The Nation Newspaper

Category: Open Forum

  • Etim Moses Essien @ 80

    Etim Moses Essien @ 80

    Reaching The Stars

    Yesterday, one of our world giants in Medicine turned 80. We refer to Prof. Etim Moses Essien, M.D; Chairman of the Nigeria National Order of Merit Board, himself an NNOM awardee as far back as 1997. He graduated in Medicine in 1962 at the University of Ibadan. Prof. Essien is 1993 Laureate of the Developing World in Basic Medical Science, a Haematologist since four decades ago, both laboratory and clinically trained. Variously Fellow of the Academy of Science in Nigeria, Africa and New York, since 25 years. Honoured with Officer of the Federal Republic, (OFR), for his competency and expertise in Haematology and related disciplines, in the year 2000. He emerged from the reputable Hope Waddell Institute, Calabar. Ibadan University College of London was the only baby of the Central Government in the colonial days. Patterned along Oxford and Cambridge. Standard and values were high. Etim rhymed – given the home grooming of Pa and Ma Udondem Essien in hard work and transparency. Etim’s foot remains dug in his age-old parental base at Ikot Eko Ibon, Akwa Ibom State.

     Haemophilia –His First Sub-speciality

    Pathology, a related medical science, was his initial exposure because Haematology, his distinct interest area, was then at infancy within our medical academy training programme. Dr. Laja, the Pathologist at the Lagos General Hospital, took him over for the preliminary tutelage in basic medical science. Etim later had an additional special spell at the Lagos Federal Vaccine Production Laboratory. He moved out of Lagos to St. Thomas and Hammer Smith Hospitals in London for his full-fledged specialist training in Haematology. Before he completed the programme, he devised a diagnostic reagent for Haemophilia disease – a Haematology problem area. Haemophilia is a deadly hereditary bleeding disorder. It is a health condition in which the ability of the blood to clot is severely reduced. Resultant continuous bleeding from even a slight injury is terminal when you do not have around a Haematologist with relevant skill to manage the crisis. On returning to UCH, Etim understandably set up a coagulation laboratory for the problem in-depth study. Outcome has been greater and predictable care for the Haemophiliacs. And bottom line: Etim laboratory work kick-started Haemopilia health-care in Nigeria. It also helped better investigation and management of other bleeding disorders in Africa. Specifically, he nullified the age-old presumption that Haemophilia disease is Caucasian preserve. Cryoprecipitate is a special form of product used in controlling Haemophiliac bleeding. Production of the agent in innovative form by Prof Essien has saved the lives of many Nigerian Haemophiliacs. Equipment was required to accelerate cryoprecipitate production. Etim invented Masia Machine to achieve the goal. The machine is still used at prototype level. Its commercialisation follows. With the overall landmark work in Hemophilia health-care delivery, Etim earned the University of Ibadan M.D exactly four decades ago. We must, however, remember to salute Prof Luzzarto of UCH for sharing his humbling Haematology knowledge with Etim, before and after his foray at Hammersmith.

    Platelet Research Programme: His Second Sub-Speciality Interest

    Besides the build-up of Haemophilia management skill, Essien by mid-70s had acquired another expertise in the broad area of Haematology. The additional area is in Platelet study. Platelet is a cell element which is quite active in blood clothing. Prof. Frazer Mustard of McMaster University, Canada, was running a leading world laboratory for the study. Etim worked with a team in his Lab. The team contributed a unique method of understanding the interaction between blood platelet and blood vessel wall. Their contribution has since added to the management of heart-attack, a worldwide killer. The team also proved that the count of circulating platelet in a given Nigerian  population is different in value with that of a corresponding Caucasian population. Malaria has always been more prevalent among Nigerians than the Caucasians. The relative level of malaria parasites spread vis-a-vis the level of disorder/disturbance in platelet has since further proved their team position.

     Essien 1984 Official Early Red Alert On AIDs And The Saving of The Nation From The Heavy Scourge

    In mid 80s, Essien’s name was synonymous in public with AIDS management. Prof. Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, the then Minister of Health, appointed him as Chairman of the National Expert Advisory Committee on AIDS. His appointment was logical. Indeed, Prof. Essien had been a Member of Haemophilia World Advisory Body. Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is a disease, which attacks certain white blood cells, which form a key part of the body’s immune system. The attack is activated by a virus identified only in 1983 by Prof. Montagnier of Paris Institute. There is high correlation between AIDS and the normal fate of Haemophiliacs. The patriotic instinct of Etim moved him to send a fundamental technical memorandum to the Health Minister in 1984. He argued that since no one could fully arrest the onslaught of the pandemic when it inevitably arrived, its spread could be slowed down and controlled in the country with medical and other relevant structure early establishment. Federal Government was very responsive. Etim addressed the challenge with unparalled devotion, hard work, focus and application. Relative to some other countries, the scourge remains effectively controlled within our borders. This is one achievement for which history will always remember Etim and his team.

