The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • A country of tragic dichotomies

    A country of tragic dichotomies

    On December 9, Professor Kamene Okonjo, mother of the Finance minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was abducted by gunmen and kept away for days. The Goodluck Jonathan presidency was embarrassed into desperation. Nearly the whole of the Nigeria Police, secret service and the army swooped on Ogwashi-Uku, Okonjo’s hometown town in Delta State, and turned it upside down and downside up in search of the 82-year-old queen. Five days later, in circumstances that are still unclear, Professor Okonjo was released by her abductors. Some said ransom was paid, and yet others said the heat from security agents got too intense for the kidnappers to keep their captive.

    But a day after Madam Okonjo was abducted, Titilayo, the wife of Brig Gen Oluwole Rotimi (retd), a former governor of defunct Western State, was also abducted by gunmen as she drove out of her office in Ibadan, Oyo State. Ten days after her abduction, law enforcement agents are no nearer solving the crime than they were at the beginning. Not only is the level of mobilisation of security agents puny even by Ibadan standards, it also pales into immeasurable insignificance when compared with the manner the presidency rallied the nation’s forces to prise Okonjo loose from her Delta State abductors. Yesterday, newspapers reported the police in Ibadan as unsure where else to look. They were spreading their puny dragnet into surrounding states, they said feebly and shamefacedly. So far, Abuja has said nothing about the Ibadan abduction, and will probably not say anything until, as usual, they are shamed into talking.

    Consider also the October 25 air crash involving the Taraba State governor, Mr Danbaba Suntai, and three of his aides, Iliya Dasat, Tino Dangana, and one Joel, the governor’s chief detail. Not only was the governor first moved to Abuja for adequate treatment, it took a little hue and cry before his aides were also evacuated for better medical attention. To compound the national folly, Suntai was again evacuated to Germany in order to enhance his chances of survival, while his aides were left in Abuja. Again, it had to take additional hue and cry before the governor’s aides were also ferried to Germany. Just what message is the country sending to its citizens? Nigeria’s story, it seems, is a tale of two countries sundered almost irreparably by a clumsy definition of citizenship. Whereas other countries would go to war for one lowly citizen, Nigerian leaders stir themselves only for the high and mighty among them.

    About six weeks after the Taraba crash, the country is again reenacting and indulging its natural talent for discriminatory treatment of its citizens. In a crash that occurred in Bayelsa State on Saturday, six lives were lost. Among them were the Governor of Kaduna State, Mr Patrick Yakowa, and the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Gen Owoye Azazi. The other four casualties were their two aides and two naval pilots. The incident offered the country an opportunity to show it had learnt lessons from the mismanaged Taraba crash. Sadly, however, the government has mourned Yakowa and the former NSA with all the lachrymose energy it could muster, but paid scant attention to the remaining four. Naturally, the families of the ignored four feel humiliated and have voiced their unhappiness. A little hue and cry has started already and will perhaps lead the government to taking belated action.

    If similar situations arise in future, could the country’s leaders be trusted to act with the decency and humanity only a united and purposeful country is capable of?

  • Buhari at 70

    On December 17, Muhammadu Buhari, former head of state and army general, turned 70. Though he has retained his differentiating principles, and has managed to ennoble anything he does, he has also remained hugely controversial. It is safe to suggest he would neither dilute his principles nor shirk from controversy until his last days. More than most of his peers, and in spite of his limited time in the highest office in the land, he is at least fortunate that very few Nigerians are indifferent to him. He arouses intense passion among those enamoured of his general inflexibility and those uncomfortable with that rigidity. That he has made his peace long ago with the feelings he evokes among his friends and enemies is a tribute to his stoicism, his rather simple worldview, his training, and his gluttonous ability to absorb punishment almost to the point of immolation. His friends were about to celebrate him before the Bayelsa air crash in which the Governor of Kaduna State, Patrick Yakowa, and others died.

