The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Television in Nigeria: Two anniversaries

    By Olatunji Dare

    They have been rolling out the drums and blowing the trumpets and the flutes and the horns and staging lectures and symposiums and laying out archival material – the full Monty, as it were — to celebrate the coming of television to Nigeria 60 years ago.

    It has been a festive celebration, especially in Ibadan, the capital of the former Western Nigeria and political capital of the Yoruba nation, home of Nigeria’s, nay Africa’s first television service.

    Its slogan, “First in Africa,” was no idle claim.

    It was indeed the first television service in all of Africa. Egypt, which had been a prominent international actor well before Nigeria became independent, established its maiden television service one year after Western Nigeria had blazed the trail.

    Ghana, which had won independence from Great Britain three years ahead of Nigeria in 1957, had no television service until 1965.  South Africa, fearing that television would explode the myth on which its white supremacist doctrine of apartheid was predicated, had no television until 1976.

    Television arrived in Australia, Austria Spain and Sweden in 1956, just one year before it arrived in Nigeria.  New Zealand and Ireland introduced television a year later, in 1960 and 1961 respectively.

    The way television came to Nigeria, which must seem a curious reversal to those used to seeing the Federal Government as the sun around which the Federating States revolve, had its roots in a controversy between the twain.

    As the story goes, back in 1956, a senior official of the colonial government in Lagos had criticised on the federal government-controlled radio, some policy or programme of the Action Group government of Western Nigeria, of which Chief Obafemi Awolowo was premier.  Awolowo had demanded a right of reply through the same medium, but the colonial authorities had refused.

    So, at the next constitutional conference in London to prepare Nigeria for independence, Awolowo demanded that broadcasting be classified as a concurrent subject, that is, one on which both the Federal Government and the regional governments can legislate.  His petition carried the day, and Awolowo went on to establish the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service (WNBS) and the Western Nigeria Television Service (WNTV) which went on air on October 31, 1959.

    The Eastern Nigeria Government led by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe followed in 1960 with the launch in Enugu, of the Eastern Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation, and the Northern Nigeria Government of Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto, and the Federal Government of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa joined the train in 1962.

    As conceived by Awolowo, the mission of WNTV was to serve as educator and entertainer, and as a stimulus to transform Nigeria into a modern and prosperous nation. Awolowo saw television as an important vehicle for prosecuting the government’s ambitious programme of free primary education, and as a multiplier of through which knowledge and skills essential for modernisation would be imparted to mass audiences.

    This emphasis on education reflected Awolowo’s belief, enunciated on various platforms, that “the freedom to know is the first of all freedoms.”

    When 30 years of the coming of television to Nigeria was celebrated in 1984, the medium had not attained the ubiquitous presence it enjoys in most Nigerian homes today, with more than 200 stations and cable channels operated by the federal and state governments as well as private organizations and individuals.

    Even so television was already so well established in Nigeria that having color television set was not a status symbol back then as was the case in many developed countries. Outcomes have not matched expectations.  Television has bred some social dysfunctions.  But on the whole, Nigerian society has been the better for television.  It kindled aspirations and widened horizons

    The 30th anniversary was therefore worth celebrating.

    But what they advertised that year as a celebration was a travesty.

    Missing from the official narrative and the narrative of Federal Government-owned media outlets in the run-up to the celebration and throughout the celebration itself was how television came to Nigeria.

    It was as if Television — I here anthropomorphize it intentionally – just woke up one morning in its sedate abode, and out of sheer boredom or in a fit of absent-mindedness, decided to check out other climes with no particular clime in mind, and landed fortuitously on fertile and welcoming Nigerian soil. Instant Television, I should call it, like instant coffee, pre-programmed for consumption, and self-adapting.

    Unacknowledged also in the narrative were the personalities whose vision and exertions had brought television to Nigeria and created an environment in which it could function productively; the engineers who daily performed feats of improvisation and adaptation;  institutional actors as well as the professional staff who learned and developed under the gun as it were.  Virtually every programme they originated went on air live; mistakes and miscues were there for everyone to see.

    There was scarcely any mention of where it had all begun, or how.

    All this happened in the time of General Muhammadu Buhari, who had vowed barely one month after overthrowing the inept and corrupt administration of President Shehu Shagari, that he would “tamper” with the freedom of the press; the time of Decree Two, which empowered Buhari’s mate in dourness and second-in-command, Major-General Tunde Idiagbon, to detain citizens for renewable periods without having to show cause.

    This was also the time of Decree Four under which anyone could be jailed for publishing truthful material the authorities deemed embarrassing.

    But I don’t think any of these factors had anything to do with the shameful omissions and silences that marked the celebration of 25 years of television in Nigeria.  Self-censorship, a more destructive force than official censorship, was responsible.

    Indeed, it might be said generally of Nigerian journalists as was said of European and American journalists of a much earlier generation:  Considering what they will not publish even with no censors at work, there is hardly any occasion to censor them.

    My investigations at the time yielded no “orders from above” forbidding stating that television came to Nigeria via Western Nigeria, through the instrumentality of the government of that region, led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

    These are indisputable facts.  No matter how inconvenient a government may find them, it cannot punish publication thereof without bringing itself to ridicule.  In whatever case, such a government cannot last forever.  No government or institution or individual can.  Plus, the media will always have last say – and the last laugh.

    More likely, it was some manager or divisional head fearing for his bread and butter that ordered those omissions, hiding behind their primary charge of “safeguarding national unity” as they perceive it or think it is perceived by the authorities and superior officials.

    Such persons do more harm than good.

    When news media fail to report events that members of the viewing audience had witnessed, or report them in ways that do violence to the facts in the belief that they are thereby “safeguarding national unity,” the audience loses faith in the media.

    More damagingly, the media, television especially, loses is mobilization potential.  A news outlet that has been used to misinform or disinform the audience cannot be used to summon the same audience to higher purpose.

     

    Another lexical matter

    We often read in biographies that XZ or PK was a school headmaster before he “joined politics.”  Or that they intend to join politics.   XZ and PK may simplify matters by announcing that they decided to “join” politics in deference to the wishes of “their people.”

    This usage is non-standard.

    People enter politics, or more appropriately, party politics, since “politics” is such a nebulous term.

    They join political parties.

  • When securocrats and lawyers came calling

    Olatunji Dare

     

    IN this business, there are some people you hope you never hear from, like the police or even worse, their military counterpart, and of course, lawyers.  They all spell trouble.

    You can therefore imagine my state of mind when the senior official at the Nigerian Herald who doubled as my Personal Assistant when I was chair of the paper’s publishing company relayed a message to my office at the University of Lagos that a Major Giwa, military assistant to Governor Salaudeen Latinwo, would like to talk with me.

    I had left Ilorin for Lagos only the previous day, after delivering a blistering critique of Decree Four, at a symposium organized by the Kwara State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists.   I had made it clear that I was speaking as a university lecturer, and that my presentation was to be understood and appraised only in that context.

    As if the authors of the decree, General Muhammadu Buhari, head of state and General Tunde Idiagbon, chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters – the Dour Duo as I christened them after their ouster — cared a hoot about subtlety!

    I read and reread the presentation and mentally reviewed my answers to question from the audience just to be sure Major Giwa would not find me unprepared.  Idiagbon had Kwara as his home base, and Latinwo was known to be his enforcer-in-residence. Friends and relations in Ilorin had in fact warned me after the lecture to expect the worst from Latinwo.

    I asked my aide to tell Major Giwa that I had no access to a phone.  Would it be okay to call on him during my visit the following week?  That would be fine, my aide reported.

