The Nation Newspaper

Tag: columnist

  • Am I sellable as a columnist?

    TAIWO Ogundipe, Lanre Ogundipe and Gboyega Okegbenro are good writers as well as being seasoned journalists. They went into the “crucible” as raw natural (or, better still, professional) materials and came out as refined journalistic ‘ornaments’ you can say are priceless. One is taciturn, if not reticent, the other gregarious or flashy but definitely not flash-in-thepan. But they have a common denominator—they are prolific, once they put pen to paper.

    That is why I have cultivated the habit of reading them in print anytime they decide to fly, as they are not given to writing platitudes. Differently on Facebook, they took me into their wordsmith laboratory, carried out a clinical analysis of my penmanship anatomy, and returned an ‘okay’ verdict. They recommended that I should commence column writing in any newspaper without further delay.

    They also drew me out to condense my writings into a book form as memoirs. I feel flattered or, as that great columnist will put it, flabbergasted! One of the two challenges I had taken up, even before it was thrown at me, and I can reveal this for free, that my 42-chapter memoirs are ready, only waiting for their final processing with a fine comb.

    As a witness to history, the memoirs are revealing, informative, educative and laced all through with divine guidance and direction. How the dialectics’ postulation of Awo began to take shape in the coming together of LKJ and MKO at a time the former’s haters’ poohpoohed the idea but which they later embraced in a manner that was suggestive of being more Rabbi than the Jews, or do we say being more Catholic than the Pope? Or how I sabotaged Okhai Mike Akhigbe’s plan to get me appointed as General Ibrahim Babangida’s media spokesman, because I couldn’t imagine leaving my boss LKJ in the gulag while shifting allegiance from the botched democracy of which I was a visible part from 1979 to 1983, to milito-cracy ; and how myself and Double-Chief Duro Onabule plotted to have Sola Odunfa appointed, through my own contacts in the military, as IBB’s chief press secretary before the lot, by divine happenstance, eventually fell on the Ijebu chief and versatile columnist/editor himself. Or how a former president of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), irrepressible Alhaji Bola Adedoja, following his unceremonious retirement as Lagos State Chief Information Officer by LKJ’s military successor, Group Captain Gbolahan Mudashiru, got appointed through my instrumentality, by the Military Governor of old Oyo State, Colonel Adetunji Idowu Olurin as the state commissioner for information and culture.

    Or how I wrote myself into my first and only police detention ever with an exclusive story that exposed the plot to deny Christopher Kolade his right or privilege to succeed Mr (later Revd) Erasmus Victor Badejo as the directorgeneral of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, forerunner of today’s Radio Corporation of Nigeria and the Nigerian Television Authority. These are some of the materials in my coming memoirs. But whether, as wished by Taiwo and Lanre (they are no blood relations) and Gboyega, I am sellable as a columnist in any newspaper, is another matter. I think I’m a bit rusty – from long disuse. But not long after, ‘The Nation’ newspaper’s management felt otherwise and think they want to take a chance with me and re-awaken the “dead cells” in me, journalistically speaking. From Victor Ifijeh, the unassuming but diligent MD of the newspaper, to the unseen hands in the plan, I appreciate your belief in me, and I say to them: I won’t let you down! Their decision, not long after some guys felt I could be good product for any editor, confirms truly that “God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform; His purposes ripen fast, unfolding every hour.”

  • The columnist as a salesman

    The columnist as a salesman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

    Corrections

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

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

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

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

  • Fuel subsidy: How to kill a columnist

    This article was first published in this column on January 6, 2012. With a new government in the saddle, we have continued to make the same poor choices, especially in our oil and gas sector. If over half of our foreign exchange earnings are spent importing petroleum products and we can’t earn such quantum of forex anymore, it is commonsensical to expedite action towards eliminating such economic carnage. How can a man haemorrhaging profusely and non-stop expect to stay alive?

    This government told us many months ago it would co-locate small, new refineries around the old tired ones. These are projects that require lightning-speed; what Nigerians want to hear most now is that these refineries would be ready in six to 10 months’ time. That petrol imports would be cut by half on so and so date.

