The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Elephant

  • JUST IN: Roaming elephant kills farmer in Ogun community

    JUST IN: Roaming elephant kills farmer in Ogun community

    A roaming elephant from a government forest reserve in Ijebu East Local Government Area of Ogun State has killed a farmer, Musa Kalamu, after straying into his farm in the Itasin-Imobi area on Monday.

    According to villagers, the elephant, believed to have wandered from its protected habitat, attacked Kalamu while he was working on his farm.

    A viral video of the incident showed Kalamu’s lifeless body, with community members lamenting the repeated threats posed by the wild animals. 

    “This is Kala, he was attacked by the elephants at Onitasin… the marks of the attack are all over his body, even his intestines are out,” one of the voices in the video narrated.

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    The residents appealed to the government to urgently intervene, saying elephants from the reserve have been a recurring danger to lives and farmlands for years.

    “This elephant keeps coming into our community to destroy our crops, damage our fishing nets, and now, it has taken a life,” a villager said.

    However, the Itasin-Imobi residents are appealing to the State government to save them from future attacks and killings by elephants in its reserved forests.

    The State Commissioner for Forestry, Taiwo Oludotun who confirmed the tragic incident, said, “Yes, we are aware and we are already on our way to the community.”

    Also, the State Commissioner of Police, Lanre Ogunlowo confirmed the elephants’ fatal attack on the villager – farmer.

    “The DPO Ogbere received information from Itasin community on 28/07/2025 at about 1620hrs that elephants escaped from government reserve and attacked one Musa Kalamu who died on the way to the hospital.

    “Officers of Ogun State Forestry were contacted to curtail the animals from further damage. Calm has returned to the community,” Ogunlowo stated.

  • Fed Govt, NGOs enforce ten years National Elephant Action Plan

    Fed Govt, NGOs enforce ten years National Elephant Action Plan

    The federal government, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations, is taking significant steps to prevent the extinction of elephants in Nigeria by implementing the first-ever National Elephant Action Plan (NEAP) for 2024-2034.

    In a statement signed by Festus Iyorah, Nigeria’s representative for Wild Africa, it was emphasized that while elephants are facing serious threats in the country, there is hope.

     The government and NGOs are actively working to safeguard these endangered animals, with the NEAP and the new Endangered Species Conservation and Protection Bill marking important initial efforts.

    The statement was released in celebration of World Elephant Day, as Wild Africa urges stronger measures to protect Nigeria’s elephants from escalating threats to their survival.

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    According to Dr Mark Ofua of Wild Africa, who is the West African representative, “Over the past 30 years, the population of elephants in the country has declined from an estimated 1,500 to 1,200 which is from two decades ago, to about 300 to 400 today. On this World Elephant Day, we acknowledge how sad it is that we are losing these majestic animals that once roamed freely across our savannas and forests.”

    He added that the Poaching for ivory and habitat destruction have reduced their population and are pushing them to the brink of local extinction in Nigeria.

    He, however, said if implemented, NEAP should stabilise their numbers, as habitat loss can lead to human-elephant conflict, which occurs when people clash with elephants due to crop raiding or property damage.

    NEAP also looks to maintain elephant habitats through land-use planning and create wildlife corridors to mitigate conflicts with communities, as well as increase public awareness and community-shared economic benefits generated by tourism.

  • Elephant and Castle (The Political Economy of Royal Succession)

    Just in case you are thinking of the huge and sprawling shopping complex to the South east of metropolitan London, this is not about shopping. Or rather let us just say that this is about shopping for a president in a royal jungle. It is about the political economy of succession in an animal farm.  All animals are equal, but some animals are truly more equal than others.

    Sorry folks, we have to return to the feral and furry realm of animals once more. A few weeks back, we had thought that we were done with animal tales. But there are compelling reasons to return to the magic world of crawlies and good old Comrade Napoleon. This is what happens when the tools of conventional Political Science fail dismally to explain or grasp the dynamics of an unfurling political drama.

    Conventional Political Science rests on a set of stable variables for its analytical validity and integrity. To a large extent, you can predict the outcome of the inevitable collision of human and social forces. After all, when you have eliminated all that is impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth, to appropriate the great Sherlock Holmes. But in the post-colonial jungle, nothing is set and everything is variable.  It is the ultimate nightmare of the political scientist.

    You would have thought that only a year after the last presidential election and given the dire and fraught situation of the country, a nasty succession battle would be the last thing on the mind of our political class. You would have thought that amidst country-wide social unrest and given the fact that the north of the nation has virtually imploded politically and economically from the Boko Haram scourge, presidential election would be the last thing on the mind of politicians.

    You would have thought that the conventional wisdom is to fix what is broken first before deciding who should handle it. But you are profoundly mistaken.  This is Nigeria, Blackman’s own country. And who would have thought that at this particular moment the Jonathan presidency would come to resemble the Yar’Adua presidency in its inert and futile probing like a stalled caterpillar and its mix of political and physiological ailments? It is all beyond our human ken. It points at some malignant tricks of some powerful occult forces.

    If anybody had thought that the next presidential election or the impending succession battle would be fought over the Boko Haram plague or how to secure the political stability of the nation by redesigning its grand architecture, they had better perish the thought.  A plantain plantation or Banana Republic does not require architectonic wonder. Just allow the oil to flow and all will be well.

