The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • SA: looting a la carte

    In South Africa, it is looting a la carte; or vandals table d’hôte — a complete family gang comprising the father, the mother and the child(ren), all beatific in their plunder of foreign shops!

    Dramatic?  Yes, for no one could swear the looting kids were children of the nearest looting adults.

    But no: it isn’t to further tar the rampaging xenophobes of Oliver Thambo’s country — more of Afro-phobes, South Africa insists — busy claiming foreign scalps, though under searing international scorn.

    Still, the defining, if troubling pictures, from the plunder and arson, are exactly that: men, women and children in an orgy of looting, just to sate patriotic ire — and rumbling tummies — against “criminal” foreigners.

    Now, after the hurly burly is done, and the battle is lost and won, how do you convince that child, tender veteran of patriotic looting, that looting and arson are evil — long after the hated foreigners had fled, and the shops remaining are the natives’?

    Xeno (foreigner) and phobe (irrational hate or fear) are Greek words. Sparta was the classical xenophobic enclave — all antiquity rumbled with its aversion for non-Spartans, even among the Greeks.

    Yes, Sparta built a fierce military machine, that knocked its contemporaries cold.  Still, beyond military hegemony, Sparta never achieved the all-round greatness that made rival Athens tick, as the greatest of the Greek city states. That was because Greece opened its door to all — not unlike pre-Donald Trump’s United States.

    The simple moral?  A xenophobic country soon shrivels up.  Even if it thrives, it seldom achieves its full greatness, with no input from aliens.  The contemporary apogee of that is again the United States.  Still, no one is sure of the future, with the present Trumpian hurricane.

    Shrivelling and wilting, therefore, are what South Africa risks, should it continue on its present Afro-phobic ruin.

    Part of it is physical — with a suspect workforce across the board, and a populace bred on an entitlement syndrome (hardly a crime, given how apartheid had crushed the Black South African psyche for decades on end), South Africa faces a danger of implosion.

    Besides, if xenophobia succeeds in driving away most aliens, it could deny native South Africans the chance to compete against foreigners, re-discover themselves as no laggards, as the White minority elite had conditioned their minds; hone their skills and, on equal footing, fight for fairer re-distribution of South Africa’s wealth — the crux of the present distemper.

    But Afro-phobia could also lead to severe spiritual backlash.

    Zimbabwe were White minority rule co-victims.  Tanzania and Zambia (former Northern Rhodesia when Zimbabwe was southern Rhodesia) were key frontline states that helped to free Zimbabwe and South Africa from White minority rule and apartheid.  Far-away Nigeria was dubbed honorary frontline state, for its radical anti-apartheid activism.

    It is tragic, therefore, that those who stood by South Africa, in its greatest hour of need — Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia (apart from Zimbabwe), have become the most bloodied from South Africans’ Afro-phobia!

    That is crass ingratitude — the hottest part of hell, in the African moral cosmos.

    What immediate irony!  Apartheid South Africa was a pariah for cruelty towards its Black folk.

    But independent South Africa, given the spate of sports boycotts (both Zambia and replacement, Madagascar, shunned the FIFA open window friendly with Bafana Bafana), coupled  with the present Nigerian growl and Rwandan frown, is on its way to becoming a new pariah — for xenophobic cruelty, against fellow African countries, that fought hardest for its liberation!

    Karma already setting in?  Not so fast!

    But the xenophobes of Mandela country had better watch it — xenophobes of Mandela country! Isn’t that a violent contradiction in terms, given the near-perfect universal icon the late Madiba was?

    Still, xenophilia (love for foreigners) is no excuse for natives to allow aliens turn their country into a hopeless drug cartel.  On this, some Nigerians in South Africa stand strongly charged — and condemned.

    Nevertheless, this South Africa-Nigeria debacle is home to yet more ironies.

    South African Catholic bishops, pouring ice-cold water on the government’s claim that the looting and arson were more of free-wheeling criminality than organized xenophobia, asked a rather pointed question: “If it was about drugs, why are South African drug dealers not being targeted as well?”

    Doesn’t that ring true of local developments in Nigeria here?

    Didn’t the media, at the height of the South West crisis of kidnapping and sundry criminality, rail and thunder at “Fulani herdsmen”, suggesting all Yoruba criminals had surrendered the crime franchise to the Fulani invaders?

    Didn’t the Fulani find themselves victims of that horrendous profiling, simply because of past insensitivity to local feeling, when power and spoils of power were at stake?

    And don’t some misguided Igbo continue to growl “Lagos is no man’s land”, the feeling of the Lagos natives be damned?

    What do you call all of these — internal xenophobia?

    If Nigerians could be this insensitive to themselves, can’t the same Nigerians, cocky, loud and proud, export that notoriety to their foreign hosts?

    If you add crime, committed with such chutzpah, aren’t their hosts likely to flip, as the South Africans have done?

    This is bitter home truth; but those with patriotic claptrap can exercise their right to carp!

    No doubt: criminal Nigerians in South Africa stand fairly accused, though past notoriety could have led to the locals tracing far more crimes to them than they could have committed.

    For instance, in a video that went viral on social media, two South Africans swore the killing of a local taxi driver, that fuelled this latest crisis, was by a Tanzanian drug baron, in an area in Pretoria, where Tanzanian crime reigned supreme.

    Still, whatever the guilt of these Nigerians and other foreign African nationals, mob rule is not the solution.  That is where the South African authorities have dismally failed.

    The Lagos reprisals have shown looting, under the pretext of holy anger, is no South African monopoly.  In reprisals, Nigerians too have attacked MTN shops and looted Shoprite malls.

    But the difference is the Nigerian authorities have not looked the other way, and have moved to secure these businesses, even if not a few feel they ought to have been more proactive.

    South Africa should have brought its foreign criminals to heel under its criminal-justice system, instead of seething with base rage (as Bongani Mkongi, South Africa’s deputy police minister, has betrayed), and given tacit support to their base elements to give their country a bad name, among the global community.

    So, beyond patriotic ire and nationalist thunder, Nigeria and South Africa must engage each other to address this common plague.  In a globalized world, no country can go it alone.

    In any case, Nigeria and South Africa are too vital for the African regional economy to drift apart because of some mutual dregs, which the law, and its strictures, can take out.

  • Africa in crisis

    The two leading African nations, and perhaps her hope for economic renaissance, Nigeria and South Africa, are in a fight to finish. Unless they come to their senses, their old colonial masters and other international hegemonic agencies may egg them on, knowing that a destabilized Africa would be more easily exploited. Whether we talk of hegemony from the East or West, disunity between the two leading nations of the continent would expose black Africa to greater danger.

    The African promoters of the new Continental Free Trade States, who just got Nigeria on board, after much exertions would be wandering whether their efforts would pay. Unless reason prevails, if Nigeria and South Africa goes into an overdrive in the ongoing tango, the relatively significant inter-African economic activities between the two nations may become extinct. While Nigerian should not condone the abuse of her citizens, the two countries must stop the tit-for-tat, in the interest of Africa.

    The government of Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa, must behave like a state authority, by calling on their law enforcement agencies to stop forthwith the xenophobic attack on Nigerians, and other Africans in their country, which triggered the crisis. They should learn few lessons from the West African experience. In the 1960s, Ghanaians chased Nigerians from their country, and in the 1980s, it was the turn of Nigeria to ask Ghanaians to go. Now Ghanaians are itching for a rematch, as Nigerians in that country are complaining of excruciating conditions handed to them by their hosts.

