Category: Hardball

It should qualify as one of the most asinine fulminations any Nigerian politician has ever made. Though this column has not kept track of the public statements of Chief Olisa Metuh, National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), however, in rallying to the defence of President Goodluck Jonathan, whom he complained was unfairly and destructively criticised, the PDP chieftain took leave of logic, and perhaps a little more. In his fulminations, Metuh provided the closest insight we would ever get into the president’s regional aversions. The Southwest, two days ago, and in fact many months before, had deplored the Jonathan presidency’s marginalisation of the region. Now they probably know why.

According to Metuh, Jonathan is heavily criticised by, in particular, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) because he comes from a minority tribe. “That President Jonathan is from a minority geo-political zone,” moaned Metuh, “should not be the reason the ACN and other opposition parties should be heaping insults and abuses on him in the name of criticisms. There must be a limit and we implore that we use the spirit of the New Year to say that enough is enough. The Presidency is the highest institution in the country and it deserves our collective respect. There should be a limit between criticisms and abuse…Let our criticisms be constructive on issues that will move the nation forward.” In other words, neither the PDP nor, apparently, Jonathan himself views the criticisms against the president as fair comment. Worse, neither also sees the president’s statements, actions and policies as deserving of harsh criticisms.

In the many years Hardball has been unhorsing political and business charlatans he has encountered bad logic, bad ideas and bad attitudes, and suffered many of them gladly. But to suggest that opposition parties are hard on the president simply because of his origins is like damning the president’s origins for his poor performance. It strains credulity to breaking point, and Hardball can no longer forbear. When the president recently confessed to slowness, could any commentator have praised him for the lack of speed and purpose? When the president denounced firm leaders as pharaohs and dictators, could anyone have flattered him for his vacillations? And when he sequestered himself within the precincts of Aso Villa for Independence Anniversaries and other national celebrations for fear of terrorists, could we restrain ourselves from condemning his spirit of surrender?

Metuh tries to draw a line between constructive and destructive criticisms, as if he knows the difference. His mendacious statements remind us of Jonathan’s hyperbole before the 52nd Annual General Meeting of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in August last year, when the president said he was the world’s most criticised leader. Did Jonathan expect us to gently remonstrate with him on that offending exaggeration, when in fact he is probably the most powerful president in any democracy in the world and one of the least criticised? And what nonsense is Metuh saying about destructive criticism? Jonathan, in our opinion, has been lambasted fair and square because his ideas, actions and policies have been, to put it gently, largely inconsistent and misplaced.

It is childish and silly to suggest the president is criticised harshly because of majorities’ contempt for minorities. Where Jonathan comes from is completely irrelevant. After all, former head of state, Gen Yakubu Gowon, is from a minority tribe, and minorities are thought to be even more detribalised than majority tribes. If Jonathan likes to read a little, we would like to constructively suggest to him Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2, where the conspirator, Cassius, was trying to persuade Brutus to join the rebellion against Caesar. Said Cassius: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Let Metuh and Jonathan look inwards for their woes. It is not the fault of Nigeria that Metuh’s general is filled with awe.

This column cannot recall any newspaper or broadcast medium in Nigeria ever making Chief Olusegun Obasanjo its Man of the Year. He was military head of state in the 1970s, was once a distinguished prisoner of conscience, was a two-term president, is an author of no mean repute, and is an intrepid polemicist who takes no prisoner nor regards his opponent’s logic kindly. These qualities and many more stand him out. It is, therefore difficult to understand why he has been omitted in repeated considerations for that great prize? Indeed, Obasanjo should by now have been Man of the Year at least twice – once for concluding the transition programme begun by his predecessor, Gen Murtala Mohammed, and handing over the reins of office to Alhaji Shehu Shagari in 1979, and a second time for leaving prison to become a two-term president between 1999 and 2007.

