Ace crooner, Stella Monye, needs N20 million (US $50, 000) to save her only child, Ibrahim. But why should anyone listen to her cries?
Ever read Michael Echeruo’s Victorian Lagos?
The magic of that book, of late 19th century Lagos Island, was its charming sketch of cultural symbols, that shaped the temper of that era.
The returnee Saro, were mainly ethnic Yoruba. So were the returnee artisans from Brazil.
But Western education gave them an edge, over the aborigines of Isale-Eko, to shape the new Lagos culture.
Richard Beale Blaize (in 1880, founded Lagos Times and Gold Coast Colony Advertiser, a local newspaper); Mojola Agbebi (led the campaign to make the Baptist Church more African-friendly); John Otonba Payne (first native registrar of Lagos courts); James Johnson, “Holy Johnson”, (whose keen sensitivity helped to stabilize the Anglican Church of his day); Henry Carr (famed educationist) and the young Herbert Macaulay (soon to turn the chief British nemesis of Colonial Lagos), just to mention a few.
Indeed, as Prof. Echeruo wrote of Victorian Lagos, Stella would most probably make the cut, of folks to be portrayed, should anyone embark on sketching the cultural Lagos, of Stella’s musical generation, of fourth-quarter 20th century.
O, what an exciting time!
“You don’t have to be a good neighbour,” Soni Irabor would croon, in-between radio programmes, “but you can, at least, be neighbourly”. That was from Radio Nigeria 2 FM, then on Martins Street, in the commercial hub of Lagos.
In the evening, when TV ran from 4pm till 12 midnight, Patrick Oke, he of the deep baritone, would mesmerize viewers, hooked to his hugely popular youth-music programme.
Stella’s boss and mentor, the late Sunny Okosuns, bossed the musical charts, outside the Juju music duo of Ebenezer Obey and Sunny Ade, and of course, the Abami Eda himself, Fela.
Sunny may have burned up the charts. But that era’s clear musical philosopher-in-chief was Bongos Ikwue.
Apart from Still Searching, Bongos’ hit album, his soundtrack for NTA’s agric-boosting tele-drama series, Cockcrow at Dawn, courtesy of UBA sponsorship, was a class act.
Throw in the Lady of Songs, the late Christy Essien-Igbokwe, and you’d just appreciate a milieu of cultural giants, from all ethnic groups, that shaped cosmopolitan Lagos, in the 20th century’s final quarter.
Stella Monye belonged to this stellar assemblage.
When 11-year old Ibrahim happened on the freak accident, that would turn his life into a consistent dash in and out of hospitals, Stella was out serving her country: part of a musical ensemble, cooking the Nigeria ’99 theme song, en route to hosting the FIFA U-21 World Cup.
By 1999, she was no greenhorn, still under Sunny Okosuns’ huge shadows. With hits like Oko mi ye (1984) — from the album, Mr. Wright — she had made a name for herself.
So by Nigeria 99, she had become an exciting and enchanting brand in the Lagos landscape.
Somewhat, Stella Monye’s musical odyssey echoes the late South African, Dennis Brutus’s poem, “A troubadour, I traverse…”.
That poem talks of a troubadour (the poet) traversing the whole of apartheid-riven South Africa. Despite all the evil, all the killings, all the injustice, the troubadour still loved his lady, and would rather be at her service.
In Stella, that troubadour would appear a lady doting on her country, warts and all.
In a moving interview with Saturday Sun (April 15), she told of how the phone call, about her son’s accident, came when she and her colleagues were presenting the Nigeria ’99 theme song to Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar.
Still she went on tour, to promote that theme song, thinking the accident was minor; and that routine medical attention would take care of it.
It didn’t — for Ibrahim’s butt had landed pat on spikes, as he fell from a raised water tank, piercing vital organs, and tragically altering his young life into a relay of heart-rending medical emergencies.
And failed surgeries, over the years, particularly the 2014 one in India, for which Stella, with other artistes like K1, Daddy Showkey, Orits Wiliki, Onyeka Onwenu, Lagbaja! and Pasuma, had to mount a roadshow to appeal for funds, had further damaged more internal organs of the 28-year old Ibrahim: the left kidney, the bladder and the uretha.
But like Dennis Brutus, Stella’s dire personal challenges wouldn’t vitiate her love for country. She spoke of other tours — part of Team Nigeria to the 1996 Yamoussoukro-Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa University Games. There, she sang the Nigerian national anthem.
Then, an extensive tour of Germany, when she played Oya, Sango’s wife, courtesy of a Nigeria-Germany cultural exchange — Berlin, Sabrieakan, Hanover, Bonn, Bremen, Geneva (Switzerland) and Amsterdam (Holland), a proud troubadour, showcasing the artistic trove of her country.
But the 1998 tour of Guyana, to mark the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slave trade, would mark the grandest of Stella’s patriotic travels, given the calibre of Nigerians, on that entourage.
Gen. Yakubu Gowon, former Nigerian Head of State (1966-1975), his wife, Victoria, Prince Tony Momoh, Chris Anyanwu, ace broadcaster and former senator and Col. Tunde Akogun, then Nigeria’s highest ranking culture official.
But that was only half of the story. Stella was lead vocalist, of a band comprising seasoned Nigerian acts: Bisade Ologunde (Lagbaja!), Zeal Onyia, Highlife ace and he of the piercing trumpet, Peter King, Nigeria’s jazz supremo and Remi Kabaka — true royals in Nigeria’s musical cosmos! The Guyana local media dubbed her the “Nigerian bomb”.
This then is the woman who has given her all for her country; but needs her country to give something back: help save her most prized earthly possession — only child, Ibrahim.
“When I grow old and infirm,” she told Ripples, “how can Ibrahim take care of me, when he has lived most of his life, moving from one hospital to another?” Moving cry, of a doting mother!
According to the Urology Centre, in Indiana USA, where Dr. Ayo Gomih is medical director, Ibrahim would need US $50, 000 for a life-saving surgery — and time is running out!
Stella has done a lot for her country. Pray what, in her hour of grave need, can her country do for her?
Lagos is 50, bravo! But as part of the celebration goodwill, let Lagos rally round a culture icon that, with others, has helped to shape her into today’s success story.
Let Delta, Stella’s nativity, also stand by a distinguished daughter.
Finally, let golden hearted Nigerians prove their worth. Stella Monye and son need everyone.
For more information, you can reach Stella on +2348037305052. Her account details are: Stella Monye, First Bank account number 2021451638.
Category: Tuesday
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Save Stella Monye’s son
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Once upon a thriving postal service
When last did you purchase a postage stamp, an aerogramme, a money order, mail a letter to a friend or relation, send a telegram, check your private mail box, have the mail carrier deliver a letter to your home, or transact any business through the post office?
For many in the attentive audience, I suspect the answer is: Long, long ago. Parcels and packages are still dispatched through the post office, mainly by those who cannot afford the higher fees charged by courier agencies. They are rare sights these days, almost like apparitions. But I gather that mail carriers still do the rounds in some of the better neighbourhoods.
But by and large, the post office has long ceased to be the focal centre of towns big and small, where residents converged to transact all manner of business, from buying postage stamps to purchasing or cashing money orders and virtually everything in between.
When I was growing up, school, the post office, and the public library defined and shaped my day and that of my schoolmates. School over, we converged on the post office, situated strategically in the middle of the town, to collect the mail that the Armel’s Mail Transport Service had just brought in from Owo, some 63 miles away, with passengers disembarking in Kabba or boarding for Lokoja, the truck’s final destination,
There we got to know who was arriving in town and who was leaving. There was a good chance that you might run into an uncle or family friend who might hand you a penny, sometimes a three-penny coin, which usually went into buying stuff from the hawkers milling around the blue Mercedes-Benz truck
For the most part, we went there to hang out.
