The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • A nation trapped in mourning

    A nation trapped in mourning

    By Olatunji Dare

     

    For years on, the Nigerian environment has been nothing if not funereal.

    Kidnappings, insecurity of life, horrific accidents, the depredations of Boko Haram and  rampaging cattle herders, killings by syndicated as well as freelance bandits, the declining quality of life, rank incompetence  and misgovernment at all levels, deep mistrust in the personnel and process of government, and a pervasive feeling that the government doesn’t care:  these are just some of the manifestations.

    They are also the staple of the news.  Bad news, bad news and more bad news, with nary a bulletin that promises relief and raises hope.

    This funereal ambience deepened last Friday with reports that the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, just four months old on the job, was killed, along with three generals and seven other officers when the Beachcraft passenger KingAir B350i plane conveying them from Abuja to Kaduna crashed near the Kaduna International Airport.

    Early accounts, corroborated by eyewitnesses, said the plane had exploded and burst into flames before crashing.  An unidentified military spokesperson blamed the incident on “a “sudden change in weather, accompanied by violent storms and lightning.”

    This “sudden change in weather” explains nothing, and those who believe that it is designed to obfuscate, if not pre-empt a comprehensive investigation, cannot be dismissed as cynics.  The record of the military in such matters has been less than transparent.

    Was the crew not apprised of weather reports that should have at the very least hinted at the sudden changes in the weather, and the disruptions they would bring?  Were they operating without the benefit of a weather report?  Or did they choose to discountenance it?

    How did the “sudden changes” affect residents of the area, their homes and farmlands?  How did it affect business and commerce?  How did it affect the structures in the area, including the Kaduna International Airport where the plane crashed, or the Nigeria Air Force Base in Kaduna where, according to inside sources, the plane was supposed to land?  Why the change in landing arrangement?

    These are only some of the important questions that an official inquiry must look into and answer definitively.

    It is at a time like this demanding sure-footed elucidation and clarification, and the utmost professionalism, that we remember and recall with gratitude the life and times of Col (rtd) Nowa Omogui, the veteran surgeon of the Nigerian Army who doubled as a military historian and analyst.  Dr Omoigui died several weeks ago.

    He would have documented in his online archives with his accustomed expertise and painstaking attention vital details concerning the plane, among them the identity of the plane’s manufacturers and their repute or lack thereof.

    He would have documented when the plane was built, its capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. Its safety record.  He would have told us who owned or operated the plane before it was acquired by the Nigerian army.

    Omoigui would have told us the terms of the acquisition.  The service and maintenance and operational records.  He would have detailed the broad meteorological outlook at the time of the incident.

    These are not peripheral issues; they constitute some of the key issues an official inquiry will do well to examine.  Its remit should be as large as possible.

    On no account must the public be subjected again to the kind of prevarication and dilatoriness that marked the death in a freak accident, if accident it was, of Tolulope Arotile, the dashing helicopter pilot of vast promise.  Flight Captain Arotile died instantly in July 2020 when a car ran over her at the Air Force Base in Kaduna.  She had the day off, having just completed a combat mission on the Sambisa front, when she was summoned to the Base.

    Driving by at that very moment, a former schoolmate recognised her.  Excited at the prospect of a brief reunion, the schoolmate put his car in reverse gear, with the object of drawing level with his famous former schoolmate.  In the process, he accidentally ran over her and killed her.

    That, at any rate, was the sophomoric tale spun by the NAF authorities.  At first blush, it seemed to have been designed to preempt an inquiry.  To this day, it remains the official line.

    The “sudden-change-in-weather” theory that has been bruited concerning last week’s Beachcraft plane may well have been lifted from that playbook, so as to predispose investigators to work towards a predetermined answer.

    This time, the authorities must regard any investigation as a test of their transparency and accountability.  They must strive to reassure a skeptical public of their basic integrity.

    This may well be an opportunity for a comprehensive review of the entire military campaign  against Boko Haram and its nihilist confederates.  The air in particular has been full of accidents, and has not yielded the kind of intelligence so vital in campaigns of this nature.

    Despite the aerial surveillance, Boko Haram remains entrenched in its Sambisa Forest redoubt.  Bandits and illegal gold miners and insurgents are doing business as usual in Zamfara and elsewhere.

    This past February, a military plane from Kaduna equipped for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, crashed near Minna.  All seven persons on board were killed. A month later, in March, an Alpha Jet of the army on a recce mission against Boko Haram disappeared and has not been located since then.  Nothing is known of the whereabouts of its two-man crew.

    The armed forces seem heavily under-resourced in the wars they are waging on so many different fronts.  Morale is reportedly low, and the desertion rate is not insignificant.

    This is the context in which a civilian governor of one of the states urged the Federal Government to enlist the support of mercenaries rather than rely entirely on the standing national army.  It was probably the same thought that moved the Nobelist, Wole Soyinka, to urge the Federal Government to seek help from the international community.

    The theatre of the shooting war is now inching closer and closer to Abuja.  This realization should concentrate the minds of the persons in authority as never before and move them to think new thoughts and devise alternative strategies of achieving the national objective, which must be to subdue the terrorists and then pursue national reconciliation.

    Without reconciliation, there can be no lasting peace.

     

    Kòkúmó of the Minna Hilltop

    Former military president Ibrahim Babangida used to revel in the nickname “Maradona,” deriving from the late Argentine soccer maestro Diego Maradona, he of the mesmerizing  dribbling skills.

    Babangida perfected his own dribbling skills on the political field and displayed them splendidly in a duplicitous transition programme that one eminent scholar called “one of the most sustained exercises in political chicanery ever visited upon a people.”

    Babangida has been rumoured dead so many times that anyone who took a bet on his mortality would have by now amassed a colossal fortune in winnings, or bankrupted himself and his progeny till the end of time.

    Just past week, he was rumoured dead again.

    He remains a byword for inconstancy, but it is time to retire the Maradona label and replace it with another that is more germane to the times. We should now call him Kòkúmó.

    Kòkúmó is the name the Yoruba bestow on a child that has been given up for dead but comes back to life, to everyone’s surprise and delight.  Literally, it means:  He or she did not die after all.  In cultural terms, it portends that the person will live long.

    Don’t bet on Kòkúmó of the Minna Hilltop.

     

     

  • Anti-reformists fighting back

    Anti-reformists fighting back

    By Gabriel Amalu

     

    The clamour for restructuring Nigeria will not go away even if the fight becomes a dangerous venture like the fight against corruption. And to make matters worse, the anti-reformists, who hold top government offices are desperately fighting back and are determined to use their good offices to press their anti-reformist agenda. As the attorney-general of the federation, Abubakar Malami, SAN, showed last week, logic and common sense are irrelevant in the battle.

    In an interview with Channels Television, the AGF desperately compared the banning of open graving by governors of southern Nigeria with the postulation that northern governors may be persuaded to ban the selling of spare parts in the northern region. The open dig against the Igbo spare part traders, who like the Fulani herdsmen, are ubiquitous across the country, showed how desperate the situation has become.

    Of course, it is convenient for the AGF not to remember that the spare part dealers have not become a source of armed conflict and national crisis as the herdsmen. Again, the AGF choose to ignore the fact that spare parts dealers hire shops to engage in their trade, unlike the open grazing herdsmen who traverse and trespass on private and public properties, consuming or destroying private and public farm products and forest reserves in the conduct of their private business.

