The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Much ado about food import ‘ban’

    Trust Nigerians to go into frenzy over issues they had barely time to digest let alone understand; a lot has been said about the directive given by President Muhammadu Buhari in the course of his Eid-el-Kabir lunch with APC governors in Daura last week. The President, we are told, directed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to stop providing foreign exchange for importation of food into the country, since according to him, agricultural production has not only steadied, but the country is already inching towards  food security.

    “Don’t give a cent to anybody to import food into the country,’’ the president was quoted to have told his guests in a message meant for Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Godwin Emefiele. He had noted, perhaps for effect, that some states like Kebbi, Ogun, Lagos, Jigawa, Ebonyi and Kano had already taken advantage of the federal government’s policy on agriculture with huge returns in rice farming, urging more states to plug into the ongoing revolution to feed the nation.

    For the hyperactive Nigerian commentariat, it was perhaps time again to kick dust. Unfortunately, such has been the deliberate muddling of the semantics that Nigerians are now at a loss as to what to make of it: Is it a case an outright ‘ban’ of food imports – which seems highly unlikely under the rules of the World Trade Organisation? Or, as it appears to be the case in this particular instance, barring food importers from access to foreign exchange– which though permissible and certainly not without precedent, has proven to be inefficacious?

    And then, there are those who couldn’t care because our dear president means well for his constituency – the poor masses of this country!

    Let’s admit that there are other contributors who not only see things different but more rationally. Among the latter is Kingsley Moghalu, a former Deputy Governor of the CBN who not only insists that the president lacks the power to so direct but was explicit that the Central Bank Act of 2007 makes clear that the bank “is independent, and not supposed to be taking direct instructions from politicians.”

    IN this category is Bismarck Rewane, the economist and chief executive of Financial Derivatives who while expressing similar misgivings on the wider implications of the president’s directive, says Nigerians have reasons to worry. To quote him as reported by Punch: “Did this policy emanate from a holistic, cross-pollination of ideas after the rubbing of minds from the relevant stakeholders such as farmers, food processors, marketers, the Customs service as well as the Ministry of Agriculture across the country?

    While a great number of Nigerians – certainly excepting the duo – could be forgiven for buying into the muddle, the presidency appears to be its chief promoter vide its inelegant response to the Financial Times report of August 15 on the issue. Nigerians who have not bothered to read the piece titled Muhammadu Buhari sparks dismay over policy shift on food imports should Google it to read. Written by its West Africa correspondent, Neil Munshi, the piece interestingly didn’t say anything new that highly informed Nigerians have not said about the knee-jerk, cut and paste, policies of the Buhari administration, the absence of internal coherence in its policies and plans, the conflation of monetary and fiscal policies, the systematic derogation of the independence – and I dare add – integrity – of the apex bank, and most worrisome, the clear absence of the clear-sighted leadership on the fiscal front.

    Stopping short of editorialising, Financial Times actually did no more catalogue the views of some of those who should ordinarily know – never mind their role as critics – on these wide-ranging issues.

    Take this sample of contribution by Amaka Anku, Africa director for the Eurasia Group as quoted by the author.  Her contention is that the policy  “sent a troubling message for an economy suffering from high unemployment, low foreign direct investment and sluggish growth”.

    Said she: “Most actors, especially the central bank, should know that a total ban of food imports is not practical and I doubt that will be the policy”. She also observed that the president’s comments “will continue to drive home the sense that Buhari has no idea how to manage an economy and will raise uncertainty about what other [foreign exchange] restrictions are coming, and contribute to already low business confidence.”

    Or Cobus de Hart, chief economist at NKC African Economics who said that the president’s call for a currency ban raised more “serious concerns”. The directive, he said, “also cast doubt on Nigeria’s commitment to a landmark continent-wide trade agreement, which it signed last month after more than a year of delay”.

    As it appears, if the article was guilty of anything, it is for projecting those critical voices on the issue.  To imagine that the article, which yours truly has read at least twice, could have been so terribly and perhaps deliberately misunderstood; add to this the needless tiff by officials that ought to be more reflective and far less sentimental; surely, these are not normal times and just as has been said by many that our country Nigeria is not a normal country.

    Will the restriction work? Aside being an overused weapon, its overall efficacy is suspect. Presently, we know the story of rice as indeed those of the 41 items earlier placed on forex ban. Restrictions or not, trade in those items continues to flourish. Don’t ask me where they source their forex from. Trust our officials to live in denial of the stratospheric rise in rice imports in Benin Republic, Niger and Cameroun; our markets continue to present the more plausible story of the astounding lacuna and the flawed assumptions that continues to be our nation’s undoing.

    No doubt, the measure by the president was well-intended and most certainly, the president means well. However, until the administration is able to come to terms with the fact success will not be measured by the  number of items on the prohibition list or even by the dizzying zillions poured into ad hoc interventions including the much touted  anchor borrowers’ scheme, but in the ability of the administration to create a sustainable climate for agro-preneurship to thrive, the country will remain on the same spot.

    This is where we need a completely new thinking. Emefiele and company at the apex bank can only do so much and all within the ambits of the monetary framework. As it is, Emefiele’s apex bank is increasingly being pushed to become a jack of all trades. I hope the time will not come when the bank will be called upon to help secure the borders!

    Of course, current times demand strong leadership at the level of the Economic Management Team. We need this to push refreshingly bold ideas to get the country working. Put bluntly, an innovative and effective fiscal strategy is what has been lacking in the last four years.  For now, if I may use a cliché which I am well familiar, a strategy of forex restriction at this time is at best – a placebo.

  • Offence of treason

    The #RevolutionNow movement, championed by the presidential candidate of the Africa Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, appears to have melted like an ice cube flung into a flame. Could it be that Sowore overrated himself? Perhaps, he trusted his famed competences and followership in the cyber world, and thought that such can be translated into street followership.

    Running scared, the federal government post-haste accused him of committing the highest offence against public order. If Sowore had consulted a psycho-analyst before the #RevolutionNow, he would have been warned that President Muhammadu Buhari would not take chances with any potential threat to his government, when history blames his indifference for the palace coup, which the wily former President Ibrahim Babaginda masterminded against his leadership in 1985.

    Some historians claim that General Buhari was warned that a coup was brewing, but he ignored it, apparently waiting to see tangible signs – like mutiny or the movement of troops. But this time, the General may have panicked too early, and he has the freedoms enshrined in the 1999 constitution to contend with. In a democracy, protests and adverse opinions are seen as inherent in the fundamental rights, guaranteed by law.

    But seriously speaking, the charge of treason and treasonable felony are serious offences against the state, which is why they attract death penalty and life imprisonment respectively. In most democracies, the charge of treason is usually linked to a military invasion, either from within or from outside the country. In our political history, it was only under the military that treason and treasonable felony were routine, except of course the Obafemi Awolowo saga, which because of its political undertone crippled the first republic.

    So what are treason and treasonable felony? Section 37(1) of the Criminal Code, provides: “any person who levies war against the Sovereign, in order to intimidate or overawe the Governor-General or Governor of a Region, is guilty of treason, and is liable to the punishment of death.” Sub-section 2, further provides: “any person conspiring with any person, either within or without Nigeria, to levy war against the Sovereign with intent to cause such levying of war as would be treason if committed by one of Her Majesty’s subjects, is guilty of treason, and is liable to punishment of death…”

    Tightening the noose further, that relic of colonial legislation in Nigeria, provides in section 38 that: “any person who instigates any foreigner to invade Nigeria with an armed force is guilty of treason, and is liable to the punishment of death.” With Sowore merely ‘whining his mouth’, as they would say in Nigerian street lingo, many are wandering how such theatrics could mutate to treason? But the government is not taking any chances in the media war, knowing the reach of Sowore’s internet warriors.

