The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Doing what they know how to do best

    Doing what they know how to do best

    At the end of a visit the other day with former President Olusegun Obasanjo in Ota, Ogun State, in continuation of meetings with leaders of the party across Nigeria to resolve a raft of internal issues, the chairman of the PDP’s Board of Trustees, Chief Tony Anenih, debunked suggestions that the PDP could lose the next general elections.

    ‘When the time comes,” he declared, “I will assure you we will do what we know how to do best.”

    The elections are not due until 2015, but the biggest vote-harvesting machine in Africa showed this past week that, despite the conflicts rocking it, doing what it knows how to do best, namely, turning winners into losers and losers into winners, is still its standard operational procedure, its trademark.

    And the fingerprints of the Arch Fixer himself, Tony Anenih, are stamped all over the deed.

    I am referring to last week’s election for the chair of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), an extra-constitutional body that has grown influential to the point of making President Goodluck Jonathan panicky and insecure, despite the awesome powers of his office. As a consequence, he has had to invest his prestige, as well as enormous public resources, to ensure that the incumbent chair, Rivers State Governor Chibuike Amaechi, would not win reelection.

    Since it was bruited several months ago that Amaechi would serve as running mate to Jigawa State Governor Sule Lamido in the 2015 presidential race, with Obasanjo’s blessing, it was clear that Amaechi’s days as chair of the NGF were numbered, and that his relationship with President Jonathan, who has given every indication of entering the race except formally declaring, as well as his political future, were in grave jeopardy.

    Amaechi has been a marked man since then.

    The NGF election planned for February was rescheduled for May, apparently in the hope that, by then, the assets needed to defenestrate Amaechi would have been fully deployed. The contrived kerfuffle over his official plane, operations permit and all that, was part of the grand strategy.

    Meanwhile, the alleged waywardness of the NGF under Amaechi’s leadership, it has been said, was more than sufficient to make Aso Rock engineer the creation of a complaisant faction, the PDP Governors Forum, with Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom as chair.

    As if to put Amaechi on notice that his number was well and truly up, Anenih, reportedly echoing the “oga” at the very top, complained at a meeting of state governors, federal legislators and state chairpersons of the PDP in Asaba, Delta State, that the NGF had become “a formidable group of power wielders seeking to control governments at all levels.”

    Translation: The NGF had become a subversive organisation.

    The body, he said, had been “hijacked by “opposition” Governors and was no longer promoting the interests of the PDP.”

    Just why governors elected on five different party platforms expressly for “providing a common platform for synergy, collaboration among interests” and serving as a lobby group to foster, promote and sustain democratic ethos, good governance in Nigeria, Africa and beyond” should promote the interests of the PDP, Anenih did not deign to explain.

    But thus was the stage set for last week’s NGF showdown election to put Amaechi in his place.

    In that dubious quest, Dr Jonathan and Anenih seem to have been worsted.

    Of the 35 governors present and voting, Amaechi won the backing of 19, according to the returning officer for the election and director-general of the NGF, Ashishana Okauru, who described the poll as fair and transparent.

    Plateau State Governor Jonah Jang, who had been dragooned into the race at the last minute when neither Jonathan’s favoured candidate, Katsina Governor Ibrahim Shema nor Bauchi Governor Isa Yuguda who also had his eye on the job would step down for the other, garnered 16 votes.

    In the normal run of things, that should have settled it. But nobody has ever accused the PDP of subscribing to normality. And so, no sooner had Amaechi finished delivering his acceptance speech than the PDP launched its desperate bid to turn Amaechi’s victory into defeat and Jang’s defeat onto victory.

    The election, they claimed, was “rigged.” An election with just 35 candidates rigged? Consider what could happen in 2015, when the stakes would be much higher. Shifting gears, they claimed that the ballot papers had not been unnumbered serially. But why didn’t they point this out before voting began? Amaechi should have stepped down so that a neutral person could conduct the poll. Again. Why was no objection raised at the outset?

    Were they severally and jointly anaesthetised?

    Leaving nothing to chance, a conclave of 18 governors hastily organised another poll and proclaimed Jang the winner and new chair of the NGF. There is nothing curious here: this in-your-face brazenness is the modus operandi of Africa’s biggest vote-snatching machine. They don’t do subtlety at Wadata Plaza.

    Even by Nigeria’s standard in matters political, Jang’s speech at a special service ahead of “Democracy Day” at the Faith-way Chapel Church in Jos, the Plateau State capital, seems rather exorbitant.

    His “emergence” as chairman of the NGF, he asserted without fear and without irony, was “the will of God” because he had gone to Abuja merely an as an elector, only to be chosen by his colleagues to lead the organisation.

    As if anticipating those who might question why the divine should be insinuated into a project that bears all the marks of the profane, he declaimed: “God is a democrat, does not support rigging but if you rig and succeed, that means God approves of it.”

    So, there you have it.

    Even with his “suspension” from the PDP for allegedly defying the “directive” of the Rivers State Executive Council – of which he is chairman, by the way – to reinstate the executive council of a local government he had dissolved, and with his declaration of unswerving loyalty to President Jonathan and the party and all its grandees, Amaechi must entertain no illusions that his travails are ended.

    Soon, they will charge him with engaging in “anti-party activities” and expel him.

    But in whatever guise or disguise it functions henceforth, the NGF will be yet another symbol, and a constant reminder, of all that is wrong with the formation that calls itself the biggest political party in Africa.

    I verily believe with his spokespersons that President Jonathan had absolutely nothing to do with these developments.

    After all, he was away in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, availing a sub-Committee of the Africa Union of his globally recognised expertise on infrastructure, a subject so dear to his heart, and in the development of which he has achieved such transformative results at home, that he passed up his turn to address the full Summit.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Praise Chinua! Bury Chinua!

    Praise Chinua! Bury Chinua!

    Cheer and jeer greeted ‘There was a Chinua’, the Achebe obituary published on this page last week: cheer for perceived comeuppance and jeer for bitter pains over the alleged disrespect to the memory of a departed icon. But the message was clear: everyone would be judged by his own professed standards – so be fair to all. It’s a hot war out there. Don’t be caught by zipping bullets!

     

     

    Excellent piece, in your accustomed depth, thoughtfulness, grasp of the subject matter and lucidity. I can’t resist saying excellent indeed. Well done and thank you. – +2348034004252.

    Achebe started well, capturing the minds of all literate country men and women with the classic novel, Things Fall Apart. But he started faltering with the tribal-induced The Trouble with Nigeria; and destroyed whatever remains of the respect other ethnic nationalities, other than his Igbo tribesmen, had for him. He died a dyed-in-the-wool hater of the Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani nations. To Achebe, only his tribesmen deserve to dominate and others must not complain.

    His is a good lesson to all our so-called elders. If they cannot add nationalistic value to the Nigerian state before their departure from this planet, they should hold their peace. There was indeed a Chinua! There goes another tribalist and an Igbo irredentist. – Adeniyi Olasunmade, Lagos.

