The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • ‘An order from above’

    ‘An order from above’

    Accounts of how two leaders of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), University of Lagos (UNILAG) Chapter, were arrested in the early hours of February 15 are a cause for concern.  The two men are Joseph Adefolalu and Adekola Adetomiwa.

    Chairman of the Non- Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU), UNILAG, Kehinde Ajibade, said: “Adefolalu was arrested at 12am in his residence at Ikorodu and Adetomiwa 1am at his residence in Onike. Adefolalu is not a thief. Why would he be arrested at that ungodly hour? What warranted his arrest? So we went to the police command for them to tell us what they have done but they could not tell us any offence they committed. They only said it was an order from above.”

    In Adefolalu’s case, a report said: “According to a family source, the security operatives, numbering over 12 who came in three vehicles with special plate numbers invaded his residence around midnight and held the members of his family hostage, until he was forced to open the door.”

    The report continued: “They came around midnight and surrounded the entire house. Initially, he did not want to open the door to them. We were all inside and some of the landlords in the environment came out. The security men who came with guns and clutching their walkie-talkies identified themselves to the landlords that they were from the State Criminal Investigation Department, Ikeja Division and acting on ‘orders from above,’ the family source said. Eventually when the threat became unbearable, and for the security of the members of his family, he surrendered to them.”

    It is positive news that UNILAG Vice-Chancellor Prof Oluwatoyin Ogundipe later secured the release of the arrested men. The VC and the leadership of the non-academic staff unions were said to have visited the office of the Department of State Security (DSS), Shangisha, to bail the   caged union leaders who had been transferred to the office from the Ikeja Division of the State Criminal Investigation Department.

    The authorities at the Ikeja Division of the State Criminal Investigation Department have a lot of explaining to do. Who gave the so-called order from above which led to the arrest of the union leaders? Why was the order given in the first place?  Why was the order carried out in that manner?

    It is noteworthy that the ongoing national strike declared by the Joint Action Committee of the non-academic staff in the universities nationwide has generated tension. But the friction should not be allowed to degenerate.

  • Zuma zoomed out of office

    Zuma zoomed out of office

    Jacob Zuma, no thanks to his grave personal peccadilloes, has been zoomed out of office, as South African president.  But new President Cyril Ramaphosa would do well to study what befell his predecessors, aside from the angelic Nelson Mandela, the revered Madiba.

    The Yoruba, in ancient wisdom, call it the  cane, used to tan the older wife, is waiting, patiently in the rafters, for the swollen headed new wife, present darling of all.

    The Igbo?  Well, a mixture of old and new.  In the early years of this 4th Republic, when the Igbo political elite were fiercely sliding and tackling themselves for the Senate President’s job, out rang the fresh warning for every current — and temporary — occupier of the seat: beware of the banana peel!  That slippery, treacherous peel was the grave of many a Senate president of Igbo extraction!

    So it is, it would appear, with Mandela’s country.  Aside from the Madiba, none of his successors had  managed to complete his full presidential terms.  But maybe that was because the Madiba did only one term, before quitting as soul of the nation, then transiting from a ruinous apartheid enclave into multi-party democracy.  Wisdom!

    Even then, the case of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma bears retelling.  The one was so politically antiseptic that he scorned politics with a vengeance; but loved policy with with a passion.  The other was the exact opposite: he was more at home with the rambunctiousness of the street, than the clinical cold of the policy chamber.

    Of course, with the street political hustle, and the lionization and demonization that come with it, he just hit the London Economist’s cynical portraiture — the African Big Man, to whom the delicate business of legal checks and balances mean absolutely nothing.

    That was the Zuma Achilles heels, which nevertheless not only undermined the new institutional gains of South Africa’s multiparty democracy but also jarred on the African National Congress, ANC’s corporate and organizational integrity.

    Mbeki and Zuma were, therefore, not unlike the political and governmental flotsam and jetsam that must be thrown in the roaring sea to save the mother vessel.  The crunchy question, though: when will Ramaphosa himself hit the Mbeki-Zuma point of no return, necessitating his own inevitable jettisoning, for the sake of the greater good?

    A piece of fatalism?  No.  Just the logical stretching of a grim trend.

