The Nation Newspaper

Tag: statesmen

  • A guide for our statesmen on trial

     

    Sitting on a couch in front of my house on Thursday night, I burst into unprovoked laughter as my mind wandered back to a scene that occurred in my neighbour’s church on the eve of New Year. His two-year-old baby moved to the front of the congregation during a session of praise worship and launched furiously into the dance steps of Shakiti Bobo, a song made popular by Nigerian hip-hop artiste, Olumide, which ironically had been banned by the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) for its vulgar contents.

    The pristine innocence that guided the toddler’s action reminded me of some funny things my siblings and I did as kids to settle scores with our fastidious father. If there was ever a man too difficult to please, it would be my late father. Although he was a traditional ruler, he found fulfillment in farming and never joked with the vocation. In those days when it was fashionable for primary school leavers to go to secondary school outside the community, my father ensured that we attended secondary school within the community just so that we could spend our Saturdays on the farm. To worsen matters, he was not one that would praise you no matter how hard you worked. He was as quick to condemn you for failing to meet his expectations but very slow to commend you for surpassing them.

    Till this day, we still wonder what could have happened the day he came late to the farm and found that we had done a lot of work. When he said e ku ise o (well done), none of us thought we heard him right, so we all stood in utter bewilderment as we looked into one another’s eyes. Apparently aware of the looks of surprise that hung on our faces, he repeated those words of commendation and we responded with excitement. That remains the only moment of commendation I can recall.

    The long vacation was the period we hated most because it was certain that we would spend the entire period working on the farm while our peers travelled Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, Kaduna and other distant cities for holiday. Knowing that he would never miss any opportunity he had to make us work on the farm, we devised our own ways of avoiding farm work. One of the things we did was to decide to fall sick from time to time so that we would be asked to stay at home with mum while the feigned sickness lasted.

    That, interestingly, seems the scenario that has been playing out among former public office holders accused of looting the treasury since the Buhari administration commenced its anti-corruption war. Accused persons who previously were bubbling with life have suddenly become victims of cancer, heart disease and other deadly illnesses. They post on the social media pathetic pictures in which they are sitting on wheelchair or walking with the aid of crutches. From former petroleum minister Diezani Allison-Madueke and former presidential adviser on Niger Delta Kingsley Kuku to former PDP chair Alhaji Haliru Bello and former Board of Trustees chairman of the PDP, Chief Tony Anenih, the fad has caught on so fast that smart Nigerian businessmen are already investing in wheelchair business.

    It is either these accused persons are guilty of deceit, pretending to be sick while they are not, or we are collectively guilty of being so uncaring that we don’t even know that our compatriots are heading for the grave until they are dragged out by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). If the latter were the case, it would constitute a bad commentary on our attitude as a people, but I don’t believe it is. As one of the most religious countries in the world, the easiest biblical or koranic injunction observable is to be our brothers’ keepers. It seems most probable therefore that many of the accused persons are merely playing the game some of us played as children to draw public sympathy. Unfortunately, Nigerians are now so disappointed with the deeds of many of their past public office holders to regal them with such sympathy.

    Our compatriots accused of embezzling, mismanaging or misappropriating public funds have no reason to panic. After all, as accused persons, they are assumed innocent until they are proved guilty in competent courts of law. And if they are found not to be innocent at the end of the day, the experiences of individuals like the late former Bayelsa State governor, Chief Diepriye Alamieyeseigha and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olabode George, are evidence that going to jail is not the end of the world. They could get presidential pardon and once more become statesmen after their prison experiences.

    It may be true that we no longer have as President a man that would indulge them like former President Goodluck Jonathan, but it is still not the end of the world. The prison, we are told by those who should know, is not the Golgotha that many of us think it is, but an institution of learning which does not only teach but also reform. They are certain to come out as better men and women. All they need to do while their jail terms last is to avoid the clock, the wristwatch and the calendar so they would have no knowledge of date or time. That way, their jail terms will run out before they know it and they will reunite with their families, friends and the rest of us in the outside world.

    In the mean time, I strongly recommend that the authorities start considering complementing our courts with well-equipped hospitals and competent medical personnel to attend to the medical needs of suspected treasury looters on trial. It would make it easier to move them to court on wheelchairs like Augusto Pinochet and Hosni Mubarak. They have learnt to shoot without missing; we also should learn to fly without perching.

  • Ajimobi to Ladoja: Statesmen should not lie

    Ajimobi to Ladoja: Statesmen should not lie

    Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi has said lies and character assassination should not be found among statesmen, especially those who have had the privilege of administering a state.

