The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Before the vaccines arrive

    Before the vaccines arrive

    By

     

    The whole world has been breathing easier this past fortnight.

    With the development and deployment of various vaccines 95 per cent guaranteed to neutralize  malignant Covid-19 disease that has upturned life in ways that seem inconceivable outside science fiction even now, we can begin to look forward to a return to the way we lived before.

    Hooray to science and to the scientists who produced the vaccines in record time.  Not even Donald Trump is calling them fake.

    Developing and producing the vaccines was the easy part, however. The transition to normality will be gradual, slow even.  For tens of thousands of persons stricken with the disease, help has probably arrived too late, given the fraught logistics of distribution and administration.

    If that exercise were a matter of going from one household to another administering the vaccines, that would be no harder than conducting an enumeration census.  Just count and document every resident.  But the mass inoculation scheme is different, and not just because of the technicalities involved.

    In the short term, there will not be enough vaccines to go round.  Almost everybody will consider himself or herself a prime candidate at this instant or the next.

    Who will get the vaccine, when, and how will they be selected?

    Debate in Nigeria on these overarching questions, I suspect, is going to be as impassioned, rancorous and divisive as the debate on the nature and essence of the Covid-19 itself.  Even now, in some quarters, they are not done debating whether the virus is fake or real¸ or whether what is being peddled as the antidote is not at bottom a scheme by the infernal duo of Bill and Melinda Gates, in pursuit of their insatiable appetite for conquest and control.

    Nor are we any wiser as to whether the search for a vaccine was not misguided from the outset, since according to a leading expert, the virus was something you could flush out of your system with any detergent worthy of that name.

    And what, pray, if the whole thing turned out in the end to be nothing but the manifestation, at long last, of the The Beast, the infernal creature with 666 stamped all over it,  the one foretold by the Scriptures?  How do you fight a monster of Biblical provenance with vaccines devised by ordinary humans?

    Better to leave all that to the conspiracy theorists, who we shall always have among us and better to leave them all in their dank lairs.  Far, far more productive to address and address forthrightly the problem of allocation.

    The vaccine is here, whether they like it or not.  It is here for everyone, including those who have fashioned careers on Covid-19 denial and fortunes from peddling fake remedies. But the proven life-saver is not there for the mere taking. Even in the short term, there is not enough of it to go round.

    So, how should this scarcest of medical, economic, social and political goods be allocated?  Who should get the vaccines?  When? And how will they be selected?

    There is no shortage of distributive strategies that have been canvassed, of which pricing – market forces – is the most efficient, according to the best authorities.  That is why the nation’s entire economy is premised on it. It may require some fine-tuning, but this is what it means in practical terms:  The vaccines should go to those who can pay for them.

    The same outcome can be achieved through competitive bids or auctions.  Those who can pay premium price get the commodity on offer first, if not exclusively

    And those who can’t?

    Their friends, relations, philanthropic organisations, maybe even the government, will pony up.  They will carry on as they have always done and live on in sufficient numbers to tell their stories.  Isn’t that what they have always done anyway?  But more on this, shortly.

    What about allocation by algorithms?  These days, they allocate all manner of scarce products by algorithms.  Why can’t they do the same thing with vaccines?

    Some have countered that the scheme can be rigged in such a way as to favour relations and friends and those willing to offer heavy inducements to the programmers who, whatever their mental magnitude and cybernetic endowments, are just as human as the rest of us

    That is no trifling objection.

    Allocation on federal character principle; state of origin, ethnic quota, gender, residence, or occupation have also been suggested.  But all kinds of objections will be raised by the usual persons.

    In the end, each country will have to devise a system of allocation that accords with its priorities, culture and system of values.

    In some advanced countries, health workers, patients of nursing homes, those in the food industry, essential services, sanitation workers, persons employed in the food and hospitality industry, are first in line to get the vaccine. Next are teachers and students. The elderly and hence more vulnerable population, follow. And so on and so forth.

    When the vaccines ordered by the federal government arrive, it would be scandalous indeed if Nigeria followed the same formula.  And why should it, when our culture and traditions are different, and when we have our own time-tested system of values?

    Given our tradition, it goes without saying that the President and the First Family and their entire household, followed by all functionaries in the Presidency should be the first set of candidates for the vaccines, not forgetting the Vice President and his suite.

    The reason is plain.  Unless and until the President and his household and aides are protected from Covid-19, no one is safe from its ravages.

    While at it, they should spare a thought for the Vice President, his family, and his suite.

    Members of the Council of State, the Federal Executive Council and their households should follow closely, and the members of the National Assembly should come next.  But I gather that the lawmakers are contending that they could get the vaccines immediately after the Presidency, if not before it. They are saying, according to my source, that since laws have to be made before they can be executed, they should have primacy.

    These lawmakers sef!  Must it always be about them?

    Commanding officers in the armed forces and the troops fighting off the menace of Boko Haram and allied terrorist outfits could do with a morale booster.  They and their families, plus serving members of the police force police should get the vaccine next.  Care will be taken in this latter case to ensure that those listed as policemen and women can execute a proper salute or a parade-ground command.

    The royal fathers, the custodians of our most cherished traditions, should follow, not forgetting their households, however large.

    Our traditional reverence for the elderly in society enjoins us to protect them from the ravages of disease. They will be next in line for vaccination.  Then, doctors, nurses, health workers, and teachers.  We will always need them.

    Given the way Nigeria is governed, the persons of consequence listed herein should constitute the first order of priority for the vaccines. Where the government cannot bear the cost outright, soft loans will be provided.

    Rest easy, those not mentioned in the foregoing list, which is but a first draft, subject to multiple revisions.

    To all, a happier, healthier and more abundant New Year.

  • Aviation industry’s troubled times

    Aviation industry’s troubled times

    By Sanya Oni

    Earlier in April the New York Times had reported that the Trump administration had reached an agreement in principle with major airlines over the terms of a $25 billion bailout to prop up the aviation as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged. In the deal put together by the Treasury Department, carriers like Alaska Airlines, Allegiant Air, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, United Airlines, SkyWest Airlines and Southwest Airlines would benefit from the package designed to help them pay their workers. A month after the US intervention, there were also reports of Her Majesty’s government, also in a desperate attempt to mitigate the devastation caused by Covid-19, reportedly shelled out £1.8bn of British taxpayers’ money to four British carriers – British Airways, EasyJet, Wizz Air and Ryanair

    Several months after, Nigerians could only mutter about the fate of their local aviation industry in the face of their own experience of similar devastation wrought from the months of imposed inactivity. Today, if the conventional wisdom across the globe is one in which countries continue to work out mitigating interventions to keep their domestic aviation industries up and running, the Nigerian government has certainly done pretty little to demonstrate not just the enormity of the challenge let alone a resolve take such measures that are necessary at this to rescue its beleaguered carriers.

