The Nation Newspaper

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  • Mugabe’s Friends in the Senate

    Zimbabwe’s nonagenarian president, Robert Mugabe, stands out in many respects that are not too flattering. He is arguably the world’s oldest head of state, and has been the only ruler of his country since independence from Britain in 1980. Not that there haven’t been several elections in the country, but Mugabe always returned as winner in very disputable circumstances characterised by allegations of vote-rigging, human rights abuses and mass emigration amidst sharp economic decline. His current term of office was renewed in 2013. And even though he attained a ripe age of 92 this year, his appetite for political power is not at all diminished. Actually, he has already secured his party’s nomination to contest the next presidential election in 2018. And he could well return again as president unless Providence intervenes. You can’t foreclose that because the southern African country is a one-dominant-party state: the dominant party being the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), while the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is the main opposition party.

    Pa Mugabe marked his 92nd birthday penultimate weekend with a $1.1million feast hosted by the ruling Zanu-PF. The lavish celebration featured the cutting of a huge birthday cake in drought-ravished Masvingo province, where 75 percent of the staple maize crop failed due to parched conditions. The agrarian province is hardest-hit in the worst drought experienced by Zimbabwe since the early 1990s, which leaves some 3million Zimbabweans presently in danger of starvation and has compelled Harare to declare a state of disaster in most rural areas. The government has also appealed for about $2.2billion in international aid to pay for grain and other food items to succour its citizens. But that didn’t stop Zanu-PF from treating Mugabe to the birthday party that was held in a large tent at the ‘Great Zimbabwe’ ruins – a UNESCO world heritage site built in the 13th Century. The nonagenarian ruler, accompanied by wife and children, cut the giant cake that was symbolically made to look like the ancient ruins, and he released 92 festal balloons amidst poetry readings, praise songs and chants hailing him as an African icon and visionary.

    Mugabe’s tastes at his lavish birthday parties, which are a yearly national event in Zimbabwe, have never been subdued. In 2015, he reportedly had wild animals, including a young elephant, slaughtered and served to guests, infuriating wildlife conservationists. Other delicacies at that party included two buffaloes, two sables and five impalas donated by a local landowner, besides a stuffed lion and crocodile thrown in as extra gifts for the old man. Local media reported that Zanu-PF activists compelled teachers and villagers in Masvingo districts to make cash donations to their fundraiser to pay for this year’s celebrations. Critics were swift to condemn the festivity as an affront to penurious Zimbabweans, with opposition MDC saying the money spent should have been used to import maize and avert impending starvation in Masvingo province and other parts of the country. But Pa Mugabe dismissed the fear of starvation and, to the bargain, called the potential bluff of likely aid donors. “If aid, as I understand, is to be given on the basis that we accept the principle of gay marriages, then let that aid stay where it is. We don’t want it. It is rotten aid, filthy aid, and we won’t have anything to do with it,” he said during an hour-long speech at the birthday party penultimate Saturday.

    I align fully with the moral of Pa Mugabe’s protestation against foreign aid with depraved terms, but the whole idea of outlandish birthday feasts in droughty seasons is another matter. Talk about Emperor Nero fiddling away when Rome is burning! When political leaders cocoon themselves in illusions of grandeur, they lose touch with reality and the urgency of the public mood and would most likely set store, outlandishly, by things that the public consider of least or, at best, fringe importance. This mindset, which is a species of what the late Chinua Achebe describes as ‘cargo cult mentality’ in his incisive literary midget, The Trouble With Nigeria, is present with us in the country today. It is apparently what is behind the controversial resolve of the Nigerian Senate to procure some 120 luxury vehicles for its functionaries and operations.

    We must hasten to note that there have been modest attempts within the present administration to shun this diseased mindset, but there have also been spot manifestations of it at different maturity stages in other areas. For instance, President Muhammadu Buhari is reported to have rejected, among other things, a proposal for procurement of new vehicles for the Presidency as part of 2016 budgetary expenditure, owing obviously to the shambolic state of the Nigerian economy presently. Some discerning citizens have, nonetheless, observed a few outstanding budget heads that are affrontingly luxurious in the country’s present circumstance or out of touch with the immediate needs of most Nigerians, like culinary provisions and certain furniture items for Aso Rock. Nigeria is notoriously in economic dire straits at the moment, with shrinking national revenue in the face of global oil price losses, and with our currency value headed steeply southwards – leaving the bulk of the citizenry largely impoverished and contending with life-threatening inflationary pressures. In effect, basic survival is the concern of many citizens for now, and this is widely expected to be the goal of governance, at least in the short term.

    Now, that is why the Senate’s seeming determination to carry through with its planned procurement of a fleet of luxury vehicles – at a cost in excess of 4billion naira – rankles. The prevailing narrative is that some of the vehicles are for the Senate President’s convoy, while the others are to be ‘pool vehicles’ for Senate committees to conduct their legislative oversight functions. By the ordinary notion of ‘pool vehicles,’ the 120 units of four-wheel drives that the Senate plans to procure is curious to most sensible people, as there are more than enough vehicles in that expenditure bill to go round all 109 members of the chamber without being pooled! Many have argued – not the least of them, former President Olusegun Obasanjo – that should Senate committees genuinely require service vehicles, a handful of pool buses that can be shared by committee members should do, rather than the fleet the chamber is working on acquiring. The Senate, to my knowledge, has not adduced any countervailing argument to justify its preference.

    Truth be told: it is downright insensitive that the Senate seems determined to pull through with its vehicle procurement binge. It is bad enough that the legislative chamber recently took delivery of new vehicles for Senate President Bukola Saraki’s convoy, it is worse and mindless that it is pressing ahead with the acquisition of the remaining vehicles in defiance of public protestation. An attempted justification of the Senate President’s new acquisition by his spokesman recently didn’t wash. It is well understood as the spokesman argued, for instance, that the vehicles inherited by Dr. Saraki were old and malfunctioning. What is not understood is why brands so exotic and foreign must be acquired in replacement, at such a time as Nigeria is in at the moment. If the naira fares so badly against the dollar and other world’s convertible currencies, and the touted remedy is for Nigerians to as much as possible patronise Nigerian-made items, why would the Senate President not set a good example by ordering a Nigeria-assembled vehicle brand like Innoson, just like ‘Common Sense’ advocate and another member of the Senate, Ben Murray-Bruce, claims to have done in private capacity?

    Leaders become undertakers when they drain out the residual life serum in their countries to indulge their fancies.

  • Radiance of Ubulu-Uku’s HRM Obi Akaeze 1

    This I believe: that it would serve a great purpose for the sake of truth, to correct the falsehood some journalists have inadvertently fed the public.

    First; that it is not true that Ubulu-Uku’s new monarch, His Royal Majesty, Obi Noah ChukwukaAkaeze 1, who was crowned late last month was aged 13. He was actually 17 –plus several months- when he became king.

    Does the issue of age matter? No is the answer! Many have commented on his young age and called him Nigeria’s youngest monarch. Obi Akaeze I may hold the title for now, but the all-time title holder is the Dein of Agbor. His Royal Majesty Benjamin IkenchukuKeagborekuzi I was born in July 1977, but following the unexpected death of his father, the late Obi, in 1979, he was crowned when he was just two years old. He was taken to London where he finished his education and returned to his kingdom, a full grown man. That is a worthy example to follow. I hope that when next the Obi of Ubulu-Uku visits his hometown and domain, he would find the time to reach out to Agbor to visit the Dein.  They would have much to talk about, and he would have much to learn from a man who travelled the route he is embarking on now, years ago. I am sure they would have lots of notes to compare.

