The Nation Newspaper

Tag: identity

  • Terrorism, identity and democracy

    I start  and stand  today  with  the view  that  with regard  to Democracy  one man’s  food  is another  man’s  poison.  I  also lace that with  the dictum  that a  hero  in  an environment  can  be a villain to others,  in the same environment. Given  the title  of today’s  piece  it is not difficult  to guess the events  that engaged  my thoughts  and agitated  my mind  on the world  scene in the last  week.  These  are happenings  in the world at large  that have tasked  peaceful communal  living under  democracy  as we practice  it in various  parts of the world including Nigeria.

    These events have raised serious doubts about how democracy  is getting on with the rule of law and  are challenging the virtues of tolerance, and respect for dissent which have hitherto been the main selling point of democracy as the best ideology in the world as we know it today.  It  is  not  an issue  or development  that can  be explained  away  by apologetic concepts  like the Clash  of  Civilisations  or  the End  of  History,  because  these are  issues  that  have arisen  unexpectedly  in various  parts  of  the world  seemingly  unexpectedly  but in reality  were    bound  to  happen  sooner  than  later,  given the unusual  scenarios  that  preceded  them.

    For  today’s  analysis  I will  like to give  my own  definitions  of the concepts  I  have  chosen  for discussion,  namely  Terrorism , Identity  and Democracy,  mainly  for  today’s  discussion.  Which means I cannot  be held accountable  for  any  different  meaning thereafter.  Just  like the Nigerian Chief  Justice  Fatai  Williams ruled  that his  judgement  in the infamous  two  thirds  of  13 case  cannot  be taken  as a precedent  in  one of  Nigeria’s  many post  election  cases  that  make  you  wonder if  post  election verdicts  were  about  events that happened elsewhere and  not  in Nigeria  right before  our  eyes. This is  important  to  note especially  as we  enter  the season  of  post election litigations in  Nigeria.  This  undoubtedly    is  a very  lucrative  festive season  for  the  Nigerian  legal  system  and  the  judiciary.

    Not  to  mention the  ebullient array    of  Men  In  Silk called Queen’s  Counsels  elsewhere,  but  more  famously  prodigiously known as  SANs –  Senior  Advocates  of  Nigeria  –  in  our  great nation. This  then  is the background  of  my  conceptual definitions  today.

    I  define  terrorism not  only as killing of innocent  people  for whatever  causes  or motive  but  all  violations of set  rules  and values  of  democracy by  force  within  the state or  polity. I define Identity  as the nationality or  tribe  which  sets  one set of  people apart from another within the nation  state.  I  also define  democracy  as  government  of the people,  by the people and  for  the people  flowing from  free  and  fair  elections.

    Given  these  definitions  then  let  me highlight  the incidents to illustrate  them.  The first  is the prevalent  charge of militarization  of the last 2019  elections in  Nigeria  and the introduction  of the dubious  terminology  of’  inconclusive elections ‘ in many states  of  the Federation.  The  second  was the slaughter  of innocent  people in Europe  namely  New  Zealand and Netherlands  and the use  of such  tragic  events  for propaganda  and  electoral  campaign  by  Turkey’s  President Tayyip Erdogan. The  third  is the state of  leadership of  Nigeria’s  temple of  justice, the Judiciary as  we  enter  the era  of  post  election  litigation, after  surviving  or sailing    through  the much feared  era  of  post election  violence ,  literally  effortlessly.

    Let  me state  clearly  that    I  put  militarization  of politics, especially  elections  on the same pedestal  as terrorism by  Boko Haram  or  ISIS.  I  hold  the same view  on inconclusive elections when  it is  apparent  one side or  the other  is on the verge of  winning.  This  is because all involve the dehumanization  of  human  beings. One  – that    is terrorism – does  this  bloodily  and with blood  letting . The other  does it by killing the  voters    right  of  choice  of  those to give power to rule them. Both  castrate  human  values    and  make  nonsense of  the rule  of  law  and a mockery  of  democracy.  In  the last election  it  was apparent  that the state  was being  used  against the state in the deployment  of soldiers  to  guarantee  the security of  the elections  so  that people  can  go  out  to  vote. They went  out in the presidential  elections and stayed indoors in the state assembly  and  governorship  elections. That  is  not how democracies  work  and Nigeria  is  Africa’s  biggest  democracy.

    In  Rivers  state the Army  issued  a statement  to  accuse INEC  of bias.  It  must  have  been  hard  pressed to  do  that  and  the statement  was  bitter  and  had  a tinge  of betrayal  by INEC. That  incident  should  be probed  further  to know who  betrayed democracy and if  the referee, which  is  INEC  took  sides  in the election.  Such  actions  are  subversive  of  democracy and  are treasonable  as elections,  free  and fair,  are  the source of legitimacy, which is the end product  of  democracy  and which becomes  questionable when  elections are not free  and  fair  or are  abandoned to favor one group  of  contestants  or  another.

    Voters  in any  democracy should  not  be intimidated  or deterred from  coming to  polling  booths.  Such  actions are  as bad  as plain  rigging  and stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  with terrorism in devaluing  and  dehumanizing  voters and  humanity in the march towards  inequality  and  justice  which  are  the essence of any democracy.

