Category: Editorial

Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, Hitler — these were the names that, for much of the world, defined the first half of the 20th century, the most destructive era in history.

Gandhi, King, Mandela — these, it could be argued, are the figures who will live longest in the public consciousness as we look back on the postwar world: leaders who had no real armies to speak of and who wielded little power in office but who helped create a new ethic through the power of their ideas and the example of their lives.

Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were, of course, men of peace, preaching nonviolent resistance to oppression and exploitation. Nelson Mandela, though not a combative man, felt there was no alternative to war against the apartheid government under which he lived, and he spent 27 years in prison for plotting violence against that government. (He and his associates planned a campaign of nonlethal sabotage and envisioned a military front, neither of which had come to much before he was arrested.)

Mr. Mandela emerged from prison in 1990 with greater stature than any leader in South Africa, white or black. More important, he came out espousing reconciliation, understanding and forgiveness. Although he was an old man by the time he took power in his country, and delegated much of the work of governing to others, the trust he had gained among people in just about every camp was essential in South Africa’s transition from a racial dictatorship to a true democracy.

Like Gandhi and King, Nelson Mandela had personal shortcomings, domestic discord and so on. But it was, to a large degree, the overwhelming and reassuring force of his personality that won over nearly everyone he came in contact with, from African villagers to prison guards to the men who ran his government. He was a regal figure, born into tribal royalty, tall, handsome and charming. He moved comfortably and confidently among his country’s many peoples — black, Indian, white — and made a point of seeing the good in each of them. As one of his admirers remarked, he had the gift of making all those he met feel better about themselves.

Also as with Gandhi and King, Mr. Mandela engaged in one of the world’s most vital postwar tasks: dismantling the strong web of racist ideas, with which certain Western thinkers had sought for more than a century to rationalize the subjugation of others through colonialism, segregation and disenfranchisement. Anyone born in the past 50 years or so would have a hard time understanding how pervasive these ideas were in many advanced and sophisticated nations (including our own, which in much of its territory bore an unsettling resemblance to apartheid South Africa).

Mr. Mandela, who died Thursday night at age 95, seemed to understand that the motivating force behind ethnic, religious and racial hatred is not only, or even primarily, self-interest; it is fear, distrust, a lack of understanding. In his person and his policies, he set out to show those on the other side that they had little to fear. He sought unity rather than revenge, honesty and understanding rather than the naked exercise of power. These are all fine abstractions, of course, but never so clear to us as when there is a living figure to exemplify them. That’s why Mr. Mandela’s influence extended so far beyond South Africa and was felt by so many of the world’s peoples other than Africans. It is the reason, now that he is gone, that it is more important than ever — in a century marked so far by frightening eruptions of terror and religious intolerance — to keep before the world the name and example of Nelson Mandela.

– Washington Post

During my life time, I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. And if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” President Barack Obama echoed this quote in his tribute hours after Mandela’s death.

He has flown away finally, after living forever, seemingly. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela finally passed on Thursday night, aged 95. He had been in and out of hospital since December 2012, as he sought treatment for a recurring lung infection. He finally succumbed to the inevitable – death – perhaps at a time many people least expected. He was for some time on life support while people kept vigil for him in South Africa and beyond. What might have been if Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela had not passed this way? What manner of world would South Africa be today; how indeed would today’s world have fared without the signature of that spirit that rose gently from the veldt land and suffused the world with its magisterial virtue. Goodbye transcendental spirit; adieu turbulent one; you made the world to heave, to listen, to rethink and reconfigure a near-moribund rainbow entity.

He died several times to rescue his fatherland from the clutches of evil and eventually meshed a most colourful landscape of peoples, places and histories. There indeed goes the great one called Madiba, the troubler for a better world.

What are his legacies? In a fractious world, he installed harmony. In a multi-ethnic, multi-racial state, he symbolised togetherness. Out of potential bitterness, he embodied tolerance. He became the world’s avuncular spirit. In these days of partisan malice and ruthless vendetta, Nigeria can learn from Mandela the graces of inter-party tranquility. Unlike our sit-tight and uptight democrats, he showed disdain for power grasping by stepping down after one term in office. Symbolism came naturally to him because, as President Obama observed, he was a “profoundly good” human being, a person for the ages.