But the glossy catalogue you had requested from Lennard’s Mail Order Store in Bristol, in the UK, might be in the mail that had just arrived. A package containing the balloon or fancy sunglasses or tin whistle you had selected from the catalogue and ordered through the post office might even be in the mail. Or notification that you had been accepted into the secondary school of your choice, with partial or full scholarship.
Or perhaps even more exciting, a letter from someone’s girlfriend or boyfriend schooling hundreds of miles away.
Mind you, this was an age when writing letters was a prized art. You chose your stationery with the utmost care. When I was old enough to play the game in high school, my favourite was the unlined blue Croxley bond writing tablet, quarto or octavo, with matching envelopes. And it helped enormously if you had a fine handwriting.
The letter could also be offer of employment for your brother from the Public Works Department, better known as the PWD.
Or the latest instalment of your teacher’s tuition notes for the Ordinary or Advanced Level General Certificate in Education from the Rapid Results College, London, or Wolsey Hall, Oxford. Or course material for the Inter BA or BSc of the University of London. Or from some professional credentialing body overseas.
It could even be course material for a full degree of the University of London that generations of Nigerians had earned as external candidates, among them Obafemi Awolowo (B.Com), Chike Obi (BSc, Mathematics), Sam Aluko (BSc Economics), Afe Babalola (LL. B),and Simeon Adebo (BA, in English, and later LL. B)).
The post office delivered the material intact and without fail, and transmitted your answer scripts to the examiners just as punctiliously, regardless of your location.
After the mail truck had departed for Lokoja, we shifted base to the public library about a quarter of a mile away where we signed off as “scholars” from the local primary schools (we could not sign off as “students” because the real students would put us in our place), thumbed indifferently through some tomes, played table tennis, and generally had a good time. We dispersed at dusk, to resume the routine the next day.
But hanging out at the post office was our chiefest pleasure.
Those were the glory days of the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST). Not even the exodus to Biafra of an estimated one-half of its work force could do significant damage to its reputation for efficiency and reliability. The postmaster invariably belonged in the local aristocracy.
Then, something happened early in the Second Republic, in the time of President Shehu Shagari. A large heap of undelivered mail was found in the bush near the international airport, in Ikeja, dumped there by those entrusted with delivering them. More heaps surfaced later, here and there. Mail delivered on schedule was often found to have been tampered with, their valuable enclosures pilfered.
Public confidence in the postal system began to wane. But worse was to come.
The postal or money order issued by the post office at a small commission was a fully negotiable instrument, as good as cash. If you mailed a postal order with a face value of, say, N10 to your ward schooling in Kaduna as pocket money, on presenting that instrument to the post office in Kaduna, your ward stood to receive the same amount in cash.
And it was so dependable that it was the instrument through which you paid for university application forms, the West African Examinations Council’s fees, and many other services.
Suddenly, the instrument was no longer negotiable. You could not redeem your postal or money order. Your money was effectively trapped in the postal system, long before the Saraki family–owned Societe General Bank swallowed up customers’ deposits running into hundreds of millions of Naira and earned the dubious distinction of bequeathing to the national discourse the metaphor of the bank as a trap.
If the postal system had any reputation left, that reputation was effectively eviscerated by communications and information technology.
Why buy a postage stamp to dispatch a letter that will travel by snail mail carried to destination by when you can transmit it free and have it received almost instantaneously and acknowledged in like manner? Why send telegrams that, for all their advertised speed, might still be lying on a postal clerk’s counter by the time your text message pings on the recipient’s smart phone half a world away? Why mail your answer scripts to your tutor overseas when you can transmit them online, free and at close to warp speed?
Why mail packages through the post office when courier services can offer faster and more reliable service to justify their higher charges?
These are some of the questions the NIPOST must grapple with as it seeks to reinvent itself and operate in a technetronic age that has reduced its once-healthy revenue stream to a trickle.
Last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, NIPOST derived almost one-half of its total revenue of N8.84 million from Stamp Duties – taxes levied on legal documents such as cheques, receipts, marriage licences, receipts, and land transactions. On the other hand, traditional postal activities such as mail service and parcel clearance and delivery accounted for roughly 25 per cent of total revenue.
As part of its re-positioning, NIPOST recently replaced its 38 territories with a seven-zone structure, run on leaner resources while maintaining efficient service delivery. But its problem is not bureaucratic or organisational. It is operating with old tools and old methods in a world that has changed profoundly and keeps changing.
That is the trouble not just with NIPOST, but with the postal service everywhere.
In the UK, there has been talk of privatising the Royal Mail, one of the most efficient in the world, to cut costs and boost revenue, with no loss in delivery capacity. In the United States, where the post office sells packaging material and greeting cards for all occasions, there has been a proposal to end mail deliveries on Saturdays, again as a cost-saving measure. They are unlikely to restore the system to its glory days.
Like that of practically every other service or institution, the shape of the postal service of the future is uncertain. What is certain is that the post office as we know it has probably seen its best days.
Emblematic of this decline is the once-majestic General Post Office building on the Marina, in Lagos. In its heyday, it bustled with people and activity. Today it is a derelict place, with shady characters lurking in the dank corners of its main business floor.
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Osun: History meets the historic
You can’t step in the same river twice
—Heraclitus, Greek philosopherThe excitement reached a head, as the party hit the November 27 interchange, that flies over Gbongan road, in Osogbo.
He was no yokel; but in his excitement, prancing and skipping, he yodelled like one.
“Ogbeni, the Awolowo of our time,” he chirped, “don’t forget the Bisi Akande trumpet!” — and, all zeal and fervency, he pointed towards Gbongon.
The Bisi Akande Trumpet Bridge was some 40 kilometers away, at the old Gbongan junction, with Ibadan-lfe expressway. But this enthusiast couldn’t imagine Osun Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, letting go of his Guild of Editors guests, without showing off his architectural wonder.
It was March 18. The Guild of Editors chose to hold its committee meeting at Osogbo. The governor also seized the occasion to show the elite of the Nigerian media Osun’s developmental strides. Though Ripples is no member of the Guild, he was invited to join the August visitors in March.
The bussed company, with the governor himself in-situ, set out, from the Oke Fia Government House, quietly enough.
But they lost their anonymity that moment, at the Olaiya junction of Alekuwodo, in Osogbo’s commercial hub, someone sighted the governor, and let go a yelp.
Before you knew it, an excited, beaming, dancing company was pumping fists and flashing “V” (for victory) signs, with their two fore-fingers, a sign original to Winston Churchill, Britain’s World War 2 hero; but popularized in these climes by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, first premier of the old Western Region.
The governor, himself a study in boyish excitement, returned the “V” compliment; and an impromptu carnival of love, mutual doting and appreciation ensued. As the convoy rolled slowly by, on the newly named Workers Avenue, so did the excited people swell in their numbers.
But everything got to a head on the November 27 bridge, when the governor and his entourage disembarked, the accompanying officials explaining the work-in-progress; and the governor himself chipping in now and then, especially the engineering and technical details.
The first leg of the tour was on the Oba Adesoji Aderemi ring road, that ripples with history, old and contemporary.
Oba Aderemi (1889-1980), was Ooni of Ife (1930-1980); and was first indigenous governor of Western Region, during which time Chief Awolowo, as Premier, performed his social transformation wonders, that hauled the old West clear of the other regions, of North and East.
But, as Oba Aderemi offers today’s Osun a symbolic tieback to the Awolowo golden age, so does its 17.5-kilometre stretch project, to a future Osun, clear historical landmarks.
Those monuments capture its infrastructural remake, from a backwater “civil service” state that rose and fell by Abuja’s dole; to a land poised to harness its resources, in the finest tradition of the Yoruba Omoluabi.
It is a classic case of history meeting the historic-minded.
Those monuments? Four bridges, really.
