The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • King Solomon’s (pension) mine

    King Solomon’s (pension) mine

    During a recent visit to the national headquarters of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) in Abuja, the Chairman, Pension Reform Task Team, Abdulrasheed Maina, told his hosts that N300 million daily was stolen from the Police Pension Office “through fictitious cheques prepared in the names of fake pensioners.” So far, he continued, investigators had been able to uncover pension fraud totalling some N36 billion. In addition, and more worrisomely, he also added, investigators had only covered about 40 percent of the pension scam. As if this gargantuan scam was not enough nightmare for everyone, the Pension Reform Team also told the ICPC that far more frightening scam had been uncovered in the Local Government Pension Funds where some N3.3 trillion had been deducted without proper accountability between 1976 and today.

    The scale of the mismanagement of pension funds is unimaginable. What should the country expect when investigations are completed? And in spite of the exposure of the seedy details of pension scam, is anybody discouraged from following the same criminal path? Indeed, going by past scams of this magnitude, is anyone behind bars?

    It can hardly get juicier or racier than these, except perhaps you are a fan of Victorian adventure novels such as King Solomon’s Mines (1885), in which, complete with maps and other tools, you embark on a journey in search of hidden treasures. It is in fact doubtful whether the author of King Solomon’s Mines, Sir Rider Haggard, would not have been overwhelmed with inspiration had he lived in modern Nigeria. Here in Nigeria, no one needs maps or any other tools to locate where the treasures are, and they are not even hidden. After completing tentative investigations into the fuel subsidy scam, the National Assembly discovered that many oil merchants had broken the law. Most of the suspects already charged in court are said to have fraudulently converted billions of naira of subsidy funds. One is even being investigated for fraudulently converting over N40 billion subsidy funds, a sum estimated to be approximately the monthly allocations of 11 states.

    Pension funds and fuel subsidy payments may be the most lucrative avenues for corrupt enrichment modern Nigeria has known; in reality, however, this most dystopian of countries has become a huge mine, far more lucrative than any other known route to wealth. As the poor opt for armed robbery, kidnapping and Internet scams, the elite will apparently continue to concentrate on pension and subsidy scams. Pension and subsidy scams may not seem like real mines where gold, silver and platinum are extracted; but they are nonetheless mines yielding inexhaustible treasures any Victorian novelist would have loved to be inspired by. Perhaps Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island) and Sir Rider Haggard lived before their times.

     

     

  • Fed Govt must urgently address looming food crisis

    Fed Govt must urgently address looming food crisis

    In response to President Goodluck Jonathan’s national broadcast on the flood ravaging the country, Hardball on October 10 decried the failure of the federal government to address the looming problem of food scarcity and provision of seedlings for the next planting season. The column said among other things that, “In the 20-paragraph broadcast, the president said virtually nothing about the even more frightening cataclysm of impending food shortages, nor of how it would be mitigated both immediately and in the next planting season. It is bad enough that weeks after the flood, he is still proposing a visit to affected communities. But his refusal to say something concrete about what he intends to do both to tackle a possible food crisis and to ensure the availability and distribution of seedlings for the next farming season, and his inability to acknowledge the threat food shortages could pose to national security at a time of sundry and ubiquitous terrorist threats, is truly befuddling.”

    In the October 9 broadcast, the president merely sympathised with the affected communities experiencing flood and announced the provision of N17.6 billion to be shared among the 36 states of the federation. In addition, he set up a fund raising committee headed by businessman Aliko Dangote to raise approximately N100 billion to help flooded communities. But Hardball had criticised the fact that the monetary relief was planned before the president had the opportunity to visit affected communities or correctly estimate the extent of the floods and the crises they were likely to engender. A few days later, the president began his visits only to discover that the problem was far worse than estimated. He has belatedly started to appeal to the international community.

    Now, in the face of fresh warnings of flood in some 19 states, it is time the federal government began to look at the issue of food crisis and national security much more closely. Not only are many farming communities and towns still under water, the threat of additional flood is an even huger burden for the affected states to bear. Already, food prices have shot through the roof, and scarcity looms. For certain food crops, prices have risen by as much as 300 percent. At a time of grave terrorist threats and breakdown of law and order, rising food prices can only stoke the fire lit by years of social and economic inequalities. With poverty spreading, highways are likely to be more unsafe, while homes in towns and cities will come under intolerable siege.

