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Tag: Olatunji Dare

  • Toast to Olatunji Dare at 80

    Toast to Olatunji Dare at 80

    On July 17, renowned scholar, teacher, author, columnist and editorialist, Professor Olatunji Dare will clock 80. His colleagues, friends, students and well-wishers will gather in Lagos that day to celebrate the prolific writer as he joins the Octogenarian Club. LAWAL OGIENAGBON writes.

    Man of many parts

    His reputation precedes him. Anywhere he goes, when Professor Olatunji Dare’s name is mentioned, heads turn, with people eager to catch a glimpse of him. His work in which he is diligent gave him his name. Dare wears many caps. Writer. Author. Scholar. Essayist. Teacher. Journalist. Academic. Columnist. Activist. Humorist. Satirist. He is all these and more rolled into one. Above all, he is a Humanist. Dare took the newspaper world by storm in 1988 when he joined The Guardian, which styled itself then as the flagship of the Nigerian press, as Editorial Board  Chair and Editorial Page Editor. He left the University of Lagos (UNILAG) where he was a teacher in the Mass Communication Department for The Guardian. Dare’s hands were full; he coordinated the writing of editorial by board members who are among the best and brightest in different walks of life, as well as oversaw the OP-ED (opposite the editorial page).

     It was a demanding job, but Dare was equal to the task. He discharged his duty well, combining it with writing his popular weekly column: Matters Arising, which later became the title of his first book. The book is a compilation of some of his published articles. If there are two titles under which Dare’s column resonates with his readers, they are likely to be Matters Arising and Matters Miscellaneous. Under these titles, he usually took a broad look at virtually all issues under the sun at any point in time in order not to miss out on any that is worth commenting on. It is time for both Matters Arising and Matters Miscellaneous as Dare, the prolific writer turns 80 on July 17. What other matter can be more important or ‘arising’ or ‘miscellaneous’ than Professor Olatunji Dare joining the Octogenarian Club?

        Giant media intellectual

      Raise up your glasses and let us toast to the well-being of the great story teller whose skill at using words is nonpareil. He deploys words like somebody taking pap with beef. When Dare turned 70 in 2014, some of his friends, colleagues and students celebrated his joining of the Septuagenarian Club with a festschrift (a collection of writings in honour of a scholar). In the acknowledgements to the book titled: Public Intellectuals, the Public Sphere and the Public Spirit: Essays in Honour of Olatunji Dare, Professor Wale Adebanwi, the editor, described Dare as “one of the brightest figures of the late 20th century and the early 21st century newspaper press in Nigeria”. Dare’s 70th birthday, Adebanwi said, was an opportunity “to re-examine the role of the media intellectual in the public sphere in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria. This book is therefore both a celebration of the subject, Professor Olatunji Dare, as it is a token effort at recording the social history of an era”.

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    Ten years after, Dare remains a giant media intellectual who is still firing from all cylinders. As long as he has the gift of life, he is not likely to stop writing, which seems to come to him naturally. Dare’s articles are a delight to read. Readers who cannot afford the paper besiege the newsstands every Tuesday to read his column in The Nation for which he has been writing since 2010. This was also the case when he was writing for The Guardian (1988-1995). The high and low read him as there is something in his column for everybody. But his satirical writings come at a cost to him, at times. Many readers, among them the educated and highly mobile as well as seasoned priests, tend to misunderstand his satires. They turn the meaning of what he is saying upside down and descend on him for, in their own estimation, going for their jugular or for being a turncoat, as the case may be. For Dare, this is the prize to pay for his style of writing, which he himself acknowledges, “is in turn satirical and solemn”.

    Onigegeewura

    Dare is a man of principle and courage. Nothing exemplifies this more than his decision not to join the management of The Guardian on its trip to Abuja to apologise to the late General Sani Abacha, as demanded, so that the newspaper house which was then shut would be reopened. Dare subsequently resigned, explaining that a newspaper that had always insisted on the sanctity of the rule of law should not be seen doing anything contrary to that position. Things were made difficult for him following his resignation. He was ejected from his official quarters and his personal and other effects were thrown out. As he ran around for succour, going as far as taking the case to court, relief came from abroad. He relocated to the United States (US), where he has been with his family in the past 28 years, coming home once in a while to touch base with family, friends and colleagues.

    Dare took up a faculty position at the Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, in 1996. His sacrifice did not go unnoticed. For what he went through, he was awarded the Hammet/Hellman Grant for Courage in the face of Political Persecution by Human Rights Watch. Dare has since retired from the university. Upon his retirement in August 2015, he was named Professor of Journalism, Emeritus. Dare and Journalism are like Siamese twins. He talks, walks and chews journalism. Even when he is sleeping, he is breathing journalism! Look no further when in search of a writer who is in love with his art. Some are born writers; some discovered their writing talent; some learnt how to write. Dare is in the first category. Only a born-writer can have the elements so mixed in him. Little wonder that his peers, colleagues, friends and students have kind words to say about him and are ready to tell the world that this is Onigegeewura (the One-with-the-Golden-Pen), as Professor Niyi Osundare described him in The Journalist as Public Intellectual (Olatunji Dare as Splendid Exemplum) in the aforementioned 70th birthday festshcrift.

      Master satirist

    Under a subtitle: From the classroom to the newsroom/newsstand, Osundare said Dare remained an exemplar of a scholar who never abandoned their commitment to a life of the mind for filthy lucre. “For the past three decades, Dare has not only succeeded in establishing himself as one of Nigeria’s most engaging thinkers and writers; he has also shown the country how it is done by raising both the accent and tenor of journalism practice. In the true tradition of journalism as truth-seeker, information-disseminator, and shaper of public opinion, he has championed a school of journalism that places the highest premium on integrity and informed engagement. Believing that journalism is not just ‘history in a hurry’ as is often touted in common parlance, Dare conceives it as history in motion and remembrance in action…

    “For Dare, journalism is not just a job; it is a vocation; not just a career but a calling. Journalism is a cause… In no part of journalism is the maxim of the writer-as-shaper-of-public-opinion truer than in opinion writing. And this is Olatunji Dare’s turf, his roost, and refuge – and in a manner of speaking – his crucible… Dare’s column is the meeting-point of many interests: up-to-date account of the news of the day; a masterfully executed analysis of it; a magisterial coda oftentimes with unforgettable moral gravitas… His column made The Guardian a compulsory read every Tuesday because of its depth of analysis, fearless argumentation, and impeccable expression… His stylistic and rhetorical features are what make Olatunji Dare one of Nigeria’s most effective satirists. When a matter is too gross, too ridiculous, or too bizzare for simple expository commentary (and Nigeria is a land of such incredible grotesqueries), the writer combs his rhetorical arsenal for the sharpest satirical weapon… Over these years, Olatunji Dare has laboured to humour Nigerian rulers out of their hubris and Nigerian citizens out of their civic folly. Dare’s satire is driven by touching patriotism and the need to eradicate the unending cycle of stupidity that lies at the root of Nigeria’s underdevelopment. Only Peter Pan in his politically astute days has jolted Nigeria with satiric barbs so sharp and so remorsefully focused”, Osundare said.

    It is to Dare’s credit that his satirical writing has been the subject of two M.A. (Master’s of Arts) theses in some Nigerian universities, and of articles in several learned journals. It has also featured in courses on Stylistics in programmes in the English Departments of some universities. It is a reflection of his academic background that his writings found a home in universities. It is also not for nothing that he returned to the university from where he joined the media when he left The Guardian in unpleasant circumstance. This connection between his media and academic life makes him to stand out. Till today, he bestrides the two worlds in a manner that no other known professional has done. A much-travelled journalist, Dare has reported from more than a dozen countries on three continents and interviewed several statesmen of global stature. His works have appeared in West Africa, Newsday and The Seattle Times. In 1995, the Nieman Foundation awarded Dare the Louis M. Lyon’s Prize for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism, in recognition of his steadfast commitment to journalism’s best practices.

       Amicus

    His teaching job at Bradley did not stop him from writing. He wrote weekly columns for audiences in Nigeria and on the Internet. In summer 2000, Dare was an editorial adviser for The Seattle Times, based on a competitive fellowship awarded by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Prior to that, he had conducted journalism workshops in Zimbabwe, Ghana and across Nigeria. It takes a man of linguistics style to do the kind of thing that Dare does week in, week out. No other person can attest to his style than his friend and colleague in their days at UNILAG, Prof  Adidi Uyo. In his contribution to the festshcrift titled: Amicus: The element of the man’s style, Uyo said of Dare: “Conversing with Amicus or reading him always enriches you with three things, especially, if you have the intellectual bent. The three things are ideas, words, and humour. Words, of course, are the bearers of the other two things, and when the three are delicately combined, the result can be a great delight”.