Five Judges, to commemorate the five Court of Appeal justices, whose verdict reclaimed the Aregbesola mandate, after almost a four-year struggle; November 26, the day that judgment was given; November 27, when the first Aregbesola administration birthed, and August 9, the day the governor won re-election, despite the hideous plots to skew the vote, by the Jonathan Presidency, flush with success in a similar gambit in Ekiti.
By design or by accident, November 27 and Bisi Akande Trumpet bridges appear the grandest of the signature road projects, wrapped in political symbols, that would in history, define the developmental temper of the Aregbesola years.
Bisi Akande immortalizes Osun’s very first attempt at serious governance (1999-2003), since its creation in 1991. But that attempt was scuttled, during the Obasanjo South West electoral tsunami of 2003. November 27, on the other hand provided a doughty root for August 9, that day in 2014 the Osun local forces trumped illicit “federal might” to renew Aregbesola’s mandate.
The rest of the project tour, the Osogbo Government High School, one of the 11 avant-grade public schools springing up in different locations of the state; and the Nelson Mandela Freedom Park, Osogbo, are no less impressive symbols of developmental governance.
But the Mandela Freedom Park offers something somewhat novel — an informal museum of leisurely history. Mingling with park seats, on close-cropped lawns, is a special section bearing busts of Titans of the progressive politics of the West, from different ages: Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chief Bola Ige, Chief Bisi Akande and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
Yet, another section of mini-galleries, boasts marble plaques, that encapsulate the tenure of every Osun governor, military or civilian, from Col. Leo Segun Aborisade, the first governor (military administrator) to Aregbesola himself. So, as loungers relax, they can read up their history and civics.
Dominating the park landscape is the impressive Atewogbeja Fountain, a tribute to the Osun river and its trove of fresh-water fishes. The fountain waters are electrically programmed, at night, to tumble down in a rainbow of colours.
Incidentally, the tour ended at Olaiya junction, with the unending tryst between an appreciative people and their governor!
From the tour revelations, Osun, of the Aregbesola years, would appear in a flux of rapid change; to justify the Heraclitean quip: you can’t step in the same river twice! Indeed, Osogbo had come a long way from the old rural town, to a growing modern city, gradually holding its own in serenity and winning infrastructure, drawing new businesses across different sectors.
So has Osun shrugged off its laggardness to, despite its puny resources, point the way in the schools feeding programme, which the Federal Government just adopted on a national scale.
Surely then, the Aregbe legacy is assured, came what may? Not exactly.
Indeed, Osun is painfully poised at a critical juncture between the short-lived but enduring Western Renaissance under Awo, before the SLA Akintola Demo forces blighted everything; and the post-1999 Lagos of sound developmental governance and golden continuity, which has become a national reference.
You could feel palpable panic, the way some Osun conservatives, in concert with Yoruba irredentists, tried to mould themselves into emergency Yoruba warriors against phantom Hausa-Fulani threat, when the Ife disturbance was nothing but mutual criminality.
The Afenifere veterans that dived into bed with Femi Fani-Kayode’s subversive Yoruba nationalism would appear splashing in the Osun political river, panic-stricken that, after the Aregbe years, so much has changed you can’t step in the same river twice.
So is Iyiola Omisore, with his trademark spew of verbal rot, perhaps gripped with the fear that, with the balance of forces, he might just be graduating, from serial failure to veteran failure, in his quixotic gubernatorial quest.
Still, that would appear no done deal. Even as Heraclitus declared nature was in a flux, Parminides, his Greek contemporary, countered nature was static and unchanging! That contradiction could give the conservatives some hope, no matter how tenuous.
So, Osun could well be changing; but maybe not rapidly enough to banish that 2003 electoral ghost, that traded solid gold for glittering tinsel. For that, the state paid a stiff price in hideous stagnation, in the dreadful pre-Aregbe years.
However it goes, Aregbesola’s personal legacy, like Chief Awolowo’s before him, appears secure.
But not the Osun developmental fate, ironically again, like the old West, where Awo wrought wonders only for the Demo renegades to blight everything.
Osun’s best bet, therefore, is a post Aregbe-era of stellar developmental strides, anchored on present efforts. That way, Osun may yet emerge the ultimate development wonder of the 4th Republic, just as the old West was the 1st Republic’s.
Ay, Lagos holds that honour now. But even the most doting of Lagosians would admit the post-1999 Tinubu movement (which incidentally Aregbesola was part of) only re-engineered a decaying former federal capital. Osun, under Aregbe, never had such a head start.
But the threat to Osun enjoying a Lagos-like golden continuation, and not enduring the old West’s reactionary roll-back, would appear to lie less with the Osun conservatives, no matter how desperate they may be, but with the governor’s own internal foes, craving pork but pretending all is cool.
That is the direction to address, if Aregbe must, like Tinubu in Lagos, get the successor(s) to further entrench Osun’s unfolding renaissance. -
Matters pharmaceutical
As you inch toward the proverbial three score and ten years, you begin to pay closer attention to the prescription and off-the counter drugs that have become a part of your daily regimen, particularly their advertised side effects.
When the drug comes packaged with the relevant literature in several languages that usually include English, you get to know the possible side effects and to decide whether taking the drug is worth the risks. More on this point later.
But in Nigeria, drugs often come packaged with instructions in every language except English –French, German, Chinese, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Turkish, Serbo-Croat, Korean, Sanskrit, and what have you. The friendly neighbourhood pharmacist who may have recommended the drug can tell you the dosage, but that is about all the help he or she can render.
Do something about this, NAFDAC. In the interest of public health and safety, insist that English must be one of the languages in which instructions and information on drug imports are written. Allow several months for compliance. Thereafter, punish those in default.
Trifling as that task might seem compared to the urgent challenge of keeping out of circulation fake, expired and under-performing drugs comprising 70 percent of the market, according to informed sources, it would be a significant step forward.
Even when all regulations are in place and are duly enforced, you still have to decide whether the drug is worth the risk. This is because many the drugs usually prescribed for the afflictions of persons in this age group often have possible side effects that may be even more alarming than the affliction itself.
Consider, first, a common prescription drug for treating high blood pressure.
Ordinary side effects include dehydration, which may result in confusion, fast or irregular heartbeat, severe dizziness, or seizures. More serious side effects include non-stop nausea, abdominal pain, yellowing skin, fever, chills, signs of kidney problems, pain in the joints, persistent sore throat, and easy bleeding.
Consider next the medication for a condition that causes blotches on the skin, discolours the nails, and makes it difficult to use fingers and joints for common, everyday tasks. Side effects include, but are not limited to, feeling faint, swelling in the face, lips, mouth, tongue or throat, trouble breathing or throat tightness, and skin rash.
Consider as well a prescription drug used in the treatment of various kinds of arthritis. Possible side effects include tuberculosis and infections caused by viruses or fungi, muscle aches, numbness, problems with vision, weakness in arms and legs, decrease in blood cells that help fight infectious diseases or stop bleeding, heart failure, liver failure, and cancer.
Consider, finally, prescription drugs that have suicidal thinking as a side effect. One drug used in the treatment of asthma belongs in that category. So does another, used to help adults quit smoking.
The literature on all of them adds helpfully that what you are reading is only a summary of possible side effects and that you should consult your doctor or pharmacist if you notice others not listed.
The consolation in all this is that the side effects were for the most part observed in an insignificant number of clinical trials. Still, a chance is a chance. One chance in a googol (the figure 1 followed by 100 zeros) might seem comfortingly nebulous, but it is a chance nevertheless.
The hope must be that the time never comes when a patient faces the stark and urgent choice of continuing to live with a disabling condition or embarking on a cure that may be worse than the disease.
Re: With March on my mind
A grave omission . . .