    In addition to the money already voted to ameliorate the flooding problem in the 36 states, and the funds yet to be raised by the Dangote committee, President Jonathan must urgently set up a committee to look at impending food crisis, the threats they are likely to constitute to democracy and stability, and the options available to tackle them. These threats are not an exaggeration; they are real, and they must be addressed now. The three tiers of government must also manage the flood relief camps much better than they have done so far and plan for the aftermath of the floods. Nothing must be left to chance.

  • Ondo: Labour Party and the Israeli connection

    Ondo: Labour Party and the Israeli connection

    In the news, we have read of movements of men of curious motives and appearances in Ondo State. We have also read in the newspapers of the Labour Party’s investment in training of some men in Israel. The purpose, according to the reports, was to equip them with skills to manoeuvre for which the Israelis are well-known.

    The election for the post of governor in Ondo State has been billed as a battle between Olusegun Mimiko of the Labour Party (LP), who has been seen by his opponents in the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) as a cheerful turncoat. The ACN candidate is Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN). In many ways, this is also a battle between integrity and opportunism, and the ACN has presented itself as the party of conscience. The LP defines integrity differently. It sees integrity as a sort of independence from what many in Yorubaland see as an enlightened impulse of integration.

    But whatever the conflicting impulses, what it should not be is a celebration of violence and the supremacy of what is sometimes called machine politics. When a party decides that part of the logic of winning an election is sending a group of persons to Israel to learn how to make and throw bombs, it is surrender to a brutish lifestyle.

    The matter was serious, according to the ACN candidate Akeredolu, that he made a formal report to the National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki. According to what he described as intelligence report reaching the ACN, about 50 persons in the Labour Party were sent to Israel to train in a company called NIRTAL Limited.

    The claim is that “They are believed to be sponsored by Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, Ondo State Governor and candidate of the Labour Party in the October 20 governorship election.

    “The scope of the training, according to our discovery, includes, offensive, tactical training, shooting AK-47 live ammunitions in a shooting range and in dedicated facility. We are also aware that this special squad has been trained in the act of bomb making.

    “According to our findings, about 50 members of the Labour Party have undergone this dastardly training. Many more are said to be there at present.

    “The returnees (Israeli-trained militia) are believed to be strategically distributed in different parts of the state ahead of the election. The predictable consequence of this terrorist tutelage is better imagined.”

    There are reports of some people already parading Ondo State, and some observers are finding it difficult to identify whether they belong to the National Guard or whether they are implants of the Labour Party.

    The way of the thug is often associated with the worst in Nigeria politics, and Hardball understands that it has become a tool both of offence and of defence in Nigerian quicksand political terrain. The Labour Party needs to come out and dissociate itself entirely from this portent of bloodshed.

    We cannot forget that a few months ago, the LP was accused serially of involvement in acts of violence until the ACN issued a stern warning that it would not tolerate any form of brigandage in the state without bringing the culprits to the full force of the law. Although it continued, it was checkmated by countervailing action.

    What this means is that tension has overtaken the state. As the governor, he should borrow a leaf next door from Edo State governor who did not carry out any form of thuggery, but he relied on the supreme will of the people. It is not the bomb but the vote that makes democracy.

  • Sitting comfortably on a powder keg

    Sitting comfortably on a powder keg

    The killing of 24 people in Dogon Dawa, a village in Birnin Gwari Local Government Area of Kaduna State, on Saturday was at first thought to have been motivated by sectarian reasons because it occurred near a mosque. A day after, however, the police suggested it was reprisal killings by a gang of robbers from the neighbouring Kuyallo community. But leaders of the Fulani herdsmen in Kuyallo dramatically showed up at the state police headquarters in Kaduna on Tuesday to claim responsibility for the killings. According to them, hostile communities such as Dogon Dawa routinely accuse herdsmen returning from long-distance grazing of robbery and then either murder them or rustle their cattle. The Dogon Dawa reprisal was to send a message that the herdsmen would not accept the affront.