    His comments followed an interview by former Governor Rashidi Ladoja in The Tribune yesterday.

    Ladoja had alleged that Ajimobi and leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) made overtures to him to be given the governorship ticket while Ajimobi goes to the Senate.

    In a statement by his Special Adviser on Media, Festus Adedayo, the governor said: “The truth is that Ladoja has become used to spinning lies that it has become a way of life.

    “Isn’t it illogical that a sitting governor would be asked to vacate his seat for someone he beat to the third place in the 2011 elections and that same sitting governor will gladly go to the home of his ‘nemesis’ and gleefully hand over his mandate to him?

    “Again, it is clear that, in telling this lie, Ladoja merely wants to recreate the absurd position he found himself in 2007 when, as a sitting governor, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) took away his ticket and handed it over to his deputy.

    “It is apparent that he lacked political sagacity and the so-called people’s support, which were responsible for this political hemlock handed over to him to drink.

    “Isn’t it a negation of common sense that the governor, who was a former senator and a principal officer of the Senate and who completed his tenure, as against Ladoja who didn’t, would prefer a Senate slot that he once occupied to the prospect of continuing as the Chief Executive Officer of a state?

    “Ladoja must have thought that Oyo people and Nigerians have no sense of appreciation of logic and common sense.”

    Ajimobi picked holes in Ladoja’s claim that he was not arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), stating that he was merely on a “roller coaster of comedy”.

    “Nigerians will, with this statement, appreciate the real comedy that Ladoja is. If he meant to demonstrate his naivety of semantics, he did it so well. For his information, he cannot rewrite the fact that he was arrested and detained for mismanaging the proceeds of the sales of shares belonging to Oyo State.

    “In his defence in a newspaper advertorial, he said he did not personally refund money to the EFCC. Does he have to personally refund money? If any money was refunded by his co-accused, he cannot exonerate himself from it,” the statement said.

    Stating that Ajimobi was yet to receive “Ladoja’s letter”, asking the governor to apologise for accusing him of the refund, the statement said the former governor was merely buying time as he does not have any case to pursue in court.

    On the allegation that the Ajimobi administration reneged on the agreement he had with the government to give him and his party 20 per cent of all appointments in the state, the governor said Ladoja was being driven by “political covetousness”.

    “Could Ladoja, known to be arrogant and unbending, during his time as governor, ever concede this absurd demand to anyone? Was it not a similar demand from the strongman of Ibadan politics, Chief Lamidi Adedibu, for a chunk of Ladoja’s security vote that led to the spiral of violence which consumed so many lives in Oyo State and which eventually truncated his regime?

  • Between motor park touts and statesmen

    The holiday has been refreshing for me and I hope it is same for my precious readers, to whom I wish a prosperous New Year. For me
    the Christmas break was as always, a time to touch base with my local community,and spend quality time, with loved ones in the village. It is also a time to attend meetings at the umunna. At such meetings, decisions are democratically reached, and except you have shown fidelity with the people over time, your status in the metropolis, counts for little. Again, it is a time to exert the provision of section 34[2][e][i]of the 1999 constitution, that “normal communal or other civic obligations for the well-being of the community” does not constitute “forced or compulsory labour”, which is forbidden by the constitution.

    But while on the revelry, I followed developments on the rambunctious scenes of politics. Among the combatants, the most memorable is the exchange between President Goodluck Jonathan and his mentor and former President, Olusegun Obasanjo. For Gen.Obasanjo, President Jonathan is a spendthrift, and invariably the only way to keep his finicky finger from the commonwealth, is to vote him out. For effect, Obasanjo reminds Nigerians that he is still a member of the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP]; but while he is willing to die for Nigeria, he will not die for PDP.

    President Jonathan who has been accused of cowardice in dealing with the Obasanjo menace, charged back at the former President, when he opened his re-election campaign in Lagos, last week. Even when he did not name names, we all knew that his umbrage, was an answer to the many humiliations he had suffered from the tongue of Obasanjo; when he referred to the former President and his ilk [high office holders], as mere “motor park touts”, who despite their best efforts will never amount to the status of statesmen.With the exchange, it was as if the two were ready to finally part ways, but no, Obasanjo last Saturday turned up at the wedding ceremony of the daughter of the President, in Abuja.

    But the words have been uttered by the President, that many high office holders, past and present no doubt, are mere ‘motor park touts’. That group of persons in common parlanceare referred to as ‘agberos’; and it is an accepted fact among the transport workers and passengers, that‘nothing concern agbero with overload’. Considering that the agbero is charged with loading public vehicles with passengers and goods, his incipient lack of interest in ensuring that the vehicle is appropriately loaded, constitute a danger to the vehicle owner and the passenger.