    And this is an industry that is traditionally assailed by myriad of challenges not limited to high operating costs, multiple charges and unfriendly policy environment. And now to add the burden imposed by the enforced lockdown from the pandemic, the outlook cannot be anything but deeply concerning.

    And the signs are already with us. In August, Air Peace, arguably the nation’s leading airline not only laid off 70 pilots, it went on to effect an across the board cuts in salaries and emoluments for staff. A simple notice from the airline had summed it up: “The airline cannot afford to toe the path of being unable to continue to fulfil its financial obligations to its staff, external vendors, aviation agencies, maintenance organisations, insurance companies, banks and other creditors…”

    That note had ended rather ominously: “Anything short of what we have done may lead to the collapse of an airline as could be seen in some places worldwide during this period”.

    Arik Air another promising airline would join the train when earlier in the month, it offloaded some 300 workers. For an airline already on the throes of asphyxiation (over 50 per cent of its workforce of over 1,600 staff had been on furlough in the last six months), the development must have come as a final nail on the coffin of sorts.

    Like the statement from Air Peace, the text was in every way similar: “Arising from the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to the constrained ability of the airline to complete heavy maintenance activities and return its planes to operations, stunted revenues against increasing operational costs, the management of Arik Air (In Receivership) has declared 300 staff members redundant to its current level of operations”.

    Put simply, Covid-19 with its associated disruptions, has, like an opportunistic disease, finally uprooted the remaining vestiges of the pretence of an industry that had long been endangered. And now with flight resuming in earnest, the need by the airlines for considerable resources for a rebound has become very urgent.

    As it turns out, the debate on the bailout is now stuck between the N4billion proposed by the federal government on the one hand, and the N50 billion proposed by the operators via the Senator Smart Adeyemi-led Senate Committee on Aviation, on the other. In between them is another proposal by the National Economic Council (NEC) for a N27 billion package for the sector. Unfortunately, if one expected a sense of urgency given the gravity of the situation that is presented, nothing of sorts is evident up until this time; none of the careful, painstaking appraisal to match the imperatives of the moment more so at a time the industry is already in the death throes, gasping for breath! Clearly, if the talk about Nigerian carriers being a part of the global chain and so are not insulated from the pangs of the pandemic has come practically to nothing; so also are the fancy talks about the quantum losses in millions of jobs; the fears of possible depletion in airline revenues and with it the massive threats to aviation investments would appear to count for little now.

    As they say in these parts – all na talk! Talk of the tragedy of a nation perennially unable to identify its priorities, let alone moving speedily to do what it must.

    Clearly,, if Nigerians would focus less on National Assembly’s rather alarmist prognosis on the state of the industry vis-à-vis the ravages of Covid-19 aspresented at their recent public hearing, there certainly cannot be running away from the debate on the bigger issue of the future of the sector even now as the industry struggles to emerge from the ravages wrought by the pandemic.

    It seems to me that a part of that debate must necessarily focus on the on-going rule of natural selection as it affects the industry under which the boys are finally being separated from the men; the debate on the so-called national carrier to be funded wholesale by taxpayers but whose rationale is not foggy still, but appears to make sense only to its promoters.

    It should touch on the daring foray by Air Peace into the international aviation orbit amidst its many challenges and what this forebodes for the local industry as a whole. We are talking of an airline which, despite the turbulence of the environment, has not taken a dime of public funds either as grant or bailout and yet successfully made a grand entry into the Lagos-Johannesburg route last week and this at a time the South African Airways which hitherto held a near monopoly of the route had lost its mojo. And more fundamentally, shouldn’t the airline with the largest domestic carrier by fleet, one that has shown exemplary character in the face of storms, not only enjoy huge financial assistance but encouraged to consolidate its lead in local and international operations?

    Wouldn’t that be a better, smarter way to save the nation the huge fortune being expended in the vainglorious search for the so-called national carrier?

    Merry Christmas dear readers!

  • Misadventures in satire

    Misadventures in satire

    Olatunji Dare

     

     

    IN the midst of the carnage that Covid-19 has loosed on humankind, the mindless terror and bloodletting that assorted Islamist insurgents and freelance marauders have unleashed on a swathe of Nigeria, and the gloom that pervades the landscape with nary a redeeming shaft of light — it might be judged unfeeling and self-indulgent that I am writing about my misadventures as a writer of satire.

    I am doing so deliberately, from choice.  My hope is that readers who have been desensitized by bulletins and graphic videos of the slaughter of innocents as they harvested their fields and by sterile arguments over who hundreds of students who were plucked from their schools and forcibly marched  into the jungle, Khmer Rouge-style, may find the piece diverting.

    Even the Nigerian mind, the Nigerian sensibility, I am persuaded, can accommodate only so much trauma.

    The first satirical piece I ever did was for an undergraduate writing course at the University of Lagos.  Our instructor, a Canadian woman who could easily have passed for one of the students in the class, returned my submission with high praise, scoring it an emphatic A.

    One of my classmates who had a great deal of media experience under his belt going into the programme – I had none – asked if I could let him read my essay, which centred on the lace craze of the late sixties through the mid-seventies.  I gladly obliged.

    His face tightened as he read one passage; he shook his head sorrowfully as he read the next, and so forth. By the time he was done, his face was contorted with resentment.

    =“No wonder she gave you an A,” he spat out.  “You denigrated your country and your compatriots before a foreigner just to get a good grade.  That’s very cheap.”

    =The way he rendered his verdict, you would think that I had committed a particularly odious species of high treason.

    =That was an early warning, from close quarters, of the perils of satire.

    =Many years later, in the wake of the return to party politics preparatory to the inauguration of the Second Republic, I did a piece for the Daily Times saying that banning university lecturers from political activity or any activity tainted by the whiff of politics, did not go far enough.

    =Why couldn’t they just shut down with immediate effect, all departments of political science in Nigeria’s universities,  clear the shelves of political treatises in all the university libraries, and ban all symposia, lectures, debates, discussions of a political nature – the kind of extra-curricular engagements that animated our campuses and kept them so vibrant back then.

    =The university community was aghast.

    =A senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Ife, as it then was, went for my scalp.  For effect, he attached a picture of himself ensconced in his book-lined campus office, a study in contemplation, unlike, you know, that book burner.

    =Stanley Macebuh of lumninous memory, the paper’s editorial adviser who also doubled as editor of its re-invented editorial page, the most engaging public affairs forum in town, added a footnote to the rejoinder from Ife, in that mischievous manner that became him so well.

