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Category: Tuesday

LASU: Still a season of unreason?

It is likely that many Lagosians would be the disappointed by Lagos State University (LASU) students’ flat rejection of the60 per cent slash in school fees offered by the state government last week. First, the students would make clear their suspicions of an offer they consider as laden with technicalese: “We do not accept the percentage reduction offered by the government because in 2011 when the fees were increased, it was not done on percentage level; rather, they made the pronouncement in Nigerian naira and kobo. Secondly, they would equally make clear: anything short of 67 per cent across board slash in the fees would be unaceptable.

Now, if you consider government’s offer of 60 percent and the students counter-offer of 67, I think we can begin to talk of some progress. It’s hard to see the seven percent holding the system down any further. Way back in November 2011 when the animosisties over the new fees first broke, it was a case of emotions simply running riot – a measure of how fixated many of us had become on the old paradigm with its deep roots in entitlement. For many, the quantum 275 percent increase was not just insensitive but primed to make university education elitist. Couldn’t imagine a more winning argument!

Here is how I saw it then. Very little appears to have changed.

“Trust reason to take flight where emotions rule, discussions on the attempts by LASU and by extension the Lagos State government to make the beneficiaries of its tertiary education system come to terms with current realities of funding is now akin to sacrilege. In other words, we are not supposed to explore new paradigms outside of the existing framework that has reduced the university idea to the current ignoble level!

Now, I appreciate all the fancy arguments about the new regime of fees at LASU being steep. That seems fine by me except that the argument is responsible for feeding some of the myths that have brought education, particularly at the tertiary level, to this sorry pass.

Let me start by saying that I do not claim to know how the authorities in LASU came by the current figures – said to be a 275 percent jump over the previous fees. It seems to me however that a more productive argument is to actually establish what the per capita cost of training a student is. I say this because, without that parameter being established in the first place, the idea of building some fancy models on some opaque statistics seems at best an illiterate way of presenting an argument.

This is where, I think, both parties have clearly missed it. My view is that you do not say a commodity is overpriced until input costs are not known! I love the idea of our universities aspiring to be world class –with excellent research and teaching facilities. The much that I know is that world class institutions require world class funding! Part of the problem – in my view – is this tradition of romanticising the golden past of our university system even when the imperative of change looms so large on the horizon! Isn’t it about time we sat down to address the problem of university funding once and for all?

Now, where do I stand on the LASU fees imbroglio? Simple. Let’s have the figures. Thereafter, we can go to debate who bears what portion of the burden. Having said that, the point remains that it is hard to fault the principles of redistributing the burden of getting the university going which is what the new LASU regime of fees is all about. Those principles are beyond question, sound and pragmatic. While it may sound satanic to some, I call it practical economics!

The alternatives? Science laboratories without reagents; ill-equipped libraries; overcrowded lecture rooms and hostels that qualify to be described as pig sties – translating into what I describe as the slow lynching of the university idea!

I haven’t said anything about government shirking its responsibilities in the area of funding…But the greater crime is the culture of denial of the responsibility to make the desired changes particularly when it calls for sacrifices on the part of the recipients of tertiary education.

If I may put it in a simpler way – it is time to set the boundaries on entitlement! Basic education is a right – an entitlement. Tertiary education does not qualify. Liberalisation of access – yes! University for all – impracticable! Much of the current debates appear to have been informed by the problematic of distinction! (I can hear some people calling for my head). Fact is – no amount of liberalisation of access would make everybody a university graduate! There is an inescapable law of natural selection that takes care of everything.

That above leads to the other issue – the fear that the new fees would price university education beyond the reach of the poor. Good point.

Question is – who is going to be the ultimately losers at the rate we are going – with mushroom institutions awarding worthless certificates? Isn’t it the so-called poor who cannot afford to send their wards to universities in Ghana or wherever? We delude ourselves to imagine that the world is not paying attention to our declining standards; I hear that foreign institutions are already demanding re-certification of our diplomas. Just how bad would things need to get before they get better?

I go to the final point – the tendency to understate the heroic contributions of the so-called poor in their relentless struggle to break the shackles of poverty through education. Coming from a rather humble background myself, I perfectly understand the painful sacrifices made by my folks to get me through university education. I know a father who sold the family’s prized Raleigh bicycle to pay for son’s school fees. As it was in the past, so it is today – perhaps till kingdom come. No matter how it is presented, the idea of contributions or sacrifice to education is certainly nothing new or particularly alien. Surely, our people know that nothing venture, nothing gain!”

The above was written in November 2011.

Is the war then over? I don’t think so. Clearly, the myth endures. I refer here to the myth that the government has a pocket so deep that it can shoulder the entire cost of tertiary education. It has been with us for so long that calls for behavioural modification are now seen as sacrilege. We claim to be enamoured of world-class institutions, but would rather shy from the debate on what it costs to produce, say for instance, a university graduate, prefering instead the typical advocacy of rule-of-the-thumb subventions that bear no relations with funding needs.

Let me be clear here; the issue really isn’t really about the responsibility of governments to fund tertiary institutions. Rather, it is the quantum of sacrifice that beneficiaries of tertiary institutions should be called upon to bear. For me, true progress begins when we accept the need for everyone to increase the stake, no matter how modest the percentage.

June 17, 2014
Fascism at the door?

When soldiers, in a democratic republic, start waylaying newspaper vans and seizing newspapers, the tragic story of Sophocles’ Antigone comes to mind. Antigone is the classic folly of raw power bringing self-ruin.

Creon, king of Thebes, played god by decreeing a dead man must not be buried because he was a traitor. Antigone, the dead Polyneices’ sister, defied the king and buried his brother, because the order was contrary to natural laws.

In the ensuing grim drama, Creon lost his son, Haemon, who was Antigone’s fiancé. Haemon committed suicide because Antigone hanged herself to escape being buried alive — another cruel decree by King Creone. He also lost his wife, Queen Eurydice, who killed herself when she learnt of her son’s suicide. Ironically, as at the time of the twin-loss, of son and wife, Creon had reversed himself!

Tragic — but just? — desert for a human playing god?

As Creon over-reached himself in Antigone, the Nigerian military is over-reaching itself in the current grim drama against the Nigerian media.

Never, even with Nigeria’s seedy political history, has the army dared, under a civil dispensation, to launch a brazen war on the media, as it started on June 6 and continued till June 8 — and beyond?

On the highways, soldiers waylaid newspaper vans, like some armed robbers in uniform, impounding newspaper parcels and wilfully subverting legitimate businesses. That is a crime under our laws — and that some thugs in uniform committed the crime does not make it less so.

True soldiers, during armed enforcement of outlawry called military regimes, often descended on journalists; and even closed down media houses. But even during those bandit regimes, the press never laid down to be slaughtered. It challenged and fought the barbarians every inch of the way, culminating in their eventual defeat, and a march-back to the barracks in 1999.

The military velvet ranks can tell, to the marines, their reasons for the clampdown: that some unintelligent intelligence has indicted newspaper vans as new carriers of Boko Haram ordinance.

Doyin Okupe, a presidential spokesperson, has also weighed in: his boss, the president, knew nothing of the crime. But in any case, he added, for security, citizen’s rights to free speech and legitimate business must crash. But of course, it was the usual Okupe-istic cant!

With Dr. Okupe’s attempt at implausible deniability, how will the Jonathan presidency navigate this latest constitutional abomination?