    The implication is manifold. It means among several other facts that the vehicle owner and the passenger must be wary of the agbero, considering that the agbero’s interest is merely limited to the immediate gains accruable to him for loading the vehicle. For the vehicle owner, the life and well-being of the vehicle is at the mercy of the agbero. For instance, the agberowill likely concentrate on the stipends paid to him for every load and every passenger, and recklessly overload the vehicle to the peril of the owner, whose investment is at risk. I guess that Nigerians, made up of past, present and future nationals, constitute the vehicle owners, and they have been forewarnedto be observant,by the President.

    The passengerson their own path, are even more exposed to greater danger, as their precious lives, limbsand personal effects are exposed, and could be imperilled as a result of the malicious conduct of the agbero.So the passengers must watch out, when the agbero is selling travel tickets, to ensure that the vehicle is not loaded with more passengers than it is designed to carry. The passenger must not rely on the smooth talking agbero, who most probably will give the impression that the vehicle is in the best state, even when the vehicle is rickety and obviously not road worthy. Again, using President Jonathan’s averment, Nigerians who are the passengers, should be on the lookout, to starve any impairment to their lives, limbs and property, as the agbero load the vehicle in 2015.

     

    Congratulations Ogwugwu Ebenebe, Ogbakokpo

    Part of the revelry of the Christmas break, came from the first Ofala festival of His Royal Highness Igwe Tom Anieheobu Inyiama, Ogwugwu Ebenebe 1 of Ogwofia Owa.Igwe Inyiama who ascended the throne of our forebears in 2003, revelled in pomp and pageantry, as the Ogwofia Owa people relished their customs and traditions, while paying homage to his Majesty. As part of the celebration,some distinguished sons and daughters of Ogwofia Owa, with a few friends and well-wishers were conferred with chieftaincy titles.

    Among the select few, was Chief Christopher Maduabuchi Okafor and his wife Nono Ann Okafor, who were conferred with the chieftaincy titles of Ogbakokpo and Nono Ogbakokpo, of Ogwofia Owa, at the colourful Ofala festival on the 3rd of January, 2015.

    Chief Okafor whoretired as a Deputy Director of Central Bank of Nigeria, in 2011, was celebrated and recognised for his outstanding achievement as an internationally acclaimed statistician and a community leader and philanthropist. Ogbakokpo and his Nono belong to the famous Okafor dynasty, of Amofia, Ogwofia Owa, whose titular head is Professor [Chief] Richard C. Okafor, Ogbueshu-Ugobelunoji,with his amiable wife, Dr. [Mrs] Cecilia Okafor, Nono Ogbueshu-Ugobelunoji.

    While congratulating all the newly installed chiefs, many of whom are well accomplished, may I wish Ogwugwu Ebenebe many more years on the throne. It is my earnest hope that his long reign will bring greater prosperity and more development to our people.

     

     

  • Statesmen, motorpark touts and pickpockets

    Statesmen, motorpark touts and pickpockets

    If we categorise them by advanced age and exalted positions in which they served their country, Nigeria’s elderstatesmen are a very small tribe. Those who make the sort of statements that have provoked President Goodluck Jonathan to make his now famous jibe belong to an even smaller tribe of one: Olusegun Obasanjo.

    Just as the president was warming up to kick off his election campaign, the pesky old man summoned a conclave at his Abeokuta hill top redoubt with leaders of market women from across the land. You didn’t need to be a seer to know that he wasn’t about to lecture the women on Keynesian economics.

    It turns out that those who feared the worst had reason to do so. Obasanjo didn’t disappoint in his latest bid to torpedo MV GEJ 2015. He accused the incumbent of squandering billions of dollars painstakingly built up in the Excess Crude Account (ECA) by his predecessors. The summary of the day out with the traders was that squandermania mixed with managerial incompetence had brought Nigeria to her current sorry economic pass.

    It was hardly the sort of testimonial with which PDP wanted to go into battle. Aso Villa went into firefighting mode. First, Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, offered a restrained rebuttal – leaving the brutal bit to the president himself.

    In a moment of uncommon transformation, mild and meek old Jonathan was changed into a fire-eating combatant who declared: “Some people call themselves statesmen but they are not statesmen; they are just ordinary politicians. For you to be a statesman is not because you have occupied a big office before but the question is what are you bringing to bear? Are you building this country? Or are you a part of people who tell lies to destroy this country?”