    In the media space, the federal government has gone ahead to accuse Sowore of having links with the disorderly followers of embattled leader of Islamic Movement of Nigeria, Sheik El Zakzaky and also of planning to team up with the separatist group, the IPOB – both organizations the federal government had banned as terrorist groups in controversial circumstances. So, with the dragnet linking him to IMN and IPOB, the federal character principle is maintained, at least in the court of public opinion.

    On treasonable felonies, section 41 provides: “any person who forms an intention to effect any of the following, that is to say: (a) to depose the sovereign from the style, honour, and royal name of the imperial crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or of any other of Her Majesty’s dominions, or from her style, honour, and name of Supreme Lady in and over Nigeria, or in and over any other country which has been declared to be under her protection;”

    Or (b): “to levy war against the sovereign within any part of Her Majesty’s dominions, or within any country which has been declared to be under her protection, in order by force or constraint to compel the sovereign to change her measures or counsels, or in order to put any force or constraint upon, or in order to intimidate or overawe any House of Parliament or other legislative authority or any of Her Majesty’s dominions, or of any country which has been declared dominions, or of any country which has been declared to be under her protection.”

    Or (c): “to instigate any foreigner to make an armed invasion of any of Her Majesty’s dominions, or of any country which has been declared to be under her protection – and manifest such intention by an overt act, is guilty of felony and is liable to imprisonment for life.” Interestingly, the federal government has secured an order of a federal High Court to detain Sowore for 45 days, within which it will hopefully conclude its investigation and prefer the taunted charge of treason against him.

    In the days ahead, it will be seen whether the surrounding issues raised against Sowore will provide the prima facie evidence that will be required to proffer a charge of treason or treasonable felony against the embattled political activist. In Ajidagba vs IGP (1958) 3 FSC 5, the Supreme Court held that prima facie simple means “ground for proceeding.”  On prima facie case, the apex court held: “a prima facie is not the same as proof which comes later when the court has to find whether the accused is guilty or not guilty….”

    Again, in Ikomi vs State (1986) 5 SC 741, Nnamani JSC, held: “It is sufficient, if the depositions and statements attached to the information disclose a prima facie case against the accused person. The question ought to be this: from these depositions, is it probable that the accused persons are linked with the offence….” Referring to the role of the Attorney General, Coker JSC in Ikomi’s case held: “An Attorney General is not the Judge of the case but a prosecutor of the charge. His responsibility was not to decide the merit of the case but to ensure that the charge is not preferred irresponsibly, solely to embarrass, harass or prosecute.”

    But in what looks like a departure from the settled principles of Ikomi vs State, the Supreme Court in Abacha vs State (2002) FWLR (Pt.118) by a majority judgement upturned the concurrent judgment of the two lower courts. The apex court, per Belgore JSC held: “In the matter now at hand, there is nothing linking the appellant with the crimes on the indictment than suspicion.” While many believe the federal government have acted tendentiously against Sowore, it is the courts that will determine whether his actions fit into the definition of treason as alleged by government.               

  • Trial of Brother Ike

    The Trials of Brother Jero is a Wole Soyinka play, which protagonist is a roguish but likable C&S prophet living on his wits; like other white-garment hustlers of his era, in his Lagos Bar Beach redoubt.

    But the Trial of Brother Ike is no fiction.  Indeed, it’s ultra-real setting is Nuremberg, the pre-World War II (1939-1945) city of intense Nazi hate, in Bavaria, Germany.

    With post-World War II trials, however, that same Nuremberg played judicial nemesis to the rump of Adolf Hitler’s hate-spewing thugs, after the global debacle that consumed thousands, if not, millions of lives.

    Besides, this scary, non-fiction badgering had the social media, as its global stage — from which it went viral, practically a few seconds after the macabre assault and battery played out.

    It was the odyssey of Ike Ekweremadu, former deputy president (DSP) of the 7th and 8th Senates; and current sitting senator of the Federal Republic, in the hands of IPOB fanatics, out there in Germany.

    The video of Ekweremadu’s mugging was simply unnerving.  Mugged by a mob, clothes torn; pushed-and-pulled, a virtual ping-pong in the hands of a hateful mob; poor Ekweremadu wouldn’t gain his get-away car until one of the mob let fly a king-size tuber of yam!

    Lodavemesi!

    Those who wish to gloat have earned their democratic right, to enjoy selves, at Ekweremadu’s expense.

    Truth be told, the Nuremberg show of shame is nothing but crass internationalization of the sewers of South East politics, particularly in relations to other ethnics.

    In that lunatic, combustible cave, it’s an elite goading to free-wheeling hate.  After all, going by the French Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 No Exit play, “Hell is other people”!

    But at Nuremberg, the city of Nazi hate, hell suddenly became own people!  That’s Ekweremadu’s personal tragedy.

    Still, those who have been gloating would do well to remember that scriptural caution: beware of throwing the first stone.

    In this high season of hate, you never know where the children of hate would spring from.  That is with particular reference to South West folks.  But more on that presently.

    Back to Ekweremadu; and an IPOB romance gone awry.

    When Nnamdi Kanu and his Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) were spewing hate, across the Niger north and west, it was mum from Ekweremadu and co.

    For one, it was the first time the mainstream South East elite would play themselves into opposition, in any democratic experiment, pre- or post-Civil War (1967-1970).

    For an elite that loves to blame others for own failings, some bile from the misguided mass would do just fine — hell is other people!

    Besides, it was the summit of Ekweremadu’s sweetheart deal with Bukola Saraki.

    Saraki had sold off his party to gain the Senate presidency.  En route, he had sold Ekweremadu the carcass of DSP, even if the beneficiary was a minority senator.  It was carcass and carrion so sweet!

    But the mission was clear: with Saraki, gang up to thwart the new order; turn triumph into defeat; and four years hence, from that base platform, rocket back to power!

    With that temper, Nnamdi Kanu’s bail was the umpteenth politics to cement that not-so-hidden rogue agenda.  Besides, don’t they say the enemy of my enemy is my darling friend?

    So, Ekweremadu played the folk hero, and Kanu got his bail — applause, applause!  Until Kanu, with his ceaseless stream of hate, turned himself into a fugitive from the law, it was, to echo that pidgin street lingo, notin’ spoil!

    Then came Nuremberg — and the hunter becomes the hunted (and haunted); things fall apart; the falcon can no longer hear the falconer; and mere anarchy is loosed upon the Igbo world: right out there in Nuremberg, the old city of Nazi hate!

    Why, IPOB, though proscribed, is even threatening more thunder and brimstone, against South East governors and other high-ranking politicos, that venture outside Nigeria’s shores!

    How internationalizing senseless bile and crass hooliganism would boost Biafra’s cause is left to anyone to figure out.

    In fairness to Ekweremadu, he just fitted pat into an extant elite agenda; the same way Ohanaeze’s combative temper in inter-ethnic matters does, as ferreted from the often bulldog stance of John Nwodo, its president; even if elderly restraint would do.