    The  killing  of  worshippers in two  mosques  in  New  Zealand and three people  in a tram  in Utrecht in the  Netherlands  are  both tragic  and  condemnable  and the  leaders in both nations have shown that such  acts  are  not  part  of their  culture  or  way  of  life.  But  the truth  is that  the issue  of  identity  and  nationalism are  behind  both  events.  The  killers  are  really  mad  but they  are basically  mad  at  the influx  of  migrants  into their environment.  Such  killings are totally  uncalled  for  as  voters have a right  and duty  to vote  out pro or  anti migration  political parties  at  elections when  they  become due  and  that explains why new  parties  are  coming  to  parliaments  based  on these  anti immigration  concern  of  those  who think  that the EU  is for Europeans and  no one  else.  Yet  it is equally  objectionable the way  the Turkish  president  is  politicizing  the  issue  and making it look like  a religious  warfare. That  is blatant escalation of  religious  hatred  and is  dangerous  for  world peace  and  Turkey’s  Erdogan  should  be called  to order in the comity  of  nations.

    Thirdly  one  cannot  but  wonder  how  the judiciary  would handle our post  election  petitions  and litigations  when  it  is virtually  headless.  The  Acting  CJ  reportedly  defended his appointment  by saying  he was right  to make himself  available  for swearing  in because  he  is acting  and the Substantive CJ is just on  suspension.  But  the suspended CJ is  also  on trial  for  false declaration  of  assets. Yet  justice  on political  petitions  need a transparently  free  and fair  environment  to  thrive  and justice  must  not only be done  but  be seen  to  have been  done.

    For  now  given  the configuration of  leadership  of  our judiciary in this    election    petition  era,  one  can  only  repeat that  ancient  saying  that ‘the hood  does  not  make the monk. ‘ Which    really    is  a great  pity.  Once  again, Long live the Federal Republic  of  Nigeria.

  • The national question of identity

    The national question of identity

    Title: Where Are You From?
    Author: Lola Akande
    Reviewer: Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
    No of pages: 306
    Publishers: Kraftgriots, Kraft Books Limited, Ibadan
    Year of Publication: 2018

    Restructuring is all the rage in the Nigerian political space. Prominent Nigerian politicians always mouth the ideals of “One Nigeria” but they happen to be the greatest apostles of clannishness, nepotism, prebendalism and all the sundry isms that divide the people. Being a so-called indigene trumps being a bona-fide Nigerian citizen in many parts of the country. It is indeed a daring venture by the irrepressible novelist Lola Akande that she presciently puts Nigeria’s fault-lines on the front burner in her novel Where Are You From? From the first sentence – “Optimism was my friend” – Lola Akande presents a plucky protagonist, Anjola Adeniyi, who dares to engage her beloved country Nigeria in all multiform dimensions.

    A sprightly graduate of English from the University of Ilorin in her native Kwara State, Anjola Adeniyi embarks on an eventful National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme in Anambra State. The challenges of the Nigerian ethnic mix of Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo are sucked into the demanding whirlpool of survival in a dire landscape.

    Starting from her place of birth, the identity question rankles given the history of Ilorin, and indeed, Kwara, in the 19th century when Afonja “liaised with the Fulanis, who were Jihadists led by Alimi, to help him fight Oyo in revenge for his technical expulsion from the Oyo dynasty… After killing the Afonja, the Jihadists fully established the first administration in Ilorin in 1837 and began to overrun, one by one, all the towns and villages in Kwara.” It is thus incumbent on the young one to ask the father: “What about us, Father? What and who are we? Fulani? Yoruba? What?”

    The identity issue cuts across the Nigerian terrain. People must perforce change their bona-fides to fit into the needs of divergent moments. For instance, Anjola’s boyfriend and eventual husband, Ifeanyi, Ify for short, and his entire family, originally from the Igbo state of Anambra but born and bred in Jos, Plateau, “had to hide their links with Anambra to be approved. They were educated to believe that they had to renounce their father’s native name and state of origin and acquire Plateau State Citizenship certificates before they could advance their interests. They had also had to discard their Igbo names – at least officially – and adopt Plateau-sounding English or Biblical names.” She thus becomes Mrs. Anjola Jeremiah upon her marriage.

    In the hunt for a job in Kaduna, Anjola is made to undergo the problematic process of going to the Kaduna High Court to swear to an affidavit of Change of Name, thus becoming Angela Adnoyi of Zango Kataf in Kaduna instead of Angela Adeniyi of Kwara! She discovers that she even needs to go further by claiming to become a Muslim with hijab to be fully accepted, whence her adoption of the name Hajia Zainab Abubakar! Of course the move goes awry as her tribal marks easily give her away. She confesses to coming from Kwara State and it is put her face thusly: “You are obviously Yoruba by descent.” She is compassionately not arrested and prosecuted for forgery but gets this advice: “Go o Ibadan. I have it on good authority that Oduduwa International is on recruitment drive and will hold a selection interview in December.” Getting to Ibadan to vie for the job she gets this ouster: “This is Oduduwa International. This interview is for applicants from the western region, not for northerners.” She is dismissed as an alien, only for the outraged Anjola to cry out: “You called me an alien in my country?”

    Anjola can only wallow in lament: “I can’t find a job, Father. Nobody seems to know where to place Kwara in the comity of states in Nigeria; and it tears my heart to think that I’m lost in a country of my birth, I’m a complete stranger in my own country.”