     “Making provocative statements in this country, statements that will set this country ablaze and you tell me you are a senior citizen. You are not a senior citizen you can never be; you are ordinary motorpark tout.”

    Although Jonathan didn’t mention names, the media decided there were  enough hints in the soundbite to conclude the salvo was aimed at Obasanjo’s doorstep. There’s also the Yoruba proverb that says “an owl (witch) cries in the night and a child dies in the morning: who doesn’t know that it is the witch that killed the child.”

    The problem with the president’s angry swipe at his elderly critics is that his failure to name names left the statement broad enough for anyone who sees himself as falling into that category to be offended. Not only that, hurling insults at others leaves you open to a sucker punch from those with the capacity to improve on whatever you have dished out.

    So, quick as a flash the Alhaji Maitama Sule-led Northern Elders’ Forum (NEF) hit back with choice commentary of its own. Group spokesman, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, called out Jonathan for being abusive towards elders who fought for the unity of Nigeria.

    He said: “President Jonathan should know that in a motorpark, there are touts and there are pick-pockets, so if some past leaders are touts, some sitting leaders are pick-pockets and thieves. So, you have to make your pick from that.” Ouch!

    I agree that being at the receiving end of an unending stream of flak cannot be fun. Still, describing prominent but voluble old men as ‘motor park touts’ just because they gave a less-than-flattering assessment of your performance is a disaster on any given day.

    If the barb was aimed at Obasanjo then it missed him and landed in the ‘overreaction hall of fame.’ For one thing the former head of state in his meeting with the market leaders didn’t use foul language. His critique was cutting but he went out of his way to be civil – even saying that he didn’t have anything personal against Jonathan.

    In our environment, and I dare say in many African societies, scolding elders in such coarse manner is unacceptable – and that is putting it mildly. Jonathan might be the occupant of the most exalted office in the land but it isn’t licence to speak that way to people who may be nearly 20 years older than him, and who were even once his benefactors.

    Indeed, the high office he holds demands a certain kind of behavior. A president is expected to project dignity, poise and calm in his public interactions. He is the captain of the ship and in the midst of a storm when all around him are flustered and losing their cool, no one should know he’s sweating.

    Jonathan lowered the dignity of the office of president with his crude insults. By so doing he invited the offended to dish out even more gross invectives in reply. He is entitled to be angry but presidents don’t get their hands dirty saying such things. That is why they have attack dogs. For him to have to have done the dirty job himself is further evidence that Jonathan is beginning to show the strain.

    Embarrassingly, the ‘motor park touts’ episode came shortly after the same president asked his campaign team not to insult his opponents. But I guess it is tough practicing what you preach when there’s fire raging on all sides of the mountain.

    All the same I ask myself when hurling abuse became electoral strategy. The president and his supporters seem content with just insulting their interlocutors. At this point in the game voting intentions are already set for the vast majority. Between 10 and 20 percent of the electorate might still be undecided. How does a volley of silly little insults convince them to vote for you? Insults are not going to win you friends; conviction would do it. I suspect, however, that those who have chosen to go negative don’t really ‘give a damn anymore.’

  • Time for statesmen

    Time for statesmen

    Let us not kid ourselves, our country is in danger. We live under a storm cloud, even if we carry on with the routine optimism of the unwary. This is not a time for the mere blossom of rhetoric or the grandstanding of a political virtuoso. It is time for home truths, and we seem to suffer parsimony in that regard.

    What are at stake? The survival of Nigeria and the security of the lives of our citizens. We seem to be living in denial. Both major political parties are at each other’s throats. The tribes do not trust each other and the religions see themselves as God’s and the others as the devil’s. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is in power and it is accused of using the military and the impeachment weapon to cow the opposition. The PDP, in its recriminatory wisdom, is also accusing the opposition as the mastermind of the Boko Haram insurgency, employing public relations firms to launder its ineptitude in the world. The opposition, the All Progressives Congress (APC), fresh from what some have characterised as a contentious convention, has, however, had its national executive, and has accused the PDP of failure.

    Yet three things haunt us today. One, the remorseless raids and rapine of Boko Haram; the deployment of soldiers as an arm of the ruling party; the fury and flurry of the impeachment saga and the fear that the whole country is in the throes of an imperial presidency. All of this is happening amidst poverty, a collapsing infrastructure and absence of it, educational crisis and youth unemployment.