    But the lesson therein for Nigeria is that the ANC at least has the capacity to rein in its political beneficiaries; and by so doing, sanitize and renew itself.

    That is the core problem with the Nigerian political party system, where people get elected but declare themselves lords and masters above the vehicle that brought them to power.  Yet there is, thus far, no room for independent candidates.  What conceit!  What hubris!

    But if it’s a consolation, the ANC is over 100 years.  No political party in Nigerian post-independence history has ever lived more than 18 years.

    Moral?  No quick fix to building robust institutions.  Only patience and punishing work.

  • Discreditable disruption

    Discreditable disruption

    News of the postponement of the 50th Convocation of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) scheduled for February 19 is yet another indication of the unpredictability of the academic calendar in the country’s government-owned universities. It is no news that students in such universities are never sure of the calendar because of frequent disruptions.

    At UNILAG, striking members of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, the Non- Academic Staff Union of Universities and the Associated Institutions and the National Association of Academic Technologists reportedly shut some administrative buildings on the university campus.

    The chairman of NASU-UNILAG, Kehinde Ajibade, was quoted as saying: “The stand of the union is that the university management should suspend the (convocation) operations. There is no way to do that (the convocation) when the three unions are on strike. The environment is not going to be conducive, no water and electricity, among others. The management of the UNILAG is expected to do the needful and they should postpone the convocation ceremony.”

    The action of the university’s non-teaching staff has forced the university’s authorities to review things. A statement by the Principal Assistant Registrar, Information Unit, Mrs. Taiwo Oloyede, acknowledged the challenges, saying, “Although necessary arrangements for a smooth ceremony were at an advanced stage, however, it has become imperative to postpone the ceremonies due to the charged and unpredictable atmosphere on campus.”

    Oloyede added: “The nefarious activities of the unions witnessed in the last few weeks under the guise of a strike have the capacity to snowball into a major crisis and mar the carefully laid out arrangements for a successful convocation.”

    Caught in the crossfire, so to speak, are the graduands who had looked forward to their graduation at the scheduled time that will now be rescheduled.  Now they have to wait until the problem is resolved, and nobody knows how long that will take.

    The striking workers chose their time to deliver a punch that would have maximum effect, without a thought for the graduands.  The university’s authorities were not thinking of the graduands by creating a situation that made the strike possible.

    Oloyede said: ”The university remains committed to providing a conducive atmosphere to foster quality teaching and research, as well as to produce graduates that can compete with their counterparts globally.”

    Such rhetoric must be backed by action. It is discreditable that UNILAG had to postpone the convocation. It means the atmosphere in the university is not what it should be.

     

     

     

  • Labour-ing in vain

    Labour-ing in vain

    Thinking of corporate political prostitution?  Look no farther than the Labour Party (LP) — a party inspired by the mass appeal of organized Labour; but which has pressed its claim to being Nigeria’s No. 1 partisan political prostitute!  Talk about how Labour under-develops Labour, on the partisan political front!

    So, when the news came that LP — hell, why isn’t anyone surprised! — is already opening talks with the Olusegun Obasanjo Trojan horse, Coalition for Nigeria (CN) Movement, it is nothing but confirming well established notoriety.

    “We can say that preliminary talks have opened between the coalition movement and a section of the Labour Party,” The Nation of February 12 quoted an unnamed CN source. “The LP is being considered because it is popular [more like notorious, in this context of political opportunism] and firmly established; and it is considered as a masses-oriented party, its meagre successes [and how could that be otherwise?] notwithstanding.

    Since its founding in 2002, LP has established a firm record of partisan prostitution, stoutly shunning any attempt to build its own genuine ranks; but lending its name to short-term partisan gambits, from which it emerges, all of the time, consumed and ravaged by its own greed.

    By that, it makes nonsense of its ideological essence, but instead offers its hollow shell in unholy matrimony to strange bed fellows.

    LP’s most glorious — and most disastrous — outing to date is in Ondo, under Olusegun Mimiko.  After abandoning the Alliance for Democracy (AD) for People’s Democratic Party (PDP) before the 2003 election, Mimiko adopted LP because he couldn’t get what he wanted from the late Olusegun Agagu’s PDP in 2007.