    A day after the Dogon Dawa killings, another group of Fulani herdsmen swooped on Yogbo, a farming community in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State killing some 25 Tiv people, mainly women and children. Tiv farmers and Fulani herdsmen are reported to be locked in a bitter battle over food crops versus grazing land, leading to the killing of hundreds of people in the past few months. On Tuesday, too, the Joint Task Force (JTF) in Maiduguri told the media that about 24 Boko Haram members were killed in a firefight between security men and Islamists, in a war that is proving interminable. Newspapers are filled with scary reports of murder, violence and threats of intercommunal and intracommunal wars. Nearly three weeks ago, more than 40 students of the Federal Polytechnic lost their lives in an attack by gunmen whose identities are yet to be determined. And in Port Harcourt, villagers at a community near the University of Port Harcourt lynched four students wrongly accused of robbery.

    The list of killings is endless and growing. Kidnapping is the order of the day, and highway robbery has made travelling by day or night an ordeal. The police are hardly able to compose themselves in the face of the massive lawlessness permeating the country; and in spite of the notable effort of the police leadership to inculcate discipline and higher degree of responsibility in policemen, officers have also affronted the law with embarrassing industriousness. What is obvious is that there are no realistic and practicable ideas from the federal government to arrest the dangerous lurch towards apocalypse. More than this, it is also indisputable that beyond general initiatives, which have neither been proffered nor tested, the structure of the country is simply too weak and even inoperable to stabilise a country of more than 250 cultures, rapidly expanding population, varying and competing religions, and intolerably high youth unemployment. Will something give?

    The country is not only in ferment, it is seething. It is time the government recognised that these problems will not go away on their own accord or succumb to exhaustion. It will have to be more proactive, imaginative and aggressive to arrest what seems like a looming apocalypse. Of all the problems besetting the country, from Boko Haram to police killings, and from herdsmen versus farmers’ deathly struggles to boundary conflicts, and from communal wars to the gory sport of indiscriminate lynching and kidnapping, the government has solved none. Worse, there is nothing to show that these problems are receiving the intelligent attention that gives hope the country would overcome its afflictions soon. This must be the worst powder keg any nation can sit on.

     

  • Mo Ibrahim Index: Africa’s famished leadership landscape

    Mo Ibrahim Index: Africa’s famished leadership landscape

    It must be embarrassing to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and humiliating to the African continent that no one was found eligible this year to be awarded the Mo Ibrahim Prize for good governance, which is given annually to a democratically elected leader who voluntarily quits office after registering great impact on his country. The award was instituted in 2006 by the communications entrepreneur and billionaire businessman of Sudanese origin, Mo Ibrahim. So far, only three former leaders have won the $5 million prize: Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique (2007), Festus Mogae of Botswana (2008), and Pedro Pires of Cape Verde (2011). In the past four years, there has been only one winner, with the foundation declaring that it failed to give it in 2009, 2010, and now 2012 because it would not compromise leadership excellence, which the prize rewards.

    Along with the inability of the foundation to give the award this year, it also issued its report on good governance, which it said reflected only a marginal improvement over previous years. Entitled the Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), it uses 88 indicators supplied by 23 independent data providers from inside and outside Africa. The foundation reports, among other things: “While governance continues to improve in many countries, some of Africa’s regional powerhouses – Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa – have shown unfavourable governance performance since 2006. Over the past six years, all four countries have declined in two of the four main IIAG categories – Safety & Rule of Law and Participation & Human Rights. Each of these four countries deteriorated the most in the Participation sub-category, which assesses the extent to which citizens have the freedom to participate in the political process. South Africa and Kenya have also registered declines in Sustainable Economic Opportunity. And Nigeria, West Africa’s powerhouse, has for the first time this year fallen into the bottom ten governance performers on the continent.”

    While the four powerhouses have proved a major disappointment to many analysts, Nigeria is understandably the main focus for Nigerians. It would have been a surprise to rate Nigeria highly given how brutish life has become in the country. It is hoped that rather than join issues with the foundation, Nigerian leaders, particularly their abrasive and unrestrained spokesmen, would see the report as a true reflection of the situation in the country and an encouragement to spare no effort at reversing the negative image insecurity, destabilisation of the judiciary, extra-judicial killings, and political exclusion have brought upon her.