Shame that, as there are no bad soldiers but bad officers in the army, the commander-in-chief is so derelict his soldiers brazenly attack the press, one of the key pillars of democracy, free speech and free society — and in flagrant breech of the Constitution?

Still, on constitutional violations, Jonathan logs an abominable record of assaults on democratic institutions.

A National Judicial Council (NJC)-Presidency combo, willy-nilly, got rid of Justice Isa Ayo Salami, for nothing but doing his job. Now, with the development in Rivers, the same NJC is resorting to self-help, after failing to have its way in court.

When Jonathan’s cronies lost out in the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) election, the presidential brigade decreed the numerical supremacy of 17 over 19. The result: an NGF split. Since then, it has been lose-lose in the NGF camp. States get 40 per cent less their due allocation. Yet, there is no united governors’ rank to fight this grave injustice.

Rivers Governor, Chibuike Amaechi, battled a federal armada of impunity to a standstill, finally forcing the Abuja aggressor and Mbu Joseph Mbu, its viceroy, to flee. Mbu and his masters have gone on to further disgrace by attempting — but failed — to ban continued public protest for the release of the Chibok girls.

But Mbu’s misadventure would appear to have galvanised another felon-in-uniform in Ekiti, as a Mobile Police unit reportedly tear-gassed Governor Kayode Fayemi, tried to disarm his security details and the MOPOL leader, in the reported presence of Ekiti State Commissioner of Police, Felix Uyanna, declared (as reported by The Nation of June 9): “Who? I mean what governor? Who is governor when VP is in town? I don’t know any governor. I have order from above. That is all.”

Call it the voice of Jacob and the hands of Esau, and you probably are not wrong. Vice President Namadi Sambo was quoted to have threatened war, as regard the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections.

Now, two weeks shy of the Ekiti polls, a local MOPOL commander is threatening war against a sitting governor, in his own pocket coup. How low can a purported democratic government sink into infamy? But an anti-media war is one neither the Jonathan presidency nor its misguided army could ever win.

Still, President Jonathan and his court must pardon the media for ignoring their body language to forget about the Chibok girls, so that the president can formally declare his second term transformation from anomie into anarchy.

Tony Anenih had earlier snorted: Is Jonathan expected to go, gun-blazing into Sambisa forest himself, to free the Chibok girls?

Mbu Joseph Mbu has pressed into service his notorious lawlessness: by the police muscles conferred on me, I, with immediate effect, ban any further #Bring back our girls protest!

Hired thugs had tried to alter the offensive #bring back our girls Chibok battle cry.

And the president himself had virtually abdicated: telling protesters to direct their message to Boko Haram, and not to him, the president of the Federal Republic.

But sorry: that the Jonathan presidential court is shirking its duty — for which it is paid at a premium — does not mean the Nigerian media would shirk theirs. The president and his men — and women — can get testy, grumpy and irritable all they like. But as long as the Chibok girls are still in terrorists’ den, the media will tell them to do their work.

As for the velvet-rank military wayfarers, cooking anti-democratic brews or simply obeying unlawful orders to “deal with the press”, it is time to pry into painful institutional memory.

Back in 1966, the first set of coup makers alleged some military rednecks were politicians’ tools, obeying criminal orders, particularly concerning the Tiv riots. Some of those officers were felled in the first coup.

But the military was the worse for it. That initial self-destruction, coupled with toxic government takeovers, had brought down the military down from its high heights to its present low, leaving many to doubt if it could even curtail Boko Haram.

As for President Jonathan, Frederick Lugard’s adventure is instructive. At the very beginning in 1916, Lugard got James Bright Davies, publisher-editor of Times of Nigeria, gaoled for what even the colonial government’s Chief Justice said was “justifiable journalese.” By that, Lugard felt he would pocket the press.

But the media did not only vanquish Lugard, it also defeated his vicious native power successors. The Nigerian press will not defeat colonial despotism and military dictatorship only to succumb to civilian fascism.

There is fascism at the door. But like Antigone’s Creon, the seed of its self-destruction is in its rash actions. Nigerians must push Jonathan’s fascism to self-destroy.

June 10, 2014
Countering the crisis of credibility

The United States has worked with Nigeria to strengthen democratic institutions for decades, and will continue to do so. As the citizens of Ekiti and Osun prepare to go to the polls in the next few months to elect their governors, Nigerians and Nigeria’s friends in the international community will be watching carefullyfor peaceful elections and results that uphold the will of the electorate.

It is undoubtedly important and interesting to see who the winners and losers in Ekiti and Osun will be, and how the outcomes will affect the national political picture in advance of next February’s elections. Beyond that, however, the Ekiti and Osun elections are crucial because of what they will tell us about Nigeria’s preparations for February 2015 – specifically, whether those elections will be, and be seen by Nigerians as, credible.

I have been in Nigeria for nearly two years now, and visited each of the 17 states in southern Nigeria, almost all of them on multiple occasions. I have spoken with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Nigerians about democracy, elections, and the history of your country as it relates to both. Some of the lessons I’ve learned from these conversations are particularly relevant as we approach Election Day in Ekiti and Osun, and head into the national elections next year.

These conversations make clear that elections in this country suffer from a crisis of credibility. There have been a few contests, particularly M.K.O. Abiola’s aborted election in 1993, that have been widely viewed by Nigerians to represent the will of the people. The international community, and in particular the United States, have gone on record as saying Nigeria’s 2011 elections represented a significant improvement over some earlier contests. But Nigerians have been disappointed – at the LGA, state, and national levels – by many of the electoral cycles in the country’s past. There are many reasons for such disappointment, some historical and some highly relevant to this day. Much work remains to be done — by INEC, by the nation’s security services, and above all by Nigeria’s political class – to build more trust in the electoral process.

Besides undermining voter faith and interest, this crisis of credibility has an additional, pernicious side-effect: it allows some politicians to refuse to accept an electoral result that was not in their favour by affirming that the election in question was “illegitimate,” and to threaten and/or employ violence as a result. The electoral system’s shortcomings have thus helped to provide cover for rhetoric and actions by some politicians that only further subvert the interests of Nigerians as a whole. Beyond broad systemic changes – stamping out corruption, improving transparency, enhanced internal democracy in Nigeria’s political parties – fighting this trend is also a key element in ameliorating Nigerian democracy.

It is time that Nigerians begin to hold elections that ALL believe produce the “correct” result.

I am constantly struck by the degree to which Nigerians, on all sides of the political spectrum, assail elections which they believe were not credible, that didn’t produce the result that represented the will of the voters. It seems to happen after virtually every election, regardless of whether a particular election was generally perceived to have been credible or not. While the United States strongly supports the notion that challenges to election results should be resolved through legal mechanisms, has there been an election in the last decade in Nigeria that did not result in a legal challenge by one or more of the losers? I’m sure there has been, but my point is this: Nigerian elections are almost never considered legitimate by all the participants.

I’d argue that there are lots of similarities between politicians in the U.S. and Nigeria in their conduct leading up to Election Day: the desire to champion one’s own accomplishments and/or policy proposals; an equivalent desire to diminish those of an opponent; and the projection of confidence that “the voters are with me” that is often accompanied by bold predictions of victory.

