The Nation Newspaper

Category: Mohammed Harunna

  • Ten years of Trust’s dialogues (I)

    Ten years of Trust’s dialogues (I)

    On January 15, 2004, Media Trust Limited, publishers of Daily Trust, Weekend Trust, Sunday Trust, Aminiya in Hausa, Kano Chronicle and the annual Kilimanjaro pan-African journal, held its first Trust Annual Dialogue in promotion of dialogue as a means of solving Nigeria’s problems. Ten years on last month, the annual event, a “town hall” meeting of sorts, has become possibly the most important regular platform for discourse in the country about its sociology, politics and economy. The dialogue has certainly made January an important date in the nation’s political and media calendar.

    The topic for the first dialogue was “The Nigerian Question: The Way Forward.” The chair was then Archbishop, now Cardinal, John Onaiyekan. The special guest of honour was President Olusegun Obasanjo, represented by his minister of Information, the youthful, dignified and somewhat reticent Chukwuemeka Chikelu. The panel of six, entirely from, or least of, the academia at one time or the other, paraded some of the country’s best egg-heads; Professors Bolaji Akinyemi, Jonah Elaigwu and Miriam Ikejiani-Clark, Drs Mahmud Tukur and Usman Bugaje and Messrs Kanu Agabi and Pharaoh Okadigbo.

    All six agreed that the answer to the Nigerian question was, to use Dr Tukur’s words, a “proper federation” with a “de-concentrated” centre. They were also unanimous about the need for the country to remain one. However, predictably for a panel of egg-heads, they disagreed on how to achieve these objectives. For example, whereas both Akinyemi and Elaigwu advocated for a national conference, Agabi disagreed.

    As special guest of honour Obasanjo, speaking through Chikelu, had asked, “When shall we move from the Nigerian question to the Nigerian answer?” The disagreement among the panellists about the means suggested that the time for Nigeria to become the answer remained in the distant future, if indeed it was not a mirage. Ten years hence it still seems that Nigeria has remained a question. This much is obvious from the fact that this year’s dialogue held last week – on January 23 – returned to the same theme of nation building as was the first.

    Between the first dialogue and last week’s there were the second on reforming Nigeria’s economy, the third on corruption, the fourth on free and fair elections, the fifth on democracy in Africa, the sixth on how to restore faith in the country’s democracy, the seventh on African women in politics, the eighth on the challenges of good governance on the continent, and last year’s on politics and the media.

    This year’s, as we all probably know, was chaired by the former president of Botswana, Mr Festus Mogae, who distinguished himself in office as honest, humble, transparent and accountable to his people. Trust could hardly have picked a better chair for a dialogue on how to build a nation. Similarly, it could hardly have constituted a livelier, more rigorous and more eloquent panel; Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, Femi Falana, SAN, Dr. Sule Bello of Ahmadu Bello University’s History department and Ms. Ann-Kio Briggs, well-known as a champion of the rights of the people of her oil-rich but much abused Delta region.

    Having attended virtually all the dialogues, the four liveliest, for me, were the third on corruption, the seventh on African women in politics, the ninth on politics and the media, and this year’s, if only for its context of the serious security threat posed to the unity and stability of the country not only by the Boko Haram insurgency but even more so by the brazen and unprecedented venality of government officials and their racketeering confederates in the private sector.

    To begin with the third dialogue on corruption, Trust could hardly have found a better chairman and panellists for the topic. Retired Major-General Garba Aliyu Mohammed, the chair, I knew very well from our days in primary school in Kano in the late fifties and early sixties. The man served the country as military governor of Niger State and minister of works and left as clean as a whistle.

    As for the panellists, didn’t it used to be said that the fear of Nuhu Ribadu’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was the beginning of wisdom? Controversy may surround the legitimacy of the commission and its selective use by President Obasanjo may have detracted from its integrity but few doubted the sincerity of Ribadu. Since his contrived departure by Obasanjo’s successor, the late Umaru Yar’Adua, there is a general consensus that the EFCC has become a toothless bulldog.

    The other two panellists, Major-General Ishola Williams, retired, and Professor Attahiru Jega had built their reputations as incorruptible Nigerians in the pursuit of their careers as an officer and gentleman and a brilliant and profound academic respectively.

    For the general the story is told of how on the occasion of an army conference in the eighties one senior officer chided any officer who did not own a house by the time he was a Lt-Colonel as being irresponsible. This was apparently too much for General Williams who was present at the conference and at the time owned no house. He responded to his fellow general by saying that any officer who owned a house by the time he was a one-star general was a thief because it was hard to see how even on that rank one could own a house on one’s legitimate income. Not surprisingly the general went on to become the pioneer chairman of Transparent International (Nigeria).

    As for Jega, the chairman of INEC, he came to the job highly recommended for his dogged fight with the federal authorities as probably the most celebrated president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities who refused all and every blandishment to give in.

    Most Nigerians would agree with Jega’s assertion in his paper that “Corruption has become the second name of our country. It is all pervasive, it is brazen and it is simply unbelievable.” Among the few that would disagree is our president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. This much was clear from the way he rejected the cry by the officiating priest at the burial of General Owoye Azazi, a former National Security Adviser, who died along with Governor Patrick Yakowa of Kaduna State in a helicopter crash in Bayelsa State, that corruption had since become the problem with Nigeria.

    “Corruption,” the President said in reply, “is not the cause of our problem. Nigeria has more institutions (now) that fight corruption…If Nigerians would change their attitudes you will realise that most of these issues attributed to corruption are not caused by corruption.” For evidence, he made the rather strange analogy with what he said some senior staff of our road safety corps told him, namely, that most accidents in the country occurred on our good roads. Apparently the logic was lost on our President that just as his belief that good roads have not been enough to stop accidents, and indeed have led to even more accidents, the existence of more institutions to fight corruption is not enough to deter corruption.

    In any case his argument that attitude and not corruption is our problem begs the obvious question: attitude to what? True, corruption, even on the incredible scale of Nigeria’s, is not in itself alone the problem. There is probably as much corruption in, say India, China, Mexico and Italy, and even in America, as there is in our dear country. The difference is the attitude of each country towards the scourge. Whereas the corrupt in these other countries are punished, often very severely, in our country they are celebrated. It is this attitude of impunity by the corrupt that has kept this country in the terrible mess in which it has been, socially, politically and economically – and in whatever..ly you can think of.

    All three panellists at the Trust third dialogue made this fundamental point. They also agreed that the solution was a change of attitude to corruption, especially by our leaders. So in a sense our President was right in saying attitude is the problem of the country, only that he failed to ask the logical question about what the subject of this terrible attitude is for the simple reason that attitude is a noun that needs an adjective to make any sense.

     

     

     

     

  • Aregbesola’s good turn…

    Aregbesola’s good turn…

    In his robust and characteristically rigorous and highly readable defence of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, the governor of Osun State, against an absolutely gratuitous attack by The Punch in its editorial of November 20 last year over his declaration of a holiday for the Islamic New Year on Muharram 1, 1434 which fell on November 15, Adamu Adamu, the Friday must-read columnist of the Daily Trust, described the governor as “one of the best, most humble and most upright governors in the country.” (Trust, January 11, 2012).

    Anyone familiar with the man and the way he has governed his state since more than two years ago couldn’t agree more. Far from disagreeing, one can even argue that Adamu’s list of the governor’s virtues fell short by at least one, namely the man’s courage of his convictions.

    The Punch had described Aregbesola’s declaration as “strange” and a manipulation of religion in a region “where harmony among the various ethnic and sub-ethnic groups is legendary.”

    How the declaration by the governor of a holiday to celebrate a new Islamic year is “strange” in a state where more than half the population are Muslims and where such a holiday detracts nothing from non-Muslims, The Punch did not demonstrate convincingly. But this is a matter for possibly another day.

    For now it’s hard, if not impossible, to deny that the man has shown in the more than two years or so that he has never been afraid to act on his convictions, in so far as they reflected the popular will and the greatest good for the greatest number of people of his state.

    Convinced, for example, that in a federation – even one like Nigeria’s where power flowed from the centre instead of from its component units – there was something inspiring with a state having its own flag, slogan and state anthem, he initiated these symbols of statehood for his state.

    Predictably, this attracted a virulent attack from the Peoples Democratic Party, the country’s ruling party, whose dubious victory in the state’s governorship polls in 2007 was overturned by the courts after nearly three years, thus ushering in the rival Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) into power in the state. Aregbesola’s action, the PDP said, was seditious, to say the least. Yet when Bayelsa State, where President Goodluck Jonathan comes from and where the party is in power, did a similar thing – even worse, some would say – the party, which prides itself as being the biggest in Africa, fell into a deafening silence.

