Category: Opinion

Text of lecture to mark the 20th anniversary of City People magazine, by Mr. Femi Adesina, Special Adviser, Media and Publicity, to President Muhammadu Buhari. May 20, 2016.
It’s my pleasure to be here to deliver this lecture. It is for me always heart-warming to find myself back amidst colleagues, fellow pushers of the pen, as we are known by outsiders.
This lecture will be a combination of two themes, each one of them dear to my heart. One has to do with the fate of the printed word in the age of the Internet and Social Media, and the other has to do with my experiences in making a transition from the newsroom, after 29 years as a journalist and editor, to the corridors of government. Both have a lot in common, which I shall get to later.
Let me speak about the impact of the internet on the journalism profession, particularly, the newspaper. The starting point is this: The newspaper has been dying for a long, long time, not only in Nigeria, but also around the world. If there is one obituary that keeps being re-written and re-issued, it is that of the newspaper.
It is of course the oldest of the forms of mass communication that are still with us today. In 1859, the first newspaper in Nigeria – it wasn’t even called Nigeria then – was founded. Iwe Irohin, a Yoruba newspaper by the Anglican Missionary, Henry Townsend. Radio did not show up until when the British expanded the BBC’s broadcast to the colony of Nigeria. Television followed in 1959, when Chief Obafemi Awolowo launched Nigeria’s first television station, in Ibadan.
At every one of these moments when a new means of mass communication showed up, and began to quickly democratize itself across the population, it felt like print had come to the end of its road. Radio and Television carry the appearance of being more engaging than print, considering that they offer us the chance to see and hear human beings, unlike a newspaper that is a static medium, cold ink on dry paper, with no element of human interaction in the form of a voice or a moving image.
But print refused to be fazed by either of these revolutions. Even as television gained ground in the 1970s, we had newspapers like the Daily Times, printing and selling more than half a million copies daily.
Even in the difficult 1980s, when a combination of military rule and economic problems afflicted the country, newspapers and magazines thrived. A new generation of investigative and boldly confrontational journalism was born in Nigeria of the 1990s, with the advent of Tell Magazine, The News, Tempo, and the others that followed in their steps.
In the 1990s, a wave of ‘liberalisation’ hit the radio and television airwaves, and an industry that had long been dominated by state-owned media suddenly found itself the darling of private investors. Today there are scores of TV and radio stations in Nigeria; most of them privately owned. And there’s evidence to suggest that we’ve only just seen the tip of that iceberg. With the recent commencement of the switchover to digital television, we are going to see a lot more TV stations emerging.
And then there is the Internet. If TV and radio were the mediums that emerged to stun newspapers, then the Internet was supposed to be its undertaker; the medium that would lay it to final rest.
And the numbers appear to strongly support that. Every month, 16 million Nigerians use Facebook. That’s a number that newspapers can only dream about. There are more than 150 million mobile phone lines in Nigeria; and more than half of them are connected to the Internet. Our mobile phones are our constant companions. It is not unlikely that there are many young people in Nigeria who have never bought a newspaper in their lives. But all of them would be regular buyers of Internet data, and regular consumers of online news.
The appetite for news has not diminished in any way, but the means by which people satisfy that appetite has undergone transformative change.
“We all currently do our journalism in the teeth of a force-12 digital hurricane,” said Alan Rusbridger, former Editor of the UK Guardian, in the memo he wrote recently while stepping down from a position he was due to take up later this year, as Chairman of the Trust that owns the revered paper. Under his long watch as editor, he transformed the venerable print newspaper into a digital giant. But like many other papers around the world, the UK Guardian is struggling. Many other popular publications that dominated the market in the past have either vanished, or are only online now. Talk about Reader’s Digest, Newsweek, Encyclopedia Brittanica, Broadstreet Journal, and many others.
In Nigeria we saw PM News become an online-only publication last year. This is the reality of the age in which we live. And yet amidst the upheaval, I still retain a strong conviction that the newspaper is here to stay. Circulation numbers may dip, and appetites may wane somewhat, but the printed newspaper will continue to be an important part of our lives for a long time to come.
I am willing to bet that the much predicted demise will not happen. I might of course be biased, having enjoyed a long and fulfilling career in that field. I have watched technology transform the way we reported, contacted sources, met deadlines and even printed our papers.