    And they would have lots of tales to swap – about growing up a Nigerian king in Britain. Yes, when kings are alone with you, tales, even surprising ones, are sure to drop from their lips. I will never forget my sitting with the immediate past Olu of Warri, the OgiameAtuwatse II in 1987 or 1988 and laughing my heart out as he told me of his National Youth Service Corp days in Port Harcourt. And we talked music too. He told me Aretha Franklin’s Who’s Zoomin’ Who was special to his heart. “You will remember my name, I’m the one who beat you at your game” he quoted the Lady of Soul. Then, I was a reporter with THISWEEK magazine and some mighty Itsekiri man was resisting Ogiame’s dabbling into business. He told me he wanted to be financially independent!

    Second: Many have asked when the “EzeNwata”  (Igbo for youthful king) would be returning to Britain? Hehas already returned to Britain; he has his studies to contend with, you should know.

    Third; so, in his absence who deputizes for him? Oh, there is that wonderful contraption called “Regent”, and the King has that in his father’s immediate younger brother, Mr. Tony Ofulue. He is already sitting pretty on the throne, keeping everything spic and span for his nephew.

    Fourth; you may have read that the queen mother, (that is king’s mother) is from Senegal or Liberia or Ivory Coast?  She, truthfully, isfrom Guinea, which became independent from France in 1958, under SékouTouré who was born on January 9, 1922 into a Mandinka family in Faranah, French Guinea. He was an aristocratic member of the Mandinka ethnic group. His great-grandfather was Samory  Touré, a noted Muslim Mandinka king who founded the Wassoulou Empire (1861-1890) in the territory of Guinea and Mali. He resisted French colonial rule until his capture in 1891, and died in exile in Gabon.  Yet, this is not novel to the town, the new king’s grandmother, the strikingly beautiful and widely beloved Queen Aliam who could split darkness with her heavenly smile, came from Ogwashi-Uku. She was deeply mourned when she passed on in 1981.

    So, this lady would feel great affinity with the fiercely proud and independent minded Ubulu-Uku, perhaps the last town in the entire Nigeria to be militarily defeated by the British in the Ekwumekwu war – the 1897-1914 pan- Anioma (an acronym coined by the illustrious late Dennis Osadebay from the LGAs that made up the area) resistance to British nastiness, especially in palm produce trade.

    According to Joseph Egwuin “Anioma Essence” Vol. 1, No. 4, 2008: “Anioma Region was divided into four and joined to other groups and neighbours who were then given political precedence over Anioma. Asaba Division was joined to the Benin Province and Aboh Division (Ndi-Olu) was joined with Urhobo, Ijaw and Itsekiri to make up Delta Province. Onitsha, Oguta and environs were joined to the Eastern Provinces. This made political unity among the people nearly impossible. This was the genesis of our woes”. Anioma was to permanently lose Onitsha, Oguta and other environs to the Eastern Igbos as even the present creations of states have failed to address this sad development.

    What plans does he have for the town?  HRM Akaeze 1 first thanked all who contributed to the burial of his father and in his coronation. Then he told his chiefs that he would cherish their advice because his father had always spoken highly of them. He promised that every Ubulu-Uku indigene is a stakeholder in the advancement of the town and should always be ready to go to any length, proffer profitable advice for the betterment of the town.  He said he would never be a lone ranger on the throne, but be open to all. He said his father had always told him that he first became an Ubulu-Uku person with the town’s people before he became a king for them, and that he would never forget such an advice.  He had visited home several times before and so he knows that Ubulu clan is vast. He promised to do all in his power to see that a clear unity of efforts will propel the clan to greater heights, as there is strength in unity.

    He even hopes to reach out to Ozubulu people, Ubulu-Uku’s cousins in Anambra State and strengthen the common bonds that hold the two towns together for as he put it, blood is thicker than water.

  • The sad case of Ese Oruru

    One of the things that I like about Mr. Donald Trump, the front-runner for the presidential nomination in America’s Republican party, is the fact that he is tough, blunt, honest, candid, frank and decisive.

    Whether you share his views or not at least you know precisely where he stands on any issue and he always speaks his mind. Perhaps that is why he is doing so well against all odds.

    In this short contribution I intend to be very blunt and Trump-like in my approach. I shall write about an issue which, as it does with many others in our nation, stirs me to anger and burdens me with a deep sense of revulsion and shame.

    That I was so ill-fated as to be lumped in the same country as a group of bestial creatures who view pedophilia lightly and who, in some cases, enjoy, encourage and endorse it, simply sickens me.

    Worse still that some of my compatriots will openly defend the abduction of infant girls for the sole purpose of sexual gratification and enslavement and that others will seek to defend it on religious and cultural grounds is a tragedy of monumental proportions.

    To this extent I believe that all those that are attempting to distort the narrative about the tragic plight of Miss Ese Oruru are not only insensitive and irresponsible but they are also evil and I commit them to God’s judgement. The facts of the case are as follows.

    Miss Oruru is 14 years old and not 18 and she was abducted from her home. She did not leave her home freely or of her own volition. She was cruelly and wickedly carried away and stolen from her parents, family and loved ones and forcefully taken by complete strangers to a distant land that she had never been before and that was on the other side of the country.

    This is not a love story about two inseparable young people as some are trying to suggest: it is a story about pedophilia, child abduction, kidnapping, human trafficking, slavery, rape, impunity, wickedness and ritual sex. That little girl has been raped over and over again and she may well have contracted aids, vesico vaginal fistula (VVF) or some other strange sexual disease by now. She may also be pregnant.

    Instead of sympathizing with her and acknowledging the fact that she may never be the same again in view of the physical and mental torture and trauma that she has been subjected to over the last few months, some misguided souls and shameless commentators have had the temerity to say that she was old enough to “get it” and that she ‘’loved it’’ and ‘’wanted it’’.

    I am utterly disgusted by these sentiments. Where is the humanity of those that speak and think like this? Where is their compassion and where is their soul? How would they feel if their own infant daughters were abducted, forcefully Islamised, raped, enslaved and kept against their will as a sex slave in an Emir’s palace in the same way that Ese was? I doubt that it would bring them any joy.

    Quite apart from that we are compelled to ask whether this sort of thing has happened before and how widespread it is? How many other little girls have been stolen from their homes and forced to join harems all over the north?

    The famous high society blogger and respected celebrity journalist Miss Linda Ikeji has just exposed yet another case. This time it is a young 15 year old christian girl, by the name of Miss Patience Paul, who has been abducted from her home, parents and loved ones in Benue state, forcefully taken to Sokoto state, islamised, raped, married off and kept there against her will in the Sultan’s palace.

    The same thing happened to a 13 year old christian Igbo girl by the name of Miss Charity Uzoechina two years ago when she was again abducted, Islamised, raped, married off and forced to remain in the Etsu Nupe’s palace in Minna, Niger state.

    This was despite the fact that her parents went to the police and the local authorities and made every effort to get her back. Sadly up till today they have not seen their daughter since she was taken from them.

    Again there was the case of Senator Ahmed Sani Yerima, the former Governor of Zamfara state, who abducted his Egyptian driver’s 12 year old daughter from Egypt, brought her to Nigeria, married her in Abuja and kept her under lock and key in his home in Zamfara.

