Opinion Archives - Page 31 of 60

Believe Me, This Buhari Cabinet Isn’t Flying, By Dele Momodu

Posted on September 24, 2016September 24, 2016 by The Elites

Fellow Nigerians, let me start by thanking all the blogs, WhatsApp groups, Facebook and Twitter wizards who make the incredible efforts and sacrifice to mass-circulate my Pendulum column every week. I’m sincerely grateful for your abiding faith in the written word. Let me assure you that you push me to write this piece regularly no matter how tough. I must also salute all those who reach out to me via emails, SMS and telephone calls offering their appreciation of my humble contribution to nation-building. I’ve just received one such call from a businessman who believes so much in Buhari but feels the man has been encircled by desperate political jobbers who are not bothered whether he fails or succeeds. They are only interested in the allure and lucre of power, he says and he may not be far from the truth.

I truly appreciate the men and women of power who see my weekly sermon from the perspective that I mean no harm but that I am determined to prop up a government I helped bring to fruition in my own little way. It is impossible to forget and ignore my own critics who can never agree with my position on any national or international issue. Unknown to them, they keep me on my toes and force me to hone the elementary logic I learned as an undergraduate student at the then University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

I wish to say categorically and with all emphasis at my command that the Buhari government is flailing. And only the ubiquitous hypocrites and cheer leaders would fail to say it as it is, that the grunts of the people are fast turning into deafening lamentations. No amount of approbation by a President Obama can detract from the plaintive suffering and cries of the Nigerian people. Indeed, much as I love Obama, we must remember that his primary interest is America and the fight against corruption which is a sub-plot in America’s fight against terrorism.

In case our dear President is unaware, and he feels only the wailing wailers are grumbling, I wish to assure him that this is not the case. Some of the President’s friends and supporters are deeply worried at the sad turn of events. They are wondering what went wrong and what can be done to turn the dangerous slide around. In fact, everything looks to them like a bad dream, a nightmare in reality. But on a personal note, I don’t think the situation is as irredeemable as it seems. The solution lies squarely on the President’s table. Only he can salvage his government from this stupendous slump from grace to grass.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s biggest equity is in his legendary incorruptibility. He must have assumed that this equity is rock solid and unassailable. But while the people truly want a reduction in the level of corruption and general indiscipline, you must replace something with something. Buhari’s team believes the problem they have is as a result of waging a relentless war on corrupt people and the freebies that have suddenly frozen up for their friends and acolytes. Not so simple folks. Where are the jobs to occupy and engage the innocent beneficiaries of corruption? A lot of those who had jobs have lost their means of livelihood. Companies are sacking their workers, as if with a vengeance. Foreign investors are running helter-skelter and many have closed shop already running back to wherever they came from. Everyone wants stability and not sermons. And there is no stability, either in the polity, in the economy, in our currency or indeed in our social life.

Unfortunately, this government has been very high on proselytising and low on performance. Their swansong has become abysmally boring. The people are now less interested in the results of President Jonathan’s recklessness in office but more in President Buhari’s remedial panacea. It is shocking that 16 months after our friends took over power they are not yet tired of moaning and groaning about Jonathan. But we sacked Jonathan because we knew and felt his case was very bad. We supported Buhari because of the mystic that he had the magic wand. We didn’t want to be accused in the future of wasting yet another best President Nigeria should have had, after Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. That is why we worked assiduously for a man we had rejected serially in the past. We must beg this government to wake up from its deep slumber. It would be a huge embarrassment and an unmitigated disaster if it fails. So many Nigerians risked everything to midwife this change. I’m willing to support this government to the very end but they should please listen to our pleas and humble suggestions.

The President needs to re-energise his team. Nigeria is too big and too bold to be controlled by a timid cabinet. We need eagles who can fly high. We should be able to find them in a country of nearly 200 million people. There is no doubt that President Buhari has some good hands in his team but most of them have refused to fly, because they are scared. Many have melted into oblivion and irrelevance. We do not need to mention names. Some jobs are so visible that we do not require masquerades to handle. Some jobs require common-sense and not loquacious rabblerousing. Some members of the team have attracted public odium to this government. They make Buhari look so pitiably bad and that should not be so.

The human rights records should also have been better handled and managed during this second coming after the massive damage he suffered in the past. Fighting wars on all fronts from day one distracted and occupied the government. That game-plan was clearly faulty. They should have known that the temperament and tone of a democratic government is ostensibly different from that of a military junta. I once read that too much anger sometimes beclouds reasoning. The government failed to take certain steps to mitigate against the expected backlash of its many wars. It did not reason that hungry people are not always reasonably tolerant of the cause of their social conditions.

No one is sure if President Buhari was ever inclined or advised by his team to plan its offensive well or if he thought he had the same omnipotent power he had from 1983-85. He would have waited a bit and stabilised his government before unleashing mayhem against the enemies of state. I’m told surprise is one of the deadliest strategies in warfare. Most of the looted resources would have remained in our banks if government had not shown its fangs too early. As a lay man in Economics, I will never understand and appreciate the decision to ban people from paying dollars into their own accounts. What did it matter if dollar was paid in cash or by transfer? That was the beginning of the free-fall of our currency down the economic ladder. A large chunk of the money looted has invariably vamoosed into foreign vaults or under some beds or dug-up holes. Shame!

I strongly recommend that the President rejigs his cabinet, especially his economic team and even replace some of the members. This is what a bank would do if some of its managers were not meeting their targets. No manager is too big to be fired by football clubs. There is nothing new under the sun about this approach to governance. There are so many global examples. In 2014, when Saudi Arabia experienced a surge after the outbreak of the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus (MERS) disease, Saudi King Abdullah fired his Health Minister Abdullah al Rabeeah. In July this year, President Raul Castro of Cuba removed his Minister of Economy Marino Murillo from his portfolio amid the economic hardship that was plaguing the country. Just two weeks ago, Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos fired the country’s Finance Minister Armando Manuel. Manuel had presided over an economic recession caused by a sharp dip in oil prices that weakened dollar inflows, hammered the Angolan Kwanza, leading to heavy government borrowing.

The President should borrow from such examples and do the needful without further delay. I’m happy that even the National Assembly is thinking along the same lines. The government does not have time on its hands and at its disposal. Two years would soon evaporate and the third year will come knocking. It has to start working for those Nigerians who put their fate and faith in the hands of Buhari. We have had enough of the blatant excuses that sound more like expressions of hopelessness and helplessness, thus leading to deja vu.

A few priorities must be tackled speedily. None is greater than the issue of power generation which is already witnessing appreciable progress. I believe the Minister of Power, Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola, should be allowed to concentrate strictly on power and give his other portfolios to equally competent people. I would love to see a former Governor Donald Duke take over works. I do not care WHICH PARTY HE BELONGS. I have deliberately mentioned this great Nigerian who could easily have been our own Obama if we were a country where merit and achievement catapulted people into the highest office. This government would do well to consider a government of National Unity. Since the suffering we are enduring does not discriminate along Party lines, the solution should not ostracise any capable Nigerian.

On the economy, President Buhari should invite and involve the best brains at home and abroad including non-Nigerians. The Bank of England brought in an expert from Canada as its Governor. Dubai invited a Briton to run one of the most ambitious airports on planet Earth. The London Gatwick Airport was sold to a consortium led by a Nigerian. Ghana has just built a world-class Cargo section by Swissport. Before our very eyes, Ghana is attracting the biggest aviation businesses in West Africa. The world has moved beyond our jejune and archaic style of doing things. Our parastatals have become too unwieldy and totally wasteful. We have so many agencies all over the places managing nothing but eating everything. That does not mean a wholesale sale of our national assets but recourse to effective and efficient lean management wherever that may come from. I say emphatically, nothing would change unless we change our retrogressive ways.

Instructively, the National Assembly and the Executive arms of government must cut down on government expenditure drastically. The National Assembly is making sense with some of its recommendations but it is has to go beyond that by actually implementing those recommendations and putting pressure on the Executive to do the same. All the legislative aides, executive aides, delegations to foreign assignments and government’s fleet of aircrafts and motorcades are atrociously over-bloated and unnecessary. I stumbled on a video footage of President Vladimir Putin of Russia’s motorcade. It had nothing more than four (4) vehicles accompanied with escort motorbikes. In 2012, President Putin even went as far as announcing that he and his prime minister will work more from home to cut the disruption caused by their motorcades in the city of Moscow. That is Russia, a global super-power making an effort to run a leaner and more effective governance structure.