    In the West African debacle, the usual root cause of hate and xenophobic attacks is dwindling economic opportunities for the locals, after the initial boom that attracted large immigrants. So, while the people may be held responsible for the actual attacks, it is state officials who are responsible for the economic boom and bust, which cause the street wars. In South Africa, the natives have not gained the promised benefits of independence and they are visiting their frustrations on the immigrants.

    Clearly, the South Africa economy is contracting, and while foreigners may be the first line losers, unless there is a reversal, the entire country would eventually boil. The solution lies in increasing economic activities for the citizens and every legitimate resident. Instead of resorting to xenophobic attacks, which some misguided security personnel appear to be supporting, the country should tighten its immigration laws and general law enforcement.

    Agreed, some Nigerians have become nuisance in that country, such is not enough to tar every immigrant in the country. Instead of becoming international law breakers, threatening and maiming citizens of other countries living in their country, South African security agencies should deal with immigrants engaged in criminal activities. And as long as the law allow, deport such recalcitrant criminals to their home country.

    Clearly, the responsibility of ensuring that every person engaged in illegal activities face the law lies with the security agencies, not other law abiding immigrants. The world acclaimed oldest political party in Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) must realise that it is not living up to the high expectations of her citizens, especially the blacks who hoped for better life after the end of apartheid.

    Part of the challenge is corruption within the ranks of government officials. As Lew Kuan Yew, said in his book: From Third World to First: “It is easy to start off with high moral standards, strong conviction, and determination to beat down corruption. But it is difficult to live up to these good intentions unless the leaders are strong and determined enough to deal with transgressors, and without exceptions.”

    The Nigerian government has been more effective in controlling her enraged citizens. Interestingly, South Africa may be taking away from Nigeria, more than Nigeria is taking away from that country, because of South Africans’ high-end investments in Nigeria. But on the social level, South Africa has provided a haven for the teeming Nigerians looking for better economic opportunities. So, while the large corporations are making huge profits from Nigeria, selling to her about 200 million population, thousands of Nigeria migrate to South Africa daily to start small scale businesses.

    In a war without end, thousands of Nigerians, many of who have failed in their economic mission, and a large number of who engage in illegal businesses may be up for evacuation, to the embarrassment of Nigeria. On its part, South Africa would suffer huge financial losses, should Nigeria nationalize the huge corporations operating in her country. Again, because South African nationals are not in Nigeria in their numbers, the country can better manage the image-fallout of the ongoing crisis, unlike their compatriots.

    But regardless of who may have the upper hand eventually, it pays the two countries and the rest of Africa to quench the fire. In his book: Long Walk To Freedom, the immortal Nelson Mandela described an incident concerning the Soweto uprising while he was at the Robben Island prisons. The young men who took part in the uprising were jailed and some of them were brought to the prisons were Mandela was.

    According to the narrative, one Patrick ‘Terror’ Lekota, then a member of the South African Students’ Organization was attacked by his compatriots when he switched over to the African National Congress. A trial was set up in the prisons for his compatriots who attacked him, but the ANC encouraged him not to formally lunch a complaint or give evidence against them, because such will favour the apartheid regime, who wants division within the struggle.

    In the words of Mandela: “I wanted these young men to see that ANC was a great tent that could accommodate many different views and afflictions.” When South Africa needed the support of Nigeria and other southern African states, they got it. Indeed, Nigeria was reputed as a frontline state, and contributed immensely to the success of the struggle to free South Africa from the firm grip of the white supremacists, who entrenched the apartheid regime.

    It is most unfair not to remember the sacrifices made by Nigeria and other frontline states. Many top South African politicians studied in Nigeria under Nigerian government scholarship. Many others lived in Nigeria, and Nigeria expended so much and lost so much fighting to liberate the country from the shackles of apartheid. Nigeria went as far as nationalising the assets of Britain, her former colonial master to force the European power to renounce her support for the apartheid government.

    In the final analysis, while we must all condemn the xenophobic attacks, the permanent solution lies with making Nigeria and the other concerned states, viable economic entities, so that the citizens of those countries will stay in their country and earn descent living.

  • Once upon an earlier call to revolution

    WHAT could have led the publisher and editor-in-chief of the online muckraking journal, saharareporters, and most recently a candidate in the March 2019 presidential election to call on Nigerians to embark on a revolution to supplant the existing order well before the newly elected governments at the centre and in the states had taken office?

    Despair that nothing would change, and that muddling through could take Nigeria no farther? Ambition, as in seeking to obtain by revolutionary force the power he had failed signally to win at the ballot, having scored only 34,000 votes of the more than 36 million votes cast in the presidential election?

    Desperation – that time was running out and that a revolution to turn things around could no longer wait?  Idealism, a genuine belief that revolution, revolution now, was precisely what Nigerians needed?

    Most likely all of the above.

    There was certainly something quixotic about it all. But it was not more quixotic than Sowore running for president, or embarking on operating an online newspaper based in New York with little more than gritty determination to make it work. To be sure, Quixotism has its limits. But overall, it has taken Sowore much farther than his growing up in riverine Ondo State could have promised.

    A motely crowd of protesters here, Sowore’s placard-carrying supporters and the police engaged in a not-so-friendly chatter there, or in a skirmish yonder:  On the whole, the response to Sowore’s summons to revolution was less than enthusiastic.  It would not be unkind to call it desultory.  It certainly cannot even be called a preface to revolution.

    Yet it would be a mistake to dismiss it as a non-event.  That a political activist of Sowore’s modest financial and organisational resources could put so many men and women on the streets at short notice is an indication that there is considerable anger in the land and that the issues he and many others thoughtful critics have raised should be addressed forthrightly and urgently.

    It would also be a mistake to treat Sowore and his comrades as common criminals.  Prolonged detention without trial can only strengthen their following and win them new supporters.

    The Federal Government showed respect for the law by seeking a court order to hold him without trial for 90 days.  The court granted an order to hold him for 45 days, an indication that it did not share the government’s harsh view of the matter.

    Sowore should be brought to trial within that period if not earlier, or charged with any number of offences an inventive prosecutor can connect.  But not sedition, please.

    As the Court of Appeal held in the 1985 case of Arthur Nwankwo v The State, the law of sedition, the principal instrument with which the colonial administration sought  to suppress political discussion and debate, made sense only in a colonial setting and has no place in Nigeria’s 1979 Republican Constitution.

    And since the Supreme Court of Nigeria, the final judicial authority, has not pronounced on the matter, the best legal authorities are persuaded that the ruling on Nwankwo stands as the controlling law.

    In summoning his compatriots to revolution, Sowore fell back to a strategy that goes back to the colonial times, the most famous instance of which the veteran journalist and statesman, Prince Tony Momoh, reminded us the other day, following Sowore’s arrest.

    It centered on a public lecture organised by the Zikist Movement and presented on October 27, 1948, at Tom Jones Hall, in Idumota, in the central business district of Lagos, and was titled: A Call for Revolution,  and was delivered by Osita Agwuna, the movement’s deputy president.