    The interesting thing to note about this case is the fact that had the Senator tried to marry this girl-child in Egypt where she came from or if he was caught having carnal knowledge of her over there, he would have been arrested, prosecuted and sent to jail. This is because even though Egypt is a predominantly Muslim country, child marriage and pedophilia are completely forbidden and strictly prohibited by the law.

    Yet in multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and supposedly secular Nigeria child sex, child marriage and pedophilia is widespread and common and it appears that anything goes.

    Evidently we live in a strange country where evil is, at best, ignored and swept under the carpet and, at worst, openly justified. We live in a country where those that expose such abominations and that speak truth are shunned, discredited,  demonised, hated, despised and, more often than not, threatened with physical violence, persecution, intimidation, arrest, criminal investigation and civil litigation. That is the price we pay for speaking the truth and exposing evil in Nigeria.

    There is clearly a conspiracy of silence about the perpetuation of wickedness and injustice in this country among the ruling elite. The feeling is that anyone can get away with anything providing they belong to a particular circle and class and providing they have money and power.

    And it is because they have money and power and they have powerful friends in government and in the political class that they feel that they can silence, crush, kill, abduct, cripple, ruin, sue and jail anybody that tests their will and crosses them or that dares to expose the truth about their blood-chilling and perverse ways.

    That is the reality of Nigeria and it is a sad and sorry one. All I can say is thank God for the media and particularly for the Punch newspaper who started the ball rolling last Sunday.

    If not for their cover story about Ese with all those pictures on their front page the little girl would not be free and at home with her family today. Instead she would have still been in slavery and captivity at the Emir of Kano’s palace.

    We should also thank the Nation newspaper particularly for their timely editorial on this issue which was published on 1st March and which raised some pertinent questions and offered wise counsel about the way forward. The Punch, the Nation, AIT, Channels, Tribune, the Sun, Vanguard, Thisday, the Guardian, Leadership and all the other titles and television stations in the Nigerian media and social media has done what no-one else or no other group could do.

    Not even the Federal Government, the state governments, the political parties, the politicians, the security agencies, the lawyers or the so-called human rights groups could achieve what they managed to achieve.

    They have helped to secure the freedom of a helpless and defenseless little girl from slavery, torment, humiliation, destruction, death, disease and bondage and they have brought her home safely to her parents. We need more of this. Kudos to them and God bless them all.

    It would be out of place for me not to mention the fact that the Alhaji Ishaq Akintola-led MURIC, a leading Yoruba Muslim organisation, has condemned the actions of those that abducted Miss Oruru. This is a step in the right direction. It is commendable and it will foster a greater and better understanding between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria.

    Finally it is my prayer that the Lord silences and shames those that chose to remain silent and that have opted to look the other way during the course of this whole sordid affair. Nigeria is not a nation of heartless pedophiles and godless reprobates and neither shall we sit by silently and allow her to be turned into one.

    We are a God-fearing, kind, compassionate, humane, hardworking, faithful, decent, long-suffering and resilient people and together, whether they like it or not, we shall expose the sexual deviants and perverts in our midst. We shall name them and shame them before the entire world.

    We shall shine the light of God in this nation and we shall deliver our land from the evil.clutches and darkness of sexual predators, perversion, cruelty and impunity. The Holy Bible says that “the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel”. Sadly, perhaps more than any other,  the case of Miss Ese Oruru confirms the veracity of this deeply profound scripture.

    Permit me to end this contribution with the following words because they are prophetic. O ye sons of Futa Jalo and ye daughters of the Vulture mountains and bitter waters: your princes and kings shall be exposed and brought to heel and you shall pay a heavy price for your wickedness and sorcery.

    May the Ancient of Days heal Miss Ese Oruru and may the Lord God of Hosts deliver her from the incantations, enchantments, witchcraft and spells of those that abducted her and kept her under lock and key in the satanic palace and dark shrine of a strange and foreign king.

  • Soyinka, Nieetzsche and Odia Ofeimun’s quest for Ogun (1)

    One of Nigeria’s pre-eminent and prolific poetical and literary voices as well as a consummate and often brutally frank public intellectual, Odia Ofeimun, never ceases to surprise with the range of his scholarship, the dazzling dexterity with which he handles a complex diversity of ideas from an array of disciplines and the freshness of his sometimes unorthodox perspectives in his numerous cerebral offerings. His book, ‘In Search of Ogun: Soyinka In Spite of Nietzsche’, published by Hornbill House, Lagos, in 2014, is another veritable, nourishing and provocative intellectual feast. The three essays that make up the 206-page book constitute a breath taking tour de force traversing diverse areas of specialisation ranging from literary theory, history, philosophy, traditional African religion, Nigerian and world history, arts and culture, political science, political theory, music, drama, theatre and much more.

    Students of Wole Soyinka’s works, ideas and politics will inevitably find this book irresistible and indispensable as the Nobel laureate features prominently in the three extended essays. The first two, ‘In search of Ogun – Soyinka, Nietzsche and the Edo century’ as well as ‘Wole Soyinka: The writer as cultural hero’, were delivered as The 2003 Egharevba Memorial Lecture in Benin and the 2004 70th birthday lecture at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, in commemoration of Soyinka’s 70th birthday, respectively. The third titled ‘The Beauty of Identity: Taking Naija-movies to the next level’, was a discourse on the Nigerian film industry delivered at the Best of the Best-TV event with the theme- The Arts and National Identity. Even then, Soyinka’s poetry, prose and drama offer the prism through which Ofeimun sheds light on his topic.

    The curious question evoked by the title of the first essay is what the author really means by the Edo century. Thus he understandably prequels his lecture with an intriguing excursion into the both heroic and tragic history of the people of his native Edo land. Ofeimun establishes a relation between Ogun Ewuare, king of the Edo Kingdom for 45 years in the 15th century, and Ogun, the fabled god of iron, war, roads and creativity in Yoruba and several other African cultures both on the continent and diaspora. In 1997, the Edo people decided to commemorate the centenary of the Benin massacre, which took place in 1887. In that incident, nine British war ships were deployed to crush and utterly decimate a people who had been deliberately provoked to act in ways to justify the criminal looting and arson unleashed on them. Benin City, the capital of the Edo Kingdom was set ablaze. The reigning monarch, Oba Overamwin, was sent into exile in Calabar marking the end of a dynasty that had lasted over 500 years.

    Ofeimun was aghast that the centenary commemorating what was a tragic moment in the otherwise glorious history of a proud people took the colour more of a celebration than the mourning he thought it ought properly to have been. Was this an approbation of the superiority of British colonial rule over the traditional system it overthrew as well as subsumption or incorporation of Edo land into the macro Nigerian ‘artificial’ entity that was the product of colonial imperialism? A pained Ofeimun writes: “Whether it was a marking or mourning, I found myself taking it very personal. The commemoration appeared to me like a celebration of the British defeat of the Edo people…what was there to ensure that if the colonisers returned today, there would be no routing of indigenous people as happened in 1897?”

    The writer’s angst is understandable. The Edo Kingdom had a pedigree that went back more than a thousand years. Yet, it suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of nine British war ships manned by thugs of foreign trading companies in a matter of days. Ofeimun metaphorically describes the period between the razing and destruction of Benin in 1897 and the centenary commemoration of 1997 as ‘The Edo Century’ just as historians narrate different phases of history as the European, American or Asian century. While he uses Edo as the anchor or peg for his analysis, Ofeimun has his sights really on the larger Nigerian entity arguing that “It makes no difference whether you are talking about the Edo people or the people of Nigeria. The implications of the Edo century are the same on either side of the flowing river of time. The Edo people are Nigerians or Nigerians are just Edo from the logic of a defeated people who have not overcome their defeat”.