In Ghana where I have lived for over a decade, I have seen the simplicity of the Presidential system of governance from Rawlings to Kufuor to the late Atta Mills and now John Dramani Mahama. Her Majesty, the Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II in all the glory of her monarchy goes around in a simple motorcade of usually two or three vehicles. The accompanying vehicles are oftentimes unmarked. But the case of Nigeria is a stark contrast. It sometimes looks as if we are war with some imaginary alien foe. Every security outfit competes to feature in the entourage of our respective leaders. Then there are the support vehicles, including ambulances, bomb disposal vehicles and anti-tank machines!

Everything is collapsing except the business of politics. Every government that comes to power seems to be in competition with previous governments in the craze to practice capitalism without capital. Clearly, this is not sustainable and we cannot continue like this. Something has to give. President Buhari must restore confidence again by allowing the change millions of Nigerians voted him for in March 2015 to begin from his desk. It is commonly said that, “desperate times call for desperate measures.” Our time is now.
Source: PENDULUM By Dele Momodu, Email: dele.momodu@thisdaylive.com

The World, According To Mama Peace, By Sam Omatseye

Posted on September 19, 2016 by The Elites

A tear for Mama Peace. No, not a jeer. She owes us that much. Let our faces break up and tears course down in winding, tortured rivulets of sorrow. Or that’s what I feel. The former first lady does not see it that way, though. That is the power of the irony. She thinks herself in a sort of messianic light, not for society, but for Mama Peace. She feels wronged, she feels purloined, she feels betrayed. However, nothing will sway her or dilute her resolve.

How come her $31 million was taken away from her, and no one understands her right to fight back. Others will call her naïve, and say let others take the fall on her behalf. But she says, no, it’s her money and the Magu-led EFCC must return it to her nest.

Patience Jonathan is a naïve woman, and she flops about with a sort of dangerous innocence. She thinks it was right for her to open a dollar account, or dollar accounts and ply them with humongous sums of money. Never mind she was only a permanent secretary and a first lady in those years, and no one could make a fraction of $31 million without raising a highbrow. She was high brow, she must have thought as first lady. So she was entitled to money that could raise highbrows. That is innocence, Mama Peace style.

When she pleaded on the hustings in 2015 that she did not want to visit her husband in jail, she was as sincere as when she mocked Wole Soyinka’s regal beard. No one could be more sincere when she said, “there is God O! or when she insisted that she was husbandless in “my fellow widows.” Or when she asked a photographer “are you taking us alive?”

Mama Peace had never bothered about her illiteracy. She has not tried to restrain herself, or attempted a lesson in civility or public etiquette. She had no need for it. She was perfect in her native ‘beauty.’ Some may have seen her as a hippo or anthropoid, or the unrelieved maritime shrew. But she saw herself as okay. We might say Patience was brash, bolshie, bashing, but she was never bashful or dashing.

That is why we must feel sorry for her. She might have gone away with her money, if she was subtle, cunning and carted away the money in guises as others did, so that the EFCC would not discover or let them discover it at her boon companion’s peril. She would not.

Her innocence is rare to see in history or literature, a fellow who is naïve enough to give herself away, unless we look at characters like Okonkwo or Oedipus, who saw disaster and pranced towards it. Critic Killam called it “insistent fatality.” But those are majestic figures, otherwise not naïve. But merely fated by their higher gifts to ignore their special follies, or what dramatists call “fatal flaws.”

Was it not the same thing that propelled former Kano State Governor Barkin Zuwo to roar that he kept government money in government house? Was it not the same temperament that made Marie Antionette to wonder why the protestors on French streets would not take cake if they did not have bread? Or the shoe fetish of Imelda Marcos who made a potential museum and industry out her foot comfort.

She was the opposite of what anthropologists and philosophers call the holy or saintly fools. They dedicate themselves to causes higher than themselves and play dumb in execution, and austere in their sartorial devotions, in their spare words, in the economy of their smiles and disdain for material splendour, in their sacrifices for the joy of others, in their recoil from personal happiness. Simeon in the Bible has been cited as one, as some Roman Catholic Popes, this present one looking like a modern-day version, or Mother Theresa. We also have them in the Buddhist tradition like Buddha himself as fictionalized by Nobel laureate Herman Hesse in his novel Siddhartha. Russian and French writers from Dostoyevsky to Victor Hugo have fed on it. In one of them, Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo – the hunchback – organises a festival of fools and he is called the Pope of fools. He exposes an age of sanctimony and moral desuetude.

But Mama Peace’s story only exposes herself. Her revelations tell us two things, among others. One, she unveiled how people in high places take away money in stealth, except that she is not prepared to hide because she believes it is her money.

Two, that her husband was not able to tame the wife. She is the shrew that got away. An English newspaper once wrote that President Jonathan lacked the ability to control his wife. Jonathan could not play the tamer in Shakespeare’s the Taming of the Shrew where Catherina is made from a wild woman into a model of obedience, a play that modern stage directors and feminist rage have turned into a rebuke of the author’s misogyny.

Humans like Patience Jonathan never have the skills of high office. She never acted, and never knew it was important to play roles when in such exalted positions. She was herself, and she was a happy woman. She spoke her mind, hurt people, humoured a nation, created traffic bedlam in Lagos and never saw a reason to apologise. She said she took the money to heal herself. May no one wish to spend such money in a hospital.

The other lesson is the “Baboon dey chop, monkey dey work” syndrome. Just like we saw in the confessions of Dasukigate, people had easy access to public funds without labour. That is the primitive splendour of capitalism. They wanted to turn lazy hours into wealth. We have many of them. They are finding it hard these days because Buhari’s era does not reward the grandiose indolence of the Jonathan era. They are like the characters in Ben Jonson’s classic The Alchemist, where the landlord leaves the home to his servant to avoid a plague. But before he returns the servant has made a huge fortune from trickery, including by lying he could turn metal into gold, and had a pretty wench to boot. The master returns and inherits everything without a sweat. The play, ironically, was written before capitalism. So were the words of Christ, “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

Mama Peace lived that world, and has not yet relieved herself.

“Can we meet you?”: How Not To Start An Interview ( Must Read For Journalists)

Posted on September 17, 2016September 17, 2016 by The Elites

By Chukwuma Okparaocha

I remember my editor once unveiling his disdain for the conduct of interviews that start with the question, “Can we meet you?” According to him, apart from being jejune and parochial, the expression could be considered demeaning by some people, especially people who believe they are too popular to be asked such a question.

Well, a friend of mine who works for another newspaper company learnt this the hard way when he decided to start an interview with a notable lawyer with the question: “Can we meet you?” He even decided to add the words “please” and “sir”, so as to add more colour to the interview. Thus “Can we please meet you sir?” was his starting point.

Well, that proved to be the end of the interview as the legal practitioner was said to have flared up, suggesting that, since the interviewer didn’t know who he was, there was no point for the interview in the first place. The lawyer also suggested that my friend should “google” his name to get his profile on the Internet.

All entrities made by my friend to the man, suggesting that he just asked the question as a mere formality, fell on deaf ears. “Come back for another rescheduled interview after you know who I am” was the stiff reply that met my friend’s entreaties. Soon he was left alone in the lawyer’s waiting room, where splattered all over the wall were the pictures of the lawyer at different stages of his life.

My friend’s day of tracking a ‘big catch’ and hours of waiting on the appointment day had just gone down the drain. My friend who had been dreaming of having a full page interview with a celebrated lawyer was left wondering where he got it all wrong. As he trudged away from the lawyer’s residence, it suddenly dawned on him, how not to start an interview, especially with a prominent personality.

No, Nigeria Can’t Be Broke, By Dele Momodu

Posted on September 17, 2016September 17, 2016 by The Elites

Fellow Nigerians, the biggest story everywhere at this moment is that Nigeria is broke, as poor as a church rat. The frustration of our citizens is boldly written on many faces. Even the rich are crying. Depending on who you talk to, Nigeria is broke because of the profligacy of the PDP-led government in 16 years of the current democratic dispensation. According to these persons, the worst victim and our ubiquitous scapegoat is Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, who reigned fully as President for five years out of the 16 fabulous years of PDP misrule. For my part, I sometimes wonder if the politicians under Jonathan stole more money than under his predecessors. And then, what of the PDP politicians who absconded over to APC in the gale of unprecedented desertions that rocked and ravaged that inglorious political party? What happened to all the traced loot and recovered cash at home and abroad, not just under President Buhari but also under Presidents Obasanjo and Jonathan? Others profess that Nigeria is broke simply because, since independence, we have not put together a coherent economic and social policy capable of harnessing the abundant human and material resources that God has deemed fit to endow us with. We have embarked on disastrous development plan after disastrous development plan and never been able to put together a creditable and veritable team of individuals that could make some sense of those plans and salvage them. In short we have lacked competent hands at the helm of our affairs. The problem is not therefore with Jonathan and his ilk of seeming merry bandits but with all those that have led us to date although some have clearly been more culpable than others.