    These are the kind of responses we want from this government. Not whether it feels our pain. In any case, we want government to ameliorate our pains not empathise with us. Doing the right things, pursuing the right visions will give us great comfort. We do not think that government is making the right moves not to talk of getting the required results…

    That is why today, we are writing the same things we wrote two governments ago; we are shedding the same tears we shed last year. Below is a sample:

    It is so very simple to kill a columnist without as much as lifting a finger: just bedevil him with dishonest and greedy leaders and watch him write himself to his merry end. Depending on your turn of mind, you can actually choose your manner and method of dispatching your miserable muse. If you want to put down the irritant quick and sure, blight him with a mob of tricksters, gamblers and knaves; let them parade the land dressed in the garb of leadership, let them occupy all the seats of authority in the land and watch the writer go down and out as if zapped with laser rays.

    On the other hand, if you are possessed of a sinister turn of mind you could choose to stalk him slowly, roil him; make him write the same things over and over again until he grows completely grey in the head (and anywhere else). In no time, he is sure to grow grey in the mind too and surely, turn the bend. The trick is to dissemble or play ‘craze’ if you like. Become anti-rational; repudiate and basics, head for Sokoto when your destination is Okrika; unleash whirlwinds when people are looking out for a breath of fresh air. To illustrate my point, I had used the exact title as above once before about eight years ago during the reign of king Olusegun Obasanjo. As an editor and columnist, I was caught in the bind of commenting upon the same things over and over. I was foolishly thwacking my head against the obdurate walls of an irreclaimable potentate. Looking back after his eight years of disastrous rule, I found that I had written more than 300 articles which I have recently collected into a manuscript titled, “A Drum for the Deaf.”

    Talking about fresh breath and whirlwind, which columnist can survive writing about the prospect of a gust of new breeze only last June only to be confronted with a maelstrom six months down the line? How could a columnist keep his head if he has been beating it against one huge wall of illogic for 27 years? Consider this trend: in 1985 when our refineries had started failing while our petroleum products consumption was rising, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, the maximum ruler at the time, went for the easy way out, he started the fuel importation binge. When our income could not sustain our import any longer, he introduced something he termed “appropriate pricing” for petrol, “deregulation” and all that. He did not think of a plan to expand our refining capacity or develop our rich petrochemical potentials. He just increased pump prices outrageously. Nigerians protested and a slight adjustment was made and that ended it all.

    It was the same with Ernest Shonekan after Babangida, the same with Sani Abacha, Abdulsalami Abubakar and Obasanjo and now President Goodluck Jonathan. Over a period of three decades, our leaders mastered the wicked art of ripping off the country through massive importation of petroleum products. We have always known that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is a horrific house of corruption that knows not how to do anything else, yet we just live with it. How could a class of people that has embarked on a fraudulent importing binge for three decades and that neglected to develop a sector that remains its milk cow turn around to insist that a dubious, self-imposed subsidy must be removed? And come to think of it, who asked for this so-called subsidy. This thing called subsidy is only the result of corruption, inefficiency and lack of vision coming home to roost. If we had local refineries running (no matter the ownership) would we not simply pay the price emanating from such refineries?

    How could a man who told us he had no shoes; who knows a thing or two about privation and penury now have the capacity of inflicting poverty on a populace without flinching. Now that he has shoes, the very best of shoes money can buy, has he learnt that shoes are not mere adornments of the feet but instrument of intimidation and oppression? How could a bedraggled citizenry, most of who live by the day, survive under a regime of wild and sudden increase in petrol price? The so-called subsidy (by default) happens to be the only benefit the citizenry could claim to enjoy. He doesn’t have roads, no water, no kerosene, no power, no food, lacks quality education or health care… nothing.

    This columnist has grown grey making this same point. This point has been made to President Jonathan by nearly all well-meaning Nigerians high and low. This point is very simple for even a kindergarten pupil to understand. But six successive heads of state of Nigeria failed to see this basic point. However, it is only Jonathan who has chosen to ride the tiger; to swim the swift currents of the people’s anger. What is the hurry, under which appropriation law is he acting when the one under which he proposed to cut fuel subsidy is still in the National Assembly to be effective in April? Why are already ‘subsidised’ products being sold at deregulated rates? Again, people ask, why this time that the country seems besieged and the citizenry are on tenterhooks, disappointed and forlorn.

    Meanwhile, yours truly is sick of making the same argument for 27 years. I sincerely hope that this is the last time.