    Determined to quicken the march toward freedom from colonial rule, the movement’s Central Committee decided to embark on a plan calculated to plunge the country into turmoil.  The lecture was to serve only as a preface.  Their calculation was that, following the lecture over which Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the NCNC leader and movement icon would preside, the colonial authorities would arrest Azikiwe on the spot.

    The arrest would set off a national uprising and lead the masses to engage in “positive action.” The jails would overflow with political prisoners. The country would be rendered ungovernable. In the event, the colonial authorities would be forced to cede more powers to Nigerians and fast-track Nigeria’s advance to statehood.

    That, at any rate, was the calculation of the Zikists.

    And the manifesto outlined in the lecture was so exorbitant even the most accommodating colonial overlord would have seen it as nothing less than a frontal challenge to its authority and indeed its very existence.

    Adherents of this new approach should see “nothing good” in cooperating with British rule, which was to be brought down through a boycott of foreign goods.  They should not enlist in the police and the army.  They should pay their taxes to the NCNC as the “new People’s Provisional Government.  Those of them going abroad to study should take courses in “military science.”  The employed among them should embark on a general strike.

    Zikist President Raji Abdallah had set the tone for the event with this declaration:  “I hate the Union Jack with all my heart because it divides people wherever it goes …  It is a symbol of persecution, of domination, a symbol of exploitation, of brutality …”

    Strong stuff, indeed.

    Ominously, Zik, who was to have chaired the occasion, was conspicuously absent.  He would explain later that he was too tired to attend, having led an NCNC mission to Ijebu-Ode earlier that day. Anthony Enahoro, who had already made a reputation as a crusading newspaper editor, fiery platform orator and pamphleteer, was drafted to chair the occasion, although he was not a Zikist.

    The lecture took place all right.  The colonial authorities did not pre-empt it, for that would have gone against their understanding of freedom of the press and of speech as explicated by the great English jurist, Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England.

    Lay down no previous restraint. Let the agitators publish whatever they desire, Blackstone wrote; then, punish them for their temerity.

    That was exactly what the colonial authorities did. They rounded up the organisers of the lecture and indeed anyone who could be shown to have played any part in it, however tangential, charged them with sedition and, on conviction, despatched them to various prisons across Nigeria.

    The Zikists never recovered fully from The Tom Jones Hall outing. If those of them who escaped imprisonment did not feel betrayed, they were profoundly disillusioned that their idol, the object of their worship, disowned, then dismissed them as “fissiparous lieutenants and cantankerous followers.”

    I wonder how they had reacted on hearing Zik declaim as governor-general of Nigeria more than a decade later when Nigeria was granted independence from Britain “on a platter of gold.”

    They say the inconstant Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), who curiously survived the recent cabinet shuffle, has been busy combing the archives with a view to using the 1948 case as a playbook for prosecuting Sowore and his followers.

    That would be a futile endeavour.  The 1986 case of Arthur Nwankwo v The State should serve him as a better guide.

    • For comments, send SMS to 08111813080

  • Again, OOPL and donations

    Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, might be a Muslim.  But by his sour-sweet relationship with former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Atiku appears to hold to heart the Christ-like admonition of turning the other cheek.

    In My Watch, Obasanjo pummelled Atiku as an alleged scoundrel that gained public office for strictly private gain.

    In his holy putdown, dripping with holy gall and pious contempt, Obasanjo hit at Atiku’s parentage and upbringing; alleging unbridled venality and charging his former deputy with irredeemable faith in marabouts.

    What did Atiku do?  He held his peace; and never sued for character defamation, even as that book enjoyed a media rave, conventional and social.

    On the contrary, he would much later sue for peace — didn’t the Bible say blessed are the peace makers?   By election time 2019, by Atiku’s own admission, he caused an in-law to donate $140, 000 (N50 million) to the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL)!

    Talk of not only turning the other cheek but also blessing your traducer-in-chief!

    That that story just broke, via an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) probe, suggests some hush-hush.  Yet donations, public or private, are hardly crimes — and so the Atiku camp has rightly held.

    Still, public good for private gain, for which Obasanjo hideously tanned Atiku in My Watch, appears to propel the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), the Obasanjo post-power shrine.

    Indeed, OOPL’s humongous appetite for donations bespeaks another famous Biblical lore: the hand of Esau but voice of Jacob, corralling the blessings of Isaac!

    As it was in the beginning, goes another biblical parallel, it is now and so, it appears with OOPL, it ever shall be!  That’s is the latest vibe from the OOPL front!

    In the beginning was the man; and the man was president; and the president dreamed up a library: to showcase his exploits, years after all the power and all the glory!

    So the president, doubling as Oil minister, invited the cream of oil-powered Nigeria, to donate to a library launch, which target was N7 billion.

    Yusuf Olaniyonu, reporting for This Day, gave an update on the event, in this 16 May 2005 report: “Donations into the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) project, which was launched in Abeokuta at the weekend, may have reached N6 billion.  This leaves a shortfall of about N1 billion for the project.”

    The Olaniyonu report came with a rider: “Oil majors donate $20 million”.

    Sure, presidential libraries, an American innovation in tangible public service history, are an excellent idea.  They are monuments by which later generations feel the pulse of a particular president on his era — and his impacts on subsequent ages.

    But even by American practice, presidents launch donations for such projects, well after they have left office, to minimize illicit quid-pro-quos, never far away from sleaze-entombed contemporary politics.

    Still, Obasanjo bucked that vital convention, doing his own launch as sitting president.

    Besides, there was something morally filthy about oil majors reportedly donating US$ 20 million, to a project championed by a sitting president that doubled as Oil minister.

    That incest, linking oil donors, to the minister’s project, aside from Minister-President sitting as Big Brother that saw all and missed nothing, gave OOPL a morally filthy nativity.

    Sure legally, no crime had been committed; since no donor back then complained of being forced.  Nevertheless, the moral stench was as acrid as ammonia.

    Little wonder, the rather erratic Ayo Fayose, as maverick as they come, would much later allege presidential extortion.

    During his second coming as Ekiti governor, Fayose publicly told Obasanjo to “return” Ekiti’s forced donation towards OOPL — alleging that Ekiti, like other PDP states back then, were corralled into “donating” to the sitting president’s cause.

    That didn’t burnish the moral tincture of the Obasanjo presidency; or clear the cesspool of illicit rackets that was the then ruling party; or, for that matter, improve  OOPL’s perceived rotten moral provenance, even if its promoter-in-chief, also sitting commander-in-chief, postured the Holy Pope, swearing it’s all for public good!

    What is more?  With the latest revelations, the former president, as ballyhooed champion of holy politics and sane governance, would appear to have taken a big hit.  His Atiku re-canonization, in the impassioned build-up to the 2019 general elections, came around the same time OOPL was pocketing the N50 million donation.

    Recall: Obasanjo had written a letter, bombing the Buhari presidency.  Thundering with tumbling adjectives, and rather graceless conceit, he pushed for the “youths” to band together, sack the ruling order and replace it with one of their own.

    That might have been umpteenth petulance from a perennial meddler-in-chief who, to stay immaculate, loves to paint his successors black.

    Still, not a few starry-eyes sparkled at his patriotic roar for a “Third Force”, to take out the stumbling order, for which his suggested African Democratic Congress (ADC) came quite in handy.

    But even with ADC gathering little traction, as it was clear the election would be an APC-PDP affair, not a few still queued behind him, in the gripping election-eve drama.