    Early Etim’s alert disposition recognised the inevitable human influence of politics on global medical research. Till today, he encourages independent scientific approach to medical questions affecting Africans. We note his rare joy at 80 in Ekaite, one of his children. Already a medical doctor and in her father’s shoes. Now on her way to becoming a laboratory and clinically trained specialist in Haematology. Hannah, Etim’s consort of decades, has given all the critical home support for his academic achievement. An erstwhile University of Ibadan administrator with Master’s Degree in Management Science. She retired voluntarily. Yes we deeply salute our rare breed of today … We salute Etim.

     

    Amb. Dapo Fafowora returns in a

    fortnight

  • Season of the wrong knives-Saharareporters mis-reports

    Season of the wrong knives-Saharareporters mis-reports

    •The media office of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu replies to an article published by a website, Saharareporters, titled: Threat of Perjury Trial: How Jonathan Blackmailed Bola Tinubu before 2011 Presidential Election

    The unfolding smear campaign against former Lagos governor and leader of the APC, Bola Tinubu, is no surprise. It had been in the works for years since the Jonathan-led government realised that Tinubu commanded a powerful political followership. The successful merger and birth of the APC posed the most potent threat to the PDP and Tinubu an architect of the merger has become a marked man.

    The thought of a Buhari-Tinubu ticket confounds the PDP hierarchy and their crisis-battered president. That Tinubu might be nominated as General Buhari’s running mate also incenses the small element within the APC who joined the party not for its progressive vision but to exploit its platform to press forward their vision of themselves. Having failed at halting General Buhari’s bid, the PDP disinformation machine has thrown itself into overdrive trying to stymie the selection of Tinubu. Sadly, some elements within the APC – elevating their personal ambition over party and national interests — have lent themselves to this endeavor.

    During the Nazi takeover of Germany, madman Adolf Hitler became jealous of those within his own party who showed independent thought and who would not allow themselves to be bent just so he could satisfy his megalomania. Outraged, he engineered a purge executing the lot of them. This bloody scheme became known as the “night of the long knives.” In Nigeria, we have entered the “season of the wrong knives.”

    The recent report on  one of the online news websites on the allegations bordering on his academic qualification is not new. What is new is how desperate they have become to stir up a new controversy using an old lie. In the past these allegations were successfully rebutted. Recent attempt to present them as fresh allegations will not go unchallenged.

    The online report, published by Sahara Reporters claims that Tinubu withdrew his support for the ACN in the 2011 election due to blackmail by the president. It is rather odd that this report colors Tinubu as the villain. If the report were true, he would be a victim. President Jonathan and his administration would be guilty of the high crime of extortion. This tiny consideration seemed not to dawn on the authors of this scurrilous piece; so fixated on stabbing Tinubu, they implicate their own boss in wrongdoing. So eager to please their master, Jonathan’s mindless men further ensnare him.

    If Tinubu had been scared off in 2011, it would make no sense for him to spearhead the formation of the APC against the same president. If the president had such control over TInubu why didn’t the president use that leverage earlier to scuttle the APC before it gained a strong position in the political space?  The story makes no logical sense.

    The particular accusations in the story further reveal the malice of mind of those peddling it. They claim Tinubu did not attend Chicago State University. They cite as their evidence a letter from the US Consulate. But if you read the letter carefully, the surname stated is “TinubO” not “TinubU.” If the University did a computer check on that name, the check would come up empty. The culprits likely misspelled the last name so that the name search would reveal nothing. This is clever but immoral; it is a wrong knife.

    Meanwhile, Tinubu has genuine documents and pictures showing him as an award-winning student at the school. Nigeria should be proud that one of its own graduated an honor student from an American university over thirty years ago when that was more of a rarity than it is today. Instead, his detractors want to pretend he never set foot on campus.

    As late as August 2012, Tinubu visited the university and was given a special reception and a tour by the school’s president. This would not have been done for a stranger. It would have been done for a distinguished alumnus.

    After graduation, Tinubu landed jobs with two well established international companies, one the accounting firm Deloitte and Touche and the other, ExxonMobil. Such companies investigate an applicant’s academic background. If he had not attended school, these companies would not have hired him. He would not have excelled in them but he did.

    The rumor about drug running is the lowest form of calumny.  He has never been arrested, charged or indicted for any drug-related crime. Had any such suspicion existed, the American government would not have granted him political asylum during the Abacha era. Under American law, asylum cannot attach to anyone who has broken or offended that same law.