    Today, several states in the Southwest have their flags and anthems but that has not seriously detracted their loyalty to the federation. Certainly, it has not detracted from the governor’s well known faith in the potential of the country to lead Africa – and the black race – into being reckoned with and respected internationally, if only the country and the continent could get leaders that are competent, compassionate, selfless, humble and honest.

    The man’s courage in charting new ways of doing things apparently led him to be the first, and so far the only governor, in the country to ask senior bureaucrats to choose a head of service through ballot papers with a list of criteria that focused on peer review of each other’s performance and personal integrity rather than on the usual one of longevity and seniority. The jury on this innovation is still out but its potential for making civil servants more transparent and accountable in executing policies and programmes of government is hardly in doubt.

    When the man took over power from the PDP two years ago, the state routinely took loans from banks to pay the wages of its civil servants. He not only stopped that. He went on to restructure the state’s lean finances to make sure it stopped living beyond its means.

    To be sure, the man took loans through, for example, issuances of bonds like many of his colleagues. But unlike several I know that have gone on a borrowing binge to build luxury hotels and similar non essentials, the Osun governor has borrowed essentially to invest in infrastructures like roads, drainage, water supply and schools. This much is pretty obvious for anyone who has been to the state since the man came to power. Certainly his sensible – and prudent – investment in infrastructure explains in part why, in spite of its many rivers and undulating topography, the state did not suffer from the floods that devastated many other states last year.

    Obviously, the man’s achievements have not only been in intangibles, as the record of his successful massive youths employment programme in the state has shown. Youth unemployment everywhere has since become perhaps the biggest source of the violent criminality that has led to so much insecurity in the country. Few governors in the country have done as much as the Osun State governor to contain this scourge of youth unemployment.

    For me, however, the man’s greatest achievement lies in the future. This will result from the highest priority he has given primary and secondary school education in his state. Virtually all over the country these levels of education have suffered devastating neglect resulting in the massive failure in, for example, the West African School Certificate examinations in recent times. In Osun State, the government has massively invested not only in building schools at this level. It has also done so in information technology that will enable pupils to learn as much at home or anywhere else as they do in schools.

    It’s early days to be definitive about the man’s record. But if only he continues with his current level of performance he’ll certainly deserve another turn in next year’s governorship election for the good turn he has done his state. He deserves another turn because, unlike your typical Nigerian politician, the man is humble, honest, transparent and competent – and has the courage of his convictions.

     

     

    On my frequent usage of the word “penultimate”

     

    Please Mohammed, check the real meaning & use of ‘penultimate’. Rather unsettling for a columnist of your stature to keep falling into the common Nigerian error! Merry XMAS!

    FEMI OSOFISAN. +2348033048383

    I checked for the meaning of the word as Osofisan, one of the country’s literary giants, suggested and got even more confused because the meanings they gave suggested my usage was right. To clear my confusion, I emailed his text to the in-house linguist of sorts of Trust, Farooq Perogi, who teaches journalism in America.

    Among my “offending” usages, in Osofisan’s eyes, were my columns of Wednesday December 26, 2012, and before then, probably that of May 2, as reproduced below:

    General Muhammadu Buhari at 70.

    “Penultimate Monday, i.e. December 17, General Muhammadu Buhari, former military head of state and perennial presidential contender since 2003, turned 70.”

     

    Beyond Azazi’s controversial intervention at BRACED Summit

    “Penultimate Monday, a (presumably) regular reader of this column sent me an sms from 08025720606, in apparent anticipation of today’s piece.”

    Perogi replied my enquiry thus: Your use of “penultimate” in the sentences you quoted above is perfectly legitimate. I am mystified by Professor Osofisan’s charge that your usage falls “into the common Nigerian error!” Penultimate is just a grander, less familiar term for “second to (the) last,” or “last but one.” Contrary to Osofisan’s claim, it is in fact native English speakers, not Nigerian English speakers, who tend to misuse “penultimate.” Grammar enthusiasts here always rail against the tendency in native-speaker English, especially of the American variety, to use “penultimate” as if it meant “greater than the ultimate,” which is senseless because “ultimate,” like “unique,” “absolute,” etc are already superlative adjectives.

    The only sense I can make of Osofisan’s criticism is that he is probably cautioning against the use of “penultimate” in contexts where the endpoint isn’t apparent. If the endpoint isn’t clear, it would be hard to isolate the second or next to it. He would probably prefer an expression like “the penultimate Monday in December” since December helps us easily locate the Mondays being referenced. But that argument neither makes grammatical nor logical sense since the newspapers in which your columns appeared have datelines that help the reader determine the days of the week you referred to.

    At any rate, many prestigious English-language newspapers habitually use “penultimate” exactly the way you used it. See the following examples:

     

    ”At Mr Obama’s penultimate rally at a nearby arena earlier the same day, the crowd, although bigger, had been more muted.—Economist Nov 8, 2012.

    “A few minutes later, Woods walked into the clubhouse in fourth place, already assigned to the penultimate pairing Sunday.”—New York Times Jul 21, 2012

     

    “I am really excited to compete,” she said after completing her penultimate training session before the first day of competition on Friday.—Reuters Jun 27, 2012

     

    “Squeezed by a royal wedding and bank holidays, parties are making the most of the penultimate day of assembly election campaigning.”—BBC May 3, 2011

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • On Buhari at 70 and Govt College, Bida at 100

    On Buhari at 70 and Govt College, Bida at 100

    Last week, I promised to reproduce today some of the responses I got to my columns of the previous two weeks. The tribute to General Muhammadu Buhari elicited 43 texts while the subsequent one on the centenary of Government College, Bida, my alma mater, got 53. Both also elicited a few emails.

    My usual approach whenever I decide to publish readers’ reactions to a previous piece is to write on my topic of the day first, and end with the feedback. This time I started out with copying and pasting the reactions I’d promised before writing the week’s piece. By the time I’d copied and pasted the more interesting and insightful responses, 11 on Buhari, 15 on my old school, they added up to nearly 2,200 words; about 700 more than the word limit for the column.

    So I was left with a choice between devoting the entire page to the readers and writing still. I chose the former because, besides giving me a week’s break, the reactions, as the reader would probably agree, were germane to the crises of political leadership and education that have bedevilled this country, what with the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party, for instance, threatening to implode over jockeying for vantage positions by its heavyweights ahead of the 2015 general elections.

    In choosing to devote the entire page to the responses, I had, of course, to reduce the number from the original 26 and edit several of those left to fit the column space and spell out the text spellings and jargons. I hope you find the reactions as insightful as they are interesting.

    First, on Gen Muhammadu Buhari at 70…

    Sir,

    I am an admirer of Gen Buhari. He represents the ideal of humanity and our collective hope to rebuild a new Nigeria. But Buhari’s greatest obstacles are the Northern elites that have been manipulating and skewing electoral processes to favour their candidate whom they trust would protect their interests. Buhari, to them, would pursue policies that are likely to send them to the gallows. The North betrayed Buhari in 2011 through the governors elected on the platform of PDP. If the North supports Buhari in 2015 most southerners will queue behind him just because we are tired of this inept and corrupt leadership.

    The question is, is the North ready to queue behind Buhari?

    Kolade Ilesanmi, Ise Ekiti. +2348030640311

     

    Sir

    The ‘MORTAL’ fear of my people is that Buhari will ISLAMISE Nigeria. I strongly doubt this because he can’t play God. I need information on how to join his party.

    +2348030968000

     

    Sir,

    Gen. Buhari remains the darling of many Nigerians. The media war against Buhari was symbolic of the cynicism of the other parts of the country towards Chief Obafemi Awolowo when he was alive. His respite only came after his passage. In the case of Buhari I hope we will not count our loss much later. Tunde Esan +2348033109878

    Sir,

    You are speaking for Gen Buhari as if he is a saint. We have not forgotten history when he chose to cancel bridge construction in Lagos. Most of the PTF roads he constructed were done in the North on a ratio of 4:1 against the South. This same man refused pardon after backdating the sin of Bartholomew et-al. Shagari (the president) was under house arrest while Ekwueme (the vice-president) was jailed by Buhari for years. Several southerners were also jailed while few Northerners like Rimi were jailed because they talked.

    Peter +2348187896640

     

    Sir,

    I never loved this man, Buhari. In fact in 2011, I not only did not vote for him but vigorously campaigned against him. But if he comes out today, I will not only vote but will campaign for him because I have come to realise that he is the only man neat enough to clean our beloved country from its excreta of corruption. GEJ, who has lost the capacity to lead, has failed us and any attempt to give him a second chance will be catastrophic for our nation. We need nationalistic leaders now and not presidential ethnic champions.