    Viola, came the Atiku apology.  Then, the sensational Atiku re-beatification; ironically in this same OOPL, with  a Concert of the Aggrieved and some fathers spiritual in tow — damn whatever dire Atiku judgment My Watch had passed!

    But now, much later, the bombshell: the Atiku N50 million “donation” to the OOPL!

    Was that some unfortunate coincidence, as the Atiku camp insists, claiming it was routine “donation”?

    Or indeed, some quid-pro-quo, though in favour of the library the former president championed?

    Again, OOPL the corporate is different from Obasanjo the person; and one can’t take the can of the other.

    But again, the thick stench of messy incest is rather over-powering!

    Which is why the gracelessly defensive Atiku camp is throwing wild swings, mouthing vulgar abuse and recklessly throwing muck like a shaven Samson.

    “Let it be known,” it lectured when the seedy story broke, “that former President Olusegun Obasanjo established the EFCC to be an investigative body and not a propaganda or enforcement arm of the ruling party, as it is now being misused.”

    In that mood, churlish blackmail would appear just fine: ”May we also add that whenever the EFCC wish to come up with mischief,” it alleged, “they fly their kite in The Nation Newspaper. This is now a pattern.”

    Then, the triumphant clincher: “It should be clear to Nigerians that the Presidency, APC, the EFCC, The FIRS and The Nation are now working together as five fingers of the same leprous hands”.

    True: patriotism is the last bastion of the scoundrel; and those with near-zero reputations think little of blighting others’.

    Still, after all the thunder and all the fury, there appears little between the political morality of Obasanjo and Atiku the former president loves to lampoon.

    That explains the collective moral stink of their presidential tenure.

  • Award against Nigeria

    The palpable fears over the $9.6 billion dollars arbitral award against Nigeria, in favour of Process and Industrial Developments Limited – a foreign company, under the New York Arbitration Convention, is not misplaced. Nigeria has every cause to be afraid that her foreign assets could be seized by the judgment creditor, in fulfilment of the award.

    Notably, the federal government has vowed to deal with the officials who entered into the dubious contract, during the regime of late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. This column also urges the government to investigate the officials who did not take appropriate steps to defend the case, timeously during the arbitration.

    In an arbitration, where the tribunal is properly constituted in accordance with the arbitration agreement, any party who in spite of appropriate notice, fails to present its case, is bound by the arbitral awards. So, President Muhammadu Buhari while investigating those who negotiated the contract, should also find out if those who were supposed to defend our cause, compromised.

    After all, an arbitration is defined by learned authors, Ojomo and Orojo, as “a procedure for the settlement of disputes, under which parties agree to be bound by the decision of an arbitrator whose decision is, in general, final and legally binding on both parties.” Importantly: “the process derives its force principally from the agreement of the parties and, in addition, from the state as supervisor and enforcer of the legal process.”

    So, for there to be an arbitration both parties must agree to submit present or future disputes to a third party (private judge – arbitrator) whose decision will be final and generally binding on the parties. Where the parties duly submitted to an arbitration, are there grounds on which the parties can legitimately challenge the award? Of course, they are grounds, but the premise for a successful challenge is very limited.

    Orojo and Ajomo noted that as far back as the 1930s, there is limitedness of the grounds, for challenge. In Attah vs Amoah (1930) 1 WACA 16, the court held: “… it is clear that the trend of modern authority is to interpret the submission to arbitration so liberally that once an arbitrator has been selected, the parties must be assumed to have taken him for better for worse.”

    Continuing, the court further noted: “an arbitrator being something more than a judge, his arbitrament will require more to upset it than would suffice in the case of an ordinary judgment, and not until this fact is duly appreciated will the time and money spent on such cases as this be saved” (emphasis mine).

    Also, in Zermalt Holdings S. A. vs Nu-Life Upholstery Repair Ltd (1985) 275 Estate Gazette 1134, Bingham J. held: “as a matter of general approach, the courts strive to uphold arbitration awards. They do not approach them with a meticulous legal eye endeavouring to pick holes, inconsistencies and faults in awards and with the objective of frustrating the process of arbitration.”

    The learned judge went further to hold: “Far from it. The approach is to read an arbitration award in a reasonable and commercial way, expecting, as is usually the case, that there will be no substantial fault that can be found with it.” While the courts are generally circumspect about setting aside an arbitral award or arbitrament, they are general grounds, upon which an award can be set aside by the courts, if the necessary application is made timeously.

    Locally, section 28(2) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, provides: “The court may set aside an arbitral award if the party making the application furnished proof that the award contains decisions on matters which are beyond the scope of the submission to arbitration….” Furthermore, Section 30(1) provides: “where an arbitrator has misconducted himself, or where the arbitral proceedings, or award, has been improperly procured, the court may, on the application of a party, set aside the award.”

    Section 48, of the Act, which relate to International Commercial Arbitration and Conciliation, contains additional grounds. Such grounds include where the applicant shows that “a party to the arbitration agreement was under some incapacity”; “that the arbitration agreement is not valid under the law which the parties have indicated should be applied, or failing such indication, that the arbitration agreement is not valid under the laws of Nigeria.”

    Other grounds include: “that he was not given proper notice of the appointment of an arbitrator or of the arbitral proceedings or was otherwise not able to present his case.” While these general principles may apply elsewhere, there is a limitation about the court with the requisite jurisdiction to set aside an arbitral award.

    In Adwork Ltd vs Nigeria Airways Ltd (2000) 2NWLR (Pt 645) 415 (CA) 422, Justice Oguntade JCA, (as he then was) held: “If the purpose of the application (by the defendants) was to determine that the judgment debt had been paid, it constituted an abuse of process since the same question could be or was being determined in the United Kingdom proceedings. If on the other hand, it was a subterfuge to use the court of Longe J as an appellate court over the decision of the arbitrator in England, which I believe it was, my simple reaction is that Longe J has no such jurisdiction.”

    The challenge facing Nigeria, on this matter is enormous, since the courts with the jurisdiction over the matter are outside our shores, just like the arbitral tribunal and the laws that guided it. Clearly, the contract in question and the mismanagement of the arbitration, is a manifestation of one of the greatest ills of our country. Unfortunately, we see persons who have no requisite competences, get appointed to positions of authority, from where they put our country into peril.

    While the federal government is entitled to stake the blame against the previous regimes, for what may amount to criminal misconduct, they must concentrate their energy to seek remedial measures where possible. As Nnaemeka-Agu J.S.C., held in Commerce Assurance Ltd vs Alhaji Buraimoh Alli (1992) 3 NWLR (Pt 232), “The underlying principle is that parties to a dispute have a choice. They may resort to the normal machinery for administration of justice by going to the regular courts of the land and have their dispute determined, both as to the fact and as to the law, by the courts.”

    The learned Justice went on, “Or, they may choose the arbitrator to be the judge between them. If they take the latter course they cannot, when the award is good on the face of it, object to the award on grounds of law or of facts.” Our country needs the best legal hands to save our common patrimony from buccaneers.

  • The scamming of a country

    No thanks to an unknown quantity that goes by the name – Process and Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID), the nation’s economy as indeed the welfare of millions of its citizens now hangs precariously on the edge.  For a country that is never short on materials to excite, the award by the English Court in favour of the little known Irish engineering and project management company obviously surpasses anyone that the country has known.

