The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

Obama and African Leaders Summit
The United States recently invited African leaders for a summit in Washington with the theme: Investing in the Next Generation. The summit was to provide an opportunity to discuss ways of stimulating growth, unlocking opportunities, and creating an enabling environment for the next generation and to chart a way forward in Africa- American relations in the area of doing business in Africa, counter terrorism, health, electricity governance, peace and security amongst others. Beyond President Obama’s rhetoric of partnership, the summit has brought to fore the new American foreign policy towards Africa which is hinged essentially on neo-liberal economic diplomacy and the subtle attempts by the White House to curtail the growing tensions over China trade relations with Africa which stood at about US$210 billion in 2013 as against US trade with Africa which dwindled to US$85 billion.

One of the paradoxes of underdevelopment in Africa is that the continent is the richest in resources and but it is home to the poorest people in the world. Yet, our African leaders are inept and corrupt and often parade themselves in Washington, Paris, Beijing and London looking for solutions to our self-inflicted problem of poverty and corruption.

Indeed, Obama’s passionate desire to create institutions and not strongmen in Africa may also have informed his decision to school our leaders in Washington with a view to increasing trade relations and to a very large extent checkmate the growing China’s strategic influence in Africa. What is more, President Obama in his charismatic manner has expressed hope in Africa leaders to leapfrog the untapped potential of the continent to the benefits of its teeming young population. His words: I do not see the countries and peoples of Africa as a world apart; I see Africa as a fundamental part of our interconnected world – partners with America on behalf of the future we want for all of our children. That partnership must be grounded in mutual responsibility and mutual respect.”

One cannot help but acknowledge the fact that, there are very few African leaders who can deliver on their promises of development because of corruption and the age – long dependency on the West as always having unfounded answers and solutions to our development agenda. In my view, leadership creativity and inspiration in governance are not exclusive preserve of Washington. African leaders must see some of these partnerships paradigms as the imperialistic West wearing new clothes of globalisation to recapture Africa resources through the backdoors of foreign direct investment and unwholesome economic and trade relations that are not beneficial to the future of our children and the overall progress of the continent of Africa.

The rules of economic partnerships and engagements remained skewed in favour of America and China over the years and this is not good for Africa’s development. It should also be noted that neo-liberalism is a metaphor expressed in the name western market democracies and globalisation to expand uneven trade and investment to us in Africa and by extension a form of recolonisation of Africa through the international financial institutions and the so called development partners to maintain the hegemonic influence of the rich countries over the poor. This unwholesome scenario has kept Africa and its people down for a very long time in the global development equation and until we make efforts to challenge the status quo, Africa’s development will be a mirage. Indeed it is time that our leaders do reality checks. The journey of development has no rehearsals; therefore it is expedient for the continental leadership – African Union and the various regional blocs to work together for the emancipation of Africa from the clutches western imperialism and the global buccaneers that has been bleeding us to death in the name of partnerships and aids.

Our leaders should come to terms that international politics and indeed summit diplomacy being engaged by the US is a game of selective morality and double standards and for Africans to win we must continuously recognise our interests and protect them with an uncommon courage.

Sadly, the chains of economic slavery driven by neo-liberal might are often replaced by the cuffs of direct foreign investment and the US continues to set tariffs against fair trade with Africa while they attract the brightest and the best from Africa to drive their economy and development interest. Interestingly, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) midwifed by the Clinton administration in May 2000 granted the preferential access with a view to deepening the U.S. trading relationship with Africa. However, AGOA has not realized its full potential for a mutually beneficial trade and investment from Africa to the US because of limitation to a strict trade-preference arrangements and restrictions in favour of America.

The question now is will these partnerships and new economic diplomacy favour Africa?

In the never-ending search for solutions to Africa’s social and economic challenges, one viewpoint is advocating for hard choices among our leaders is to tackle the issue of corruption head on and to invest on young talents to unleash growth in the small and medium enterprises sector. The China example is worthy of emulation by our leaders. China development policy has always been tied to its peoples. China with 1.3 billion people has lifted over 400 million Chinese from poverty in the last 30 years with loanable funds that is more than three times of the World Bank and given to their people at the lower rate of two percent which increased investment and development in China.

Interestingly, China has also efficiently redirected its resources including Diaspora remittances into education, science and technology most especially its rail system with 10,000 Chinese nationals involved in its research and development efforts. This indeed is a reflection of the kind of inspirational and transformational leadership that Africa requires to move to the next generation rather turning to Washington for roundtable and quick-fix answers. Pointedly, our progress as continent lies within us as a people and we must renew our belief to reverse the trend of development rather the politics of tyranny and myopia syndrome of corruption and it is time to rethink the massive and primitive wealth accumulation by a few at the expense of the greater and common good.

The price of corruption and the manifest inefficiencies of leadership in Africa are overtly huge and painfully so and we must be reminded that no country or indeed the continent of Africa can successfully develop its people and economy through uneven trade partnerships and foreign direct investment portfolio that are often canvassed by the West.

Lastly, international diplomacy of summits are not charitable as they appear to our African leaders but subtle psychological warfare for power relations to capture our minds with the ultimate purpose of wealth redirection in the name of partnerships that do not benefit the majority of Africans. African leadership must restore the sense of destiny, which should translate into high self-esteem and self– confidence. Indeed self confidence has lifted the vision and aspirations of the world powers to current enviable position and for us as Africans, all we need to do now and most urgently is to put our house in order to make our future greater than past.
- Orovwuje is founder Humanitarian Care for Displaced Persons, Lagos
September 2, 2014
Enugu ‘Chicken Impeachment’: Matters arising

In countries with a tradition of adherence to the letter and spirit of the law, an impeachment is the ultimate political sanction, the punishment of last resort for high officers of state who betray the public trust or fail egregiously to live up to its stipulations.

In Nigeria where politics is vengefulness and vendetta by another name, an impeachment is the weapon of first choice. Thus, on any given day, there is an actual impeachment, an attempted impeachment, or rumours of an impeachment already in the making or being contemplated, mostly for reasons that cannot stand legal scrutiny, or simply because the weapon is there and an ascendant group is all too willing to wield it just to show who is in charge.

They have perverted impeachment and given it a bad name.

