The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Obahiagbon writes back

    Obahiagbon writes back

    By Olatunji Dare

    Precisely a fortnight ago, I availed myself, not for the first or even the second time, of the instrumentality of this public platform to dispatch a personal epistle to Osahon (Patrick) Obahiagbon, a friend of this space and its curator, asking if he could kindly share with the attentive audience a distillation of the insights from his cogitations, meditations, reflections and ruminations on a latitudinous range of national, regional and global issues.

    The time seems eminently propitious for his sagacious intervention, when everything is in a state of total disarticulation, the resolution of which has confounded the best minds.

    Ever so punctilious about his obligations, he commenced the necessary exertions almost as soon as what he graciously adverted to as “my summons” reached him.  His perspicacious response came a few days later, marked by his wonted lexical dexterity.

    His predilection for sesquipedalianism may turn off, even infuriate or exasperate, those who have jettisoned their dictionaries or abjured the habit of consulting them.

    That is their loss.  For his submission is at once engaging, recondite, didactic, incisive, enthralling, edifying, and entertaining.

    Enjoy.

     

    My dear Senior Brother,

    It was with bated breath and a palate well titillated and titivated that I perused your coruscating and usually didactic epistle after an entr’acte brought about not out of communicative ennui but arising from de die in diem existential mandates.

    You can therefore conjecture how delighted it was hearing from you again, my senior brother, and also suo moto putting at my disposal your seminal and encyclopedic ex cogitations on both national and international polyvalents.

    Since I am an apostle of the apothegm by The Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare, to the effect that what concerns us most, we lastly attend to, permit of me in the circumstance, to venture an opinion ab ovo, on some global Kantian categorical imperatives, hoping that we will learn utilitarian lessons therefrom.

    As sardonic, lugubrious and sepulchral the Covid discombobulation has become (and am in a state of lachrymoseism for all those that have yielded and transited under its quietus jugular), the lessons inter alia that The Great Architect and Geometrician of the Universe is teaching humanity here, boils down to the unipolar and sacrosanct fact that “sceptre and crown shall tumble down and in the dust be equal made with poor crooked, scythe and spade.”

    In fact, the Covid incubus and succubus has pulverized the earlier assumptions that “when beggars die, there are no comets seen but heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”

    Indeed, princes and kings and every political, social and economic strongman the world over have bowed and submitted to the pandemic.  It’s my sincere hope that political and economic strongmen all over the world and particularly in Africa and Nigeria are imbibing the necessary lessons which is the desideratum for a national rebirth on governance issues.

    But it does not appear to me that the spiritual lessons have been particularly impactful on our political leadership here in Nigeria against the backdrop of the way and manner they are still plying their asphyxiating prebendals.

    Need I say how democratically satiated I was when I watched with delight and glee how Uncle Sam cornucopiously and ebulliently showcased itself to the world as the bastion and bulwark of democracy?

    True, former President Trump made the point that it’s not yet eureka for America when it comes to sit-tightism, political strongmanism and governance megalomania verging on monomania as is characteristic with Africa but Americans made the point in caboodle that their democratic institutions were resilient enough and have been sufficiently forged in the furnace of a democratic salamander to resist political strongmen.

    What a political lesson again for Africa and Nigeria!  I would asseverate from mountain Olympus that the triumph of American democracy over Trumpism was SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS.

    Now to the elusive Pax Nigeriana of our dreams.

    A poetic and philosophical homo sapiens was once quoted as saying, “…See me lakayanalakaboy, shokolokobangoshe….was the language of the white man to abuse our colonial mentality and our lifestyle still sustains that abuse.”  How very true.

    I have bestirred and ensconced myself in my mystical and alchemical laboratory, preferring to engage on matters that redound and conduce to the evolution of my soul personality in this incarnation because Nigeria is fast becoming a damnosa hereditas-God forbid — peregrinating the trajectory of a FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION by the purposeless purposelessness, conscienceless consciencelessness and directionless directionless directionlessness of its largely supine, indolent, philistine, somnolent and rudderless political leadership.

    How can we ever justify the sheer criminal lawlessness, arrant banditry and deprecable brigandage openly perpetuated by pastoralists against farmers all over the country and with harum scarum bravado and recusant braggadocio?

    Farmlands are being daily ravaged, pillaged and farmers kidnapped and eviscerated by herders and yet the response of the coercive apparatus of state is one of Olympian aloofness, lackadaisical complacency and shilly-shally predilection?

    In the midst of this seeming state of anomie, a state governor is regaling himself with incendiary rhetoric and verbally hurling combustible projectiles. And yet we are being told that these are no incipient signs of a failed state, especially when various geo-political zones and states now have to resort to self-help?

    It is on public record now that the former Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Buratai, pontificated only a few weeks ago that it would take an aeon to defeat Boko Haram and its dastardly activities in our country.  So, what about the tales by moonlight from the arm’s propagandic orifice that Boko Haram has since been militarily defenestrated?

    Goebbellian hogwash and putrescent legerdemain.

    l have said for the umpteenth time that Boko Haramism, more formally known as Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad, has transmogrified into Nigeria’s gorgon medusa (it predates this government) is itself a manifestation of governance fiasco over the years, especially in northern Nigeria where majority of successive governors like their southern counterparts have been inebriated in their narcissistic aqua rather than delivering the dividends of democracy to their people.

    Are we out of economic recession? For me, the answer is a very simple one and it can be found in how our ragged among us and the proletariat and lumpen proletariat are interfacing with the day to day economy and not in the gobbledygook from the air- conditioned offices of official high priests.

    In the midst of all these security challenges, there has been a new outcry for state police.  That appears very attractive, especially since the federal security agencies seem to have been overwhelmed by their constitutional duties.

    But I hold the view with a sense of deep reflection that state police at this point in time would tantamount to the apple of Hesperides.  One federal Gordon medusa is still certainly better than adding another 36 state gorgon medusas to it.

    Looking forward, it appears to me very clear and settled that whoever takes over as President of Nigeria in 2023 is what is largely going to determine the survival of this country.

    His character, bridge-building capacity, ideological grasp of issues, sense of local, national and international dialectics and more will count heavily.

    I assure you that God and the Cosmic giving me life and health, I will be at the frontline of the political barricades for that struggle, for this country belongs to all of us.

    Permit of me my senior brother to retire back into the cocoon of my alchemical and mystical laboratory from whence your avuncular and patriotic concerns roused me with the sui generis privilege of feasting with you on very high and noble matters pertaining to our nation-state.

    I hope that through your kind graces, our soulmates you eloquently spoke about will have the opportunity as usual of knowing that your younger brother has dutifully responded to your patriotic summons.

    • I remain yours truly,

    Osahon Obahiagbon.

  • Shakabula thinking, shakabula tactics

    Shakabula thinking, shakabula tactics

    By Olakunle Abimbola

    The Sunday Igboho-Yoruba elite romance brings to mind the fox and cock in Yoruba folklore.

    The fox always pounced on the hen.  But each time it sighted the cock, it bounded for dear life.

    “Wait!” the rooster, one day, cackled at the panic-stricken fox, already belting away.  ”Why do you always flee from me?”

    “Because,” it pointed to the roaster’s head of fire. “That can burn!”

    “Fire?” the cock was surprised.  ”On my head?  This is no fire!  It’s only my comb!”

    “Is that so?” The fox crept towards its newfound quarry — and pounced.  From that moment, the cock became sweet game!

    It’s a powerful metaphor for surrendering your ace — and cropping catastrophe.

