Jimi Agbaje, the hoped-for electoral golden boy of Lagos Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has caught the bragging bug, even before landing the Lagos PDP governorship ticket.
Somewhat, Agbaje reminds Hardball of the global boxing order, before the Klitchko brothers. In that classical age, with titans like the Incomparable Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Smoking Joe Frazier, Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvellous Marvin Haggler and the Detroit Hitman, Tommy Hearns, boxing, especially the heavyweight class, was the near-exclusive preserve of men of colour.
So, if any white slugger as much as showed the most elementary of promises, he was suddenly hyped as the “Latest White Hope”, a not-so-disguised racial antipathy in sports. But before you could bawl White, the latest white hope was clobbered black-and-blue by the usual nemesis, leaving the White press on the lookout for next White hope! But that was before the emergence of the Russian duo, Brothers Klitchko.
Back to Lagos politics, where the PDP has received hopeless gubernatorial and other electoral whupping these past 16 years. Will Jimi prove the Klitchko? Or yet another hope turned mirage? That is in the belly of time.
What is not, however, is that Agbaje has caught the PDP bragging bug. Not so long ago, a PDP national chairman bragged that his party would rule Nigeria for the next 60 years. Then after: maybe a power century, a millennium — or even power till kingdom come, forever and ever, Amen?
Well, shortly after, the bragger-in-chief disappeared in the PDP maelstrom; and not so long after, the PDP humpty-dumpty came crashing, at the tail end of Bamanga Tukur’s tenure.
Agbaje seems unaware of the very recent history. He told The Punch that if he got the ticket, PDP would win: and not for four years, or even eight, but no less than 16 years!
Sure, 16 years is far shorter than 60. Besides, if the Alliance for Democracy (AD)-Action Congress (AC)-Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN)-All Progressives Congress (APC) continuum could rule Lagos for 16 years, why not PDP, particularly with Agbaje, its new progressive golden boy on the saddle, to kick-start the Lagos PDP golden age? Why not, indeed?
Still, what might have inspired Agbaje’s bragging? In the absence of previous state record, superlative performance by the Jonathan Presidency at the federal level? A superlative and verifiable PDP special programme for Lagos as a former federal capital and enduring economic hub? A solid manifesto that clearly demonstrates the state opposition could do the job better?
Hardly any — except, of course, the all-too-familiar language of power, no matter how obtuse!
But, not unlike the PDP national experience, a short while after Agbaje’s boast, humpty-dumpty appears to have hit Lagos PDP. Yomi Finnih, famed medic and Lagos PDP long-standing member, led some PPD supporters to ditch the party. What is more? That was done as President Jonathan was visiting, the point a jubilant Governor Babatunde Fashola merrily rubbed in!
Well, politicians moving to-and-fro could well be Nigeria’s peculiar pre-election ritual, a tale, in Shakespeare-speak, of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Still, if Jimi Agbaje is bringing new thinking into the Lagos PDP, he gains nothing by just catching the bug of power-talk without rigour. Winning elections takes more than open sesame of wishful thinking — and bragging!
2015 and politics of affirmative action
By Nkechi Jane-Frances Odinukwe
During the recently concluded National Conference, the Committee on Social Sector
recommended among other things, for the federal character provision in 1999 Constitution to include gender considerations. The committee equally recommended for gender mainstreaming of all laws, policies and programmes of government, passage of Equal Opportunity Act/Laws at states level and an amendment of Section 223 (b) of the 1999 Constitution to include the term “Federal Character of Nigeria and gender”. They did not stop at that but also recommended for the constitution to be amended to read that state at all levels put in place 35% affirmative action to ensure that women, minorities, people with disabilities and other marginalized groups participate and are represented in governance and other spheres of life.