    Comrade Chris E. Onuoha +2348033423615

     

    Sir,

    Northerners feel the media is against Northern leaders. Not true. Tell me which Nigerian leader, from the colonialists to President Jonathan that has not come under the fierce and relentless fire of the Nigerian press. I have come to see that it’s God’s democratic way to ensure that Nigeria never ends up with a Mobutu or a Gaddafi. Notice that no Nigerian leader, military or civilian, no matter the scheming, has been granted by the Almighty to reign up to 10 years. The media hounds them out.

    Anthony +2348032913085

     

    … and the GCB Centenary

    Sir,

    I refer to your article of January 2nd 2013, extolling the college and singing the praises of our heroes and shining stars. But here I come again. In paying tribute to the fallen GCB heroes you omitted Capt. Haruna A. Auna. He was the one quoted by you in an earlier article on Magaji Danbatta’s autobiography “Pull of Fate” and erroneously referred to therein as Capt. Abdu Auna. Capt. Haruna Auna was in the same class as Gen. Wushishi. He was killed during the July 1st 1966 riots in Kano because he tried to stop the mutinying soldiers from doing as they pleased.

    Buhari A. Auna. Gwarimpa, Abuja.

     

    Sir,

    Your piece on Government College Bida’s centenary was quite revealing except for your omission of some notable old boys like late Ambassador lsa Koto (1920), renown educationist, late Alhaji Abdurrahman Okene and His Royal Highness OHIMEGE Igu Kotonkarfe (1922).

    Secondly in your mention of outstanding premier secondary schools in the north you left out Okene College, now Abdul Aziz Memorial College, renamed after the former federal super permanent secretary who was a prince of Okene.

    Please next time you are writing a piece like this you should be fair and generous because some of the ones omitted also made sacrifices just as those mentioned. You should not concentrate on military products alone as you appear to have done.

    Rufai +2347058339096

     

    Sir,

    Your write up as an alma mater of G.C. Bida on its one hundred years of establishment is commendable! But one missing old boy worthy of note is the late Alh Idrisu Alhassan Kpaki (1956-1961), Chief Imam of Kpaki, Niger State, and one time Minister of State, FCT. He became the first old student to serve as its principal.

    A.M.YAKATUN +2348037001954

     

    Sir,

    A slight correction, if you will, on your take regarding GCB as, “the only secondary school to have produced two military leaders of this country…” Barewa College, Zaria, had Generals Gowon and Murtala. Also then Rumfa College, Kano, too had General Murtala Mohammed and General Sani Abacha.

    +2348035901911

     

    Sir,

    Military School, Zaria, has produced the highest number of generals in the armed forces.

    +2348033110112

     

    Sir,

    Except for your mention of late Col Taiwo, I would have accused you of beaming your searchlight on Northerners only! I became a friend of the College in 1955 through Ladiji Gbadamosi, my age mate and bosom friend. He was of 1958 set, an all-round athlete who represented the school in many competitions and one of the first boy-scouts to visit Britain with my own classmate, late Gen Martin Adamu. Ladiji was a bank manager who travelled all over this country before retiring to become a world class businessman.

    Deacon Fehintola, +2348033835939

     

    Sir,

    In your write up on Govt College Bida Centenary you mentioned Col Garba Dada Paiko as late. We belong to the family of the late Col Abogo Largema who was killed in the 1966 coup in Ikoyi Hotel. Col Dada served as his ADC. We lost contact with him for some time until I read your write up. May his soul rest in peace.

    Alhaji Ali, Maiduguri. +2348033141078

     

    Sir,

    This is wishing your old boys’ association the best of luck as you set about redeeming its lost glory. However, like Caesar the poet, the school deserves a few knocks on the head for producing the highest number of dictators and feudal lords.

    Ogacheko Opaluwa, Abuja +234806709090

     

    Sir,

    Your column on Government College Bida Centenary makes interesting but shocking revelation i.e. the dismal failure of its last WAEC result – less than half a dozen of 200 students had four credits and above. We came to GSSB (then) in 1966 as the first batch of HSC students, about 21 of us. At the end three of us were withdrawn due to inadequacies in WAEC, 15 were directly admitted to universities while the remaining three came in through back-up preliminary studies. That was the Bida we knew and cherished. Alhaji Yunoos F. Oyeyemi, the principal at the time, is very much alive and active. May be BOSA may need to change strategy now to qualitative HUMAN RESOURCE SUPPORT. For me it was a very remarkable two-year sojourn.

    Mohammed A. Ahmadu. +2348032103986

     

    Sir,

     

    Please why have you not mentioned the Sokoto Middle School, now Nagarta College, among the older Northern schools? I think it is older than the Bida. Sardauna himself went to the college. So also did former president Shehu Shagari, late Sultan Abubakar III, Sultan Dasuki and host of others.

     

    Mohammed Augie. +2348039660007

     

    Sir,

    Note Alhudahuda College, Zaria City, established in 1910, has been outstanding too.

    Bulus Saliyuk. +2348055125945

    Sir,

    Ambassador J.T. Kolo was never SSG in Niger State. He was Head of Civil Service.

    Baba Akote +2347083581112

     

     

  • Still playing dangerous politics with Boko Haram

    Still playing dangerous politics with Boko Haram

    For the umpteenth time, President Goodluck Jonathan has seized the opportunity of his attendance at a church service to reassure Nigerians that the end of Boko Haram insurrection in Nigeria is well nigh. This time it was a service on the last Sunday of last year at the Ekklisiya Yan Uwa a Nigeria (EYN), in Abuja, to mark the end of 2012.

    “We are,” he told the congregation, “suppressing the insurgency. For instance, before Christmas, we were told the whole of Abuja will be burned down, including Maiduguri, among others. Though we had some incidents but they were minimised… I assure you the excesses of Boko Haram will be brought to a reasonable control in 2013.”

    I do not know any member of the congregation, much less talk to anyone of them. But I’ll be surprised if the President’s assurances induced anything else but “we’ve-heard-all-this-before” big yawn. After all, have his past assurances not almost always been followed by even worse spate of bombings allegedly by the sect?

    It will be a big pleasant surprise if the President’s assurance makes any difference this time. However, I, for one, have my doubts based on at least three reasons. First, we have a President who seems easily given to hyperbole, at least on Boko Haram. This is a dangerous flaw in anyone’s character, but even more so in a leader, if only because it will invariably lead him to over-react in looking for solutions to a problem.

    The reader will recall how our President once described the sect’s threat as worse than the country’s civil war between 1967 and 1970. This was at the National Christian Centre, Abuja, during the 2011 end of year service. It simply beggars belief that anyone, much less the president of a country who, like our own President, is old enough to have experienced it, can compare the horrors of a full scale war with the effects of any insurrection.

    The President was back again to his hyperbole mode during last year’s end of year service. This time he went beyond our borders to compare the Boko Haram insurgency to the civil war in Syria and to the rebel insurrection in Central African Republic. The wars in those countries, he said, are “akin to what Boko Haram is trying to do in Nigeria, to take over Abuja so as to make me and those in government to go and hide.”

    His comparison of Boko Haram with the CAR rebels is understandable, but isn’t it incredulous that he will compare himself with Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, whom the West and Israel, the main sources of our President’s foreign security advisers in his fight against the sect, regard as the bad guy who should be kicked out of office and out of his country or who, better still, should be dead?

    The second reason I am sceptical about the President’s last assurance that the end of Boko Haram is nigh is his predilection for using churches instead of secular institutions to make pronouncements about the sect. Since last November alone he has used occasions of church events no less than four times to pronounce on the sect, as if Muslims too have not been victims, probably worse, of the sect’s terror. Our President’s apparent preference for churches, as against secular institutions, to speak on this ostensibly religious issue exposes him to suspicions that he is not averse to exploiting religion to divide and rule Nigerians.

    Thirdly, his recent altercation with his erstwhile benefactor, former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo – of recent there appears to have been a falling out between the two – over the President’s handling of Boko Haram suggests that, like so many Islamophobes in and out of this country, he believes in one law for terrorism in his part of the country and another for the Muslim North.

    The genesis of the altercation between benefactor and protégé, as we all know, was Chief Obasanjo’s dismissal of the President’s handling of Boko Haram as “tepid” compared to the iron fist with which he said he had handled a similar insurrection by the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) in November 1999.

