The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

Fani-Kayode’s incredible illogic

Yesterday, nearly all newspapers gave generous treatment to Chief Femi Fani-Kayode’s snide remarks on President Goodluck Jonathan’s dismissal of the Odi invasion. The president had during his recent media chat made wry comments on former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s methods of fighting terrorism. Obasanjo, who pictures himself a strong leader, had in Warri on the occasion of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor’s 40th anniversary of pastoral work sanctimoniously declared that Jonathan was ineffective in fighting Boko Haram. The former president pointedly gloated over the orders he gave in 1999 for the invasion of Odi, Bayelsa State. Said he: “My fear is that when you have a sore and you don’t attend to it early enough, it festers and becomes very bad. Don’t leave a problem that can be bad unattended…I attended to a problem that I saw; I sent soldiers. They were killed, 19 of them (were) decapitated. If I had allowed that to continue, I would not have the authority to send security anywhere again. I attended to it. If you say you do not want a strong leader, who can have all the characteristics of a leader, including the fear of God, then, you have a weak leader and the rest of the problem is yours.”

Apparently incensed, but doing his best to hide it, Jonathan had retorted during the said media chat: “After that invasion, myself (as deputy governor) and the governor entered Odi…and saw some dead people. Most of the people that died in Odi were mostly old men, women and children; none of the militants was killed. If bombarding Odi was to solve the problem, then it was never solved. If the attack on Odi had solved the problem of militancy in the Niger Delta, then the Yar’ Adua government would not have come up with the amnesty programme. So, that should tell you that the attack on Odi never solved the militancy problem and we had more challenges after that attack on Odi.” Jonathan was referring to a recent part of our history, a part most of us were witnesses to. How could anyone fault this verifiable account?

But Fani-Kayode is not anyone. He knows how to get water from a rock; and in spite of his well- known irreverence and what his detractors describe as his facile tendency to apostasy, he knows how to procure the miracle of turning the bitter waters of Marah to sweet, and effecting changes in colours without being a chemist. Responding to Jonathan’s rebuttal of Obasanjo’s unkind characterisation of the president, he had tendentiously declared: “After the Federal Government’s strong military response in Zaki Biam, the killing of security personnel with impunity stopped. The objectives of the military operations in both Odi and Zaki Biam were to stop such killings, to eliminate and deal a fatal blow to those that perpetuated them and to discourage those that may seek to carry out such barbarous butchery and mindless violence in the future…By doing what he did at Odi and Zaki Biam President Obasanjo saved the lives of many and put a stop to the killings and terrorism that had taken root in the Niger Delta area previous to that time…He brought justice to the perpetrators quickly and promptly and he did whatever he had to do to protect the lives and property of the Nigerian people.”

Did Fani-Kayode respond to Jonathan’s observation that no militant was killed in 1999 at Odi, and that the old general’s sense of decisiveness and justice were grossly perverted? No. He simply sidetracked it by waffling about security goals achievable through indiscriminate, state-sponsored killings. Both Obasanjo and Fani-Kayode in fact gave the impression that collateral damage in security operations was acceptable. Worse, they even suggest that scorched-earth approach is an effective deterrent to criminality. Fani-Kayode talks of barbarism in his rejoinder without really knowing what it means or who to apply it to: is it to those who ambushed opposing soldiers and policemen and murdered them; or to a government that destroys two communities of women and children and the innocent in order to punish fleeing militants? One, it seems, should be tried in a local court; and the second doubtless should be tried for crimes against humanity.

November 21, 2012
China and the emergence of Xi Jinping

Whatever anyone may say, China’s single-party political structure has served the country well in quite a remarkable way. It has ensured stability, unity, and since 1978, enviable and measurable progress. The bitter memory of the turbulent years when the iconic leader, Mao Zedong, unleashed the disastrous Great Leap Forward (1958-1961), has faded. That experiment led to the death of an estimated 45 million people and the impoverishment and malnourishment of more than 200 million others. China only began to make steady recovery when Deng Xiaoping, who held the position of paramount leader between 1978 and 1992, enunciated and implemented a different developmental paradigm. Mr Deng, it will be recalled, was himself a victim of the Cultural Revolution that began in 1966 and lasted until Mao’s death in 1976.