He lived his name, Rolihlahla, which means to pull a branch of a tree, or translated more loosely, a “troublemaker”. At 19 in 1937 he was designated to inherit his father’s position as a privy councillor, he chose his own way – to move to Healdtown to attend the Wesleyan College in Fort Beaufort. Again at the end of his first year in Fort Hare University, where he was studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree, he became involved in a Students’ Representative Council boycott against university policies. He would not yield to the demand of the university authority and was asked to leave. He chose to leave.

The rebellious streak in young Nelson continued to manifest when he jettisoned the marriage arranged for him by his uncle, the Regent of his Thembu clan and fled to Johannesburg. There he found job as a guard at a mine but his employer kicked him out of the job upon learning that he was a runaway Regent’s ward. He was undeterred. Helped by his friend and mentor, Walter Sisulu, he worked as an articled clerk in a law firm, completing his B.A. degree at the University of South Africa via correspondence. He also began his law studies at the University of Witwatersrand.

Mandela had created his own unique persona by the time he was 30 years. He had defied his father, his uncle and a major university authority. Politics beckoned and there was no other place to berth than the fecund grounds of the African National Congress, (ANC). With a law degree in hand and his soul mate Oliver Tambo beside him, he took the South African political landscape by storm. In 1948 after the election victory of the Afrikaaner-dominated National Party (NP), the stronghold of apartheid and racial segregation, Mandela went full swing. He was a key figure in the ANC’s 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People which birthed the Freedom Charter and marked the beginning of the epic anti-apartheid struggle. In those early days, the law firm of Mandela and Tambo was providing free and low-cost legal representation to many blacks.

Though Mandela was an adherent of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance principle (Satyagraha) he executed an about-face in 1956 when he and 150 other ANC members were arrested and charged with treason. The trial lasted for five years, with the accused all acquitted eventually. While the trial lasted, new youth groups, the Africanists (later the Pan Africanist Congress, PAC) emerged deriding ANC’s ‘softness’ in the struggle and seeking the use of more force to achieve change.

This growing impatience may have motivated Mandela in 1961 to lead the ANC armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) or the ‘Spear of the Nation’ which he co-founded. This marked the defining moment in the fight to end the obnoxious apartheid policies of the White-dominated regime. Mandela’s MK had a clearly defined and publicly stated mission to organise carefully coordinated sabotage attacks against military and government targets with an eye on guerrilla war if sabotage failed to end apartheid. Mandela raised funds abroad for MK and established paramilitary training camps.

Only a trouble maker would take a stance that leaves his neck on the chopping block or put better, would make a move that left him at the shooting range of the enemy. There is no telling what might have become of South Africa if Umkhonto had not been in the hands of a reasonable but dogged fighter like Mandela, a positive trouble maker. In June 1961, Mandela reportedly sent letters to South African newspapers warning the government that unless it met MK’s demands, they would embark on a campaign of sabotage. The key demand was a call for a national constitution convention.

Of course the apartheid government ignored the warning and on December 16, 1961, MK launched its first attack – the bombing of an electricity sub-station. Though only about a dozen acts of sabotage campaign were said to have been carried out, Mandela would be charged with about 193 acts of sabotage bombings in total by the government. Some of the other targets recorded include post offices, pass offices, utilities, magistrates’ courts and crop burning in places like Durban, Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg. MK was to later morph into a guerrilla organisation taking with it, many human casualties as against its initial stance to allow no human victim.

After living on the run for about one and half years, Mandela was captured in his hiding place in Kwazulu-Natal province. He was sentenced for an initial five years for leaving the country illegally and leading workers to strike. While still in prison, the famous Rivonia trial began. He and prominent ANC leaders were charged for capital crimes of sabotage and treason. Unbowed and unapologetic, Mandela admitted ‘complicity’ in the charges of conspiring with the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP) to deploy explosives to destroy public utilities in the Republic of South Africa.