    =“We humbly recommend a second reading,” he wrote tersely at the bottom of the published piece.

    =Some two decades later, I saw that very article cited in his Inaugural Lecture by a highly accomplished political scientist as scholarly evidence of the hatred Nigerians of all stripes harboured for his specialism.

    =Early in 1984, I set out to examine Decree Four, the enactment that criminalised publication of the truth, if that truth embarrassed a public official.  Trial was by a special tribunal with a civilian judge as chair complemented by two military assessors. The intent of the submission was unambiguous.  Its title, “In defence of Decree Four,” was a dead giveaway.

    Some people saw it as a grand betrayal of the media, by one of their own. Some read it as an underhanded attack on the obnoxious law.  But in the circles that really mattered, it was welcomed as a hearty endorsement of Decree Four.

    At a journalism conference at Bayero University, in Kano, Dan Agbese, then editor of the New Nigerian, told me that some of his friends in the military high command had commended the article to him, wondering why he and his colleagues in the daily press could not demonstrate discernment that perfused it.

    “And what did you tell them,” I asked Dan, holding my breath and praying that he had not been recommending a second reading of the piece to them, as Macebuh had done to my traducer from Ife.  Agbese said he just shook his head and pursued the matter no farther.

    =If you were not too distracted by the on-going War Against Indiscipline or consumed by the search for “essential commodities,” you could have heard my sigh of relief far away in Lagos.  For, if Agbese had told them the truth about that article, they would have marched me to prison immediately to keep Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor company.

    =In Babangida’s court, academics of a certain tendency were viewed as persons given to all manner of radicalism, due and never, and who never taught what they were paid to teach. They went on strike at the least provocation or no provocation at all just because they thought they had a monopoly on specialised knowledge and skills.

    = “Malarkey,” I wrote.  Time call their bluff. Send them packing and replace them with commanding officers from the armed forces.

    =After all, the director of army signals could be pressed into the academy as a professor of mass communication, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, the gruff mariner who carried on as if he had scores to settle with the university community, could assume duties right away as a professor of nautical engineering.  The army’s paymaster-general would serve with credit as a professor of finance.

    Time, indeed, to call the lecturers’ bluff.

    The reactions were swift, personal.  An English teacher in a high school in one of the Eastern States, lamented that such a “wishy-washy” piece with no redeeming grace found its way into the hallowed editorial page of The Guardian.

    Its author, he said, could have been actuated only by envy of the most corrosive kind, never having seen the inside of a university.   The author in question, I might add in parentheses, has three degrees from three universities, two of them world-class.

    I must now fast forward to the matter of William Keeling, the reporter for the London Financial Times who analyzed Central Bank records, oil export receipts and other financial data and concluded that $2.8 billion out of some $5 billion in “windfall” oil revenues accruing to the Exchequer from the second Gulf War, was missing from the record.

    They plucked him from his office one evening, and put him on the next available plane to London.

    He got off too lightly, I wrote in a piece titled “In defence of William Keeling.”  They should have put him in a dugout canoe, handed him a paddle, escorted him out of our territorial waters and left him to find his way home.

    Just imagine the contumacy.  What business has a Brit investigating Nigeria’s oil earnings?  Was his home country not also an oil exporter, and did it not also reap windfall profits from the Gulf War? Why did he not write about that? Why his fixation on Nigeria?

    Many friends of the column felt betrayed, none more so than Gani Fawehimni. Need I add “the fiery Lagos attorney?” The very day the article appeared, his assistant brought a letter to me at Rutam House how the piece had “shocked” and forced him to stare at nothing, with mouth agape.”   If it was conceived as a satire, he said, “the satirical impression was too dry” to be clearly comprehensible to ordinary people” like himself.

    =If it was not a satire, he added in pained lament, then, the forces of justice and human liberty are agonisingly witnessing “another loss or crossover” of “a well-balanced thinker, intellectual, brilliant arbiter and patriot.”

    =Fawehinmi’s reaction brought to mind perhaps the earliest lesson I was taught in the art of writing satire, by Tejumola Olaniyan, who is unfortunately no longer with us.  Olaniyan had just begun an academic career at the University of Ife as it then was.  In July 2019, five months before his untimely death, he was named The Wole Soyinka Professor in the Humanities by the University of Wisconsin.

    =Concerned that “the satirical thread” in some of my articles were sometimes too slender, Olaniyan had written in his neat, disciplined script, that “bold exaggeration is the heart of good satire.

    =If I had learned that elementary lesson four decades ago, I would have been spared some of the misadventures reported here and others I am saving for another day.

    =It remains to thank friends and critics of the column for their time and attention, and their instructive feedback.  Best wishes to you all for a merry and safe Christmas.

     

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  • Ransom Moni

    Ransom Moni

    Gabriel Amalu

     

    With the 2020 Christmas a few days away, Nigerians while putting money away for celebration, may consider saving for the kidnapper. Those who have benefited from the laudable federal Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), whether through trader moni, farmer moni or market moni, would remain apprehensive, whether they will be forced sooner or later, to part with ransom moni or protection moni, in other to see the New Year.

    This new challenge is particularly more evident in the rural areas and the highways, where armed bandits freely roam the country side, and maliciously turn humans to merchandise. The recently released over 300 Kankara boys abducted from Government Science Secondary School, Kastina state, bears testimony that a new business may have birthed particularly in the rural northern region. Unfortunate travellers on the highways, even in the southern part of the country bear testimony to this new malaise.

    So while thanking God for the lives of the Kankara boys, who have been released from captivity, the federal and state governments must seriously worry at the possibility that Boko Haram now operate in the north-west as they do in the north-east. People living in that region must be praying that the video released by Shekerau claiming responsibility for the Kankara boys kidnap and showing boys who claimed to be the kidnapped, remain a hoax.

    Of course, other parts of our beleaguered country is not safe from the spate of kidnapping. So, every Nigerian, moving from one state to another, must worry at the potential of paying ransom moni. No doubt, many of those who benefited from the farmer moni, trader moni and market moni, may be worse than they were before the federal government largess came their way in 2019. Most of them will not be in a position to repay the loans, as their investments have been swept away by all manner of vicissitudes.

    Even those who benefited from the Central Bank of Nigeria supported agricultural programmes of the federal government, may not feel safe to near their farm lands, for fear of kidnappers. Part of the alleged sin of the victims of the recent Zabamari massacre, was that they decided to confront, instead of cuddling the Boko Haram bandits with their protection moni. So it is either you pay to be allowed to roam your farm or you pay to regain your right of movement when docked.