In the past three decades, the Chinese economy has grown at more than 10 percent, and that growth rate was sustained through the exemplary leaderships of Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, Jiang Semin, and Hu Jintao. China’s story since Mr Deng has been one of decades of stability and phenomenal growth. That stupendous growth has seen China emerge as the second-largest economy in the world, a feat that has made it an industrial society, of course with all the accompanying contradictions and challenges, some domestic, and others international.

While China’s economic indicators continue to dazzle, what thrills observers more is the ease with which the country has managed its leadership succession for so long. Thus, after a very successful 10-year presidency of Hu Jintao, China is once again poised for a fresh 10 years of the 59-year-old Xi Jinping. He is expected to navigate the treacherous social, economic, political and international undercurrents the country’s rising influence and power will throw up. Having assumed the highest Communist Party of China (CPC) position of General Secretary of the Central Committee after last week’s convocation of the 18th National Congress, Mr Xi, who was vice president to Mr Hu, will in March 2013 when he formally assumes office inherit a slowing economy that is growing at about eight percent instead of the more than 11 percent they had been used to for more than a decade. Britain’s by comparison is projected to grow at one percent next year.

According to the Daily Mail of London, China, since Mr Deng, “Consumes nearly half the world’s concrete every year, and the country now bristles with skyscrapers and high-speed railways. China’s defence spending has quadrupled in 10 years, it has cyber-warfare capabilities, anti-satellite missiles and is developing the Shenlong passenger spaceplane, capable of travelling at supersonic speeds on the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. Incomes in the past decade have tripled and the number of Chinese with basic health care and pensions has reached 95per cent. The country boasts a million millionaires and several billionaires, while the middle class has expanded to 500 million people. In that decade, a segment of Chinese society equivalent to the entire population of America has bought a smartphone. It is only a matter of time before the country overtakes America as the world’s pre-eminent superpower.”

But beyond its enviable economic and strategic profiles, China is doubtless a well-governed society. Its leaders have ruled with far more discipline and patriotism than Nigeria has ever enjoyed. Its foreign policy may lack what some describe as a moral core, but the country has nonetheless projected power and, to some extent, even ideology, quite admirably. By ensuring relatively smooth leadership succession since 1978, minus the hiccups in the 1980s that led to the ouster of Hu Yaobang, his eventual death, and the Tiananmen Square protests, China has assured stability that only monarchies seem capable of and many democracies dream of. The country has grown so rapidly in every measurable area that the West now sees it as the major rival in the near future, much more than Russia.

Though it has not really tried to export its politico-economic ideology of ‘socialist market economy’, many African countries, especially Nigeria, could borrow a leaf from Mr Deng’s brilliance and originality by formulating unique hybrid of altruistic economic and political ideologies. China may not fit into our general understanding of popular or participatory democracy, however, the fact is that that country evidently works and has proved to be much more transforming than Nigerian leaders’ sloganeering. The Chinese model offers huge lessons for Nigerian leaders who may wish to study the history of China since Mao. For sure, they will appreciate anew the rigour that goes into conceptualising developmental paradigms that really work. In particular, by studying the symbiotic leadership of Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang, Nigerian leaders may begin to recognise why critics berate their half-hearted attempts at making structural changes that do not go beyond tinkering with the tenure system and wastefully balkanising the country.

November 20, 2012
National carrier: Is the Fed Govt listening at all?

Sometime in early September, the Minister of Aviation was quoted as saying the federal government was about inspiring the establishment of a new national carrier to perform the role the defunct Nigeria Airways woefully failed to carry out. Enraged, Hardball on September 3 took the minister and the government to task, wondering whether they had learnt any lesson from the collapse of the former national carrier, or whether they were simply looking for ways, at our expense of course, to give jobs to the boys and line a few more pockets. Equally stunned, the minister and the government simply ignored all remonstrations and proceeded happily with their plans. In fact, soon after, the minister announced that the legal framework for a new national carrier was ready, and foreign airlines would be invited as technical partners.

Eventually, no foreign airline agreed to participate in any form, whether as technical or theoretical partners. Undeterred, the government began fishing for private investors, because, as it said, the new national carrier would be a private sector-led business. The federal government, the minister said, would put in very little so as not to involve taxpayers’ money. How very solicitous. What the minister and the conniving presidency did not tell us was what magic wand the assembled investors hoped to wave when all the existing investors in the airline business are teetering on the brink of a nightmare. Would it not end up like Transcorp?