    With not a little trepidation, I called Major Giwa after settling down in my hotel room.

    “How are you, Doctor?” he asked warmly.

    “Very well Major,” I replied.  I am calling as you had requested.  I hope there is no problem.

    “No problem at all.  Doctor.  I just wanted to congratulate you on your Decree Four lecture.  You said what you had to say, and you said it without giving offence.”

    Oh, was I relieved!

    I had hardly settled down as a member of the Editorial Board of The Guardian, on leave from the University of Lagos when I had visitation from Military Intelligence, no less.  My visitor came armed with an unsigned and undated memo alleging that, as chair of the Herald’s publishing company, I had pillaged it to set up a company which a certain Major Olatunji was running for me as a front.

    He would like me to come to their office at 15 Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, in Lagos, to make a statement.

    Could I not make a statement there and then, in my office?

    No, said my visitor.  I had to come to 15 Awolowo, which was notorious for its unwelcoming ambience, to make a statement and answer some questions

    Had my visitor ascertained the identity of the petitioner?

    No.

    How about the identity of “Major Olatunji”?

    No.

    The company I am alleged to own, is it listed in the books of the Corporate Affairs Commission?

    My visitor could not tell.

    “This is irregular,” I protested. Why do I have to respond to such nebulous charges when you have not even ascertained whether there are factually grounded?

    The visitor said it was their duty to investigate such allegations whenever they surfaced.

    At 15 Awolowo, they made me submit and sign a written statement, and then asked me to go.  I never heard from them again.  It turned out that the petitioner was a staffer who had been dismissed for misconduct long before I was appointed to chair the Board at The Herald.

    Fast forward to May 2015.  As part of its preparation to assume power after its historic victory in that year’s General Elections, the victorious APC had put together two days of briefings and discussions on the task ahead.  Former British Prime Minister Tony “The Liar” Blair was scheduled to be a keynote presenter.

    By pure coincidence, my column, “A visitor, not a guest,” came out in The Nation the very day Blair was going to speak.  The article was a damning treatise on his warmongering in Iraq, and his subsequent career as a money-grubbing international hustler. A former student of mine who had read it overnight in the paper’s electronic edition had called, saying that if Blair had any honour left, he would not keep the date.

    He was right.  Although Blair was already in town, he did not show up for the event.  Instead, he was represented by a former minister in the Blair’s Labour Cabinet Peter Mandelson.

    I was going through Nigerian newspapers online when The Nation’s editor, Gbenga Omotoso, called from Lagos.  Chief Femi Okunnu, the SAN, had called to ask for my phone number so he could talk with me.  I asked Omotoso to send me Okunnu’s number instead so that at I could call him from my base in the United States.

    “Tunji,” he said preliminaries over.

    “Sir,” I responded.

    “I have seen your article in today’s paper.”  He seemed to be pausing for dramatic effect.  I held my breath.

    “I have seen it,” he resumed after what had seemed like an eternity.  But I have not read it.”

    I was straining mightily to hold my breath.

    “I have called Lai Mohammed’s attention to it and asked why they invited Tony Blair, of all persons, to be a keynote speaker as the APC prepares for the Inauguration?”

    You could have heard me exhale.

    You never know with these attorneys.  What if Tony Blair, himself a lawyer married to one of the smartest lawyers in the UK, or his solicitors, had called Okunnu on reading my column and asked him to issue a writ of libel against me immediately?

    But I need not have worried.  Okunnu and I were of the same mind on Blair’s villainy regarding the invasion and destruction of Iraq with Trumped-up evidence.  No, I take that back:  trumped-up evidence.  Donald Trump was then only a concupiscent reprobate, groping and probing and grabbing women as he pleased.

    This past week, I got a call from another attorney of the first rank, Wole Olanipekun, SAN, whom I had not met since 1985.  Why would he be calling, this learned  man who, considering the many titanic election cases he has argued and won in the courts over the years, might well be regarded as the most formidable,  if not the foremost, election lawyer in Nigeria?

    “Egbon, my name is Wole Olanipekun,” he began disarmingly.

    That was cause for relief.  You can’t call a man Egbon, and then put him on notice in your very next breath that you would be sandbagging him with a multi-billion Naira defamation lawsuit on behalf of a client next week. That would not accord with the omoluabi ethos.

    The more he talked, the more I was reassured of his bona fides.

    He was calling about one of my recent articles all right, but you’ll never guess which one.  It was not a matter on which even the most creative attorney could have grounded a lawsuit.

    He was calling about a lexical matter – specifically the use and abuse of the word “foremost,” which I had discussed in the column for the previous week.  He said with touching humility that he “wanted to be educated.”

    Next time a lawyer calls me, I will be more relaxed, less worked-up.  Such calls do not always spell trouble.  They sometimes turn out to be positive feedback.  But I will still feel queasy any day I get a call  from the custodians of law and order and national security.

     

    The fly in JKF’s ointment

     

    IT first blush, an airport for Ekiti state, to be located in Ado-Ekiti, might seem high-minded compared to other projects his predecessor Ayo Fayose conjured up in an impulse.  On close examination, it is just another monument to vainglory.

    Dr Fayemi’s admirers, among whom I count myself, cannot but feel disappointed that he has now adopted it.

    Think of the dozens of rural health centres that can be built and equipped, the roads that can be fixed, schools that can be rehabilitated, the hundreds of teachers that can be hired, the tens of small-scale industries that can be funded with the resources that will go into building an airport for which there will be little patronage, and which will be a drainpipe on the state’s fragile economy.

    The airport in Akure, in neighbouring Ondo State, has lain idle for decades, and the prospects for an airport in Ado-Ekiti are not more promising.

    Governor Fayemi should let it remain for now an idea on paper, a dream perhaps, but certainly not one to which scarce funds needed more urgently elsewhere should be committed.

  • Abuses everywhere

    Gabriel AMALU

    While private individuals are running rehabilitation homes as torture centres for young persons, officials of state are running organs of government as torture labs for adults. Head or tail, the citizens are at the receiving end of the trying times. To the detriment of the citizens, it appears governments and their collaborators in the corporate world are competing in imposing unconscionable taxes on the people. In a country supposedly under the rule of law, rogue communication companies and banks are unilaterally extorting citizens, while the apex bank and the communication regulatory commission are acting lame.

    On their part, in the name of seeking new sources of revenue, everyday our incompetent fiscal managers, instead of introducing measures to deepen national productivity, lazily sit in air-conditioned offices to introduce one Ponzi scheme after another in the name of new taxes. And when you ask why these inhuman extortion, they will reel out some meaningless statistics that Nigerians are under-taxed. Yet, they fail to see the statistics that says that unemployment and underemployment is exponentially high in the country.

    Those in charge of introducing one new tax after another don’t tell the rest of the citizens what they take home as earnings, from the taxes they impose on them. They don’t also consider it unconscionable that our federal legislators are amongst the best paid in the world, while other federal and state workers are amongst the most poorly paid even by African standards. In the midst of the so-called under-taxation, most of the sub-national states are technically failed states.

    So, because majority of the states and their citizens are so pauperized, they truck large number of their indigenes to Lagos State, which has become a concentration camp of sort, just to escape the economic quagmire. Instead of concentrating on extorting citizens through phoney taxes, the federal government should relinquish control of some of the items in the exclusive legislative list, to gift states economic activities that can sustain them. Under the present arrangement, the main responsibility of the federal government is to collect petroleum and other taxes, and preside over the sharing in Abuja.