    If the Yoruba polite society continues to cede space to such a crude soul, then soon the Igboho fox would gobble up the Yoruba elite rooster.

    Can that still be rolled back?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But the prognosis appears dire — except folks change tack.

    Still, let’s be clear.  Igboho as a person, crude bouncer or savior-vivre, is absolutely of no interest to this column — and this does not issue from any arrogance or empty condescension.

    In truth Igboho, like Gani Adams, has somewhat made something of himself, despite his humble beginning.  You can’t, therefore, continue to permanently judge both men, by the shackles of tough nativity, which they appear to have admirably thrown off.

    Besides, Igboho would continue to be the hero of not a few, particularly for his heroic, if crude, intervention; in the vexed armed herdsmen criminality, on the Ibarapa front of Oyo State; and the Ketu front of Ogun State, both in the Yoruba interior.

    Neither would his stock likely fall, among the ranks of giddy Yoruba ultra-nationalists, high on their craving for Oodua Republic, the latest political opium in town — a cause an unfazed Igboho, even in cheering respectable circles, has declared himself a rabid proponent.

    Now, the problem is not holding a political view.  That’s the democratic right of all.

    The problem is a rude, crude and limited fellow, belching ill motives to traduce revered natural rulers; and threatening to kill or harm citizens who hold contrary views — citizens no less covered by democratic norms, in a republic founded on law. That ought to have triggered instant elite alarm.

    Indeed, this Igboho crude intrusion on public consciousness; and his continuous stark commentaries, rippling with devil-may-care outlawry, should worry all.

    Yet, not a few Yoruba elites have made peace with this dangerous bombast; like the cunning but ultra-foolish one, hiding behind a crooked finger.

    As for the media, particularly the (anti)social media hue, it’s morning yet on hugging the sweet plague of sensation! The Igboho end clearly justifies the mean(ness) — to parody that cynical coinage, by our own WS!

    Which brings to mind current shakabula happenings, in a high season of shakabula thinking, in the Yoruba country.

    Flush from an alleged foiled arrest, for whatever reason, Igboho arrived Lagos, to hold court and claim kin with Gani Adams, who had had cause to earlier rebuke him for his stark penchant to hurt what Adams called the “struggle”.

    The one serenading the other is no crime; since both are angling and hankering for elite admittance and approval.  A cross-serenade, therefore, hurts no one.

    But what could hurt all is an emotive elite, flinging open own gates, in uncritical endorsement of the Igboho essence — push-and-pull, warts and all; just because short-term ethnic plots and conspiracies align.  It’s a short-sighted take the Yoruba polite society may yet rue.

    Which was why Baba Ayo Adebanjo and his Afenifere rump, holding court with, and proudly touting an Igboho photo-op, appears a near-travesty, even by traditional Awoist standards.

    For context, that was akin to the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo, admitting Eruobodo, among the most fearless and most celebrated of that era’s Action Group (AG) “stewards” (polite Awo-speak, for push-and-shove party fixers), into the innermost sanctum of the party — and making a giddy photo-op of it!

    Indeed, Pastor Tunde Bakare’s shakabula (Dane gun) metaphor is proving not only robustly analytic but also eerily prophetic!

    It accurately portrays the tragic collapse of Yoruba reaction to felt danger: from the clinical rigour of the Awo era, to the scalding emotion of this current post-Awo epoch.  That change holds little in stock, beyond strategic ruin.

    But again, it’s less about Igboho, as a person.  It is rather about the grim metaphor, of Igboho’s grim essence; and the long-term ruin it holds for all.

    It’s not unlike the tragedy of military rule in Nigeria, rupturing polite governance, and putting everyone in a bind.

    The pristine military that took power on 15 January 1966, was not the most illiterate bloc in the country.  On the contrary, subject to the humble human development stats of that era, it still counted among the most elitist and most knowledgable in its field.  Certainly, it was the most adept at enforcing its command ethos.

    Yet, it made so much hash of governance, that by the time it finally surrendered power in May 1999, it knew it had thoroughly subverted its core essence; and it craved a core rebirth.

    The military, despite its strong points, was simply ill-equipped to rule.  But it took decades of collective ruin, before Nigeria could figure out that grim reality.

    Still, what modern Nigeria took eons to find out, Ibadan, in its rustic paradise of plunder imperialism, never allowed to happen.

    Even at the apex of his power, Ibadan resisted the ploy of Latoosa, its last official warlord-in-chief, to combine military and governance duties.

    After vanquishing the powerful Iyalode, Efunsetan Aniwura, perhaps the last symbol of elite opposition against Latoosa’s bid to take complete control, Ibadan still told the fierce warlord that he couldn’t combine military duties with the Baale, as he craved.

    To that Latoosa scoffed (according to accounts in Samuel Johnson’s The History of the Yorubas), that the Baale was a “woman”, since by Ibadan Constitution, the Baale didn’t go to war.

    The Ibadan elite agreed, even if the Latoosa slur hurt.  But the constitution held.  The warlord faced war while the Baale faced civil governance.

    This short blast from Yoruba history underscores that golden rule: in times of crisis, stark fellows and hot heads don’t call the shots.  They stay in the streets ready for orders, from more seasoned minds, who fully understand the issues.

    That golden rule is what the Yoruba elite buck, with the sweet romance of yielding space to the likes of Igboho and Gani Adams, for short-term gains.

    It could end in long-term tears.

  • Vaults of secrets

    Vaults of secrets

    By Gabriel Amalu

    The splotches of the Nigerian story, is akin to some of the tales, in Olukorede S. Yishau’s collection of 10 short stories, titled: Vaults of Secrets. The similarity is such that while Olukorede’s work can be dubbed a fiction, one does not need to look far to see resemblances in the characters around us.  On its part, Nigeria, which ordinarily should be a reality show, sometimes trends more like a fictional entity.

    Perhaps, Nigeria’s present ‘fictional reality’ started with the 1999 constitution. There are many, who will swear that the document is a work of fiction, by unknown intellectual mercenaries. For such people, the constitution started with a lie in its preamble that: “We the people of the federal republic of Nigeria … do hereby make, enact and give to ourselves.”

    So, one can understand any diatribe, over which genre the Nigerian constitution belongs. Fiction, faction or Reality? With the preamble a fiction, the constitution furthers the narrative by proclaiming that the Nigerian state shall be a federation, which for many is a combination of fiction and facts, when they compare the provisions of the 1999 constitution with the fundamentals of a federal constitution elsewhere.

    Indeed, if the country is truly a federation, the 1999 constitution would have restricted its provisions to the prerogatives of a federal government, while each state would be entitled to enact her own constitution. Agreed the states can make some laws, but the jurisdictions allowed the states are so restrictive that the reference to Nigeria as a federation for many is fictional.

    A further peep into the constitution stretches the confusion on the appropriate classification of the constitution. In chapter II of the 1999 constitution, for instance, one is accosted with a very rich provision which can make the federal republic an Eldorado. It is eloquently titled: ‘Fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy.’ A foreigner seeking the citizenship of a modern country, would be enthralled by those provisions, and may be attracted to apply for citizenship.

    Such a person after reading chapter II, would think that he/she has found the country with the ideal constitution, and with great expectation may apply for citizenship under chapter III. Such an applicant may assume that if the government can meet the fabulous provisions of Chapter II of the constitution, even by a half, the country would be one of the best countries to live in.