Hardball had in September asked: “Oduah indicates the new national carrier will allow private equity and be jointly and professionally managed to make it a successful venture… It was also not too long ago, however, that the government welcomed Virgin Atlantic to invest in the airline business in Nigeria over the ashes of Nigeria Airways. It proved an impossible task after just a few years, as the new airline made huge losses estimated at more than $300m between 2005 and 2010. In 2007 alone, Virgin Nigeria Airways lost nearly N10 billion. Moreover, Virgin Atlantic Limited never took more than 49 percent equity in the Virgin Nigeria project. So, what has changed?”

But in spite of the protests, the Aviation minister is sticking to her guns. This is sheer national insult. The latest to come out from the Aviation brain trusts is that the new national carrier, which is now being incredulously sold as part of President Goodluck Jonathan’s transformation agenda, would procure 30 brand new aircraft. Is the ministry and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) already running the new venture and determining policies for the so-called private investors? Is it not clear that there are too many devils in the detail the ministry has so far provided? For a government pointlessly and unconvincingly asking for giant foreign loans, do they not have better things to do with money and their time, especially at a time when even foreign airlines are having a tough time staying afloat?

As Hardball observed on September 3, “The Aviation ministry cannot claim to have an innovative business model which the world has not seen before or heard about, and which is capable of sustaining a successful carrier.” Hardball’s conclusion is still valid. Said he: “The idea of a new national carrier is…wishful thinking. There is absolutely no basis for it, either financially or managerially. Worse is the fact that the federal government’s own business model, in which virtually everything except the plum and very rewarding decision-making political process has either been privatised or is run on private-public partnership, negates the founding of a new carrier – a road the government travelled both alone and in partnership before. If Oduah and other government officials who think like her are not quickly dissuaded, soon another minister will begin to flirt with the heresy of reviving the Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL), which was liquidated in 1995, and other moribund public agencies long since buried. If the Aviation ministry is idle, the government should look for less costly toys to keep it occupied.”

November 19, 2012
The police should be worried

One of the most difficult and unpleasant tasks top police officers in Nigeria face is how to respond to the misconduct of their men. They are often torn between the dignified acceptance of blame for the egregious actions of trigger-happy cops, with the implication of public loss of confidence in that security institution, and the deliberate and even instinctive resort to lying about those malfeasances in order to cover up for their men and present a façade of professionalism. The police top brass have so far not found the right formula to manage this dilemma and engender a reform-minded and reform-driven modern police organisation. The consequence is that in the past few decades, an increasingly unethical police force appears to dominate, override and compromise its top echelons, thereby giving the security organisation a bad image.

The police should really be worried that their image is not improving. Not only are a significantly large number of policemen and officers resistant to change and modernisation, preferring to do things the old-fashioned, unscientific and unrefined way, they have also created a security monolith that no one seems able to manage or reform. To everyone’s dismay, that unhealthy mould became the immediate trigger for the turbulence ravaging the Northeast. Amnesty International and other local civil society organisations have given us an earful of the reprehensible practices of the police. Rather than be shamed into refining their methods, as the current Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, is crusading, they prefer to deny all wrongdoings. And rather than prevent or limit to the barest minimum poor policing tactics, they seem resigned to routinely and absentmindedly punishing errant policemen as a satisfactory remedy. But prevention is always better than cure.

The police hierarchy should be worried that the country is daily inundated with newspaper reports of police misbehaviour. The top brass need to be shamed into action. Torture, extra-judicial killings, discourteous policing methods that alienate the public, and as experienced by a newspaper recently, even imperiousness by top police officers who should know better, and on whose shoulders the reforms being undertaken by the IGP rest, are some of the widespread reports that humiliate and ridicule both the police as an institution and the country as a whole. Given the attitude of many police officers and the rank and file, it is not unlikely that the IGP will find it increasingly difficult to make his modernisation efforts permeate the entire organisation. He has scrapped police checkpoints, which for decades opened the largest black nation on earth to scorn, and is moving to undo decades-old habits of torture and cruelty. He will need likeminded officers to succeed. But it is not clear whether he has succeeded in identifying passionate and patriotic officers burning with the zeal to give Nigeria one of the most modern police organisations in the world, if not in technology, at least in methods.