  • Coincidences or the columnist as prompter?

    But it just gladdens the heart that after deeply and reasonably interrogating goings-on in the politics of the country, one is able to offer pragmatic advice on resolving apparent logjams with a view to smoothing the way forward, to those whose responsibility it is to make lives better for all of us.

    I am neither about to gloat nor claim to be a re-incarnation of the redoubtable Mohamed Heykal (23 September 1923 – 17 February 2016), the Egyptian journalist and editor of Al-Ahram who, for more than 50 years, was a highly informed commentator on Arab affairs, using his famed friendship with President Nasser and relationship with Sadat to so uncannily predict the two presidents on both Egyptian and Pan –Arab affairs. But it just gladdens the heart that after deeply and reasonably interrogating goings-on in the politics of the country, one is able to offer pragmatic advice on resolving apparent logjams with a view to smoothing the way forward, to those whose responsibility it is to make lives better for all of us. So has it been for this columnist and it matters nothing whether these were mere coincidences; that is, whether or not the political actors read, or did not read, the articles containing those pieces of advice. That the columnist’s thoughts coincided with the big man’s subsequent actions is more than enough satisfaction for one’s weekly efforts on these pages. One thing is sure though, even if they did not personally read the relevant article, the possibility exists that other persons could very well have mentioned it to them.

    In the article: RE: THIS BUDGET –WHY HEADS MUST ROLE, 2 February, 2016, which was  shortly after it became public knowledge that the 2016 budget had been mercilessly padded, the columnist wrote as follows:

    “Why on earth are Jonathan’s appointees sitting pretty as head of critical agencies of state when he (President Buhari) knew that their track record during the campaigns and presumed voting pattern during the election point unerringly to the fact that they neither believe in his candidacy nor his policies. No, as bona fide Nigerians, nobody is suggesting that they should lose their jobs but for Christ’s sake why were many of these people not moved to less sensitive posts?”

    It was certainly not  difficult for any hard-headed observer of events in our country to know that too many of those in key positions in government during the Jonathan  era owed primary allegiance to him or to the First Lady and, going by what transpired during the campaigns, it was obvious they wanted none of Buhari. It was therefore obvious that, remaining ensconced in those posts, there was nothing they would like more than for President Buhari to fail. This is eloquently attested to by the fact that some of the permanent secretaries he worked with at the commencement of his administration were so disloyal, and corrupt, they were aggressively illegally  lining their pockets and now have questions to answer from the EFCC. In the same vein, it was this disloyalty that largely accounted for the budget padding to show that nothing changed Buhari or not. Happily, the president reacted within 24 hours of that publication but not with just juggling positions. Rather, over 20 of such officials were shown the way out especially from the ancien regime’s propaganda redoubts of the NTA, FRCN, VON, NOA, NBC, and NAN.

    Again, in RE: THIS CHANGE IS KILLING US, March 20, 2016, seeing the total dysfunction within the ruling party and the government arising largely from the intra-party power contestations amongst the legacy parties, I wrote:”Their victory, I surmise should, ordinarily, have strengthened the bond amongst the merging political parties. Unfortunately, there  is a sprinkle of the likes of the ever ambitious Saraki’s and the Dogara’s who have since successfully widened their legislative power grab through political enticement i.e  – a carefully choreographed allotment of committees’ membership and posts. Ever scheming and conspiratorial, they gifted a defeated PDP, via the likes of Ekweremadu and Akpabio, such positions and inherent powers; it now looks like APC is, indeed, the opposition party. About the only way out for the APC, is for the president to know that he may belong to all, but not all belongs to him or love him. He must go back to those God used in bringing this dispensation about”.

    Shortly after these words were written, President Buhari was at the 8th Bola Tinubu Colloquium where he not only congratulated Tinubu on his birthday, but was particularly effusive in commending his role in the APC victory in the 2015 elections. Said President Buhari: “There are very few patriots, alive or departed, who can match the commitment, resilience and creativity that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has, over the past few decades, demonstrated in organising Nigeria’s public life for good.” In an earlier message, he had described Tinubu as a visionary leader, thanking him for creating a formidable opposition party which, within a short period time, ousted a party that had been in power for 16 years. These should give the lie to mischief makers who said Buhari’s ‘I belong to nobody’ statement at his inauguration was aimed at the Jagaban. More fundamentally though, they should go a long way in returning the party to the status ‘quo ante bellum’. The effect of this obvious reconciliation on party cohesion and overall governance  should be enough to see APC change from being a ‘party in government but not in power’, as a fellow columnist recently described it, to both a de jure and, de facto government.