    It may be an economy based on extractive predation, but it is an economy all the same. After all there is demand and there is supply, which is the first law of economics.  Secure the oil rig first and the electoral rigging can come later. This is the political economy of royal succession in an animal farm.

    Last week, there were some significant moves on the chessboard which foreshadow a great battle of will and wits in the coming months. It points towards another epic succession battle. It is a play of giants and both the grass and the grassroots are already trembling. Against the selectorate, the electorate have no chance. The people only vote after the king has been chosen for them. This past week, the elephant rumbled and the castle quaked as if it has suffered a tectonic concussion. Let us return to the elephant and the castle.

    With its mammoth brains, the elephant is gifted with phenomenal memory. It neither forgives nor forgets. Its powers of photographic recall are a tad short of the miraculous. It remembers human faces and scant topographic features. It stalks those who have attempted to harm it with chilling resolve. It often lies in wait for those who would ambush it. When roused to fury and indignation, the elephant is a truly formidable picture of elemental rage and umbrage, tearing at and pulling out everything in sight and out of sight.  Its capacity for absorbing punishment is legendary and even in death—as the Yoruba will attest—the skull of an elephant is no luggage for children.

    In anger and angst, not even the castle is safe and secure from the elephant, more so when the elephant itself has sojourned twice in the castle. A bid to secure permanent residency met with massive popular discontent in which the earth quaked with towering indignation and disgust. The elephant retreated in shame and misery. But it has not forgotten old business or forgiven old businessmen. In military parlance, it is known as discreet evacuation of troops while awaiting reinforcement.

    Last week, Nigeria’s surviving pachyderm from the Jurassic Age, the irrepressible and inevitable General Olusegun Obasanjo, finally roused himself to political battle but from the economic trenches.  With well-controlled indignation and in an act of political marksmanship quite stunning for a man of his advanced age, Obasanjo took the economic policy of his political protégé to the cleaners. The proposed introduction of the 5,000 naira mega-bill, he averred, was not only going to further compound the economic miseries of Nigerians, it was bound to fuel massive inflation.

    All hell was let loose at the castle. This was the political equivalent of Pearl Harbour when the Japanese suddenly overwhelmed the imperial might of America. You would have thought that as a distinguished member of the Council of States and Jonathan’s political benefactor and godfather, Obasanjo had a safe and secure communication channel, a hotline as they say, to communicate his misgivings to the presidency. But this is what late M.K.O Abiola famously described as “high-wire politics”.

    A  succession war is in full swing. The elephant has bared its battle-tested trunk. Knowing fully well that transformation is the kernel of Jonathan’s message and self-declared mission, and knowing fully well that a sound economic policy is the heart of transformation, the great elephant has wrapped its trunk around the presidency’s soft and septic underbelly.

    This is a textbook military operation, a bold Panzer strike at the jugular before the mopping up operation. Once Jonathan is rendered combat-ineffective, it will be a question of time before his limping presidency is taken out of contention. Obasanjo is a past master of the politics of delegitimation. His artillery bombardment of Babangida’s “deficits of honour, credibility and integrity” prepared the ground for the Minna General’s crucial lapse of concentration and hurried exit from power.

    The same gambit led to the eventual unraveling of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, General Mohamadu Buhari and lately the Yar’Adua presidency. In the particular case of Alhaji Shagari, Obasanjo gave a damning and devastating critique towards the end. When the Daily Times deliberately published a garbled and mischievous version, the irate general sent a blistering rejoinder. Abacha who could read the game very well swiftly impounded him, but this did not prevent the goggled one from meeting a similar fate.

    For months, there have been rumours of a final and terminal parting of way between godfather and godson. It was deliberately leaked to the press that Obasanjo was eyeing a Sule Lamido/ Rotimi Amaechi ticket. This was swiftly and hurriedly denied. The stinging economic rebuke is the clearest indication so far that that the Jonathan administration is an object of stringent scrutiny by Nigeria’s power mafia and the report card may not be too flattering.

    Predictably, the presidency has been placed at the equivalent of a war footing. Presidential canine sentries simply tore into Obasanjo. There were even echoes of Michael Okhai Akhigbe’s infamous put-down of the old warhorse as a frustrated farmer. Leading the pack of hounds is Doyin Okupe who ironically was  Obasanjo’s former spokesperson. With patronizing glee, Okupe dismissed his former boss as a private citizen who is entitled to his own views. One can almost hear the bellicose medico smacking his lips in relish. It all recalls a passage from Job: “My desire is that mine enemy hath writ a book”.

    The elephant has the castle within its rifle sight. But the castle is unmoved and unmoving. It all points at a nasty roforofo fight or what the Yoruba call yanponyanrin. The old general may be trying to return to his old political base. But for once in his career, he might have made a fatal political miscalculation with Jonathan. This is because other unstable variables might have crept into the equation. The chap from Otueke is unlikely to go down lightly and meekly.

     

    • First published in 2013.