How could I have omitted Chief ‘Folake “The Lady SAN” Solanke, who turned 85 on March 29, from the “children of March” (the phrase is Niyi Osundare’s) whom I sketched last week?
Chief Solanke is a towering public figure in Nigeria, widely admired for her formidable forensic skills, her distinguished public service, her compelling presence, her poised, regal bearing, her impeccable grooming, her unfailing graciousness, and, of course, her exquisite tailoring.
Chief Solanke earned a special BA in Latin and Mathematics from the University of Durham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1954 and followed it up with a Diploma in Education. She taught high school Latin and Mathematics before returning to Nigeria. Six years later, she was back in the UK, to study at Grays Inn, London, completing the programme in two years.
She is a woman of many firsts — first woman to set up her own law firm, first to chair the old Western Nigeria Television Service, first female commissioner in former Western State (she held the portfolio of Establishments and Training), and the first to take Silk.
It was my fortune to chaperon her when she came to Lagos with her husband, the distinguished surgeon, Professor Toriola Solanke, to chair the 1991 Guardian Lecture presented by Ali Mazrui, the multiperspectival scholar of global renown, until his death in 2014 the Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at the Centre for Global Cultural Studies, University of Binghamton, Binghamton, in upstate New York.
She presided over the proceedings with grace and finesse, but with firmness when the situation warranted it. Since then she and Professor Toriola, unfortunately no longer with us, always received me with their accustomed warmth and graciousness whenever our paths crossed.
When Chief Solanke was elected first African president of Zonta International, a global service organisation devoted to advancing the status of women, I wrote to congratulate her on the distinction.
A week later, my letter came back, with a handwritten note from Chief Solanke thanking me ever so graciously for the spirit behind it but pointing out that what it said was clearly not what I meant, and would I kindly withdraw and replace it with another that reflected what I had meant to say?
I was shattered.
“The distinction could have gone to a worthier person,” the letter said in cold print.
In my handwritten draft, the particular sentence read “The distinction could not have gone to a worthier person.” My secretary had in an uncharacteristic lapse omitted the critical word “not” and inadvertently turned a congratulatory message into a gross libel. And I had signed off on the typescript without reviewing it.
The lesson lives with me to this day.
. . . And a correspondent remembers
Your article “With March on my mind” ignored a particular feminine personality Mariam Abacha with whom I share the March 4 birthday. She will be remembered as a lady to whom Gen Oladipo Diya carried a big greeting card in one of the intriguing Aso Rock days of the Abacha years.
One of my two daughters turned to me and said, “Dad, while you and others in Ogun State shivered under Diya, Mariam got him to kneel down in presenting the big card.”
My other daughter countered, “She must be representing all those born on March 4.”
Lóbátán!
That was my consolation. Mariam Abacha turned 70 this year. We share the same day and year of birth. How times fly and change.
Thanks for the article.
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Ode to ideas and compassion
For Asiwaju Bola Tinubu at 65, it is ode to brilliant ideas and deep compassion — and just as well; for no politician of his generation better epitomizes these two concepts.
But the remarkable thing about this year’s birthday: that Tinubu philosophy, of razor-sharp ideas founded on deep compassion, is seeping into the grassroots.
That was clear from the adoption, as part of the Tinubu 65th birthday, of 300 indigent pupils, from all of the 18 public primary schools, in Eredo Local Council Development Area (LCDA), in the Epe Local Government of Lagos State.
That charity’s punch-line could well have come straight from the celebrator himself: “No child will be left behind”.
Now, to some lexical arithmetic: if you graft compassion with ideas, what you get is compassionate ideas.
That would appear the fundament of the Social Contract, that theoretical basis for the pristine government, in which the people surrender parts of their rights, in exchange for welfare and protection, by the mutually empowered Leviathan.
Until neo-cons, under US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher (both late) seized the globe by the scruff, and left the world much poorer, hungrier and angrier, compassionate ideas, as government policy, was given.
Indeed, the democratic concept of the vote-for-sound-governance would appear a logical flow from that given, subject, of course, to voter renewal or rejection, at periodic elections.
But then the neo-cons came, changed state compassion to capital worship, and condemned the people to scrounging majority need from minority greed. Governance has since never been the same!
So, when Asiwaju Tinubu, at the 9th Bola Tinubu Colloquium, with the theme, “Make it in Nigeria: use what we make and make what we use “, declared the political economy must work for the people, he was only reasserting an instinct that had endeared him to millions of Nigerians.
Tinubu, as grand symbol of compassionate ideas, as the cornerstone of governance, was apparent from the attendance mix at the May 28 colloquium in Lagos.
The policy geeks were there in numbers. So were entrepreneurs, thriving or budding, eager to mix and mingle with the governmental royals, on fresh ideas for national economic redemption — all under the grand mastermind of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
But so too were the political hoi polloi, beneficiaries of the legendary Tinubu empathy, no less eager to celebrate with their champion.
From the inaugural colloquium in 2008, Prof. Osinbajo had been the quiet but acute mind, bossing this yearly festival of ideas.
The inaugural theme, “Every vote must count” was a logical response to President Olusegun Obasanjo’s “do-or-die” election of 2007, that foisted the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua as president, in what would prove the beginning of the end for the former ruling party.
But even poor Yar’Adua — goodly soul! — recoiled at that “election”. He therefore set up the Justice Muhammadu Uwais Electoral Review Panel. That inspired Tinubu’s own Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reforms (CODER), which drove the theme for the first-ever Tinubu colloquium: Every vote must count.
So, from the harsh Siberia of opposition, when the PDP loomed, as if it would swing its threat of 60-year uninterrupted rule, Prof. Osinbajo had run the colloquium; to engage the polity on cutting ideas, in a political economy neither proud of its past nor clear about its future.
This year, the Tinubu colloquium has engaged the Buhari government, in which Osinbajo serves as vice-president; aside from other Nigerians. Between Tinubu and Osinbajo then, it is as Chief Obafemi Awolowo, himself the most vigorous ideas man of his generation, quipped: only the deep can call to the deep.
Unlike the Shakespearean Ides of March that doomed Caesar, the Tinubu Colloquium is morphing into grand Ideas of March, that could well save a nation.
So is the novel Eredo Epe charity, saving the rural poor. No less striking was its symbolism: an act of compassion, to toast Tinubu at 65, to kick-start the birthday celebrations, their unique Eredo way.
It is equally interesting how the Indigent Pupils Adoption Programme came about. Shamsideen Adeniyi, former secretary to the Eredo LCDA, whose Ojo Ibukun Foundation is chief driver of the charity, recalled how he observed the acute discomfort of a bare-foot pupil, one hot afternoon, in the Eredo country.
As his boisterous mates barged on the tar, seemingly without a care, the poor child skipped, now on the hot tar, then in the adjoining bushes — all the “kokoma” dance just to relieve the searing afternoon heat, on his shoe-less sole! Even then, his short was tattered. So was his shirt. Of course, he logged a rude sack for a school bag, which was all the more remarkable for its full emptiness!
That set Adeniyi furiously thinking — with a mere N5, 000, this child could get two pairs of uniforms, a pair of school scandals, a doughty bag to carry his books and some dozen exercise books for school work. The Indigent Pupils Adoption Programme was born — and in its first coming in 2016, it benefitted 100 pupils!
But then, Wasiu Odeyemi, aka Wastab, another big shot in the Eredo political universe, bought into the idea, adopting 120 of the 300 beneficiaries this year, under the ambit of his Hassmowun Foundation (after his late parents, Hassan and Omowunmi who, especially his mother, were great lovers of education).
Both foundations agreed to use the event, the second in the series, to celebrate Asiwaju Tinubu at 65; and in that, drew virtually every who-is-who in that community.
From 100 in 2016 to 300 in 2017, Adeniyi’s Ojo Ibukun Foundation, with collaborating partners, would continue expanding the scheme until it achieves its ultimate goal — No child will be left behind.