    What would, however, pass for the mother of promptings was also in that same article of 20 March, 2016. Poignantly appreciating what disequilibrium an unsettled Southwest APC could cause in both the region and the nation at large, I  suggested that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the party’s ‘numero uno’ leader in the geo-political zone should, like Uncle Bola Ige had intended to do for the AD before he was cut down by enemies of the Yoruba race, do everything  within his power to smoothen all the rough edges within the party in the Southwest adding that as the lodestar and  undisputed pathfinder, he should commence the process of an all-encompassing rapprochement which would, amongst other things, give him a solid home front from which to launch frontally into the party on the national arena, helping to resolve issues in other parts of the country and getting prepared for whatever intra-party, geo-political contestations that may arise in the future.

    Neither Nigerians nor the columnist had long to wait to see evidence of efforts in this direction. Ahead of the 2015 general elections, a thoroughly messy intra-party feud had arisen in the Ogun State wing of the APC occasioned by the very stiff competition for legislative seats especially at the National Assembly. The main protagonists were the state governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, and Aremo Segun Osoba, a former governor of the state and the acclaimed party leader in the state, each joined by his subalterns who were, in turn, big players in the party as senators, Reps etc. So bad was the crisis Osoba said not even God could resolve it and promptly left, with his supporters, for another party. You can then imagine the hard work Tinubu, the leader of the party in the Southwest, and others must have put into reconciling the two sides to see Aremo return jubilantly into the party from what he has since described as a sabbatical. Osoba is a lifelong progressive and, in his own words, would remain one for life. Despite that, nobody can doubt his being a highly principled politician. For him to have come back to the party, therefore, a lot of water must have passed under the bridge and without a scintilla of doubt, Asiwaju must have been central to the effort. Even if he did not initiate it, he must have subsequently coordinated the entire process with the assistance of other party leaders like Chief Bisi Akande, Otunba Niyi Adebayo, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, to mention but a few. However, his job of reconciliation, is only half done. Since there is no success without a successor, Asiwaju must now move rapidly, bottom up, to reconcile with all his estranged younger colleagues. He would need them, as much as they need him, going forward, in the man-eats-man jungle that Nigerian politics has become. Also, for development and for the region’s economic integration to proceed uninterrupted, the Southwest also needs such all-round peace within the progressive fold as the dominant political perspective, having effectively banished the Jonathanians to political Siberia.

    I cannot wait to see the Southwest progressive family return to its 2007 status of solid camaraderie.

  • The ‘exceptional’ columnist

    A simple but profound Igbo adage has a queer manner of relating the saying: “Enough is Enough.” It says it to the effect that when a matter or an occurrence gets too overwhelming or sinister, we must point at it. It is not clear from the expression what the motive of our elders was in pointing at the matter. Could it be to draw attention to it; to repudiate it or perhaps to cast a spell on it? Whatever the case may be, the very act of pointing at something ominous and foreboding is in itself an enactment of valour.

    Hardball is therefore of the opinion that time has come to point to the weekly column of a certain Femi Aribisala published in Vanguard  every Tuesday. Yes, he has indeed made a reputation for himself as a controversial columnist who seems to love to hold extreme views.

    In fact his views rub against the grain so much they hurt like the sharp cut of the razor. Sometimes some wonder whether Mr. Aribisala truly means what he writes or he is just kidding. His support for the former President Goodluck Jonathan would make a case study in the art of intellectual endorsement for a candidate in a major election.

    Of course, he is entitled to his views and standpoints. One can even grant a columnist some spell of propaganda especially of the subtle and intellectualised type. They are his prerogative so long as they are within the bounds of decency and journalism ethos.

    But Hardball posits that Mr. Aribisala’s views are designed perhaps to damage the mind. His thoughts are often obdurate and at variance with edifying national sentiment.