The National Council of Women Society (NCWS) also submitted a proposal on the floor of the conference requesting for 50% equal representation of women in implementation of National Agriculture Policy. NCWS motion went down like a pack of cards by a boom of the loudest ‘nay’ ever recorded in the history of opposed motions in Nigeria. It appeared that majority of delegates were in consensus on the impropriety of the motion. One wonders what may have been running through the minds of distinguished delegates when they unanimously voted against this motion. Perhaps conference delegates felt that the 35% quota for elective and appointive positions as recommended by the National Gender Policy 2006, was still underutilized; making it premature for an upward review of the quota in any shape or form. Whether the motion survived or not, the need for greater involvement of women in the processes of governance was at least re-echoed.
February 2015 general elections are round the corner and political activities are on the increase across the federation. No day passes without some news about party defection, demand for political seat vacation or subtle election campaigns cloaked as rallies or grand reception for defecting party members. Just as expected, President Goodluck Jonathan has finally declared his intention to run for the presidency in 2015 elections. Politicians are up to their old tricks again. They have started expressing their intent to curry favour and citizens’ votes with air-filled promises that are fast forgotten after elections are over. Voters are getting wiser on the antics of this game and should vote wisely in February 2015 general elections. I often wonder how well our votes will be protected during the elections; especially considering voters’ history of voting wisely only for politicians to shortchange the process with ghost votes. This is more so with nation’s political culture that continuously recycles same old faces from one elective position to another. Political positions in contemporary Nigeria has become about retaining old sour palm-wine in old urn. There appears to be no room for unknown names in this field and no opportunity for grooming young people who have no connection to party stalwarts, financiers and political godfathers. One wonders if young and gifted Nigerians leaving the shores of this country in droves are simply wary of politics or frustrated with exclusionary nature of our political class who has not provided an enabling space for the young to use their God-given talents to benefit the country.
What about women? Where lies their role in 2015 elections? A look at the number of women indicating interest to vie for political positions across Nigeria shows that Nigerian women will not be left out in the struggle for political offices in 2015. Of interest is the gubernatorial ambition of a certain female senator from the South-east. Gubernatorial positions are male dominated but the said senator may be considered one out of few Nigerian women with enough mettle to take on the demands of such a position going by her past achievements in the National Assembly. Another example is the Anambra North Senatorial seat which is likely to be an all women contest during PDP primaries. Observers of Nigerian politics have however stressed that it will take much more than impressive political pedigree for these few women to win their party primaries. Oftentimes, winning elections in Nigeria has nothing to do with who is best qualified to govern but who has cavernous cash pocket, influential godfather, presidential blessing, strong political party backing or is lucky enough to bear a politically familiar surname. For women in politics, it becomes more difficult as the little space provided for women is often filled without regard to who is most eligible to promote the interest of women at decision making forums. Even with the insignificant number of women currently showing interest in elective positions, critical reflection on intending female candidates is urgently needed as it appears Nigerian women are yet to break out of the nuances of politically motivated gender- based affirmative action.
It may be said that the Jonathan’s administration has tried to make good on its 2011 Jos Township Stadium political promise to give women 35% ministerial and ambassadorial positions but what about political parties, state and local government structures? Why would they not borrow a leaf from the federal government’s initiative? How do we handle the politicization of 35% involvement of women in governance processes especially considering the little space men have grudgingly accepted to offer women,? I do not know whether Nigerians are paying attention but it has become the norm for female political party members to be restricted to ‘soft’ political positions as women leaders even when a significant level of grassroots mobilization of the electorate is carried out by women. How can women effectively challenge the culture that still keeps men in decision making positions invisibly when politicians at all levels wittingly sponsor voiceless female aspirants who merely add to affirmative action statistics?
Does the positioning of women who do not have any commitment to promoting the cause of women in legislative and decision making positions speak to or against 35% representation of women in decision making positions? Considering the temporary nature of affirmative action policies, should affirmative action be about counting the number of women seen to be in elective and appointive positions or more about providing a level playing field for qualified persons through elimination of preferences enjoyed by virtue of race, ethnicity, gender, wealth or filial relations? If a woman is simply selected by influential party chiefs to contest and possibly win an elective position, will she have the willpower to freely canvass ideas that may be contrary to her benefactor’s agenda – would not her loyalty lie with whoever selected her to win party primary ticket or general election? Most women are simply selected into structures even at the community level just to play out the politics of gender balance without so much as contributing to decision making… that is the politics of gender-based affirmative action in Nigeria.
