The Nation Newspaper

Tag: malady

  • Maize malady

    Well, you heard about tomato Ebola and grain weevils attack; but this is not another kind of crop disease or farm pestilence. Not at this thick of the rainy season when maize is ripening all across the country. It is indeed that time of the year when we suffer a form of ‘maize malady’.

    You know that time of the year when every street corner you turned, you are confronted by corn on the cob – roasted, boiled or even the corn-beans porridge collabo! The one that has been adjudged the most balanced tropical diet! The one that makes you drink water like a camel many hours after consuming it!

    But that is not the maize madness that catches Hardball’s fancy here; it is the madness of a different kind, a national malady that makes a country import all the things it can produce and export all the things it can refine.

    It is a madness that is symptomatic of a slothful people who lack rigour, who lack a sense of process and live out on a daily basis, an illusion of grandeur. Corn madness is the story of a country devoid of leadership capacity to drive her people to harness her rich, God-given resources for the good of all. It is the madness of a people who living in a vast arable territory of the universe and should be feeding the world but rather depend on everyone else (even arid countries) for the most basic staple food.

    Maize madness is about a report in national dailies last week that Nigeria imported about N6 billion worth of maize in the last two months of April and May, 2017. It is an action so preposterous it borders on madness of national propensity. It is such an obfuscating phenom that every being in such a country deserves twelve strokes of the cane starting from number one to the last person.

    Considering that we are in the rainy season when corn grows with little effort and less costs and can mature for harvesting in 90 days, importers of N6b worth of maize could have gotten twice the quantity of maize they needed at half that cost if they had tilled Nigerian land in February/March this year.

    Imagine    the thousands of jobs that would have been created; the know-how that would have been infused in the value-chain. The economics of scale of a multi-billion domestic maize production project; the huge foreign exchange saved including  passed-on costs like freighting, packaging for export and port handlings.

    It may interest you to know that apart from maize madness, there are other maladies like palm oil madness, rice madness, poultry madness, milk madness and even petroleum products madness.

    Some drastic cure required please!

  • Diagnosing the Nigerian malady (2)

    Diagnosing the Nigerian malady (2)

    Last week, we focused on the supernaturalistic account of the affliction that imperils Nigeria’s movement to greatness and found it inadequate as an explanatory model. Today, we will examine the humanistic account which pins our national malaise on human factor. There are at least three variants of the theory.

    First, it is argued that even if we grant that Nigeria had a divine beginning and a destined end, we must also admit that the God of Nigeria’s beginning granted her citizens the free will to determine the course of their nation with adequate provision of resources to last many lifetimes. If they make that determination without much thought and they miss the road, it is their responsibility to change course. That they have failed for more than 50 years is not the fault of God. I believe that this is the position of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

    The former President admonished us recently to “stop troubling God because God has done all we need for us. We only need to play our part…” As he might add, as humans placed in this part of God’s creative genius, we have failed woefully to our detriment.

    Whether as clerics, mullahs, priests, priestesses and sheikhs or as congregants, devotees and Ummah we know the ways in which we fail to play our part. Whereas the prophets of old did not shy away from confronting the corrupt practices of their era, with our trust in the gospel of prosperity, we aid and abet corruption in various ways. When we choose to accept the proceeds of graft as thanksgiving offering without asking pertinent questions, we thereby frustrate the development goal of the nation.

    As business professionals, we play an ignoble part when we cheat on tax payment or collude with international frauds. This is the case with oil subsidy scandals. As contractors, we ruin the future of the nation when we abandon our contractual responsibility for road construction and abscond with contract mobilisation fees. Is God responsible for these acts?

    As politicians, when we are motivated just by pure self-interest whether in our legislative priorities or in budget approval, we intentionally risk the future of the country. And when we allow our wants, whether material, mental, or spiritual, to overshadow the long-term interest of the nation, we fail to play our part in setting the nation in the path of development.

    Of course, we can pray to God to help us know what is right and do it. But we cannot blame God for the weakness of our will. This is the essence of the humanistic theory.

    Second, and following from the first, there is the account of leadership deficit and it is straightforward. The reason that Nigeria has not made it; the reason that it has missed the road often and has not been able to change course is that it suffers from a deficit of leadership. Of course, the theory does not deny that Nigeria has either elected leaders or has had leaders imposed on her since independence. The point is that those leaders have lacked the qualities that a leader needs to move a nation forward. Therefore, per this variant of the humanistic account, Nigeria has a leadership crisis, and until this crisis is resolved, it cannot move forward. Again, former President Obasanjo has recently doubled down on this position.