Even so, the proceeding in the Enugu State House of Assembly last week that the online newspaper, Premium Times, referred to as the “Chicken Impeachment” must have stunned those who still cling to the belief that Nigeria is a land where certain things simply cannot happen.

Before I am summoned to appear before the Enugu Assembly to show cause why I should not be punished for contumely, I should hasten to explain that it is emphatically not the case that the honourable members had become so idle or were so bereft of subjects worthy of their notice that they decided to impeach a chicken.

Even at the local government level, our legislative houses have not sunk to that level yet.

What happened was that the Enugu Assembly, after solemnly deliberating on the charges before it, namely, that His Excellency the Deputy Governor, Sunday Onyebuchi, desecrated his high office by converting the hallowed grounds of his official residence into a sprawling chicken farm and, furthermore, that His Excellency the Deputy Governor, aforementioned, in a show of wanton disrespect, refused to dismantle the said chicken farm when ordered to do so by His Higher Excellency the Governor, Sullivan Chime.

In vain did the Deputy Governor submit by way of extenuation documentary evidence that the impeaching authority, to wit, the Enugu Assembly, had dutifully approved, year after year, a budgetary provision for the upkeep of the chicken farm. In vain also did he depose that His Higher Excellency Governor Chime had for his part converted the pristine precincts of the Executive Mansion into a pig farm.

The latter point was not at issue in the deposition, but I will not be surprised if the Enugu Assembly, in keeping with its remit for good governance and its reputation for equity, had also been providing annual budgetary support for His Higher Excellency Governor Chime’s hog farm.

Persons learned in law tell me that the impeachment is likely to go down as an instance of legislative overreach and a flagrant breach of the Constitution to boot. For nowhere in that much-abused document, they tell me, is it expressly stated that the deputy governor of a state cannot convert his official premises to a chicken farm.

Nor, I should add in the interest of balance, that nowhere in the Constitution is it expressly stated that the governor of a state cannot turn the Executive Mansion into a hog farm.

Why such projects should be supported by the Exchequer is a different matter. Perhaps it is of a piece with the self-assigned allowances that have percolated from the federal legislature through the state assemblies down to the local councils – allowances for breathing, laughing, sleeping, staying awake, travel, sitting, standing, talking, not talking, walking, driving, reading, writing, and for the incomparable hardship of doing the business of law-making.

But this is mere speculation.

If the Enugu Assembly was minded to abide by the law of the land and rather than embark on a witch-hunt, it could have found some clause in its remit to charge the beleaguered Deputy Governor with a misdemeanor that does not reach the threshold for impeachment, persons learned in the law insist.

With a little creative thinking, they said, it could have come up with some shibboleth – doctrine of overriding necessity, for instance – to constitute itself into a special court and charged Onyebuchi, immunity or no immunity, with at least a dozen violations of the Enugu State Environment Law, found him guilty on all counts, ordered him to cease and desist, to relocate his chicken farm and clean up the place.

And that strategy would have had the great merit of opening an exciting new chapter in Nigerian jurisprudence.

But the usual people have been spinning all sorts of theories around the matter and imputing the basest of motives to the honourable members of the Enugu Assembly.

Some of these slanderers, pivoting on the Stomach Infrastructure Theory, are saying that some legislators had been heard complaining that, despite the budgetary appropriation for the defenestrated deputy governor Sunday Onyebuchi’s chicken farm, he had been “eating alone”.

They say he never thought it necessary to send a tray – not even one single, solitary tray — of complimentary eggs to the breakfast table of His Excellency the Governor and the First Family, nor the state legislators’ homes. He did not consider the kitchen of the State Assembly worthy of a steady supply of assorted eggs for preparing meals and delicacies for the exclusive consumption of its honourable members and their special guests.

At Easter and Christmas and New Year and the New Yam Festival and like occasions, it never crossed Onyebuchi’s mind to send even one ordinary dressed hen – to say nothing of a dressed turkey or ostrich – to the Executive Mansion or the homes of the legislators for their holiday enjoyment.

If the formerly excellent Onyebuchi had catered more assiduously to the stomach infrastructure of his principal and members of the Enugu Assembly, his career would not have ended on such a sad note, the slanderers have been saying.

From such reasoning, it is but a short step to the conclusion that the impeachment was the Enugu Assembly’s response to the Deputy Governor’s predilection for eating alone. The reasoning is tendentious, and the conclusion pernicious.

The still excellent Governor Chime has not been supplying grilled pork and allied products or whole roast or barbecued pigs from his hog farm in the Executive Mansion to the homes of members of the state legislature on festive occasions. He has not been catering to the stomach infrastructure of the lawmakers. Yet he has not been impeached.

Still, in a larger sense, Onyebuchi’s impeachment can be seen as a signal warning to those political officials who have been eating alone or may be tempted to eat alone, and a powerful reminder of the wisdom of our people that those who eat alone are doomed to fight alone.

Since one impeachment has a way of begetting another, Governor Chime will have to take appropriate measures to avert the Pig Impeachment that could well follow the Chicken Impeachment of his former deputy.

His first step would be to spread the pork from his Executive Mansion hog farm fast and far.

September 2, 2014
IBB @ 73: The dissembler at work

Former military president Ibrahim Babangida has been giving interviews to mark his 73rd birthday, which would otherwise have passed almost unremarked in the news media. Unlike the time when he subordinated the National Day, October 1, to his birthday, the news media were not crammed with congratulatory messages from hustlers of every hue.

Back then, his birthday was the occasion for grand pronouncements and major policy initiatives or changes. The National Day featured for the most part desultory parades of school children and working people, and Babangida would send a message of goodwill to his compatriots, like a potentate in a distant capital out to assure the natives in a far-flung corner of his empire that he had not quite forgotten them.

Ah, the instability of human greatness!

Babangida said nothing new in the interviews and provided no insights. Where he was not obfuscating as is his wont, he was dissembling.

Not a squawk of regret escaped from his lips on the chain of events that his brazen annulment of the 1993 presidential election set off – the killing of hundreds of Nigerians protesting the annulment, the flight into exile of hundreds of prominent Nigerians marked for elimination, the murder of prominent opposition figures, among them Alfred Rewane and Kudirat Abiola, the framing and jailing of General Olusegun Obasanjo and General Shehu Yar’Adua and some prominent media figures on bogus charges of plotting a coup, and the murder, in captivity, of President-elect Moshood Abiola.