But it seems to me that the day after the election the similarities between U.S. and Nigerian politicians diverge. With very few exceptions, by the day after the election, a losing candidate in the U.S. has called his/her opponent to congratulate them; has publicly conceded defeat (at least for those elections that garner media attention), and has begun to close up their campaign offices and operations. In most cases where this hasn’t happened by the day after the election, it’s because the vote is too close to determine the winner without a careful recount. Otherwise, the day after the election, for losing candidates it’s about “going back to normal life.” In Nigeria, by contrast, for defeated candidates, the day after the election almost seems like the beginning of the real contest – that of the legal challenge to the election’s announced result.

I would like to raise two questions: when will Nigeria reach a point where the system has enough credibility that losing candidates no longer regularly challenge their losses? And more importantly, what can each Nigerian do to move Nigeria closer to that moment? The latter question is especially salient. Nigerian elections are not going to be perfect this year or next year, but they have to continue to improve, and every Nigerian has to do his/her part.

For those who are stakeholders in the election process, I have three points to make as Nigeria works towards that end:

First, the sponsorship of violence and intimidation, and the rhetorical threat thereof, are utterly unacceptable in a democratic society, and need to be expunged once and for all from the Nigerian polity and discourse. The U.S. has been deeply troubled by some of the rhetoric that has been thrown around in recent weeks and months as these elections have drawn closer. It is perfectly acceptable, and even praiseworthy, to seek to defend your vote and that of your fellow citizens who share your support for a particular candidate. It is not, however, productive or reasonable to threaten violence, even when you perceive others have been guilty of misconduct. We were deeply troubled by the threat of “rig and roast” issued multiple times by a major political figure in recent weeks. Who benefits from that type of violent rhetoric, we wondered? And why would any ordinary Nigerian accept such provocative language, especially considering the history of post-election violence in Nigeria, and the truly horrific carnage that this country has been suffering at the hands of Boko Haram? If a candidate believes an election is threatened, then that candidate should be doing everything possible to see that the rules of the game are enforced properly – by having party agents in the numerous locations where they are permitted, for example, to bear witness to what happens – or doesn’t happen. That is part of the painstaking work of participating in, and building, a democracy. Drawing on or threatening violence is an attempt to short-circuit that process for the benefit of a few, but to the detriment of many.

Second, Nigeria’s politicians must accept that they undermine the democratic process when they systematically deny even the possibility of defeat in a free and fair process. These politicians should repeat to themselves the following sentence, either now or sometime before Election Day: “It is possible that I can lose this election if it is conducted credibly.”

Third, and finally, Nigeria has a well-established set of rules for elections – produced by INEC, in concert with the Electoral Act, and guided by the Nigerian Constitution. Abide by them. There is no process, democratic or otherwise, that can survive when its basic foundation is undermined by those seeking to use it. The Nigerian electoral process is only as good as Nigerians make it. That doesn’t mean only worrying about what the other parties are doing – it means worrying about what you and your allies are doing. The fundamental question is this: does what you’re doing help build and sustain an electoral process that you want your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to take part in?

• Hawkins is Consul General, United States, Nigeria

June 10, 2014
Media Haram?

Nigerian media may yet have cause for thanksgiving. In a country where 276 school-girls could vanish into the vast forest of Sambisa without trace, call it the tiny droplets of mercy that the Jonathan administration has not denied responsibility for the latest wave of clampdown on the media. For no matter how much we detest or even deplore the antediluvian tactics unleashed by Jonathan’s Military High Command on newspapers distribution crew in the last few days, it seems no one would again dare to describe the administration as an absentee one. If anyone still harboured doubts as to whether Jonathan was in charge, the onslaught ought to have settled that.

Let me begin recall here that when the news first filtered late last week that this newspaper’s distribution vans couldn’t reach their destinations because some men in uniform had intercepted them, my first instinct was to put it to either the work of fifth columnists who mean nothing well for the Jonathan administration, or the administration’s arch-nemesis – the Boko Haram – the throng which the President had claimed infested his government. In the weeks following the abduction of Chibok girls and the barrage of global media spotlight it spawned, I thought I could at least credit the administration with sufficient gumption left to resist opening another flank of battle – not least with the local media – and not while the girls are still in captivity.

How wrong I was.

By even time on Friday, the question of whodunnit had been fully answered. Lo and behold, it was Jonathan’s federal government. An administration sworn to promote civil liberties, free speech and constitutionalism was the one on the prowl. Soldiers, for whatever reasons, had been issued strict orders to prevent newspaper vans from reaching their destinations. The nebulous statement from Defence Spokesman, Major General Chris Olukolade would confirm our fears. He would claim that: “security agencies had received intelligence reports indicating movement of material with grave security implications across the country, using the channel of newsprint related consignments”. He would add on Friday that “the exercise has nothing to do with content or operations of the media organisations or their personnel, as is being wrongly imputed by a section of the press”. How very convenient.

Were the political authorities aware of the clampdown – given the dire implications on the constitutional responsibility of the media to keep the citizens informed on the activities of their government, and of course the image of the administration?

Doyin Okupe, the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs would on Saturday supply the answer. While he would not expressly deny that his boss, the President was in the know of the onslaught which had paralysed media operations for two days running, he would instead offer the administration’s sympathy for the discomfort suffered as a result of the curious security checks!

While the rationalisation(s) would have been laughable were they not to be so tragic, everything about the plot would appear to add up. Just as it seems given that the media would not necessarily the best of friends with the bungling administration, the tenuous relationship appears to have been exacerbated in the wake of the Chibok affair. Today, the media’s cup appears filled to the brim and hence running over with their rather generous coverage of #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

For a country that is supposed to be in a state of war, we are expected to accept the ‘mild’ operational discomforts of the past week as nothing extra-ordinary. How mild?

The issue of course goes beyond the question of whether President Goodluck Jonathan can pretend to have played fair with the media to one of whether indeed he has not abused his authority as commander-in-chief.

It is beside the point that no one would dare again to accuse him of lacking the balls to take on his enemies. We have certainly seen enough of the acute symptoms of persecution complex to help understand the current situation in which friends and foes are banded together as enemies to be fought to a standstill. At the moment, it seems a question of how far down the shrunk Presidency would go before full anarchy is loosed upon our firmament.

My grouse really, is whether the brazen abuse, or if you like, subversion of the military institution is tolerable under any circumstance. Here, I do not mean to be uncharitable, but the reality is that the military has no business doing the administration’s dirty work for it.

I understand that no questions are supposed to be asked about the nature of the “intelligence” that would dare to present sheaves of newsprint as probable purveyors of death. I also understand that the Military High Command would rather be spared the hard, probing questions as to why, after interrogating the drivers and subjecting each of the distribution vans to a most rigorous search in the circumstances they had sought to paint, the poor drivers would still not be allowed to proceed on their mission after.

Couldn’t things have been done differently if indeed it was true that terrorists had actually sought to use the vans to move their deadly wares around? And why not go about the job in such a way as to lessen the disruptions to media operations?

By the way, would it have hurt the intelligence were the media executives to be taken into confidence? Questions. More questions.

Answers to the questions, as difficult as they appear, are obviously critical to the larger quest of salvaging the image of the military in these difficult times.

Did Nigerians ever swallow the yarn spun by the military? Doubtful.

Did they believe their government’s we-are-not-involved tale? Even more doubtful. Bad enough that both didn’t even think it necessary to summon the rigour to press their case; but worse is that the storyline put out would be incredibly infantile!