He seized the moment of this trial to call attention not just to the white supremacists’ policies but to the whole world about the evil of apartheid. In his famous opening statement from the dock on April 20, 1964, at the Pretoria Supreme Court, Mandela stated the reasoning behind the resort to violence. Peace had failed; peace seemed to energise the apartheid regime. One hard stance followed another fresh official terror like the Sharpeville massacre, the declaration of the state of emergency and the banning of the ANC. “I am the first accused” is the speech that was to reverberate around the world and shape the struggle against white domination in South Africa. He closed the speech thus: “During my life time, I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. And if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” President Barack Obama echoed this quote in his tribute hours after his death.

Mandela and his ‘co-conspirators’ were ‘mercifully’ given a life sentence instead of being sent to the gallows. Thus began the long road to incarceration that was to last for 27 years and most of which was spent in Robben Island, aka, ‘Mandela University’. The struggle gained in intensity from this moment and the campaign against the vagabond administration in South Africa seemed to gain fresh global momentum each day Mandela was in prison. President Pieter W. Botha in February 1985 offered Mandela freedom on the condition that he renounced violence, but in a statement through his daughter Zindzi, Mandela retorted, “What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.”

In an event broadcast live worldwide, Mandela was released from prison on February 11, 1990, by President F.W. de Klerk. Few days earlier, de Klerk had lifted ban on the ANC and other anti-apartheid organisations. Full reconciliation was on the roll, thanks to two great men of history – Mandela and de Klerk. Mandela led his party, ANC to a long-drawn, multi-party negotiations which culminated in the first multi-racial elections in South Africa, with full enfranchisement. On May 10, 1994, Mandela was sworn in as the first black president of South Africa. Mandela and de Klerk were to win the 1993 Nobel Prize for Peace.

Choosing to rule for only one term of four years, he continued the difficult reconciliation process which signposted the birth of a multiracial and deeply seared state. Only a Mandela could have fit this moment that called for unparallelled equanimity and gracefulness of spirit. If he defined the struggle, he also shaped the peace. There indeed goes a ‘trouble maker’; a man who would not rest, who was indeed willing to die in order to dislodge an evil system from our world. Adieu Madiba!

The Nigeria House in New York has been in the news for the wrong reasons. Some unseen persons seem hell bent on selling the monument for no cogent reason. We are bothered that if the process is not halted, this could be another attempt at indiscriminate disposal of one of the country’s legacies spread across the globe.

Representative Yakubu Dogara alerted the House of Representatives to the impending sale through his motion that was roundly adopted by the lawmakers. Dogara averred that some officials have prepared a disconcerting official repair bill of N2.754 billion on the Nigeria House for government. Their sinister motive for doing this was to lay the foundation that would easily mislead the government into taking a misplaced decision to sell the house. The house has however mandated its committee on foreign affairs led by Nnenna Elendu-Ukeje to conduct a public hearing on the matter.

We are happy at the House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs’ swift summoning of principal personalities in the matter. These dramatis personae are or were at one time or the other involved in the management of the Nigeria House. They should tell the nation what they know about why and what informed the move to sell that monument.

Those invited: Prof Viola Onwuluri- Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Martins Uhomoibi-Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign affairs, Prof Joy Ogwu, current Nigeria’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Professor Adebowale Adefuye, Nigeria’s ambassador to the United States, Prof Ibrahim Gambari, former Nigeria’s permanent representative to the UN, Aminu Wali, current Nigeria’s ambassador to China and former permanent representative to UN and Olugbenga Ashiru, former foreign affairs minister, among others.

It is indefensible that this New York edifice that still serves as the official residence of Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and the Consular-General is being contemplated for sale. Virtually all former Nigerian representatives to the UN lived in the house that was reportedly bought in 1961 by Nigeria’s late Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, from the famous John Rockefeller family at the sum of $1 million. The historic edifice sits on over 16.6 acres of land in one of the acknowledged most expensive areas in the world.