    Mimiko would spur, and gallop on, the LP Trojan horse of no ideology — or pseudo-progressivism? — till late 2014 when he went back to his PDP vomit.  Give and take?  Though LP was Mimiko’s power special purpose vehicle (SPV) for eight years, it was nothing more than labouring in vain for LP.

    Beam your political binoculars to other states, and you’d see LP hot and earnest in partisan harlotry, most times subverting existing ruling parties, and not only under-developing the political party system but also terribly undermining itself.

    In Lagos, whenever the ruling party had  slight crises, parasitic elements from LP circle, like vultures, swoop for a bit of the carrion.  That has dated back to 2003 when former Deputy Governor Femi Pedro first adopted LP to run in a failed governorship attempt, after he couldn’t secure the AD ticket.  That spectre of LP opportunism has lingered, every election season, the latest being the 2017 Lagos local government elections.

    Why, even Donald Duke, the happy and merry duke of Obasanjo’s doomed latest gambit, even had a stint with LP, when he fell out with his PDP successors in Cross Rivers, ironically a PDP answer to Lagos, in a one-party ruling movement since 1999, with pretty much to show.

    Shouldn’t he have known — if indeed, as being speculated, Duke is Obasanjo’s latest Prince Charming, in his grand CN stratagem — from past experience that any deal with LP is nothing but Labour-ing in vain?

    LP should be done with short-term harlotry that results in long-term self-destruction.  But then, as the Yoruba say, you don’t tell a wilful child not to grow a crooked set of teeth.  The ultimate mockery will do the deed!

  • Powerless manpower

    Powerless manpower

    If course, there are reasons the Nigeria Police Force is largely ineffective. The Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG), Zone 5, Mr. Rasheed Akintunde, supplied a major reason during his tour of Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, on February 8.

    Akintunde was quoted as saying: “The funniest thing is that only 20 per cent of the police personnel are the ones working, the rest are just there. Talking about  20 per cent working; if you look at it well, every ‘big man’ wants his own security, they want 30 men to secure them instead of supporting the whole community by saying we should give resources for police to do the work so that the environment will be secured. They only want security for themselves.”

    He added: “Even religious leaders want personal security. So after all that, we find that it’s only 20 per cent remaining to guard other places. Even for government’s commission too, they can load 20 units for it whereas they need only seven, so that’s why the 20 per cent comes in.”

    It is noteworthy that the Bayelsa State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Don Awunah, reportedly thanked the AIG for his visit but complained that the 4,000 police personnel in the state were inadequate. In addition to the manpower problem, Awunah mentioned logistics, equipment and accommodation as major issues.

    Three days later, the Chairman of the Police Service Commission, Mr. Mike Okiro, said in an interview in Abuja that more than 150,000 policemen were attached to VIPs and unauthorised persons in the country.

    The former Inspector General of Police said:  ”We cannot afford to have more than half of the population of the police in private hands…We could not sustain the enforcement of the order on the withdrawal of policemen attached to unqualified persons in the country because of lack of funds.” Okiro reportedly observed that persons who were ministers about 10 or 15 years ago still went about with police security.

    The question must be asked: Is the Police Force meant to serve so-called privileged Nigerians to the detriment of the larger society? Of course, the answer is in the negative.

    It is inexcusable that the identified police manpower shortage is compounded by a privileged few who don’t seem to care what happens to the rest of the society as long as they enjoy police protection. It is equally inexcusable that the police authorities have failed to correct the anomaly.  With the way things are, the police can’t change if there are no changes.

  • What’s wrong with cattle colonies?

    What’s wrong with cattle colonies?

    What’s wrong with cattle colonies?  Nothing except the politics of meaning.  That starts with passing “colony” to mean “colonization”.  That is nothing but lexical fraud.

    Much of the old Greek states started as colonies on the Crete islands.  These Greeks of old just fled, from their mainland, as a result of land hunger; and settled on these islands as Greek communities.

    So, they were Greek colonies.  But antiquity never charged the Greeks with colonization, in the later sense of the British, French, etc, subjugating their colonial peoples.