    His last piece (Vanguard, Tuesday, December 15, 2015) comes particularly insensitive and raises a lot of questions in the minds of compatriots of goodwill. Titled: “Goodluck Jonathan was an exceptional president”, it is an extension of some of the electioneering sing-songs he rendered early in the year. Now that the elections have been won and lost, it would be expected that all sword would be sheathed and we all return to making the best of our mother land.

    In the face of the current revelation of large scale pillaging of the treasury during the administration of President Jonathan, one would expect all compatriots to work in tandem to see that our looted treasure is restored. But not Mr Aribisala; hear him: “Thanks to Jonathan, agriculture now accounts for 22 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP, more than oil and gas which only account for 15.9 per cent. Under Jonathan, Nigeria recorded more than 50 per cent reduction in food imports… With the innovation of dry season farming, Nigeria reached 60 per cent self-sufficiency in rice production…? Where is the rice, where is the food?

    He says the ongoing investigation of public officials is a witch hunt of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) but what is his take on the billions of dollars being revealed? Is Mr. Aribisala not troubled that so much money was removed in cash from our apex bank? As an Oxford alumnus, which other country has he heard that $2 billion cash is taken from the apex bank? Would he rather this grand thievery is not probed?

    Where is the public consciousness of an intellectual- columnist that Aribisala supposedly is. He is indeed an exceptional columnist!

  • The dilemma of a columnist

    No information can be as tenable as that of an eyewitness to an incident”.  

    By Prophet Muhammad (SAW)

    Monologue

    It has been asserted severally in this column that the similitude of column writing in a national newspaper on a weekly basis is like a pregnancy in the womb of an expectant mother. Such a pregnancy carrier can hardly have any respite until she has been delivered of her pregnancy. In the same token, the problem of a quality columnist is not a dearth of ideas but a deluge of them. No columnist of worth will ever be in search of vocabulary to use or facts to be presented comprehensibly to his or her readers. A strong linguistic background and many years of experience in column writing would have taken proper care of that. Thus, a worthy columnist only faces a problem when it comes to choosing the subject of his writing. And that is a weekly intellectual agony which any newspaper columnist anywhere in the world is compelled to pass through regularly.

    As a columnist, while ruminating on a subject to write on, several other subjects often spring up and start throwing themselves torrentially at you in such a manner that you may fall into a dilemma or even confusion sometimes. That is the case with yours sincerely this week.

     

    Debunking a rumour

    The rumour making the rounds that the leader of this year’s National Hajj   Coordinating Team, His Royal Highness, Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II, the Emir of Kano, had ruled out the participation of Nigerian pilgrims in the future throwing of pebbles at the Jamrat. This rumour is not founded. What the leader of the team said was logically conditional. This is how he put it: “The throwing of pebbles at the Jamrat is not worth the blood of any Pilgrim. If throwing of pebbles will be the cause of deaths for Nigerian pilgrims that aspect of Hajj rites might be reviewed in such a way that Nigerians may skip it in future since those pilgrims are not on Hajj to die. His Royal Highness cited an example of a group of pilgrims who came on Hajj riding camels. When those pilgrims complained about the problem faced by their camels at Mina during Hajj the Prophet advised them to stay put in Makkah to be able to save the lives of their camels. His Royal Highness therefore concluded that if the Prophet could permit camel riders to abstain from throwing pebbles at the Jamrat just to save the lives of their camels why can’t the lives of human beings be saved from being perished through stampedes”. He also requested the Saudi Authorities to reconsider the location of Nigerian pilgrims at Mina in relation to the distance between that location and the Jamrat. Thus, since the throwing of pebbles is only symbolic it should not be the cause of death for pilgrims. After all, the opinion of His Royal Highness which was based on Qiyas (one of the four sources of Islamic Law) is not mandatory on all pilgrims. It is only meant for those who may not want to lose their lives at the Jamrat if they are threatened.

     

    A promise is a promise

    As promised last Friday in this column, the idea of today’s contents was to continue the reappraisal of the stampede in Makkah that caused the termination of thousands of pilgrims’ lives including those of hundreds of Nigerians. That was meant to suggest to Nigerian government what it could do to prevent its citizens from falling victims of a similar occurrence in the future. Such a reappraisal was meant to enable Nigerians to know the immediate and remote causes of that unfortunate incident and therefore device a means of avoiding its likes in the years ahead.

