Category: Commentaries

Of recent, the media is once again aglow with the debate of why General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), the man many see as the ultimate saviour for this country, should, or should not give a shot at the presidency come 2015, once more. The debate, even if riddled with sentimentality, is obviously being upped to the ante of a critical national question at this juncture when all well-meaning Nigerians are dedicated to groping for alternative leadership for the country. While Femi Adesina’s thesis that many of those calling for Buhari to step aside are simply doing it because “they are afraid of him” may sound convincing, it is actually a fallacious stance – indeed a subtle blackmail to shut people with sincere interventions. For among Buhari’s sincerest admirers, there are quite a significant number of them who had a rethink, after Buhari’s failed attempt for the third time in 2011. To those Nigerians in this group, the General should quit the race and back someone who is credible and with competitive advantages to drive home victory. And there are many valid reasons for these calls, often hinged on the vulnerability of the Buhari brand which is so much damaged that many a Nigerian have been induced with doubts about the man. One needs no proof to back this claim as it has been proved time and again by the voting pattern from across the country.

It is therefore the saying that once beaten, twice shy that made people who were otherwise emotionally attached to the cause of Buhari to have a rethink. It is a consensus among most keen observers of Buhari’s foray into politics that serially losing the elections could not just be attributed to rigging. But instead of the General and his team to conduct self-searching introspection, they keep riding on the egoistic pony that he is being rigged out and his victory is assured in the next election. But this pressure on Buhari to contest again and again has since been discovered to be a fraudulent money spinner for some people who literally boxed him in a corner, massaging his ego for their own ends.

This is how for three consecutive times the General would contest and lose and commence a legal proceeding that has by now become synonymous with the man. The torturous litigation process, thanks to slow and cumbersome nature of Nigeria’s legal system, only further embitter the Buhari crowd as the courts throw out the petitions, time and again. Obviously frustrated, the man vowed not to stand for the elections again, after the 2011 elections. But his actions and words still point to the contrary. The pressure is also still there.

While some of us where happy that he was shedding off some of the people who have been his albatrosses since 2003, now a new set of converts – ex-PDP spin masters are forming another formidable shell around him. They are also coming with similar infamous agenda of his past lieutenants: pressurise the man to contest, print posters alongside him (or use his name to extort aspirants), carry him around to campaign for all manner of aspirants and use him to smuggle in or step down candidates.

Over the years, as he grudgingly moves from one electioneering marathon to another, the General keeps losing grip on what was once a cult-like follower-ship. While the impact is not readily visible among the grassroots crowd in the North, it has actually deflated among the ranks of people that matter – core politicians and strong supporters. The figure also keeps nose-diving in the South. What is the elixir for this? Buhari and his close circuit of associates would not want to find out.

As the Buhari aspiration debate heats up, leading into the General’s intervention late last week, one fundamental issue is what Eric Osagie raised in his recent column on Buhari – is the man indispensable? Yes, Nigerians overwhelmingly agree on and appreciate the man’s honesty and integrity. But is he the ONLY honest person among the 170 million of us, capable of leading the country? However, there is a section of his staunch supporters who -albeit dangerously- advance this line of thought. Such epithets should be drummed for dictators and emperors, not a democrat, even if a dilettante.

At over 70 years, Buhari cannot be said to be the best thing to happen to Nigeria if elected. The inevitability stunt was chanted for many past leaders and those who aspired to lead. They blacked out, Nigeria moved on. It is a brainless thought for anyone to think Buhari is the only competent and trustworthy Nigerian to lead the country. Indeed, even within the folds of his All Progressives Congress (APC), there are many well groomed people that could discharge such a responsibility as well as he could, or even better. But the blackmail that the ticket, and the competence, all belong to him, make many of them lie low.

Only last month, Abba Mahmood’s critical but honest essay, went viral on the social media. Mahmood, himself a staunch Buhari supporter, until lately, offered what many felt was an honest analysis of the situation and raised many questions that are at once vital and discomforting for those whose only route to fame and fortune is to fly under the wings of the General.

“If Buhari himself will be honest with himself,” Mahmood wrote, inter alia “he should own up that he is not what Nigeria needs, at least anymore. His 2015 candidature will be more of a distraction from main issues in a way that will allow incumbent forces a leeway back to power. Of course he can play a major role but his talk of if-my-party-fields-me-I will-contest is more of a forked tongue oratory than actual humility. It will not hurt him to admit that what Nigeria needs is not a man with a good image but someone who has a vision, and the energy and charisma to drive it; and that he is just not that person.”

Mahmood’s position above was re-echoed by Punch columnist, Abimbola Adunni Adelakun, who, writing under the title “The Honesty Buhari Needs”, argued that Buhari’s handlers should present something beyond personal integrity and honesty in selling the former head of state to Nigerians. While no one doubt those labels, it is a consensus that good leaders are not marked by their personal conduct, of their choice not to be corrupt, significant as that could be especially in the present day Nigeria. However, the stench is too much and the Augean staple could only be cleaned by someone who is firm, energetic, sincere and in sync with the current trends of governance here, and on the world stage not a septuagenarian who would only rely on second-hand submissions and ideas.

• Ahmed wrote from Wuse 2, Abuja.

Throughout the past week, I have been reading two different kinds of writings – one very sad, and the other exciting and futuristic. The first concerns what, in my opinion, amounts to a major retrogression in one of the few significant forward steps in Nigeria’s disheartening history. The other concerns thought-provoking pictures of the future of Black Africa.

