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Category: Hardball

Police versus NSCDC: Symptom of deeper malaise

The early morning clash between policemen and members of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) on Wednesday near Ikorodu in Lagos State is sufficiently serious to warrant tough questions and deep reflections. Two NSCDC officials were killed in the incident, allegedly shot by policemen. Reports say the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, has already ordered an investigation. But it is feared that little or nothing will come out of the investigations, especially in terms of preventing a recurrence. The Ikorodu clash is not the first between security agencies; sadly it is unlikely to be the last.

Both the police and NSCDC have given very contradictory accounts of the Ikorodu clash. According to the NSCDC, the fault was entirely that of the police. The NSCDC officials had arrested a gang of pipeline vandals, they claimed, and were transporting them to their headquarters in Alausa, Lagos State secretariat for further interrogation. However, they continued, one of the vandals put a call to an alleged police collaborator who responded by putting a team together to foil the arrest and forcibly release the suspects. Not only were the vandals released, according to the story, two officials of the NSCDC were also shot dead while many others sustained injuries. The NSCDC account was silent on the reprisal attacks carried out by civil defence officials near their Lagos headquarters.

The police on the other hand were also copious in their account. While they were silent on who died or didn’t, they insisted they were on legitimate duties around the Ikorodu pipelines, having received a distress call from officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) who complained they suspected the pipelines were being tampered with. Rather than being the aggressors, as the NSCDC officials claimed, it was the civil defence officials who attacked the policemen, disarmed the police team leader and even handcuffed him. Other teams of policemen waded in on that dreary morning in Ikorodu, they said, to compel the release of the police team leader, a sergeant. They also gave a graphic story of the reprisal attacks near the Corps headquarters of the NSCDC.

It is unlikely the two accounts of what transpired near Ikorodu can be reconciled. Both the police and the NSCDC will stick to their accounts and refuse to back down. To back down is to lose face and admit incompetence. This column will, therefore, not chase the chimera of trying to determine who was at fault, nor even expect that in the final analysis the truth will be established. What is truly worrisome are the implications of both the Ikorodu clash and the reprisal attacks at Alausa, near the seat of government. While both the Ikorodu and Alausa attacks point disturbingly to the customary brutality of the two security agencies and the tyrannical fashion they relate with the public, these are actually the least of the problems confronting the country. There are a few other things surrounding the clash that give room for more concern.

The Ikorodu clash is first and foremost an indication of just how deeply poor training and incompetence of security officials have taken root in the two agencies. The attack was obviously neither accidental nor one of mistaken identity. If anybody was handcuffed and identity card seized, it showed that everyone involved knew who the other persons were. The shooting simply indicated uncontrollable anger and lack of regard for both the rules of engagement and sanctity of human life, the same breach of operational guidelines regularly displayed by security agencies when dealing with unarmed civilians. Second, the reprisal attacks also indicated gross indiscipline and lack of respect for the laws of the land. Yet, these are the same agencies the government hopes would show restraint and display sound judgement in enforcing the law and upholding the constitution in the thick of fighting and general or restricted breakdown of law and order.

The Ikorodu clash and Alausa reprisal are not the first of such ugly incidents between the security agencies. Nor will they be the last if the government continues to tinker with an attitudinal problem that is evidently very fundamental but at odds with the country’s ambition to be a stable polity and a civilised society. The errant behaviour of the police and NSCDC is a reflection of the impunity they have been used to for far too long, an impunity only a determined government can put an end to. It is not certain whether the leadership of the two security agencies can be trusted to get to the bottom of the problem or even whether they have the will to apply full sanctions once the guilty party is identified. But if the government is as worried as most Nigerians that such clashes give the country a bad name, it can demonstrate its dissatisfaction by empanelling an investigation team and following up firmly by dismissing those who participated in the Ikorodu and Alausa show of shame.