    As President Buhari was celebrating the release of the kankara boys, a top Emir was attacked, even as more kidnappings were taking place in Kaduna and other parts of the north. Those who called the Kankara kidnap a slap on the face of the president, considering that it happened just as he landed in his home state for a week long rest, must worry that the entire country is now at the mercy of armed bandits. The situation is not one of do-nothing, as has been the situation in recent times.

    The President needs the help of security experts to design measures to contain the insurgency. Otherwise the gains of his presidency will be washed away. The fact that we are celebrating the release of the boys, and not the apprehension of the bandits who carried out the dastardly act, shows that the danger is still out there. For the army to deserve the plaudits showered on them by the president, they have to apprehend the bandits otherwise many would believe it was ransom moni that did the magic.

    And the security challenge is spicing the economic challenges facing citizens. While many other countries are in recession, ours is made worse by the underlining security malaise. With the second wave of the pandemic birthing, the economic recession may be prolonged, and that will further aggravate a situation that is already very dicey. There are already fears of another national shut-down, for an economy that is suffering the double whammy of insecurity and recession.

    This column recalls that last year, the trader moni, was a source of hope for many Nigerians, even with the controversy over whether it was politically motivated. In an interview the chief operating officer of GEEP, Uzoma Nwagba had said: “GEEP is a microcredit programme that provides much-needed capital to traders, artisans, farmers, petty traders.” He went on: “it is one of the social intervention programmes of the federal government, and comprises of three products: market moni, farmer moni and trader moni.”

    Nwagba said it was initiated to capture over 30 million Nigerians who operate at the base of the financial pyramid, and had no access to finance. Laudably, the programme was geared to give this huge number access to capital. One wonders whether that number has not doubled with the sacking of many business by the twin bazookas of insecurity and recession. The Buhari presidency must figure out a way to starve these two monsters, if our country is not to go under.

    So this Christmas for the majority of Nigerians is a bleak one and the fear of the challenges of the New Year is the beginning of wisdom. With the recession eating deeply into family economies, how on earth will parents face year 2021, with the economic meltdown of 2020? Where will the resources come from to pay school fees, house rents and feeding money? Of course, many have since abandoned the regular hospitals since their costs have gone beyond their reach.

    Of course, those holding high public offices may not be able to relate to the above challenges, considering the quantum of the resources they have cornered for themselves and their cronies. Just as they cannot relate to the challenges of keeping undergraduates at home, because their children are studying abroad and in private universities, they cannot relate to the economic quagmire of the greater number of Nigerians. Unfortunately, President Buhari who was promoted as a friend of the poor seems to have been transformed by the ambience of Aso Rock.

    Clearly overwhelmed by the challenges of statecraft, and forces beyond his control, like COVID19, the Buhari era may go down in history as one of the most excruciating period to live in Nigeria. Burgeoned by insecurity and economic recession, and abandoned by government, the poor in Nigeria are now on their own. Many of them who received the trader moni, may become finance sector pariahs, as they will be unable to repay the loan, in other to remain creditor worthy.

    With the way things are, the trader moni they received may become an entrapment, instead of a lift to economic prosperity. One day, government may wake up to demand the repayment of the trader moni, and their recovery agents would pretend that the reigning economic recession and insecurity never happened.

     

     

  • Ogunsanwo: The editor’s life and times

    Ogunsanwo: The editor’s life and times

    Olatunji Dare

     

    THERE is not much to add to, or take away from, Tatalo Alamu’s judicious “critical appreciation” of Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, the dashing editor and dazzling new newspaper columnist, who died two weeks ago, aged 75.  Still, I feel obliged to enter some personal reminiscences on a person I counted as a friend.

    Ogunsanwo had star quality stamped all over him.  He had boyish, movie-actor looks and comported himself with effortless dignity and grace – what the French call savoir faire. His column “Life with Gbolabo Ogunsanwo” overflowed with wit and humour, its fluidity and felicity a product of his omnivorous reading, his capacious vocabulary and his lexical inventiveness.

    Ah, the man could turn a phrase.

    Even now, I can visualize the rambunctious Federal Commissioner for Information in the Yakubu Gowon regime whom he described as “frightfully riotousdecades Today, some four years later and at 93, the fellow is not a whit less bumptious.

    Who can forget his piece on the long-retired “Papa” who “got a brand new job” when his son, the military governor of one of the Eastern (now South-south) states recalled and pressed into service to lead the government’s new transport corporation?

    Ogunsanwo’s giftedness never got into his head.  He was an engaging raconteur, but you could never accuse him of being self-absorbed.  For he was also a good listener.  He liked to hear other voices beside his own, which was vibrant and sonorous.

    He entered journalism as an instant star.  His column for the Daily Times where he made his debut drew a large, appreciative audience.  It was habit-forming.  Grateful readers pined for the next instalment, and the next, and the next.

    On encountering it for the first time, I had asked myself:  Who is this Ogunsanwo guy? Where has he been all these years?  I will not be surprised if members of the attentive audience had asked the same questions.

    It came as no surprise, therefore, when Ogunsanwo was catapulted to the editorship of Sunday Times, probably the youngest person to hold that office since the legendary Peter “Peter Pan” Enahoro some two decades earlier.

    The weekly menu of features, reviews, entertainment, celebrity gossip and essays, of which Ogunsanwo’s column was invariably the pièce de résistance made breezy, delightful reading. It catapulted Sunday Times to the top of the weekly titles, with an audited circulation of 500,000 copies. Your Sunday was not complete until you had at least leafed through the paper and communed with Ogunsanwo through his scintillating column.

    Given the altered environment in which today’s newspapers operate, it is safe bet that this record will never be surpassed.

    Ogunsanwo became a celebrity, a gadfly and man-about-town.  His wedding to his sweetheart from his undergraduate years at the University of Lagos days was the stuff of society nuptials.   He had everything going for him.  He seemed destined to reach the editorial pinnacle of the largest and most influential newspaper publishing house in Africa, with connections to the powerful Mirror Group in the UK.

    But as Ralph Waldo observed with accustomed insight, “Events are in the saddle and rule (hu) mankind.” He could have added from his observation cabin Walden Pond that it is in the nature of such events that they are unforeseeable and unfathomable.

    The events that supervened in this story began with the July 29, 1975, coup that felled the regime of General Yakubu Gowon.  A curfew was in force, and breaking it posed not a little danger. The sedate, bureaucratic editor of the Daily Times went missing as this epochal story unfolded.  He would explain later that he could not find his car keys.