    The former president couldn’t have chosen a more apt occasion to rebuke his protégé; the 40th anniversary celebration in Warri on November 22, last year, of the call of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor to the ministry. As president of the Christian Association of Nigeria few, if any, have spoken more forcefully than the pastor against any form of accommodation with Boko Haram. To date no president of CAN has been as hawkish as the pastor, not even Dr. Sunday Mbang, the retired Prelate of the Methodist Church, who was once quoted as saying, “Whether they like it or not we will not allow any Muslim to be president of Nigeria. I am declaring this as President of CAN.” (Thisday, July 31, 2000.)

    As if to add salt to an injury, Chief Obasanjo’s belligerent former spokesman, Femi Fani-Kayode, added the gratuitous, and evidently incorrect, rider that Odi effectively destroyed MEND; as several press adverts that seem to have the imprimatur of the Presidency have pointed out, MEND merely went deeper underground after Odi only to return with a vengeance that ultimately forced the Federal Government to negotiate an amnesty for all Niger Delta militants.

    In his own response to the former president, President Jonathan, during his media chat last November, in effect, described Odi as a crime against humanity. When, he said, as then deputy governor of Bayelsa, himself and his boss, Diepriye Alamieyeseagha, visited Odi after the operation ordered by Obasanjo all they found were, “some dead people, mainly old women and also children. None of those militants was killed. None. So the bombardment of Odi was to solve the problem but it never solved it.”

    This raises the logical question of why the President has since persisted in using the same method against Boko Haram insurgency that he has strongly denounced as a crime against humanity. One possible answer is that for the president MEND was “us” but Boko Haram is “them.” Another and related answer is that it is against his political interest for peace to return to the North where opposition to his retention of the presidency in 2015 is likely to be strongest.

    Those, like the President, that insist on a hard-line solution to Boko Haram obviously miss the historical lesson of terrorism, even of the emergence of Boko Haram and of the apparent inability of government to destroy it. Contrary to Obasanjo’s claim of government’s failure to nip the sect in the bud, its massacre in Maiduguri in July, almost ten years to the anniversary of Odi, was predictably worse, if only because Odi is a hamlet compared to Maiduguri as Borno State’s capital.

    It is also telling that when the late President Umar Musa Yar’Adua ordered the army to put the sect down, he boasted that “The operation we have launched now will be an operation that will contain them once and for all.”

    As we are all by now painfully aware, putting down Boko Haram has been anything but a cake-walk. And no one interested in ending its terror will deny the fact that what Amnesty International described at its November 1, 2012 press conference in Abuja as “serious human rights violations carried out by the security forces in response (to Boko Haram), including enforced disappearance, torture, extra-judicial executions, the torching of houses and detention without trial,” will never work.

    Anyone who imagines that it will should take a lesson in the history of terrorism. One good place to start, as I once mentioned on these pages, is a three-page primer on the subject in The Economist of August 20, 2005. As the report pointed out in a comparative history of 19th and 20th century anarchism and contemporary jihad, just like repression did nothing to stop the former it also cannot on its own deter the latter.

    Terrorists, the magazine said in its wise editorial to the West on the subject, “…can be caught, sometimes before they have done anything terrible. That argues for excellent intelligence and police work. Perhaps their numbers can be reduced by ameliorating the grievances that lend them justification for their attacks. That argues for political action. And certainly the public needs re-assurance. That argues for honest explanation – that terrorism does not threaten any western government, that retribution, like police injustices committed in nervous haste, is likely to provoke more violence, that new restrictions are unlikely to bring new safety.”

    None of these three elements – excellent intelligence and police work, political action and honest explanation – exists in President Jonathan’s strategy for bringing an end to Boko Haram terror.

    Instead what we have, as I said on these pages in my longest piece on the subject to date (December 6, 2011), is a government that seems hell-bent on playing dangerous politics with Boko Haram.

     

    Corrections

    Last week’s piece elicited a number of reactions on factual errors it contained along, of course, with many interesting comments. I’d intended to publish them but lacked the space. I’ll do so next week, God willing, along with reactions to the piece before on the 70th birthday of General Muhammadu Buhari, former military head of state and a leading opposition figure.

     

  • Government College, Bida centenary

    Government College, Bida centenary

    For two days early December last year, Government College, Bida, where I had my secondary school education between 1965 and 1969, celebrated its centenary. As you can imagine it was a great homecoming for many of the students of the school which, by sheer longevity alone, has produced some of the most pre-eminent citizens of this country.

    The celebration was prefaced by the sad and sudden demise of one of the school’s most eminent old boys, Ambassador James Tsado Kolo, Waziri Doko. JT, as his friends called him, was among the pioneer senior staff of North West State, today’s Kebbi, Niger, Sokoto and Zamfara states. A humble, diligent and upright gentleman, he rose to the rank of permanent secretary in the old state and eventually served as the Secretary of the Niger State Government before he ended his civil service career as an ambassador.

    Ambassador Kolo was billed to deliver the keynote lecture about the journey to date of his alma mater on the night of December 7, the first day of the celebration, and had indeed prepared his paper. He died at 74, apparently from heart failure, a little over two weeks before the lecture and a day after the very day the centenary organising committee put out the first newspaper advert announcing the programme of the event.

    In the end it fell on his old teacher as a secondary school student, Professor Jonathan O. Ndagi, himself one of the most eminent educationists in the country and pioneer Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Minna, to deliver the lecture. The occasion was chaired by former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Alfa Modibbo Belgore, who though not an old boy, had sentimental ties to Bida as the closest childhood friend of Alhaji Umaru Sanda, the late Etsu Nupe, whose late father, Alhaji Muhammadu Ndayako, was one of the emirs in the North to plant the seed of Western education in the otherwise conservative and hostile region.

    As you’ll expect Ambassador Kolo’s history of his alma mater was full of reminiscences about the good, but at times not-so-good, old days of diligent and stern teachers, simple but delicious meals, notably nyanboci, the Nupe staple food of tuwon shinkafa served with bean soup or gbegiri soup as the Yoruba with their affinity with the Nupes, would call it, and of the senior boys all too often lording it over their juniors, etc.

    The one thing Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the pioneer premier of Western Nigeria, was justly famous for was his policy of free education in his region. In a sense his Northern compatriot, Sir Ahmadu Bello, was one better than the chief; JT Kolo and his fellow pupils not only enjoyed free education, they were actually paid to learn. For, in addition to free tuition, primary and secondary school pupils in the North right up to the seventies enjoyed free meals and free uniforms, and received allowances which were princely sums in those days. Such was the great store the great Sardauna put on education and such was the strength of the momentum of his legacy.

    As the college celebrated its centenary its good old days seemed light years away. Although academically it was not in the premier league, to use a football metaphor, it produced a few odd brilliant students that went on to set academic records in other schools. One such student was Malam Yunusa Paiko whom Professor Ndagi singled out from the audience for mention in the course of reading Ambassador Kolo’s lecture. To date Malam Yunusa’s record of six distinctions in West African School Certificate examination in 1959 remains unbroken. He went on, according to Professor Ndagi, to set a similar record in King’s College, as a Higher School Certificate student where he made three straight A’s.

    Modest as the school’s academic record is, it has produced more than its fair share of the country’s most pre-eminent citizens. It holds the record as the only secondary school to have produced two military leaders of this country –Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar – both of them Class of ‘62. The same class has also produced the single highest number of senior military officers in the country. These officers, with the exception of Colonel Sani Bello who was retired as military governor of Kano State, left the military as major-generals. These were Muhammadu Magoro, now a senator, Muhammed Gado Nasko, a former minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Sani Sami, the current Emir of Zuru in Kebbi State and the late Mamman Vatsa, he too one time FCT minister. Another exceptional classmate of theirs was Garba Duba who retired as a three star Lieutenant-General.

    The trail blazer for them all, however, was Lieutenant-General Muhammadu Wushishi who was their senior by two years. Along with the late Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo, the military governor of the old Kwara State who was killed in the coup attempt against General Murtala Muhammed in 1976, and late Col Garba Dada Paiko, they were the first to be enlisted into the army by their old teacher, Alhaji Tako Galadima, as Nigeria’s first minister of state for the army.

    The military, however, was not the only sector in which the early products of the school proved their mettle. In the judiciary, broadcast, banking, bureaucracy, academia, and among traditional rulers many of its students have come to occupy prominent positions. In the judiciary, for example, a recent former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi was a student (Class of ’54) and its head boy. Then there was Justice Abdullahi Mustapha, one time president of the Federal High Court. Again there is the current Chief Judge of Niger State, Justice Jibrin Ndajiwo, and before him a few other chief judges. This is not to mention many serving judges at various levels of that arm of government.