Instead, Babangida teased and taunted the entire Nigerian public and put the blame for all the mayhem on them. Ah, if only they had agreed to have another election within six months after the annulment. After all, an Interim National Government (ING) had been set up to govern the country and a constitution had been fashioned specifically for the period that would lead to the election of a president and the restoration of democratic rule at the centre, to complement what was already in place in the states.

But those hotheads, those extremists and spoilers in the so-called pro-democracy movement would have none of it. It was their way or no way at all, and now, see where it landed the country. If only they had listened to him, the course of Nigerian history would have been different; the country would have travelled far on the road to greatness.

Anyway, all was not lost. Nigeria had finally embraced the two-party system he decreed into existence during his transition programme; the privatisation and commercialisation that were key elements of his much ballyhooed Structural Adjustment Programmed (SAP) had finally taken a hegemonic hold on the economy and on social policy.

In retrospect, you would have to grant that he was far, far ahead of the time.

Thus did Babangida tease and taunt his interviewers and through them the Nigerian public; thus did he berate his compatriots, this man who spent eight years and N40 billion building a house of cards, an exercise that the noted scholar, Richard Joseph, called “one of the most sustained exercises in political chicanery ever visited upon a people”.

Babangida has never been able to give a reason for the annulment. At one time, he said he carried it out in “absolute fidelity” with the rule of law. At another, he said if the winner of the election had been allowed to take office, the military would have toppled him in a matter of months. The way he framed it, it was as if he did President-elect Abiola a favour.

At yet another moment, with the loathsome Sani Abacha conveniently dead, Babangida’s son said Abacha, who wanted very much to take power for himself, had literally held a gun to his father’s head and threatened to blow it off if he allowed the election to stand.

Some two decades later, Babangida, oblivious of the excuses he had confected in the past for annulling the election, claimed that the same election was the freest and fairest ever conducted on Nigerian soil, and that the credit belonged to him and his Administration.

That is the mindset of the man who ruled Nigeria virtually unchallenged for eight years, wasted it and was scheming to return to finish the job until he was forced into a ragged retreat by the very forces he could not suppress nor bribe even at the height of his usurpation.

It is of a piece with Babangida’s stock response to questions on the parcel-bomb murder of the journalist, Dele Giwa, in which he remains a prime unindicted suspect. The so-called human rights activists prevented the police and law-enforcement agencies from doing their work, and the media that should have led the search for the killer of one of their brightest stars went missing in action.

The truth about the annulment is that Babangida did not want to quit. He did not want to give up power, according to Professor Ben Nwabueze (SAN), who was in formal terms Secretary for Education in Babangida’s so-called Transitional Council, but morphed unaccountably into the regime’s legal strategist for eviscerating the sovereign will of the people.

“His behavior in the last days of his regime left a rather strong impression of a man forced to quit against his will, of one un-reconciled to quitting in the last days of his rule and in the face of defeat, he cut the figure of someone unwilling to reconcile himself with composure to the adverse torrent of events, of an angry and bitterly disappointed man,” Nwabueze wrote of Babangida in his book, June 12, 1993 Election: Problem and Solutions

More tellingly, Nwabueze added: “His mind, his motions and his actions seemed to have become somewhat disoriented, and no longer governed by disinterested, patriotic considerations. In the event, he quit office in a rather undignified, unceremonious manner . . .”

So, there you have it.

The ING, the vehicle that was supposed to lead Nigeria to democratic bliss through an election, was a ramshackle contraption. Babangida said not long ago that he knew little of the doddering ex-UAC chief executive, Ernest Shonekan, whom he named to head it. He had heard nice things about Shonekan, but the man had turned out to be a disappointment. Entrusting the destiny of a country to a man you hardly knew is nothing, if not indicative of Babangida’s contempt for the collective destiny of the people of Nigeria.

In whatever case, it is illustrative of the conspiratorial and utterly opaque manner in which the Babangida regime governed the country. Hard copies of laws purported to be in operation were often not available to the Government Printer, or were available only to commissioned government lawyers who employed them to ambush petitioners and the courts alike. The printing of decrees was often farmed out to Heritage Press, said to be owned by Babangida or his proxies.

Thus, there were in circulation at least four versions of the decree setting up the ING, each claiming to be authentic. The one I saw contained a blank, to be filled by the military president, stipulating the name of the person to head the body. Babangida had declined to furnish the name of the appointee to those who drafted the law. He simply identified the office.

It has been speculated that he was creating room for himself to hang on to power in another guise. When it became clear that his time was up, he named Shonekan to the post. For good measure, he inserted in the draft a clause mandating the most senior minister to assume the office of head of the ING if the substantive office became vacant

Only one thing about the ING was true: it was interim, lasting only 83 inglorious days. Everything else about it was false through and through: it was not national, and it was not a government.

Yet, that was the body Babangida expected to conduct a presidential election just six months after the one he had annulled without fear and without probable cause, with more than 14 million Nigerians who had voted in the previous election trooping to the polls again, thankful for another chance to exercise their franchise.

Anyone who believed this then or believes it now is either incurably naïve or practically unconscious.

August 26, 2014
Aregbesola’s finest hour
In the heat of the global human carnage that was the Second World War, Britain’s famed politician and war-time leader, Winston Churchill, gave a famous speech on the floor of the House of Commons to update the House on the progress of the war. He addressed many themes and then rounded off on the pungent rallying note to his compatriots: ‘Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”’

And on this very note, Churchill gave a significant new insight into the affairs of humankind. He facilitated our capacity to see that every human being, irrespective of his stations in life, must have some moments in his existence that can truly be adjudged to be ‘his finest hour’. The only difference is that, more often than not, famous men and women enjoy the privilege of public inquest and assessment into their lives such that it is they alone who are most frequently thought to have such moments in their lives.

But the truth is that such moments of indisputably outstanding performance in whatever one does is far from being the exclusive preserve of the famous and the celebrated of human species. Rather, even the most lowly placed and unassuming do have such moments in their lives. The crucial distinction is the fact that such moments in the lives of the ordinary man are unknown to the public and are therefore left unsung.