     According to Uyo, he and Dare have been calling themselves Amicus, the Latin word for friend, since the 1980s after the latter wrote a piece titled: Amicus Curiae (friend of court) in The Guardian. To Uyo, Dare is a COW! Do not take that in its literal sense, as Uyo explained what he meant by the acronym. “There goes my beloved COW, again! Only a person with the size of his vocabulary and the ability to pick and position words the way the man does can be called a Connoisseur of Words… Take it from me: Amicus is a COW, par excellence!”  Uyo, himself a wordsmith, was not done yet. “As he always does, Amicus uses his prodigious erudition to enrich his readers. That, to me, is his mark of distinction: it is what distinguishes Amicus as a columnist. It is what I have dubbed, erudition for enrichment (EFE)”.

    Martyrs Arising

    Another accomplished scholar and essayist, Professor Adebayo Williams also commended Dare’s style in his own contribution to the festshcrift. Titled: ‘Martyrs Arising’, which is apparently a play on the words: Matters Arising, which Dare likes writing under, Williams said: “Ten years ago when Martyrs Arising was written, it was parody as a homage, an iconic tribute and a backhanded birthday compliment to an older friend who is one of the quiet heroes of Nigeria’s democratic emancipation. Olatunji (Ale)Dare, master satirist, stylistic exemplar and magisterial editorialist had just turned fifty… Whenever the political scene got overcrowded and unwieldy for a single column, the noted columnist would come up with a unique unifier: Matters Arising. So merciless and assiduous was Dare’s chronicle of the June 12 fiasco and the shenanigans of Nigeria’s political class that he had an omnibus diary to contain the magical realism in all its bizzare twists and murderous idiocies. Titled: Diary of a Debacle, it was a compelling read soaring with lacerating wit and roiling indignation. Such was the national following that when the diary ceased for a fortnight, I had to pay a surprise visit to Dare in his trenches at The Guardian to ask whether the Diary of a Debacle had become the debacle of a diary”.

       The deep call the deep

    Indeed, it takes the deep to call the deep. At 80, Dare has come a long way in life. From his community in Kogi State to the bustling city of Lagos and the alluring American state of Chicago, he remains true to the path he has cut for himself. He obtained the first-ever First Class (summa cum laude) degree in Mass Communication from UNILAG, where he later became senior lecturer in journalism. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University in New York, where he won the prize for Editorial Writing, and a Ph.D from Indiana University. Bloomington, Indiana, with twin concentrations in International Commumication and Public Policy. Among his numerous prizes are the Nigeria Media Review Award for Informed Commentary, the Faculty Award in Teaching Excellence, Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship from the Slane College of Communication and Fine Arts, and the President’s Prize for Meritorious Service from the Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois. He was a full professor there until his retirement in August 2015. He was subsequently made Professor of Journalism, Emeritus.  In 2018, he was presented a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Nigeria Media Review.

    Although, he is now retired, Dare still writes his weekly column, At home abroad, for The Nation, where he has been working since 2010. He is the paper’s Editorial Adviser. Dare is also the author of Diary of a Debacle: Tracking Nigeria’s Failed Democratic Transition, 1986-1994. It is not out of place to say, happy birthday, Prof.

  • ‘June 12 changed my life’

    ‘June 12 changed my life’

    Professor Olatunji Dare is one of Nigeria’s best-known journalists, journalism educators, and public intellectuals. For nearly a decade, he served as Editorial Page Editor and chair of the Editorial Board of The Guardian, where his award-winning and wide-ranging weekly column, in turn satirical and serious, attracted a wide appreciative national audience. His weekly column for The Nation, now in its 14th year, is of the same vintage and has drawn high praise for its insights and felicity of style.  A much-travelled journalist, Dare has reported from more than a dozen datelines on three continents and interviewed several statesmen of global stature. His professional journalism has appeared in West Africa, Newsday, and The Seattle Times. In this interview with OLAKUNLE ABIMBOLA, on the cusp of his 80th birthday, he takes a panoramic view of his life and times as a journalist and academic, talks about how the June 12 election annulment saga changed his life, and touches on a few professional regrets.

    At 80, you are “home abroad”.  What are your broad takes: about past life at home, present life in exile?

    Life back home was ordered, more or less.  You went to school with your peers,  with whom you nurtured the same aspirations about getting on in life; aspirations fueled by so many inspiring examples around you.

    I had brothers studying at Igbobi College and CMS Grammar School and Zaria and Keffi and Okene.  When they came home on vacation, they seemed like a superior breed:  well-groomed,  well-mannered, and seemed destined for  high achievement.  The first two persons to go to the UK  for advanced study were from my family.

    Dad was also an inspiration.  Largely self-taught and well-cultivated.   Wrote and spoke impeccable English, and laid out his country home, Okemopo Villa, like that of a British baron, furnishings and all, and drove a Ford Mercury V8 limousine.

    You were led to believe that the only obstacle standing between you and your goal was yourself, your drive, your motivation, and there was plenty of motivation, starting from home.

     And everything fell into place, more or less, culminating in my earning a doctorate, my detour into media work, my return to the academy, and appointment as a university professor.

    Up to the June 12 crisis, my life was fulfilling.  Work at The Guardian was so fulfilling that I actually looked forward to going to work on Sundays, so much so that my wife often wondered whether there was not much more than editorial work involved in those Sunday outings.

    The pay was middling, but the professional and emotional satisfaction was priceless.

    And I had some of the finest colleagues one could wish for.

    This lifestyle crashed when  General Abacha shut down the paper.  Harassed by the security people, and unable to fulfill my obligations to my family, I relocated to the United States via the NADECO route.

    I had a sense of exile only during the two years before my family came to join me. Thereafter, we made the usual adjustments and lived as we had done back home.  I see myself as an expatriate, not as a person in exile.

    How has that – permanent – change in location affected your craft as journalist and columnist?

    Abroad, you cannot carry out the kind of freewheeling discussions and interactions you had with colleagues back home.    You cannot just breeze into your colleagues’ space without an invitation.  They guard their private space against every form of intrusion. 

    The spontaneity of home is missing.  The kinds of discussions and debates that can enrich perspective don’t happen, except with your fellow expatriate Nigerians.

    Back home, I had well-informed sources in and out of government and could run my ideas and hunches by them,  one-on-one.  With the erratic telephony at that end, it is difficult to operate that way.  And so, in the work I do from here, there is more often than not a gap in my knowledge of the facts and their nuances.

    I see myself as an expatriate, not an exile.  Even so, you feel somewhat detached, or rather not fully absorbed in the source of your consciousness and creativity.

    Plus, finding satisfying full-time media work here is difficult, no matter the position you held previously.  I was lucky to have won a competitive fellowship from the American Society of Newspaper Editors to serve with the Seattle Times as an editorial writer.  It was to last through summer but they offered me a position, which I could not take up then.  But without the agency of the ASNE, I would never have had that chance.

    The Academe here and in America: strengths and drawbacks?

    In Nigeria, the teacher is in charge.  In matters academic, in teaching style,

    In classroom experience, he enjoys almost full autonomy.  They sometimes abuse this autonomy through sexual harassment and other unethical practices. But the game is theirs overall.

    In America, the educational experience is student-centered. Most are well-behaved, courteous, and respectful.  But there are those who are having a Black instructor – or even sitting in the same classroom with them – for the first time.  That is not how things are supposed to be.  There is nothing you can do to engage or impress them. 

    They take out their frustrations on you when they have to evaluate you and your course at the end of the semester. But they do it to fellow whites too.

    Some white instructors have been known to resign or retire prematurely, following devastating student evaluations.

    You try to fulfill your obligation to the best of your ability.  And I think I came out well in the end, even winning an award for Teaching Excellence. The testimonies former students  made by personal appearance and in audio, text and video at my retirement rank among the best compliments I have ever received in my life.

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    Only two weeks ago, a student I had in my Media Law and Ethics class some 14 years ago, now on the Health Sciences faculty of another university, sent me an email saying how I had inspired her and how she remembers many of the examples I provided in class, the phrasing of my class notes, and my challenging exams.

    Could you trace your last days at The Guardian, and the circumstances that led to your exit – and exile?

    We intuited that we could not carry on indefinitely with our outspokenness, our analyses, our depth reporting, and our investigative approach to issues, and that the authorities would have to wield the big stick at some point.  The Government had no answer.  The official media were simply no match

    I used to warn my colleagues to leave no vital documents – passports, cheque books,  ID cards, etc, in their offices.

    But the end came when we least expected it.  I had just returned from a trip to Germany, and the pouch containing my passport and other documents was in my desk, in expectation of another foreign trip, when security forces ordered everyone out around midnight and shut down the place indefinitely.  My column titled “The Nigerian Ideology” was scheduled to appear Tuesday of the following week. It was run more than a year later, when the paper was allowed to resume publication.

    The government thought that the appointment of our publisher Alex Ibru as  Internal Affairs Minister and member of the ruling Supreme Military Council would blunt our critical edge.  When it didn’t, despite Ibru’s attempt to teleguide the paper, they shut it down, sacked Ibru, and made an attempt on his life later.

    Word reached Ibru that if he apologized for The Guardian’s misdeeds and promised that it would sin no more, the Government would consider unbanning the paper.

    And so, Ibru led a team of his inner circle to Abuja for that purpose.  Though a member of that inner circle, reporting directly only to the Publisher, I was not privy to that decision.  They sent an airline ticket to the house, with a cover letter that said we were going for an audience with Abacha.   The purpose was not indicated, but I had been tipped off by some colleagues and by a source in the Presidency in Abuja. 

    It was my 14-year-old son, awaiting his JAMB results, who took delivery of  the letter.  He opened and read it.  As I settled down, he handed it to me, saying, “Dad, they say you are going to Abuja to meet Abacha.”

    I have heard, I told him.

    What’s the purpose?  I told him.

    As I was reading the letter, he looked me in the eye and said “You know you can’t go on that trip, Dad.  If you go, you are sunk.”

    “I will not go,” I assured him.  Then, I asked, “Are you prepared to live with the implications of my not going?”  We were living in official quarters, with no home of our own, and not much money in the bank.

    “Yes,” he said, without hesitation.  We shook hands.  I hugged him.  And that was it.

    They went, they begged, and were forgiven.

    Two days later, I turned in my resignation.  The Guardian had always insisted on the primacy of the rule of law, I stated in the letter.  If we had broken any law, we should be made to answer before the courts.  After the compromise we had made, we could never write in that vein again without sounding hypocritical and disingenuous.

    I never went back.  I dusted up my diplomas and took up a teaching job in the United States, through the help of one of my former professors at Indiana.

    As a journalism teacher, you have taught and mentored many.  How has it been over the years, with your different generations of students and mentees?

    Seeing a good many of my former students in the commanding heights of Nigerian journalism has been a great source of joy and pride for me.  I am sometimes embarrassed by the deference they show me, and by some of the things they say about me.

    At my 70th birthday celebrations ten years ago – how time flies – there was this former student who brought his nine-year-old son along.  He said he had talked about me so many times in their house about how I had influenced his life that the young man insisted on meeting me. I fought back a tear or two.

    You were once a student yourself: teacher training, science-inclined and finally media studies.  Which of your teachers shaped you and nudged you toward your present career as a celebrated journalist?

    A tricky question.  I have had so many good teachers that it would be invidious to mention some and leave out others.  Still, at UNILAG, I must mention Frank Ugboajah,  Marie Riley, Onuorah Nwuneli, and Jim Scotton who was journalism dean then.

    I had entered UNILAG as a self-sponsored student.  My money ran out at the end of my first year.  I had applied for a Kwara State Scholarship without success, and I wasn’t about to re-apply.  I thought of taking the year off to work to earn some money to pay for the rest of course.

    I mentioned it to Dean Scotton.  He said I would lose my momentum if I did that, and that I would never regain it.  Was there any authority he could write to about me?  I suggested the Kwara State Scholarships Board.

    That was how I Was awarded a scholarship to cover my remaining two years at UNILAG.   The financial security allowed me to focus on my studies and to pursue excellence.  Jim Scoton died last year.

    Outside Mass Comm, there was Alain Herbert in Modern European Languages (I had two years of French) and the Rev. Father Joseph Schuyler in Sociology.

    At Columbia, Luther Jackson, Norman Isaacs, and Fred TC Yu come to mind.  In Indiana, I must mention Ogan and Herb Altschul in journalism, William Gawthrop and Jack Hopkins in public policy; Ed Buehrig in International organization, and Owen Johnson in international communication.

    All of them sharpened my intellect and by their personal examples, made me strive for excellence.

    You wrote that a letter of support from Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka for your application for a professorship at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, USA — where by the way, you’re now Professor Emeritus of Communication — caused quite a stir.  Could you share with us that experience?

    Soyinka is a writer and intellectual of global stature.  It is not often that one encounters a person of that calibre.  Knowing such a person to the point that he enthusiastically endorses your application for a professorship virtually marks you out as a remarkable figure by extension.  That was what happened.

    I should mention an earlier, related example.  I was caught in the U. S Visa trap on a visit to Nigeria.  Embassy officials said I had to spend two years in Nigeria before I could return to the United States, unless the government of Nigeria sanctioned my return.  In vain did I point out that I was not a government official.  Only the President could give the necessary authorization.

    When they learned of this development, my college dean visited my wife at work on a sympathy call and enquired how difficult it would be to get the authorization.

    My wife replied that it should not be difficult since the President and I are friends.

    Her visitor straightened up, swallowed his breath, and asked:  “What president are we talking about, Mrs Dare?”

    “President Obasanjo.” she replied calmly.  “He and my husband are friends.”

    Some two weeks later, the Note Verbale was delivered to the Embassy.

    Several days thereafter, I was on my way back to the United States, a person of some consequence in his homeland.

    Soyinka’s letter of support sealed my standing as a person who has friends in higher places.

    You bossed, to high public acclaim, the delicate art of satire in your columns, during the troubled years of military rule.  Why that choice, which could easily be misinterpreted?

    I honestly can’t tell whether it is the case that I chose the medium of satire, or satire chose me.  It came naturally to me, and I found it convenient and effective.  The risk of being misunderstood, of its being taken literally, was always there.  But you learned to live with it.

    Perhaps the most notable example of that eventuality was a piece I did when it was reported that the fellow posing as President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja was a double, from Sudan.

    I tried to puncture that story by taking it to a much higher level, stating that those who planted the fake had demanded a hefty portion of Nigeria’s oil revenues for the next 25 years as a price for withdrawing, and that the British authorities were mediating.

    A much-revered cleric took the story literally and relayed it to his global congregation.  I was told that my piece and the cleric’s spin on it had caused a major security concern in Abuja, and that I should kindly declare that it was a satire.  Which I did, for the first and only time I  have been writing satires.

    By and large, however, it has served me well, and a discriminating audience has grown used to it.

    With fetching prose, you curate not only elegant style but also sound lexis and structure.  How do you rate the Nigerian media today in the use of language?

    Very high on the whole.  In some cases, world-class.  You still find, here and there, examples of language use and abuse that offends the reader’s sensibilities, examples of transliteration, solecisms, non-sequiturs, and what have you. 

    But in the mainstream media, especially in the editorial and opinion pages, language use ranks with the best you will find anywhere.   Only the best are recruited to service those pages.

    I wish I could say that this is true for all sections of the media, or for all departments of a given media outlet.  News reporting is still governed by formula, with inordinate attention to the who rather than the what, with scant attention to process, and with and with no follow-ups.

    Contrasted to the 1970s, literacy today is up but copy sales are down.  What can the media do to use higher literacy to boost sales?

    You need resources to train and recruit versatile staffers to raise the literary profile of news outlets.  But with shrinking purchasing power, I doubt whether outstanding language use alone can boost sales.

    The reader must know that there is valuable content for him or her.  This calls for audience research, creativity, diversification, and excellent marketing so that even in a stagnant environment, you can attract a larger piece of the pie.  You have to have readers and audiences.  Do not take their loyalty or patronage for granted.

    At 80, what do you count as your fulfillment, and what are your regrets – on the personal plane, and on Nigeria?