    If the federal government must however remain only a tax collector, it should consider implementing a new revenue formula in favour of the states. That is hoping that some of the governors who run their states like the Russian czars would make better use of the increased resources. There is also the urgent need to encourage regional economic activities so that states can pull resources together to solve basic existential problems, like the production and distribution of electricity.

    Even security challenges can also be tackled by cluster of states like the southeast and southwest are trying to implement. The regions can also be encouraged to organise and fund inter-state railways, highways, water transportation and similar beneficial activities. The potentials in inter-regional activities, is exemplified by some of the ambitious projects planned by Cross River State government. If the federal government is mindful, it will support the trans-regional highway and the deep sea port planned by the state, which can open the eastern flank of the country, from south-south to the northeast.

    Unless there is a change in tactics, states would continue to stymie in basic challenges, more so as they are asked to pay a new minimum wage. Take for example, Kaduna State, which recently received positive attention after the governor, Nasir El Rufai, enlisted his six-year old son in a public school. It quickly swung into disrepute following the discovery of ‘centres of welfare’ for the torture of citizens, albeit masquerading as Islamic centres for knowledge.

    Should the government of the state have statutory control of police in the state, Governor El Rufai can choose to wipe out such criminality at his own pace. Shockingly, similar centres have been discovered in other states and many more may be discovered in that part of our country. In an environment of monumental failures by parents, failure is hidden in religious disguise. So, parents who are unable to provide for their children pass them off as delinquents, and so they ‘proudly’ send them to ‘religious centres’ where they would learn ‘morals’.

    Poverty and ignorance, of course, is at the root of the crisis. For reasons best known to the northern elites, they have failed to give western education the deserved attention and the result is abject poverty and ignorance plaguing the region. Of note, but for the fact that the discovery of the torture centres were under the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, religious bigots would have termed the exposition a form of religious persecution, for which innocent Nigerians would have paid with their lives.

    With the discovery of similar torture centres in other states, the governors in the region surely have to worry about the types of educational institutions that exist in the states they are leading. But it is heart-warming that El Rufai has promised to fight one of the root causes of such fake religious piety. If he can enforce his promise of free and compulsory basic education, he would have dealt the abuses masquerading as religious training a heavy blow. His approach will also eradicate challenges associated with early marriage like VVF, Almajiri children and similar vices plaguing the region.

    Like a nation under spell, the states in the southern part of the country, apart from their fair share in incidents of kidnapping and other violent crimes, especially amongst the youths, are plagued by what is commonly referred to as baby factories. Young women, some even supposedly in higher institutions of learning, get conned into giving birth to children which are sold off, while they earn few pieces of naira. There is also high incidence of yahoo-yahoo boys, who live off fleecing Nigerians and foreigners of their hard earned monies.

    So, the nation is in a state of anomie. While the poor hook up to delinquent behaviours to survive the economic crisis facing the country, the politically connected hook their children, to the few jobs available, without merit. Recently, it was reported that the leadership of the senate cornered the few job opening in the Federal Inland Revenue Services, for their wards. Because the unearned privilege could not go round, the leadership shut out the wards of their colleagues. Of course, the bad behaviour is a reflection of the dwindling opportunities available in the society.

    Another form of abuse that has become rampant in our country is what is referred to as sex-for-marks, mainly in higher institutions of learning. It is good that President Buhari has spoken up against it. Strangely, there is claim that such delinquency is also happening in private faith-based universities, but it is all hush.

  • Kogi: Why are we so unblest?

    By Sanya Oni

    A popular saying in Yoruba, roughly translated goes thus: You give birth to a vagabond; expect to suffer the pang of being condemned to live with the reign of delinquency. In the case of my dear state of Kogi, it is actually a case of the chieftains of the ruling APC munching the sour grape while the teeth of the children – the hapless Kogites are set on the edge.

    For a drama that started mid-month when a group 25 lawbreakers in Kogi House of Assembly not only upended the Nigerian constitution but proceeded to substitute a strange rule of procedure to suit their fancies, the week ended came with a fitting anti-climax when the revered court of the Attah of Igala, hosted another cynical spectacle: the conferment of Oga-Onu-ogu- Attah of the Igala kingdom title on Yahaya Bello, the state governor by the Attah Igala and President Kogi State Traditional Council HRM Dr Micheal Ameh Oboni II.

    As you guessed – an inescapable part of the ritual was the presentation, days before, of a sparkling white Rolls Royce Phantom – allegedly, by Igala sons in Governor Bello’s government led by the 45year old Edward Onoja – until recently the Chief of Staff to the governor. A friend who sent the photograph to yours truly couldn’t resist sending another photograph with a footnote that the pock-marked, crater-riddled road actually leads to the new home of the pricey toy!

    Read Also: Large turn-out at Kogi election campaign excites PDP

    So much for the outrage over the so-called impeachment of the deputy governor, Elder Simon Achuba; those who make much of the travesty going on in Kogi perhaps forgot those elegant words of the scriptures as stated in Matthew 7: 17-18: “Even so every good tree bringeth forth good     fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit; neither    can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit”.

    Talk of expecting an administration sired in iniquity and a most cynical misrepresentation of the law to produce exemplar governance. It won’t happen!

    Of course, many forget that Yahaya Adoza Bello, the current occupant of Lugard House was never a product of democratic choice. Certainly not of the good people of Kogi who trooped out to gift the APC candidate Prince Abubakar Audu with 240,876 votes trailed by his PDP challenger, Idris Wada with 199,514 votes in November 2015.  Unlike that Achebean character “whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit” and so expected to be humble, the straggler that swept into office with a miserly 6,885 votes surely knows about the efficacy of raw power to bother about the niceties of the law, process let alone the views of the ordinary man on the street. That would appear one lesson that the good people of Kogi are yet to learn!

    Surely, Yahaya Bello is no ordinary governor. Here is a man who took on the civil service and rendered the institution totally prostrate. After suffering bouts of forced starvation, the institution today knows better than look the governor in the face. He sought to muscle the judiciary only to find its leadership a hard nut to crack. And with the legislature firmly in his pocket, he could do as he pleased, unchallenged. In Kogi, the word of GYB, like those of ancient kings, is said to be law.

    In case you have not heard, he also claims to be the beloved son of the president – an association he routinely flaunt to anyone who cared. If you ever doubted about his stature, or his ability to make things happen, picture a man who could cause our world-acclaimed thrifty president to request National Assembly’s authorization for reimbursement of N10 billion spent by the state government on federal roads few weeks into his re-election! That individual with the appellation ‘White Lion’ surely knows a thing or two about turning the levers of presidential power particularly as the same request was denied the former governor in 2015 on the grounds that it would be used to finance an election that was also few weeks away. To those who say that the awesome presidential influence is yet to be felt on the infrastructure front after a record N50 billion in bailout funds, I can only say – sour grapes; who says presidential errands has been this good!

    Back to the action of the 25 lawbreakers in the Kogi House of Assembly. Should that surprise anyone?

    Until I read the silly statement credited to the assembly’s majority leader, Hassan Abdulahi, yours truly could have sworn that the members merely fell to the seduction of mischief! Now, it is clear that some the so-called legislators in the assembly may not have seen a copy of the Nigerian Constitution – whether the original or the amended; or as for those that have read, they surely have difficulty understanding the contents!

    And what did the House Majority Leader Abdulahi say? First, that the panel was merely a fact finding body hence lacking powers to form an opinion! Secondly, that the rule of procedure which the panel members subscribed to was explicit about this! Thirdly, that the wisdom of the House supersedes the findings of the panel.

    Remember, this is a panel that has a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, John Baiyeshea as chairman.