What is more? Every beneficiary child would be yearly kitted throughout his or her primary school years. That is the term for adoption, and donors have bought into it.
Asiwaju Tinubu must feel doubly proud: his persona inspiring charity to the society’s most vulnerable; and his policy temper, spawning progressive thinkers, even at the grassroots. For Lagos, that is good news.
In Achebe-speak, for Tinubu-esque compassionate ideas, it’s morning yet, on creation day!
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With March on my mind
In these days when the seasons are becoming less clearly defined, when snow falls in Sahara and you can venture outdoors casually dressed in midwinter as you would on a hot summer day, the coming of spring is still as eagerly awaited as of old.
Heralded by March, spring is the season of new life, of rebirth and renewal; the return of long days, when the drab uniformity of winter wardrobe yields to a riot of rich colours on the streets; when flowers come into full bloom and fill the air with their fragrance; when, to borrow from Victor Hugo, “it seems that everything laughs.”
March also marks the birthdays of many notable Nigerians, starting off with Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s on March 6, which the lady of the house proudly shares with the sage. Fittingly, Awo’s 108th posthumous birthday lecture was given by the respected historian and author, Professor Banji Akintoye, a member of the Sage’s Brains Trust and a leading member of the opposition in the Second Republic’s Senate. Compared with that legislative assembly, faults and all, what currently passes for a Senate is a sad regression.
Akintoye spoke on a subject that was always at the core of Chief Awolowo’s thoughts: the imperative of true federalism in Nigeria multinational state, and the centrality of knowledge in human affairs. He challenged Nigerian youths to emulate Awolowo who had carved a path to greatness by the time he was 40 years old
The challenge was not misplaced, considering that in Awolowo’s home state of Ogun, the school-age population reportedly knew much more about Obafemi Martins the international soccer star than they knew about Obafemi Awolowo. To shut History out of the school curriculum in Nigeria as they have done is to condemn the younger generation to a future innocent of the ennobling achievements of the past as well as its chastening lessons.
Awolowo was a polymath: economist, lawyer, journalist, philosopher, parliamentary debater, and brilliant organiser. He was also a writer of the first rank, though not generally recognised as such. Consider his Path to Nigeria’s Freedom his allocutus when he was about to be jailed on a dubious charge of treasonable felony. Consider before that his 1944 letter to a wealthy fellow Ijebu asking for an unsecured loan in the staggering amount of £1, 400 to enable him go to study law in the United Kingdom, and this summation in his autobiography AWO on the joys of lawyering.
“To engage , without bitterness or animosity, in the fiercest contention; to cultivate the habit of always examining both sides of a problem, and to present the side you espouse with forensic forcefulness and assuredness; to identify yourself with your client and to enter into his feelings as if you were the plaintiff or the defendant or the prisoner at the Bar; to propound and urge points of law which are sometimes difficult, sometimes not all too tenable, or sometimes so fine and abstruse that it is not at all easy to distinguish one point from another; to be utterly fearless and unsparing in combat; to acquire an independence of outlook in all things and to enjoy immunity in all you say and do as long as it is legitimate and within the bounds of professional etiquette; to take part in fostering the cause of justice and equity in their total impartiality before the very bulwark of the citizens’ liberty and individual freedom – all these and more are the inherent and distinctive attributes of a noble profession which I love and will forever cherish.”
That is a whale of a sentence, but also a beauty. Only a gifted writer could have pulled it off.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s 80th symbolic birthday came up on March 5, just one day before the Awo anniversary, symbolic because, like many in his generation, he has no record of his birth. Because of this gap in his personal history, he celebrated his 65th birthday twice
The anniversary marked the grand unveiling of his controversial Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, about which I had written scathingly when he embarked on it. It was gracious of him — unusually gracious, some would say — to thank Chief Olusegun Osoba, former Governor of Ogun State, for allocating the choice real estate on which the majestic edifice stands.
One day, as Obasanjo was waxing lyrical in his Otta Farm House about how the prize Awolowo had sought in vain had literally fallen into his laps, he who was reared in poverty, I interjected in a fit of impetuosity that, nevertheless, he was condemned forever to live in Awo’s shadow.
His face tightened, his eyes bulged, and his frame swelled. I surveyed the room for the nearest exit. His aides told me later that he must have a high regard for me. If any other guest had said the same thing to Obasanjo’s hearing and in his home, they said, that person would have left bearing a mark of his rage.
That was long before his second coming as a two term-president. Like all great men, he made great mistakes. But given his cumulative record of achievement and his standing in his own right as a statesman of global renown, I must now take back my taunt that he was forever condemned to live in Awo’s shadow. To his credit, he never held it against me.
Dr Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo, journalist, playwright and public intellectual, was killed in a bizarre accident on March 7, two days shy of his 57th birthday. He was unassuming, personable, and full of promise. Incidentally, the accident that claimed his life occurred as he was returning to his Abuja base from the unveiling of Obasanjo’s Presidential Library.
I gather from those “on ground” that Obasanjo has issued no statement on the passing of Onukaba, his estranged protégé, biographer and collaborator.
Please, Mr President, say that this is not true.
Our much acclaimed poet and future Nobelist, Professor Niyi Osundare, turned 70 on March 12. His joy on attaining this milestone was somehow muted by the deaths in quick succession of the erudite and retiring literary scholar of the first rank, Professor Ben Obumselu, and the great Caribbean poet and Nobel laureate in Literature, Derek Walcott, both of whom he knew quite well.
His eloquent tributes to their memory say as much about him as it says of his departed friends.
Subomi Balogun, corporate lawyer, pioneer merchant banker, founder and chairman of First City Monument Bank and philanthropist, turned 83 on March 12. The celebration was modest, compared to that of the 80th as well as the 60th, which I had the pleasure of attending in his Ijebu-Ode country home in 1994 at his personal invitation.
He is still driven by the passion for excellence and Christian doctrine that made him what he is.
Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a pivotal figure in the political landscape and prime architect of the grand coalition that swept the All Progressives Congress into power, turns 65 tomorrow. To take a good measure of his political stature and influence, look no farther than the disarray and the insolvency in which the PDP has been mired since its crushing defeat in the 2016 general election.
For the 16 years it held power, the PDP advertised itself as Africa’s biggest political party. It had ample access to resources for all manner of grandiose projects, including a N16 billion, 12-storey national headquarters, for which its well-heeled supporters and governors in PDP-controlled states plonked down more than N6 billion at the launch.
Today, the project stands abandoned, a monument to excess and misplaced priorities. Within months of losing power, the PDP could not even pay the salaries of the skeleton staff hanging out in its secretariat, for want of a better alternative.
Then consider that at the time the PDP was threatening to hold power for 60 years in the first instance, Tinubu and his associates in the Action Congress, and later in the Action Congress of Nigeria, constituted the only barrier to the PDP’s total takeover of Nigeria. Stolen election after stolen election shrank his political base in the Southwest and Edo. Abuja tightened the screws.
It was in this hostile climate that Tinubu set out to reclaim, ward by ward, constituency by constituency and state by state his base on which the PDP had foisted its visionless rule by electoral fraud on a scale almost beyond belief.
They called him “the last man standing” for good reason.
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Fani leads ‘em to Kigali
Femi Fani-Kayode is strutting to Kigali. Yet, the Yoruba nation — at least its media-savvy denizens — barge along, too angry, it appears, to remember their essence.
When did the cherished Omoluabi credo (in-born nobility, founded on honour, equity and justice) start endorsing criminality, simply because the alleged perpetrator is Yoruba?
Or what else do you call this rabid atavism over the Ile-Ife crisis, except giving tribal cover to heinous crime and brazen criminality?
What is this — some early-day hubris, of a people set to fall upon their proud heritage of uncompromising fairness, as a diminished Roman great would fall on his own sword?