     

  • Elephant and throne in Gambia ( An aomerinjoba template for African despots)

    Elephant and throne in Gambia ( An aomerinjoba template for African despots)

    Aomerin joba ( We are going to crown the elephant)
    Erekuewele ……………………..
    Aomerinjoba (We are going to crown the elephant)
    Erekuewele …………………………
    Gbobo wa pata kalo merin joba ( All of us must go and crown the elephant)
    Erekuewele……………….

    In the traditional African tortoise fable so beloved by the Yoruba people, an overweening and overbearing elephant consumed by ambition, insisted on being crowned as the king on account of its size. The people obliged. They had already hatched a plot to lure the foolish mammoth to its destruction and sure death. A deep pit was dug covered with damask and all the accoutrements of royalty. Thereafter, the elephant was asked to proceed to the throne accompanied by much singing and dancing.
    Like many of their fellow Africans in the epoch after formal colonization, the good and good-natured people of Gambia have been to hell and back. It is an intriguing irony that they eventually resorted to traditional African stratagems of cunning, concealment and dissimulation to see off the crackpot despot who has tormented and tortured them for twenty two years.
    In the end, Yahya Jammeh, through a combination of overconfidence and battle-weariness, succumbed to an elementary political miscalculation so obtuse that you begin to wonder whether his fabled marabous and political antennae were on sabbatical. It simply shows that no dictator can dictate beyond his allotted time once the time is ripe and the people are ready.
    The international, continental and local climate had turned against him, but he thought he could hang on. If he had known that the election would end in such a comprehensive shellacking, he would have stalled and stonewalled. But like all despots on an opiate diet of messianic invincibility, he underestimated the Pan-Gambian revulsion against his odious rule and the bitter resolve among both the elite and the people of his country to see him off in. In the end, such was the scale and magnitude of his electoral humiliation that the fog of messianic delusion suddenly cleared revealing a pathetic, whimpering bully.
    Yet here was a man who only three years earlier in 2013 was boasting that he could rule for a billion years, if it was the wish of Allah. Allah is not the God of injustice, but the rogue despot knew what he was talking about. Before then, he had routinely rigged elections and had silenced the most vocal of Gambian opposition. He thought he had happened upon the perfect formula for ruling in perpetuity. Such was the cult of personality he had built around himself and the aura of impregnable power that his people only spoke about him in whispers even after casting furtive whispers around for the ubiquitous enforcers solely recruited from his Jola people.
    A lady friend of this columnist, an iron lady in her own right who once chaired the African Union Commission on Human Rights based in the Gambian capital, told snooper of being sent several official feelers that the government of Yahya Jammeh will not tolerate any human rights nonsense and she should take note if she valued her life. It all reminds one of the barely literate Valentine Strasser, a former Freetown disc jockey turned military ruler of Sierra Leone who now lives with his mother in a hovel outside the capital, summoning a resident American upon seizing the reins of power and asking the harried fellow in creole: “A wan know if America go recognize we gobment?”
    Such has been the level of depravity and murderous comedy some illiterate military usurpers dragged this unfortunate continent. Officially known as His Excellency Sheikh Prof Alhaji Doctor Yahya AJJ Jammeh Babili Mansa, the illiterate hooligan was a combination of comic brutality and murderous buffoonery which would have made Field Marshal Alhaji Idi Amin Dada wince in horror.
    The Gambian nightmare began one quiet morning in July 1994 when soldiers led by the then Lieutenant Jammeh began protesting for better pay and conditions of service. But they quickly realised how weak, inefficient and unpopular the government they were demonstrating against was and swiftly raised the stakes.
    The government of Sir Dawda Jawara, an ethnic Mandika, collapsed like a pack of cards as the protests snowballed into a full-blown military intervention. The Nigerian Colonel who had been seconded as Army Chief of Staff quietly disappeared from Banjul only to meet a more fateful nemesis in the punitively proactive and strategically pre-emptive General Sani Abacha in a matter of months.
    Having ensconced himself in the presidential Villa, it took only a few months for Jammeh to unleash a reign of terror on the Gambian populace. Most military coups in Africa are an opportunistic affair with strategically placed officers cashing in on popular discontent without any ideological unanimity or coherence and even coincidence of political principles among the coup plotters. Regime instability is therefore a foregone conclusion. Gambia could not have been an exception.
    Jammeh was to bring the entire Gambian nation to heel having decimated the original band of coup plotters. Some were sentenced to long term imprisonment others were hounded into exile while the unlucky few disappeared forever. Summary executions of prisoners on death row became the norm. A few years back, Alieu Bah, a former military officer who had been in prison since 1997 on charges of plotting to overthrow the government, was taken out and shot.
    Any wonder then that under Jammeh, the formerly sedate and serene country became a police state? Many citizens fled to nearby Senegal as Jammeh became the only political game in Gambia. Human rights violations became rampart, even as the Gambian despot built up a reputation for eccentric pronouncement on matters beyond his ken and comprehension. He claimed to have a cure for infertility and AIDs and advocated that gays should be summarily decapitated.
    In the course of a twenty two year despotic reign, Jammeh virtually alienated all sectors of the Gambian society with his brutish insensitivity and lack of concern for the plight of the ordinary Gambian. If Gambians thought that life under Sir Dauda was hard and harsh, it became pure hell under Jammeh.
    His cruel and casually brutal attitude to human rights violations slipped through when he was asked about the fate of Deyda Hydara, a journalist suspected to have been murdered on his orders. “Other people have also died in this country. So what is so special about Deyda Hydara?” he quipped with barely concealed irritation. This cruel disregard for the sanctity of human life indicates how far Gambia regressed into the Stone Age under its whimsical tyrant.
    Yet when all has been said about this barbaric spell in Gambia, an inescapable fact stares us in the face: national character or the structural configuration of a nation is fate. Like most African nations in the epoch after formal colonization, Gambia must throw up its own local tyrant. There must be something about the structural configuration of most African nations which predisposes them to the irresistible rise of local tyranny until the nation in itself becomes a nation for itself. This is what has just happened in Gambia.
    Despite its miniscule size, Gambia is also riven by ethnic, class, regional and caste divisions. There was no genuine elite consensus, not even an agreement to disagree. Its founding father, Dawda Jawara, a British-trained veterinary surgeon, was a product of a provincial revolt of agrarian and pastoral notables against the urban elites. Gambia boasts of the sophisticated Aku people, descendants of former American slaves who upon manumission decided to settle along the coastal strip. Until his first marriage to a lady with impeccable upper class credentials, Jawara himself suffered under the social slur of belonging to an inferior caste of leather traders.
    The urbane, cultured and unfailingly polite Sir Dawda was a master conciliator who ruled with a restraint and rectitude that was unusual and uncommon among Africa’s traditional post-independence big men. But he was no visionary. Under his watch, the national divisions simmered just below the surface, boiling over once in 1981 in a Marxist inspired guerrilla uprising led by the Libyan trained and funded Kukoi Samba Sanyang in cahoots with elements of the constabulary known as the Field Force.
    It took the intervention of the Senegalese army and about six hundred dead to quell the rebellion. Jawara, who was attending the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in London, had to be ferried to the safety of the Senegalese capital while the rebels held sway. The debacle underscored Gambia’s utter dependence on its bigger neighbour for its survival. But this vulnerability and the unmistakable sway of Senegal in turn led to quiet national indignation and resentment.
    Thirteen years later, the national contradictions boiled over again in a bloodless military coup which toppled Jawara. Nobody was willing to lift a finger for a government which was widely regarded as corrupt, dissolute and well past its sell-by date. Senegal was not willing to risk its troops to maintain a government that had lost popular legitimacy. This time around, a nearby American frigate ferried the urbane vet and his family to safety and historical oblivion.
    Thus began a twenty two year reign of terror by a barely literate military thug which culminated in a battle of will and wits this past week when the entire nation rose in concert against the crackpot despot. It was the first time the entire populace would be acting in Pan-Gambian concert against an enemy of the nation. It has taken a demographic shift in favour of the youths of Gambia who had been homogenized by poverty and hunger and an international climate of hostility to civilian and military autocrats to achieve this.
    It is a new day and dawn in Gambia. To be sure, the transition from despotism to genuine democracy in the nation is going to be a fraught and delicate matter. With the agents of the defeated ancien regime still manning the security apparatus of the nation the focus and steeliness of the new rulers will be sorely tested as overt and covert attempts are made to roll back the historic gains. But it is most likely that out of the ashes of despotism and despondency a new Gambia is set to emerge. And the rest of Africa will take note.