    Then, there is the explosive menu of mixing business with politics; and its attendant raw and destructive hysteria.  Yoruba history provides a prime example in the “Two Pepper War” (1821-1827).  It was between the Owu and the confederacy of Ife, Oyo and Ijebu.

    According to Owu records, an Ijebu woman had accused an Owu seller, at Apomu market, of stealing two alligator pepper, from one of six sacks she had bought.  Apomu is in present-day Osun. That alarm led to a six-year war!

    Why? You guessed right — the politicization of business.  The Owu were opposed to slave trade.  But from this booming trade, some Ife, Ijebu and Oyo lobbies were making hay.  The Owu, a warrior people, felt they could use their military might to smash it. But the opposition confederates decided to call their bluff.  Because of “two allegator pepper” however, the Owu got sacked from Owu Ipole, and got scattered all over Yorubaland!

    See how explosive a politics-business cocktail can be?

    The anti-Fulani hysteria, leading to the fashionable condemnation of cattle colonies without thinking, is another prime example of mixing politics with business.  Instead of a win-win that business opportunities most times are, business poisoned with politics — and this time, the explosive ethnic hue — portends a lose-lose for everyone.

    The Fulani in Nigerian history, no thanks to British perfidy and greed, may have earned due notoriety in political domination.  The criminals among the cattle herders have for long given the Fulani added bad name, by their combative ignorance and murderous impunity.

    Still, that is no reason to demonize the livestock business.  It is even dafter to, because of Fulani hatred, lock up your mind and throw away the key into the Atlantic Ocean.  Yet, the subject, taboo to your mind, might be a possible solution to the herdsmen-farmers’ clashes that have resulted in too much blood and gore!  What if it works?

    Cattle colonies can never be evil, just because a lot of people hate the Fulani.  It is only a colony of ranches, concentrated on a particular vast piece of land.

    If it portends a gradual end to itinerary animal husbandry, then it’s worth some consideration.  If herders have their space, does it not logical promise less herder-farmer clashes; and their attendant ethnic tensions? Besides, its a systemic way of assuring both herders and farmers equal opportunity to ply their trade.  Shorn of emotive politics, and other things being equal, it’s likely to be win-win.

    So, let the Federal Government continue to sell the benefits; and offer cast iron guarantees against future abuse.

    But let others too open their minds, beyond emotive but sterile ethnic hysteria.  If you consume beef, you should care about how far or near the market is.  That is where the cliche of making Sambisa Forest the sole cattle colony misses the point.

    Cattle colonies could be promising economic growth areas — how otherwise fallow ancestral lands can make yearly money for the natives, while at the same time assuring a cattle mart — and ranch — as near as possible.

    Isn’t proximity to market one of the critical points in basic Economics “location of industries”?

  • Congestion and decongestion

    Congestion and decongestion

    It looks like Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha has been thinking about the death penalty and the legal requirement that a governor must sign the relevant death warrant before a condemned prisoner can be executed.

    He gave the public an idea of his thoughts on the issues when members of the Presidential Committee on Prison Decongestion visited him at the Government House in Owerri.

    Okorocha said: “One hundred and seventy Imo indigenes have been condemned to death. We shall take a decision. Whoever takes life should be ready for the consequences, but we shall look at the issues, especially from our cultural perspectives, before taking action. Where forgiveness should be the case, we shall also know. It is going to be a holistic approach.” He was quoted as saying that “Imo people are known for forgiveness.” The governor displayed narrow thinking by thinking of the condemned prisoners as “Imo indigenes,” instead of condemned criminals.

    Interestingly, Okorocha spoke like he had all the time in the world.  But he is expected to leave office next year after a second four-year term. Prison statistics show that there are nearly 2,000 prisoners awaiting execution in the country. This death-row congestion is inexcusable. As long as the death penalty is accommodated by the country’s criminal justice system, it amounts to evasiveness to speak like Okorocha did.

    It is complex enough to arrive at a death decision, and the complexity should not be further complicated by evasiveness when it comes to executing the decision. If judges are able to reach a death decision without the interference of extra-judicial considerations, governors should be able to carry out the decision without the hindrance of extra-legal thoughts.