Whichever view you subscribe to, the question now on every lip is: could Nigeria be broke? It is difficult to imagine that a country that was declared the biggest economy in Nigeria barely three years ago has suddenly transfigured into a miserable apparition and a laughing stock in the comity of nations. But I personally refuse to believe Nigeria is as broke as our leaders now make out. I have listened to series of arguments on why the Nigerian economy has plummeted from the pinnacle of the temple to the deepest depth of the abyss. The most constant and plausible prognosis is that Nigeria was a disaster waiting to happen and that Jonathan as the undertaker had only succeeded in embalming the dead body in order to keep it looking fresh while the soul was already gone.

As a Minister assured me, it was only a matter of time; Nigeria would have collapsed on Jonathan and led to our hasty interment as a nation if he had stayed longer. My response was that why did President Muhammadu Buhari offer to be the lamb of God by allowing a danger that could not be averted to collapse on his own head? Or why could he not stabilise the nation at the state and stage he met it without the country running dangerously amuck the way it is doing right now? There is a Yoruba saying that: orisa boo le gbemi, se mi boo se ba mi (if the gods can’t make our lives better, they should simply leave us the way they met us! That is the cry of those who feel Buhari has failed on his promise to save Nigeria from the perfidious reign of PDP. What is most galling to most observers is the endless accusations and counter allegations from the past and the present governments. I had advised the APC government to stop the blame game long ago so as to save itself the barrage of attacks from those who are only interested in results and not excuses. Such people do not care if Buhari decides to hang Jonathan and all past operatives of PDP combined as long as our economy stops this kamikaze plunge.

I’m certain the situation won’t improve until the government wakes up to its responsibilities. The government cannot retain the old style of governance and expect a drastic and monumental change in our lives. The cost of governance is still atrociously high. Our style is still ostensibly ceremonial and definitely ostentatious. We can’t continue to practise capitalism without capital.

For starters, and to demonstrate his seriousness and resolve to tackle our almost comatose state, President Buhari needs to butcher the presidential fleet and the lavish protocol and fanfare that seems to attend every departure from Abuja and subsequent return. That is the beginning of our salvation. Jesus Christ demonstrated he could float on water before asking his disciples to join him. That is the way to go.

Our State houses are over-funded and one cannot justify the level of expenditure required to maintain them. Political aides are too many. Their roles duplicated and sometimes triplicated. They have become major drainpipes for a bleeding economy. The end result is that they confuse and obfuscate rather than bring clarity and discernment to a system that is already in the throes of death.

Our parastatals are too many, too large and too unwieldy. Our airports, both international and domestic, which serve as the first advertisement of our country to that much sought after potential investor that the government that the government craves are an eyesore and remain most useless despite the many agencies directing and controlling affairs there and the vast sums of money supposedly spent in trying to transform them. I do not know of any nation with such a propensity for self-destruction. This cannot continue.

My humble suggestion as always is that the Federal Government should stop behaving as if it has all the time in the world to fix our problems. It should endeavour to fight corruption and poverty simultaneously. We must replace what there was with what there is. Not all cases of corruption are high profile or derive from greed. The most endemic form of corruption is the one that has percolated across all of us out of necessity or desperation. Corruption would always be attractive when and where the needs of man cannot be met. This is usually corrected in most advanced nations through credit systems, social welfare, scholarships and loans, etc.

We cannot continue to preach to empty stomachs. The attitude of saying we are suffering because corruption has been blocked is no longer tenable. If this is true, what would happen is that only the poor man would bear the brunt. Those who have stolen in arrears and in advance would always get by. The poor have nowhere to go except to device their own means through petty bribes, armed robbery, beggarly existence, blackmail, kidnapping, brigandage, terrorism and so on. The fact that this can only be counter-productive to economic and social development cannot be refuted.

The Federal Government should make its priorities known to the people. It should not operate like a secret cult. There is no better government than an open and transparent government. The world today is just one wholesome unit because nothing is secret anymore. Social media has put paid to the arcane art of secret government that our previous leaders practised. Much traction would be obtained by a government that keeps its people informed of what it is doing in all areas of its operation and the challenges it faces rather than one that is selective in what it tells the people. I know that the average Nigerian is understanding, patient and forgiving if provided with information that it can properly digest.

Government should regularly make public its plans. The President himself should talk to the nation on a regular basis. It shows not only that he has a human face but the people can resonate with him, after all it is him they elected and not his coterie of advisers. It is an archaic way of governance and a relic of the military way of governance for spokesperson to issue press releases on behalf of the President. That is why there is often great confusion from the multitude of messengers deployed by the Government to disseminate information on its behalf.

The President’s blueprint to resuscitate and restore the economy of this country should be well thought out and articulated. It cannot be done by mere slogans, mantra and platitudes. The President’s word must have the force of conviction and should be practised as much as it is preached. The blueprint must be easy to execute. The President cannot do everything at once and his adoring public knows this. However, we believe that the President can do many things and that is why fought for him and we elected him. Once the generality of Nigerians can see that the President is proactive that would change the perception that this government is doing nothing, whereas I am sure it is doing a lot.

Once government can reduce the cost of governance and concurrently reduce corruption, it should invest heavily and urgently in infrastructure, especially our roads, airports and railways. All the talk about diversifying the economy is futuristic. Nigerians need to begin to feel the impact of this “change” government. Projects that will immediately impact on the people and alleviate their present suffering should be implemented. Palliatives to soothe the deep wounds and hurt of the people should be put in place even if it entails greater sacrifice on the part of government and some form of quantitative easing. For instance, I am sure that the NNPC under its new dynamic leadership can put together a package that will help the generality of Nigerians. Within one year, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State is already considered a success because he is investing in visible things rather than nebulous ventures. There is a feelgood factor in the air in Lagos State. If Lagos can do it the Federal Government has no reason to fail. It is gratifying that Lagos continues to be in the vanguard of unprecedented development and improvement for its people.

Education is another key area to invest in. Until we bring our schools to international standards, travelling abroad would continue unabated and our scarce resources would be donated to even much smaller countries in Africa. The Federal Government should treat the issue of education as of utmost emergency. I would rather we educate our kids and sponsor the brightest of them to the best schools in the world than give dollars at cheaper rate to pilgrims. So many families would be affected and touched by this gesture. We should borrow from the examples of China, India and others. They sent their kids to the best schools wherever they could find one and by the time they returned home, they started changing the economic and socio-political landscapes of their beloved countries. Nigerians are as brilliant as they come and if given the opportunity they will fly to the moon. We cannot compete in today’s world without quality education.

The Federal Government needs to jazz up its style. I will continue to say it, there are many distinguished Nigerians out there who can help reposition our country in the right direction. We should stop making governance look like rocket science. Even within APC, there are known and tested geniuses who have the knack for discovering talents and nurturing them. One such person is Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Lagos is what it is today because since 1999, Lagos has been blessed with young and vibrant leaders. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was once Vice President and since leaving power he has displayed uncommon business acumen. He has also invested in one of the best schools in Nigeria today. There is no reason these men cannot be given special roles when it is obvious that this government needs to inject more verve into its contentious capabilities. A man who asks for the way would never get lost on the road, according to a Yoruba proverb. I’m not sure APC has made sufficient use of the amazing talents available in Nigeria. President Buhari should go beyond politics and politicians and do the needful. Nigeria is too great and naturally endowed to be sentenced to archaism and antiquity.