    Clearly, if the quantum of the award – a record $9 billion fine for a contract that never was could be deemed as exceeding the threshold of reasonable and exemplary, considering that the firm in question neither brought a dime into the country beyond the offer to turn the nation’s rich gas resources into gold, the story of how the company ‘agreed’ to accept $850 million in compensation, negotiated down from an initial proposal of $1.5 billion by a government committee after things fell apart, and how this later morphed into the July 2015 — $6.6 billion award for “loss of income” and which has now ballooned  to $9 billion, would qualify for a prominent chapter in our long-running Incredible Naija story.

    As the story went, P&ID reportedly entered into a 20-year gas and supply processing agreement (GSPA) with the federal government to build a gas processing facility. By the terms of the agreement, Nigeria would receive 85 per cent of the refined non-associated gas, free of charge to power generating and industrial entities; P&ID would receive the remaining 15 per cent and the by-products – namely methane, propane and butane for export.

    Simple, or is it? But then, the government was obligated to supply 150 million standard cubic feet (scf) of gas per day to the plant. This was to rise to 400 million scf in the life of the project.  A critical element is for the government to build a gas supply pipeline to the P&ID facility to be located in Adiabo, Odukpani LGA, Cross River State. The gas was to be sourced by the government from OMLs 67 and 123 operated by Addax Petroleum.

    End of story?

    Not really, in fact, the story had only just begun. First Nigeria did not build the pipeline; but neither did P&ID build the plant although it claimed to have spent about $40 million on pre-take-off expenses. Of course, P&ID claimed that the failure of Nigeria to build the gas pipeline breached the agreement even though there was no evidence that it acquired any land anywhere in Cross River let alone the one for the proposed facility. And so the government maintained that it could not, have conceivably, built a network of pipelines when the off-taker had not itself determined the project site let alone turn the sod!

    To put things in the Nigerian parlance, the matter thereafter became a case of “cunny man die, cunny man bury am’. Trust the foreign buccaneer; an arbitration clause simply became handy for a compensatory award for loss of “potential” income! At this time, not even Nigeria plea that the gas pipeline could not have been constructed to an unknown site made sense as P&ID would contend that Article 6(b) of the GSPA forecloses any such precondition!

    That, in summary is the story. You wonder how a $40 million pre-feasibility expenditure by a corporate entity would become the basis of an aggravated – and I daresay a most perverse award – $9 billion against a sovereign? That could only be made for Nigeria!

    I have taken time to peruse the different sides of the arguments on a deal that easily qualifies as a travesty.

    In this, Nigeria, I must admit, is no stranger to settlements that are best described as odious.  We saw this in 2005, when the Nigerian piggy bank, brimming full with cash courtesy of the windfall from petro-dollars was forced to shell out $12 billion cash in settlement of a most odious debt to the Paris and London Club cartel of creditors.  Never mind that Nigeria had as at this time had paid sums far in excess of the original sum borrowed in compounded penalties and charges even as the debts kept mounting! We are supposed to be grateful that the tidy sum which could have delivered the Lagos –Kano standard gauge railway was used to appease those foreign gods so our children could live debt free – even if we are a few years after, back in the same credit circuit shopping for funds to finance public infrastructure!

    Now, 14 years after, a variant of the game is at play via a deal that aspires to be the scam of the century. Think it is far-fetched?  The reader is invited to google up the recent shuffling of feet at the corporate suites at VR Capital Group, the hedge fund managers said to have taken a large stake in P&ID in the aftermath of the award. The group, as aggressive as they come, takes no prisoners. They have the money and the clout to make things happen – and are prepared to foreclose on Nigeria’s assets anywhere on the globe even if in the end, the African giant is brought on its knees.

    And to think that a few Nigerians actually inflicted this treasonable scam against their country. Unfortunately, stories of a few incompetent and unpatriotic fellows who, blinded by greed, couldn’t care about taking an entire country down the valley have not only become commonplace, they have since become the stuff of the Nigerian tale. Today, armed with a briefcase, you could literally walk out of the corporate towers of the national oil corporation with billions of dollars in sweet sleaze in the name of “strategic alliance”!

    Siemens. Subsidy-gate. Malabu. These are simply variants of the same Nigerian pathology: Impunity Inc. Talk of the malaise ceaselessly mutating; a virus well ahead of a known therapy. Knowing how others before this went, one could not but wish Magu and team lots of luck as they seek to unravel this latest mystery.

    Finally, the ECOWAS giant roars 

    I do not know if many Nigerians paid much attention to what happened at the Nigerian borders with Benin Republic last week. Without as much as a fanfare of a prior announcement, the Nigerian authorities finally, although temporarily moved to shut our western borders. President Muhammadu Buhari would later clarify that the measure had become necessary owing to the intolerable level of smuggling going on in that axis. Well, the measure is certainly overdue; the problem is that it did not go far enough. Why single out our western neighbour, Benin for a crime that Cameroun, Niger and Chad are guilty although in different degrees?

    Moreover,  I understand why the federal government would focus on rice smuggling at this time. That menace is killing local initiatives. However, were Nigerians to be asked to choose between that menace posed by that class of smugglers and those posed by transhumance activities across the borders, I suspect that they would gladly opt for the lesser evil in the age of mindless terror!

    Freewheeling transhumance seems to me one area where urgent and drastic action is also needed.

  • Weep not for Adebayo Shittu

    Civil society groups and democracy activists – the usual suspects in such matters – were largely silent when news outlets revealed that he had not deigned to do the obligatory one year of national service for graduates under 30 but had instead launched one flourishing career after another.

    The law enforcement authorities launched no investigations.  President Buhari demanded no explanation and felt no obligation to dismiss him from his cabinet for what seemed a clear breach of the law.  The man himself sat tight, defiant, saying tersely that he did not believe the law at issue applied to him.  What service could be more important than making laws for the good governance of one of the 19 states of the federation?

    Everyone was certain that the man would not be reappointed minister for one very weighty reason: his failure to participate in the compulsory National Youth Service scheme more than four decades after his graduation.  His ho-hum performance as minister furnished just as weighty a reason for not reappointing him.

    But on the latter basis, only a handful of ministers would have merited a second term.  So, pressing that charge would be an overkill when, by everyone’s reckoning, the first charge alone constitutes an iron-clad indictment and more than enough reason to end his cabinet tenure.

    Everyone’s reckoning, that is, except that of the man himself, Adebayo Shittu, lately honourable minister of communications in the Buhari cabinet.

    As he told the News Agency of Nigeria the other day, he was shocked that his name was not on the list of cabinet nominees Buhari presented recently to the National Assembly for confirmation. He had confidently expected to be reappointed.  Not that he was complaining. As a devoted Muslim and author, it should be added, of some 10 books on the theory and practice of Islam, he had taken the matter in his stride, thanked  God and Buhari for the opportunity, and moved on.  He was not disappointed.

    But so many people who would not mind their own business have entered into all manner of speculation about why Shittu had confidently expected to be reappointed.  Could it be, some among them have asked, that the powerful cabal that runs the Presidency had assured him that he was the President’s favourite minister, and that if one person deserved and was sure to be reappointed minister, he, Shittu, was that person?

    Such assurances are not uncommon in Nigeria’s public life, and sometimes carry consequences that reach much farther.