    However, as soon as yours sincerely started putting together the contents of today’s column last Wednesday, many other equally important issues began to surface, as usual, to compete for my attention and choice. And which of those issues does not deserve attention anyway especially for someone who just returned to the country after about one month of spiritual sojourn in Saudi Arabia?

    There is the new Islamic year (1st of Muharram, 1437 AH) globally being celebrated in the Muslim world. There is also the speculative apprehension being caused in Lagos and some other Southern States at the instance of the satanic terrorist group called Boko Haram. There is also the unbecoming rampant spate of rape in Nigerian cities and towns that seems to have turned some Nigerians into heartless beasts.

    There is also the ridiculous brouhaha from some diehard tribal bigots over the presidential nominations for ministerial appointments. There is also the newly emerging artificial scarcity of fuel being currently experimented by some Nigerian Shylocks called oil barons in readiness for another round of callous exploitation of ordinary Nigerians. There is also the shameless tribal eulogy for a onetime public criminal who got a tribal official pardon and whose extradition was being sought in another country for prosecution. There is also the seemingly ignored petitions against certain ministerial nominees whose nominations are generally perceived as rewards for corruption.

    Besides, I was privileged to deliver the 7th convocation lecture of the Crescent University, Abeokuta last Friday at the invitation of the authorities of that University. And characteristically, such a lecture deserves immediate publication in this column if only to enable the readers of ‘The Message’ column and other Nigerians to benefit from it. Now, which of these is not strong enough to draw a columnist’s attention?

     

    Sacredness of life

    However, given the fact that human life is or should be sacred in any sane society and at any given circumstance, I decided to choose the last option. Though the dust on the recent Makkah stampede that consumed thousands of lives has now settled, its reverberating effects on the affected homes are yet to settle. What of the bleeding hearts of wives who suddenly became widows or those of husbands who fortuitously became widowers or even those of teenagers who are now orphans at the instance of that unforgettable stampede? Though the general focus has been on the lost lives because of their sacredness, the amount of money lost in that stampede was also incalculable. Because of the nature of Hajj and the spiral movements of the pilgrims during the sacred days of the Dhil-Hijjah every pilgrim carried his or her money about. Thus, millions of Saudi Riyals, European Euros, American Dollars, British Pound Sterling, French Francs, German Deutsche Marks and the likes were lost in the stampede but nobody is talking about that.

     

    A Chronicle of previous Hajj Disasters

    It is never expected that an annual gathering like Hajj that accommodates millions of pilgrims can completely be devoid of deaths and injuries either due to unavoidable natural disaster or human error. But when such disasters are becoming more frequent than normal tongues must wag and comments must be made. For hundreds of years, the Hijaz area of the country now called Saudi Arabia has maintained the two most sacred sanctuaries in Islam creditably well without blemish and she has consistently taken credit for that. It is therefore expected that if on a particular occasion or occasions there is any lapse in the same exercise she should humble enough to take responsibility for it.

    Saudi Arabia’s maintenance of the two sanctuaries as well as the activities of Hajj around them is voluntary. And if for any reason she had needed the assistance of some other Muslim countries she would have sought such assistance. Thus, by not seeking assistance, Saudi Arabian government might have indicated her readiness to accept any responsibility arising from any administrative lapse on her part.

     

    Personal observation

    From my personal observation, there is hardly any country in the world that can maintain Hajj better than Saudi Arabia in terms of infrastructure, security and administration. This country has such a tremendous experience in Hajj matters that calling for withdrawing the administration of Hajj maintenance from her may only amount to sheer envy. But whoever can happily take credit for a job well done must also be ready to take blame for a job not well done.

    So far, Saudi Arabia has tried her very best on Hajj matters but shifting blames in times of lapses shows neither good intention nor reflects sense of responsibility. Any government that voluntarily takes charge of an institution like Hajj must be ready to accept any responsibility associated with it.