    Among traditional rulers the school has produced the late Lamido of Adamawa, Sarkin Sudan of Kontagora, Alhaji Sa’idu Na Maska, the longest serving emir of Lapai, Alhaji Muhammadu Kobo, who was both student and teacher in the school, the current emir, Alhaji Umaru Bago II, the late Ohinoyi of Ebiraland, Alhaji Muhammed Sani Omolori, the current Sarkin Zazzau of Suleja, Alhaji Awwal Ibrahim and Sarkin Sudan of Wurno, Alhaji Shehu Malami.

    Several of these old boys, along with some of their teachers, notably Professor Ndagi, Sheikh Ahmed Lemu – now famous for his hard hitting speech during the submission of the report of his presidential committee that investigated the 2011 post-election violence – the late Professor Albert Ozigi, also a prominent educationist, and the ageless Malam Iliyasu Bida who is most likely in his eighties but is always looking 60, came up for award on the second day, December 8, of the centenary.

    Of the seven categories of awards on that day, the most interesting and telling for me was the Special Award that went to two of the school’s pioneering students – both of them females. Telling because, first, mixed schools were rare, if not unheard of, in these parts at that time. This apparently explains why the old boys of the school who initiated the establishment of their association in October 1975 chose to name it Bida Old Students Association (BOSA). Second, I thought the award was interesting and telling because the elderly Hajiya Jibabatu Mohammed, who, of the two recipients of the award, was present in person to receive her award, spoke such perfect English in accepting her award you would be pardoned if you thought she attended some of the best schools in England; you would never imagine that all she got was Middle School education between 1945 and 1948, when the school’s status as mixed came to an end.

    Certainly, it would make you wonder whatever happened to Western education in the country, especially in the North which had been a laggard in that field.

    However, even by the school’s rather modest academic performance, the last result of its WAEC was exceptionally dismal; out of 200 of its students who sat for the exams in June, less than half a dozen had four credits and above.

    All stakeholders in the school – students, teachers, parents, old boys and the state government – must share in the blame for the terrible decline of the college. But the least blameworthy are the old boys for the simple reason that under the chairmanship of Col Sani Bello, BOSA has done virtually all that any group can do to restore the past glory of the college. Along with his team, he has used a judicious combination of carrots and sticks to get many of the high-net-worth old boys to rehabilitate the schools buildings, infrastructure and equipment.

    So successful was he as chairman in the last five years that the school today stands out among its contemporaries like Barewa College, Zaria, Rumfa College, Kano and Government College, Keffi, as probably the best in these three areas.

    If the old boys are the least to blame, the worst culprit must be the state government. Like most states in the country, especially in the North, education seems to be Niger State’s least priority, whatever the state authorities, going all the way to its self-styled chief servant, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu, may claim to the contrary.

    And unless the state authorities begin to give primary and secondary schools their due and unless there is transparency and efficiency in the handling of what goes into the sector, things can only get worse than the dismal record of the school in recent times no matter what anyone else does or says.

     

     

     

     

  • Muhammadu Buhari at 70

    Muhammadu Buhari at 70

    Penultimate Monday, i.e. December 17, General Muhammadu Buhari, former military head of state and perennial presidential contender since 2003, turned 70.

    An austere person, his birthday celebration was to have been low key to begin with. However, in apparent deference to the national mourning over the tragic death in a helicopter crash the weekend before of Sir Patrick Yakowa, governor of Kaduna State where he is resident, along with former National Security Adviser, General Andrew Azazi, and four others, the general virtually cancelled the celebration.

    That virtual cancellation of his birthday bash on account of the previous weekend’s national tragedy spoke volumes about the man’s essential humanity, something Nigeria’s dominant southern media, his nemesis, had done, and continues to do, almost everything it can to tear into shreds.

    This media has done virtually all it can to portray the general as a stone-hearted, tyrannical, parochial and religious bigot, unfit for election as a civilian leader. In truth he is anything but.

    Instead he has been a victim – along with each and every Northerner, with the possible exception of General Murtala Mohammed, who has held power in the country, from the Northern premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello, and the country’s first and only prime minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, through President Shehu Shagari to Generals Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar – of a sustained media propaganda which has succeeded in creating the popular impression that the Northern elites believe Nigeria is exclusively theirs to rule and ruin.

    As with all successful propaganda, this negative portrayal by the dominant Nigerian media of the Northern political elite, in mufti or khaki, is not entirely without basis; Northerners have ruled this country much longer than those from the other regions and their record in government, generally speaking is, to put it mildly, difficult, if not impossible, to defend.

    However, again as with all successful propaganda, the kernel of substance has been mixed and padded again and again with lots of half-truths and even barefaced lies.

    Take the case of General Buhari as an example. As I said, the man, like all Northern leaders of the country, has suffered more than his fair share of malicious propaganda. There is, however, a major difference between his case and the rest; he never really enjoyed any honeymoon with the media from the time he emerged onto the national arena as minister of petroleum in 1976 up to the time he became head of state in 1983 – and even well beyond.

    Dr. Aliyu Tilde, one time Friday columnist with the Weekly Trust and now a co-publisher of the online newspaper, The Premium Times, accurately captured the general’s hate-hate relationship with the Nigerian media in his rested column in the Trust of July 6, 2001, which he entitled “The Seven Sins of Buhari.”

    Tilde’s piece was in apparent response to my earlier article in the Daily Trust which was critical of the general’s controversial remarks in Sokoto ahead of the elections in 2003 about how Muslims should vote.

    For that article, Tilde lumped me along with others who he said disliked Buhari for no worse crime than committing “seven unforgivable sins” in their eyes. These sins, he said, were that the general was a northerner, a Muslim, honest and transparent to a fault, popular with the masses, apparently disliked General Babangida (his army chief who overthrew him in a palace coup in 1985), enacted Decree No 4 which criminalised embarrassing any government official, and served under the much condemned General Abacha.

    “Briefly,” Tilde said, “these are some of the sins that Buhari committed and for which he is too arrogant to repent. If he could change his habits and become deceitful and corrupt, he cannot change his birth, his history and his faith. After all he is not a politician and does not need our votes.”

    Obviously Tilde was speaking tongue-in-cheek. Buhari, as he said, could hardly change his birth and history and, like most adults, was unlikely to change his faith. And with the exception of the general’s well-known grouse against his former army chief and his enactment of Decree 4, his other “sins” were really universal virtues. Again even his worst enemies could not but acknowledge that he served as executive chairman of the Petroleum Task Force under the much-condemned Abacha with distinction and transparency.

    Even then his virtues never endeared him to the rump of the Nigerian media and by extension much of the Nigerian public. The source of this bad blood between the two dates back to his job as minister of petroleum. Under his charge the media circulated a story that 2.8 billion Naira of our oil revenue had gone missing. A judicial panel that looked into the case concluded that it was all rumour. In the end otherwise respectable Nigerians like the late Tai Solarin and Chief Gani Fawehinmi that had claimed Buhari was culpable could not prove their claims. Instead Solarin, for one, had to admit that it was a piece of gossip he picked up on a bus!

    That, apparently, did not stop the media from continuing to peddle the falsehood as fact right up to the moment.

    Predictably when the man became head of state in December 1983, following the overthrow of the Second Republic under Shagari, he enacted Decree 4 under which two reporters of The Guardian, Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, were jailed for a leaked story on the appointment of a new high commissioner to the UK which the government found embarrassing.

    As if the N2.8 billion false story was not bad enough, the media went to town with another one about the Emir of Gwandu and father of his aide camp as head of state, Major Mustapha Jokolo, going to Murtala Muhammed international airport to clear 53 suitcases for the emir at a time the general had closed our borders with other countries to stem the smuggling of currencies and other contrabands.

    That, like the so-called missing oil money, also turned out to have been blatant falsehood. The general’s ADC was at the airport alright to receive his dad who was returning from a trip abroad, but the suitcases belonged to the large family of a former ambassador who was coming home to serve as the general’s chief of protocol.

    Obviously this fact was poor copy for a story so the media decided to spruce it up a bit in order obviously to sell well. To date the lie, like so many distortions that have caught the imagination of the public, has simply refused to go away.

    At the time Tilde wrote about the general’s “seven sins,” the man had repeatedly said he hated politics and politicians with a passion. As head of state he had certainly left no one in doubt as to what he thought of them from the way his regime tried and jailed virtually all of them, many of them many life times over.

    The general must have therefore surprised even himself when in 2002, he announced to an astounded public that he was joining politics. Since then he has become a perennial presidential candidate; three times in 2003, 2007 and 2011 he ran for the job and three times he lost in elections that got progressively worse.