    The novel Where Are You From? by Lola Akande spans the period of July 1985 to September 1998. Divided into five sections, the first four sections are narrated in the first person point-of-view by Anjola while Part Five is rendered in the omniscient view. The General Ibrahim Babangida coup of 1985 and the embargo on employment somewhat shape the life of Anjola Adeniyi.

    A patriotic Nigerian per excellence, Anjola dares all travails to forge ahead with her inter-ethnic marriage to her Igbo lover Ify despite the evil machinations of Ify’s elder brother Cajethan. She triumphs in the end as a teacher of the community in the dear “home” of Magaji Njeri in Kaduna State.

    The schisms in Nigeria point to the fact that Lola Akande’s Where Are You From? needs to be made recommended reading for students and political leaders alike across board. In getting married to Ify the Nigeria of Anjola’s dream runs thus: “In my mind’s eyes, I saw how our union would offer hope and engender greater harmony between our different ethnic identities just as the marriage between the parents of Maj-Gen Ike Omar Sanda Nwachukwu did. Nwachukwu was born to an Igbo father and a Hausa-Fulani mother and he grew up in Lagos. In no distant future, Ify’s blood and mine would form a formidable connection and we would have adorable children who would be true specimens of Nigeria. Through our children, a new generation of Nigerians with a common identity would evolve and it would be difficult for people to take up arms against one another.”

  • Identity management solution coming

    A leading provider of identity management solutions, SEAMFIX,  plans to unveil an innovative data management solution named BioRegistra.

    It said the solution is a state of the art Know Your Customer (KYC) as a service online platform developed primarily for individuals and business owners with the aim of ensuring they are able to capture data, store the data, and have access to the data at any time.

    The solution allows a fully automated process that ensures seamless execution of all KYC business processes, thus enabling faster customer on-boarding and increasing customer satisfaction.

    Its Managing Director, Chimezie Emewulu, described solution as a game changer in data capture and management. He said: “With BioRegistra, the difficulty associated with knowing and identifying your customers is a thing of the past. The platform enables you to capture and store your customer’s KYC details and allows you access and to view the captured information or data whenever required. Your customer in this context is not limited to any sector.”

    According to him, the solution has an intelligent quarantine engine designed to detect fraudulent and fictitious records and prevents them from being processed by running the records through security and inbuilt validation checks.

  • Identity crisis in Nigeria

    Linguists have identified about 400 distinct languages in Nigeria. Almost three quarters of these languages are found on the Jos Plateau, Southern Zaria of Kaduna State, Bauchi and Adamawa hills and upper Benue River Valley as well as the Cross River valley and Middle Niger River valley. The area so described approximates the Middle Belt region of Nigeria. This is the region of Nigeria’s ethnic minorities. There are of course ethnic minorities in the Southern part of Nigeria especially in the so-called South-south region. Apart from these minorities who together constitute substantial component of Nigeria are the so-called majority groups like the Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba. This group were regarded as the tripodal foundation on which the Nigerian house stood. The federal architectural design for the Nigerian house was built on the fact of this triune nature of Nigeria.

    For a long time this was the accepted reality until the so-called minorities in the three regions even before the exit of the British began to agitate for their own home rule or for special institutions to be created to facilitate their quick economic and educational development.

    The Action Group of Chief Obafemi Awolowo was the first to recognize the potency of this ethnic force by embracing the creation of states as the party’s strategy of winning power at the centre. Chief Awolowo recognized that the only way he could come to power was through a coalition of the various minority groups presumably under the leadership of his largely Yoruba party. The constitutional angle to this strategy was fiscal federalism, meaning a loose federation in which each federating unit managed its financial resources but contributing enough to the centre to run common services like defence, aviation, communication, transportation and currency and no more.

    The other two main parties, the NCNC (National Council of Nigerian Citizens) led by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and the NPC (Northern People’s Congress) led by Alhaji  Ahmadu Bello were opposed to creation of states for their  own strategic reasons.  Ahmadu Bello did not want the North, his base of power split. Azikiwe for the same reason wanted the East to remain undivided. He also was opposed to the federal structure of government preferring a unitary constitution as a way of overcoming ethnic divisions in Nigeria. Even though Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello were ideological enemies, they however were staunch supporters of fiscal federalism. Federalism was of course more realistic and Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello wanted control of the agricultural wealth of their regions whereas Azikiwe who led the agriculturally poor Eastern Region wanted Unitarian structure so that the East could benefit from a collective pool of the national wealth.

    This was the political setting that took us to independence in 1960. The story of how the northern and the eastern political forces combined to finish off Awolowo and to send him to jail exploiting the division in the Action Group is well known. During the Action Group crisis and the weakening of the Western Region, the Mid-west Region was created in 1963 from the West while unlike what Awolowo advocated which was, contemporaneous creation of state’s in the three regions, the remaining regions remained intact.

    The civil war gave Awolowo opportunity to see the creation of states as part of the strategy of winning the civil war and perhaps to realize his long held view on state creation. Thus the 12 states structure under Yakubu Gowon gave the minorities in the Eastern Region and in the North something to fight and to die for. Unfortunately, instead of keeping this 12 states structure, each succeeding military ruler has further divided the country into small and unviable states arbitrarily and without rhyme or reason and sometimes to satisfy the desires of those in power. We now have 774 local government areas and 36 states not counting Abuja which is a state but not in name. The result of this is that almost 80 percent of national resources are used in administrative costs of payment of salaries and allowances and humongous payment of federal legislators. There is no money left to maintain nationwide infrastructure of roads, rail, and other infrastructure such as ports, air ports and other means of communication and aviation.  Money so spent on administration would have provided jobs for our teeming population of youths who have now been mobilized into ethnic armies and movements by charlatans looking for what to eat. School dropouts are issuing statements on behalf of nations like the Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa while responsible people for fear for their lives are keeping quiet.

