The Nation Newspaper

Category: Editorial

  • How private are your phone calls?

    Americans need safeguards against snooping by intelligence agencies that are tracking terrorists.

    In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration monitored the international phone calls and emails of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people within the U.S. without a court order. Seven years after the New York Times broke that story, it is apparent that privacy safeguards legislated in response are inadequate — a deficiency Congress needs to rectify.

    The House recently voted to extend for another five years amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act adopted in 2008. The amendments allow U.S. intelligence agencies, with minimal court supervision, to collect vast amounts of electronic communications from sources reasonably believed to be abroad, even if a U.S. resident is at the other end of the conversation. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has placed a hold on similar action in the Senate in the hopes of amending the legislation.

    Meanwhile, a group of lawyers, journalists, activists and academics who communicate confidentially with foreigners living abroad has filed suit claiming that the 2008 FISA amendments have made it difficult for them to exercise their constitutional rights and execute their professional obligations. On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether the plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU, have legal standing to bring suit. Given the importance of the constitutional questions involved, the justices should affirm that they do.

    But the important actor in protecting the privacy of Americans is Congress. The 2008 amendments do contain some protections for Americans’ privacy. For example, the government may not use its authority to gather information abroad to “target” someone known to be in the United States. The law also contains “minimization” procedures placing restrictions on the retention and dissemination of information about U.S. citizens and residents.

    But critics say that the prohibition on the targeting of Americans is no guarantee that the government isn’t engaging in what the ACLU calls “dragnet surveillance” of Americans’ international emails and phone calls. Given that intelligence agencies are trawling for broad categories of information — perhaps as broad as “communications originating in or terminating in Yemen” — it’s inevitable that some of those communications will involve people in the U.S.

    How many? The office of the director of national intelligence said last year that it is not “reasonably possible” to determine the number of people in the U.S. whose communications may have been “reviewed.”

    It’s generally assumed that most of the collection involves not real-time eavesdropping on phone conversations or instant messages but the downloading of large amounts of information, which is later analyzed. In one scenario, communications from a person in the U.S. would be accessed as part of the scrutiny of a variety of messages sent or received by a foreign target. But some worry that analysts also may use the names of U.S. citizens and residents in their searches of acquired communications. The office of the director of national intelligence insists that the government does not engage in “back door” searches of Americans, but also acknowledges that government operatives have “sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law.”

    In voting to reauthorize the FISA amendments, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the law “has been implemented with attention to protecting the privacy and civil liberties of U.S. persons.” Americans would be more receptive to such assurances if Congress were to adopt two amendments proposed by Wyden and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.).

    One would prohibit, in the absence of a court order, “the intentional acquisition of the contents of communications of a particular United States person or the searching of the contents of communications … in an effort to find communications of a particular United States person.” (There are exceptions for emergencies in which such information might be necessary to save lives.) The other would require the Justice Department and intelligence agencies to inform Congress of how many people in the U.S. have had their communications either “acquired” or “reviewed.”

    Congress must strike a new and better balance between national security and the privacy rights of Americans.

    – Los Angeles Times

     

  • The election in Ondo state

    The election in Ondo state

    The gubernatorial election in Ondo state has come and gone. Dr. Olusegun Mimiko and his Labour Party have won. In spite of the protestation of the PDP and the ACN, it seems that the people have decided. This is the spirit of democracy. The people have foolishly or wisely chosen who their leader for a while should be. Most of us independent observers are convinced that the economic integration platform of the ACN is in the longer interest of our people in the South-western part of Nigeria. I have a feeling that Mimiko himself would not be opposed to integration and I do not see how Ondo State can avoid integration with the rest of the Southwest even if Ondo state is not in the same party with its neighbours.

    In politics, one can choose his friends, but one cannot choose his neighbours. It’s like in life generally; one can choose one’s friends, but not members of one’s family. If this is a given position, both Mimiko and leaders of the ACN would have to get used to each other. If they do not, it is our people who would suffer. It is not necessary for elders to jump into the affray between the two contending ideologies in the South-west. Statesmanship should dictate that reconciliation is the way forward. Our interests are permanent, even though the strategies to attain these interests may change and there is no need to reduce political contestation to struggles between individuals and to personalize issues as it is being done in the story of Ondo State. There is absolutely no need to demonise and denigrate Bola Tinubu who by all accounts and yardstick has been a positive force in Yoruba politics. Whether we like it or not, Tinubu for the foreseeable future, will remain a relevant and constant force in Nigerian politics.