Or a more sinister end-stage decadence, of a people that boast nothing now but once-upon-a-time fairness?
These are troubling questions. But they demand rigorous answers, in the hysteria of the moment.
It started with Fani’s usually tendentious pieces (this one, a two-piece grenade) that gave the Ife crisis the stark colouration of ethnic saints and sinners. Yet, the miscreants involved, Yoruba or Hausa-Fulani, are suspected criminals.
Why, good old Femo, flush with emotive lather, even branded himself the Hitler of the moment! That ought to have exposed his sinister motive.
But no! Other Yoruba leaders and pressure groups have jumped into the fray, each and everyone rippling with a rather explosive dose of Yoruba ultra-nationalism!
Without risking an ad hominem fallacy, you could see through the early launchers of this emotive war, fired from tribal missiles.
Femi Fani-Kayode has gained unfettered notoriety for cunning emotional claptrap, disguised as some reasoned real deal. Though only the obtuse get hooked, that tribe boasts great numbers in today’s Nigeria.
Between the old Afenifere and the Buhari Presidency, there appears no love lost; since the grandees so spectacularly backed the wrong horse at the 2015 elections.
With disturbing Yoruba ultra-nationalism issuing from the Afenifere camp, “Hausa-Fulani”, to that frazzled assembly, sounds like throwing the red flag at a snorting bull. Add downtown rage from the Odua People’s Congress (OPC) and allied clans, and you may well see, in full emotive gargoyle, howlers from 2015, seeking some rogue closure to their pain.
But the real surprise, in the trending Yoruba ultra-nationalism, using the Yoruba cradle as launch pad, would appear the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG). That is the real tragedy, for though ARG is proudly Yoruba — and correctly and unapologetically so — its reasoned mien, since it broke away, tended to shun the supremacist gait of its pristine elder cousin. All that seemed melted with the ARG response to the Ife crisis.
The problem with ultra-nationalism, in a delicate federation, is that it is good for no one. Not a few believe “Hausa-Fulani” ultra-nationalism is expressed in the notorious “Fulani herdsmen”, that kill with murderous bravura and satanic flourish. That has set the whole of the southern media in a tailspin of rage.
But that scalding rage, which belches visceral hatred across regional and ethnic lines, is counter-media terrorism, which erects an intriguing match-up between physical and psychological siege.
The Fulani herdsman slits the throat. The hate-belching media rips the soul. The situation is lose-lose, for the innocents, on both sides, are tarred and cooked.
The herdsman libels his race as free-wheeling, conscienceless killers. The howling media damns a whole people as murderous monsters, beyond redemption; and those it defends as primeval bigots.
That can only point to the blood-soaked road to Kigali, on which hate-filled Rwandans killed first, reasoned later — when it was too late! A shocked globe reclined from that horror!
The Fulani antipathy, which shaped much of the reaction to the Ife crisis, and the role of the state in it all, lead the discourse right back to the subject.
There is a strong case to be made against the alleged lop-sided arrests in the Ife communal dispute. It takes two to tango; and apparent one-sided arrests are bound to set the alarm bells clanging for fairness.
The Police had better issue a convincing explanation, or they risk being charged with odious partisanship; and perceived as aiding and abetting ethnic crimes, thus actively undermining the state. That is tragic — and treasonable.
Frankly, President Muhammadu Buhari and his security apparatus have earned fair blame over the rampaging killer herdsmen. These guys are felons, who the state should bring to heel and fast. The more the Federal Government tarries over these heinous criminals, the more the president gets gravely de-marketed, along ethnic lines.
But it is sheer fallacy to hang, on the president’s neck, the crime of a few “Hausa-Fulani”; and go ahead to hint, as many of these media reports do, at culpable presidential enabling for this gory criminality.
For all the president’s faults, he is no devious fellow. Besides, such supposition is illiterate and wilful. No self-respecting media pushes such a line.
Unfortunately, that is the line Fani is wilfully pushing on the Ife crisis, with the other so-called Yoruba leaders in tow. But really — Yoruba leaders? Or just soulless dealers, in willy-nilly relevance, mortally scared of creeping but sure oblivion?
Let every felon — Hausa, Fulani or Yoruba — be arrested for their ignoble role, in the Ife fracas. But let no one, pleading alleged lop-sided arrests, push to spring genuine criminals, under the cover of ethnic solidarity. Failure to do justice to all leads to two fatal passes.
One junction leads to Kigali. Perceived government cover for crimes, under ethnic sympathy, arouses the explosive ghost of Hutu-Tutsi antipathy, that brought Rwanda to its knees, after its security agencies had been thoroughly demarketed and devalued, incidentally, by its hurting media. It is baiting avoidable anarchy.
The other, no less suicidal, is the road to Mogadishu. That should be of riveting interest to the Yoruba nation. Somalia fell upon itself, despite being of essentially one ethnic stock, because it harboured wilful criminality among its own.
After the Kiriji War of the 19th century, is the Yoruba breeding certified felons to plague its future, whether inside or outside Nigeria?
That is what you do when you rationalize criminality in the Yoruba cradle, simply because the victims are “other people”.
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Once upon two uniforms
First, an acknowledgement, and then a caveat.
I owe the title of this piece to Femi Osofisan’s play, Once upon Four Robbers. I cannot claim much familiarity with that work. But somehow, its title bobbed up from the deepest recess of memory, and I shamelessly adapted it.
So, to Himself the Okinba, ìbà.
The caveat: Other than the title, Osofisan’s play and this piece have nothing in common.
Twenty-seven years and two months separate the dramas related here. The first one was acted out in a hallowed courtroom of the High Court of Lagos, and the other in a rowdy session of the Senate. The one was riveting drama, the other an unsubtle show of power.
First, the court drama.
The famous prisoner, jailed for expressing a perfectly legitimate request that his case be assigned to a judge other than the one before whom his prayers had been denied in as many as 10 previous appearances, insisted on turning up before yet another tribunal in his prison uniform.
Prison officials would have none of it. He was a prisoner all right, but they maintained that it would be unseemly for him to appear before a tribunal in prison clothes. That may have been a concession to the fiery attorney, one of the sharpest dressers in the business.
But he was not flattered. He was not ashamed to be a prisoner. He was not embarrassed to be seen in public dressed in prison uniform. Whose body was it, anyway?
The Tribunal was just as troubled as the prison authorities. Why would the suspect insist on appearing before so grave and dignified a body in prison clothes? After all, he was not your run-of-the-mill prisoner but an honourable member of the Bar who, in another circumstance could be standing before the Tribunal as counsel rather than culprit.
Perhaps the prisoner’s attorney could persuade him to appear before the court in his everyday clothes and not in his prison uniform?
No, thanks. All that the law required, his sedate and urbane leading counsel replied, was that his client appear before the Tribunal. His client was ready to answer the Tribunal’s summons, without preconditions.
The police officer despatched to fetch the prisoner returned, without him. The prisoner would not step out of the precincts except in his prison uniform, the officer reported. The proceedings were adjourned.
Two weeks later, the prisoner was brought to court wearing that contentious uniform, ebullient as ever, showing not the faintest sign of embarrassment and decidedly not asking to be pitied. If anyone ever looked spiffy in a prison uniform, it was Prisoner Number J60/4990.
The press photographers clicked away. They knew a unique moment when they saw one.
A robust sense of humour was unlikely to be counted even among the prisoner’s minor assets. But he had an almost infinite capacity to surprise. And so, he urged the photographers to make a good job of taking the snapshots, and to be sure to send the prints, with his compliments, to the kabiyesi judge who had jailed him for contempt.