    On the personal plane, I am thankful that I have lived a full decade beyond the proverbial three score and ten years, without appreciable loss in cognition or mental functioning. But the passage of time is all too evident in my gait and in my impaired mobility.

    I am grateful that I have a loving wife and children who share my values and hold tenaciously to my values and principles.  I am grateful that our caring and dutiful children have struck out on different paths and are finding fulfillment in their personal lives and their callings. 

    I am thankful for those friends who came to my help at critical times, and to colleagues who inspired me with their outstanding work.  I count it a blessing that my professional attainments have been acknowledged at home and abroad. 

    On Nigeria:  It is deeply to be regretted that a country so richly endowed is yet to find a secure footing in the community of nations; that a country that aspired at the end of the civil war five decades ago to become a land full of bright opportunities is today a land from which tens of thousands, young and old, are fleeing in search of better opportunities.

    I have the hope that one day, Nigeria will finally make a rendezvous with its destiny- that its vaunted potential will finally be translated into actuality.  I regret that this will not happen in my lifetime.

    On the professional front: 

    I regret that I never had an opportunity to interview former military president Ibrahim Babangida, no holds barred. 

    Most of those who have had the chance, whether Nigerians or foreigners, were too star-struck, too beholden to him, or too timid to ask and ask insistently those tough questions about his failed, duplicitous leadership that landed Nigeria in the morass from which it is yet to emerge.  Only Karl Maier (author of “Nigeria:  This House Has Fallen”) came even close.

    One last regret, and a matter of consuming shame.

    On my 70th birthday, I solemnly declared that, on my retirement from the Bradley faculty the following year, I would devote myself to raising awareness about autism, building a constituency for the afflicted, and helping mobilize support for their care.

    This declaration did not spring entirely from altruism.  I have an autistic son well into his forties.

    Much to my regret and shame, I accomplished next to nothing in that regard.  The pathologies  of ageing set in even before I retired and overwhelmed me thereafter, necessitating radiotherapy, two spinal surgeries and other radical interventions that impaired my capacity for independent travel, and then Covid Correspondence went unacknowledged, and phone calls went unanswered.  It was difficult to ascertain who was who in the community of the concerned.  The file containing my notes and working papers went missing with my luggage on the flight to Lagos.  The luggage was never found.  Things did not get to the point where I could confidently ask for public donations for the cause.

    During the 2014 event, former Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole and former Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti donated N2 million and one million Naira. respectively, for the project.  That sum has more than doubled as a fixed bank deposit.

    It remains to determine the bond fide legatees for the autistic in Nigeria and to hand over that sum, and my personal bequest in lieu of the initiative I could not execute.

  • Colloquium for Olatunji Dare at 80 holds July 17

    Colloquium for Olatunji Dare at 80 holds July 17

    Vintage Press Limited, publishers of The Nation in collaboration with the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) is organising a one-day colloquium to celebrate Prof Olatunji Dare.

    The colloquium billed for 12noon at Radisson Hotel on Isaac John Street, GRA, Ikeja, Lagos, is in commemoration of 80th birthday on July 17.

    With “Dare @ 80: Same craft, changing times – the columnist as societal conscience” as theme, the colloquium will feature the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Diamond Publications, Mr. Lanre Idowu and former Managing Director (MD) of the now rested New Age Newspaper, Mr. Sully Abu as the lead speakers.

    Mr. Abu served with Prof. Dare on The Guardian Editorial Board.

    Read Also: A new dawn in Ibadan

    To colloquium will be chaired by journalism icon and former Ogun State governor, Chief Olusegun Osoba.

    Other panelists include: President, Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), Mallam Kabiru Yusuf; ace public intellectual/eminent scholar, Prof. Adebayo Williams; former Managing Director of Guardian Newspapers Limited, Mr. Emeka Izeze; NGE President, Mr. Eze Anaba; President of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Chris Isiguzo; Lagos State Information and Strategy Commissioner Gbenga Omotosho; Prof. Tola Sunday of the University of Lagos among others.

    Dare is The Nation Editorial Adviser who is also renowned as consummate teacher and seasoned columnist. He is globally acknowledged as “master satirist, stylist exemplar and magisterial editorialist.

    As journalist, scholar and public intellectual, Prof. Dare has also been praised as the “language connoisseur’s delight” who deploys “a mixed menu of satire and mischievous parody” to exhaust a whole gamut of social, political, economic, cultural and international events relating to each with equal passion and dwelling on specifics with the ease and familiarity which only outstanding scholarship bestows.

    In 2014 when he clocked 70, the celebration by his constituency – journalism and media industry – produced a significant resource material titled: “Public intellectuals, the public sphere & the public spirit – Essays in honour of Olatunji Dare”. The book was edited by Prof. Wale Adebanwi. It is hoped that the July 17 colloquium will trigger imilar outcome.

  • Olatunji Dare, Ray Ekpu to receive DAME Lifetime awards

    Emeritus professor of mass communication and veteran columnist, Olatunji Dare and former editor in chief of Newswatch magazine, Raymond Ekpu have been named Lifetime Achievement awardees of the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence for 2018.

    Both men will be decorated at the 27th edition of the awards on Saturday, December 15 in Lagos alongside mainstream journalists in various sectors of media practice.

    Educated at the University of Lagos where he earned a first class bachelor’s degree in mass communication in 1973, Prof Dare later obtained a master’s degree at Columbia University, and a doctorate at Indiana University, Bloomington. He was for many years a lecturer in the department of mass communication at the University of Lagos. He later served as Editorial Page Editor of the Guardian before relocating abroad where he taught at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois for 19 years.

    Dare is one of Nigeria’s longest serving newspaper columnists having been at it for almost four decades. DAME noted Dare’s “lifelong devotion to advancing the frontiers of knowledge and strengthening the media as a pillar of democracy.” DAME commended him for producing “many journalists and administrators who are today holding important positions in various media institutions worldwide.”

    Ekpu, a former President of the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), in a similar tone is being honoured for his life long devotion to advancing the frontiers of knowledge and strengthening the media as pillar of democracy. Also a graduate of mass communication from the University of Lagos, Ekpu has been a dominant name in the media for almost four decades. A former editor of the Nigerian Chronicle, he edited Sunday Times before berthing at National Concord as chairman of the editorial board. A founding father of Newswatch in 1984, he has been part of the struggle for press freedom. Today, he keeps a weekly column in the Guardian. As a celebrated media manager, Ekpu has mentored many outstanding journalists who are holding important positions in various media institutions worldwide.

    The lifetime award is DAME’s highest honour for communication professionals who have distinguished themselves and brought uncommon honour to journalism practice in the belief that such honorees can continue to serve as positive role models.

    With this recognition, both Dare and Ekpu join 24 previous inductees into the DAME Hall of FAME of Lifetime Achievers who have brought honour and meaning to media practice and scholarship.

    They include eight deceased men and sixteen living legends. The deceased are: Alhaji Babatunde Jose, Anthony Enahoro, Mr. Alex Ibru, Professor Alfred Opubor, MallamTuri Muhammadu, Hadj. Alade Odunewu, Chief Segun Olusola and Mr. Ted Mukoro.

    The living giants are: Mr. Sam Amuka, Alhaji Lateef Jakande, Dr. Christopher Kolade, Henry Odukomaiya, Mallam Mohammed Ibrahim, Chief  Segun Osoba, Prince Tony Momoh, Prince Mrs. Omobola Onajide, Mr. Felix Adenaike, Dr. Doyin Abiola, Senator Akin Odunsi, Mr. Biodun Shobanjo, Prof Idowu Sobowale, Mr. Dan Agbese, Mr. Kevin Ejiofor and Mr. Dapo Olorunyomi.

  • Re: Olatunji Dare’s GEJ is back

    SIR: Our attention has been drawn to an article written by a newspaper columnist Dr. Olatunji Dare in which he hid behind innuendo to criticize former President Jonathan’s new book and cast aspersions on his doctorate degree.  Writing in his column of Tuesday November 27, in The Nation, Dare in a piece entitled ‘Matters Miscellaneous’, weighed in on the prevailing robust media reviews of Jonathan’s new book ‘My Transition Hours’.

    In his intervention, he chose to go with the opinion of the cynical minority that had typically assumed a dim mien, even before reading the book.  Coincidentally, the popular writer let down his guard by allowing himself to fall into the same unscholarly trap. He uncharacteristically got off his intellectual stool, by opting to run an uninformed commentary on a book he has not read, going by his own confession that he was drawing his acerbic conclusions from the account of some “reviewers”.