    You could even trace, on a grander cultured level, the current South East distemper to Chinua Achebe’s swan song, There Was A Country, his Civil War memoirs of prose and poetry, which not a few think is a tad one-sided.

    Even if you could excuse that criticism with the saying that he who wears the shoe knows where it pinches, bile has never solved any problem.  All it does is block clear thinking, sorely needed to clear the fog and improve the situation.

    Still, for South West denizens that love to gloat at the Ekweremadu debacle, they had better watch current happenings in  own home region; with elders at the departure lounge (to echo Obasanjo’s  metaphor) vomiting enough bile, to ensure inter-ethnic ancestral feuds continue, long after they are gone.

    True, former President Olusegun Obasanjo continues to blow hot and cold, as befits his rather unstable political temper, with wild swings between joy and angst, as final judgment dawns on his legacy.  But Obasanjo is not the danger here.

    The danger, rather, is the progressive mainstream now split, with the losing bloc digging deep into bile, as bitter as gall.

    That explains why a faction of Afenifere, which hitherto had served the Yoruba rather well in earlier battles in a federal Nigeria, would now seem to champion a rather noxious strain of Yoruba ultranationalism, complete with ethnic slurs, particularly against the Fulani.

    Now, that would appear a potent two-in-one whiplash: to drub the rival victors at the polls, turning into ash their legit win; and to inveigh against the Fulani who, by present hysteria, are folks others love to hate.

    Even better: in blind bitterness, cast the victorious bloc as bastards, come to drag the once proud Yoruba into Fulani peonage — applause, applause, from a fast increasing bigoted mass!

    But when comes the Yoruba Nuremberg, when a Yoruba Ekweremadu would play out, in shameful technicolor, in full view of the globe?

    When would that be?  After the grandees pushing the present hate are dead and buried; and the young Turks in the current bile ensemble become the new Ekweremadu, flailing under own home missiles, to universal derision?

    So, let folks nationwide gloat less and think more.

    Let the Ekweremadu pill be the turning point, jerking everyone back to reality. Hate or bile exalts no nation.

    Nigeria may be at a crossroads.  But so have many countries too, at separate times in their history.

    Yet, many of these not only weathered their storms, not a few even morphed from countries into nations, integrated in love, justice and mutual respect.

  • EBONY, and Ebonygate revisited

    WITH the recent sale by public auction of its archives of more than four million black-and-white photographs, some of them prize-winning and some never published before, the monthly lifestyle magazine EBONY which defined and captured the black experience in America like no other for two generations has finally gone out of business.

    Priced at $46 million, the archives were sold for $30 million.  The proceeds will be used to offset part of the debts of the Johnson Publishing Company, owners of the magazine.  The company filed for bankruptcy liquidation, some three years ago, unable to arrange financing or a sale.

    Fears were rife that EBONY’s iconic pictures would fall into the hands of a private-equity firm that may choose to dispose of them as it pleases.  In the event, they were purchased by a consortium of four leading private foundations, which will donate them to the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution and the Getty Research Institute.

    This arrangement guarantees the archives will be preserved for posterity and made accessible to the public

    EBONY was launched in 1945, in Chicago, by John H. Johnson, a visionary entrepreneur concerned “to show the Negroes (as African Americans were then called) but also white people that Negroes also got married, held beauty contests, gave parties, ran successful businesses, and did all the other normal things of life.”

    Johnson’s daughter, who succeeded him as publisher, said the mission was to make EBONY the “curator of the African-American experience, past, present, and future.”  It fulfilled the first two parts of its mission admirably. But its future now lies behind it, sadly, after a run of 71 years.

    Within a few years of its debut, EBONY became a habit.  There was hardly any black home in the United States where you would not find a copy.  It was read and passed along, to be read and passed along until every member of the household had savoured its contents.  Those who could not read were rewarded with its white-and-black pictures that captured arrestingly all aspects of black culture, from the ghetto to the executive suite, and the Boardroom, and ultimately to the Presidency.

    It was a lifestyle magazine with a difference.  It depicted African American entertainers, athletes and movie actors and performing artistes all right.  But it also showcased black scientists, lawyers, diplomats, legislators, community leaders, inventors, engineers, astronauts, corporate executives, commanding officers in the armed services and, generally, achievers in every sphere of American life.

    Its tone was optimistic, upbeat.  But you could never accuse EBONY of puffery, for the stories were substantive, well researched, and very well written. The photo-essay it published from time to time was a model of story conception and execution.

    Its stablemate Jet, published in a much smaller format, debuted in 1951 as “the weekly Negro news magazine.”  Together, EBONY and Jet captured the essence of black life in America like no other journals. Their challenge was to define or redefine for America black Americans, who were for the most part presented with mutilated images of themselves by the dominant media.

    The field was not entirely bereft of black journals.  There were, for example, the Chicago Defender, the Baltimore Afro-American and Amsterdam News based in Harlem, New York.  These were important voices and vehicles in their communities, but their circulation and impact were modest.

    At the launch of EBONY, many newspapers in the American South, did not publish pictures of blacks   as a matter of policy.  Large sections of the print media did not report the stirrings that culminated in the civil rights movement, the sit-ins and protests that challenged Jim Crow laws and caused them to be abolished.  It was only in the late 1990s that a newspaper in Jackson, Miss, sought to atone for this denial by omission and published supplements chronicling important news stories of the civil rights it had not reported.

    Television was just as complicit.

    EBONY changed all that.  Black people, many of them for the first time, could see black people like themselves as leading achievers and key public figures, in positions they did not know black people could hold and performing roles they never thought black people could play; they saw Africans in their colourful native attires on the world stage as kings and presidents and prime ministers and statesmen.

    It fostered black pride. It promoted Black role models and fired black aspirations.  Its yearly issue profiling the 100 Most Influential Blacks in America was a parade of excellent role models for aspiring African Americans. And if you wanted to reach the attentive black audience EBONY was the medium that gave you the best value for your advertisement budget.

    The coming of the Internet opened the era of free content.  Television generally, and cable television in particular, offered round-the-clock programming that gravely undermined newspaper and magazine readership.  Advertisers shifted to digital platforms and television even as newspaper production costs soared, forcing such venerable publications like TIME and NEWSWEEK to abandon the business model that had served them so profitably for decades.

    EBONY’s fortunes contracted in this altered environment. Debts mounted.  Operations became unsustainable.  Unable to arrange financing or find a buyer, it filed for bankruptcy liquidation three years ago.  The sale last month of its photography assets closed what will go down as one of the most eventful chapters in the history of American journalism and black culture.

    Unfortunately, generations of Nigerians will probably remember EBONY in an entirely different context

    Despite its iconic status in the African American experience, the magazine had no market presence in Nigeria or anywhere outside the United States.  Many Nigerians were acquainted with it only by its reputation.  Some had read pass-along copies at infrequent intervals, courtesy of Nigerians living in or returning from the United States.   You certainly could not pick up a copy at the newsstand as you could TIME and Newsweek.

    Still, in 1990, EBONY magazine figured in Nigerian politics the way few foreign journals had done before or since. In the process, it bequeathed the term Ebonygate to the nation’s vocabulary of sleaze.

    Military president Ibrahim Babangida’s benighted Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) had sapped the economy, turning basic needs into luxuries and eviscerating the middle class. Hunger stalked the countryside, and many Nigerians were reduced to rummaging through dustbins for food scraps.

    Anti-SAP demonstrations, which turned violent in many cities, broke out across the country, fuelled by rumours that Babangida had stashed away some $3 billion from the national treasury in foreign banks, and that he and his wife owned, among other properties, a diamond watch factory in France.

    The organizers cited EBONY magazine as their source.

    Conspicuous among the teeming protesters in Lagos was the respected educator and founder of Mayflower School, Ikenne, Dr Tai Solarin, in his trademark floppy hat, khaki shirt and shorts.  In an interview he had made some reference to Babangida’s rumoured offshore wealth – a key grievance of the demonstrators.

    The claim that the story came out of EBONY was implausible through and through.   It was not EBONY’s fare.  But no matter.

    State security officials seized Solarin and subjected him to a brutal inquisition on live national television, conducted by Col. Kunle Togun, who had been living under a cloud of suspicion of complicity in the 1985 parcel-bomb murder of the crusading journalist, Dele Giwa

    What was Solarin’s source?  Did he verify it?  As an educator and an influential citizen, was he unaware that he had an obligation to verify the information so as not to lend his authority to subversive rumours?

    Official desperation did not end there.  The authorities dispatched a team to Chicago to urge EBONY publisher Johnson to state categorically, for the public record, that at no time had the magazine carried the story attributed to it. Johnson refused the strange demand.

    And to this day in Nigeria, Ebonygate carries the resonance of rumour, gossip, or falsehood, a slur on the reputation of the foremost journal of the African American experience that was.

  • Panacea for peace

    In a multi-ethnic society like Nigeria, there will always be conflict. While the country should develop the capacity to manage the conflicts as they arise; more importantly the leaders must seek the ability to minimize the incidents or causes of conflict. When conflicts are properly managed or prevented, there would be peace, and when there is peace the society prospers. So, developing the ability to manage or prevent conflict should be one of the trainings our leaders should be exposed to.

    A leader who does not possess the capacity to manage or prevent conflict will stumble from one crisis to another; unfortunately to the detriment of the people he or she leads.  In this enquiry, let us appreciate some of the key terms from different perspectives. Peace is defined as: “freedom from disturbance”, “agreement and harmony among people.” It relates to: “tranquillity, calmness, restfulness and quiet.”

    Interestingly, a former president of United States of America, Ronald Reagan, said: “peace is not absence of conflict; it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.” On the other hand, conflict is defined as “a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one.” It relates to: “dispute, quarrel, squabble, differences of opinion.” Most of the conflicts afflicting Nigeria are political, but in recent times, we now have more of religious, cultural and social conflicts.

    On its part, conflict prevention has been explained as “a peace operation employing complementary diplomatic, civil, and, when necessary, military means, to monitor and identify the causes of conflict, and take timely action to prevent the occurrence, escalation, or resumption of hostilities.” Conversely, conflict resolution “is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of conflict and retribution.”  It is also defined as “Intervention aimed at alleviating or eliminating discord through conciliation.”

    There may be a dispute as to the number of ethnic groups in Nigeria, but there is no dispute that the number runs into several hundreds. Perhaps that explains the multi-layers of conflict that afflict the country, ranging from the minor to the more serious ones that threaten the corporate existence or foundation of the country itself. In definitional terms, “an ethnic group or an ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities such as common ancestry, language, history, society, culture or nation.”

    To manage or prevent conflict in a multi-ethnic society like Nigeria and thereby engender peace, the panacea is simply “to do unto others as you will want others to do unto you.” But a more pragmatic process of ensuring that conflicts are prevented or managed, have been developed by Rotarians. It is called: “the four-way test.” According to Wikipedia: “The Four-Way Test of the things we think, say or do is a test used by Rotarians world-wide as a moral code for personal and business relationships. The test can be applied to almost any aspect of life.”

    It is made up of 24 words, and was developed by Herbert I. Taylor an American from Chicago as his ultimate plan to save a dying company Club Aluminium Products Distribution Company from bankruptcy, way back in 1930s. Taylor offered Rotary his 24 words when he became a director of Rotary International in 1940s and Rotary adopted it as a moral code for personal and business relationships. The test asks us to test every action, word or step by asking first: “is it the truth, is it fair to all concerned, will it build goodwill and better friendships, and finally will it be beneficial to all concerned?”

    Rotarians recite the four-way test at every Rotary meeting. In my humble view, it is perhaps one of the greatest gifts of Rotary to the world, because the 24 words are eternal guide to life and relationships. There is no doubt that the four-way test is a variant of the golden rule: do unto others what you would want them do to you. For Christians, and I believe Moslems and Animists may have a variant, Jesus Christ taught the golden rule in Matthew 7:12, when he said: “so in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

    In a multi-ethnic country like Nigeria, conflict would be minimal if not completely eliminated, if leaders and followers regardless of ethnic membership relate with one another truthfully, fairly, with the motive to build goodwill, to encourage better friendship, to act in a manner beneficial to everyone within the community and even beyond.

    When an issue affecting persons of different ethnicity in the country arises, leaders and followers can resolve such disputes by simply applying the four-way test to the complaints, testimonies, presentations, accusations and disagreements. They can justly end the dispute by applying the four-way test in their decisions, judgments, resolutions and instructions.

    Of note, the four-way test can be used to eliminate fake news, which has become one of the new causes of conflict in multi-ethnic communities. For instance, those who forward volatile messages that could ignite ethnic passion should first ask themselves whether the content is true; whether it is fair to all concerned, whether it will bring goodwill and better friendship, and finally whether it will be beneficial to all concerned.

    Once the message does not meet the requirements, a person wishing to build peace or prevent conflict or resolve an existing conflict should not forward such a message. Pastors, Imams, Babalawos and other religious leaders can also apply the four-way test to the messages they deliver to their congregation. By applying the principles of the four-way test, messages which can ignite unruly passion will be eliminated.

    The four-way test of the things we think, say or do can also help to eliminate the scourge of hate speech in a multi-ethnic community. No doubt, any message which meets the four-way test cannot be a hate speech. To deal with hate speech, Rotary should offer our beleaguered country the four-test as antidote. Power buffs, like chiefs, obas, council and state government officials will provide efficient leadership by applying the four-way test in their relationship with members of the public regardless of their ethnic origin. It will help them treat members of the community equally.

    Applying the four-way test would help promote love and peace in a multi-ethnic community.   As Mahatma Gandhi said: “whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.” He also said: “The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” On his part, Albert Einstein said: “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” Finally, as Mother Theresa said: “Peace begins with a smile.”

    Happy Sallah Nigerians.

  • Poisoned psyche

    A consummate professional, Adeniyi Adesina, got recalled to The Nation for higher duties.

    Another, Ismail Omipidan, got invited from The Sun to take Adesina’s place, as chief press secretary (CPS) to Gboyega Oyetola, the Osun governor.

    Both exited and entered without fuss or ill will.

    Nor did the governor exhibit any angst, beyond the reluctance of letting go a calm, measured and polished mind; replaced with great relief at finding an alter ego — in professional brilliance, focus and temper — to do the job.

    But see how a fellow, on Facebook, captured the transition: “Gboyega Oyetola sacks Ijeshaman Niyi Adesina as his CPS; replaces him with Ila-Orangun man, Ismail Omipidan. O da baun!” (cynical Oyo Yoruba snap for “It’s alright”).

    And then this follow-up: “Sacking a Christian to replace him with a Moslem. So Oyetola could be this intolerant?”  Ah!