    The last one triggered one of the worst political violence in the North – except for the 1966/67 riots – especially in Kaduna his state of residence, a violence which the authorities naturally blamed on the general’s pre-election warnings that any attempt to rig the election will be resisted by the masses.

    As with the elections themselves he also lost his cases against the ruling party in the courts. After losing his case last year an apparently frustrated Buhari told the world that it would be the last time he will stand for election. It was all reminiscent of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the other perennial loser of elections for the leadership of this country, when he told The Guardian in one of his most exhaustive interviews shortly after losing the massively rigged 1983 elections to President Shehu Shagari, that he was done with politics in Nigeria because he was convinced the country would never experience genuine democracy in generations to come.

    Unlike the late venerated chief, however, the general seems to have changed his mind about not ever offering himself to serve as leader; in an interview in the Saturday Sun (December 22), he said in effect that he would if given the chance.

    His party, he said, has been in serious talks with the two leading opposition parties for merger. At the same time he has, he said, been under tremendous pressure from his huge following to rethink his stand. “If,” he said, “they give me the ticket or recommend me, I will consider it.”

    The general at 70 is obviously now a different man from the one who, until barely 10 years ago, was absolutely sure he will never want to be a politician. It will be a miracle if, as a politician, he ever gets a fair shake from a media that has harboured deep prejudice against him essentially because, like Awolowo whose mirror image he is, he is given to speaking bluntly.

    It is a measure of his dislike by the rump of the Nigerian media that the same quality they had seen as virtue in the late chief they have treated as a vice in the general.

     

  • Sir Patrick Yakowa (1948 -2012)

    Sir Patrick Yakowa (1948 -2012)

    Sir Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa, who died tragically in a helicopter crash last Saturday in the creeks of Bayelsa State, was a good man. I first met him in 1971 through Mr. Aboki Galadima, his childhood friend who was to become his chief of staff as governor of Kaduna State. I was Galadima’s “fag” as a third year student in Government College, Bida, where he came to do his Higher School Certificate (HSC) from Government Secondary School, Abuja, both in Niger State.

    When I first met Yakowa, himself and Galadima were undergraduates at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. I was a “Basico” (student of then two-year-old School of Basic Studies of the university established jointly by the then six northern states to prepare secondary students from the region for direct admission). When we first met the man struck me as nice and somewhat withdrawn. Thereafter our paths hardly crossed until he graduated the following year to embark upon a successful career as a civil servant which culminated in his brief stint as permanent secretary at the federal level in 1999.

    I got to know him a little bit more when General Abubakar Abdulsalami, the military head of state I served as chief press secretary in 1998/’99, appointed him a minister. This, apparently, was to change his career as a technocrat into an even more successful one in politics. Even then few, if any, could’ve predicted he would end up as governor of his state, once considered the bellwether of Nigeria’s politics as capital of the old powerful North.

    But then God, as they say, moves in mysterious ways. First, Mr Steven Shekari, Governor Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi’s deputy who looked as fit as fiddle, died suddenly in 2005 during the governor’s second and final term. Makarfi replaced Shekari with Yakowa, then the secretary of his government.

    Next, Makarfi’s handpicked successor, Architect Namadi Sambo, retained him as deputy after he and a host of others, including the possibly better connected and certainly more politically ambitious Mr. Isaiah Balat, now being touted as possibly the next deputy governor of the state, lost out in the 2007 primaries of the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party.

    Next, God’s mysterious hands took away President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in May 2010 after a long-drawn illness during which attempts were made by many within his kitchen cabinet to stop his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, from acting.

    The sad death resolved the high wire politics that surrounded his illness in favour of Jonathan through the invocation of a little heard of “Doctrine of Necessity” by the Senate. As president his choice of a deputy eventually fell on Governor Sambo. By constitutional progression Yakowa became governor.

    Finally after serving out Sambo’s first term, he predictably won his party’s ticket for the 2011 governorship election and went on, again predictably, to win the election itself. The election proved highly divisive, with the opposition, mainly the CPC, alleging that it was massively rigged.

    As a person Yakowa was a good man. As a politician I am not so sure he was as good. Many, even within his party, had accused him of being highly partisan in his appointments, award of contracts and distribution of projects.

    Last Monday, when I was at my vendor’s to collect my complimentary newspapers and buy others for the day, I overheard a group discussing his tragic death. Uninvited, I offered that he was a good and fair man. Someone in the group disagreed. The Yakowa I knew, he said, was not the same as a governor.

    The man said he was a senior staff in the state’s ministry of education. Before Yakowa, he said, they had eight directors split equally between the Muslim dominated northern part of the state and the Christian dominated south. Since then, he said, the directors had increased to 11 and only two were from the north. Worse still, he said, some of these new directors had neither the requisite skill nor experience. This pattern, he said, was replicated in almost everything the man did, regardless of the impression he tried to create that he was a fair man.

    This claim was perhaps exaggerated, perhaps even false. What cannot be denied, however, is that as a Nigerian politician, he was hardly different from the rest in his determination to get and retain power. This much was obvious in the recently concluded local government elections where the ruling party won an incredible 22 out of 23 local governments. Even the one local government, Kaduna North, which was conceded to the opposition seemed aimed at portraying the governor’s former boss, Vice-President Sambo, with whom he never really had any cordial relationship, as someone no longer of any consequence in the politics of the state; although Sambo is from Zaria, he has lived all his adult life in Kaduna North.

    Whatever may have been his shortcoming as a politician, the one thing I have never heard anyone accuse him of is venality and self-service. Nor have I heard anyone accuse him of lack of humility. In a nation like ours where corruption, selfishness and arrogance have become the main defining characters of its public figures, especially its politicians, Yakowa’s apparent personal integrity and humility made him a rare breed politician.

    Not least of the virtues that recommended him as rare was his apparent disavowal of the First Lady Syndrome, a thing which is not bad in itself but which, as with so many things we copy from abroad, has been turned by the wives of our elected public officers into a sophisticated grand scam. The greater credit for this must go to his wife, Dame Amina, who is probably the most self-effacing First Lady in the country, especially for a woman who is well-educated and from a liberal social background. Some credit, however, must go to her husband for allowing her to be her natural self rather than push her to be like the Joneses.

    As we mourn his death in very tragic circumstances, may his virtues become the guiding principles of his successor, Alhaji Mukhtar Yero. And may the Good Lord give all those he left behind the fortitude to bear his great loss.

     

  • The Oloye (1933 – 2012)

    The Oloye (1933 – 2012)

    Beginning August 1, 1977, the New Nigerian ran a series of interviews I conducted for it with a number of candidates for elections into the Constituent Assembly (CA) that eventually authored the 1979 Constitution. The interviewees were 14 in all, among them Dr. Abubakar Olusola Saraki who went on to win his Ilorin seat. His interview started the series.

    At the time of the interview he was one of the most successful medical doctors in the country, holding retainerships of many blue chip companies and high net-worth individuals. He practiced his medicine out of a modest clinic on the popular Broad Street, Lagos. However, even though he was doing well in his practice, there were already signs that the man was about to hang his stethoscope for politics.

    In the course of the interview which I conducted in his clinic, he expressed strong views on several contentious issues, notably on the heated debate over the military authority’s obvious preference for the American type presidential system against the parliamentary democracy of the failed First Republic.

    “I am,” he said unequivocally, “against this provision.” He gave three reasons. First, he said, the country’s level of literacy and the political awareness of its citizens were too low for what he said was the highly sophisticated presidential system to succeed. Second, he said, it would be too expensive and, third, the risk of its being abused was too high because he thought it gave too much power to one man.

    Long before he died on November 14 aged 79, it seemed the man’s concern about the viability of the system in the country had been born out on the second and third count, if not the first; few would dispute the fact that the system, at least in its current form, has proved unsustainably costly. Few would also disagree with the argument that we’ve since been saddled with a dangerous presidential monarchy.

    However, his strong objection to the system notwithstanding, the man soon became one of its biggest operators as probably the country’s most powerful Senate leader to date.

    His journey to Senate leadership during the Second Republic started in earnest with his successful election into the CA. However, the journey would have suffered a setback had his biggest rival in Kwara State politics at the time, Alhaji Abdulganiyu Folorunsho Abdulrasaq, the North’s first Senior Advocate of Nigeria, had his way.

    Not long after Saraki’s election into the CA a huge scandal surrounding the purchase of Leyland buses for the 1977 African Festival of Arts and Culture, FESTAC ‘77, broke out in which himself, Malam Adamu Ciroma, then managing director of the New Nigerian, late Chief Anthony Enahoro and late Alhaji Tatari, as commissioner and permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Information respectively, were implicated. The government White Paper on the report of investigations into the deal found all but Malam Adamu guilty of self-enrichment.

