The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • A new beginning

    The vice president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, on a visit to Anambra State recently, called for a new beginning in the relationship between the All Progressive Congress (APC) and the people of the Southeast. This column on many occasions, called for that rapprochement, arguing that the Southeast has no reason to put all her eggs in one weak basket, placed on the unbalanced head of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), whose legs have been wobbling since 2015.

    In his remarks, published by his media aide, Laolu Akande, the vice president reminded south-easterners that President Muhammadu Buhari on two occasions he ran for the presidency, had as vice-presidential candidates, two eminent Igbo sons. One was Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, and the other was Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, and both of them were no minnows in politics.  So, when PDP agents say that historically President Muhammadu Buhari hates the Igbos, I wonder where they get their facts.

    The vice president also reeled out projects that the Buhari presidency has undertaken in the south-east, to include the on-going second Niger Bridge, completed Zik Mausoleum, Onitsha-Enugu expressway rehabilitation, electrification project at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, and of course the social investment programmes very dear to the vice president’s heart. While the Southeast deserves more projects, this column commends those projects as potentials, a détente between the zone and the Buhari presidency could generate.

    The vice president also noted that Anambra State is one of the seven states that have two ministerial nominees. While the state has always had that privilege, perhaps because of her per capita contribution to the party, it is noteworthy that under the Buhari government, the special favour is maintained. Of course, the returning minister and former Governor Chris Ngige, is a juggernaut in the party.

    Going forward, what Igbo elites should do, is to work for the interest of the region in any party they are in, while not negating the overall interest of Nigeria. For instance, they should take a stand on the boiling issue of insecurity in the country, and push for amendment of the constitution to allow for state and local police authorities. While opponents of the ruling party are entitled to disagree with the party, it is retrogressive to associate membership of APC with sabotaging of the region’s interest.

    After all, the PDP government could not gift Nigeria any significant restructuring, while in power for 16 years. So, it is untenable to give the impression that APC’s inability to address the problem is because a Buhari who has an axe to grind with the Igbos is in power. Therefore, since the faulty national security structure predates Buhari, a bipartisan approach would be more productive that smear campaigns.

    While Buhari’s opponents can claim that insecurity has arguably worsened or has created a dangerous mutant under his watch, the solution would only come under a bipartisan approach to the challenges. So, instead of the Igbo elites wasting energy demonising their kit and kin who feel comfortable in the APC government, they should concentrate their energy in finding solution to the hydra-headed problems bedevilling the nation. As I have said, the fundamental challenges can only be solved via a bipartisan approach.

    So, abuse qua abuse, will not lead to the Promised Land, which the country badly needs to stave a total breakdown of law and order. With former Governor Rotimi Amaechi returning hopefully to the Ministry of Transportation, the new beginning should include, adding the Southeast to the Northeast railway, in the federal government’s railway modernisation programme. Cutting a deal on that major infrastructure project can only come via a deft rapprochement with the central government.

    The leaders of Southeast in government must therefore wake up and make hay while the sun shines. It is not fair to take the benefits due to leaders of the party in the zone, but fail to work to build the party in the zone and ensure the people benefit from the government. Luckily, the constitution ensures every state has a minister. The occupier of that coveted position must use the visibility conferred by it, to grow the party and ensure what is due to the state gets to it.

    In some states, there were protests over the re-nomination of former ministers. My home State Enugu, was one of them. The state chairman of the party protested that the party was not consulted before Geoffrey Onyeama was re-nominated for the new federal cabinet. While the president could choose not to consult with the party in making his choice, the chosen one owes a duty to nurture the party, as a representative in the cabinet.

    Even when the president is doing his final term in office, it is in his interest the party is sustained and if possible returned to power, if the legacies of the president is to be sustained. So, the survival of the party is as much in the interest of an outgoing president, as it is in the interest of a budding successor. Unfortunately, the drawback caused by the absence of cohesion amongst party officials in southeast states, is made worse by the failure of their representatives to use their visibility to promote the party.

    For instance, this writer severally called upon former Governor Rochas OKorocha to use his position as the only APC governor to build the party in the zone, but he squandered the opportunity. Now he is running from pillar to post, with neither party nor the people supporting him, as Governor Emeka Ihedioha is turning him and his family into an endangered specie in the state. While as Imo State governor, Okorocha was beclouded by an ill-mannered determination to foist his son-in-law on the state at all cost. As happens in such silly endeavours, he is left to lick his wounds, alone.

    One project that should also form a cornerstone of the new beginning, preached by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is the upgrading of the Akanu Ibiam International Airport to full international status. Recently, the federal aviation authority reeled out the airports they are working on their landing instruments, and no mention was made of the only international airport in the Southeast. If Buhari’s government wants a cohesive country, it must disregard partisan detractors and ensure a fair distribution of national resources across the geo-political zones.

    Perhaps, it is good the immediate past Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, is returning to government, most likely his former ministry. The action governor of Enugu State, Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, must ensure a good working relationship with whoever emerges as Minister of Aviation, to contribute his quota for the Enugu airport to be upgraded to full international status by the federal government within the next four years.

  • Baba Kekere

    Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande (LKJ) may have turned 90.  He did on July 23.

    But in the Awoist cosmos, with their pantheon of social democrat greats, he remains Baba Kekere.  This is neither a diminution of his age; nor scoffing at his great feats.

    It is just that, on that progressive canvas, he is next only to Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the Baba Agba himself, in implementing, with spectacular success, the progressive ethos in government.

    Of all the progressive Titan-governors of Second Republic (1979-1983) Western Nigeria, he is the only one still alive.  Chief Olabisi Onabanjo (Ogun), Chief Bola Ige (Oyo: now Oyo and Osun states) and Chief Michael Adekunle Ajasin (Ondo: now Ondo and Ekiti states) are all gone.

    So, is Prof. Ambrose Alli (Bendel: now Edo and Delta states), who completed the famous LOOBO — Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Bendel and Ondo — Gubernatorial 5, of 1 October 1979 to 30 September 1983.  Even LKJ’s Deputy, Alhaji Rafiu Jafojo, has also joined his ancestors.

    But had LKJ been the first of the lot to pass, he would probably still have been the first to emerge a legend — thanks to his superlative, people-driven performance, as 2nd Republic, nationally acclaimed, Action Governor of Lagos.

    It was the pre-1st Republic Awo come alive all over again in Lagos, the then federal capital, under the satisfying watch of the avatar himself.

    LKJ shared the Lagos space with the conservative Shehu Shagari National Party of Nigeria (NPN) presidency.  But he ran rings round the federal Leviathan, with his policy brilliance, people-focus and the sheer zest to serve, at a lightening pace!

    Now, by nature’s munificence of long life, LKJ is the last of the Titans still standing.  At 90, therefore, LKJ is a living legend to an appreciative people.  That much was clear from the Who-is-Who, patrician or plebeian, at the LKJ 90th birthday bash.

    But that is only dress rehearsal for the main show.  As Awo, the progressive avatar eternally lives in our hearts, so surely shall  Baba Kekere, after his time is up, on account of his Lagos exploits.

    Indeed, between Awo and LKJ are exciting parallels.

    In seven short years (1952-1959), Awo’s revolutionary policies, epitomized by the epochal universal free primary education, transformed the Yoruba Western Region.

    In four short years, as Lagos governor, the LKJ legend was made.

    Unlike many of his Awoist peers — and even some Awo biological children — to who the Awo name is nothing but ceaseless bounty of democratic feudalism, LKJ seized, with both hands, four years to earn his stripes as a solid social democrat.