    South Africa’s poor rating is also not surprising, as readers of this column must have expected. This column in 2008, it will be recalled, regretted the leadership change in South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) that brought in Mr Jacob Zuma, whom it described as distracted and sometimes frivolous, in place of the aloof intellectual, Mr Thabo Mbeki. Almost immediately Zuma became President of South Africa in 2009, his country’s image began to fare very badly in the face of his superficiality, social indiscretions and political blunders.

    As the Mo Ibrahim Prize indicates, Africa is indeed a famished continent with few leaders of enviable reputation. Increasingly, the Foundation will find it harder to give the prize, and harder still not to lower its standards or compromise excellence as it vowed. Take Nigeria, for instance. In its more than five decades of independence, it has had only one leader out of 13 who vacated office in line with constitutional provisions – Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. But if Obasanjo fooled himself that he left office willingly, or that, as his praise singers chorused, he impacted positively on the country in line with the Mo Ibrahim Index, he fooled no one else. He left office groaning so loudly that the whole world noticed his pains. Even if the African leadership award were to suffer some little compromise and he was favourably considered, Hardball would himself lead the protest.

     

  • Budget wars

    Budget wars

    For many months before President Goodluck Jonathan finally read the 2013 budget estimates, the National Assembly had been squirming over what they described as poor implementation of the 2012 budget. The legislators became so angry that for a time it was believed they were unwilling to have the president present the budget. There were even parliamentary discussions suggesting the National Assembly would first undertake a tour of the country to assess how well the president implemented the outgoing budget, before he was given a hearing. Eventually, the budget was presented last week, but not without its dramatic moments, some of which were captured by the press. The president, it was reported, uncharacteristically and directly requested for copies of the scathing speeches made by the Senate President David Mark and Speaker of the House of Representatives Aminu Tambuwal on the federal government’s indefensible budgetary habits. A surprised and embarrassed Tambuwal was said to have demurred, but finally surrendered his copy to the president.

    In their remarks, Mark pledged to Jonathan and all Nigerians that the legislature would not “robotically pass the budget estimates as presented,” while Tambuwal groaned that the president had not impressed anyone in implementing the 2012 budget. These remarks have in turn triggered another firestorm. Heralding the storm was the veritable storm trooper himself, aka attack dog, Dr Doyin Okupe, a presidential assistant newly recruited and dying to prove himself and justify his wages. He berated both Mark and Tambuwal for nursing unrealistic expectations of the 2012 budget, and for speaking, according to him, indecorously to the president. In any case, he summed up patronisingly, the remarks were not necessary, for the president had presented a “masterly” budget.

    Had the cantankerous Okupe remembered that neither Mark nor Tambuwal suffer fools gladly, perhaps he would have been more restrained in waving a red rag to two bulls at the same time, with Tambuwal even more bullish than the average. Predictably, the two top legislators have taken up the challenge with alacrity and have thundered their own replies. Mark described Okupe as meddlesome, acerbic and dedicated to making enemies for the president rather than friends. It will be recalled that on an earlier incident, in which Okupe spoke defiantly to the Senate leadership, Mark had characterised the presidential assistant as someone who spoke before thinking. With his latest attack on the National Assembly leadership, that unflattering impression of Okupe will now naturally endure in the Senate. On his own, Tambuwal described Okupe as ignorant, uncouth, disrespectful and overzealous. That image of Okupe will not change in a million years in the House of Representatives.

    If Okupe’s manners grate on the nerves of the National Assembly leadership, it is probably music to the ears of his employers who recruited him to pep up the communication world in the presidency, a world that had threatened to mummify in airy intellectualism, somnolence and pacifism. Aah, that sanguine feeling; there is nothing like descending to the mire and becoming down-to-earth pugnacious. For the presidency, here at last was their Java man, the missing link whom archaeologists describe as Pithecanthropus erectus. If his employers are satisfied with his combativeness, who cares what anyone thinks?

    Among other issues, the real budget fight will be over the $80 oil benchmark proposed by the National Assembly, as against the $75 suggested by the Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Her arguments are simple but apocalyptic. If $80 benchmark is used, she warns, it will fuel inflation, devalue the naira, lower savings, and reduce investments. She has not offered convincing proof how these scary scenarios will come about, or why it has to be $75 benchmark and not $70 or even $60. All she knows is that the wizards who drafted the budget used realistic economic model and standard technique common to commodity-dependent countries. So far, the legislators are unimpressed. More, they have threatened that the budget dispute would not be considered as a family affair. Read that to mean war – a war Tambuwal cheekily suggested should help the president to be a better man in delivering the dividends of democracy and implementing budget proposals.

