The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Uniport killings: In the name of God, let this be the last

    Uniport killings: In the name of God, let this be the last

    No one who has watched the video clip of the lynching of three University of Port Harcourt (Uniport) students and a yet-to-be-identified fourth youth at Omuokiri village near the campus can fail to be truly and deeply horrified by the depth of barbarism we seem to be capable of plumbing in Nigeria. To describe the lynching as gruesome and stomach-churning is an understatement. Now, imagine that parents and relations of the victims also watched the video and saw how their loved ones were horrifically put to death, and you may begin to vicariously feel not only a sense of loss and hopelessness, but a sense of despair as to how alone and unprotected the Nigerian citizen truly is.

    The three Uniport students and the fourth youth were beaten to pulp and burnt to death last week by members of the Aluu community in Omuokiri. The students have been identified by the school authorities as Biringa Lordson, a 200-level theatre arts student; Ugonna Obuzor, a 200-level student of Geology; and Mike Toku, 200-evel civil engineering. The fourth victim, Tekena Erikena, had yet to be properly identified, said the university vice chancellor, Professor Joseph Ajienka.

    Nigerians have always suspected that such barbarism was commonplace in their country, what with the disturbing news of frequent extra-judicial killings and officially-sanctioned torture by security agents, as documented by international organisations and local civil society groups. Their suspicions have now been confirmed. But the Uniport video also brings it home graphically to everyone just how irresponsible we have become in putting up with such abhorrent practices over the years, whether they were committed officially by government agents or carried out by private entities such as vigilance groups and ethnic militias.

    The video of the lynching has gone viral on the Internet. It will confirm to the world the bestiality they always felt we were capable of. It will also diminish us in the estimation of the world. Coming barely a week after the cold-blooded murder of over 40 students in Mubi, Adamawa State, Nigerians must be forgiven if they wonder whether their country is not much closer to the precipice than most people imagine. We must also wonder, as indeed this column asked after the Mubi massacre, how much more the country, particularly youths, can take.

    In the name of God, the federal government must seize this occasion of the Uniport killings to make it the last time extra-judicial killings and other bestial practices would be tolerated. It is not enough for the police to bring the perpetrators to book; the president must recognise that the Uniport killings have raised national revulsion to fever pitch deserving of his personal attention and strong policy initiative.

    Whether the murdered students actually stole laptops and phones as alleged by their tormentors, or they were robbers or cultists as some others claimed, is completely beside the point. The government must come up with firm initiatives to eradicate cultism from campuses, put a complete stop to extra-judicial killings by agents of the state, halt torture as a means of extracting confession from suspects, and put an end to the degrading treatment citizens publicly suffer at the hands of security agents, all of which have spurred the country’s rapid and seemingly inexorable descent to anarchy and barbarism.

     

     

  • Obama/Romney: The sense and nonsense of polemics

    Obama/Romney: The sense and nonsense of polemics

    By popular acclamation, President Barack Obama of the United States lost the first round of the presidential debate to his Republican Party challenger, Mitt Romney. Two more rounds of the debate are outstanding before the November polls. In that first round, Obama was said to have debated like a bored university lecturer, while Romney went in like an aggressive bull ready to do battle. Both incumbent and challenger stretched their stories exceedingly tall and ladled out inaccuracies like confetti, but Romney disrespected facts and figures much more, in fact far worse than our own President Goodluck Jonathan did with the Transparency International (TI) figures. Democratic Party faithful expect Obama to be ruthless in the next two rounds of the debate, that is, assuming his genial nature will permit him to bite in the clinches.

    Romney’s performance has predictably revived his chances in the November poll, and he will seek to press home the advantage. If Obama is not to be buried alive, he must bring his talents as a law professor to bear, for now more than ever he needs them. But that precisely is where the problem lies. Polemics is by no means an easy art, as indeed many victims of unsparing polemical pugilism can testify. Victory in polemics does not always go to the most astute, most intelligent, most oratorical, for polemics consists of dangerous chemical and metaphysical elements with unpredictable properties. Even if it were listed on the periodic table, anyone who succumbs to polemical defeat would still be unable to fathom what hit him or what the properties of the elements are.