Perhaps the media are afraid that it requires nuanced understanding to appreciate that the choice for Man of the Year does not necessarily have to be a person who has affected his country positively. The prize, everyone knows, could also go to a man who has affected his country negatively. In a country where everything is presumed bought or sold, including honours, a brave newspaper making Obasanjo its choice could be accused of merchandising that esteemed honour. There was in fact a time in the late 1980s and early 1990s when it was harmful to its finances for a newspaper or magazine to publish the picture of Military President Ibrahim Babangida on the front page. Anytime an editor succumbed to that indiscretion during the said period, he instantly knew his paper would sell fewer copies. Perhaps, newspapers suspect that to make Obasanjo Man of the Year would send them spiralling into the abyss of total rejection. And discretion, it is said, is the better part of valour.

But here is a good case for Obasanjo to be made Man of the Year, and a brave newspaper to bite the bullet and publish and be damned. In addition to having handed over power to civilians in 1979, albeit extremely reluctantly, as Gen TY Danjuma said a few years ago in the heat of the former president’s scheming for third term, Obasanjo has also sustained his reputation as a one-man NGO dedicated to sanctimoniously pressuring the governments of the day to do right by the people. More, since the Second Republic, he has been the only president re-elected into office, even if the polls were spurious and despicable. Cumulatively, Obasanjo holds the record of the longest serving Nigerian ruler, having ruled for more than eleven years. Importantly too, and doubtless controversially, he has managed to mould Nigeria in his image, a country structured to fail, underperform, remain fractious, and seethe uncontrollably in what Chief Audu Ogbeh once described as moral/political corruption.

It is curious that newspapers find it tough going every year to select one person who has affected Nigeria for good or bad, when there is one ready material, a hardy perennial, who has affected, and continues to affect, his country in a way no one has done since independence. That hardy perennial is the incomparable Obasanjo, from whose spectral shadow the country is yet to emerge. If not Obasanjo, then perhaps the media should consider President Goodluck Jonathan, at least for his beguiling and quizzical extemporaneousness. Jonathan makes the most down-to-earth speeches any president could make, speeches so replete with sweet nothings and boyish optimism that they fail to inspire the deep as much as they have remained outrightly impracticable even for the frivolous. How could newspapers continue to omit these two eminent gentlemen in selecting their Person of the Year?

It is unclear why the Secretary to the State Government of Edo, Prof. Julius Ihonvbere, needed to take on the United States over a travel advisory issued by that country’s Bureau of Consular Affairs of the State Department restricting the travels of American citizens in Nigeria. The advisory did not warn Nigerians off Edo State, nor advised other people but Americans to watch their travels in Nigeria. The advisory did not also attempt to rate the safety index of Edo, especially in comparisons with other states. All it did was to list 10 states the US felt Americans would be unsafe in, and to then add that its officials should avoid the entire 19 northern states except it became absolutely essential. The advisory predicated the travel ban on the incidence of robberies, armed gangs activities and kidnappings in those Nigerian states.

To disprove the advisory, however, Ihonvbere could not resist the impulse of embarking on giddy logic. He argues thus: “It beats the imagination of discerning minds that while some states which record violent crimes on a daily basis in the country are excluded from the list, Edo State which has been commended by all, including the World Bank which, through its Country Director, Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly said: “Edo State’s social indicators are above the national average” and which had earlier been confirmed by her predecessor, Mr. Onno Ruhl, who said, “Edo State is one of the states in Nigeria where the willingness to change is the fastest in Nigeria”, is included in the offensive U.S list.” The US travel advisory said nothing about Edo’s economic potentials or adaptability, so why is Ihonvbere depending upon the statements of World Bank officials?

Furthermore, the travel advisory, as Ihonvbere himself acknowledges in his rejoinder, is essentially about travels of US citizens in Nigeria during this holiday season. It is neither a permanent travel ban nor a commentary on Edo’s economy, nor yet about whether Edo is the safest in the South-South or anywhere else. Rather than make a cynical commentary on safe and unsafe American cities in the light of the shooting incidents in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, Ihonvbere should have more appropriately and less combatively assured Americans of their safety in Edo State and indicate the steps the state was taking, in spite of the recent robberies in the Edo town of Auchi, to ensure the safety of citizens and foreigners alike. Edo State may in fact be the safest in the South-South, and may even be much safer than many northern states not mentioned in the US travel advisory, but it is hard to see how an impulsive or tongue-in-cheek rebuttal would be of any help.