     

     

  • Love affair between books and controversies

    Love affair between books and controversies

    There is perhaps no fate worse for a book than when it is ignored. If it is savaged by critics, some may even argue it is precisely the adrenaline it needs to thrive in the market. But when it is truly and sensationally controversial, well, the author’s dream will appear fulfilled. Ultimately, however, whether controversial or at first ignored, it is always difficult to tell how a book would fare in the market in the long run. For there is usually no proof the long run would not come well after the demise of the author. It may be too early to tell what will become of the new Chinua Achebe book, There Was A Country, but at least for now, no matter how bilious some literary critics think its content is, the controversial book will not be ignored. In Nigeria itself, it has raised a storm, with real and imitation critics polarised essentially along ethnic lines. But polarisation notwithstanding, both classes of critics will certainly not ignore the book, and to that extent, it is likely to receive some moderate to good amount of commercial attention.

    Except where an author sets out deliberately to be a woeful failure, the first principle to publishing success is for the author to shock the public with either too much logic and fair amount of truth or too little logic and outright fatuousness. The jury is still out on the Achebe book. But connoisseurs of great literature will recall instances of controversial books that became popular, thereby establishing the link between controversy and popularity. Take John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, a social commentary on the economic plight of poor farmers in the United States in the 1930s, for instance. The Times of London had this to say of the book published in 1939: “It is one of the most arresting [novels] of its time.” Newsweek magazine described it as a “mess of silly propaganda, superficial observation, careless infidelity to the proper use of idiom, tasteless pornographic and scatological talk.” On the other hand, a New York Times reviewer suggested that “Steinbeck has written a novel from the depths of his heart with a sincerity seldom equalled. It may be an exaggeration, but it is the exaggeration of an honest and splendid writer.” But the Associated Farmers of California, displeased with the book’s depiction of California farmers, denounced it mercilessly as a “pack of lies…and communist propaganda.”

    The result was that in some places the book was burnt, and it even led to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) putting surveillance on Steinbeck who was considered a communist agent on account of the book. The Grapes of Wrath later won the Pulitzer Prize, sold 4.5 million in the US alone, and about 14 million worldwide. Consider also D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Sons and Lovers, two novels either censored or banned because of their explicit sexual content. And who could ignore James Joyce’s Ulysses that drove many into fury because of its egregious reference to masturbation? It suffered an obscenity prosecution, was banned in some places, and was for a long time not even available in Ireland, where Joyce hailed from.

    Achebe’s latest work is unlikely to witness more than the controversy that has greeted it so far. There will be no burning, banning or censoring. But for him, it will be a controversy that warms the cockles of the heart. There are millions of books either ignored or completely forgotten today. Whether There Was A Country will be forgotten on a distant tomorrow cannot now be determined, especially considering its contribution to Nigeria’s civil war literature. In view of the fame of the author, even if the book’s accuracy is repeatedly and brutally called to question, as it is now, it is certain there will always be references made to it now and in the distant future. Achebe’s name guarantees that; as he becomes the latest quintessential example of the troubling love affair between books and controversies.

  • Symbolism of Malala’s shooting in Pakistan

    Symbolism of Malala’s shooting in Pakistan

    On October 9, Pakistani Taliban shot and wounded a 14-year-old girl, Malala Yousafzai, for campaigning for girls’ education in the formerly notorious Swat Valley in Northwest Pakistan. The shooting, according to reports, has outraged the world and incensed the normally indifferent but violent Pakistani society which has connived at extremism for so long and even yielded supinely to the disruptive and atavistic campaigns of non-secular groups. The Swat Valley, it will be recalled, was invaded and occupied by the Taliban for two years between 2007 and 2009. Under the Taliban, who operate in Pakistan and Afghanistan, girls’ education is violently detested, and girls must go to extreme and dangerous lengths to receive education, sometimes on pain of death. But in spite of being driven out from the region, the Taliban still muster a lot of power to cause the kind of harm to which Malala was subjected early last week.