Now, considering the state of the war on terror, it ought to be seen as truly tragic that Nigerians neither believe their government nor trust their armed forces. Trust Nigerians, they may appear timid, they are no fools; they have lived with budding tyrants for far too long not to recognise one when it shows up with a sneer while adorning the bowler hat. I guess they perfectly understand the plot; the desperation to label the fourth estate Media Haram – good enough for mass slaughter.

Seems the perfect way to say that one Haram is as good as the other!

Trust Nigerians; they know enough to affirm that this too shall pass away!

My understanding is that this is no prophecy; it’s something as sure as daylight.

June 10, 2014
Press and state security

One of those things every student of Mass Communication is taught in school is how to navigate the dangerous terrain called state security.

In Nigeria it is more dangerous, in fact very dangerous because the security of our leaders and their families is often confused to mean security of the state. And quite often you find journalists and media houses being harassed by overzealous, in most cases, illiterate gun-toting security personnel for publishing stories they consider embarrassing to their principal (or the spouse/children) the fact that such stories are true notwithstanding.

And when mistakes or gaffes of our leaders are reported or the media try to hold the government accountable in line with the duties assigned to the Nigerian Press by the constitution, such journalists or media houses get harassed, abused and treated as enemies of the administration who must be punished one way or another. And there are one thousand and one such punishments in government’s arsenal, including the use of the security forces that will conveniently cite breach of state security when meting out whatever punishment they deem fit on the ‘erring’ journalist/media house.

Over the years the Nigeria Press has had to contend with series of such punishments from our security forces acting on the orders of our political leaders. One of the laws they often use to carry out this harassment/punishment is the Official Secret Act, enacted by the British colonialists to keep every government document away from the prying eyes of the media/public. Even after independence, the legislation was still retained in our laws until not long ago when a high court nullified it. But even after that security agents have not ceased harassing the media, though I must admit the scale has dropped since the advent of this democracy.

But while the Nigerian Press has over the years gotten used to this type of punishment on account of what was published or intended to be published, getting punished on account of what somebody else is doing, has done, plan to do or could do has never been the case, until last week.

The Nigerian Armed forces in an unprecedented manner prevented some major national newspapers including this newspaper from circulating for three days last week on suspicion that the terror group Boko Haram and similar organizations may be planning to use the transportation networks of these newspapers to circulate their weapons of terror and destruction.

To say that the media and indeed all right thinking Nigerians were shocked was an understatement. Initially nobody could understand what was happening as the Nigerian military in the typical Nigerian style felt it owed nobody any apology or explanation for its action. But I think somebody reminded the soldiers almost twenty four hours later that this is a democracy, and in a democracy you don’t behave that way, and so belatedly, General Chris Olukolade, the military spokesman gave one of the most laughable reasons you can ever think of, for the seizure of the newspapers, now in its fifth day today.

Granted the fact that the fight against terror is a new territory and experience for members of our armed forces, looking for Boko Haram’s bombs and ammunitions in newspapers’ circulation vans looks so amateurish and smacks of a Boys Scout operation.

If there was any intelligence report suggesting there could be a plan to infiltrate newspaper distribution business by Boko Haram or any such terror organization, an intelligent application of such report would have been for the security agency concerned to approach the media owners, take them into confidence to the extent that it would not compromise or threaten state security and seek their cooperation. As Nigerians they would readily cooperate.

There is no way the military will understand the business more than the people running it. Except the military are saying they don’t trust other Nigerians and if that is the case then it would be difficult for them to win the war against terror.

Our soldiers and other security agents I believe are doing their best but to win the war, they need other Nigerians and they are not likely to get everybody on board if they continue to act in the way they have done in this latest clamp down on the media.

Since the clamp down began last Friday nothing incriminating has been found in the circulation vehicles or even with newspaper agents and vendors from whom the newspapers were snatched and yet the soldiers have continued to disrupt the circulation of some newspaper, especially The Nation. Is there anything more than we are being told by the military? Is there a deliberate attempt to cripple the businesses of those newspapers considered ‘unfriendly’ to the government? These are some of the questions the military and indeed the government would need to answer to remove any iota of doubt as per the reasons given for this war on free press.

Foolishly, some of Federal Government’s propagandists have indicated that the administration knew nothing about the clamp down and didn’t order it; meaning, the President and Commander-In-Chief does not know what his commanders are doing on the field. If this was the situation then what does the Commander-In-Chief know? And we want to win the war on terror? This is rather grave, if that was the case.

If the clamp down is a sign of what is to come from the administration, then the people at the Villa in Abuja need to be reminded that the Nigerian Press is resilient and would fight to the last. And if history is anything to go by it will come out triumphant at the end of the day no matter how long it took.

The media fought for then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to be installed acting President when President Shehu Yar’Adua was incapacitated by illness, the Press was largely on his side in 2011 (because we felt that was the right thing to do in the name of equity and fairness) in order to give our compatriots in the South-south a fair chance of also ruling this country which after all belongs to all of us (and in case anybody wants to forget, the wealth of the country for now comes from there), and the Nigerian media have been fair to his administration even in the present dispensation; so for him to declare war on the Nigerian Press would be a fatal mistake. It is uncalled for.

MBU JOSEPH MBU

Since the Commander-In-Chief doesn’t seem to know what his field commanders are doing, would it also be right to say the Inspector General of Police does not know what all his commissioners are doing? Or how do you explain the order given by the Commissioner in charge of the FCT Police Command, Mbu Joseph Mbu banning public protests, especially the #Bring Back Our Girls protest in Abuja that was denied and rescinded the following day by the police high command?

Well whatever was the truth of the matter, Mbu Joseph Mbu should know that his days are numbered in the Nigeria Police and when that time comes he will have to answer for all his actions.

June 10, 2014
“June 12”: An infamy revisited

I am writing these lines at 7:30 in the evening of Thursday, June 10, 1993, just 48 hours to the presidential election. But it is by no means clear that the election will actually take place.

The High Court in Abuja is yet to determine whether the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Federal Attorney-General (Clement Akpamgbo) and Military President Ibrahim Babangida have furnished compelling reasons as to why the election should not be stopped, as demanded by Arthur Nzeribe’s Association for a Better Nigeria (ABN). The association has followed up its petition with a huge demonstration in Kaduna, urging Babangida to stay on for four more years.

S. G. Ikoku’s self-styled Council of Elder Statesmen is still busy calling for what amounts to a scuttling of the transition process. Curiously, its advocacy, dripping with contempt for the two official political parties and their presidential candidates and indeed for the entire political class, is described not as a proposal but a “Report.’’ The ‘’Report’’ is received in Abuja with all the pomp and circumstance of a commissioned job.

Newspapers are awash with unsigned advertisements excoriating the SDP candidate, Moshood Abiola, and the NRC candidate, Bashir Tofa, for all manner of misconduct, ranging from alleged purloining of an opponent’s letter to religious fanaticism. The country is awash in rumours of dark plots and dire warnings.

From his base in London, fugitive Second Republic minister Umaru Dikkko, no longer fearful of being shipped home in a crate, is reported to have written to the Kaduna Mafia, warning that under no circumstance should a Southerner be allowed to win power.

As if to add poignancy to the rumoured Dikko epistle, allegations surface that Abiola and a conclave of Yoruba elders have completed plans to transfer the federal capital back to Lagos if Abiola won the election. And if he did not, Igbo property in Yorubaland was marked for destruction.

