The Nation Newspaper

Category: Mohammed Harunna

  • The columnist as a salesman

    The columnist as a salesman

    y now the reader may have heard of the Council of State’s approval about four weeks ago of my nomination, along with five others, by President Muhammadu Buhari to serve as INEC national commissioners. This was to complete the commission’s full compliment of 13 national commissioners, including the chairman, as opposed to the current seven.

    Last week, news came that our names have been forwarded to the Senate for approval. Hopefully we will get its nod this month after which we will be sworn in by the President to assume office.

    Several readers have since sent me texts asking if this means an end to my column. Only God can answer that. But what is certain is that there will be a five-year break in transmission between my readers and I as long as I am in INEC; you can’t be a public servant and pundit at the same time.

    Indeed I have decided to anticipate Senate’s approval by making today my last appearance until, God permitting; my tenure ends successfully five years hence. Only then can I tell whether I can resume transmission or not.

    As a somewhat valedictory column I have decided to reproduce an edited version of a chapter I contributed to a collection of essays published 11 years ago by Diamond Publications Ltd, publishers of Media Review magazine, and edited by journalism veteran, Lanre Idowu. The collection, “Voices from Within: Essays on Nigerian Journalism in Honour of Sam Amuka,” was in celebration of the 70th birthday of Amuka, publisher of Vanguard and one of Nigerian journalism’s enduring and genuine icons.

    I have also decided to correct the factual errors I made in my last two columns for the records. The corrections are at the end of this piece. And as my last piece for the next five years, it is long, part historical and part autobiographical. I hope the reader will indulge me to the last word.

    Once upon a time, to be a columnist was the equivalent of being a United State’s senator; you became one only after you’d paid your dues. The rough equivalent of the word senator in Hausa is dattijo, someone whose longevity and experience have made wise and firm in his convictions and is therefore worthy of respect.

    I wasn’t exactly old when I started writing a column on November 8, 1977.  But I did have some experience. Long before I became a professional journalist in 1976, I had always been fascinated by the printed word. Growing up as a kid back in the late ‘50s and in the ‘60s in Sabon Gari, Kano, two of my favourite haunts were the premises housing The Comet newspaper on Yoruba Road, not far from our home on Niger Road, and the bigger and better premises housing The Mail on the outskirts of Fagge.

    The Comet, as those old enough would know, was part of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s vast press empire. It was the official mouthpiece of the leading opposition party in the North, the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), led by Malam Aminu Kano, and other radical politicians like Malam Sa’ad Zungur from Bauchi and Malam Abubakar Zhukogi from Bida, my hometown in Niger State. Zhukogi was Malam Aminu’s deputy. NEPU was then in alliance with Zik’s National Congress of Nigeria and Cameroon (NCNC).

    The Mail, which was better printed, was, on the other hand, the official mouthpiece of the ruling Northern Peoples’ Congress, under the leadership of the Sardauna, Sir Ahmadu Bello, North’s premier, and other conservative politicians like Alhaji Aliyu Makaman Bida, his deputy, and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the country’s first prime minister.

    Even though compared to The Mail, The Comet was little more than a rag sheet considering its somewhat dirty look, it was my favourite, mainly because of a column in it with the frightening title of “Tit-bits by Aradu,” Aradu being the Hausa word for thunder.  It was an anonymous column and always contained bits of irreverent comments about the people and politics of the time.

    The Mail and The Comet were provincial and local and they were no match for the Daily Times and Sunday Times as the leading national newspaper. Indeed in those days the name Daily Times was synonymous with the word newspaper.

    By the time I finished my primary school in Kano in 1964 and headed home for my secondary school education the following year, my fascination with the printed word knew no bounds. I simply could not resist anything that was printed – newspapers, magazines, novels, non-fiction, anything.  In my fifth and final year in school, I became the deputy library prefect and the deputy editor of the school’s magazine called The Dove.

    Then I got into big trouble.  In my first year of Higher School Certificate (HSC) a riot broke out in the school. The principal, Mr. Albert Ozigi, concluded I must have been among its ringleaders on no stronger evidence than that I was a fairly outspoken deputy editor of the school’s magazine.  Eventually I was expelled.  That was in 1970.

    That year Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, started its School of Basic Studies to prepare secondary school graduates for direct entry into its degree programmes as a complement to the HSC. Its pioneer students were all Arts students.  The second year, i.e. 1971, it started to admit Science students. That year I got admitted among the second set of Arts students – with more than a little help from Mr. Ozigi, who sent in an excellent reference to the SBS authorities.  By then he had realised that his decision to expel me was a mistake.  As he found out eventually, I was actually in the school library with the Library Mistress, one Mrs. Larson, an American Pace Corp, reorganising the library when the riot broke out.

    Upon gaining admission in 1973 to read B.Sc. Government, I plunged straight into campus journalism. Campus journalism then, possibly even now, was essentially gossip and anonymous journalism, much of it slanderous, if not criminally libellous.  The rag I joined carried the improbable title of Bullet. 

    In my final year, myself and two colleagues, Clem Baiye, now a director at the National Communication Commission, and Sa’idu Adamu, senior lecturer in Department of Political Science, ABU, decided to change the face of campus journalism.  We founded a rag called Campus Monitor and for the first time in the history of campus journalism, appended our names and hostels on the paper’s imprint.  So sure were we of the news and views we would publish.

    We thought this pioneer effort deserved the support of the campus authorities. Apparently we couldn’t have been more wrong.

    Our first edition carried a story in which we asked some awkward questions about the Students’ Union finances.  The president, Malam Adamu Waziri, Police Affairs minister under President Olusegun Obasanjo, was not amused and dragged us before a disciplinary panel under the university’s Dean of Student Affairs, Dr. Chris Abashiya.  We successfully defended our story, or so we thought. Still we lost the newspaper. At that time the school authorities decided the campus rags generally had become too much of a threat to the peace and stability of the university and embarked on a censorship drive that effectively killed them.

    At the time we founded Campus Monitor, Clem and myself were already writing news and opinion pieces for Saturday Extra, a pullout of the New Nigerian, which by then had become the country’s pre-eminent newspaper on account of the literacy and authority of its editorials and of its famous Candido column, which appeared every Wednesday. This was not to talk of the accuracy of its news.

    Saturday Extra was a human interest and light-entertainment pullout. Among its many attractions were street level interviews on topics of the day, articles on popular music, native boxing, etc, and a column by Theresa Bowyer, one of the pioneer women journalists in Nigeria.  Those old enough will recall her “Theresa’s Page” in the Sunday Times in the ‘50s through the ‘60s, a column in which she mostly discussed women’s lifestyle.

    While Clem and myself wrote on campus life from ABU, Yakubu Mohammed, the deputy chief executive of the rested Newswatch, wrote from the University of Lagos, while Sully Abu, the managing director of New Age, also rested, wrote from University of Ibadan (UI).  Sully, if my memory serves me right, was later joined in Ibadan by Mvendaga Jibo, now a professor in Communication Studies at the Benue State University, Makurdi.

    Upon graduation, first Yakubu and myself and later on Clem from ABU, Sully, Mvendaga and Rufa’i Ibrahim from UI, all joined the New Nigerian. One of my most exciting periods after becoming a professional journalist in 1976 was a series of interviews I did with 14 delegates to the 1977/78 Constituent Assembly on various issues in the Draft Constitution. These 14 were Alhaji Shehu Shagari in Sokoto, Malam Adamu Ciroma in Kaduna, Chief C. C. Onoh in Enugu, Chief Nwobidike Nwanodi in Port Harcourt, Malam Aminu Kano in Kano, Chief Richard Akinjide in Ibadan, Chief Soji Odunjo in Abeokuta and Dr. Sola Saraki in Lagos.

    The rest were Prof. Omo Omoruyi in Benin, Alhaji Yahaya Gusau in Kaduna, Dr. Abubakar Usman in Zaria, Mr. George Hoomkwap in Jos, Mr. Stanhope Alozie Ubani-Ukoma in Aba and Dr. Suleiman Kumo also in Zaria.

    Before these shuttle interviews, however, I had covered the activities of the Constitutional Drafting Committee (CDC), including seminars on the draft constitution itself. During one of such seminars in late March 1977 in Zaria, I exclusively reported Malam Aminu Kano of accusing the military government of General Murtala Mohammed of exerting “soft subterranean influence” on the work of the CDC.

    This story stirred the hornet’s nest, provoking criticisms from some of CDC’s members, including the chairman, Chief Rotimi Williams, who threatened to sue the newspaper and Malam Aminu if he did not retract his accusation. Far from doing so, the malam sent in a two-paragraph letter to the New Nigerian, reaffirming it. “I must”, he said in the letter published on the front page of the newspaper on March 31, 1977, “finally say that I have grown old enough in the politics of Nigeria and generally politics of Africa to avoid equivocation or sycophancy and to know the difference between political consistency which is hard to maintain, and political acrobatics, simple to operate. The first I will continue to do, but the second I condemn and reject, death, suffering and ostracisation notwithstanding.” We never heard from Chief Williams after that.

    I suspect it was these series of interviews and my familiarity with the subject of constitution drafting which paved the way for me to become New Nigerian’s first signed political columnist.  Long before me there was, of course, the inimitable Candido, but it was anonymous. It was, however, an open secret in the company, possibly outside it, that Candido’s main authors were Malam Adamu Ciroma, the managing director, Malam Mamman Daura, the editor and Malam Turi Muhammadu, the managing editor. They wrote signed pieces occasionally but none of them wrote a signed column and, in the tradition of The Economist and presumably because, in their humility, they believed signed columns were ego trips that distracted from the heavy responsibility of editing and managing a paper, they discouraged it.