    There is nothing wrong in being patriotic and embracing one’s ethnicity but not to the extent of hating and denigrating fellow countrymen and women. It is my considered opinion that it is the dwindling opportunities for employment that is fuelling the ethnic fissiparous tendencies in the country. It is idle hands that the devil finds work for. It is the frustration that nothing is working and nobody is trying to find solutions to pressing problems that is making people to go back to their ethnic comfort zones. The question is where are the Nigerians and how do we build a country we can all call our own?  Karl Marx is right when he said economics is at the basis of all relationship. You are a good father when you can provide for your family. A country is worth dying for when that country can provide for you and for your descendants. We all want to live and provide for ourselves in a country which has a future for our families. In the absence of this, we look for alternatives. The lack of opportunities and the level of poverty in the land is driving us to the edge of the precipice.

    Looking at Nigeria in historic perspectives shows us that we are not as different from each other as we think. Going from the South-west, the Yoruba has always shared historical ties with the Nupe, Borgawa,, Kanuri, Igalla, the pre-Fulani Gobirawa in the north and the Edo in the south. The Edo had historical relations with the Igbo in the western periphery of their land. The Edo have some relations with the Nupe just as Igalla have with the Nupe. The entire Benue valley was influenced by the Jukun. Sometimes Jukun influence spread to the Hausa states. Hausa land looked eastwards to the Kanuri for enlightenment.  In other words there were chains connecting all our people in the distant past before the advent of British colonialism. We may be speaking different languages today but most of the languages spoken in Nigeria belong to the Kwa group of the Niger-Congo family of languages.

    The material culture of the Nigerian area as seen in the Nok, Ife, Ugbo Ukwu, Benin, Idah, and Bida leaves no doubt about the cultural sameness and uniformity of the Nigerian area before the advent of the British. The concentration of unique African culture of dance, song, cuisine, couture and civilizations in the area at the central Atlantic and at the trigger of the African continent imposes some kind of mission on this area in the leadership of the African people. If all this is true, why then do we have the problems of forging a nation out of the multitude of tongues it has pleased the Almighty to endow us with?

    What we need to do is re-engineering of the country to make it workable. The centre is too strong. We must devolve power to the regions whatever the number of them we collectively agree to have. We must free the resources of this country from over-administration and channel them to physical development and industrialization so as to create jobs for our people.  We must embrace the principle and practice of fiscal and cooperative federalism. If people have jobs and they can fully realize their potentialities, it will not matter to them who is president or prime minister. In any case, the arena of politics should be shifted to the regions while the centre will simply manage affairs collectively assigned to it. We spend too much time on politics and little time for development. It is not so in serious countries like Japan, Germany and Canada to mention a few.

    Whatever we finally agree to do in this country, we must realize that the forces and facts of history and geography have made it impossible for us to separate. We cannot change our neighbours so it is futile to be talking about separation. If we are not happy about our current political structure, we must agree to reconfigure it and this must not be done by threats and blackmail. We are and remain Nigerians.

  • Coronation Merchant Bank unveils new identity

    Coronation Merchant Bank unveils new identity

    Coronation Merchant Bank Limited has unveiled its new corporate identity. The lender’s new brand was to reflect its strategic direction to meet the market’s future needs.

    The bank is an emerging merchant banking franchise with industry-leading financial stability indicators.

    Far more than just a logo, the new corporate identity was designed to communicate its vision to be Africa’s premier investment bank, ambition and inner strength.

    The lion, a core feature in the design, is a widely-recognised symbol of Africa, typifying courage, leadership and intelligence.

    These are attributes the bank must demonstrate to achieve its vision and become a respected brand within the African sub-region.

    Coronation MB was established to fill the gap in a long-underserved market segment, seeking to address the need for long term capital across key sectors of the economy. The provision of affordable, longer term financing is critical for sustainable economic growth and its absence is one of the key challenges African entrepreneurs and corporations.

    Commenting on the new corporate identity, Managing Director/CEO, Coronation Merchant Bank, Abubakar Jimoh, said: “There is a clear market demand for more sophisticated banking services from Nigeria’s top-tier corporates. Coronation Merchant Bank will focus on bringing world-class advisory services, accompanied by innovative products and services to the sub-region. It will deepen and broaden economic growth over the next decade, whilst remaining committed to our values of strong governance and transparency.”

    Chairman, Coronation Merchant Bank, Babatunde Folawiyo stated: “The transition to a new brand, with a broader and more strategic focus, is a major milestone for our organisation as a full service merchant bank capable of supporting the wider economy, and with a balance sheet to support its ambitions.”

  • ‘Fidelity Bank’s new identity strengthens its transformations’

    ‘Fidelity Bank’s new identity strengthens its transformations’

    The Chef Executive Officer of Fidelity Bank, Mr. Nnamdi Okonkwo has described the banks’s new identify as a reinforcement of its overall transformation.

    He spoke while receiving the eight awards won by the bank’s ‘Tough Job’ campaign at the 2016 Lagos Advertising and Ideas Festival (LAIF).