    Where guilt has been unambiguously established and it has attracted a death sentence, there is ambiguity if execution of the judgement is problematised.

    Okorocha observed exaggeratedly:  “Setting up the Committee for Prison Decongestion means President Muhammadu Buhari has been doing special things, including the Agricultural Revolution, the N-Power, and now the prison decongestion. These are wonderful innovations by the President. This is the first time a government at the centre is taking steps to see our prisons decongested.”

    Prison decongestion efforts should also address death-row congestion. Governors come and go, but the problem won’t go away if nothing is done to solve it.

     

     

     

  • Kukah cooking full emptiness

    Kukah cooking full emptiness

    The revered Father Matthew Hassan Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, just cooked his latest broth.  But it is nothing but full emptiness — taken from the angle of the good priest as sound public thinker, teeming with deep knowledge of Nigerian contemporary history.

    Still, on the thinker’s plane.  The good father loves to impress with great polemics — a little to the left; and a little to the right; like Ibrahim Babangida’s doomed two parties.  But at the end, your brain flogged and drained, you just wonder what he is saying.

    To be fair though, his latest broth pushed something specific, even if it hit new lows by passing the military — or didn’t he? — as some deus-ex-machina, fit and proper to fix the Nigerian crisis of nationhood.

    Has reason so spectacularly failed among Nigeria’s most rigorous thinkers — among whom the Catholic priest clearly classes himself — that their forensic minds must throw up past debacles and future miracles?

    Father Kukah let it slip, rippling with avant-garde knowledge and holy wisdom, that Nigerians could not afford to, much longer, “take the military for granted”.

    Pray, who are the military and what what might that mean?  Are the military a political party, constitutionally free to join political frays?

    Or o, on the philosophical plain: the military,  all-wise and supremely above board, should come, post-haste, and sack the democratic order yet again?

    Perhaps the holy father should educate the woolly-brained hoi polloi, on what he meant by not taking “the military for granted”.

    This is a most condemnable baiting — if not outright goading — by a man who definitely ought to know better.  It is a sickly reminiscence of that sorry period of Nigerian life, when some otherwise respected “intellectuals” would hug to crass emotions, and with sententious zest, beckon the military to come roll in their tanks.

    Why, even the stark Sani Abacha was passed as some “democratic general” come to revalidate MKO’s mandate!

    Twice, in less than three years, the holy Father’s trumpeting has not quite matched his priestly and thinking reputation.

    When Buhari’s anti-corruption war debuted in 2015, Father Kukah did not quite ripple with priestly zeal, to clear Nigeria’s public finance of sleaze.  Rather, he called on Nigerians to “move on” because President Goodluck Jonathan had done fantastically well for losing election and quitting.  Was he supposed to stay put, holy Father?

    But you could even pass that for his democratic opinion, even if it challenged his priestly essence, as the society’s moral anchor.

    Now, he is suggesting the military, which by the Constitution, are subordinate to the democratic order, as having intervening rights.  That is bordering on high treason, no matter how putative.

    That is why the Catholic Church must call this priest to order.  He sure has rights as a citizen.  But his right ends when he starts insinuating extra-constitutional ideas, just because there is tension in the land.

    That is approaching a very dangerous territory, particularly with Nigerian past experience of abject military ruin, which even after 18 years of straight democracy is yet to be cleared.

  • Contrived continuity

    Contrived continuity

    It is interesting that Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha was quoted as saying to reporters on February 5: “If I show them my successor now, they will kill him. The politicians here are very wicked, but at the right time, when I disclose the identity of my successor, I will stand behind him to protect him.”

    So, Okorocha knows who will succeed him as governor. He sounded so sure of the identity of his successor. Okorocha will leave office next year after a second four-year term, and the person who will become governor after him is expected to be elected by the electorate.

    Going by Okorocha’s words and the way he spoke confidently about the identity of his successor, he may not be thinking about the electorate and its electoral power. He may well be thinking about his own power to pick his successor and ensure that whoever he picks succeeds him as governor. In other words, Okorocha is thinking like a kingmaker.

    “The governor we want is a man that will continue with what we have done, because my administration has laid a solid foundation for the next governor,” Okorocha said.  Of course, he is entitled to want the person he wants. The question is whether the person he wants is the person the voters want.