Since it has been said that equitable participation of women in politics and government is essential to building and sustaining democracy, Nigerian women must keep asking questions that speak to quality of equitable participation needed from our female representatives. Equitable participation here should not be about mere increase in number of women in elective and appointive positions alone but must include complimentary decision making leverage. Women in politics and appointive positions must see the need to frequently mentor young and capable female Nigerians into councillorship and state-level positions and also facilitate policies/bills that uplift Nigerian women. As 2015 election approaches, female aspirants must know that Nigerian women will be watching to see the quality of representation they provide when elected.
Odinukwe is a Legal Practitioner and Gender Activist based in Abuja.
Letters
OAU Davids and Goliath President
On the face of it, the reported stoning of President Goodluck Jonathan by a vanguard of Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife students is incredible stuff. As an idea, it has a feasibility that can be estimated at a degree shy of impossible. This is because the President enjoys the protection of an elite security force. Alert and nimble, their trained reflex answers any detectable attempt to harm the President: this typically constitutes a disincentive to plot. But pictures and eyewitness accounts confirm that the irreverent students defied the prohibitive risk.
What did Jonathan do to deserve the hail of stones that is reserved for the devil in Mecca? The answer can be traced back to the day President Goodluck Jonathan inaugurated a modern Stone Age.
On February 3, 2012, President Jonathan mounted the soapbox of Seriake Dickson’s gubernatorial campaign rally in Yenagoa and regaled the teeming crowd with a reprehensible story. He told them of how he relished the spectacle of impudent miscreants stoning Timipre Sylva, then incumbent Governor of Bayelsa State. The stoning had occurred during the President’s homeboy visit and bore the decipherable signs of his tacit imprimatur.
President Jonathan said, ‘’Dickson, you brought the people from Abuja to present the flag; the only thing I want to do is to tell you that some time ago I was in Bayelsa and the people stoned the Governor. I was here and you must work hard for Bayelsa not to stone you. The day they stone you, I will join to stone you’’.
At the time, President Jonathan had imagined that his perch on the top of the totem pole exempted him from similar disgrace. But he misjudged: he actually scheduled his own baptism of stones with that cruel public endorsement. Two years later, the spatial distance between Yenagoa and Ile-Ife was literally bridged to a stone’s throw.
So the daredevils who cast stones at President Jonathan may have been furnished with good breeding; very unlikely prospects for such despicable stunt. But it seems that Karma, the triumphal payback principle of the universe, momentarily commandeered their volition and drove them to serve President Jonathan a dose of his own medicine.
President Jonathan supervised the stoning assault on the then vulnerable Governor Sylva. Jonathan was content to recline and watch the absurdity run its full course, like some morbid voyeur. He declined to affect indignation that such barbarity could be executed in his presence. He even opined that the incident offered the next governor a didactic nugget. Jonathan, a PhD, thought he sounded sensible when he decriminalized lynching, proclaiming that any group that thought the governor had been substantially slothful was free to empty their stone quiver. And he threatened, to dramatic effect, that if such Stone Age mob emerged, he would join, lugging Aso Rock itself. The President made these scandalous declarations without a blush.
Thankfully, the students adopted the President’s recommendation and chose to test its value on him – it was a passable empirical experiment. The OAU lynch mob had apparently determined that Jonathan, the stoning exponent, has now qualified as a stoning target. Has he not been largely idling away like ‘Governor Sylva’? Has he not been a C-in-C in hibernation mode, with Boko Haram sacking entire villages and expanding borders of the territory under their Caliphate?