March 29, 2013
AU apathetical to the CAR rebellion

Last Saturday, rebels of the Seleka Coalition led by Michel Djotodia poured into Bangui, capital city of Central African Republic (CAR) to overthrow the government of President Francois Bozize. In the process, some 13 South African soldiers, members of a peacekeeping contingent, were killed. In announcing a takeover, however, Djotodia promised he would uphold a semblance of the power sharing deal under the Libreville Accord and ensure a three-year transition programme. In the interim, he said, he would rule by decree. But in spite of the massive rebel presence in Bangui, the Seleka Coalition has not been able to restore order or prevent looting and fighting in and around the capital city. Meanwhile, sources say that South Africa, miffed by the killing of its soldiers, is sending reinforcement to pacify the restive country of about five million people once governed by the notorious Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa between 1965 and 1979. Evidently, the problem of the beleaguered country, said to be one of the poorest in the world, is far from over.

In spite of the restoration of democracy in the country since 1993, CAR has never really enjoyed peace. Nearly right from its independence from France in August 1960, the country found itself reeling from one mutiny to the other or seething interminably with ethnic tension. The instability has gone on for decades without the African Union (AU) proactively engaging the country to find a lasting solution to its crises. Instead, depending on the government in power, foreign forces had been invited to intervene. The foreign troops included the French, who are now guarding Bangui’s International Airport, Libyans, when Muammar Gaddafi was still in office, Chadians, and now South Africans. With a GDP (nominal) of $2.165bn and a per capita income of $456, CAR seems primed for a permanent crisis without a massive continental help to manage its problems, chief among which is its rollicking and unstable ethnic pastiche.

It is time for the AU to redeem itself, notwithstanding decades of inaction in crises spots on the continent. The case of CAR is particularly delicate. It must not be allowed to deteriorate further. After watching Mali virtually disintegrate before something was done, and other parts of the continent such as Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, among others, bleed almost to death, could we hope that a few leaders would emerge in Africa to end the madness? The prospects are, however, not too good. Nigeria and South Africa, who are best placed to do something about the continent’s crises, are themselves hobbled by misrule and poor and visionless leadership. But in spite of these, it is time the AU ended its apathy to save CAR from destruction.

March 28, 2013
Lessons from Zambia’s iconoclasts

Nigeria sees itself as big, strong and free, but it still has a lot to learn from other African countries, particularly from the iconoclasts of Zambia. To Zambians, there is no one too high or mighty to be questioned or brought to trial, not even their presidents. The immediate past president, Rupiah Banda, was on Monday arrested by the police and charged in court on Tuesday for corruptly enriching himself through an oil deal with Nigerians in which he was said to have siphoned $11m through his son, Henry’s bank account. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and alleged that he was being persecuted by his political enemies, notably President Michael Sata.

With the exception of former President Levy Mwanawasa who died in office at the age of 60, no Zambia president has escaped prosecution. The first president of Zambia and author of Zambia Shall Be Free (1963), Kenneth Kaunda, was tried for being a foreigner (Malawian) and not qualified to stand for the 1996 presidential election. In 1999, a Zambian High Court eventually declared Kaunda stateless, even though he ruled Zambia between 1964 and 1991. The author of his distress was of course his opponent in the 1991 election, Frederick Chiluba, who caused the constitution to be amended to preclude foreigners from standing for elections.

But Chiluba himself was tried for corruption after he left office. Accused of embezzling $500,000, Zambia spent about $13m to prosecute him, a cost Banda would later describe as obscene and irrational. Chiluba’s trial, which took place under the presidency of Mwanawasa, his mentor, further cemented Zambian iconoclasm by proving that no one in Zambia was above the law. Though Chiluba was acquitted of the charges in 2009, a London Court, however, found him guilty in 2007 of laundering stolen money estimated at $40m.

The prosecution of Zambia’s ex-presidents evoked images of a game of musical chairs in a quaint way. While Banda prosecuted Chiluba for corruption, he was to take his turn on the ‘guillotine’ early this week when his successor, Sata, began prosecuting him for corruption. The cumulative effect of these prosecutions was that in 2010, the World Bank described Zambia as “…one of the world’s fastest economically reformed countries.” Politically too, the country has enjoyed pluralism for more than four decades, with no military hiatus. The country has been ruled by at least three political parties since independence. First was Kaunda’s socialist United National Independence Party (UNIP), followed by Frederick Chiluba’s social-democratic Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMPD), and then the Patriotic Front (PF) of the current president, Michael Chilufya Sata.