    Ironically, the same House that was mindful of section 188(5) hence their directive on the chief judge to appoint a panel of seven persons to investigate the allegations made against the deputy governor would later shut its eyes to the express provision of section 188(8) that: “where the panel reports to the House of Assembly that the allegation has not been proved, no further proceedings shall be taken in respect of the matter.”

    If you consider such climate of impunity terrible to bear, consider further that citizens will, less than three weeks from now be called upon to exercise their democratic choice.

    Never mind that the electoral umpire has already dubbed the November 16 election as possibly the most monetised ever; a verdict will be returned one way or the other. And with the army of enforcers already on the leash, it would hardly matter how many heads will be broken or lives lost, an electoral contest would have taken place. Who cares about the rule of majority when the precedence of 2015 is there to guide? Surely, democracy a la Kogi is on the march!

  • Nnamdi Kanu and royal pleaders

    By Olakunle Abimbola

    Does a fugitive have any leverage under the law?

    Nnamdi Kanu, the controversial leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and a coterie of royals in Orlu, Imo State, appear to think so.

    Kanu’s mother, Sally, just died in Germany after an illness.  As a fellow human, your heart must go out to him and his family, especially to Kanu as the first son.  A mother is an indescribable pearl no one wants to lose, no matter how old they grow.  And when they pass, the ultimate duty and joy, for the child, is to bury them.

    That, however, is in the realm of sympathy and empathy; a manifestation of our common humanity.  Mixing that with the complications of the law, especially the consequences of its disobedience, is pushing raw sentiments too far.

    Which was why it was rather rich, when Kanu was reported thinking aloud, wishing he be allowed to come home, bury his mother and quietly fizzle out.

    Well, since when did a democratic order, driven by due process, start stopping a law-abiding citizen from coming in to bury his or her mother?

    Of course, the key word is “law-abiding”.  If the law is ruptured, that equation changes.  But shouldn’t that be trite?

    That is why the Orlu monarchs’ take on the matter is rather amusing.  It started with a plea and ended with a veiled threat.  But its soul and driving spirit is emotive blackmail.

    Speaking through Eze Gideon Ejike, the royals wanted President Muhammadu Buhari to allow Kanu to come into Nigeria to bury his mother “without molestation”.  Then the not-so-subtle threat: the United Nations should prevail on Nigeria to grant Kanu the coveted passage.

    Read Also: Nnamdi Kanu: A continuing tragedy

    Then the doting endorsement: “Kanu is not a terrorist.  Terrorists kill but we are yet to see any bloodshed by Kanu,” Ejike declared. “He is our hero and should be allowed to bury his mother before the beginning of next year.  He deserves the honour and right as the first son to bury his mother.”

    Now, that’s very interesting — a royal diktat, huffing with entitlement, rogue and royal; ringing with an impatient deadline, severe scolding and hot lecture on citizens’ filial rights, to a savage and insensate order, dead to basic norms, tradition and culture!

    Nice try!  For all you know, the camp of the converted is already berserk with incestuous roar and delirious cheer!  Still, until these royals set up their own democratic feudalism in which their whims are law, all these bombast would remain within the confines of royal delusion.

    How all of these would help Kanu’s case (if anything can), under a democracy structured on law, is difficult to see.  By first routinely flouting his bail conditions, then eventually jumping bail and fleeing the land, Kanu has mocked and baited that same law.

    So beyond emotions really, how can his case be helped, even under common sense, other than returning to, like a man, face the consequences of cheating the judicial process, instead of resorting to a lather of sentiments?

    Still, the royal fathers are no fools.  They follow a well-beaten Nigerian track: start a whispering campaign hinged on scalding emotions; ensure it gathers traction as full blast propaganda; then adroitly wheel it as the latest manifestation of the much lamented ethnic victimhood!

    But before folks start running ahead of themselves, the fact is the federal executive need not lift a finger in Kanu’s case.  If he sets foot on Nigeria, the judicial process would auto-trigger.

    If you jump bail, it is ultimate folly to expect the same law you played for a fool would wrap you in a warm embrace.  The law may be an ass but it’s doubtful if it’s that asinine!

    So, maybe the Orlu monarchs should spare the president their sweet jeremiad and zoom in on the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), in whose court (every pun intended!) the ball is.

    Even then, how would the poor CJN handle it all?  Pass a judicial decree ordering the judge handling the Kanu trial to annul, from his records and from public memory, that Kanu jumped bail, and bragged he wasn’t bound by the law trying him?

    After that, how does he, open sesame-wise, blot out the notorious facts of Kanu’s poor sureties left in the lurch, when the judicial prodigal took off?

    O, maybe the CJN would even enlist the help of the Senate president, to help placate Ike Ekweremadu, the former deputy Senate president, who went to Germany to savour iri-ji (new yam), only to be pelted and almost lynched with the same treasured tuber, for which his throat tickled?

    Well, maybe this particular one is a family affair, to which others should not poke their nose!  But the fact is it all happened in the Nigerian space, which that kind and loving family shares with others!

    What a peculiar mess!

    Peculiar mess!  That about captures what Kanu has made of himself, the crude and uncouth way he prosecutes his IPOB campaign; and how he has soiled — nay, poisoned — Igbo relations with other ethnics in the country.

    At the zenith of his campaign of sweet hate and crispy bile, the Fulani were the very Satan; the Hausa the grand fools to have suffered, so gladly, the tiny Fulani; the Yoruba were supine slaves, lost under the peonage of the so-called Hausa-Fulani; and the Igbo reasonable and moderate are the scorned Okoro-Awusa, as former Rochas Okorocha, the former Imo governor, was scornfully dismissed in the safe and secure ethnic laager IPOB had erected!

    Things got to a head when some equally hot-headed northern “youths” read out the riot act — all Igbo must leave the North, with a deadline to boot!

    But just as the Orlu royals now remember that Kanu has the “right and honour” to come bury his mother, even when they kept loudly mute as Kanu made mincemeat of others’ rights and honour, his elders never cautioned him, when he was launching unprovoked and combustible slurs against other ethnic groups — until the innocent Igbo in the North were about becoming scape goats, of a  tongue-loose, hate-filled prodigal!

    That was a very dangerous juncture, that nearly brought Nigeria back to the tragedy of 1966.

    Whereas the terrible pogrom forced the Easterners East-ward in 1966, in a last-ditch effort at self-preservation, Kanu was jeopardizing the Igbo in the North: belching ethnic hate and courting needless disaster.

    Talk of history nearly repeating itself as farce!  But thank God, reason prevailed.

    Every part of the country have their own “Kanu”, a high priest in the tabernacle of the reckless, bordering on the insane, spewing ethnic poison.

    The South West has a relay of leaking mouths, dedicated to spewing nonsense. A bloc, in the North, even calls itself elders.  But they are so juvenile and reckless, they would put callow youths to shame.

    Still, both regions have succeeded in rendering these lobbies veritable nobodies, hankering after recognition that would never come. The Igbo elders should do the same.

    Yes, Kanu has the right to come bury his mum.  But by making himself a fugitive from the law, he has all but ruptured that right–and no sentimental rapture can put that right.

    His elders should bluntly tell him that, rather than start a campaign that is a clear and wilful insult to the rest of law-abiding Nigerians.

  • Matters lexical

    In his column for this newspaper several months ago, Harvard Professor Biodun (BJ) Jeyifo, who cares more passionately about the proper use of the language than most people I know in the business, called attention to the abuse of the word “foremost” in the Nigerian news media — a misuse so rampant that it qualifies to be called an abuse.