But then it is one of those uncanny sociological realities of human life that we cannot all have the same share of limelight and public glory. It does not mean that many of us do not have achievements in our little lives that are worthy of celebration; it is just that most of us will have such achievements unnoticed and uncelebrated. But this would not also detract from the truth that the famous and the celebrated do have achievements to their credit that are worthy of laudation. And so it is with the Governor of Osun State, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola –a man whose character qualities have earned him a deserved place in the sun.

At a distance, he is most likely to give you an impression of a non-personable individual and one of those typical ilk of Nigerian politicians. But a close contact with him would reveal a man of strong character and amiability. One who knows exactly what he wants and goes for it. He aims high and matches those high aims with steely determination and doggedness. He is an engaging speaker whose high intellect contrasts sharply with what you tend to see from afar. He is a man of deep conviction who stubbornly clings to his beliefs.

Perhaps this explains why he has the capacity to attract opposite emotions in equal measure of intensity. Those who love him are unflinchingly loyal. Those who don’t are die-hard opponents. But in fairness to the man, and contrary to what one might be tempted to deduce from his political activist posture, he is someone with genuinely accommodating spirit. He engages with the people across all social strata right from the political ‘tree top’ to the grassroots.

All of these have come into play in his political career in recent years. His rise to the governorship seat occurred in extraordinary circumstances that were filled with mortal dangers and high-wire political intrigues. It took over three years of resolute and relentless battle through the courts to prove his victory at the 2011 polls. His re-election for a second term of office on Saturday August 9 happened in no less intriguing political fashion.

The election was a battle for the soul of Osun and by extension that of Nigeria in its present political configuration. In a significant way the Osun governorship election outcome would affect the electoral contest for Aso Rock in 2015 between the two leading political parties in the country, the PDP and the APC. Accordingly, having achieved a largely unforeseen victory at the Ekiti gubernatorial poll barely two months ago, the PDP became emboldened to emasculate the APC in its strongest-hold, the South-west, which would have been achieved with victory in Osun.

Hence, the PDP-led federal government threw everything at it, including placing Osun under a security lockdown, not to mention the inexplicable and inexcusable arrests of APC party functionaries, along with members of Aregbesola’s cabinet on the night preceding the election. But the people of Osun stood firm. They did not succumb to intimidation and the federal government’s unwarranted show of force. They voted massively for the incumbent to reaffirm his genuine popularity among his people.

But Aregbesola’s greatest moment was to come the day after the election on Sunday when he rode triumphantly to the Nelson Mandela Freedom Square to address his supporters. Incidentally, he was formally declared the winner by INEC on that Sunday morning after hours of waiting. The announcement was greeted by a spontaneous outburst and tumultuous gathering of mammoth crowds all over Osogbo who then converged on the Olaiya intersection as the governor’s convoy emerged from Okefia Roundabout.

It was some of the biggest crowd I have yet seen assemble just to welcome only one man. As I watched the man and his crowd inch their way towards Freedom Park at Old Garage, I remembered those memorable words of Churchill. However, as humans, it is in our nature that until we actually cease to breathe, it is difficult to definitively say that we’ve had our most glorious moments. So Aregbesola may yet have greater days of glory ahead of him.

But this much can be said– that irrespective of what greater glory he may still step into in the days, months and years to come, Aregbesola’s triumphant entry to Freedom Square on Sunday August 10, and his grand reception by an enthusiastically massive crowd, would go down in history as arguably his Finest Hour.
- Jimoh is a University of Ibadan graduate student of political science
August 26, 2014
She died to save our lives

And so death came calling on August 19 for Dr Stella Sade Aneyo Adadevoh, the senior consultant physician who treated the late American-Liberian Ebola patient Patrick Sawyer.

Sawyer, you will recall was the one who imported Ebola into our country from his native Liberia on July 20 and infected those that had primary contacts with him at First Consultant Hospital, Lagos where he was taken after he collapsed on arrival at Murtala Mohammed Airport, Ikeja.

Dr Adadevoh, an endocrinologist, was one of a few medical personnel that attended to him at the hospital. She was not even on duty on that day but had to come in response to an emergency. She was the fifth casualty of the problem brought on to us by Mr. Sawyer. Two of the nurses I think and a protocol officer attached to ECOWAS office in Lagos that had contact with him had equally died.

As I write this piece, there are some Nigerians in isolation in Lagos being monitored for signs of Ebola after they have had direct or indirect contact with late Sawyer. A few others not in isolation but are remotely linked to the Liberian are equally under watch and told to report the slightest sign of an outset of Ebola to health authorities once they noticed any.

As public enlightenment on how to avoid contracting Ebola and what to do in case one was infected continues, people are now wary of handshakes and an embrace or bear hug is being avoided like a plague. Connoisseurs of vintage bush meat are beginning to look elsewhere while hunters and sellers of hunted roasted animals are lamenting their plight blaming Sawyer for the calamity that has befallen their business.

But while the rest of us are running away from Ebola some people stayed and confronted the deadly disease in other to save millions of Nigerians that today could have been infected with the virus if Patrick Sawyer had been allowed to leave First Consultant Hospital, Lagos as he requested, even after he had been diagnosed with Ebola. Among this honourable group of patriotic Nigerians was Dr Stella Sade Aneyo Adadevoh.

This patriot could have ignored the call for emergency when Sawyer was brought into her hospital after all she wasn’t on duty. But she remembered that her duty as a physician was to save life and pronto she rushed to the hospital. If she considered that her colleagues in public hospitals were on strike at that time, she could have refused to attend to any emergency or fresh cases in solidarity with the striking doctors, but she didn’t.

As Ebola presents itself like ordinary malaria fever or typhoid fever, Dr Adadevoh and her colleagues at First Consultant Hospital could have treated Sawyer for mere malaria without running a test and discharge him immediately to go home but they didn’t. They suspected something grave was wrong with the Liberian and when test confirmed he had Ebola they raised alarm and treatment began him. But for Dr Adadevoh and the nurses, it was too late to protect themselves, Sawyer had infected them with Ebola; and now they have paid the ultimate price to save the rest of us from this deadly disease. What a patriotic thing to do!

Imagine what could have happened if Adadevoh and hes colleagues had thought of themselves alone and allowed Sawyer to go home and mix freely with the rest of the society. If he had been discharged and allowed to go to Calabar as he had planned, by now many Nigerians in that axis would be carrying the virus. And with Nigerians penchant for travelling, an infected person could export this disease from here to say Europe, America and the rest of the world. If that were to be the case the world and not just West Africa could have been facing an epidemic by now. But this Nigerian has saved the whole of humanity this calamity. What a sacrifice.