    I suppose it was my familiarity with the leading names in the 1977/78 Constituent Assembly, arising from my series of interviews and my coverage of the CDC, which led to the management’s decision to assign me to cover the 1977/78 Constituent Assembly and also allow me to write a column on goings-on at the Assembly.  Whatever the reason, I was grateful for the opportunity and grabbed it with both hands.

    Thirty nine years on next month, the excitement and the pleasure of being able to share my views on politics with readers have hardly abated for me. I was barely two years into professional journalism when I was given a column.  By then, however, I had practised amateur journalism long enough to claim I had paid my dues.

    These days it seems every rookie believes he deserves to be a columnist.  Which is all right since ambition can be a virtue.  What is not all right, however, is how editors and publishers appear too liberal in obliging the demands for columns, going by the countless number of empty and barely literate columns you see in the print media today.

    The result is that columnists, with few exceptions, have become poor salesmen of their publications and of their own ideas and objectives. The yardstick of success as a columnist is hard to quantify by virtue of the commodity of his trade, namely ideas. Still it is fairly accurate to say success can be measured in the debate that a columnist provokes. As Ken Saro-Wiwa said when he started his column, Similia, in the Sunday Times in 1989, “I will proffer solutions, not in the sense that whatever solution I propose is best, but in the sense that it will stir up debate and thought, possibly give some people sleepless nights or nightmares when they do manage to sleep.” It is hard to think of a better yardstick for success as a columnist.

    From my experience, to be a good salesman whatever your product, you need style and you need substance. With few exceptions both qualities seem lacking in most columns in newspapers and magazines these days.

    Any columnist wishing to excite the reader must be willing to get off his armchair and do solid spadework. He must spend time cultivating and talking to sources. He must also spend time searching for, and painstakingly reading documents and books.  It is such hard work that will give his column the substance that will help make it compulsory reading as result of which he may become successful in his salesmanship.

    Equally important, if not even more so, is his style. Substance is important for successful salesmanship of your newspaper and of your own objectives. But you need the right style to get the reader to read your substance.

    Your style is unique to you. You may take your cue from the old masters. You can learn humour from Sad Sam (Sam Amuka), wit from Peter Pan (Peter Enahoro), political insight from Haroun Adamu, or polemics from Ken Saro-Wiwa, but you can never write exactly like them no matter how hard you try simply because you are you and they are they.

    But no matter how you write it is important, indeed critical, for your success that you write with clarity, with simplicity, with precision, with conviction and, above all, by avoiding offensive language. Offensive language alienates instead of engaging the reader.

    Once upon a time the typical columnist used to be an effective salesman of his newspaper or magazine. He was effective because he knew his onions, having worked the streets and known all the major actors in his line of punditry. Today there are still some columnists that are effective.  But few excite the reader like the Sad Sams, the Peter Pans and the Aiyekotos (Bisi Onabanjo) of old.

    Part of the problem is the challenge the electronic media and the Internet pose for the print media. The main problem, however, is that most columnists as salesmen of their products and thoughts do not seem to have the right style and enough experience and conviction behind them. The editors and publishers in the print media should reconsider the ease with which they give columns to every rookie, who thinks he has the Wisdom of Solomon to share with readers.

     

     

    Corrections

    In my column of September 21, “The case of Buhari’s alleged plagiarism,” I said President Muhammadu Buhari launched his controversial re-orientation programme, “Change Begins With Me”, on September 14. He actually launched it on September 8.

    I also gave the wrong date for the Time magazine, whose cover story entitled “Why we’re losing the Internet to the culture of hate”, I quoted from. I wrote August 26. The correct date was August 29.

    Finally, in last week’s column, “To sell or not to sell?” I said Godwin Emefiele, the Central Bank governor, was managing director of UBA Plc. He was managing director of Zenith Bank Plc, not UBA.

    My apologies to him and to the erstwhile managing director of UBA, Phillip Oduoza, for mixing them up.

  • To sell or not to sell?

    To sell or not to sell?

    Last week, Africa’s top business mogul, Aliko Dangote, along with Emir of Kano and former Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank, Malam Mohammed Sanusi II, stirred the hornet’s nest when they proposed that the government should sell off some of its assets to plug the huge gap in its revenue stream caused by the collapse in oil price and of oil production.

    In this, the two were supported by another business mogul, former Chairman of the United Bank for Africa, Tony Elumelu, and by the bank’s former Managing Director under Elumelu and now the Central Bank’s Governor, Godwin Emefiele, and even by the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki.

    Predictably, Dangote and Co.’s proposals have come under heavy public criticisms, if hostile opinion in the mass media is something to go by. It seems even the Senate president’s distinguished colleagues led by his deputy, Ike Ekwerenmadu, are also opposed to their leader’s stance.

    Even more predictably the labour unions, led by the Nigeria Labour Congress, have not only condemned the proposals, they have threatened to shut down the country if the government goes ahead to implement them.

    Remarks last weekend by the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, suggests that Dangote and Co. were merely floating a kite for a decision that the government may have already taken.

    ‘‘I think,” she told finance reporters in Abuja, “when you are looking for money, some things that the government is sitting on, we don’t have money to do them and so it makes sense for me to unlock those things as it will bring money to the economy at these difficult times, so that we can move forward.”

    The minister was careful enough to point out that the government has not yet finally decided which assets to sell beyond saying they would be “idle assets” and that some of them would merely be leased out rather than sold.

    In justifying government’s putative decision to sell or lease, the minister pointed out that even Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil producer, has been selling some of its assets.

    The main problem, Madam Finance Minister, is not the sale of public assets as such, even though there are those like the NLC and public sector workers that, for sound ideological reasons, would be opposed. The main problem, Madam Finance Minister, is the history of privatisation in this country – and also elsewhere – going all the way back to the country’s first privatisation exercise in 1976.

    Here two examples readily come to mind: the sale of NITEL and PHCN under Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan. In both cases conflicts of interests were put on naked display as companies in which very senior government officials, and/or their cronies, had interests were sold, the parastatals, in whole or in bits, at prices that had absolutely no bearing to their net asset values. Today the beneficiaries of these fire sales have been living it off even when the quality of services the privatised companies have been providing are little better than when they were publicly owned. And when they are, they hardly provide value for their charges.

    Most people, I suspect, will support the minister if the government decides in the end to sell off “idle” assets because it’s only sensible to do so. But then she has to make it clear to the public which assets are idle and why it’s impossible to make them active.

    All of which point to three things, at the least. First, there must be no viable options to the sale. Second, the sales must be transparent and competitive. Third, the prices must reflect the net assets of the parastatals.

    In this respect, before Madam Minister embarks on her sales, if she must, it would be worth her while – and worth the while of her colleagues in her economic team, and even that of her oga at the top – to read, or at least flip through, a 2007 book by an award winning reporter, Naomi Klein, titled “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.”

    Ditto, our federal legislators as they set about enacting the economic laws and policies that should get us out of our current economic predicament.

    The book is about how government abroad, notably in the USA and the UK, have used what Klein called “the shock doctrine,” as a principle of state policy, shock doctrine defined as “the use of public disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters – to push through highly unpopular economic shock therapy.” Klein called the outcome “disaster capitalism,” i.e. “the rapid-fire corporate re-engineering of societies that are reeling from shock.”

    Since late last year Nigerians have been reeling under the shock of the man-made disaster the erstwhile ruling Peoples Democratic Party had plunged this country into, which some people would rather no one talk about in their attempt to exonerate the party and its leaders of their culpability for our  recession.

    Several of these people remain in positions of authority either by changing their political hoods or by disguising themselves as so-called technocrats.

    President Muhammadu Buhari must be vigilant as he considers policy recommendations from such people. He must learn his lesson from their antics as they disown the decisions of his predecessor when they never objected to those decisions and even when they were actually based on their self-serving advice.

    Chances are Mr. President, Madam Minister and her colleagues, and our federal legislators, do not have the time to read Klein. In that case they should spare the little time required to read a section of this year’s edition of The Economist’s “THE WORLD IF” dated July 16. The pullout is the magazine’s annual collection of its editors’ suppositions about a world different from what it is.

    The section in reference wondered what the world would look like were China to embark on mass privatisation of its huge state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The article said a successful sale must learn lessons from the fire sales of SOEs in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 90s that led to the emergence of well-connected oligarchs, who virtually became laws unto themselves.

    For its privatisation to succeed, China, the magazine said, must be “bold, transparent and long term.”

    I don’t know about “bold.” But there is no gainsaying that if we must privatise at all, we must learn from the lessons of the past at home and from abroad by making sure the sales of public assets are transparent and gradual.

  • Case of Buhari’s alleged plagiarism

    Case of Buhari’s alleged plagiarism

    Easily the biggest news last week was the allegation that President Muhammadu Buhari committed plagiarism in his speech “Change Begins With Me,” with which he launched his national re-orientation programme on September 14. The speech itself had come under a lot of flak for seemingly transferring the onus of bringing about the much-needed change in attitude in the country from its leadership onto its ordinary folk

    “I am therefore,” he had said in the course of the speech, “appealing to all Nigerians to be part of this campaign. Our citizens must realise that the change they want to see begins with them, and that personal and social reforms are not theoretic exercise. If you have not seen the change in you, you cannot see it in others or even the larger society. In other words, before you ask ‘where is the change they promised us’, you must first ask ‘how far have I changed my ways’,  ‘what have I done to be part of the change for the greater good of society’.”

    The uproar caused by this seemingly bait-and-switch speech had barely subsided when the allegation of the president’s plagiarism surfaced. It seems to have triggered widespread moral outrage and an even louder uproar.