Since 1960 when Nigeria gained independence, no president or military ruler has ever been prosecuted for corruption. Indeed, the culture of lifelong immunity for past leaders seems to have been adopted. That culture has in turn bred impunity, encouraged civil dictatorship, and may very well engender fascism if care is not taken. This was why the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) swore after the 2011 polls to stay in office for the next six decades. And this was why in 2005 Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, while still president, unethically and unscrupulously raised almost N5bn for his presidential library. This was also why on March 16, President Goodluck Jonathan felt no qualms organising a fundraiser for his church back in his village, and raising about N6bn. Considering the appalling behaviour of the two Nigerian presidents, Zambia has shown better judgement, more restraint, and higher degree of morality.

Zambia may be a country of a little over 14 million people with a nominal GDP of about $19.206bn, compared with Nigeria’s 160 million people and a nominal GDP of $238.920bn, but the former has demonstrated more sanity and maturity in its 49 years of independence than the latter in its 53 years of independence. Zambia’s iconoclasts show that sometimes, small may indeed be beautiful, and that foolishness is no respecter of size or delusion of grandeur.

March 27, 2013
Boko Haram: Paralysis is not an option

The Islamist sect Boko Haram has proved more resourceful in modifying its insurgency tactics than the federal government in adapting its law enforcement strategy to the modern era. First, the sect briefly toyed with conventional warfare in fighting the state, partly provoked by the extrajudicial murder of its leader, Mohammed Yusuf. But recognising that it could not hope to make a major dent in the federal capacity to fight back, the sect simply adopted guerrilla tactics, thereby positioning itself to inflict demoralising blows on the state. Second, after realising that its ability to attack prominent targets, such as the United Nations building in Abuja and the Police Headquarters in the same city, was limited and offered only partial public relations advantages, it began redirecting the enormous resources required for major operations to small-scale but more widespread attacks on a sustained basis.

The sect has still not changed its guerrilla tactics, but it has managed to inflict embarrassing losses on the state. Scores are now killed in bomb and gun attacks nearly on a daily basis. A wide swath of the North has become nearly ungovernable, and federal forces not only have their backs to the wall, in spite of their positive confessions to the contrary, they also have been pushed into embracing terrible reprisal measures certain to alienate the people. Worrisomely, with each Boko Haram attack and consequent reprisal from the state, the morale of the insurgents seem to soar. All they do is simply spring a surprise, sometimes far away from the theatre of war. If a bus park bombing or razing of a school would satisfy today’s purpose, abduction and killing of foreign workers would take care of tomorrow’s bloody craving. Sadly, the sect’s manoeuvrability has been met by official inflexibility that often seems to punish the innocent more than the insurgent.

The Goodluck Jonathan government should be worried more than it has let out. While the president has proved flexible and even imaginative in hatching 2015 re-election strategies, he has not been as forthcoming or resourceful in designing measures to defeat Boko Haram. He has rejiggered the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) structure and staff, replenished the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT) with trusted strongmen, ruffled the feathers of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) by inoculating it against effectiveness, and manipulated executive clemency powers to sedate his home front against rebellion in the coming years. These tactics may prove dubiously effective in the long run, but they do not show lack of imagination and oomph. On the contrary, the war against terror has ossified into one brutal and retrogressive policy of pulverising the restive regions.

The March 7 visit of Jonathan to Borno and Yobe States showed very clearly that no fresh thinking is expected from the government to fight the sect other than bluster and the continuing application of massive and sometimes undiscriminating force. This unfortunately is tantamount to paralysis. The more the state unleashes its fearsome arsenal, the more Boko Haram and its splinter groups are encouraged to keep on fighting, assured that in the long run their anarchist tactics would weary the government into submission or even achieve far more than they had hoped for at the start of their campaigns. It would not be out of place for the government to detach itself a little from the centenary project and 2015 re-election politics in order to concentrate its best efforts in formulating fresh initiatives to combat Boko Haram. Existing strategies have simply become impotent.