Such were the doubts and distrust sowed in the week before the election and watered assiduously every passing day. Long and disorderly queues formed by panic-stricken motorists in the wake of a strike by petroleum workers strengthen doubts about the election. A breakdown in electricity and water supplies further reinforces the doubts.

NEC Chairman Humphrey Nwosu comes on the television screen as I write these lines, ebullient as ever, and reeling out in a sing-song, combative voice, a trainload of things that must not be done on election day and assuring a national audience that all was set for the historic poll.

I am immediately reminded of what someone who should know told me long ago: Never mind the histrionics. Good old Humphrey is not actually in charge, and does not know what is really going on.

At any rate, no polling booths have been erected, and no voters’ list has been put on display in Lagos 48 hours to the poll. It requires a degree of credulity bordering on naiveté to wager that the poll will indeed hold on June 12.

NTA’s network news has just ended. There is no indication at all of developments in the ABN’s legal battle to scuttle the election. The doubts remain. The electoral laws state categorically that no court action can stand in the way of the election. If this means anything at all, it means that no court can entertain any petition that seeks to stop the election. The Abuja High Court has not only entertained the petition, it allows it to drag on for one full week, and to cast grave doubts on whether the election will be held.

At this point, I break off and go to bed, hoping to complete this piece the next day, Friday, June 11, to meet my copy deadline.

At 11:05 p.m., the doorbell rings.

Who can it be at this late hour?

It is Femi Kusa, The Guardian’s director of publications and editor-in-chief. He has a message, and it is for my ears only, the night guard tells me. I go downstairs to meet Kusa.

Without the slightest trace of agitation or surprise, Kusa tells me, first, that the Abuja High Court has ruled that election scheduled for Saturday, June 12, must not hold as demanded by the ABN; second, that the court has reserved ruling for one month on NEC’s counter-motion, and third, that the police had granted the ABN a permit to stage a Babangida-Must-Stay rally in Abuja. He says he thought I should not have to read the newspapers the next day before learning of these developments.

Even those of our countrymen (and women) who have maintained all along that the transition programme bears the markings of a cruel hoax and of a prologue to tragedy could hardly have believed that matters would come to such a desultory pass. But such, alas, is the level of triviality to which the final phase of the transition programme has been reduced.

No sooner were thepresidential primaries concluded than rumours spread that the candidates of both parties would be disqualified. Damning dossiers on both candidates were said to have been compiled, with generous help from the intelligence services of Western nations. Since then, it has been one dark hint of gloomy portents after another.

Was this the ‘’hidden agenda’’ finally unravelling?

A hidden agenda exists all right, weighs in Vice President Augustus Aikhomu. But it belongs to the self-appointed messiahs and their confederates who held a widely publicized meeting at General Olusegun Obasanjo’sfarm the other day, not to the Babangida Administration.

As I conclude this piece at 1:05 a.m. on Friday, June 11, 1993, NEC has not indicated whether it will go ahead with the election as planned, the Abuja injunction notwithstanding. The authors and managers of the transition programme have made no statement.

Perhaps they are satisfied that the transition is still ‘’on course,’’ and that the ‘’solid foundation’’ they have been laying for democracy these past seven years is, if anything, stronger than ever. Or it may well be that they regard the latest developments as just another phase of the “learning process’’ that is the transition.

Others of a different cast of mind cannot be blamed if, on waking up today and hearing the news, they felt, like Jacob in the Old Testament, that they had for seven years been sleeping with an illusion.

For the next 16 hours or so after Justice Ikpeme’s ruling, there is no clear indication that the election will hold. It is well past lunchtime on Friday, June 11, when NEC finally announces that the election will go on as scheduled, Justice Ikpeme and the ABN notwithstanding.

The Federal Government’s affirmation that the election will hold comes only indirectly, in response to a statement issued by the United States Government through the United States Information Service in Lagos to the effect that any postponement of the election would be “unacceptable” to Washington.

The election holds as scheduled. Minor hitches are reported here and there, the type that can be expected even in the best-ordered poll. For the most part, NEC and everyone connected with the election gets high praise for a job superbly executed.

Nine days later, when results already proclaimed or authenticated and only awaiting official release indicated that the SDP ticket of Moshoold Abiola and Babagana Kingibe had swept the poll, the regime of military president Ibrahim Babangidawhich had been thrown into panic by the results finally dropped all subterfuge to announce through an unsigned and undated memo issued on plain paper by Nduka Irabor, chief press secretary to Vice President Augustus Aikhomu, that it had annulled the election.

Why?

“To rescue the judiciary from inter-wrangling . . . to protect our legal system and the judiciary from being ridiculed and politicised both nationally and internationally,” according to the memo, and to ensure that a judiciary built on sound and solid foundation was not “tarnished by the insatiable political desire of a few persons.”

By that instrument, the Babangida regime terminated all court proceedings on any matter touching on the June 12 1993 presidential election, and for good measure repealed all laws relating to a political transition programme that had been eight years and some N40 billion in the making.

The consequences of this brazen evisceration of the sovereign will of the Nigerian people, executed with the active complicity of the political class, sections of the judiciary and the news media, political merchants, revanchists and quislings, live with us still.

This piece, slightly revised, was first published in this newspaper on June 11, 2013. It is adapted from my June 15 and June 22, 1993, columns for The Guardian, where I was editorial page editor and chair of the Editorial Board.

Desperate censors at work

There is a strong chance that patrons of the paper edition of The Nation may never get to read the Tuesday issue in which this column is scheduled to appear.

For three days running, military officials claiming to be acting on orders have blockaded the routes of newspaper vans across the country and taken over the distribution points, resulting in late deliveries and sometimes no delivery at all.

The officials said they were acting on intelligence that some unidentified persons were going to use newspaper distribution vans to carry explosives to areas of Boko Haram activity. Could the officials not have alerted the newspaper houses and urged them to ensure that their vehicles were not employed for subversive activities?

The Abuja office of ThisDay was severely damaged some two years ago in a bomb explosion. If the security services have forgotten, the news media have not. It cannot be in their interest to be witting or unwitting accessories to any plot to employ their vehicles for terroristic purposes.

Besides, the selective nature of the blockade, especially after the first day, suggests powerfully that what is unfolding is not a scheme to frustrate the designs of potential terrorists but to paralyse a section of the press and prevent Nigerians from receiving the news and information so vital to making informed decisions and choices in a democracy.

In whatever case, why detain the vans after searching them and finding nothing compromising? Why impound their cargo?

This shamefully disingenuous recourse harks back to the darkest chapters of military rule in Nigeria.

June 10, 2014
Discordant tunes

There is this friend of mine who has this habit of always calling me each time he felt worried about happenings in the polity.

“Ol boy”, he said last Friday when I picked his call. “What kind of government is Jonathan running in this country?” he asked referring to the federal government. “Can’t they get their acts together? In one breath he is ordering an all out military onslaught on Boko Haram, and at the same time granting amnesty to the terrorists. Which one are we to believe?”

And before I could even attempt a response he launched into his second concern about happenings in the country. He is worried that the All Progressives Congress (APC), the main opposition party in the country, and in his enlightened estimation, the only hope of rescuing Nigeria from the misrule of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), does not seem to be getting its acts together. He is particularly worried about the seeming civil war within the APC in Ogun State with Governor Ibikunle Amosun and former governor Olusegun Osoba at daggers drawn. “What does Osoba wants?” he asked but quickly added that Amosun should also take things easy and learn to respect his elders.