    ‘Tough Job’ won Silver for Radio, another Silver for Film, a Bronze for Best Use of Production Design & Art Illustration. The Bank’s logo  took home a Bronze in the Radio category.

    Fidelity Bank’s (Our Word) campaign won Bronze in Radio under the Investment & Other Financials products category.  ‘Tough Job’ picked bronze each for “Best Use of Film Editing” and Film prize, under the Bank & Investment category.

    Okonkwo, who dedicated the feat to the bank’s “esteemed customers” said: “To be recognised at LAIF validates the hard work that we have put into the development and execution of our new corporate identity”.

    He added: “The new identity reinforces its overall transformation and also strengthens its focus on the youth segment and overall service excellence. He pointed out that the lender has not only raised the bar in the  customer service delivery but also remains focused on attaining its renewed vision of becoming a vibrant and millennial brand.  We are highly delighted to share this success with our agency, even Interactive, who led the creative effort and worked with us throughout the rebranding process. “

    Produced in Nigeria, the campaign’s multi-dimensional application has been trending on the social media and other platforms. The ‘Tough Job’ campaign brings to the forefront the arduous responsibilities the Bank owes its teeming customers.

  • Redefining Nigeria’s identity

    “Man is history after his demise. Therefore, endeavour to be a pleasant history for others to read after you might have left the stage”. 

    Arab poet

    PREAMBLE

    Man is both a product and a producer of history. He lives by history and leaves history behind as his legacy at the time of his departure from this ephemeral world. This confirms the fact that man and history are like Siamese twins. The one cannot do without the other. History makes man just as man makes history. The synergy between the two makes them look like a pair of scissors in which one blade cannot effectively function without the other.

    This is a period in Nigeria when recalling history is a necessity. How did Nigeria come into being as a country and as a name? Is this name fitting and appropriate for the country that bears it? Can the name be changed and can changing it make any reasonable difference? These are some of the questions that ‘The Message’ seeks to answer today.

    Accident of history

    On January 8, 1897, an article appeared in Financial Times which suggested a name for the vast land around river Niger which had then been colonized by the Royal Niger Company on behalf of the British Empire. The suggested name was Nigeria and the author of the article was one Miss Flora Shaw, a 45-year-old journalist. She was then the colonial editor of Financial Times as well as the writer of a weekly column named ‘The Colony’ in that newspaper.

    In coining the name Nigeria, Flora Shaw logically took many facts into consideration. One: the area in question had no specific name by which it could be called other than a protectorate of the ‘Royal Niger Company’. Two: She considered an earlier suggested name ‘Central Sudan’ as an aberration since that name already belonged to an area around the Nile River occupied by a population of Black Africans now called Sudan. She equally considered the name ‘Slave Coast’ which the colonialists had attempted to give to this area as derogatory and finally settled for ‘Nigeria’, which she coined from ‘Niger Area’.

    Flora Shaw’s profile

    Born at 2, Dundas Terrace, Woolwich, England on December 19, 1852, Miss Louisa Shaw (fourth of her parent’s fourteen children) was a novelist and frontline, versatile female journalist who gained fame through her pungent analyses of African colonial economy. She was later to become ‘The Honourable Dame Flora Lugard, the wife of Frederick John Deatry Lugard of Abinger who colonised Nigeria and amalgamated its southern and northern parts in 1914.

    Flora was six years older than Frederick who was born in India on January 22, 1858. The two historic personalities married in 1902 and lived together without children for the rest of their lives.

    Historical facts

    Four historical facts are manifest here. First: the name Nigeria had come into existence far away from England and long before the country that now bears that name became a country.

    Second: the name was coined five years before Flora Shaw married Frederick Lugard. Therefore, contrary to the general erroneous belief that it was Mrs. Lugard who named our country Nigeria, Flora was Miss Shaw and not Mrs. Lugard when she coined the name.

    Third: it can be said that Nigeria came into existence through the efforts of a bachelor and a spinster who later became a couple.

    Fourth: by sheer coincidence, Nigeria’s second First Lady, Flora Azikiwe, the wife of Nigeria’s first President, shared the same first name with the wife of Lugard: FLORA.

    Lord Fredrick Lugard’s profile

    Baron Frederick Lugard was a military adventurer and an ardent administrator who played a major part in Britain’s colonial history between 1888 and 1945, serving in East Africa, West Africa, and Hong Kong. His name is particularly associated with Nigeria, where he served as High Commissioner (1900-06) as well as Governor and Governor-General (1912-19). He was knighted in 1901 and raised to the peerage in 1928.

    As at the time of Lugard’s incursion, most of the vast region of over 300,000 square miles (800,000 square km) was still unoccupied and even unexplored by Europeans. In the southern areas were mostly animists and in the northern areas was predominantly a Muslim population with big towns and large walled cities.

    Lugard’s intention

    Lugard’s intention was to merge these two areas and people of diverse cultures and spiritual inclinations together and manage them as a single people in a single nation. Within three years of his expedition, he had established a British control over the large territory by diplomacy or by swift use of his meager force.

    Although in hastening to take the major states of Kano and Sokoto, he engaged the hands of his more cautious home government, only two serious local revolts marred the widespread acceptance and cooperation that he later enjoyed. His policy was to support the existing native states and chiefdoms with their laws and their courts but at the same time forbid slave raiding and severe punishments for minor offences as well as to exercise control of central authority using the native rulers as agents. Thus, to achieve his objective, he merged the Southern part of what later became known as Nigeria with the Northern part with a tacit approval for the Christian religionists to mobilise their evangelical machinery – the Christianisation of the animist Southern part of the new colony.

    Historic marriage

    After Lugard’s historic marriage to Flora Shaw in 1902 and the latter could not stand the Nigerian climate, Lugard felt obliged to leave Africa and accept a junior position of the governorship of Hong Kong which he held from 1907 to 1912. That was like stepping down as president to accept the post of a governor which no African Head of State has ever tried even if to display statesmanship.

    And on arrival in Asia, this daring British adventurer from continued his surprising degree of success to such extent that most historians of his time became nonplused. He founded the University of Hong Kong and ensured its standardisation as well as its sustainability. Today, that University is one of the best in the Commonwealth of Nations.

    A Centenary hoax

    Ever since the exit of the British colonialists in 1960, Nigeria has remained a country without focus, despite the enormous resources at her disposal. In less than half a decade after independence, the crude hands of African inexperience had begun to show conspicuously in governance as ethnic and religious flavours started to reflect vividly in a republican ethos. Then, an insuperable mountain of corruption crept in with overwhelming tenacity on the citizenry and turned all hopes into a forlorn even till today.

    Now, after 100 years of the indigestible absurdity called merger, why does Nigeria continue to wallow hopelessly in a paroxysm of despair as the last 17 years of the so-called fourth republic has shown an unprecedented history of relentless corruption with unbridled impunity?

    As if in a nightmare, we suddenly found ourselves in a situation where figure 16 politically became higher than figure 19 and open theft was officially defined and treated as being outside the framework corruption. Billions of dollars were growing wings and flying away from our national and state treasuries through the artful pens of our so-called leaders. Thus, our foreign reserves were daily being depleted even as Legislators, Judges, Ministers and other governmental cronies began to compete with one another in living like princes and princesses under a clueless ‘Emperor’.

    A Democratic tenure

    Four years is a long period in a democratic tenure of a nation. It is long enough to lay a solid foundation for a nation. It is long enough to build a formidable edifice that can be inherited from generation to generation. If 17 years of a democratic dispensation cannot do any of these in Nigeria of today how can one be sure that a whole century will do? If a journey of one year cannot take a traveller off the spot of embarkation who says 10 years may be able to take him to his destination?

    As an OPEC country, we have abundant oil wealth but we must import refined fuel for domestic consumption from individual Nigerian refineries built outside Nigeria from which we are compelled to import and theft is not considered as part of corruption. We have a massive army of unemployed youths and we cannot provide electricity to enable them be self-employed. Yet, we are insisting that we must continue like this even as billions of dollars are being stolen daily. Where are we going from here?

    Government’s failure

    Perhaps no one in the recent past has analyzed the problem of Nigeria more succinctly than Mrs. Hillary Clinton. When she visited Nigeria in 2010  as America’s Secretary of State, she took time to speak directly with ordinary Nigerians in a ‘Town Hall’ forum. At that forum she said among other things that: “….Nigeria, Africa’s biggest energy producer and second-largest economy, “faces a threat from increasing radicalisation that needs to be addressed. And describing corruption in Nigeria as unbelievable, she reiterated that the government’s failure to deliver basic services helped to foster extremism in young people…adding that: “The failure of the Nigerian leadership over many years to respond to the legitimate needs of their own young people, to have a government that promoted a meritocracy, that really understood that democracy can’t just be given lip service, it has to be delivering services to the people. She lamented poor governance and deteriorating living conditions which she said made Nigeria’s disaffected young people ripe targets for militants looking for recruits to attack the West.

    Substantiating her assertion, Mrs. Clinton said, when she met with a group of Nigerians in the capital city of Abuja, “people were … standing and shouting about what it was like to live in a country where the elite was so dominant, where corruption was so rampant and criminality was so pervasive”. And “that”, according to her, “is an opening for extremism that offers an alternative world view”.

    Poverty knows no tribe, religion, gender or age. It cuts across all strata of human life with no exception. That was the belief that spurred one time Chinese leader, Mao Zedong, in the 1960s, to transform China into a formidable nation of today. Any country that cannot feed her people will have no moral right to urge such people to think of a solution to any problem. A hungry person is an unreasonable person.

    Obama’s advice

    In his own direct presidential address to Nigerian populace on Tuesday, March 24, 2015, the American President Barrack Obama said of tomorrow’s elections and the subsequent ones as follows: “Hello.  Today, I want to speak directly to you – the people of Nigeria.

    Nigeria is a great nation and you can be proud of the progress you’ve made.  Together, you won your independence, emerged from military rule, and strengthened democratic institutions.  You’ve strived to overcome division and to turn Nigeria’s diversity into a source of strength.  You’ve worked hard to improve the lives of your families and to build the largest economy in Africa.

    “Now you have a historic opportunity to help write the next chapter of Nigeria’s chapter of history by voting for progress or further retrogress in the upcoming elections.  For elections to be credible, they must be free, fair and peaceful.  All Nigerians must be able to cast their votes without intimidation or fear.

    “So I call on all leaders and candidates to make it clear to their supporters that violence has no place in democratic elections and that they will not incite, support or engage in any kind of violence-before, during, or after the votes are counted.