The consequence of sticking to unworkable measures is to embolden the more flexible and proactive sect and its splinter groups and make the country dangerously susceptible to one fateful bombing that could push the country over the cliff and send the crisis spiralling out of control. While there is still time to tinker with solutions, let the Jonathan government come out with fresh options for consideration – anything but today’s paralysis; anything but waiting for the next attack and wondering for whom the bell would toll, the unwary citizen or the country itself.

March 26, 2013
US drones in Niger Republic, Burkina Faso

The United States has reportedly signed a “status of forces” agreement with Niger Republic, Nigeria’s neighbour to the north, to deploy surveillance drones in that country to carry out spying and monitoring missions on Islamist militants in the Sahel. A similar agreement had been signed with Burkina Faso, and US drones are already in operation there feeding French forces in Mali with information on Tuareg rebels and Islamist militants affiliated to al-Qaeda. It requires no clairvoyance to know that there would be a very limited sharing of intelligence gathered by the drones with the host countries. The agreement with Niger is said to impose no constraints on military-to-military cooperation. This means that the deployment of surveillance drones could easily graduate to deployment of armed drones. Ethiopia and Djibouti in the Horn of Africa preceded the West African sub-region in accepting US drones on their soils.

It will be recalled that the use of American drones in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia have become so controversial that they have generated resentment among the local populace and civil liberties groups. The danger is how to draw the line between gathering intelligence on militants and attacking the militants on one hand, and gathering other kinds of intelligence on the host countries. In 1962, the Action Group political party sensitised Nigerians to the dangers of an Anglo-Nigerian defence pact, leading to massive demonstrations and the eventual collapse of the deal. Such sensitivity is lacking today. Apart from the secrecy that surrounds the operation of armed drones, there is also the unacceptably high incidence of civilian casualties. According to a foreign newspaper report, “The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has monitored American drone strikes all around the world and calculates that in Pakistan alone there have been some 362 strikes since 2004. They are estimated to have killed up to 3,461 suspected militants in the country and as many as 891 civilians.”

President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger Republic has regrettably already given permission for the deployment of the drones. However, as in all the countries where drones have been deployed, there is no telling how far things can go or get out of hand. Meanwhile, Nigeria is just next door, and drones are extremely difficult to shoot down or to compromise. Only yesterday, this column deprecated the inability of ECOWAS leaders to be proactive on Mali, thereby allowing the situation to degenerate to the point of triggering French intervention. France was Mali’s former colonial master. It is evident that the quality of leadership in the region, nay, in Africa as a whole has declined horribly. There are no brilliant and perceptive leaders conversant with their countries’ histories, nor even keenly aware of the dangers of neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism. These mediocre leaders rule their countries badly, and embrace desperate methods, including opening up their countries to harmful external influences, to mitigate the effects of their misrule.

It is not surprising that between 2009 and 2010, and also in 2012, the prestigious and most expensive leadership prize in the world, the Mo Ibrahim prize for good governance, was not awarded to any African leader. According to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, “The $5m prize is supposed to be awarded each year to a democratically elected leader who governed well, raised living standards and then voluntarily left office. The $5m prize is spread over 10 years and is followed by $200,000 a year for life.” In 2011, Cape Verde President Pedro Verona Pires won the prize. The dearth of sound leaders should worry everyone, while the paucity of good leaders is nowhere more evident than in West Africa.

A tragedy is befalling Africa – the tragedy of insensitive, retrogressive and unintelligent leaders. It is almost as if it is not the same Africa that produced the likes of Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Kwame Nkurumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Nelson Mandela, among others. With the turmoil in Mali, the deployment of drones in Niger Republic and Burkina Faso, the likelihood of US-Africa Command, and the collapse of state economies, the continent, or at least West Africa, is being opened up for recolonisation. Sadly, African leaders, whose poor judgement led them to recently accept the new $200m African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa as a gift from China, have become inured to the dangers of external control which their incompetence and lack of foresight are engendering.