Nor is it even clear that the presidency, which itself is still steeped in fairly archaic ways of running a 21st Century government, shares the IGP’s passion for change and modernisation. This column acknowledges the efforts of the IGP and some of his officers, and even feels the IGP sometimes cuts a lonely picture up there where he is. If he wishes to succeed, however, he must change gear by doing something definitive about his officers who abuse their power, and he must also reconceptualise the training paradigms of both the officer corps and rank and file, clean up the torture chambers and remould them into proper crime detection and crime investigation departments, and forcefully but intelligently institute behavioural changes in his men, police stations and police commands all over the country. Very many of his top officers are too steeped in the methods of the past to be of any use to a modern police and to the country.

A surgical intervention is needed to restore public confidence in the police. A failure to carry out that surgery means abandoning the police force and indeed the entire country to an uncertain and brutish future and perhaps eventually to an anarchical showdown. The task is not easy, but for the sake of the country, the IGP, who has talked the talk quite engagingly, is encouraged to take firm and concrete measures to implement his reforms. He must believe in himself and not condone the laxity, collusion and connivance many of his men are noted for.

November 16, 2012
Someday, traffic offences will attract death penalty

The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) was reported in the Wednesday edition of The Punch to have submitted a proposal on constitutional amendment to the National Assembly. One of the striking recommendations the northern political group made, the paper said, was capital punishment for those found guilty of corruption. This startling suggestion is bound to attract more than a cursory attention from the public, especially against the backdrop of the Edo State governor’s insistence on executing two state convicts on death row. The convicts, Messrs Daniel Nsofor and Osayinwinde Agbomien, were condemned to death many years back. Their sentences have now been confirmed by the Supreme Court.

It is unlikely the ACF proposal was inspired by Governor Adams Oshiomhole’s resolve, but the northern group probably sustains its argument with the same philosophy that undergirds the Edo approach to crime fighting. Hear Oshiomhole’s argument: “I am convinced that those people (the two convicts) need to die. In the interest of society they need to die under the law. The rule of law is different from resolutions by some NGOs and nations are not governed by NGO resolutions. We must have a balanced view of human rights in which the rights, not only of the man they killed but the right of his relations, and much more importantly, to send a clear message to would-be murderers, that when you kill a human being and you are caught, you are likely to die. If you don’t want to die, then abstain from killing. If criminals abstain from killing, fewer people would be killed by robbers and other murderers and that is the truth.”

Oshiomhole’s rationalisation is not too different from that of the ACF. Hear the northern political group: “The law classifies crimes according to the severity of their consequences both on the individual victim, the community or the country. If crime holds a high potential to gravely harm or kill its victim, the more severe the punishment, which was designed to punish and deter offenders. This is to say that punishment must always fit offences. One crime that has proved capable of gravely harming or killing its victim, Nigeria, is corruption. Sadly, our laws have not recognised corruption for what it is. ACF recommends that corruption be recognised as a capital offence and made to carry capital punishment.”

Neither the governor nor the ACF is right about the capacity of the death penalty to deter capital crimes. There is no country where capital crimes have inverse relationship with capital punishment. In fact, even in the United States, which still retains capital punishment in the statutes of a few states, states with capital punishment have higher incidence of capital crimes than states without the death penalty. Both Oshiomhole and the ACF should avail themselves of the numerous studies on the topic rather than rely on general impressions and suppositions. They must recognise from available statistics that robbery rate has not declined in Nigeria since the Gen Yakubu Gowon administration promulgated a decree to make robbery punishable by death. Robbery has in fact increased. And in spite of extra-judicial killings by policemen, robbers have not become less vicious or less fecund.

It is disquieting that we have found ourselves in the position of recommending the death penalty for certain categories of corruption instead of examining scientific ways of curbing the malaise. Would we not someday get the brainwave to extend this extreme measure to traffic offences? Life has been made very cheap by both lawbreakers and security agencies; we should not now make it even more worthless by extending capital punishment to sundry crimes, further vitiating the little claim we have left to decency and civilization, and reducing ourselves, like the lynch mob, to the bestial level robbers would like us to sink.