Source: PENDULUM By Dele Momodu Email: dele.momodu@thisdaylive.com

ISIDORE OKPEWHO: Scribal Lord of Orature By Odia Ofeimun

Posted on September 11, 2016 by The Elites

It is truly sad news that Isidore Okpewho, unforgettably warm-hearted, civilized, accommodating and a gentleman without humbug, has passed on at the age of 74. A professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton since 1991, and a President of the International Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa (ISOLA), he is acclaimed, across the world, as a virtuoso performer among authoritative figures in the research, practice and teaching of oral literature. After a First Class Honours degree in Classics from the University of Ibadan, he began his career in publishing at Longmans Nigeria where, as an unpublished poet seeking outlet, I first met him.
Affable, and genuinely serious-minded, Isidore left publishing for the University of Denvers, USA, to get his Phd which he capped with a D.Litt at the University of London. He returned to publishing at Longman publishers but pulled back to Academia, teaching for fourteen years at the University of Ibadan, his alma mater, before returning to the United States where his academic career had started sixteen years earlier at the University of New York at Buffalo (1974-76). A year at Harvard University in (1990-91) convinced him to remain in the United states at a time when Nigerian academics under military dictatorship were being sacked for teaching what they were not paid to teach, and were being paid pittance for a take-home that could not take them home.
As a creative writer, novelist, poet and literary critic, Isidore Okpewho made reaching for perfection a great reason for being around in any genre or discipline. Always with an inter-disciplinary focus, he refused to follow the herd. Once he made a commitment, he ploughed his own furrow and refused to be distracted by praise or rebuke. Formidable in every sense, his intellectual prowess always had an intimidating edge that he never flaunted even when lesser mortals over-rated themselves. His output as a writer, a veritable master of cultural literacy, has had few parallels. He was the kind of scholar that other long-standing professors would say: when I grow up, I want to be like him. This was the result of his outstanding performance in two seminal, paradigm-changing works of scholarship The Epic in Africa: Toward a Poetics of the Oral Performance (1979) and Myth in Africa: A Study of Its Aesthetic and Cultural Relevance (1983) which gave him not just a head start as a master in the study of oral literature but a special vantage as an interrogator and formulator of theories of knowledge and humanistic studies that primed Africa as a centre of civilization in her own right. The works dredged the commonality of human reflexes at the base of aesthetic production between different races and nationalities. Given his knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman Culture, there was a solid substructure upon which he built a highly universalist temper. In a lot of ways, it explains his grasp and forthright engagement of the grand theories of modernist and post-modernist scholarship and consequently, his concern with the interconnectivity of narratives of knowledge systems which proves his quintessential mark as a scholar.
Generally, not being a nativist, Isidore Okpewho stood with African civilization without allowing multiple, incongruous, moralities to influence his reception and judgement of other climes. As a classicist, with deep immersion in ancient civilizations, he knew how not to let the bragging propensities that go with all cultural geographies, especially imperial ones, to lay exclusive claims to human values that cut across cultural boundaries. Particularly, in The Epic in Africa, he uncovered for serious engagement the reality that the oral and scribal cultures of the world share common principles of poetic composition in too many respects to warrant the parochial necessity to privilege one civilization above the other. His Myth in Africa re-drew the map of scholarship in relation to received Western notions that distanced Africa from other cultures on the question of mythologies and mythmaking in general. Based on fieldwork in various parts of Nigeria, especially in the Igbo and Ijaw parts of the Benin Delta, and drawing on researches in other parts of Africa, he formulated an aestheticist theory which invoked performance in the arts as plausible transformers of the way societies behave or change modalities of action.
For an Urhobo whose mother was Asaba, it may well be said that he had to have a keen appreciation of cultural diversities and their interactions as the grit of his vocation. I recall interviewing him about this in Morocco, during an African Literature Association (ALA) conference on his book, Once Upon A Kingdom, which deals with the relationship between the Benin Kingdom and their cultural siblings on the West of the Niger. Even where we differed, I thoroughly enjoyed the ease with which he could immerse himself in local cultures and then link them to universal themes such as the incipient rise and rise of ethnic nationalism. It was after Once Upon a Kingdom that he began to dredge the racial memory of African Americans, addressing and seeking redress for collective psychologies of grandchildren who, in their sub-conscious, were living through ferments in ancestral Africa that even their fathers could not intuit, but they had to resolve before they could tackle the civil rights issues of their day.
Racial memory, as he has threshed it, is not just about what happened to the enslaved through the Middle Passage, the gore after the landing, and the blithe summer of the freeborn without a memory of slavery. This came out quite well in his novel, Call Me By My Rightful Name in which he literally romped through ancient Ekiti dialect of the Yoruba language and Culture with an effortless pitch that told of the harrowing dislocation which slavery wreaked on both sides of the Atlantic; right into the civil rights movements of O we shall overcome. On this score, it is quite a treat to follow his deep historical and anthropological insights, in full fictional flight, as depicted in this novel. The point, so creatively and poignantly woven into Call Me By My Rightful Name, is that even those in the new world whose parents had no physical contact with Africa could be so implicated in what happened in Africa before Trans-Atlantic enslavement. It simply calls for the tie between homeland and Diaspora to be studiously kept alive in order to have clear perspectives on how to go in a divided world.
The beauty of it is that Okpewho’s novels and general literary creativity, while benefitting from so many diverse associations, maintain simple, absorbing touches of empathy. This is even-handedly displayed in the Victims, dealing with the question of polygamy, The Last Duty, on the travails of the civil war outside Biafra, and his penultimate, Tides, which deploys a superb epistolary form to unearth threats of environmental biocide and political insipidity in the face of sheer homicide in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. The novels, with truly folkloric zeal, read like conversations between friends celebrating the resilience of the individual spirit in times of collective disorientation. We meet an author who is at home with the innocence of childhood and the rueful world of the grown up in equally hapless situations.
Never to be down-graded is that Isidore Okpewho was, first and foremost, a teacher. On this counterpane, his ground setter for the study of Oral literature was his 1992 book, African Oral Literature: Background, Character, and Continuity(Indiana University Press). Quite an ambitious take, after it, was the elevating concern that yielded the grand collaboration with Ali Mazrui and Carol Boyce Davies in editing the path-breaking and incomparable book The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (Indiana University Press, (1999). Consequently, the great pull of Isidore Okpewho’s scholarship into the 21st Century was building up and assessing the dimensions and directions of linkages between Africa and the African Diaspora. It added a twist to his academic interests and a broadening of those interests to accommodate Africans outside Africa in terms of their interaction with the continent.
May I note that, sad as it is to miss him, I am more like wanting to raise a shout for a man who was dogged in always doing things so right that whatever one remembers of him brings out vintage heartiness. He was a classicist and anthropologist, always able to put his knowledge of ancient and modern times to good account without being fazed by the new fangled theories of modernism and post-modernism. Forever on top of aesthetic seepages and values that help in configuring national and cross-national identities, he gave the arts their due not as passive but active elements in how people perceive social and cultural spaces. For him, it was ever about knowledge and its shared valuation. As G.G. Darah reminded us in his tribute, Isidore Okpewho’s passing away hits home with Hampate Ba’s appreciation of how it is like a whole library burnt down when an old man dies. It is a tragedy spelt at the level of the knowledge industry. This is especially the case when one considers that the critical mass of intellect that was driven out of the country in the eighties into the nineties, is thinning out, and continues to haunt us with sheer opportunity costs and, worst of all, terminal cases of loss.
Irony of ironies, it makes it imperative, to celebrate the fact that, but for his relocation to the United States, his chance of surviving up to the age of 74 and with the high level of intellectual production that has accompanied his artistic and academic odyssey, would have been so much less prodigious. This touches the issue of how much greater Nigeria would have been in the comity of knowledge-driven nations if all those Nigerian masters of the Word in the United states were all at home and producing. To think of it! One realizes how our society never creates good opportunities to celebrate the real avatars in our midst until too late. It rankles because, in a country without regular literary journals and the necessary soirees that give contemporary arts their great moments, yes, in a society in which those who ruined the economy and the university system are still having a great showing in the public space as if waiting to be given laurels for their destructive engagements, whole armies of our best minds are still being driven off-shore. It makes past encounters that were of little moment, when they first occurred, to begin to spring wider associations.
Surely, one such moment I can’t forget was during the burial of Isidore Okpewho’s mother at Asaba. It was like a convergence of the Nigerian literati in solidarity with him. Dancing through the streets with the ritual carriage on his head, he was acknowledging our toasting of his scion-ship in ceremonial fashion. Suddenly, he veered off and brought the funeral throng in a virtual stampede to where I stood on the other side of the road. Stomping around me, he lunged, without preambles, into an argument, about an opinion I had just expressed, that weekend, in my Guardian Review of his book, Myth in Africa. It was a review, now part of my book, A House of Many Mansions, which Stanley Macebuh and Yemi Ogunbiyi had thrust upon me as a test of intellectual nerve. Coming face to face with the author on the streets of Asaba, I found I had to step obligingly to the beat of the ceremonial drums, while we entered this intense argument about his aestheticist theory of myth.
The drums and gongs were pounding away. Around us, the women sang and danced and stomped along with us, as we punched the air from one leg of the argument to the other. But the man of ideas was intent on slugging it out over my insistence that a myth without ritual becomes mere metaphor. As ever, full of erudition, he conceded the point but refused to accept the implication I drew from it. Using one example after another, he kept reiterating the view that I missed the point he was making in his book.
I still cant stop laughing each time I recall that some people thought our argument, which the drums were contesting, and his dancing around me, were part of the funeral ritual. He made it look that way to justify his moving the funeral throng off its course. With some embarrassment, I kept nudging him about my not wanting to disrupt the ceremony. He shrugged it off. It was his ken to lead the funeral throng to where it had to go. So we argued some more before I literally had to run from the scene because I was beginning to enjoy the arguments. Surely, it was an incident that we were not going to run away from or let become a mere metaphor. We had to re-enact it again, and gave it ritual content when, some years later, once upon a visit to the United states, I grey-hounded a nightbus journey from NY to Cornel and then to Binghamton, to see him.
We, sure, had another, but more conversational jig, after attending a lecture by Amiri Baraka, who was the visiting lecturer at a University event on that day. We talked about projects and tasks confronting African writers and scholars, a subject on which he never stopped reminding me of Professor Abiola Irele one of the few great legends of his standing, whose passion on the subject of pooling knowledge for Africa, rises from romance to sheer myth in the face of a society at home that seems too far gone. Assuredly, in fine intellectual fettle, still talking like a Senior Boy from St Patricks Asaba where he had his secondary school education, Isidore had the assurance of someone with so much work still to be done. Although he was recuperating from an illness, also because his wife, Obiageli, was away to see one or other of their four children Ediru, Ugo, Afigo, and Onome, we could talk a little far into the night. It was our last meeting.
I had promised to return to Binghamton again when I would be able to meet the whole family and if need be re-enact the jig. But as such promises go, time disposed otherwise. Here we are. On September 4, 2016, he was gone.
The great part is that, as a creative writer and scholar, Isidore Okpewho, wrote his hands black and left so much that can save many lifetimes, many generations to come, from the wastage that would have hounded their endeavours but for the humungous scholarship that he has left as guard and guide. He was always the great mind, who moved from oceanic dimensions to brooks without losing his swimmingly authoritative stride and stature. He won the 1976 African Arts Prize for Literature and, in 1993, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book Africa. His prestigious fellowships in the humanities include “the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1982), Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (1982), Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford (1988), the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard (1990), National Humanities Center in North Carolina (1997), and the Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2003). He was also elected Folklore Fellow International by the Finnish Academy of the Sciences in Helsinki (1993).” Not forgetting that he was a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and a recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award, it is such a good feeling to know that he was honoured while he was at it.; and especially, that hereafter, his life’s work remains secured. His essays, a gargantuan production, will not just remain scattered in journals across the world. They have entered the stream of production by Professor Toyin Falola, assessor per excellence, one of the greatest minds that Nigeria has ever produced, who has promised to take the job in hand. Blood on the Tides: The Ozidi Saga and Oral Epic Narratology has just been published through his auspices by the University of Rochester Press to be followed by his collected essays. Although the marvellous literary and academic productions by Nigerians abroad hardly manage to enter this country that lacks a respectable bookshop and library culture, it is good to know that when, someday, we catch up with the rest of the world, the work done by Isidore Okpewho and others forced into expatriation in the years of the locust, still in place, will be there as quite a harvest awaiting all of us. Incidentally, how we could catch up was always part of Professor Isidore Okpewho’s unending concern. For his immeasurable contributions to that quest, certainly, he has earned his rest. May his soul rest in perfect peace.