    The outrage and even the uproar, if not its pitch, are justified; plagiarism, as Wikipedia points out in its treatment of the subject, may not be an offence defined or punished by law because it is not the same as copyright, but it is unethical. It, therefore, stands to reason that the higher the status of a plagiarist, the more unethical the plagiarism.

    Even then there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for the terrible pettiness of the politics that Buhari’s political enemies have been trying to play with the allegation.

    Leading this implacable crowd is – of course, no prize for guessing right – Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, whose hatred for anything and almost anyone Islamic and Northern has since become legendary. Buhari, he said on his social media account, “has no memory, knows no history, plagiarises other President’s speeches and reads only the cartoon section in the newspapers”. Buhari’s plagiarising Obama’s speech, he said, “is outrageous and it has brought shame to our nation”.

    No doubt the timing and context of the plagiarism saga could hardly have been worse for the President, coming as they did on the eve of his departure to New York for this year’s United Nations’ Summit and as a speech which was supposed to inspire positive change in Nigerians’ attitudes. Even then it is no excuse for Fani-Kayode’s demagoguery. Most certainly it is no excuse for his blatant lie that the President is a habitual literary thief.

    Since his inaugural speech on May 29 last year the President has delivered more than a dozen speeches at home and abroad. This is the first time he has been accused of plagiarism. Since then there has, of course, been insinuations that the theme of even his inaugural speech was plagiarised from a speech in French decades ago by France’s president, the late General Charles DeGaulle. That allegation is probably untenable since important nuances and details are often lost in translations.

    But even if the insinuations are justified, there is the big difference that presidents invariably don’t personally write their speeches. Therefore at worst they can only be vicariously responsible for the exact wordings of their speeches.

    In the particular case of Buhari’s “Change Begins With Me” speech, it is important that the presidency owned up to its mistake without equivocations, apologised and promised to take measures against a repeat.

    People like Fani-Kayode who, no matter what, are prepared to crucify the President even about something he was not personally responsible for, would do well to remember that the very man whose speech he was accused of plagiarising – America’s President Barack Obama – has himself been accused of stealing other people’s words several times, probably not completely without justification.

    This is not to excuse one wrong by merely pointing fingers at someone else’s. No. It is simply to put Buhari’s wrong in context. In that sense Buhari’s vicarious literary theft pales in significance compared to that of several accomplished journalists and columnists in America and here at home, whose alleged literary thefts were direct. The charge against the President certainly pales in significance to the literal theft of our commonwealth by the PDP regime – a regime in which Fani-Kayode was a presidential spokesman and minister – for 16 long years.

    A little over four years ago Dr. Fareed Zakaria, a well-regarded columnist and editor at Time magazine and CNN was found to have plagiarised a paragraph from an article in New Yorker magazine in a piece in his column entitled “The Case for Gun Control”. He pleaded guilty and was immediately suspended by the magazine and the TV station, both of which are in the same stable.

    His suspension lasted only one week and though his reputation has been dented, his journalism career has not ended. On the contrary, he has remained a credible and respected voice in global journalism.

    Here at home, readers old enough may remember the famous case, 30 years ago, of Ray Ekpu when he was accused of plagiarising from the English philosopher, Thomas Paine’s book, “The Age of Reason,” by a two-some of Dele Momodu, Ovation’s publisher, and Kunle Ajibade, editor-in-chief of The News. At the time the two were post-graduate students of the University of Ife now known as Obafemi Awolowo University.

    The genesis of the case was a book on Dele Giwa, co-founder of Newswatch along with Ekpu, Yakubu Mohammed and Dan Agbese, who was assassinated in a first-of-its-kind parcel bombing of a Nigerian journalist. The authors of the book were Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo, who later became managing director of the now comatose, if not dead, Daily Times, and Dele Olojede, who was to win a Pulitzer for international reporting years after he moved to America to ply his trade.

    Their book, “Born to Run”, was somewhat unflattering of Giwa’s colleagues at Newswatch. An apparently angry Ekpu wrote a review of the book in which he paid its authors back in kind. As students, Momodu and Ajibade thought they detected copious reproduction of Paine in Ekpu’s angry review.

    Accordingly they jointly wrote an article accusing Ekpu of plagiarism. For weeks none of the country’s newspapers they approached would touch it. Finally Guardian Express, then an evening newspaper in The Guardian stable, ran it. Then all hell broke lose. The military administration of General Ibrahim Babangida considered the allegation serious enough that it withdrew the congratulation it had written to Ekpu for winning the International Editor of the Year Prize awarded by a New York-based media review outfit.

    Ekpu threatened to sue The Guardian. The newspaper’s worried management tried to talk Momodu and Ajibade into retracting their allegations, but the two youngmen stood their ground. They did so even after Ekpu’s colleague, Agbese, wrote an article with the self-explanatory title “Green in their eyes,” in defence of Ekpu.

    Ekpu never sued the authors. However, through the interventions of some elders of the profession at the time, most notably Aremo Segun Osoba, former governor of Ogun State and at the time managing director of Daily Times, the matter was allowed to gradually die down. Today Ekpu remains one of Nigeria’s brightest lights in journalism.

    What the cases of Zakaria and Ekpu clearly show is that, though unethical, passing off someone else’s words as your own is not necessarily a fatal offence even for those in the business of professional communication.

    Not only is Buhari NOT a professional communicator. He has been honourable enough to own up to the allegation against him and has promised to punish the author of his embarrassment, and through him, the nation’s embarrassment.

    Some people have called for the sack of whoever was responsible for the gaff. I think that would be extreme because the offence was most probably committed not out of malice but out of a desire to make one’s principal look good.  And, at least in America whose model of democracy we aspire to, absence of malice can be justification even for proven libel.

    Not surprisingly the plagiarism allegation has triggered claims by two media consultants, Akin Fadeyi and Omor Bazuaye, that the very concept of “Change Begins with Me” was theirs, but was stolen by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, after they’d presented it to him early this year.

    The minister has, of course, rejected their claim. He said he started work on the concept long before he met any of the two. His story of the sequence of events leading to its launching last week sounds more believable to me than those of Fadeyi and Bazuaye.

    In any case the good thing is that the claims and counter-claims here are copyright issues and therefore a matter of law rather than ethics. Mohammed has challenged the two to go to court. Either they pick up his gauntlet or they should shut up.

    Today we are in an age of social media where the Internet, as Time magazine said in its cover story of August 26, is apparently being lost to a “culture of hate” and a “tyranny of the mob.”

    Reasonable and knowledgeable people in the society owe themselves and their country a commitment to fight back against that culture and tyranny. The allegation of plagiarism against Buhari is a test of that commitment. Hopefully it will not be flunked.

  • Education: Aregbesola as an exemplar

    Education: Aregbesola as an exemplar

    Last Thursday, September 1, all roads led to Osogbo, the Osun State capital. The occasion was part of the state’s celebration of the Silver Anniversary of its creation by the military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, on August 27, 1991, along with 11 other states, namely, Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Delta, Edo, Enugu, Jigawa, Kebbi, Kogi, Taraba and Yobe. The significance of Osun State’s celebration lied, in part, in the fact that it was the only one President Muhammadu Buhari participated in.

    The president’s participation was by way of visiting a couple of the state’s newly built primary and secondary schools before finally inaugurating the Osogbo Government High School. The school must be one of the largest, most beautiful and most well equipped secondary schools in the country.

    Actually the school, as the  governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, explained in his welcoming address, is three-in-one, each with a student population of 1,000, its own principal and staff but with an overall supervising principal and sharing academic and sports facilities.

    The high school may be top of the line, but it is only one of a dozen or so high schools that Governor Aregbesola has built or rebuilt as part of his comprehensive restructuring – today’s buzz word for every politician seeking relevance! – of primary and secondary school education in the state to give its students the quality education they need to transform their state from Third World status to First in one generation. (It reminds you, doesn’t it, of the famous title of the autobiography of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s late prime minister, who lifted his country from Third World to First in one generation).

    When Aregbesola first became the governor in November 2010, he inherited a public school system typical of public state system all over Nigeria – dilapidated, over populated, under staffed, under equipped, and badly managed schools. As a man who apparently believed the key to human progress is education, the governor resolved to end the rot.

    As the man himself told it in his welcome speech on Thursday, the first step he took in ending the rot was to convene an education summit for the state chaired by no less an icon of the virtue of knowledge than Wole Soyinka, black Africa’s first Literature Nobel laureate.

    Out of the summit emerged four elements for the transformation of the state’s public schools: their feeding and health programme, reclassification of the schools into elementary, middle and high schools, infrastructural development and the provision of what Americans call edtech (the use of technology to drive education), but which the state called Opon-Imo (Yoruba for tablet of knowledge) for all students.

    The building of the high school President Buhari inaugurated last Thursday fell into the third category in which so far the Aregbesola administration has constructed or reconstructed 28 elementary schools, 22 middle schools and four high schools, with another 14 virtually completed.

    Aregbesola was, of course, not the first to convene an educational summit. Long before him, the Northern Governors’ Forum did so in Kaduna. Individually the governors also made the right noises about ending their region’s notorious educational backwardness. To date their actions have not matched their noises. Instead, the region has dropped even further behind than it was during the First Republic.

    Educationally backward as the North was back then, its leaders, with its premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello, in the forefront, walked their talk about bridging the gap between the region and the rest of the country. Meaning, they invested heavily in primary and secondary schools so that the region could produce quality materials qualified for admission into any tertiary institution anywhere in the world.

    With all due humility, I can boast that I am one of those materials. I and my cousin, retired Major-General Mohammed Garba, and a childhood friend, Professor Mustapha Zubairu of Federal University of Technology, Minna, attended Native Authority primary schools in Kano, first in Tudun Wada for the first four years from 1957 and finished at Kuka Primary School after another four, having had to repeat my final year because I failed to gain entrance into a secondary school in my third year in 1963.