    Furthermore, in his desperation to justify his anti-reformist agenda, the AGF choose to ignore the fundamental right to own private property, and the exclusivity arising from such ownership as provided by the 1999 constitution as amended. Those who have taken the AGF to the cleaners, including the governor of Ondo State, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, SAN, and Professor Chidi Odinkalu have wondered loudly how a learned silk, could proffer such jejune argument in furtherance of a jaundiced proposition.

    When arguments are professed that what Nigerians are against is open grazing of cattle, and not ownership of cattle and breeding them in private ranches, the desperados would remind Nigerians that those breeding cattle are adding to the nation’s GDP. When they are reminded that other businesses also contribute significant portions of the GDP, without endangering the business of other persons, they seek cover under the constitutional provision for freedom of movement. The AGF, using his stature as the chief law officer pontificated that the ECOWAS protocol and the Nigerians constitution guarantees the freedom of movement for cattle.

    Those who are also learned in law, like the AGF, have argued that the fundamental right to movement guaranteed by ECOWAS protocol and the constitution, deals with only human beings, and not cattle, as portrayed by the chief aw officer. But when a man is desperate, common sense and reasoning abandon him, which is what has happened to the AGF, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and a member of a profession referred to as the learned.

    The possible reason for such argument is that his interpretation of law has been fused in his cultural identity. As has been argued by Fulani protagonists, while the Fulani may forgive the mistaken killing of a human, they do not forgive the killing of a cow. So, perhaps in the cultural milieu of the AGF, the life of a cow is equal to, if not superior to the human being. In essence, if the constitution confers freedom of movement to humans, it also inheres automatically in the cattle.

    Could it therefore be that between those clamouring for reform and those opposed to it, there is a cultural clash? While those led by the AGF believe there is already more than enough progress, the reformists want accelerated progress for the country? If the AGF with the enormous power entrusted to him by the constitution, could push such an agenda openly, is he beholden to forces which he considers superior to his oath of allegiance to the constitution?

    Recall that the federal government, since the advent of the Buhari presidency chastise those opposed to some policies of the government, as corruption fighting back. That label was used to tar the enemies of the regime, as well as political opponents of the government. Even in some instances, it was the answer to some failings of the government, or to those opposed to some policies of the regime. Even when some officials of the regime are accused of corrupt practices, they push it as corruption fighting back.

    Now that the din for restructuring is reaching a crescendo, and those opposed to it, especially those within the corridors of power are fighting back, would the fight for restructuring, like the fight against corruption, become dangerous? Perhaps it is the danger in the fight that has shooed some public officials to quickly stand with the anti-reformist group, even when it is the promise of reformation that propelled them to the office they occupy.

    A lot of analysts have pooh-poohed the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) for promising the nation restructuring in the party’s constitution and during the political campaigns in 2015, only to renege now that the people are calling for it. But in fairness to the APC, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), while they were in power for 16 years could not push through any fundamental restructuring of the country. So, perhaps the forces against restructuring are so entrenched and powerful, regardless of the party in power.

    In her book, Fighting Corruption is Dangerous, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, tells the chilling story of how her mother was kidnapped, to force her to resign from office, as Minister for Finance. She went on to recall that when her mother somehow regained her freedom, the next plot was to maim and incapacitate her. Her sin was that she refused to pay billions of dollars of false claims, to dubious petroleum products marketers, who were draining the country of her meagre foreign exchange resources.

    One of the remarkable story that stood out was how the former governor of Cross River, Donald Duke, visited her in Washington, before she accepted to serve under President Jonathan, and told her not to accept the job of Finance Minister, as some powerful forces believe her involvement would give the regime credibility. When she enquired as to those Duke represented, he refused to disclose, but advised her to heed the advice.

    Of course, she rejected the advice and joined the government. But she paid a huge price, including the kidnapping of her mother and payment of ransom. As detailed in her book, what intrigues this writer is the existence of some powerful shadowy forces that are determined to ensure that the nation does not make any meaningful progress. These forces are only interested in lining their pockets with the nation’s resources, even if the country goes up in flames in the course of their nefarious activities.

  • Tragic crashes, conspiracy theories

    Tragic crashes, conspiracy theories

    By Olakunle Abimbola

     

     

    Again on May 21, tragedy struck: a thunderclap that swept away Lt-Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS) and 10 others, among the finest in the Nigerian military.

    Other Army victims, in that air catastrophe, were Brig-Gen. Abdulkadir Kuliya (acting Chief of Army Intelligence), Brig-Gen. M. I. Abdulkadir (chief of staff to the late COAS), Brig-Gen. O. L. Olayinka (Provost Marshal of the Nigerian Army), Major L. A. Hayat (aide-de-camp to the late COAS) and Major N. Hamza.

    The Air Force casualties were Flight-Lt. T. O. Asaniyi (pilot of the doomed aircraft, whose wedding was reportedly due in November), Flight-Lt. A. A. Olufade (co–pilot, who wedded only two months ago), Sergeant O. Adesina, Sergeant Umar and ACM O. M. Oyedepo (air crew members).

    It was one tragedy too many.  One can only pray to God to forgive the dead, comfort the distraught they left behind (particularly the newly wed, whose husband just went with the winds; and the prospective bride, who would be bride no more), console us, their grieving compatriots (who are shell-shocked at the sheer magnitude of the tragedy), heal our hurting country, and spare us all further disasters.

    Still, that disaster has spewed conspiracy theories.  First, by many, who genuinely need explanations to grapple with the catastrophe, to retain their sanity.  Then, by others, who just betray a Freudian slip: solid evil, buried inside the deepest recesses of their dark souls, cascading like dank and dark fountains.

    Still, sadness and joy are a duality.  One dawns for us to appreciate the other.

    That reality stresses the imperative to always be grateful to God.  Over the severe beauty of life, humans have absolutely no control.  So, we take it or leave it.

    Still, the present bears an eerie parallel to 1968/1969, with its high profile military air crashes, sparking the very Armageddon in wicked rumours, driving up the adrenalin of doom.

    On 8 May 1968, Lt.-Col. Joseph “Joe” Akahan (12 April 1937 – 8 May 1966), the late Ibrahim Attahiru’s predecessor as chief of staff, Army (May 1967 – May 1968), had died in a helicopter crash, during the Nigerian Civil War (1967 – 1970).

    Akahan’s crash and death fuelled serious propaganda, as could be understood in times of high tension, on both sides of the Nigeria-Biafra divide.

    From the Biafra side, it was good riddance.  Aside from peerless war propaganda of the enemy’s army chief crashing, Akahan it was, they reasoned — if not outright gloated — that allegedly supervised the slaying of Igbo officers, in the Ibadan-based 4th Battalion, under his command.

    Indeed, Akahan was Head of State, Major-Gen. Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi’s substitute for Major M. O. Nzefili, a Midwest Igbo acting Battalion Commander, who the mainly northern troops in that division refused to obey.

    After the counter-coup of July 1966, Akahan was reported to have said the killing of Eastern officers would stop, “since events had now balanced out” — referring to the counter-killings, to “avenge” the January 1966 coup, and its non-Igbo casualties.  He then replaced new Head of State, Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon, as chief of Army, before his death, after barely a year in office.  He was succeeded by Col. Hassan Katsina.