    I have read comments glamorizing one group while demonizing leadership of another group. There is no doubt that the leadership of the ACN has been largely successful in mobilizing people in the South-west and asking them to begin to look inwards, so as to find salvation from collective efforts, rather than looking towards an external saviour from Abuja. This trend has always characterised politics of people in the South-west over time and anyone who goes against this tendency would eventually find out that he has backed a wrong horse. This is the evidence of history and the political history of the South-western part of Nigeria is clear on this. This is also in tandem with global trend where cultural awareness accompanied by local autonomy is the order of the day. This is why I find it ridiculous for anybody to accuse the leadership of the ACN of tribalism. Politics is about defending group or collective interest and political parties are organised for this purpose especially in a situation of competing and conflicting interests as we find in Nigeria. Politics is war by other means. Instead of resorting to violence to defend one’s interest, one is involved in organised party politics. This is the real meaning and advantage of party political organisation.

    In advanced countries like the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark and Belgium, political parties exist specifically to defend regional or cultural interests and they don’t have to be apologetic about this; and anybody who feels defending regional interest is against the national interest is living in a fool’s paradise, because after all, the national interest is the aggregation of the interests of all.

    Dr. Mimiko should settle down and face the reality of the need to relate positively with the main political force in the South-west and he should avoid being used to fight intra and inter ethnic battles. He has enough on his plate at home and he must understand that his support in Ondo State is statistically very weak. He should concentrate on the task of development and creating jobs and economic opportunities at home. And that should take all his time, so that he doesn’t have time for indulging in self-adulation and praises from his A-men corner. Mimiko is an intelligent man and personally likeable, I have respect for his sense of judgement. He should avoid being used as a Trojan horse or bridgehead of those who may be opposed to progressive development in the region especially at a time when it is obvious the region is under intense and programmed marginalisation.

    The ACN as a political party needs to be seen as a mass movement that is ready to work with other mass movements in other parts of the country in preparation for 2015 election. The party must therefore be structured in such a way that its leadership is collective and not domineering. There is also need for internal democracy within the party so that candidates who contest elections command the support of the electorate. This is not a time to apportion blame, but this is a time for reform and democratization of all party organs. This is the bitter lesson that it must learn from the Ondo election.

    Political parties grow when challenged. Parties without opposition tend to ossify. This is why I believe the ACN has no reason to feel discouraged or despondent, after all, it made a good show in Ondo in spite of the loaded dice against it. The electoral process must be transparently fair and not subject to the shenanigans of party hawks who would like to use federal might and muscle to win elections. We have seen this before and it has not always been in the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians. If this country is to progress, we must allow a contestation of ideas from which the right way forward would evolve.

     

  • Re: The face of postgraduate medical training

    SIR: My attention has been drawn to the write-up titled ‘True face of postgraduate medical training’ by Dr. Timi Babatunde in the October 22, edition of your newspaper.

    I can not hold brief for, or defend the National or West African Postgraduate Medical Colleges, which are the institutions responsible for organising and publishing results of examinations. It is obvious that the target of the accusations contained in the write-up are examiners who are responsible for setting the questions, marking the papers, and deciding the results, which are ratified by the institutions except in cases of genuine appeals and protests. As an examiner therefore, I am constrained to put in perspective the deliberate misrepresentations and omissions of the writer or complainant.

    Firstly, if the writer is truly a doctor, s/he ought to know the bodies that should deal with such complaints.

    Secondly, the residency training prepares doctors through a postgraduate scientific and professional apprenticeship for appointment as Consultants. Consultants are the last port of call for decisions about diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of patients seen at the highest levels of health care facilities. Patients often live of die through their opinions, which can only be challenged by peers in the same specialty. With such responsibilities, one can only sympathise with those who are passing through the training which we have also passed through with its challenges. There can therefore be no apologies about the fact that standards have to be set, they have to be high, and they have to be maintained. These examinations are therefore to be compared to the ICAN or elevation of lawyers to the position of SANs.

    When it comes to examinations, questions are set by a Court of Examiners made up more than one individual. When questions are to be scored, they are either marked in conference, or marked by at least two independent people after a marking scheme has been agreed, and marks are reconciled before final scores are awarded. At the end of every examination, a meeting of all examiners reviews the whole examinations with scores, with thorough discussion, hard consideration for borderline candidates and sometime sympathetic consideration leading to upgrade of borderline failures.