Education: Aregbesola As An Exemplar, By Mohammed Haruna

Posted on September 11, 2016 by The Elites

ON Thursday, September 1, all roads led to Osogbo, the Osun State capital. The occasion was part of the state’s celebration of the Silver Anniversary of its creation by military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, on August 27, 1991, along with 11 other states, namely, Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Delta, Edo, Enugu, Jigawa, Kebbi, Kogi, Taraba and Yobe. The significance of Osun State’s celebration lied, in part, in the fact that it was the only one President Muhammadu Buhari participated in.

The president’s participation was by way of visiting a couple of the state’s newly built primary and secondary schools before finally commissioning the Osogbo Government High School. The school must be one of the largest, most beautiful and most well equipped secondary schools in the country.

Actually the school, as the state’s governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, explained in his welcoming address, is three-in-one, each with a student population of 1,000, its own principal and staff but with an overall supervising principal and sharing academic and sports facilities.
The High School may be top of the line but it is only one of a dozen or so high schools that Governor Aregbesola has built or rebuilt as part of his comprehensive restructuring – today’s buzz word for every politician seeking relevance! – of primary and secondary school education in the state to give its students the quality education they need to transform their state from Third World status to First in one generation. (It reminds you, doesn’t it, of the famous title of the autobiography of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s late prime minister, who lifted his country from Third World to First in one generation).
When Aregbesola first became the state’s governor in November 2010, he inherited a public school system typical of public state system all over Nigeria – dilapidated, over populated, under staffed, under equipped, and badly managed schools. As a man who apparently believed the key to human progress is education, the governor resolved to end the rot.
As the man himself told it in his welcome speech on Thursday, the first step he took in ending the rot was to convene an education summit for the state chaired by no less an icon of the virtue of knowledge than Wole Soyinka, black Africa’s first Literature Nobel Laureate.
Out of the summit emerged four elements for the transformation of the state’s public schools: their feeding and health programme, reclassification of the schools into elementary, middle and high schools, infrastructural development and the provision of what Americans call edtech (the use of technology to drive education) but which the state called Opon-Imo (Yoruba for tablet of knowledge) for all students.
The building of the high school President Buhari commissioned last Thursday fell into the third category in which so far the Aregbesola administration has constructed or reconstructed 28 elementary schools, 22 middle schools and four high schools, with another 14 virtually completed.
Aregbesola was, of course, not the first to convene an educational summit. Long before him, the Northern Governors’ Forum did so in Kaduna. Individually the governors also made the right noises about ending their region’s notorious educational backwardness. To date their actions have not matched their noises. Instead, the region has dropped even further behind than it was during the First Republic.
Educationally backward as the North was back then, its leaders, with its premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello, in the forefront, walked their talk about bridging the gap between the region and the rest of the country. Meaning, they invested heavily in primary and secondary schools so that the region could produce quality materials qualified for admission into any tertiary institution any where in the world.
With all due humility, I can boast that I am one of those materials. I and my cousin, retired Major-General Mohammed Garba, and a childhood friend, Professor Mustapha Zubairu of Federal University of Technology, Minna, attended Native Authority primary schools in Kano, first in Tudun Wada for the first four years from 1957 and finished in Kuka Primary School after another four, having had to repeat my final year because I failed to gain entrance into a secondary school in my third year in 1963.
Kuka was located between Sabon Gari where we lived and Fagge. It was a walking distance from our home on Niger Road. All around us were Igbo and Yoruba most of whose children attended private and mission schools. In the evenings of weekdays all of us attended private lessons to improve on our chances of doing well in school. I remember we used to beat the children who went to private and mission schools in the evening classes, especially in English.
I am always amused each time people talk about the magic Chief Obafemi Awolowo performed with free education in Western Region. Of course, it was a great achievement which showed Awo’s foresight. Even then I am always amused because while the great premier of the West gave free education, in the North we were paid to go to school and we did so in hundreds of thousands, if not in millions.
The problem, I think, was that the next generation of the region’s politicians chose to pay only lip service to investment in education, especially primary and secondary education, without which invariably we could only send garbage into our tertiary schools. And as they say of computers: garbage in, garbage out.
I know this for sure because of the experience I had teaching in my alma mater, Ahmadu Bello University’s Mass Communication Department for six years until I left two years ago. During the last three of those six years, I made it a habit to test the English Language of all my students, both under- and post-graduates, at the beginning of each semester.
The test was a simple one of correcting ten sentences with errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation. The average failure rate for all the students was a dismal 70%! The highest score was 8 and you could count those on your fingertips.
The conclusion is obvious; our universities have generally been taking in barely literate materials because our primary and secondary schools have suffered criminal neglect.
In giving primary and secondary education top priority to the extent of even borrowing to reform Osun State’s public education system, Aregbesola has demonstrated that he has his heart and mind in the right place. As a mutual friend, Chief Ikechi Emenike, who also witnessed Buhari’s commissioning of the Osogbo Government High School said, the governor’s educational intervention “reflected an abiding love for his people and a deep appreciation of history and his legacy.”
President Buhari summed it even better when he said in his speech the governor was only keeping the promise of the ruling party to provide free and qualitative basic education by implementing the Basic Education Act.
“What we are witnessing here today,” he said, “is the formal fulfillment of that promise in Osun by the state government. The cost effectiveness of this project can only be seen when we consider that this school will graduate an average one thousand pupils in a year and in fifty years it would have produced fifty thousand well-trained and well equipped pupils many of whom will go to higher education and will form the backbone of the administration of our country.
Over six years ago, an award-winning columnist of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, wrote an article which underscored the importance of quality basic education and which I have had cause to refer to on these pages and elsewhere. He titled it “ Pass the Books. Hold the Oil.”
It was published in the Times of March 10, 2012. Every politician concerned about the dismal state of our education at all levels should read that short – roughly 1,070 words – article. In it Friedman narrated how a study by rich-country club, the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.), established a negative linkage between natural resource dependent countries and knowledge.
The club looked at the bi-annual test of 15-year olds in Mathematics, Science and reading comprehension in 65 countries and the total earnings of each of them as a percentage of its Gross Domestic Product. The test was called PISA, Program for International Student Assessment.
The study, Friedman said, showed that the bigger a country’s revenue from natural resources as a percentage of its GDP, the poorer the knowledge and skills of its pupils. For example participating Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Algeria, Bahrain, Iran and Syria that were natural resource rich performed poorly compared to Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, also in the Middle East, which were natural resource poor. So, Friedman concluded, “Oil and PISA don’t mix.”
As always there were exceptions to his thesis. Canada, Australia and Norway, also countries with high levels of natural resources, he pointed out, still scored well on PISA, in large part because all three countries had established deliberate policies of saving and investing these resource rents, and not just consuming them.
The three countries provide great lessons for us as a natural resource dependent country by showing that oil and PISA can indeed mix.
As a country we may have so far blown away our oil fortune but clearly Aregbesola has shown as governor of one of the poorest states in the country that you don’t have to be rich to plan for the future of your children.

EDITORIAL: Isidore Okpewho (1941 – 2016)

Posted on September 10, 2016 by The Elites

As Isidore Okpewho passed on September 4, a flood of condolences surged across the land. For the readers of his novels, it was a time to look back with relish and appreciation for his gift as a raconteur. For those who were his students, moments of great knowledge flashed back from memory about how the man played the role of an exponent of literature. To those enamoured of traditional literature, they warmed to the man’s seminal moments over his deep well of knowledge about African folklore.

He read, he explained to audience and he drew from culture. But in the end, as he passed on at 74 in the United States, he left the world better than he met it. He was poet, scholar, folklorist, teacher, exponent of the African narrative and lover of myth.

Many remember him for his novels that probe the intersection of Nigerian culture and psychology in such works as The Victims, The Last Duty, Tides and Call Me By My Rightful name. When he was not unearthing the dynamics of the Nigerian family like polygamy in The Victims, he was looking incisively at the pathology of the civil war in The last Duty.

He wrote with a fidelity to the oral culture and explored the nuances of the indigenous voice in his oeuvre. On account of his works, he won the 1976 African Arts Prize for Literature. In 1993, he also won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Best Book Prize. He was also a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award.

He was also well regarded in the world of research and scholarship in the major institutes, hence he became fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre For Scholars in 1982, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1982, Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences, The W.E.B Dubois Institute in 1990, the National Humanities Centre in 1997. In 2003, he won the Guggenheim fellowship.
An important part of his background was his erudition in the classics and Greek. He graduated in the first class degree in classics at the University of London. He also studied Greek with distinction. Although his degree was in the University of London, he was in the University College, Ibadan, an affiliate of the University of London. He proceeded to obtain his Ph.D in comparative literature at the University of Denver. Then he obtained a D.Lit in the humanities from the University of London.

He had a vast experience in teaching. He taught at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York from 1974 to 1976, the University of Ibadan from 1976 to 1990, Harvard University from 1990 to 1991, and Binghamton University where he was before his last breath.

But many in the ivory tower also respect him for some of the great work he accomplished in the area of non-fiction. He tapped from his knowledge in classics and Greek and drew from his African roots to enhance his stature as a professor and scholar of comparative literature. He wrote such books as The Epic in Africa, Myth in Africa, African Oral Literature, Once Upon a Kingdom.

Okpewho was one of a generation of scholars who spent a big part of their careers outside Nigeria, and expended great intellectual energies educating foreigners about our tradition of literature. This comes not out of a sense of self-hatred or contempt from their fatherland. They were forced out for a simple reason. The nation did not provide them the atmosphere to flourish. So, they fled their country in what is painfully called brain drain.

The situation has not changed today. In fact, it is worse, and our universities have dropped out of the top one thousand, while they teach sometimes in the top 10 in the world.

We shall continue to breed the Okpewhos abroad until we make our country fertile for ideas.

Unveiling President Buhari’s Mindset, By Dele Momodu

Posted on September 10, 2016 by The Elites

Fellow Nigerians, I doubt if there is anyone who does not see and feel President Muhammadu Buhari is a complex character. As a matter of fact, that is the veritable hallmark of his persona and super brand. Those of us that supported him voluntarily, and almost blindly, last year did so out of our acute frustration with Project Nigeria.

There were those who hated his guts but still went ahead to vote for him because they expected him to wave the fabled magic wand and bring sanity and succour to our insane clime. What no one bargained for was the repercussion, and reverberation, of such venture and adventure. As always, Nigerians felt their situation could never be worse under Buhari than that of the 16-year rule of profligacy of the PDP and the squander-manic regime of President Goodluck Jonathan.

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The APC operatives ran a blistering campaign with active collaboration and connivance from some of us. On the matter of the continuation of the Jonathan Presidency, there was no negotiation. Even now as people pummel us over the seeming inertia or retrogression of the Buhari government, I still stand by my decision to support Major General Muhammadu Buhari, warts and all. Walahi, I would have loved any of the combinations of Donald Duke, Nasir El Rufai, Rotimi Amaechi, Aminu Tambuwal, Mobola Johnson, Babatunde Raji Fashola, Nuhu Ribadu, Oby Ezekwesili, Charles Soludo, Akinwunmi Adesina, Pat Utomi, Kayode Fayemi, and some of our other tested and brightest young stars.

They may have their personal foibles like all mortals do but I’m persuaded that Nigeria would have joined the comity of other nations parading some youthful cerebral leaders by now. But the ways of Nigerian politicians are not the ways of mere mortals. We have our unique and peculiar methods of doing things. Our incorrigibility is almost second to none. Everything about us is about self and self alone. Everyone’s permutation is about who is his friend, school mate, church member, Muslim brother, godfather or godson, village folk, and so on. It is not about what you know but more about who you know. Nepotism is the order of the day!

That is why the best of the myriad of Nigerian brains would never be able to win elections at certain levels because of our irredeemable obsession with primordial and parochial sentiments. The import of my preamble is that Buhari was a product of our maddening and inordinate search for a near saint amongst us and he perfectly fitted the bill. Buhari himself must have assumed that the votes given to him were signed off carte-blanche and in blind trust. I’m sure he never expected that the honeymoon would not be an endless romance.

But things and times have changed. It is now sour grapes time. Except for profiteers and/or pretenders who would not tell our President the gospel truth, things are falling apart. The reasons are not because of what Buhari and company are doing wrong but because of what they are not doing right which I hope to enumerate and dissect.

I had chosen to write on this topic before I received the message quoted below from a young, concerned Nigerian reflecting on the “new” rebranding that we have been subjected to. His views mirror the present mood of the nation and the restiveness of our people especially the young ones who fought gallantly for Change and PMB!