    But even if his supporters and admirers don’t celebrate him with the kind of flourish they had initially mustered, there is little doubt he will continue to be admired in most parts of the country, and be hugely popular especially among the downtrodden as he has been for the past several decades when he began his public career. But the value of Buhari is not so much in his achievements as a public officer as it is in something else more nuanced, more inconspicuous. It is true his military career glittered right from when he was commissioned as a second lieutenant, through the civil war years, and his command of the 3rd Armoured Division during which time he proved himself in the fight against Chadian renegades who occupied more than a score of Nigerian villages sometime in 1982 or 1983. His altruistic service in the Petroleum ministry has also been remarked by both his admirers and opponents alike. In sum, Buhari has been a long-standing patriot, which is more than can be said for most politicians of his time and those who have had the privilege of serving in high office like him.

    His real, if slightly nuanced, value can indeed be appreciated through the prism of what his fellow Nigerian leaders, whether elected or military, did in and out of office. His policies, when he ruled the country, might not have been as robust as a mature thinker’s, or as deeply conceptualised and philosophical, but there is no question he was far more disciplined, far more realistic, and far more coherent and consistent than any of his successors from Ibrahim Babangida to Olusegun Obasanjo and to Goodluck Jonathan. He gives the impression of general unease with other faiths and ethnic nationalities, yet, he does not wear his religion on his sleeve, and has been far more circumspect in dealing with these turbulent and divisive issues than the denotative hypocrisies of his successors.

    But there is no denying he has been an unsuccessful politician, perhaps a reflection of what many believe is his lack of intuitive grasp of politics and his overwhelming dependence on character rather than intellect. Indeed, it sometimes seems Buhari naively wishes to mould political fundamentals, including all the axioms, maxims and incontestable rubric, to fit his own boyish ideals. Nothing exemplified this proclivity, and damned his chances of success, as pervasively as his repeated efforts to win the presidency. The last attempt in 2011 was perhaps his best chance, and he probably would have won had he not incredibly squandered it on a puritanical loathing for compromises and vested interests. He is yet to tell us whether he had ever encountered a politician who gained high office without compromise, without sacrifice, and without owing so much to so many.

    It is not certain whether at 70 Buhari will want to give the presidency one last try. If he does, and if the circumstances are favourable, especially if the dreadful mess the ruling party is making of governing a modern and complex society worsens, he is certain to embrace compromises as avidly as a chaste couple on honeymoon. But even if he does not run, or runs and loses, his place in Nigerian history is secure. By his triumphs and failures, and in spite of his offensive cocksureness and sometimes indefensible human rights record, he has, more than any leader of the Fourth Republic, affected Nigeria very substantially.

     

     

  • Critic Obasanjo sticks to his guns

    Critic Obasanjo sticks to his guns

    Last weekend in Abeokuta, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the self-confessed number one patriotic critic, gleefully reiterated to the visiting Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, just how much he enjoyed commenting on national issues and needling President Goodluck Jonathan. “If there is anything that requires my own comment, position or views, I will say it,” said the former president magisterially. “It is only when you kill me that I will stop doing so. It is my passion, patriotism and love that will continue to make me say my own. If something inimical to the growth of the PDP is being done, I will talk.” There is no statement in all of modern Nigerian political history that is as self-righteous. Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it is not outrageously far from Obasanjo’s enduring sanctimoniousness, especially seeing that he was responding to the cold war the media said he was fighting with Jonathan, his estranged political son.

    But the former president was not done. Immensely gratified as he held court, Obasanjo began to soar lyrically and philosophically into higher realms as his visitors deferred to him. “The country, the party and government,” he began gravely and syllogistically, “would remain my primary concern, because, if there is no Nigeria, there will not be a party, and if there is no party, there will be nothing to govern on the platform of the party.” And then with absolute deadpan he delivered this clincher: “Even when I was in prison, I was not quiet. Those who want me and the party chairman (Tukur) to quarrel; this visit will keep them quiet. But my mouth will not be quiet.”