    But the crackerjack reporter, Segun Osoba, an assistant editor of the Daily Times, who was given to thinking on his feet, mounted a motor scooter and braved the ride to the paper’s offices at Kakawa Street, and to the home of its publisher and managing director and chief executive, the Babatunde Jose. Back at Kakawa, Jose, a newspaper man to the core, and Osoba, put out the next day’s edition, with news and tidbits that Osoba had ferreted out from his well-placed sources.

    Staffers arrived at Kakawa the next working day to find flyers announcing, effective immediately, Osoba’s appointment as substantive editor of the Daily Times. That was exactly what the press barons in the UK who had groomed Jose for the position of chief executive of the Times would have done. These were powerful men who answered marginally at best to their shareholders, and to nobody else.  He held it as a principle that you cannot not run a newspaper on the plebiscitary principle.

    Ogunsanwo was to remain editor of the Sunday Times, though there was a lingering feeling that he too did not rise to the responsibility his office demanded.

    But Osoba’s preferment rankled.  It breached what had long been regarded as the line of succession at the Daily Times:  The editor of the Sunday Times was promoted wherever the position was vacant. Going by that tradition, Ogunsanwo should have replaced Areoye Oyebola.

    The shake-up brought together senior editors, managers who had been nursing grievances against Jose and the Fleet Street –style imperial streak that ran through his overlordship at the paper.  They put together a well- documented petition demanding Jose’s resignation.

    A new government eager to demonstrate that it had come to change the way of doing business embraced the petition enthusiastically, ousted Jose, the petitioners, as well as Ogunsanwo who had found common cause with them.

    Thus ended a phase of Ogunsanwo’s life that had seemed invested with boundless possibilities.  He was in his mid-thirties.  He had not fully absorbed that blow when his wife walked out on him  He tried his hands on trading on imported canned beer from the UK; the business hardly got off the ground.  Meanwhile, the invitations to high society events and diplomatic receptions dwindled to a trickle, then stopped altogether.

    I would come to know that feeling about a decade later when I quit my post as chair of the Editorial Board of The Guardian and editorial page editor on a matter of principle.  More than once, I actually heard the person I was calling instruct his secretary to tell me he was not available.  If I ran into some old friends and they could not make a quick getaway, you could almost see their blood pressure rising from thinking that I might ask for a loan.

    Ogunsanwo fell back on what he knew best.  He launched a fortnightly he called New Nation, on which I served as a contributing editor.  It thrived for a while and then ran into the usual financial headwinds. Some of the stalwarts of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) which had a lock on party politics in the Southwest offered to support it financially it he would turn into a party organ.

    He refused.  Even in his privations, he would not compromise his journalistic autonomy.

    Many later, Ogunsanwo bobbed up at my office in Rutam House, at one of the turning points of military president Ibrahim Babangida’s duplicitous transition programme, and told me that he was going to run for president and was sure to win.

    For more than an hour, he sketched various scenarios according to which he would be the only candidate left standing by the time Babangida was done banning, un-banning and re-banning the dozens of seasoned politicos in the field.

    The scenarios had no room for the doubts, the prejudices, the miscues, the prejudices, and the force that make politics so unpredictable.  The whole thing was mathematically elegant, iron-clad even.

    After he left, my colleague Sully Abu whom I had invited from his office next door to meet Ogunsanwo and I wondered which of Nigeria’s professional soothsayers he had been communing with.

    In the event, Ogunsanwo did not even get to the starting line.

    I last met him some six years ago, at Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s place in Bourdillon.  He was making a precarious living in building construction. Thereafter, I would learn that he was in South Africa, and then in Australia, but nobody could say what he was doing until news of his death in Lagos broke two weeks ago.

    Of Gbolahan Ogunsanwo, it might be said that he rose like a rocket and fell like the stick.

    But he will always be remembered for his towering accomplishments and his fundamental decency. His was a life of equanimity, a life without bitterness even in the face of betrayal and adversity.

  • A passage in the fraternity

    A passage in the fraternity

    Olatunji Dare

     

    IN the past three weeks, the fraternity of Nigerian journalists has lost two of its ablest and most accomplished practitioners ever.  One of them, Bisi “BizLaw” Lawrence belonged in the older generation. The other, Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, belonged in mine, and was withal a friend.

    In keeping with the custom of our people, this piece is for Bisi Lawrence.  A separate tribute to Gbolabo Ogunsanwo will come later.

    At 87, Lawrence, was among the oldest practitioners still in active service and easily the most versatile, turning out sparkling columns week after week,  often twice a week, on subjects ranging from sports, politics, society, the scriptures, the human condition – indeed, on just about every subject under the sun and beyond for Vanguard Newspapers.

    His range was truly encyclopaedic.  In a way he was the archetype of the journalist of a bygone era, who was expected to know a little about everything, with the difference that Lawrence expected much more of himself and prepared himself intellectually to meet the changes of the eras through which he lived

    When you read his sports columns, you knew immediately that you were in the hands of an expert.  Whether he was writing about cricket, soccer, boxing or athletics you had not the slightest doubt about his firm grasp of the material, the analytic rigour from which his conclusions flowed.

    Every word fell in place, woven seamlessly into the tapestry.  He possessed and valued that sense of craft that distinguishes the master craftsman from the journeyman.

    Long before joining Vanguard Newspapers, Lawrence had plied his trade on radio and television in Nigeria, and on the global scene as a sports administrator and consultant. In each setting, he acquitted himself with high distinction.

    Having lived so long and functioned on so many platforms across the world, he had plenty of stories to tell about journalism and about the human condition.  And he shared them with his colleagues, they said, for their entertainment and even more for their edification.

    I never met Lawrence, not in a professional scene nor in social context.  For reasons I cannot fathom, our paths simply never crossed.   What I know about him derives from his Vanguard columns, of which I was an admirer and student, and from the post-humous tributes of his friends and colleagues at the paper.

    Now, sports writing, like sports casting, is probably the most cliché-ridden journalistic form.  String a few stock phrases together; garnish it with some atmospherics; deliver the product with breathless excitement, and you were well on the way to a career in sports journalism.

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

    Lawrence was different.

    Whenever he reported on tennis, for example, he made you see the flow and ebb, the crosscutting currents of play. He made you know not just the player but the person behind the racquet.  He made you feel the atmosphere.  He situated the game in its political and commercial context, He made you see the bigger picture.  He transported you to the scene of action.

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

    Those who hold that such elegant wordsmanship should be reserved for more important subjects must have been nurtured in the tradition of that earlier era.

    The formula then consisted in stringing a few stock phrases, garnishing it with some atmospherics and delivering the package with breathless excitement, the purpose being to wow the audience.