    A major issue is the attitude of trainees. Dr. Babatunde forgot to inform his readers that those who are pursuing the program leading to the Fellowships are qualified medical doctors who are fully employed as Registrars and Senior Registrars, and earning full salaries while going through training and sitting for examinations. In addition to that, most of them are engaged in private practices either as proprietors or in the employment of other private practitioners. Some moonlight in two or more places in addition to their full and permanent employment. Although these practices are frowned at, there is little that a trainer can do, other than grumble since he/she is not the employer of the one in training. All these are in spite of the fact that the trainee is aware that there is generally a maximum period of about six years within which the hospitals expect them to complete the training and give room for others to come in. A good number are also married with children. This is what I call eating your cake and wanting to have it at the same time. You will then wonder how much time is available for reading and preparation for these examinations. In addition, some of the trainees are already formed family men and women, who are not so amenable to instructions. In an attempt to finish quickly, some candidates also appear for these examinations against trainers’ when it is obvious that they have not prepared adequately. Since the examination is a human system, it is not perfect. It is however pertinent to show that results are not always as erroneously presented, For example, the results of the last examination in my Faculty shows that 29 out of 97 passed the Primaries, 52 out 90 passed Part I, and 35 out of 41passed Part II.

    Agreed, examination fees should not be prohibitive, but the argument that doctors in full employment and earning salaries are heavily handicapped can not be sustained.

    As trainer and examiners who agonise over the performances of the candidates, one can not help feeling being unfairly treated by this write-up simply designed to vilify the examiners

    and the postgraduate medical colleges.

     

    P. O. Olatunji

    Lagos

  • Re: Imoke’s undignified view of women

    SIR: I frown at Dr. Cosmas Odoemena’s article in The Nation of October 18 page 20, which offers criticism that is intellectually sterile and not well founded. The article marked Imoke’s speech with a quotation mark but did not indicate the closing quotation mark, so we just have a loosely running sentences being attributed to Imoke.

    It will interest Odoemena to know that human beings, whether men or women, are a part of tourism assets. They fall under what is referred to as the social attraction of tourism products. A city having beautiful women shows that the women are naturally, culturally or cosmetically beautiful and tourism is about ‘experience’ –something beautiful to look at, certainly not ugly sights. For a city to have beautiful women also means that the men are sensitive to beauty as such both sexes are aesthetically conscious.

    Beauty either as body adornment or other forms of embellishments shows that such a society has risen. There is refinement of taste in the way the people look, walk or their environment, and that such a society has time for leisure which ultimately means that it is a stable and organized society. If Odoemena is not being mischievous, the word delicacy is not a reference to human beings. In his entire article, there is no sentence directly from Imoke referring to women as delicacies.

    Above all Cross River State has a high cultural history of women beautification. The richly decorative coiffure of the Efik women, in the hinterland the nsibidi and eblemi body decorations and the moninkim maiden dances are all forms of indigenous expressions of beauty among Cross River women. It is a misplaced emphasis to assume that beauty connotes sexual gratification. It is more about wellbeing and pleasantness. I am yet to see an ugly woman among the President’s cabinet. Finally, the dignity, respect and prestige of womanhood are also embodied in her beauty which must be admired, praised, sang or painted like Mona Lisa.

     

    Dr. Victor Ecoma.

    Calabar

     

  • Unholy oil

    Unholy oil

    •Ribadu report on the industry must be left inviolate and the guilty brought to book

    Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke now epitomises everything that impedes transparency in the oil and gas sector of the nation. To her, nothing goes wrong in that rotten sector. Any attempt to make her see the contrary stands scuffed. She has demonstrated this times without number before the National Assembly.

    We are afraid she might want to doctor the contents of the Nuhu Ribadu-led 21-member Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force set-up last February by President Goodluck Jonathan. The committee, an upshot of the mass protests against removal of fuel subsidy in the country last January was mandated, among others: To verify all petroleum upstream and downstream revenues (taxes and royalties) due and payable to the Federal Government: And to take necessary steps to collect all debts due and owed, and: To obtain agreements and enforce payment terms by oil industry operators.

    The committee came up with its findings in its 141-page report. Its submissions in the report handed over to Mrs Alison-Madueke are scandalous. The report clearly corroborates previous indictment of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the petroleum ministry for their lack of accountability and transparency in managing the country’s oil affairs.

    Through the committee’s report, about N86.65 billion earned in 10 years by the NNPC is allegedly missing: It wants billions of dollars of unpaid debts from signature bonuses and royalties to be accounted for. The committee shared the public position that the NNPC needs urgent surgical operation or be scrapped outright.

    We know that President Jonathan will officially receive the report Friday, other things being equal, but we admonish Mrs. Alison-Madueke not to change the content of the report earlier submitted to her by the committee. It is disgusting to note that the petroleum minister attempted to clothe the copy presented to her in fake robe by musing: “It is a draft…There will be some areas where the government may have a slightly different opinion … (and) will put its point of view to the committee.” This is despite Reuters, a foreign news agency’s confirmation that the report was labelled “Final Report.’’