    It is important to tease out the claims of this variant, especially in the former president’s most recent presentation. While some may rightly blame leadership from the beginning of the republic, Obasanjo gave credit to his generation, which fought for the unity of the country, and the generation before his, which fought for independence. His beef, therefore, is with generation after his, which, according to him, lacks “focus, commitment, continuity and sometimes proper knowledge about economic and development issues.”

    Not a few may find this positing of the issue self-serving or more uncharitably, self-glorifying. But I want to cut the former president a little slack. Each generation of leaders faces a unique challenge. The first generation that faced the colonisers had no choice but to focus on independence. But the germs of later problems were clearly discernible even at the time of their struggle for freedom. Leading the country after independence, they failed woefully in the matter of unity and progress. As the military struck and leadership changed hands, that challenge of unity became insurmountable. Trained as fighters, the military leaders met the challenge the only way they knew. But while the rebellion was stopped, no one can deny that the war of unity was not won. Instead, there was an escalation of ethno-nationalistic mistrust. The leadership crisis that we have now is traceable to that juncture in our history.

    What Obasanjo’s generation, and he, in particular, needs to come to terms with is that the matter of leadership cannot be resolved in isolation from our historical trajectory. Leaders are not plucked from trees. They are the products of particular cultures, histories and philosophies. In our case, the diversity of such cultures, histories and philosophies, which, should normally be an additional advantage, have been adversely impacted by the politics of uniformity.

    The third variant of the humanistic theory of Nigerian malady chooses to give leadership a break while focusing on followership. The rationale for this is simply that followers either choose leaders or can reject them once they determine that those leaders lack the necessary qualities to lead. However, in the case of Nigeria, leaders and followers have been engaged in a game of mutual deception with followers yielding to the manipulative abilities of leaders for the satisfaction of short term wants at the expense of long term needs. If developmental goals are left unfulfilled because followers seek immediate consumption, they have themselves to blame.

    There is no doubt that each of the foregoing variants of the humanistic theory is an improvement over the supernaturalistic theory. For one thing, they place emphasis on human agency and, therefore, on our human capacity to change the course of the nation.

    Yet, as important as it is to recognise the significance of human agency, it is also crucial to understand its limitation, especially when the condition for the effectiveness of human agency to play its part is missing. Consider the fact that despite our lamentations regarding good leadership, we have had at least a few in our history that everyone, including sworn adversaries, attest to.

    As I prepare this piece, a friend dropped in my WhatsApp message box an excerpt of a statement on Chief Obafemi Awolowo attributed to Ikemba Odumegwu Ojukwu: “As a leader of the modern cast, he (Awolowo) has left Nigeria standards which are indelible, standards beside which future aspirants to public leadership can be eternally measured. He was, for a long time, the only Nigerian leader that enunciated principles and played down personalities… Awo was a leader of great stature…That he did not fulfil a presidential ambition cannot detract from his leadership… and us, poor us, who were not his people, must continue to regret that our own leaders had not led us as he did his people or achieved for us as he did for his people.”

    The crux of our challenge is in the last part of Ikemba’s statement. Do we see ourselves as one people or as different peoples with different agendas? If the latter, we do not have a leadership crisis. We have an identity crisis.

    Therefore, a further refining of the humanistic theory is needed. If we insist, as we should, that humans are the architects of their own fortune, it stands to reason that they should also be the builders of their national greatness. This entails the responsibility for ascertaining the right kind of institutions and structures that are essential for the management of their affairs and the progressive development of their nation. It requires active thinking and selfless abandonment of short-term gains for self or group in favour of the general good of the nation. The challenge for leaders is to set their minds wholly to this structural task.

     

    (To be continued)

     

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  • Malabu malady

    Legendary Afrobeat king, Fela Ransome-Kuti, better known as Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (he would have been a Nobel Literature Prize candidate were he alive today now that the literary award is also given to lyricists like Bob Dylan), was a master of rhyme, rhythm and commonsense.

    In one of his classic songs he crooned: Dead body get accident/ confusion break bone/ double wahala for dead body/ and the owner of dead body.

    Of course Fela was searingly political in his songs and was indeed, Hardball made into songs. In the lines above, he imagined the helluva confusion that would ensue should a corpse being taken to the mortuary get entangled in an accident. You don’t want to see such a sight do you?

    Well Hardball is not bringing blood cuddling horror to your living room. Far from it; it is about the little matter of an oil block (OPL 245) which reportedly holds 9.2 billion barrels of crude oil. You must remember the Malabu Oil deal and you must remember a weasel known as Dan Etete? These are Nigeria’s sordid facts and they are neither dead bodies nor unfortunate corpses.

    Dan Etete was the miserable fellow who as Minister of Petroleum Resources under the late junta Gen. Sani Abacha in 1998 awarded this massive oil block to his firm, Malabu Oil and Gas. But he was not alone, he had numerous other cronies, including Abacha’s son.

    But what is the big deal in this old story; looks straight forward enough. No it isn’t. Because of the sheer size of the stolen pie, almost anyone who has a big finger in land has his finger stuck in it, so to speak.

    Shell Petroleum Development Company is the conniver-in-chief and perhaps the lead player in this graft theatre. Today, a committee of the House of Representatives is reviewing the Malabu malfeasance. But Mr. Abubakar Malami, the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, says the matter is too complex if not confusing for his office to understand.

    Hear Malami: “We have multiple contentions. There is Mohammed Abacha, Dan Etete, Atiku Abubakar, Hassan Adamu; they are all laying claims to entities.”

    Shell on its part, has as it is wont, hired top politician-attorney Chief Richard Akinjide to challenge the jurisdiction of the House Committee because of the litigations surrounding Malabu. Shell and Nigeria Agip Explorations reportedly paid out $1.1 billion supposedly to the Federal Government. But the money never made it the treasury. It was reported that former ministers Diezani Alison-Madueke (Petroleum), Mohammed Adoke (Justice) caused the money to be transferred to Malabu, which then spirited the money to various foreign bank accounts.

    Complex and confusing isn’t it? But the stolen property remains property of the Federal Government ab initio that was stolen as events have revealed. If a man steals my car and runs under the miry world of thiefdom, passing it from owner to owner; if the car is eventually discovered, does it cease to be my car just because the underworld system has encumbered it? One thought the SIMPLE SOLUTION would be to revert property to the rightful owner?

    Is that not what they call RESTITUTION in law?

  • The Nkurunziza malady

    Let us admit upfront that Hardball is a licentious fellow. But make no mistake it’s in a poetic and literary sense. It is in this wise that the above title could use some adumbration. Pierre Nkurunkuziza is the president of the hapless eastern African country, Burundi. Now Nkurunkuzia has been afflicted by sit-tightism – a malady that is at once dangerous and catastrophic.

    But here is the explanation: Nkurunziza (let’s call him Ziza for short) is not the only leader in history to be so terribly afflicted; he even has numerous soul mates currently. So why has his name sign-posted this malady? Simple; let’s say his name is literarily correct. His name has been chosen for its sweet rhythm. Dear reader it is called onomatopoeia: a word that sounds like what it represents.

    Please take a deep breath and say ‘Nkurun-zi-za!’ with as much gusto as you can muster. It sure sounds like ‘Go zap them’ isn’t it? This is why Hardball has taken the liberty to name the good, old imperial instincts after him.

    Ziza is so power drunk now he has challenged his chi (god) to a wrestling match. After serving 10 years as Burundi president he has refused to take a bow as the country’s rule book stipulates. He has manipulated the book in order to rule indefinitely. He wants to convert to an emperor.

    He is not the only one who is suffering in this manner. He has a long list of active classmates especially in Africa, Middle East and Arabia. Paul kagame of Rwanda; Yoweri Museveni of Uganda; Yahya Jammeh of Gambia; Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, to name a few Africans who have deified themselves and who insist that they symbolise the country and only they can rule it.

    But Ziza takes the prize now. He has vowed to attack the African Union peace keepers that has been proposed to go maintain the peace in a fast disintegrating Burundi. Ziza has warned both African and world leaders that he would consider it an act of aggression and an ‘invasion’ should peace keepers be sent to his country. He thinks such an intervention would violate Burundi’s constitution since there is no fighting between two parties in the country.

    But over 200 Burundians have been killed following a mass protest that erupted after Ziza indicated interest to run for a third term last year. The country has continued to crack up along ethnic fault lines since. The old Hutu-Tutsi internecine rivalry is beginning to brew once again. Soldiers are defecting to form tribal affiliations, a recipe for a repeat of the bloody madness of Rwanda of recent memory.

    Of course the world would not and must not sit by and allow another genocide of such holocaust proportions to happen ever again. Like all dictators, Ziza has gone mad and must be stopped. He talks about Burundi Constitution, but there is no such thing anymore; he has violated and damaged it. He talks about foreign ‘invasion’, but that’s better than Ziza’s invasion. The AU and UN only seek to save him from himself.

    Hardball insists that dictators are worse than the worst epidemics, wouldn’t the world be a better place if we eliminate them?