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

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

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

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

    I regret never meeting him.  I kept nursing the hope that I would meet him one day, introduce myself and tell him how much his writing and a long and distinguished career unspoiled by scandal has meant to me.

     

     

    • For comments, send SMS to 08111813080

  • Interesting times

    Interesting times

    Sanya Oni

     

    YES, these are interesting times! Had the situation not been so dire and drastic and the environment charged, I guess this would be such moments where Nigerians ought to recline their seats to watch the farcical show not only playing out as governance but tearing the country apart from the inside.

    To begin with, so much has been made of our chief steward of state being summoned to parliament to brief members on what his administration is doing to halt the spate of killings particularly in the Northeast; now we are being reminded of the minister-steward in charge, who, being so far removed from the herd, could not be bothered about those minor things that ordinarily trouble the rest of us.

    And as if we needed any reminders of the thin line between the Divine Rights of the monarchs of yore and the constitutional order that we pretend to embrace, think of that open letter from the chief law officer of the federation – Abubakar Malami, SAN – accusing our esteemed lawmakers of not only parlaying to the mob but exulting in overreach all for the sin of daring to call on President Muhammadu Buhari to come down to engage with the people.

    To our esteemed Malami, SAN, the law is apparently what he deems it to be. To those who harbour the notion of presidential infallibility as being incompatible with the current constitutional order, they’ll probably need new lessons from the chief law officer of the republic to understand that the king, in the current season, can do no wrong. Now, we know that the “right” of the president to engage the NASS and appear is “inherently discretionary”. How about this one also – that “NASS has no constitutional power to envisage or contemplate a situation where the President would be summoned to explain operational use of the armed forces” – whatever that means!

    Talk of the same law that could not avail those luckless farmers – 43 of them – butchered on their farmlands by a band of terrorists which our government continues to assure us, have long been decimated? To rub salt upon injury, we are even now been told that the hapless farmers could not be held guiltless since they didn’t obtain relevant permit(s) from the military to harvest their crops!

    So, the issue is about legalism? When has the practice of throwing in the books ceased to be fashionable for those minded for mischief? To those who do not know, we have a legislation called the NDCC Act. That law establishes the functions of the agency, creates the various offices expected to run it and specifies how the appointees get to serve. The president of course thinks he has a better idea. First, he sends the nominees to the senate for confirmation in accordance with the law. The latter confirms the nominees only for the president, against the dictates of the law, to change his mind just moments after! And the result? Three interim management committees in a row in less than two years!

    To get back to the issue, if it is any shame that the administration’s points-man couldn’t see beyond the narrow legalism of the moment –thus putting all manners of conspiracy theories into the overdrive –could we put the eerie silence in the corridors of governance to the climate of dissonance under which the disparate parts of the same administration are to be seen doing their parts?

    Nigerians obviously recognise an alibi when they see one; surely, it is understood that an appearance by the president before the House, for whatever is worth, would have made for good optics. That these now belong in the past only leaves one in the hope that the cost of that botched appearance would not be so grave as to be incalculable in the long run. We are after all, still a praying nation!

    In the meantime, we can think of a country bleeding profusely from all sides. Whether it is from the Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) in the Northeast, bandits with their reign terror in the North-west and now far spreading into the North-central and the Middle Belt, or even the endless squabbles between farmers and killer herdsmen, not forgetting the reign of kidnappers across the national landscape. Let’s add to those the travails of the economy; the declining manufacturing capacity, the looming spectre of famine in the coming months as our farmers desert their farmlands to escape being killed by armed gangs.

    Does anyone still find time to talk of the mind-boggling corruption going on? The rot in the public service, the unbearably high cost of government all of these in the atmosphere of denuded values?

    Put all of these together side by side with the decline in state capacity, the leadership regression across the board and of course, the absence of an effective, hands-on leadership.

    More specifically, think of the ruling party –APC that would rather put its internal politics and the associated intrigues first at a time of national upheaval. A party now so consumed by hubris that it has no qualms about foisting its own brand of anarchy on the rest of us; think for a moment of a party that would not hesitate to replace an elected body with a so-called caretaker committee against the express provisions of its own laws – and yet proclaim itself as a party of change. You couldn’t have a better recipe for state failure.

    From Borno’s Zabarmari 43, to Katsina’s Kankara 333; these are not mere statistics; they sum up to an unmitigated national tragedy the kind that should ordinarily throw the country into deep mourning; in some ways, they represent symptoms of our failures to confront the truth about our leadership and existence; of our penchant to live in denial even when the reality is out there starring us in the face.

    As for those who make the fancy argument that the country is safer now than pre-2015 simply because the Boko Haram no longer holds territories, one only needs to point them to what is happening along the Abuja-Kaduna corridor – that all important artery that connects the seat of our federal government with the base of the erstwhile regional administration; certainly, one of the busiest highways in the federation – to appreciate how hollow some claims can be! In any case, if there is one thing that most Nigerians have come agree upon, it is that this president, who promised hands-on leadership, has been more of an absentee president.

    But sincerely, what qualifies a mere mortal like yours truly to so pronounce on our squeaky-clean  Kabiyesi-President of whom it is said, like the Biblical Nathaniel, there can be no guile?

  • Vote for mercenaries

    Vote for mercenaries

    By Gabriel Amalu

    Governor Babagana Zulum, of Borno State, surely has this column’s sympathy over the heightened insecurity in the state he is ignominiously referred to, as the chief security officer. Brave and daring, Zulum has been a zealot in the war against the Boko Haram insurgents. On many occasions, he has put his life forward for martyrdom, visiting very dangerous parts of the state, to identify with the pains of his people.

    He has boldly confronted the military on some occasions, accusing them of complicity, or incompetence, in the war against terror. At some other times, he has praised the military for their gallantry, wooing them to get even more lethal in dealing with the bandits.  He has also mobilized his citizens, to rise against the evil that has befallen them. Indeed, the so-called civilian JTF, has on a few occasions appeared more daring than the military, because of the encouragement of the governor, who is their own commander-in-chief.

    Clearly, if Governor Zulum should enter into a contest on effectiveness in the war against Boko Haram, with the commander-in-chief of the military JTF, there is the possibility that he could win a landslide. Perhaps, but for the fact that the two commander-in-chiefs are in the same political party, the governor would have been railing against the other commander-in-chief for incompetence, just like his predecessor, Kashim Shettima, denounced former President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Amongst other suggestions, Governor Zulum has called for the use of mercenaries to tackle the Boko Haram. Perhaps that is Zulum’s diplomatic way of saying that the Nigerian Army is incapable of defeating the insurgents or a nice way of saying the military’s commander-in-chief and his field commanders have failed in their commanding duty, in the war front. The visibly frustrated governor also suggested the engagement of the army of neighbouring countries, to rout the insurgents. Interestingly, his fellow frustrated brother governors have agreed to the proposals.

    With the recent senseless slaying of 67 rice farmers by the insurgents, in Zabarmari community of Jere local government area of Borno State, Zulum, is frustratingly flabbergasted. But Zulum, clearly, a proud warrior of the ancient Borno Empire, is more frustrated the law restricts what he can do to help his people confront the bandits. Beyond aggressively expressing his frustration and combatively dealing with the development challenges of his beleaguered state, within limited resources, he is helpless as the state chief security officer.

    Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, captured the helplessness of the so-called chief security officers of the states, succinctly, in a recent Channels Television programme. In El-Rufai’s words: “we are all frustrated. We are almost helpless. The #EndSARS protests clearly showed the limits to the control of governors over the police and the army.” I guess what shows more the helplessness of the governors for Governor Zulum, is the insurgency in the north-east, particularly in his beloved Borno State.

    To make matters worse, while Governor Zulum, may have ideas as to what he can do to tame the savagery of Boko Haram in Borno State, he is incapacitated by law, to do any meaningful thing. He cannot even raise a police to maintain law and order in the civilian environment, so that the army can concentrate on the war front. His, is like the true life story of one Idris Valentine, a condemned prisoner, who titled his new book: Gifted but Caged.

    Unfortunately, the entire country has become a killing field. While Boko Haram is killing in the north-east, armed bandits and cattle rustlers are having a field day in the north-west. Down the north-central, it is a dangerous brand of herdsmen that have the licence to kill. Until the #EndSARS protest exposed a perfidious brand of SARS, in the southern part, it was some SARS officials that were competing with herders and kidnappers to decapitate fellow Nigerians.

    Regrettably, after the din over this latest killing, which some sources put at more than 80 persons, government officials will recline to their languid state of stupor. As is their style, even the senate which wields enormous constitutional power to affect a change, are acting timid, as if they can only wring their hands in frustration. Like children, the best they have offered as our country gradually collapses into anarchy, from ravaging insecurity, is to repeat their mantra that service chiefs be sacked.

    While answering distinguished, they have not distinguished themselves by ensuring the executive act diligently over this tragedy. Either they are playing dumb, or they are pretending not to realise our country could collapse, if no fundamental changes are made to the nation’s security architecture. They pretend that it is sustainable to keep borrowing money, to fight a war that has become a corruption ensemble for the prosecutors. They pretend that the strange security arrangement where a governor cannot muster a police unit, to ensure internal security of the state, even though he answers the chief security officer, is normal.

    The senate and their brothers in the House of Representatives pretend that they can annually take a large chunk of the national resources, while the university students are languishing at home, because the federal government refused to pay the comparative pittance demanded by university teachers, over the years. In their dumb comfort, the National Assembly believe that if the three arms zone is safe, then the rest of the country does not matter.

    To add salt to Zulum’s gangrene, Garba Shehu, the presidential spokesman succinctly told the governor and his people that they cannot earn a living, without a farming licence, from the national army. Perhaps out of exhaustion, Garba let out the real feeling of the high command, instead of the platitudes that usually follow the mindless killing of hapless citizens of our country. While agreeably Garba may not wish the farmers death in the hands of Boko Haram, as insinuated, what he offered may still result in death from starvation, should farmers stay at home.

    With a frustrated Governor Zulum, asking the lethargic federal government to recruit mercenaries to fight the insurgents, perhaps, Nigeria may also consider employing mercenaries to guard farmers, and escort them to the market. Speaking of safety, in the markets, the Sultan of Sokoto recently cried out that armed bandits freely roam the cities of northern Nigeria, demanding fees without any challenge. On his part, the Emir of Kastina, following another round of killings in his domain, where the military’s commander-in-chief hails from, wailed that life in his domain has become short and brutish.

    What baffles this column, is why the northern political elite, reputed to be more politically savvy than their southern counterpart, would watch idly by, as insecurity is torpedoing the ‘one Nigeria’, they desperately desire.

  • A passage in the fraternity

    A passage in the fraternity

    Olatunji Dare

     

    IN the past three weeks, the fraternity of Nigerian journalists has lost two of its ablest and most accomplished practitioners ever.  One of them, Bisi “BizLaw” Lawrence belonged in the older generation. The other, Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, belonged in mine, and was withal a friend.

    In keeping with the custom of our people, this piece is for Bisi Lawrence.  A separate tribute to Gbolabo Ogunsanwo will come later.

    At 87, Lawrence, was among the oldest practitioners still in active service and easily the most versatile, turning out sparkling columns week after week,  often twice a week, on subjects ranging from sports, politics, society, the scriptures, the human condition – indeed, on just about every subject under the sun and beyond for Vanguard Newspapers.

    His range was truly encyclopaedic.  In a way he was the archetype of the journalist of a bygone era, who was expected to know a little about everything, with the difference that Lawrence expected much more of himself and prepared himself intellectually to meet the changes of the eras through which he lived

    When you read his sports columns, you knew immediately that you were in the hands of an expert.  Whether he was writing about cricket, soccer, boxing or athletics you had not the slightest doubt about his firm grasp of the material, the analytic rigour from which his conclusions flowed.

    Every word fell in place, woven seamlessly into the tapestry.  He possessed and valued that sense of craft that distinguishes the master craftsman from the journeyman.

    Long before joining Vanguard Newspapers, Lawrence had plied his trade on radio and television in Nigeria, and on the global scene as a sports administrator and consultant. In each setting, he acquitted himself with high distinction.

    Having lived so long and functioned on so many platforms across the world, he had plenty of stories to tell about journalism and about the human condition.  And he shared them with his colleagues, they said, for their entertainment and even more for their edification.

    I never met Lawrence, not in a professional scene nor in social context.  For reasons I cannot fathom, our paths simply never crossed.   What I know about him derives from his Vanguard columns, of which I was an admirer and student, and from the post-humous tributes of his friends and colleagues at the paper.

    Now, sports writing, like sports casting, is probably the most cliché-ridden journalistic form.  String a few stock phrases together; garnish it with some atmospherics; deliver the product with breathless excitement, and you were well on the way to a career in sports journalism.

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

    Lawrence was different.

    Whenever he reported on tennis, for example, he made you see the flow and ebb, the crosscutting currents of play. He made you know not just the player but the person behind the racquet.  He made you feel the atmosphere.  He situated the game in its political and commercial context, He made you see the bigger picture.  He transported you to the scene of action.

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

    Those who hold that such elegant wordsmanship should be reserved for more important subjects must have been nurtured in the tradition of that earlier era.