    The President’s copy must be the ‘Final Report’ and not the opinions of Mrs Alison-Madueke and friends that have been sulking over the indictment that the subsidy-cum-oil industry in the country has become, especially under her leadership. Nigerians want real facts on the state of fraud in the oil sector, not unconvincing opinions of government officials that have always been part of the problems militating against its growth.

    The government must streamline forthwith the curious bumper profits made through sharp practices by multinational oil majors identified in the report. Something also has to be done about the indiscriminate issuance of oil licences by successive oil ministers in the nation without due recourse to due process.

    It would be unpardonable if we do not ask why international oil traders buy crude without any formal contracts just as NNPC continues to short-change Nigeria of billions of dollars by selling crude oil and gas to itself below the market rates. Multinational oil companies such as Addax, now a unit of China government’s-owned Sinopec, and Shell identified in the report to be owing Nigeria $1.5 billion and N137.57bn ($874m), respectively, in unpaid royalties must, among others, be forced to pay the debts. Furthermore, some people, no matter how highly placed, must also be fished out and held accountable for the hundreds of millions of dollars in signature bonuses that are allegedly missing.

    We call on the government to promptly issue a White Paper on this report so that all those involved in fleecing the country of billions of dollars of oil money, whether as individuals or corporate bodies, do not escape justice. The sanctity of this report must be protected.

     

  • Pension fraud

    Pension fraud

    •The missing local government pension fund must be unearthed

    The news that a whopping N3.3 trillion local government pension fund is missing is shocking and deserves to be investigated. Like many, we are surprised that despite the enormity of this mind-boggling allegation, there has not been a sense of revulsion on the part of government and sense of urgency to investigate the authenticity of the report. We urge the security agencies to thoroughly investigate the alleged missing pension fund. It is a national shame that those put in charge of pension fund have been allowed to turn it to a slush fund.

    According to the report, a member of the Pension Fund Task Force Team made this revelation during a visit to the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission’s (ICPC) headquarters, alleging that this sum was illegally deducted from the pension fund, since 1976. As correctly noted by the chairman of the ICPC, the continued stealing of pension fund is an impending national disaster. The task force team also noted that about 36 billion of the police pension fund has been stolen, alleging that about N300 million is daily pilfered from the fund. While claiming that most of the police fund has been recovered, the official failed to name those who have been sent to jail for this disturbing criminality.

    Indeed, if N3.3 trillion has been pilfered from local government pension scheme, it will be a major national tragedy waiting to happen, when the benefits are due. That amount, which is about two-third of our national budget, represents future entitlements of thousands of potential pensioners, contributed over the years by government, and under the new scheme, also by the workers, for the days ahead. Nobody needs to be reminded what value pension fund represents, considering that it is money meant for one of the most vulnerable members of the society.

    It will not be farfetched to regard the pension fund as blood money, since it represents money meant for decades of sweat and hard work, saved for the proverbial rainy day. Again, the regularity of this stealing also portrays the moral decadence in the society. A situation where it has become a norm for those in custody of such sensitive resources of the state, to freely steal from it, shows the moral degeneracy of the society. It must also be remembered that the new pension scheme is designed to mitigate the challenges usually associated with the inability of the state to meet the pension benefits of its retiring workers. It is totally unacceptable for people who contributed to their pension to be told stories when the time to pay comes.

    The security agencies must therefore quickly investigate the missing fund, and rein in those responsible for it. They must move quickly to ensure that the properties of those behind the scam are sought out and the necessary applications made to the court for an order to confiscate them. The government authorities must realise the potential challenges the pensioners will face down the road, as the contributors retire from service. Indeed, if the government officials fail to safeguard these pension funds, the pressure will be on successive governments to find answers to the problems in the future.

    The expectation then will be for government to pay the pensioners regardless of what happened to the money now. To safeguard the social crisis of that future, those at the helm of affairs must rise up to their responsibilities, and save the future generation the task of paying for what has been stolen by greedy officials of the present generation.

     

  • Suntai’s escape

    Suntai’s escape

    •The Taraba Governor’s plane crash raises important questions

    By the working of providence, the people of Taraba State and, of course Nigerians, are breathing a sigh of grateful relief rather than dripping with tears in an ambience of funeral sadness. The Governor of Taraba State’s escape from death in a plane crash last week, with five other persons also saved the nation the sort of unhappy story that trailed the now familiar story of the Dana Air crash whose many dead the families and the nation still mourn.