  • How to eat your elephant

    Today’s report is actually the size of an elephant and imagine for a moment that you are faced with the small task of confronting a whole barbequed elephas maximus…? Such is the setting for today’s piece which is partially an account of the Nigerian Guild of Editors’ conference held last week in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

    Obviously triggered by the dark images hanging over the nation’s horizon, the editors (apparently unbeknown to them) put up a crash programme on how to save Nigeria via agriculture revolution. It was  perhaps the most stirring agric summit one had attended and it turned out an eye-opener for the crowd of editors and senior journalists from across the country. The only downside was that the Federal Ministry of Agriculture was missing at a forum that was perfect for presenting its new plan – The Agriculture Promotion policy (2016 – 2020). More on this later.

    Stars of the story: Of the numerous speakers on parade, three examples stand out because their stories are not only stellar, they exemplify the power and ingenuity of youth; signalling to us that our great nation would yet rise to her billowing glory regardless of the scourge of poor leadership.

    The first to wow the crowd was a feisty young man known as Lucas Adeniji. If his energy could be converted to megawatts, it would probably light up half of Lagos; he is the managing director of Niji Farms and Allied Services Limited. Established four years ago in Kajola, Oyo State, the farm, he said, has about 3,000 acres of cultivated land of mainly cassava, yam and maize.

    An internationally-acclaimed agric entrepreneur, Lucas has managed to work his business through the entire agric value chain. In other words, he fabricates production and processing tools, he cultivates, processes and has even developed both local and international markets for his products. He collaborates at various levels with such major organisations as College of Agriculture, Umuagwo; National Root Crop Research Institute; International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan and the Honeywell Group to name a few.

    He has a number of processed and packaged foods to his name, such as Niji yam flour, Niji garri, Niji fufu, Niji vita, etc. which are available in markets and malls across the country.

    The ‘uncowed’ milkman: The Economist of London after an interview with Alhaji Muhammad D. Abubakar in his Kano farm, it typically, titled the story ‘uncowed’. Such is the impact Abubakar is making with his L&Z Farms Limited in Kano. According to him, he left his bank job a few years ago to establish his dairy farm. And till today, his is the only full process diary farm in Nigeria which produces fresh milk.