    It is an irony that the education many societies, including Nigeria, take for granted, comes at a terrible price for many others like Malala. Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman of the Taliban, was quoted as saying the schoolgirl activist would be targeted again if she survives her current ordeal. There are probably millions like her in Pakistan and Afghanistan who would give an eye and an arm to receive the education that has become considerably cheapened in countries like Nigeria. They go to secret schools by day or by night depending on which option presents the least possible target for the Taliban enforcers. Consequently, they value the little education they receive, and agonise over an uncertain future in which the schisms in their society, which manifests in the struggle between modernism and traditionalism, portend grave danger for female education.

    If we recollect that the Taliban movement nearly took hold in Northern Nigeria through the efforts of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram (Western education is sin), it can best be imagined, given the Pakistani experience, how dangerously close we sailed near the wind some six to seven years ago. For Nigeria, the danger is by no means over. But beyond the danger constituted to education by various extremist groups, or the saddening fact that the low quality of Nigerian education has neither made democracy safe nor advanced the cause of tolerance, is the symbolic impact the Malala shooting is having on Pakistan itself. The Asian country has now seemed to wake up horrified to the dangers of continuing to indulge both cultural and religious extremism, and is cobbling together a preliminary consensus against the kind of violence meted out to Malala.

    Whether Pakistan can harness the present outrage against the shooting to defeat the cancer of intolerance that has eaten deep into their society is another thing, for extremism has already taken root in that beleaguered country. Abrogating girls’ education is merely a manifestation of the extremism which societies in the region have either gladly embraced or reluctantly succumbed to. Much more importantly, the shooting of Malala is a natural progression from the regimen of extremism enthroned by the Pakistani government. Extremists are insatiable. From one little concession, they have mastered the art of asking for a dozen more, until there are no more concessions to be solicited or given. In the final analysis, extremists always seek the overthrow of an existing order. Pakistan is today suffering the pangs of the abnormality its weak and compromised elite have allowed to fester. Nigeria should learn from Pakistan’s tragedy.

  • An unusual Nobel Prize

    An unusual Nobel Prize

    This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been won by Sir John Gurdon, 79. He shares the prize with the Japanese scientist, Professor Shinya Yamanaka. The Nobel Prize Committee praised Gurdon for “…revolutionising (the world’s) understanding of how cells and organisms develop.” Yamanaka, it was noted, built on Gurdon’s work. But the two, said the Committee, “discovered that mature, specialised cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body.” As revolutionary as this discovery was, the unusualness in the prize comes from the fact that Gurdon was very nearly not a scientist but for his perseverance. He may have shown the world a deeper understanding of cell genetics, and is properly considered the godfather of cloning and stem-cell therapy, but much more importantly, he has shown the world the virtues of fortitude and belief in self.

    Back to Eton College in the 1940s, where Gurdon schooled. After having consistently failed to impress in his academic work, his science teacher described him unflatteringly as follows: “It has been a disastrous half (that is, midterm). His work has been far from satisfactory. His prepared stuff has been badly learnt, and several of his test pieces have been torn over; one of such pieces of prepared work scored 2 marks out of a possible 50. His other work has been equally bad, and several times he has been in trouble, because he will not listen, but will insist on doing his work in his own way. I believe he has ideas about becoming a scientist; on his present showing this is quite ridiculous, if he can’t learn simple Biological facts he would have no chance of doing the work of a Specialist, and it would be share waste of time, both on his part, and of those who have to teach him.”

    Perhaps you think such dismissiveness is too brutal to be repeated elsewhere. However, consider former US President Richard Nixon’s account of his discussions with a Chinese educator during a trip to China. The subject of the discussion was Britain’s one-time Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. Wrote Nixon in his book, Leaders: “It is well known that Churchill, like Einstein, was a mediocre student in his early years. One of his tutors observed, ‘That lad couldn’t have gone through Harrow School, he must have gone under it.’ In China or the Soviet Union he would not have been selected as one of the elite who are sent on for higher education and given an important position in government or industry. On one of my trips to Beijing a Chinese educator told me with pride that all children in China are guaranteed a free elementary education. When they finish grammar school, he went on, they are given a comprehensive examination, and only those who pass are allowed to go on to higher grades. Those who fail are sent to work in the factories or on the farms. He then added wistfully, ‘Under our system we provide better education for the masses, but we lose our Churchills.’”