    The governor, Danbaba Fulani Suntai, is a trained pilot, and until the painful incident, many Nigerians never knew he flew himself in a private jet. Informed sources say he has flown himself regularly, while his colleagues relied on the expertise of pilots. But Suntai is a qualified pilot, even though he is a trained pharmacist.

    According the report, he was flying from Jalingo to Yola, but lost contact with the Yola control tower, and that led to the crash. Something good happened and that was the mobilisation of search and rescue personnel to the crash site. The governor and the others on the plane were moved to the hospital. At the time of writing, no fatalities have not been reported.

    Governor Suntai has been flown to Germany for treatment. The Taraba State chief executive has the right to fly as a qualified pilot. He trained at the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, Zaria, Kaduna State in 2010. Given the delicate pressures of his task, we wonder if it was wise of him to take the task of running a state and flying an aircraft at the same time.

    Some governors also drive themselves and, even if they reserve the rights to do so, the weighty and intricate workload of their offices advise that they use the services of chauffeurs. Some may say the governors are mature enough to ascertain when the burden is light enough for them to fly an aircraft or sit behind the wheel of a Land Cruiser.

    We are not aware whether it was only the loss of contact that cost the crash or whether certain individual inadequacy added to the technical challenge.

    It was also reported that after the crash, the new deputy governor, Garba Umar, was harassed by some local politicians acting on the orders of a senator. The misfortune of the governor has suddenly taken the familiar tint of politics. The Taraba State House of Assembly affirmed Suntai as not relinquishing his position as governor.

    The political elite could not even allow a collective sense of sobriety overwhelm partisan discord. It is not important whether Governor Suntai is incapacitated or not. According to the constitution, if the governor is sick, the onus lies on the deputy to take charge. This should happen without rancour.

    If Umar takes charge though, he will be wrongly labelled with the ambitious tag of usurper. Power abhors vacuum.

    Governor Suntai’s failure to travel abroad with others who sustained injuries in the flight is palpably unfair. The governor has the resources to care for himself, but the injuries sustained by the other five came because he piloted them. Even if it was an error of weather or technology, the journey may not have happened if he did not embark on it and asked them to go with him.

    Again, if the medical system was not good enough for him as governor, then it means he did not create a good enough system for his fellow citizens. So why should he fly and leave the rest to the weaknesses of our medical system? Their families are protesting and they should. We hope they do not suffer any deaths or lifetime deformities or pathologies that a trip to Germany could have averted. It will be on the governor’s conscience if he returns to bury any victim – or console their families – he left behind.

     

  • Retreats and rhetoric

    Retreats and rhetoric

    •Will President Jonathan walk his talk on sports development?

     

    AS has become his accustomed practice, President Goodluck Jonathan recently hosted a presidential retreat on sports development. The occasion, which brought together many of Nigeria’s best-known sports administrators, coaches, sponsors, journalists and other stakeholders, was aimed at taking a comprehensive look at the state of the country’s sports, especially its talent-development processes, infrastructural deficiencies and funding issues.

    In the light of Nigeria’s relatively poor outings in international sports tournaments, as well as its unsavoury reputation for age-cheating, the utilisation of mercenaries and other unethical practices, there can be no doubt that there is a pressing need for the country to take a hard look at its sports.

    To that extent, President Jonathan is right to convene a sports retreat. The assemblage of the major players in one location provides a valuable opportunity for them to speak frankly with one another, and to discuss problems and solutions in the presence of those who have the authority to enforce whatever remedial measures may be proposed.

    However, while there is no problem with the convening of retreats as a strategy, there are several difficulties with ensuring that they are put to effective use. Since the restoration of civilian rule in 1999, there have been several presidential retreats on issues as diverse as agriculture, education, the aviation sector, the economy and security. Papers have been delivered, worthy sentiments have been expressed, and lofty goals have been set. Yet, very little has been achieved in reality. The aviation retreat, for instance, proposed several far-reaching measures designed to improve safety standards and the sector’s economic viability, but recent tragedies have exposed how little was really done.

    In a manner similar to the conveners of previous retreats, President Jonathan has expressed his determination to ensure that Nigeria “rules the world” in sports. The president’s ambitious vision involves the country attaining sports supremacy in Africa and ranking among the top four in the Commonwealth of Nations, on its way to global sporting domination.