    Whenever military President Ibrahim Babangida felt that time was running out on his duplicitous transition programme and that he needed time to tinker with or prolong it, he would let it be known that he was planning to carve Nigeria into more states, or he would suborn the more vocal ethnic champions to petition him for the creation of more states.

    In perhaps the last of such diversionary games before he was ousted, he told one of his loyal military chiefs that the yearnings of his people for their own state, freed from the domination of an overbearing suzerain, and with the capital in the military chief’s own hometown, was about to be gratified. The military chief should go tell his people that it was a done deal and that they should prepare for great rejoicing.

    On the day the of the presidential broadcast announcing the new states, everybody who was somebody or thought he was somebody converged on the military chief’s sprawling compound in his hometown and projected state capital to watch the historic broadcast, to see history in the making, as it were.

    Among the four or five new states named, none came from the military chief’s turf.

    For several weeks thereafter, they kept the military chief under close watch, fearing that he might harm himself.

    The reader should not rush to put this down as yet another example of Babangida’s perversity. He had been overruled by powers he could not countermand.

    To return to Shittu:  Among the busybodies aforementioned, some speculated that Shittu must have had the highest assurances from the prophets, marabouts, chiromancers and  all manner of diviners servicing the system that he would be reappointed minister. Abuja is teeming with such clairvoyants who can, for valuable consideration commensurate with the position desired and the cost of good living in that city, deliver the desired verdict.

    But those who know Shittu say he is too high-minded for that kind of thing.

    Those who claim to know how the system works are saying that Shittu may have followed a tack that works for the most part but is not foolproof.  This is how that system works.  If the quester is, like Shittu, a Muslim, and the President and those who have his ears are Muslims and will be performing the Hajj or Umra, the quester embarks on the same holy voyage, confident that an arranged meeting with the President or those who have his ears will help seal the deal.

    What vow can be more binding than one made on holy ground?  Hence, Shittu’s confidence that he would be reappointed minister.

    I have heard of one vice chancellor of one of the highly regarded public universities who was waging a grim battle for reappointment.  Given his record, it seemed a futile bid.  Then he learned that the Head of State and Visitor of the university would be performing the Umra.  Pronto, he rummaged through his drawers, dug up his Tesbih, dusted it up and took the first available flight to Saudi Arabia where, not entirely by coincidence, he was presented to the Head of State.

    In their brief encounter, the professor made a deep impression on the Head of State as a rarity – a scholar, a pious and devoted Muslim, and an unobtrusive southerner!

    Before the vice chancellor returned to base, his reappointment had been announced.

    I am in a position to assert that the speculation that Shittu employed that strategy or a variation thereof is spurious through and through.  Being a devout Muslim, Shittu would consider it sacrilegious to employ the Hajj or Umra for such a profane project even if he happened to be in Islam’s holiest sites at an opportune moment.

    Can it be, then, that Shittu was a victim of his own conceit, persuaded that he was, on the basis of his superlative performance in office, a sure bet for the Next Level?  Some incline to this uncharitable view, I regret to say.  But I am not in the least surprised.  For we shall always have among us those who, out of envy or malice, take delight in the downfall or discomfiture of others.

    I can assure them that their joy will be shortlived.

    They should remember that the Shittu phenomenon did not just happen overnight.  Back in 1979 when politics was politics, he was at 26 the youngest person elected member of a state assembly. And I am not talking of some flyby state, but the Oyo of Bola Ige, himself the Cicero of Agodi.

    If they don’t know, I can tell them, based on Shittu’s personal testimony, that Shittu was the only candidate in the entire Oyo Division of Oyo State who passed the 1973 West African School Certificate Examination in Division 1 at the very first sitting.

    But need I tell them also that Adebayo Shittu is a qualified barrister, who served as commissioner for Information, Culture and Home Affairs in the “landslide” administration of Dr Victor Olunloyo for three memorable months? And more recently as attorney-general and commissioner for Justice, also in Oyo State, under Governor Rasheed Ladoja?

    Weep not for Adebayo Shittu.  Who can put down such a phenomenon?

  • Public assault

    The public assault meted against the former deputy senate president, Ike Ekweremadu, in Nuremberg, Germany, has exposed the peculiar challenges faced by politically exposed persons of Igbo extraction. Poor Ekweremadu, the political bounce he spent 20 years of guile and trickery in the peculiar slippery political environment of Nigeria to build has been perforated by a few IPOB zealots in far away Germany.

    Unlike in Germany and other western European countries, political protest in Nigeria has not matured enough for protesters to freely pelt their leaders with objects, to register dissent. So, while the German government is resisting pressure to haul in the protesters who manhandled Ekweremadu, the Nigerian government is putting pressure on the government to arrest and prosecute the boys who acted on behalf of IPOB. My worry is that in our country of copycats, there is the possibility that the Nuremberg maltreatment may become the new way to register political protest by youths in Nigeria.

    So, as Ekweremadu is left to lick his wounds, political elites, even from other geo-political zones, must weigh their options on how to deal with what may turn a malignant tumour for Nigerian elites. Of course, they should join the government to condemn the action of IPOB against Ekweremadu, and urge that necessary steps be taken to ensure that such style in exercise of the right of protest is discouraged by law enforcement agencies.

    Truly speaking, the easiest way to stem the burning anger of youths of our country is to ensure good governance across board. Those in authority must mend their ways, unless they want to bring the roof down on our heads. The level of corruption in our country is so unnerving that one needs to be sturdy in resistance to resort to self-help, not to be tempted to applaud the kind of humiliation meted out to Ekweremadu. Of course, not as a person, but as a metaphor for the frustration that governance in Nigeria has turned to.

    It is the same feeling of disenchantment about the way Nigeria is that the Buhari government taps into in its war against corruption. Interestingly, because Ekweremadu has been in power for so long, he has developed a cult of followers as well as a coterie of haters. While his followers are raising their voices to condemn the humiliation of their beloved, his haters are saying, the treatment serves him well, and is a notice to others that the day of reckoning is near.

    As Ekweremadu’s young political acolytes tried to salvage what is left of his famed invincibility in the state politics, when he landed at Enugu airport last week, the sense of forlornness in his eyes was too glaring to miss. While the young Turks stood guard for a photo shoot, their master’s eyes were so distant, apparently realizing that its joyous political life was dying. The eyes betrayed weariness and sense of failure as he failed to gingerly maneuver the land mines this time around, as he has done for 20 years in Enugu State politics.

    In a statement by his media aide, Ekweremadu excoriated Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB gang for betraying him despite his modest efforts to help secure his release on bail. Kanu accused him and other Igbo leaders of being responsible for Operation Python Dance, which the federal government ordered to deal with IPOB.  Sounding upbeat, Kanu has threatened to deal with other Igbo political leaders for their alleged role in bringing IPOB to its heels.

    While calling those who attacked him in Germany miscreants, Ekweremadu was forced by political exigencies to reply the allegations by Kanu, while advertising his achievements as the highest political officer holder of Igbo extraction. He cannot afford to ignore the miscreants, considering the harm they have done to his political image.  Exuding confidence at the Nuremberg treatment to Ekweremadu, Kanu has ordered his followers to arrest President Muhammadu Buhari and hand him over to Japanese authorities as he visits Japan. Of course, Kanu knows his supporters would be putting themselves in a harm’s way if they try such stupidity.