    Kuka was located between Sabon Gari where we lived and Fagge. It was a walking distance from our home on Niger Road. All around us were Igbo and Yoruba most of whose children attended private and mission schools. In the evenings of weekdays all of us attended private lessons to improve on our chances of doing well in school. I remember we used to beat the children who went to private and mission schools in the evening classes, especially in English.

    I am always amused each time people talk about the magic Chief Obafemi Awolowo performed with free education in Western Region. Of course, it was a great achievement which showed Awo’s foresight. Even then I am always amused because while the great premier of the West gave free education, in the North we were paid to go to school and we did so in hundreds of thousands, if not in millions.

    The problem, I think, was that the next generation of the region’s politicians chose to pay only lip service to investment in education, especially primary and secondary education, without which invariably we could only send garbage into our tertiary schools. And as they say of computers: garbage in, garbage out.

    I know this for sure because of the experience I had teaching in my alma mater, Ahmadu Bello University’s Mass Communication Department for six years until I left two years ago. During the last three of those six years, I made it a habit to test the English language of all my students, both under- and post-graduates, at the beginning of each semester.

    The test was a simple one of correcting 10 sentences with errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation. The average failure rate for all the students was a dismal 70 per cent! The highest score was 8 and you could count those on your fingertips.

    The conclusion is obvious; our universities have generally been taking in barely literate materials because our primary and secondary schools have suffered criminal neglect.

    In giving primary and secondary education top priority to the extent of even borrowing to reform Osun State’s public education system, Aregbesola has demonstrated that he has his heart and mind in the right place. As a mutual friend, Chief Ikechi Emenike, who also witnessed Buhari’s inauguration of the Osogbo Government High School said, the governor’s educational intervention “reflected an abiding love for his people and a deep appreciation of history and his legacy.”

    President Buhari summed it even better when he said in his speech the governor was only keeping the promise of the ruling party to provide free and qualitative basic education by implementing the Basic Education Act.

    “What we are witnessing here today,” he said, “is the formal fulfilment of that promise in Osun by the state government. The cost effectiveness of this project can only be seen when we consider that this school will graduate an average 1,000 pupils in a year and in 50 years it would have produced 50,000 well trained and well equipped pupils, many of who will go to higher institutions and will form the backbone of the administration of our country.

    Over six years ago, an award-winning columnist of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, wrote an article which underscored the importance of quality basic education and which I have had cause to refer to on these pages and elsewhere. He titled it “ Pass the Books. Hold the Oil.”

    It was published in the Times of March 10, 2012. Every politician concerned about the dismal state of our education at all levels should read that short – roughly 1,070 words – article. In it Friedman narrated how a study by rich-country club, the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.), established a negative linkage between natural resource dependent countries and knowledge.

    The club looked at the bi-annual test of 15-year olds in Mathematics, Science and reading comprehension in 65 countries and the total earnings of each of them as a percentage of its Gross Domestic Product. The test was called PISA, Programme for International Student Assessment.

    The study, Friedman said, showed that the bigger a country’s revenue from natural resources as a percentage of its GDP, the poorer the knowledge and skills of its pupils. For example, participating Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Algeria, Bahrain, Iran and Syria that were natural resource rich performed poorly compared to Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, also in the Middle East, which were natural resource poor. So, Friedman concluded, “Oil and PISA don’t mix.”

    As always there were exceptions to his thesis. Canada, Australia and Norway, also countries with high levels of natural resources, he pointed out, still scored well on PISA, in large part because all three countries had established deliberate policies of saving and investing these resource rents, and not just consuming them.

    The three countries provide great lessons for us as a natural resource dependent country by showing that oil and PISA can indeed mix.

    As a country we may have so far blown away our oil fortune, but clearly Aregbesola has shown as governor of one of the poorest states in the country that you don’t have to be rich to plan for the future of your children.

  • Still on Obasanjo, Buhari and the rest of us

    Still on Obasanjo, Buhari and the rest of us

    Once in a while I find it difficult to resist the temptation of breaking my own rule of not publishing reactions to my column that are longer than 300 words. With apologies to my readers, today is one of such rather arbitrary exceptions. I am sure, however, that the reader will find the first two lengthy reactions to my column of last week on the subject above – along with the short ones – interesting,  even if some of them use rather disagreeable language. Please enjoy.

    I refer to your “Obasanjo, Buhari and the rest of us”, in The Nation of Wednesday, August 24, 2016. In your disturbingly partisan column you spoke of the “Yoruba war for ‘June 12’ and its warrior-in-chief, Chief MKO. Abiola.” What a way to see the people and events of 1993 – 1998! What a cynical presentation of history!

    Is Mr. Mohammed Haruna speaking for himself – and he has every right under heaven so to do – or is he speaking for the “North”? In either case, what a great shame!

    Abiola transcended tribe, geopolitical zone, North/South “divide”, and religion to aspire to the presidency of NIGERIA. His alliances AND largesse went beyond Yoruba land, all the way up to the farthest reaches of the North. The same North through its “implacable” politico-military ruling class, in complicity with people of crass ill will against the Yoruba in general and the much-envied Abiola in particular, went ahead to annul Abiola’s election to the Presidency and ensured he died in detention.

    The real tragedy of “June 12” (as you put it, which really means “The so called June 12”) is that people who were never friends of democracy were and are, the ones who have cornered the rewards, the influence, the affluence, the fame and fortune of democracy and civil rule. They have become powerful President, Vice President, President of Senate, Senators, Representatives, Ministers, Governors, and extremely rich potentates in the civil service and in industry, politicians, and party leaders.

    As you have rightly noted, Obasanjo, a fellow Yoruba with Abiola – albeit a non-loving and unloved Yoruba – reaped most handsomely from the June 12 crisis with the self-serving approval of, and facilitation by, the politico-military ruling elite of the North. He has always reaped where he did not sow, as you rightly pointed out.

    Obasanjo brought the ailing brother of his associate in military government, Major-General Shehu Yar’adua. President Yar’adua’s deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, Obasanjo’s chosen “Son”, took over upon the death of his principal. And as should be said, “the rest is tragedy”.

    June 12, 1993 was a transcendental moment and fact of history; it is NOT “June 12”, and Abiola won the election fairly and squarely, NOT “presumed” to have won it.

    Mr. Haruna, let us have a healthy respect for history. Let us cultivate the virtue of transcending ethno-centric cynicism and prejudice. Nigeria as we know it, is doomed if we do not.

    • Abdul Akin Bello

    Akure, Ondo State.

    abidak09@gmail.com

     

    It is with all sense of responsibility and modesty that I wish to comment on your above headlined article that appeared in the Daily Trust of 24/8/16.

    You asserted that Obasanjo was the architect of the Jonathanian predicament because Osuntokun said, he it was who, against all protestation, single-handedly imposed the Yar’adua/Jonathan ticket on the ruling party for the 2007 presidential election and ensured it won. Meaning that you believed what Osuntokun said.

    But both of you are wrong, deadly wrong. Because by the same analogy your never-do-wrong was responsible for the release from prison, presidential pardon, fielding of Obasanjo as candidate and his eventual winning of the 1999 presidential election. Also the intrigues that went with the 2007 election, from your boss show of interest to his withdrawal for his “junior brother” up to the role played by your other brother in midwifing the candidature of Yar’adua all point to one fact: conspiracy. Along the way in the run-up to the 2003 election, your good self, Dr. Mato, Bafarawa, Abdulmumini Aminu, all had insider roles to play in the frustrating game. And I believe all of you are culpable in bringing Obasanjo, Yar’adua and Jonathan.

    May be Obasanjo was singled out because he opted out of the continuous conspiracy game?

    I am happy that you didn’t disappoint me when you brought up the issue of your boss from nowhere to, as usual, praise sing him. But you were wrong to credit him with the provision of almost the entire oil infrastructure the country enjoys today. He had no hand in the establishment of all the oil refineries and laying of the network of pipelines and you know that. Yet you pretended. After all in an earlier article in Daily Trust you had conceded that your benefactor would carry his Aniya to the grave as-is.

    Obasanjo might have collaborated to support Buhari as the only viable alternative to Jonathan to save Nigeria. But happily even you never contemplated that your mentor/benefactor made that list of collaborators that conspired to save Nigeria. What a pity!

    According to Obasanjo, Buhari will overcome the challenges the country is facing. We believe him. Because Allah in his infinite mercy has thus far guarded and protected him from all human conspiracies and crowned his sincere effort with success and the presidency of Nigeria. Allah would not abandon him at this hour. He is on a mission successful.

    • Umaru Buhari Safana,

    umarubuhari@yahoo.co.uk

     

    You have said it all as to President Obasanjo’s character. Your assessment is well known to many Nigerians. It is either Obasanjo or nobody else. Your concluding paragraph said it all. My earnest prayer and of many Nigerians is that President Muhammadu Buhari should succeed.

    • Biyi Adesanya,

    Ibadan.

    +2348033243936.

     

    Using your statistics OBJ still left USD 65 billion for ‘Yar’adua’s government after paying off our foreign debts. To me this was an achievement.

    • Abdulwasiu Abiola.

     

    For Nigerians who care to know Obasanjo, so far, is the worst enemy of Nigeria and Nigerians. Quote me.

    • Jiday,

    Abuja.

    +2348058517684.

     

    You are the worst, dishonest and ethno-bigot living Nigerian. You cannot launder Babangida no matter how hard you try.

    • Tony Lokoja.

     

    As always, great piece and truly illuminating. History has to be kind to IBB.

    • Tim Mathias.

    +2348065775957.

     

    • So frank and so courageous!

    gizago12@gmail.com

     

    Brilliant write up! I hope he reads it. I also hope Buhari isn’t a fool.