    Moreover, Tinubu travels frequently to the states. This means he has a visa. American law prohibits visa issuance to anyone reasonably suspected of drug dealing, let along being convicted of the same.

    If I were Tinubu, I would place a wager with the PDP. He should offer to fly to America if the PDP would also send Mr. Kashamu. Both can fly to Chicago. Then he should bet the PDP who would return to Nigeria first.  We all know the answer.

    There is a vicious campaign to deter Tinubu from the APC ticket; this campaign is being run from the PDP’s basement. They fear him. They cannot assail his competence and experience. He has been an able senator and governor. They cannot assail his commitment to democracy. He has personally sacrificed more for democracy than all the PDP hierarchy combined. They fear his ability to campaign, to get out the vote and to protect that vote, especially in the southwest because they know that is the pivotal region where the election will likely be won or lost.

    These assailants desperately try to scuttle Tinubu’s potential candidacy. In that the truth offers them no solace, they resort to lies. They seek to ambush the man under cover of innuendo and untruth. But their aim is off and their knives are wrong. In the end, what they use to injure him will turn to point against them. Such is the outcome when one engages in malice.

    Thus, they seek to prevent a person who may be controversial yet he is perhaps Nigeria’s most able and versatile politician, strategist and policy maker. For perhaps the most gifted politician of his time not to seek national office is a luxury a nation in this dire circumstance can ill afford.  In the end, governance has little to do with religion, region or rumor. It has to do with vision and competence. The wrong knives will never be able to cut that truth.

  • Democracy Gate: My takeaway

    I watched dumbfounded, probably like many other Nigerians, and perhaps as many foreigners on global television, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and his colleagues locked outside the National Assembly. Many thoughts came flooding through my mind.

    But the most important for me of those thoughts was simple yet profound. I asked myself when we will live by the RULES that we make.

    As I pondered that question, my mind also went back to about 41 years ago, when my mother bought me my first rubber football. I had never played competitive football beyond kicking the ball around in our yard. I think it was my 10th birthday and I had done everything to get what I wanted – A football.

    So off to the playground I went with my ball. To my surprise, all those I met there were bigger, older and more talented.

    They took my ball and did not allow me to play. It hurt. I protested. At a time, they stopped the game, asked me to take my ball and never come back.

    If I wanted to play, they said, I had to learn I had to earn my right to play, and owning the ball did not give me that right.

    Those, were the RULES of engagement. It was skill, talent and hard work. Not who got to the field first or who owned the ball. Indeed, some people were selected in absentia, while we who got there first, had to wait, to see if we would get the unlikely chance to play. It never happened. At least not soon enough.

    I made my decision. I would play by their RULES.

    On the first day as I said, I did not get a game. To add salt to my personal injury of disappointment, the ball (made of rubber) hit a sharp object, promptly got deflated and destroyed.

    I left without a game, with a deflated ego and a deflated and permanently damaged ball.

    But my resolve was strong. I went back many times without getting a game. I made myself busy as a spectator. One day, the regular goalkeeper did not come. They needed one. I had no goalkeeping skills but offered to be in goal.

    It was the only way to get in the game.

    Surprisingly they agreed. I threw my feet, my body and anything I could move at the ball. I prevented many goals without knowing how. Somehow, they were making a discovery. They thought I was a great goalkeeper.

    From that day, my story changed. My reputation in the neighbourhood went ahead of me. They called me all sorts of nicknames after famous goalkeepers and I even started getting picked while still at home and games were delayed for me to arrive.

    After a length of time in goal, our star striker suddenly travelled, I asked if I could try to play outfield. Luckily another boy, Idris, was showing promise as a goalkeeper. My movement outfield gave him a chance. He seized it as I seized mine.

    I scored in that game and my ordeal in the goal ended forever, while Idris relished his position in the goal. The place he favoured most.

    We survived by following these unwritten RULES of street side football in Lagos and I am sure these RULES still prevail.

    Nobody locked the field, removed the goal posts (often made of all types of materials) or stopped us from playing.

    Many members of my generation who grew up in Lagos in the 1970s will remember these RULES. It was not first come first served. It was survival of the fittest. At least in terms of footballing skills, and also lobbying your friends who had the skills and had earned their stripes to pick you.

    It was not a matter of my way or the highway. That was why I did not walk away with my ball, which incidentally was the only ball available on that first day.

    Many years later, as a member of a veterans football club, the All Stars International Football Club in Surulere, that RULE remained applicable.

    We had by then become men; husbands, fathers, and business leaders. We had a club Constitution but the RULES applicable on the field of play was not the Constitution. It was talent and ability, lobbying and friendship, not who got to the field first.