    Usually, it takes the form “foremost banker, “foremost oil magnate,” or “foremost evangelist, or indeed, “foremost whatever,” where “whatever” can be a calling, trade, profession, occupation, or specialism.

    Jeyifo explained with his accustomed lucidity that the term is meaningless if it is not preceded by the definite article the, as in “the foremost banker,” the foremost urban geographer,” “the foremost theologian,” or “the foremost Soyinka scholar,” a distinction that Jefiyo has earned in a lifetime of comment and criticism on the ouvre of the Nobelist.

    But it was almost labour lost.  The very next week, the news media were brimming with foremost thespians and foremost labour leaders and foremost musicians.

    I myself can report a similar experience. Two weeks ago, in a tailpiece to my column, I wrote about  “Our diminished universities.” The lament however was not about the underfunding, infrastructural deficit, and the erosion of autonomy and the sex scandals that vitiate their existence.

    My concern was that the news media have reduced them to firms run by managers. Hence, we are told of how “the management” of a certain university has put out a strict dress code for female students, and how “the management” of another university has announced a zero-tolerance policy on campus sexual harassment in its many guises.

    Like BJ’s, my intervention seemed like labour wasted.

    Several days after the piece was published, this very newspaper was writing about “the management” of the University of Lagos. This past week, an eminent academic and newspaper columnist in a comment on campus sexual harassment heaped much the blame on “the management” of the universities. And an official of the University of Lagos spoke of its “management.”

    There are units in the university which function as firms and are run by managers, the bookshop and the Guest House being examples.  But the university, it is necessary to insist, is not a firm. It is run on the collegial principle.

    What is wrong with reporting that “The university of Abuja today announced that its medical school has been fully accredited by the Nigeria Medical Council? “ Isn’t that sharper and more specific than making “the management” of the University of Abuja the actor?

    Those who employ such usage are wont to ask:  Why the fuss, when the public understands what we are talking about?  But if you are in the business of pubic communications, you can make no such assumption. The referent of a title must be specific.  Apropos of the university, the term vice chancellor or register is precise.  “The management,” on the other hand, is nebulous.

    As a general rule of public communication, the specific is always to be preferred to the nebulous.

    A first-time visitor to Nigeria who has spent some time reading Nigerian newspapers in preparation for the trip is likely to ask after exiting the airport:  Where are the stakeholders? From one day to the next, from one story to the next, the profile of a Nigerian that emerges is that of a person lugging all over the place stakes that they guard jealously.

    Every man, woman or child is a stakeholder in one area of the national life or another.  You are not merely an electricity consumer, you are a stakeholder in the matter, or better still, a stakeholder in the energy sub-sector.  If you subscribe to the rule of law, you are a stakeholder in the judiciary.  As a parent or guardian of a student, you are an education stakeholder.

    How is a visitor to protect himself or herself against all those stakes which can be repurposed into weapons of offence without notice?

    I have inveighed against that word more times that I can recall.  I have even gone so far as to declare if I had the power, I would ban its usage.  For it discourages the search for creative alternatives.  Why strain to find another word when one that has been employed, to serve that purpose, however egregiously, is there for the plucking?

    One alert reader has charged me with not practicing what I teach, pointing out that only last week, I had employed the word “stakeholders” in my column, “Rumours of a Third Term and a wedding.” Specifically, I had urged all “stakeholders” in the very delicate matter under reference to rest easy, since one of the parties was likely to be so fully engaged with ministerial duties that the status quo in the Villa was unlikely to be threatened.

    I had agonized over the word but had settled for it from a sound instinct of self-preservation.  Enough said.

    One other usage has attracted less attention that it merits.  I have in mind the word “conducive.”  We want a conducive environment, a conducive workplace, a conducive motoring experience, etc., etc. Some even speak of a “highly conducive environment.”

    Conducive to what?

    The word is an adjective, and it means likely to lead to some desirable end.  It cannot stand alone. You have to specify the end desired, as in “A good workplace is conducive to high productivity.”

    In terms of usage, the verb “assure” falls in the same league as “conducive.” Example: “The floods will not affect the bumper rice harvest expected this year, the Minister of Agriculture has assured.”

    “Assure” is a transitive verb.  That kind of verb cannot stand alone. It less with an object. And so when we encounter a sentence like that, we must ask:  assure whom.  Without the “whom”, the sentence is incorrect.

    Given the climate crisis that has now been catapulted to the top of the global agenda, floods are no longer a rarity, even in desert regions. The rain comes down in sheets, lakes swell, rivers rage and sweep away almost everything in their wake.

    Reporting on this phenomenon, with its own special vocabulary, has become a staple of news.

    One word that readily comes to the reporter’s aid but is often misapplied is “submerged,” which means “under water. But that is not emphatic enough for some reporters.  So, they write of structures that are “completely submerged,” which is a redundancy.

    Unless a house or other structure is under water, do not describe it as “submerged,” much less as “completely submerged.”  If you can see its top, it is flooded not submerged.

    Pronunciations of some apparently common words are even more daunting than the use of words in writing.  I learned that lesson some six decades ago, when the Northern Minister of Education, the highly regarded Isa Kaita, an alumnus of the famous Katsina Higher College and a contemporary of the Premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, visited my School, St Paul’s College, in Wusasa, Zaria.

    In his address before the staff and students, Isa Kaita spoke of the “jigantik” strides the Government was taking in education.

    You could hear the chortling and the chuckling in the ranks of the students, most of them from the lower Middle Belt and the South.

    “A whole minister, some of them sniggered after the assembly. He can’t even pronounce an ordinary word like “jijantik.”

    Back in class, one of the less self-assured students looked the pronunciation up in the Advanced Learners Dictionary of the English Language a standard issue in the school.

    Alhaji Isa Kaita had it right, he announced.

    When in doubt, look it up.

  • Of border closure and belly analyses

    By Olakunle Abimbola

    Much of the response to Nigeria’s current border closure touch on the tummy.  So, it’s little surprise that rumble is well echoed in impassioned belly analyses.

    Yet, what is called for is clinical thinking, with clear eyes on the strategic plane.

    The border closure is not sustainable — beyond the short run.

    But neither, even in the very short run, should the vicious but unprovoked economic hostility towards Nigeria, by these subversive neighbours.

    On this score, Benin Republic has, for too long, proved a hung-ho enemy; and Nigeria, for too long, has been meek and long-suffering.  The time for turning the other cheek is over.

    Of course — and is anyone surprised? — from within Nigeria, partisan bile has weighed in, on the anti-closure front.

    On the closure, the political opposition and their media confederates have  drawn a line in the sand; and fled the policy plain to spew personal abuses, expletives and even curses.

    It would appear the perfect blackmail mix, at least to the obtuse and excitable  — rumbling tummies keying into “hunger”, to harvest cheap partisan points!  Rice o compatriots!  It’s free-wheeling thunder and anger, as price of rice shoots through the roof!

    Yet, it’s nothing but sweet mischief.  Economic survival is nowhere to play cheap belly politics.

    Even then, each passing day, the likes of Benin, Niger Republic and Cameroon, seem to realize the huge cost of sabotaging the Nigerian economy; and undermining the general welfare of the majority of Nigerians, who have done these economic adversaries no harm. The not-so-involved Ghana is also caught in the warp.

    But of course, without in-house Judases — Nigerian smugglers that trade with these foreign parasites — that illegal market ring won’t be there.

    So, it’s quite an interesting scenario: in-house Judases bad-mouth the closure within; their confederates-in-trade-crime buffet it without, with an eye for international blackmail, to pressure Nigeria, to continue undermining itself.  Why, there even appears a muted ECOWAS institutional blackmail, not to see things in Nigeria’s way!