March 22, 2013
No, Jonathan couldn’t have said that

For once, Hardball is prepared to believe that President Goodluck Jonathan is capable of more altruism, patriotism and logic than he has been credited with since he assumed the presidency. For exercising such a great faith in the president, this columnist will absolutely not believe that he said all the things the newspapers attributed to him yesterday. The president was reported to have said in Lagos on Tuesday that the complete removal of fuel subsidy was inevitable. “We cannot continue to waste resources meant for a greater number of Nigerians to subsidise the affluent middle class, who are the main beneficiaries of fuel subsidy,” he sneered. “We believe that as we progress, government is going to continue to enlighten Nigerians on the need to remove fuel subsidy.”

It is impossible to imagine that Jonathan made this highly derogatory and incredulous statement. It is true he did not indicate he would be removing the subsidy next month or even next year, but the timing of the removal is the least of the problems the troubling statement is capable of creating. The problem is also not really the unfavourable socio-political climate in which Jonathan would want to throw the subsidy crisis, especially in view of the already combustible revolutionary situation the country is immersed in from the Northeast to the other parts of the country. Nor is the problem the violent protests that would greet further increases in fuel products prices.

This column thinks the president was probably misquoted for the following reasons. First, the few papers that published the story relied on the same two-paragraphed quotation, with hardly any elaboration on the matter. This is unusual, except of course the papers relied on the same source. Second, and more damagingly, the statement is annoyingly contemptuous of an important economic stratum, the middle class. If indeed the middle class is the leading beneficiary of fuel subsidy, has the president tried to analyse the role of the middle class and its humongous contributions to the economy, particularly in terms of employment and production? How could any president take any of the classes, whether lower, middle or upper, and dismiss it so casually, so frivolously, so contemptibly, so antagonistically?

Third, what curious school of economics would inspire a president to conclude so bewilderingly that fuel subsidy benefited mainly the middle class, a class the president was said to have described as affluent? Who relies most on the already expensive private sector-run transportation system? Is it not the lower class, especially the urban poor? Whose agricultural products would be moved to the markets more expensively if fuel subsidy were to be removed? Is it not the small-scale subsistence farmer? The statement attributed to the president should never be made by a college graduate, let alone a president, for the reasons underlying the statement are so slipshod that it is impossible for anyone to offer them as rational economic arguments.

Though Hardball is aware that during last year’s fuel subsidy revolt, the president made utterances not too different from the one attributed to him yesterday, it is still hard to imagine he truly made that indefensible statement on the middle class. But if indeed he actually made the offending statement, well, it is a pity he could not be impeached for poor reasoning, for that would have been the least we could do to redeem him from his excesses.

March 21, 2013
Boko Haram ups the ante

Monday’s deadly attack on the New Road Motor Park in Kano bore the imprimatur of the Islamist sect, Boko Haram. Ansaru, the sect’s equally deadly splinter group, prefers to abduct those it considers enemies of Islam, and does not hesitate to murder them if the group’s safety is threatened. It is officially estimated that about 22 people died in Monday’s attack and 65 were injured. Eyewitnesses, however, suggested that more than 60 people died and several more were injured in an attack that consumed five luxurious buses. Whether the eyewitnesses exaggerated or security agencies deliberately downplayed the story cannot be immediately determined. But more than 20 dead is as horrendous as more than 60 dead.

It may be speculative to conclude that the failure of President Goodluck Jonathan’s visit to Borno and Yobe States almost two weeks ago virtually guaranteed that Boko Haram would not relent in launching vicious attacks on selected targets. The president had been expected to extract some commitments from the elite in the twin hotbeds of Boko Haram insurgency, or possibly announce initiatives capable of stanching the flow of blood in the entire Northeast and parts of the Northwest. Unfortunately, he neither got any commitment from his hosts nor did he present pragmatic plans to curb the insurgency. Indeed, he unwisely engaged the elite in Damaturu and Maiduguri in bitter and divisive verbal exchange. It was, therefore, inevitable that the sect, splintered or not, would intensify its rage, and the security agencies would respond unorthodoxly and ruthlessly.