    And this yakking, after reasoned caution, to his hysterical post: “Is Adesina an Ijesha? Is he a Christian? Is he still Oyetola’s CPS?  Is Ismail the new CPS, a Christian, an Ijesha?”

    The reminds you — doesn’t it? — of Irish poet, W. B. Keats, in his famous poem, ‘The Second Coming’ : “…The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity …”?

    Talk of combative ignorance, cocky, reckless and unfazed!

    Enter the menace of the media as meddler: base, petty, graceless, crass, cynical, petulant, manipulative and mischievous.

    Still, a Facebook comment, by a cyber denizen, as reckless and they come in the cyber jungle, couldn’t possibly qualify as “media”, in the most basic sense of the word?  True.

    You could even label — and with justification too — that categorization as a tad too sweeping.

    But that is only when you view the media from the formalist stand point.

    From the point of effect, that repudiation would appear cosmetic and artificial.  Otherwise, the social media, where you could unleash anything that suited your fancy on an unsuspecting and often gullible audience, could not have become such a menace.

    In a contemporary Nigeria, where the line is becoming wafer-thin, between the conventional media (with its robust “gate-keeping”) and new media (with its mad rush at “breaking news”: even if it is often pure fiction, garbled truths or even spiteful lies as free and democratic commentaries, as this Osun case), the havoc of such steamrollers is real.

    Why, even AIT, before its crunch with the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC), gloried in such unfazed mischief, by beaming social media inanities, which nevertheless fuelled some partisan bliss.

    Even now, some radio stations are outright pests, pushing a brazen democratic right to misinform — nay, to disinformation; traducing and maligning those whose right of response, in full measure, could be distracting, if not outright impolitic; and unleashing  nothing short of media anarchy, that bucks all sane broadcast rules.

    Enter: the birth, nurture and sustenance of the poisoned psyche, on a mass scale.

    Yet, partisan reportage is not new.  The NTA, from nativity, sees and hears no evil, concerning the extant powers.

    But should the tide change, as it did in 2015, the transition is prompt and dutiful.  Open sesame:  the clobbered of last night, become the new news toast this morning — all in the line of duty!

    In the 2nd Republic, nothing the conservative National Party of Nigeria (NPN) President Shehu Shagari (Allah bless his soul!) did passed the muster of the opposition press; which, with a vengeance, cancelled out the NTA government doting, at least within these newspapers’ spheres of influence.

    Still, all those were generally done within the confines of strict and robust gate-keeping: check and balances, at many layers of news treatment, to at least conform to journalism best practices.  Not any more!

    Now, a new potent virus straddles the conventional and new media.  Those in government will ignore it to their peril.

    In this particular Osun case, traducing an innocent Governor Oyetola, over base but empty clannish and faith allegations, would appear a continuation of the sickly Osun-as-media-ping pong of the Rauf Aregbesola years.

    Independent sources, including mainstream local and international development agencies, hailed that government as nothing but revolutionary; in driving radical, human-centred development, dealing mass poverty lethal blows, even with puny cash in its till.

    But to a section of Nigeria’s mainstream media, all those striving, rich practical equivalent of Jeremy Bentham’s “greatest happiness of the greatest number”, were nothing but crap.

    Indeed, going by their own old wives’ tales, dished as hot and explosive media fare,  the former governor, with his then chief of staff and now governor, and other braves that laboured and sweated to lift their people, only qualified to be nailed to the cross, to parody Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novel, Devil on the Cross.

    Media terrorism was never more brazen!

    That, for Osun, nearly proved fatal — fatal because, no matter what partisans may claim, had Osun voted otherwise, it would have proved more than a routine election lost and won.

    The people would have been the ultimate loser, for a dawn of true people-centred development would have been tossed away, by partisan bile, no thanks to a poisoned psyche, deliberately and spitefully pushed by a section of the media.

    It would have been well and truly tragic.

    Both Adesina and Omipidan, the one returning to  journalism practice, the other crossing over to media-manage a government, must know it’s poisoned times.

    But again, partisan journalism is not new.  What is new is the newfound toxicity that poisons all.

    The earliest Nigerian journalism masters, John Payne Jackson and son, Thomas Horatio Jackson (Lagos Weekly Record); George Alfred Williams  (Lagos Standard); James Bright Davies (Nigerian Times/Times of Nigeria), and the great Herbert Macaulay (Lagos Daily News) were great crusaders against the colonial order.

    Though they were no partisans for belonging to political parties, they were partisan — and proudly so — for their fiercely pro-native stance, against a harsh colonial order.

    If history remembers them rather fondly today, it was just because they went by the highest ideals: in language, thought and temper, so much so that they corralled attention, if not grudging respect, from the uppity colonial order.

    Not any more — for a section of today’s media appear blissfully luxuriating in the sewers: in language, thought and temper, fired with base emotions.

    How will history remember the media of this era?  That should agitate the mind of Adesina and Omipidan — one processing the news, the order churning out stuff to project his principal — as they lead their new charge.

    The media thrives on fairness to all.  So, a media that spews toxins that poison its environment of practice only digs its own grave.

  • July people in the news

    The month of July has more than its fair share of the birthdays of eminent Nigerian achievers who have made great contributions to their professions, craft, or calling.

    All protocols observed, I would have to start this eclectic roll with the Nobelist and media person extraordinary, Professor Wole Soyinka, who turned 85 on July 13. Ceremonies to mark the milestone were staged in various cities.  He was characteristically missing from all of them, except the one that brought young men and women together to meet and parley with him in his Ijegba forest home.

    Those students were fortunate.  Soyinka rarely attends such ceremonies. In 2009, I had the honour of presenting the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism Lecture to mark his 75th birthday. It was a packed house, but the man of the hour was nowhere in sight.

    He was in some secret location – the space lab of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, I suspect – undergoing a simulated space flight:  zero gravity, weightlessness, and all that, courtesy of a well-heeled friend.  The experience didn’t come cheap, he told me in an email, in case I was thinking it might be a good idea to check it out.

    Most of what we give others, Allan B Krueger, the late Princeton economist who studied happiness noted, are of little use and thoroughly disposable.  What counts most, according to that economist, is the gift of an experience, and the more exceptional the experience, the more valuable the gift.

    Soyinka’s friend must have thought long and hard about what to give the Nobelist as a birthday gift.  Cash?   That would be crass, insulting even. The choicest wines from Louis XIV’s cellar?  A better idea, to be sure, but the value diminishes when you share it with others, as Soyinka is sure to do.

    But simulated space flight?  How many people can claim to have experienced it?  Several hundreds, and among them, Soyinka may well be at that time the only African.

    I doubt whether he has described that experience in any of his numerous writings.  Perhaps he is saving it for another magnum opus.

    Congratulations, sir, and very many pleasant birthdays yet.

    There must be something in the Nigerian air and water highly conducive to the birth of would-be journalists and media people.  Just think of this constellation for a moment:   Lateef Kayode Jakande, Prince Henry Kayode Odukomaiya, and Olusegun Osoba.

    Jakande, dean of Nigerian editorialists, incisive columnist who plied his trade in the Nigerian Tribune under the pen name John West, newspaper editor, author and one of the most accomplished public figures in Nigeria’s history, turned 90 on July 23.

    The tributes were not in the least feigned. If they were also somewhat muted, it was mainly on account of the great man’s inexplicable refusal to quit the loathsome Sani Abacha’s cabinet even as Abacha had was tearing apart almost everything that Jakande had spent his lifetime promoting – freedom of the press, the rule of law, and democratic institutions.

    Former Daily Times editor Tony Momoh once told me in the run-up to the Second Republic that when Jakande was elected first civilian governor of Lagos State, he prayed fervently and frequently for his success.  Why? I asked him.  Why Jakande in particular?

    Because, Momoh said, Jakande’s success would put paid to the canard that journalists were only good at stirring things up.

    More than three decades later, Jakande’s tenure still stands as a benchmark for good governance.  If all he achieved in five years was the streamlining of the chaotic multi-tier system of primary and secondary education in Lagos State, that would have been achievement enough.  But he accomplished that only in his first year.

    Henry Kayode Odukomaiya, who turned 85 on July 10 is arguably the most versatile newspaperman Nigeria has produced in recent memory:  news reporter, feature writer, editorialist, production wizard, and newsapaper administrator. At the Daily Times where he was deeply but quietly revered (he operated under the shadow of the great Babatunde Jose) for his exacting standards.  At subsequent stops at the Concord Newspapers and the Champion, he left indelible footsteps.

    Olusegun Osoba, cracker-jack reporter, astute media manager, exemplar of the reporter as a judicious insider and nimble political actor and statesman, turned 80 on July 15 and launched his engrossing memoirs Battlelines:  Adventures in Journalism and Politics, which I had the privilege of reading in manuscript.  It lives up to its author’s reputation for getting the inside dope, for fast footwork, and for counter-punching.

    Osoba was a master of networking well before the term came into popular use.  Having learned early that, in Nigeria, the decisions on who gets what, when and how, are taken at night, he made himself a nocturnal operator.  That kept him abreast of the decision-makers and ahead of everybody else.

    His knowledge of how the system functions and his vast network of contacts helped catapult him to the top at the Daily Times ultimately and, en route, turn the Daily Sketch in Ibadan and The Nigerian Herald in Ilorin into newspapers of national reckoning.

    One of the things I found most revealing in the book was the plot to dump Osoba and replace him as chief executive at the Daily Times with Prof Alfred Opubor, who had at one and the same time served as head of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of Lagos, chair of the board of the News Agency of Nigeria, and chair of the Bendel Newspapers, publishers of the Observer.

    Osoba worked the phones, did his nocturnal rounds, and foiled it. He was in my judgment a better fit for the job anyway.

    Though strictly not a media person, Ajibola Ogunshola is deservedly honoured as such.  He would not  kowtow to military president Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha in their craven bid to emasculate the Independent press.  He turned around the fortunes of the Punch.  He drew up and enforced the ethical  principles on which it is grounded.

    But presiding at the Punch was a detour for the pre-eminent African actuary, who turned 75 on July 14?  His 70th was a class act that bore his accustomed painstaking attention to detail. Unfortunately he lost his daughter Yetunde, a person of remarkable intellectual and professional attainments and of vast promise to a rare form of cancer on the eve of his 75th birthday.

    My condolences again, Ba’royin.

    For entrepreneurial chutzpah and innovativeness, it would be hard to beat Nduka “The Duke” Obaigbena, the Thisday publisher who turned 60 on July 14.   Who but Obaigbena would have sent to whomsoever it may concern an advisory that it would be a good idea to buy media space and airtime to congratulate him on the occasion?

    But this may just be yet another tale by those from whom Obaigbena commands respect and dread in equal measure.

    The reader will have noticed, if not pardoned, my partiality to media people even in this necessarily eclectic outing, as if they alone qualify as eminent achievers among those born in July who have made distinguished contributions to their profession, craft, or calling.   Not in the least.

    I am thinking of our pre-eminent cardiologist, erudite scholar and university Administrator, racounteur and wit, Professor Oladipo Akinkugbe, who turned 85 on July 10.  Equally versed in the humanities and the sciences, and a gifted writer to boot, he is emblematic of the cultivated man in the finest sense of that term, a savant.   It makes sense, then, that bird-watching is his hobby.

    Come up with some bon mot, and he would instantly tell you its source. I once struggled in his presence to recall the name of the English man of the nobility quoted to have said, by way of advice to a young man about to get married:  “Don’t.”

    Professor Akinkugbe came up with it effortlessly.  In vain do I struggle to recall it even now.

    I am also thinking of his younger namesake and fellow laureate of the National Order of Merit, Professor Oladipupo Adamolekun, distinguished international civil servant, who turned 75 on July 21.

    As an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan in the 60s, he was one of the brave souls who undertook to distribute copies of The Tribune which the beleaguered authorities in Western Nigeria considered seditious through.  Today, he writes an occasional column for Vanguard Newspapers.

    There has got to be some printer’s ink in his DNA.

    To all July people named here and those inadvertently omitted, a belated happy birthday.

     

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  • Between protest and anarchy

    Omoyele Sowore and his “Revolution Now” protests command the question: when does lawful protest turn an invite to anarchy?

    In today’s Nigeria, of endless politicking, directionless anger and ceaseless intrigue, you might not get a straight answer, basic as that question might be.

    Yet, concepts are definite and clear.  That is why they are concepts.

    So, conceptually: can a citizen howl “revolution!” and still claim protection under the law?

    Hear Sowore thunder, on July 25, on his so-called revolution: “I’m not talking of protest. I’m embarking on revolution. 85% of Nigerians are in support. Don’t tell me about legal implications or what a Judge will say. I don’t care. We must bundle Buhari out of that place.”

    Eighty-five per cent of Nigerians!  Where did the bloke get his stats from?

    Does that stay within the purview of civil protest?  Or has crossed the threshold of threatened anarchy — even if talk is cheap?

    Revolution, real or comic, implies the overthrow of the extant order.  So, exactly under what law might its purveyor be seeking protection — the present law he seeks to overthrow?  Or the inchoate one, he seeks to impose?

    Talking about extant and inchoate law, is the sitting order expected to watch, helpless and dazed, as “revolution” wreaks havoc?

    O, maybe “revolution” is radical protest in jest — very funny! But you can’t fault a sitting government for not finding the comedy amusing, can you?

    The “human rights” lobby that indulge Sowore’s flippancy are entitled to their democratic delusion.  That is pretty much predictable — as predictable as the state’s counter-roar.

    Both indicate an intriguing, if mutual paranoia: the one for citizen liberty; the other for state security.

    Ironically, both lobbies dramatize the creative pull, on which the state is delicately balanced.

    No wonder — when the chips are down, both point a finger of guilt at each other; and citizens cheer or jeer, depending on which side of the divide they stand.

    But beyond fixed tempers, it would appear even organizing the straight-forward, legitimate protest is facing a decline — like everything else in decayed, contemporary Nigeria.

    Still, does that demonize legitimate protests in a democracy?  Does it also endorse things as they are?  Not a chance.

    The basis of the pristine state, as teased out from the Social Contract, was security.  That was why folks surrendered their individual freedom to the Leviathan, in exchange for collective security.

    That founded the state; and the Leviathan concept gifted the state’s rulers sole access to legal and legitimate force.

    But the finest form of the modern state pushes citizens’ liberty.

    That, indeed would appear, why most states have morphed from monarchies to democracies, and ultimately the republic — that equal opportunity polity, where the people are citizens with equal rights under the law; not subjects, under the pristine Leviathan.