    Successful and self-assured, Abubakar dropped a few, shall we say, verbal bombshells which had the large hall in disarray. One, he said 70 per cent of the powdered milk we have been lapping up in this country is not consumed anywhere else on the globe because they are infused with fat and used only as additive in manufacturing.

    Two, but here is the banger, he told us that MOST OF THE SO-CALLED POWEDERED MILK CONSUMED BY NIGERIANS CAN CAUSE CANCER. He would not name any brands but challenged the foods, drug and consumer agencies to run their tests and disprove him.

    Three, he told us so many other things we did not know. The so-called Fulani herdsmen he said do not actually need to move about or stay in large ranches for that matter. They wander about out of survival instincts. If they were aggregated into small cooperatives and there was a sure market for their products, there won’t be any need for them to ‘suffer’ so much wandering about.

    He continues: “If there were large dairy farms and meat processing factories that are off-takers of their products they would organise themselves around their living quarters and neighbourhoods. It is about creating viable value chains.”

    To drive home his point, he made us to understand that milk is better taken fresh and in liquid form; that is what obtains in other parts of the world except Nigeria. His fresh milk can be found in supermarkets in major cities of the country. He is not shy to say he has become successful from producing and selling milk in Nigeria, a feat no other firm has achieved.

    His company is assessed by the international accounting firm, Price Waterhouse Coopers and at least three multinational companies have applied to partner him. Just like what our leaders are wont to do, foreign companies (investors) come down to Nigeria to seek him out.

    Lastly, L&Z Farms runs on generator for 24 hours because of the nature of its products (fresh milk, yoghurt, cheese and chickens) which need to be refrigerated all the time; he has never borrowed a dime from any bank nor enjoyed any government financing. He urged Nigerian professional to take the huge advantages in agribusiness, especially at the processing end.

    Pretty Miss Farmer: This is the moniker by which Ms Mosun Umoru is commonly known by today. And she is indeed beautiful – tall, delicate and finely slender, any man would want to follow her to the farm if that is what it takes! She is the managing director of Harvesters Farms Limited in Ile Ife, Osun State. A 3000-acre farm city, it is an integrated farm that embodies many agric chains – from production to the dining table. Numerous processed products from the farm which include garri, rice, etc, are already in supermarkets in the country.

    She is hands-on, being able not only to drive her own tractors but she can maintain them as well. A graduate of Lagos State University and Stanford in the USA, she has created the very important though intangible advantage of making agriculture look cool to Nigerian youths who think agric is dirty and not ‘lucrative’.

    PMB’s Agric Promotion Policy (APP): So many other speakers spoke at the NGE conference including the managing director of the Bank of Agriculture and many agric commissioners, but these three stood out and made huge impact. One had expected the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development would have stormed the venue to sell its new strategy document released in June, but that was not to be.

    It is a story that would be told here another day soon. Suffice to say that it is a better articulated work compared to the Agric Transformation Agenda of the last administration. But articulation can be very cheap when put beside implementation.

    Back to the top, Nigeria’s agribusiness today is like a whole barbequed elephant: so gargantuan, so sumptuous yet so dauntingly offensive. How would you approach your elephant?

     

    The Imo conundrums

    Last week on this portion of space, one had interrogated the rationale for the deprecatingly novel three-day work week being mooted in Imo State. It is bad enough that the state’s civil service had been in the doldrums in this dispensation; to now design a lackadaisical work regime is to finally bury the bureaucracy. Perhaps the government may wish to completely do away with the civil service; whereupon we shall have the 8th wonder of the modern world in Imo State.

    Passing through the streets of Owerri, Imo capital last weekend, it is apparent that a hurricane had wreaked havoc on some major streets. Orlu road, Okigwe road and Mbaise road were troubling spectacles with wailing and mourning on the trail of the whirlwind.

    Now these roads were freshly revamped and dualised, but the governor is said to want make them eight-lane roads. Well the motive maybe noble, but eight-lane roads through the city cannot be the priority of a state that cannot pay its workers. Especially if we remember that many inter-state roads in Nigeria are still two-lane. Thus, knocking down shops, offices and buildings without compensation and in a time of hunger borders on callousness. Worrisome signs indeed.

  • Death Wish

    Death Wish

    Circuses are noted for featuring outrageous stunts. But this one involving an elephant and a performer entertaining audiences at the Award Gala of the 38th International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo recently, certainly pushes the envelope. There’s no room for error or the man underneath the hoof would be squashed. But then men would go to any length just to earn a living. Photo: Getty Images

  • Elephant and Castle

    Elephant and Castle

    (The political economy of royal succession)

    Just in case you are thinking of the huge and sprawling shopping complex to the South east of metropolitan London, this is not about shopping. Or rather let us just say that this is about shopping for a president in a royal jungle. It is about the political economy of succession in an animal farm. All animals are equal, but some animals are truly more equal than others.

    Sorry folks, we have to return to the feral and furry realm of animals once more. A few weeks back, we had thought that we were done with animal tales. But there are compelling reasons to return to the magic world of crawlies and good old Comrade Napoleon. This is what happens when the tools of conventional Political Science fail dismally to explain or grasp the dynamics of an unfurling political drama.