The takeaway from this Karma return on President Jonathan’s woeful investment is that all of us, at some point, would be compelled to reap the reincarnation of our actions. And the rebound often comes to initiate the offender into the embarrassment the sufferer has already recovered from. In the ironical role reversal, we see Speaker Tambuwal watching as his oppressor duck stone hits.
One stone could have scored the David point. And Goliath could have fallen flat.
Emmanuel Uchenna Ugwu
@emmaugwutheman
The recent violence in Ibadan
For those of us living outside Oyo State, one particular thing that has been our joy in the last three and half years is the peace and tranquility that has been reigning supreme in the state since the inauguration of the Governor Abiola Ajimobi administration.
Before the advent of the administration, most of us who are Oyo State indigenes used to bury our heads in shame anytime the issue of the state was being discussed. This was because of the fact that the state, which used to set the pace among the comity of states in Nigeria, had retrogressed in all aspects of development. It had been turned into a theatre of war where lives were no more than a piece of tissue paper. Ibadan, the state capital, was held by the jugular by hoodlums most of whom were members of the transport union, aided by the governments of the day. The attendant consequence was the disappearance of Oyo State on the radar of development, while it was largely being treated like a pariah.
All these have disappeared and we are now raising our heads anywhere we find ourselves as proud indigenes of Oyo State. Thanks to Governor Ajimobi whose efforts have resulted in the peace that the state is now enjoying.
This is why I was so saddened with the ugly events of the past one week when the city of Ibadan was visited again with violence by the agents of darkness who were bent on returning Oyo State to its inglorious past. It is on record that so many properties were lost to the mayhem which occurred at Oke Ado and Born Photo-Popoyemoja-Idi Arere axis of the Ibadan metropolis. What an unfortunate incident!
There is no gainsaying the fact that the mayhem was masterminded by politicians who are bent on truncating the existing peace in Oyo State, in a bid to realize their selfish ambition. It will, therefore, be a sad reminder of the ugly past if these people are allowed to have their field day and continue to unleash terror on Oyo State, a state that has reveled peace in the last three and a half years.
Security agencies should, therefore, launch a thorough investigation into the Ibadan fracas and fish out the perpetrators and their sponsors. The state security outfit, Operation Burst, should also intensify its patrol operations, both within and outside Ibadan metropolis. Nothing should be left undone to guide the existing peace and stop the hoodlums from holding the state to ransom.
I also like to appeal to Governor Abiola Ajimobi not to allow the incident to distract him from the good works that he is doing in Oyo State for which all of us, indigenes outside the state and in the Diaspora, are very proud.
*Kolawole Akilapa,
Diobu, Port-Harcourt, Rivers State.
Nigerians must rise beyond divisions
It is unfortunate that despite many years of self rule, oil boom, and economic prosperity, corruption, and long years of military dictatorship has brought about a situation in which Nigerians have no sense of patriotism or nationalism. Tribal and regional inclinations have been dividing Nigerians for a very long time. Instead of Nigerians to unite against their common problems, they choose to remain divided. The political class are enjoying this division to take advantage of Nigerians. For example, the consistent power (electricity) failure is as common in the north as it is in south. The Igbos, Yorubas, Hausa-Fulani and even Jonathan kinsmen, the Ijaws are suffering from it. Instead of Nigerians to unite and pressure the government, the Ijaw’s will say Jonathan is their kinsman and they will not join other Nigerians in pressuring him.
On the alleged missing $20 billion, is the money stolen against northerners alone? It belongs to all Nigerians. Likewise the current insurgency in the north-east. The money budgeted is for all Nigerians not just for people of the north-east. Nigerians should unite against it. If one argues that northerners are against President Jonathan and that is why the bombings are going on, then why will they kill them selves? Why will there be a bomb blast in a mosque? Why will they do it in their own land?
The Nigerian masses are at the receiving end. They are at the mercy of those evil, devil-nurtured, renegades, traitors and satanic politicians. They have enslaved us. They steal our money, we work for them for peanuts, our parents as their drivers, our mothers as their nannies.