I could sense that he was feeling very bitter and the best I could do as a friend was to calm him down and assure him that Nigeria ‘go survive’ even when I share most of his concerns.

We later went into those things that friends talk about for a few more minutes before he hung up.

Coming a day after the celebration of the so called Democracy Day to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Nigeria’s return to democratic rule, and about six weeks after over 200 school girls were abducted in Chibok, Borno State by the terror group, Boko Haram, I sat back after the conversation to reflect on the two issues he raised.

Since the 15th April abduction of these girls, the Goodluck Jonathan administration has been going forward and backward, blowing hot and cold at the same time with little to show for it in terms of tangible achievements that could raise our hopes that our girls would return home quickly and safely. It’s been all movement no action. The federal government could not even speak with one voice.

Granted the fact that Jonathan failed to respond openly, as if in denial, to the abduction of the girls until about three weeks later, what manner of response have we been getting from the government ever since it came out, albeit belatedly, to admit that our girls are missing?

When the whole world expected a robust and tough response, at least in the open, from the federal government, the Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, the man under whose watch many job seekers were killed during the ill-fated Nigeria Immigration Service recruitment exercise, came out to announce that the Jonathan administration was ready to negotiate with the terror group, but the backlash forced the government to back out of that statement and launched into a policy flip-flop on the rescue/return of the Chibok girls.

And when we all thought that the administration had learnt its lesson from that Moro’s statement, Boni Haruna, another of Jonathan’s ‘emergency’ ministers and latter day friends opened his mouth to announce amnesty for Boko Haram, at least for those insurgents who renounce violence and lay down their arms. Haruna, Jonathan’s Minister for Youth Development, claimed the president had actually granted the amnesty. A day or so later the presidency said there is no amnesty on the table.

With such policy summersaults and discordant tunes coming out from the presidency one begins to wonder how our partners in this war again terror, especially against Boko Haram would see us; inconsistent, unreliable? More importantly, the insurgents would probably be laughing at us and see the federal government as an unserious partner, if at all they, or some among them is contemplating peace or ceasefire.

If we want to negotiate the release of the girls, fine, but we don’t have to tell the world that we are talking to the terrorists for their release. We can still be fighting Boko Haram and at the same time negotiating with them on how to bring our girls home peacefully and safely. After all, the United States just secured the release of its only servicemen captured by the Taliban in its war against terror, after reaching a secret agreement with the terrorist group. Sgt Bowe Bergdhl, 28, was released by the Taliban in exchange for freedom of five of its members held in Guantanamo Bay by the US. No noise was made while negotiations were going on and the US has not relented in its fight against Taliban while the terrorists have also not renounced violence and terror.

Granted the fact that this is a new territory (fighting terror) for our government, but by now it ought to have learnt how things like this are done, at least from those that had passed through that route before. This kind of policy inconsistency could put government negotiators in harm’s way in their dealing with Boko Haram or whoever were the abductors of our girls.

I am not surprised that the military high command denied knowledge of the Australian negotiator reportedly appointed by the Federal Government; I don’t expect the government also to admit there is such a person(s). Things like these are never done in the open or openly admitted, they are only acknowledged if and when they went well. All we are interested in is #Bring back our girls, safely. How Jonathan and his team does that is left to them, but they should stop disgracing themselves and the country in the public and before the international community with their lack of coordination. The discordant tunes must stop and the presidency must speak with one voice. Make your position clear Goodluck Jonathan on this matter and Nigerians would follow.

On the seeming civil war in Ogun APC and by extension in some other chapters of the party, I just hope that the opposition would not shoot itself in the foot and gift the presidency to Jonathan again in 2015.

The Jonathan government is discredited already but the APC should not help it bounce back into reckoning by its own internal wrangling. The leaders of the party known and unknown must step in to resolve the crisis in Ogun APC before it snowballs into another thing that could thwart Nigerians genuine efforts at sending Jonathan and PDP packing next year. Suffice to say that the era of godfathers in our policy is gone, it never served us well. Whoever has been elected should be allowed to rule. What some people did not accept when they were governors they should not force it down the throat of others. As Yoruba would say, ti a ba fi agbo fun eegun, a nfi okun e si le ni, meaning literally, when you give the ram to the masquerade you release the rope.

June 3, 2014
Ekiti: Beyond Fayemi
Nigeria is said, and the country has indeed validated beyond a reasonable doubt that it’s a country of such an amazing and perplexing paradox, the magnitude of which is probably unequaled anywhere in the world. As it is in the centre, so it is in its component parts. If the new socio-economic paradigm that has taken shape in Ekiti State, with the highly unusual endorsements by his erstwhile political detractors and the public admissions (however grudgingly given) by some other contestants of a job well done were to have happened in a sane, normal and progress-inclined society, the June 21, governorship election would have been a foregone conclusion. In a more civilized clime, some of those contesting with Governor Fayemi would have scaled down their campaigns considerably to mitigate cost of a lost cause, while those still in the race would be hanging in there hoping for some miraculous divine intervention. With such a glaring, strong and unprecedented performance record, in partnership with the support of key opposition political figures and the enthusiasm of a huge majority of everyday people in Ekiti, Fayemi’s worries by now should not be June 21, but what to say on his inauguration day. But in Ekiti, a governorship election is not over until another Ayoka Adebayo goes into hiding.

The recent defection of the former governor of Ekiti State Engineer Segun Oni from his relative comfort in the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) is probably indicative of the heavenly stars alignment for Fayemi’s victory. The defection and the speech from Segun Oni should be seen by the PDP as the final warning to collapse their rigging machine and take it back to Ondo, their surrogate satellite state. But no, they wouldn’t. What he said on that fateful day was even more instructive and a food for thought. In a society in which politics is driven more by the egos of its players, for Oni to have subsumed, if not jettisoned his pride for the sake of the good of Ekiti people which is being championed effectively by Fayemi shows a quintessential leadership quality of the former governor. In his speech, he asked Ekiti people to ask themselves who is in a better position to give them and their children a better future. He also said among other things that “tomorrow is greater than today and yesterday” where the focus should not be “on personal interests” but the future of Ekiti and its children. These are powerful statements of which true statesmen are made.

Segun Oni’s decision to finally get rid of the PDP from his system may not have been an easy one, considering his status in the party hierarchy as a former chief of state. The audacity of the PDP to throw up, once again, Ayodele Fayose as its governorship flag-bearer was probably more than enough to stomach by any fairly decent, morally upright, and progress-inclined individual whose modus vivendi is the public good such as Segun Oni. Even if one should take out or set aside the strong leadership credential of Fayemi in the Ekiti governorship election matrix, the emergence of Fayose in the current political landscape, courtesy of his party should be seen as the greatest insult that can be bestowed upon a people in a just, equitable, and democratic dispensation. This is the context within which the election should be seen—first and foremost. This opprobrium should not only be seen by Ekiti people as such but every right-thinking and discerning people of Yoruba descent with a modicum sense of history, who are spread to as far as Isanlu in Kogi, Omu-Aran in Kwara and the marshy enclave of Delta. It is a reprehensible but deliberate disrespect to the collective sensibility of Ekiti people in particular who, as small as they are, have contributed, and continues to contribute probably more than their own fair share to the growth and development of this country in many facets of nation-building, and by extension, a slight on the Yoruba race.

The decision of the PDP to throw up Fayose, a former governor whose rap sheet is as long as the Niger River shows the depth of moral depravity and crass political primitivity that the PDP behemoth has sunk. Here is a man whose tenure in office was the most traumatic experience that Ekiti people ever witnessed in their collective memory until his cup runneth over and was booted out through impeachment. Here was a governor who dragged his state’s traditional institution through the mud and God help that traditional ruler who had the effrontery to caution him about the direction in which the state was headed. Here is a man who caused Chief Afe Babalola –a well-respected countrywide indigene of Ekiti whose contribution to the creation of the state made it possible for Fayose to become a governor in the first place –to cry out for help because his life was in mortal danger during the errant government of Fayose. Here is a man who, as a governor, carried his hooliganism beyond the call of duty, having reportedly brandished lethal weapons on several occasions in order to intimidate voters and his political opponents. What about the state poultry farm that turned out to be a huge financial scam from which the state is yet to recover financially? Meanwhile, several billions of naira allegedly went into his pocket and that of his cronies and the case is still in court as of today. It’s hard to believe that President Jonathan and his party thinks that Fayose’s electoral value and his political indispensability in the state are very hard to ignore to the extent they’re willing to foist him on the people with all these antecedents. Even if one must accept this twisted logic, should the party not have found a way to co-opt the judiciary into clearing his name from the several criminal litigations he’s facing in order meet the minimum moral threshold of a civilized society?

The point, however, must be made that the forthcoming Ekiti governorship election is beyond Fayemi just as the one in its sister state in Osun slated for August transcends Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. It’s about another attempt to subjugate a race of people who, having found a common socio-economic underpinning and the political philosophy that works for them in charting their own course, in which the blueprint was handed down by their progenitor now referred to as a sage and a president Nigeria never had. It’s about truncating a new set of their leaders like Fayemi and Aregbesola who have probably been identified by some clairvoyants as unexplainably carrying the genes of their late sage, hence their going into overdrive, once again, to ensure that the sage’s spirit is not allowed to reincarnate in these leaders. June 21 and August 9, are the two significant dates in which the Yoruba race can either cross the Rubicon or be stopped in their tracks in their journey towards their socio-economic and political emancipation. The choice is theirs to make.
- Odere is a media practitioner. He can be reached at femiodere@gmail.com.
June 3, 2014
May 29: Not yet “Democracy Day”

Like October 1, Nigeria’s independence anniversary, May 29, the so-called “Democracy Day”, has become a sombre, almost funereal event on the national calendar.

With rare exceptions, the former has become, 53 years on, an occasion to lament the road not taken and to bemoan missed opportunities, the unfulfilled and constantly retreating promise of independence. The latter has run out of steam and even symbolism after little more than a decade, and those who foisted it on a skeptical public seem now to have grown weary of according it even the perfunctory celebration of yesteryears.

That is just as well, for “Democracy Day” was never fundamentally about democracy. It was the day an exhausted and discredited military hurriedly transferred power to civilians following rushed elections based on a Constitution the public played no part in making, and the provisions of which those succeeding to power knew little.

Trappings of “democracy” had figured in the process leading to the final transfer of power. Political parties had been organised and had, after a fashion, chosen their candidates; elections had been held, and it was clear that there would be no fundamental departure from the architecture of what would have been Nigeria’s Third Republic if General Ibrahim Babangida had not, with help from hegemonic forces in and out of uniform, annulled the 1993 presidential election that was supposed to inaugurate it.

But nobody outside the General Abdulsalam Abubakar’s inner circle knew the letter of the Constitution – what powers it grants, to whom, and with what limits. But those waiting in the wings cared not in the least. Collect the baton, move on and govern happily thereafter.

It is a measure of how defective the military decree parlayed into the 1999 Constitution has turned out to be in operation that as many as 54 amendments to it have been proposed. And yet, it is the foundation of what has been designated “Democracy Day”.

Little has been done since then to strengthen this weak foundation in the letter or spirit. Elections that are no elections continue to be staged with ritual regularity, and it is often left to the courts, invoking abstruse technicalities subversive of the letter and spirit of the Constitution, to determine who actually won.

This process often takes so long and costs so much that it is a mockery of the plebiscitary principle itself.

The challenge to Delta State Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan’s second-term election ran its course only a week ago, with his victory affirmed. If it had been reversed, he would have served three years in an office to which he was never elected, exercising the powers of that office unlawfully as Olagunsoye Oyinlola had done in Osun State and as Professor Oserheimen Osunbor had done in Edo and Segun Oni in Ekiti, though for shorter periods in the case of the last two.

In a democracy, the welfare of the people ought to be the supreme law. That is what “government of the people, by the people, for the people” means at bottom. In our system, the people rarely figure in this calculus. The welfare of the Legislative and Executive branches is the supreme law. Only in that sense can membership of the legislature be regarded as a hardship warranting special compensation.

By the time the Exchequer is done indulging the fancies of the Executive and Legislative branches, there is little left to address the needs of the people in whose name they claim to govern.

Nor have the statistically impressive figures of growth proclaimed across the economy before and after rebasing translated into real development. Fully 50 per cent of young men and women able and willing to work cannot fine meaningful employment. Earned pensions, the closest thing to a safety net, go unpaid for months; in many instances, they are not paid at all.

Despite all the brave talk of transformation, what is more evident is shadow-chasing. It is delusional to embark on a project to build “Nigerian” cars for a discriminating export market without fixing the problems that doomed previous efforts.

It is self-defeating to raise tariffs to discourage importation of used cars that bridge at more affordable prices the huge gap between local production and demand, even when production is optimal. For, as with the ban on rice imports, since revised, and the embargo on wheat imports, higher tariffs on used car imports will only profit syndicate smugglers. The national treasury will be the poorer for the measure, for you cannot collect custom duties on contraband.

Political party alignment and realignment is driven more by opportunist calculations than by conviction or ideology. When they are not running their jurisdictions and constituencies like their personal estates, many political officials carry on in the manner of military prefects.

Recruitment into the political leadership cadre follows no known rules. The result is the acute crisis of leadership besetting the country, most poignantly at the centre. This leadership deficit is revealed starkly every passing day in Abuja’s acts and omissions relating to Boko Haram and its maniacal campaign of murder and mayhem.

One day, we are told that President Goodluck Jonathan is at long last set to visit Chibok, scene of the abduction of more than 200 school girls whose plight has dominated front pages and headlines across the world for more than a month; the next day, we are told that Dr Jonathan was not going to Chibok and had never said he was going there.

As the multinational effort to locate the girls gather pace, the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, announces sensationally that his men know where the girls are, in the process squandering the element of surprise so vital to successful military operations, assuming that his claim is true. Since then, Boko Haram must have moved the girls to different locations.

One day, Abuja says it is willing to negotiate. The next, it says it will not. Rather than engage the parents and concerned Nigerians staging peaceful demonstrations to demand action to bring the girls home, it sets rented crowds against them and seeks to undermine them in other ways.

One day, Abuja is reported to be prepared to offer an amnesty to Boko Haram elements who renounce their murderous ways; the next day, it stoutly denies that such an offer was ever made.

In Abuja, it has been one long amateur stretch, and not just on Chibok.