In 2013, the American billionaire, and one of the world’s richest people, Warren Buffett, said: “I believe that newspapers delivering comprehensive and reliable information to tightly-bound communities and having a sensible Internet strategy will remain viable for a long time.” A “sensible internet strategy.” That is what Nigerian newspapers need, as it currently does not exist.
Perhaps I am biased, but I very much share the optimism that the newspaper won’t die. Let me paraphrase the American writer and humourist, Mark Twain, and say that rumours of the demise of the newspaper are very much exaggerated. But survival will depend on how creative you can be as investors, stakeholders, and professionals.
Writing in a magazine called Financial Nigeria, Jide Akintunde, in an essay titled ‘The bad news that hit Nigerian media and journalism,’ posited that “the future of a professional Nigerian media is far from assured.” He says further bad news has hit the mainstream media through a formidable disruption, which is the social media, and then submits:”The charlatans of the social media, relieved of organisational wisdom and ethical considerations, are trumping professional journalism.”
Very well said. But then, look at these two pieces of good news from across the seas. Last week, The Times of London ran these headlines:”Readers shun ebooks and rediscover the pleasures of paper.” The second one;”Daily Mail publisher appoints digital guru as chief.” The two stories indicate that more people are returning to patronising the printed word, as opposed to the electronic version. And a giant newspaper conglomerate appointed a digital guru as chief executive, rather than a core journalist. These show that we need to tweak our business models as demanded by the exigencies of time and technology. The publications that reinvent themselves and their business models will always survive. Gone are the days when you can survive on just one product line. You need to have multiple streams of income, even while still keeping an eye on your core calling, which is newspapering.
The second theme I would like to address, is a much more personal one. It is, like the fate of the newspaper in the age of digital, a matter related to my professional life, but it is also very personal in the sense that it has to do with the interesting transition I have made, from being a journalist and a private citizen, to being a government official.
In less than two weeks, it’ll be one year since I took office, as Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity. I am of course following in the steps of a number of professional colleagues, all of whom you know. Before I talk about how my appointment came to happen, I think I should provide some context for the relationship between myself and President Buhari – this is something I have also previously written and spoken about. My admiration for him actually started when he was in office as military head of state, in the 1980s. I was at University then, and was impressed by his single-minded dedication to making Nigeria a better country, and tackling the rot and corruption that had long plagued us. I was of course disappointed when he was overthrown, and excited when, many years later, he joined partisan politics and decided to offer himself as a candidate for the presidency of Nigeria. I have been a passionate supporter of his ambitions since then; readers of my weekly column in the Sun Newspaper will be able to attest to this. What I found interesting was that from time to time, I would write about him in the column and he would get in touch with me on the phone and we would discuss it. He was often full of gratitude. I actually did not get to meet him in person until about 2009. In 2013, he pleasantly surprised me by attending the christian service for the funeral of my mother. I had sent him an invitation, but had no idea he would attend. He sat through the entire service. And that was a man some people had wrongly labelled religious bigot.
I’ve taken the time to lay out this context in the hope that it will provide some background to the circumstances that triggered my decision to transit from being a journalist and editor and ‘newspaper-man’, to a presidential spokesman. I have always believed that President Buhari would be a great President of Nigeria. I have always been impressed by his qualities – his personal incorruptibility and strong desire to see Nigeria break free from the curse of corruption, his commitment to Nigeria’s teeming poor, the lowly, and downtrodden.
And so for me, getting a chance to work for and with him has been a privilege, and an opportunity to support a man I have long admired, to enable him implement his vision for the country.
One question many of you will be asking is this: Did I ever imagine that I would one day find myself on the other side of the divide, the proverbial ‘Other Side’?
No and Yes, I would say. Let me say that I never really had any desire to work in government. I had, at the time of my appointment, two high-profile and influential jobs, one as Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of the Sun newspapers, as you all know one of the highest-circulating papers in the country; the other as the President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors. My hands were full, as they’ve always been throughout my working career. I had also actually just been re-elected for a second term as President of the Editors’ Guild, having already completed one term of two years. It is easy to see why I can say I was not looking for another job, and certainly not in the uncertain waters of politics.