    Having been sworn to abide by the constitution of his new country, he/she would be excited until he/she tries to enforce any of the provisions of Chapter II. Before a court of law, he would be confronted with a provision in Chapter IV which renders nugatory the detailed provisions of chapter II of the 1999 constitution, as a justiciable right. Tucked away in the belly of section 6(6)(c) of chapter IV, is a denouement of the great expectation of chapter II.

    Read Also:Reviewing Yishau’s Vaults of Secrets

    There are similar sudden deaths of great expectations in Olukorede’s 10 short stories, which bring the exciting stories to a sudden denouement. One such sudden death is that of the chairman, in the second short story titled: ‘This Special Gift’.  Like Olukorede did to the chairman, the authors of the 1999 constitution, perhaps winking in mischief, struck down the great expectation of chapter II of the constitution, with a stroke of pen.

    Such is the power of fictional writing that Olukorede, could after gifting readers what looked like a biography of a living chairman, killed the character, to return the story to a work of fiction. So, just as the reader of Vaults of Secret, would complain that the chairman he/she thought the book is referring to is still alive, the new citizen would complain that he/she thought the provisions of chapter II is justiciable, only to be told that the soul was taken in a subsequent chapter.

    Another arcane resemblance between Nigeria and the Vaults of Secret is seen in ‘Till We Meet To Part No More.’ The story revolves around prisons and prisoners, their crimes and their time in jail. For many, Nigeria has become one huge prison, and everybody including the leaders are like ‘condemned men’ doing time in jail. And like the men in jail, in ‘Till We Meet To Part No More’ many in Nigeria are not ready to divulge what they did, to get Nigerians into the huge jail that the country has turned into.

    The third story, ‘My Mother’s Father Is My Father’ perhaps captures the shame associated with earning preferment in the Nigerian power conundrum. In the short story, a father rapes his daughter, who bore him a child. In a sense, there is some similarity with what Niger Deltans are doing with the NDDC, set up to liberate the zone from the abandonment of the federal authorities. There are also many, who would never divulge the oaths, and other unthinkable things they did, to beget power.

    In ‘Letters From The Basement’ Olukorede’s story can be related to the tribal sympathizers in government. With everyone, including the president, and many governors, accused of reclining into ethnic enclaves, the story warns of the consequences of using government apparatus to further such ethnic interests. The consequences could be a jail term, as happened to Nelson, the protagonist in the short story. Of interest, the governor of Zamfara State has raised alarm that the country would quake, if he opens up on those sponsoring the mayhem in his state. Are such persons, politicians of high standing, like Nelson?

    Another interesting resemblance with Nigeria is the story of Michael Ekiwetan Esq, in: ‘Better than the devil.’ The legal luminary with a big chambers, made his money as a hired assassin. His story reels of similar traits of many Nigerian who pretend to be doing what others are doing, but under the cover of darkness, are engaged in criminal activities. Perhaps, the story is a warning that all that glitters is not gold.

    In Lydia’s World, set in London, Olukorede, tells the story of swapped Nigerian children. The story somehow pokes fun on the indigene and the settler issue that is unsettling Nigeria. In the story, a Yoruba son was swapped for an Ibo son, and they lived as such until the truth puckered the peace of Lydia. The story reminds me of a rhetorical question I asked a classmate boasting about his brave ancestry, some months back.

    When I told my classmate that it is possible that at birth he was swapped unintentionally with a child from another tribe, different from the one he is boasting of, the argument ended. Of note, recently in Nigeria, the DNA test, as in Lydia’s World, has become a sharp knife searing the hearts of many families.

     

     

  • Bloody hands

    Bloody hands

    By Gabriel Amalu

    Those who own the cows roaming other people’s homesteads, whether in the northern or southern part of our beleaguered country, may actually have blood on their hands, without realising it. In their naivety (criminal?), they may be postulating that they are not the gun-men killing in the name of cows, neither have they procured the killers. But those who hand over their cows to itinerant herdsmen to roam the homesteads by that act may actually be accessory to the killings.

    As argued by some of the apologists of the armed killer herdsmen, the crisis bedevilling the northern part of the country, which has now mutated into mass kidnapping as an economic activity, is the result of ethnic warfare over cattle rustling. So, if you handed over your cows to herdsmen to roam the wild and the result is mayhem and killings, you are as guilty as the herders and their armed wing that kill to protect cows from farm-owners.

    A leading figure amongst the apologists, and governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed, in justifying the carrying of arms by Fulani herdsmen contended that the armed herdsmen are protecting themselves from cattle rustling. That argument may be one of the original reasons for bearing arms. But a prognosis of the crisis will show that cattle rustling may have become an economic activity, because of the destructive activities of the cows, which has made normal farming activity useless.

    So, if farmers whose farms have been destroyed by herders have turned to cattle rustling as an economic activity, the blame should fairly go to the owners of cows which roamed about and destroyed the farms. Unfortunately because the herders come from a privileged class, what originally may have been precipitated by their actions are now pushed forward as a reason why they should be allowed to illegally bear arms.

    Of course, the herders and their armed wing that are paid to defend the archaic culture are mere couriers of death. Those who procure death as an economic activity are the owners of the destructive cows. So, the next time you meet any person (Fulani or non-Fulani) who boast of owning cows, the question to ask is, where are your cows? While it is legitimate to practice the culture of one’s ancestors, like rearing cows, it is only fair to ask those concerned whether their cows are roaming the hinterland and causing death and mayhem to their fellow citizens.

    So, Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State, this writer asks you: where are your cows? It is important that the governor understands that if he owns any of the cows roaming parts of Nigeria, then he may have blood on his hands. The same question applies to all elite Fulani who understandably take pride in engaging in the cultural proclivities of their illustrious ancestors. There is no doubt that the Fulani has a rich history of being herders, and agreeably they deserve to be proud of that.

    But just as it was macho and a sign of virility for Fulani men to tend cows in the bush and fend of wild beats in the past, or get beaten with canes to earn the right to a bride in the past; in the modern times, it is cowardly to steer the cows into the private homes and farms of fellow citizens, and brutally assault them when they confront you for destroying their homesteads.

    For this writer it is criminally unconscionable for those who are living in big mansions to pretend to be cultural activists, by allowing their less fortunate brothers to still roam the wild in the name of practising an archaic culture. If these privileged few, especially those of them in positions of authority, believe the practice of roaming the wild with cows is worth retaining, they should allow some of their own children to engage in it.

    When Governor Bala Mohammed and his supporters push the argument that because the practice of roaming the wild is dangerous and governments have failed to provide security, therefore the Fulani herdsmen should be allowed to carry guns, they are turning logic on its head. As elected representatives of the people (both Fulani and non-Fulani), it is their responsibility to promote a fair and equitable economic environment for every citizen. That responsibility includes steering the herders away from any practice inimical to their own well-being.

    To allow the herders to engage in an economic activity that exposes them and their fellow citizens to danger is a failure of governance. To encourage them to engage in unlawful activity like carrying guns illegally to further their dangerous economic activity amounts to criminal collusion. So, those in positions of authority who openly argue that herders are entitled to carry guns, should be tried for criminal conspiracy to engage in the unlawful conduct of bearing firearms illegally.

    For if we accept the logic of the apologists, then it is what started off as destructive activity of herders who engaged in indiscriminate open grazing on farm lands that morphed into cattle rustling. And it is those who suffer the dispossession from cattle rustlers that now bear arms to protect themselves. With the cattle herders overpowering them and freely destroying their farms, the farmers have in turn acquired their own guns, to further the cattle rustling and other criminal activities.