“President Buhari, with all due respect to your high office, you are losing me. What’s wrong? What’s wrong with your advisers? Who got you to sign up to the cliché called “Change Begins With Me” and to throw the weight of your office behind it? Did they put together a crack team of psychologists, communicators, sociologists, political scientists, etc? I refuse to believe that this programme, and especially the name, is the product of deep thinking and reflection.

First, the idea that “Change Begins With Me”, renders all our efforts to get you elected in 2015 worthless. Heck, why did we bother? If it’s going to start with us Lilliputs, we might as well have left Goodluck Jonathan in office and allow him and his band of hopeless cohorts to get on with the good job they were doing of raping Nigeria. Don’t you get it? Change began with you! We, the people, already implemented the biggest change possible with turning around this country by electing you on the mantra of change. So why are you now passing the buck? The buck is on your desk. Make the change happen and we will follow from there. It’s over a year and many, sadly, are already suffering buyer’s remorse. Arrest the trend!

Secondly, what change can any single individual put into action that will impact the culture and behaviour of 180m people in double quick time? We are in a hurry, Mr. President. So much has been lost. So to rely on Adeola, Abubakar or Opara to start the change and hope that we will be counting gains in months is delusional. You don’t have all the time. We do not have the time. Start the Change!” – Chris Adetayo
Let me reiterate that I have had the privilege of meeting and interacting with some members of the Buhari administration.

I can confirm that I have held discussions and communicated the feelings of both the rich and poor on the streets directly to them. However, I am not sure that they are in tune with the reality of things on this side of the divide. I believe I have sufficient knowledge of the political history of Nigeria. I’m afraid to say, I see the same symptoms of afflictions that ravaged previous governments and rendered them incapacitated. I’m saddened that no lessons seemed to have been learnt from our beleaguered past. Government appears to believe only in its own mind-set and every complaint or suggestion is summed up in some dangerous conclusions: the wailing wailers; corruption is fighting back; the suffering of Nigerians is exaggerated, etc.

Equally worrisome is the apparent paranoia that has crept into our senior government officials. Every commentator or demonstrator is perceived an enemy of government. I was surprised to read how my childhood friend and brother, Femi Adesina, singled me out in his article yesterday and accused me of insinuating that he was too comfortable in Aso Rock. There are so many occupants in Aso Rock and I know the limits of Femi’s influence on the men of power. I can never blame him for what I clearly know is beyond him. He faces the same dilemma of his predecessors who found themselves defending the indefensible in order to exhibit their hard work, competence and loyalty. It is a delicate and thankless job that leads oftentimes to Golgotha. I love Femi so much that I would rather offer him my sincere prayers instead of hanging him.

Let me go to the next case at hand. I could not believe the shabby treatment meted to Mrs Oby Ezekwesili and other members of the Bring Back Our Girls agitators. Their harmless and defenceless group is being harassed for merely exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights of expression, association and movement. They constitute no danger whatsoever to society. Even if President Buhari won’t receive or entertain them, a senior member of the Federal Government should have been assigned to meet, pacify and reassure them.

Something is terminally wrong with our crisis management capabilities. Our proclivity for mismanaging and escalating troubles is legendary. This particular case is as disgraceful as it is unnecessary. Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, these were the friends of Buhari. They had pinned their hope on the muscular and military abilities of our President to liberate the Chibok girls in a jiffy. If things were proving difficult as it seems, constant dialogue is the only way out of the debacle.

But the handlers of Buhari prefer to fuel the long held belief or myth that Buhari is a mean and ruthless man. This is not good. It also comes at the wrong time. This administration has been accused of several human rights abuses and, according to the Minster of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, the President is heading for the United Nations on Tuesday to make the case that his administration is not guilty of such allegations. Intolerance for the rights of expression, association and movement cannot be a good way of making out such a case.

Anyone who has met President Buhari would readily attest to his simplicity and humility. His witty jokes are remarkable and legendary, just like his hearty smiles and laughter are infectious. He certainly means well for Nigeria and wants to rid our nation of the debilitating cankerworm of corruption and indiscipline. Why, therefore, would anyone want to remind Nigerians that the Buhari in uniform is not different from Buhari, the born again democrat. Why are they compounding Buhari’s image of an irascible dictator? Buhari needs to make a conscious effort to tear the toga of vindictiveness and irritability that appears to surround him. The biggest image deficit he has today is due to the fact that his biggest pet project, the war against corruption, is believed to be largely uncoordinated and too staccato in outlook.

It is difficult to ignore the cries of so many Nigerians who feel let down by a government that promised so much change but seems to have short-changed the people who saw Buhari as a liberator. Even if some of the most vociferous complainants are being cheeky and outright mischievous, many are doing so out of genuine concern. They do not want Buhari to fail. It is someone who loves you unconditionally that can do this. They are worried that the President behaves like a man who feels he has all the time in the world when in reality he has none. Some believe that he started fading and failing when he took his time in selecting his ministers and advisers. The intractable squabbles in his Party has also contributed to the lacklustre nature of his government. APC does not look or act like a Party in power. There seems to be no serious input from the Party to the affairs of government and governance.

The government has been wobbling and fumbling by doing the same things PDP used to do that led to the disintegration of the biggest political party in Africa, according to their self-glorification. The war of attrition in PDP has been passed on to APC. A house divided against itself is inviting extermination. And whenever politicians fight dirty it affects governance adversely.

The economy is in shambles and the commonest justification is that Jonathan’s gang looted the treasury. All that is well and good. But Nigerians knew this and therefore voted for Change! We promised to make things much better. Fighting corruption alone would not save Nigeria. We must fight endemic poverty. If Alhaji Lai Muhammed likes, let him launch a million campaigns and waste more scarce resources on doing a rehash of what past governments did that led nowhere. The Yoruba have a way of describing this kind of unproductive sermonisation: “Eni ebi npa ko gbo iwaasu!” (A hungry man does not listen to sermons in the church).

What the people want to see are the following: a drastic reduction in the size and budget of our over-bloated governments; a sustained war against poverty; protection of lives and properties; creating a less rancorous atmosphere for businesses to thrive; special concessions and incentives to employers of labour; a stable currency; upgrading our educational system and making the schools’ curriculum more relevant to our communities and society in general; provision of social infrastructure, particularly power, good roads, hospitals and potable water; and so on.

The mind-set of gloating over the fall of some former members of the privileged class is counter-productive. We must be careful of the image portrayed to foreign investors. Let government concentrate urgently on alleviating the suffering of the people. It is obvious that government may never be able to collect enough money back from the brigands and looters to make appreciable impact on our national treasury. We should stop building our castle in the air and start thinking outside the box.

Pendulum By Dele Momodu

To My Aburo Patrick, Himself The Igodomigodo

Posted on September 6, 2016 by The Elites

By Olatunji Dare

Pardon me for kick-starting this missive with this peculiarly Nigerian locution: How far?

The enquiry contains more than a hint of jocosity, to be sure, but there is nothing jocose about it insofar as it relates to the state of the nation, the Nigerian condition, of which you are a perceptive observer and incisive analyst.

I say nothing of course of your coruscating erudition and wit, in contradistinction to those hacks who, in desperate yearning for anything emblematic of distinction, however fleeting and fragmentary, however tenuous, are forever advertising themselves as “Abuja-based public affairs commentators.”

The truth of the matter, the indissoluble actuality as you personally experienced it during your memorable and eventful sojourn in the House of the People in that city, with its asphyxiating sterility is that they are for the most part unemployed and unattached freeloaders, if not unreconstructed scroungers outright. Even in your present disposition, you have encountered a surfeit of them, I am sure.

It is deeply to be lamented that the aforementioned disposition has incommoded you in no small measure, rendering you not just invisible but also inaudible. I still find it incomprehensible, inexplicable even, that a person of your vivaciousness, spontaneity and sensibilities can feel obliged to observe so much restraint in face of the daily occurrences that provoke nothing short of atrabilious rage even when each is considered as a singularity.

Taken cumulatively, as a totality, the occurrences are nothing if not benumbing. Your resolute and unflappable equanimity in the face of all this is eminently to be lauded.

Unlike many of our compatriots of easy gullibility, I do not suppose for a nanosecond, however, that this apparent equanimity stems from fecklessness; I know you too much to entertain such a misimpression. I know it has been forced upon you by the rules of engagement under which you currently operate.