    The inimitable Mark Twain captures for posterity one such polemical disaster as contained in the story of Abelard and Heloise in Chapter XV of his book, Innocents Abroad. It is a love story between a cold-hearted and ungrateful priest, Abelard, and a trusting, warm and innocent nun, Heloise, whose passionate love was unrequited. In the end Abelard betrayed Heloise, and he in turn was vanquished by a skilful debater called St.Bernard at the debating ground – fittingly, said Mark Twain. Hear Twain: “Abelard, a man of splendid talents, and ranking as the first debater of his time, became timid, irresolute, and distrustful of his powers. He only needed a great misfortune to topple him from the high position he held in the world of intellectual excellence, and it came. Urged by kings and princes to meet the subtle St. Bernard in debate and crush him, he stood up in the presence of a royal and illustrious assemblage, and when his antagonist had finished he looked about him and stammered a commencement; but his courage failed him, the cunning of his tongue was gone: with his speech unspoken, he trembled and sat down, a disgraced and vanquished champion.”

    The effect polemical defeat has on the vanquished is akin to a crushing defeat suffered by a politician at the polls: both would rather die than live, for such defeats, having been publicly delivered, are impossible to live down. Obama probably did not experience a crushing blow to the medulla, but there is no doubt he knew he was thrashed, a fact that two-thirds of the 58 million people who watched the debate conceded. Too many people have had their reputations ruined on the debating ground. The sensible thing to do, therefore, is to avoid being pinned down to a formal debate. Nigerian politicians are adept at doing this. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo avoided the Yale-educated Chief Olu Falae of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) in the aborted 1999 presidential debate; Umaru Yar’Adua scorned Abubakar Atiku in 2007; and both Muhammadu Buhari and Dr Goodluck Jonathan simply ignored the Young Turks of the opposition in the 2011 debate.

    Romney may have outperformed Obama last week, but America would be the poorer with him as president, as indeed the country was under George W. Bush. And as many women whose chastity and reputations have been ruined by smooth-talking men can attest, the most oratorical is often the most avidly libertine. If Obama does not turn the table against Romney in the next rounds, he must pray that Americans become as sturdy as Nigerians who in the First and Second Republics relished the oratory of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe on the stump but still went ahead remorselessly to vote for their candidates and champions.

  • Mubi massacre: Just how much more can the nation take?

    Mubi massacre: Just how much more can the nation take?

    The full scale of the Mubi, Adamawa State, killings will not sink in until inconsolable parents who lost loved ones begin to grieve openly. Some 40 youths, most of them students of the Federal Polytechnic, Mubi, were reportedly murdered by unknown gunmen who stole in on them while they slept in their off-campus hostels, and in spite of curfew. Preliminary reports indicate the students were shot only after their identities were ascertained. The motives are unclear. But it is feared the killings were probably a spinoff from the recently concluded students’ union elections in that school, a theory some students have dismissed as farcical. It may, however, be too early to dismiss any theory, including the sectarian motive insinuated by a few students. In the coming days, as the identities of the victims become known, the nation should be able to make sense of what happened on that bitter and rainy Monday night.

    As if anyone needed additional proof of Nigeria’s descent into bestiality, the sheer scale of the killings and the numbing fact that students were the principal victims have sealed the country’s notoriety as a modern-day killing fields. Inexplicable emotions follow the killing of students anywhere, almost akin to the strange emotions that follow the death of passengers in a plane crash, as if one type of death was less shocking or less honourable than the other. The Mubi horror will, therefore, probably assume more frightening dimensions in the days ahead. Though the country may have become inured to terror-related killings, it will nonetheless find out that the Mubi slaughter will be difficult to live down. Worse, the massacre may even begin to raise fears that terror killings, if they continue, could yet trigger something much more catastrophic for the nation, probably something even apocalyptic.

    Nigerians are predictably deeply outraged. That outrage will loom larger in the coming days as wrenching stories of family losses reach the media. The Senate was in fact so incensed by the barbarous display in Mubi that they began calling for sterner measures against the murderers. But in the din, it will be forgotten that terror killings and the outrage that follow have become a national pirouette from which the country is unlikely to extricate itself soon, particularly given the government’s desultory and sanguinary anti-terror measures. It will also be forgotten that by killing scores of students in one fell swoop, the perpetrators might in fact be modifying their tactics by shifting from attacking churches to attacking students. If the attacks on churches could not bring about the apocalypse they desired, then perhaps attacks on students might.