    It is gratifying that the nation’s leader should be so bold. It apparently expresses an unshakeable faith in the ability of Nigeria to achieve these targets. The trouble is that the president has spoken in similar tones before. During the presidential election campaigns of 2011, he promised to transform the country; more recently, he promised a definitive end to the Boko Haram insurgency in June 2012. Not only have such promises failed to materialise, there is little evidence that his administration is even taking coherent steps towards the fulfilment of his pledges.

    Jonathan’s forthright statements on sports are likely to encounter a similar gap between announcement and action. In spite of all the useful ideas that were mooted at the retreat, there is nothing to show that the Federal Government is beginning to tackle the roots of under-performance in sports.

    It has not, for example, started to address the pervasive corruption and lack of transparency that has enriched administrators and impoverished athletes. The Nigerian Football Federation and other sports federations are continually embroiled in financial scandals which are almost never resolved. The audited accounts of the country’s disastrous outing at the 2012 London Olympics are yet to be released publicly, despite the controversy over how an estimated N2.6 billion was spent to prosecute it.

    Victory in the sporting arena is the end-result of dedication and competence. All the speeches in the world will count for nothing if the Jonathan administration does not realise this fact and act accordingly.

  • Ave Iohannes, Cardinal (designate) Onaiyekan

    Ave Iohannes, Cardinal (designate) Onaiyekan

    Among those who know him or have followed his career with interest, the only surprise in the translation to Cardinal of Dr John Onaiyekan, Archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of Abuja, is that it did not come much earlier.

    I belong in both categories.

    Onaiyekan and I were born the same year but six months apart in Kabba, Kogi State, and had our primary education there, he at St Mary’s Catholic School, and I at St Andrew’s Anglican School.

    Our paths rarely crossed, since we lived in different parts of town, and even when we staged the obligatory Empire Day march every year to the Divisional Office, each school maintained its own formation.

    That changed in 1956 when both of us were among a group of primary school pupils specially selected – so we were told — to travel to Kaduna to join our counterparts from other parts of Northern Nigeria to greet Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Phillip on their maiden visit to Nigeria. It was during the trip, and our four-week encampment in Kaduna, that I got to know the boy behind the legend.

    His brilliance had long been the talk of the town. Among his peers, he was deemed the person most likely to succeed, not just on account of that brilliance, but also because of his dutifulness, and his impeccable good manners. He had everything going for him, including a handsome, athletic gait that would grow even more winsome in the years ahead.

    His given name Olorunfemi (God loves me) could not have been more prescient: He was prodigally gifted.

    Back then, the best pupils headed to Government College, Keffi, or the Provincial Secondary School, Okene, via the Northern Common Entrance Exam. Onaiyekan had already decided, it would seem, that those prestigious secular institutions would do little to prepare him for the life of the cloister.

    He could have headed to St John’s College, Kaduna, easily the best-known Catholic secondary school for boys in Northern Nigeria and one of the best in the nation. Instead, Onaiyekan chose to go to the little-known Mt St Michael Secondary School run by the Catholic Mission in bucolic Aliade, near Otukpo, in today’s Benue State. There his brilliance and humility instantly endeared him to the authorities and to fellow students.

    A schoolmate two years ahead of Onaiyekan once told me how he would call Onaiyekan to some quiet corner, far from the embarrassing gaze of colleagues, to seek his help with knotty problems in geometry or the proper use of the ablative absolute in Latin.

    In his final year at Aliade, Onaiyekan’s brilliance thrust him – and his school – into the national limelight. He came first in the entire Northern Nigeria in the entrance examination into the two-year Higher School Certificate (HSC) programme to prepare students for university matriculation.

    His prize was the Isa Kaita trophy, donated by Alhaji Isa Kaita, the much-respected Northern Nigeria Minister of Education. This achievement so impressed the premier himself, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, that he journeyed all the way to Aliade to present the trophy to Onaiyekan.

    With that feat, and a performance of the same vintage in the West African School Certificate examination, Onaiyekan stood to receive a government scholarship to study anywhere he pleased. By the time the WASC results were released, he had already enrolled at the SS Peter and Paul Major Seminary, Bodija, in Ibadan, to prepare himself for the priesthood.

    He could have elected to study mathematics or physics or biology or literature or chemistry or indeed any subject at the most renowned institutions in the world, for such was his prodigious talent. He could have become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or an architect. With proper coaching, he could have earned a decent living in professional soccer as a goalkeeper outside these shores.

    In the academy, he would no doubt have changed more than a few footnotes. He might even have played a leading part in changing a paradigm. But his commitment to the priesthood was unshakeable.

    That commitment took him to Rome for further studies, culminating in a doctorate and versatility in Italian, French, and German and Spanish, took him back to Bodija as a professor of Sacred Theology, and saw him shuttling between wherever he happened to be based and Rome to participate in some of the most important deliberations at The Vatican.