    By that, he emerged the most promising Awo reincarnation, even with the avatar himself alive and beaming with approval!  Baba Kekere!

    Nobody needed to name anything after him.  The masses instantly did: witness the “Jakande” housing estates: Ije, Adeniji-Adele, Ojokoro, Agege, Isolo (Oke-Afa), Iponri, Mile 2, etc.

    Ay, the designs of those houses were humble.  But for many poor denizens of Lagos, and even the then vanishing middle class, “Jakande” was their first essay at decent own homes — and to think those structures just sprang, from virtually nowhere, in four years!

    And the Lagos schools shift system! From the late 1960s down to October 1979, you had to do afternoon shift, at least in the mid-classes (between primaries 2 and 4).

    But then came October 1979 and the shift system just vanished!    Cynics, back then, wailed and cursed.  In holy rage, they poked fingers at classrooms they dubbed “poultry sheds”

    Again, the classrooms were not pretty.  But the Lagos public school villages were a post-Jakande legacy.  Those “poultry sheds” were, therefore, opening tactics en route to a vibrant strategy in public education.  Talk of mocking a humble beginning!

    Besides, were these critics to go back into history, they would have seen how earlier cynics had mocked “Awolowo school”, as the new low in public education!  But how many today remember those cynics, fast to pose questions, sluggish to provide answers!  Baba Kekere! 

    Even the Lagos Metroline, a classic Awoist vision, would have saved Lagos much of its current traffic snare.  But multiple conspiracies stalled it: North vs South; military vs civilian; conservative vs progressive — the classic sterile Nigerian realpolitik!

    It’s amazing too, how the LKJ quiet contrasts with, say, the Obasanjo racket, as leadership model, for befuddled Nigerians.

    LKJ did four years and three months as governor.  Aside from the Sani Abacha months — the only smudge in his public service career; and that, not on quality of service but by peers’ ideological disowning — he had retired into his public space.

    Obasanjo, on the other hand, did more than three years as military head of state, another eight years as elected president, and even essayed a rogue attempt at “third term”.

    Yet, to remain in the public mind, he feels obliged to make periodic, petulant rows; that paint others bad, so he could stay good.

    Why the other day, the former president beamed, as newly enthroned “Father of Modern Nigeria”, courtesy of some “youths”, with a N1 million prize money! Didn’t the bible say the poor would surrender the little they had to the rich?

    After a Presidential Library of suspect moral source, the N1 million cash prize would appear unfazed ode to holy parasitism.

    The LKJ persona is the direct opposite: legacy, quiet but incandescent, eternally glowing in the heart of a grateful people.

    LKJ, as governor, never rode government cars.  Never lived in government house.  Never moved from his Bishop Street, Ilupeju, Lagos, neighbourhood, to some plum hillside mansion to validate his new post-gubernatorial status.  Indeed, never extorted a gubernatorial library, from contractors, in full public glare!

    Yet, he has more community value in one tiny fingernail than others would ever have in their grubby beings!

    In the progressives ranks, LKJ continues to teach some of his excitable peers the essence of a true Titan.

    Ripples is again pleased to recall how the Greek Titan gods gracefully yielded space for their Olympian successors; and thus retain the love and awe in Western modern hearts.

    The likes of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a piquant symbol of the succeeding Lagos class that upstaged LKJ as Lagos progressive lord of manor, were at the LKJ @ 90 bash — all praise and awe.

    LKJ, a true Titan, knew how to quit with grace, no matter how difficult.  Besides, if your motive is service, why would you force yourself on people — particularly with a legacy that continues to tell your story?

    That can’t be said of many.  For willy-nilly relevance, they would curse, swear and screech.  Canonize new friends; demonize new foes, to suit their new fit.

    Rather than fade away with grace, they assume the neo-Samson.  They must pull the house down — with everyone sinking with them.

    At 90, LKJ is different and refreshing.  Happy birthday, Baba Kekere.  You will forever live in our hearts!

  • A burial to remember

    Keeping an eye all the time on the Rolls Royce, the Jaguar, the Bentley, the Maybach, the Lamborghini, the Alfa Romeo and the custom-built Mercedes Benz, the Cadillac and their lesser cousins, to say nothing of a collection of prizeless gold jewelry and the finest time pieces watches ever made, to say nothing of  proceeds from his money-spinning compilation on anti-corruption and his chart-bursting album, must be stress enough even for the zestful Senator Dino Melaye (PDP, Kogi West).

    To this vast acquisition, his fellow lawmakers, political associates, grateful contractors, diverse supplicants in one guise or another, and his teeming supporters, have now added 104 cows, their contribution, they said, to the burial expenses for his mother, Deaconess Comfort Melaye, who passed away recently.  I suspect the number will have since multiplied.

    Only a dozen or so of the cows are of local breed, I gather.  The rest are imports from Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Botswana and New Zealand, prized for their milk and their fecundity, and even more so their meat, always finger-lickin’ delicious whether boiled, roasted, fried or barbecued.

    But in most communities in Nigeria today, and certainly in Melaye’s constituency, cows are not exactly the most welcome of animals, no matter their pedigree or the culinary pleasures advertised for them.  A cow or two might be tolerated.  In larger numbers, they are considered a menace to agriculture, and a good many of their minders have given herders a very bad name.

    But don’t pity Dino.  And don’t blame the donors.

    From direct as well as incidental experience that, on an occasion of that kind, there would be tens of thousands of mouths to feed from near and far, for an entire week or longer.  Beef may have become a vanishing commodity in many a home, but the burial of a senator’s mother should serve as an occasion to remind the public of the good old days that would be brought back if only they would vote wisely in the next election.

    Still, there were formidable issues of logistics to resolve.  Where would the cows be kept until they were ready for slaughter?  You couldn’t slaughter all of them anyway, even if residents of the entire local government area descended on Aiyetoro Gbedde.  So, what would you do with the rest?  How do you ensure that they did not stray onto adjacent farms and devour all the crops?

    The gifts that poured into Aiyetoro Gbedde did not consist entirely in cows, as Melaye, who enjoys a reputation for transparency and full disclosure, will reveal at the appropriate time.  Hundreds of sacks of rice and beans and gari and yam flour and cans of cooking oil jostled for storage space with thousands of cartons of beer and crates of soft drinks and boxes of pasta.  Goats and sheep and turkeys and hens came in even richer profusion.

    How they ferried in all that stuff through some of the worst roads in Nigeria is a well-guarded secret.  Sorting that vast array without the benefit of a mainframe computer or a computerised warehouse would have fazed even the chief of logistics of any army at war.

    Not our Dino. He rose magnificently to the occasion, drawing on his vast experience in the National Assembly.

    Indeed, there is no greater attestation than the occasion of the respect, love, esteem and affection his people have been showering on the distinguished senator and best-selling author and composer.

    Those who are forever denigrating and vilifying him now know better.  If ever there was a man of the people, that man is Dino.

    And yet, it was not long ago that some misguided people were gullible enough to allow themselves to be recruited into a plot to recall him from the House of Representatives, alleging that he was incurably delinquent and lacking in all the parliamentary arts.   The plot failed miserably.  Now the joke is on the plotters.

    Ensuring that everyone in that vast assemblage of sympathisers ate and drank as much as they wished was no easy task.  But it was accomplished with nary a hitch.  There was no limit to the number of servings they could have, nor the quantity the usual suspects could take home by the bucketful.

    To ensure that there was no stampede, the type that could be expected in a parlous economy in which yesterday’s necessities have become luxuries, food service was decentralised.  I gather that the uncompleted stadium built by his predecessor Smart Adeyemi in Kabba, 13 miles away, served as one of the reception centres.  That is an uncommon instance of political reconciliation.

    From mobilisation to superb execution, one shrewd observer noted, the whole thing had about it the aspect of a Constituency Project, the controversial undertaking that the National Assembly has enshrined in its manual of operations. All that remains, the fellow said, is a joint resolution of the House and the Senate to accord the burial of a parent, wife or husband of a lawmaker the status of a Constituency Project. He says he is almost certain that it will enjoy the unanimous support of the entire Assembly.

    The querulous in our midst will kvetch as is their wont.  Let them chafe.  One day, they will finally grasp the elementary truth that those who sacrifice so much to make laws for the good governace of our country ought to have their every need met by society.

    In the countryside, churches are usually just one short step away from insolvency.  So, burials of well-connected notables are propitious events, more so since they occur infrequently. Church officials have learned how to mine them to the last Naira.

    I recall the burial of the mother of an officer from the most lucrative of the para-military services at a nondescript village church several years ago.  Colleagues of the bereaved officer descended on the village in numbers that practically overwhelmed it.  Inside the church, it was standing room only.  There were more people outside than inside.

    Crisp banknotes, sometimes bundles of them, filled the collection plates during the thanksgiving, only to be emptied into more commodious receptacles for a fresh collection.  At the invitation of the officiating priest, friends, relations, associates, former classmates, in-laws, former golf partners neighbours, anyone who could be linked to the bereaved, however tangentially, were invited, one group at a time, to head to the altar to give thanks.

    Then it was the turn of those who had come from Lagos, from the state capital, from Abuja and points in between, not forgetting those who had come from abroad and were expected to express their thanks in foreign currencies.

    When he had exhausted every possible combination and permutation of those in attendance (algorithms had not come into popular use back then), the officiating priest gently urged all those who wanted the work of the Lord to prosper to proceed to the altar with their offerings.

    I will be surprised if the commemoration service at Aiyetoro Gbedde, did not follow that pattern. Given the roll call of those attending, their status and their power and their wealth, and the sheer splendour of the occasion, the Apostolic Church of the Lord (Oke Ayo Assembly) and indeed the town will never be the same again.

    I can almost hear the reader asking:  What is going to happen to all the cows and sheep and goats and turkeys and hens that were not slaughtered, and to the food items that were not cooked?

    Dino said in one facetious moment that he might have to join the Myetti Allah Cow Breeders Association so as to profit from the Federal Government’s projected RUGA project.  Don’t believe him.  The future of the project is uncertain in any case.

    He has since decided to enter the impending race for governor of Kogi to take out the bumbling incumbent, rather than bide his time and win back the presidency for the PDP in 2022.

    The surplus from the burial could spell the difference between victory and defeat.

  • Media, reasoned mainstreams, lunatic fringes

    When crises break, the lunatic fringe attempt to gobble up the reasoned majority.  If they succeed, catastrophe dawns.  If they fail, you step off the brink.

    That dovetails, rather nicely, into the Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi’s July 18 visit to the president.  It would appear the triumph of the reasoned mainstream over the lunatic fringe.

    The Ooni had told the president the Yoruba wanted no war.  Neither do they disparage the Fulani as a whole.  But, seeking federal help, they demanded an immediate checkmate of Fulani criminals, wreaking havoc in Yoruba forests.

    The Ooni committed the Yoruba traditional institution to that salvage mission.

    Prior however, a Yoruba lunatic fringe, which gyre widens by the second, threatening to swallow the rest, had been beating drums of war.  In that mission too, wholesale Fulani-tarring was fair game.

    But war over what exactly?  Banditry, kidnapping and allied criminality not even exclusive to the Yoruba country, which nevertheless have latterly spiked, thus smashing the bliss of that hitherto safe haven?

    But even if “Fulani” bandits have invaded Yoruba forests and sent their Yoruba cousins-in-crime on a sabbatical — if that gung-ho shriek is to be believed — then the solution would be war, to deepen the anguish all round?

    Well, thank God the Ooni has put the crisis in its proper perspective, far away from the free-wheeling lunacy, of political opportunism — for which again, baying for war is fair game.

    While some Fulani criminals have been fingered in the present crisis (no matter their motives), the solution is nabbing the other guilty ones; not tarring every Fulani a robber, kidnapper or bandit; or ascribing every single crime, in the Yoruba country, to the Fulani.

    That was Ripples’ opening — and subsisting — stand on the crisis; and it’s good the Ooni has given it a royal seal.

    Why, even Gani Adams, 19th century Oyo Empire Kakanfo mascot in 21st century Nigeria, appears receiving new wisdom, away from his earlier bellicosity.

    A video interview quoted him as saying the Yoruba must pass intelligence on toxic aliens to the security agencies.  Any attempt at crude retaliation, he warned, could even be enemies’ ploy to snare him, as the new Kakanfo.

    Another quote adduced to Adams, which has gone viral on the social media, goes thus: “How can ordinary Fulani herdsmen be holding AK 47?  In our findings, AK 47 rifle goes for about N1 million and with many bullets.  So, we are looking beyond ordinary Fulani herdsmen.”

    The Yoruba component of serious national insecurity is certainly beyond making or wrecking a Kakanfo.  Still, it is good Adams has snapped out of his initial fantasy of awaiting royal orders to unleash his anti-Fulani warriors!

    The tragedy for the Yoruba — sophisticated, cosmopolitan, sensitive and introspective — is they appeared happy and merry war baits; by the basest among their ranks: educated or illiterate; accomplished or stark.  Awo would be scandalized in his grave!

    But the truth is that no ethnic group — sophistication be damned! — ever soars above rage manipulation, framed as ethnic slur. This particular one was framed as dire ethnic survival.

    The same goading sent the Rwanda Hutu on a genocidal binge.

    It sent the Yoruba — at least their rogue elements, the truly bewildered and the excitable — baying for war.

    The same goading, for that matter, sent the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), unvarnished northern irredentists, to call on Fulani herders to, pronto, relocate from the South and jaunt up North, with their herd in tow.

    The cold, hardly veiled sinister threat was unmistakable: let everyone relocate to his space and, thereafter, may the devil take all!

    Extremists, North and South, just tried each other for size!  But before you go blaming the northern side, just because you have greater media control, admit southern loonies started it all, with their unceasing Fulani hate.

    But it’s refreshing both federal and regional voices — at least from the Yoruba end — promptly slammed these extremist voices.  The president has told the herders to ignore the NEF call.  So have the South West governors.

    It’s a combined timely voice of reason, at a near-fatal juncture.

    The Nigerian media loves to growl against “failure of government”.  But the present crisis is excellent failure of media watch.

    To be sure, the media has kept faith with its surveillance – or news – function.  If there is grave insecurity, caused by non-native criminals, the media would be irresponsible not to dutifully report.

    Yet, they have woefully failed in their (news) correlation — interpretive and editorial functions; and cultural transmission — shaping societal mores, over generations.

    Jaundiced headlines and hare-brained interviews with extremists, North and South, have made crime less important.

    The criminal’s nativity is the new real deal.  To sell copies, increase viewership and expand audience, the media merrily trades bigotry for profit.  The social media?  Sheer pestilence!

    In such a news melee, the real criminals go uncaught: the state chases the wind; and the traumatized victims go after the equally traumatized masses on the other side — who their hate-spewing elite just branded the new enemy!

    With the media baying for blood like some enraged market folks ensemble, institutional memory recedes even more tragically.

    That’s why you will see an Olusegun Obasanjo posture and grandstand over insecurity.   As president, his daughter was almost killed by robbers — or assassins?  Nobody knew!

    The late Bola Ige, ultimate symbol of law and order, as federal Attorney-General, was killed in his ultimate sanctuary — his bedroom.  Yet, Obasanjo hee-hawed with absolutely no clue; nor did he have any, about the Niger Delta militancy, that crippled his presidency.

    Why, even the effete Goodluck Jonathan came to the blame party!  His tenure was one week, one Boko Haram blast — and the closest ever, to a presidential anarchy, in Nigerian history.

    Indeed, the Global Terrorism Index and US Council of Foreign Relations records say 2014 was the worst year in violent deaths in Nigeria; and that violent deaths, which peaked from 2010 to 2014, reduced from 2015 to 2018.  The blighted years were Jonathan’s presidential years.

    The BBC also cited a report which suggested that under Obasanjo, between 1999 and 2004, farmers-herders crisis claimed 50, 000 lives in Plateau State alone.  Perhaps Obasanjo too was Fulani, goading his kinsmen to slaughter Plateau farmers for a right of way!

    The tragedy is that the media acted exactly under Obasanjo and Jonathan, as they are acting now; and will probably act in the future – cynical, hysterical, excitable, reckless  and sensational; only sans the Fulani scapegoating, because a Fulani is president.

    Now, if the Fourth Estate cannot keep its head and clinically track in periods of crises, how is it different from the first three realms, which it loves to lampoon in holy rage, because it can?

    The lunatic fringe cannot gobble up the reasoned majority, if it didn’t first gobble up the media.  Aside from the dire security question, an excitable media appears Nigeria’s clear and present danger.

  • AfCFTA: Now the hard part

    Your excellency, our reports show that, on balance, Nigeria should consider joining the AfCFTA”, and using the opportunity of the on-going AfCFTA negotiations to secure the necessary safeguards required to ensure that our domestic policies and programmes are not compromised…

    “Our study has shown that the AfCFTA is not without major risks and undesirable impacts. The most significant of which is the potential rise in smuggling and abuse of the rules of origin. The risk is that it will provide incentive for traders to disguise goods imported from outside the continent as made in Africa goods to qualify for duty-free treatment…The risk is further complicated by the lack of capacity, resources and will on the part of some African countries to enforce their borders. Tackling this threat will require collective efforts at the highest level of ECOWAS and the African Union”.

    The above was the summary of findings/recommendations of the Presidential Committee on African Continental Free Trade Agreement last month. Barely a week after, the federal government in a terse statement would announce that “Nigeria is signing the AfCFTA Agreement after extensive domestic consultations”. With Republic of Benin also boarding the AfCFTA train, Eritrea remains the only African Union member yet to agree to the trade policy.

    The horizon, as it would appear, couldn’t be better. We are here talking about continent whose members would rather do business with former colonial masters than their kith and kin now deciding finally not only to change course but to redress through concrete measures the historic imbalance with major trading partners. Currently, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) puts the percentage of total trade conducted between African countries at less than 20%– as against 80% with the rest of the world. One can only imagine the impact of a redirection of the current trend from, say the current 20 percent to 50 percent on the various economies in the continent. Or better still, the impact of the removal of the costly customs duties which the agreement guarantees and which the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) projects could increase intra-African trade by 52% within five years.

    The problem is that AfCFTA idea is increasingly outmoded. In fact, I’ll put the chance of its making a difference – or even survival – at less than 20 percent – and that I will consider rather generous.

    I start with the African giant, Nigeria whose 2018 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $397.30 billion readily presents a study in the mismatch between infrastructure and the GDP. With the value of Nigeria’s infrastructure put at about 35 per cent of GDP, compared with 70 per cent for larger economies, we are simply not there yet!

    Some estimates suggest that Nigeria will require an annual investment of N9.47tn ($30 billion) over a decade to make the bend – a problem very much at the heart of its diminished economic growth and lack of competitiveness. So, it’s a long road ahead.

    Here, at once is the great irony: Everyone from the high official to the lowest operative pretends to know the problem(s). Of course, it has to be the case with the country having been on roller-coaster train of de-industrialisation as far back as anyone could remember. Little wonder an average high school kid, even without any serious contemplation, can roll out the problem on the tip of his/her fingers: lack of basic infrastructures such as roads, railways and power.

    For an oil producing country, a petrochemical industry which would have provided the raw material base for the nation’s industrial take-off, has become a tall dream. Absent the critical linkages between agriculture and agro-processing, post-harvest losses are not only among the highest in the world, farming has remained at a most ridiculous pre-industrial level. Today, with perhaps the exception of the indigenous conglomerate – Dangote Group, and few other international brands that have managed to survive the Nigerian scourge, the environment – no thanks to the harsh and myopic policies of government – is now renowned as a giant cemetery for manufacturing entities.

    But then, just as the problems are well known, so also are the solutions seemingly very straightforward. Yet, the matter, like a party manifesto that gets recycled from one electoral season to another, are such that the Nigerian government has done practically little else than recycle them, and when it suits the government in power, kick them down the road! And so the scourge endures in its manifold variants.

    Let somebody tell me how the government intends to dissolve the heavy baggages that have hobbled our industrialisation quest short of a miracle.

    Of course, I am amused when I hear otherwise knowledgeable Nigerians relish the AfCFTA promise of “immense opportunities for Nigeria’s manufacturing and service companies to expand to Africa”. They forget that the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) initiated by the United States government to give African countries a berth in the United States market existed before it. Exactly 19 years after, Nigerians should be interested in knowing why the initiative floundered here even when other smaller, relatively less endowed countries on the continent were able to take advantage of it. It is a lesson in our penchant for sloppiness, our lack of abiding standards and our predisposition to cut corners.

    I can list other dozen reasons why AfCFTA is fated to die on arrival. I will cite two. Thanks to Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again and his Brexiteers and resurgent Far Right allies in Europe, not only the old sanctimonious rules of globalisation being rewritten, global trade relations are being altered to an extent that would have been unimaginable barely a decade ago. In a real world where the issues of economy intermingle with those of national security, the rule has since become one of country first! While Nigeria continues to luxuriate in the most expensive farce called ECOWAS – and now AfCFTA, other countries more discerning know better than throw their borders open without cast iron guarantees on what it considers its national interest more so at a time the entire humanity is experiencing unprecedented turmoil. A country where a foreigner – a Nigerien could easily saunter into an airport, going as far as mounting the wings of an aircraft readied for take-off obviously belongs to a different age!

    Finally, ever wondered why the mention of Nigeria evokes fear, hate, anger, mistrust and envy? Talk of Nigeria’s brand of exceptionalism. Didn’t they say in these parts that Naija no dey carry last? Talk about our signature reputation of fierce but sometimes crooked competitiveness that has become too loud to be ignored!

    I close this way: there is nothing mysterious in the so-called free trade. The talk about AfCFTA being nothing without the African giant although seductive is cheap. A Nigeria already burdened with its own internal problems can do without a club whose rationale is utterly questionable at this time. Let’s get cracking with the business of fixing our economy and, if I may add, the security challenge and everything will fall in place.

  • National insecurity

    A letter trending in the social media allegedly written by a consultant medical physician of Fulani descent expresses discontentment that a certain cattle breeders association known as Miyetti Allah has become the face and spokesperson of all Fulanis in Nigeria. That over-generalization is instructive of the danger ahead of Nigeria, as substantially captured by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in his latest letter to President Muhammadu Buhari.

    The danger lies in categorizing all Fulanis as enemies of other cultural groups in Nigeria. Perhaps for political expediency this recalcitrant group has been allowed to become a mirror of the reaction of the Fulanis to the danger, a rogue group of Fulanis now pose to the rest of Nigerians.

    Each time the Miyetti Allah makes a statement, one is left wondering whether the group is unaware of the grave danger their irresponsible behavior pose to the wellbeing of those they claim to represent who are scattered across the country. Unfortunately because of them, many Nigerians believe there is an ominous agenda, fuelled by the slow-pace reaction of the federal government to the state of insecurity across the country.

    While the tragedy that befell the family of Pa Reuben Fasoranti over the dastardly killing of Mrs. Funke Olakunri deserves all the out pouring of grief Nigeria has witnessed the past few days, it is instructive to note that similar criminal conducts have been happening on that axis for a while without much reaction by government. Agreed that criminality is not the exclusive preserve of any ethnic group, the challenge posed by the recent development in Nigeria is that many believe there is an agenda to foist a certain religion, culture and life style on the rest of Nigerians.

    Unfortunately because the president is a Fulani man and the commander-in-chief at this inauspicious time, it has become trendy to claim that the president has acquiesced to such an agenda. While this writer do not buy that reasoning, it is difficult to convince many that there are other Fulanis who do not own cows and who do not subscribe to the insensitive actions and inactions of the Miyetti Allah group on this issue.

    Rising up to the status of statesmanship, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi has been shuttling Abuja to rouse the federal government to action. He has said clearly that the Yorubas do not wish to press their youths to war, even as he warned that many people are beating the drums of war. Instead of berating the Ooni as alleged, the civil authorities should commend the Ooni of Ife for his preemptive step to rouse the federal government to fulfill their constitutional obligation.

    While sending a delegation led by the Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo to visit traditional rulers in the Southwest to reassure the region is good, the federal authority should take steps to find and disarm the marauders who are giving the entire Fulanis in Nigeria a bad name.

    In other to avoid exposing the federal government to accusation of banding to sectional interest by sending the vice president to his kith and kin, the president should summon a meeting of leaders across the country, to explain the steps the government is taking to stem a descent into anarchy across the country.

    One of such steps should be to use the advantage of a friendly National Assembly to further amend the 1999 constitution, to accommodate state police.  It is bad enough that the federal government has proved incapable of policing our expansive country, but it should be unacceptable to deny states the opportunity to provide security for their indigenes.

    So instead of waiting for the anger aroused by the murder of Mrs. Olakunri to abate, so that we can continue our wobbling and fumbling as a nation, the federal government can use that tragic incident to start the renewal of our nation. Without equivocation our country needs new security architecture, if we want to survive as a nation-state. With the security challenge of a modern state mutating, it is foolish to continue to rely on the outmoded structure of a centralized policing for a country as large as Nigeria.

    On the eastern flank of the country, the Southeast Governors Forum has advised herders in the region to stop moving their cattle on foot; rather the cattle should be transported to the cattle markets. If they can jointly enforce that, the clashes between farmers and herders in the region would substantially abate, and women can return to their farms, abandoned because of cases of rape and killing by the recalcitrant marauders masquerading as cattle herders.

    In southeast states, there are big cattle markets and northerners transacting in those markets for decades have become enmeshed with the natives. Rarely is there any conflict between this grade of Fulanis and their hosts. Those markets are also well organized with the provision of water, food for cattle, and access roads.

    Those who live near these markets have access to other social infrastructure like other members of the community. They access hospitals, schools, markets and other basic needs of metropolitan life. While persons from the northern part of the country are predominantly the traders in such cattle markets, they have no exclusivity.

    But of course since they have access to the sources of cattle, they dominate the market, without any person feeling excluded. It is such ethnic mix that we need to sustain Nigeria, not the proposed exclusive preserve of an ethnic group as many contemplate the RUGA proposal to be. What causes crisis is the movement of cattle across farmlands and homesteads, with the destruction that follows in its wake.

    Also, the initiative by Igbo leaders in Kano to condemn the call by Miyetti Allah group that northerners in southern part of Nigeria should relocate to the North is commendable. The killings, kidnappings and insensitive herding practice that have raised the stakes in inter-tribal relationship in Nigeria is not caused by all northerners. Most likely it is championed by a few rogue elements that do not care what happens to their malleable kith and kin.

    So the northerners who speak Igbo, who were born in Igbo land (and they are several of them) would feel very offended if forced to relocate to the northern part of Nigeria, just like the Igbos who were born in Kano and other states in the north, who speak Hausa Language like the indigenes. Both groups would be hamstrung if forced by hateful sabre-rattling to relocate to ancestral homesteads they have no communal connection to.

    It is for these peace loving people whether of the Fulani, Hausa, Yoruba, Itsekiri, Urhobo, Igbo, Kalabari, Bini, or other several stocks that make up Nigeria that President Muhammadu Buhari must rouse himself and his government to action to save Nigeria. The war mongers in government and outside are few, and they should not be allowed to goad the country into an avoidable tragedy.

  • Marauders on the march

    In retrospect, it has taken the killing of a daughter of the prominent Afenifere leader, Chief Reuben Fasoranti, in an ambuscade that has become tragically all too familiar, to move the Federal Government and its security apparatus to ratchet up their condemnation, if nothing else, of the spate of kidnapping and the armed pastoralist invasion that have turned vast swathes of Nigeria into killing fields and ungoverned spaces.

    Funke Olakunri, 58, may not be the latest casualty of this barbarous conflation.  But she ranked among the most politically connected. She was travelling to Lagos when gunmen ambushed her vehicle and others near Ore, Ondo State, killing her on the spot and wounding her female aide.

    Victims of this pernicious traffick in the Ondo-Osun-Ekiti axis, which now enjoys the dubious distinction of being Nigeria’s kidnap corridor, have included prominent academics, Christian clergy, Nigerians visiting from abroad and casual travellers.  Many of them survived to tell harrowing stories of their ordeal.

    Some of the accounts seem vastly exaggerated, and some may well be outright fabrications.   But there is more than anecdotal evidence that something sinister has been going on largely unchecked in that corridor. Those who must ply that route now do so in convoys, or with private security guards, and always with a prayer on their lips.

    The police have blamed Funke Olakunri’s killing on kidnappers, in a bid that went tragically awry.  But residents of the area have blamed it on “cattle herders” who frequently employ the same tactics but may be pursuing different goals.

    In whatever case, the incident has heightened ethnic tensions and spread fear and loathing in an area that first attracted notoriety some four years ago when Chief Olu Falae, a former secretary to the Government of the Federation, and one-time presidential candidate, was abducted from his cocoa plantation by herders and subjected to abject torture.

    Even in areas of national life more amenable to data collection, guesswork of the most uninformed kind often takes the place of vital statistics.  So, it is hardly a surprise that the number of deaths inflicted on innocent citizens by kidnappers and herders cannot be stated with certainty.  Estimates for the past two years range from the high hundreds to the low thousands.

    Whether it is the one or the other, the figure is unconscionably high, more so when, outside the areas of the Boko Haram insurgency, the nation is not technically at war.  A sub-regional and even international dimension has rendered the insurgency more intractable outside a sub-regional and international framework.  Although that dimension also obtains in the carnage that now defines herder-farmer relations in Nigeria, it is less constraining.

    What was regarded as an economic issue in the country’s Middle Belt has now burgeoned into a geopolitical issue that threatens to shake Nigeria right down to its fragile roots.

    At its most elementary, it is a conflict between sedentary farmers seeking to secure their crops and farmlands and nomadic herders roaming all over the place in search of increasingly scarce grazing lands for their herds.

    But in many parts of the Middle Belt where the conflict has been at its most  convulsive, the herders are for the most part ethnic Fulanis and Muslims, whereas the famers are for the most part members of other ethnic groups which subscribe largely to different religions or belief systems.

    So, there you have it:  a highly combustible mix of economics, religion, and ethnicity, and politics.

    As the herders moved southwards in search of more pasture and ever more disposed to employing deadly violence, these cleavages grew sharper, to the point that some have charged that Nigeria is witnessing nothing less than a campaign of “Fulanisation and Islamisation,” though it is far from established that all the herders are Fulanis and Muslims to boot.

    The violence the herders often visit on farming communities and rural dwellers is totally at odds with the character of the Fulani herders that many Nigerians have lived with peacefully for decades.

    There was indeed a time, not too long ago, when herders carried no lethal weapons.  Now, the sticks they slung across their outstretched arms then to fend off predators threatening their herds have been replaced by deadly weapons.  And the weapons are not just for deterrence; they have been employed again and again to lay waste many villages and sack entire communities.

    The brazenness, the impunity with which they go about their grisly business is hard to fathom. They operate as a law unto themselves, with scant regard not just for consequences, but for the very concept of civil authority.  The safety and well-being of their herds is their greatest concern, and nothing appears too precious to be sacrificed to that end.

    In many parts of Nigeria today, the fear of the armed pastoralist is the beginning of wisdom and Heaven help those who discountenance it, for they can expect little help from the Government.

    In the midst of this slaughter of innocents, the authorities are yet to ask some fundamental questions.  Who are these marauders without borders, and where do they come from?

    It is no answer to say that they are citizens of the Economic Community of West African States, and that its governing protocols guarantee the free movement of persons and goods within the zone.  Or that they are stragglers from Muammar Gaddafi’s defeated army.

    Are their entry into and movement within Nigeria documented as required by law? In the case of ECOWAS citizens, does “free movement” imply the free flow of arms and the right       to trample with impunity on the laws, the property and the sensibilities of the host communities?

    Deadly assault follows deadly assault on unarmed populations with benumbing frequency.  The authorities vow again and again to apprehend the perpetrators and bring them to justice. Most suspects escape arrest and prosecution.

    This lassitude accounts for the widely-held view that the marauders enjoy protection in high places.

    Even where it has been recognised that the unchecked activities of the herders constitute a clear and present danger to national peace and security, thinking on the way forward has been woolly, to say the least.  Though commendable in its sweep, RUGA, the latest proposal to deal with the menace, partakes of this woolliness.  In vain does one search the blueprint for the rigour of thought and of painstaking implementation that should inform it.

    A new approach is clearly indicated.

    A preparatory committee of accomplished agronomists, agricultural economists, veterinary scientists, rural sociologists, working with representatives of pastoralists, farmers, and farm labour should be set up to define the situation and prepare within six months wide-ranging   papers to guide discussions among the relevant audiences at a national summit that should conclude its deliberations and submit recommendations within six months.

    The recommendations will be embodied in a Bill to be submitted to the National Assembly for ratification within six months.

    The chances seem unpromising; yet, we must hope that it can bestir itself and accord any proposals before it great urgency even as its new members, with the backing of the Senate Chief Whip,  Dr Orji Uzor Kalu {APC (ha!) Abia North} carp about their poor – indeed penurious — compensation well before they can find their way around the precincts.

    Meanwhile the beleaguered areas should be placed under a 24-hour joint military-police patrol as well as electronic surveillance.  Nothing less than that will assure traumatised residents that the authorities are looking out for them.  Given present circumstances, it might not even be out of place to declare a state of siege in those areas.

    Time is of the essence.  That much is clear from the sabre rattling, the bellicose rhetoric that has been issuing lately from the Southwest, the Southeast, and the Delta, not forgetting the provocative taunts from sections of the North. There must be an unambiguous demonstration of political will at the top to end this national nightmare.

  • Season of hate

    Out there, it’s high season of hate. Suddenly, it’s infra-dig to love.

    Bigotry, bounding and swashbuckling, is in high season.  Love, across ethnic lines, high treason.

    Were it a new spike among the lunatic fringe, it would still have been bad enough. But the fanatical neophytes of scalding hate, as binding faith, appear the cultured, the reasonable and the sane.

    It’s a fast track to Kigali.  But no one seems to care.

    Nothing illustrates this new pestilence more than the July 12 Fasoranti tragedy.

    News came that armed criminals just shot and killed a woman, Mrs Funke Olakunrin, 58, near Ore, while travelling with others, in a jeep, to Lagos from Akure.

    The felons, attackers who reportedly came out of the bush, rained bullets on her car, sending everyone scuttling for cover.

    As it turned out, she was daughter of the 93-year old Baba Reuben Fasoranti, Leader of Afenifere.  Now, that was a big deal — a 93-year old father, losing a 58-year old daughter, he had hoped would bury him!

    By African culture and universal fraternity, that was a deep, deep tragedy to befall an old man.  You can only feel, and pray, for Baba Fasoranti, in this hour of grief!

    Only God can console and strengthen him!

    But from that juncture, of humane empathy and grief, crude politics took over.

    The bigger deal, apparently, was that she was killed by “Fulani herdsmen”, as a sensational release by Yinka Odumakin, Afenifere spokesman, claimed.

    Odumakin’s statement, shortly after the heart-rending tragedy: “We have confirmed the death of Mrs Funke Olakunrin (58), daughter of our Leader, Chief Fasoranti.  Eye witness accounts say she died of gunshots from Fulani herdsmen who shot her at Ore junction in Ondo State earlier today.  She was coming from Akure when the armed Fulani herdsmen came from the bush to attack her and other vehicles.”

    That there was no herd, in tow, to substantiate the “Fulani herdsmen” charge, arose from another popular claim of “Fulani” kidnappers overrunning Yoruba forests.

    From that sub-text, it went without saying: every bandit, or kidnapper, just had to be Fulani!  Every herdsman, with or without his herd in tow, just had to be armed: to steal, rape and plunder — and South West forests are new, rich, profitable frontiers!

    The Fulani, whose son heads a North-South West ruling coalition, just declared war against their Yoruba allies — and to do what exactly?  To undermine President Muhammadu Buhari, the son in whom they are well pleased!

    What gaseous thinking!  But then, that’s what hatred does to your mind!

    Like the plebs of old Rome, notorious for echoing inanity and banality without thinking, the press of today’s Nigeria flew with, and echoed it over and over!

    One just hopes while that grand, scalding distraction is afoot, the criminals — Hausa, Fulani, Tiv, Edo, Yoruba, Ijaw or whoever — wouldn’t have escaped to other blood-cuddling crimes, cock sure they are covered by the overwhelming pall, of the “Fulani” ogre.

    God knows, Baba Fasoranti deserves justice for a slain daughter, just as others felled in the senseless killings that have seized the land.  But it’s clear most won’t get that justice — no thanks to wilful self-distraction, powered by passionate Fulani hate.

    That brings the matter to the trending mental pathology of Fulani-loathing and nailing.

    Not a few say the Fulani had it coming, no thanks to a past record of galloping outlawry; and the alleged tapping into illicit official protection, by cousins in power.

    This arrogance to commit crime, they insist, often emboldens the herders, as stark as they come, as they unleash their cattle on farmlands: their herd chew up the crops; the herders slaughter the protesting farmers; the Nigerian state plays dumb in cold, conspiratorial silence!

    Then, injustice upon injustice!  Since PMB became president, his Fulani cousins, and herdsmen criminals, had gone haywire!  Some even claim the president’s body language gave them the vim to go ye and destroy!

    There are some truths to these allegations — herders-farmers clashes are as old as humanity itself.  Therefore, the Nigerian Federal Government must be hard on criminal herders, both the Bororo alleged killers; and the kill-joys that feel only other people’s sweat (crops) befit the patrician palate of their cattle.

    That is imperative to remove ingrained fear; and impotent rage that breed wide-spread hate; and reckless Fulani demonization.

    But a lot of these claims are also pure crap.  One is that the president’s body language gave the murderous Fulani the vim to go ga-ga.  That is pure trash.

    Why might the president do that — to unleash mayhem on the same folks that gave him their vote, and thereby undermine his own government?

    Besides, beyond a media conspiracy to fan the embers of crude politics, based on dangerous ethnic profiling, it is debatable to claim Fulani-linked crimes have spiked under PMB.

    Before PMB — aside from the ill-fated Umaru Musa Yar’Adua — the last Fulani man to be president was Alhaji Shehu Shagari (Allah bless his gentle soul!).  That was the 2nd Republic (1 October 1979 – 31 December 1983).

    Ironically, the then Major Gen. Muhammadu Buhari also succeeded President Shagari as head of state, after the December 1983 coup.

    But since the Buhari overthrow (again except Yar’Adua, who died in office), no Fulani had been president — Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Olusegun Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, in that order.

    There is no proof herdsmen-farmers tension was any less, when these non-Fulani were in power.  Neither did the alleged Fulani arrogance diminish.  So, where then is this Fulani ogre, crippling and stifling, coming from?

    Let everyone rail against illicit privileges for any group.  But that power disequilibrium, that birthed such, dated back to the 1st Republic North-East regional power deal-turned ash.

    The first coup, in January 1966, was dubbed an Igbo domination coup.  The counter-coup, in July later that year, was a clear northern ploy to wrest back power.

    By the time the impasse was settled on the war front, the northern segment of the belligerents had seized the Nigerian military; and remoulded it in their own image.

    Still, most of the principal players in the 1966 counter-coup would tragically dissipate. A classical example was Murtala Muhammed and Bukar Suka Dimka.

    Murtala was the leader of the counter-coup.  Dimka was one of his zestful boys, fighting the northern cause.  Yet, Dimka would lead the abortive coup that claimed Murtala’s life!

    Even the older Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, and net-gainer after the coup that claimed Murtala, was himself wasted by Abacha, in another coup, which observers continue to insist was phantom.

    No, the North had not always gained by these power adventures!

    So, let everyone rail against preferential treatment for any group.  But that cannot equate a visceral Fulani hate.

    The danger here is no ethnic group holds a monopoly of hate, profiling and counter-profiling.  It’s the Mosaic Law — an eye for an eye makes everyone blind!

    Let the Buhari presidency scale up security and stop this ceaseless bloodletting.  Let it also get justice for the slain Mrs Olakunrin.

    But let the high season of irrational hate come to a stop.  It will lead nowhere but perdition.

  • Chairman Chukwu’s hard times

    It was the famous radio broadcaster Earnest Okonkwo, that named Christian Chukwu, the chairman, during his playing days for Rangers International Football Club and the national team, known back them as the Green Eagles. He named him so, because of his commanding organisational ability as captain of the teams, especially in the midfield. While playing his role effectively, he also keeps an eye on what his compatriots were doing, and gets them to play their roles. In short, he was a master synchronizer and led the national team to win her first Nation’s Cup in 1980.

    Chukwu later became the national coach of the Green Eagles who have become Super Eagles, after assisting Clemens Westerhof to win the Nations Cup in 1994. With Westerhof, they produced a dream team which arguably was an equal if not better than the head-swelling time of Chukwu as a member of the original Green Eagles. Chukwu had also variously been the chief coach or technical adviser of Enugu Rangers, where his career had blossomed in the 1970s and 80s, as a player.

    Recently, the chairman whose names when translated to English means ‘Christian God’ fell on hard on times. In his words: “I had many complications and I couldn’t walk.” He went on: “When I heard Otedola brought out money for my treatment, I marvelled because in my circle, we didn’t know him before then. We have people with us but maybe they forgot or it is not in their character to help.” So it was billionaire business mogul Femi Otedola who came to the rescue of the chairman, when he fell on hard times.

    Last weekend, the Super Eagles almost flew into the 2019 Nation’s Cup in Egypt, if not for the ambush by desert warriors of Algeria. The young lads who represented our nation were not given much chance at the beginning, but they have made it to the loser’s final, otherwise known as third place match. Since they lost the semi-final match against Algeria, I have listened to some commentators, who complained they were not super enough. Quite a number had harsh words for the coach.

    One complaint from some of the commentators that ties back to Chairman Chukwu’s recent hard times, is what some have said about Mikel Obi’s inclusion in the current national team. Some commentators on the radio were so mean in their commentaries and condemnation of the inclusion of Mikel that you will think that Mikel was just a meddlesome interloper in the national team, instead of the captain of the team.

    Assuming without conceding that Mikel played badly in the two matches he played, the reaction from the commentaries did not betray any emotional attachment to the ‘good old days’ when he played the pivotal role as the engine room of the team. Since playing against the little god, Lionel Messi of Argentina in the under aged tournament, Mikel has been a constant star for Nigerian national teams. So, assuming Mikel has fallen on bad times, those commentators prefer he should be ignored in his travails like Chairman Chukwu.

    While the national team is a swivelling chair, as such players should come and go, there should be orderliness in getting key players out of the team. Mikel has been a key national player and has won laurels for the country, and so should be accorded some respects. Even the younger players in the national team recognise his stabilising and mentor role in this tournament. The coach would know when Mikel’s time is up, and a befitting farewell testimonial match should be played to bid him farewell.

    Also worrisome is the faith of most national icons who have brought joy to the country, either in football or in theatre. A number of them have had to rely on philanthropy like Chairman Chukwu to survive debilitating health challenge. At such times, it is either state governors use public funds to come to the rescue of these national icons, or a public spirited individual like Femi Otedola use private resources to save the day.

    While philanthropy is something this writer appreciates and praises, it is scary that but for such interventions, these unfortunate national icons would be left to die miserably. Indeed, a few have died because of the absence of resources to access medical care. But while sparing a thought for those whose past deeds draw public attention to their plight, what about those who despite their labour of love for country, did not have the limelight of media and as such would not draw any sympathy if they fall on hard times?

    There are many in this category, who have paid their dues, and if they have overbearing health challenge, would not draw any public sympathy talk less of gaining such huge intervention from any source. Lucky Chairman Chukwu, was in such a bad situation before Otedola’s intervention. According to Chukwu: “If you saw me before I left for London, you won’t believe I’ll be here talking to you. I think I won’t be making a mistake if I say after God, it’s Otedola in my life.”