    The formula then consisted in stringing a few stock phrases, garnishing it with some atmospherics and delivering the package with breathless excitement, the purpose being to wow the audience.

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

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

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

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

    I regret never meeting him.  I kept nursing the hope that I would meet him one day, introduce myself and tell him how much his writing and a long and distinguished career unspoiled by scandal has meant to me.

     

    • For comments, send SMS to 08111813080

  • Between June 12, 1993 and November 3, 2020

    Between June 12, 1993 and November 3, 2020

    By Olatunji Dare

    June 12, 1993 and November 3, 2020, are destined to endure as milestones in the history of Nigeria and the United States, respectively.

    The one was designed to launch Nigeria on a new socio-political order with the election of a president under a new democratic constitution, ending 10 years of military rule diluted with token civilian participation.

    In the normal run of things, the other would have registered as just another election held every four years to re-elect a sitting president or to choose a new one.  But there was nothing ordinary about Donald Trump, the candidate of the Republican Party, who was seeking re-election.

    Trump’s first term has been riotous, and polarizing; an exercise in chicanery and mendacity. He carried on like a modern-day emperor with all the trappings, accountable to no laws or institutions. To re-elect him would be to empower him to indulge even more egregiously in his ill repute.

    Yet, this was the choice before the American people:  to re-elect the repellent Donald Trump who cannot fake empathy even if his life depended on it, or vote for Democratic candidate Joseph (Joe) Biden.  At 78, Biden is four years older than Trump, and a tad slower.  On every other political metric, he was consistently rated higher in the polls than Trump, whose ineptitude and venality alone contributed hugely to the deaths of more than 250, 000 Americans from coronavirus disease,

    Trump dwells in an alternative universe, governed by “alternative facts” of his own fabrication that could mean one moment, the precise opposite the next moment, and something else in between.  Biden projects stability and steadiness, a world rooted in verifiable facts and governed by ascertainable laws.

    Given the damage Trump has wrought on the American political landscape, Biden was right to insist that nothing less than decency itself was on the ballot for the election. And by any rational measure, an election between Trump and Biden, the outcome should not even be close. I will return to this theme later.

    In the 1993 Nigerian election, there were no major issues.  The contending parties, the Social Democratic Party (“a little to the Left) and the National Republican Convention (“a little to the Right”) were decreed into existence by the military government.  Their constitutions and emblems and anthems were of the provenance.

    In the American election, the contending parties go far back far more than 200 years ago, to the founding of the Republic. But the Republican Party that entered the 2020 election has very little in common with the GOP.

    GOP had transformed to the party of Donald Trump.

    In the 2016 election, he ran on, and pursued policies and programmes that scandalised its grandees, and the majority of the electorate, but had gone on to win. By his second coming, its platform, it declared, was “to support the President’s agenda,” pure and simple

    In Nigeria’s 1993 election, candidates ran under the constant threat of being banned or disqualified at any time before, during or after the election if they ran afoul of the rules              laid down by the military.  And it was no idle threat.  Many indeed were the candidates who were disqualified, banned, un-banned and re-banned, for the flimsiest of reasons, or for no reasons at all.

    Dates and other signposts kept shifting, even as the rules kept changing.  Until the eve of the presidential election, no one knew for certain that it would take place, including officials of the body supposed to administer it, the National Electoral Commission.  What saved the day was a not-so-subtle warning by the United States Government, per its embassy in Lagos, against further postponement.

    The American election was not subject to the whim or caprice of any individual or institution, Still, it was conducted in an atmosphere that was flagrantly incompatible with democratic principles. You had the incumbent president calling for his opponents to be jailed, turning the machinery of justice against them, and seeking desperately to limit the franchise and to suppress popular participation. You had him ceaselessly impugning the legitimacy and subverting the operational capability of crucial public institutions of which, he was in the final analysis, the chief custodian.

    Against a raft of contrived odds, the Nigerian election held as scheduled.  The authorities had calculated that no clear winner would emerge, and that massive confusion and disenchantment would ensue.  But it would last only a few weeks; law and order would be restored by force or co-optation, and the country would move on.  That, at any rate, was their expectation.

    But it all went awry.  A clear winner emerged.  But before his victory could be announced officially, they annulled the entire election, citing irregularities for which they could produce not a shred of evidence.  Protests broke out in major cities of the country, in ways and with an intensity the military could not easily contain.

    The military did not allow the people’s will to prevail.  But it exhausted itself in a crisis of its own making and was forced to vacate the civic space severely discredited.

    In the United States, the competent authorities determined with nary a murmur that Joe Biden was the clear winner of the presidential election just concluded.  But Trump was waiting for them. It was not nothing that he had for nine months employed his bully pulpit and the twitter handle that was in his hand an instrument of terror to vilify them, cast grave doubt on their competence, their good faith and their decency.  He had left nothing to chance.

    He was going to win, Trump declared at every stop.  The declaration did not spring from mere wishful thinking or even the optimism that animates every political candidate. It has behind it force of certainty.  He could not lose.  If he did, that result could only have flowed from election rigging and corruption of the foulest kind.

    Trump’s last act of desperation was to seek out pledged electors who would abandon Biden at the Electoral College and cast their ballots for Trump instead.  He found none.

    In Nigeria, he would have succeeded with the right combination of bribes, cajolery, threats, and blackmail.  It was this combination that turned winners into losers and losers into winners in the 1993 election.

    By any rational consideration, a contest between Biden and Trump was not supposed to be close.  Even viewed through the distorting mirror of the Electoral College, this one isn’t.  But politics is not a rational pursuit.  And so, here we are, with the deluded Donald Trump grasping at every straw, real or imagined, in a craven bid to invalidate the election outcome, the merest assertions on which he had relied to peddle his smears and his crack-brained conspiracy theories, now of no avail.

    Until they happened, Nigerians never believed that the events subsumed in the “June 12” debacle could ever happen in their country. Such events took place in those lands near and far they had come to regard as “unfortunate,” or only as the wildest aberrations.

    Until Donald Trump came along, few Americans believed that a person of his record and predilections could win election as president; the system of political recruitment and promotion would eliminate such a person on the threshold and clear the deck for those who could be expected to pursue the quest with honour and moral purpose.

    Nothing in the constitution, history, political structures, laws or institutions of Nigeria operated as a bulwark against the depredations of the military, just as nothing in the laws and institutions of the United States nor in its vaunted exceptionalism, foreclosed the rise of Donald Trump.  And nothing would stand in the way of his political resurrection in an unaltered form.

    Here and yonder and everywhere, eternal vigilance remains the price of liberty.