    Against violence

    “I call on all Nigerians to peacefully express your views and to reject the voices of those who call for violence.  And when elections are free and fair, it is the responsibility of all citizens to help keep the peace, no matter who wins. Successful elections and democratic progress will help Nigeria meet the urgent challenges you face today.  Boko Haram – a brutal terrorist group that kills innocent men, women and children-must be stopped.

    “Hundreds of kidnapped children deserve to be returned to their families. Nigerians who have been forced to flee (their habitats) deserve to return to their homes.  Boko Haram wants to destroy Nigeria and all that you have worked to build.  By casting your ballot (correctly), you can help secure your nation’s progress.

    “I’m told that there is a saying in your country: ‘to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done’. Today, I urge all Nigerians – from all religions, all ethnic groups, and all regions – to come together and keep Nigeria one.  And in this task of advancing the security, prosperity, and human rights of all Nigerians, you will continue to have a friend and partner in the United States of America”.

    The columnist’s comment

    Ordinarily, such a cross-Atlantic presidential speech would have been unnecessary if we had learnt from the examples of great African leaders such as Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Sam Njoma of Namibia, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Ahmadu Ahidjo of Cameroon. With the political change guards in 2015, most people assumed that the woes of Nigerians were over. It was hardly remembered that it is not enough to plant a crop to be qualified as a farmer. The real farmer is the one who imbibes the patience with which to wait and harvest the crop at the right time of fruition. The time of harvesting is almost here. With or without the presidential sermon of an American Obama, the reality on ground requires only a little more patience to end Nigeria’s woes of hunger. It took a long time of greed and avarice to build up the wall of hunger. It must take a reasonable time of patience to demolish it. Whatever name we now give Nigeria, positive or negative, we should not relent in saying: God save Nigeria! And we shall eventually surmount the problem of the moment.

  • The year of identity

    The year of identity

    Throughout the year, we have been riveted on the bias that draped the United States presidential election. We bewailed Trump and his incendiary rhetoric. We bemoaned the sartorial evil of France of liberte, egalite and fraternite that would not let women free to wear hijab on the beaches just as we moaned when young zealots razed down lives in pubs and stadium.

    We looked with horror the tents in Calais that tenanted the tears of a rootless people, what Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul designated as a people without a place, in his novel, In a Free state.

    Brexit led an island nation in rebellion against one of its own Poet John Dunne, and denied it is “a piece of the continent.” Italy that traffics fancy shoes and dainty suits to other nations booted out its international leader, Renzi, and voted like Britain. Russia with its Putin is not wary of an uprooted world order and stretches world equilibrium by staking bullet after bullet, air raid after sorties to dare a quiescent Obama. Austria narrowly escaped the harmer of disharmony, but just narrowly. It looms in next-door Germany where Hitler is getting a revival in the great mall of its great city Berlin.

    In all these, we as Nigerians show horror at the prejudice in a world that should canonise harmony. Yet throughout the year, we committed the same sins. We did not, could not, look in the mirror. But just like Macbeth who saw the vision and prophecy of his own bloodletting but willed himself to more malevolence, we did it week after week, month after month.

    It was a year when the militants were angry, whether driven by ethnic rage or religious bile. They fought in the Niger Delta, but like invisible forces. They told President Buhari that they belonged to the place that once produced the president. They did not want peace except on their own terms. So, until that peace comes, bombs would go off. And they did go off, and they went straight to the jugular of lazy largesse: oil. They blew pipeline after pipeline.  So, even when the price of oil rose modestly, we had no reason to laugh. Starvation stoked by scarcity makes the states pine for a little draught of financial air.

    Yet, the president, who was weaned on the profession of guns and bullets, thought it weakness to bow. So, the militants blew, but he did not bow. What bowed? Our prosperity, if we ever had it. Shall they sit on the floor or at table? Would the president not even do humility the courtesy of visiting the Niger Delta to appear to understand? We never had it. Same applies to MASSOB and how they made streets boil in the East. No Nigerian project is good enough. No one has approached them with the language of conciliation.

    Everyone, the militant, the MASSOB and the president, sat in their little covens. It was the same President that belongs to everybody and nobody. That is the very definition of soullessness. I am everywhere but I am nowhere. Translation: now you see me, now you don’t. Perhaps that’s why he has flown more to other countries than he has to states under his watch.

    So, we suffer, while each party sinks in self-righteous despair. Up North we see the same thing. The religious bigots under El- Zakzaky understand themselves and no other. The Sunni majority understands Allah the way the Shiites don’t. But all inhabit the same pious space, worship the same God and invoke that same God against the other. This is against the logic of Boko Haram that sees a theocratic vengeance in every bomb, in the willowy menace of the girl bomber and the muscular stealth of the boy bomber. All of them talk to a people not happy to live together.

    We also see in southern Kaduna where a people are subject to the routine savagery of a band of bandits. They burn houses and slaughter in droves. At the last count, 102 persons have been consigned either to heaven or hell, or purgatory, or whatever. Houses and hectares of land gone. They see no government presence to help, and the governor claims a group that has never been publicly paraded or evidentially convicted as culprit. He invokes similar rapine in Zamfara State. By claiming the victims there are Muslims, he exonerates the herdsmen. No evidence, so no excuse. But the larger blame lands where the Army is. They probably have not enough men. So, we ask, why not provide self-defence in the absence of official defence. Just as we have vigilante where police is absent.