    If the famous columnist and scholar had stopped at that, his improper haste that produced the ill-informed appraisal could still have found explanation in the fact that Dare probably did not want to miss out on the currency of the discourse. However, the writer betrayed obvious bias and prejudice for him to have averred that few adverse comments from the barrage of media reviews and engaging public interest already generated by the book could dig up the ghost of what he called controversy over Jonathan’s “dodgy doctorate”.

    Although we have heard such jokes cracked in beer parlours and light-hearted gatherings in the past, we had simply ignored them. We had anchored our restraint on the understanding that such banters, coming from the ordinary people and often targeted at public figures, usually yielded the strange advantage of lightening the burden of some of our people who are heavily weighed down by life’s daily grind.

    However, to see such rumours jump out from the shadows into the writing of a serious and respected columnist of Dare’s ilk is, to say the least, in bad taste, utterly reprehensible and unconscionable.

    In the first place, Dr. Dare who usually holds strong views on issues is well aware of the need to always separate rumours from facts.  As a role model to younger journalists and writers, the least the society expects of him, especially in the age of fake news and unregulated social media, is to teach his wards to treat facts with reverence by avoiding the convenient broadway of salacious fallacies and specious contrivances, no matter how tempting.

    Dr.  Dare knows for a fact that Jonathan has never made any claim to obtaining any foreign degree, (save for the few honorary ones which he never celebrated); in which case the process of authentication could have been more rigorous. He also knows that Dr.  Jonathan has never hidden the fact that his tertiary qualifications were obtained locally with his first, second and doctoral degrees all coming from the University of Port Harcourt.

    That being the case, does it then make any sense that writers and researchers should still be operating on the realm of conjecture when the accurate information on the former president’s qualifications could easily be obtained, on request, from his alma mater?  Why should a veteran journalist choose to rummage in the rumour mill for lies and half-truths, when he could have readily taken advantage of the Freedom of Information Act signed coincidentally by Jonathan, to avail himself of the details of the former president’s qualifications from the University of Port Harcourt?

    Besides, a simple internet search would have helped the writer out of this needless quandary as the university authorities had already clarified the status of Jonathan’s doctorate following such ‘dodgy’ and mischievous posturing from some critics in the past.  For the avoidance of doubt, the then University of Port Harcourt’s Deputy Registrar (Information), Dr. William Wodi, had in a January 2015 statement, laid the rumour to rest by proving, with evidence, that Jonathan acquired his first degree, Masters and Ph.D. in the same institution.

    He had said: “For the avoidance of doubt, the authorities of the university wish to state without equivocation that Mr. Goodluck Jonathan, as he then was, was among 422 students, who matriculated in 1977. He was admitted into the then Department of Zoology, now Animal and Environmental Biology in the then School of Biological Sciences, now a Faculty in the new College of Natural and Applied Sciences.

    “At the end of a successful residency period, Jonathan was awarded the Bachelor of Science (Upper Division) in 1981.

    Daily Post newspaper further quoted Wodi as noting that the former president later enrolled into the postgraduate programme and obtained the Master of Science degree in Hydrobiology and Fisheries in 1985 and crowned his academic pursuit in the university with the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Zoology in 1995.

    The truth is that if we have to fulfil our core responsibilities as journalists to inform and educate, we must admit that we have no better choice than to always apply rigor in our work.  That way, the general public will be better served at all times.

     

    • Ikechukwu Eze, Media Adviser to Dr. Jonathan.

  • These disarticulated times

    Beleaguered Senate President Bukola Saraki surpassed his own notoriety for inventiveness and grand-standing last week in various statements explaining and justifying his recent defection from the ruling APC to the PDP, from which he and his supporters had bailed out in 2015 when it        was clear that the biggest party in Africa was doomed to go down to historic defeat.

    There was nothing high-minded about it.  It was a career move pure and simple.

    It did not follow from ideology, much less conviction.  To leader and follower alike, one political party is as good as another as long as it delivers the juice.  Once its ability to deliver the juice in the usual quantities seems threatened, or it is time seek another party that can gratify their overweening sense of entitlement.

    This scenario is all the more likely to occur when the party of their current sojourn develops vulnerabilities that might imperil its chances of re-election, as the APC is now circumstanced.

    Four issues have above all made the Buhari administration especially vulnerable.

    The first is the narrow base from which President Muhammadu Buhari makes some of the most important federal appointments.

    The second is the murderous reign of cattle herders from the Sahel to the Atlantic coast.  Each day brings with it blood-curdling tales of murder, arson, devastation, rapine, and displacement. For the most part, the government wrings its hands in abject befuddlement and promises to bring the marauders to justice.  The very next day, the marauders strike on a more brutal scale.

    The third is the dilatoriness with which urgent national issues are being handled, at a time that demands decisiveness.

    The fourth is the gloomy atmosphere across the country, the pervasive feeling that things aren’t improving or improving fast enough, despite the Buhari Administration’s best effort.

    The PDP, which took Nigeria to the edge of economic ruin and set the value system at nought has skillfully exploited these vulnerabilities to cast itself as the deliverer Nigeria is waiting for.   Last week’s defections from the APC into the welcoming embrace of the PDP was supposed to signalise its resurgence and its unstoppable march back to power.

    Regardless of the balance of forces in the Senate, it now has in its collection Saraki, who has always had one foot in the PDP where his soul belongs, and the other in the APC. For deputy Senate president, thanks to the self-same Saraki, it has an entrenched PDP stalwart, Ike Ekweremadu.

    These are no minor trophies.

    The Senate president used to be little more than a ceremonial office, but Saraki has parlayed it into an independent centre of power to delay, disrupt and obstruct Buhari’s agenda.  No other Senate president in the world exercises the kind of power Saraki has arrogated to himself; none draws nearly as much on the public purse.

    Saraki has vowed to remain president, a position he had usurped by fraud and kept by dispensing patronage, thanks to Buhari’s vacillation in enforcing party discipline – a vacillation that doubtless haunts him today.

    Meanwhile, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, another PDP crossover who was also set to defect, has been hedging his bets – in case he finds his position unviable – further evidence, were any needed, that the defections were never rooted in conviction.

    Saraki’s proxies are claiming that, even in Nigeria, there is precedent for members of the Opposition holding key positions in the legislature.  As examples, they cite Ume Ezeoke of the NPP who served as Speaker in the NPN-dominated House of Representatives, and John Washpam, also of the NPP, who functioned as deputy president in the NPN-controlled Senate.

    This brazen revisionism should not pass unchallenged.

    The arrangement was a product of negotiations between the two parties.  It also included allocation of cabinet positions to the NPP.  Though the largest single party in the National Assembly, the NPN lacked an overall majority that would have enabled it to govern effectively, what with the strong UPN presence in the legislature.

    When the marriage of convenience collapsed, each party went its separate way. It cannot therefore be cited as a precedent for Saraki’s tenacity of office.

    Last week’s armed siege on the National Assembly was barbarous through and through.  It is indefensible. Those who planned and staged it must be identified and brought to justice, and there should be no prevarication in the matter.

    But that intrusion hardly justifies Saraki’s heated rhetoric and his grandstanding.

    Hear him, at his chaotic “world press conference”:

    “. . .The legislature, more than any other institution in this country, more than any other arm of government, represents the will of the people. We are elected by the people, and an assault on the legislature is an assault on the people of Nigeria. The forcible shutdown of the legislature was an unconscionable assault on a national institution, and thanks to all your efforts, the aggressors have been put to shame. . .”

    In what ways, it is necessary to ask, has the legislature over which Saraki has presided in the past three years and run as a fief represented the will of Nigerians?  And isn’t it rich that a person impervious to shame and noblesse oblige should talk of putting others to shame?

    And this from the same press conference, about the siege and its masterminds:

    “. . .They attempted to execute an illegal impeachment of the leadership of the Senate without the backing of the law, but they faltered. We are confident that, together, we shall always defeat acts of unconstitutionality. The rule of law shall always prevail. . .”

    Saraki’s new-found belief in the rule of law – if belief it is indeed and just another instance of his accustomed posturing – is hollow through and through.  Whether in his political career or in his business operations, he has always lived under the penumbra of the law.  Ilorin and Kwara State,  not forgetting Lagos and Abuja, are littered with the evidence.  I say nothing of the Cayman Islands and other foreign shelters for wealth of dubious provenance.