    The reason for this excursion into logic, lyricism and smugness is that the PDP and perhaps, too, Jonathan, have embraced the view that Obasanjo is angry with the presidency over a number of issues, mostly undisclosed. Believing that the former president’s increasingly trenchant dismissal of Jonathan’s policies and style could prove injurious to the party’s chances in 2015, PDP bigwigs have been anxious to placate the offended two-term president. History teaches the party leaders that Obasanjo’s relentless criticisms often do not bode well for a sitting president, whether military or civilian. President Shehu Shagari (1979-1983) felt the sting of Obasanjo’s waspish tongue; Gen Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993) was more than twice cut to the quick; Gen Sani Abacha (1993-1998) attempted to do something drastic about Obasanjo’s acerbity but came to grief as dramatically as he tried to put the complaining Otta farmer down; and neither the late President Umaru Yar’Adua nor Jonathan has fared better with the patriotic critic’s remorseless pummeling.

    Obasanjo has done his best to downplay the so-called cold war between himself and the president. As he told Tukur during the Abeokuta visit, it required patriotism and loyalty to party to make comments on issues, country and party politics. It is doubtful whether Obasanjo was being evasive. He really meant what he said; and he reflected what he genuinely believed. But what is not apparent to those who have had dealings with Obasanjo, including the PDP bigwigs, is that the former president is permanently engaged in saprophytic relationship with other politicians, especially his godsons. He wouldn’t be relevant if his godsons (and successors) were not declining in competence and value. His criticisms are thus the only nutrients that give him life, make him relevant, convince everybody of his invincibility and infallibility, and must therefore be conveyed elaborately and, unfortunately for his victims, garishly.

    There will not be an end to Obasanjo’s rage and self-righteousness. As he morbidly put it himself, only death could still his shrill denunciations of his opponents inside and outside the party, the fools he is determined not to suffer gladly, and even his betters whom he often views contemptuously. For in the former president’s cosmogony, there is only one man – Obasanjo. Everyone that came before him was insignificant; and everyone that comes after him is inconsequential.

     

     

  • Why Zuma deserves to lose ANC leadership election

    Why Zuma deserves to lose ANC leadership election

    The African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s ruling party for the past 18 years, began its five-day elective conference yesterday. The conference, attended this year by about 4,000 delegates, holds every five years. Top on the agenda is the election of the party’s leader, with the winner expected to lead the party into the country’s general election in 2014. Whoever wins the party’s leadership contest will automatically become the next president. Vying for the coveted position are President Jacob Zuma, 70, and his vice president, Kgalema Motlanthe, 63. The contest comes at a time when South Africa (Pop. 50m) has been described as one of the most unequal societies in the world, with more than half of its people living in poverty, and its bond rating downgraded by at least two international rating agencies, including Moody’s, and Standard and Poor’s. There are also widespread allegations of corruption.

    Mr Zuma, who has no formal education, and is self-taught, is expected to garner enough support from the party’s delegates to win the leadership election at the conference taking place in Bloemfontein (Mangaung). He is still charismatic and clever, compared with his challenger who is described as ‘quiet and unassuming.’ A Zulu from KwaZulu-Natal, he is very popular among the Zulu, the country’s largest ethnic group. But even though Zuma is expected to win, he deserves to lose. The reasons are legion and compelling.

    Apart from lacking the intellectual depth to innovatively tackle the mounting social and economic problems facing Africa’s largest economy, Zuma is also embarrassingly frivolous and unable to summon the gravitas required to replicate a fraction of the nobility Nelson Mandela, and to a lesser extent, Thabo Mbeki, imbued South Africa. Even though he makes strenuous efforts to separate his public life from his private life, it is disturbingly remarkable that Zuma has been married six times, currently has four wives, and has some 21 children. The business of presiding over South Africa is too serious to be left in the hands of a serial polygamist permanently distracted by the opposite sex. In 2006, he barely escaped a rape conviction, in spite of making very ludicrous statements about sex and HIV infection.

    Even if we ignore his 2009 acquittal on corruption charges, though his financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, was jailed for soliciting bribes in a $5bn arms contract scandal, Zuma has really never shaken off the image of someone who cannot be trusted to properly manage the finances of his country. But much more importantly, Zuma deserves to lose because of his poor handling of the mineworkers’ strike which convulsed the country in August. Some 34 miners were shot dead while protesting low wages and poor working conditions at the Lonmin plant near Marikana. It was the most violent repression perpetrated by the police since the collapse of apartheid, indicating that little has changed in that country’s law enforcement operations. Other unions have since embarked on their own protests to press for better working conditions and higher wages, and Zuma has equally displayed appalling inability to tackle the growing discontent.

    If Zuma wins the top party post, he will probably lead the ANC and preside over the affairs of his country up to the 2019 elections, by which time he will be 77. It is not his advanced age that is the problem. What may constitute a tragedy for South Africa is that Zuma is unlikely to display sterling leadership qualities or exhibit more restraint than he has shown so far. He will not be more innovative, he will not be more intellectual, he will not be less frivolous, and he will not be less distracted. The leadership position his country hopes to secure in Africa will of course be threatened the more, as will its chances of social and economic turnaround. With South Africa undermined by leadership insufficiency, and Zimbabwe racing downhill on account of President Robert Mugabe’s insensitivity and poor judgement, and Nigeria wracked by egregious leadership incompetence, the outlook for Africa grows dimmer by the day, if not by the hour.

  • Robbery, kidnapping replay colonial history

    Robbery, kidnapping replay colonial history

    In the space of one week, the mother of the Finance minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and the wife of a former military governor of Western States, Brig Oluwole Rotimi (rtd), were kidnapped. Their abductors put a ransom of N200m on each head. Both abductions have accentuated the nightmare kidnapping has become, growing from a seemingly casual petty crime in the Niger Delta to a fairly sophisticated and robust industry encompassing nearly the whole of Nigeria. Perhaps, we have our genes to thank for this criminal tendency. Indeed, going by our history, some things never change. Or, more accurately, like the French say, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

    Historians poetically and poignantly describe the colonisation of Nigeria as “the forcible possession of our land replacing the forcible possession of our people.” They were saying, in other words, that the transatlantic slave trade of the 16th to the 19th centuries, which cost west and central Africans more than 15 million lives by some very conservative estimates, gave way to outright colonialism that cost us, more perniciously, our minds, our identities and our pride. This is not to forget that the trans-Saharan slave trade (10th-19th centuries) also cost West Africa an estimated nine million people. There is in fact no agreement which of the epochal events cost us the more: the damage of slave trade (Atlantic and Saharan) which lasted for more than nine centuries, or the damage of colonialism which lasted for less than a century. However, less than half a century after the end of colonialism, and not even minding the effects of neo-colonialism, Nigerians have managed to blend in themselves all the fiery and evil elements of slave trade and colonialism in one harmonious whole.

    Consider the price put on the head of Mrs Okonjo, the Finance minister’s mother, and ignore the security overkill going on in Delta State. By the kidnapper’s preliminary estimate, she is worth N200m. If the kidnappers succeed in their nefarious venture, expect the price to be negotiated downward. It is too demeaning to hazard a guess what price the kidnappers would not go below. The hapless Mrs Okonjo is not the first notable kidnap victim; and she won’t be the last. Kidnapping has become so lucrative and carries less risk than robbery that it is hard to see the death penalty curbing it. Mrs Titilayo Rotimi, going by the kidnappers’ perception of her family’s ability to pay, may even fetch much less than Mrs Okonjo. But there is no doubt that what is indeed taking place is modern slave trade, not human trafficking. Capital punishment did not curb robbery; that extreme punishment won’t curb any other aggravated crime.

    What is remarkable is that the robberies and abductions perpetrated by our forefathers in those many centuries have been passed on exquisitely to the present generation of Nigerians. This generation didn’t discover its adeptness at these crimes early, one half of the twin crimes having lain hidden for so long, but with the conducive environment triggered by economic and social dislocations, including general governmental incompetence and leadership failings, many of our young have unconsciously acquired, nay inherited, and begun to display the criminal habits that made slave traders and colonialists the villainous henchmen of our historical past, and made our forefathers the perfect criminal accomplices.