    Your article, ‘There was a Chinua’ was apt, blunt and educative. Thanks. – Chief T. A. Odofin, Ofada, Ogun State, +2348103113512

    I am an avid reader of The Nation just to keep abreast of the Yoruba opinion on every issue under the sky. Your column today did not disappoint. – +2348055105774.

    All of you are living to hate Achebe because he documented the truth to the world about the sins of Awo. You can only heal your conscience by stating your facts to contradict his own. ‘There was a Chinua’ you said and I ask: would there ever be an Olakunle? – Amadi Ibeleme, +2348066516467

    It makes no sense for an Achebe to claim ignorance of events he witnessed. My father told us stories of how Hausas slaughtered his Igbo friends in Zaria in 1966 – same story Achebe told [in There was a Country]. I have read the remarks he made of our dear sage, Pa Awo. But Achebe wrote with conviction. He didn’t spare Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, neither did he spare Ojukwu. – +2348132634663.

    I just finished reading your piece, ‘There was a Chinua’. I do not, with due respect, really understand what you want to portray or achieve with it. To me, you have done what you accused others of – tribalism. Let’s learn to write positively about our fallen compatriots. – Kelvin, The Polytechnic, Ibadan +2348033660174.

    Your piece on Achebe this week was excellent! – Wale Adebanwi.

    Your piece on Achebe registers on the superlative scale. Salute! – Tade Ipadeola, +2348038023412.

    Truth is always bitter but it must be told. Achebe was a statesman. No amount of calumny can prevent it. – +2348038762465.

    The tribute given by Labaran Maku, the Information minister, on behalf of President Goodluck Jonathan, that Prof. Achebe was a nationalist to emulate by Nigerians must be a product of a brainless intellectual. Achebe was a literary genius worldwide. But he was also a chronic tribalist. His writings are good attestations. – Larry Adebisi, Lagos, +2348060227434.

    ‘There was a Chinua’ – that piece today was great. – Jimo Akeran, +2348023096362.

    Just read your ripples on Achebe – my sentiments exactly. Your conclusion is on point – insightful. But what to do to avoid that Nigerian harm? Sovereign national conference. – +2348023157882.

    How sad that you too are a victim of Yoruba tribalism. Why are you so bitter with a dead man for chronicling an event that he witnessed, the way he saw it? Though you tried rather fruitlessly to balance your write-up as all professional writers should, you failed to disguise your hatred for Achebe and the Igbo tribe. You stopped short of openly mocking Achebe at death. The title of your article was even cheeky, the comparison between your tribesman, Soyinka and Achebe gratuitous and, at this mourning period of the fall of a great Nigerian, very indiscreet and insensitive. I got off with the impression that you had a score to settle with Achebe; and his death offered the opportunity to do it. – +2347030398497.

    ‘There was an Achebe’ is vintage your provenance. But one could read the complex driving your striving, as your views therein are not necessary. In fact, they are uncalled for on this solemn occasion. I am looking forward to the day your Yoruba compatriots would rise above certain innate instincts. – Peter, +2348093912933.

    I am ashamed to know that you are very illogical in your war against Achebe. As a Yoruba, I have read There was a Country and believe Achebe spoke against injustice to all. There was nothing wrong in the way he defended his people, after all, they have suffered the most in Nigeria, against their wish. Please have some respect for the late icon. – Sarah Isijola, +2348132634663.

    You truly have come to bury Chinua, not to praise him. Thanks for a thoughtful piece. Never mind that it didn’t sufficiently explore the psychology of Igbo chauvinism and ‘victimhood’. – Femi Macaulay, +2348020339050.

    That was a wonderful piece on Achebe. You have called a spade a spade. You should not be deterred by some reactionaries over such a factual presentation. Kudos. – Niyi, Lagos, +2348023377135.

    Genius and gerontocrats have one thing in common: set minds. You hardly can convince them or make them see reason from a different perspective. So it was with Achebe. I think the Federal Government and those who want a posthumous recognition for him should let him be. Otherwise, he will turn in his grave. Achebe had defined his part as an Igbo irredentist – a truly Igbo of Nigerian extraction. – Olumide, Kaduna, +2348057277770.

    Your article, ‘There was a Chinua’ was good but deficient. I want you to bear in mind that other Nigerians see the late Awo’s politics as insecure, insensitive and rancorous. – +2348033334562.

    Your ‘There was a Chinua’ is thought provoking. It has set me on a spiral of thoughts and wonder about our national figures. How many are nationalists? When shall we place Nigeria as a collective over and above our tribes? Until we see ourselves first as Nigerian before our tribal sentiments, all efforts towards nationalism will keep raising local champions, rather than Nigerian nationalists. – +2348071023711.

    I couldn’t have agreed with you more – ‘There was a Chinua’ – Achebe died a frustrated and bitter man, as well as a jingoist. – Wale Osoba, +2348023264597.

    Achebe’s book, ‘There was a Country’ is a hard and bitter pill to swallow. It takes a strong will and courage of a lion to damn the consequences of saying the truth. Achebe did the best thing by telling his people the truth of the Civil War. If Awo was a god to the Yoruba, that had nothing to do with the right of the Igbo man to say exactly how he perceived him. – Barrister Orji, Port Harcourt, +2348030961855.

    I wish I can write like you. You are too good and very familiar with national issues, thus helping people like me to know. Please keep up the excellent work. – Ogoo, Abuja, +2348054727240.

  • This‘monster’ is our brother!

    There is a mail making the rounds in social media network routes. It has come on the heels of the savage butchering of a British soldier in broad daylight. It is doubtful if anyone remains who has not heard of the despicable incident that happened in the Woolwich area of London on Wednesday just gone by. The man, Lee Rigby, known as Riggers to his friends and family was first hit by a vehicle, then dragged into the road, then using the tarmac as their slab, the assailants, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale had his head chopped off…

    In case you have not seen it, I post below, excerpts of the mail, essentially a call to Nigerians, to deny our connection with the assailants suggesting that the links are nothing but tenuous.

    “Nigerians all over the world should speak out and condemn the beheading of a citizen yesterday in UK. The beheading was done by a British citizen and not a Nigerian as speculated; his name does not confirm his nationality. This lunatic was born in the United Kingdom, never been to Nigeria, [he has been] issued a birth certificate in the UK and holds a British passport. Suddenly he is now a Nigerian?

    This guy is not a Nigerian….. British born Michael ‘Mujahid’ Adeboloja with an accomplice yesterday beheaded a British Soldier on a street in Woolwich, London…. Nigeria should just be left out of this…”

    As with most viral media messages, it is not clear who has authored this but the person is clearly a passionate and patriotic compatriot. Their response reminds me of our erstwhile Minister of Information Professor Dora Akunyili’s response to the matter of the botched American airline bombing attempt. She declared then that suicide bombing is “not in our character”. Hers was the official coalescing of the views of many who chose to deny the culprit, to find reasons why he should not be identified as one of us, in spite of the fact that his father, a highly placed, and ostensibly responsible and respected member of the Nigerian society. “Oh, his mother is from Yemen”. “He schooled in Togo”.“He was resident in London; see what they have done to our son”. That’s was the closest we came to identifying with him.