    But if the Akahan-Biafra antipathy was understandable, an intra-Nigeria whispering campaign soon greeted Akahan’s tragic death.  It suggested that though a Gboko-born Tiv, Akahan allegedly fell to some so-called “Hausa-Fulani” ploy to replace him with one of their own!  Conspiracy theories — and it swirled around for quite a while!

    The Akahan fate shows the Attahiru crash isn’t novel.  Yes, the pain is unbearable.  It would also breed wicked rumours.  But nation-building continues, to ensure the gallant COAS — and Akahan, his predecessor — did not die in vain.

    Nor were high-profile deaths, of military top brass, limited to the Army alone.

    On 15 October 1969, when the Civil War was nearing its end, Lt.-Col. Shittu Alao (1937-1969), fourth commander of the Nigerian Air Force (NAF), crashed and died at Uzebba, some 50 miles northwest of Benin City.  He was NAF chief from August 1967 to October 1969.

    Alao (six-foot-five) was as massive as his Ogbomoso cheek scarifications were deep.  But he was only partly Yoruba, his mother being from Shendam, in the present Plateau State, where he was born in Dorowa Babuje.  He also went to school in Jos and Kuru, before joining the Army as a cadet officer, after graduating from the 13th Course, Regular Officers Special Training School, Accra, Ghana.

    He was one of four Army infantry officers seconded to the NAF, to take over from the pioneer German officer corps; and one of only two that qualified to fly, the other being Brigadier Emmanuel Ikwue, who succeeded Alao as Air chief.

    Nevertheless, his crash and death came with thick conspiracy theories.  But the official cause of death was that, flying solo, his L-29 aircraft ran into bad weather, ran short of fuel and crashed into the woods of Uzebba, near Benin, while manoeuvering the fuel-starved machine to crash-land.

    Despite the thick, dark rumours that buzzed around Alao’s death, it is glory to the Nigerian phoenix that his son, now Air Vice Marshal (AVM) Lawal Shittu Alao, only three when the senior Alao died, still made a career in the NAF.

    That’s fitting tribute to the memory of Col. Alao.  Those jabbering Armageddon and prattling fashionable doom, particularly in times of national woes, must know some folks have invested simply too much in Nigeria to contemplate its failure.

    But why this brief foray into Nigerian contemporary history?  That every country has its share of triumph, power and glory.  So does it, its share of doom and gloom.

    That doom and gloom just consumed the late COAS and co — brave and gallant officers all, who died that their country might live; who perished that their nation could thrive.  It’s a huge debt of gratitude we all can never pay back.

    Martial supreme sacrifice would always make the military that elite corps, sworn to its  nation’s survival; and deserving deep love, awe and honour, so long as they stay true to their noble creed, and shun ignoble coups.

    Conspiracy theorists?  No time to gloat; or spread wilful bile that helps no one.

    If Nigeria survived the Akahan and Alao tragedies — one year apart, during a very turbulent period of Nigerian history — it will surely survive the present gloom of Attahiru and co; despite the current challenges of banditry, kidnapping and Boko Haram terrorism, not to talk of separatists’ emotive derring-do.

    Indeed, the blood of the fallen should whet the common appetite for a country founded on fairness, justice and equity; and equal-opportunity access to every citizen.

    Still, the government must move swiftly to probe military aircraft crashes — the Attahiru crash was the third in quick succession — and stem the tide of losing the cream of Nigeria’s military pilots; and the very flower of the Nigerian armed forces.

  • As the coup plot thickens

    As the coup plot thickens

    By Olatunji Dare

    Scarcely a week after it was revealed that national security had uncovered a plot by some “disgruntled elements” to stage a conference of sorts for the express purpose of supplanting the existing national order as by law established, it is deeply to be lamented that the plot has thickened.

    Those disgruntled elements sef!

    Since independence, they have been stirring things up and growing only more disgruntled in the process, and more brazen.  This is what happens when you uncover a sinister coup plot and do not proceed immediately to invoke the full authority of the Nigerian state to contain and smash it.

    Now, see how the whole thing has ramified.

    Instead of closing shop, the plotters closed ranks and came out in much larger numbers, virtually daring the authorities to come get them.  And far from being the flotsam and jetsam that the security people had profiled, they turn out to number in their ranks many of those we have been conditioned to regard as persons of great consequence.

    They comprise, to cite one metric, elected governors of 13 of Nigeria’s 36 states and two deputy governors thereof, accounting for more than one-half of the national population even after due allowance has been made for the  usual jiggery pokery of the Census Office.

    This is a far more dangerous group than the disgruntled elements, aforementioned.  They control vast personal fortunes and huge official resources. They preside over sprawling bureaucracies.  The can buy whatever authority the Constitution does not expressly grant them.  They are for the most part no respecters of the rule of law anyway.

    From their huge stockpiles, they can dole out essential commodities to sustain a prolonged sit-in or sit-out.  They are backed in varying degrees by political parties that can put boots on the ground and stalwarts in the streets.  Being denizens of the system, they know how it works or does not work.

    It must be hoped that the true identity of the plotters has not surfaced too late to give the constituted authorities a tactical and strategic leg-up in the war for the soul of Nigeria.  For, make no mistake about it:  What is at stake is nothing less than the soul of our country and the future of Black humanity.

    Time and again, we have failed to produce, enlist and mobilize enough citizens of the gruntled variety to put them out of their nefarious business permanently. Regardless of how it is resolved, the present crisis must come up with a formula that will alter the balance of forces permanently in favors of the gruntled ones.

    Enough of the coddling.  It has not worked, and it will not work.

    The task is not going to be easy.  Just consider the intimidating calibre of the new, expanded disgruntled elements and for the moment forget their numbers.  Serving and former state governors.  Former and serving Senators and National Assembly representatives. Former and serving members of state assemblies.

    Current, recurrent and former Chairmen of Traditional Councils, not forgetting members of local government councils.  Current and former political appointees, from special assistants at large to cabinet-rank officials

    Their ranks include senior lawyers and seasoned bureaucrats, former commanding officers in the armed forces.  Barons and captains of industry.  Chieftains of labour.  Leading educators and generations of students under their charge. Artisans, traders, market men and women, clerics of the fire-and-brimstone school of proselytizing.  Former presidents and former presidential candidates again aspiring to the top job.

    Imagine the punch a body thus composed will register when acting with a single aim – that goal being the reshaping, the restructuring and the repurposing of Nigeria in the widest sense of those terms even if the body excludes the disgruntled elements aforementioned.   But that is impossible for they constitute nucleus, the base of the larger group that has now surfaced.   Was it not a mere hint of the stirring of that nucleus that threw the Centre off kilter the other week?

    The larger group did not just burst upon the scene.  It has been operating under the radar for quite a while.  That is has operated in this mode for so long  but as it were for so long must be accounted a monumental failure of intelligence. But to what do we attribute the fact that they have not been read the Seditious Offences Act and ordered to cease and desist, or face the undiscriminating wrath of the law?

    Certainly not to a failure of nerves, I can tell them before they start gloating in the conceit that they now have the momentum on their side.  The authorities are considering a raft of options.

    Will it be containment? Co-optation?  Infiltrating the body and neutering it from within? Confrontation? Setting up and equipping rival bodies to keep it so busy defending itself that it has no time to pursue its agenda? By permutations and combinations of the strategies?