    • Sada,

    +2348033850603.

     

    I don’t think your subject matter today was necessary since Obj has denied the story saying he claimed glory for Buhari’s election. For me the Sunday Vanguard report you alluded to over-simplified a complex issue.

    • Jimoh Salman,

    Kuje.

    +2348035041062.

     

    Thanks for your write-up on Obasanjo. About 90% of Nigerians including his family don’t regard or respect him. You have written the truth and nothing but the truth about a man who should shut up.

    • Chuma,

    Imo State.

    +2348057525085.

     

    It has become your culture that every time you write, you will insult Uncle Jona. Obj cannot conduct credible polls just like Buhari who brought Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, who is telling us that he cannot guarantee credible election in 2019. Without Jona’s credible polls your PMB would not have been president. Please give him some respect.

    • Emma Obodechi,

    Abuja.

    +2348035585109.

     

    The smart card reader was a monumental failure. Ask INEC for necessary data. Kano recorded over 80% failure rate.

    • Ariyo,

    Abuja.

    +2348030620882.

     

    When Obasanjo came in 1999 I said if he gets it wrong we will be thrown back 50 years behind development. Truly he came and woefully failed and set the whole country on the current crisis we are undergoing. However, the truth of the matter is that Good

  • Obasanjo, Buhari and the rest of us

    Obasanjo, Buhari and the rest of us

    Last week former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, was widely reported to have claimed himself and two or three other  “eminent” Nigerians brought General Muhammadu Buhari into power to salvage Nigeria from what looked like an impending doom under Buhari’s predecessor, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. He made the claim at a reception in Jalingo, the Taraba State capital.

    Obasanjo did not name the other two or three Nigerians, but it is not unlikely that they included former army chief, Lt-General TY Danjuma, who is from Taraba and former Lagos State governor and currently the most pre-eminent Yoruba politician, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    “Three or four of us from different parts of the country got together” he reportedly said, “and said to ourselves what do we do…We got talking and we knew we needed to do something.” Apparently that “something” was Buhari’s coming to power through the ballot box last year.

    Himself, Danjuma and Tinubu are not known to be the best of friends, given their political differences and especially given the bitterness Danjuma has harboured against his former boss since Obasanjo seized half of his lucrative oil block, which he had been given by the late former military dictator, General Sani Abacha. So it is difficult to imagine how, when and where they “got together” – to use Obasanjo’s words – and decided to put Buhari in power. But then in politics nothing is impossible. Besides, Danjuma and Tinubu may not even have been the “eminent” Nigerians Obasanjo teamed up with to oust Jonathan.

    Whatever the case, all three never hid their disappointment with Jonathan over his dismal record as president, even though it was Obasanjo alone of the three who felt strongly enough against his estranged godson to write him a long and bitter open letter, which proved critical in the fall of the godson from power. And having made up their minds that Nigeria was no longer safe in Jonathan’s hand, each decided to support Buhari as the only viable alternative to Jonathan.

    Whether or not the fall of Jonathan was due to teamwork or the cumulative impact of individual efforts by Obasanjo’s “eminent” Nigerians, Nigeria was saved from tipping over into an abyss last year. Even then Obasanjo’s claim to the leading role in the rescue mission seems as dubious as it is one more evidence of the man’s predilection for reaping where others have planted – and of denying responsibility for any of his decisions that have gone awry.

    His claim is dubious because, first, he was the architect of the country’s Jonathanian predicament, to begin with. As we all know and as his spokesman during his 2013 re-election bid, Akin Osuntokun, acknowledged in his Thisday column last week, he it was who, against all protestations, single-handedly imposed the Yar’adua/Jonathan ticket on the ruling party for the 2007 presidential election and ensured that it won.

    “President Umaru Musa Yar’adua,” said Osuntokun, “was directly and specifically installed as president by Obasanjo and was presented as a fait accompli to Nigerians. As a matter of fact, it was the whole presidential ticket comprising Yar’adua and Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan that was so imposed.”

    When Obasanjo imposed the pair on Nigerians, he knew that Yar’adua was not in the best of health and Jonathan had hardly proved his mettle, first as deputy governor and then as governor of Bayelsa State after he (Obasanjo) orchestrated the impeachment of Jonathan’s boss. Besides, Jonathan had the albatross of a wife implicated in laundering millions of dollars round his neck.

    As he is wont to, the former president has since denied he knew Yar’adua was fatally ill when he decided to impose him as president. His excuse was that Yar’adua himself assured him he was as fit as a fiddle. To think the man really wants us to believe an applicant for any job, not to mention the one into a country’s Number One Office, never needed a health check!

    Obasanjo must have known that a combination of Yar’adua’s ill health and Jonathan’s cluelessness was like a national disaster foretold. Yet he still went ahead to impose them on Nigerians.

    In my article on the occasion of the former president’s official 76th birthday three years ago, I said Obasanjo was one of the most hardworking, intelligent, knowledgeable, globally well connected and decisive leaders Nigeria has ever had.

    He was, I also said, the luckiest. Thrice at least, I said, he reaped where others had sown; first, when he received the instruments of surrender from the Biafrans in 1970 after another general, the late Benjamin Adekunle, had done virtually all the fighting in his war zone, second, when he succeeded Murtala Muhammed following his assassination in the failed February 1976 coup, and third, when he reaped the dividends of the Yoruba war for “June 12” after its warrior-in-chief, Chief MKO Abiola, died in detention in 1998. Obasanjo reaped the dividends of that war by returning to power as elected president in 1999.

    Three years after the piece in question, I can now add one more item to his long streak of luck, thanks to a diligent story by Sunday Vanguard (August 14), even though its motive clearly was more to inveigh against Nigeria’s revenue allocation since 1967 than to shine the light on how the Niger Deltans themselves squandered the absolutely huge sums they were allocated during the period. I am, of course, talking about the oil wealth that has since made us all so lazy and fractious.

    Save Jonathan, no Nigerian leader has received the huge oil revenue Obasanjo did during his eight-year presidency. Of the total 96.21 trillion Nigeria received as oil revenue between its discovery in 1958 and now, Sunday Vanguard said, Obasanjo received 27 trillion, nearly half the 51 trillion Jonathan received in his nearly six years in office. The highest any one had received before and after Obasanjo, except of course Jonathan, was 1.6 trillion under General Sani Abacha.

    By comparison, the oil revenue former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, whom Obasanjo loved to criticise, received in all his eight years in office was like spittle: a mere 420 billion Naira. Yet Obasanjo’s economic legacy does not begin to compare with Babangida’s in its positive impact. If nothing else, Babangida at least built Abuja and almost all of the oil infrastructure the country enjoys today with that spittle.

    Given Obasanjo’s many virtues I enumerated three years ago, I had personally expected a much better political and socio-economic legacy from him than what he left behind, especially as he loved to criticise not only Babangida but also all other Nigerian leaders.

    Unfortunately for Nigeria, Obasanjo left behind a terrible legacy of political meddlesomeness in other arms of government and in his political party, huge deficits in infrastructure and a highly selective crusade against corruption. It was a legacy he ought to have known Yar’adua was not strong enough healthwise and Jonathan was not well equipped to fight successfully. Predictably the two, Jonathan especially, only made matters worse.

    This is the legacy that Buhari must now grapple with. Obasanjo now claims credit for being in the forefront of those who have made it possible for the man to come to power last year. Yet three times before, he did everything possible to stop Buhari from becoming president. This obviously makes Obasanjo’s claim somewhat tenuous.

    That Obasanjo may have changed his mind about Buhari was really more because events – including popular sentiments for Buhari’s moral perpendicularity and the Independent National Electoral Commission’s card reader, which made it well-nigh impossible to rig elections – had gone beyond anyone’s control, including Buhari’s, than because the former president was penitent for the sorry legacy he had left behind.

    Obasanjo has said so far Buhari has not disappointed him and he trusts the man not to let down Nigerians. “I know,” he said at the Jalingo reception, “he will overcome the challenges the country is facing.”

    Given the hard times Nigerians are currently facing, they can only say Amen to that. And then hope and pray that the wily old general truly meant what he said and was not merely flattering the president in order to blind him to a haymaker that may follow, something with which he has knocked down many a Nigerian leader after him.

    The occasion was the Fourth Annual Ibadan Sustainable Summit at Le Chateau, Bodija, Ibadan, where he was the guest speaker. His topic was Leadership in Africa’s Quest for Sustainable Development.

    “We had some people who were under 50 years in leadership positions. One of them was James Ibori. Where is he today? One of them was Alamieyeseigha, where is he today? Lucky Igbinedion, where is he today? The youngest was the Speaker, Buhari. You can still recall what happened to him. You said Bola Tinubu is your master. What Buhari did was not any worse than what Bola Tinubu did. We got them impeached. But in this part of the world some people covered up the other man.”

  • IBB at 75

    IBB at 75

    Five years ago today, I wrote a birthday tribute on these pages to Nigeria’s one and only self-styled Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. At 75 today, he is the youngest living former military head of state, bar General Abdulsalami Abubakar, his childhood friend, classmate and neighbour on the Niger State capital, Minna’s, exclusive hilltop neighbourhood; General Abubakar was 74 on June 13.

    (General Muhammadu Buhari who will be 74 on his next birthday on December 17 and who Babangida ousted in a palace coup on August 27, 1985 as his army chief, would have been the youngest, but then he returned as elected President Buhari in May last year after a record three attempts and another record of being the first contestant to oust an incumbent national ruler in Nigeria’s history.)

    At 75, Babangida is also Nigeria’s longest ruling peacetime military head of state, with his eight years in office; General Yakubu Gowon who ruled a year longer, between 1966 and 1975, spent three of those years (1967-1970) fighting a civil war to keep Nigeria one.