    In case Saraki has conveniently forgotten the underhanded, insidious and smart-alecky path he trod to “emerge” Senate president, how he conspired with all 49 members of the PDP and nine renegade members of the APC to wrest the position for himself and assign that of deputy president to the minority PDP, the APC be damned, here is a reminder.

    When the 7th Senate was prorogued, the law in force was the Senate Standing Orders 2007 “as amended,” according to the best authorities.  And until the Senate convened to elect new officers for the 8th Senate, it transacted no official business whatsoever.

    So, how did Standing Orders 2007 (as amended), which required all members of the Senate to participate in the nominating and voting for the Senate president and deputy president morph into House Standing Orders 2015 “as amended” which states rather limply that members of the Senate are entitled to participate in voting for Senate president and deputy president?

    Back in July 2015, the police had determined that the document at issue was a forgery.  The Director of Public Prosecutions of the Federation, Mohammed Diri, issued a legal opinion concurring in that finding and recommended that those behind it be identified and charged with criminal conspiracy, forgery, breach of official trust, and unlawful assembly.

    Toward that end, the legal opinion also set forth some questions the police should answer definitively, namely:  Who authorised promulgation of Senate Standing Order 2105? Who published it? Who approved it?  Who paid for its publication?  Who distributed it?

    The Ministry of Justice, then headed by immediate past Solicitor-General of the Federation and permanent secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Abubakar Yola also concurred in the legal opinion and stated that the Senate leadership election, based as it was on forged documents, was null and void.

    But the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN) who took office four months after the legal opinion was issued has, without formally issuing a nolle prosequi, discontinued the case.  Nor has he deigned to explain why.

    The police seem just as disinclined to pursue investigations to answer the questions formulated by the DPP.

    That is the background to the making of Senate President Saraki.  Those who are now lionising him as a champion of democracy and the rule of law care little about his personal history.

    They care even less about democracy and the rule of law, and about integrity in public life.

  • Will Paradise be postponed, again?

    Will Paradise be postponed, again?

    I have been thinking of the year 2020.

    This must seem capricious, given the exigencies and the sheer volatility of the moment.   Need I recite the litany that everyone knows so well?

    Twenty-wetin’?  I can almost hear the reader gasp in disbelief.  Twenty-wetin’?

    But those who are not too far gone in their cynicism, especially those among them who have also been paying close attention to what some of the best authorities have been saying, will have no difficulty apprehending  that the year 2020 must now be the focus of the national policy dialogue.

    To cite just two of the best authorities aforementioned:  The World Bank Group said six weeks ago that the recession had bottomed out and would end soon.  And only last week, the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, drawing on a report from the Central Bank of Nigeria, said the recession was fast tapering off and would end by June.

    Let nobody call this optimism unfounded.  At the height of the recession, the government’s main problem was how to find the money to pay all the bills.  Now the money has been pouring in from sources expected and unexpected in such abundance that the problem now is how to spend it.  The wheel has turned full circle, from the oil-boom days of General Yakubu Gowon’s regime.  The good old days are about to return, even if only slowly

    Then, an acute shortage of foreign exchange, the U.S. dollar especially, virtually grounded manufacturing. Now, there is so much foreign exchange in supply that the banks which used to hoard them and sell to buyers at rates that it would be polite to call usurious, are literally begging customers to come buy.  But takers are few and far between.  They are stuck with a glut.

    Only three years now stand between our exit from the one and our entry into the other; between a desultory 2017 and a 2020 full of the great expectations encapsulated in Vision 20:2020

    Here is the first of several Vision Statements, formulated in 1999:

    By 2020, Nigeria will have a large, strong diversified, sustainable and competitive economy that effectively harnesses the talents and energies of its people and responsibly exploits its natural endowments to guarantee a high standard of living and quality of life to its citizens, The Statement continued.

    The whole thing had begun life as Vision 2010, in the time of the debauched dictator Sani Abacha. He inaugurated the Vision 2010 Committee in September 1996 and charged it to produce a report no later than September 1997. The Committee was chaired by Ernest Shonekan, whose tragi-comic pretence of being head of state Abacha had tolerated for 83 days before summarily kicking him out back in 1993.

    Its remit was, first, to determine why, some 36 years after independence, national development lagged         far behind Nigeria’s vast potential and, second, to envision where Nigeria should be in 2010, five decades  after attaining sovereign rule.

    In reality, the whole thing was to provide a setting for Abacha to transform himself into a civilian president, under a new Constitution that would grant him two six-year terms.   He did not live to pursue his scheme

    On taking office in 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo exhumed the Vision 2010 document, dusted it up, breathed new life into it and projected it as the blueprint for catapulting Nigeria to the league of the 20 biggest economies in the world by the year 2020.  His bid to amend the constitution to allow him a third term —to implement Vision 2020, among other projects — crashed on a procedural vote on the floor of the Senate.

    On succeeding Obasanjo, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua  more or less embraced Vision 2020, renamed Vision 20: 2020, but his mantra was The Seven-Point Agenda.  Until he died two years after taking office,  it was hard to tell which was goal and which was mechanism: The Vision, or The Agenda

    Among its specific targets:  By 2020, a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of not less than $900 billion and national per capita income of not less than $4,000 per year, and generation of 60,000megawatts (mw) of electricity by 2020.  These targets, Vice President (as he then was) Goodluck Jonathan said while launching the Vision Document, might even be achieved earlier.

    In fact, Jonathan could hardly wait until 2020 for Nigeria to be counted in the league of world’s 20 largest economies.  His administration re-calibrated the economic data and came up with the finding that Nigeria, not South Africa as was generally supposed, had far and away the largest economy in Africa, and the 16th largest in the world.  And as if the Vision was not sufficiently freighted already, he grafted an Industrial Revolution on it.

    Given present realities, it seems clear that the targets set out so clearly and eloquently in all the Vision documents are unlikely to be achieved.  When 2020 comes three years hence, will Paradise be postponed again?

    That won’t be the first time.

    Most of the good things in Vision 20:2020 and its antecedents were supposed to bring should have become commonplace some 17 years ago, in 2000, the magical year that marked all at once the end and the beginning of a decade, a century and a millennium, a conflation that occurs only once in a thousand years.

    That was the year Paradise was going to be regained.

    There would be education for all, health for all, shelter for all, water for all, transportation for all, food for all, clothing for all, shelter for all,  and money for all. There would be absolutely no need to worry about admissions into schools and universities, for there would be enough places for everyone.  Hunger would vanish from the land, and so would homelessness and disease.

    When they were peddling these nostrums in the 1980s, the target year of 2000 seemed quite safe.  Almost like a thief in the night, it came and went.  But the Paradise it promised never came.  In Nigeria, it was postponed, until 2020.  And now that 2020 is nigh upon, and with everything indicating that the targets are unlikely to be achieved, will Paradise have to be postponed again, perhaps to 2030, 2040, even 2050?

    President Muhammadu Buhari’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (2017-2020)  two years late in the making, treads basically the same paths and promises the same outcomes as the Vision Documents I have here examined, though couched in far less portentous tones.  One can only hope that it will fare better than what came before.

    A much earlier Paradise envisioned in the Second National Development Plan (1970-74) launched shortly after the end of the civil war, a time of giddy optimism when Nigerians thought all things possible and petrodollars poured at a rate that overwhelmed the national exchequer, should not pass unremarked.

    The goals of the Plan were to establish Nigeria firmly as

    • a strong, self-reliant nation;
    • a great and dynamic economy;
    • a just and egalitarian society;
    • a land of bright and full opportunities for all citizens, and
    • a free and democratic society.

     

    It hardly got off the drawing board.  Less than a decade later, President Shehu Shagari was setting up a Presidential Task Force, supervised by one of the most influential members of his cabinet, to import rice.

    Some five decades and several Vision Documents later, how to produce enough rice for Nigeria’s teeming population lies at the heart of the national policy dialogue, and the prospect of generating enough electricity recedes with each passing day.  Toothpicks remain high on the import list.

  • Once upon two uniforms

    Once upon two uniforms

    First, an acknowledgement, and then a caveat.

    I owe the title of this piece to Femi Osofisan’s play, Once upon Four Robbers.  I cannot claim much familiarity with that work.  But somehow, its title bobbed up from the deepest recess of memory, and I shamelessly adapted it.