    Even from Ancient Greece, the difference was clear between Sparta and Athens.  Sparta was the ultimate garrison state.  Athens was the ultimate democratic one.

    Sparta, with its military might and fierce patriotism, made quite a mark on antiquity, which still resonates till today.

    Witness King Leonidas and the heroic 300, at the pass of Thermopylae — an all-time study in serving and dying for country.

    But Athens climaxed the fruits of personal liberty, peaking in soaring intellect, underscored by advances in philosophy, theatre, mathematics and science, which pretty much have shaped modern civilization.

    Witness the Athens of Pericles, that liberal lawgiver, under whom Athens hit its zenith: the best in every facet of life — scholarship, politics, art and science, theatre, sports, sculpture and fashion.

    Still, individual liberty is a function of states.  But the fundament of the state is order, hinged on laws.

    So, citizen liberty is no more than a balancing act — the much latitude a citizen can have in expressing his freedom, without breaching the rights of others; and endangering the overall security of the state.

    Therefore, if you bound into a territory, bawling and screaming revolution, and inciting citizens to take up arms — literally or metaphorically — you set yourself up for a sucker punch.

    That pretty much describes Sowore’s “Revolution Now”.  Again, if romantics feel otherwise, they are entitled to their delusions.

    Still, the Sowore angle is no controversy over citizens’ rights.  That is settled — at least under the democratic order.  It is rather the how of exercising that right.

    No right is absolute.  Every right is moderated by law.  Therefore, you can’t project a neo-Kabiyesi syndrome. (Kabiyesi is Yoruba for he who cannot be challenged or reproached; the ultimate power in Yoruba feudalism).

    If you did, in a democracy, you attract the stern sanction of the law.

    But that would seem Sowore’s attitude in his pre-protest build-up, scribbling “Revolution Now” graffiti on public walls, with his crowd in tow.  That recklessness baits the simple and the excitable.  The result could well be public disorder.

    Besides, flashback to the self-aborted 2Face’s protest of February 2017.  At its rump, Sowore declared himself unsatisfied with docile Nigerians, who wouldn’t troop out to scatter everything — or something to that effect.

    In the build-up to this present one, he was even quoted to have threatened to set himself ablaze, like the Tunisian hawker, that triggered the Arab Spring protests. Those were rather disturbing streaks of anarchy.

    Again, the human rights lobby would chuckle, and claim that comes with the protest territory.  But the government would balk — and dutifully so.

    Those who demonize the government on that score miss the point.  Both divides — the government and the human rights ensemble — only hold on to their mandates, being differently wired!

    So, the issue is not exercising human rights per se.  Rather, it is claiming that right legitimately, since every action attracts consequences.

    But again, that is waving the reg flag at the rights lobby.  It would only get them more excitable and agitated.

    “Revolution Now” is a grand distraction.  Nigeria is in dire straights, where everyone ought to pull resources, for urgent solutions.

    Ay, the present rulers have their own issues.  But they are not the enemies here!

    The enemies are rather those whose torrid choices in the past have come to plague our present.

    Still, it is the cross the elected must carry,  while warding off Mavericks, pressing democratic rights.

  • Tears for a priest

    What could be the motivation for the gruesome murder of a Catholic priest? A catholic priest is relatively poor, does not own a business, and is never in contention for a contract, or advancement in critical sectors of the economy. A priest mainly dresses drab in his cassock, is unmarried and never in contention for the hottest bevies in town, and do not contend for titles. He owns no farm or pasture. So, why have priests become targets for herdsmen in Enugu State?

    Last week, Rev. Fr. Paul Offu, the parish priest of St. James the Greater Parish, Ugbawka in Nkanu West Local Government Area, in Enugu State was gruesomely murdered by the herdsmen. A picture of the priest lying in a pool of his blood in an open truck should break the heart of any human being. A disconsolate Catholic Bishop of Enugu, Most Rev. Dr. Callistus Onaga, lamented: “if there are crop of bad herdsmen in the state they should be fished out and we will continue to live in peace with the good ones.”

    Why would the bad herdsmen be allowed to give bad name to all Fulani herdsmen in the country? Nearly two weeks to the murder of Father Offu, another Priest Rev. Fr. Ikechukwu Ilo escaped assassination in the same axis of the state, in the hands of the same bad herdsmen. To show their discontentment, over 200 priests in the Enugu diocese marched on the street, demanding that the murderers be apprehended to face the law.

    A bewildered Catholic Bishop of Enugu wondered: “why we get worried when our priests are attacked is that it shows the level of insecurity other Nigerians face daily.” He went on: “our priests are very much respected and honoured by the people (locals); so if these things can happen to them, what happens to the flock.” No doubt, the priests are revered by the locals in that part of the country even though occasionally you see cases of intransigence by a few. But to contemplate murdering a priest is an ignominious and unpardonable abomination.

    So, why would herdsmen whose primary business should be to tend cows, turn to gun-toting men, targeting those who they have nothing in contention with? As bad as it is, one can situate herdsmen attack on farmers, which is a war waged by bad herdsmen to forcefully gain access to food for their cattle. But how can one situate the gung-ho attacks by these bandits on helpless priests who own no farms, fields or any form of pasture that could be the target of a herdsman?

    Same last week, five persons travelling on the Benin-Sagamu expressway to Lagos to join their brethren at a conference of RCCG ministers were captured in a commando style, by the bad herdsmen. It was on the same route that the daughter of Afenifere leader was gruesomely murdered recently, leading to a national uproar. As I said on this page following that mindless killing that rattled the federal government, criminality is a regular feature on that unfortunate national artery.

    One wonders the motivation for herdsmen to bust onto a national highway, to shoot travellers or kidnap them? Ransom perhaps for the kidnap; but what is the motivation for the mindless killing of those who are not contending anything with the killers? I can hear readers saying, just to terrorise them. Well, yes, such acts of criminality fit into the definition of terrorism; but terrorism to achieve what purpose? Could it be to drive home a point that the terrorizers are ruthless and should be allowed their way elsewhere?

    While we ponder these queries, governments at all levels, especially the federal government which has control over the national security apparatus must wake up to confront these bad herdsmen and other criminals making life unbearable for Nigerians. As the General Overseer of the RCCG, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, whose pastor and church members were kidnapped asked: “As a father, how do you think I should feel to hear that five of my children have been kidnapped while on their way to attend the ministers’ conference?”

    Luckily, the police in Ogun State have reportedly found out the den of the kidnappers in the forest, and have rescued the victims. Also, it was reported that some suspects have been arrested. I hope they expose the sponsors and their gang. The named victims Chidozie Eluwa, Chiemela Iroha, Okor Ohowukwe and Ibeleji Chidinma are lucky to gain their freedom, perhaps because of the pressure from the highly influential Pastor Adeboye of RCCG and the vice president, who is a pastor of the church, on the security agencies to free the victims.

    In Enugu State, where Father Offu was killed by the bad herdsmen, as I write, the federal government is yet to apprehend the murderers. With the vice president barely settling down from the trips he made in the south-west after the killing of Mrs Olakunri, who will the president send to appease the people of the state and the zone? Or is the death of Rev. Fr. Offu not enough to arouse an upheaval? Perhaps, like Stalin, the authorities may ask: “The Bishop! How many divisions has he got?”