The Tribunal commenced its assignment at last, under an intriguing division of judicial labour whereby a suspect, arrested by the federal authorities (unlawfully, said a judge) and detained by the same federal authorities (lawfully, the same judge said), is prosecuted by the Lagos State Government before a Tribunal empanelled by the federal authorities.
But its discomfiture at having to try the suspect in his prison uniform was almost palpable.
Not for long, however. Between the first session at which the prisoner did not show up and the second one at which he turned up in the prison uniform they found so discomfiting, some enterprising prison official had combed ancient statute books and found, to the immense relief of everyone in that corner, a law that apparently prohibited appearing in court or before a tribunal wearing a prison uniform.
This deus ex machina was read out solemnly to the prisoner. He was unimpressed, and so was his attorney. It was not immediately clear whether this was a contrivance, an ingenuous interpolation. But it resolved the problem, and the prisoner soon regained his freedom.
Prisoner Number J60/4990 was none other than Gani Fawehinmi, our Gani of cherished memory, and the foregoing is based on my column with the same title for The Guardian (January 30, 1990), reproduced in my book, Diary of a Debacle. His attorney was the legal titan Chief GOK Ajayi (SAN), also since deceased.
The second case about a uniform has been playing out lately on the floor of the Senate, with television cameras beaming it live to a national audience. It has little of the texture, the subtlety of the Fawehinmi case. But who cares for subtlety when you can have mass entertainment guaranteed to take away attention from the pains of the recession and other discontinuities of social life, however briefly?
At the centre of the drama is an unlikely figure, Colonel Hameed Ibrahim Ali (retired), a former military governor of Kaduna State, and currently Comptroller-General of Customs and Excise, or rather the official uniform he has chosen not to wear to work, or to appear before the Senate.
The Customs Service had been demanding proof of payment of duty on pre-owned vehicles from end-users who had bought them directly from smugglers, or from dealers who had bought them from smugglers. Brimming with unaccustomed solicitude for the plight of the unfortunate end-users who stood to be gravely exploited, the Senate asked that the practice be stopped. For good measure, it invited the Comptroller-General to appear before it to defend his controversial directive.
Ali had sent two of his deputies to represent him. The Senate would not receive them, saying that its rules precluded appearances by persons other than heads of agencies. It was Comptroller-General Ali, or nobody else.
Bowing to pressures from the Senate, Ali announced that he was suspending the directive ahead of his scheduled appearance, which he made in mufti, not in his full official uniform as the Senate had demanded with all the threats and tantrums that Dino Melaye and his cohorts could work up.
They rebuked him for insubordination, warned him severely to come dressed in his official uniform for his next appointment or face some unspoken consequence, and walked him out. But not before he had told them that no law enjoined him to wear the uniform of the Customs Service.
As far as I know, nobody has cited any law that Ali has breached. Convention perhaps, or tradition. In any case, the kerfuffle is not about law. The Senate rarely cares about law, except when it serves its purpose.
The whole thing is about power. In formal terms, the balance lies with the Senate, which can, at summary proceedings, invoke its contempt powers to jail for a limited time those who disobey its orders.
Ali could defy the Senate and end up in jail, like Gani, or walk away from the job. The one will portray the Senate as overbearing, if not overreaching; the other will hand it a dubious victory.
There is a third possibility.
Ali could challenge the Senate’s order at law and then, taking a cue from Senate President Bukola Saraki, find or manufacture every conceivable distraction, explore every interstice of the law, no matter how unpromising, pile objection upon objection and adjournment upon adjournment, and with scant regard to jurisdiction hopscotch from one court to another and generally draw out the hearings until the Eighth Senate will have run its term.
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At 80: Ebora Owu sweet and sour
From his wild rants, Ayo Fayose, Ekiti governor, cuts the picture of a doomed dog, deaf to the hunter’s whistle.
His gruff request for a “refund”, of “his” N10 million, the then President Olusegun Obasanjo allegedly extorted for his presidential library, from sitting governors in 2005, could well be due comeuppance for brazen hypocrisy. But it was no less graceless, coming at the zenith of celebrating the old man at 80.
Still, that was pure Karma at work! As a younger man, Obasanjo himself, in Not My Will, had poked rude jabs at seniors, professional and biological.
On account of the February 1976 coup, which claimed Gen. Murtala Muhammad, Obasanjo had summarily condemned Gen. Yakubu Gowon, his former commander-in-chief, thundering “Mr. Gowon” would face trial — and sure conviction and execution — should he set foot on Nigerian soil.
Well Gowon, his honour restored, is alive to see a coarser Fayose do to Obasanjo, what Obasanjo did to him!
On Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s failed presidential ambition, he mocked: what Awo craved all his illustrious life, he, a mere boy from the Egba backwaters, got on a platter of gold.
Why, he even slammed the great Zik of Africa as ending life as Owelle of Onitsha!
But even as Karma’s agent, Fayose just doomed himself to a similar fate!
It is this vigorous paradox of immaculate rot that makes the Obasanjo public persona puzzle at 80.
The Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) need not be the biblical whited sepulchre, glittering outside, rotten within. But given its suspect moral provenance, it risks boiling down to just that, despite its huge historical potentials. Talk of a rigged process to an immaculate end!
Since Gen. Obasanjo first hit on Nigeria, as Civil War hero, Federal Works commissioner under Gen. Gowon, Gen. Murtala Muhammad’s chief of staff, Supreme Headquarters, and later military Head of State, he had always projected public high-mindedness.
Under his tenure as military head of state, he changed the National Anthem, arguing that the new reflected Nigeria’s African essence more than the old. He also conceived the National Pledge, an everyday awakening of the dormant patriotism in the citizenry.
Even as Lord of Manor at Dodan Barracks, Lagos, the Obasanjo regime pushed out official civic communications that compared the government to a dustbin, into which citizens rightly throw their garbage! Moral? Governments — even under juntas — must be humble and long-suffering, always putting citizen’s rights and welfare first.
As elected president, he founded the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), with the volcanic Nuhu Ribadu as first chairman, thus mainstreaming the War Against Corruption; as well as the ICPC, to lesser applause. Still on anti-corruption infrastructure, he established the Due Process Office, under Oby Ezekwesili, to check the soulless padding of contracts.
Of course, under his economic “reforms”, away from the public sector-led ethos of his first coming, he crowned the local Breton Woods royals of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Charles (later Chukwuma) Soludo, Ezekwezili, and Nasir El-Rufai who, as first Bureau for Public Enterprises boss, birthed the first set of privatization of public companies; and liberalized the telecoms sector.
But Obasanjo’s flaw has always been failure to walk the talk of his own high-mindedness. That has been responsible for the sweet-and-sour that has pork-marked his public persona, spanning some 47 years since 1970.
Even under the growl of Ribadu’s anti-corruption rhetoric, cynical extortion, that was the fund-raiser for the OOPL, strutted in full public glare, probity be damned!
Or how else would you call a sitting president, doubling as oil minister, suborning the cream of the Nigerian economy, to “donate” to a private cause, dressed in public garb? But that was even on the narrow economic front.
On the far larger canvas of politics and constitutionalism, Obasanjo’s, through Ribadu’s EFCC, was the ultimate paradox of an absolute corruption war corrupting absolutely!
Tornado Obasanjo, flush with cynical puritanism, blasted the Constitution and blighted the impeachment clause. Enter then, the tragi-comic lingo of “simple minority”, for “impeaching” state governor-enemies of the presidential Leviathan!
The motif of the Leviathan-come-to-crush all was also all too apparent, in the fate of the hubris-stricken Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and its eventual destruction.
That, to be sure, was mutual opportunism gone awry: Obasanjo wanted power to crow about his “greatness”; a manipulative military cabal, with their civilian side-kicks, wanted a pawn, to sustain their hegemony. But the pawn soon turned brazen manipulator, and the PDP goose was cooked. Good riddance!