    The herdsmen were a story of our lack of mutual understanding. Herdsmen say they have the right of way, and it has translated into the right to maul, kill, rape and steal. They want life and more abundantly at the expense of the land owners. The federal government even flirted with the idea of giving them the land that belongs to others. In the Middle Belt, the herdsmen would revenge those who rustled their cattle. That I move illegally should not make you a thief of my cow. Right. So, no understanding except bloodshed.

    Even in our electoral politics, the story is the same. In the Edo as in the Ondo and the Rivers State near-war electoral contests, it is a people who bear the same nation, sometimes the same name, fighting to the death against the other. Each group is either pelting the other with the charge of lack of good faith or good taste. But what is not good is our fate because of the flawed process and we have accepted it as an emblem of our flawed existence or coexistence.

    We are not better than Trump, or the Brexiteer or even the Manila villain Duterte. Or the French who disavow hijab. We just saw them as excuse to levitate ourselves as moral superiors. But what does this tell us, that this is a year of identity. Everyone wants to assert who they are without pretence. It is the boldness of the bigot, the murderer, xenophobic. But they also claim they are not. They claim to be fair. They may genuinely feel so, and that is the conundrum. Some who voted for Trump say they loath his divisive rhetoric but love his trade bill or just loath Clinton’s hypocrisy. It is therefore the year of Shakespeare’s best play by critics, or at least the most contemporary: King Lear. When many saw Trump as a devil, his followers said, like one of the best lines in the play, “the prince of darkness is a gentleman.”

    No one who voted for Trump or voted for Brexit, or calls for immigrants to go, would call themselves racists. Nor will a herdsman call himself a murderer. They are just doing right. Hence the 21st century person defies definition, just like when Lear, in a clarity of madness, asks: “Who is it that can tell me who I am?” The clarity eludes Harvard theorist Samuel Huntington who calls it “the clash of civilisation.” Yet the irony, they speak the language of the bigot. Trump calls Hispanics rapists. The British foreign minister used the word piccaninny when Obama visited the United Kingdom to lobby against Brexit. They “speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” Another shot from King Lear.

    So, we like our little cubicles. We talk to ourselves, smell the same, sound the same, and would not accept the other just the same way it happens in King Lear. Hear this: “Come, let’s away to prison. We two alone will sing like birds in a cage.”

    Irony, large numbers don’t think like this. But the frightening thing is that they have the important numbers and they are the most mobilised. They have dredged up the wrong identities. As we go into the new year, need not push away the other tribe or faith or face, but we need John Dunne’s cry to prevail: “I am involved in mankind.”

  • Police reveal identity of inspector killed in Ekiti

    The police have revealed identity of the officer killed in an attack by gunmen suspected to be robbers on Friday night in an attack on Ido Ekiti Police Station, Ekiti State.

    The officer, Inspector Taiwo Oloniniyi, was gunned down by hoodlums while on duty about 7.25 pm.

    Two others were seriously injured in the attack, and their weapons stolen from the armory.

    Police spokesman Alberto Adeyemi said police authorities have paid a condolence visit to the family of the late officer.

    Adeyemi, who said no arrest has been made, added that investigation was on to unmask perpetrators of the attack.

    Barely two days after, Ido Ekiti is calm. But residents are yet to recover from the incident, as they called on relevant authorities to ensure their safety.

    A source said the incident formed prayer points in some churches yesterday, as  worshippers prayed against a repeat of the attack.

    Governor Ayo Fayose, in his reaction, expressed sadness at the incident and commiserated with the police, family of the deceased.

    Speaking while appearing on his monthly media chat, “Meet Your Governor”, Fayose said Ekiti was experiencing shortage of policemen because officers refused posting to the state.

    Fayose said: “We don’t have enough policemen in the state and I think it might be because this is not a state where you can get so much from.”

  • eTranzact unveils new brand identity

    eTranzact unveils new brand identity

    eTranzact International PLC, an e-payments solution provider, has announced a corporate rebrand and strategic repositioning across its markets.

    The strategic rebranding of its identity, vision, mission, products and people, reaffirms the company’s leadership position in transaction switching, mobile banking, mobile money, bulk payments, remittances, bills & utilities payments, collections and other payment technology areas.

    Established in 2003, eTranzact has been at the forefront of innovation in payment technology, creating solutions that have driven growth and development across different areas in government, private, SME and international markets.

    Valentine Obi, Founder and CEO, eTranzact International PLC, speaking at a media briefing in Lagos said; “The new eTranzact identity shows how much our brand has evolved since we launched in 2003 and expanded to other countries. The “e” represents electronic, empowerment, ease and efficiency, showing where our company is today, our vision for the future and our commitment to simplify payments across Africa.

    ‘’We have always been at the forefront of innovation, providing complex and powerful technology with simple interfaces to enable efficient, convenient and cost-effective means of payment on all channels.

    ‘’With new and refreshed product offerings for business to business and business to consumer segments of the market, we are committed to our vision of being the leading payment technology provider for individuals and organizations”.

    Renowned for its transparency, excellence, agility and motivation, eTranzact has grown its turnover from 7.1 billion in 2014 to 8.6 billion in 2015, and profit before tax from 0.6 billion in 2014 to 1.1 billion in 2015. Signifying a 22% growth in turnover and 76% growth in profit before tax respectively.