In spite of whatever merits are contained in Ihonvbere’s rejoinder, they will sadly be attenuated by the fact that the world has learnt to expect from Nigeria bad-tempered attacks against every assessment portraying the country in unflattering colours. Nigerian officials habitually react peevishly and sometimes sanctimoniously to Amnesty International (AI) reports and other international agency reports worrying about our laggard position in human development indices. Officials here also condemn any report predicting that certain serious political and social fault lines could predispose the country to disintegration if urgent measures were not taken to tackle them. In sum, Nigerian officials rarely see this negative portrayal of the country as a reason to shape up. They see it as a reason to be surly and combative.

Considering how Edo has reacted, it is not impossible a few other states could also paint their states in good light and condemn the US travel advisory as mischievous and mendacious. After all, in May, Gen Muhammad Shuwa (retd) denounced Gen T.Y. Danjuma (retd) for describing Borno State a failed state, only to be felled by assassins barely six months later in the same state he had tried to portray as not a failed state. The problem is not so much the challenges Nigeria is facing – these are by no means unusual or new – but the manner officials either live in denial or denounce those who call their attention to those challenges. Whether it is the safest or not in the South-South, Edo doubtless faces security challenges, like most other states. And while the state is not alone in facing these challenges, its officials, like those of Nigeria, must learn how to properly respond to the concerns raised by others.

President Goodluck Jonathan has once again tried to justify his government’s apparent lack of speed in enunciating and implementing policies. At a Christmas Service held at the Cathedral Church of The Advent, Life Camp, Gwarinpa, Abuja on Tuesday, the president said experience had taught him serious mistakes often accompanied hasty decisions. To him, it was better to approach matters cautiously – in other words, better to be safe than sorry. Very pretty philosophy. The president had said: “Sometimes, people say this government is slow. Yes, by human thinking, we are slow, but I can say that we are not slow. Government must think things properly before it acts. When you don’t think through things properly, or when you rush, you will make mistakes. It is more difficult to correct errors. You can ask those who build houses. Government will not, because of the perception, begin to rush. But where we are required to act very fast, we will do so, just like we did during the recent flood disasters.”

It must be painful for Jonathan to candidly admit slowness, with all its pejorative connotations. Perhaps, he has never heard of what it means for a president to think on his feet. Perhaps, too, he assumes that slowness or cautiousness invariably implies correctness. Statesmen, diplomats and great leaders all know that of all the major components of great decisions, slowness is absolutely not one of them. But if that method makes the president happy and guarantees his subjects peaceful life than they would otherwise have if the president rushed his decisions, then perhaps we must support him, and give him a long rope to hang everybody.

But when the president gave the example of his response to the flood disaster that wreaked havoc on many states recently as very fast, it was impossible to indulge his philosophy further. He said the federal government’s response to the floods was fast. That is certainly not true. It was neither fast nor even satisfactory. The floods began to paralyse parts of the country some three weeks before he travelled to the United States to address the 67th General Assembly of the United Nations in late September. When he returned, it took him nearly two weeks before he announced a relief fund of about N17.6bn for the affected states and the setting up of a fundraising committee, and two more weeks to begin his tour of affected states.

In addition, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) had warned in July that flooding was imminent in the country. The government did little to prepare for the looming disaster, and when catastrophe struck, little still was done. Even the president himself acknowledged in his October 9 broadcast that “Over the past few weeks, unprecedented floods have ravaged many parts of our country, rendering tens of thousands of fellow Nigerians homeless and causing massive destruction of properties, farmlands and infrastructure across the country.” How these responses translate to “very fast” is difficult to understand. What is clear is that President Jonathan has conjured philosophical justification for his lack of speed or what he describes as public perception of his slowness. That style soothes him; and though we can see through it, we must live with it. After all, we voted him into office.