    From cattle rustling, the bandits have grown in stature and have taken to kidnapping as a more lucrative criminal activity. The above scenario may not be far away from the tragedy that has befallen Nigeria, particularly northern Nigeria. Those who have no economic activity to sustain them like the grown up Almajiri children, criminally abandoned by the state (again in the name of cultural proclivities) may also have joined to swell the ranks of the bandits that have rendered boarding in secondary schools a dangerous social behaviour.

    With the north already lagging behind educationally, and with the Boko Haram’s war on education, this latest practice of kidnapping of secondary school boarders, as a pastime, may be the death knell on education. So, unless the tide is reversed, the northern part of Nigeria may soon become one of the most dangerous places to live in the world. For many with separatist disposition, the northern part of Nigeria is a drag on the southern part, so they don’t mind an end to the relationship.

    While disintegration should be a far-fetched contemplation, efforts must be made to stop the haemorrhaging in the north. The answer does not lie in bearing illegal firearms; neither does it lie in enforcing the archaic culture of open grazing. Without doubt, those elite whose cattle roam the countryside may have innocent blood of their fellow citizens on their hands.

  • Murder in the Consulate

    Murder in the Consulate

    By Olatunji Dare

    Thanks to U.S. President Joe Biden, the world now knows conclusively the horrible fate that befell the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2, 2018.

    Khashoggi was lured to the Consulate to pick up papers that would seal his divorce from his Saudi-born wife and clear the way for him to marry his Turkish fiancée.  Life was about to take  a more agreeable turn for the exiled journalist, a reporter and columnist for the Washington Post.

    He headed to the Consulate that day, accompanied by his fiancée.  The visit would be brief; she would wait outside, and they would return to their residence with a passport to their wedded future.

    Hours passed by, and he did not come out of the Consulate.  Alarmed, she alerted the Turkish authorities.  Surveillance video showed a man wearing the clothes Khashoggi had on when he entered the Saudi Consulate. But the man was not Khashoggi.

    Khashoggi did not show up that day, or the next, or the day after.  It would turn out that he had set out on a one-way trip, a mission of no return.

    What happened to Khashoggi?

    Hours before he was due at the Consulate, a chartered flight from Riyadh, the Saudi capital, had landed at Ankara airport, in the Turkish capital.  On board was a team of Saudi officials, including the chief security officer to the Saudi Crown Prince and de facto Saudi ruler, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), whom the Western media had been lionizing as a modernizer and reformer.  The Saudi king, in whose name he rules, has long been incapacitated by infirmity and superannuation.

    An x-ray of their hand luggage revealed a curious collection of artifacts:  a bone saw, and other accessories of, let us call it, macro surgery, to dignify the butcher’s trade.  With their diplomatic cover, they cleared security and headed to the Saudi Consulate.

    Several hours later, they headed back to the airport and flew back to Riyadh in their chartered jet, mission accomplished, with no telltale fingerprints.  Or so they thought.

    But Turkish intelligence had videotaped the mission in all its bestial and blood-curdling detail.  To advance his stature and his claim to being a major in Middle East politics, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan leaked the recording to some key members of the international community, including the United States.

    If there ever was a smoking gun, this had to be the mother of all smoking guns.

    It showed the men who had flown in from Riyadh early that day throttling Khashoggi, cutting off his fingers perhaps to prepare him for the main act, and then hacking him to pieces, leaving others to stuff the parts into sacks and clean up as best they could.  A local contractor helped dispose of the grisly remains.

    Consulate staff hurriedly put new coats of paint on the Embassy precincts, but tell-tale signs were still much in evidence when Turkish officials visited several days later to inspect the crime scene.

    At first the Saudi authorities denied any involvement.  “The former guy,” as Biden called his execrable predecessor in a sublime putdown, echoed the Saudi authorities.  He said he had spoken with the Saudi crown prince and that he had vehemently denied any involvement. The media must therefore not rush to judgment.

    Later, indulging his predilection for saying one thing in a sentence and unsaying it in the very next, if not in the same sentence, the former guy said of the Saudi authorities that “maybe they did and maybe they didn’t.”  He would go on to suggest that some “rogue elements” might have carried out the killing.

    In the face of iron-clad evidence, the Saudi authorities changed tacks.   The killing, they said, had been carried out by some free-lance executioners acting entirely on their own without their knowledge and without their approval.

    But the attentive audience knew that this was no freelance or impromptu outing.   The gruesome operation had to have been approved from the very top.  The team of murderers included the crown prince’s chief security officer, personnel from his security detail, and top medical officers in public employment.  The logistics could not have been perfected on a whim.

    Pivoting on the narrative of the rogue assassins, the Saudi authorities rounded up 11 unnamed  officials, among them, it is believed, some of those who had jetted to Ankara on that gruesome mission in October 2018, and put them on trial before a secret court in an effort to pin Khashoggi’s murder entirely on them.  Five of them were reportedly condemned to death.

    The whole thing was a sham through and through, and Trump the former guy knew it.  His intelligence officials had compiled for his benefit a detailed report of the murder.  Nobody expected him to evince a sense of grief, much less outrage.

    After all, while in office, he routinely called the American media and the working press “enemies of the people,” except the section owned by Rupert Murdock, especially its broadcast arm Fox News.

    But some empathy, surely, was indicated for a beleaguered person who sought refuge in America the land of the free, contributed his skills and insights to an American institution over the years and wanted to be a part of the American experience?

    Fat chance.

    Trump does not do empathy.  Reprisals against the Saudi authorities were also out of the question.  Saudi Arabia was a staunch American ally and a proxy in its conflict with Iran, a friend  of Israel, the world’s largest oil-producing country, and a client in lucrative arms deals reportedly worth $100 billion.  Why allow the killing of one journalist get in the way of such good business?

    That, alas, is what passes for realpolitik—politics without sentiment.

    Not even Jimmy Carter’s White House, with its affirmation of human rights and humane values, would have made a calculation different from Trump’s.  In these matters, “national interest” is what really counts. To those who define and are charged with protecting that interest, every other consideration is sentiment.

    At the time of the Khashoggi murder, Democratic hopeful Biden, as he then was, had expressed outrage.  He had vowed to make the Saudi authorities pariahs over the murder and their horrid human rights abuses.  But President Biden is now less sure-footed.

    To his credit, he declassified and released with minor redactions the intelligence report on the Khashoggi murder that the former guy had embargoed.  That report implicates Saudi’s crown prince unambiguously and takes the matter out of the realm of conjecture.

    But as to practical consequences, Biden and “the former guy” are on the same page, even if not in moral terms.  Biden would pursue no direct sanctions that could place America’s vital interests at risk.

    If there is any consolation in this bestial matter, it is that the truth has finally been revealed.

    There is a local angle to this tale.

    For 36 years years, Nigeria’s authorities have concealed the facts and the truth of the parcel-bomb murder of Dele Giwa, the crusading founding editor of the iconic newsmagazine Newswatch, in his home in Ikeja, Lagos.

    A ranking police officer tasked with the investigation, my brother Herbert Tunde Dare, was murdered while pursuing the assignment with his accustomed doggedness.

    Other investigators, sought to drown the matter in a tide of perjury, evasion, prevarication, and obfuscation. Besides the fact of the murder itself, they came up with nothing that can be called credible.

    But nothing stays secret forever.