Is that how Nigerians want to continue to live? Why don’t we join hands to fight corruption, and to demand a better life? Our predecessors lived that way, we are living it, do we want our children to inherit this rot? Woe unto Nigerians.
The 2015 general election is by the corner. Nigerians are still divided. What sort of people are we? Nigerians are becoming dumb, unlearned, and the most unwise people in the world.
With the killings going on, is Nigerian problem one of Muslim-muslim ticket? What’s wrong with a Buhari-Fashola ticket? If Jonathan runs with David Mark, and they are deemed competent why should Nigerians go for them? The current government has failed and Jonathan should be blamed. This man is incompetent and incapable. Nigerians must rise above this nonsense and irrational inclination and choose leaders based on competence and ability to deliver. Buhari has said that nobody can Islamanize Nigeria. Let me also say that nobody can Christianize Nigeria. Nigeria belongs to all and not to group.
Nigerians should stay battle ready for 2015. Elections must be free, fair and credible. Elections must hold throughout the country including Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states. Elections must hold in Gwoza.
Nigerians must emancipate themselves by voting the right leaders in 2015.
Comrade Abdulbaqi Aliyu Jari,
Katsina
Osundare: a breath of fresh air (The Nation, 2 December 2014)
By Olakunle Abimbola
In the present morass, Prof. Niyi Osundare winning the 2014 Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) is a breath of fresh air.
Still, a breath of fresh air evokes an ironic déjà vu.
A few months before the 2011 presidential election, there was a contrived air of great expectations.
Mobile adverts, particularly on the panel of Danfo commercial minibuses, spoke of the imminence of “A breath of fresh air”, a pan-Nigeria new deal that would, perhaps, eclipse the globally acclaimed New Deal of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
FDR’s New Deal (mainly, 1933-1936) was well and truly phenomenal, with its 3Rs — Relief for the unemployed and poor; Recovery of the economy to normal levels; and Reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression — lifting America from the Great Depression. The Depression started in August 1929, hit the trough with the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, and triggered a global economic meltdown.
Nigeria’s answer to FDR was Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
The Nigerian equivalent of the American dream was a once shoeless southern creek boy, from the poorest of the dirt-poor, from the minority of minorities — and, to boot, a charming name of Goodluck, and the record: first Nigerian president to boast a PhD! — rising to the acme of Nigerian political power, despite the country’s bully and domineering majorities.
And GEJ’s answer to FDR’s New Deal was a Transformation Agenda, which mesmerising core was to pump the breath of fresh air, after which Lugard’s musty contraption would never be the same again! Moral? GEJ’s age of merit and quality beckons!
Four years later and a few months to another presidential election, however, that promise has vanished, leaving the air toxic, rancid and pungent — almost in all spheres of national life. An anticipated era of Plato’s philosophical kings has begotten the exact opposite: an unrepentant rule of the executive rabble.
Whereas pre-Jonathan Nigeria was a venal redoubt where, to parody the England of the poet Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Philistines (the garish nouveau riches) routinely trumped the Greeks (the deep and cultured), Jonathan’s Nigeria has slid into sheer political barbarism, where about nothing is sacred.
Transformation has turned deformation. Hope turned mirage. Merit turned unbridled mediocrity. Freshness turned stale. Public institutions, proud slaves of private whims: with the Police sacking Parliament; and an unfazed IGP Suleiman Abba, in an eager and merry dance to Hades. A once proud and secure state has turned captive, pliant and prostrate, to blood-thirsty anarchists.
Moral? It is Jonathan’s age of unbridled paralysis, stupid!
But from this sooty pot of national paralysis has emerged the immaculately white pap of welcome sanity: Niyi Osundare, sole NNOM winner for 2014.
So, a near-irredeemably damaged state can still throw up uncompromising quality? Perhaps some redemption is afoot!