As usual, the Ebora Owu has claimed everything good and decent left the PDP when he did. But that is a sweet, self-serving lie. Fact: Obasanjo moulded the PDP from a neither-nor power machine, to a partisan monster, with a “do-or-die” electoral temper.
Poor, naive Goodluck Jonathan was the ultimate fall guy, for he got buried under its rubble, ironically to Obasanjo’s sanctimonious applause!
This paradox of immaculate case housing a rotten core, and its dire testimony to history, may have propelled Obasanjo’s manic essay at self-written history: My Command, Not My Will, Under My Watch — the narcissistic “My” would appear no accident! — and of course, the ultimate in self-erected shrines, the OOPL, first in Africa!
What drives all this racket of intellect, and thunder of integrity, positioning the former president as the model of honest and enlightened citizenry?
Perhaps Buhari and Awo. President Muhammadu Buhari is as taciturn as Obasanjo is voluble. But his unquestionable integrity quakes and vibrates, like when you roll a vessel filled to the brim — the telling opposite of the grating and scraping, of rolling an empty one!
Now that Buhari is also president, history has a choice, between tinsel and solid gold, in presidential integrity.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo (1909-1987) never attained federal power. But in distilled public intellectualism, of plotting a way out of Nigeria’s morass, he is nonpareil so far.
Obasanjo, on the other hand, has authored a lot of narcissistic tomes, detailing his watch, at his many layers of responsibility, in an active engagement with contemporary Nigeria, climaxing with the presidency.
Again, between Awo and Obasanjo, history has its pick, if the subject is rigour and cutting-edge ideas.
One clear difference between Awo and Obasanjo, though: while an intellectually restless Awo craved a more workable Nigeria, bench-marking Jeremy Bentham’s greatest good of the greatest number, Obasanjo thoroughly understood — and still understands — his Nigeria, and for good and for ill, thoroughly milked it.
Perhaps Obasanjo’s greatest tribute? That he was great. But only because Nigeria was puny, as Gulliver beside Lilliput! If ever Nigeria hits its dizzying heights, he could well turn a dwarf.
Still, to the Ebora Owu, happy birthday at 80! -
The road to Lagos Airport
In practically every other country, getting to – and getting out of –the major international airport is a breeze; in Nigeria, it is a fraught obstacle race.
And so, from my waking up until the plane takes off, any day I am flying out of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos is one of foreboding and high anxiety.
As a rule, I do not venture far beyond my lodgings in Anthony Village or Maryland, Ikeja, as the case may be, for fear that I might find it impossible to return in time to head to the airport. But there are many other factors over which I have no control.
What if the skies opened and the roads were flooded and it was impossible to get to the airport before scheduled departure? I know many domestic and international passengers who were caught in precisely that situation.
What if an unlatched container fell off the truck and effectively blocked entry into or egress from the airport? Such accidents are not uncommon in Lagos. Who says, then, that a mishap like that cannot occur that very day, at a strategic point on the road to the airport?
Another argument between stalwarts of rival factions of the road and transport workers union could turn Oshodi, by no means the most tranquil neighbourhood in town, into a riot scene, with motorists abandoning their vehicles and scampering for safety and the usual miscreants taking advantage to do brisk business as is their custom.
The possibilities are legion, the uncertainty almost numbing. As four o’clock approaches, I can almost feel my blood pressure rising. That is the hour I have chosen from long habit to leave for the airport to catch a flight scheduled to depart some six hours later.
Barring any of the exigencies I mentioned above, I am reasonably sure that I would get to the airport, complete departure formalities and still have an hour or so to catch my breath and make some farewell calls before boarding. And if it turned out that I had a much longer waiting time, there was plenty of reading material to keep me engaged.
My ample head start, pardon a digression, once turned out to be providential. Traffic had flowed so smoothly that day that the check-in counter was just opening when I took my place on a short queue at the departure lounge. Confidently, I reached for my travel documents in my handbag.
My passport was not there. It was nowhere to be found. My options were clear but daunting. I could give up on the flight and cough up $400 as penalty for a new reservation that might open up, or I could dash home to retrieve passport and with some luck return to the airport in time for boarding.
Entrusting my luggage to the young man who had conveyed me to the airport, I dashed out of the terminal building and breathlessly told the first taxi operator I saw my problem. He obviously didn’t have an operating licence but that was not the time for nice discriminations.
“Where is home?” he asked.
“Maryland Estate.”
“When is your flight?”
I told him.
He looked at his watch and smiled. There was more than enough time. He signaled to one of his boys and asked him to speed me off.
“That would be N8,000,” the driver said, as I fastened the seat belt. That was nothing, I reckoned, compared to the $400 I would have to plonk down for a new reservation if I missed the flight?
We made it back to the airport in less than two hours. After completing departure formalities, I still had some two hours to unwind before boarding.
I had never experienced such frantic, aggressive and dizzying driving, such calculated disregard for the Highway Code. My heart was literally in my mouth most of the time I was in that battered Renault, a grateful but traumatized passenger. It was an experience I hope I’ll never have to go through again. For the driver it was just another assignment in the line of duty. It was as if he fully expected the N4,000 that I gave him by way of gratuity.
To return to my travel blues: There was a time when I harboured apprehensions that an official taking an unusual interest in my passport or my person might ask me to step aside while other passengers were being processed and finally, long after the plane had departed, inform me with touching solicitude that he had received “orders from above” to hold on to my passport, and to ask me to report at my earliest convenience to that sprawling complex on Awolowo Road, in southwest Ikoyi, Lagos, to retrieve it.
The apprehension was no fantasy. It would finally materialize, but on my arrival from a foreign trip rather than at departure.
There was also this apprehension that, as the plane prepared to taxi to the runway, representatives of law and order would suddenly show up and invite me to disembark, again invoking those dreadful “orders from above.” But it never came to pass.
Stanley Macebuh’s famous liberal temperament, excuse a final digression, almost snapped whenever anyone voiced the phrase “orders from above” to his hearing. To him it was a tautology, and an ugly one at that. “Where else do orders come from?” he would ask rhetorically. “Do they ever come from below?”
My flight-day apprehensions almost never materialized, I am glad to report. Still, they assail me on each and every such occasion. And that is because of the road to Lagos Airport. It is an unending nightmare.
I often wonder: What if a passenger plane crashed into some building on landing and disintegrated in an inferno, as in those frightful clips of doomed flights shown ever so often on television?
With the road to the airport through Oshodi clogged even on the best days and the road from the domestic terminal only slightly less congested, how quickly would first responders get to the scene, when minutes could make the difference between dying and surviving? How quickly would the injured be evacuated to hospitals and trauma centres?
An air ambulance would be the fastest mode of transportation at such moments, but how quickly can one be deployed? How many of such vehicles are available in Nigeria anyway?
It is scandalous beyond belief that the main road to and from Lagos Airport has been allowed to stand for so long in such riotous disrepair.
Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode has asked the Federal Government, the derelict owner of the road, to cede it to Lagos for fixing. In its place, he plans to construct a 10-lane dual carriage way that will meet the highest international standard. The drawings and building specifications have been completed, he said.
There should be no quibbling over the matter. If the Federal Government cannot and will not fix the road, it should gratefully cede it to the Lagos State Government.
Niyi Osundare@70
Our much garlanded poet, belletrist, humanist, voice of reason and courage, and intellectual of global stature, charmed man of letters who survived the rage and the trauma of Katrina and carried on as if they were no more than minor irritants; distinguished teacher and mentor; visionary who made the Environment an object veneration and celebration well before scientists and policy-makers fully grasped the need to protect and preserve it; a scholar and a gentleman: Oluwaniyi Osundare turned 70 last Sunday, March 12.
Welcome to the Fraternity, Ákóyéjó.
I have the permission of its denizens to impart to you by way of induction its secret handshake at the earliest opportunity.