    Babangida’s eight years as military president, as I said in my birthday tribute to him at 70, have since become the defining period of Nigeria’s history for better or for worse. This is because since independence in 1960 no Nigerian leader has sought to change the face of the country’s politics and socio-economics in as thoroughgoing manner as the man. To date the Structural Adjustment Programme and the New-breed dominated two-party democracy he sought to impose on the country have remained the template of our political-economy.

    Because of the impact of his long rule on the country, many Nigerians have come to regard him as the chief villain of Nigeria’s many woes, not least of all its deep and widespread corruption. For such Nigerians there could hardly be a more conclusive proof of their view than the recent remark by President Buhari that Babangida removed him from power because he was about to investigate a case of corruption against Babangida’s friend, then army intelligence chief, General Aliyu Mohammed.

    As he said in the now widely reported interview with the opinion monthly magazine, The Interview (July, 2016), “I found out that some officers were spending money. I asked: Where did they get the money from? They said it was from the military intelligence fund. Later, I learnt that General Aliyu Gusau who was in charge of intelligence took import licence from the Ministry of Commerce which was in charge of supplies and gave it to Alhaji Mai Deribe. It was worth N100, 000, a lot of money then. When I discovered this, I confronted them and took the case to the Army Council. I said if I didn’t punish Aliyu Gusau it will create problems for us. So I said General Aliyu Gusau had to go. He was the Chief of Intelligence. That was why Babangida got some officers to remove me.”

    Contrary to the claim by the magazine that this was the first time Buhari would reveal why he was ousted by his army chief, Buhari had said as much several times before in media interviews, perhaps the only difference this time being his more specific mention of names and his speaking as a president whose topmost priority, quite rightly I believe, is his fight against corruption. He had, after all, given the same reasons each time in response to claims by Babangida – the first time in a Newswatch interview in November 1985 after his first 100 days in office – that he ousted Buhari because himself and his co-conspirators had come to the painful conclusion that Buhari was “too rigid” on issues national and international.

    In his interview in The Interview Buhari challenged Babangida to deny his claim. “Let him (Babangida) repeat his own story. Ali Gusau is still alive,” he said.

    Babangida would be wise not to pick up his former boss’ gauntlet for at least two reasons. First, the Ali Gusau factor may not have been the only one in Buhari’s ouster, but certainly it was among the key ones. Second, as we all know, image has since come to matter more than substance even before the advent of the so-called social media. Unfortunately for Babangida the public has since been persuaded to regard his charm and ability to neutralise almost all opposition to his viewpoint as a vice.

    Personally I have always believed this negative image of Babangida is a metaphor for people wanting to blame everyone else but themselves for their inability to stand up for their convictions. I have been as great a beneficiary of the man’s legendary large heartedness as any. But that has never stopped me from telling him the truth as I saw it in private and on the pages of newspapers, as any regular reader of my columns going back to 1978 would testify.

    On his part, my forthrightness has never stopped him from remaining a senior brother and a benefactor. It has therefore never seized to amaze me why anyone would blame the man for the failure of many politicians to stand up for their convictions during his years in power.

    Unfortunately for Babangida, verisimilitude, as one public relations executive once put it, matters more than veracity. And so at 75, his image as the Great Compromiser is, sadly, a cross he has to bear for the rest of his life. Fortunately, however, since 2011 the man has put partisan politics behind him for reasons of age, as he himself put it, and of ill health, due mainly to a worsening of his well-known radiculopathy, occasioned by a bullet he took on the war front during the civil war. This ill health apparently led some faceless malicious people to spread unfounded rumours of his death twice this year in the social media.

    Happily those rumours, as they say, proved greatly exaggerated.

    And now that he does not need to charm anyone out of his or her convictions, Babangida can only live a quiet and peaceful life for the rest of his highly fulfilled life.

    Here’s wishing many more returns of today to arguably the country’s most astute military politician.

     

    Re: In defence of Osinbajo (August 3)

    Your defence of Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo’s view that restructuring is not our problem though desirable is commendable. The motive of those making restructuring an issue is the breaking up of the country and my advice to them is let them form their political party and make breaking up their sole party manifesto or shut up. RESTRUCTURING IS NOT IN APC’s MANIFESTO. Terrorism, insurgency and militancy may be their handiwork. Buhari and Osinbajo should be watchful.

    • Hussaini Dangaladima,

    +2348163422383               

     

    For me, Atiku, Bakare, Odumakin, Alani, Ezeife, etc., are the ones that are in earnest need of restructuring. Mindsets that are thoughtless of corruption and ignorant of the strategic value of anticorruption war practically need brain restructuring. You hardly hear these characters kicking against corruption, the corrupt, the corruptible and the corrupted.  Except for the brain-dead, who would be pursuing appearance instead of substance? Why put the cart before the horse? Nigerians, not Nigeria, need streamlining.

    • Abdullahi Idris Abdriss,

    Abuja, FCT.

    +2348039522148. 

     

    No amount of propaganda from your likes will stop Nigeria from being restructured, if not in peace then in pieces. Bear it in mind.

    +2348171314331.

     

    So many instances abound that we can’t progress on the basis of region or ethnicity. Those conversant with Plateau State will testify to the marginalisation of smaller ethnic groups by the bigger ones. What Jang left can better be imagined and what the present governor is doing in promoting ethnicity will leave us worse off.

    Bassa LGA, the closest LGA to the state capital, is completely locked in, in terms of infrastructure just because the LGA has not produced a governor to develop it. I agree totally with you that those calling for ethnic development are hypocritical and selfish.

    • Adudu,

    Bassa LG, Plateau State.

    +2348067036916

     

    I am always disappointed in your double speak, subjective and non-forthright analysis anytime the issue of moving Nigeria forward is discussed. Is true federalism not the reason for the revenge or counter coup of July 29, 1966 by the North? And since that time have your kith and kin not been playing zero sum or winner takes all politics after grabbing power to the detriment of other zones?

    Much more than the plague of corruption, if the truth must be told, it is the palpable lack of equity, justice and fairness in the handling of affairs of the country that has precipitated the morbid display of tribal, ethnic and religious sentiments which has continued to be our bane and undoing as a country!

    In any case, this jejune or feeding bottle or tail wagging the dog federalism we presently practise has continued to limit our progress, development and prosperity as a country; the present structure is warped and regressive and we either restructure or we perish as a country!

    • Hakeem Kazeem,

    Abuja.

    adeguzzi@yahoo.com

     

  • ‘Oil money: Honey or poison?’

    ‘Oil money: Honey or poison?’

    Last weekend Tahir Guest Palace, Kano, played host to the country’s energy correspondents for a workshop on reporting oil and gas. This was at the invitation of Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company (KRPC), which has made it an annual event it organises jointly with the Kaduna State chapter of the Nigeria Union of Journalists in the last four years.

    The theme this year was “NNPC in transition: Transformation and Media’s Role in Facilitating Positive Outcome.” Four of the five papers billed for the two-day workshop were delivered each by the new Managing Director of the corporation, Idi Mukhtar Maiha, the former Head of Mass Communication Department of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Dr. Suleiman Salau, the Executive Director (Operations) of the refinery, Shehu Malami, and this reporter.

    The new Group General Manager of NNPC’s Public Affairs Department, Garba-Deen Mohammed, who was to speak on the role of the mass media in facilitating success in the latest reform of the oil and gas sector, was away in Port Harcourt where the Nigeria Guild of Editors he was the erstwhile president was holding a conference.

    Maiha spoke on the remit given to the management of our three refineries under NNPC’s recent reform to transform them from cost centres into profit making companies. Salau spoke on the social responsibility of energy correspondents for the development of the oil and gas, Malami on how to prepare KRPC for success in its new brief, and myself on how NNPC’s seemingly unending transition can come to a happy ending.

    On each day of the workshop, Dr. Musa Bawa, the principal partner of Topdesk Consultancy based in Kaduna, conducted mind coaching and intellectual games for participants in between the presentations. The games were as much fun as they were stimulating and educating.

    I opened my presentation with a reference to the editorial of New Nigerian of June 29, 1974 aptly titled “OIL MONEY: Honey or Poison?” This editorial, I said, is arguably the most insightful and prophetic editorial of any Nigerian newspaper since independence. Sadly, I said, its prophesy that our corrupt and profligate ways of the post-civil war years of the early 70s- readers old enough would remember the Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon’s famous sound bite about money not being an object but how to spend it – can only make our oil money more poison than honey, proved too true less than a decade after it was written.

    In the last 16 years oil and gas, it seems, have landed us in a predicament even worse than that of the 70s and 80s. For one, easy money from the twin commodities has afflicted us with so-called “Dutch disease” whereby our dependence on it had led to the hardening of our currency which, in turn, had led to cheap imports and made our exports uncompetitive and theretofore to the decline of our manufacturing and agricultural sectors.

    Worse than our neglect of agriculture and manufacturing, easy oil money has led the entrenchment of waste and corruption in the country, the current “Padding-gate” unveiling in our House of Representatives being merely the latest of the unending corruption scandals in the country since the discovery of oil.

    “Padding-gate” may be the latest in the country’s parade of corruption scandals but in size it hardly compares to the Oil Subsidy scandal of 2011. As scandals go, this may yet prove the Gold medallist – actually Platinum is more like it. Certainly, next to the perpendicular drop in the price of crude oil since last year nothing has depleted our treasury like the subsidy scandal.