    What is clear in all this is not that Nigerians fail to show enough fortitude in the face of extreme provocations, or refuse to bear their periodic losses with dignified resignation. The main problem is that the government has not inspired much confidence, either by its methods or by its attitude. Yet, the people must nurse hope that there is light at the end of the dark terror tunnel. After all, it is one of the cardinal responsibilities of any government that in times of great crisis it must ensure the people see that reassuring light if they are not to yield to despair or, worse, engineer the fragmentation of their country.

  • Anyim takes on Osun

    Anyim takes on Osun

    If anyone is in doubt just how zealously the federal government treasures its capacity to nurse malice, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim, provides the perfect disillusionment. Late last week, when the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora paid him a visit, he betrayed his and, it seems, the government’s feelings on the supposedly rested but apparently still controversial issue of which takes grammatical and constitutional precedence over the other: the State of Osun or Osun State.

    A few months ago, it will be recalled, the country was set on edge by security reports suggesting that Osun was planning rebellion because it insisted that the state be henceforth called and regarded as the State of Osun, not Osun State, even as former documents remained valid. The security reports were too fantastic to be true, and so the matter came to an abrupt and comical end. Gingerly, Osun got to keep its newly adopted name, arguing that the constitution was silent on whether the name should be State of Osun or Osun State. Until the Anyim outburst, it was unknown to many that the federal government had merely gone underground with its malice and seethed dangerously like a volcano waiting to erupt.

    Finally, however, the dormant volcano spewed out its molten rock last week during the said visit. A member of the committee from Osun, Hon Ajiboye Famurewa (ACN), had introduced himself as the member from the State of Osun. This became a red rag to a bull. Hear Anyim: “That is unconstitutional. Let me also say, even though in a lighter mood, that the ‘State of Osun’ issue should be a serious matter. We should not trivialise issues regarding our nationhood. Particularly, where it could be misinterpreted and where it could affect the unity of the country. The constitutional name for each state should be upheld more particular by parliamentarians. Ordinary local politicians can try to politick with it, but not those of you who are to keep the country in shape and in firm stand. But, I think that there is nothing like the ‘State of Osun’ in the Constitution, we have Osun State, just like any other state. And we should honour our constitution that is the foundation of the basis of patriotism in the first place. We must have faith in our nation; we must have faith in our constitution. We must live it, we must preach it and we must act it. The ‘State of Osun’ is not in the constitution, it is Osun State.”

    First, State of Osun or Osun State is nothing but six of one and half a dozen of the other. The constitution, Osun argues, lists the names of state without saying whether ‘State of’ should come before or ‘state’ should come after. Why make a big issue out of it? Is it names of states that threaten national security or that recurring nightmare, Boko Haram, and its killing spree? Second, even though the federal government has the right to hanker after uniformity, it was deeply embarrassing to see Anyim speak down to the legislator, as if a colonial officer was reprimanding an ignorant native. It is unbelievable how legislators can sometimes be so tolerant.

    The federal government can pursue its nomenclatural games as fiercely as it wants, but the Anyim outburst reveals in all its ugliness just how perniciously that unseemly colonial mindset has permeated the thinking and perspectives of government officials. That kind of thinking makes nonsense of democracy and gives the unwholesome impression that the government is loth to relinquish its archaic privileges. But much worse, and this is not to denigrate Anyim’s learning, the outburst indicates that Nigerian leaders are still incapable, in spite of all their education, of deep reflection and proper understanding of the fact that leaders are in government to serve.

  • The president misreads history again

    The president misreads history again

    Nobody is at liberty to interpret history anyhow. But on Sunday, President Goodluck Jonathan, in yet another of his delectable extemporaneous speeches, did just that. The occasion was the 52nd Independence Anniversary interdenominational church service in Abuja, and the theme of the service was: “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal.” His interesting remarks, which were a mixture of historical lessons, political science and exegetics, took the congregation on a trip through the rebuilding of Jerusalem by the Jewish leader, Nehemiah, as recorded in the 16th book of the Bible. Nehemiah, who was probably a eunuch, occupied the privileged position of royal cupbearer to the Persian king, Artaxerxes. He was among those who superintended the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, and succeeded Zerubabel as governor of the great city.