    It worked injustice as far as some less endowed members were concerned.  But those were the RULES.

    The dissatisfied or excluded members bid their time. They gathered their numbers, lobbied the club executive and at a general meeting gathered enough majority to turn the tables against us.

    They changed the RULES without bringing down the house.

    The majority of members voted for first come, first to play. The club coach was mandated to get a register and people recorded their arrival numerically and by time.

    Many of us “the Stars” as we considered ourselves, felt hard done by. We came late as was our old habit (and they die hard) only to see that the early birds had started the game. You could not register by proxy.

    Why is all this relevant you might wonder?

    It is about RULES. Every human endeavour is governed by RULES. Written and unwritten.

    Those who thrive in life are those who make it their business to know these RULES and how to ‘use’ them to their advantage without physically damaging the process.

    I have used the football metaphor, because football is life. Every game of football has many of life’s challenges and experiences embedded in it.

    Passion, from fans and players, contest and competition from them, errors by players and officials, injustice by officials, joy, pain, disappointment, victory, defeat and many more are all human experiences that are embedded into each football game of 90 minutes, or more.

    You will see tears and laughter as well on a football field. Tragically deaths have also occurred. Ask Bebeto how he felt when Kanu scored that wonder goal.

    Romance and love have existed in and around football if you ask David Beckham and Gerard Pique.

    Drugs and gambling are present from time to time, and so is violence, if you ask Zidane and Cantona.

    There is a lot of drama too, if you ask referee Festus Bolaji Okubule.

    Football has endured because all the stakeholders have chosen to live by the RULES, sometimes very unfairly.

    We have seen faked fouls where officials are deceived to award undeserving penalties, erroneous red cards and sending offs, that alter the course of the game. But that is why football is LIFE.

    We play on, in spite of these, because there is a next game, and what goes around comes around. If only we could manage our politics like football. How really pleasant this would be.

    And this is the reason for my takeway on Democracygate, as I choose to call the assault on the National Assembly by the Executive.

    Yes, the Executive, because the police is an agency under the direct control and supervision of the Executive and the buck on this matter must stop at the desk of the Chief Executive.

    The genesis of that event is all too well-known.

    Since 1999, the party in power has had the run of things. Governors and legislators had left other political parties in droves to join them.

    From 1999, when that party had only 21 Governors, it grew in size by fair and foul means to almost 30 Governors at one time.

    For 16 (Sixteen) years, it had a commanding majority in both chambers of parliament. Senators and House of Representatives members elected on other party platforms deserted their platforms to join the party in power.

    It did not matter whether there was a faction or not within the party, they left.

    The parties they left went to court but those cases often expired because the tenures of the parliamentarians often ended before the courts could decide.

    The party in power enjoyed their spoils. In spite of the clear Constitutional provisions they turned a blind eye. These were the RULES as they wanted them.

    The ‘losers’ did not did lock down parliament. They did not try to take the Mace. They sharpened their skills to play this game on the RULES defined by the party in power.

    If you like, they were like a Manchester United of the Premier League in the 1990s. They could buy any player, they had more money, at least until a Roman Abramovich came to Chelsea and Etihad came to Manchester City.

    Obviously the party in power did not see this day; when 5 (FIVE) of its governors would leave, and when a principal officer and indeed the head of one chamber of parliament it controls would also leave. Or did they ignore the signs?

    It is my takeaway that they must live by the RULES they invented until the courts can determine the matter.

    They cannot be allowed to invent new RULES; such as shutting down the parliament. It is nothing short of treason.

    Parliament is the greatest expression of the will of the people in a democracy. If you aggregate the number of votes that elected each and every Member of Parliament, I would like to think that they will exceed the votes that elected the Executive.

    If democracy is about the majority, the Executive is in the minority here. It cannot have its way.

    As Charles Umeh put it recently in the Guardian Newspaper quoting Wael Ghonim “the power of the people is greater than the people in power.”

    I find it incomprehensible and indefensible that the Executive could have attempted to subvert parliamentary independence and the will of the people.

    We have seen some parliamentary brinkmanship even in the more developed democracies. But their Executives have not resorted to the type of impunity that we were assailed with back home.

    Can you imagine the Capitol Hill or the House of Commons being taken over by policemen?

    The matter is compounded by an attempt to change the story and talk about people jumping the fence or climbing the gate.

    That may well be wrong, but we must never forget that events in life are a series of “causes” and “effects.”

    But jumping the fence or the gate does not subvert the will of the people. It is an illegal taking over of parliament that is an assault on Nigeria.

    Parliament is the stadium where politics is played. The rule book is the Constitution, the laws and rules made under it, and the conventions that have evolved.