    In other words, slay it with “hunger” within; buffet it with “trade” without! Nice try but fond hope — at least, so far!  What Nigeria cannot afford is succumb to this blackmail.

    What did the bible say about love?  Love your neighbour as yourself; not love your neighbour more than yourself.  In any case, to love or to hate, you first must stay alive.

    Nigerian neighbouring leeches have for too long played the reckless parasite, eyes jammed in sheer delirium, sucking away in sweet comfort.  It never occurred to them that should the host die, the leech perishes with it — such self-eradication greed!

    If Nigeria therefore rallies not to be sucked to death, it is as much grim redemption for the host, as it is painful wake-up call for the leech.  A new, mutually beneficial trade engagement could be win-win for everyone.

    Still, should there persist a trace of parasitism, at least the parasite is now much smarter to keep its host alive, vibrant and healthy!  In that common sense, lies its own self-preservation.

    That about sums up the IMF’s take on the matter: inasmuch as trade is good for the international economy, illegal trade, fired by wanton smuggling, is ruin for all.  Still, it wished all the parties would dialogue, iron out the issues and settle the dispute.

    Conventional wisdom would have wagered IMF would wax poetic on “trade” and pummel Nigeria for blocking it; so much so when Nigeria just signed the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) protocol.

    It was tactical support from the most unexpected of quarters.  Still, the key word is “tactical”.  On the strategic plane, the IMF would much sooner go back to its gospel of trade, no matter what.

    For now, however, the IMF’s take would appear a logical response. Still, no country can sustain a closed border for too long. So, dialogue is it: so all sides can come to party in licit trade.

    What then are the core issues, beyond sentiments and emotive grandstanding?

    First: food and energy security.  On both fronts, Benin has proved reckless and insanely unabashed, in economic hostility.

    Nigeria, since 2015, has made a forceful push for food security.  Audu Ogbeh, former Agriculture minister, had pushed the new government’s credo of “grow what you eat and eat what you grow” with rare passion.  That had produced near-revolutionary results in local rice cultivation (for local consumption) and tuber exportation (for forex, from local excess).

    But all Benin has done — its economy being driven by large-scale smuggling into Nigeria, after collecting port duties on rogue imports — is frustrate Nigeria every point of the way.

    If rice paints the picture of rotten imports, petroleum products paint the picture of rotten exports.  Again, Benin makes hay with petrol and diesel smuggled from Nigeria, so much so that it sits pretty retailing fuel smuggled from Nigeria in peculiar bottles, while the pumps in its fuel stations stay proudly dry.  That appeared the most thriving household sales.

    Talk of the leech sucking its host to death!

    Yeah, Benin deserves all the conking it has earned, to reset its brain, to be less parasitic and be less subversive, to Nigeria’s legitimate trade interests.

    Also note: rice and petrol are only twin-metaphors for Benin’s trade crimes against Nigeria.  It cuts across many sectors: tyres, automobile, poultry, etc — and even illegal small arms, that have devastating crime and security implications.And yes: the likes of Niger, Chad and Cameroon also savour the illicit gravy, at Nigeria’s expense.

    Still, as in the case of Ghana, many involved in legit trade are also caught in this bind.  That has led a Ghana trade group to, in anger, call for the boycott of Nigerian goods.

    Honest Ghana traders have a right to their ire.  But their patriotic anger hardly considers Nigeria’s own bind.  Without that, the problem won’t be solved.  So, it would pay both sides to be less emotive and be more logical.

    Even in Benin, a booming export of vegetables to Nigeria — tomato, lettuce, carrot, etc — is in jeopardy.  A sickening picture of these farm produce, perishing  by a roadside farm, in Benin’s Grand Popo area, is well and truly sickening.

    To stop this bleeding, dialogue is the key.  Nigeria must extract tough and firm commitments from Benin and allied saboteurs, now that it is clear the opportunity cost of building their economies on illicit trade is hefty and nasty.

    After that, Nigeria must deploy technology to clip the wings of corrupt state troopers that operate at the border.  Besides, Nigeria must make stern scapegoats of as many smugglers and colluding Customs troopers as are caught.

    After all that, the next logical step is to reopen the border.  Though the closure is not sustainable, illicit trade, that mushrooms poverty and kills Nigeria’s dream, is absolutely unacceptable.

    After this shock therapy, it shouldn’t be too difficult to navigate a mutually beneficial trade course that makes Nigeria and its neighbours happy.

  • Citizens under siege

    By Gabriel Amalu

    Last week, just as Intersociety, a civil society organisation, released a report that the police and the army have extorted Nigerians of the southeast and south-south geo-political zones to the tune of about N306 billion in the past 50 months, the Governor of Enugu State, Rt. Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, delivered to the state Commissioner of Police, Ahmad Abdurahman, keys to 65 patrol vans to help secure the state. Like Ugwuanyi, other governors across the regions, also empower the police, to secure their states.

    But according to the New Telegraph, a special research report conducted by Intersociety, showed that the police and the army have within the review period, allegedly raked in about N306 billion, through more than 6,900 roadblocks, scattered across the two regions. While it is commonly claimed that policemen and women jostle to be posted to major cities in the regions for untoward reasons, it is unimaginable that such insidious and invidious extortion could be going in the regions.

    Of note, the last 50 months cover the period that President Muhammadu Buhari has been in power as civilian president, and if his opponents are to be believed, he is accused of harbouring a special distaste for the two regions, because majority of the citizens from there have refused to identify with him. Could it be that the report is an attempt to call a dog a bad name, in other to hang it, or is it possible that such flagrant abuse of public power is going on in the president’s regime?

    No doubt, the alleged extortion, is audacious. N306 billion in 50 months from citizens in the name of providing security for them? All persons of goodwill should call on the president to order a discreet inquiry into the Intersociety report, and make the findings public. Because, whether the president cares or not, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, it is his name that history may record as being in charge while instead of providing security, the army and police are extorting citizens from the south-east and south-south zones.

    The field survey and research covered 11 states, made up of Edo, Delta, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Cross River, Bayelsa, Anambra, Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi and Imo, from August 2015 to October 2019. The report claimed there are 600 military and 6,300 police roadblocks across the southeast and south-south. It further claimed that while police roadblocks extorted N250 billion, the military roadblocks raked in N56 billion. It broke down the monthly collection to N6.4 billion and yearly collection to N76 billion yearly in the past four years.

    The charge becomes less preposterous, because unfortunately the president has not been warmly welcomed politically in the two zones. So, those who have accused the federal government of discriminatory tendencies against the zones, would readily point to political differences as the motive. While it will not be reasonable to hold the president personally responsible for such obnoxious conducts, he owes the citizens in that part of the country the responsibility to provide them equal protection as those from other regions.

    The report also parleys into the hands of those working to divide the country. So, if the report is true, unless the federal government takes steps to discourage such extortionist tendency, it may be accused of complicity in the criminality. Going forward, the seasonal military exercise in the southeast, formerly called operation egwu eke, and now known as atilogwu udo, may be viewed by people of the region, as an extortionist agenda of the army. Same for operation crocodile smile in the south-south. Would the exercise escalate tension or reduce it?

    The report would also tally with the claim by some groups that the southeast and south-south are like occupied territories. The argument being that while the zones are not exposed to external aggression, they have excessive concentration of security checkpoints per square kilometre. In some places in the southeast, you will not drive more than one kilometre without meeting a checkpoint. While one can argue that checkpoints are there to secure the people from armed robbery, kidnapping and sundry crimes, the people become citizens of a vassal state, when the security agencies freely extort them without any consequences.