    Only the President could tell why he was fascinated with the story of Nehemiah, especially considering that what is broken about Nigeria is not just the wall of Nigeria, that is, metaphorically speaking, nor were Nigerians ever carried away in captivity, except of course by their Nigerian rulers, again metaphorically speaking. The President knows that of all the criticisms meted out to him, the greatest is that he and his predecessors have inflicted misery and pain on the people. Anyway, the understanding is that in the general sense, the President draws a parallel between the current misery in Nigeria with the misery experienced by the returning Jewish exiles and the remnant left in the Holy City.

    But far more puzzling than the inapplicability of the Nehemiah story is his inaccurate reading of the demands human societies make on their leaders. The President had posited that he alone could not solve Nigeria’s problems. Consequently, he said, he would need the support of all Nigerians, perhaps such as Nehemiah and his fellow elders received in rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem. The President was right to ask for support, but he was wrong to assume one person could not change Nigeria. Let us hear the President first. According to him, “leadership at all levels is collective. One person cannot change a nation. Agreed the leader matters, but he cannot change things alone. All of us Nigerians must work together to rebuild our nation. Our men and women will change things in this country. There are so many Nehemiahs in the National Assembly, the Federal Executive Council, our judiciary, our teachers, businessmen and women and I believe God will use these Nehemiahs to rebuild the country.”

    This column will not advise Jonathan to be immodest, but it will ask him to remember the biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar who boasted, “…Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?” If the President read history well, he would also remember other great leaders who changed their nations by the sheer force of their personalities and visions. Has he not heard of Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Marshall Tito, Genghis Khan, Suleiman the Magnificent, and Winston Churchill, among others? Has he not also heard of Askia Mohammed the Great, Mansa Musa, Samori Toure, Shaka the Zulu, Uthman dan Fodio? Changing a nation actually starts with one man; it is nothing more than superfluous to tell future generations the support such leaders received or how that support was evoked.

    The problem, it seems, is that Jonathan finds the task of “empire building” unpleasant and unbearably demanding. Since he often can’t see the wood for the trees, it is not surprising that he sees criticisms as distracting and destructive. This is why columnists like Hardball draw his ire. It is sheer escapism for Jonathan to hide behind the lack of popular support to explain his inability to proceed swiftly in “rebuilding the wall” of Nigeria. No one is interested in how he gets the people’s support. All Nigerians demand of their President is that he should quit himself like a strong man and courageously offer the visionary leadership the country deserves. How he mobilises the people is his business. If the vision he has for Nigeria burns with enough amperage within him, nobody will teach him to walk or dare alone if need be.

     

  • At 52, hope deferred, betrayed or made forlorn

    At 52, hope deferred, betrayed or made forlorn

    In an article published in 1997 by Professor J.F Ade.Ajayi, historian and former vice chancellor, the disconnects suffered by countries which pretend ignorance of their histories were examined. Entitled The Rearview Mirror, he wondered how any society could hope to make progress and confidently face the future when it did not consider where it had been or where it was coming from. He thought it weird that any society could attempt to build something on nothing. The eminent historian’s discursive essay comes to mind today as Nigeria struggles to make meaning of its existence and independence. It has been 52 long years of groggy presence on the world stage, underachieving, wasting and draining its potentials. It is imbued with unquantifiable talents, its children among the world’s best, but in vain it waits for the harnesser to bridge the gulf between its past and present, and bring together in one powerful and mesmerising whole the energies this most vibrant of societies is capable of.

    Alas, instead, the country has trudged forward as if it is only the present that matters, as if both the past and future menace its existence. The lessons of the past seem lost in its history books and dog-eared files of dispirited bureaucrats. Not even its leaders appeal to the past, nor dare hope for a glorious future beyond what they could pay lip service to. Nigeria’s age distribution shows the country is disproportionately young, with most of its elected officials and workers, including civil servants, born after independence. But the courage, stamina and adventurousness associated with the young have either been lacking in the developmental battles the country is waging or are completely misdirected. Indeed, no country has seemed so capable of harbouring virtue and villainy in one exquisite whole as Nigeria. It has produced world-class academicians in the arts and the sciences; but it has also concocted, for want of a more appropriate word, the crassest opportunists and global renegades.