    Gurdon, Churchill and Einstein remind parents of the sleepless nights they sometimes have to endure, and the frustrating battles they often must wage to get their children up to par in their studies. What parent does not dread the day a son would give up in frustration and opt for either music, with all the uncertainties of success, or football, with all the broken bones and shattered dreams, or simply embrace hooliganism, often with the certainty of ending in prison? How many parents do not fear the day a teenage daughter would come home with pregnancy or ask for early marriage instead of facing the drudgery of hard study? Gurdon’s and Churchill’s teachers, like many frustrated parents, were quite sure their two students would not amount to much in life, and they said so with harsh unambiguity. Often such views became self-fulfilling prophecies; except the students themselves, like Gurdon and Churchill, exercised irrepressible belief in self. And like the Chinese educator asked rhetorically, how many of such children had been inadvertently sent to the garbage heap, assured that they were irreparably damaged goods?

    Confronted with underperforming children, parents should encourage themselves in the life stories of Gurdon, Churchill and Einstein. There are hundreds of thousands of laggards turned geniuses out there whose stories never made it to the front pages of newspapers, but whose lives have become an inspiration to youths everywhere, neighbours and contemporaries. It is for such unsung heroes and their longsuffering parents that Gurdon’s unusual Nobel Prize must be dedicated.

  • National broadcast? Press release would have been sufficient

    National broadcast? Press release would have been sufficient

    Some five or so weeks after many communities across the country were overwhelmed by flood, President Goodluck Jonathan has finally taken what seems to his government urgent steps in ameliorating the effects of the unprecedented disaster. He had earlier sent a technical committee to assess the damage and to prepare an interim report. After deliberating on the report and having presented it to those he described as stakeholders, the president yesterday morning announced through a national broadcast the provision of N17.6 billion to tackle the problem. The money is to be shared among the 36 states and a few relevant federal agencies involved in disaster management. In the broadcast, the president sent word he would be visiting some of the affected communities, while a team of financial heavyweights has also been constituted to raise more money for the purpose.

    It is not exactly clear why the president felt a national broadcast was in order merely to announce the provision of N17.6bn to the 36 states. Was it to lend seriousness to the disaster or to give an impression that the problem required such attention that only a broadcast could convey? If the president thought the problem grave enough, should he not have visited a few of the ravaged communities immediately he returned from addressing the 67th General Assembly of the United Nations late September? The president is of course at liberty to apportion his time as he deems fit, but there are not many Nigerians who would have objected to their president visiting some of the flood-ravaged states. And judging from the enormity of the problem and its urgency, and the rather disproportionately niggardly sum the president has set aside for the task, a common press release announcing the federal government’s contribution would have been more than sufficient.

    In the 20 paragraphs broadcast, the president said virtually nothing about the even more frightening cataclysm of impending food shortages, nor of how it would be mitigated both in the medium run and in the next planting season. It is bad enough that weeks after the flood, he is still proposing a visit to affected communities. But his refusal to say something concrete about what he intends to do both to tackle a possible food crisis and to ensure the availability and distribution of seedlings for the next farming season, and his inability to acknowledge the threat food shortages could pose to national security at a time of sundry and ubiquitous terrorist threats, is truly befuddling.

    The president is probably unable to gauge when a national broadcast is appropriate. Yes, he was expected to let his countrymen know what he wanted to do on the flood problem, but if he must make a broadcast, they also expected him to talk stirringly about the October 1 massacre of some 40 students at the Federal Polytechnic, Mubi, Adamawa State, and to also visit the school and the host community. Nigerians also hoped he would say something quite deep about the University of Port Harcourt students who were lynched near their school, and then pay the four grieving families a visit and swear that such would never happen again under his watch.

    Instead, Dr Jonathan has offered us an unappealing and needless broadcast, and has found it difficult to correctly judge when to stir himself sufficiently to hit the road. He is a top politician, and he is president of the country upon whose shoulders all our troubles, hopes and disappointments rest. He should not be told how to discharge the responsibilities of that great office or when to mollify the pains and sorrows of his people.