    To those sentiments above, I should add the age old one that is common in Nigeria when things go awry– the wicked have done their worst! Though not uttered on that occasion, it was implied at least in the compassionate views expressed about the villain. This sort of denial is rampant on such occasions especially within the domestic sphere. It is evidence of a blame culture, a refusal to accept responsibility to contribute to the restoration of a broken equilibrium. We are quick to wash our hands and distance ourselves from the aberrant. We would rather not explore the unpleasant situation to see if and how we might be culpable in the transgression. So homes are broken on account of erring children. “A good child is the father’s” we say; when a child offends the mother is to be punished – excised from the family home with ignominy, for polluting the stock.

    Very well but whatever happened to the view that it takes a village to raise a child? We now live in a global village. Many who were born in Nigeria are raised, or are raising children in various parts of the world.

    As a British Nigerian, here is my reply to the call to shun the Woolwich attackers. I deplore the act unequivocally, regardless of who may have committed it. I am definitely disappointed that the despicable deed can be associated to Nigeria even if remotely. I understand why compatriots resent such associations but we should not bury our heads in the sand or deny our own. The name Adebolajo attests to a Nigerian connection. And deplorable as the crime may be, as a Nigerian, I will not disown Michael Adebolajo, nor should you. We should stop to consider his folk. How they must feel at this time. How they must feel at the monstrosity he’s turned out to be. We should all be concerned that other seed of Nigerian descent do not become so corrupted. What can we do to ensure that Nigeria’s children walk uprightly and attain glorious heights? That should be our concern. After all, when British-born Nigerians do well, we are happy to claim them as our own. Let’s not be fair weather friends. This monster is our brother. At least he is our brother’s son.

    Regardless of the bad press that prevails at this time, I am still proud to be a Nigerian for the fact that one deviant element does not reflect the whole. I know there are many more like him, in perhaps not so dissimilar ways. They exist in Nigeria, in the UK and in other nations of the world. May I remind us of Anders Behring Breivik, the man who in 2011 killed 77 people in a bomb attack and gun rampage in Norway? Norway is not known for violence, neither is Newtown, Connecticut U.S.A. the scene of the chilling gun attack that claimed the lives of 20 children, six adults including the mother of the gunman. That gunman then killed himself – 27 lives in all, wasted just like that in December 2012 and for what? Bizarre, yes; just like the acts of the deranged Michaels. So you see – it is not about nationality, race or religion. They are depraved, and they should be dealt with appropriately.

    Undoubtedly, media representations are important. They influence how individuals and groups are defined. So, I understand, even appreciate the objection to the media labelling of these guys, done by introducing a qualifier which distances them from the dominant group. By describing them as being of Nigerian descent, there is a distancing from these Britons; perhaps as a means of explaining the barbaric nature of the act. After all, previous acts of terror had been brazen and brutal, but none had been so savage – head chopped off with a cleaver in full glare of the public. It is stuff from nightmares, played out in horror films, best not imagined, but it happened.

    The media is justified to present the facts and we must be measured in our reaction to the reports.

    Rightly, the mail going round lists Nigerians who have brought glory to the Britain – the land of their birth, and to Nigeria – the root of their parents. Sadly, the behaviour of the duo is shameful. Yet, we and folks whose name they share, need not despair. The name Adebolajo may not ring a bell; but till now it had not been associated with notoriety. There are enough Nigerians doing good and I am glad. So yes, warts and all, of my Nigerian heritage I remain proud. The lessons it has taught me I will use. The discipline I have learnt from my culture I’ll deploy. I shall thus strive to do my bit, for God and for country.

     

    • Dr Esan lectures Broadcast Journalism in the United Kingdom.

     

  • Aviation minister’s proxy war

    Aviation minister’s proxy war

    Some ominous sign is already in evidence that President Goodluck Jonathan is gradually transforming into a full-blown dictator. His Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah has with bare-faced impunity, overtly engaged the Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi in a proxy warfare; dramatising the most heinous breach of public morality on behalf of the President, thereby blunting the edges of official conduct and civility. No one can deny the fact that the minister is on errand for the President. Aviation and the state are synonymous. The aviation is federal government and federal government is President Jonathan.

    Since her assumption office, the minister has visited untoward tardiness on the industry which ought to be the nation’s signpost for excellence. One aviation correspondent spoke of her obstructive dominance as the sole reason holistic reformation can never be allowed in the industry as long as she presides over the corruption-plagued ministry.

    If the “Transformation” sloganeering is possible with the minister of aviation, why is it that no Nigerian airport was listed among the best in Africa in the 2013 Skytrax World Best Airport Awards held at Passenger Terminal EXPO, Geneva, Switzerland? To be rated, airports must be top notch in the areas of safety and security, friendliness, passenger facilitation, functionality, among other criteria which all Nigerian airports lack.

    South African airports dominated the top 10 ranking in Africa, with Cape Town International Airport emerging the Best Airport in Africa, followed by Durban King Shaka International Airport and Johannesburg (Tambo) International Airport in 2nd and 3rd places respectively. This year’s awards, voted by airport customers from around the world, garnered 12.1 million responses.

    Egypt’s Cairo International Airport was ranked 4th while the 5th position went to Mauritius International Airport. East London Airport, South Africa, was placed in the 6th position; Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Ethiopia, 7th; and Port Elizabeth Airport, South Africa in 8th position. Morocco’s Marrakech Menara International Airport and Seychelles International Airport ranked 9th and 10th respectively.

    South Africa also made a clean sweep of the Best Airport Staff category with Cape Town International Airport, Durban King Shaka International Airport, Johannesburg International Airport, East London Airport, and Port Elizabeth Airport occupying all the five positions. So, where is the Nigerian aviation reform?

    Addressing the House of Representatives Joint Committee of Aviation and Justice a few days ago, the aviation minister told the committee that Rivers State governor has ran foul of the aviation laws and threatened him with the EFFC and ICPC for operating illegally and violating some Sections of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) laws, as if the Rivers State aircraft imbroglio is responsible for the poor rating of the Nigerian Aviation industry under her watch.

    But she buckled when the joint chairman of the hearing and chairman of justice committee, Ali Ahmed quoted copiously from relevant Sections of the NCAA Act, especially Section 35 which forbids any form of sanction until due notification in writing to aircraft owners was done. Attempt to lie through Caverton Helicopters that the Rivers State Governor has been “operating without valid airworthiness or legal certificate aircraft registered in the name of Bank of Uttah Trustees, but used/operated in the name of Caverton Helicopters” backfired. The Rivers State government presented a letter before the committee on the revenue collected by NAMA on April 26 which indicated payment of $ 389 to the federal government by the Rivers State government for the usage of aviation facilities. In the same token, the minister feigned ignorance of the fact that the aviation authorities ever knew that the Bombardier jet in question has been carrying Coat of Arms of Rivers!

    Aviation minister has been unable to prove the righteousness of her cause in this matter. Nigerians cannot be deceived as to where the body and soul of the minister reside. She has refused to dedicate herself to the revitalisation and rebranding of the aviation industry so as to take out the trash. Under her, mediocrity, incompetence and failure perfectly converge to neutralise the nation’s aspiration for aviation sanity.