    Conventional Political Science rests on a set of stable variables for its analytical validity and integrity. To a large extent, you can predict the outcome of the inevitable collision of human and social forces. After all, when you have eliminated all that is impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth, to appropriate the great Sherlock Holmes. But in the post-colonial jungle, nothing is set and everything is variable. It is the ultimate nightmare of the political scientist.

    You would have thought that only a year after the last presidential election and given the dire and fraught situation of the country, a nasty succession battle would be the last thing on the mind of our political class. You would have thought that amidst country-wide social unrest and given the fact that the north of the nation has virtually imploded politically and economically from the Boko Haram scourge, presidential election would be the last thing on the mind of politicians.

    You would have thought that the conventional wisdom is to fix what is broken first before deciding who should handle it. But you are profoundly mistaken. This is Nigeria, Blackman’s own country. And who would have thought that at this particular moment the Jonathan presidency would come to resemble the Yar’Adua presidency in its inert and futile probing like a stalled caterpillar and its mix of political and physiological ailments? It is all beyond our human ken. It points at some malignant tricks of some powerful occult forces.

    If anybody had thought that the next presidential election or the impending succession battle would be fought over the Boko Haram plague or how to secure the political stability of the nation by redesigning its grand architecture, they had better perish the thought. A plantain plantation or Banana Republic does not require architectonic wonder. Just allow the oil to flow and all will be well.

    It may be an economy based on extractive predation, but it is an economy all the same. After all there is demand and there is supply, which is the first law of economics. Secure the oil rig first and the electoral rigging can come later. This is the political economy of royal succession in an animal farm.

    Last week, there were some significant moves on the chessboard which foreshadow a great battle of will and wits in the coming months. It points towards another epic succession battle. It is a play of giants and both the grass and the grassroots are already trembling. Against the selectorate, the electorate have no chance. The kingmakers only vote after the king has been chosen for them. This past week, the elephant rumbled and the castle quaked as if it has suffered a tectonic concussion. Let us return to the elephant and the castle.

    With its mammoth brains, the elephant is gifted with phenomenal memory. It neither forgives nor forgets. Its powers of photographic recall are a tad short of the miraculous. It remembers human faces and scant topographic features. It stalks those who have attempted to harm it with chilling resolve. It often lies in wait for those who would ambush it. When roused to fury and indignation, the elephant is a truly formidable picture of elemental rage and umbrage, tearing at and pulling out everything in sight and out of sight. Its capacity for absorbing punishment is legendary and even in death—as the Yoruba will attest—the skull of an elephant is no luggage for children.

    In anger and angst, not even the castle is safe and secure from the elephant, more so when the elephant itself has sojourned twice in the castle. A bid to secure permanent residency met with massive popular discontent in which the earth quaked with towering indignation and disgust. The elephant retreated in shame and misery. But it has not forgotten old business or forgiven old businessmen. In military parlance, it is known as discreet evacuation of troops while awaiting reinforcement.

    Last week, Nigeria’s surviving pachyderm from the Jurassic Age, the irrepressible and inevitable General Olusegun Obasanjo, finally roused himself to political battle but from the economic trenches. With well-controlled indignation and in an act of political marksmanship quite stunning for a man of his advance age, Obasanjo took the economic policy of his political protégé to the cleaners. The proposed introduction of the 5,000 naira mega-bill, he averred, was not only going to further compound the economic miseries of Nigerians, it was bound to fuel massive inflation.

    All hell was let loose at the castle. This was the political equivalent of Pearl Harbour when the Japanese suddenly overwhelmed the imperial might of America. You would have thought that as a distinguished member of the Council of States and Jonathan’s political benefactor and godfather, Obasanjo had a safe and secure communication channel, a hotline as they say, to communicate his misgivings to the presidency. But this is what late M.K.O Abiola famously described as “high-wire politics”.

    A succession war is in full swing. The elephant has bared its battle-tested trunk. Knowing fully well that transformation is the kernel of Jonathan’s message and self-declared mission, and knowing fully well that a sound economic policy is the heart of transformation, the great elephant has wrapped its trunk around the presidency’s soft and septic underbelly.

    This is a textbook military operation, a bold Panzer strike at the jugular before the mopping up operation. Once Jonathan is rendered combat-ineffective, it will be a question of time before his limping presidency is taken out of contention. Obasanjo is a past master of the politics of delegitimation. His artillery bombardment of Babangida’s “deficits of honour, credibility and integrity” prepared the ground for the Minna General’s crucial lapse of concentration and hurried exit from power.

    The same gambit led to the eventual unraveling of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, General Mohamadu Buhari and lately the Yar’Adua presidency. In the particular case of Alhaji Shagari, Obasanjo gave a damning and devastating critique towards the end. When the Daily Times deliberately published a garbled and mischievous version, the irate general sent a blistering rejoinder. Abacha who could read the game very well swiftly impounded him, but this did not prevent the goggled one from meeting a similar fate.