November 15, 2012
Imagine Obasanjo, Bakare as revolutionaries

Almost in quick succession, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president, and Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly spoke about revolution or made revolutionary remarks in the past few days. Of the two, Bakare confuses us the more. Whenever he presents himself in public we are in a quandary what to make of him: a pastor full of the character of his Lord, temperate in speech, gentle, kind and empathetic, or a typical Nigerian politician who must have things his way, opinionated, aggressive, inconsiderate and, in the literal sense, eager to bring the house down on everyone? The former president, on the other hand, is a self-canonising and irritable politician who speaks daggers, if Hardball is permitted to adapt Shakespeare, and uses it with utmost relish.

Obasanjo drew first blood and triggered the misspeaking that has culminated in the noisily talk of revolution. Newspapers and online media described his speech as revolutionary, and reported that it was made in Dakar, Senegal where he had gone over the weekend to attend a West African regional conference on youth employment sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the African Development Bank (ADB). They paraphrased him as saying that unless something drastic was done urgently to address youth unemployment, which hovered around 71 percent, we would head inexorably towards revolution. Inexpert paraphrasing can, however, become a very problematic issue in mass communication or in the hands of a clumsy redactor.

Though the media said he spoke of revolution, all the former president said was this: “I’m afraid, and you know I am a General. When a General says he is afraid, that means the danger ahead is real and potent.” In his refutation after he was widely reported to have spoken of revolution or warned that one was likely, the former army general said those who quoted him spoke bad English. He could never call for a revolution, he said, apparently because he had too much at stake in a system that has callously misused its citizens, a system he himself did his damnedest to promote, ossify and institutionalise.

If Obasanjo did not call for a revolution, what then did he do? A careful reading of his sanctimonious rationalisations in Dakar seems to lead the analyst to the point where he stopped just short of calling for a revolution, but hinted that social chaos was unavoidable. Knowing him for who he is, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, he would see opportunity for his kind of leadership in such chaos; and more, he would recommend a suppression of protesters if it came to that. In short, he would do anything but recommend a revolution.

Not only did the media misquote and misinterpret Obasanjo, their reports also brought out the hardliner in Bakare. The Latter Rain Assembly pastor simply assumed Obasanjo was quoted correctly and then concluded that the former president would be a victim of the revolution he called for in Dakar. More fanatically and sacrilegiously, Bakare said religious leaders, especially the private jet ensemble, could not escape the repercussions of popular revolt going by the damage they had caused the nation by their greed and connivance. Speaking in Lagos on Monday, he had said: “I am not inciting the public against the church and the mosque, but the congregation must demand explanation from their leaders. They must demand to know where they are getting the money. If it is not from the church offering, then it is from Abuja. All general overseers must go to prison. If the revolution does not begin in the church, it cannot spread; if it does not begin in the mosque, it will not spread, because they control the population.”

From his Dakar speech and follow-up explanations, it is clear no one should ever imagine Obasanjo a revolutionary; this closet radical is too conservative and too indebted to the decaying system to be one. Bakare, on the other hand, does not just seem to be unalterably irreverent and iconoclastic; his remarks show him to be more than a revolutionary. He seems in fact to be a Trotskyite or perhaps even a Stalinist, or a hybrid of the two Marxist tendencies, but certainly not a priest.

November 14, 2012
Before we move into Mali

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is urgently putting together an intervention force of about 4,000 soldiers to reclaim Northern Mali from Tuareg rebels who on April 6, under the banner of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), unilaterally declared the independent state of Azawad. According to rebel leaders, Azawad, which constitutes about 60 percent of Malian territory, comprises the regions of Timbuktu, Kidal, Gao, as well as a part of Mopti region. If the territory endures, it will share borders with Burkina Faso to the south, Mauritania to the west and Northwest, Algeria to the north and Northeast, and Niger to the east and Southeast, with southern Mali to its Southwest. After the Battle of Gao on 27 June, the Islamist groups Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa and Ansar Dine took control of northern Mali, pushing out the MNLA.

