driven by an overarching commitment to public service rare among the younger generation, a belief that he can make a difference and a desire to pursue it.  But his problem is how to find the money, whereas if Dr Jonathan and Senator Mark have any problem at all with money, it is how to spend it.

    The kind of help being heaped on Dr Jonathan and Senator Mark who do not need it and, it has to be said to their credit, have not asked for it, should be going to the Ifowodos, to insulate them from the pernicious Matthew Effect.

  • An earful from Fayose’s people

    An earful from Fayose’s people

    When I turned in my copy for this space last week (“Fayose 2.0:  A troubling start”), I fully expected that its publication would set off spirited comments, pro and contra, in roughly equal measure.

    I was flat out wrong. Reactions poured forth all right, but they were far more contra than pro. Governor (Dr) Peter Ayodele Fayose’s teeming supporters gave me an earful, and not just on account of the issues I raised in the column.

    In retrospect, I should have kept in mind what a young resident of Ekiti told me in a telephone conversation last June as the returns of the state’s gubernatorial election were being tallied.

    Fayose was going to win and win big, he had asserted.

    “Despite the integrated poultry scam on which he expended hundreds of millions of Naira without producing a single egg?” I asked.

    “The people have largely forgotten, and those who haven’t forgotten don’t care,” he rejoined.

    “And despite facing two murder raps?” I pursued.

    “If Fayose should kill off one-half of the population of Ekiti State,” he said without fear and without revulsion, “the remaining half would still vote for him.”

    This is of course a gross libel on the proud, valiant, principled and highly accomplished sons and daughters of Ekiti I have been privileged to know at work, at play and in social intercourse. Fecklessness is not their defining character.

    My interlocutor, I suspect, was carried away by Fayose’s folksy ways and his capacity for “connecting” with the mass of the people, to the point of believing that his hero could do whatever he needed to do and not have to worry about consequences.

    “We just love him,” he added, in case I didn’t grasp what he had been saying.

    If I had kept this profile in mind, I would perhaps have anticipated the sandbagging that was sure to follow the publication of my October 21 column, “Fayose 2.0: A troubling start.”

    Not all of it was bad news, however.

    Duro Afonja, a longstanding follower of this column from whom we had heard nothing for quite a while entered this thoughtful critique online:

    “It’s too easy to laugh at Fayose, but while shaking our heads over stomach infrastructure, agbo jedi (herbal concoction for haemorroids) etc, it is necessary to conduct an inquiry into what Fayemi did wrong to squander his goodwill to the extent that the people preferred a Fayose’s return to his continuation.

    “The people knew Fayose, so all he said at his 2nd inauguration was not news to them, yet they chose him. Fayemi and the APC crowd took the people for granted, became complacent and rested on their PhDs.

    “Fayemi would have written and delivered a better inaugural address, he’s a gentleman etc. but na dat one the people go chop?

    “Stomach Infrastructure should not just be seen in terms of rice and chicken but in terms of the disconnect of government from the people.”

    Another correspondent, who signed off as “asula”, wrote in a text message:  “Thanks for that wonderful piece on Fayose . . . but with such serious character defect how did he manage to persuade Ekiti kete to elect him for a second time?”

    Also belonging in the category of the more thoughtful reactions is this one:  “I read your column of October 21 with dismay. As an experienced and respected columnist, you didn’t’ seem to see anything good in the inaugural speech of the new governor.  The former governor you eulogised like an angel recorded his own minus while in office. There should be a balance between IDEALISM and PRAGMATISM.  Whatever may be the inaugural speech of the new governor, it is too early to judge and crucify. Be modest in your writings.”

    And this, also:  “You have x-rayed all the misdeeds of Fayose in the past. He didn’t do any good thing?”

    From then on, the text messages, unsigned for the most part, get downright tacky.  Here is a random selection:

    “Olatunji, you talk like a little boy, you have turned your old age into a curse.”

    Another:  “Your write-up today is full of lies and jargons. I know you as a regular beggar at Asiwaju’s residence.”

    You have to wonder what he was doing so regularly at Asiwaju’s residence.  But I digress.

    “Not all pots are black,” wrote another correspondent in an sms. “Believe what you believe and let Fayose be. You are full of emptiness.”

    Yet another wrote, taunting:  “You are obviously a hater and an enemy of progress.  You still can’t digest the fact that a not-too-schooled Fayose upstaged a well-schooled Fayemi. I feel your pain.”

    Then this:  “Your write-up lacked depth. I wonder how you became a professor. You should be ashamed of yourself. At 70, you collect pennies from your paymasters to run elected officials down.”

    You have to wonder how much he collects from his own paymasters. But I digress again, for the last time.

    This next comment cannot but strike you with its lexical freshness. It reads:  “I know quite a few professors who are groundnut materials. You have now joined the list. Hungry professors like you are a shame to academia. Destructive criticism of a man of the people does not serve any good purpose.”

    Me?  “Groundnut professor?” That’s a new one. Who says Fayemi’s people have a monopoly on learning?

    Back during the Babangida era, some young, obviously disgruntled and probably envious junior academics came up with a hilarious taxonomy of the Nigerian professoriate.  First there were those they called agbero intellectuals. The Yoruba prefix denotes the motor-park tout, whose task is to get the vehicle filled with passengers, without the slightest thought about its carrying capacity or its roadworthiness. The only thing he cares about is his commission, calculated from the number of passengers.

    The agbero intellectual, then, served any government in power or any cause, no matter its complexion or ideology. A denizen of the corridors of power, he flaunted his access at the slightest provocation or with no provocation, marshaled the argument to justify any policy. His commission was the trappings of office and, like the motor-park tout, he prized it above all else.

    Then there was the miliki (or playboy) intellectual, cigar-chomping, cognac-swilling, weighed down by gold necklaces, more concerned with living the good life than with changing a footnote, to say nothing of changing a paradigm.  He drove the finest cars and hobnobbed with the men of the moment, the better to indulge in their favourite pastime of influence-peddling.

    I think there was another category – perhaps two — that I cannot recall with confidence. But “groundnut intellectual” or “groundnut professor” was definitely not one of them.

    It is a new entry in the vocabulary of scholarship, for which my correspondent who, most likely from an excess of modesty, chose not to claim ownership.

    Could I through this medium appeal to him to shed his modesty and step forward to claim just credit for what is sure to enter the books as a lexical breakthrough?

    Should Fayose ever require a Senior Special Assistant on Mental Infrastructure, there is his man.