First then, the sad stuff. I guess because I am a Yoruba man, and because I therefore believe that contact among peoples and cultures is progress for every culture and for mankind, I have been glad as my homeland, the Yoruba homeland in Nigeria, has increasingly and happily drawn people from the other parts of Nigeria and other parts of West Africa. Everything belonging to us Yoruba people have encouraged such attraction of folks from all over. Our ancient towns and cities (located at only short distances from one another), our cosmopolitan outlook, our hospitality to the stranger, and our culturally-based willingness and readiness to welcome, accept and include the foreigner, all these naturally have attracted lots of people to our land. So too has the important cultural fact that we, Yoruba people, are perhaps the world’s most sensible and most tolerant in matters of religion – that we do not grouse or fight over religious differences.

But now, from what I have been reading this week, I can see that there is now one foreign people that a very good number of the Yoruba people have, reluctantly, reached the point of not being able to continue to accept and include. I refer to the Igbo people. As the Igbo have come, and have shown a general inclination to insult their Yoruba hosts and to make all sorts of weird and absurd claims, most Yoruba people have tended to laugh off such insults and claims. But there seems to be no doubt now that the Igbo have pushed it far too far. Yorubaland is attractive because Yoruba people have spent many hundreds of years in history making it so. A lot of Yoruba people are now tired of the multiple pollution being imported into Yorubaland by the Igbo people. In general, the Yoruba are happy that many other peoples are coming to Yorubaland , and they desire that these other immigrants should be able to settle down peacefully, enjoy the benefits of Yoruba urban civilization, raise their families in a healthy atmosphere, prosper, and become major contributors to life in their new communities in Yorubaland. But more and more Yoruba people now have good reason to fear that the presence of the Igbo people threatens such noble desires and expectations. It is sad for me to see my naturally open and accommodating people being pushed by the Igbo people into paths that negate our culture.

The Igbo have had ample time, and abundant reasons, to caution themselves, but apparently they are not capable of doing such a thing. All these remind me of 1966. I visited the campus of ABU in Zaria in April 1966, after the January 1966 coup and during Ironsi’s military presidency. The anger and bitterness on the ABU campus were indescribable, because of the way the Igbo were childishly and disrespectfully taunting northerners in the northern towns. Some Igbo were even selling a picture showing the late Sir Ahmadu Bello dead on the ground with Major Kaduna Nzegwu standing triumphantly over him. We all know what followed upon those egregious follies. Thankfully, the Yoruba are never likely to launch into any blood-letting, but they are an ancient civilization – and definitely not without their own kind of means of dealing with a situation such as the Igbo have now created.

But I must go to the second stuff – the exciting and thought-provoking stuff. Surveys, studies, projections, and prognosis by the United Nations and its various agencies, and other research agencies, are pointing to certain very great possibilities in tropical Africa’s near future. Many of our cities are growing exponentially, not only in population but also in support infrastructures. For instance, a city like Lagos could, by the end of this century, easily be a contender for the title of world’s largest city. But that is not all. These booming cities are responding to their growth by building infrastructures that are, in effect, turning these cities into evolving centres of probably the real Black African countries of the future. And for these infrastructures, they are attracting lots of worldwide investments. In the light of these developments, say the authors of these studies, some of the fanciful and largely unworkable and unsustainable countries and boundaries that colonial rulers created in tropical Africa may vanish away – without any acts of secession or civil wars. Cities like Lagos and Abidjan on the West African coast seem to lead such developments now, but others like Nairobi in East Africa are coming right behind them. Fragile countries like Benin and Togo, and huge ramshackle concoctions like Nigeria, could disappear, while virile new countries, unified by potent economic and other realities, could become the facts of our lives.

How do I react to all this heady stuff? Thoughtfully. I wake up at night, think about them, and can’t fall back to sleep. Many of us, African scholars, in spite of our natural sentimental attachment to our countries, have a second sense that some of the countries and boundaries of tropical Africa, creations of largely ignorant and arrogant colonial agents, are simply unsustainable and likely to change. In fact, I have just finished writing a book about the future of Black Africa, a book that I title “Coming Revolutions in Black Africa” and which I have sent to many of my intellectual colleagues to read before publication. Although I did not look at Black Africa’s future from the perspective of the impact of our blooming cities, I came to more or less the same conclusion – namely, that the political map of Black Africa is likely to be redrawn in not too distant a future.

In West Africa, new countries are likely. To mention a few, a large interior country is a possibility, spreading from Chad, through what are now Northern Nigeria, Niger, Mali and probably Mauritania. Though large, it would be a very coherent country, unified by Islamic faith and by a focus on its grassland, Sahel and desert-land wealth. The wealth is there, but in a country like Nigeria, it can never be focused on. The State of Israel found ways to turn its desert-land into a wonderfully productive agricultural land, and this large West African country can do the same; but it cannot be done in Nigeria. In fact, in Nigeria, even the region’s ancient economy (cattle) and the economy it generated in British colonial times (groundnuts) have been allowed to perish. To the south, another possibility is a country spreading from today’s Kogi State, westwards over the Nigerian South-west, Benin and Togo, with Lagos as its pivot. So too is a Delta country; and so is an East Niger country with its pivot on the Onitsha-Asaba conurbation – especially if the Lower Niger is dredged at least up to that point. Here are exciting new things for us Africans to think about.