     

    Stampede update

    In what became the latest update about the Makkah stampede of September 24, 2015 so far, as it concerns Nigerian pilgrims, the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) disclosed last Wednesday (October 14, 2015) that the death toll of Nigerian pilgrims in that stampede had risen to 168. NAHCON also revealed that the official figure of death toll admitted by the Saudi government was 769 as against over 4000 alleged by the international media. It added that seven out of the 42 Nigerians previously admitted into hospitals for various degrees of injuries were yet to be discharged and added that the figure of the hitherto declared missing Nigerians had reduced from 165 to 144. Thus, as of today Nigerian pilgrims who participated in year 1436 AH can be said to have gone to war only to return as vanquished. Meanwhile, in the melee of conflicts in death toll figures the Saudi Interior Ministry has claimed that only 934 pilgrims were missing without giving the details of the nationalities of those missing.

     

    Saudi Arabia’s Reaction

    In a spontaneous but embarrassing reaction to the devastating stampede the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Interior blamed the cause of that stampede on what it called unruly attitude of African pilgrims whom it described as a bunch of illiterate that understood neither Arabic nor English. But when that insulting comment attracted a barrage of media criticisms from various parts of the world the Ministry quickly retracted its statement and denied ever making such a remark. For those who witnessed the agonizing scene, nothing could have been further from the truth in that unfortunate remark. As an eye witness to that tragedy, I could not personally put the population of black Africans in it beyond 3% of the entire pilgrims involved. How could such a tragedy be then blamed on Africans?

    After a similar stampede in 2006, Saudi authorities instituted single-direction pathways for pilgrims going to or coming from the Jamrat to avoid commotion. In the past decade or so, the Saudi government had worked with a wide range of architects and designers, including the famed international firm Gensler, to improve flow and safety at all of the hajj’s major sites including the Central Mosques in the tent locations of Mina and Arafah.

     

    Crowd management

    Reflecting on the various causes of stampedes during Hajj in the past decades an American columnist, John Seabrook wrote an opinion article in 2011 in which he stated as follows:

    “In the literature on crowd disasters, there is a striking incongruity between the way these events are depicted in the press and how they actually occur. In popular accounts, they are almost invariably described as “panics.” The crowd is portrayed as a single, unified entity, which acts according to “mob psychology”—a set of primitive instincts (fear, followed by flight) that favor self-preservation over the welfare of others, and cause “stampedes” and “trampling.” But most crowd disasters are caused by “crazes”—people are usually moving toward something they want, rather than away from something they fear, and, if you’re caught up in a crush, you’re just as likely to die on your feet as under the feet of others, squashed by the pressure of bodies smashing into you. (Investigators collecting evidence in the aftermath of crowd disasters have found steel guardrails capable of withstanding a thousand pounds of pressure bent by crowd force.)

    In disasters not involving fire, panic is rarely the cause of fatalities, and even when fire is involved, such as in the 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, in South-gate, Kentucky, research has shown that people continue to help one another, even at the cost of their own lives”. Other issues not accommodated in this column today will be published in the subsequent weeks in sha’Allah.

  • KIDNAPPED JOURNALIST, DONU KOGBARA, FREED

    KIDNAPPED JOURNALIST, DONU KOGBARA, FREED

    Vanguard’s columnist, Dornu Kogbara, who was kidnapped on August 30, has regained her freedom.

    Kogbara, an Ogoni, was released at 10 pm last Friday but returned to her Nkpogu-Port Harcourt residence around 2 am yesterday.

    The new Rivers State Commissioner of Police, Musa Kimo, visited her at 4:30 am at her residence.

    The Rivers Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Muhammad Ahmad, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), confirmed Kogbara’s release in a phone interview.

    He said the renowned columnist was in a stable condition and unhurt and could not confirm if ransom was paid before she regained her freedom.

    Ahmad also refused to give details of her release from the kidnappers’ den.

    The released columnist spoke briefly with reporters yesterday morning.

    She was very angry with Niger Delta youths, who she alleged kidnapped her despite fighting their cause.

    Kogbara stated the kidnappers told her Niger Delta youths had been abandoned and therefore, abducted her to take their share of looted funds.

    Unknown to them, however, she said she was just a columnist and not a looter.

    The kidnappers, who wore police uniforms, seized Kogbara on August 30 when they stormed her Nkpogu-Port Harcourt residence in a CRV car, amid gunshots.

    They quickly disappeared with the columnist whose whereabouts remained unknown for almost two weeks.

    The Rivers chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) described the release of the “easy-going and peace-loving” columnist as a welcome development.

    In a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Chris Finebone, the party said: “APC will like to thank the Almighty God for Kogbara’s safe return to her loved ones.”