Former head of state, Gen Yakubu Gowon, and Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, have both testified they would have been on the crashed Navy chopper that took the lives of Kaduna State governor, Mr Patrick Yakowa, and former National Security Adviser (NSA), Gen Owoye Azazi, on Saturday. They missed death by sheer good fortune, they said. According to Gowon, while he waited to board the chopper at Okoroba in Bayelsa State, and the pilot readied himself for the privilege of flying the former head of state, another chopper was made available. He recalled the young Navy pilot regretting not being the one to fly him, and he saying there would be a next time. Maku on his own could really never explain why he missed the crashed chopper other than to say it was sheer fate. He was about to leave the ceremony in company with Yakowa and Azazi, only to inexplicably change his mind. He had got up, he recalled, but then sat down again for reasons he didn’t know.

There are many curious phenomena human beings can really never explain. It is these complex phenomena that determine success and failure, happiness and tragedy, life and death. It is these phenomena, which humans have summed up as fate, that determine who would be in a crashed plane, car, motorcycle, collapsed building, or shipwreck etc., and who would miss it. It was this hand of fate, sometimes called destiny, that induced Yakowa and others into the crashed Navy chopper while Gowon and others missed it. It is possible some people are gifted in the metaphysics of anticipating or second-guessing fate, and are therefore able to avoid calamity. But most people do not have that gift. In the end, given the complexity and unpredictability of human existence, especially the aspect that deals with life and death, it is really hard to say whether even those who claim to anticipate fate are really able to do so, for the confident sometimes dies where the cowardly survives.

Academicians have not quite explained how fate is different from instinct, whether it is also different from its homonymic cousin, faith, which can sometimes be exercised to control the former, or whether in reality all three words are not a crude attempt to second-guess God. As Albert Einstein once said, “God does not play dice with the world.” And so when one person misses a crashed chopper, there is order in it, almost like predestination; and when another person does not miss it, there is also order in it, quite like predestination. Alexander the Great called that instinct that made him a victor on the great battlefields between the Ionian Sea and the Himalayas his “hope.” Caesar called it his “luck,” and Napoleon called it his “star.” Hardball forgets what Hitler called it, but he had a name for it. Whatever it was, Winston Churchill did not attempt to name it, but he recognised its value in the Dunkirk evacuation (otherwise called Miracle of Dunkirk or Operation Dynamo) when the allied powers managed to ferry 338,226 trapped soldiers to safety in 1940 against an advancing but inexplicably dithering German army. However, seeing the national exultation over the Dunkirk feat, Churchill managed to deliver this witticism on the evacuation: “Wars are not won by evacuations.” If only he knew.

The late Governor Yakowa was himself no stranger to fate, having either ridden on it or was embraced by it for decades, before his final emergence as governor. Twice deputy governor, he finally and dramatically assumed the top position when all hope seemed lost. The emergence of both Yakowa and his successor, Mukhtar Yero, reminds us of the equally fateful emergence of Calvin Coolidge as the 30th president of the United States after the death of President Warren G. Harding in 1923. Reporters knew Coolidge was an exceptionally lucky man, and a few of them had presumed, based on that luck, that Harding would be assassinated before completing his term. In the event, mused reporters, God Himself was the agency by which Harding was translated in order for Coolidge to secure the great prize.

Just when humans think they have all things figured out, it is then they discover to their dismay that in reality few things are actually ever figured out. That is why in spite of all plans, hope, expectations, visions, wealth, power and age, no one has yet found a way to stop the hands of fate. We must continue to do what we will; but, as great literature has portrayed, the gods must do what they will. “Their’s not to reason why,” wrote Alfred Lord Tennyson in 1854, “Their’s but to do and die. Into the valley of death rode the six hundred.”