But – there had always been a caveat to this stance. Never say never, the old saying goes. It had always occurred to me that there was a possibility of shifting my position regarding serving in government – on one condition, and no more – that the government in question was one headed by President Buhari.
On the day he was declared the winner of the Presidential elections, I got a surprise phone call from him, during which he thanked me for my support over the years. Yet another pleasant surprise. I had elected to stay away because I knew that in the post-election euphoria, he would be under a lot of pressure both from well-wishers and from people seeking one favour or the other from him. But I could not escape for long. I got an offer, thought much and consulted widely about it, and the rest, as they say, is history. Here I am working for the only man with the power and moral authority to draw me from the newsroom to the presidential villa.
I have touched on two seemingly disparate themes – one about the survival of newspapers in a digital age, the other about moving from the newsroom to the corridors of power. Seemingly disparate, but only on the surface. You only need to scratch a little deeper, and realise that both narratives share a great deal in common: they are about transition, about the inevitability of change, and the importance of seeking to always adapt to changing times and circumstances.
If there is one thing the newspaper and I share in common, it is that we are both trying to do our work in an age that has been ‘disrupted’ by social media and digital technologies. Earlier on, I quoted Alan Rusbridger: “We all currently do our journalism in the teeth of a force-12 digital hurricane.” Every government spokesperson today could easily – and accurately – rephrase that as “We all currently do our communicating in the teeth of a force-12 digital hurricane.” Just as printed newspapers have to struggle to cope with mobile devices and applications and changing habits and news consumption patterns, government spokespersons also have to deal with staying on top of their game in a world where everyone has a means of expressing their sentiments and opinions directly to the world.
As a government communications person in the 1990s, you only had to deal with a finite number of editors from the print and electronic media. Even the underground media, in the vanguard of the opposition to military rule, could be counted on your fingers.
In 2016, you’re dealing with a vastly changed world. With the profusion of digital publishing tools, one now has to deal with an unlimited number of publishers and editors and bloggers and citizen journalists. The traditional gatekeepers of news have got and are still getting a massive challenge from the new kids on the block. The publication conventions of print newspapers and radio and television bulletins have been upended by the ceaseless 24-hour news cycle.
There are upsides to the revolution, but it also has its downsides. We are in an era where –as a recent profile of President Obama’s communications strategy, written by Michael Grunwald and published in Politico, put it – “conflict is the click of the realm, where lies travel at the speed of tweet while the truth is still annotating its Medium post.”
While government is still crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s on a press release, falsehood is already trending on social media. Unfortunately in most cases there are no consequences for online irresponsibility, but that is a discussion for another day.
In one sense it is easy to argue – and only half-jokingly – that the newspaper and the government spokesperson are both endangered species. But that’s only one side of the coin. The other side of the story is that there is no better time than in situations like this, for reinvention. We need to constantly be asking ourselves – how do we continuously make ourselves relevant in changing circumstances. As the president’s spokesman, I have had to become a lot more familiar with social media. I had no choice in the matter; it’s the reality of our age. I have had to balance my thinking like a newspaperman and newsroom editor with thinking like a digital ‘native’ – how might this press statement be mis-interpreted once it makes its way into the public square that is Twitter or Facebook; what kind of reception should we be anticipating for this announcement.
Twenty years ago, City People burst on the national scene as a unique celebrity magazine. It has made strides, and done good business, bringing returns to the investors and stakeholders. But is the business model today the same as it was 20 years ago? It can’t be. Are the stories that excited the market 20 years ago the same as today? No. Therfore, my conclusion is that the printed word is under a heavy barrage. But just as it survived the onslaughts of radio, of television, it will also survive the digital media. But that would not be without great creativity from the professionals and stakeholders.
Thank you for listening.

By Abdulrasaq Magaji

Honestly, elders and leaders of thought in the southwest Nigeria must watch it! This is a wake-up call that is coming against the backdrop of unlikely political developments in the zone. In developing economies, such as Nigeria’s, there will always be the temptation for people to do the bidding of brigands with deep pockets. But, even at that, voters in the south west must resist the urge of electing brigands, no matter the depth of their pockets, into public office! The south west cannot afford to become the proverbial ball for all to kick around.