    In spite of making major contributions to the knowledge industry, it periodically fails in its greatest moments of distress to rationally examine its own problems or proffer sensible solutions. It reels from poll parroting alien and inapplicable dogmas to embracing half-baked and sometimes monstrous homegrown theories. Perhaps now is the time for Nigerian leaders to honestly come to terms with their failures and deficiencies, especially seeing what horrendous aftereffects these have imposed on the country and its people. It begins with rejigging its education and returning its schools to world-class status. It won’t be easy, and change won’t come in a hurry. This should, however, be followed by a deliberate effort to harness the intellectual capabilities of experts and applying their ideas to the problems confronting the country.

    Surely, after living in denial for so long, demonstrating appalling lassitude, and fiddling as the country burns, it must be time to put an end to the dithering that has moved the country closer to the precipice. Let the people talk and kick-start the process of re-engineering their country away from its dysfunctional structure; and let them determine whether they want to stay together and if so, work out what they want to give up in order to stay together peacefully. Let them begin to address the fact that this and previous generations have betrayed the country either by their indolence or by their cowardice, and that if the future of coming generations is to be secured, if the coming generations are to remain competitive on the harsh world stage, the sacrifices required to guarantee these advantages must be made now and the price paid in full by those who seem determined to wipe out that future.

  • So, Labaran Maku talks nineteen to the dozen

    So, Labaran Maku talks nineteen to the dozen

    Senate President David Mark was charitable early in the week when he described Information minister, Mr Labaran Maku, as a mere careless talker. Judging from the high voltage of his anger, he could very well have described the minister in more uncharitable terms. After all, this was not the first time the Senate would lose its temper in the face of ministerial bluffing, as Mallam Nasir el-Rufai and Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi can affirm. Maku had last week described the resolution passed by an angry Senate against the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) plan to print N5000 banknote as advisory and not binding. Convinced they were not in the upper legislative chamber to market jokes, the Senate invited the minister to explain himself. A contrite Maku, who had no wish to grandstand like el-Rufai, told the Senate, as any repentant careless talker would always do, that he held the upper chamber in high esteem.

    It is a pity Mark offered us no assistance in documenting some of the careless talk Maku had engaged in prior to the Senate hoopla. But there is no doubt both the Senate and the public must have formed the unfavourable impression the minister actually talks nineteen to the dozen. Mark’s putdown resonated with the public, and it was accepted with relish. It will be recalled that the minister was voluble in the days fuel subsidy protest lasted, when he showed how fondly he loved to hear himself speak, sometimes declamatorily on any subject, including economics and law. Though he was still measured in comparison with Dr Doyin Okupe, the now famous presidential attack dog (or lion, as the physician fantasises), but certainly not less melodramatic, he has managed to impress everyone how overflowing he can be when he puts his mind and energies to talking.

    Though Mark was unsparing, having described Maku as talking before thinking properly, he and the Senate were nonetheless eager to accept the minister’s apology. They however warned that ministers who talked carelessly henceforth would be recommended for sack. Had they been as angry now as they could have been when Sanusi, the CBN governor, suggested in a lecture on the economy that unreasonably too much was expended on the National Assembly, he would have been the first candidate for the legislature-induced sack. It is well known that when it comes to verbal waterfalls, few people can hold a candle to Sanusi.

    But how would the eminent Senate describe one of their own in the lower chamber, the veritable Niagara, Hon Patrick Obahiagbon? Hear him pontificate on the fuel subsidy protest early in the year, according to a popular quote: “I have read with a catalytic disgust, government’s asinine and puerile ratiocinations attempting to justiceate the proposed removal of subsidies from petroleum products. It has asseverated that its intention is guided by the need to checkmate the odoriferous excesses of a Machiavellian and Mephistophelean cabal, and I have said to myself, what a shame! What a self-indicting admittance of the failure of governance! What an hocus-pocus! What an anathemalous disdain for its citizenry!” Perhaps the honourable legislator was misquoted. Or perhaps he was just being deliberately entertaining, and is otherwise a reserved person who is sometimes inflated by a passion for explosive talk.

    Though Maku has responded to Mark’s gentle rebuke by quickly apologising, it is not clear whether he understands that the Senate expects him to put a tougher leash on his natural tendency to “shoot before aiming.” But he shouldn’t feel too bad; he is in good company with most of humanity whose natural tendency is to be talkative both to nourish their egotism and to underscore their argumentativeness.

  • Boko Haram: Multifaceted approach or indecision?