    Our land and people were not safe from slave traders and colonialist; now both are not safe from modern-day robbers and kidnappers. Of all the things we chose to inherit, it is a scandal to humanity that we ineluctably chose to inherit the talent for robbing one another, and kidnapping and merchandising our people. Nor should our consolation be that only a few of our people have opted for this atrocious way of life. Before we sanctimoniously dismiss the kidnappers as vermin, let us consider that since independence, our undisciplined governments at all levels have behaved even worse by officially killing, maiming, executing, robbing and dehumanising those nature have entrusted into their care. It will take some doing to repair the genetic damage that has burdened us for more than 10 centuries, a damage that has turned our people, both the governed and the government alike, into a band of robbers and kidnappers.

  • Diarchy in Mali: Nigeria has no business in that country

    Diarchy in Mali: Nigeria has no business in that country

    It seems all but clear that Mali is quietly but agonisingly slipping into diarchy. This is a traumatic transformation for a country that in 1992 transited into full and stable democracy with the election of Alpha Oumar Konare. His re-election in 1997, and the peaceful transition to another elected president, Amadou Toumani Toure, in 2002 convinced the world that Mali had become a democratic trailblazer for the region. Unfortunately in March this year, a few months before Toure passed the baton to a successor, the army under Captain Amadou Sanogo staged a coup d’etat. Even though international pressure and ECOWAS muscle-flexing compelled Sanogo to transfer interim presidential power to the Speaker of the Mali National Assembly, Dioncounda Traore, and head of government business to Cheick Modibo Diarra, a former Foreign minister, effective power has remained with the coup leader who continues to enjoy the perks of leadership without the corresponding responsibility. The latest evidence of this anomaly is the sacking and detention of Diarra, a famous astrophysicist, by the military and the appointment of a replacement, Django Sissoko.

    It is instructive that Diarra was forced to resign because of his support for the ECOWAS intervention force being assembled to help Mali regain control of the northern part of the country currently under the control of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). MNLA declared the independent state of Azawad in April, one month after the March coup. The military, sources within Mali say, prefers financial and logistical help, not ECOWAS troops. It will also be recalled that the pretext for the March coup was that the deposed government of Amadou Toure was ineffective in fighting the rebellion in the north.

    On November 13, Hardball had warned Nigeria not to be a part of the intervention force until Sanogo and his fellow military adventurers were forced out, and Algeria, which shares some 1,400km border with Mali, was persuaded to go along with the ECOWAS plan. The columnist argued that whatever help Mali got to defeat the secessionists would simply achieve the paradoxical result of entrenching the military in power, rather than restoring democracy. The forced resignation of Diarra has proved that point eloquently. More than ever before, Nigeria now has a sound excuse to re-examine its support for the intervention force, and to insist on Captain Sanogo’s complete relinquishment of power.

    As Hardball put it on November 13, “Before going into Mali, Nigeria must insist on the coup leaders surrendering effective control and retiring from the military…It is no use risking the lives of our soldiers for a cause that is doubtful…Nigeria must also examine how far the transitional government has gone in restoring civil rule, especially when the ECOWAS mandate given to the Interim President to organise presidential and legislative polls will expire in five months.” The ECOWAS intervention force is now clearly endangered. Much more clearly is that Nigeria now has absolutely no business going into Mali until Sanogo and his colleagues do the proper things, and until the budding diarchy in that blighted country is extinguished.

  • Adoke confirms our worst fears

    Adoke confirms our worst fears

    The police had sneered at the figures before. They will sneer even more violently again, notwithstanding the fact that those figures were reiterated by Mr Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN), the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice. Delivering a keynote address at a “national dialogue on torture, extra-judicial killings and national security” organised by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in Abuja, Adoke quoted a report by the Network on Police Reform indicating that some 7,198 people had been killed by policemen in four years. He added that about 2,500 of the victims were detainees. The minister also suggested that the police had relied on Police Force Order 237, which allows the police to shoot any suspect or detainee trying to escape or avoid arrest, to carry out some of these questionable killings. However, he did not suggest that all the deaths were as a result of extra-judicial killings, though he thought police methods were forcing a rethink of the criminal justice system to take away the power of prosecution from the police. His conclusion was damning. Said he: “Although these figures have been stoutly disputed by the police, even the most charitable defenders of the Force cannot deny that some dishonourable officers indeed have taken the law into their hands in the most barbaric fashion by killing suspects and innocent citizens.”