    For months, there have been rumours of a final and terminal parting of way between godfather and godson. It was deliberately leaked to the press that Obasanjo was eyeing a Sule Lamido/ Rotimi Amaechi ticket. This was swiftly and hurriedly denied. The stinging economic rebuke is the clearest indication so far that that the Jonathan administration is an object of stringent scrutiny by Nigeria’s power mafia and the report card may not be too flattering.

    Predictably, the presidency has been placed at the equivalent of a war footing. Presidential canine sentries simply tore into Obasanjo. There were even echoes of Michael Okhai Akhigbe’s infamous put-down of the old warhorse as a frustrated farmer. Leading the pack of hounds is Doyin Okupe who ironically was Obasanjo’s former spokesperson. With patronizing glee, Okupe dismissed his former boss as a private citizen who is entitled to his own views. One can almost hear the bellicose medico smacking his lips in relish. It all recalls a passage from Job: “My desire is that mine enemy hath writ a book”.

    But the icing on the cake of insolence goes to Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the feisty Central Bank Governor. Virtually dismissing Obasanjo as an economic illiterate, Sanusi, with caustic severity, added that the old war veteran may be a successful farmer but he is a bad economist. The main plank of Sanusi’s diatribe was that it was Obasanjo himself who had introduced mega-bill currencies into the Nigerian economy.

    Yet in the very next breath, and in patent self-contradiction, Sanusi added that Obasanjo’s introduction of mega-bills did not lead to inflation due to “prudent fiscal and monetary policy”. Does that not mean that in spite of himself, Obasanjo is not a bad economist after all? In any case, the Central Bank guru has not told us how the current massive run on the naira through various sinister scams and the Sanusi-endorsed unjust taxation of the poor called subsidy removal will not eventuate in printing more and higher megawatts naira thus fuelling more tacit devaluation and inflation.

    As it is often the case with Lamido Sanusi, the ease, fluency and facility of delivery seem to have got in the way of logic and deep reflection. In Nigerian officialdom it is not a crime to speak before thinking. Yet it is quite unlikely that these vitriolic denunciations could have passed without some tacit endorsement from the presidential bunker.

    The elephant has the castle within its rifle sight. But the castle is unmoved and unmoving. It all points at a nasty roforofo fight or what the Yoruba call yanponyanrin. The old general may be trying to return to his old political base. But for once in his career, he might have made a fatal political miscalculation with Jonathan. This is because other unstable variables might have crept into the equation. The chap from Otueke is unlikely to go down lightly and meekly.

    (First published in April, 2012)

  • Elephant and Castle

    Elephant and Castle

    (The political economy of royal succession)

     

    Just in case you are thinking of the huge and sprawling shopping complex to the South east of metropolitan London, this is not about shopping. Or rather let us just say that this is about shopping for a president in a royal jungle. It is about the political economy of succession in an animal farm. All animals are equal, but some animals are truly more equal than others.

    Sorry folks, we have to return to the feral and furry realm of animals once more. A few weeks back, we had thought that we were done with animal tales. But there are compelling reasons to return to the magic world of crawlies and good old Comrade Napoleon. This is what happens when the tools of conventional Political Science fail dismally to explain or grasp the dynamics of an unfurling political drama.

    Conventional Political Science rests on a set of stable variables for its analytical validity and integrity. To a large extent, you can predict the outcome of the inevitable collision of human and social forces. After all, when you have eliminated all that is impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth, to appropriate the great Sherlock Holmes. But in the post-colonial jungle, nothing is set and everything is variable. It is the ultimate nightmare of the political scientist.

    You would have thought that only a year after the last presidential election and given the dire and fraught situation of the country, a nasty succession battle would be the last thing on the mind of our political class. You would have thought that amidst country-wide social unrest and given the fact that the north of the nation has virtually imploded politically and economically from the Boko Haram scourge, presidential election would be the last thing on the mind of politicians.

    You would have thought that the conventional wisdom is to fix what is broken first before deciding who should handle it. But you are profoundly mistaken. This is Nigeria, Blackman’s own country. And who would have thought that at this particular moment the Jonathan presidency would come to resemble the Yar’Adua presidency in its inert and futile probing like a stalled caterpillar and its mix of political and physiological ailments? It is all beyond our human ken. It points at some malignant tricks of some powerful occult forces.

    If anybody had thought that the next presidential election or the impending succession battle would be fought over the Boko Haram plague or how to secure the political stability of the nation by redesigning its grand architecture, they had better perish the thought. A plantain plantation or Banana Republic does not require architectonic wonder. Just allow the oil to flow and all will be well.

    It may be an economy based on extractive predation, but it is an economy all the same. After all there is demand and there is supply, which is the first law of economics. Secure the oil rig first and the electoral rigging can come later. This is the political economy of royal succession in an animal farm.

    Last week, there were some significant moves on the chessboard which foreshadow a great battle of will and wits in the coming months. It points towards another epic succession battle. It is a play of giants and both the grass and the grassroots are already trembling. Against the selectorate, the electorate have no chance. The kingmakers only vote after the king has been chosen for them. This past week, the elephant rumbled and the castle quaked as if it has suffered a tectonic concussion. Let us return to the elephant and the castle.