    There may well be, lying in some dank official vault, a classified report on the investigations that official after succeeding official has sought to conceal, for reason of self-preservation or esprit de corps.  There may well be a crucial witness who will conclude one day that he has nothing to lose by telling the world who killed Dele Giwa.

    May the principal suspect and his collaborators live to witness that day.

  • Our new normal!

    Our new normal!

    By Sanya Oni

    With every passing day comes new prognostications on what to do with the rabid band of criminals that have taken arms against the Nigerian state, the lot that have reduced our humanity to the level described by Thomas Hobbes as ‘brutish and short’. Trust our opportunistic political elite in moments like this, not only have rigours – the good old endeavour of scrupulous interrogation of ordinary day events  for context to aid understanding – taken flight, we are suddenly finding that good and bad have not only become relative. In place of truth now lies the seduction to a brand new world of alternative reality which once promoted by one Donald Trump has now been fully domesticated by the Nigerian politician. In Nigeria’s convoluted moral space, not even the so-called armour-bearers of truth and everything in between, seems to have been spared. Now, no one is sure of anything – anymore. It’s Nigeria’s season of new normal!

    Talk of a country where things – particularly of the negative kind – are known to move at the speed of light, we have gone beyond mere debates on the moral underpinnings of the open embrace of criminals. Once the talk of exploring back-door channels to engage the murderous bandits was deemed as academic –  more like the testing of the waters at the time in the context of the creeping anarchy in that part of the country. Now hierarchs of state not only pander to them, the ill-clad, bazooka-bearing fellows have since become regular faces in the places of power, laying out demands and giving instructions on what the government needs to do for the rest of us to have peace.

    Guess that those Nigerians who, a short while ago expressed outrage when the federal government granted amnesty to 600 so-called repentant Boko Haram terrorists saw what the rest of us could not have seen. Their grouse – which is that many of these people were not only known to have committed mass murder but should ordinarily be objects of interest for their crimes against humanity, couldn’t sway a federal government that was only too eager to advertise tokenism as progress!

    Today, that train, of the thoughtless absurdity called amnesty has since berthed in the northwest states of Zamfara and Katsina. In July 2019, Governor Aminu Masari had on behalf of his Northwest counterparts after their one-day security and reconciliation meeting with security agents, vigilante, and volunteer groups, herdsmen and farmers in Katsina issued what came close to a decree at the time: “As from today, no vigilante group member or volunteers should attack or kill any herdsman, as sacrifice must be made by both sides to ensure peace reign”.

    Apparently bent on ensuring that the armistice worked, he would a month after, play host to the representatives of the bandits terrorising the eight frontline local government areas in his state. There again, he re-emphasised the need for them to respect the amnesty granted to them by his government.

    As things turned out, not only did the governor overstate the bandits understanding of the text of the amnesty but also their sense of honour as the entire thing fell apart few months after. He would later tell the BBC Hausa Service that his administration would no longer engage in any negotiation or peace talk with bandits as they did not honour the agreement they signed!

    A lot has happened since. First, was the frontal display of criminal impunity in which some 300-plus schoolboys of Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina were abducted in December last year. Now, the latest tale is that Awwalun Daudawa, the leader of the criminal gang alongside six other co-masterminds of the abduction have handed over their weapons, swearing on the Holy Quran not to return to their former practices – all in exchange for amnesty. Talk of a sweet deal in which different figures– all them dizzying – have been bandied as settlement for one of the biggest crimes of all time; surely, some variants of criminality not only offer rich rewards, they actually guarantee access to the good life!

    As for the latest – the Kagara abduction, we may never really know all that has happened. Suffice to say that a group of outlaws – so powerful as to get the entire machinery of Niger State government scampering like some rain-bitten chicks couldn’t have gone that far for a few pieces of silver! And now we are talking of the amnesty franchise being merchandised like some piece of silverware and as if it is some sort of incentives for uncommon display of ethical behaviour.

    But then, absurdity also comes in different shades or variants. Talk of a country of moral relativists: last week, I referred to a certain Governor Bala Muhammed who verily believes and so insists that his kinsmen – the herdsmen – who have since established themselves as the clear aggressors in the unequal conflict with their farmer-counterparts have nonetheless still earned the rights to bear sophisticated arms since, they are apparently more endangered than their victims!

    Now, compare this with a governor, who says that herdsmen should vacate the state’s forest reserves, which in any case, they illegally occupied and which they have since turned into a vast theatre of crime, the latter being accused – by the promoters of crude inverted logic and specious morality – of executive overreach and of ethnic profiling – and all in the bid to ensure the safety and security of the vast majority of the citizens in his domain.

    I have earlier on the matter written of the barely acknowledged tragedy – that a governor in this day and age could not draw a distinction between the rights to free movement as guaranteed by the law and the curbs equally set by the same law on the violation on other citizens’ spaces! But what do you make of the number three citizen, the number one lawmaker and the head of the legislative branch not only stoking the fire but carelessly and needlessly inserting himself into the fray at a time all eyes are on the leaders to calm the situation.

    At the Hausa Service of the BBC at the weekend, the Senate President Ahmad Lawan, claimed that ethnic clash at Shasha market in Ibadan was sparked by the utterances of some governors from the Southwest. To the extent that he fell short of naming the governor, one can only hazard a guess; and that is if one finds such necessary or even useful.

    Yes, what happened in Shasha market in Ibadan was unfortunate. I will even go as far as to say that the tragedy was not only avoidable, it is inexcusable in this day and age. However, as against the superficial explanation by the likes Lawan, what the facts point to are certainly far deeper and more complex.  Which is why his inferences, draped as it were, with the same blinkers of ethnocentrism as those of Bala Mohammed, are just as hollow, unhelpful as they are opportunistic. Yes, I understand why Lawan’s fixation with an unnamed governor might provide some therapeutic effects in a season of abdication. But only if he truly desires to find the chief culprit in the national malady would he fdare to look inside Abuja’s sprawling Three Arms Zone!

  • How not to grow parties

    How not to grow parties

    By Olakunle Abimbola

     

     

    The February 11 passage of Alhaji Lateef Jakande, 2nd Republic governor of Lagos (1 October 1979 – 31 December 1983), was the end of an era — on the personal plane.  Of all the five Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) governors back then, he was the last to depart.

    But that epochal end, and start of another, may yet transcend Jakande as a person.

    It may symbolize a shift — not necessarily for the better — in the evolution of political parties: from the Jakande era, with its organic flow, on the progressives front, from the 1st Republic Action Group (AG), to 2nd Republic UPN; to the post-Jakande period’s inorganic and much more diffused methods.

    Now, a bit of backgrounding — then and now.

    Then, the UPN, with its four cardinal programmes of free education, free health, full employment and integrated rural development, was the 2nd Republic leading progressive voice.  But it was in opposition to the ruling but conservative National Party of Nigeria (NPN); just as the progressive AG was in opposition to the conservative Northern People’s Congress (NPC: NPN forebears), and its ruling allies, in the 1st Republic (1 October 1960 – 15 January 1966).

    Now, the All Progressives Congress (APC) is the ruling party, officially sworn to social democracy.  But its nativity, after the merger of legacy parties, was a fusion of varied tendencies.

    These were South West traditional progressives of the Awolowo hue, in the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN); northern conservative progressives, in the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC); wilted conservatives, in the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP); South East liberals, in a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA); and, of course, latter-day joiners, and rebels against the then ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), in New PDP (nPDP) elements.

    Just as well Alhaji Jakande died in the midst of APC revalidating its membership, amidst reports of the party exploring the raiding of cross-party lines to grow its ranks!