    An Ilorin Progressive Youth Organisation with links to Abdulrasaq, then a nominated member of the CA and, like Saraki, known to have had his eyes on the governorship of Kwara State, seized the incident to call on Saraki, along with Alhaji Tatari and Malam Adamu, to either quit the CA or be sacked. Otherwise, the IPYO said, the authorities would be guilty of double standards because they had used an earlier and somewhat similar scandal, the Scania Bus scandal, to stop Chief Adisa Akinloye, one of its chief culprits, from contesting the CA seat for his Ibadan constituency. Akinloye, since deceased, eventually became the first elected chairman of the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN).

    None of the three left the CA or was kicked out. Instead Saraki went on to become one of the most influential voices in the CA and, like a considerable number of its members, notably Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Chief MKO Abiola, Malam Adamu, Dr Chuba Okadigbo and Dr. Joseph Wayas, he became one of movers and shakers of the Second Republic.

    By the time the CA ended somewhat abruptly in 1978 because of a serious rift over the status of Sharia in the draft Constitution, Saraki’s ambition had, it seemed, moved on from the governorship of his state to the presidency of his country; he contested the first presidential primaries of the NPN ahead of the elections in 1979, along with Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Alhaji Maitama Sule, Malam Adamu, Chief JS Tarka and Professor Iya Abubakar, coming out a respectable fourth behind Shagari, Alhaji Maitama and Malam Adamu, in that order, but ahead of Chief Tarka, easily the most formidable politician during the First Republic from the Middle region to which Saraki belonged.

    In his obituary about the man, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, one of United Nation’s top bureaucrats and himself an Ilorin prince, said Saraki had “single-handedly built a grassroots machine that endured for decades.” In truth the man did no such thing. Rather, what he did was use his considerable wealth to build a huge patronage system that all his contemporaries in the state, singly or combined, could simply not match.

    Of course, Saraki was not the only Ilorin plutocrat. But he was almost alone in his willingness to spend money to earn the personal loyalty of the political grassroots and opinion leaders alike in his state – and elsewhere. Again almost alone among his state’s political elite he held no contempt for ordinary people. On the contrary, he seemed to enjoy mixing with them.

    Consequently, Saraki came to dominate the politics of his state so totally that hardly anyone in the state with political ambition – from the local government level to the centre – could realise his or her ambition without his patronage. It was not for nothing that the man, who was first the Turaki of Ilorin and subsequently its Waziri, the emir’s prime minister, came to be affectionately called the Oloye – the benevolent big chief – by all and sundry.

    Like all great men the man made his mistakes, not least of which was his attempt in the twilight of his life to impose his first daughter, Gbemisola, a two-term senator, as governor of his state in succession to her half brother, Bukola, after his second and final term. This lead to a sad falling out between father and son who, in this case, it seemed, was more in tune than the father with the very religious conservatism of Ilorin as the centre of Kwara politics. The predictable failure of the attempt became a sad anticlimax in what was otherwise one of the most illustrious political careers in the country.

    Also his generous political patronage system may have been partly responsible for the eventual collapse of his bank which was the Nigerian affiliate of the troubled French bank, the Societie Generale. The bank has since regained its operating licence from the Central Bank. However, it is instructive that over a year on, it is yet to return to business.

    Most of all, the man expected absolute loyalty almost bordering on servility from recipients of his political benefaction. The inevitable consequence of this was that he invariably fell out, for example, with each and every one of the five governors he installed between 1979 and 2003, including his own son.

    In spite of these political and financial misjudgements, the Oloye will no doubt go down in Nigeria’s history as one of its most accomplished politicians.

    May the Beneficient and Mercifrul Lord forgive all his transgressions and reward his good deeds with aljanna firdaus. Amen.

     

  • The President and NCC’s dirty war

    The President and NCC’s dirty war

    In contrast to the oil sector which has remained a by-word for corruption, waste and inefficiency since the seventies, there is widespread public perception that the old telecommunication sector, at least from the advent of mobile telephony some eleven odd years ago or so, has turned into an excellent demonstration of how privatisation can turn the fortune of an economic sector around.

    This public perception has a sound basis. Today mobile phones number in their tens of millions in sharp contrast to less than 15 years ago when fixed phones were only for the well-heeled or well-connected and numbered only in their few thousands. Mobile phones have also been relatively cheap to buy and use compared to what we had before, if not compared to elsewhere in the world. Not least of all, the services the private phone companies provide have been making quite a bundle for their shareholders and users alike.

    Behind this public perception of a relatively efficient and profitable telecommunication sector, however, there seem to lurk a level of corruption which seems different from that of the oil sector less in its nature than on its depth and scope. Indeed there are experts I know who believe, given the way Nitel, the government telecommunication company, was privatised, corruption in the sector is worse than in the oil sector, regardless of the public perception.

    We may quibble about the depth and scope of the corruption in the telecommunication sector, but no one can deny that it is there – and that it is big.

    Any Doubting Thomas need only refer to recent newspaper reports of how the management of the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), the regulator of the industry, has been washing its dirty linen in public.

    It would seem the first blood in the commission’s running feud was drawn by Dr Bashir Gwandu, NCC’s Executive Commissioner (Technical Services), who has been at daggers drawn with the Executive Vice-Chairman of the commission and its chief executive, Dr. Eugene Juwah, almost from the day Juwah took over from him as acting chief executive following the retirement of the penultimate chief executive, Mr Ernest Ndukwe, a couple of years ago.

    On October 8, Leadership ran a front page lead story in which it alleged that President Goodluck Jonathan had approved a waiver of a little over 1billion Naira to a company, MTS First Wireless Services, which Dr. Juwah had worked for and in which he had shares before it went belly-up a few years ago. This was also before he became the CEO of NCC. The insinuation in the story was obvious.

    Even the most casual reading of a full page advert entitled “Mr. President, Please Save NCC now!”, published in the Daily Trust of October 23, among other newspapers, and signed by five members of a Business and Technology Publishers Forum (BTPF), which they claimed is “a professional body of seasoned Nigerian journalists who are actively engaged in the reportage of Business and Technology especially ICT in the country,” can only lead one to conclude that Juwah and his sympathisers believed the source of the Leadership story was Gwandu.

    Predictably, the BTPF advert’s conclusion was that the only way the P4resident can save NCC is to sack Gwandu who, it alleged, has been a serial saboteur of the commission’s management since he was first appointed a commissioner about seven years ago, all, they said, in his bid to become the commission’s CEO.

    BTPF is not alone in its call for Gwandu’s sack. Sources close to the supervising ministry say it too would not be averse to sacking the executive commissioner.

    The President may yet succumb to the pressure to do so, even though this would not be so easy because it requires the approval of the Senate. But even it were so easy, the President would be ill-advised to listen to the BTPF because sacking Gwandu will not make the issues involved in the now open management feud in the commission and about which Gwandu is accused of talking to the press, to go away. On the contrary, it can only raise questions about the President’s oft-stated commitment to fight corruption. For, there are indeed sordid goings-on at the NCC.

    First, no one has denied that the President has approved a huge waiver for the MTS with which Juwah had had links. I believe the insinuation in the Leadership story that this was his handiwork is somewhat unfair to the man. He may have worked there before, but the initiative for the waiver did come from him. Instead it came from his supervising ministry. Besides, the President did not have to approve. So even if he had a residual interest in MTS, the blame for the waiver should go to the minister and the president.

    In his own attempt to defend himself from the charge of conflict of interest in the case, the Executive Vice-Chairman told Thisday (October 21) that the allegation was an attempt by enemies of the Jonathan administration to discredit its record of performance.

    “It is,” he said, “now obvious that there is a motive and an agenda by some elements who are enemies of this administration and who are bent on stopping us from excelling.” Coming from someone I do not believe should be blamed for the MTS waiver, this is rather disingenuous.

    As Juwah himself said in the interview in question, the waiver came about because of moves by a new putative owner of Starcomms, Multilinks and MTS to merge and transform the three into a company that can compete with the Big Four in the industry, namely MTN, Glo, Airtel and Etisalat. All three merging companies, he said, applied for waiver but only MTS was given. This, he said, was because of the three, only MTS had gone bankrupt. This was in 2007. “It was,” he said, “no longer a going concern unlike Starcomms and Multilinks.”

    Surely as an industry consultant, Juwah must know that when you buy companies, as the chap he said was behind the planned merger of the three did, you buy them with all their assets and liabilities. Why was it necessary for anyone to ask government to shoulder the liabilities of MTS?

    Juwah, obviously, could have done better than trying to defend the indefensible.