What should we do to immortalize this great granddaughter of the father of Nigerian nationalism; the late Herbert Macaulay? Apart from personal post-humous national honour for Dr Adadevoh, her death to save our lives should draw government attention to the deplorable state of our public health facilities in this country. When Sawyer arrived at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, officials at the Port Health Services could not detect anything wrong in his system (even after he collapsed) to warrant him being detained and quarantined at the airport. He was allowed to enter the country with Ebola and travelled with it as far as Lagos Island from Ikeja. What if the man had detoured on the way to the Island or pleaded to be allowed to go home instead of the hospital, nobody would know that an Ebola patient has entered the country.

The first contact with the patient on arrival in the country should have been Port Health which should detain and quarantine him. But I doubt if there is any quarantine centre or facility at any of our ports, land, air or sea. What of the state of our preparedness for medical emergency. Sawyer was already in the country and his status known before we began to set up isolation centres for this kind of contagious disease. And how many of such centres do we even have in the country at present?

Part of our preparation for emergency should have been taking a pre-emptive action against the entry of Ebola into Nigeria once it was reported in some West African countries. But we took no action. A responsible and responsive government would have embarked on a thorough screening exercise at the various points of entry for everybody coming into the country from the affected countries, including Nigerians returning home. If this had been done, Sawyer would not have gone beyond Lagos airport before being quarantined.

The importation of Ebola into Nigeria from Liberia should tell governments in West Africa that no country is immune in the sub-region to any crisis or plague in any of ECOWAS member states and as such we should collaborate and see ourselves as one. If the Liberian government had been thinking about the health of the neighbouring countries, it wouldn’t have allowed Sawyer to escape and export Ebola to Nigeria via Lome in Togo.

The fact that any disease could be airlifted across continents via just one intercontinental flight should also alert the developed countries to their responsibilities to the rest of humanity. Ebola has shown that it is no respecter of race or colour of skin or social status. It is an enemy of humanity and the whole world must stand together to fight it, if need be with our lives just as Dr Adadevoh has done with hers to prevent the spread of the disease. ADIEU patriot. We will never forget your sacrifice.

August 26, 2014
DSS on a sad familiar terrain
The tragedy of state apparatus in Nigeria is usually that of blind loyalty to the proverbial piper that dictates the tune. The recent altercation between the spokesperson of the Department of State Security, DSS, Marilyn Ogar and that of the opposition All Progressive Congress, APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed provides a sad commentary on what a government agency should not turn itself into.

It’s so sad that history beacons on us concerning state agencies like the police, the armed forces, customs, immigrations as well as, of course, and particularly, the Department of State Services.

Nigerian Security Organization (NSO) was the security and intelligence service of the Nigerian government in those days (1976-1983), set up shortly, in response to, and after the unfortunate assassination of the charismatic military leader, General Murtala Ramat Mohammed.

NSO was given a mandate of coordinating both domestic and foreign intelligence. Under the military regime and continuing through the Second Republic, the NSO was accused of carrying out systematic and widespread human rights abuses, especially of those seen to be critical of the government. Of these, repressions against journalists, opposition figures, government officials and the 25-month imprisonment of late musician Fela Ransome-Kuti, are especially remembered.

After handing over power by the military to a civilian government in 1979, the Umaru Shinkafi-led NSO had the difficult task of transforming from a military-era secret police organisation to one which respected the constitution. Although there was a reduction in the number of human rights abuses committed by the NSO, during the Second Republic, their overall human rights record still remained poor. Political parties and opposition groups complained of harassment by NSO, particularly the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo – a keen rival of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN).

President Shehu Shagari later nominated Lawal Rafindadi to head the agency. His tenure as the Director General of the NSO was plagued by arbitrary arrests and detentions of anybody suspected of being a threat to the regime, imagined or real. This attitude crept down the ranks of the NSO and led to heavy handedness among some of the agency’s operatives. A good example is the case of Brigadier Abbas Wali, a former defence attaché to the UK and Adjutant-General of the Nigerian Army arrested in Kano by an operative named Bishara and detained at the NSO office for a week without anyone knowing about the arrest – including Rafindadi, the DG and his deputy, Albert Horsfall.

Also, under Rafindadi, the agency began a wire tapping and eavesdropping programme against government officials and military officials including Supreme Military Council (SMC) members. Rafindadi also used his position as member of the SMC to initiate a purge of senior officers in the diplomatic service many of whom lost their jobs and entitlements.

The establishment mission of the SSS is to protect and defend the Federal Republic of Nigeria against domestic threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of Nigeria, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to both federal and state law-enforcement organs. The SSS is also charged with the protection of the President, Vice President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, state governors, their immediate families, other high ranking government officials, past presidents and their spouses, certain candidates for the offices of President and Vice President, and visiting foreign heads of state and government. The SSS has constantly adapted to various roles necessitated by evolving security threats in Nigeria including counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency.

The SSS has been criticised for allowing Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the “underpants bomber”, to board Northwest airlines flight from Lagos despite his father having previously warned security officials of his son’s radical views on America. The agency was also criticized heavily in the wake of the August 26, 2011 United Nations House bombing in Abuja. The Nigerian public grew even more critical of the agency after newspapers ran stories in which they claimed that the agency had received intelligence about the bombing beforehand from the Americans.

Indeed, the Nigerian press ran stories early November 2011, alleging that the United States government had issued a travel advisory on Nigeria. The travel advisory included the threat of bomb attacks at major hotels in Abuja frequented by expatriates. The story generated panic among the populace and accusations of incompetence made against the security agencies, the SSS inclusive.

The SSS has a long history of repressing the political activities of opposition groups. Public meetings are arbitrarily canceled or prevented, including cultural events, academic conferences, and human rights meetings. September 25, 1997, police and SSS agents broke up a Human Rights Africa (HRA) seminar for students in Jos, arrested then HARA director Tunji Abayomi and four others, and briefly detained some 70 students. Abayomi and the others were held for 10 days and then released on bail. A workshop on conflict management in Port Harcourt on May 1, 1998 was canceled when the SSS warned local coordinators that such a meeting could not be held on Workers Day, a local holiday. Similar workshops elsewhere proceeded unimpeded despite the holiday.

So, when a long convoy of DSS operatives arrived in Osogbo, Osun State, weeks prior to the governorship election in the state, not many following the historical atrocities of the agency were amused. If an organisation, serviced through taxpayers money could easily turn against such people, then, something may be wrong somewhere.

Alhaji Lai Mohammed is certainly not the type to be accused of loitering especially on the eve of an election involving a party in which he is a national officer. If an incumbent state governor, in the person of Rauf Aregbesola, a contestant is holed up in his residence by this same organization; if Mohammed could be blindly arrested and detained; if hooded operatives could harass and arrest citizens randomly and members of a political party singled out for arrest and harassment on the eve of an election; if a spokesperson of DSS could gleefully allege on national television, that a political party is the sole sponsor of insurgency and bombings in the land, without any credible evidence to support; if the same image maker is alleging bribery of her men without concrete evidence; if a security agency is supporting a faction of labour union against another instead of being impartial; if our own equivalent of Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, chooses to strangely come out in the open to announce its presence and through intimidation of innocent voters and opposing parties, then a lot has certainly gone wrong.

In the 80’s when yours truly was a young NSO operative in the old Oyo State, being seen as such was like breaking a taboo. Your pride and strength resided in being anonymous. But today, the bravado of our intelligence agency operatives calls for utter concern. Just like the defunct NSO, it is just a matter of time for the proverbial chicken to come home to roost.
- Akinola is a social commentator
August 26, 2014
Stranger than fiction

Trust Nigerians to pass off the sacking of the elite police training institution in Dhimankara District, of Gwoza Borno State last Wednesday as just one of those things. Yours truly has been picking the bits and pieces of the accounts together notably that of Leadership newspaper. It seems to me that the Wednesday afternoon attack on the police training facility was predictable. Indeed, it was a matter of “when”, not “if”given that the insurgents had been attacking pockets of hamlets and villages around Gwoza town.

From the accounts, it was clear that the insurgents had better intelligence; they knew when each batch of trainees came in and when those that had finished their training left. It was therefore a question of simply bidding their time for the period betwen the departure of a batch and the arrival of another. And that exactly was when they chose to strike – a case of terrorists at work while our men under arms slumbered.

Again, the story is familiar. The insurgents came riding on trucks and armoured tanks. Not only did they outnumber the security forces, they clearly outgunned them. In the Gwoza attack, the newspaper quoted one of the trainees as saying: “We just arrived the camp and were busy with the documentation process when we began to hear the sounds of shooting at the gate. We later learnt that some of our colleagues, mounting guard at the gate, were exchanging gunfire with the Boko Haram. Most of us were not armed, so we had to flee into Dhimankara village, and from there, we all found our way into the bush and headed towards Adamawa State”.

In the operation that lasted the whole of an hour, some 35 persons were reported missing.

Nigerians are by now familiar with the exploits of the ill-clad ragamuffins in the vast ungoverned space described as North-east Nigeria. Again and again, we are told of the ability of their long convoys to sneak into vast communities to wreak havoc without detection. And with it stories of cycles of confrontation with the Nigerian military which makes the latter look like boy scouts.

While we question the strategies being employed in the war on the insurgency to the extent that they neither make sense nor add up, we must insist on having a holistic picture if only to understand how we have become what we are.

To start with, Dhimankara, the base of the Military Police Training School is just barely 16 kilometres from Gwoza – a community which the Boko Haram had not only seized but had declared the seat of its caliphate. One imagines that a police facility – not least one training the mobile squad – being in close proximity to the base of the terrorists would be in permanent state of heightened alert and with adequate security back up. Were they?

Secondly, there was no doubt that the attackers took them by surprise as they were not in combat form when they arrived. Leadership reports on the account of one of the policemen: “The instructors and armorers had taken over our rifles when the shooting started. Most of us were not with our rifles, and before we could get back to the armoury, it was very late” .

An instructor at the camp was quoted as saying: “The fight at the gate lasted more than an hour before the terrorists blew off the armoured tank that was giving cover to our men at the gate. That was how they succeeded in entering into the premises.” What happened after can only be imagined– the poor hapless souls simply fled into the Adamawa jungle!

Remember, the military outpost in Gwoza had been sacked since August 6; since then, the combined efforts by the military and the air force to dislodge the militants from the town had not only met stiff resistance but had failed. Even then, it seems particularly doubtful that a framework of inter-agency cooperation was in place. Or even a back up or grand preparation in case of possible eventuality.

Why should grand plans be deemed as beyond our ken?

More importantly – why open for business if the safety of the personnel cannot be guaranted? Or better still, why not relocate the training facility to a safer place at least for the sake of the trainees?

It is of course doubtful that anyone would be called to account for last week’s Gwoza disaster. Yet, the truth that needs to be told is that someone, somewhere, was derelict in the performance of his job. Indeed, some functionaries failed the men. The consequence is the scores forced – against their will – to pay with their lives. Nigerians deserve full account. Indeed, finding the answer to what went wrong in Dhimankara would in many respects, speak to all that is wrong with us as a people – particularly our continuing regression.

Finally, for a war that has gulped nearly a whole of three trillion naira in the last three years, we expect not only better coordination but greater efficiency from our body of fighting men. As for military high command’s dismissal of Boko Haram’s declaration of caliphate, it means nothing without an emphatic routing at the battle field. If only for the sake of its glittering past record and institutional pride, it just cannot afford to lose the war against the Boko Haram.

August 26, 2014
Impunity writ large

Nigerians ought to be alarmed at the emerging symptoms of political Ebola in Nassarawa State given its implications both for the health of our badly scarred democracy and the future of Africa’s most populous nation. I refer to the alleged plan by Nassarawa lawmakers to re-open impeachment proceedings against Governor Tanko Al-Makura after an earlier attempt was botched. While Nigerians may claim to have seen enough of the disease of impunity in the sundry acts of institutional abuses by an out-of-control federal government; there is something in the latest attempt that speaks to a potentially more ravaging, debilitating malignancy.

Of course, we know the story. Late last month, 20 PDP members of the 24-member Nassarawa House of Assembly decided that the APC governor’s time was up. In all, they listed 16 offences– the usual stuff (contrived?)– to justify their bid to remove him. Armed with a resolution, they directed the Chief Judge to constitute an impeachment panel.

Problem Number One was that the House intended the Chief Judge to function as a mere undertaker – as against the constitutional role impartial constitutional arbiter – to finish the job. Problem number two was that the Chief Judge, Suleiman Dikko couldn’t imagine playing the errand boy for a group of unruly lawbreakers pretending to be lawmakers.

A looming clash of titans? You bet. And so, the Chief Judge chose a panel of seven, who in his opinion would do the job according to the law. The lawmakers smelt a rat. They ordered the respected Chief Judge to disband his panel alleging that one or two was not qualified. They also made clear their preference for another panel either of their own choosing or one to be approved by them. The Chief Judge wouldn’t be persuaded that anything was wrong with the panel and so refused to bulge. The House fulminated. No matter. The panel went into business.

To be sure, it was not a question of the law being ambiguous about who had the authority to exercise the discretion. Indeed, it appears to be the one instance where constitutional provisions do not lend to any ambiguity. While it is the lot of the lawmakers to kick off the process, nowhere in the law is the House conferred with absolute discretion on the process. This, unfortunately, the House chose not to understand.

In the end, the panel returned NOT GUILTY verdict on the man that the House would rather have his head on a platter!

Under the law, the case was deemed permanently closed: it was clear that the lawmakers had not only blown the chance to oust the governor, they had fully exhausted the provisions of the law in the bid.

That however has since turned out to be one bitter pill that the House would rather not swallow hence the fresh bid to oust the governor. Indeed, it would appear that the Nassarawa lawmakers see themselves as not just above the law, but far beyond the niceties of checks and balances ingrained into the political process hence their latest gambit to draft a vacation judge to finish up the job left by an unwilling Chief Judge!

The implication of this must be seen as truly frightening. First is the danger in the desperate resort to self-help by the PDP lawmakers; the idea that the House is prepared to have its way by any means no matter how illegitimate – or treasonable – and that there is nothing that anyone – not even the electors of Nassarawa – can do about it!

The other is the signal being sent out – that PDP would only accept its preferred outcome – even that means undermining a vital institution of democracy like the judiciary. Why not go to court if the issue is that Justice Dikko actually breached the law in the setting up of the impeachment panel? Would the drafting of the vacation judge to do their bidding automatically set aside the earlier proceedings? Would the trial of the governor by another panel for the same offence not amount to double jeopardy?

And finally, would it not amount to a usurpation of the power of the chief judge – a clear breach of the constitution? How would that pan out with the constitutional provision which confers finality to proceedings in the event that the panel returns the no guilty as in the present case?

Nigerians are watching how this plays out. However, with General Elections barely six months away, they must wonder at the game plan; the interests being served by the activities of the bunch of delinquent lawmakers sworn to truncate an orderly process. While it seems clear that the sponsors of mayhem cannot see the danger signals in the precipitous descent into the famed Hobessian jungle, Nigerians have a lot to worry about in what the development portends for their democracy.

And where do we go from here? From hooded democracy to the rule of might? And where does that lead? Your guess is as good as mine.

August 19, 2014
The President’s false self-congratulation!
The gubernatorial election of Saturday August 9 in Osun was a significant event in many ways. It was one of the most peaceful in the history of elections in Nigeria. It witnessed massive voter turnout and palpable good conduct on the part of the electorate and the competing politicians, particularly those in the camp of the incumbent Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola.

After putting the nation on edge in what is the longest wait for result declaration, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), announced Aregbesola as the winner. This was followed by a gale of congratulatory messages, including, surprisingly, from President Goodluck Jonathan whose message has the sinister inference of self-congratulations for allowing the opposition to win. However, the circumstances surrounding the conduct of the polls clearly suggest that, contrary to the false self-congratulations, nothing so good can be said of the role of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) controlled federal government, whose duty it is, thanks to our warped federal system, to provide security and all other logistics for the poll.

Under the guise of carrying out its security obligations, the government at the centre placed the state under siege. Nobody, whether residents in or visitors to Osun, during the period, would be able to dismiss the thought of being in a war zone.

The situation was that of a complete lockdown in which the state was crawling with security personnel of different hue and ilk – DSS, police, civil defence corps, soldiers and others, all armed to the teeth. There were at least 5,000 DSS agents alone deployed to the state during the election period.

Thus, as the polls came to a peaceful conclusion, the federal government immediately went to the media to take a devious advantage of the situation. It quickly congratulated the incumbent and winner of the election and expectedly went on to congratulate itself as the unbiased umpire in the electoral game.

But a more careful and diligent dissection of the facts of the situation would give a different picture. Contrary to what obtains in the advanced democracies, there is no institution of state in Nigeria that is capable of asserting any institutional independence from the Presidency.

It is common knowledge that our institutions are simply appendages of and tools in the hands of the federal government which happens to be a partisan in the Osun election.

Hence, we must differentiate fact from appearance for the sake of clarity. There is a qualitative difference between providing security and imposing a state of siege. The requirement of security at elections is to assure voters of their safety and democratic freedom. It is thereby meant to enhance their participation in the process.

On the other hand, placing the electorate under siege betrays a badly disguised intent to intimidate and bully them in order to make them shy away from exercising their franchise, which was the case in Osun.

When we put this together with other facts in the election, it gives a clearly different indication of the real motive of the Jonathan-led administration. How, for instance, does the federal government explain the harassment and arrests of several All Progressives Congress (APC) members by its security agents on the nights before the election, including members of the incumbent governor’s cabinet?

At least, 200 of the APC bigwigs were arrested without any charges whatsoever on the night preceding the poll, only to be released without any reasons or explanations.

What plausible reason can the Jonathan-government give to rationalise the embedding of Niger Delta militants in the ranks of the DSS agents deployed to Osun – they were distinctly wearing balaclavas to cover their faces while most of their colleagues were going about their business, and mingling with people, without any face coverings.

How does the President explain the presence of Asari Dokubo in Ilesa or that of Tompolo in Osogbo, the state capital, during the election? Were they in Osun as tourists at a time when the state was in a security lockdown by the Jonathan government? Or is it the case that they came as part of the team to carry out the ulterior and dastardly plan of their paymaster?

What about the deliberate bombardment of the Osun government with false intelligence regarding ballot paper stealing and thump-printing by PDP members throughout the night prior to the election day? The false information is a tale that accords with widespread expectation that the PDP candidate is incapable of winning in any free and fair manner.

However, the real purpose of the intelligence is to tempt the opposition into taking precipitate action which would then be used as an excuse to use the security agents for the real objective of their deployment – pacification.

It would then have paved the way for the PDP candidate to emerge victorious from the orchestrated chaos. The sitting governor and his party would have been blamed for bringing about disorder and for losing the election.

But thankfully, it all failed. Reason and restraint prevailed in the opposition camp; they refused to take the dangerous bait of the powers that be. The PDP candidate lost massively and incontrovertibly.

Consequently, the claim by the federal government to the effect that President Jonathan is a benevolent democrat would certainly ring hollow. We have all read The Prince. We are very familiar with that tactic. It is classic Machiavelli: make yourself appear very generous and magnanimous while harbouring grievously evil intention.

The Osun election is not a tribute to President Jonathan’s magnanimity. Far from it! It is a victory to the good people of Osun who defied all the bully and show of force to come out and exercise their democratic right and freedom.

They refused to be intimidated or browbeaten by the gunpoint magnanimity of President Jonathan. They trooped out on election day; they conducted themselves in a most orderly and peaceful manner; and they exercised their inalienable rights to freely choose their own leader.

The people of Osun refused to have a leader foisted on them. They taught us all a useful lesson in democracy: that, with their power to wield the ballot paper, they can trump the power of the federal government to wield the guns.
- Ogundele lives in Osogbo
August 19, 2014
Questioning our desire for democratic good governance
Have you at one time or the other been caught in traffic jam, then watched angrily as the gridlock grew worse because impatient road users senselessly rushed upfront to unleash more confusion a few blocks ahead? Maybe you have experienced standing patiently on a queue, only to have someone else walk all the way from down the line to usurp a place way ahead. Or perhaps, you were on a queue when suddenly one person creates a fresh line and you hear others echo your frustration by angrily shouting ‘no be line be dat o! Perhaps you may have experienced traveling on a dual carriage road that suddenly turns into a five – lane road when a police/army checkpoint appeared few meters ahead. It may be that people are all lined up at a filling station waiting for fuel and you suddenly notice some people circumventing the queue through the ‘exit’ gate when you got there a few hours ahead and sat sweating in the scorching sun to wait for your turn.

How about the most recent sight of someone using the street corner, gutter or roadside shrub as his private restroom to rid his system of human waste? That one is usually a disturbing sight especially when you sit to eat immediately after and houseflies cheerfully come visiting. What about your last shopping experience in our markets where you ended up buying low quality items at a value twice the price of the real deal? Let’s not forget the substandard food and medications in circulation and the frustration that goes with discovering that your life means nothing to some unscrupulous importers of fake products. When was the last time you felt fear about sending your children off to school in today’s Nigeria? How often have you read or heard about corruption and senseless abuse of public office by political office holders? How do you feel anytime you realize that nothing seems to work in this country? These are all experiences that leave an unhappy feeling with us

Now ask yourself….when was the last time you traveled by public transport on our roads and watched the commercial vehicle driver, maneuver traffic in a highly unconventional manner by driving against traffic or creating a fresh lane to navigate traffic jam? How did you feel when you noticed the vehicle conveying you was moving and making progress while others were stuck at a place? I have lived that experience and can compare it with the time I found myself at the driver’s seat stuck in traffic… but your feelings may be different from mine. What about while walking or traveling in a vehicle and it felt so logical to wind down the window of the vehicle and push all the refuse onto the street? Think about the last time you stood before an ATM machine to check your credit balance and left the scene with more paper on the floor than you actually met it. Any thoughts on how your young domestic help must have felt the last time you discriminated between them and your own children? In this era of infectious disease outbreaks, consider how sensitive you have been about hugging, touching and shaking people’s hands while rarely washing your hands after toilet use. How have you used the little power you have at work to be of assistance to people you come in contact with?

So what is the point behind this exercise? The point is to draw our attention to the different ways we fail to live up to the tenets we so much want others around us to live by. It is to enable us see that accountability is not restricted to public office alone but applies to the private too. Our leaders in their highly corrupt ways have set this country on a collision course with poverty driven violence but we cannot rid ourselves of all blame in the part we have allowed the politicians to push us on. Our country is the way it is today because we have all unconsciously allowed it to be so. We need only to pause a while in deep reflection to realize that the power to change our destiny as a nation does not lie in the ruling class or politicians but in each and every one of us. Nigeria will not get better except the individuals who make up Nigeria get better in the way we manage ourselves as individuals and the little space we have some level of control over. If everyone of us decides to change three things we do that works against public good, this country will experience positive change in leadership because all manner of election malpractice that puts corrupt leaders in positions of leadership will no longer thrive – We will vote with wisdom too.

It is so easy to blame the government for all of Nigeria’s woes including those problems that are personal to us as individuals like throwing waste across the street and in gutters. Of course government needs to wake up to it’s governance responsibilities but to what extent can government clean up the environment after us or manage every driver on the road if we refuse as individuals to discipline ourselves ? We all need to change our orientation and that of others on little things that can help move us towards the ideal country of our dreams. Change is not easy but usually starts with the individual and gradually moves to the collective. Every one of us has to make effort at changing the negative in us in order to be able to collectively hold politicians accountable. Nigeria cannot change overnight but we can start planting the seeds of change today. Change requires confronting the uncomfortable in us and dealing with it in a positive way. It requires sensitivity over the unconscious in order to be conscious. Change can never come except we, individually, begin to live and mirror the change we want to see in our country.

Imagine a country where everyone made an effort to dispose waste properly. We would at least have fewer diseases, a clean environment and spend less on medical bills. Imagine a Nigeria where every motorist observed traffic rules… traffic will definitely not vanish overnight but at least, discipline on our roads will guarantee some measure of movement and safety. Imagine a Nigeria where by holding oneself accountable as a father, mother, youth, worker, we could collectively live the change we desire and hold our politicians accountable to the mandate we give them.

Change starts with one step…it may not happen in our lifetime but that does not stop us from trying. …The dreamer dreams on as it is only from dreams that reality takes shape.
- Odinukwe, a legal practitioner and gender activist lives in Abuja.
August 19, 2014