    When will Okorocha reveal his choice? When is “the right time”?  Does the person he wants know?  Why would his choice be targeted for elimination? Okorocha unfairly labelled politicians in the state as “very wicked,” and maligned them by saying they would kill the person he wants if he unveiled the person’s identity at this time.

    Okorocha’s thinking on succession shows that he may be no better than Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose. Okorocha of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Fayose of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are on the same page on the question of succession. It is noteworthy that Fayose had caused a stir last year when he named his deputy, Prof. Kolapo Olusola, as his successor. The state is expected to elect a new governor this year. Justifying his choice, Fayose had said during a thanksgiving service to mark his third year in office:  ”I wanted Kayode Osho, but the Lord said it is Kolapo Olusola and I had no choice but to obey.”

    Governors who think they must pick their successors appear desperate to remain in power after their tenure. It is contrived continuity.

  • Hubris in different cultures

    Hubris in different cultures

    From the fierce, jealous and fiery Jehovah of the Old Testament, to the Divine grace of the new, by the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, Christianity is bound to be benign, even when passing across a grim message.

    So, when Christians pray the prayer, “May you end well”, it’s a benign way to warn against hubris, and its attendant catastrophe.  As that prayer begs God for His mercies, it also warns you to be cautious, and be at your best behaviour.

    The Greeks, with their myths, in which the gods hold the uppity human in almost near contempt, baiting him to trip so they could burst into an uproarious laugh, there is little time for benignity.

    With Oedipus’s classics, Oedipus Rex, Antigone, et al, the gods are all too eager to watch man trip and fall.  King Oedipus, with the characteristic savage fatalism of Greek myths, did all in his power to avert the baleful prophecy of killing his father and marrying his mother.

    But that terrible sentence did not only come to pass, it drew enough cross-cultural pathos for Ola Rotimi (God bless his soul!) to forge a parallel in Yoruba culture: The Gods are Not to Blame.

    So, the caveat emptor, in Greek traditional myth is real:  Only the dead and buried are well and truly lucky!  The harsh warning is clear: jaunty man, behave yourself.  Until the second you dies and get buried, the gods are always at the ready to get you!

    That’s the dire Greek warning against hubris.

    In Yoruba culture, aside from the total submission to the Almighty God, Olodumare, warning against hubris comes through proverbs and folktales, to which the human is supposed to listen and from which (s)he is supposed to learn.

    One of such concerns the tortoise, the crafty weeping boy of Yoruba folk tales, just as man himself is the gods’ weeping boy, in Greek cosmogony.

    In one of those tales, the tortoise suddenly declared he was going on a journey.

    “When will you come back?” he was asked.

    “When I’m disgraced,” he quipped, all wit, all pride!  Even then, the stupidest of imbeciles would know disgrace should be no wilful wish for anyone, talk less of the all-wise tortoise!

    Indeed, this tortoise quip so impressed Prof. Ola Rotimi, that in his tragic play, Kurunmi, he dramatised that boast to set up the dramatic fall of Kurunmi, the Aare Ona Kakanfo, in a war with Basorun Ogunmola-led Ibadan army.  Of course at the end, it was tragedy foretold, but which the all-powerful Kurunmi was fated not to see.

    It started with conceit.  It ended with hubris.  Another uppity man, dead to reason, had fallen, to the thunderous roar of the gods!

    Well, this is no Tuesday morning foray into religion, literature and culture.  It is rather Hardball’s timely warning to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in his latest political gambit.

    Well, the man has his democratic right to push his opinion.  He calls it patriotic intervention.   His opposers could equally call it democratic rascality.  All fit in with the democratic code, in which the majority opinion carries the day.

    Still, the dynamics of democracy is that those who scream “hail him! hail him!” when the story is good, will also screech “nail him! nail him!” when it all turns sour.

    So, Hardball sincerely hopes and prays Obasanjo’s latest intervention is indeed patriotic; and Nigeria would be richer for it.

    But if it a tortoise journey, from which he won’t come back before disgrace, the gods would claim only his scalp — not of those now hailing or nailing!