    The evidence lies partly in how the subsidy grew exponentially from an already high of N261 billion in 2006 to at least N1.3 trillion in 2011. I say “at least” advisedly because different government officials and institutions gave different figures in their testimonies before the House of Representatives Ad-Hoc Committee under Honourable Faruk Lawal which investigated the scandal and which in turn became a scandal all of its own; whereas the Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said it was N1.3 trillion, her Petroleum counterpart, the all-powerful Dizeani Alison-Madueke, said it was 1.47, the Accountant- General of the Federation said it was 1.6, the CBN said it was 1.7, while the Ad-Hoc committee said it’s own estimate was an incredible 2.59 trillion!

    It was also instructive that whereas the subsidy gravy train started with only five companies, including NNPC, on board, the passengerss doubled in 2007, almost quadrupled in 2008 and increased to 140 by 2011!

    Again it was instructive that no one could say for sure what the daily consumption of petrol was before the Faruk committee; the oil minister said 53 million litres, NNPC said 35, DPR said 43, while the PPPRA said 24. The fact that the perennial queues at our petroleum stations have disappeared since the recent removal of the subsidies in spite of the fact that the amount available is no where near the least of these figures suggests that we have all alone been blatantly lied to with statistics.

    After taking our workshop through the history of the country’s oil sector going all the way back to 1908, i.e. before even our amalgamation in 1914, and analysing its ills, I suggested at least three ways to turn it from a curse into a blessing. My suggestion was clearly no rocket science; transparent pricing of oil, as opposed to the many ill-defined factors PPPRA uses, including outrageous remunerations and severance packages for its top management and board, enactment of the 2012 Petroleum Industry Bill and, as the New Nigerian editorial in reference said, massive investment in agriculture. The only difference was I added education, with much greater emphasis on primary and secondary education. This invariably means a review of our revenue allocation formula in favour of states and local governments compared to the Federal Government.

    At the end of my presentation the KRPC managing director suggested that I find a way to reproduce the entire New Nigerian editorial I talked about because of its contemporary relevance and because he said I had referred to it more than once in my column. I promised I would as soon as possible. I thought today was as good a day to do so as any. So here we go:-

    “It is commonplace to say that Nigeria is at the moment very lucky because of oil revenues. In a very real sense we have much more money than our system can absorb. Unofficial estimates put the figure added to our reserve this year at 2,000m Naira. In many essential respects this bounty has been a blessing. It has enabled us to pay some of our loans, liberalised commercial and industrial policies and has enabled increased revenue to be diverted to building of modern infrastructure commensurate with our executive capacity.

    “But the reverse side of this coin is painful to contemplate. The nature and source of oil money put it in a class of its own. A few years ago a disturbing international report was published arguing in stark terms the future of all underdeveloped oil producing countries to make more than marginal use of their splendid fortune. No effort is involved in our part. It is the foreigners who employ their capital and skills to exploit this resource and we simply receive autonomous additions to our national income.

    “Such un-worked for riches can land a country in trouble of a peculiar kind. There is soulless opulence of a few, in evil contrast to crushing poverty of the many. There is unimaginable corruption and disastrously wrong allocation of resources. Above all there is absence of hard work without which the country cannot pull itself together. In that sense the oil money becomes poison rather than honey. How will an economic historian 50 years hence explain the relative expenditure on agriculture and on various forms of so-called “culture” : All-Africa Games, Black Arts Festival  and all the rest of it? He must conclude that we had taken leave of our collective senses.

    “Happily, in the Nigerian case the situation is by no means irretrievable. We could deploy considerable energies and resources in producing a commodity which is more important than oil: food. We must at all costs get agriculture on the move again. There are millions of acres lying fallow when they could be used to grow food for our burgeoning population. The setting up of two River-Basin Commissions is a great step in this direction (although the staffing has ensured that the two schemes would not take off for some time).

    “Nor are we unmindful of individual state efforts. But fiddling around with 10-15m Naira is just like one grain in a silo. We need a monumental plan. A 500m Naira plan with the help of say, Danish and Chinese experts under our direction would do wonders for grain production in this country. We may not have oil in 50 years. But to survive we must have food. The ground work can be done now.”

    The reader will agree with me that this less than 500-word editorial, published in its famous front page one inch column down the left side, is as relevant today as it was 42 years ago. The big difference, of course, is that today, in spite the huge difference in the scale of oil revenue, money is an object. Another difference, of course, is that whereas in the 70s we frittered away our fortune on games and festivals, this time we did so on wine, women, exotic cars and private jets and on fancy private property.

    As oil price begins to pick up we will, hopefully, this time learn the big lesson of the hard times our corrupt and profligate ways have landed us into.

  • In defence of Osinbajo

    In defence of Osinbajo

    Last weekend former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, returned to what seems to have become his hobbyhorse of late: restructuring Nigeria. The occasion was a memorial conference on July 30 to mark the death of Northern Region’s first and only military Governor, Major-General Hassan Usman Katsina, 21 years ago on July 24. The former vice-president spoke on “The challenges of national integration and survival of democracy in Nigeria”.

    The only guarantee for national integration and survival of democracy in Nigeria, he said in his speech, is the restructuring of the country. In any case, he said, it was inevitable. The North, he said, should therefore stop what he called its “knee-jerk resistance” to the calls.

    “I suggest,” he said, “we resolve today to support calls for the restructuring of the Nigerian federation in order to strengthen its unity and stabilise its democracy. I believe that restructuring will eventually happen whether we like or support it or not. The question is whether it will happen around a conference table…or will it happen in a more unpredictable arena and in a manner over which we have little influence. It should be at a table and we need to be at that table.”

    The day before Atiku Abubakar spoke, i.e. July 29, the inimitable Pastor Tunde Bakare, the General Overseer of Latter Rain Assembly and General Muhammadu Buhari’s running mate in the 2011 presidential elections, had spoken with perhaps even more impassioned voice on the same subject.

    The occasion this time was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the first Western Region’s military governor, Lt-Col Adekunle Fajuyi, in the revenge coup of July 29, 1966. Fajuyi was killed, along with Major-General JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi, his guest as Head of State, when Ibadan, the regional capital, was supposed to be hosting a conference of the country’s traditional rulers.

    The conference was meant to douse the tension that had pervaded the country following the first coup on January 15 in which nearly all senior Northern military officers, along with the region’s Premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello, and the country’s Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, were assassinated.

    Speaking in a vein similar to Abubakar’s, Bakare said that restructuring was in the interest of all sections of the country, including the North which seemed opposed to it.  “Need we,” he said, “remind those in opposition to restructuring today that one of the main grouses of Nigerians of northern extraction within the army and civil society after the first coup was the abrogation of the federal system by the Aguiyi-Ironsi-led government?”

    The call for restructuring, the pastor said, was a demand for a return to the First Republic’s regionalism which was “a demand for the prosperity of the constituent parts that make up the whole…It is therefore inconsistent with the interest of the North or the South for the current pseudo-federal structure to persist.”

    In broadening his appeal for restructuring to include the already apparently converted Southern elite, Bakare did not scold anyone. Even then it is safe to suspect that in speaking thus he had Vice-President Osinbajo in mind for supposedly becoming a latter day convert against restructuring.

    However, if the pastor was content to use innuendo to chide Osinbajo, it was not so with quite a number of fervent restructuring crusaders, notably Afenifere, the Yoruba umbrella socio-political organisation, Lt-General Alani Akinrinade, a former highly regarded defence chief, and Chief Chukwuemeka Ezeife, former old Anambra State executive governor.

    Speaking on behalf of Afenifere, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, its National Publicity Secretary, said his organisation took serious offence with Osinbajo’s “new” position.  “The Vice-President, Odumakin said, “may have come under pressure to lend his voice to the upholders of the status quo that has brought Nigeria to this sorry pass,” but by so doing and by reducing restructuring to the issue of more revenues for states, the vice-president committed a “faux pas”. (Punch, July 12).

    “The central plank of restructuring,” the Afenifere spokesman said, “was for Nigeria to go back to true practice of federalism wherein, mineral resources that abound in all states would be freed from the exclusive list so that states would move into prosperity.”

    On his part, Ezeife said he didn’t want to believe Osinbajo was reported correctly on the issue, but if he was, the vice-president was wrong. “Does he want to join President (Muhammadu) Buhari against the whole country,” he asked. Restructuring, he said, “was what will keep us together in view of the prevailing economic challenges. It will reduce the cost of governance. It makes our diversity to be positive. It is either we return to the six (three) regional structures or 12 regional units.” (Punch, July 12).

    Of the three I have mentioned who have expressed displeasure with Osinbajo, General Akinrinade seemed the angriest. In a lengthy interview with Sunday Sun (July 24), he said procrastination over talking about their differences was what has led Sudan into its present horrible predicament.

    “Because we Africans are stupid,” he said, “Sudan didn’t do it the way Czechoslovakia did it in the past. They are still killing one another now. It is as a result of leaving all these problems for too long.” The same fate awaits us, he argued, if we refuse to restructure.

    The ruling party, he said, was in any case being unfaithful to its promise to restructure the country. “In the past two weeks,” he said, “we have heard, though people are trying to retrace their steps, the Presidency saying there is nothing like restructuring. Then, we heard the Vice-President (Yemi Osinbajo) saying ‘no, what we need is good governance and not restructuring’. After that, we heard their National Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, saying another thing. Do they think we are idiots? “

    The last national conference, he said, may not have answered all the questions about Nigeria but what he expected of the government was to pick up from where the conference left off rather than simply reject it.

    “I think people will accept (this). But to tell us there is no restructuring, we are not going to take it. Nigeria is going nowhere without restructuring,” he said, with an apparent air of finality.

    The problem with all those now condemning Osinbajo as a turncoat, directly or otherwise, is that the man never said he was against restructuring.

    There are at least four basic elements to restructuring, aka “true federalism”: so-called resource control, state police, neo-regionalism and local government creation. Nowhere in the man’s interview did he say he was against any of these. On the contrary he spoke explicitly in support of resource control and state police.