    With its mammoth brains, the elephant is gifted with phenomenal memory. It neither forgives nor forgets Its powers of photographic recall are a tad short of the miraculous. It remembers human faces and scant topographic features. It stalks those who have attempted to harm it with chilling resolve. It often lies in wait for those who would ambush it. When roused to fury and indignation, the elephant is a truly formidable picture of elemental rage and umbrage, tearing at and pulling out everything in sight and out of sight. Its capacity for absorbing punishment is legendary and even in death—as the Yoruba will attest—the skull of an elephant is no luggage for children.

    In anger and angst, not even the castle is safe and secure from the elephant, more so when the elephant itself has sojourned twice in the castle. A bid to secure permanent residency met with massive popular discontent in which the earth quaked with towering indignation and disgust. The elephant retreated in shame and misery. But it has not forgotten old business or forgiven old businessmen. In military parlance, it is known as discreet evacuation of troops while awaiting reinforcement.

    Last week, Nigeria’s surviving pachyderm from the Jurassic Age, the irrepressible and inevitable General Olusegun Obasanjo, finally roused himself to political battle but from the economic trenches. With well-controlled indignation and in an act of political marksmanship quite stunning for a man of his advance age, Obasanjo took the economic policy of his political protégé to the cleaners. The proposed introduction of the 5,000 naira mega-bill, he averred, was not only going to further compound the economic miseries of Nigerians, it was bound to fuel massive inflation.

    All hell was let loose at the castle. This was the political equivalent of Pearl Harbour when the Japanese suddenly overwhelmed the imperial might of America. You would have thought that as a distinguished member of the Council of States and Jonathan’s political benefactor and godfather, Obasanjo had a safe and secure communication channel, a hotline as they say, to communicate his misgivings to the presidency. But this is what late M.K.O Abiola famously described as “high-wire politics”.

    A succession war is in full swing. The elephant has bared its battle-tested trunk. Knowing fully well that transformation is the kernel of Jonathan’s message and self-declared mission, and knowing fully well that a sound economic policy is the heart of transformation, the great elephant has wrapped its trunk round the presidency’s soft and septic underbelly.

    This is a textbook military operation, a bold Panzer strike at the jugular before the mopping up operation. Once Jonathan is rendered combat-ineffective, it will be a question of time before his limping presidency is taken out of contention. Obasanjo is a past master of the politics of delegitimation. His artillery bombardment of Babangida’s “deficits of honour, credibility and integrity” prepared the ground for the Minna General’s crucial lapse of concentration and hurried exit from power.

    The same gambit led to the eventual unravelling of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, General Mohamadu Buhari and lately the Yar’Adua presidency. In the particular case of Alhaji Shagari, Obasanjo gave a damning and devastating critique towards the end. When the Daily Times deliberately published a garbled and mischievous version, the irate general sent a blistering rejoinder. Abacha who could read the game very well swiftly impounded him, but this did not prevent the goggled one from meeting a similar fate.

    For months, there have been rumours of a final and terminal parting of way between godfather and godson. It was deliberately leaked to the press that Obasanjo was eyeing a Sule Lamido/ Rotimi Amaechi ticket. This was swiftly and hurriedly denied. The stinging economic rebuke is the clearest indication so far that that the Jonathan administration is an object of stringent scrutiny by Nigeria’s power mafia and the report card may not be too flattering.

    Predictably, the presidency has been placed at the equivalent of a war footing. Presidential canine sentries simply tore into Obasanjo. There were even echoes of Michael Okhai Akhigbe’s infamous put-down of the old warhorse as a frustrated farmer.

    Leading the pack of hounds is Doyin Okupe who ironically was Obasanjo’s former spokesperson. With patronizing glee, Okupe dismissed his former boss as a private citizen who is entitled to his own views. One can almost hear the bellicose medico smacking his lips in relish. It all recalls a passage from Job: “My desire is that mine enemy hath writ a book”.

    But the icing on the cake of insolence goes to Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the feisty Central Bank Governor. Virtually dismissing Obasanjo as an economic illiterate, Sanusi, with caustic severity, added that the old war veteran may be a successful farmer but he is a bad economist. The main plank of Sanusi’s diatribe was that it was Obasanjo himself who had introduced mega-bill currencies into the Nigerian economy.

    Yet in the very next breath, and in patent self-contradiction, Sanusi added that Obasanjo’s introduction of mega-bills did not lead to inflation due to “prudent fiscal and monetary policy”. Does that not mean that in spite of himself, Obasanjo is not a bad economist after all? In any case, the Central Bank guru has not told us how the current massive run on the naira through various sinister scams and the Sanusi-endorsed unjust taxation of the poor called subsidy removal will not eventuate in printing more and higher megawatts naira thus fuelling more tacit devaluation and inflation.

    As it is often the case with Lamido Sanusi, the ease, fluency and facility of delivery seem to have got in the way of logic and deep reflection. In Nigerian officialdom it is not a crime to speak before thinking. Yet it is quite unlikely that these vitriolic denunciations could have passed without some tacit endorsement from the presidential bunker.

    The elephant has the castle within its rifle sight. But the castle is unmoved and unmoving. It all points at a nasty roforofo fight or what the Yoruba call yanponyanrin. The old general may be trying to return to his old political base. But for once in his career, he might have made a fatal political miscalculation with Jonathan. This is because other unstable variables might have crept into the equation. The chap from Otueke is unlikely to go down lightly and meekly.