    That makes the former Lagos governor an exciting historical landmark: at his death, the loading of APC with ideological all-comers, but christening them “progressives”, appears coming of age.

    On the surface, that passes as a post-Jakande development.  But really, Jakande was in the thick of it all (though as a victim), when it all started, in 1989.

    Gen. Ibrahim Babangida had, take-it-or-leave it, charmed the brow-beaten political class, with his divisive “new breed” versus “old breed” theory.

    The regnant fib: to make way for saner politics.  But the real reason: to power Babangida’s own ploy, as Army general, to dominate Nigerian electoral politics, after the style of Argentina’s Gen. Juan Domingo Peron (1895-1974); with feeble opposition from the broken and disinherited politicians.

    That new breed experiment effectively cut the umbilical cord, of political tendencies, progressive or conservative, from their 1st and 2nd Republic ideological ancestors.

    It would also presage the terrible partisan cross-breeding of today, which suggests every party is only a convenient vehicle to grab power; and not ideological vehicles to clinically think out and distil public service solutions.

    Sure, the IBB gambit collapsed under the June 12 rubble — that avoidable nation-wrecking crisis, over a rash military annulment of the presidential election of 1993, that Moshood Abiola won fair and square.  Still, the new breed vs old breed dummy has remained to blunt the ideological clarity of subsequent political parties.

    But back to Jakande, as prime victim of it all.  As at that time, the Awo old guard still boasted three UPN-era governors: Ondo’s Pa Adekunle Ajasin, with unimpeachable moral authority; Oyo’s Chief Bola Ige, with unrivalled street charisma, particularly among the younger South West progressive elements, and Jakande himself.

    At least in his native Lagos, Baba Kerkere appeared well positioned, as Awo-incarnate, to lead the third generation of Nigerian tested and trusted social democrats, after AG and UPN.  But the IBB abracadabra put paid to all that.

    The new breed experiment attracted young, upwardly mobile professionals, gathered behind Dapo Sarumi, determined to battle, for political space, the Jakande-led Lagos old guard.

    That new phalanx crystallized behind the late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, retired major-general and Obasanjo junta’s chief of staff, Supreme Headquarters; and post-Army days, conservative progressive from Katsina State, with creditable presidential ambitions.

    Either side won some and lost some.  But that sustained clash would knock Jakande off, as the Lagos progressives’ undisputed leader.  But beyond that personal loss, the Lagos Awoists would get diluted with more conservative elements than hitherto. Again, that set the stage for today’s ideologically flexible — indeed, neuter — political parties.

    But again, the June 12 crucible would further purify the Lagos progressive front.  Sarumi backed the Yar’Adua bloc’s trade-off of the MKO mandate, for the earnestly hated Ernest Shonekan Interim National Government (ING).  He got consumed in all of its vortex, and promptly lost his leadership.

    From that ruin, a new order sprouted, boasting a new breed-old breed alliance, that somewhat restored the primacy of Awo-like social democracy in Lagos, thus trumping the putative ascendancy of the Yar’Adua conservative-progressive strain.

    This new Lagos order would morph into the Alliance for Democracy (AD), in 1999.  The new face of this alliance is Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who led successor governors to re-plant Awo’s progressive ideas, as firm cornerstone of Lagos state policy.

    Also Asiwaju Tinubu, more than any, takes credit for the progressives’ 2015 win at the centre, though only after his own faction of the old, fissured AD had morphed into Action Congress (AC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and APC, the winning platform, after the 2014 merger.

    But why this brief historical tie-back?

    Well, the regnant wisdom, among the present APC party leadership, appears cross-party sorties to grow the party — no crime! — not withstanding any ideological dissonance that brings in its trail.

    Still, let them remember that it’s such brazen cross-party raids, so long as it translated into immediate power grabs, that eventually unhorsed the PDP, which had bragged to rule for 60 years — in the first instance.

    Let the passage of Jakande, therefore, rekindle the message among true progressives in the party: long-term cohesion is a function of like minds, not a staccato of all-comers, in for ultra-immediate gains.

    But that message is true of progressives as it is true of conservatives, and even of centrists.  It’s the only logical way to grow sustainable political parties.

  • Goodnight HRH Tom Inyiama

    By Gabriel Amalu

     

    If there was a king, qualified to combine modern executive and traditional authority, the king of my community who will be buried this weekend, qualified. So I dedicate my offering today, to his memory.

    On February 26, the Ogwofia community in Ezeagu Local Government Area of Enugu State, will roll out Ushe and Ikpa, for the last offala of her illustrious traditional ruler, HRH Igwe Thomas Anieheobu Inyiama, who joined his ancestors on December 20, 2020, at the ripe age of 82. As posited by Professor Richard Okafor, et al, elsewhere, expectantly on that day, Ushe will “burst into praise poetry, saluting the king, praising his genealogy and family tree, and daring (his spirit) to surpass the heroes and ancestors in deeds of valour” while the Ikpa ensemble will praise his bravery.

    HRH Tom Inyiama, a devout Catholic, was a dainty royalty, even before he climbed the exalted throne as Ogwugwu Ebenebe 1 of Ogwofia on December 28, 2003. Before he became king, he was fondly called Uncle Tom. Handsome, tall, elegant, fair skinned with a cherubic face, you cannot miss Uncle Tom in any gathering. Before any audience, he was the archetype public speaker as “the revealing expression of a human personality.”

    Whether in his native Ogwofia dialect or in English Language, which he bagged BA (Hons), from the University of Nigeria Nsukka in 1963, Uncle Tom was a marvel, as a rapporteur and a story teller. Rich in native wisdom and polemics, he would regale his audience with historical redounds and anecdotes. When he became a king, regal effervescence entwined with a natural luminescence.

    Uncle Tom went to university at the dawn of Nigeria’s independence, and became prominent early in his life. When it was rare to meet senior civil servants, in Nigeria, Uncle Tom had latched several senior administrative positions. He started off as Assistant Secretary, Federal Ministry of Commerce, from 1964-1965; then Assistant Secretary, Federal Scholarship Board, 1965-1966.

    Just before the Nigerian civil war, Uncle Tom became Assistant Secretary, Ministry of Lands and Survey, Enugu, from 1966-1971, and later Assistant Secretary, Public Service Commission, Enugu, in 1972. Uncle Tom rose to the prestigious position of Divisional Officer, Igbo-Eze, from 1973-1976. Later, he served as Senior Assistant Secretary at Ogbaru, from 1977-1978 and at Onitsha Local Government, first as Principal Assistant Secretary from 1979-1980 and later Under Secretary from 1980-1981.

    In 1980, when the government of Chief Jim Nwobodo, established the Anambra State Television, Uncle Tom was head-hunted to serve as the Administrative Manager and later Director of Administration. Back to national service, in 1997, Uncle Tom was appointed the Electoral Commissioner of Sokoto State. A distinguished English language scholar, Uncle Tom was a part-time teacher of English and Literature in the University of Lagos, from 1965-1966; and a part-time teacher of English at his Alma-mater, UNN, for the Extra Mural Programme from 1973-1976. He was the Coordinator of English and Technical Writing at Anambra State University of Technology, from 1987-2010.

    Uncle Tom also served his beloved Ogwofia community, as the chairman of the Ogwofia Development Union (ODU), and under his watch, a water project commissioned by the state military governor in 1986 and a school laboratory in the community secondary school, were built.