Everything should be done to stall the move to cheaply sell the Nigeria House whether directly or through proxy to selfish powerful elements in the society. The move to sell at all is ill-conceived since it portrays the government as not thoughtful. It is under one of the administrations controlled by the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that monetisation policy was introduced. Under the policy, government houses were sold to top ranking officers of state while government was imprudently made to rent some of these sold properties at exorbitant rents for the same officers. What is the wisdom in this ill-conceived monetisation idea? So, it would be difficult for those hinging the case for the sale of Nigeria House on the failed monetisation policy to successfully push their position.

The nation should learn to guard and preserve her monuments, which include the Nigeria House. Moreover, the government, through several officers of state, has come out to deny insinuations that the nation is broke. Our doubt is reinforced by the fact that if the country is not broke as officially touted, why then is the haste with which the edifice in New York was being planned for sale, obviously without transparency?

Even if the edifice is no longer of immediate use to the country, it should be rented out and the hard currency made on it deployed for meaningful use. This is better than the obtuse surreptitious attempt to sell the house.

Egyptians are squandering another chance to build a broadly inclusive democratic system with the latest constitutional revisions. The new charter defies the revolutionary promise of the Arab Spring by reinforcing the power of institutions that have long held Egypt in an iron grip.

The Constitution, approved by a 50-member citizen committee on Sunday, replaces one imposed last year by the government of President Mohamed Morsi, who was deposed in July, and his Muslim Brotherhood allies. It is expected to be ratified by a popular vote in a referendum within the next 30 days. Most Egyptians are not practiced in civic activism after being disenfranchised for decades under President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in 2011. But they would be wise to read the new draft Constitution thoroughly and demand that the writers alter its provisions.

On paper, it appears to grant citizens important new rights, including criminalizing torture and human trafficking and requiring that the state protect women from violence. But some of the language is vague and could even enlarge the influence of the military, the police and the judiciary, which worked to overthrow Mr. Morsi and outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood.

The military won significant autonomy in the 2012 Constitution; the new one would extend that by giving the military the authority to approve the defense minister for the next two presidential terms. It would also allow the military to try civilians in military courts, a practice that has been long opposed by democracy activists.

The new constitution would require that a council of senior police officers be consulted on security policy, which would very likely ensure that there will be little, if any, meaningful reform that could bring the army and police firmly under civilian control.

Egyptians understandably want more stability after nearly three tumultuous years. But expanding powers for the security agencies would be disastrous for democracy. In recent days, there has been a crackdown against thousands of largely liberal and leftist activists who protested a new law effectively banning demonstrations, the government’s latest attempt to curb dissent.

Mr. Morsi and his supporters went too far last year in ramming through a Constitution that greatly enhanced the role of Islamic law and restricted freedoms. This new constitution is equally flawed because it was drafted with minimal input from Islamists and could further crush the Brotherhood by banning political parties based on religion. A last-minute change in one provision has also raised the possibility that the army may not allow elections for a new Parliament before elections for a new president — a promise it had made earlier. That move might make it more likely that Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the defense minister, would win the presidency if he runs.

In the final analysis, the real test of any constitution is how it is carried out in practice. Egypt’s recent history, sadly, offers little assurance that any improvements in constitutional language will be honored.

– New York Times

Nigeria’s perplexing status as a country of monstrous contradictions was demonstrated last week when it emerged that support staff of the House of Representatives are set to go on strike over unpaid wages.

They allege that their allowances have not been paid since 2011. The workers had planned to act earlier, but stayed action because they apparently did not wish to disrupt President Goodluck Jonathan’s now-postponed 2014 budget presentation to the National Assembly. The assembly’s management responded by setting up a committee to look into the workers’ complaints, but so far, nothing has been done.

Even by the deplorable standards of Nigerian labour relations, this is shocking. The Lower House is, in many ways, the very soul of Nigeria’s democracy. More populist than the Senate, less open to executive manipulation than state houses of assembly, and better able to reflect the popular mood, the House of Representatives has arguably done more to sustain faltering hopes in democratic norms than any other government institution.