    His fervent and rigorous search for Ogun can thus be interpreted at a deeper level as a quest for the rediscovery of indigenous cultural, spiritual and intellectual moorings or resources that will enable African nationals to regain their self- confidence as a basis for recovering psychologically from the humiliations of their colonial past while reviving and strengthening their capacity for genuinely autochthonous development. This is particularly because Ofeimun believes that the cultural and spiritual depredations suffered by African religions, traditions and social systems in their contact with invading religious and values was no less devastating than military and economic subjugation of the continent. In his words “Since the British overran our geographies, we have all failed, and woefully too, at putting up a liveable, countervailing strategy for dealing with, not just rampant imperialism but our own incapacities, our past and the need always to map the future”.

    Odia’s essay is an interdisciplinary voyage into history and myth not for its own sake but with the hope that “by enabling us to engage roots of development that were abandoned at some point in the past, it might tell us something about how to escape the morass of present tense” because “our self- knowledge and general development as a people have been compromised by the inadequacies of our responses to the challenges of western civilization”. In pursuit of this objective, Ofeimun deploys Ogun as his medium although he also exhaustively discusses Sango, Obatala and the indigenous but subverted knowledge systems of diverse African cultures. He undertakes his intellectual quest for Ogun through the works of Soyinka who has consciously and deliberately drawn inspiration from the fount of Ogun. For him, Soyinka “more than any other writer has plumbed deepest to the core issue of enriching an African world view from the defeat of yesterday and extracting such strategies of self-management from it which belongs to our traditional past and can still belong to our future”.

    In this panoramic survey of Soyinka’s literary corpus from the observatory of Ogun, Ofeimun not only gives insights into the Nobel laureate’s prodigious creative output, he also critically interrogates his several intellectual encounters with the dramatic aesthetics of a Femi Osofisan, the radical, Marxist perspectives of a Biodun Jeyifo, the modernist philosophical vision of the Ghanaian thinker, Akwasi Wiredu and the combative Afrocentric trio of Chinweizu, Onwucheka and Madubuike. He draws parallels between the German Philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche’s resort to the gods in Greek mythology to help re-orientate people away from moral distress in a chaotic and anarchic world in which he assumes the death of God, and Soyinka’s seeking a “return to the African gods as a means of healing the severance that had taken place between humankind and the original Oneness”.

    As Ofeimun puts it, “Just as Nietzsche felt free to bend Greek gods to his will Soyinka felt free to bend the Yoruba gods to his will as a way of engaging spheres of experience in which neither science nor Christianity had any explanatory force”. However, one cannot help but wonder at the practical utility of Soyinka’s intellectual experimentations with Ogun mythology when Ofeimun writes that “For Soyinka, Ogun had become a twentieth century deity, who superintended not only over iron foundries that gave rise to modern civilisation but other scientific pursuits, beyond Metallurgy, in electricity, electronics and related fields. In his metaphysics, Ogun is represented as the modal archetype; not a god of either/or but a force capable of either good or evil through whose feats civilisations may be explored, established or dissolved”. How do we contrast this ‘modernising’ conception of Ogun with the protracted technological and other forms of underdevelopment across Africa where the god is most widely worshipped?

  • Udom Emmanuel shows his class

    …sets out promising industrialisation, but is stuck with political vendetta

     

    After the Supreme Court necromancy that elevated evil over good, Akwa Ibom people are stuck with Udom Emmanuel for the next four years. So we have got to deal with the situation as best we can. The prognosis, given what we have witnessed in the last nine months, does not give much room for hope.

    Mr Emmanuel does not appear to be ready for the job of governance. He is merely content with using false propaganda to attack and malign his political opponents for every imagined or real political difference. For him every opinion about his job performance is an excuse for personal attacks and insults.

    If Mr Emmanuel is asked, for instance, why he is not telling Akwa Ibom people how much debt he inherited from the former administration headed by Godswill Akpabio, he lashes out with insults and lies. If anyone calls him a stooge on the ground that he still takes instructions from Akpabio and for the reason that most of his commissioners and other appointees were imposed on him by Akpabio, he launches personal attacks and levels insults at his critics.

    In this manner he has personally attacked Mr Umana Okon Umana, governorship candidate of the APC in the last election and even the man’s wife in apparent reactions to legitimate issues of governance raised by Akwa Ibom people. For Udom whoever raises a question of governance must have been sponsored by Umana. So to get back at his ‘traducer’ he falsely accused Umana of sponsoring people to blackmail the Director-General of the DSS and also of trying to get President Buhari to remove him, Mr Emmanuel, from office as governor. Taking leave of all decency, Udom Emmanuel, through his media minions, but without any basis whatsoever went to the extent of saying that “Mrs Umana has threatened to leave her husband because he has joined a cult.”

    The personal attacks are getting more reckless and totally unprovoked. At a recent funeral of a former governor from the state who was military governor of Cross River State, Navy Captain Edet Akpan Archibong, Udom Emmanuel was as bruising as he was gross in his remarks against another former governor of the state. “I am here because the late Archibong was a man of integrity,” Mr Emmanuel said in a tribute to the late former governor, “unlike another former governor who went to the tribunal to lie that there was no election in the state.” This was an undisguised attack on Obong Victor Attah, former governor of the state, who testified at the governorship election petition tribunal and was cited in both the judgments of the tribunal and the Court of Appeal as a witness of truth.

    The point is that in a democracy there is a right of reply. Since Udom Emmanuel has decided to launch these personal attacks, he should be ready for it when those he is attacking decide to reply in kind. After all, those who live in glass houses should not throw stones; the story of a signed letter by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria about Udom’s family tree is still fresh in the public mind, not to talk of the history of serial wife-beating. There will salacious feast if the mudsling continues.

    No government has a right to set up newspapers for political vendetta and expect its victims to keep quiet. Those who raise questions about others’ reputations should expect equal and opposite reactions. Comrade Idongesit Okpon, a political commentator in the state, reacting to the spate of attacks by Mr Emmanuel on political opponents, cautioned that the governor has more to lose in an all out media war. Mr Okon Inyang, a political leader in Uyo, has commended the patience of those at the receiving end of Udom Emmanuel’s political barbs and warned that their “patience maybe fraying at the helms.” Inyang advised Emmanuel to focus on his plan for the development of the state.

    Mr Emmanuel had during the election campaigns boasted of his plan for industrialisation of the state, vowing to plant manufacturing plants right across the state, but nine months after, the signs of industries are not visible anywhere save for groundbreaking, which is actually the signature action of his administration, whatever the sector.

    In place of industries, Mr Emmanuel is setting up a string of guttersnipe tabloids dedicated to sleaze and slander, with the sole purpose of smearing the reputation of senior citizens in the state to massage his ego. At the last count, there were six of such hatchet-job rag sheets. Most notorious among them are The Citizen, Global Pilot and Society Watch newspapers. The others are Anchor Express, Nigeria Pulse and The Waves newspapers.

    Intelligence is abroad that Mr Emmanuel is pumping millions of naira of government money into a not-so-covert demolition contract job designed to destroy all known opposition figures to his government, with Mr Umana Okon Umana as the principal target.