    When Ogwofia autonomous community was restored, by the civilian government of Dr. Chimaroke Nnamani, the community needed a king. Among the gladiators for the exalted throne, Uncle Tom shone like a meteor. Humble, humane and gentle, Uncle Tom was among the few who fulfilled the requirement set down by the young Turks in charge. With his cache of achievements, Uncle Tom, also a novelist, with an LLB (London), emerged victorious as Igwe elect of Ogwofi-Owa Ancient Kingdom.

    After a failed attempt by some hawks to upturn a transparent selection process, the community rallied to install their Igwe. In a colourful ceremony at the Ogwofia Owa civic centre, Nwankwo, Uncle Tom transformed to HRH Igwe Thomas Anieheobu Inyiama, Ogwugwu Ebenebe 1 of Ogwofia Ancient Kingdom. And this writer had the honour of swearing him to the oath of office.

    Indeed, Ogwofia is an ancient kingdom. The man Ogwofia was the fourth son of Owa, who lived centuries ago. According to Professor Okafor, et al, in their book: The History of Amofia Ogwofia Owa, Ogwofia had five sons, namely Umuofunu, Agbani, Egede, Amofia and Nchenawa. However after some valiant men earned Ogwofia honour in a battle, they were granted the privilege to occupy the conquered territory, and the new village, Okpuyo, assumed the position of the first son of Ogwofia.

    It is this proud people of many firsts, which HRH Igwe Tom Inyiama had the honour and privilege to rule for 17 years. At my usual Christmas visits to his Majesty (until COVID-19 with impudence shut the doors of conviviality) Ogwugwu Ebenebe 1, would remind me about the exploits of Ogwofia and my family. He would remind me that he is standing on the shoulders of great men like my father, late Chief Michael Amalu, a man of many firsts himself, who was Ogwofia’s sole candidate for Igwe, in the 1970s, while the town formed a part of the greater Imezi Owa.

    Also my famed Uncle, late Chief (Ozo) Joseph Amalu, who was a traditional ruler of the community, a customary court judge, and an enigma. Ozo Joseph with a few distinguished sons of Ogwofia, in the 1940s under District Officer Chadwick, heralded the famous Day Break in Udi, a drama shot on celluloid, depicting the exploits of a mobilized local community, championing infrastructural development. His majesty would remind me that Ogwofia had the first Cooperative Consumer’s Shop in the whole of Nigeria, built in 1944, among several other achievements.

    While Igwe Ogwugwu Ebenebe reigned, the community made tremendous progress, with a new town hall, cooperative shop, electricity and water projects, tarred road, edifying church and several other developments. Indeed, despite the huge controversies, the emerging Enugu Free Trade Zone, partly on Ogwofia land, for which some are angst against the king, may become the key transformative landmark.

    HRH will be missed by his family, friends, people of Ogwofia, Ezeagu Local Government and Enugu state. My sympathy goes to His Majesty’s closest pal, Professor Richard C. Okafor   and his wife Dr Mrs Cey Okafor, who with His Majesty and Nono Josephine (the late Queen), shared scintillating friendship and pet names. My sympathy also goes to Igwe’s surviving wife, Nono Florence, the Princes, Anayo and Obinna, and their siblings, the Onowu and members of Igwe’s cabinet and indeed the people of Ogwofia.

    Goodnight Ogwugwu Ebenebe 1 of Ogwofia Ancient Kingdom.

  • Touching base with Osahon Obahiagbon

    Touching base with Osahon Obahiagbon

    By Olatunji Dare

     

    My dear Osahon:

    Fraternal greetings.

    It has been a long intermission.  The hiatus that this epistle is designed to interrupt has far exceeded in duration any we had known previously. But need I assure you that “out of sight” has not been “out of mind?”

    Whether contemplating developments at home or abroad, it is almost as if the world we once inhabited has passed on irretrievably, and we have been thrust into a strange new one without the wonted delineations of the old one, and almost without anything that can be called a compass.  The concatenation, I find, grows more unfathomable and more stultifying with each passing day.

    Incidentally, it is one year to the day that the first Covid death was reported in the United States.  Since then, 500,000 lives have succumbed to the virus that the disgraced and discredited former American strongman Donald Trump dismissed as a minor irritation that would soon expend itself, failing which it could be eviscerated with a judicious ingestion of any off-the shelf disinfectant.

    This figure is more than the combined American death from Word War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War.

    Worldwide, the virus has consumed some 1.5 million lives, blighting the prospects of those who survived         its infernal visitation.  This latter figure does not include fatalities from the so-called Third World, where testing for the virus is sparse at best, and vital records are notoriously unreliable.  To take a familiar case: No more than 10 per cent of births and deaths ever enter into Nigeria’s official records, according to the best authorities.

    Can you imagine for a moment, Osahon, how many vacancies this cumulative toll has created in the hearts and hearths and homes and beds and dining tables of individuals and places of work worldwide; how much misery and agony and despair the virus has loosed on the world?

    But that is only a partial measure of the devastation the pandemic has wrought in the short term.  It has changed the meaning of work and worship and learning.  It has constrained living, leisure, commerce,    travel and social interaction in ways few could have imagined. And it may well be that, when it is all over, everything will have changed so profoundly that the way we now calibrate time will amount to a distortion and a denial of the present discontinuities.

    The calendar will have to be recast in pre-Covid and post-Covid terms.

    But despite the cataclysm, millions are still in denial, not merely of a virus they cannot see but whose depredations are nevertheless all over the place; they deny science itself, armed with their private arsenals of alternative facts and trapped in the most inane conspiracy theories.

    Do you know, Osahon, that despite the lush television coverage and copious documentation of the event and the moon samples ferried home by the visiting earthlings, 10 per cent of Americans still believe that the moon landings were faked?  To them, astronaut Neil Armstrong’s “one giant step” was nothing but “one giant hoax.”

    They will most likely refract through the same distorting mirror last week’s landing with pinpoint accuracy on a predetermined spot on the planet Mars by the spacecraft Perseverance with its payload of a robotic rover and a helicopter, in the most sophisticated exploration of the red planet yet.  The news that China and the United Arab Emirates also landed separate probes on the red plant that very week can only lead the usual suspects to gin up new conspiracy theories.

    But enough about America, Osahon.  Being a pertinacious but discriminating consumer of international news, of which there is always a superfluity, thanks to the plethora of media outlets, you probably can tell me more about America than I can tell you.

    Shifting gears, I will now advert my mind to the homeland.

    From what I read daily, it has been bad news, bad news and more bad news over there, despite recent intimations of what officials are trumpeting as the end of the recession.

    Do you believe them, Osahon?  Especially given the serial lockdowns to mitigate the propagation of the coronavirus and the attendant contraction in economic activity, to say nothing of the closure of the nation’s land borders, the policy somersaults, and the mixed fortunes of oil in the international market?

    To those who have enjoyed no respite over the years from the deprivations that have been their constant companions, the news must seem a cruel joke.  Have they not always lived in a recession?

    But their deprivations, I gather, are nothing compared to the security situation.  I am told that farming, the country’s lifeblood, has become the most dangerous and least rewarding occupation.  Farmers have been forced to abandon their farmlands to pastoralists, for fear of being killed or kidnapped for hefty ransoms. Their holdings have become free grazing grounds for cattle and homesteads for their herders.

    Just last week, women in the Esan country of your great Edo State took to the streets in protest against the insecurity that now governs their lives.  They can no longer work their farms because of well-founded fears of being raped by armed pastoralists. Marauders have set up camps not only in the ungoverned spaces that perfuse the country; they have also forcibly taken over forest reserves, ecological treasures controlled and maintained by state and government and local authorities for posterity.