A House of Representatives that has taken ministers and chief executives to task should not be guilty of the labour infractions that it has investigated in other bodies. How else can it present itself as an honest broker in labour crises such as the six-month old strike embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)? At a more fundamental level, why should the Nigerian masses believe that the House has their true interests at heart, when it cannot even honour the legitimate entitlements of its own workers?

The House of Representatives undermines itself when it does not maintain the principles of equity, justice and fair play that it has often sought to hold others to. The refusal to pay allowances for nearly two years is all the more disheartening when it is remembered that members of the House receive princely sums which rival the remuneration of their colleagues in far wealthier nations. Experience has shown how assiduous the House can be when it comes to its own benefits; the aggressiveness with which its members have confronted the Executive on this issue is well-known, to say nothing of the shameless alacrity with which they pad their budget every year.

The National Assembly’s reticence becomes even worse when it is realised that this is not the first time that workers have protested the withholding of their allowances. In November 2010 and May 2013, staff members of the National Assembly stormed the complex in outrage over illegal deductions of pension funds from their salaries, an allegedly fraudulent housing scheme and the non-payment of allowances. On both occasions, the interventions of leaders of the National Assembly and their reassurances that the issues would be resolved calmed the workers. The latest altercation shows just how empty those promises were.

This situation cannot be allowed to continue if the House of Representatives expects to function effectively. The workers in question provide vital support services without which the House cannot fulfill its mandate. In addition, the bad publicity the issue has caused is likely to reflect negatively on the House, and consequently cause it to lose a great deal of the moral authority it currently has, which will further erode its capacity to do its job.

Rather than cower behind arcane notions of parliamentary privilege, the House must do the right thing. Its members should direct the management to meet with acknowledged representatives of the relevant unions, such as the Parliamentary Association of Nigeria (PASAN), identify and clarify all contentious matters, and set out a timetable for their complete resolution.

If the allowances have been fraudulently withheld, then those involved should be sanctioned accordingly. Nigeria’s House of Representatives must put its money where its mouth is.

It has long been clear that Viktor Yanukovich, Ukraine’s president, cares more about maintaining his grip on power than advancing the interests of the country he leads.

It was almost certainly the president’s instinct for self-preservation that led him to spurn an EU deal that would have offered Ukraine access to European markets in return for political and economic reforms. The agreement was opposed by Russia, which sought to undermine it by threatening its neighbour with import restrictions and other forms of pressure. Vladimir Putin is thought to have made a rival bid for Mr Yanukovich’s allegiance in two closed-door meetings in recent weeks. Precisely what help Mr Putin might have offered, and at what price, remains unclear. Ukraine’s shrinking economy needs foreign aid if it is to avoid a balance of payments crisis before presidential elections that are due to take place in little more than a year.

Responding to the snub, the EU stressed that the door remained open to Ukraine, while wisely resisting the president’s requests for further inducements. Yet a darker indication of Mr Yanukovich’s determination to stay in office came shortly after he left the meeting in Vilnius where the agreement was to have been signed. Over the weekend, peaceful demonstrators expressing their support for the EU deal were viciously attacked by police armed with truncheons and tear gas, and pursued down side streets when they tried to flee.

This violence stands in contrast to the authorities’ restraint during the Orange Revolution of 2004. It demands a firm response, which should appeal to Ukrainian officials’ keen sense of self-interest. Senior government figures hold assets in the west, and educate their children in western schools. The EU should make clear that it will freeze the assets of anyone complicit in political violence, and that visa applications from such malefactors will be denied.

The debacle will lead some to conclude that the EU should have offered terms that were more palatable to the politicians on whom it must rely to implement any deal. Such criticism is unfair. It was always going to be difficult to wrest Ukraine from Russia’s grasp, even with the support of the Ukranian people. A compromise would have betrayed the EU principles that a majority of Ukrainians endorse. Europe should now make clear that it will not stand by if Ukrainian authorities assault more people for expressing their agreement with its values.

– Financial Times