But there is something uncanny about the latest Kano attack. The main Boko Haram group had before now deliberately targeted places of worship, particularly churches, in the hope that it could instigate a sectarian war and throw the country into anarchy. In the end, wiser counsel prevailed with many Nigerians realising that while the sect had targeted Christians, as many Muslims, if not more, also fell to Boko Haram’s bullets and bombs. The sect’s primary objective is the establishment of an Islamic theocracy, but its violence indiscriminately punished Christians and Muslims alike. Now, with the Kano bus park attack, the sect appears to be sinisterly trying to instigate ethnic war through the back door. The government and victims must recognise the sect’s tactical manoeuvrability, and must unite to foil its objectives as they foiled the sectarian catastrophe it plotted.

It is evident that Boko Haram and its splinters have become more imaginative than the presidency. They are adapting tactics and shifting objectives. Rather than keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome, it is time Jonathan tried a more scientific approach to the war against extremism, conciliate moderates in Boko Haram hotbeds, speak and act more presidential without the rashness and imperiousness that have served him poorly, and clean up the dismal and brutal methods of the security agencies that have clearly become counterproductive. It is incumbent on the president to ensure that the tipping point is not reached, for no one can tell when that would be or what tragic consequences that portends for the unity of the country.

March 20, 2013
Alamieyeseigha: A little more bellicosity in our foreign policy would be in order

It will take some time before the hysteria triggered by the state pardon granted Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha is dissipated. But while the controversy rages, it may unwittingly serve as a barometer of the potency of Nigerian foreign policy. That President Goodluck Jonathan operated within the ambit of the constitution to grant pardons to former Bayelsa State governor and others is not in doubt. That Nigerians feel justifiably enraged by the pardons, and are vehemently protesting the exercise, is also not to be waved aside, for they are protesting within the rights granted them by the constitution. Yet, the truly worrisome part of the whole affair is that the controversy seems to suggest the quality of our foreign policy enunciation has declined.

Indeed, the local reactions to the pardons show in particular that the decline of our foreign policy is almost complete, with the Nigerian government and the populace seemingly inured to the neo-colonial dangers engendered by the controversy. Let us put the problem in context. The Wikileaks scandal of a few years ago showed how flippant top Nigerian officials were in the presence of American diplomats. It was not enough that Nigerian heads of state and elected presidents deeply coveted American and European approbation, with many of them even becoming house Negroes, now senior government officials and the media also think in terms of the white man’s worldview. This probably explains why Nigerian officials are desperate to avoid any misunderstanding with the United States over the Alamieyeseigha pardon, as if the former governor offended the US more than he offended and shamed Nigeria. Can Jonathan withstand the pressure?

Sadly, the times have really changed. Neither the government nor the citizens, who in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s displayed boisterous nationalism and would not be dictated to by any foreign power, are unsure today of how to respond to the relentless foreign insults triggered by our government’s ineptitude. Rather than seek for ways to punish our criminals, no matter how highly placed, President Olusegun Obasanjo in his time in office was, for instance, willing to let the world humiliate Nigerians, as exampled by the Alamieyeseigha Heathrow airport drama. The current Alamieyeseigha sequel could have been better handled if the government and present generation of Nigerians were more nationalistic and sensitive to the full ramifications of the independence handed over to them by the patriarchs.

Not only did the first US reaction to the controversial pardons come humiliatingly via a twitter posting, even when the US State Department finally reacted, it was to insinuate they would reassess their relationship with Nigeria and look into ways of restricting donor funds. Has Nigeria become an outpost of the US? Does the US have a viceroy in Abuja? Hear the plaintive cry of the Nigerian ambassador to the US on the controversy: “The American government through the embassy in Nigeria made its feelings on the issue of the pardon known. We have taken note of it… We are prepared to admit the rights of our friends to comment on the issue since it is now a matter of public knowledge. We understand the furore caused by the inclusion of the ex-governor. The statement recently made by Dr. Doyin Okupe explains government’s rationale. This will form part of the response of the embassy in Washington to questions that might arise in the future.” Hogwash.