    So, to Himself the Okinba, ìbà.

    The caveat:  Other than the title, Osofisan’s play and this piece have nothing in common.

    Twenty-seven years and two months separate the dramas related here.  The first one was acted out in a hallowed courtroom of the High Court of Lagos, and the other in a rowdy session of the Senate.  The one was riveting drama, the other an unsubtle show of power.

    First, the court drama.

    The famous prisoner, jailed for expressing a perfectly legitimate request that his case be assigned to a judge other than the one before whom his prayers had been denied in as many as 10 previous appearances, insisted on turning up before yet another tribunal in his prison uniform.

    Prison officials would have none of it.  He was a prisoner all right, but they maintained that it would be unseemly for him to appear before a tribunal in prison clothes.  That may have been a concession to the fiery attorney, one of the sharpest dressers in the business.

    But he was not flattered.  He was not ashamed to be a prisoner. He was not embarrassed to be seen  in public dressed in prison uniform. Whose body was it, anyway?

    The Tribunal was just as troubled as the prison authorities.  Why would the suspect insist on appearing before so grave and dignified a body in prison clothes?   After all, he was not your run-of-the-mill prisoner but an honourable member of the Bar who, in another circumstance could be standing before the Tribunal as counsel rather than culprit.

    Perhaps the prisoner’s attorney could persuade him to appear before the court in his everyday clothes  and not in his prison uniform?

    No, thanks.  All that the law required, his sedate and urbane leading counsel replied, was that his client appear before the Tribunal. His client was ready to answer the Tribunal’s summons, without preconditions.

    The police officer despatched to fetch the prisoner returned, without him. The prisoner would not step out of the precincts except in his prison uniform, the officer reported.  The proceedings were adjourned.

    Two weeks later, the prisoner was brought to court wearing that contentious uniform, ebullient as ever, showing not the faintest sign of embarrassment and decidedly not asking to be pitied. If anyone ever looked spiffy in a prison uniform, it was Prisoner Number J60/4990.

    The press photographers clicked away.  They knew a unique moment when they saw one.

    A robust sense of humour was unlikely to be counted even among the prisoner’s minor assets.  But he had an almost infinite capacity to surprise.  And so, he urged the photographers to make a good job of taking the snapshots, and to be sure to send the prints, with his compliments, to the kabiyesi judge who had jailed him for contempt.

    The Tribunal commenced its assignment at last, under an intriguing division of judicial labour whereby a suspect, arrested by the federal authorities (unlawfully, said a judge) and detained by the same federal authorities (lawfully, the same judge said), is prosecuted by the Lagos State Government before a Tribunal empanelled by the federal authorities.

    But its discomfiture at having to try the suspect in his prison uniform was almost palpable.

    Not for long, however. Between the first session at which the prisoner did not show up and the second one at which he turned up in the prison uniform they found so discomfiting, some enterprising prison official had combed ancient statute books and found, to the immense relief of everyone in that corner, a law that apparently prohibited appearing in court or before a tribunal wearing a prison uniform.

    This deus ex machina was read out solemnly to the prisoner. He was unimpressed, and so was his attorney. It was not immediately clear whether this was a contrivance, an ingenuous interpolation. But it resolved the problem, and the prisoner soon regained his freedom.

    Prisoner Number J60/4990 was none other than Gani Fawehinmi, our Gani of cherished memory, and the foregoing is based on my column with the same title for The Guardian (January 30, 1990), reproduced in my book, Diary of a Debacle.  His attorney was the legal titan Chief GOK Ajayi (SAN), also since deceased.

    The second case about a uniform has been playing out lately on the floor of the Senate, with television cameras beaming it live to a national audience.  It has little of the texture, the subtlety of the Fawehinmi case.  But who cares for subtlety when you can have mass entertainment guaranteed to take away attention from the pains of the recession and other discontinuities of social life, however briefly?

    At the centre of the drama is an unlikely figure, Colonel Hameed Ibrahim Ali (retired), a former military governor of Kaduna State, and currently Comptroller-General of Customs and Excise, or rather the official uniform he has chosen not to wear to work, or to appear before the Senate.

    The Customs Service had been demanding proof of payment of duty on pre-owned vehicles from end-users who had bought them directly from smugglers, or from dealers who had bought them from smugglers.  Brimming with unaccustomed solicitude for the plight of the unfortunate end-users who stood to be gravely exploited, the Senate asked that the practice be stopped.  For good measure, it invited the Comptroller-General to appear before it to defend his controversial directive.

    Ali had sent two of his deputies to represent him.  The Senate would not receive them, saying that its rules precluded appearances by persons other than heads of agencies.  It was Comptroller-General Ali,  or nobody else.

    Bowing to pressures from the Senate, Ali announced that he was suspending the directive ahead of his scheduled appearance, which he made in mufti, not in his full official uniform as the Senate had demanded with all the threats and tantrums that Dino Melaye and his cohorts could work up.

    They rebuked him for insubordination, warned him severely to come dressed in his official uniform for his next appointment or face some unspoken consequence, and walked him out.  But not before he had told them that no law enjoined him to wear the uniform of the Customs Service.

    As far as I know, nobody has cited any law that Ali has breached.  Convention perhaps, or tradition.  In any case, the kerfuffle is not about law.  The Senate rarely cares about law, except when it serves its purpose.

    The whole thing is about power.  In formal terms, the balance lies with the Senate, which can, at summary proceedings, invoke its contempt powers to jail for a limited time those who disobey its orders.

    Ali could defy the Senate and end up in jail, like Gani, or walk away from the job.  The one will portray the Senate as overbearing, if not overreaching; the other will hand it a dubious victory.

    There is a third possibility.

    Ali could challenge the Senate’s order at law and then, taking a cue from Senate President Bukola Saraki, find or manufacture every conceivable distraction, explore every interstice of the law, no matter how unpromising, pile objection upon objection and adjournment upon adjournment, and with scant regard to jurisdiction hopscotch from one court to another and generally draw out the hearings until the Eighth Senate will have run its term.

  • Coming soon: A mega-circus, without the bread

    Coming soon: A mega-circus, without the bread

    This past fortnight, they have been planting broad hints at strategic moments and in strategic places about the coming of a mammoth political formation – a “mega-party,” its promoters, self-avowed and clandestine, have chosen to call it until it takes on a concrete existence that warrants a proper name

    You could almost hear me scream “Megawetin?” when the report first bobbed up on the computer monitor.

    Another political party, whether mega or mini or midi, perhaps to supplant, now that it is in terminal decline, the PDP which, without fear and without research, proclaimed itself Africa’s largest political party, destined to rule Nigeria for 60 unbroken years in the first instance?

    Or to shove aside the ruling APC, the bumbling amalgam of very strange bedfellows, concerned more to share the spoils of office than to wield its enormous mandate to make a dent on the privations in which the vast majority of Nigerians are mired now and for the immediate future?  The APC that was so stunningly successful in getting elected, but has been, alas, so  remiss in office?

    In whatever case, why is the political class so obsessed with the size of the parties that give expression to their policies and programmes?

    In a sense, that obsession, like a great many of Nigeria’s festering political ailments, goes back to the time of General Ibrahim Babangida and his duplicitous transition project, in which he  set the political formations seeking registration as political parties on an impossible obstacle course.

    He required them to supply, in the words of the late and much lamented political scientist Claude Ake, “a level of documentation that was absurd in meticulous detail, phenomenal in  bulk and prohibitive in cost…”

    Labouring under the misapprehension that size was everything, each of the associations accumulated as many as 13 truckloads of documentation.  In the end, none was deemed qualified.

    Babangida then ordered six of the associations that came closest to winning recognition to dissolve themselves into “two mass, grassroots democratic parties,” one a little to the left, to be known as the Social Democratic Party, and the other a little to the right, to be called the National Republican Convention.

    Neither the NRC nor the SDP could make a plausible claim to being grassroots political parties.  They were deeply rooted in the Babangida presidency, which funded them covertly, prescribed what they could and could not do (remember those “no-go areas”) and manipulated them in every conceivable manner, to the point that it would amount to a flagrant abuse of language to call them political parties.

    Nevertheless, Babangida advertised them as democratic fortresses capable of withstanding the fiercest assaults from anti-democratic forces and destined to lead Nigeria to a glorious rebirth.  They collapsed right under his nose, like the house of cards they were.