    Everything is directed clearly at victory in 2015. But how are we sure that violence will not torpedo the trek to that date? How are we sure that we are not on the edge of a civil war? Politicians on both sides are not speaking to each other. Rather they are lobbing words at each other.  With Adamawa down, the agony lingers. With Nassarawa in the crosswind, the polity aches with fear. In Rivers State, Edo State, and even a hint in Oyo State, we have seen the primitive dust of distrust and mayhem. Meanwhile, we see a leadership at odds with an answer to the violent impunity of an insurgent militia, the latest victim being the convoy of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari.

    We don’t have a history to fall back on in this instance. Our past never had the convoluted skein of today’s narrative. We have had religious angst in the past, but not this sanguinary. We cannot think of Maitatsine riots in the same bloody register as Boko Haram. Religion was always a factor in our politics, but there was no time we saw clerics line up publicly in defence of their faithful as candidate and spewed hate words about the other faith like we have today. People did not insist on a Muslim or Christian candidate. We had the Abiola-Kingibe ticket on this land once, and religious murmur purred into silence.

    We have had impeachments in the past, not even the Balarabe Musa story carried the omen of a national catastrophe as we feel today. Obasanjo’s impeachments were projects of revenge and humiliation. But they did not threaten the fabric of the nation on the present scale. The impeachments flattered Obasanjo’s pride and we spoke of a heated polity. We did not express fears about the fragile temper of the whole country in this apocalyptic mood.

    So, this is the time to put away party differences and realise that whoever wins may resemble that of the Roman General Pyrrus who conquered and conquered and conquered and lamented, “ one more victory and we are finished.” That is the origin of the phrase, Pyrrhic victory.

    But this is the time for statesmen. The tragedy is that I cannot see anyone in the country who can serve as an arbiter in this battle to the death between the parties. Maybe I have not searched well. I see no one. The closest is Wole Soyinka, but he has spoken himself hoarse over the malady that his melody is heard without its prosody. Soyinka is a critic as a statesman. We want a soul who is a political figure. But they are either compromised into partisanship or bought with filthy lucre. “In our times,” wrote poet Alexander Pushkin, “man, whatever his element, was a murderer, a traitor or thief.” That is the pass today.

    All institutions have been abused. The word is tainted, the money is adulterated, the pulpit bastardised, the gun does not protect but the criminal. Fear belongs to the strong and confidence to the harlot. Truth is only perceived because no one can pluck it like a fruit because it does not hang low. We have the council of state, but what we want is a council of statesmen. That council has not spoken truth to power because no one has risen to a moral stature that would lend him an unimpeachable voice.

    In the past when the leaders erred we had men who spoke and they shook the moral moorings of the land. One of them was Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. Because he did not rise up to the substance of his rhetoric when he became president, he has not retreated into the high cheer of a statesman. He is seen as a contributor to the crisis rather than a voice out of the void.

    Shehu Shagari is insistently quiet because he was never a moral force, either as president or ex-president. Ibrahim Babangida left office in murky ways and his doings show he belongs to one side of the divide. Buhari is an APC chieftain and the weight of his recent warning is lightened by his partisan cloud.

    In other countries, we have seen men show moral gravitas in times of crisis. U.S. presidents perennially comment on crisis and their voices are taken seriously. This began with the grandeur of their first president George Washington, who thankfully would not turn the position into a regal one as life president. He had the opportunity. That made him a statesman and he intervened in feuds after he left office, including when Thomas Jefferson was president.

    Nelson Mandela played a key father-figure role after he vacated office. His voice kept the system in calm waters. We want the sort of leader Max Weber designated as the charismatic figure. Such are rare these days because technology and easy access to information take away the myth of leaders. That raises the stakes of leadership. Or are we victims of technology that subdues the greatness of men?

    If we don’t have men on top, the other alternative is the mass. But the crowd has been compromised in today’s world. Crowds can be conjured by politicians for any cause these days. A scoundrel can buy a crowd and claim to be the people’s hero. The crowd has lost its innocence. In his Crowds And Power, Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti shows how the crowd can emerge for just any purpose, for feast, for god, for the devil, for reversals. We cannot count on the crowd to save us because the Nigerian masses do not trust them anymore. Each crowd suffers from solitude in the logic of David Reisman, who wrote a book titled “The Lonely Crowd”.

    If the crowd that should represent the masses cannot help us, and the charismatic leader is lost in the Nigerian sea, to whom shall we turn? That is the question that can stand between peace and disaster for Nigeria in the coming months. This is not an APC or PDP matter. It is a Nigerian matter, and the political class cannot be saved from blame if Nigeria lapses into collapse with division and bloodshed.