    Thus, his translation to the College of Cardinals was a forgone conclusion. The only surprise, as I was saying, is that it did not come much earlier. Something tells me that he has arrived only at a station, not the terminus.

    In Nigeria, Onaiyekan has been a font of inspiration, always appealing to the moral law within us as Immanuel Kant called it, always speaking truth to power in measured terms but without equivocation, always seeking to promote acceptance and deepen understanding, always exhorting those who have taken the destiny of Nigeria in their hands to make it the country that Providence has endowed it most bounteously to be.

    Not for him, however, the shrillness and sanctimony of a great many of the evangelicals and Pentecostals who are forever invoking “holy ghost fire” on those who don’t share their faith or fervour.

    Sometime in 1968, Onaiyekan, then principal of St Kizito’s Secondary School, Isanlu, in Kwara State, came on assignment to Oro, also in Kwara State, where I was teaching at the Grammar School. During the visit, he said Mass at the local Catholic Church.

    Not being a Catholic, I did not attend the mass. But it clings in my memory. A friend who was in attendance told me how young women literally swooned that a man so handsome could have chosen to be a priest of all things, and the older women wondered and wondered how his parents could have allowed him to make such a wrong-headed choice. It must be that he was orphaned in childhood and had no one to give him proper guidance, some of them speculated.

    No, he was not orphaned. His father was warden of the Catholic Church in Kabba, and even if Onaiyekan was his only child, his father would still not have objected to his entering the priesthood. He is not an only child, however. His older sister was one of the first set of students to graduate from Ahmadu Bello University, where she took a degree in chemistry. Nor is she his only sibling.

    While in Oro, Onaiyekan came to my residence on the Grammar School compound. What seemed to engage him the most in my bachelor home was my bookshelf, chockfull of an eclectic collection of which I was really proud. He picked out one volume from the collection and asked whether I had read it.

    It was “The Phenomenon of Man”, by the French Jesuit theologian and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and I told him rather tentatively that I had read it.

    “Did you understand it?” he asked in the manner of a solicitous family doctor.

    In the book, with an elegant and engaging preface by the evolutionary biologist Sir Julian Huxley, de Chardin combined insights from his study of fossils with insights from sacred scripture to explain the universe and Man’s place in it.

    I told him I found large sections of it tough going.

    “Do you have French?” he asked, again in the manner of the solicitous family doctor.

    No, I told him.

    “No wonder you found it so hard.” He said. “The French original is far easier to understand.”

    That is the image of Dr Onaiyekan that has remained with me ever since: the image of the solicitous family doctor, which translates in clerical terms into the good shepherd, tending his flock ever so solicitously.

    The other image is that of a rather reticent savant, more concerned to guide and to make people better and wiser than to appear clever.

    Ave Iohannes, Cardinal Onaiyekan.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Triumph of spite?

    Triumph of spite?

    No one can accuse any electorate of spite.

    As John Milton argued in Paradise Lost, God has given Man the free will to choose; when queried on why God “allowed” Satan to steal into Man’s paradise. But a caveat: good or evil, Man reaps the consequences of his choice.

    And so, it is with every electorate – not the least the Ondo electorate that just returned Olusegun Mimiko as governor. They would greatly rejoice at their choice, if the governor delivers the el-Dorado he promised. But they would gnash their teeth and lament to no end if they found they had sold themselves a pig in a poke. It is nothing spiteful. It is just desert for wise or foolish voting.

    But if the electorate is quite blameless on the question of spite, the various gatekeepers that drove the dynamics; and helped shape the outcome of that election were not.

    In “Ondo and the limit of spite” (September 25), Ripples x-rayed the Ondo gubernatorial election as no more than a proxy battle against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) national leader, by a coterie of embittered interest groups: failed ACN gubernatorial aspirants, the Afenifere grandees who sought with gusto a last ditch chance to unhorse their perceived nemesis and, of course, Governor Mimiko himself, who was fighting the political battle of his life.

    A sub-set of the Ondo “battle plan” was elite hostility and conspiracy, as hallmarked by political irritants like Pastor Tunde Bakare and co; and by how the media aligned themselves in the fray (“Ondo: now the crunch”, October 16).

    Also, fatal to the ACN cause was its politicisation of South West economic integration, as distinct from making it a clinical electoral issue. If it had demonstrated it was the most committed and, given its governments’ record of performance, was best placed to swing South West integration, perhaps the outcome could have been different.