    Boko Haram: Multifaceted approach or indecision?

    In his address to the 67th United Nations General Assembly, President Goodluck Jonathan said, among other things, that peaceful ways of resolving conflicts were less costly and more effective. In a general sense, he is right; except that the devil is in the detail. Conflicts, it is true, come in diverse forms, and the means of fighting or resolving them do not respond to a generic pattern. The President had declared in his UN address that, “our response to these (Boko Haram and other conflicts in Nigeria) has been multifaceted, as we seek to address the root causes of these threats, exploring opportunities for dialogue, improving law enforcement to ensure public safety and security.” The President was very clever in lumping things together. Theoretically, the approach he enunciated before the UN is faultless. Most conflicts can only be resolved using a multifaceted approach, for as it is well known, they are often caused by a combination of factors.

    In the particular case of Boko Haram, though Jonathan was reluctant to describe the sect’s violence as terrorism in the truest sense of the word, it is, however, incontestable that its causes are rooted in socio-economic deprivation, general politics, and private and doctrinaire sectarian objectives. Analysts have in fact, failed to agree on the cause or combination of causes of the Boko Haram campaigns. The sect sometimes gives the impression it is fighting an unjust state that sanctions brutality and extra-judicial killings, and their arguments and facts make sense. At other times, however, it viciously fights innocent Nigerians opposed to its hate ideology or opposed to its leadership, and sometimes executes people its leaders claim misrepresent the sect. At yet other times, it has targeted Christians for no other reason than the fact that they belong to a different faith.

    There is no consensus among Nigerians on the factors that motivate the Boko Haram violence. Worse, the government, which should know better, has also reflected the general confusion by its inability to properly classify the sect or its methods. Since the Jonathan government has shown reluctance in describing the sect as a terrorist organisation, and because it even agrees with apologists to classify the sect into at least three categories of criminal, political and true Boko Haram, it is not surprising that there is no official consensus as to how to tackle the sect. It is this confusion that Jonathan reflected in his UN speech. But it is a confusion that only the equally clever can discern in his speech. The question the President has never answered and will never be able to answer is that aside from emotive considerations, in what ways are Boko Haram’s methods different from the typical terrorist’s?

    An appraisal of the President’s address shows only one thing: Jonathan has been unable to make up his mind whether to fight Boko Haram or placate it. Whatever fight he has sanctioned so far is only to the extent that the sect has failed to clearly accept the government’s olive branch. From all indications, the government has been too desperate to make peace with the sect than to soberly consider the moral dilemma involved in making peace with a violent organisation that levies war against the state and continues to terrorise and murder fellow citizens in cold blood.

  • More and more dysfunctional

    More and more dysfunctional

    Nigeria seems to be awash with small arms. Hardly a day passes without an announcement by the police of one seizure or another of arms and ammunition. The magnitude of each seizure often gives indication that the arms are certainly not meant for robbery or even kidnapping alone. Just this weekend, the Lagos State police announced the recovery of five rocket launchers, five dynamites, 11 General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), 250 loaded magazines and 17,000 rounds of ammunition from a house in Lagos. Early September, security agencies also announced the recovery of a cache of arms in Oraifite, Anambra State. In that instance, the police said, albeit with a dose of exaggeration, the Anambra seizure was substantial enough to defeat a small army. According to a newspaper report of the Oraifite seizure, the recovered arms, some of them in underground armoury, included 17 rockets, 13 rocket grenades, one rocket launcher, 27 AK-47 rifles, one K2 rifle, two other rifles, one general purpose machine gun, six pump action guns, three locally-manufactured guns, one Berretta pistol, and some 14,425 rounds of live ammunition. The seized weapons doubtless packed a hefty punch.

    The weapons recently recovered from both Lagos and Anambra States are merely examples of the ubiquitousness of light arms in the country. More pass through the eye of the needle than are seized by the authorities. The Boko Haram Islamic sect, which is waging a sectarian cum socio-economic insurgency in the northern part of the country, also packs an even deadlier punch than the arms seizure in the two states listed above. It does appear that no one can halt the flow of arms nor curb the criminal uses to which the weapons are being put virtually on a daily basis. Indeed, the problem of kidnapping, which feeds on light arms, has become so pervasive that it is even underreported, while the country has seemed to reconcile itself almost completely to the menace of armed robbery.