    Another factor in the obsession of the political class with size stems from the very definition of politics in these parts as “a game of numbers.”   Forget about programmes and policies rigorously thought through, about short-term objectives and long-term goals. Consider strategies and tactics only in so far as they relate to getting the numbers right.

    And remember, the whole thing is a game. “Get the numbers and everything else will be added thereunto” is the unwritten rule and the controlling ideology of Nigerian politics and governance; hence the padding of the voters’ register, ballot returns, budgets, payrolls, contracts, and indeed anything that can be padded.

    By one account, the so-called mega party was conceived in the first quarter of 2016, less than a year after the APC took office.  Back then, signs that the economy was headed southwards were already in the air.  Oil prices had crashed to their lowest in decades.  But the economy was not yet in recession – at least not officially.  The Naira had not been orphaned.  And there was little of the despondency and desperation one sees everywhere today.  Optimism, which many regard as the defining attribute of the Nigerian character, had not taken flight.

    And yet, the mega-party’s promoters, mainly careerists who lost out or had not secured as much booty as they had hoped in the patronage sweepstakes, were already scheming to bail out.  The problem, as they see it, is the vehicle in which they had been doing business, not the nature of the business, nor the way they have been conducting it.

    The vehicle is broken, they say; another craft must be fabricated, one that can take those on board safely to a more prosperous destination and deliver whatever they ask for.  But the passenger manifest will be more or less like that of the ship they are abandoning, and so will be the captain and crew.

    To swindle the credulous, they are spreading the word that the principal promoters include two titans of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who has been alienated and marginalised by the APC he had laboured like no other person to create, and Abubakar Atiku who, in speech after speech, has voiced dissatisfaction with the way President Muhammadu Buhari and his team have been running the country.

    Tinubu and Atiku have separately issued forceful denials, but they continue to be linked with the scheme which apparently will involve, among other things, mass defection of governors and elected officials in various parts of the country to the mega-party.   They are planning to take a leaf from the playbook of the ACN/CPC/ANPP merger that produced the APC.

    Can’t they come up with something more innovative and more inspiring?

    In ancient Rome, the emperors distributed bread and staged circuses and gladiatorial shows to distract the public from the problems of the day.  Here, the promoters of the mega-party are scheming to divert and distract the public with circuses only.  Forget the bread.

    Buhari is not yet half-way into his term.  The country is beset by formidable problems.  It cannot pay its way without massive borrowing.  Unemployment among young persons willing and able to work stands at a scandalous high and is growing.  Inflation stands at an alarming 20 per cent. The infrastructure is so broken that it would not match 1990 conditions if 50 per cent of the budget were to be devoted to it for the next five years.

    Even in retreat, Boko Haram has continued to show a capacity for engaging the military in lethal firefights and for striking almost at will on soft targets.  There has been a lull in the murderous ravages of armed cattle herders devastating farms and communities.  But who can say that such brigandage is ended?

    If just a small fraction of the casualties of roads and domestic accidents reported daily had occurred in six months in a community, the elders would have set out to appease their gods.  Since we are such a prayerful country, it is a wonder that President Buhari has not declared  a National Day of mourning, prayer and atonement.

    In the midst of all this, the people that are lining up to join the mega -party are as self-absorbed as always. They are demanding that 20 per cent of the budget be handed to them for bogus “constituency projects,” in addition to the millions they appropriate unto themselves with scant regard for transparency and due process. They will not touch motorcars assembled in Nigeria.  Nothing less than exotic American-specification SUVs fit for their distinguished and honourable frames.

    This mega-party thing, it has to be said, is a flight from responsibility, and a distraction the country cannot afford.  Its promoters can best serve the country by carrying out to the best  of their abilities the tasks enjoined by their elective or appointive offices, and in keeping with their oaths of office.

    The vehicle is not the problem, gentlemen.  You are the problem, individually and collectively. If you empty it and fill it with passengers and crew cut from the same cloth as the former passengers and crew, you will get the same outcome.

     

    Correction

    I was in error when I stated in my December 12 column (“Sit-tightism:  A Primer”) that descendants of Sheikh Alimi have been sitting tight on the Ilorin royal throne for 120 years. Actually they have been at it for 192 years, no shaking.

  • THE NATION @ 10: Anniversary reminiscences

    THE NATION @ 10: Anniversary reminiscences

    By Olatunji Dare Editorial Adviser

    I can hardly believe that ten years have rolled by since that day in June 2006 when I drove into the premises of Vintage Press Ltd, on Fatai Atere Way, in Isolo, Lagos, and signed in at the reception desk to see the Managing Director.

    No sooner was I announced than a gentleman slightly shorter than I but inclined to portliness like me breezed into the reception area, took my outstretched hand in his hands and with a bow introduced himself as Victor Ifijeh. I knew him only by reputation, from his time at ThisDay where he had distinguished himself as writer and editor and risen to managing director.

    He apologized that I was kept waiting when I should have been brought straight to his office, though I had no previous appointment.

    Preliminaries over, he asked Gbenga Omotoso, whom I had known since my Rutam House years, to join us.

    The COMET, where Omotoso was the editor, and to which I had contributed a weekly column titled “Matters Arising” was moribund. They were laying the ground for a new daily, to be called The NATION, they told me.

    They were wrestling that day with the paper’s Editorial Policy. They had submitted several drafts, but the fastidious proprietors kept asking that the drafts be re-worked.

    That was how they dragooned me into assisting with the task at hand, though I was visiting for old times’ sake, was in fact vacationing from the United States, and mental exertion of any kind was the last thing on my mind that day.

    Apparently, the proprietors liked the product. For, several weeks later, The NATION hit the newsstand, with the draft we had worked on standing as its editorial policy, and my name appearing as “Editorial Adviser.” By then, I had returned to the United States, and to my teaching at Bradley University, Peoria, in central Illinois.

    Writing a newspaper column is a great addiction. I have done so on and off, but mostly on, for more than three decades. Like every addiction, it is hard to kick. Plus, few things are more agreeable than having a good platform for ventilating your opinions, grievances and prejudices and of course your insights, hoping that, together, they will help shape the standards of sense and sensibility in the society.

    So, after a lapse of two years, I went back to columnism. I offered to do for The NATION every Tuesday a column to be called “At Home Abroad.”

    Ifijeh and Omotoso were ecstatic. After several installments of the column they mooted ever so gingerly the matter of compensation. What they called a modest recompense exceeded my expectations. I told them I would accept it on one condition: I had to be assured that staff salaries would be paid regularly.

    They kept the bargain, until the collapse of the oil market and the Naira upended the principles that had long governed the economics of newspaper production and distribution.

    “At Home and Abroad” has been a staple of The NATION this past decade, and the feedback suggests powerfully that it enjoys a wide, appreciative and discriminating audience, at home and abroad. Their generous praise and informed criticism have sustained and enriched the column.

    It has been a pleasure to serve as The NATION’s Editorial Adviser. The position carries no job description. Management has left it to me, as it were, to write my own remit, and to discharge it as I please. I suspect that this arrangement has left many in the house and outside wondering what the position actually consists in, what I do other than writing the column and serving as a member of the Editorial Board.

    As the title suggests, I advise. I advise on content and presentation. I suggest story ideas and ways of executing such stories. I encourage, pointing out what has been done well. I personally commend staff for superior work. When the work is of outstanding quality, I commend it to management for special recognition. I point out what I think could have been done better.

    I teach. I lead an occasional workshop on some aspects of newspapering.

    I also warn. I point out political, legal and social repercussions that may flow from publication of certain kinds of material.

    My advice is of course not binding, nor should it be. Otherwise it would erode the autonomy of the editors. But it has been generally well received. I cannot recall an occasion when it was spurned or even taken lightly.

    I operate as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, and even when I became a more regular presence in house, many still see me as a stranger. One day I went to the library to ask for a book. The librarian asked whether I was a staff, and I said yes. Could she see my ID card? I told her I had none. She asked whether anyone in the room could identify me. A reporter came to the rescue, and I checked the book out.

    The corridors and passages in the building are far from labyrinthine, but they can faze first-time or occasional visitors. One day, there was a knock on the door of my office, located at the end of a short passage abutting two other offices.

    “Come in,” I said to person on other side of the door.

    He opened the door, looked inside, and retreated quickly. He thought it was the toilet, he muttered by way of apology.

    Another such intrusion, Victor, and I will demand an office that is not so nondescript that it can be mistaken for a toilet.