Until a number of issues are resolved, however, it would be unwise for Nigeria to join forces with the intervention force in Mali. Some of these issues were thrown up by the March coup d’etat led by Captain Amadou Sanogo, which saw the deposition of President Amadou Toumani Traore. Shortly after, ECOWAS imposed a short-lived regime of sanctions to pressure Sanogo to relinquish power. But even before crippling sanctions brought the usurpers to heel, ECOWAS inexplicably accepted a disingenuous compromise that foolishly forced the resignation of the president a month to the end of his tenure. It also led to the appointment of the former Speaker of the National Assembly of Mali, Dioncounda Traore, as the interim president, former Foreign minister, Cheick Modibo Diarra, as prime minister, and the installation of a new cabinet.

While the coup leaders, unprincipled Malian politicians, and pusillanimous ECOWAS leaders engaged in horse-trading, the rebels in the northern parts of the country seized the opportunity to declare independence. This made the coup, which was in the first instance staged to force the deposed president to take the rebellion more seriously, quite absurd. In fact, Reuters described the coup as a “spectacular own-goal,” and Hardball in one of his many essays on Mali described the short-lived ECOWAS sanctions as snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

It is obvious the UN Security Council is eager to approve the ECOWAS force in Mali because of the fear that Azawad was already turning into a hotbed of Islamic militants affiliated to al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM). Not only have the rebels brought Azawad under strict Afghanistan-type Sharia law, with stoning of suspects and amputation of their limbs, they have also welcomed battle-hardened militants from Libya and adventurers from Algeria looking for a fight. Neither ECOWAS nor the Security Council is prepared to have another territory in Africa where hotheads are trained and exported.

Before Nigeria signs up for the Mali adventure, it must do its homework well, and the National Assembly must ensure it is satisfied before authorising the use of force. First is the fact that Algeria, which shares a 1,400km border with northern Mali, and which would be affected by a war next door, still thinks there is room for negotiations. Moreover, the US Secretary of State, Mrs Hillary Clinton, and the UN have been unable to persuade Algeria to agree to the use of force. Second, and more crucially, the underlying problems which predisposed groups to rebellion have not been addressed. The coup leaders foolishly played into the hands of the rebels by destroying democracy in Mali. If ECOWAS regains northern Mali, is it to hand it over to Captain Sanogo, who while not in power still wields enormous influence over the country and its weak interim leadership? In April, ECOWAS irresponsibly agreed to a 12-month transition to elected government. It is not clear how the defeat of rebels will serve as impetus to democracy, when it seems more paradoxically likely that it would serve as breathing space for Sanogo and his stooges.

Before going into Mali, Nigeria must insist on the coup leaders surrendering effective control, their retirement from the military, and a reconstitution of the country’s security system. It is no use risking the lives of our soldiers for a cause that is doubtful and whose ends are uncertain and helpful only to coup leaders. 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.

November 13, 2012
Too big to fail or too big to succeed?

It is not clear why Rwandan President Paul Kagame thinks Nigeria is too big to fail, or whether in fact that was the idea he sought to convey when he surveyed Nigeria’s problems and proffered solutions. At any rate, a newspaper gave that headline to the Kagame prognosis on Nigeria when the Rwandan visited the country as a guest of African Personality Forum to speak to young Nigerian professionals in Lagos. The headline, if not Kagame himself, was inspired perhaps by the world financial crisis of 2008 which triggered massive economic collapse and business failures around the world. Kagame’s actual words were: “Nigeria is too big, too resourceful to allow these things (corruption and underdevelopment) to continue. If there is a problem in Nigeria it would spread, even to as far as Rwanda. That is why we as Rwandans are ready to work together with Nigeria to solve our problems together and learn from one another.”

The term itself came into prominence when certain mavericks coined the phrase to inspire government bailout of distressed companies, among which were banks, insurers and auto companies. Some of these companies, investigators found out, augmented their profitability by creating and disposing complicated derivatives. By trading in risky loans, currencies and stocks, among other things, they became so big that if they failed, as indeed many of them did, it would have ripple effects on other smaller companies and create an unmanageable chain of damaging effects for the economy. One of these companies that inspired the ‘Too big to fail’ slogan was AIG, a leading insurance company that specialised in traditional insurance until greed pushed it into credit default swaps (insuring assets that supported corporate debt and mortgages). Lehman Brothers, which made the largest bankruptcy filing in United States history in 2008, also inspired the phrase.