    So a man whose surname shows he appreciates God immensely, is saying without equivocation, that next after God is his benefactor, Femi Otedola. While every person of goodwill should appreciate the kind gesture of Femi Otedola, every Nigerian of age should worry that but for such a gesture, the great Christian Chukwu may not be around us anymore. Those who have occupied positions of authority in our country, especially executive authority at the state and national levels should be concerned at the nation they have bequeathed the rest of Nigerians.

    Of course, the answer to such an embarrassing helplessness is a national health insurance scheme. Without a health insurance scheme, there are very few persons who can shell out N36,635,000.00, which is what Oedola spent on Chairman Chukwu, or even a fraction of it, to treat themselves. This writer definitely cannot afford such a humongous resources, even though a few people who read this column, once in a while call to ask for financial assistance, believing that to have a media space is to have money.

    Tragically the National Health Insurance Scheme, which the federal government instituted as a solution to this kind of challenge, turned into a cesspool of corruption, with those who have been in charge in the recent past, helping themselves as much their evil heart desire. As the national team was a rainbow colour of Nigerians without any quota system, it is also instructive that Otedola, a Yoruba man did not worry about where Chukwu comes from before helping him. Otedola’s kind gesture confirms that our country of many nationalities can do great exploits, if we all work together.

  • Back on the beat

    My weekly contribution to this newspaper last appeared in this space on January 8, 2019.  It ended with a terse announcement that the column was taking “a long break,” and that I was looking forward to resuming my communing with its teeming followers “in due course.”

    Now, vagueness is unlikely to be counted as one of the failings of the column in the four decades or so that it has appeared in many guises and on different platforms.  What was the reader to make of “a long break” and “in due course?”

    The vagueness was deliberate.

    I was guided by the experience of an eminent compatriot, a person of great consequence and very high net worth and of exquisite taste to match, who was flown abroad for medical treatment. He recovered, and after a period of rest and rehabilitation, he called the agent looking after his home in the village and informed him that he would be visiting shortly.

    The person of consequence could hear the silence at the other end of the line, a silence that seemed as if it would never end.

    “But where are you going to sleep, sir?” the agent finally blurted out.

    The agent, a relation whom the person of consequence had given the best education that money           can buy at home and abroad and established in a well-paying executive position, had sold off or otherwise disposed of every movable item in the house and the adjoining store – beds, sofas, settees, furnishings, light fixtures, appliances, crockery, matching flooring tiles to replace broken ones.

    Everything.

    My assets are puny compared with that of the person of consequence, aforementioned.  Even so, some people might try to take liberties with them if word got round that I was critically ill in America.  Or they might begin relating to me as if I no longer belonged in the world of the quick.

    Better to give them no lead, then; better to take refuge in vagueness.

    Returning to the beat has been marked by self-doubt. Wasn’t I misjudging the level of my recovery?  What if I could not summon the old magic? Would I be able to sustain the effort?  In a way, it was like taking an examination.  If one waited until one was fully prepared, one would never take the exam.  In the circumstance, you went with what you had and hoped for the best.

    Nothing is more distressing to political journalists than being consigned to watch from the sidelines instead of charting from a position of privilege the ebb and flow and the sheer drama of politics, the fortunes and misfortunes of major political actors, who is up and who is down. and pronouncing on the mystery of things as if, to quote the Bard, they were “God’s spies.”

    For me, it was the closest thing to professional death.

    So, here I am six months later.  If two weeks is a long time in politics as a British statesman once observed, six months in Nigerian politics has got to be nothing less than a millennium.

    Where to start?

    Mark Twain’s counsel came to mind:  Start at the beginning.  But where is the beginning?

    The situation provides a perfect setting for Matters Miscellaneous, the rubric which I employ to deal in broad strokes and short takes with a the glut of occurrences I deem newsworthy  But it is impossible to account for a hiatus of six months in this manner.

    Let me just say, then, that I missed the highs and the lows of the general elections and their aftermath.  One moment, it seemed as if the APC had again pulverised the PDP.  The next moment, the PDP turned out to have fought a closer race than it was given credit for, buoyed no doubt by  the unfailingly regaling literary pyrotechnics of its national publicity secretary, my aburo Kola Ologbondiyan.

    It is a measure of the fabled durability of the Saraki dynasty that it was swept off the political chessboard by a group of amateur activists wielding nothing more lethal than a slogan that summed up brilliantly the depredations which père and fils had visited on Kwara and the nation at large for four decades.   And the new people are uncovering new depredations with each passing day.

    I do not envy Saraki’s media adviser, Yusuph Olaniyonu.

    “June 12” lived up to its reputation as arguably the most consequential day in Nigeria’s post-colonial history.  Its official canonisation as the nation’s Democracy Day, and the tacit recognition of Bashorun Moshood Abiola as president-elect, set off the usual reminiscences and recriminations.

    The revisionists went into overdrive.  By one Northern account, the North, despite being cheated out of producing the president in the pre-Option A4 primaries, championed the cause of June 12 relentlessly and single-mindedly until the Southwest “hijacked” it and turned it into a Yoruba issue.

    Not so, countered one Southeastern account.  The Southeast was the true, actual, authentic and indefatigable protagonist of “June 12” until the Yoruba in the Southwest hijacked and perverted it.

    You have only to consider the names of the principal actors in the cast, pro and contra, the rewards that flowed to them or the privations they suffered, and the geography of June 12 activism to see through the revisionism.  It was so brazen that I had to consult Diary of a Debacle, my contemporaneous account of the developments subsumed under “June 12,” to be sure that I had not lost my mind.  Silence or indifference would have served the revisionists better.

    Kogi State seems set to compensate me with compound interest for all the thrills I missed during my timeout. Those who have been petitioning the APC hierarchy to deny him the nomination for a second term have it backwards, Governor Yahaya Bello has said.  Whoever heard of mere tenants evicting the landlord, even in Nigeria?

    Senator Dino Melayo, who has never missed an opportunity to initiate or participate in a brawl, and who is forever executing one sophomoric stunt after another to score cheap political points or for sheer fun, is threatening to run for governor, vowing, as is his custom, to inflict ajekun iya (punishment most abundant) on anyone who dares to confront him.

    And Idris Wada, who contributed mightily to running Kogi aground as governor from 2008 through 2016, is threatening to return to finish the job.

    Despite the apparent widespread rejoicing over the scrapping of the RUGA scheme before it took off, I can report that some entrepreneurs with eyes on the main chance are grieving inconsolably.

    They were scheming to buy two cows and four goats and thereafter pass themselves off as herders so as to partake of the free land, free water and electricity, free security, free grazing, and free veterinary care for their herds, to say nothing of free housing, free medical services for themselves and free education for their children and dependents.

    Implementation would have witnessed the greatest urban-rural migration since Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge forcibly emptied Kampuchea (Cambodia) of its urban dwellers in 1975.  The federal authorities saw through this southern conspiracy and wisely scuttled the project.

    Finally, a word in defence of Senator Ishaku Elisha Abbo (PDP, Adamawa North) whom everyone has been pillorying for allegedly physically assaulting a female clerk while shopping for sex toys in Abuja recently.

    Insinuations of the darkest kind have been swirling since then.

    Easy, ladies and gentlemen.  The distinguished senator, I gather, is chair of the Sexual Deviancy and Related Matters Sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Family Values, Family Health, and Family Wellbeing.

    I can report that he was exploring the sex toy shop in keeping with his oversight duties.

     

    With gratitude

     

    I was deeply touched by the get-well messages and gifts that reached me directly or through the office from friends and from fans of the column.

    To you all, my grateful thanks for your kindness and thoughtfulness.