The world may be a global village, and money laundering may also be a major component of drug trade and terrorism, but the Alamieyeseigha problem is at bottom a Nigerian problem that should be dealt with fully by Nigeria in spite of our imperfect and sometimes corrupt judiciary and incompetent anti-graft agencies. It is deeply troubling that Nigerians are not conscious of their independence. They have forgotten the story of their country and the stories of how other countries, including the US, jealously guard their own independence and national pride. Nigeria fought a civil war without borrowing. If foreign aids, including Bill Gates’ aid money, must be accompanied by meddling in Nigeria’s affairs, we should be prepared to do without donations, and perhaps go to China for tutorials. With the events in Mali and the creeping recolonisation of parts of Africa, we have an even more urgent task ahead of us to elect a government that would be activist like the Murtala Mohammed government and not display the appalling misjudgement shown by the Jonathan presidency on Alamieyeseigha.

March 19, 2013
APC versus APC versus PDP

Nothing represents more acutely the distress facing the unregistered All Progressives Congress (APC) than the biblical quotation in Matthew 13:25. It says: “But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.” The verse is the opening shot in a parable told by Jesus Christ using farming analogy to describe the kingdom of God. But it could very well describe the predicament the APC is in today. How did matters get so tangled up? The APC, that is, the original APC made up of three or four political parties (Action Congress of Nigeria, Congress for Progressive Change, All Nigeria Peoples Party, and a part of the All Progressives Grand Alliance) excitedly came together early last month to activate a paradigmatic change in Nigerian politics. While they were still putting their papers together to seek official registration, they were at the same time irrepressibly bouncing up and down the country acting as if they were already a registered party, making deft moves, giving the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) sickeningly effective uppercuts in faraway Maiduguri, and perhaps already secretly imagining they were going to cause an upset in the 2015 polls.

Alas, they underestimated the enemy, their old and furtive antagonist, the behemoth with many tentacles and, now, many proxies. While APC slept, perhaps dreaming of political nirvana, the tip-toeing enemy craftily spawned “four or five APCs” and got lawyers to put in application for their registration before the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The proxy APCs have so unnerved the real APC that the latter’s top hats are no longer sounding as self-assured as they did when they knocked out the PDP in Borno State about two weeks ago. It has probably come to the APC in an epiphany that, just as this column had warned, the PDP is very much alive and capable of delivering knockout punches even with its back against the ropes. The activists in the more troublesome APC will of course fight the ruling party’s chicanery, but from now on they will respect the enemy and learn not to underestimate it.

It is expected that INEC would do the right thing eventually, for there are probably still a few men in its top echelon whose consciences are still alive and functioning. The chairman of the electoral body has indicated the issue of a surreptitious attempt to register a proxy APC would be investigated. He will see the investigation to its logical end, and he will ensure that justice prevails. Being a man with an eye on history, it is unlikely he would let such deliberate malfeasance define his accomplishments. More, it is also unlikely that the ruling party, which is alleged to be behind the birthing of the pesky proxies, really wants to permanently disfigure the real APC with one brutal blow to the medulla. All they want to do, it seems, is to discomfit or disorient the political upstart, make it less giddy than it has been in the past few weeks, confound its strategies, and generally earn respect from it. Therefore, they will use the proxy cards as much as is feasible until it becomes untenable. Then they will move on to other more malevolent stratagems, some of which will reach maturity as the fateful elections draw near.

In many ways, the real APC should thank its stars that the ruling party is showing its hand early in the day. The proxy battle, no matter how it is resolved, should tell the APC that the months ahead are fraught with forebodings. There will be bitter battles, eyes will be gouged out, and ears bitten off. And if care is not taken, what seems a proxy, phoney war today could very well transform into a sanguinary war tomorrow, the type experienced by combatants in the Somme Offensive in World War I. From all indications, the APC can stand a chance only if it adopts unorthodox fighting style. The current fanciful footwork it has embraced, reminiscent of Georges Carpentier’s sweet but ineffective pugilistic style against the bullish Jack Dempsey (Heavyweight boxing match, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1921), will have to give way to more enduring pragmatism and, shall we say, more devilment, if it is to stand a chance of winning the polls and redeeming the country in 2015.