    Coincidentally, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) was also on the same day and place worrying about extra-judicial killings, which it said were dehumanising Nigerians. The NBA President, Okey Wali (SAN), put it even more pithily than the Justice minister. Said he at a roundtable organised to mark the 2012 International Human Rights Day: “When rights are serially violated, the people are apprehensive, nervous and unsure of their humanity.” No statement can be more disapproving of the law enforcement agencies’ methods. With the Justice minister associating himself very strongly with the conclusion that police malfeasance is well known and on the rise, and the NBA focusing attention on the menace undermining the criminal justice system, perhaps there is hope that the will to do something about lawless law enforcement would be summoned. The police may dispute the allegations of extra-judicial killings levelled against them as much as they like, but the truth is that it is widely known to be their culture. And no one can doubt that it was a factor in the radicalisation of the Boko Haram Islamic militants.

    Rather than continue to pretend that the problem does not exist, or needlessly debate the scale, the police should do an honest introspection if they want to become the law enforcement agency of their, and dare we say, our, dream. The Justice minister should be encouraged to work more assiduously at transferring the responsibility of prosecution of suspects to the Justice ministry. It is a step in the right direction. The notorious Police Force Order 237 should also be reformed in line with modern and civilised standards of policing. But it is not enough to reform the system and establish police rules of engagement that do not affront our humanity; it is also important that allegations of extra-judicial killings must be investigated and culprits brought to book. As the Boko Haram terror is showing, it is impossible for any society, let alone an errant Police Force, to make progress and achieve stability on the foundations of so much injustice and unfairness. As the NBA president succinctly puts it, “Denying cases of extra-judicial executions and unlawful detentions in the face of overwhelming evidence can only diminish our prestige and respect in the comity of nations.”

     

  • Now, kidnappers hit close to home

    Now, kidnappers hit close to home

    Sooner or later, kidnappers were expected to do something more daring than the usual snatching of wealthy Nigerians for a few negotiated millions of naira. Like drug barons, pool betters and lottery maniacs, the urge by kidnappers for a big jackpot had always been irresistible. Finally, on Sunday, our worst nightmare came to pass when Professor Kamene Okonjo, 82, mother of the Finance minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was kidnapped in broad daylight. She was reportedly seized in front of her home by a gang of armed men. In a brazen display of disrespect for traditional institutions, the kidnapping even took place at the palace of her husband, Obi Chukwuka Okonjo Agbogidi, a retired professor of economics, and traditional ruler of the Ogwashi-Uku kingdom in Delta State. The trauma can best be imagined.

    A few theories have been suggested as motivating what is probably the most high profile kidnapping ever in Nigeria. The police are refusing to be drawn into speculations, preferring for now to assume it is nothing but a clear case of kidnapping. A few others think it was politically motivated, but they have not been forthcoming on what sort of politics could have motivated the crime. Yet others believe the crime could have been motivated by the minister’s reported delay of subsidy payments to some oil importers having trouble verifying their payments. All these theories are, however, far-fetched. It is unlikely oil importers would take the extraordinary step of kidnapping the minister’s mum to pressure her. Surely, at a point they would have been forced to disclose their reasons, and invariably become suspects. After all, frustrated fuel importers are known.

    The police have more sensibly restricted themselves to the theory of kidnapping for ransom. But given the sheer weight of law enforcement logistics that are being deployed to free Mrs Okonjo, it is not known whether the kidnappers would have the courage to name a price. If they do, the elderly woman would doubtless be worth a pretty penny, far beyond what anyone has heard so far, and so costly that it would be hard to see the kidnappers retiring safely to their lair to enjoy the loot. Indeed, going by the nearness of this incident to President Goodluck Jonathan, and considering that Okonjo-Iweala is one of his most influential ministers, it would be a surprise if the kidnappers make a success of this audacious caper. The presidency would already be feeling embarrassed, frustrated and incensed. For a government’s reputation, some things, such as this latest kidnapping, had better not happen.