    The herders and their enablers are asserting a constitutional right, without any corresponding obligations, to graze their cattle wherever they please, and the rights and privileges and economic interests of those who own the land be damned.

    To travel outside one’s immediate locale is to court danger, as hundreds of motorists and passengers have found to their grief.  Inter-city and inter-state vehicles are seized at gunpoint and diverted to God-forsaken forests where their occupants are stripped of their possessions and subjected to horrific abuse, before being freed on payment of ransom.

    These occurrences, plus the unending barbarities of Boko Haram, and the country’s shambolic response              to the coronavirus pandemic interspersed with stories of actual or looming hardship and compounded               by continuing and new instances of brazen inequities in the allocation of federal resources, I find, are the narratives that dominate the headlines and the front pages and discussion programmes on radio and television.

    The civility and restraint that should undergird the national policy dialogue, especially at times like these, have been supplanted by demagogic posturing and opportunist vigilantism.  Wherever you turn there is seething discontent, and even from this remove, you get the sinking feeling that this path can only lead to national tragedy.

    Where are the statesmen?

    The bonds of nationhood, tenuous at the best of times, are fracturing with each passing day.  But the response at the highest level has been much talk and very little consequential action that does not invite charges of appeasement, if not complicity.  They are carrying on in the belief that the country will muddle through as usual.   But that very belief is what landed us in our present predicament.

    Can that be the way forward, Osahon?  Can continuing yesterday’s failed policies with half-hearted adjustments here and there conduce to building a country whose unity is rooted in justice, equity, empathy, and brotherhood?

    It is less than reassuring that the same old faces and their predilections are astir again and regrouping to perpetuate the status quo, content to have Nigeria remain a land of great potential.  There is little fresh thinking up there, only how to keep an utterly dysfunctional system going.

    The foregoing, Osahon, represent my fears and prejudices.  I thought I should share them with you.  Being    of a younger generation, engaged, and withal “on ground,” you will probably have sharper insights and consequently a more nuanced perspective.

    Your friends and admirers nationwide, among whom I am glad to number myself, will be greatly enriched by your cogitations on these momentous issues and others I have not raised in this epistle.

    Until then, Osahon, stay engaged, stay well, and stay safe.

    Fraternally

    Olatunji Dare

  • Ganduje vs Bala Mohammed

    Ganduje vs Bala Mohammed

    By Gabriel Amalu

    Those who claim that a federal law banning open grazing, if enacted, as proposed by Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, will be unlawful, miss the target. In their confusion they conflate a law banning open grazing with the right of herdsmen like every other Nigerian, to trek from Bayelsa to Sokoto, as long as they don’t trespass on private property or commit any crime on their way.

    Furthermore, they want to confound our reasoning that the right to live in any part of Nigeria is the same thing with a right to practice your trade at the detriment of the rights of other persons in any part of the country. They give the unreasonable impression that because a Nigerian has a right to live in any part of the country, such a person can go into the precincts of the Bauchi State government house, for instance, to set up a spare parts shop.

    In their malice-laden endeavour to deceive, they give the impression that whereas there is a constitutionally guaranteed fundamental right to move freely from one part of the country to another, there are no constitutional guaranteed right to privately own properties, protected by laws of the state from intrusion and interference by other fellow citizens.

    To show how deceitful the proponents of these fallacies are, one of them, Governor Bala Mohammed, of Bauchi State, lied that his Fulani kinsmen who are herders are entitled to carry AK-47 to defend themselves, because governments have failed to provide them security, and consequently that the farms owned by the kinsmen of Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State, can be trampled upon and destroyed by the herders without consequences.

    In an address in Abuja, last week, Bala denigrated the constitution he swore to uphold with his barefaced lies, even as some persons clapped for him. Of course, there are many misguided public officials all over the place, who will neither study the laws of the country nor consult those who have studied it, even when they answer lawmakers.

    The chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Ajibola Basiru, Osun Central, displayed such ignorance when he said: “If a law was made as proposed by the governor (of Kano), it would not only be unconstitutional, but also go contrary to the part of the constitution which stipulates that Nigerians, irrespective of state of birth or nativity, had right to freedom of movement.”

    They pretend they are not aware that there are legitimate laws and regulations undergirding the practice of trade and business, in every part of the country. Because they are desperate to please the powers-that-be, they pretend that the rearing of cattle cannot be regulated, just like every other private business, even when that trade is being practised in a manner constituting danger to public health.

    Such a mind-set as displayed by Ajibola is what is plaguing the officialdom in Nigeria at the highest level. It is the reason the presidency are quiet when a governor lies on a national television that citizens whose business interest are endangered are entitled to carry guns, but it will be unlawful for a state to arm its security men to protect the citizens of the state.

    For the purpose of emphasis, the freedom of movement does not include the right to defiantly walk across a private lawns, talk less of eating the grasses on the lawn. Last week, the private residence of revered Noble Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka, was trespassed upon by headless herdsmen. To show that the herdsmen even know that their right of movement does not include a right to trespass, they ran away when they were confronted for their unlawful conduct.

    The 1999 constitution (as amended) in the much misinterpreted section 41(1) provides: “Every citizen of Nigeria is entitled to move freely throughout Nigeria and to reside in any part thereof, and no citizen of Nigeria shall be expelled from Nigeria or refused entry hereof or exit there from.”

    There is clearly nothing in the above provision that arrogates the right to turn such movement into a tumultuous hurricane leaving in its wake destruction of other people’s property. If the constitutional guarantee of freedom of movement extends to the right to traverse private properties and to conduct business in any place, then a Church organisation can go into the compound owned by a Muslim society and set up a church, or vice versa.

    The same constitution in section 43 provides that: “Subject to the provision of this constitution, every citizen of Nigeria shall have the right to acquire and own immovable property.” It provides further down in section 44(1) “No moveable property or any interest in an immovable property shall be taken possession of compulsorily and no right over or interest in any such property shall be acquired compulsorily in any part of Nigeria except in the manner and for the purpose prescribed by a law”.

    All the listed derogations in sub-sections (a) to (m) of section 44 do not include a forceful acquisition of such immovable property by private citizens for the purpose of fostering private business of feeding cows or through the exaction of armed banditry with AK 47 rifles. Yet, Governor Bala and his ilk, who probably own those destructive cows, and prefer the archaic culture which foster their hegemony over their less fortunate kinsmen, would push such lies in the name of Fulani interest.

    But they forget that if the right to traverse the country with cattle and guns are constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights, then there would be no need for rights to private properties, state and national boundary. Indeed, if Governor Bala is sincere, then that large expanse of land he acquired in Abuja, while he was minister of federal capital should be forfeited to herdsmen.

    I am sure that if someone should set up a car wash in any part of that land which he acquired for himself and his erstwhile principal President Goodluck Jonathan, he would readily sue for trespass, yet he argues herdsmen to enter into other people’s family compound, farms and forest reserves recklessly, and have their cattle feast on crops and grasses as it suits them.

    Of note, trespass was defined in the English case of Entick v Carrington (1765) 95 ER 807 at 817 as “every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute is a trespass though there be no damage.” If not that our country is degenerating to swaths of lawless fiefdom; and if the judicial system is up and active, successful actions in trespass, with award of humongous exemplary damages, would have curtailed the madness promoted by the likes of Governor Bala Mohammed.