    Then, of course, the MTS is not the only indefensible going-on at the NCC. There is even the more serious issue of the improper underselling of spectrum in no bid deals, the two most prominent of which were the sale of one spectrum to Open-Skies Limited led by Chief Emeka Offor – someone whose permanence in the corridors of power is almost legendary – and a similar sale of another spectrum to another company with the almost cynical name of Smile Communications Limited (Could it be that its owners enjoy smiling all the way to their banks at the expense of others?).

    In both cases the spectrums could have fetched the country much, much more that the price at which they were sold. And in the case of Open-Skies, not only did it pay peanuts for its spectrum; it failed to meet the deadline for payment more than once. Worse, it did not and still does not have a licence from NCC to use any spectrum.

    Worse still, at the time the company bought the spectrum it was yet to be properly retrieved from the Nigerian Police Force to which it had initially been allocated for security purposes but which it had failed to use.

    Again, it seemed more than mere coincidence that Open-Skies rushed to complete its payment only after the police had acquired a $406 million security surveillance system in preparation for the use of the spectrum. This can only fuel suspicions that Open-Skies acquired the spectrum merely to speculate with it, akin to land speculation.

    Certainly the President should move to save the NCC, as our telecommunication beat reporters have urged him to in their advert. However, what he should move against is not Gwandu but the messy goings-on at the NCC which the commissioner has been complaining about but which our concerned reporters see as the antics, indeed, “the lies of an ambitious Commissioner,” to use their own words.

     

  • Feedback on ‘Achebe’s personal history of Biafra’

    Feedback on ‘Achebe’s personal history of Biafra’

    In keeping with my promise last week, here are some of the scores of reactions my piece of October 24 on the subject above generated in texts and emails.

     

    Sir,

    Thank you very much for balancing the story objectively. We need more of your likes to educate our people on what really happened in that Civil War. As you are aware, our people, for lack of reading their history books, can believe anything, including the fact that goats in Nigeria had eight legs before the Civil War! As for Prof Achebe, Olatunji Ololade summed his self-propelling lies thus, “There was an elder.” I cannot agree more!

    Kayode A, Abeokuta.

     

    Sir,

    Your article on Achebe’s Biafra story was well written. Those of us Igbo who lived here before and after the war understand you. Both sides have certainly erred and strayed. What we need to learn is the futility of resorting to violence and murder as a method for redressing wrongs. Peaceful demonstrations and powerful articles like yours and powerful speeches and lectures like Azikiwe’s in the pre Independence period are, in my view, better. The newspaper articles and the action of the Save Nigeria Group urging the observance of the Constitution regarding the succession of Yar’Adua by Jonathan proved that this method can work. And it is a more civilised way of dealing with such issues.

    Dr. Ekweani, Kabala Hospital, Kaduna.

     

    Sir,

    You missed Achebe’s point. I’m neither Igbo nor northerner nor a fan of both people, but, my dear, we need to say the truth. And you are the one not saying the truth not Achebe. Why didn’t northern officers stop at killing Ironsi and Igbo army officers? Jan ’66 coup saw less than 35 casualties, but July ’66 coup saw well over 300 victims. Was that not enough revenge? Why oh why, did they go ahead to kill civilians in such large numbers and expect the Igbo to stay calm for the sake of one Nigeria? Your article justifies the murder of countless innocents. This is one area anti Achebe writers, including you, glossed over. If hatred for the Igbo wasn’t a factor, why didn’t Gowon institute policies to assuage Igbo feelings? How on earth did you expect a tribe that lost 30,000 souls in massacres across the North not to opt for secession?

    Tonye Kalango, Port Harcourt

     

    Sir,

    I read with dismay and I found it very nauseating reading miles of inaccurate nonsense you wrote about Chinua Achebe and the Civil War. I don’t like distortion of facts which is your trade mark. You exhibited a stunning ignorance of what happened during the war. Yoruba and Northerners both hate Ndigbo. Why don’t you leave us alone to go as Biafrans? You hate us and you still want us to be in Nigeria. I believe you are confused and your confusion emanated from a deeper ignorance different from what Achebe has written in the nice book, “There was a country”.

    Collins Ewenike, Imo State.

     

    Sir,

    For the first time you are writing southern issue without your acidic bite. Thanks for not joining our Yoruba brothers to shout down peoples account as if they have skeletons in their cupboard. Ojukwu failed the Igbo by not writing his account before he died. Please beg Gowon not to make the same mistake again. We, the new generation Igbo, need as much information as possible on the Civil War so that when the time comes in the near future we will not suffer the same fate again.

    Andrew Udeze

     

    Sir.

    Your piece of 24/10/12 got it all right. However, you equally allowed the manipulation of historical events to affect you, which reflects in your write up. You may note that Anthony Enahoro’s proposal for independence in 1956 was in 1953, which Sir Ahmadu Bello sought for its amendment with the clause “as soon as practicable’. The eventual motion for Independence was proposed by Chief S. L. Akintola in 1959. The Yoruba nation, in its desire to erase the contributions of Akintola, conspired to ensure that all his landmark inputs were obliterated from historical events. Sir, please crosscheck this area of your work and don’t allow students of political history quote you in error.

    Mohammed Adebayo Ameenu

     

    Sir,

    Thanks for the refreshing angle on the one of the causes of the Civil War. Achebe has only succeeded in opening a can of worms, and creating disaffection between new generations of Nigerians.

    +2348034058476

     

    Sir,

    Your fact on Igbo triumphalism and their celebration and gloating at the death of Sardauna is very true, as I recall as a seven year old in Makurdi, a recorded popular song in Igbo with the lyrics ‘ewu ne barkwa’ ( meaning a goat is crying or gloating). Regrettably that’s what the Igbo still think and call all Northerners. What puzzles and annoys me is why would an icon like Achebe today remind me of the sad era of me running for cover with my siblings whenever Makurdi came under Biafran bombing? History is okay but Nigerians, especially the Igbo, should let the sores of that period of the life of the nation go.

    Adoga Anyebe

     

    Sir,

    I can’t understand what Achebe wants to achieve by raking up an old wound with so much hatred at a time this nation has so much present day challenges to surmount. What Nigeria needs today is how to heal old wounds so as to move forward. I suppose Achebe is familiar with the saying that if you cannot improve on the silence it is better to keep quiet!

    I think Achebe and some members of his generation with long memory for hatred are part of the problem with Nigeria. Period!

    Dr Festus Aisabokhale

     

    Sir,

    I hold you in a very high esteem, and your critique on Achebe’s latest offering, ‘There was a Country’, has only reinforced my respect for you.

    You pointed out, from your perspective, the lapses inherent in the work without abusing the author. There is no doubt that Achebe is human, and therefore he is not infallible. The good thing about this work is that it has opened up the debate for a soul searching exercise, and even the healing of the wounds of the past.

    It is right for those that do not agree with Achebe to state their own perspectives, without resorting to inflammatory statements or abuses. I do not share the view of some commentators that we should bury the past and forge ahead. The holocaust is still being discussed in the Western world, in spite of being a very sensitive issue.

    If, as you pointed out, Achebe glossed over the murder of innocent military officers of Northern extraction by Major Nzeogwu and other conspirators, then you have towed the same line of argument as Michael Hollman, one of the first reviewers of the book, who stated that the book is ‘partisan in perspectives’. I was uncomfortable to learn from you that Achebe did not acknowledge the contributions of nationalists like Herbert Macaulay and Bode Thomas to our independence. However, the lapses inherent in the book do not detract from its importance and relevance to our fledgling society. For once, both the generation that did not witness the Civil War and those that witnessed the brutal conflict are engaging themselves in intellectual exercises; some in the right direction, others, unfortunately, in the wrong direction.

    Erasmus Ndulue.

     

    Only well informed and respected columnists like you and Duro Onabule, would serve as guides to ensure the youths do not stray from the path of probity. Abusing Achebe and demonising his tribe, simply because his views were seen as ‘being partisan’ will not help matters. We need other perspectives to balance the stories of our unfortunate past. As you rightly pointed out, ‘The truth of the Civil War was that there were rights and wrongs on both sides’.

    Another critic, Clem Baiye, in Tell of October 29, even pointed out that Achebe did not address the issue of the opposition of the minorities in the Southeast to the secession of Biafra in his work. It is however simplistic and reductionist for most commentators to dwell solely on Achebe’s comment on Awolowo’s role during the war. Those commentators turned a blind eye on Achebe’s observation of Awolowo’s meticulousness in managing the affairs of Action Group, as pointed out by Clem Baiye in Tell.

    Having said that, I have placed an order for the book, and your critique will surely serve as a guide for a student of political history like me.