    When it began in the days of the Niger Delta struggles, kidnapping was essentially targeted at foreign oil workers. Then the target became any oil worker; then children became primary victims; and then finally, anyone was game. The kidnappers themselves have not been discouraged by the prospect of facing the death penalty, just like robbers also casually shrug off capital punishment. Even the novel method propounded in some parts of the Southeast to enact laws authorising the demolition of Kidnap suspects’ properties has also been ineffectual. After absorbing all the punishments the government could throw at them, kidnappers have happily gone on to perfect the template of their lucrative business. Even if they come to grief in this latest effort, they will still carry on their nefarious trade in human articles with only slight modifications.

    The reasons are not far to seek. First, the chance of success far outweighs the risk of capture, thanks to ineffective policing methods and inadequate crime fighting tools. Second, and more importantly, kidnapping, like most other crimes such as Boko Haram terrorism, requires a holistic approach rather than routine law enforcement tactics. That holistic approach entails re-engineering the polity to take advantage of lower cost of governance, foster stability, and engender economic growth to cater for rising population. Until these things are done, terrorism will increase, kidnapping will thrive, and other sundry crimes will also flourish. As unpalatable as it may sound, the Okonjo kidnap indeed hit close to home, and is one more disquieting indication of creeping state failure.

     

     

  • Akinyemi on Sanusi

    Akinyemi on Sanusi

    In an open letter circulated to the media at the weekend, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, a former Foreign Affairs minister, has defended the public policy advocacy role the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has assumed with gusto. He did not always agree with the banking chief, said Akinyemi, himself an erudite policymaker, if also a controversial one, but it was necessary for someone who could command attention to fill the vacuum created by the exit of great Nigerians like Chike Obi, Tai Solarin, Ayo Awojobi, Aminu Kano, Gani Fawehinmi, Bala Usman, Obafemi Awolowo. Akinyemi’s position is indeed intriguing. Whether we will discover the true reasons he supports Sanusi remains to be seen. Hardball can hazard a guess that Akinyemi defends Sanusi because the indisputably controversial top banker is a kindred spirit to the former Foreign Affairs minister.

    This column recalls that though Akinyemi as minister was not a public policy advocate in the Sanusi mould, having as an intellectual appreciated the incompatibility of his position in the Ibrahim Babangida years with that unusually public role, he was nonetheless very controversial. Yet, even his controversiality at the time was not because he was recklessly garrulous or because he was an overexcited policy wonk, but because his ideas, such as the Concert of Medium Powers, were misunderstood, being somewhat far ahead of his time. Akinyemi will recall that his Medium Powers idea actually got off the ground, and did not cause the administration either headache or heartache. Yet Babangida still felt queasy about the controversies that dogged Akinyemi’s lively and fecund tenure, and shuffled him out of the cabinet. At the time, some of his supporters felt that IBB moved against Akinyemi because the former military president was uncomfortable with his intellectualism and visibility.

    It is true Akinyemi hedged his support for Sanusi by warning that he did not always agree with the top banker’s views. But it is still surprising that as a seasoned public policy expert himself, Akinyemi is still willing to condone what are sometimes divisive and indefensible policy interventions simply because certain economists he consulted assured him Sanusi’s interventions had not had adverse effect on economic policies. But can anyone deny that some of Sanusi’s interventions have had aggravating effects on the polity generally, as the banker seems to have acted or spoken on some occasions parochially and insensitively to the point that a few regional interests have accused the banker of ethnic favouritism? Must the country wait until things go wrong with the economy much more than the general governmental incompetence has provoked before asking Sanusi to shelve his ambitious public policy advocacy pastime?