March 18, 2013
How not to cut your nose to spite your face

The English playwright and poet, William Congreve (1670-1729), wrote in The Mourning Bride, “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” It is not a mystery why many scorned women and men take pure delight in hurting their spouses or partners. A scorned woman, as a recent case in Britain is showing, thinks nothing of cutting her nose to spite her face if sufficiently provoked. Indeed, she would as soon gouge out her eyes to spite her head if the circumstances required it. Congreve came to life once again, as he often does when spouses are at war, in the highly publicised case of the philandering Chris Huhne, 58, and his spurned wife, Vicky Pryce, 60. Huhne, a Liberal Democratic Party top shot and former cabinet minister, unceremoniously left his wife in 2010 for another woman, the bisexual Carina Trimingham, a media consultant. Spousal betrayal is commonplace except that in this case, a decade ago, the vulnerable Huhne had made his ex-wife to accept punishment on his behalf for a traffic offense, and the woman was bent on revenge.

Pryce, a notable economist in her own right, tipped off the press on how Huhne had perverted the course of justice in 2003. The subsequent trial, which was meant to humiliate the former Lib Dem high-flyer, unfortunately consumed Pryce herself and ruined the reputations of both the adventurous politician and his scorned ex-wife. In the process, Peter, one of the pair’s sons, displayed unadulterated loathing for his father by sending him bitter text messages deploring his atrocious lies and infidelity. With an investigation and trial that lasted long enough to complete the ruination of Huhne’s public image, followed by an eight-month jail term for each of the disgruntled pair, and harsh public commentaries on the Huhne family, it is surprising that both Huhne and his ex-wife hold out any hope the family could still be redeemed and relationship between children and parent healed with the passage of time.

However, the least problematic part of the Huhne scandal is the humiliating trial or even the jail terms, out of which the couple will serve only four months each. The real tragedy is exemplified by Peter’s text messages to his father, and Justice Sweeney’s characterisation of the couple. Said Peter to his father in one of his texts: “You are the most ghastly man I’ve ever known. Does it give you pleasure that you have lost almost all of your friends?…Leave me alone. You have no place in my life and no right to be proud…You are an autistic piece of s**t. You make me feel sick…You don’t think about anyone but yourself. You are a pathetic loser and a joke.” The trial judge was even more damning. Said he to Huhne’s ex-wife: “…In November 2010, motivated (I have no doubt) by an implacable desire for revenge, and with little consideration of the position of your wider family, you decided to set about the dual objective of ruining [Huhne] whilst protecting your own position and reputation in the process. Your weapon of choice was the revelation of his part in the offence in 2003. But it was a dangerous weapon because it had, in truth, been a joint offence.”

But perhaps the most evocative comment on the fall of Huhne and Pryce is the one by her brother, George Courmouzis. In his view, “Anger blinds you and humiliation breeds revenge. And this is what drove her.” Had she kept quiet, the offence of 2003 would probably have stayed buried forever. It is true Huhne would have gone on enjoying his life, and Pryce would have stayed rejected and humiliated. But her reputation would have remained intact, her peace of mind guaranteed, and her children would have continued living in the tranquillity she had woven around them.

It is not certain whether Pryce reflected at all on the consequences of her action, nor ever feared she would find herself in jail so suddenly. She may have achieved the goal of ruining her ex-husband, but that objective has come at a heavy price. No wonder it is said that once a woman sets her eyes on a man, he would be lucky to escape her charms. But such a man would need far more than luck to escape a scorned woman’s revenge. This is not chauvinism; it is perhaps simple biology, a biology that will see women activating their defensive mechanism of bringing the house down on their families just to get even, to reenact hell, or to generally dissuade bored men from libidinous adventurism.

March 15, 2013