    Instead, its insistence that all South West states must belong to one party (hardly a partisan crime, but costly electoral gaffe) before integration could succeed fired the brainless but devastating primordial counter-emotion that propelled Mimiko back to office, despite a hugely suspect first term performance, considering the N600 billion trove at the governor’s disposal.

    Victory, therefore, went to the most ruthless blackmailer and the most cynical manipulator of emotions. That is hardly salutary. But the good thing is that in Mimiko’s victory have come seeds of his self-destruction; just as in ACN’s defeat has come seeds of its self-redemption. To learn the right lesson, therefore, is crucial.

    That takes the discourse to the gloating that has greeted the result. The Afenifere grandees’ holy bile and Pastor Bakare’s holy spite have morphed into reckless triumphalism, leading to a lot of gibberish, hasty attributions and crazy projections, as to be expected of a camp that got a rare victory over a perceived perpetual nemesis.

    It is all so reminiscent of Leo Tolstoy’s classic, War and Peace. After the Russo-Austrian alliance inflicted a rare defeat on Napoleon Bonaparte, in a minor battle at Schon Grabern, the Austrian part of the alliance and the cocky Russians thought of galloping from victory to victory over a now subdued French Emperor Napoleon. It took the alliance’s comprehensive defeat at Austerlitz to smash that illusion!

    Still, in the midst of all these grandstanding, clear moves are there for the politically discerning.

    Goodluck Jonathan, the man that won the 2011 presidential election by good luck, has started dropping political IOUs for 2015. After Adams Oshiomhole won re-election, the Edo governor went first to Aso Rock, praising the president to high heavens, for “allowing” his re-election – was Jonathan supposed to do otherwise?

    Then after Mimiko’s win, his first port of call, with his wife Kemi in tow, was the same Aso Villa, the Jonathans’ special guests to celebrate with First Lady and birthday dame, Patience. Of course, wily Jona and his media managers ensured the photo of that celebration hugged the choicest pages of newspapers the next day!

    In due course, en route to 2015, the pair of Oshiomhole and Mimiko, no matter their respective parties’ stand, would pay back Jona’s IOU!

    As Jonathan manoeuvres to secure a future political fortune, the Afenifere grandees swoon to secure a past (and lost) glory, putting their titanic fate in the hands of Mimiko, their new champion. “To be thus is nothing,” the evil Lady Macbeth told her regicide husband in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, “but to be safely thus …” As Lady Macbeth goaded her husband to inevitable doom, so would the Afenifere titans goad their new charge to over-reach himself.

    But even without the titans’ prompting, Mimiko probably harbours enough hubris to go after Governors Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti) and Rauf Aregbesola (Osun), when their own elections are due in 2014 – and why not? Didn’t this twain align against him in his own re-election? In doing this, however, Mimiko would be part of such improbable alliances, which would only expose his empty ideological core, outside a survivalist instinct; and manifest seeds of his inevitable self-destruction.

    The ACN governors therefore have their jobs cut out for them. Fayemi and Aregbesola may be beginning to stamp their developmental vision on their two states, much more penetrating than what Mimiko has done in his oil-rich state in four years. But they must do much more, and present a score card that shows a clear and marked difference. Only such clear-cut quality and excellence can withstand the three-pronged conspiracy to come: from Jonathan, fighting for 2015, from Mimiko, seeking his pound of flesh and from the Afenifere rump, on a quixotic quest for lost glory.

    Ogun and Oyo states, though not due for election until 2015, must press hard their party’s record of solid performance in government – and bond with their people as they do so. And so must Lagos which, after the Tinubu and Fashola years, would be transiting into a new government.

    But beyond partisan gains and losses, the greatest casualty of the Ondo election is clearly South West integration, ironically the most crucial agenda for Yoruba welfare and development in a neither-nor federal Nigeria. For the umpteenth time, awry politicking has put the Yoruba at a crossroads, with Nigeria itself at a fearful juncture.

    In the First Republic, from the Action Group (AG) schism sprouted the Ladoke Akintola centrist forces, which slowed down the old West’s pre-independence developmental head start. Now, 52 years after independence, with the national question still potently unresolved, the Trojan horse is wily Mimiko and his LP, backed by a medley of embittered elite, many of them close to the grave, but who hate and spite have blinded to the future of their offspring.

    The ACN must therefore rouse itself. It must consolidate its governments’ development charter, fix its vexatious candidate nomination dynamics, and kick-start the economic integration process, if only as a model of what to expect. On this score, a progressively insular-looking Lagos must take the lead.

    If ACN does all these and does them well, it may yet win the big war, after losing the battle with the Ondo debacle.