    But the Reverend Father is a priest of the most High God, and the wrath of his father is a consuming fire. As the Bible said, ‘touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm.’ The bad herdsmen who have made priests in Enugu State an easy target are digging their graves, and would soon meet their comeuppance. In the meantime, the federal government must also deploy the drones to the south-east to expose the criminals giving President Muhammadu Buhari’s ethnic group a terrible profiling.

    The order by the president for the killers to be fished out must be carried out by the security agencies. No excuse should be acceptable to the people of Enugu State. The bandits who killed Rev. Fr. Paul Offu and those who shot at Rev. Fr. Ikechukwu Ilo must be fished out by the security agencies quickly, so that they can face the law. To delay is to expose the good herdsmen to the anger of the people, and the good herdsmen deserve to be separated from the bad ones, just like the grains from the chaff.

    The governor of Enugu State, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi’s promise to fish out the killers is reassuring. He should give a matching order to the leadership of Miyetti Allah in the state to fish out the culprits and hand them over to the police. They should know that failure to solve the dastardly murder of Rev. Fr. Paul Offu would do grievous damage to the relative peace in the state.

  • Waiting for the next list

    Nothing concentrates the mind of a Nigerian wannabe better than a list believed to be in the making  and scheduled to be released soon.

    The expectation, whether rooted in fact or merely conjectural, sets the entire country atwitter.  Not merely the world of wannabes, but also the lives of their sponsors, lobbyists, patrons, marabouts, prophets, traditional rulers, acolytes, hangers-on, and of course, adversaries.

    It’s an endless expectation, since there is never a shortage of appointments to be made, honours to be conferred, contracts to be awarded, university places to be filled, and projects to be sited.  Expectations dashed with the release of one list roll seamlessly into the new list being awaited.  In fact, it can be said that a good many of our compatriots literally live from the publication of one list to the next, nursing great expectations all the while.

    Is their candidate still on the list?  The last time they checked, he was.  They had been assured that the candidate was a sure bet.  But this being Nigeria, the candidate may have been supplanted by the ward of a more influential sponsor. A name that was a certainty at dinner time may have been scrubbed by breakfast the following day, never to appear again.  Or a name that was never in anyone’s reckoning  has shot to the top of the list

    Whose list, anyway, and which list?

    For there are so many people peddling one list or another.  Everyone who can peddle a list does so, from the office messenger in a ministry, department or agency, to the resident chief of staff, each insisting that his is the authentic original and that any other document purporting to be the much-awaited list is fake. 

    It is a thriving, high-stakes industry, powered by rumour, gossip and information.   But whereas rumour and gossip are free, information does not come cheap.

    Friendly advice: Do not scoff at a list just because it comes from a lowly source.  An alert office messenger may well be more attuned to all the happenings in a ministry than many of the senior officials.  For one thing, he is ignored for the most part by senior officials.  So, he can operate unobtrusively. 

    For another, whereas senior officials are warring over territorial turfs, the messenger can compare intelligence with his fellow messengers and thus obtain the latest and most reliable version of developments.

    Plus, whereas the senior official usually wants to make a killing on the information he is dispensing, the lowly messenger will give you the tidbit at a discount.  He has not been corrupted by free money.

    Some wannabes have been known to fabricate their own lists, and to place themselves right at the top. Then, they would procure some starving reporters and, in the manner of someone imparting a profound secret and, of course, always on condition of anonymity, reveal that the wannabe ranks very high on the list of those being considered for minister, senior advocate, permanent secretary, ambassador, chief executive or member of the Board of a corporation, or an oil concession.

    The very next day, the story dutifully appears on every media outlet that the wannabe is indeed a hot candidate for a major preferment.  By that simple expedient, the wannabe obtrudes his private ambition not just on the official and freelance compilers of lists, but also on the public consciousness.

    And he, for it is usually a man, can parlay that new status to obtain bank loans, take a chieftaincy title, or another wife, and to get the social attention that always passed him by.

    Like no other leader before and after him, military president Ibrahim Babangida understood the average Nigerian wannabe’s ravenous appetite for inquiring into who is in line for what position, and was adept at exploiting it for his private amusement.

    He would scribble some names of military officers and positions on a nondescript piece of paper and plant it in a conspicuous place in his bedroom or among his laundry where a domestic aide was sure to see it.

    And Babangida would chuckle to no end several days later when the papers, as if on cue, published the script he had planted. Yes indeed, Officer X might well be slated for Position Y.  But it was more likely the military high command had been instructed to de-commission Officer X.

    In the hands of the Establishment, the list also serves as an instrument of control.  I came to understand this when a senior aide drew a friend of mine aside at a gathering one day and asked him pointedly: “Don’t you guys ever admonish your friend, Olatunji Dare?”

    “About what?” my friend asked, taken aback.

    “Whenever we are about to give him a major appointment, he goes on to write something foolish,” the solicitous aide said. “What does he want?”

    “Tell him I want to remain free to write foolish things,” I replied.

    That was in the time of Babangida.

    The moral:  If you don’t want to be stuck forever in the ranks of our professional wannabes, you have             to exercise a great deal of self-censorship, especially if you sound off frequently in the media on all manner of subjects.

    A perceptive colleague of mine back in Rutam House understood this unwritten rule only too well.  Trained as an economist in the 1960s, he was steeped in the orthodoxies of the Bretton Woods institutions.  Giving “market forces” free rein was his solution to every problem Adam Smith and JM Keynes and Karl Marx ever grappled with.

    While other analysts were knocking Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Programme, he embraced it enthusiastically and even wrote a book about it without using that jarring term, and keeping the discourse as anodyne as possible.

    Word soon got to him that, of all the writers on the Op-Ed The Guardian regarded as its cranium,  he was far and away Babangida’s favourite columnist, principally on account of his “mature” and “constructive” approach to issues, unlike – well, you know who and who and who.

    Then, Babangida dissolved his cabinet.  And the word was that his favourite Guardian columnist had been penciled down for a senior cabinet appointment – Minister of Finance, or Minister for Economic Development.

    Weeks passed.  Then months; yet no new cabinet.  No cabinet of any kind.

    It took roughly one year for Babangida to effect what turned out to be only a minor cabinet shuffle.  His favourite Guardian columnist did not figure in the new team.

    For the one year that Babangida kept the entire nation in suspended animation and the usual wannabes close to nervous exhaustion, his favourite columnist never wrote another Op-Ed piece, fearing that he might inadvertently say something that would take him out of favour. 

    The nation lost a fine columnist but never gained a good minister.  By way of compensation, Babangida made him chair of one of the mushroom financial institutions that were an integral part of his structural adjustment programme. But he never returned to columnism.

    I must not omit a slight variation on this theme.

    After receiving intimation from the highest source that he was going to be appointed minister, one notorious dandy-about-town and industrialist of sorts to boot paid a farewell visit to his cosmetics factory in Ilupeju, Lagos.  The next time they saw him on the premises, he told the assembled managers and staff solemnly, it would be in the capacity of an Honourable Minster of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

    He was appointed minister all right, but only one full year after his farewell visit to his factory.

    Not a few wannabes will have been disappointed that they did not figure in President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet, those who had been assured categorically that they were ministers-in-waiting, no less than those who thought that their merits qualified them for a seat on what the presidency had said was going to be a cabinet of technocrats.

    But that is only one list, out of the thousands in the pipeline. There may be a dearth of technocrats on the cabinet list, but despair not, o ye long-suffering technocrats.  I have it on the best authority that subsequent lists will be made up almost entirely of crackerjack technocrats and policy wonks.