But the ultra-sweet bonus: Osundare triumphs even as Hurricane Jona is busy blowing Nigeria to the cliff; and Typhoon Fayosh is busy smashing everything of common sense in Osundare’s native Ekiti, where Governor Ayo Fayose sits as unbridled cave-master, with zero tolerance for anything lawful, anything noble, and anything decent: in stark contrast, to echo Osundare himself, to the “arrested renaissance” of the Kayode Fayemi years, in a race-against-time into the Stone Age.
Still, Prof. Osundare is no short burst to success. On the contrary, his is the Old School long and arduous trek to excellence.
Way back at the University of Ibadan in the early to mid-1980s, he mentored a crop of students in his highly interactive creative writing class: Kongi — no, not the inimitable WS but Sesan Ajayi of blessed memory, who nevertheless patterned his poetry after WS’s; Remi Raji, now a professor of English at UI, Babatunde Ajayi, Jr, Afam Akeh, the political science major who had his soul yoked to euphonic poetry, Nduka Otiono and, of course, yours truly, to mention a few.
As he always warned that the Nigerian Ivory Tower was turning grey, he honed his students’ poetry skills as he fired their humanity; beseeching them to protect their inherent nobility, and avoid leaving school to “join them”, no matter the odds.
But of course, the laureate’s staying power was that, in whatever he did, he walked his talk.
To start with, he was — and still is — a consummate academic that always told you creativity was “99 per cent perspiration and one per cent inspiration”.
He worked hard at his trade, and from Song of the Marketplace, to The Eye of the Earth, to Moonsongs, to Song of the Season, to Waiting Laughters, to Midlife, to The Word is an Egg, to Early Birds, to Not My Business, to Tender Moments: Love Poems, among others, the Ikere-Ekiti “rural-born and peasant-bred” toughly nurtured his genius, to produce a happy concert of inspiration and perspiration!
Not for him, cloistered but conspiratorial silence when things go awry.
At Ekiti’s fatal embrace of Fayose’s toxic “stomach infrastructure”, he composed a dirge for his native land: pained lamentation of a devastated troubadour, for his doomed lady. “The People Voted their Stomach — Blues for an Arrested Renaissance” went viral: for its arresting content and its enchanting form.
Less than three months later, the Ekiti blues is real!
When Fayose’s barbarians sacked the courts, battered judges and ripped court records, the poet’s rebuke came in biting riposte: “They slap Court Judges ‘In the Land of Honour’ “, the pristine voice of noble Ekiti scolded the present barbarity that would pass; and rued how “Impunity mates Immunity/And the union begat Imuniti” (devastating pun for “immunity” and literally, Yoruba for beyond arrest; or executive lawlessness).
Less than three months later, Fayose’s pact with the past — while others make a dash for the future — is all but cemented!
Unlike the infamous hee-haw of some Ekiti elders, over the governor’s galloping illegalities: the latest being the Ekiti Assembly 7 sacking 19 (a triumphant improvement on Jonathan’s Nigeria Governors Forum novelty of 16 greater than 19), the man has not died in the poet (to paraphrase our own WS). In the face of glaring lawlessness, he has refused to be silent.
That this poisoned atmosphere, in Nigeria as a whole and in his native Ekiti, still produced Prof. Osundare as sole NNOM laureate for 2014 is well and truly remarkable. It is simply the inevitability of excellence — particularly that hue that combines brilliance with conscience — for any nation desirous of attaining its manifest destiny.
So, when on December 4 the President meets the Poet to deliver the award, it would be a meeting between mere tinsel and solid gold.
Perhaps Nigerians, on the virtual eve of another election, will gravely ponder: why do we settle for tinsel (or even worse) when we have and can get solid gold?
Osundare’s win is tribute to the sane segment of troubled contemporary Nigeria. These times would pass, if the deep don’t surrender their sanity to the galloping barbarians.
Quote: “Osundare triumphs, even as Hurricane Jona is busy blowing Nigeria to the cliff; and Typhoon Fayosh is busy smashing everything of common sense in Ekiti”