But sometime last year, G. Pascal Zachary, a former foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, author of Married to Africa and professor of practice at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, wrote an interesting article for the prestigious The Atlantic magazine on Nigeria’s shaky battle with underdevelopment. The title of the essay was Nigeria: Too Big to Fail. A little like Kagame, and referring also to Karl Maier’s book, This House has Fallen, published in 2000, Zachary lists a potpourri of factors ranging from ineptitude, corruption, ethnicity and in particular religion as factors predisposing Nigeria to disaster. If the West did not help Nigeria to avoid apocalypse, he warned, it would have grave repercussions for Africa.

There is, however, no doubt that Kagame’s analysis suggests he feared Nigeria’s collapse could affect everyone everywhere, even as far away as Rwanda. He admonishes Nigerians to work out their differences and not surrender to unproductive pessimism or even fatalism. This large country of resourceful people, he says, has a large pool of talented young people to turn the country around. But while his admonition was doubtless sound, especially coming from a tested war and peace leader like himself, there is little to suggest that Nigeria is taking any step to avoid state failure. Absolutely nothing. Indeed, while the world appears anxious about Nigeria’s stability and future, many Nigerian leaders seem convinced, as former military head of state, Gen Abdulsalami Abubakar said on Saturday, that Nigeria was not going to disintegrate.

The bad news Hardball regrets to give all of them is that many Nigerians actually don’t think their country is too big to fail. They in fact think it is too big to succeed. These are the people the optimists mouthing platitudinous words need to address and reassure. In any case, believing something is too big to fail neither precludes failure nor guarantees success. Everything depends on what is done to avoid the worst-case scenario.

November 12, 2012
Oil politics and oil wars

No matter how passionately President Goodluck Jonathan pleads with the governments and people of Rivers and Bayelsa States to end the ongoing media war between them and curb rising communal tensions and animosities, there may be no one to heed his appeal. It is not because they intentionally want to defy the president or simply because they love to fight, or even because they do not appreciate the implications for the Nembe and Kalabari Ijaw from Bayelsa and Rivers States respectively. The reason is oil wealth and the power and possibilities it affords.

The dispute between the two states assumed national dimension when Rivers alleged that the federal government appeared to have taken sides with Bayelsa over the boundary dispute pertaining to oil wells between the two states. The Soku oil wells, Rivers claim, are in the Akuku Toru Local Government Area of Rivers State, not in Bayelsa. The state also alleged that the federal government took sides by “recently” releasing to Bayelsa monies previously fixed in escrow account consequent upon the ongoing case before the Supreme Court. Pursuant to the dispute, eminent Kalabari sons and chiefs organised protests in Abuja drawing national and international attention to what they said was unfair handling of the dispute by federal government agencies, including the National Boundary Commission (NBC), security agencies, and Surveyor General’s office.

Bayelsa not only insists the oil wells justifiably belong within its borders, it also condemns Rivers for blackmailing the president, a Bayelsan by birth, and unnecessarily stoking tensions and passions between the two states. The Bayelsa government also insisted a few days ago that the state had received no monies from any escrow account. It recommended that Rivers should go and get its facts right. Perhaps, soon, Rivers will give the public proof of how and when the escrow monies were released. It is also hoped that the Boundary commission will publish the 12th edition of the Administrative map of Nigeria to set the facts straight. Hopefully, someone will tell Nigerians why the 11th edition adjusted the map in 1999 to put the oil wells in Bayelsa, and why for more than 12 years the 12th edition has remained in the works.

Neither this column nor any state, nor yet any group should take sides in the controversy just yet, no matter their private suspicions. But everyone is disturbed that from all indications both the Kalabari people in particular and Rivers State in general are wary of the camp the federal government seems to support. It is recalled that when the dispute began in 2000 with the publication of the 11th edition of the disputed map, the president was then deputy governor of his state, Bayelsa, and so was quite acquainted with the facts of the case. There are already insinuations the president could find it hard to detach himself from the dispute. But he has moved very quickly to douse such insinuations by twice calling the disputants to a meeting in Abuja and requesting (not order, as some newspapers reported) the quarrelling states to cease media war on the dispute. The states have of course gingerly ignored the admonition and interpreted the Supreme Court ruling on the matter very creatively.