    “I have,” he says, “always been a strong believer in fiscal federalism that is to say, that the states must have more resources and we went to the Supreme Court. I actually went to the Supreme Court as Attorney-General of Lagos State no less than 10 times on issues of fiscal federalism.”

    Likewise on state police he couldn’t have been more explicit. “I strongly believe that we must have state police,” he said.

    On the third element, what he was against, he said, was not restructuring Nigeria as such, but going back to the old regions or doing so along ethnic lines. As for the fourth element, it did not even feature in the interview.

    “Dividing Nigeria, going back to regions and all of those kinds of things,” he said of the third element, “I do not believe that at all. I don’t think that we need to go back to regions. (And) if there are people who believe that we must structure ourselves again along ethnic lines I don’t accept that that is the right way to go.”

    Afenifere says the issue of fiscal federalism is not just the states getting more revenues than they now do but taking 100% control of their resources. This is as gross a misrepresentation of the First Republic Constitution they say we must return to, as it is hypocritical.

    Gross misrepresentation, because according to Section 134 of our Independence Constitution, collecting rents and royalties of all minerals, including oil, were exclusively federal. The only thing – and admittedly it is a big thing – was that the federal government was obliged to remit 50% of the rent and royalties to the states the minerals were derived from.

    Therefore a valid argument can be made for an increase from the current 13% derivation for oil. And this does not require any constitutional amendment since 13% is only the floor set by the constitution, not the ceiling.

    Afenifere’s position of 100% resource control – and for that matter all other similar ones – is also hypocritical because, national conference after national conference since 1978, they have always run with the hare in broad daylight only to hunt with the hounds in the night; the fact is that if the alliance of the Southwest, Southeast, Northcentral and the Southsouth led by the Southwest that had always clamoured for resource control was sincere with itself, it would have defeated any and all opposition to their demand. The fact, however, is that each time the chips fell, all the non-oil oil producing states never supported even 50% derivation for oil, never mind 100%.

    As for neo-regionalism and ethnicity-based federalism, the one is as impractical (the demands for more states, as opposed to the collapse of the current 36 into six regions, have never abated) as the other is retrogressive (no country in the world has ever worked, not to say prospered, on the basis of ethnicity).

    No, Nigeria’s central problem, one would never tire of repeating, is not its structure. Its central problem is its selfish and rapacious leadership.

    It’s difficult, if not impossible, to put this any better than the rhetorical question Osinbajo asked in the interview for which he has since drawn so much flak:  “Corruption for example, which is crippling Nigeria, is corruption a geo-political problem?”

  • No end in sight to Erdogan’s hubris

    No end in sight to Erdogan’s hubris

    Three Wednesdays ago I wrote a cautiously optimistic piece on these pages titled “An end to Erdogan’s hubris?” It was about what I thought could be the beginning of the end of what I described as Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s, hubris.

    As arguably the most successful politician in modern Turkey, the man has pulled all stops to make himself the country’s first executive president since he stepped aside in 2014 as prime minister after serving for three successive terms from 2003. During that period he transformed Turkey into one of the world’s leading economies and stable democracies.

    That imperial ambition, apparently born out of his untenable, albeit understandable, presumption that only he knows best what’s good for his country, has been the source of his country’s recent economic and political travails.

    It was this hubris that led him to his unsuccessful openly partisan campaign for his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which he co-founded in 2002, to win the two-thirds majority it needed to change the country’s parliamentary system into a presidential one during the June 2015 elections. It was the same hubris that, along the way, led him into cracking down hard on all opposition to his ambition, real and imagined.

    It was also what led him to reverse the constructive engagement he had entered with the Kurdish minorities in the country’s Southeast in his years as prime minister to bring an end to their violent rebellion. The list goes on and on. But it culminated in sacking his faithful prime minister, Professor Ahmet Davutoglu, last June, essentially because the man had reportedly not shown enough enthusiasm in his support for his boss’s imperial ambition.

    Then terrorists struck the Atatürk International Airport in Istanbul, the country’s business capital, on June 28. It was not the first such attack and, as casualties go, it was also not the highest. However, the attack on the airport as a great symbol of the country’s transformation into a stable, thriving and modern political-economy, attracted the widest global media coverage.

    In the wake of the attack, Erdogan announced that he was restoring his country’s ties with Israel, severed decades ago. He also apologised to Russia over his downing this year of one of their fighter jets that he claimed has crossed into his country on a bombing raid against the Islamic State in Syria.

    My article of three weeks ago was to express the hope that, for Turkey’s case if nothing else, Erdogan would extend the same softening of his belligerence towards his perceived enemies outside to those inside. After the July 15, happily unsuccessful, military coup attempt against him, it is now apparent that my hope was forlorn.

    Since that coup he has cracked down even harder on his enemies within, real and imagined. So far he has sacked or suspended more than 60,000 workers, soldiers, police, judges, university lecturers and journalists right across the public sector on mere suspicion of their involvement in the coup. He has sworn to crack down even harder.

    Top of the list of his self-declared enemies has been his erstwhile ally in his long-drawn fight against the country’s Kemalist military and civilian secularists, the self-exiled cleric, Fethullah Gulen, whose Hismet (Service in Turkish) Movement, the president had long ago condemned as “criminal.” Indeed the president has been quick, too quick some would say, to accuse his former ally as the number one culprit and intensify his demand for Gulen’s extradition from his self-exile home in Philadelphia, United States.

    As allies, Erdogan and Gulen worked hand-in-glove to purge the military of Kemalists and restore “mildly Islamist” values and symbols, like the ban on alcohol and the wearing of hijab, into public life. The alliance started falling apart from 2013 partly over Erdogan’s ambition to transform himself into an executive president and partly over a 100-billion-dollar corruption scandal which broke out in December of that year in which several of Erdogan’s ministers and relations were implicated and which eventually led to the resignation of some of the ministers.

    Since the falling apart of the two, Erdogan has spared no opportunity to purge all sectors in his country, including the judiciary, the police, the military and the media, of those he perceives as Gulen disciples and supporters. Abroad he has also spared no opportunity to persuade other countries to shut down businesses and institutions belonging to or affiliated to the Hismet Movement, several off them well entrenched in Africa, including here in Nigeria.

    I was spending the weekend of the coup in Turkey at home in Bida, blissfully unaware of goings-on in the Internet world when Sarkin Karshi, Alhaji Ismaila Mohammed, called me on the phone and said I must be happy at the unfolding events in Turkey, considering my seeming antipathy towards Erdogan. Not knowing what he was talking about, I asked him what was going on. He said he was surprised I didn’t know a military coup was taking place in Turkey, as if in response to my July 6 article.

    I told him a coup may be bad for Erdogan but it certainly couldn’t be good for Turkey, certainly not after none of the six coups the country had suffered between 1960 and 2007 ever brought any good to the country.

    As things turned out the coup failed, ironically thanks in the main to the very media, in this case the social media, which Erdogan has done his best to crack down hard upon; as we have since been told, it was his use of an iPhone to urge his fellow countrymen to rise against the coup which turned the tide in his favour.

    That people heeded his call is obviously a reflection of his support in the country, in spite of his authoritarian tendency. But without the media he would never have had the weapon to rally his countrymen against the coup.

    There are people inside and outside the country who believe the president stage-managed the coup to have a pretext for finally getting rid of all those opposed to his imperial ambitions. One such person is Cemil Yigit, a spokesman for Ufuk Dialogue, an affiliate of the Hismet Movement in Nigeria which promotes interfaith dialogue and among whose patrons are the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, and the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, John Cardinal Onaiyekan.

    In an interview in Daily Trust (July 24) he said: “Many analysts believe that this coup attempt was stage-managed by the Erdogan administration to consolidate power. When you look at events of the past days there is a lot of evidence that it might be true.”

    One of the events Yigit mentioned was the fact that even as the coup was still unfolding the president was already certain that Gulen was the main culprit. Another was the fact that Gulen was among the first to condemn it even when it was uncertain where the chips would fall.

    There are, on the other hand, others who believe Gulen may indeed be the main culprit. One such person is Dani Rodrik, a Turkish economist and Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

    “All of this,” he said in an article on his blog on July 23, “points to the Gulen movement as the immediate culprit behind the coup attempt. Gulenists had both the capability and the motive to launch the coup,” his “all of this” referring to what he said went “much beyond the schools, charities and inter-faith activities with which it presents itself to the world.”

    The movement, he said, “also has a dark underbelly engaged in covert activities, such as evidence fabrication, wiretapping, disinformation, blackmail and judicial manipulation.”

    Whoever is right between Yigit and Rodrik, the greater concern should be Erdogan’s response to the coup. For me his greatest enemy remains his imperial ambition, not the Gulenists, or the Kurds or all those opposed to his ambition.

    The right lesson for him to learn from the coup attempt therefore is to abandon his ambition and return to the accommodation he had with the Gulenists and the one he sought with the Kurds in his days as prime minister.

    Perhaps not being knowledgeable about the mysterious ways of Turkish politics I fail to see, like Rodrik, what motive Gulen, who seeks to promote peace between the world’s religions and whose creed is religion in the service of humanity, regardless of anyone’s faith, would have in worldly political power and material wealth.

    Of course, we’ve seen a similar thing happen before in Iran when the late Ayatollah Khomeini living in exile abroad, returned home to ultimate political power in his country after the Shah was overthrown. But then Turkey is a country of Sunni Islam and therefore has no clerical hierarchy similar to Iran’s that can provide Gulen to claim any crown.

    Alas!, all indications so far is that the prospects that Turkey may see an end to their president’s hubris is bleak – very bleak.