    Any assault on it is an assault on the people. You cannot do that. It is unconstitutional. Let us play by the RULES. We will be better for it.

     

    Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN

    Governor of Lagos State

     

     

     

  • Nigeria’s power problem

    Nigeria’s power problem

    The NEPA people came the other day. Actually, their official name has changed, but NEPA — an acronym for the utility formally known as the National Electric Power Authority — is easier to say and jibes so well with our expectations: Never Expect Power Always.

    Though the organisation is now called the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, the new name doesn’t work as an acronym, though its initials, P.H.C.N., are popularly agreed to stand for: Problem Has Changed Name.

    I had been expecting them. They come about once a month, a van containing a crew of four or five guys, going from house to house, ready to cut off your power if you lack proof that your payments are up to date — and turn it back on for an $8 reconnection fee, or any reasonable under-the-table amount. Alas, I was in arrears.

    I owed several months for the electricity they had barely been providing. Even though about 85 percent of Nigeria’s urban areas and 30 percent of rural areas are on the power grid — the result of years of government monopoly and its attendant corruption — the supply is intermittent at best. I’ve been getting about three hours a day, if lucky, and even then rarely at a stretch. Sometimes you don’t get any power for three or four days. Like many people here, I rely on a private generator to bridge the gaps.

    Things were supposed to get better since the government announced with great fanfare (almost a year ago now) that it had privatized the power-distribution network. But one didn’t need to be an engineer to understand that decades of neglect, in this as in other areas of national life, can hardly be fixed in a few months.

    It’s difficult for nonprofessionals to work out the complicated structures involved, but generally speaking the government now generates electricity and private companies distribute it. These companies tend to be much more aggressive than the government had been because they need to repay bank loans and recoup other start-up costs. Their employees, like all workers in Nigeria, are paid very poorly. It is therefore understood that a man must augment his income any way he can.

    The affable crew boss who confronted me was sincerely understanding as I explained to him how my problem had begun six months ago, when my monthly bill jumped from $30 to nearly $185. But arguing was pointless. After my power was cut, pending payment of past bills and the reconnection fee, he suggested that perhaps it would be best for me to go state my case at my local P.H.C.N. office. I should have known better.

    The official I was directed to wait for was calm, considering the confusion and mass irritation swirling around him. When my turn finally came, he looked over my latest bill, frowned, and began to tap away on his keyboard. Finally, he looked up at me and explained that my previous bills had been too low; they had been adjusted upward based upon estimates of my power consumption.

    In any case, he added, my meter was obsolete. I tried to explain that my meter still functioned, but he cut me short, demanding to know why I hadn’t applied for one of the new prepayment cards, which deduct money automatically as electricity is used. I explained I had been told that none were available — to put my name on a waiting list. (Payment cards may be more efficient, but they offer less opportunity for the state to collect cash payments, or impose fines.) He shrugged and called the next customer.

    I decided to take my case up a notch. But the senior manager I appealed to at the head office the next day shook his head. There was nothing he could do but demand payment in full. However, he added, I was in luck. The card meter was now available. For “just” $275, and they could fix one for me — after I had settled the outstanding bill.

    So now I was looking at fees of around $525. I went home and discussed the problem with my wife, but in truth there was nothing to discuss and we both knew it. We already paid $215 a month to run our generator, which is not powerful enough to draw water from the well I had dug when the state water authority, equally comatose, finally stopped supplying us many years ago.

    To say that this couldn’t have happened at a worse time assumes that there is ever a good time to be hit with an outrageous bill. We had just embarked on major renovations, and a newspaper that had hired me to write a weekly column suddenly and without explanation stopped paying.

    Then there was always “the Nigerian factor,” which is to say the uncertainties of life in a country where even the power of the government itself is something of a fiction. This is most obviously demonstrated by the fact that none of the more than 200 schoolgirls who were abducted over three months ago by Boko Haram terrorists have been rescued (although a few of them managed to escape).

    So time passed, the next monthly bill appeared, and hard on its heels came the men with their ladders to disconnect defaulters.

    This time I fudged the truth, explaining that I had met with the senior manager, and that we had worked out a payment plan. No use. They cut the power line to my house.

    I went to my local office and paid something on account, and got a stern warning to settle up once and for all as quickly as possible — or else.

    And yet, even as I write this, I’m not as perturbed as perhaps I should be. Cutting corners has become a way of life for all Nigerians, great and small. We don’t expect anything better, which is why we are so quiescent under conditions that should ordinarily make people rise up and say, enough is enough.

    But power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and, in their own small way, so do power shortages.