    The situation in the zones become even more tendentious, when a major cause of insecurity in the zones, is caused by armed herdsmen, who are viewed in some quarters as part of the grandiose plan to occupy and exploit. So, under the circumstance in the zones, it remains a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. They either live with the exploitation from the security agencies or if they demand their withdrawal, then they will be exposed to the murderous attacks of armed herdsmen.

    The governors of the states in the zones must be in a quandary how to deal with the situation. Ironically, despite the reported presence of 34,000 armed personnel of the army, navy, air force and police; not to talk of the huge resources expended by the various states to support them, the states concerned are not fully secured. Recently, because of the criminal activities of the armed herdsmen, the states are also expending tax payers’ money to train vigilantes, forest guards and other groups to complement the security agencies.

    Again, because security agencies are controlled by the federal government; the states despite handing them security equipment bought at huge costs, are not in a position to demand optimal performance from the agencies. After providing the required resources, they would have to beg them to perform. This column in the past decade always joined other well-meaning Nigerians to demand for a change in the policing architecture of Nigeria, and the Intersociety report is one more reason for urgent change.

    Of note, last week, the oil producing states visited the president, and all the visiting governors are from the two zones. Same last week, the president also announced that N10 billion has been budgeted for the rehabilitation of the Enugu runway, which was closed down for repairs. Also, the Minister for Works Babatunde Fashola SAN, promised that the Second Niger Bridge would be ready in 2021. While the federal government should quickly rehabilitate the Enugu runway and indeed finish the international wing of the airport, it deserves pundits for delivering on the two promises.

    On their part, the police and the army should take their indictment by Intersociety seriously. Before taking the easy way of merely dismissing the report, the accused institutions should conduct investigation to determine whether the findings are true. While extortion by police at checkpoints are common, the nation should be alarmed if its army has joined such infamy.  

  • Rumours of a Third Term and a wedding

    FOR much of July 2011, as I reported on this page back then, nothing filled me with so much foreboding as a telephone call from Nigeria, or from a fellow expatriate Nigerian in the United States.

    Not that I dreaded being woken up at 3 o’clock in the morning by an insistent phone call informing me that the son of my grand-aunt’s younger nephew has secured admission to the Federal University of Kutuwengi’s coveted programme in cassava technology, and that unless I cabled the sum of N100, 000 immediately by way of a non-refundable deposit, the offer would go to another.

    I had been given a tutorial by a fellow expatriate Nigerian on how to handle such matters.

    “Tell the caller,” my tutor counseled, “tell the caller how genuinely delighted you are that the youngest son of your grand-aunt’s nephew had secured a place in the prohibitively competitive cassava technology programme at UniKutuwengi (UK).

    Impress it upon the caller that the young man is even more fortunate in other ways because the vice chancellor of UK is your bosom friend and the professor of cassava propagation, who also happens to be the dean of the faculty of cassava technology, is none other than your favourite brother-in-law.”

    Then, the clincher:  “Tell the caller to ask the young man to kindly send for ease of reference, a copy of his letter of admission so that you could cable the deposit directly to your good friend the vice chancellor at UK, or to the professor of cassava propagation.

    “You would never hear from them again,” my tutor had assured me.

    My discomfiture stemmed from the previously rumoured, speculated, suspected, widely-believed, and finally incipient “Third Term.”

    Whenever the phone rang and I identified a Nigerian voice at the other end, I began to have that sinking feeling. I could feel it in my bones that the caller had nothing other than the so-called “Third Term” on his mind.  And I was right for the most part.

    The calls usually began on a casual, even languid note, with “Bawo ni?” or “Hao nao?” But I had learned not to be fooled by such a gambit, nor by the preliminaries that followed, no matter how diverting or long-drawn.

    Not a moment too soon, the callers got going.

    “How is Baba these days?” they would ask casually, almost absent-mindedly.

    “Which Baba?” I would reply, spoiling for an opening to play interrogator.

    “Baba President,” they would rejoin.  OBJ.”

    “How would I know from this distance?  Why don’t you ask Femi Fani-Kayode?”

    “Ah!” the callers would exclaim in terror. “He will curse the daylight out of us for daring to ask.”

    “No, he won’t,” I would assure them. “As a born-again Christian and an ordained deacon, Femi Fani-Kayode doesn’t curse.  And if you are only asking after Baba’s health and not dabbling into the great issues of state, he will thank you for your interest in Baba and praise you for your patriotism.  He might even pencil you down for a federal appointment.”

    “From all that I have read and heard, Baba has not said he is interested in a Third Term,” I  would tell them with as much conviction as I could muster.

    “If he is not interested, why can’t he come out straight to say so and thus put an end to all the speculation and all the nasty things people have been saying about him?”

    “For reasons of state, no doubt. Raison d’état.  But I can’t speak for Baba. You really must

    ask Chief Fani-Kayode.  I can give you his phone number.”

    A second invocation of that name was usually enough to dissuade the caller from pursuing this pesky inquiry.

    The conversations — such as they were — with callers who opened with a “Hao nao?” usually took a different tack.  No dancing around; they went straight into business.

    “Nna, this Third-Term thing is now spreading like bush fire. What’s the latest?”

    “My brother, this avian ’flu is a really terrible thing,” I would reply.  “Just imagine, our  people can’t even eat ordinary chicken again.   Our poultry farmers are finished. Hundreds of thousands of birds dead.  And now there is the fear that humans may be afflicted too.  It is really terrible.”

    “Na so we see am o,” my brother. Very sad.  But this is about Obasanjo’s Third-Term plot.

    “Alleged plot,” I would cut in.

    “Alleged my foot,” one such caller shot back, aspirating with a force that almost blew out my eardrum. “Your Yoruba people have endorsed it.  Are you saying they have endorsed a mere allegation?”

    “It’s the governors of the Yoruba-speaking states that endorsed it. The South-South, South-East governors have also endorsed it Even Ohanaeze has embraced it.  And it cannot be long before the Arewa people follow suit.  “Senator Ibrahim Mantu who coordinated consultations across the country has said that everywhere he went, he found a strong national consensus favouring a Third, and possibly a Fourth Term.

    “The whole thing began like a crazy joke. And now, it looks as if they just might pull it off, like this is some banana republic.  How did they do it?”

    “You must ask Andy Uba.  And Tony Anenih, the master fixer. I can give you Anenih’s GSM number.”

    No response.

    “Hello. . . . Hello. . .”

    Still no response.  End of conversation

    These were persons hoping to enter party politics one day.  It must have been drilled into them that the fear of The Fixer is the fundamental law of political practice in Nigeria.

    Memories of these skirmishes came flooding back when it was bruited the other day that President Muhammadu Buhari might seek a Third Term.  Handbills and posters soon surfaced           in Abuja and elsewhere urging Buhari to bid for a Third Term, even as the Next Level Agenda  for his present and last term as consecrated in the Constitution is yet to gain traction.  A motley crowd of placard-carrying Third-Term protagonists put an exclamation mark on the matter.

    The Presidency has disavowed any such intent.  Yet the rumours have persisted.

    And I suspect that now, as in 2011, it would be a matter of time before I am inundated with requests for insight and analysis on the matter, even though I do not relate to Buhari the way I related to former President Obasanjo.

    But that is the least of my worries.  I am concerned with the far more treacherous terrain ahead.