    Stella Oduah, no doubt, is craving for clout. She has debased her office for political partisan fights. She is pushing through an opportunistic reform – on behalf of President Jonathan – which forbids private jet owners from air-lifting friends or associates. Under the present aviation reform, President Jonathan alone will be legally permitted to fly over the nation’s airspace with more than 10 presidential aircrafts for campaigns while presidential aspirants of other political parties will have institutional hurdles to contend with. How offensive can this be in a supposedly democratic society?

    The unfolding senecio should not surprise Nigerians. From the outset of his presidency, even on the campaign turf in 2011, the President, aside the nebulous “Transformation Agenda” made no pledge to Nigerians hence none was broken! A “Transformation Agenda” that promises virtual deception to over 200 million citizens can not translate to good governance overnight, including the overhaul of the aviation industry.

    For all the President’s rhetoric on “Transformation Agenda”, the reality is that it is just a fig leaf for conscious power grab. President Jonathan may continue to pursue his oppressive tendencies with fidelity for all he cares, Nigerians are never known, as a people, to permanently attune themselves to oppression and tyranny without asserting their freedom.

    Dictators of all hue begin just the same way the meekly Jonathan strides with consistent vindictiveness, crude politics and opportunism. One can only locate all of this on poor judgment. The truth is that we do not have a president in Aso Rock.

    Nigeria, like any other country under the yoke of dictatorial dereliction, will certainly overcome the appurtenances and deception masquerading as leadership. It happened in the perilous days of President Ibrahim Babangida; we saw the exhibition of raw and murderous power in the ruinous years of the demented dictator, General Sanni Abacha; we bemoaned and stampeded the repellent administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Third Term Agenda. We celebrated their vanity and fickleness in grand style such that will forbid intending dictators to recoil to self-consciousness and vigilance, that they too will have their days in the hall of infamy.

    In this trying times, Nigerians cannot afford an absolute dictator driven by unrestrained ambition and propensity to breach the laws and the constitution he swore to uphold; using extreme and cruel tactics to subdue his own people. Putting power into wrongful use amounts to weakness on the part of a leader. President Jonathan may still grasp the essential cause – and with chance, possibly help the nation to shape the new future.

  • Last throw of the dice

    Last throw of the dice

    No fewer than 2000 Nigerians have reportedly fled to Niger Republic from Borno State as the effect of the state of emergency and concomitant military action declared on the state and two others in the north east last week by President Goodluck Jonathan begins to bite.

    And as the people head to destination unknown in desperation, one can only hope that their flight from home would not be permanent and that the president would return peace to the troubled region very soon.

    Restoring peace and security to Borno, Adamawa, Yobe states in particular and the rest of northern Nigeria under threat of annihilation from the rest of the country by Boko Haram insurgents would be the greatest single challenge and achievement of the Jonathan presidency and could determine whether he gets another term in office in 2015.

    The fact that the man has decided to use the sledge hammer now shows how desperate he is to get the Boko Haram problem behind him and face the other dangers facing his bid to retain power post 2015 presidential election.

    Jonathan probably reckons he needs to quell the insurgency first before he could ask us for our votes again but he may have left his action too late as it is doubtful whether the latest of his military actions against the terrorists would not just end the problem but also endear him to Nigerians, especially our compatriots in the north.

    To win this war he needs time and that he doesn’t seem to have as presidential election is due in about twenty months from now. Before polling day the party primaries and other pre-election party activities to choose the presidential candidate would have taken place much earlier, say late next year or early 2015.

    To be in a good position to get his party’s ticket and win our votes at the polls, he would need to have run Boko Haram out of town by not later than this time next year and begin a physical and political building process in the affected region to restore faith and confidence in himself and his administration.

    But can he “finish” off Boko Haram in one year?

    According to the military high command, the ongoing military onslaught against the terrorists is beginning to yield positive results. But it is early days yet and nobody should be carried away by the initial success of the “shock and awe” tactics employed by the military. This is expected more so as helicopter gun-ships and fighter jets were being deployed for the first time against the terrorists. But we have all seen this type of tactics employed elsewhere and victory declared only for the Commander-In-Chief to eat his words. Recall that former US president George W. Bush went on a US Navy ship in the Mediterranean to declare victory prematurely in the second Iraqi war for domestic political gains, only for the Iraqi insurgents backed by Al Qaeda to storm back forcefully in a series of hit and run attacks that left the Americans and their allies gasping for breath.

    The way President Jonathan spoke and his body language during his national broadcast announcing the state of emergency showed a man desperate to win the war on terror and combat insecurity and not a man convinced and determined to do so. And in his desperation he could do a number of things including genocide and other crimes against humanity just to be seen to be tough and on top of the situation and convince his doubters (who are in their millions) that he deserves another term in office.

    This is where the danger lies. I can’t see this war ending in six months or one year, but the longer it persists the worse it would get for President Jonathan’s second term ambition. So the man would want to end it quickly, and in doing so, his military could be given the power to even commit murder within the amorphous power conferred by the provision of the state of emergency.

    We have seen how brutish our soldiers could be even when operating under normal times as in the Odi town massacre and Zaki Biam destructions and killings. We have seen a taste of it in Baga under Jonathan’s watch; even in Jos. As his desperation grows, more of such could happen, but it would be counter productive both for the nation and the president’s political agenda/ambition.

    To inflict a collective punishment on the people in Boko Haram infested areas could only end the war but not bring peace as the innocents that suffered could end up being alienated from the government and holding grudge against the Nigerian state and her institutions like the police and other security agencies. Remember injustice was at the core of Boko Haram’s grievances, albeit misplaced, against the Nigerian state.

    There is therefore, the need for the rule of engagement to be clearly spelt out for our military in this war against terror and all those involved should be told in clear terms that any breach will be punished with the full application of the law. Both the commanders and the troops should know this. And just as well, the terrorists should also know that they would account for their actions not just to God but also to Nigeria and the international community.

    The tendency is also there for Jonathan, the politician, to want to beat his chest too early to claim victory in this war; this is not just dangerous and could amount to merely postponing the evil day, but could also give a false sense of security and lure the people into complacency and into harm’s way of Boko Haram. Iraq is there as an example, even after the Americans have exited peace is still elusive.

    So, the military must be thorough and professional and remain as long as it takes to restore peace to the north east and other troubled spots in the north and should not succumb to any political pressure to declare victory prematurely.

    But it would be foolish to think this war on terror on its own would bring peace and guarantee security not just in the troubled areas alone but all over the country without a political programme. Jonathan must pursue a political solution side by side with this war and in doing this must carry along the political class, the elites, elders, opinion leaders, and religious leaders in particular and the youth. Every segment of society, every good hand must be brought on board to achieve peace and security in that region.

    Some have argued that the declaration of state of emergency is half-hearted because the democratic structures are still in place in those states and could be a hindrance to the effectiveness of the emergency rule. This is neither here nor there. But suffice to say that if everybody is sincere, we can all work together to restore peace to our land and the president must take the lead, sincerely. But I have my doubt whether he can stay above politics and do the right thing in the interest of our unity and security. But he was no other choice. This is his last chance; his last throw of the dice. So to speak. If he fails, his 2015 project would go with it.

     

  • What’s in emergency?

    What’s in emergency?

    Before the proclamation of state of emergency in the three states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa by President Goodluck Jonathan Tuesday May 14, the insurgents may have imagined that by scaling up their terror machine, the typically weak-kneed Jonathan administration would literally be on its knees begging them to come to table for discussions. Going by developments in the past week, they may have tragically misfired. Not only does it seem unlikely that things would go their way in the near term, even more unlikely is the prospect of gaining an upper hand – ever.

    Recently on this page – that is, shortly after the so-called Baga massacre of April 16, I had predicted an escalation of the crisis. My simple reason was that the insurgents would most certainly misread the outrage over what was generally perceived to be the military Joint Task Force’s excessive use of force to upscale their offensive. Of course, with the military left to rue the aftermath of the unfortunate situation, the opportunity to cash upon the condemnations provoked by that military action would seem too good a chance to miss – by the insurgents and their sympathisers – to further pin the JTF’s back to the wall. Don’t forget that the amnesty committee had also started work on the purpose-made amnesty for the mass murderers days before; for the group, the strategy became one of coming to table only on terms that they find agreeable.

    That was the premise of my prognosis of possible heightened hostilities. Well, it turned out a bull’s eye four weeks later. On May 7, the insurgents staged another high profile assault in Bama that left 55 people, mostly soldiers and policemen dead. Since then, it has been regular tales of unrelenting skirmishes.

    I have followed the various shades of the argument either to justify or declaim the emergency. I can only say that we would not be the complex people that we are said to be without the typical hair-splitting debates over nothing of substance really. So what – that the federal government is finally standing up to its duty of routing the band of savages?

    And the arguments? Some say that the emergency is unwarranted. They cite the fact that the affected states are already heavily militarised which makes the proclamation superfluous. Should that be a problem?

    Others on the other side of the continuum insist that the emergency did not go far enough, that the democratic structures should not have been left intact. So, how about drawing an iron curtain around the three states for effect?

    Admittedly, those in the category of the former are a negligible minority; however, that alone does not necessarily make them wrong. What makes their prescriptions far off the mark is the understatement of the nature of the problem, a lack of appreciation of how far deep the roots of the insurgency lies buried in the communities North-east, and, if I may add, the denial that any prospects of resolving the security challenges stands a no-hoper without a strong, deterrent force firmly on the ground.

    As for the latter group, I do not think that anyone should be in doubt about what an emergency is supposed to achieve. The main idea is to restore normalcy to the states affected by the insurgency. Aside the requirement of the need to restore law and order, hence the authority of the government, nothing in the 1999 Constitution (as amended) even remotely suggest the supplanting of the democratic order by any other arrangement. In any case, removing the elected functionaries in the circumstance would have pronounced them complicit in the crisis – and this unfortunately so in a situation where they have no control of the police and other security agencies all of which are under the direction of the federal government.

    Now, just by the carnage unleashed by the terrorists in Borno and Yobe in the last few months, Tuesday’s action by the President would appear several months late in coming. The exception would be the inclusion of Adamawa – a relatively peaceful state among the states under emergency rule. Even then, the government has since clarified that the latter’s proximity to Cameroon and the need for the military to have a wide area of coverage justified its inclusion.

    The issue of course is that the nation is at war. Those preferring to live in denial are free to choose whatever to believe. What cannot be denied is that the war is being fought on land and in the skies; and we are told that both sides have the most lethal arsenal available for modern warfare. As for the prospects of a negotiated peace, this will certainly come – but only after a decisive tilt in the scale of battle.

    Now, my sympathy goes to those dreamy-eyed Nigerians who still nurse the dream that the nation would at some point be able to tap into the inherent goodness of mass murderers. Or that the Boko Haram would one day be amenable to reason without unleashing the awesome power of the federal government as we have seen in the past week. Unlike them, I suffer no blind faith that the terrorists who freely lob bombs into places of worship, those deranged fellows who have been unrestrained in the use of weapons of mass destruction, would overnight become purveyors of peace. I have argued elsewhere, it won’t happen. It has to be made to happen.

    To me, the whole point about the emergency is to make the cost of the insurgency so unbearable to the elements of the Boko Haram as to make the option of peace desirable. Now, with the JTF boots firmly on the ground, the citizens of the communities – yes, the innocent victims – have one good chance to demonstrate good faith: to assist the JTF to rid their territory of the brigands. It seems to me the only way to shorten their own pains too. That is what citizenship demands. Any other suggestion is bunkum.

     

     Feedback

     

    Re; Madam Rufai’s other children

    Dear Mr Oni, do you know that there is a department of Business Administration in each of our tertiary educational institutions? What businesses are these army of graduates to administer? Short-term: enhance artisanship and convert the hordes of educated unemployed to artisans. If you have reliable SUREP links, there are credible trainers with fast track programmes.

    Medium to long-term: overhaul the NUC for a planning-driven platform. Femi Fadairo

    Your position on Madam Rufai’s lamentation as regards inadequate tertiary institutions to absorb candidates is timely and commendable. I am not surprised however because lamentation is the beacon of Jonathan’s administration. We should truly go back to the vocational trainings of yore. Government should ensure that discrimination against HND vis avis degree certificates should be discouraged. Let us de-emphasise paper qualification because it leads to all manners of malpractices. Agaba Okpe

  • Restoring sanity to Delta’s transportation

    Restoring sanity to Delta’s transportation

    As a resident in Delta, one development that has impressed me greatly is transport. The administration of Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan has no doubt given transportation uncanny attention deserving of some mention. Part of this transformation agenda has made Delta Line buses with its white and blue colour a common feature in towns and villages of Delta State and many cities in Nigeria. This leads me to conclude that across Nigeria, Delta state comes tops in such well organized, integrated transportation structure with public buses almost outnumbering privately operated buses.

    Because of what I observed, I decided to research further the extent and impact of Delta government transport policy. The intervention in transportation by the government of Uduaghan became prominent in 2008, with the establishment of Delta state urban mass transit scheme when Governor Uduaghan launched 168 brand new Toyota Corolla cars. Some of the Toyota set of cars were given out to interested drivers as part of government empowerment program; others were allocated to Delta Line Transport Company for commercial purposes.

    In 2009 and 2010, the state government further increased the fleet with the purchase and commissioning of 100 and 200 number brand new Hiace buses. This holistic approach in transportation should be recognized as a major infrastructure development, a critical component of the three-point agenda of Uduaghan administration. It is also a demonstration of the Delta administration’s total commitment to opening up the state to attract tourist and investors.

    By the acquisition of 800 vehicles, comprising Hiace buses, Toyota taxi cars and Marcopolo buses, the governor has stemmed the hitherto crisis that greeted the transport sector during the deregulation of the petroleum downstream sector early 2012.

    Similarly, in marine transportation, hundreds of 19U speed boats have been acquired, while several jetties have been built in the coastal communities. Over 21 of such landing jetties were provided between 2008 and 2010 fiscal year. The Delta publics, who are mainly the beneficiaries, have shown great enthusiasm and gratitude to their loving governor for this intervention, particularly, with the regulated fare. The downward review of the fares has had tremendous impact as it has put private operators in check.

    In a random poll which I conducted across Delta state over several months. I found many respondents reacting differently to the state government’s programme especially after the introduction of tricycles, popular called Keke, in addition to the buses and the regulated use of motorcycle in certain communities in Delta communities.

    For example when I spoke with a tricycle operator in Asaba, the state capital, Jonathan Ator, believes that the regime of tricycles and buses have been very beneficial to both the operators and commuters. To the operators, it has restored sanity in the sector and reduced frequent accidents occasioning limbs and leg fractures. “I feel a lot safer driving my tricycle, and the daily turnover is mouth watering”, says the unemployed Sociology graduate who prefers it to Okada for the safety it offers. Another commuter, this time a house wife and civil servant, Ruth Okuns, said, even though, it is yet to reach the door steps of many homes, it guarantees more safety for her and her little kids who daily employ the services of tricycle for school runs. She commended Uduaghan’s initiative in this direction. Jaros Jarikre, who combines work and schooling and traverses Asaba where he works and Abraka, his school location, described the revolution as God’s intervention. A ride to Abraka from Agbor, he said, is one of comfort. “All of us on this route have called the bluff of these shylock private operators, which hitherto have made travelling a nightmare. At the moment, those private buses hardly exist. I doubt if they still exist.

    Deacon Aburi Adams, said members of the public have embraced the revolution as society and government is dynamic. There is nothing wrong with the innovation; he lauded the state government for its policy directives in the transport sector, describing it as wonderful. However, he called on the government to make the roads more motorable, so that more tricycles can reach the door steps of the commuters.

    A public analyst in Warri, the commercial city of Delta State, Richards Achums described the Uduaghan revolution in the transport sector as novel. He said in Delta state, commuters feel very comfortable with government intervention. The visibility of Delta Lines buses, now popularly known as Uduaghan Buses in every part of the state has made transport fare very competitive. The masses now have alternative.

    What is not lost on me is that this revolution which the governor brought into the transport sector of the state underscores the government’s commitment to good governance. The mass transit program though remarkable a populists program has helped to ease the burden of the people greatly.

    The economic vision did not only cushion the hardship of the deregulation of the downstream sector, it also provided the jobs for youths in commercial transportation with opportunity and today it is a success story.

    The Uduaghan administration has procured 800 vehicles comprising Toyota taxi cabs, 500 Hiace buses, 60 Marcopolo buses, 10 Tata buses and 130 boats deployed to various communities in the state. This has immensely improved the transport sector and reduced the stress associated with daily movement of Deltans.

    It is my hope that the administration will build on this before it leaves office in 2015. Deltans have suffered a lot and deserves the continuation of this relief.

     

    • Ejiro Idama is a public affairs commentator, who lives in Asaba state

     

  • Passages in the fraternity

    Passages in the fraternity

    In the past six months, the fraternity of Nigerian journalists has lost four of its ablest, all of them of my generation.

    Not to the lucrative field of Public Relations or corporate communications, or to the political bureaucracy, with its delusions of power and influence, but to the cold, undiscriminating handsof death.

    I knew Ayo (Arena) Ositelu, one of the four, only through his writings on sport. Now, sportswriting, like sports casting, is probably the most cliché-ridden journalistic form. String a few stock phrases together; garnish it with some atmospherics; deliver the product with breathless excitement, and you were well on the way to a career in sports journalism.

    The resulting narrative was predictable. But it was rarely remarkable or memorable.

    Ositelu was different.

    Tennis was his passion. And whenever he reported a tennis match, he made you see the flow and ebb, the crosscutting currents of play. He made you know not just the player but the person behind the racquet. He made you feel the atmosphere. He transported you to the scene of action.

    And he did so in graceful, riveting and uncluttered prose, and in a context that gave the event full meaning. You knew you were in the hands of an expert guide and a craftsman who cared deeply about words, chose them with precision, and deployed them with telling effect.

    Someone once rebuked Ositelu for “wasting “such elegant writing on tennis, of all things.

    The fellow must have been weaned on the tradition of sports writing that I described earlier – the one rooted in stringing a few stock phrases together, throwing in some atmospherics, and delivering the package with breathless excitement.

    But there is a richer and nobler tradition — one that elevates sports writing to the status of serious literature, even great literature. Here I am thinking of the writings of AJ Liebling and Grantland Rice in the first half of the last century, and their American compatriot Red Smith, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the third Mohammed Ali – Joe Frazier fight, “The Thrilla in Manilla”.

    I am thinking of Frank Deford, the contemporary National Public Radio personality who has parlayed sports writing into an art form. I am thinking especially of Ernest Hemingway’s gripping writings on bull fighting

    On the other side of the Atlantic, I am thinking of Peter Wilson of The Mirror, called by avid sports fans “the world’s greatest sports writer, on account of his great mastery of that form, and High McIlvanney, the Scotsman who has written for a string of British publications with enchanting facility on soccer, boxing, and horse racing.

    On our own shores, intimations of that tradition of sports writing as literature perfused the work of Bonar Ekanem and Peter “PECOS” Osugo, and is stamped on the commentary of the unfailingly delightful Bisi Lawrence.

    Ayo Ositelu kept that tradition alive until he breathed his last.

    I knew Victor Ogundipe the way I knew Ositelu: through his reporting of the economy, particularly banking and corporate finance. Ogundipe pioneered that genre in Nigeria, along with two or three others. Before him, that kind of reporting was perfunctory at best.

    He wrote about the subject incisively and engagingly and transformed it to the substance of headlines and the frontpages. With his boyish good looks and an elegant wardrobe, he brought glamour and not a little excitement to the trade, at a time the Nigerian economy was caught in the throes of a Structural Adjustment Programme.

    Ogundipe’s kind of expertise was just what the burgeoning banking industry needed, and for a time, he was its articulate and personable public face.

    But he was soon caught up in the intrigues that governed banking and left on terms not entirely his own. His plans to return to financial journalism did not materialise, and he left Nigeria for the United States, where he lived until he died late last year.

    Although he left active journalism more than two decades ago, he was at his death remembered as a pioneer and an innovator. There is no greater tribute.

    Ashikiwe Adione-Egom I knew quite well. I went to work for The Guardian, on leave from the University of Lagos, shortly after he burst on the scene with a 10-part serial for that publication that he signed with the self-deprecating byline, “The Motor-Park Economist“.

    I would learn later that he had had his secondary education at King’s College, Lagos, where he and Guardian managing director Stanley Macebuh were classmates,had entered Cambridge to study archaeology and branched into economics and social anthropology, and that had once served as a financial adviser to the Central Bank of Tanzania.

    He had joined The African Guardian at its inception and served as its editor for several months while maintaining a regular column on the economy for The Guardian.

    There was always something of the tramp about Peter Alexander Egom, as he later chose to be known. The settled life – home, wife, family, personal possessions — was not for him. He preferred to live in hotels or hostels, with as little freight as possible, and with the freedom to move on at short notice to wherever the spirit led him.

    On leaving The Guardian, he went to found and edit the weekly Financial Post. When the publication collapsed, he became resident preacher at a church in Surulere, Lagos, where congregants fondly called him Pastor Luke. Later still, he went to serve as scholar-in residence at the Ibru Ecumenical Centre in Agbarha-Otor, in Delta State.

    For years thereafter, he lived in Abuja in a Catholic facility, courtesy of Archbishop (as he then was) Dr John Onaiyekan. It was then that he wrote his 2002 book, “Globalisation at the Crossroads.”

    The last time I heard of him, he was reportedly affiliated with the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, in some unspecified capacity.

    He cared a great deal about ideas and expounded them with great versatility. But he was no intellectual snob. He was one of the least pretentious scholars I ever met. The Oxbridge thing never got into his head.

    Whatever his circumstances, Egom never lost his engaging, sometimes ribald, sense of humour, and his capacity for friendship.

    And then, Pini Jason, real name Jason Onyegbado. One day I was reading his measured remonstrance of an official of a public agency who claimed he had been victimised for publishing an article criticising its chief executive, Dr Ngozi Okonjo, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy no less.

    It was vintage Jason. Measured. Combative, without being pugnacious.

    Disagreeing, without being disagreeable. Illuminating, without being pedantic.

    During his brief stint in Rutam House, we used to meet at the editorial conferences of The African Guardian of which he was a correspondent and I was contributing editor. I found him enormously well informed.

    His Op-Ed pieces for The Guardian, and his reports for the London-based New African, and for the short-lived ThisWeek magazine were models of clear thinking and lucid writing. The same quality perfused his writing for Vanguard Newspapers, his last stop.

    Jason was as much at home in Lagos and Ibadan as he was in the Igbo country. He wore his Igbo heritage on his lapel but did not make you feel that you should be apologetic that you belong to a different ethnicity. He campaigned for the validation of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, arguing that if the winner MKO Abiola could not take power, it would be hard for an Igbo to become president.

    Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Jason is that he was largely self-taught. If his formal education extended beyond CMS Grammar School, Lagos, he kept it a close secret.

    In life and in journalism, he exemplified the truth that the best part of a person’s education is that part the person gives himself or herself.

    Ayo Ositelu, Victor Ogundipe, Peter Alexander Egom, and Pini Jason: Nigerian journalism is the poorer for their passing.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • There was a Chinua

    There was a Chinua

    I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him – Mark Anthony, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

    Between Things Fall Apart (1958), his first work and There was a Country (2012) his last, Chinua Achebe (1930-2013), the world-acclaimed novelist for burial on May 23, defined himself: an Igbo man from Nigeria, not a Nigerian from Igbo land.

    That was no high crime against Nigeria, a country that is no nation but passionately craves doting nationalists.

    Though English, the coloniser’s language, provided Achebe his vehicle to global fame, the professor, in Things Fall Apart, told a grim tale of how British colonialism smashed the Igbo pristine world: all too clear in the personal tragedy of Okonkwo, that has held the world spellbound for more than 50 years – and still counting.

    But There was a Country was even more censorious of Nigeria than Things Fall Apart was of Britain.

    If Things Fall Apart was a dignified, taut and divinely crafted creative prose that won about everyone’s attention, empathy and awe, There was a Country, a non-fiction that nevertheless bordered on the fictional, with its wild, sweeping and bad-tempered claims; and ringing denunciation of pan-Nigeria sinners doing in the meek Igbo saints, belonged more to the world of the virago than of the grand old sage, where Achebe rightly belonged.

    Not a pretty sight, to be sure. But that was Achebe’s brutally frank (some insist, impassioned) reaction to Nigeria’s ever-unfolding crisis of nationhood, with its penchant for injustice as national ethos; and the insouciance to dominate, with its happy-go-merry march to self destruction.

    That much was clear from the British-programmed Hausa-Fulani hegemony; the brief Igbo ascendancy that ended in Civil War (1967-1970) and fired the Achebe bitterness in There was a Country; the Olusegun Obasanjo me-first-others-never presidential philosophy, disguised as altruistic national ethos; and of course, the brainless muscle-flexing of Goodluck Jonathan’s current Ijaw presidency.

    The most casual of logical introspections, therefore, must reveal that about everyone is a victim in Nigeria’s vast physical, spiritual and psychological killing mine.

    Yet, what Achebe did in his swan song, There was a Country, was to pounce on co-victims in the Nigerian morass; and with the arrogance of a writer’s licence, tarred them as the Igbo enemy.

    Talking about victims, whoever thinks the Hausa-Fulani are not, even of their own past power rascality, must chuckle at the North’s frantic bid for power after Jonathan. Yet, their grand concept of power, untrammelled ethnic over-lordship served as “national interest”, of pre-12 June 1993 Nigeria, is gone and gone for good!

    Perhaps questioning Achebe’s judgment, by his last hurrah, would be going too far. But beyond clannish roar and the emotive whipping of ethnic flag to toast a master race allegedly stopped in its track, There was a Country did not show enough sensitivity to the plight of the Ndigbo still trapped, and the coming generation to be trapped, in the Nigerian debacle. It certainly did not win the Igbo new allies; nor prescribe a reasonable way out of the jam, beyond a shrill orchestration of the Igbo as victim, without admitting the vast ruin of pan-Nigeria victimhood.

    This, of course, is no unanimous verdict. To the Achebe-converted, There was a Country was a tribute to the master storyteller’s brutal candour, like The Trouble with Nigeria (1983) before it.

    But all too often, people come to be judged by their own professed principles; and there is but a thin line between brutal candour and bad grace, particularly when candour is brutally exercised on wrong occasions. So, it is with Prof. Achebe.

    When Obafemi Awolowo died and politically correct jiving was waxing poetic about giving him a “national burial” (even if Awo was only pre-independence Premier of old Western Region), Achebe cut the crap, insisting Awo did not deserve a national burial because he was a “tribalist”. Well, Achebe himself died not exactly a “nationalist”.

    Also, after Wole Soyinka, his great contemporary, won the Nobel, Achebe quipped: winning a European prize did not make Soyinka the Asiwaju of African literature. WS, a wordsmith that takes no prisoners, promptly countered: he had no intention to become the Ogbuefi of African literature! Was Achebe resentful of Soyinka’s win – and why the ethnic colouration?

    That, of course, dovetails into the sterile controversy over WS, Achebe and the Nobel.

    In sheer fecundity, Soyinka’s 34 titles in non-fiction, novels, drama and poetry tower over Achebe’s 20, though Achebe’s tally also includes classics in children stories, as Prof. Biola Odejide, a children’s literature expert formerly of the University of Ibadan, noted in her tribute to Achebe shortly after his death. Even in their primary fortes, Soyinka the playwright with 15 plays trumped Achebe the novelist with five novels.

    But Achebe possessed the arresting simplicity that ensured probably more people have read Things Fall Apart, his flagship classic, than all of Soyinka’s works combined. So, maybe the Nobel committee settled for fecundity over accessibility.

    That was their choice – and it had nothing to do with Achebe’s secured place in global literature, Nobel or no Nobel. In Nigeria’s often ethnic-powered discourse, however, things are not quite that simple and clear-cut.

    But judged from the prism of writer as robust social crusader (which the Nobel citation also noted), Soyinka is it. Beyond strident protests over Ndigbo troubles, Achebe was much more muffled over other Nigerian crises: June 12 crisis, Ken Saro-Wiwa state murder, among others. Soyinka’s The Man Died and You Must Set Forth at Dawn, fully document how Civil War activism sent the author to gaol; and how he rallied global conscience against the Abacha state murder of Saro-Wiwa.

    So, was Achebe roused to action not by injustice per se, but by injustice meted his native Ndigbo? That is no illegitimate poser!

    The literature of Achebe is simple, rigorous, clear and sweet; the majesty of an uncluttered mind that made Things Fall Apart such a classic; and set a benchmark for the African novel.

    But the politics of Achebe is far less edifying: partial, insensitive, rancorous and insecure – all in defence of his Igbo people and culture, against Nigeria’s internal colonisers: hardly a crime.

    The snag is, with all due respect to individual differences, the Igbo elite does not mind dominating others, yet are shrill to protest perceived domination by others. But to all these, Achebe appeared patriotically blind, deaf and dumb; even with his rather indulgent criticism of Igbo brashness and triumphalism. That made There was a Country so rankling.

    Between literature and politics, therefore, an author met own debacle: noxious gas from Nigeria’s institutionalised injustice, and the resultant fierce rivalry, robbing his golden mind of pristine equitability!

    So, there was a Chinua from Nigeria who could easily have been an icon of global justice. But he bowed out as a patriotic ogre against Igbo-tailored injustice – hardly illegitimate in Nigeria’s killing fields.

    Still, that was a much diminished place for his world-acclaimed genius. But it is yet another glaring example of the harm Nigeria does, even to its greatest minds.

  • Our unfortunate police officers

    Our unfortunate police officers

    This has got to be the worst time to be a police officer in Nigeria.

    Not that there was ever a best time or even a good time for that matter, for members of the force have always been poorly trained, ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-equipped, ill-used, and poorly paid into the bargain. Four months after television pictures of the hovels in which they are trained and housed were beamed to a horrified national audience, the conditions remain unchanged.

    In the field, they lack the communication gear and the mobility that may spell the difference not merely between operational success and failure, but even more crucially between life and death for the officers themselves and those they are trying to protect.

    It has long been a standard joke that when beleaguered citizens finally reach the nearest police station with frantic calls that their homes are under attack by armed robbers. the desk officer asks calmly whether the caller can send a vehicle down to convey police team to the scene.

    Sometimes, you even have to supply the stationery for filing a complaint at the police station.

    When it comes to firepower, the police are no match for the hoodlums they are supposed to rein in. I am told that there is a location near FESTAC Town where stolen luxury cars are parked until they can be ferried across the border to be sold off. Geo-positioning technology has traced many a stolen vehicle to that site. But it is so heavily protected by guards packing the most lethal munitions that it is for all practical purposes a no-go area, even for the fearsome mobile police.

    Colossal sums of money raised in the name of the police and purportedly for the well-being of its officers end up in private pockets, and the police cannot even vigorously prosecute the arch-swindler behind the scheme. Their pension funds are embezzled with impunity by the very people who are supposed to keep them in safe and profitable custody.

    As things stand, Nigeria must be the only country where you can swindle the police and suffer no consequences.

    But that is not the worst part. The worst part is that wearing the uniform of the Nigeria police gets more fraught with each passing day.

    In what seemed to signal a resumption of the insurgency in the oil-producing delta, the police have been prime targets and casualties. In one incident scarcely two months ago, 12 police officers on patrol – I used the term loosely, in the American sense, to get round the sexism inherent in “policemen” and “policewomen” – were ambushed, dispossessed of their weapons, killed, stripped of their uniforms, and buried in shallow graves.

    Exactly a week ago, Boko Haram militants attacked Bama, in Borno State, setting alight the police station and the prison. They also attacked the military barracks. By the time they had competed their grisly errand, 55 persons lay dead, among them 22 police officers and 14 prison officials.

    The next day, in Elakyo, near Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital, operatives of a little-known cult identified as Ombatse ambushed a contingent of security officials on a mission to arrest their leader. Early reports said as many as 90 members of the team had been killed. At this writing, some 30 police officers have been certified dead; their remains were mutilated in an orgy of bestiality, and then burned. The cultists are said to be holding roughly the same number of police officers hostage in a secret location.

    Every adult Nigerian probably has his or her own “police story”. More often than not, it is a story of shakedowns, extortion, arbitrariness, of grovelling ingratiation before those they perceive as persons of substance, and of more than occasional casual resort to deadly violence against unarmed civilians.

    But in an exact sense, our police officers are victims thrice over.

    They are victims of the successive governments since independence that have assigned them the task of maintaining law and order without providing the necessary tools to carry it out, without training them adequately, without providing decent housing, without paying them reasonable wages, and without guaranteeing that at the end of their service, they will be paid their entitlements without fuss.

    They are victims of the corruption that flows from the very top and permeates every layer of the police establishment.

    And yet, whenever there is talk of “reorganising” the police, the government falls back on a long line of police chiefs who contributed in no small way to its underdevelopment, the very people believed to have diverted official resources to serve private ends, or who conveniently looked elsewhere as the resources were being diverted.

    Tafa Balogun grew obscenely rich even as police officers had to pay bribes to get their official uniforms. Senior police chiefs were part and parcel of the so-called Police Equipment Fund that was a cover for pillage of public resources and private donations on a scale almost beyond belief. They were silent, funereally silent, while the Police Pension Fund was being systematically looted.

    While serving as full-time Inspector-General of Police, Mike Okiro reportedly ran on the side a construction company that routinely took loans from the banks and put in bids for government contracts. If he had invested more time and attention in projects designed to uplift the police force than he did in scheming with James Ibori, the career thief and former Delta State governor now serving time in a London prison, to hound Nuhu Ribadu out of the EFCC and the police and subsequently into exile, the establishment he once headed would probably not be in its present parlous state.

    And yet, Okiro is the person the Jonathan Administration has tapped to head the Police Service Commission, in the undistinguished company of persons re-appointed to the board despite their record of culpable negligence during their previous tour.

    These, surely, cannot be agents of the transformation Dr Jonathan claims to be promoting.

    The police are also victims, finally, of a society that cares little for law and even less for order; a society wedded to the belief that you can always bribe or buy your way out of every infraction of the law.

    Meanwhile, the Minister of Police Affairs, Caleb Olubolade, has not summoned the decency to hand in his resignation, nor President Jonathan the will to sack him.

    In the end, each society gets the kind of police force it deserves. We will never get the perfect society, and we will never get the perfect police force. But unless and until our police officers are substantially empowered to operate as citizens with a stake in the scheme of things rather than as alienated victims of a pernicious system, their woes will continue, and so will the nation’s.