    The proliferation of light arms, whether they are able to defeat or pin down a small army or not, kidnapping and ethnic and sectarian violence obviously indicate that there is something fundamentally wrong with the country. Officials appear to scratch the problem only on the surface. There is neither a coherent nor intelligent attempt to decipher the problem, let alone proffer realistic and targeted solution. As a result, the country is getting more and more dysfunctional, and the problem will get worse with each passing month the government continues to apply the anodyne measures of sermonizing and police action.

    Perhaps the problem is fundamentally rooted in politics, especially the need to restructure the country away from the unitary system that masquerades in the 1999 constitution as federal, but which has proved unworkable and now even cancerous. Perhaps the country’s leaders, or those purporting to lead it, need to climb down from their high horses to acknowledge that it is time to sit down and discuss not only where we should go and how, but also who we really are, the resilience of the ties that bind us, and the nature of the factors that disunite us.

    There is no guarantee that the country’s present leaders have the courage to meet the tough questions and hard choices confronting Nigeria. There is also no proof they will not begin to scramble for solutions only when things begin to unravel. But if the country is to put a lid on the burgeoning forces tearing the nation asunder, forces that are deceptively manifesting as kidnapping, armed robbery and sectarian bloodletting, we must urgently draft bold, intelligent and honest leaders willing and competent to handle the national crisis threatening to undo us.

     

  • Senator Mark takes umbrage

    Senator Mark takes umbrage

    Responding to a newspaper report on the appalling state of the multi-billion naira National Stadium, Abuja, President of the Senate, David Mark, suggested last week that heads ought to have rolled if Nigerians had not become accustomed to mediocrity in everything. But heads wouldn’t roll, he regretted, in spite of the fact that “the National Stadium, Abuja, our supposed symbol of sporting excellence, was recently discovered to be decrepit, overtaken by weeds and reptiles.” Pointing to the abandonment of such a costly edifice, Mark declared that what worried him the most was that “our psyche is beginning to accept this malady as normal.” Then he summed it up: “Ordinarily, such an appalling state of affairs ought to have been followed by voluntary resignations or mass purges. Nobody has resigned, and nobody has been fired. Distinguished colleagues, there is no doubt that a drastic overhaul of our sports administration is long overdue.”

    The most remarkable thing about Mark’s bewilderment is his statement that our psyche has begun to assume that neglect and slothfulness were normal. It is understandable why the senate president took umbrage so dramatically. No one would see photographs of the neglected stadium and not feel scandalised. He was probably not exaggerating when he wondered why no one had been sacked over the matter, and why the situation had lasted as long as it did. He was also right to link the debacles in sporting competitions to uncommitted sports administrators, poor maintenance of facilities, mismanagement and corruption. He was indeed right to view recent failures in international sporting competitions, particularly the Olympics, as a reflection of our domestic troubles and inadequacies.

    But he was wrong to assert that our psyche was “beginning to accept the malady as normal.” Our psyche wasn’t just beginning to accept the malady as normal because of the decay and neglect of the stadium in Abuja. Maladies have been accepted as normal in Nigeria for a very long time, perhaps as long as the country’s independence. He was also wrong to have inferred the National Stadium in Abuja to be our only symbol of sporting excellence. Where would he place the National Stadium at Surulere in Lagos, which also suffers dire neglect? Where would he place the National Arts Theatre at Iganmu also in Lagos, which maintenance is done in fits and starts? What of the Nigerian Railways, Nigeria Airways, Nigerian National Shipping Lines, etc. all of which collapsed under the weight of neglect and corruption? Have we maintained the airports, though another 11 are to be built with Chinese loans simply so that we can have at least one airport to match the best in Europe, according to the Aviation Minister? What of the various expressways and grain silos? Malady, any type of malady, has long been accepted as normal in these climes.

    If Mark and his fellow legislators need real excuse to take umbrage, perhaps they should recruit an enterprising newshound to help them prepare a long list of projects long since abandoned by federal and state governments, complete with photographs. Thereafter, they should set aside a day of mourning and prepare to let the dams break. If the stadium in Abuja is too bushy for them to indulge their wailing, the country should be persuaded to build them a wailing wall, and lend them the dignified presence of the president and governors and other officials who have all contributed to turning the country into a barren landscape of abandoned and “decrepit” projects.