    The search-and-destroy job is reportedly being coordinated by both the state commissioner for information and the chief press secretary to the state governor. Hired hands are on the prowl scouring for ‘enemies’ of Mr Emmanuel with the brief to invent and publish the most scurrilous, downright damaging stories on them in the hope that by such hatchet job they will cease to exist politically.

    But sober citizens of the state are concerned that with Mr Emmanuel it seems to be “morning yet on creation day.” He doesn’t appear to realise that the media war should have ended with his award at the Supreme Court, and that now is the time for governance which has been on hold for nearly a year under the pretext that election litigation was crowding out time for the job of administering the state.

    There is enough to keep Mr Emmanuel busy, without a needless media war. State finances are in the most parlous state from a combination of the consequences of cheap oil and carte blanche spending on election litigation. This is the time to sit down and think through the challenge of finding the money to finance development and alleviate poverty in the state.

    It is the time to end the paradox of grinding poverty and hunger in the highest revenue-earning state in the federation. It is not time to continue with unabated and misdirected propaganda. It is time to address the unemployment time-bomb that is ticking in everybody’s face.

    The most cursory check will reveal that about three to five generations of graduates in the state cannot find work. Many, if not most, of them have even given up looking for work, because they do not think they will ever get a job. Hunger is not some headline news on TV about starving millions in Ethiopia. It is a lived reality in the homes of Akwa Ibom people, a most disconcerting malaise coexisting with the fabled wealth of an oil rich state which collects the most revenues from the federation account every month.

    These are the concerns that should keep a state executive awake at night, and not some imaginary political foes long after the battle has been won and lost. The man who has the onerous task of leading a state like Akwa Ibom should worry about the chronic lack of skills by most citizens of the state in nearly all areas needed to build the capacity for development. Then the priority should be investment in training, skill acquisition and capacity building. The priority should not and cannot for any reason be investment in guttersnipe publications and the hiring of attack dogs to go after ‘political foes.’

    Given the circumstances in which Akwa Ibom has found itself today, where payment of workers’ salaries and pensions is no longer a certainty month on month, where rural infrastructure has decayed to the extent that the countryside is about to be cut off from the cities, investment in hate press is tantamount to a wrong-headed decision to major in minor; in fact, akin to  the emperor fiddling while Rome burns.

    Haba! There is so much to do and the stakes are so, so high that a state chief executive cannot afford this kind of self-distraction. The primary and secondary school system is in shambles. Or is it education at the tertiary level that is in good harness? Look at the state owned university! The place exists just in name. The school is so cash-strapped that it couldn’t prepare for the recent accreditation visitation from the NUC. Conditions are even direr at both the state polytechnic at Ikot Asurua and the state college of education at Afaha Nsit. Yet students are being graduated from these institutions.

    What quality are they taking with them to the job market, and what is the implication for the state in terms of local capacity for development? This should be the concern of a leader, and not investment in some hate enterprise.

    Let this go out as a call for return to normalcy. Mr Emmanuel has a job to do to develop the state and let democracy dividend reach every hamlet and home. Hate press will not cut it, though that is easier to organise. What will cut it is serious, sober work of putting a shoulder to the wheel.

    As for the rain of insults, there is bound to be negative feedback if it continues.

     

    • Mr. Etop wrote in from Lagos

  • The church and the challenge of anti-corruption war

    There is no gainsaying the fact that religious pretensions do not shield anyone from the enticements of worldly pleasures and lust for dishonest enrichment. Greed does not know sex, tribe, age, religion or economic status. The religious leaders who partook of the Dasukigate largesse despite their sanctimonious facade, who were goaded-on by their avarice to engage in the pillaging of our common patrimony, are an eloquent testimony to this fact. These abject vassals, who don the toga of religious elites, are the ones the Chairman of Fresh Democratic Party (FRESH), Rev. Chris Okotie, labelled the grex venalium (the venal crowd) in an article he wrote in the February 8, 2016 edition of The Nation, which he aptly titled ‘Buhari’s battle against the venal crowd.’

    The piece in question clearly shows that Nigeria is under assault from a new form of economic insurgency—bread and butter spiritualists who receive ‘prayer welfare packages’ as a grant for submitting thei religious office to political adventurism. This is probably not their first dip-in-the-till for black monies; the prayers welfare package saga was just the episode in which they got caught: How sad!

    Much to the chagrin of many in the Christian fold, Rev. Okotie had repeatedly alerted the nation to this anomaly, which another pastor from the north, Borno-based Kallamu Musa-Dikwa, and later former River State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, alluded to when they disclosed that some pastors received a whooping N7 billion as their offering towards ensuring the return of Goodluck Jonathan to power. The voices of repudiation rang across the PDP and its supporters, but Dasukigate has given us a peep into the scale and truism of these allegations which robbed Nigeria’s treasury of an estimated $2.1 billion; a booty which former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), allegedly shared freely to anyone who was willing and ready to receive.

    Okotie’s article questioned the integrity of the pastors who displayed such depth of ecclessiastical indiscretion, brazenly desecrating the tenets of Christianity’s forensic right-standing by their display of unbridled greed. He wrote: “If Attahiru Bafarawa was the accredited agent of the Muslim prayers welfare package, who then collected on behalf of the multitudes of Christians? Who? Who is that Christian proboscis whose insidious suction availed

    himself of billions of naira on behalf of the followers of Christ? Who is that Judas, maybe Judases? What an irony that those who should scrupulously guide the people are themselves poisoning the water from which the flock would drink…”

    While Nigerians of different faiths were being slaughtered on the altar of Boko Haram, this lot congregated to share blood money under a pretentious ploy of offering prayers for the survival of a PDP candidate drowning in the pool of political ineptitude. Those prayers, if ever there were any, obviously failed to help Jonathan walk on water: He sank. Yet the battle to escape the clutches of lady justice has compelled Jonathan’s appointees, who are being prosecuted for these crimes against Nigeria, to engage the services of big legal teams funded with their loot to help subvert the cause of justice. In the minds of this venal crowd, justice can be bought at the right price. The callous pillagers cannot see any wrong in their activities, and their no-case submissions to the charges of graft against them unmask their unrepentant nature in the dehumanizing effects which their economic crimes have inflicted on the nation and its citizens.

    PDP’s 16-year reign is a case study in economic terrorism. Jonathan, during his six- year malarkey, displayed base propensities as a leader, rarely questioning expenditures, as if the treasury was a bottomless purse which he could use to service his coterie of political hangers-on, allowing all and sundry to dip in and take their fill.

    But could we have expected any better from a government led by a pack of thieving elite? During Jonathan’s tenure, rising oil income produced lower living standards, poverty, and the external reserves were drained to its barest minimum. The slew of anti-corruption probes became the logical response. To this, Rev. Okotie spared no words in voicing his support for President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign when he said recently: “We have an ex-general in power, who is an epitome of discipline and transparency. I urge Nigerians to support his anti-corruption campaign which aims to rid this country of PDP’s legacy of a government of the corrupt, by the corrupt, and for the corrupt.

    The legacy of corruption and insurgency may have been the twin malignant cancers which the Jonathan government celebrated with glee, but the silver lining which can translate into a full reversal of Nigeria’s fortunes and the tradition of corruption has obviously begun with the ongoing probes. This is one of many welcome manifestations of our party’s idea of a paradigm shift from the status quo.”

    Those who have accused President Buhari of selective persecution of Jonathan’s PDP appointees must remember that Jonathan’s government chose not to probe the governments before his. Neither did he investigate questionable practices within his government. Also, the claim, that the probes are concentrated in the federal arm of government cannot stand the test of scrutiny. Engaging the services of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the two primary agencies saddled with the task of ridding the nation of these vices, are not the exclusive preserve of President Buhari. By law, any citizen, especially a governor, local government chairman or councillor at state and local government levels, have the responsibility to ensure that these agencies pursue the requirements of justice against any official or past regime found wanting. It can’t all be about President Buhari. He has led the way, other arms of governments should follow suit, and Nigerians should likewise give the battle against corruption the necessary support for the sake of future generations.

     

    • Patricia Ariole wrote in from Lagos

  • Democratising bus transportation in Lagos

    There is madness all around me. The sun is high and heat is sweltering. There is traffic, street hawkers, hustlers and everything about the atmosphere is quite hectic. This is Lagos. And this is a very usual week-day occurrence in many parts of the metropolis. And as true-born Lagosian, the chaos is familiar. But I am not complaining as I am seated, tucked comfortably on the Obalende-bound bus. How can I complain? Of course, I am engrossed in the novel I am reading. But I’m sure it’s because I am not in just any bus. I am seated on one of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) buses that have become ubiquitous to the discerning Lagosian. I only notice the bustle in darting glances outside my object of focus. Bus rides in Lagos was not always an enjoyable experience.

    Hitherto known for its mostly dilapidating yellow and black striped Molue buses, public bus transportation in Lagos has paved way for comfort and modernity in transporting residents within the metropolis. Since the early years of its creation in 1967, Lagos teemed with a growing population and government at various times had experimented with providing public buses. But somehow, these efforts were fleeting with confidence of passengers waning just as the fleet of buses disintegrated and disappeared.

    It was in the shadow of these failed interventions to public bus transportation that Molue buses thrived and even became symbolic of Lagos. And for decades, Lagosians packed into dilapidating, rickety, exposed to the dangers of pickpockets and unscrupulous hawkers. That was in the past. But the BRT initiative seemed to have come to stay. Now, BRT buses have come to replace the eyesore the Molues degenerated to.

    Though the BRT blueprint was laid down by the Bola Tinubu-led government, Babatunde Raji Fashola, former Lagos governor and present minister of power, works and housing began the execution. And after the baton of Lagos State governorship passed on Akinwumi Ambode last May, the BRT has since got further boost.

    Firstly, within his first six months as governor, the state government purchased 434 new BRT buses to join the existing fleet. In the same spate of time, he commissioned the Mile12-Ikorodu extension. And in a move aimed at bringing sanity to the route, Ambode relocated the 1st BRT Co-operative of Lagos Council of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) to another corridor. According to the government, they didn’t adhere to stipulated frequency schedules and operated buses below 50 percent fleet capacity which was contrary to the agreement. In addition to that, commuters had complained of their reckless nature on the road. Also, in February, Lagos launched Special Offences (Mobile) court for traffic. And with this development, more sanity is expected to prevail on Lagos roads. While the court will try different traffic offences such as driving against traffic, disobeying traffic lights and signs and even jaywalking, it also seeks to punish motorists who use BRT lanes.

    And thinking forward, I find it commendable that the Ambode-led government is considering 24-hour operation of BRT buses. Confirming this, Lagos State Commissioner for Energy and Mineral Resources, Wale Oluwo, in January said: “Arrangement has been concluded on having BRT buses to work at night once the Light Up Lagos project is completed.”

    For a city that compares to New York in major parameters, Lagos is long overdue for a 24-hour transport system. The truth be said, many parts of Lagos hardly sleeps. And this unlike what some people think can only further drive the state’s economy. And with the increase in street lightning the state is witnessing with the ‘Light Up Lagos’ project, movement in the state will be safer. Already, from Berger in Ojodu to Lekki, Ikorodu to Lagos Island, the entire Ikeja axis, Victoria Island and Ikoyi, and even the route of my daily commute from Ikeja to Agege via Alfa Nla Road are now lit up at night.

    I can feel the seriousness the Lagos State government attaches to the ensuring efficient public bus system. However, to jack up efficiency, the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) must step up on its regulatory functions. It must ensure it continues to work with other partners, like those involved in maintaining roads, ensuring order on the roads and those providing lightning, to bring out the best.

    At a recent town hall meeting in January, Ambode, while giving account of his stewardship at the second quarterly town hall meeting at the City Hall, Lagos Island, said that 66 major road projects were at various stages of completion and 80 road grading and surface dressing projects will soon be completed across the state. It is also commendable that Ambode’s administration has commenced the construction of flyovers at Ajah roundabout, Abule–Egba Junction and Berger Bus stop.

    Today, Lagos has not yet reached its desired level as regards public transportation. Of course with no metro line and very reliable public water transportation, it is not yet Uhuru. But one thing is clear. Ambode is poised to take the state’s public transportation sector to much more enviable heights, just like his predecessor did. That is why I am consoled by Ambode’s promise that the Blue Line Rail Project which runs from Okokomaiko to Marina will be completed by December.

    While a Lagos without traffic is like stripping the city of its identity, an efficiently planned and properly operated public transportation system will make commuting less hell. In this age and time, public buses should be efficient, modern and with the BRT lanes accorded them, fast. As Lagosians, we owe the government the co-operation to see it work. It is for all our benefit. Eko Oni Baje.

  • Remembering and empowering youth

    Let us think and act INTERGENERATIONALLY.

    Always. Planning always to include the youth. We shall digress this week from our planned discourse on nation and nationhood, to engage Professor Wole Soyinka’s positive and needed call for an economic conference of experts, consumers, as well as qualified and concerned citizens. Many have rightly pointed out that this was a necessary move that I also support if it will take our country out of our seeming economic and perhaps political quagmire. It is heartening that in this new political dispensation, voices of relevant and concerned people are noted and given a response. My contribution is to remind us to include the youth: invite their representatives and consult the youth widely as we also listen to them without condescension or bullying. We hope that in this new democracy of change, we shall avoid the culture of bullying our citizens as they are not subjects of their ruling class. The political class should always remember that they are servants of the citizens who have been put in place to do what is best for the citizenry as well as recognize that they are not a master class but a servant one if we are following the tenets of democracy that we claim to be practicing. This caveat applies also to the adult citizens, not only youth. No bullying of citizens.

    Whom do we consider the youth? I would think we mean young people of 40 years and under. It would not be a new event in our experience as Africans to include such ages in our social and public organizations of our society if we look back into our past and our indigenous traditions. Including youth would not be only an idea from the West or the United Nations for African societies always had a place for youth in many ways. Not only in war but in life-supporting human activities such as farming, building and clearing roads, helping to administer justice, organizing in social events and celebrations that help to define the community and provide sheer pleasure. They often had their own chieftaincies too conferred by and respected in the larger society. In my father’s town, they were called the Gbara, as I learned. My belief in the recognition of our youth caused me to be quite pleased when I noticed the involvement in many ways of the Egba youth in the celebration of the life of Lisabi, the founder of the Egba (the people of Abeokuta) people.