Specific reference here is to the characteristic impudence of Ekiti state governor, Ayodele Fayose, which threatens to rubbish the image the Yoruba have built for themselves. To describe Ayodele Fayose’s conduct as shameful is to beg the question: at the risk of sounding immodest, only a troubled mind is capable of what the governor’s actions! It is not for fun that one columnist wondered how the governor’s wife, Feyisetan, has weathered the storm with a man of such insufferable insolence! But, this is by the way.

The shameless conduct of Mr. Fayose only confirms what an estranged buddy said of their ascribe governor. Just before Mr. Fayose emerged candidate, of course with the backing of former president, Goodluck Jonathan, who apparently needed a goon as his arrowhead in the southwest, a young man dropped from the blues to tell Nigerians to ‘read’ Mr. Fayose’s lips, whatever it meant, to understand him! Ugh! The estranged Fayose buddy did not elaborate beyond suggesting, as many Nigerians advocate, that prospective public office holders undergo psychiatry tests.
Curiously, some supposed Ekiti elders who care less about ‘reading’ lips are busy justifying the perennial dryness of Mr. Fayose’s lips. Early last year, one such supposed elder employed an inappropriate African saying to rationalise Fayose’s by suggesting that it is imperative to breed mad men from within as part of preparations to confront mad men from without! In essence, the doctrine of the elder is that, in its dealings with other Nigerians, the Yoruba need unstable minds to press their agenda! This reasoning stands logic on its head because it creates the untenable impression that the Yoruba are anarchic.
It’s about time Ekiti elders and leaders of thought admitted Fayose was a mistake.
In place of condemnation, all we get is the lame narration of how the governor used stolen funds to send voters’ conscience on holiday and how one lazy army general, apparently induced by Fayose, led two equally lazy cabinet members of the Goodluck Jonathan government to enforce strict orders of the president to rig Fayose into office! These are facts for that caused one army general his commission but, did theshameless and disgraced general and the felonious Jonathan ministers force Ekiti voters to take oath of secrecy after collecting Mr. Jonathan’s money to vote for Fayose?
Like many Nigerian politicians, Ayodele Fayose must have done very nasty things to reach his present post in life. But whatever he did is known to him, those who acted in his behalf and his creator. And, only God knows what Mr. Fayose will do to remain relevant and for how long he succeeds. Anyone with a morbid interest in death can go to any length to give effect to their wish! The people of the appropriately-named Fountain of Knowledge should shudder at the thought that they have ignominiously been recorded as a people who, in the 21st Century, entrusted their destinies in the hands of a virtual outlaw!
If truth be told, the famed sophistication of south west Nigeria was dealt a devastating blow the day Fayose re-appeared on the political scene. The advantage enjoyed by the south west is the free education programme of the defunct western regional government headed by late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. It is no mean feat that Ekiti state, as it is known today, is reputed to have the highest turnout of intellectuals in Nigeria courtesy of the free education programme!
If this is contradictory, deliberate effort should be made to discourage its spread. Sophistry and banditry should have no place in the present south west that has achieved a comparatively high level of political sophistication. It really does not matter now that ordinary voters in Ekiti now openly confess their mistake in giving Mr. Fayose a look-in. This is hardly surprising because this is the same man who dragged the state in the mud after he virtually emptied the till before he was thrown out of office. What was the attraction in considering a deviant for the post of governor?
Many could not have forgotten that Ayo Fayose was on the brink of political extinction before his emergence as governorship candidate. Needless to say that Fayose’s rancorous emergence, at the behest of Mr. Goodluck Jonathan, threw the PDP into irreconcilable confusion that forced prominent chieftains either to withhold their support or defect to other parties. Even on the eve of the election, many PDP chieftains took out full-page advertisements to display their lack of confidence in their party’s nominee. So, how did a virtual outlaw defeat an acclaimed high-achieving sitting Dr. Kayode Fayemi, now minister of solid minerals development?
Certainly, Chief Awolowo did not labour so hard to implement a free education programme that will produce unquestioning citizens who sacrifice integrity and self-esteem at the altar of stomach infrastructure and allied hollow political neologisms! Wish I was wrong!