    But such is the crass insensitivity of Kanu’s IPOB, and the dilemma they foist on Igbo leadership in a Nigeria that is badly governed. While the majority of Nigerians are clearly disconsolate with the state of affairs, IPOB’S decision to challenge the corporate existence of Nigeria as the solution, strewn with land mines the political road of Igbo political elites, should they show them overt sympathy.

    To make matters worse for the Igbo political elites, in a Nigeria where their people feel so marginalized, the message of a new Biafra by IPOB resonates well, especially amongst the hoi polloi. It is that discontentment that Nnamdi Kanu exploits and Igbo leaders know that. To compound their challenge, their competitors from other regions know that local challenge exists, and would not mind to take advantage if the opportunity arises.

    Of note, Ekweremadu’s political opponents at the national level will be chuckling at his recent misfortune from the home front. After all, he connived with the former senate president, Bukola Saraki, to share the spoils of senate leadership between the majority party APC and the minority party PDP. They would be happy at his recent misfortune, and even amongst PDP, there are those who will privately be wishing him more misfortune, considering that he has enjoyed a roller coaster of joy for 20 years.

    In Enugu State politics, Ekweremadu has also managed to outwit those he formerly called his masters. His former boss as governor of Enugu State, Senator Chimaroke Nnamani, though in the same party with him presently, would not forget how he joined his successor, Sullivan Chime, to deal him a deft blow. Across the political divide, Chime, now an APC stalwart would be chuckling at the turn of events. There are also others in the state, who started with him, but whom he had outfoxed along the line, to stay at the top in the state political cadre, who will be happy at his misfortune.

    But regardless of how Ekweremadu’s enemies and friend-enemies may feel about his style of politics, it is important they work together to ensure three things. They have to agree on how to take appropriate steps to discourage the resort to self-help by the multitude of disenchanted self-exiles. Secondly, they have to stop the glaring mismanagement of public resources by those of them in public service. Finally, President Buhari must be discouraged from giving fillip to the marginalization of Igbos or any other group in Nigeria.

    Considering several encounters with Ekweremadu in the past, this column is not his fan, but it does not support his being violently abused.

  • Food as human right

    Mission to Ibadan was to meet, for the first time, Emeritus Prof. Ikenna Onyido, senior citizen and avid reader of this column.

    But Ripples came back wowed, with the concept of Food as human right; from the traditional notion of food as human need.

    Though that concept is not so new, that it hasn’t fired much fresh thinking on food policy, food availability and food security, is well and truly depressing.

    For a developing country making strategic choices, in a brutally skewed globe, it shows how jejune public discourse has become.

    It was all a fallout from the 1st Prof. Francis Sulemanu Idachaba Memorial Lecture, held on August 15, at the University of Ibadan’s Faculty of Agriculture.

    That lecture, with specific focus on Agricultural Policy in Nigeria, is the brainchild of the Idachaba Foundation for Research and Scholarship and the University of Ibadan.

    At UI’s Department of Agricultural Economics, the late Idachaba looms rather large.  He not only spent most of his celebrated academic life in that faculty — “the building at the blind corner”, as the guest lecturer dubbed it — he mentored a rich brood of protégés, who now proudly swear by his name, even if the renowned scholar has passed.

    Prof. Onyido, chair at the lecture, is one.

    An ex-UI (though later a professor of Chemistry), he rose to become Vice Chancellor, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike.  After, he founded the Centre for Sustainable Development, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka (Unizik). Now, after formal retirement in May (an event billed for December 2018 but postponed because of the ASUU strike), he is now Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, Unizik.

    Onyido’s Unizik valedictory lecture, entitled “The antithesis of a rolling stone that gathers moss”, which he delivered on May 24, speaks of a renaissance scholar: a core scientist at home with the liberal arts; and a Chemist comfy with the history of the academia, right to its pristine roots.

    When others fled the Nigerian academia, mouthing fulsome grumbles, Prof. Onyido stayed back.

    The Yoruba speak of the shame-faced boy, who points his contemptuous left finger at his ancestral home.  Not Onyido, in his gripping — but never griping — engagement with the Nigerian university, warts and all!

    He is the eternal rolling stone in our local universities — five, over some 44 years, at the last count, public and private; a rolling stone gathering moss; a doting troubadour traversing the vast space, in the service of his Lady; while others fled, griping and swearing; and later, smacking and gloating, from their foreign redoubts!

    To Onyido, therefore, chairing the Idachaba lecture was both fealty to a cherished mentor; and umpteenth service to a cherished Lady — the Nigerian university.

    Another was Prof. G. B. Ayoola, founder of Farm and Infrastructure Foundation (FIF), an Abuja-based agricultural think-tank; shaped in the Idachaba tradition of robust interface between gown and town, especially in agriculture and allied matters.

    The lecturer, whose topic was “Rural Infrastructures and the challenge of food security in Nigeria: Are good intentions of policymakers enough?”, interrogated the popular controversy: is agriculture a business (like other ventures) or a core developmental prerogative?

    He submitted it was both.  Still, he frowned at the starkness of regarding agriculture, by latter-day investors, as strictly business; as a Mathew Arnold (1822-1888), the English poet, would classify the nouveau riche of his day as ‘Philistines’, in comparison to ‘Greeks’, the well-rounded (wo)men of wealth and culture.

    Quoting Wendell Berry, in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays, he posited: “The word agriculture, after all, does not mean ‘agriscience’, much less ‘agribusiness’.  It means ‘cultivation of the land’. And cultivation is at the root of the sense, both of culture and cult.  And these words all come from Indo-European root meaning both ‘to resolve’ and to ‘dwell’.  To live, to survive on the earth, to care for the soil, and to worship — all are bound at the root to the idea of a cycle.  It is only by understanding the cultural complexity and largeness of the concept of agriculture, that we see the diminishment implied by the term ‘agricbusiness.’”

    That would appear the conceptual basis for Prof.  Ayoola’s FIF, particularly its national campaign on the right to food.

    FIF has declared, following its founder’s 2016 postulation of food as human right: “The right to food,” Ayoola quotes, “is the irreducible minimum degree of freedom from hunger and malnutrition for a person to live a dignified, productive and healthy life.”

    That appears the classical social democracy (“progressive” in local Nigerian parlance) — the primacy of humans over capital (the opposite of the Conservative primacy of capital over humans), even if humans, individual or government, can do pretty little without capital.

    But it doesn’t translate into some Utopia, a neo-Garden of Eden, where you could pluck whatever you wanted, from a sweet garden of bliss!  Even that would appear unsustainable, from the debacle of Adam and Eve!

    By the way, “want” pushes the discourse to basic Economics, and its demand and supply concepts of want, need and effective demand.

    Linked to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, “want” is not unlike the id — raw, unbridled desire.

    “Need” is want, moderated by purchasing power.  In other words, you grab your needs, from an unceasing pool of wants.

    “Effective demand” is what, despite all you want, your money can buy — except, of course, you steal; which has devastating consequences!

    Still, that food should be cheap, because it is abundant, underscores the concept of food as human right — so cheap, even the dirt poor can afford it and have their fill, as the very basis of living.

    But then how can the government achieve food, cheap (available) and abundant (secure), if it often treats agriculture, in isolation of rural infrastructure, physical and social: roads, linking farms to markets; electricity, lighting up farm houses and rural homes; schools and hospitals, for the sound education and sound health of the rural folk?