It is in the interest of everyone that the president should be successful in finding a just solution which the situation demands, not an amicable solution to the dispute as he and his aides announced they wanted. The reason is that all eyes are on him to see whether he would do justice, or he would embrace expediency. Already, because of the crisis of leadership bedevilling Nigeria and the rest of Africa, most continental leaders have sunk to the abysmal level of luxuriating in primordial sentiments. This is evident in the manner Nigerian leaders site projects in their communities so that they will have a community to happily retire to. The hugest challenge before Jonathan is to get Rivers and indeed all Nigerians to trust his sense of impartiality and judgement on the Soku oil wells dispute when even he, like many of today’s governors and unlike First Republic leaders, could not resist the parochialism of siting a federal university smack in the middle of Otuoke, his beloved town.

November 9, 2012
Obama defies the odds again

You did not have to be a clairvoyant to predict that President Barack Obama of the United States would be re-elected in the November 6 presidential poll. But Hardball ignored metaphysics and acted breathtakingly like a seer on Monday by sticking out his neck in favour of an Obama victory. And so after taking seven of the nine swing states (or eight out of 10 if Pennsylvania is counted among the battleground states), Obama surpassed expectations by winning, at press time, 303 Electoral College votes to his challenger, Mr Mitt Romney’s 206. If he takes Florida, which was still being counted when this column went to bed, he would climb to a massive 332 Electoral College votes. In terms of popular votes, he exceeded the Republican candidate’s votes by more than a million. Obama’s Electoral College votes doubtless painted a rosier picture than the popular votes (50% to 48%), which showed that the keen contest that ended in a dead heat before balloting, was after all anything but heated or dead.

But the remarkable thing about Obama’s victory goes beyond the election statistics that has dazed everyone, how he won, what he intends to do, and what coded messages can be gleaned from his challenger’s strong showing in the ballot. Just as it is presumptuous to think that Hardball’s prediction of an Obama win was of any significance to the electoral outcome of the 2012 US presidential poll, it would also be hubristic to counsel the winner on what to make of his victory. It is more important to consider what Nigeria can learn from the poll.

The US of course has the infrastructure to conduct a smart election and get the results out in a jiffy. They have done that again this year with the customary aplomb the world associates with them. Even though it is the third or fourth largest country in the world by total area and the third largest by both population and land area, this country of more than 314 million people, which in 2008 saw a voter turnout of about 131m out of a voting age population of more than 225m, has conducted elections without shutting the economy down and declaring a national holiday, and has declared the result virtually a few hours after the last ballot was cast. Such feat becomes notable when compared with the dreadful botch Nigerians have made of their elections. If Americans could do it, the question is why can’t we? Is the problem just one of technology or age of country?

Contrary to what many believe, the 2012 US presidential poll was also not just about picking a president. Quite a number of issues were on the ballot for voters to indicate their preferences. And they killed many birds with one stone. Among the issues settled on Tuesday were:

·“Referendums in Maine, Maryland and Washington state approved same-sex marriage, while a measure in Minnesota to block gay unions failed

Colorado and Washington state voted to legalise recreational use of marijuana

·California voters rejected a proposal to abolish the death penalty

·In a referendum, Puerto Ricans voted in favour of becoming the 51st US state, if Congress approves the move.”

The election is also remarkable for the intervention of Hurricane Sandy, as Hardball noted a day before the election. Sandy is one more example of just how unfathomable human affairs are. Just when we think we have everything under control, it is precisely at that moment that forces greater than we are intervene to alter the course of history. How many military generals have lost a battle or a war because of intervening variables such as freak weather, supposedly small miscalculation of the thickness of soil, gradient of a hill, a break in communication between forward troops and resupply lines?

To say Obama was lucky to win this election, when everything conspired against him, is to belittle his enormous talent as a public speaker, his charisma, his ability to connect with voters, his hard work and his incredible self-belief. But both his 2008 win and this latest one speak inexorably to the fact that there is a magisterial Supreme Being somewhere who sits over the affairs of men and who, as Albert Einstein once said, “does not play dice with the world.” Readers, especially the agnostics among them, would disagree; but we dare them to offer a more audacious explanation for why Obama has twice in less than a decade brazenly defied the odds.

November 8, 2012