    Lately, they have been linking His Excellency the President and the Honorable Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Intervention and Social Development Sadiya Umar Farouk, romantically.  They even went so far as to put it about that they were to be joined in matrimony last Friday.

    This purported heads-up sent the Muslim faithful, all manner of supplicants and those seeking nothing but voyeuristic thrill flocking to the National Mosque in Abuja to witness the historic event.

    They all went home disappointed.

    In the wake of all this, Buhari’s wife Aisha, who had been away in the UK ended her extended vacation in the UK and returned to Nigeria.

    Requests for my reactions to these developments as a veteran public affairs analyst cannot be  long in coming, I fear.

    Here, upfront, is my response:  I am not aware of any link between the alleged presidential dalliance and Aisha Buhari’s precipitate return to base.  I have no thoughts, no comments, and  no insights whatsoever regarding these developments, nor what they portend for a Third Term or The Other Room.

    I will not let anyone goad me into perdition.

    The floods now devouring large swathes of the country are going to keep the Hon Minister for Disaster Relief fully engaged for a long time.

    So, rest easy, all ye stakeholders.

     

    •For comments, send SMS to 08111813080

     

     

  • Was Dogara there?

    Olakunle Abimbola

    Was 8th House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, in the Green Chamber when President Muhammadu Buhari came delivering the budget estimates?

    Everyone knew Dino Melaye was there: that loud mouth from the 8th Senate, with much diminished tantrums in the 9th.  A photo, in which Dino the excitable tried to serenade PMB, with a rankadede pose, went viral on the social media.

    A few days later, the valedictory symbolism of that photo would become pungent.  The president presented the budget proposals on October 8.  On October 11, the Court of Appeal booted out Dino, from his Kogi West senatorial seat.  Unless Dino won at the ordered re-run, not later than 90 days from verdict time, he would have kissed the Senate a final bye-bye.

    Again, that would be a crushing blow for the Bukola Saraki-led powers and principalities that held the 8th National Assembly in thrall; but that somewhat miscarried, in spectacular version, at the 2019 general polls.

    Saraki himself was nailed in battle, felled by the fearsome hail, from the  Kwara “O to ge” (Enough is enough) war.  That war utterly consumed Saraki, his entire political dynasty, and his routed O tun ya (Let’s do it again) troops: all penned and swept into electoral Siberia; not unlike Lucifer and his fallen angels — those tragic folks, in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, that would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven!

    Still, as the Yoruba would say, “Baba ku, Baba ku” — the patriarch is departed; the patriarch is very much alive!

    Saraki, the puppeteer, may have fallen in electoral battle.  But Melaye, the unfazed Saraki puppet, in senatorial rascality and allied ribaldry, somehow stole into the 9th Senate — Baba ku, Baba ku!

    But with this latest judicial yellow card — to borrow that famous football-speak — even that is turning into a grand illusion, for an ancien regime, with its dying ashen glow, in the new parliamentary order.

    Still, where the hell was Dogara, Dino’s twin apparition from the old order, during the budget presentation excitement?

    Was he in the chamber?  Was he without?  His quiet presence, if he was, clearly equates a loud absence!  That was a stark departure from the Saraki-Dogara glory days of legislative infamy!  How time changes!

    If Saraki was Brutus sans the post-mortem nobility ascribed to him after the anti-Caesar conspiracy had come a sad cropper, Dogara wasn’t exactly the “such men are dangerous” Cassius, with the “lean and hungry look”, who the tragic Caesar himself spotted, before the curtains fell.

    Yet, Dogara was no less potent in the 8th National Assembly’s anti-PMB legislative conspiracy, than Cassius was to Caesar’s.

    Saraki might have been the unfazed, gargoyle-like scowl of that conspiracy.  But Dogara was its smooth Jerkyll and Hyde — the day-time friend, the night-time fiend, in the anti-people legislative push, even if the primary goal was to cripple the PMB agenda.

    Just as well Saraki got “slain” in battle!  But Dogara stole back into Parliament as virtual prisoner of war (POW) — or how else would you describe his present status as ultra-mute floor member, from the zenith of swashbuckling, gavel-banging Speaker?

    Would Dogara remember the wild tantrums, the last time he and Saraki perched over the Green Chamber, to receive the budget estimates?  Boos and jars, in a free cascade, from a crude and ill-tempered chamber, fired at the president?

    Still, if the president was fazed by it all, he didn’t show it.  He responded instead with that four-plus-four finger signal that instantly went viral!  Talk of icy chutzpah as parliamentary riposte!

    Less than one year down the line, with Ahmed Lawan-Femi Gbajabiamila at the saddle, the mood was much changed, with even Dino coveting positive presidential attention!

    How did Dogara feel, observing the new temper at close quarters — and with painful anonymity?

    How would he squirm at Senate President Lawan’s resolution to pass the budget by December, firmly warning ministers to be prompt at budgetary defences or take whatever comes their way, against the Saraki-Dogara era’s drawn out late passages, to sabotage budgetary goals, because of partisan differences — partisan differences not fired by any noble dissent but by crass perfidy?

    Better a gone Saraki, fallen in electoral battle; than a Dogara parliamentary prisoner of war (POW), captured and condemned to witnessing that nightmare, perhaps?  How time changes!

    Still, are all these tailored to kick folks who are already down?  Absolutely not!

    However, whatever political comeuppance Saraki and Dogara now suffer for a past rotten parliamentary conduct, it can’t still compare to the pains their wilful actions and stealthy inactions have inflicted on voters that voted them.  Because the 8th National Assembly was busy cannibalizing the budget and diverting estimates for core infrastructure, to atomistic personal projects in the so-called constituency projects, vital arteries like the Lagos-Ibadan expressway and the 2nd Niger Bridge have had their completion time rolled back by at least two years.

    Travellers from the Lagos to the Sagamu interchange segment of that road (easily the busiest in the country) can feel the Saraki-Dogara parliamentary bad faith in real time travel pains; for the reconstruction, which should have be nearing completion, appears dreadfully slow.

    Even then, that pales into nothing when you calculate the multiplier effect, of that slow-down, in aggravated poverty — faster road travel, of people and goods, should normally give the economy a jab in the arm.

    But the political dangers were even direr.  After Saraki had traded off the APC right of deputy Senate president to PDP, and Dogara had annexed basically PDP votes to become Speaker, the duo attempted to invent a new though satanic realpolitik: the majority having its say but the minority having its way!

    So potent was this new “way” that even after the opposition’s National Assembly electoral hiding of 2019, not a few feared the opposition wizards could still conjure the Saraki-Dogara 8th Assembly encore.  But alas!

    Still, the win or loss is not personal glory or infamy.  It is rather the voters’ collective loss of four years: the polity badly bled, while Saraki, Dogara and confederates gamed!

    Ay, not a few would insist the problem was never one-way; and that the PMB Presidency and the ruling APC had own issues — true.  Still, that is as good as putting Judas in the clear for betraying the Christ, since he only fulfilled a dire divine decree!

    The Dogara debacle should be a clear and crystal lesson to the 9th NASS, both as a collective and as individual senators and Reps.  When you have a sacred historic opportunity to make a difference, don’t blow it on crass profanity.

    It is to Karma’s glory that Dogara may be stranded in the House, to shamefacedly observe the prompt correction of his Speakership’s deliberate bad faith — the prompt passage of the 2020 budget, for instance.

    On this score, Saraki would appear to have claimed the better deal, though he fell, not unlike Absalom, that grand Biblical rebel, in electoral battle.

    To return to that John Milton imagery: it is indeed better to be as dead as dodo in political hell, than a Dogara enduring the living dead, in parliamentary heaven.