    It’s not as if linking agriculture to the local ecology is new.  The problem is that policy-wise, both are often treated as “extracurricular” matters, when they ought to be “co-curricular”, to borrow those educational terms, floating or sinking with one another.

    That was the crux of the Idachaba lecture, with Prof. Ayoola tracing agricultural policy way back in time: Nationally Coordinated Food Production Programme (Gowon, 1972); Operation Feed the Nation (Obasanjo, 1976); Green Revolution Programme (Shagari, 1980); Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (Babangida, 1986); National Agricultural Land Authority (Babangida, 1990), National Programme on Food Security (Obasanjo, 2000), National Food Security Programme (Yar’Adua, 2008) and Agricultural Transformation Agenda (Jonathan, 2011).

    Food as human right should have gripped the media, revolutionized policy and anchored the polity on a sharp ideological divide.

    But alas!  The media is busy and not to be disturbed — in perfect bliss with banality and allied crap!

  • A letter from President Donald Trump

    Dear…, ”began the three-page, double-spaced typewritten letter from the White House addressed to a person I know.

    “I know you are someone I can count on to tell me the truth …

    “That’s why I am reaching out directly to men and women like you to get your input and ask you to serve as part of our grassroots leadership team.

    “So please don’t delay.  Complete the enclosed Presidential Advisory Board State of the Nation Survey and return it to me with your contribution of $25, $50, $100, $250, $500 or even $1,000 to the Republican National Committee as soon as you can …

    “The future of the Presidency, and our entire country, depends on the success of the RNC’s efforts to build our party and prepare for the next critical election.

    “And we cannot afford to wait until next year to start fighting back against the aggressive, nasty attacks from the two dozen Democrats running for President, as well as the kooky socialist policy proposals put out by radical leftist Democrats in Congress

    “The Democrats and their liberal special interest allies, with the help of their lapdogs in the biased media are trying to create a phony, negative “narrative” that our nation is headed in the wrong direction.

    “And what do they base their accusations on?  They quote the same “experts,” who worked for the Obama Administration, and the failed pollsters that wrote off my campaign that I never won the White House.

    “Can you believe that?  We can’t let them get away with it …

    “Since I took the Oath of Office on January 20, 2017, I’ve been working incredibly hard to bring accountability to the federal government and to get the bureaucrats out of the way so our economy can grow and create jobs.

    “For too long the federal government and the people who work for it forgot that THEY work for you, not the other way around.  Not anymore.

    “I ran for President to fight for the American people. My victories are your victories.

    “So many BIG WINS for America.”

    “But liberal Democrats in Washington, D.C., Iike Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, aren’t happy, and their pals in the liberal media don’t even acknowledge our strong expanding economy, and the positive impact  my policies …

    “Rather than cheering for America’s victories, they grow more and more angry and aggressive every day.

    “I’ve tried to reach out to Democrat leaders to ask for cooperation on issue after issue, and all I get in return are attacks on my Administration, my family, and me.  They do not care at all about issues that need addressing, such as health care, border security and infrastructure.

    “They are blinded by power, envy.  They put politics before country.  It is a disgrace.

    “I cannot work with them when all they want is to accuse, investigate and interrogate.  No President should have to deal with endless bitter, phony, politically-motivated attacks …

    “I urgently need you to stand with me today.

    “So please, send the enclosed survey along with your generous contribution . . . in the pre-addressed envelope provided.  Your feedback will let me know how you feel – unfiltered by the Fake News and their biased polls.

    “Thank you in advance for your steadfast support of my leadership and my agenda.’’

    Sincerely

    Donald J. Trump President of the United States.

    —-

    It is just as well that this letter, which reflects none too subtly the most disagreeable aspects of the Trump persona:  his compulsive lying, his intolerance of dissent, his visceral disdain for anything associated, however tangentially, with his predecessor Barack Obama, his reading the darkest motives into the conduct of his  opponents, his predilection for infantile name-calling, etc; etc, was not addressed directly to me.

    If Trump suggests that you are someone he can count on to tell him the truth, you should ask your attorneys to explore the possibility of filing a defamation lawsuit against him. He is saying, in effect, that you are, or that he regards you as, a fellow-traveller for whom lying is a way of life. You do not need a Washington DC or New York lawyer billing $1,000 an hour to win the case.

    The least I can do now is to try to respond to the letter, at least in part.

    With the Donald, it is always about money.  Hardly had he established his bonafides than he asked for donations to pursue his agenda – an agenda that will for all practical purposes do great harm to the person he is importuning, and for whom he has not the least regard anyway.  If Trump had his way, he would whisk the person to the nearest detention camp, pending deportation.

    Trump talks blithely about “the truth.”  He urges his correspondent to tell him the truth.  In Trumpworld, the truth is forever shifting.  What he presents as the truth on a given day is most likely the precise opposite of what he had presented as the truth the previous day and will bear no resemblance still to what he will present as the truth the next day. It is a constant stream of lies, lies and more lies; lies big and small, lies vile and hurtful, disingenuous lies that would diminish even the local dog-catcher.

    Trump lies about his finances, his academic record, his officials, the state of the economy, his golf game, his meetings with other world leaders and about his achievements that have in two years dwarfed the combined achievements of all previous U.S. presidents; he lies about the weather. Before Trump (BT), it was all darkness. After Trump (AT) it has been all light and sweetness and will continue to as long as he remains in charge.

    And Trump goes about this marathon mendacity with a straight face, without remorse and without a twinge of conscience.  He knows no other way.  It has carried him to the pinnacle of wealth and power and influence.  So, why bother?  Why reconsider a way of life that has brought him to such dizzying heights, Leader of the Free World no less, this arch apostle of unfreedom?

    Only those ignorant of the Trump’s record will sympathise with his claim that he has tried to reach out to Democrat leaders to ask for cooperation on issue after issue and that all he gets in return are attacks on his Administration, his family, and himself.

    Cooperation with the Trump Administration on health care would require the Democrats to abandon the Affordable Health Care Act – President Barack Obama’s signature achievement which, with all its imperfections, made health insurance coverage available to more than 34 million previously uninsured persons.

    Cooperation in the face of Trump’s serial law-breaking and contempt for the rule of law and due process would be subversive of the system of checks and balances that is the heart and soul of the Constitution of the United States.

    This is a president who would rather believe Vladimir Putin’s denials than iron-clad evidence that Russian intelligence intervened in ways subversive of the American electoral process. And he did not even require any help from Senate Majority Leader Mitch “Moscow Mitch” McConnell to pull it off.

    When he promotes a return to coal to please his wealthy donors than invest in clean energy, when he lowers or abolishes outright air and water pollution benchmarks set by his predecessors yet accuses them of putting politics before the country, you have to wonder whether he is not practically unconscious.

    When I got to the part where Trump says: “Since I took the Oath of Office on January 20, 2017, I’ve been working incredibly hard to bring accountability to the federal government,” I had to go over his text again and again to be sure it was not a misprint.

    Accountability, as in blockading his tax returns and records of his financial dealings and every document under subpoena, refusing to testify and preventing others from testifying, harassing court officials, and asserting absolute privilege over executive actions, harassing judges, The Donald is too far gone in his chicanery to pause and reflect.

    And, by the way, who launched his Presidency two years ago on the narrative that the United States was mired in the vortex of a dystopia?