    We could make more of a practice of looking back into our indigenous past not only for carnivals but for constructive organizations that will help our present and our future, give us our identities and keep the youth busy. I have always been concerned with the social impact of our newly adopted ways of raising and educating children and youth that does not keep them occupied meaningfully with and usefully to the larger society between the ages of five and 18 for instance or give them leadership for instance in organizing the beautiful and highly creative Atilogwu Dance. Instead of engaging in socially organized and recognized social activities, they are left to wander around society trying to find their own amusements and running into trouble with crime and physically abusive activities. Lacking guidance or attention from adults and the larger society, they obsess with the imitation of foreign societies that they do not know or understand, the world of cell phones and television and new modes of crime as they suffer from sheer confusion and boredom.

    It was never so in the past and it is being suggested here that the energy and creativity of youth be harnessed in our new national dispensation. I have often wondered to myself if the rage of cults and cultism in the society do not derive from the neglect and boredom of youths. By neglect is meant the fact of not being educated culturally by adults who are confused between modernity and their own culture, who themselves mimic what they think is modernity as they pursue the new ideal of money by any means necessary and neglect the cultural raising and development of their offspring. Since the larger society does not guide them or innovate modern patterns of activities of their own, the young make up their own consisting of gruesome notions of what they think is African and traditional: initiation ceremonies of murder, mayhem and the abuse of women (the girls who are fought over and shared by them, dominated in a mixture of bad Hollywood and what they think is African culture as no parent or adult taught them or helped to find what is African. Perhaps such energies can be taken over by governance, absorbed into organizational and public structures and used to give youth a sense of usefulness and respect from adults. Perhaps it would help if the youth are given recognized positions of leadership in the modern dispensations in their villages, towns and governmental organizations.  I was at a conference in Senegal where students who were members of parliament came to represent their country, Mali.

    Such absorption of youth into social and governmental life, finding useful and relevant patterns from our traditional cultures can only happen if we still respect our various cultures and do not despise them as seems to be the condition now for many religious organizations teach youth and the whole country that everything African is demonic. This rage of internalized racism and self-despisal needs to be engaged and stopped in the new educational curricula and the development of children and citizenry that we are thinking of now and are also necessary. Self-respecting nations like Japan and others do take from their past and their own cultures as they love and respect them unlike us… They are reputed for instance also adapt those cultures to meet modern needs as is reported that Japanese social patterns of authority are adopted in their factory system and other businesses. The Japanese studied, mastered and dominated electronic technology without considering themselves therefore inferior to the Westerners from whom they learnt.

    We seem to think that worship, adoration and self-despisal must go with learning from a culture perhaps because we think culture is biological, but culture is not biological. Anything created by human beings anywhere is the heritage of all humanity as interculturality, learning from and borrowing are habits of all humanity. And that is why we must study our history, world history and the histories of other peoples to understand how achievements are made in those societies.  The British are reputed to have studied the Romans to build their own empire of Britannia as other peoples did before them. We often say we no longer know the African cultures; yes, maybe but we can read about them; study them for all sources in museums and libraries from all over the world. That is what was and is done by other peoples to learn their own cultures and know what to choose for modernity. The average Britisher or French person does not necessarily know his or her history but those who build nations and institutions read, study for the important work of nation building in which they are engaged. Our Nigerian political and ruling classes travel a great deal; they could find the time to visit places and study.

  • Wanted: Nigeria’s economic oracles

    I must begin this piece with a caveat; I am not an economist and do not pretend to be one. I am an engineer. Engineers find solutions to complex material problems that go to make life comfortable for mankind. Economics is also a solution science, much like engineering, but within a social context. Its main purpose, experts would say, is to improve the material well-being of the people. The two fields of knowledge use theoretical constructs and models to leverage better living for the society.

    Despite this point of convergence, I have a little quarrel with economics and the way it is practiced, may be in Nigeria. For while over the years, better life has come the way of society through engineering and allied sciences, economics has continued to postpone our well-being. It would seem the way we are told to await this ‘well-being’, the farther it is from us in much the same way as our shadows. Economists keep projecting into the future when today’s challenges are yet unattended to. As we get close to that future, they shift to yet another future, postponing our well-being interminably. This has been the lot of Nigerians over the last 50 odd years. And when we realize that our life expectancy is about 55 years, it becomes obvious the need to approach life with transcendental sobriety knowing that Nigerians well- being may well be in the other world.

    I would however wish that the President Mohammadu Buhari’s era be different. He is a honest man who wishes Nigeria well and should be encouraged and assisted to succeed even where others failed. But he should help himself to the array of economics experts we have in the country – the Charles Soludos, Pat Utomis, Akpan Ekpos, etc – to evolve a workable roadmap that would bail us out of the obviously surmountable challenges.

    Nigeria’s resources profile is not such that we should be crying for help, not after over three decades of oil boom when our soil was dripping with the black gold and associated gas at princely price. I am yet to see a nation that is so averse to production like Nigeria, a nation that relishes in conspicuous consumption at the expense of production (we are one of the world’s heaviest consumers of the most expensive wines), a nation that prefers to eat its yam with the head. Only recently I stumbled on a packaged ‘abak’, a local preparation from palm fruits usually used to make what is popularly called ‘gbanga soup’ in South-south Nigeria. On the label was the inscription: “Made in Ghana”.

    It is sad that oil price has tumbled the way it has in the world market; but it did not come as a surprise. What is rather surprising is that despite the warning signals that hung in the air menacingly, we went about our economic activities as though all the variables to oil price management were at our beck and call, and like the stubborn fly, followed the coffin right into the grave. Imagine Nigeria with 80 million hectares of arable land, about 23 percent of all the arable lands across West Africa importing, rather than exporting, food. Imagine the fact that manufacturing contributes a paltry five percent to the nation’s GDP when the minimum should be between 35 and 40 percent. Among the emerging economies, Malaysia receives 45 percent contribution from manufacturing to their GDP.

    Let’s look around us and we will see the giant installations at the steel mill at Ajaokuta, the Aluminium Smelter Plant at Ikot Abasi, the massive paper mill and gmelina plantation at Oku Iboku and Iwopin, the failed NITEL and M-TEL at a time of the nation’s communication boom, dead Nigeria Airways/National Shipping Line, etc. is there something in our genes that is working against our growth as a country?.

    Three things stand between us and development –decaying values, unmitigated   corruption, and lack of sustainable planning.  Nigeria’s value system must be re-fixed if we are to make progress. We have to go right down to teach our children the values embedded in dignity of labour, the evil of stealing, respect for elders, the criminality of cultism, hard work, honesty, patriotism and working for the common good.

    The President is fighting corruption under a very difficult condition. If this war must take root, it must be supported by all. It must come as an admixture of prevention and cure consistently fought over a prolonged period. Habits don’t change fast, it will take a gradual process; but consistency is the key. So far we have dwelt on the cure, but we need to evolve a strategic action plan to educate the public on the evil effects of corruption. We must traverse the mosques, churches, schools, social gatherings and airwaves to drum the gospel of sincerity into our youths. When these are combined with a revised law that punishes adequately, anyone caught on the wrong side of the corruption law, the impact will register. So far we must give kudos to Buhari for daring where others feared to thread.

    Planning in Nigeria is a difficult subject to discuss. But it is on one subject we can ill-afford to ignore. During the Obasanjo years when Charles Soludo was the Economic Adviser and subsequently Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank, a development model was brought to bear on the Nigerian system that if it was followed through would have had tremendous impact on the economy. It came in three blocks, namely: National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), States Economic Empowerment and development Strategy (SEEDS), and Local Government Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (LEEDS). The objective was to string economic development in a way that builds symmetrically from the last tier of government, the local governments, through the states to the national.