     

    • Maja-Pearce is a writer and critic, and the author of “Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa, and Other Essays.” First published by New York Times of August 7

     

     

  • Re: Bring back our country: Courageous followers to the rescue

    Reading Segun Ayobolu’s piece on Saturday is always a welcomed delight. However, the edition of 10th May 2014 depicted the abyss to which Nigeria as a country is heading to if the mass of followers in Nigeria decide to keep frolicking in the status quo ante.

    Presently, the attention of the international community is focused on how to “bring back our girls” abducted in Chibok by the Boko Haram insurgents while writing an examination in their school. The Federal Government is seemingly overwhelmed or overrun by the increasing brutish and bestial antics of the Boko Haram insurgents. This is further compounded with overt lack of tact in command, control and compliance within the rank and file of the nation’s armed forces especially with the widely publicized mutiny resulting in the apparently premeditated attack on the General Officer Commanding (GOC) the 7th Division of Nigeria’s army. What is happening in 21st century Nigeria? Nigeria Army known to win laurels in Regional and United Nations Missions over the years has now been reduced to lily-livered mass of people taking flight at the hearing of Boko Haram as a child will be scared at the sight of a ragamuffin bogeyman!

    What Went Wrong?

    It is high time followers in Nigeria began to ask pertinent, salient and succinct questions if we are to see and savour the effective and exemplary leadership practice that would usher in the real change that most of us desire. This change must not just be a cliché hanging in the air a la transformation agenda of the present government at the centre that most people cannot see, feel, touch or embrace!

    It is against this backdrop, I am concurring and chorusing same “Bring Back Our Country” stance of Segun Ayobolu before it will be difficult to salvage Nigeria from failing even as some do not want to hear or read that Nigeria is a failed state. If Nigeria must not be overtly seen as failed, then, we need a gargantuan number of unique class of followers in Nigeria to leverage the change from clueless to credible and competent leadership that will steer the ship of the state to an envisaged haven. According to Robert Kelly, a professor of leadership and researcher in followership studies, there are five types of followers in organizations and polities. These are: Alienated, Passive, Conformist, Pragmatist and Exemplary. Kelly, in his research studies on followership, distinguishes followership typology by utilizing the lens of engagement and independent thinking. The former trait ensures followers participate while the latter engender a challenge of the system by speaking truth to power when the need arises. To him, the worst type in ranking is Alienated and the best for organizational performance and effectiveness is Exemplary.

    Who are Exemplary Followers?

    Exemplary followers exercise independent, critical thinking, separate from the leaders or group-making them to challenge or question the status quo ante, and they also actively engage the system while Alienated Followers think freely and critically; but they do not participate in the groups and organizations of which they are members. They score high in independent thinking and low in active engagement. It is my stand and stake that Kelly rightly describes the dominant traits inherent in majority of followers within Nigeria’s polity. Most Nigerians like to talk, argue with less number coming out to criticize; worse still, very few engage or participate in the system. If you doubt this assertion, pause and ponder on these for few minutes: how many enlightened citizens partake in the political process of becoming eligible voters. Going forward from there, how many would come out to vote on election days? Are most elites not leaving voting on election day for the likes of National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) or Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) members, Market Men/Women, Petty Traders, Artisans, Okada Riders, etc? No wonder politicians are habituated to curry the favour of these classes of people as election approaches while simultaneously jettisoning the elites! Is anyone still amazed that the worst of us is ruling the best of us in the words Pastor Tunde Bakare?

    Catalogues of Issues Exemplary Followers Need To Concentrate on:

    The list presented here is not exhaustive but few cases of exhibition of seeming corruption and impunity necessitating courageous followers’ persistent, painstaking and proactive engagement:

    -Alleged 20 billion dollars oil money missing! What steps are few exemplary courageous followers taking to ensure this is not swept under the carpet? We need to keep asking questions. The forensic auditing must be published as our image is daily going down in the comity of nations. Hilary Clinton, America’s erstwhile Secretary of State lately opined concerning our country: “Nigeria has made bad choices, not hard choices…they have squandered their oil wealth, they have allowed corruption to fester and now they are losing control of parts of their territory because they wouldn’t make hard choices.”

    -Alleged Aircraft Lease costing a whopping 10 billion Naira by Minister of Petroleum Resources. It is appalling that even the Committee in the House Representatives probing this indecorum has been halted by the Honourable Speaker of the House of Representative. Where is Nigeria heading to?

    -Pension scam perpetrators running to billions of Naira forgotten, forgone or forgiven?: Are Nigerians asking where is Abdulrasheed Maina, Chairman, Pension Reform Task Force (PRTF) and his heinous acolytes under whose nose 400 billion Naira took flight and disappeared leaving myriads of pensioners languishing in undue impecuniosities?