    There is no conceivable way to justify the spirit behind Sanusi’s interventions, notwithstanding the rightness of some of those interventions. Public policy advocacy is incompatible with the functions of a CBN governor, here and anywhere. Sanusi must be encouraged to choose between the two roles. Nor is Akinyemi right when he observed in his letter that, “As far as I am concerned, and others may hold different views on this matter, you (Sanusi) are the only one right now holding a position that empowers his views with such gravitas that they command attention. That they often lead to controversy is beside the point.” The fact is that it is indeed truly worrisome that Sanusi’s views often lead to controversy. This fact is certainly not beside the point. Akinyemi also unhelpfully imbues Sanusi’s sometime extreme and undiscriminating views with more importance than they deserve when he suggested that the top banker was the only one with the gravitas to make his views command attention.

    After all, Sanusi’s views on Boko Haram were atrociously divisive, and his comments on “the size of the bureaucracy, the pernicious 1999 Constitution, the need or non-need for more states, the redundancy of Local Governments, to mention a few” were doubtless superfluous.

  • Shock, shock! Men are not all they are cracked up to be

    Tt used to be that when a woman failed to conceive after many attempts, her male counterpart self-righteously blamed her and began proudly to look for alternatives. After reading the current edition of a scientific journal, Human Reproduction, men are unlikely to be so sanguine about their masculinity, not to talk of their pride. The reason is that according to the journal, between 1989 when a research into male reproductive health began and 2005 when it ended, scientists discovered a worrisome indication of a substantial drop in sperm count. In statistical terms, the researchers found out that “sperm count (concentration of sperm per millilitre of semen) declined progressively by 1.9 per cent a year throughout the 17 years – from 73.6 million sperm per millilitre in 1989 to 49.9 million/ml in 2005.” Worse, they said, even “The proportion of normally formed (that is, healthy) sperm also decreased by 33.4 per cent over the same period.” This is double jeopardy for men who think they are seldom to be blame for infertility.

    That, sadly, is not the only bad news for men. According to the research conducted at the Institut de Veille Sanitaire, St Maurice, France using samples from 26,000 men whose average age was 35, “Although the average sperm count of the men was well above the threshold definition of male infertility – which is 15 million/ml – it was below the World Health Organisation threshold of 55 million/ml which is thought to lengthen the time to conceive.” The report then compounds the nightmare for men. It says: “The worldwide fall in sperm counts has been accompanied by a rise in testicular cancer – rates have doubled in the last 30 years – and in other male sexual disorders such as undescended testes, which are indicative of a worrying pattern.” In order words, men are not just becoming more sterile; they are even becoming diseased as a result of that sterility. It means to save themselves from disaster, men must simply be fertile; sterility is not an option. Call this triple jeopardy, if you permit that lexical licence.

    It does not require deeper analysis to appreciate that men who love to sow their wild oats, (the predatory libertines who consider themselves as gifts to womanhood), will find it more difficult to impregnate a woman. Assuming their frustrations do not make them desperately indiscrete, this new reality should begin to engender a salutary cultural metamorphosis: men would become less inclined to put away their wives hitherto blamed for infertility. But as if the bad news is not enough, with men not knowing what is going on down there, their historical pride is now being affected by factors they neither understand nor have significant control over. According to the study, “Something in our modern lifestyle, diet or environment is causing this and it is getting progressively worse. We still do not know which are the most important factors, but the most likely are … a high-fat diet and environmental chemical exposures.”

    Now that we know that men are no longer what history and culture tell us all they are cracked up to be, perhaps we should appeal to women to show more understanding and not delay childbearing, for any delay on their part could worsen the woes of men. If the worrisome trend continues, however, women could start to relish the tantalising prospect of Isaiah 4:1 being reversed. “In that day,” said Isaiah, “seven women will take hold of one man and say, ‘We will eat our own food and provide our own clothes; only let us be called by your name. Take away our disgrace!’” Consider this role reversal: “In that day seven men will take hold of one woman and say, ‘We will eat our own food and provide our own clothes; only let us be called by your name. Take away our disgrace!’” Does anyone imagine seven men gently taking hold of one woman? Of course, there would be war, and six men would die, for it is obvious that the world, as we know it, is more tolerably and safely polygamous than polyandrous. But if a man is not as fertile as he used to be, how can he even contemplate polygamy? And who can tell, would it not sometime in the heretical future require seven polyandrous men to put one woman in the family way?