The rule of law that is supposed to undergird democracy has in Nigeria been supplan3ted by the rule of immunity and impunity. Consequently, among the political class and the well-connected, crime and grave misconduct are more likely to be rewarded than punished.

Democracy, it has been said, is a journey, not a destination. That is true. More fundamentally, however, democracy is a plant that has to be cultivated, tended, and nurtured. By that measure, the journey has hardly begun

So, the verdict on May 29 has to be: Not yet “Democracy Day.”

June 3, 2014
Enter the Serbians

A Yugoslavia-Nigeria parallel is instructive.

The final trigger for the break-up of Yugoslavia was Serbian ultra-nationalism.

Now comes Nigeria’s season of ethnic ultra-nationalism: Oduduwa and MASSOB’s Biafra (active: because they push carving Nigeria into new countries) and the North (passive: because it insists on the failing status quo).

On Josip Broz Tito’s defunct country, Wikipedia writes: “Yugoslavia was a country in South East Europe during most of the 20th century. It came into existence after World War I in 1918 …” It broke up in 1991, after 73 years.

Lord Frederick Lugard amalgamated northern and southern Nigeria in 1914. Though Nigeria hit its centenary this year, 2014, there is no guarantee, with the escalating tension, Wikipedia would not write on Nigeria in the past tense, as it does on Yugoslavia now.

Yugoslavia’s World War II (1939-1945) dead was around one million. Tito’s Yugoslav Partisans fought the (guerrilla) war to secure Yugoslavia’s integrity against carve-up threats from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy).

Nigeria’s Civil War (1967-1970) casualty tally was also around one million dead. Nigeria fought the war to thwart the Igbo attempt to break away.

According to Wikipedia, the rise of nationalism, coupled with religious differences between Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks prompted the collapse of Yugoslavia.

Nigeria now appears locked in religious antipathy, aside from the Boko Haram mass slaughter; and ethnic nationalism is on the upswing.

A “Croatian spring” protest in the 1970s, which condemned Yugoslavia as a Serb hegemony, led to Yugoslavia’s 1974 constitution. It slightly watered down Serb influence by granting federating republics more autonomy.

But the Serbs (self-proclaimed special breed) resented that constitution’s “threat to national unity” (read Serb dominance). Much later, Slobodan Milosevic, Serbian communist leader, attempted to cancel the 1974 reforms and re-impose Serbian sovereignty over other ethnic nationalities, particularly Croats (who incidentally were the late Tito’s people, though he lived and died a Yugoslav national icon; and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo). That move proved fatal for Yugoslavia.

Nigeria’s status quo ensemble has a ready cant: “Nigerian unity is non-negotiable”; as it tries to block campaigns by ethnic nationalities and other lobbies to restructure the country.

But remember: agitations by “ethnic nationalities” were fair reactions to Nigeria as a northern hegemony. Like Serbia, the North fancies itself a special power breed, with near-divine right to rule. Add the merry-go-round national conferences (Abacha 1994-95, Obasanjo 2005 and now Jonathan, 2014), just to buy time, and what you see is intransigence.

If such intransigence proved fatal for Yugoslavia, could it prove any less for Nigeria?

Even a more eerie parallel: “In 1986” Wikipedia wrote, “the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts drafted a memorandum addressing some burning issues, concerning position of Serbs as the most numerous people in Yugoslavia.” Six years later, Yugoslavia was history.

In 2014, a northern think-tank collective authored the North’s position paper to the ongoing National Conference (NC).

The paper told “Northern Nigeria, the backbone and strength of Nigeria” to use its “extremely understated” population to maintain the status quo, and even roll back to five per cent, the 13 per cent paid to Niger Delta as oil derivation!

Was this a virtual chapter from the Serbian Academy paper? And, in six years’ time, would Nigeria stand strong and united, guaranteed by a northern spine, as the northern elite hope or, like Yugoslavia, have fallen to pieces, as the Serbian elite perhaps now rue? Nobody knows.

What is clear is that since that Northern NC document was made public, Nigeria has been gripped by virulent ultra-nationalism, reminiscent of the last days of Yugoslavia.

First, Femi Fani-Kayode, the gentleman who never does things in half-measure, has gone dramatically poetic on Yoruba ultra-nationalism: “Give me Oduduwa or let me die”, he thundered in a now famous article, trending on the social media.

Another set of Yoruba groups, at the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park, Ojota, Lagos, declared with no less finality: “Regional autonomy … or nothing”. But the groups said while they had no intention to impose their will on others, they would resist the imposition of others’ will.

Across the Niger, the Movement for the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) in Owerri, Imo State, led by Ralph Uwazurike, wanted Nigeria split into six republics, along the present geo-political zones.

Chief Uwazurike talked of “deep-rooted hatred among major ethnic nationalities in Nigeria”, the mistake of 1914’s Lugard amalgamation, “irreconcilable disdain existing between Islam and Christianity” and “a failed state called Nigeria”. He also dismissed Igbo mainstream politicians as parasites who mouth “one Nigeria” because Nigeria is their corrupt “cash cow”.

And drama of dramas: Uwazurike not only donned, with matching ceremonial cap, a blue outfit his supporters called “the navy blue Biafran uniform”, he also came accompanied with two MASSOB representatives in UK and Europe!

The Yoruba and Igbo groups were also devastating in their politics of memory. MASSOB hailed May 30, the day in 1967 Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu declared the ill-fated Biafra Republic, as a “watershed” that boldly questioned the “mistake” of Lugard’s amalgamation, but remained the true path to Igbo liberation even 47 years after.

The Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) also thumbed down May 29, Nigeria’s official national Democracy Day, as a date of infamy. First, May 29, 1962: date phony emergency rule was imposed on the old Western Region, marking the beginning of the end for the First Republic. May 29, 1999: the Army Arrangement (apologies to late Fela), that sold (un)civil rule as Democracy. And — ARG did not cite this one — May 29, 1966: anti-Igbo pogroms started in the North.

Meanwhile, from up North came dire news: Boko Haram had killed an emir and sent two other scuttling into the bush for dear lives! The symbolism is scary: the creeping collapse of the northern community where the emir was something of a demigod? Now, if the North cannot secure its own spine, how can it be a backbone for a failing Nigeria?

Even from the South West, some dissonance. The Yoruba declared “regional autonomy or nothing” in Lagos. Yet, Lagos, at the NC rejected regionalism and upheld the artificiality of Nigeria’s current 36-state structure!

And that comic piece about creating Ijebu State as trade-off to guaranteed Igbo security nationwide! Champions of regionalism still hankering after Ijebu State? Comic confusion indeed, in the Yoruba camp!

Ethnic nationalists giving up on Nigeria can be excused. Its unsustainable structure is unravelling fast.

But the Lagos NC rebellion shows it’s no use being gung-ho about Nigeria’s collapse. If and when it happens, the balkanisation might just be total — as Serbia and Montenegro’s failure to keep Yugoslavia’s name on the map has shown — and no single geo-political zone might be sure to stay as one.

That is why the North must moderate its empty conceit on “national unity” and the opposing camps, their delirium on Nigeria’s collapse.

Genuine restructuring, on productive federal lines, remains the best option.

Otherwise, Nigerians might just be fated to Niger-nostalgia (when recalling former Nigeria) and maybe The Economist would coin Nigersphere (as it has coined Yugosphere), to refer to the space Nigeria now occupies.

June 3, 2014