    -Immigration Job Recruitment Scandal with attendant 16 lives of precious and promising Nigerians lost: there is now criminal silence! Has this been thrown into the shredding machine of history to forgotten as others before it? As at now, no one has been officially indicted or sanctioned. It is business as usual. Some of us are waiting, watching and following this government as February 2015 beckons when Nigerians will throng the polls again to express their preference for who they long and yearn for in the saddle at the centre.

    -The power sector stinks with epileptic service pervading Nigeria’s landscape even with billions of Naira exchanging hands between inept private investors and the government at the centre. The investors apparently are acolytes and sycophants of people in the corridor of power. These investors now need a bail out as virtually all of them do not have the financial wherewithal and the competency required to lighten the seemingly incurable darkness pervaded Nigeria!

    -Is our defence spending justified when viewed against epileptic and clueless performance of our ill-equipped armed forces in the faceoff with the Boko Haram insurgents? At least an exemplary courageous follower, Sam Omatseye, in his column on Monday, May 19,  lamentably declared: “…about N2.7 trillion of security budget has gone unaccounted for since 2011. The U.S. Congress lashed the Nigerian military as ill-equipped and ill-trained. ..Foreign powers are now giving us technology that we could have acquired with the princely security budget allocations.” Hogwash! Yet, many Nigerians are not asking questions even when in the Boko Haram’s latest video, there was the display of Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) at the background.  Has it been the norm to see in any Al-Qaeda video anything of such? Hopefully, another courageous exemplary follower, Femi Falana, the cerebral and sagacious legal icon and civil right leader urged leaders at the National Confab to probe the gargantuan budgetary allocation to the security agencies in the country which runs to three trillion Naira, a fraction away from Omatseye’s. It was his postulation that this would shed light on how the security vote has been expended.

    Who will bell the cat?

    As we are approaching the season of another electioneering campaign, it is my opinion that Nigeria needs more of not just Kelly’s Exemplary Followers, as depicted earlier, but what I will refer to as Exemplary-Courageous Followers. In Nigeria’s context, this is the unique typology of followers that can usher this country into the glorious future the mass of followers hope, long and yearn for.

    In the write-up of Segun Ayobolu he stated inter alia: “But how do we bring back our country? No one can do it for us. The responsibility is ours. We must be determined to hold our governments accountable and ensure that our votes count in free and fair polls.” Well stated. Who will bell the cat? Presently, in Nigeria, there is the palpable and pervading atmosphere of fear of kidnapping, assassination, ritual killing, armed robbery, insurgency, militancy, terrorism, etc. This is worrisome for democracy to thrive as in orderly, decent and developed climes.

    This is the precious moment for Exemplary-Courageous Followers within the polity in all the six geo-political zones; 36 states and federal capital territory; and 776 local government areas to step up their ante and find ways and means of procreating themselves. In essence, it is high time; this class of followers were mass reproduced, indoctrinated or mentored through education, enlightenment, empowerment and encouragement. The Civil Societies have a big role to play in this direction. We need more Civil and Human Rights leaders to do more of community organizing in all the nooks and cranny of Nigeria especially zeroing on the need to fully partake in the electoral process thus ensuring the followers’ vote count and that ultimately it is One Man, One Vote!

    Why are we not asking questions in Nigeria? Why are many followers in Nigeria alienated? Why are many followers not courageous enough to talk truth to power at local, state and federal level? The fear of being sanctioned, stigmatized, or severed permanently? It is high time followers arose and shove aside all kinds of fear including that of death to ensure our country is governed by competent, credible, capable and cerebral minds. Barbara Kellerman, a professor of public leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government christened this category of followers as “Diehard”; according to her, these followers are ready to lose “lives and limbs” to usher in the needed change as we have seen in Ukraine, Thailand, Tunisia, etc.

    I think we need this typology of followers, albeit in few numbers, to embolden and encourage mass of Exemplary-Courageous Followers to initiate passionate, proactive, progressive  and peaceful change in our polity. We shall get there by the grace of the Almighty God, not far from now!

     

    -Dr Ekundayo, John M. O, author and researcher in Followership studies, lives in Lagos

     

  • How hysteria can cheat us all out of justice

    Fear lies behind some of the worst miscarriages of justice. In the current climate, are we in danger of forgetting that?

    A quarter of a century ago, a little more actually, in another life, I appeared at the Irish centre in Kilburn, northwest London, and debated against Ken Livingstone. I was a parliamentary candidate at 24 years of age and a mile out of my depth. Though of course I didn’t realised it, then. One rarely does.