When you were not thus shackled, your voice resonated with unmatched clarity and eloquence rendered all the more arresting by your consummate mastery of cadenced, sesquipedalian oration delivered right off the cuff – unlike some of your colleagues who could not make the most prosaic statement off script and are consequently not remembered for anything except their propensity for self-aggrandisement of the most ravenous kind, by which I mean, gorging themselves remorselessly on the national patrimony.

It cannot have been easy for a person of your public spiritedness and unswerving commitment to what is noble and just and of good report to live through an almost endless march of events of the most stultifying kind and yet refrain from giving utterance to disapproval and disapprobation even in the most subdued of tones, sotto voce, so to speak.

And the events, in all their discombobulation, in all their furious gallop, are legion. Where to start, then? Where to delineate as a point of departure in this excursus?

Is it the Senate Rules of Order, as amended, which threw up a leadership that has been embroiled in a crisis of authority and legitimacy and credibility and integrity since that body launched its current session more than a year ago? Or the perjury trial, the carnivalesque optics of which may appear to a first-time visitor to these parts as a coronation, replete with fawning adulation and saccharine glorification?

Or Budget 2016 that has performed enough disappearing and re-appearing acts to turn the Cheshire cat into a rank amateur in the business, a mewling infant? Or again Budget 2016 that was padded with layers upon layers of pork when a version which seemed closest to being authentic was eventually found?

Or should I commence with the crash of the oil market and its deleterious consequences for everything: the Exchequer and the economy, not forgetting the Naira which has since become like an orphan abandoned, and the attendant disequilibrium and disarticulation in transactions of every kind and even social intercourse?

I will enter no comment on the vexed and perennial subject of fuel subsidy, whether real or contrived. I recall your spirited and illumining intervention the last time it was the focal point, the core issue of perfervid national discourse, and how it compelled abandonment of the perilous trajectory on which the authorities were determined to embark, and a near-complete reversion to the status quo ante, consonant with vociferous public demand.

The price of that precious combustible has since escalated, with nary a public rally by the usual sworn opponents. But where in the time of regulation there was a drought there is now in the time of de-regulation a cascading torrent, a glut. Still, despite the superabundant revenue accruing to Abuja following deregulation, there have been dark intimations, registering just above whispering level, of some stubborn residual subsidy requiring radical excision.

Save your heaviest ordnance for that conjuncture, Aburo. It is not quite over yet.

Something tells me, Aburo, you are fully primed for the looming battle for the succession on the home turf. Having worked in close juxtaposition with the Comrade Governor – no, I under- state it horribly and crave your indulgence to take it back – having served him as trusted adviser, sounding board, confidant, having taken charge of organising his schedule and his work flow, you doubtless apprehend more than anyone else the factors that have conduced to his phenomenal success.

Do you espy any of those traits or factors in any of the contenders? It is again deeply to be regretted that even if you do, you cannot so proclaim under current rules of engagement. Such, alas, is the perversity of bureaucracy.

But you are nothing if not creative, my dear Aburo. I am sure you will fabricate, with your accustomed ingenuousness a design that will help beam on the battle for the succession your unrivalled knowledge of the Comrade Governor, his vision, his work habits, his temperament, his proclivities and all those factors that shaped the great legacy he is bequeathing to the grateful people of Edo State and indeed to posterity.

Someone who claims to be privy to recondite secrets tells me that reports to the effect that the Grand Fixer has been neutered, rendered hors de combat, are vastly exaggerated, and that he is lurking patiently in the shadows, waiting to charge into battle at the sound of the bell.

Is there any veracity to the report, even a scintilla of verisimilitude? I ask mostly of our curiosity, not from diffidence. I know that with you and the other stalwarts in his corner, the Comrade Governor can contain a dozen grand fixers.

That would be all for now, my dear Aburo. Something tells me we will hear from or of you soon, over the chants of victory and the promise of continuity.

Until then, I remain your Egbon and kindred soul.

The Soldier Who Would Save Nigeria, By Pius Adesanmi.

Posted on September 5, 2016 by The Elites

I’m in a hotel room in Amsterdam. A ten-hour layover and I decide to enter Amsterdam, stroll around downtown a bit before getting a hotel room. Now I can process what happened at the airport in Lagos yesterday evening…
At the chaotic KLM check-in counter in Murtala Mohammed Airport, any Nigerian who felt that rules, law and order are only meant to be respected outside of Nigeria – and that is most Nigerians – was somehow trying to undermine the queue.
Every queue jumping strategy, from shunting to ojukoroju attempts to squeeze yourself and your ten suitcases – abeg wetin Nigerians dey pack? Why we dey get so much luggage? – past people to claiming that “I was here before. I just went “to ease” myself”, was on display.
Directly behind me was one exemplary man. I was on my best behaviour. I had promised myself that I would mind my airport business and resist airport sobolation. My nose refused to obey my orders and started poking itself into the affairs of the man behind me.
It was the fault of the man’s wife that I entered sobolation mode. I had only just taken a mental note of the fact that two young men in their late teens or thereabouts – looking every part of undergraduates going back to school in Europe or North America – jumped the queue with the aide of two soldiers who accompanied them.
I had only just begun to process the fact that Nigeria’s rich and indolent further spoil their already spoilt children by having soldiers accompany them to the airport to help them disobey rules and cheat other law abiding citizens when a woman behind me began to grumble very loudly to her son:
“I don’t know why your father is like this. He alone will repair Nigeria. It is always his own that is different. See what his juniors are doing and he is keeping us here in the queue.”
Now, the woman has my attention. I look back at the family. A young man of about fifteen was trying to calm his mother down. The man trying to single-handedly repair Nigeria did not pay them any heed. He remained calm and composed. His wife whined on and on and on about the time they could save if “only Daddy will not always behave like Nigeria is his father’s property.”
I stole a second glance backward. The man under accusation caught me in full sobolation mode this time and smiled. I returned the smile. Then he started a long conversation that was absolutely sweet music to my ears. He asked me if I thought that Nigeria was being ruined by the leaders or the people. I said I believed that leaders and followers were equal opportunity spoilers of Nigeria. He agreed with me but claimed that the people were worse culprits than the leaders.
“Look at what has been going on here on this queue”, he said, barely able to hide his contempt for the law-breaking, rule-disobeying Nigerian humanity around us. “What has any of this got to do with the leaders? What has adults who can’t wait patiently for their turn in a queue got to do with leaders?”
I replied that it is all intertwined because many of them have never seen a leader or a Nigerian big man who waited for his turn in their entire adult lives. I told him that the previous day, I had witnessed the convoy of a Deputy Governor jump the queue at the toll gate leading to the airport in Abuja. Worse, they did not pay the toll! Why should Nigerian public officials, who practically get everything for free, not pay toll fees?
Again the man agreed with me but insisted on apportioning greater blame to the people. Then he added this: “I am sure you have heard my wife who has been complaining. I am a serving Colonel in the Army. But as long as I live, I am determined to train my son to wait for his turn in this country. I can disgrace all these soldiers coming to help young men like him jump the queue but I don’t want to cause a scene here and I don’t want to pull ranks.”
By now, the man has earned more than my attention. He has earned my admiration. He continued on the significance of values. Of the need to raise his son’s generation properly if Nigeria is to stand any chance. It was obvious he had already written off any generation of Nigerians twenty-years-old and above. It was obvious he believed that Nigeria’s only chance was with 15-year-olds and younger – like his son. Those are the ones who might still be rescued from corruption and indiscipline if only the parents raising them would insist on doing right by their kids and not send soldiers to help them break the law.
By now, we had exchanged complimentary cards and promised to keep in touch. More gists! By now we had become friends. The Colonel kept complaining bitterly about how, we the people, are the ones ruining Nigeria and how he would not allow his son to acquire the wrong values. “It is already bad enough that we have to send him to school abroad because we must be honest with ourselves and accept that the school system here is beyond hopeless.”
My mind was going to stray into the part where it should start to be amazed that even serving Nigerian soldiers on a military salary can now afford to send their kids to school abroad.
I decide to rebuke my mind by warning it not to try any nonsense by trying to ruin my excellent impression of the soldier trying to do right by his son. After all, if the Chief of Army Staff breeds snakes and successfully uses his savings on snakes to buy Dubai mansions, with which mouth is one to query his officers if they breed crocodiles and use the proceeds to send their children to school abroad?
“Park well!”, I ordered my mind.