    The inherent benefits of that planning model is that whereas states have enormous leeway to plan their development, they should not operate in a way that suggest we have 36 nations working at cross purposes with one another and with the nation. States’ economic goals must add up to the national economic goals. Otherwise there could be dissonance and waste. Soludo’s plan, I think, was to evolve a paradigm of development that allows for benchmarking and acceptable peer comparison under a healthy competition. It was to draw up a template advice from the National Economic Council that would from time to time examine the physiology of states’ economy vis-à-vis the overall national economic goals. This way, an organically developed nation would emerge and tools for peer comparison developed for better economic management.

    Till date, I still see that model as the best; for while the centre may not be able to control states and Local Government expenditures by virtue of the limitations placed by the constitution, it can all the same foster voluntary development cooperation that would have redefined our development paradigm away from the present Tower of Babel.

    The other equally important issue is the need to ensure that the nation’s fiscal and monetary policies operate together to achieve our predetermined socio-economic goals. Am not particularly expecting the exchange rate of the naira to convertible currencies to improve. Not any time very soon. Those who blame this on Buhari are simply playing politics; and this is not the time for that. Any economist worth his buy knows that to compare any two administrations is not realistic except where the indices are discounted against time and space. If we had saved during our windfall years by investing bulk of the petro-naira in income generating investments, we would have made up for our shortfall from revenues from such sources today. If we had checked our unbridled proclivity for conspicuous consumption and tamed our waste, we would not have come to this sorry pass. We are now at the cross roads where the options are few and straight. It is either we produce or perish. So the naira will drift, whether government likes it or not, until such a time that our taste for foreign goods give way to their local equivalents.

    What is rather necessary is for the CBN to fund industrial goods, production equipment/machineries, raw materials, and vital spares at the official rate and allow those who make forex through their productive efforts to bring such in through existing official windows. Those who desire Kellogs Cornflakes, decaffeinated coffee, Brazilian hairs, Alceet wines, super exotic cars, etc satisfy their corrugated taste from wherever they can. The tea party should by now give way to serious economic management.

    Government should also address the issue of power frontally. Those of us in the private sector know the challenges we undergo with basic infrastructure like power, water, roads, transportation, etc. We can in the short run re-examine the industry cluster option where dedicated power, water, warehouses, etc are provided and shared by say, a hundred small scale businesses rather than this duplication of efforts at great cost to industrialists. We have seriously examine the issue of renewable energy – solar, wind, and biogas, which are environment friendly, cheaper in the long run as supplements to hydro electric power and fossil fuel.

    • Ekpenyong (Ph.D, FNSE, FNIM), is the former Deputy Governor of Akwa Ibom State.

     

     

  • Ogun Institute as a metaphor

    The diamond anniversary of the Social Development Institute (Shasha), Iperu literally caught me flat-footed. The news clip on the Ogun State Television (OGTV) on Thursday afternoon somewhat jarred me. The human lenses that beheld the ruins of this college should have been part of the historic 60th celebrations. It was a brisk moment of self-flagellation.

    This imagery extract from one of the works of Wole Soyinka is most fitting for this exercise: “Usually one sees them in still photos – images of dying cattle in a land overtaken by drought, now landmarked by carcasses and skeletons, withered shrub and dry water holes. Occasionally however, the cine-camera takes charge, lingers over a calf that is reduced to nothing but skin stretched over a cage of ribs, and the final contractions of emaciated muscles. Flies settle and crawl over what remains of moisture on the prostrate beast, mostly around the eyes, ears and nostrils. It makes a feeble attempt to lift itself, scuffing dirt with the sides of its hooves, then settles back on its side, immobile. Its enlarged eyes stare blankly into the lens. This disproportioned frame with extended ribs sinks slowly into immobility. At some point, you know the calf is doomed, its life slowly ebbing into the sands. The lens lifts towards the desiccated horizon, rises directly upwards to reveal a cloud of swooping vultures, suspended, circling, blotting out the pitiless sun.”

    This allegory of “dying cattle” could perspicuously substitute for the narration of this author in 2013 after the visit of the Ogun State governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, to the institution that had sunk into atrophy due to decades of neglect: “…Just picture structures abandoned in the bush for decades or that have lost their innocence to wars or some natural disasters… The termite-infested hall – the best of the buildings – the (high) table and chairs standing grudgingly on legs that had lost their souls to the rage of termites, the pock-marked asbestos ceiling, windows without covers, roof threatening to collapse at the slightest fury of the elements…”

    What made that visit by the governor in June 2013 more poignant was that there were actually some students in that school – doing what then? Studying? Were they up to a hundred at the time? The sight was most affecting as one took time to know the mission of those hapless youths in what might pass for a deserted jungle.

    It was not totally an overcast day, and nothing had really forewarned the governor and his small entourage on how the day might turn out to be when the convoy left the state capital after noon and pulled up about an hour later at the Social Development Institute (Shasha), Iperu, a college established on February 20, 1956 by the government of Western Region, led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, to offer leadership training to community leaders, traditional rulers and politicians. It  offers Certificate and Diploma in Social Works and Social Development to youths in affiliation with the Olabisi Onabanjo University.

    After a tour of the college, the governor was downcast. Although he managed to lighten up the shoe-string cultural display of the students, it was evident that the mind of the state’s helmsman had been taken up in some cogitations – the ramifications of his Mission to Rebuild Ogun State, knowing full well that Shasha was just one of the thousands of institutions across the state that had paid the heavy price of decades of neglect – the Nigerian factor – not just in education but health, agriculture, etc. The journey from Iperu to Lagos afterwards was expectedly sombre and I fantasized the governor retiring to his bed by 1 a.m. or thereabouts mulling the ‘sight of the day’ over, imagining the number of such scenes of regression yet to be identified in addition to the thousands already known, in the face of scarce resources of the state.

    Efforts had to be redoubled in the renovation of existing schools while building new ones in order to expand access to education. Any new school built that does not factor in the age we are is not worth it. So the state government had to be futuristic in the design of its new schools, a template that can now be imitated by any individual, group or future governments. Indeed, in every new project embarked upon by the Amosun administration in every sector of the state’s economy, compliance with the 21st century was an article of faith. Reclaiming the state is not a work of one, two, three or four terms. As one observed then, “Even if you devote the entire yearly budget to education alone and consecutively for 10 years, you will still be left with one or two dilapidated buildings.” But the journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. What is of moment now is that the pace and tempo of the ongoing development must not abate…

    At the end of that enervating tour of Shasha, the governor promised to rehabilitate the institution. Did I hear some heckling? Such promises were not new to the school; they heard them for decades. But to the glory of God, it was a renovated institution that celebrated its 60th anniversary last week Wednesday. You only need to request from the state television station the video clip of the college when the governor visited in 2013.

    Indeed, as I watched the news flash of the 60th, the state’s officials that sat on the high table, in the very space that the governor was received in 2013, it was evident that from the ashes of neglect, a bright future had emerged for the students of Social Development Institute (Shasha), Iperu. I congratulate the students and staff of Shasha and laud the state governor for fulfilling his pledge to the premier institution. Of course, the government still has plans for the second phase of the reconstruction when finances of the state improve, but the image of a dying calf, some neglected jungle or moribund institution in the throes of death has now been supplanted with prospects of a bright and flourishing future for the students and people of Ogun State.

    • Soyombo sent in this piece from Abeokuta via densityshow@yahoo.com