  • NUJ calls for release of kidnapped columnist

    NUJ calls for release of kidnapped columnist

    The Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Rivers State council, has called for the immediate and unconditional release unhurt of the kidnapped Vanguard columnist, Dornu Kogbara.

    Rivers NUJ, Friday in Port Harcourt, through its Chairman, Omoni Ayo-Tamuno, also condemned the abduction of Kogbara, an Ogoni.

    The kidnappers, who wore police uniform, seized the renowned columnist on Sunday morning, when they stormed her Nkpogu-Port Harcourt residence in a CRV car, amid gunshots. The gunmen quickly disappeared with Kogbara, whose whereabouts remained unknown and no demand for ransom had been made by the criminals, as at press time.

    The Rivers Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Muhammad Kidaya Ahmad, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), who confirmed the kidnap, noted that the police were on the trail of the gunmen, while assuring that the victim would soon be rescued unhurt.

    NUJ in Rivers said: “Why should an innocent journalist/columnist, who is contributing to societal development become the target of kidnappers? Journalists are positively impacting the society and should be spared the trauma of being kidnapped.

    “It is really sad that the renowned columnist, who is using her pen to bring about development, will now be in the den of kidnappers for many days, considering the usually-unpleasant experiences.

    “Where do the kidnappers want the columnist or her aged mother to get money for ransom? Journalists in Rivers State are insisting that Kogbara must be released now, without attaching any condition and she must not be hurt.”

    The Rivers NUJ, with the backing of the national secretariat of the union, also called on the security agencies to quickly ensure the release of the columnist and to apprehend/prosecute the kidnappers, in order to serve as a deterrent to other criminally-minded persons.

  • MOSOP urges release of abducted columnist

    The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) has called for the immediate and unconditional release of the kidnapped Vanguard columnist, Donu Kogbara.

    MOSOP, in a statement yesterday in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, by its President, Legborsi Saro Pyagbara, condemned the abduction of Kogbara, an Ogoni woman.

    The kidnappers, who reportedly wore police uniform, seized the renowned columnist on Sunday morning, when they stormed her Nkpogu-Port Harcourt home in a CRV car amid gunshots.

    The gunmen disappeared with Kogbara, whose whereabouts remain unknown.

    The abductors have also not demanded a ransom, as at press time last night.

    Police spokesman, Muhammad Kidaya Ahmad, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), confirmed the abduction.

    He said the police were on the trail of the abductors, assuring that the victim would soon be rescued unhurt.

    MOSOP said: “Although we do not know what might have led to the unfortunate and reprehensible act, the action is, no doubt, bestial. MOSOP finds it difficult to rationalise her abduction, as she is an acknowledged responsible, humble, peaceful and harmless journalist, who has been using her journalistic endowment to advance and promote the cause of humanity. Ms. Kogbara does not deserve this sort of treatment.

    “MOSOP is deeply concerned that she is yet another Ogoni victim of the disturbing and deepening security challenges in the state.”

    We are convinced that had adequate security arrangements been in place, she would not have suffered her present fate. The questionable circumstance in which she was reportedly abducted strengthens our doubts on the quality of our security services.

    “It is our concern that for some time now, we appear to be losing the battle against men of the underworld, who have gone berserk and have been terrorising and inflicting pains on the people, but regrettably met with counterfeiting response.

    “We urge the government and its security apparatus to redouble their efforts, directed at drastic reduction in the activities of these criminals, since they have a special responsibility to protect life and property of the citizens and residents of the state. For now, appropriate security approach that places premium on intelligence gathering, surveillance and rapid response is lacking and should be vigorously pursued.”

     

  • Columnist kidnapped in Port Harcourt

    A columnist with Vanguard, Donu Kogbara, has been kidnapped in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.

    Her abductors reportedly stormed her home in Nkpogu, Port Harcourt, in a CRV car amid gunshots.

    Eyewitnesses, who spoke in confidence for security reasons, told our reporter that the abductors left with the columnist to an unknown place.

    The hoodlums, it was learnt last night, had not contacted the writer’s family for ransom.

    Police spokesman Muhammad Kidaya Ahmad, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), confirmed the abduction.

    He said the police command was trailing the abductors, adding that Kogbara would soon be rescued.