    No option is foreclosed, I gather.

    When the disgruntled elements were content to talk in vague generalities, the authorities could perhaps look on with benign bemusement.  Now that the expanded ranks of the malcontents have come out of hiding and laid out their comprehensive agenda on the national and global platforms, the authorities will have to engage them in concrete terms.

    Nothing is to be gained now by admonishing them to take their case, if they have any, to the National Assembly which the Constitution has in its omniscience and omicompetence has made the final arbiter.

    Leaving nothing to chance, they have now articulated their case in the clearest terms possible. In the communiqué issued at the end of their conference in Asaba, Delta State, 13 southern state governors and two deputy governors called on the Federal Government to convene a “national dialogue” to address the agitations roiling the polity.

    They called for a new revenue allocation formula weighted in favour or the subnational states, and for the creation of other institutions that would undergird a re-commitment to the practice of federalism in its truest sense.

    They called attention to the fact that, because of marauding cattle herders who have turned the entire country into one huge grazing reserve, citizens and farmers can no longer live safe and productive lives.  They demanded an end to open-grazing.

    They called a review of appointment into federal agencies, including the security services, to reflect the Federal Character principle. They also demanded better federal coordination in dealing with the Covid menace.

    Thus did the state governors meeting in Asaba thrust in the national limelight issues that the Federal Government has always dismissed as the talking points of idle agitators.  And they made clear that the initiative belonged with the Federal Government, not a National Assembly concerned more to expand the obscene privileges of its members than to advance the will of the people.

    And they urged President Muhammadu Buhari to address the nation on those pressing issues and others.

    At this writing, he is away in Paris, France, attending the African Financial Summit.  On the side, he is expected to discuss bilateral security issues with French President Emmanuel Macron and visiting African leaders.

    Macron’s most valuable contribution would be to urge Buhari to listen to his people.  These days, Buhari rarely does that. He seems distracted, perhaps even resigned. You certainly cannot accuse him of being engaged.

    As the ship of state teeters, buffeted by ripples set off by pressing issues, the least he can do is to engage and stay engaged.  The issues will not go away.  If not addressed forthrightly, they can only fester.

  • South ahoy!

    South ahoy!

    By Olakunle Abimbola

     

    South ahoy?  Legitimate message.  But not-so-sound messaging, if it only preaches to the converted.  The goal should be doughty national consensus, in a season of peril.

    That about captures the crux — and puff — of the May 11 Southern Governors parley.

    Indeed, since 2005, when Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, then governor of Lagos, pushed a southern equivalent of the Northern Governors Forum (NGF), that parley has, at best, been some staccato.

    After a sixth summit, which held at Port Harcourt, Rivers State, in 2007, counting from the 2005 Lagos first meeting, the Southern Governors Forum (SGF) went into a limbo; before a spasmodic burst into life again — 10 years later in 2017 — thanks to the effort of Akinwunmi Ambode, incidentally again, then governor of Lagos.

    Three years later, on May 11, the Asaba parley would dawn.  So, when comes the next SGF parley?  And what’s the assurance it won’t again succumb to its accustomed fits and starts — unlike the routine NGF?

    Meanwhile, since 2005, the SGF agenda has changed little: fiscal federalism, more robust states’ rights, more state tasks, backed with requisite cash, resource control, state police (which could all be grouped under the omnibus: “restructuring”).

    Perhaps the only not-so-new, but which has assumed a fresh alarm (no thanks to the security challenge), is the call to ban open grazing.

    O, there’s another: the call to re-jig security appointments to reflect Nigeria’s ethno-cultural diversity — a purely elite push, though it masquerades as core people charter!

    But more on open grazing and security appointments presently.

    If the SGF cause has remained virtually the same, over 16 years (2005-2021), why has its course been so slipshod?  No prize for guessing right: cant, politics and the careful framing of selfish elite wish list, as the people’s demands.

    SGF should, all season, push its people’s core interests, beyond combative newspaper headlines, after its usual sudden burst into life.

    Still, no thanks to geography, culture and mutual suspicion, SGF has its task well cut out.  Yes, there is a geographical South.  But hardly a political South: in the sense of a political North, even with radical “Middle Belt” elements attempting a disavowal!

    Pray: what’s the difference between “North Central” and “Middle Belt”?  Maybe the colour of your faith and the tinge of your politics!  Yet, somewhat, NGF has always found its groove.  Not so, SGF.  By geography, the South is riven by the Lower Niger, as it drains into the Atlantic, via a tributary of rivers.  No such physical barrier nettles the North.

    Then, comes the majority question: the great Igbo-Yoruba rivalry, from their South East-South West redoubts.

    Then, the great southern minorities, all humming and chirping, from their South-South geo-political refuge.  Of course, they are suspicious of the Yoruba and the Igbo — but perhaps, even more suspicious of one another!

    Now, how do you build sustainable consensus, in this Babel of ringing distractions?  But it may not be as complex as it looks, if you can hone in on a genuine South people’s charter which, for that matter, should be little different from a genuine North people’s charter, since human needs are basically the same.

    The Niger could well be a natural, if artistic, West-East demarcation: the actual geography is much less precise.  But a less selfish elite can locate, in the life and links that a body of water brings, mutual goals to lift the entire South.

    Unfortunately, politics is often elite-driven.  So, the political elite simply wraps its cravings as the people’s ravings, waving the magic of trickle-down benefits, which most times fails; and ends in mass frustration, hopelessness and bitterness.

    But back to the “Asaba Declaration”, as not a few have crowed, of the SGF parley.

    While a fresh “national dialogue” is neither here nor there, restructuring — or what this column prefers to call re-federalization — makes eminent sense to all.

    That there is still any controversy over it issues from poor messaging (from the South: which postures and lectures as though it would be the sole beneficiary); and phobia, from some lobbies in the North (which act as if restructuring would snare their region).

    Restructuring is a win-win.  It’s high time both sides saw it that way.  But It’s good a national consensus appears afoot over it.  Nevertheless, that can be fastened by better messaging, devoid of phobia-driven stalling and triumphal crowing and show-boating.

    But while the buzz is on, the Federal Government can pluck low-hanging fruits from the re-federalization tree.  It can push an immediate constitutional amendment to formalize state police, in view of the current security challenges.

    That would be a brilliant move, indeed: making the states to own their local security challenges, rather than pointing fingers — many times, helplessly — at the centre.

    But even on “restructuring”, the southern elite hypocrisy shines through and through.  It’s rich the South-South lobby now screams “restructuring” when less than six years ago, under Goodluck Jonathan, they were loudly silent over it!

    Perhaps “restructuring” is useless to whoever is in power, is busy “eating”, and table manners decree silence, for it not to choke on its munificence?

    Now, grazing.  Without a solid consensus on modern ranching and allied alternatives, claiming to “ban” open grazing is pure gas.  For one, herding is some citizens’ legitimate livelihood.  You can’t take it away by fiat, without risking avoidable crisis.

    For another, you can’t make sound public policy by criminalizing all herders, just because some of them are alleged criminals.  But it is good the governors’ communique is generating further discourse on grazing routes and ranching.

    The push to re-jig personnel manning Nigeria’s security infrastructure looks convincing on the surface.  But probed further, it’s another elite prerogative moonlighting as people’s imperative.  Though framed by the governors as a pan-southern challenge, it is basically a South East elite charge.

    Now, the Igbo have a right to cry out if they feel short-changed.  But the irony here is that, in terms of crowding out other ethnics from public offices, right from 1960, the Eastern (and later, South East) elite and the elite of the political North, are guiltier than most.

    1966 would perhaps not have flared out of control, if not for that spectre of putative Eastern domination of the federal space. Under President Jonathan, it was government by the political North, the minority Niger Delta and the South East elite.

    Does this seedy past then negate the present demand?  No.  But it behoves everyone to, every time, strive for fairness.  Complaining only when you’re out in the cold is cant.  It would only breed future opportunism, rather than birth overall decent conduct.

    South ahoy!  Not a bad move in a federal Nigeria.  But the SGF must push for regional economic cooperation and integration, among its three geo-political zones.

    That way, it would have homed in on a genuine South people’s charter while, across the Niger and the Benue, pushing for a more equitable federal Nigeria; and focus less on elite greed, which can’t equate its people’s need.

  • Arrow of God

    Arrow of God

    By Gabriel Amalu

     

    The past week had thrown many political pundits into confusion over the responsiveness of the National Assembly leadership to the crisis afflicting our country. Not that the sky was clearer before last week, considering their silent disposition to the rivers of blood, which has become our way of life. The confusion arose from their antagonistic rebuttal of the Asaba resolution of the states of southern Nigeria, amongst which they demanded for a restructured Nigeria.

    It is the reactionary statement of the president of the senate, Ahmed Lawan, to the resolution which drove this writer to the inimitable work of the immortal Chinua Achebe in the Arrow of God for anchor. Before the two leaders of the National Assembly bared their minds, many thought that President Muhammadu Buhari was the only one out of sync with the enormity of the crisis facing our country, and unwilling to submit to a paradigm shift to save our nation.

    But as Lawan has shown, there are others, who like Ezeulu, the chief priest of Ulu, in the ‘Arrow of God’, who are more anxious about their powers and privileges, damn the impending tragedy that may consume their people. While the House of Representative Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila nuanced his reaction to the resolutions of the southern states, Lawan out-rightly condemned the governors as hypocrites, insisting that they should first restructure the states they govern, before calling for national restructuring.

    The Ezeulu story is therefore a fitting metaphor of the crisis of leadership pushing the country to implosion. As written by Chinua Achebe, at the book’s back page: “Ezeulu, the chief priest of Ulu, finds his authority is under threat. He has rivals in the tribe, in the white government, and even in his own family. Surrounded by trouble, he adopts an increasingly cosmic view of events: surely in the battle of the deities, he is merely an arrow in the bow of his God?”

    Achebe went on: “Armed with such ideas, Ezeulu is prepared to lead his people on, if necessary to destruction and annihilation. The power of the people, however, reasserts itself.” In the battle for the soul of our country, her leaders are replicating the traits of Ezeulu as our country roils in crisis. Even while some of the governors may have exhibited totalitarian tendencies in their states, it is not enough reason for the National Assembly leadership to dismiss with a wave of hand, the Asaba resolutions that can stem the national crisis.

    One particular resolution that requires a constellation of forces to actualize is that on open grazing in the southern part of Nigeria. They said: “ the incursion of armed herders, criminals, and bandits into the southern part of the country has presented a severe security challenge such that citizens are not able to live their normal lives including pursuing various productive activities leading to a threat to food supply and general security. Consequently, the meeting resolved that open grazing of cattle be banned across southern Nigeria.”

    Of course, except the senate president is himself a hypocrite, the call for an end to open grazing is one he should readily support. All across the country, particularly in the middle belt and southern Nigeria, the poor handling of open grazing has exposed our country to the danger of food insecurity, as farmers have been chased out of their farms by the trained armed herdsmen. With herders raping women, killing farmers and now kidnapping persons in the country-side for ransom, going to farm has become suicidal.

    And with the national economy buffeted by inflation, and Boko Haram forcing farmers away from their farms in the northeast, such that food prices have skyrocketed, every leader worth the name should support every measure to help farmer return to their farms in the southern part of the country. The senate president who knows that our country is broke, arising partly from the expensive war in the northeast, should therefore be supportive of any efforts to make other zones as productive as possible, for the country to be able to sustain the war.

    So, instead of berating the governors, and tagging them regional champions, Lawan should call their representatives to a meeting to offer ideas on how the National Assembly can intervene to make the country more liveable. Or has Lawal like Ezeudu now become only interested in being in the good books of President Buhari, who has enough influence to threaten him in his plum position? That can only be the reason for the quick dismissal of the resolution of the governors of 17 out of 36 states in the country.

    While not asking Lawal to antagonise the president, he must strike a balance between what is of paramount national interest and fending off potential disruptions to his authority; after all the position he occupies is to keep the executive under check. Another of the Asaba resolutions, which is aimed at stemming the crisis bedevilling the country is the recommendation that “in deference to the sensitivities of our various peoples, there is a need to review appointments into federal government agencies (including security agencies) to reflect federal character as Nigeria’s overall population is heterogeneous.”

    It must be said that the senate, which Lawan heads partly bears responsibility for this malaise of the Buhari presidency, since most of the one-sided appointments passed through the senate for confirmation. If as senate president, Lawan had shown a measure of independence, the senate is in a position to check-mate the one-sided appointments. By allowing the president to make appointments that are glaringly sectional, non-state actors like Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Ighoho get the impetus to preach their separatist agenda with some measure of justification.

    It is interesting that the initial equivocation by the speaker of House of Representative, Femi Gbajabiamila, has yielded to reasonable composition that the house does not oppose the Asaba resolutions. Gbajabiamila would have shot himself in the foot to push otherwise, for while he could secure the confidence of the president for an unreasonable stance against the resolution of the southern governors, he could so malignantly antagonise his constituency such that he would pay dearly at the next election.

    This column hopes the senate would also bend their president to be reasonable in appraising the Asaba resolutions after all, Lawan is not the president of the executive, but that of the legislature. As Ezekwesili said to Ezeulu, in the ‘Arrow of God’: “An adult does not sit and watch while the she-goat suffers the pain of childbirth tied to a post.” The National Assembly must wake up to their constitutional responsibility, and save themselves and the country from ruin. Lawan should avoid the tragedy of Ezeulu in the ‘Arrow of God.’

  • Rumours of a coup

    Rumours of a coup

    By Olatunji Dare

    When the history of this epoch in Nigeria comes to be written, this past week is sure to register as an inflection point.

    Not on account of the apparent flight of the virus from Nigeria, thanks in no small part to Governor Yahaya Bello who has made the Kogi clime so inhospitable to the virus that it has fled from the entire country. Nigeria thus appears to have been spared the Covid conflagration sweeping India and turning the subcontinent into one roaring funeral pyre and hospitals into theatres of unspeakable suffering and misery in which death lurks in every corner.

    But there is no room for complacency.  Covid-19 is nothing if not cunning.  See how it assumes different forms and shapes, each deadlier and more intractable than the strain that preceded it, and roars back when you think you have subdued it or forced it to retreat to its infernal habitat, there to hibernate for up to a century before making its insidious re-entry into human society.

    The horror unfolding in India should therefore serve as a cautionary tale. One hopes devoutly that we have seen the worst of Covid in Nigeria. But that cannot be assumed.  This is the time to build capacity, to stockpile vaccines and oxygen tanks and ventilators and build field hospitals and re-imagine social life in anticipation of a possible recrudescence.  Temporising, or “waiting it out” to conserve resources that may be needed elsewhere is not the best strategy.

    Nor does the past week stand out in terms of the fatalities – policemen and women, students, farmers, passengers on the highways, etc — from the  depredations of herdsmen, bandits, ritualists, jihadists and others actuated for the most part by ignoble causes.  It was just another week in the carnage that now defines Nigeria.

    It featured the usual mix of riots, strikes, rumours of riots and strikes, horrific accidents, crippling deprivations, syndicated and freelance fraud, patently fake news and news that is neither fake nor true, rumors that the long subsisting subsidy on petroleum products was set, finally, to be revoked completely and forever.

    Not an exceptional week overall, certainly not in a sense that would qualify it as an inflection point.

    I count that week an inflection point because it jolted Nigerians to a reality they we had long forgotten – the ugly reality of coups.  For nigh on 25 years, they had luxuriated in the comforting certainty that the government of the day, established by law, could be changed only law; that government derives its power only from the consent of the governed as expressed in elections in which the people vote their un-coerced choices.

    They had successfully established, funded and organised political parties and conducted elections in which not a few limbs were broken and not a few heads were bloodied, to set up precisely a government so contoured.  They were never going back to that dark era when some inebriated soldiers could just amble out of a pepper-soup joint, seize the nearest radio station, declare that they had taken over the government, and proceed over the next seven or eight years to fill in the gaps.

    The nation had been labouring under a delusion, it learned that week from its vigilant and usually discreet security forces, which had uncovered in the nick of time, a dastardly plot to overthrow by force the government of the day, recognised under the Law of Nations as the organ in which inheres the sovereignty, unity and indivisibility of Nigeria.

    And this was not going to be your run-of-the-mill military coup.  No martial music.  No tanks rumbling through the streets and quiet neighbourhoods. No decrees. No curfews.  No new Saviour in uniform.

    The putsch was going to be executed by an unruly assemblage of civilians – disgruntled politicians who had given up on the ballot box, knowing that they can never win free and fair elections, their misguided collaborators, religionists, ethnic jingoists masquerading as champions of the people, desperate grifters, faded and jaded statesmen and women united by one thing and one thing only:  the lust for power and its unearned rewards.

    Nor was that the only novelty.  The vehicle the coup makers had chosen for executing their plot was a grand assembly of these malcontents at which they would excoriate the legitimate government of the day, declare that they had lost the last iota of confidence in it, proclaim a new order, and assign to themselves and their confederates the principal, secondary, subsidiary and ancillary offices of state.

    Just like that.

    As if Nigeria were a banana republic or, changing metaphors, a pepper-soup federation.  They were hoping to ride on the crest of the seething, murmuring discontent that had perfused the country for several years now, bubbling to the surface every now and then.

    Among the perceived causes: the privatisation of government and its instrumentalities by entrenched interests, and their deployment to serve those interests, and all others be damned.  The willful contempt for the imperatives of the nation’s geopolitics by those enjoined to uphold them.  Application of the law in a half-heartedly, if at all.

    And among the manifestations: Rampant insecurity of lives and property. The Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast that has now made its way to the outskirts of Abuja Federal Capital Territory, if Niger State Governor Sani Bello is to be believed.  The sacking of Lagos in the so-called anti SARS protests. The war on police personnel and formations.

    Relentless extraction of and trafficking in precious minerals by local and foreign cartels in brazen defiance of the las and the constituted authorities.  The relentless pillaging of public assets, and not just in the oil industry.

    Not to be discounted is the widespread perception that those at the top lost the plot a long time, in rhetoric as well as in remedial and self-redeeming action. Those trained to divine such matters say that their body language bespeaks complete resignation.  Many in the attentive audience say that for the first time, they cannot with confidence, name more than a few members of President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet –  four or five honourable exceptions who are executing their remit with quiet commitment.

    Also not to be discounted is the absence of common purpose up there — apart from announcing yet another raft of contracts at their periodical meetings.  In daily transactions, those who regard themselves as the true custodians and legatees of the system dismiss Vice President Yemi Osibajo contemptuously as “the VP Academic” is a mark of his relevance to their scheme, rank outsider that he is considered.

    It will come as no surprise if, in the same vein, they deride the president’s Chief of Staff, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, as the “CoS UN,” having regard to his previous job as high official of the United Nations, even though he shares their privileged pedigree.

    And yet, the government has been sitting pretty, confident that the public appreciates its good intentions, understands the challenges of the moment and has been willing to put up with them.  It has been resting secure in the knowledge that any attempt to supplant it by persons who have serially been rejected at the polls and cannot lay any credible claim to influence is sure to collide with the law of the land, the will of the people, and the preferences of the international community.

    It has remained in power and in office despite the foregoing calumnies and insurrections.

    Why is it then so jittery at the prospect that a resolution for its ouster may be passed at an illegal assembly of some busybodies accountable to no one?

  • Time to strike

    Time to strike

    By Gabriel Amalu

     

    The members of the Judicial Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) who have been on strike for the past four weeks, surely did not take head to the Biblical exaltation in the book of Ecclesiastes which extols: “To everything there is a season. A time for every purpose under heaven.” If they did, they would have known there is a better time to go on strike, to gain the attention of the recalcitrant state governors, who don’t give a damn if the courts are shut.

    If JUSUN members are as wise as the serpents, they would have known that the best time to strike was when the governors are before the tribunals with their time-bound election petitions. But JUSUN was relying on the justness of their cause, and trusting that with little pressure, democratically elected governors will obey the 1999 constitution (as amended) from which the derived their power to govern. But as the striking unions have found out, most governors pay scant regard to the constitution, except to wield the powers it confers on them.

    For four weeks, the high and lower courts across the country have been grounded, because some governors are unwilling to obey the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, (Fourth Alteration, No. 4) Act, 2017. The Act which came into effect on 7th Day of June, 2018, provides in section 2, as follows: “Section 121 of the Principal Act is altered by substituting for subsection (3), a new subsection (3).”

    The new subsection 3 provides: “Any amount standing to the credit of the – (a) House of Assembly of the state; and (b) Judiciary; in the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the State shall be paid directly to the said bodies respectively; in the case of judiciary, such amount shall be paid directly to the heads of the courts concerned.” For reasons best known to the recalcitrant governors, they have refused to obey that clear provision of the constitution, even when President Buhari tried to force obedience by an executive order.

    Could it be because the governors constitute a major force in the political calculation for the 2023 general election, which has become the main concern of the ruling elite that the president’s executive order has been treated as a worthless piece of document, without the president snarling? Surprisingly, the promise by the chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum, Dr Kayode Fayemi, that the governors are willing to obey the constitution, so that the strike can be called off, has so far been a fake promise.

    JUSUN’s compatriot, the Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria (PASAN) has also been on strike to pressure the state chief executives to obey the same provisions of the 1999 constitution (as amended), with regards to money due to the state parliaments. Unfortunately for them, their principals, the state parliamentarians are too timid to look the state governors in their face and demand what is due to them under the law. So, PASAN as far as the state legislators are concerned are on their own in the struggle.

    Perhaps, because the speakers of state Houses of Assembly mostly depend on the support of the governors to emerge and retain their positions, most of them are too cowardly to demand the financial consequences of the autonomy granted the parliament by the amended constitution. The result is that in some states we have governors who are no better that constitutional leviathans, with all the consequences for our fledgling democracy.

    Of course, most governors enjoy the trappings of autocracy which the disequilibrium in the other two arms of the presidential system of government offer. Thus they treat the legislative and judicial arm as junior partners of the tripod, and have members of the parliament and judges grovel at their feet for what ordinarily should be their entitlement. As the Igbos say: “it is the man who holds the palm leaves that the goats follow”, and so the governors, instead of the constitution, have become the fons et erigo.

    This absurdity is partly responsible for the political crisis afflicting our country, and governors who have interest in how history will judge them, must encourage abundant observance of the tenets and spirit of our constitution, knowing fully well that power is transient. In his book: The Presidential Constitution of Nigeria, Professor Ben Nwabueze, SAN, wrote: “Concentration of government powers in the hands of one individual is the very definition of dictatorship, and absolute power is by its very nature arbitrary, capricious and despotic.”

    On his part, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, SAN, GCFR said: “Under our constitution, the three organs of government are separate and distinct both in respect of the function which they perform, and of the functionaries who are entrusted with the performance of those functions.” In Myers vs USA, (1962) 272 US 52, learned Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis held: “The doctrine of separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary powers. The purpose was not to avoid friction, but, by means of inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy.”

    This column commends the governors to the wise counsel of Allagoa, Ag. CJ, Rivers state in Amakiri vs Iwowari (1974) 1 RSLR 5; wherein he held:  “Rule of law in practical terms means no person however highly placed is beyond the law and it implies due consideration for others and a true fear of God. The courts are the watchdogs of these rights and the sanctuary of the oppressed and will spare no pains in tracking down the arbitrary use of power where such cases are brought before court …”

    He continued: “The fruits reaped by respect for Rule of Law is stability, efficient administration and economic progress and satisfaction amongst the citizens. Persons in authority and government functionaries should by their good example command and not demand respect.” The averments made by the learned Justice above are sacrosanct, and if I may add, it is to the benefit of all and sundry that there is stability and progress in the society. As should be abundantly evident to all and sundry, those in government today needs the observance of rule of law, especially when power leaves them.

    The crisis foisted on the nation by the avoidable strike by JUSUN and PASAN are huge. Apart from clogging the already clogged judicial dockets, many detainees are languishing in jail because the courts cannot hear their bail application. Even more importantly, the impression that might is right, being exhibited by the recalcitrant governors, is akin to the anarchist tendencies of the ravaging Boko Haram, kidnappers, terrorists and violent separatists.

  • Return to Titcombe -2

    Return to Titcombe -2

    By Sanya Oni

     

    This week, all roads lead to my alma mater, Titcombe College, Egbe, Kogi State where the old boys and girls gather to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its founding. For yours truly, the symbolism comes in a number of ways.

    First, although I left the school 42 years ago, I have visited more than two dozen times in between all in the attempt to re-live the unforgettable memories of my sojourn in that great, iconic institution. Suffice to state that each visit represented a learning experience of sorts; they offered teachable moments on how not to mismanage a great tradition and legacy.

    Talk of a legacy, there is, no doubt, a lot for the school to be proud of. I recall that a particular experience in which a set invited me for a talk on the Titcombe legacy. I told the story of the welcoming embrace of its gates as a 10-year-old way back in 1973, the beautiful lush-green ambience that proudly advertised the school’s promotion of the delicate balance between man and nature; the sparkling clean dormitories; the vast sporting arena that left little doubt about how much premium the school placed on sports: the Olympic size basketball courts, the world class lawn tennis courts, the football pitches etc.

    I touched upon the vast academic area – the sacred grove where silence was not only golden but strictly enforced; the sprawling multi-purpose auditorium which aside serving as the school chapel also played host to varieties of activities – including those renowned travelling theatres of old – the Hubert Ogundes, the Funmilayo Rancos and the Jimoh Alius of the world; and of course, the weekly film shows.

    Yes, I journeyed into the near regimental discipline, the values and sheer organisation which left no student in doubt as to his/her place in the ordered system. I reminded them that Titcombe – our dear school- had long perfected the equivalent of the national identity system (yours truly is 1634) –its NIN – years before its current national champions stepped out of their diapers; that we had an effective structure to punish deviance – our point system ensured indiscipline was duly penalized without attendant disruption in school work. We understood the concept of work, the dignity of labour hence the weekly gratis, and the essence of the school motto: Learn and Worship. Yes – the hymnals! How could anyone ever forget!

    And I wasn’t even done! I told them of the massive school dam, which ensured that the school and the adjoining hospital did not lack potable water; the beautiful orchards; the power house that supplied the school; the living quarters that spoke of a community that was just profoundly integrated but self-sufficient in its truest essence. Finally, I pointed at the school motto as if to remind them of what made their Titcombe truly exceptional.

    Of course, with many in the audience gaping in wonder at my ‘Aesop tales’, I had to quickly remind them that this was the Titcombe of the last century– never mind that yours truly was talking of the period 1973- 78!

    It is truly a measure of how vastly things have degenerated that these legacies have not only gone into oblivion, they now reside in distant memory!

    As someone who has had just enough time to rue the rot visited on the institution by a generation of uncaring, unsympathetic undertakers, I have certainly in the course of time enjoyed some mixed moments, such as when some old boys, provoked by the decay, chose in their modest way, to hearken to the cry of restoration of its walls; or when my kids after their experience of a guided tour to the school, pointedly accused our generation of abandonment and dereliction!

    And that was long after the intrepid fellows, had in a rather soft banter, charged me with painting for them, an exaggerated picture of my alma mater in the course of our serially unending comparison between the past and present and of their typically pricey institutions and mine!

    Talk of each side striving to win an argument!

    Which takes us to the third reason why the 70th anniversary meeting holds a special place in my heart. I call it the promise of restoration – The Macedonian Call; the one last opportunity to chart a fresh course for that great citadel of learning. Surely, our old school needs help!

    Of course, not once or twice did I have cause to wonder if things would not have turned out differently had the prodigal inheritors of that great legacy left the institution in the hand of its esteemed founders; but then, I am reminded that the same could easily be said of our country, a country not only orphaned but has continued to be ravaged by successive generation of inept leaders. Talk of stories to tell – from the railways to the moribund refineries, from aviation to shipping; name it – legacies destroyed by a terrible, profligate leadership.

    Titcombe, it must be said, is way different; it may have been victim of serial mistreatment by its ‘grant-aiders’ it is by no means an orphan. It cannot be. Not with those wonderful men and women making their contributions all in the bid to make a difference. Once we had the entire roof of the dining hall replaced by an old student – a former Chief of Navy, Admiral Samuel Afolayan; I personally inspected a sick bay constructed by another set; yet another set replaced the roof of the administration block. And then, the set to which yours truly belongs – the refurbishing of the library, one of the science laboratories and the basket ball court. Yet as well-meaning as these efforts are, they amount to mere tiny droplets in the vast ocean of its restoration! Yes, we can, and will do more!

    Truth is that the last few weeks have been an eye-opener not just in the immense possibility of its restoration but in the renewed resolve to turn the fortunes of the school around. Yes, I see hope; hope for a new beginning.

    In all of these, we have the old brigade to thank for holding the torch; Professor Ade Ibiyemi, Pa Tunji Arosanyin, Theo Aladeniji, and countless others who have toiled in the course the years to keep the Titcombe College dream alive. Our eternal gratitude. Already, there is a lot to say of the crop of new generation leaders ready to take the baton.  What I see in the energy of the likes of Sunday Afolayan, the Director General of the secretariat tells me that our school is not only in for a new lease but that the future we desire for our school is assured.

    That task is not so much about recreating the past; it is about recovering a legacy. While the task is by no means easy, it is also no time to succumb to Judah’s chant of despondency: The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed, and there is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall. (see Nehemiah 4:10).

    May that not be our portion.

    See you at the Great Reunion!

     

     

     

  • Crucible

    Crucible

    By Olakunle Abimbola

     

    A crucible, fired by too many wrongs from the past, is kilning the country.  In that searing, scalding oven, even elders are wont to talk rot.

    That recalls The Crucible, that 1953 classic, by famed American playwright, Arthur Miller.  Set in 17th century Salem, in the Massachusetts Bay colony, with its witch hunts, the play echoes the Joseph McCarthy US communist purges (1950-1954).

    The Crucible’s major themes include reputation, hysteria, power and authority, guilt, portrayal of women, deception, goodness and judgment.  But add amnesia, were The Crucible to be set in contemporary Nigeria!

    Robert Clarke, SAN, 82, appeared on Channels TV and told the Federal Government  to hand over to the military — to “restructure” the country; and stave off Nigeria’s collapse in six months: an Armageddon he swore to, by the grave of his doting father!  Hysteria, the emotive handmaiden of treason?

    But deja vu — have we not seen such before?

    In January 1966, even after Nigeria’s first-ever military coup had all but failed, Nwafor Orizu, then acting president, announced a “voluntary” transfer of power to the military.

    On 17 January 1966, the no-less-tragic Major-Gen. Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, “accepted” Orizu’s “invitation”; thus unleashing the plague of military rule.

    Might Nigerian history have dramatically changed, had Dr. Orizu summoned the most senior cabinet minister, to act as Prime Minister, and shut out the military, given that  Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was still missing?

    Nobody knows for sure, if we were not to commit the fallacy of getting wise after the fact.  For one, though, there was uproar over the 1965 general elections, casting a huge legitimacy pall on the Balewa government.

    For another, the Western Region, whose denizens more or less strutted the media, had tried and convicted the Balewa government — not without cause — of the anarchy in the “wild, wild West”; and were puritanically baying for blood.

    Still, Orizu’s bad judgment provided the first grist, for the latter-day dubbing of that putsch as an “Ibo coup” — and the cascade of tragedies that followed, cresting with the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970).

    Then, phases of tragic military rule, in painful slow motion: Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi (and regimental fumblers); Yakubu Gowon (age of innocence); Murtala-Obasanjo (emotive purges that killed the civil service); Muhammadu Buhari (very first taste of harsh military rule); Ibrahim Babangida (evil genius of SAP and archangel of socio-economic collapse); Sani Abacha (ruthless graft machine); and Abdulsalami Abubakar (snapped the power-poisoned military from their misery).

    Chief Clarke was 27 in January 1966, when Dr. Orizu committed that “original sin”.  But here, he is pushing an encore, on Channels, some 55 years later!  Culpable amnesia?

    Still, Chief Clarke is only a fitting metaphor for unbridled but fashionable unreason, which nevertheless elicits thunderous cheers, from the ultimate putative victims!

    Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s declaration of Biafra, in May 1967, elicited a wild flourish, as some Utopia long-delayed.  Yet, that has bred nothing but generational bitterness, a  poisoned collective psyche, and perpetual gnashing of teeth, as eternal victims!

    You could spot a similar recklessness, among the uppity Yoruba, in the rash ranks of the Oodua Republic lobby: that fashionable folly of swearing — at the grave of your father! — that frothing emotion and brainless zest are indeed rigorous strategy!

    Whoever knows what time and cold ash of reason would bring these dreamers?  Even if Yor-Exit succeeds: a Yoruba version of South Sudan perhaps, where the glorious revolution consumes own children, with old whipping boy, Nigeria, out of reach?

    Still wild carping, in all its glorious hysteria, comes with the territory, in a season of high stress.  At the turn of New Year 2021, Nigeria’s spiritual futurologists came with a near-uninanimous vision of “coup” — the holy spite, from their sacred souls!

    The fiery Father Matthew Kukah, Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto, also hinted at that grisly business, in his patriotic railing against the present order.

    But his rabble of excitable followers, co-questers for the quick fix, always swear: Kukah hates the regime less; he only loves Nigeria more — not unlike Shakespeare’s Brutus that loved Rome more than he hated Caesar.  So, why not an 82-year-old SAN canvassing a military coup, bang on public TV?

    Still, banditry, insurgency and kidnapping are a whiplash from the past: viciously hitting back are those disinherited and dispossessed, by past heinous policies and humongous greed — consolidated, rather than dissipated, by the Olusegun Obasanjo-led civil order, after eons of ruinous military rule.

    Of course, President Muhammadu Buhari has own faults.  For one, the much diffused insecurity crisis is a near-irremovable stain on his tenure, like Lady Macbeth’s hands, stained with Banquo’s blood.   Besides, Buhari came highly recommend to smash the rampart insecurity that shooed away Goodluck Jonathan.

    But aside from that regime culpability, neither helped by the Buhari penchant to let things fester before acting nor his coolness towards re-federalization, the president would appear not unlike Eman, the scapegoat in Wole Soyinka’s tragic play, The Strong Breed — who sacrificed all, for his ungrateful, unfeeling, insensitive fellow villagers.

    Buhari it is, who has called the bluff of the Nigerian thieving elite, without anyone pinning, on him, any venality of his own.  That can’t be said of he, of the infamous Presidential Library, built with controversial “donations”!

    Buhari it is, whose anti-sleaze war, with the Ludo-playing judiciary hardly permitting, has tried to call to account, the greedy elite, whose unconscionable graft bred the current plague of banditry and allied insecurity.

    Buhari it is, though with resources whittled down three-fold from the Obasanjo-Jonathan era, has launched the most ambitious infrastructure revamp, in roads, bridges and rail, since 1999.  But for his pains, it’s ceaseless torrent of insults, from the same folks whose future he’s trying to secure!

    The media that should put things in proper perspectives appears well and truly beyond redemption.  But the media’s problem would appear structural, honed from past worst practices, of ceaseless and glorious carping.

    If you doubt, just content-analyze past security crises — under Obasanjo; under Umaru Yar’Adua; under Jonathan.  You’ll find a media bristling and yakking hysteria in all seasons, sans any institutional memory!  Any wonder then, Channels would proudly thrust, on its viewers, an 82-year-old SAN, virtually calling for a coup — after all the military woes our learned silk had lived through?

    The president and his (wo)men should double down on the present challenges.  However it plays out, Buhari would need no gaming machine, masquerading as a Presidential Library, to remind the people of his tenure.

    His infrastructure uptick, in the worst of seasons, his radical push for food security and his campaign for integrity and productive work ethos, would loom large enough — as eternal testimony against the present hysteria to muddy the waters.