    When we had finished speaking, someone asked us about the Guildford Four, still then in jail for a pub bombing that had taken place in the mid-1970s. Ken proclaimed their innocence. I responded that, whatever the merits of the case, it wasn’t for politicians to question the judgment of courts.

    At the time, and for a while afterwards, I was quite pleased with my answer. This despite the fact that immediately after I sat down, a woman got up, announced that Paul Hill, one of the wrongly imprisoned men, was her son, and spoke passionately and brilliantly about the justice.

    But now? In the days after the death of the innocent Gerry Conlon, I think that while in 25 years I have said many naïve and stupid things, if I could only take back one of them, this would probably be it.

    To understand why I feel that way, consider another story that, by pure chance, broke on the same day that Conlon’s death was announced. It was that compensation had finally been paid to five of the young New Yorkers who had been convicted in 1990 of the assault and rape of a jogger.

    On April 19, 1989, Trisha Meili, a young woman working for a Wall Street investment bank, was attacked and raped in Central Park. She was so badly beaten that she almost died and cannot, even now, remember anything about the attack. The case became famous internationally as a symbol of urban crime, of the dangers of New York in particular, and of racial tensions.

    Almost immediately, suspicion fell on a ground of young African-Americans and Hispanics who had been roaming the park that night. The first paragraph of the very first Central park jogger story in The New York Times talked of “an attack by as many as 12 youths”, a theme taken up in all the stories that followed. The police were quoted from the beginning talking about “a group” of attackers. By April 22 a new word, “wilding”, had been coined to described the assailants’ behaviour that night.

    It didn’t take long for there to be arrests and, after many hours of interrogation, confessions. Even though the confessions were confused and contradictory, accounts of the jury deliberations make clear that they were central to obtaining the convictions.

    The confessions, however, were misleading. As was the entire story of how Ms Meili had been attacked. More than a decade after the original court case, a man called Matias Reyes pleaded guilty to murder and four different rapes of Manhattan women. In jail, he said he had one more crime he wished to admit to. He had raped and attacked the Central Park jogger in 1989. And he had acted alone.

    At first, Reyes’ claim was dismissed. However, on re-examination of the evidence, semen on one of Ms Meili’s socks was analysed. The DNA showed it to belong to Reyes.

    Reyes gave a detailed, consistent account of the attack, one which made it obvious that he had no accomplices. There is no evidence to seriously contradict this. Yet those involved in arresting, trying and convicting the original defendants have found it hard to accept.

    The immediate response of New York’s police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, was to reject Reyes’ story. He wanted to defend his men against the accusation that they had been overbearing when obtaining the confession. The prosecutor, Linda Fairstein, responded by saying: “I think Reyes ran with that pack of kids. He stayed longer when the others moved on.” There is no evidence to support it.

    In 1989 the magnate Donald Trump ran an advert in the New York Daily News calling for the death penalty for the gang that attacked the jogger. Now he attacks the compensation settlement, quoting one of case’s detectives calling it “the heist of the century”.

    Two things link the Guildford Four case with that of the Central Park jogger and make them a parable, almost.

    The first is that the guilt of all those convicted was detained in an atmosphere of hysteria. Gerry Conlon was jailed because at the height of the IRA mainland bombing campaign fear made people deaf to the normal rules of justice, to the careful consideration of evidence and to the need to determine whether an individual, rather than a group, was guilty of a crime.

    The young men convicted in New York suffered because of a similar deficiency. It was impossible for any individual to be treated justly because that would interfere with the universally-accepted narrative of what had happened.

    And the tenacity with which people held to that narrative once it was formed is the second link between the two cases. No amount of proof that the Guildford Four confessions had been obtained under duress, that evidence had been forged and alibis ignored, seemed enough. Even when it became obvious that the Balcombe Street gang had in fact bombed the Guildford pub and admitted it, many involved refused to accept the innocence of Conlon and the others.

    Towards the end of his life, the famous judge Lord Denning, when asked if capital punishment for the Guildford Four would have been wrong replied: “No. They’d probably have hanged the right men. Just not proved against them, that’s all.”

    We all of us cling to the truth as we construct it, and we resist alternatives that challenge the construction. In recent days, as rumours have swirled about a VIP child abuse ring, a conspiracy to cover it up, and people who have been named without any proper evidence against them, I wonder how much we have learnt.

    We have a difficult task ahead of us. To get to the truth, to obtain justice for many abused children, to address the way evil acts were ignored and even tolerated, to address institutional political failure that may prove similar to that of the Catholic Church, to make sure nobody, however important, is above the law.

    Yet at the same time to keep our feet on the ground. Not to jump to conclusions and mistake rumour for fact. And to make sure that nobody, however important, is beneath the law either.

    daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk