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  • IAAF WORLD YOUTH CHAMPIONSHIP 2013 21 Nigerian athletes begin quest for medals

    IAAF WORLD YOUTH CHAMPIONSHIP 2013 21 Nigerian athletes begin quest for medals

    TWENTY-ONE Nigerian athletes will hoist the country’s flag today as they begin their quest for medals at the 8th IAAF World Youth Championship holding in Ukraine.

    The Nigerians will compete in the following events: 100m, 200m, 400m, javelin, 100m, 200m. Ese Brume (6.35m) will represent the country in the long jump girls event. Nigeria’s medal hopefuls will also be partaking in the 100m and 400m medley boys and girls.

    However, this may not be the best of times for the Malian Athletics Federation, as financial constraint has forced the country to send just one female athlete and one coach to the Championship, which begins today in Donetsk, Ukraine.

    The set-back notwithstanding, the Francophone country is hoping to capture the female 100m gold medal in the championship. Usman Maliko, who heads Mali’s athletics technical crew, said at the Istanbul airport in Turkey while transiting to Donetsk on Monday that his country barely managed to raise ‘little funds’ for him to attend the championship.

    Also, like Mali, only one female athlete will fly Senegal’s flag in the 8th IAAF World Championship. Quarter-miler, Bangoura Brigitte Penda is tipped by her coach, Moussa Ndiaye, to win the gold in the 400m female event.

    Coach Ndiaye said Penda will win the 400m gold. I don’t see anyone beating her in this competition.”

    The President of the Nigeria Athletics Federation, Solomon Ogba, left the shores of the country yesterday to provide support for the country’s contigent. In the same vein, the delegation led by the Vice President of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), Tunde Abdulkareem, left Lagos on Monday evening to join the athletes and other officials who were already on ground in Donetsk. The first batch made up of eight boys and nine girls, was led from Lagos on Saturday by former sprinter, Endurance Ojokolo and some officials of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN).

    Speaking on arrival yesterday, two coaches attached to the team, Abraham Odia and Raymond Agboro said they were confident that Team Nigeria would live up to expectations in the championship.

    Odia pointed out that the fact that Team Nigeria was able to rule Africa at the last African Youth Championship (AYAC) in Warri, Delta State, was enough for the athletes and officials to know that much is expected from them in Ukraine.

    “We are the champions of Africa at the moment at this youth level and if things work out well, we should be able to live up to expectations as true champions. But in a competition of this magnitude, one could only hope for better things to come. We have prepared the athletes well enough and I pray they don’t disappoint us,” he stated.

    Coach Odia further said that Team Nigeria should be able to capture as many as six gold medals in the championship saying: “I am banking on the male and female sprint gold, the 400m for male and female, the 100m hurdles for girls and the 110m hurdles for boys, the medley relay for girls and the shot put event.

    “Our girl, Anulike Aniefuna defeated the girl from Egypt in Warri and I see her as a potential medalist here if she is able to repeat all she had been doing in camp.”

    On his part, coach Agboro, who discovered the two fastest male sprinters representing Team Nigeria in the competition, Devine Oduduru and Charles Okezie, said: “We stand a very good chance of winning a good number of medals because our athletes have been given quality training from technical experts picked by the AFN.”

    Also in the technical team are coaches Chet Ike and Tom Nwakwe, while former hurdler, Seigha Porbeni is the coaches’ coordinator.

    SportingLife recalls that Nigeria topped the medals table when the country hosted the maiden African Youth Athletics Championship in Warri, Delta State, in March this year.

     

  • Nigerian wins Caine Prize for African writing

    Nigerian wins Caine Prize for African writing

    Nigeria’s Tope Folarin has won the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing,

    The award is described as Africa’s leading literary award, for his short story entitled ‘Miracle’ from Transition, Issue 109.

    The Chair of Judges, Gus Casely-Hayford, announced Tope Folarin as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner last night at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

    ‘Miracle’ is a story set in Texas in an evangelical Nigerian church where the congregation has gathered to witness the healing powers of a blind pastor-prophet. Religion and the gullibility of those caught in the deceit that sometimes comes with faith rise to the surface as a young boy volunteers to be healed and begins to believe in miracles.

    Gus Casely-Hayford praised the story, saying: “Tope Folarin’s ‘Miracle’ is another superb Caine Prize winner – a delightful and beautifully paced narrative, that is exquisitely observed and utterly compelling”.

    Tope Folarin is the recipient of writing fellowships from the Institute for Policy Studies and Callaloo, and he serves on the board of the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Tope was educated at Morehouse College, and the University of Oxford, where he earned two Master’s degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. He lives and works in Washington, DC.

  • 2013 Nigerian Army Day Celebration

    2013 Nigerian Army Day Celebration

  • Caine becomes a Nigerian affair

    With four Nigerian writers making this year’s shortlist for the Caine Prize for African Writing, Edozie Udeze takes a look at the genesis of the prize, why it strikes a chord in Africa and what it means to both the losers and the winners.

    It was first awarded in 2000 to a Sudanese writer, Leila Aboulela whose short strory, The Museum, arrested the interest of the judges. When the Caine Prize for African Writing for short stories was instituted in 2000, the primary focus was to encourage African writers to use the prize to get to greater heights in their writing career.

    It was meant as an annual literary award for the best original short story by an African, whether he was living in Africa or in the Diaspora. In the first place, the story has to be written and published in English Language and the story itself ought to have an insight into the ways Africans live, perceive and conceptualise their environment and other issues in and around them.

    History

    When the prize was founded in England, it was named in memory of Sir Michael Harris Caine, a former chairman of the Booker Group, owners and founder of both the Booker prize and the Booker International. Owing to this connection, however, the Caine Prize has come to be known in some quarters as the African Booker. And it is made so in order to help writers in the short story genre to find true expressions in their muse.

    Every July, the winner is usually announced at a bumper dinner party in Oxford, England. There, all the shortlisted candidates are invited to be part of the show during which also their stories are read, autographs are signed while there are press interviews to let the public know who the writers are and what motivates them to write.

    To date, the prize has been supported and encouraged by four African winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Apart from acting as patrons of the award, their presence often gives credence to the prize. They include Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Naguib Mahfouz and J. M. Coetzee. These big writers, like the Caine Chair has often described them, have shown the light for other African authors to follow.

    Criticism

    A lot of close watchers of the prize have often descended hard on the conditions for selecting winners and the type of stories they write. In 2011, Ikhide Ikheloa, a Nigerian writer criticised the prise, saying that “many writers are skewing their written perspectives to fit what they imagine will sell to the West and the judges of the Caine Prize.”

    He went on to say that the creation of a prize for African writing may have inadvertently created the un-intended effect of breeding writers who are willing to be stereotype for African glory. So far, the 2011 edition has been singled out as the most poorly judged in terms of storyline, structure, texture and orthodoxy. It was apparently skewed in absolute absurdity and mediocrity where the whole stories that made the shortlist were deliberately tailored and patterned to suit and satisfy the whims of the West.

    2013 edition:

    For the first time in the history of the prize, four out of the five shortlist are Nigerians. Daggar Tolar, chairman of Lagos chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), says it is a sign of the commitment of Nigerian writers towards creativity. “Yes it shows the outside world how much our literature is valued. Even in the face of mounting pressures, uncertainties, difficulties and the like, people still find the discipline to write. It is really impossible to silence or disrupt the resilient spirit of an average Nigerian who is determined to prove himself.” Tolar asserted.

    Taking a critical look at the stories for this year, the chairman of the judges, Gus Casely-Hayford, said: “It has been gripping for us… The shortlist was selected from 96 entries from 16 African countries. They are all outstanding African stories that were drawn from an extra ordinary body of high quality submissions.

    The lucky ones

    Besides the fact that the £10,000 prize is to challenge writers, these five contrasting titles for this year interrogate aspects of things that people feel and know about Africa. They range from violence, thuggery, religion, corruption, family, community, ethnicity and so on. However, all these are subjects that are deconstructed, represented and beautifully remade and repackaged to entice readers.

    The stories are refreshing, challenging, intriguing, provocative, suffusing, ambitious and breathtaking in many diverse respects. For this and more, Gus said: “we can see through them Africa, a continent and its descendants captured at a time of burgeoning change.”

    These authors are: Tope Folarin (Nigerian) whose work Miracle was published in Bloomington last year. He was educated at the Morehouse College and the University of Oxford, where he obtained two Master’s degrees: He is a Rhodes Scholar and a recipient of writing fellowships from the Institute for Policy Studies and Callaloo. Folarin lives and works in Washington DC, USA, where he also devotes time to writing.

    Elnathan John’s (Nigerian) work is entitled Bayan Layi and has its setting in Nigeria. John is not only a full time writer, he is equally a lawyer and lives in Nigeria. His works have appeared in Per Contra, Zam Magazine, Evergreen Review, Sentinel Nigeria and lots more.

    Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (Nigerian) is based in Abuja, Nigeria. His entry, The Whispering Trees published by Parresia Press seems to have the most arresting title and a lot of people have even tipped it to win if an intriguing title has a way of doing it for the author. Besides, he is a Gabriel Garcia Marquez fellow who in 2007 won the BBC African Performance Prize.

    Chinelo Okparanta (Nigerian) was born in Port Harcourt, Rivers State and educated at Pennsylvania State University and Rutgers University, both in the USA where she studied for her two degrees.

    Her entry work, America, has been dissected from different perspectives by critics as being pro-west. Yet, she is a profound and conscientious writer whose works have appeared in many publications in the United States of America and beyond. She currently teaches at Colgate University in the US where she is an Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in Fiction.

    Pede Hollist (Sierra Leonean) has the title of his work as Foreign Aid, a work that is obviously pro-West, yet he sees it from the point of view of the ‘homeland.’ He is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Tampa, Florida. There, his areas of interest cover the literature of the African imagination, literary expressions in African continent in the Diaspora.

    Notably, the winner will be given the opportunity to take up a month’s residence at the Georgetown University. The award will cover all travel and living expenses, including an invitation to take part in the Open Book Festival in Cape Town, South Africa in September this year.

  • Nigerian children deprived, says Rep

    Representative of Ekiti South West/Ikere/Ise-Orun Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, Dr. Ifeoluwa Abiose Arowosoge, yesterday said children in the country had over the years, been deprived of the care due to them.

    He, therefore, sought a deliberate policy that would be held inviolate in genuine pursuit of improved welfare for children across the country.

    The lawmaker, who spoke on the Children’s Day being celebrated today, further told The Nation: “If you take a critical and honest look at the welfare of children in this country today, you can’t but shed tears. Many are forced to hawk all sorts of funny things under the rains and hot sun, even with nothing in their stomachs. How many of our children are in schools today to have a good foundation laid for their future? What have past administrations been doing at all levels? What are we doing today? As we claim to celebrate today, how many children can smile? It is time something was done urgently so that we don’t keep celebrating hungry children in vain every year.”

    He, therefore, admonished all serving public office holders at all levels of governance, to set in motion, deliberate efforts to factor into their commitments, ways of ensuring improved living for children.

  • India schools woo Nigerian students

    Indians are now looking to enroll Nigerian students in their tertiary institutions. With a 15 per cent international students’ quota to fill, the institutions are hoping that eligible Nigerian students, who lose out of the admission process locally due to space constraints, would consider India for affordable tertiary education.

    For two days last week, more than 12 Indian institutions participated in an education expo hosted by the Indian Embassy on Victoria Island, Lagos.

    In addition to charging tuition fees far cheaper than what obtains in Europe and America, the popular destinations for Nigerian students, some of the institutions promised prospective students scholarships, quality education service delivery, and assured them of affordable living expenses.

    Some of the institutions present at the expo included, SRM University, Chennai; Galgotias University, Greater Noida; Symbiosis International University, Pune; BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore; Don Bosco Institute of Technology, Banbalore; VAG Group of Educational Institutes, New Delhi; and R.R Institutions, Bangalore.

    Representative of SRM University who also doubled as the Head, Middle East and Africa, Samiullah Khan said the institution is a private university that ranks among the top 10 in India.

    He said the institution which accepts the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and the National Examinations (NECO) Council SSCE results from Nigerians as entry qualifications, has over $200,000 earmarked for scholarships for those who meet the merit benchmark.

    Khan added that students could also secure jobs before graduation as over 170 companies flood the institution, scrambling for their hotcakes graduates.

    “You know India is known for ICT, and we have over 170 companies that come to employ our students. All SRM students get jobs before graduation. The students join the company even before graduation, and the companies recruit and train them while they are still in school. The companies move the training to the school rather than having it in their offices because we have the facilities,” he said.

    Galgotias University in Greater Noida is offering students affordable education in a well planned city. Head of its International Relations Unit, Anita Charles, said cost of living is low while Nigerian students who take up offers will learn a lot from the international community of over 5,000 students.

    “Greater Noida is a well-planned city, but it is not crowded. There are over 80 institutions in that city. It is also a big plus because up to 5,000 international students reside there. The cost of living is affordable. There are a whole lot of Nigerians in India. It is true that the climate, culture and food are different but that is also an important aspect of education for inter-cultural learning,” she said.

    Another representative, Anita Patankar of Symbiosis International University, said students seeking good quality education in Management and Law can be rest assured to get it in her institution.

    While at $5,000-6,000, Symbiosis is one of the high end universities in India, Patankar said students can be rest assured they are getting quality.

    Other institutions, such as Vag Group of Education Institutes, which runs eight institutes charges only 1,200 for tuition, books, ID card, exam fees and free English-speaking seminar; Bharath University on the other hand, charges $130,000 for Medicine for four-five plus years.

    Some of the students, who attended the exhibition, said they were willing to travel to India for their education because the Asian country is known for expertise in Information Communications Technology, as well ad the affordable tuition compared with private institutions here in Nigeria.

    A parent, Mr. Tunde Adelanwa said he wants his daughter to travel to India to study because of the space constraint in Nigeria.

    “She finished her secondary school education with good grades two years ago but up till now she has not been given admission into any university,” he said.

    In his address, the High Commissioner of India to Nigeria, Mr. Mahesh Sachdev, said the advantage of Indian institutions is that they offer quality and affordable education that is globally-recognised.

     

  • ‘How I pioneered Nigerian air ambulance’

    ‘How I pioneered Nigerian air ambulance’

    When he was alerted by old friends about the interview of Dr Ola Orekunrin who claimed to have founded the first air ambulance service in West Africa – The flying doctors, Dr. Taiwo Malumi, a veteran medical practitioner told them that the woman is bereft of history. If not, she would have known that she was merely eight years old when the first air ambulance service in West Africa berthed in the country, courtesy of Dr Malumi. Dr Malumi established Medic Air, first air ambulance in Nigeria in 1994 after successfully turning a four-bed space hospital to 60-bed space.

    His Funtai Hospital and Maternity Homes in Port-Harcourt, River State capital, was a household name. With best equipment that met international standard, the hospital had on its pay roll expatriate medical practitioners who attended to patients while Dr Malumi was left to handle special cases. His knowledge of the profession was acknowledged by top government functionaries and captains of industry. Top people from the Eastern states made him their physician.

    ”I almost turned into a wizard in the profession; once a patient entered my office, I can diagnose such patient without taking him through the machine but to be 100 percent sure, I will ensure such patient went through the machine. I consulted for Shell Petroleum and other top companies and used the proceeds to expand my hospital from four-bed spaces to 60,” he said.

    According to him, the idea of the air ambulance project was conceived when the day-to-day affairs of meeting with patients had been left for his junior doctors.”I thought of what I could venture in that would be of immense benefit to the people in the medical line; then, the issue of air ambulance cropped in.

    ”Nigerian first air ambulance started in 1994 and it was pioneered by me and a couple of others and the air ambulance was called Medic Air West Africa. We were encouraged to start it having attained the height in medical practice, I felt we had to do something higher for the medical practice in Nigeria. And that was how I brought in Area Jet and a South African pilot, and I trained my nurses in South Africa.

    Interestingly one of those nurses today is now a medical doctor. We have a very interesting, highly professional and international connection,” he said.And why were the nurses trained in South Africa, the Ilaje-born doctor replied that South Africans have a precedent in that line of business.”

    “They have Air Helicopter Ambulance, so instead of sending them to Europe, South Africa is closer and cheaper. We sent five to six nurses for training and we also had four pilots, not because there were no pilots in Nigeria, but because that was a critical flight that required people who have been used to handle Area Jet.  Most of the Nigerian pilots were pilots of commercial airlines not the private ambulance like Area Jet.

    “The Area Jet as you can see is not a big air craft, it can serve a dual purpose. When you don’t have air ambulance kits, you can put the back seat up and convert it to accommodate between six and 12 people. Apart from that, it requires an experienced pilot who can operate the flight during emergency session, especially when a patient is in a critical condition. If you don’t have someone that is used to it, it can affect your own operation too,  that is why I had to bring in expertise outside of the country,” he said. According to him, the challenges were not out of what they could handle.

    He said: “As soon as we announced our presence, it was obvious that we were needed. Although financially, it was tasking, it wasn’t easy but anyway God supported us and we had it on ground, we had the licenses and Port- Harcourt was our base. Within two months we started, we had so many flights. We had so many patients taken abroad and within that two months we travelled everyday. And it was very interesting in medical practice when you see somebody that is almost dead but God revived him through our efforts. That was the joy derived from such exercise.”

    Medic Air then had a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), with some medical centres in South Africa because of what Dr Malumi described as relative cheap cost compared to hospitals in Europe.

    This, he said, made the middle class to afford the service.Apart from this, Medic Air had a scheme which allowed their clientele to pay certain amount every six months to foot their bill. One of the breakthroughs the company had was when SOS from Geneva sent delegates to assess their services.”When they came to Nigeria and we were discussing on how we operate; an emergency case occurred and SOS representatives asked if we could handle it. We did it successfully and that made them sign an agreement with us.

    “It was a big boost to our operations. Likewise, during FIFA Junior World Cup in Nigeria, one of the senior FIFA executives was treated in our aircraft,” he said.”What is interesting is when I remember the level we attained then- our level of professionalism, its gives me joy as we moved critical patients without visa. I could call the British Ambassador that we are flying a particular patient and all they would ask from me is detail.

    “I was trusted to that level and landing over there, with our contact, an ambulance is waiting. The visa has been given on air. Though, the accomplishment wasn’t an easy thing to achieve but because they saw the professionalism in our operation,” he said.

    According to him, the challenge of running such service was very high. His words: “There was no moment as the chairman that I will have rest of mind once a patient is in the air. It was usually a very tense period; once there is a patient flying, you will actually look ill like the patient because nobody wants a patient to die in the aircraft no matter how critical it was.

    “I was always on my toes; so it is good for a younger person to run such service now except you have an institution properly set up.” Dr Malumi said he closed the business due to some life-threatening challenges when his company flew out a dying patient.”Our lives were at risk then; we had to abandon the service and leave the country,” he said.

    Since the country returned to democratic rule, the University of Ibadan graduate told The Nation how his efforts to bring back the service were thwarted by unfavourable conditions by the regulating agency.

    ”About two years ago, I went and asked suppose I want to bring back this business into Nigeria.

    He gave me a list of conditions and those conditions discouraged me. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have the enabling environment to run the service. Part of the conditions is to deposit about N20million. People need to understand what you are trying to do, to promote the health sector and health is wealth. If wavers can be given, I am prepared to bring back the service,” he lamented.

    He urged Nigerian leaders to invest in building special medical centres that are of international standard. To him, the nation is not lacking personnel to man such institutions. ”It is unfortunate the way we find our country; I remember when Gen Ibrahim Babangida came in, he described our hospitals in one language. When Gen Sani Abacha came in, he also described the hospitals in the same language. Up till today, those hospitals have not changed. For example, look at Nelson Mandela who has been taken to hospital about three or four times now, he has not been taken out of south Africa, because they have the facilities.

    ”Nigeria has produced the best doctors worldwide; if you go to the United States, and Europe the best brains are Nigerians. I have seen Nigerians being taken from here to Canada for treatment and interestingly the doctor attending to them will be a Nigerian. Why can’t we encourage them to come home, provide the standard, the equipment, and the enabling environment and this country will progress,” he said.

  • Nigerian wins Book Prize

    The Commonwealth Foundation has announced the regional winners for this year’s Commonwealth Book Prize and Commonwealth Short Story Prize. A Nigerian, E. E. Sule, is the regional winner for Africa with his short story, entitled: Sterile Sky.

    Representing Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, Caribbean, and the Pacific regions, the writers will now compete to become the overall winner, to be announced at Hay Festival in the United Kingdom (UK) on May 31.

    The Commonwealth Book Prize is awarded for the best first novel, and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the best piece of unpublished short fiction.

    Part of Commonwealth Writers, the prizes unearth, develop and promote the best of new writing from across the Commonwealth, developing literary connections worldwide and consistently bringing less-heard voices to the fore.

  • Court jails Iranian, Nigerian 17 years for arms importation

    For importing 13-container-loads of arms and ammunition into Nigeria without a licence, an Iranian, Azim Aghajani, and his Nigerian accomplice, Ali Jega, will spend 17 years in jail.

    Justice Okechukwu Okeke of the Federal High Court, Lagos, yesterday found them guilty of four of the five counts of illegal importation of the arms.

    He sentenced them to five years imprisonment on the first count, two years on the third count and five years each on the fourth and fifth counts.

    The jail terms will run concurrently, beginning from February 1, 2011, when they were first arraigned.

    The judge ordered that the arms and ammunition be forfeited to the Federal Government.

    He refused to grant a request that the Iranian be deported to serve his prison term in his country.

    Justice Okeke, however, discharged and acquitted the accused on the second count, in which they were charged with being “in control” of the arms, having imported them without a licence.

    The judge said the convicts had not taken “constructive possession” of the arms when they were arrested. He averred that there was no evidence before him that they paid the Custom duties and cleared the goods from the port.

    “On the second count, the accused are not guilty. They are hereby discharged and acquitted,” Justice Okeke held.

    On the remaining counts, the judge said the prosecution proved its case beyond any reasonable doubt.

    He said he was further convinced after visiting the locu in quo (where the arms were kept to see them by himself).

    Justice Okeke remarked jovially that he was fortunate to have come out of the visit alive.

    He said: “We went for the visit of the locus in quo and we survived it. There was no explosion!”

    He added that it was the prosecution and defence counsel on the team who were “dragging their feet” for fear of explosion during visit.

    The accused were re-arraigned on March 7, 2011 on an amended charge of importation of prohibited firearms without licence, reckless and false declaration of the consignment’s content and concealment.

    The prosecution said between June and October 2010, they were “in control of bombs and grenade without licence”.

    The ammunition is categorised as prohibited firearms under Item 4 of Part 1 of the Schedule to the Firearms Act, Cap F28, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, and contrary to Section 3 of the 1999 Constitution.

     

  • Once upon a Nigerian state?

    Once upon a Nigerian state?

    When a coward sees someone he can beat up, he becomes hungry for a fight – Igbo proverb, courtesy Chinua Achebe

     Prof. Adebayo Williams, the inimitable and formidable verbal pugilist, in informal discourse, called it post-state cancer – so piqued is he with the ease with which under-class bands run rings round the Nigerian state; and triumphantly claim the scalp of the once-dreaded security personnel.

    In Goodluck Jonathan’s Nigeria, the state is well and truly demystified!

    Indeed, when the Igbo proverb quoted above is fed in the combustive mix, it conjures some gallows humour: ragtag groups, the latest of which is the Ombatse (ironically translated ‘Time is now’ – for total anarchy?), contemptuously flexing its muscles and taunting the fleeing Jonathan Presidency to bring it on!

    Already, the cult group, domiciled in Nasarawa State, has claimed a reported 47 scalps in confirmed deaths of police officers – including the missing Mohammed Momoh, which an online news publication claims is dead; but which local authorities could not confirm, beyond his missing status.

    Having worsted the Police soft target, is Ombatse now, willing and ready, awaiting the military big guns, like Boko Haram before it? Remember Boko Haram started with throwing bombs at police personnel and attacking police and prison facilities on get-away bikes locally dubbed ‘Okada’?

    And talking of Boko Haram, the Jonathan Presidency’s Amnesty-biko (Igbo for please) offer suggests the “e don beg me” hilarious episode, another tragicomic affair involving the late Afrobeat Kingpin, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and his gaoler, Justice Okoro Idogu.

    After a visit to an infirmary where Fela was inmate while still serving his prison term, for offences not a few believed the Buhari military government trumped up, Fela claimed the conscience-stricken judge had apologised to him – e don beg me!

    That claim triggered a chain of events that led to Fela’s release from prison. But it also landed the involved jurist in hot controversy. Justice Idogu bellowed his denial and innocence, amid a bedlam of condemnatory voices. But not a chance! His was a lone voice buried by a hostile din.

    But back from Fela and Okoro Idogu, where was the Commander-in-Chief, when the likes of Boko Haram, Ansaru and now Ombatse were flexing their muscles: slaying innocent citizens and dutiful security operatives?

    He was probably busy elsewhere flexing his own muscles; against real or imaginary political foes, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the Rivers governor, being the latest to be crushed. Indeed, when a bully sights one he can maul, he becomes hungry for a fight!

    Indeed, whatever is happening today, in this polity, makes a mockery of all those concepts in basic Government, none the least the concept of the state; and of course, the much maligned federalism. This two-some got a routing in this latest and bizarre Ombatse massacre.

    The pristine state is supposed to have overwhelming force – if not a monopoly of it – to impose its will: if you factor in the concept of the Social Contract, in which all citizens surrender their rights to the state in exchange for common protection.

    But at Alakyo, an Eggon village near Lafia in Nasarawa State, it was a lunatic fringe that got the better of the all-mighty Nigerian state.

    How else could one explain the entrapment and massacre of 47 security personnel, purported on a mission to round up members of this lunatic fringe, who earlier even had had the temerity to capture a senior police officer, torture him and force him to swear an oath of allegiance to the Ombatse god? Is this 1st century Africa or 21st century Nigeria? The state-as-relic could not have been more starkly painted!

    Then the sight of His Excellency, Tanko al-Makura, the Nasarawa governor, slithering for cover at Aso Rock like some frightened snake, and bawling for help, was a wicked thumbs-down for Nigeria’s peculiar federalism.

    How does a governor enforce security when he has no control over the Police, the basic security agency? And what is Nigerian federalism worth if a governor has to scurry for presidential help on basic security? That, in full technicolor, shows the inherent absurdity of a state government without state police. Yet the gubernatorial fop is grimly humoured as the chief security officer (CSO) of his state!

    But even in all of this all-too-Nigerian tragedy, some new comic always emerges! Imagine, Ibim Semenitari, the Rivers commissioner for Information, while warning off presidential storm-troopers bent on putting her governor’s nose out of joint, reminding the political invaders that Governor Amaechi remained Rivers’ CSO! A peculiar CSO without troops? And a tiger proclaiming its ‘tigritude’ (apologies to Prof. Wole Soyinka) if ever there was one!

    Of course, al-Makura arrived to find the president, not unlike the fictional Chief Derin, the great one for junk trade missions abroad (in Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters), met his commander-in-chief, before whom every governor must bow and tremble, blissfully abroad in South Africa.

    Hardly a crime, to be sure. The South African trip could even pass for dutiful tour of duty, since it had something to do with the World Economic Forum (WEF). The snag however is that you find in Jonathan a gravely distracted president, who seems more consumed by plotting four more years of incompetence and impotence; than solving the grave security situation and sundry infractions he faces in his troubled current term.

    Of course elsewhere, a political jobber without; and a trashy talker within, have upped the ante by sabre-rattling of a peculiarly lunatic hue.

    To Kingsley Kuku, a presidential aide, 2015 is nothing but Hobson’s choice: vote in Jonathan or forget peace in the Niger Delta. To trash-talking Asari Dokubo, a former militant, deny Jonathan re-election and face war!

    And to Jonathan’s grand political godfather, Chief Edwin Kiagbodo-Clark, whose earlier libel of everything and everyone for the Jonathan cause paved the template for the all-muscle-no-brain bombast of the duo: the lads’ outbursts are regrettable – but whoever blocks Jonathan’s way is looking for trouble! Now, how are six different from half-a-dozen?

    Besides, Pa Clark let drop a costly Freudian slip: never mind Dokubo, he assured; Ijaw would not go to war. So, the Jonathan cause is not even a South-South cause again – it is an Ijaw agenda? Geez!

    Even to the Northern elite, at the fore-front of power-change: as Heraclitus the philosopher said, even they cannot step in the same river twice! Nigeria is so rapidly changed that old northern ideas about power are tragically out of date. It is time, therefore, everyone subscribed to new ideas.

    It is end times for Lord Frederick Lugard’s arbitrary forge, now lumbering into its centenary with utmost stress. How will the endgames be: peaceful or violent?

    Pa Clark suggests a national conference before 2015. That is hardly novel. But there is hardly any other way to renew and federally restructure the Nigerian union before it collapses on everyone. The ongoing spectre of once-upon-a-Nigerian-state is sure trouble before the final collapse.

    After the Jonathan debacle with all the vacuous power talk, Pa Clark’s suggestion shows at least some good can still come out of his house of Israel.