Magaji wrote this piece from Abuja and can be reached at magaji777@yahoo.com

1) I remain unpersuaded by the arguments I have read in favour of oil subsidy removal. I am not talking about the mostly hot air, ill-informed, half-informed, and politically-jaundiced propositions being pushed on all sides on social media. I am talking about conversations I’ve been following or contributing to in other spaces. Until I read superior arguments and logic from those arguing in favour of this move by President Buhari, I remain persuaded that subsidy removal is wrong and I condemn it without equivocation. President Jonathan was wrong to have removed it; President Buhari is wrong to have removed it.
2) I am not unmindful of the basic problems with the subsidy regime. We don’t need to go into details here. The problems have been retailed ad nauseam in our public sphere for years and are being retailed now by supporters of President Buhari to justify the removal. Let us just say that all those problems lead in one direction: corruption. If oil is Nigeria’s most corrupt sector, the subsidy regime has been by far the most “fantastically corrupt” wing of that spectacularly corrupt sector of the Nigerian economy. The subsidy regime is the home turf of Nigeria’s shadiest and most powerful characters – the breeding ground of petro billionaires and multi-billionaires. These are the criminal patrons of the Nigerian state who are paid billions to import air or water or sand or nothing and declare it as imported fuel. Some of them even import non-existent fuel in non-existent fuel tankers and are paid handsomely by the Federal government in the subsidy regime.
3) There is also the other argument about market forces and market dynamics. Supporters of the removal are saying that we cannot continue to pretend that we can somehow defy the market, etc. I know this argument too. In fact, it is sexy and seductive on the surface.
4) Everybody arguing in favour of oil subsidy removal is combining numbers 2 & 3 above and their variants in their submissions.
5) Here is my problem with number 2. No administration in Nigeria has ever really had the courage, the moral resolve, and the ethical willpower to go after the saboteurs and beneficiaries of the oil subsidy regime; those who decade after decade have prevented the dividends of oil subsidy from reflecting on the quality of life and purchasing power of the masses. None has ever been arrested or prosecuted. It means we have never operated the oil industry with minimal corruption and therefore have no national experience in what possible benefits are accruable from a corruption-free oil sector.
6) When you remove oil subsidy, my understanding of it is that the Nigerian state is capitulating to corruption. She is saying that because she lacks the courage to go after the usual suspects and charge them with treason and cleanse the Augean stable in a comprehensive manner, she will just kuku give up and pack up the subsidy regime entirely. Until we try a corruption-free petroleum sector with subsidy, it would be illogical to conclude that subsidy does not work. It does not work and has never worked because there are too many entanglements of corruption. The untouchable fat cats making subsidy impossible are PDP and APC, Christians and Moslems, they are from virtually every ethnicity. And President Buhari is basically saying that he lacks the resolve to fight them.
7) The same thing applies to Number 3. I remain unpersuaded by market fundamentalism. Let market forces determine things bla bla bla. The Western owners of this doctrine hardly ever subscribe to it. Whenever something is determined to be the life wire of the middle classes and the masses in their society, they subsidize it heavily while describing others trying to do the same thing for their own people as “rude” and “fantastically corrupt”. No Western country is a genuine market fundamentalist. Market fundamentalism is what they prescribe for you if you are Chinese, Arab or African.
8) Read up on farm subsidies in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. There are critical sectors that these imperialists protect at all costs for their people with subsidies while advising you to remove subsidies and be at the mercy of market forces in the Third World. For much of the decade of the 2000s, African governments complained bitterly about how US and European farm subsidies were ruining the lives of African farmers. They protect their own farmers with subsidies and advise you to leave your own farm products to market forces! What farm subsidies are to the developed world, oil subsidy was to the Nigerian people: the only remaining safety net for the people in a state run exclusively by the corrupt rich for the corrupt rich. Subsidy was the only thing the people could still theoretically benefit from (if you take out the corruption). Instead of fighting members of his own corrupt ruling class who were making it impossible for oil subsidy to work for the people, President Buhari has elected the laziest escape route. From experience, the lazy escapes of the Nigerian state from her responsibility always ensure that the people bear the brunt. This is not acceptable to me.
9) President Buhari, go and fight the subsidy buccaneers properly. If your government fights them in a way that commands the respect of the people and market forces still overwhelm you, even with reduced corruption in the sector and the installation of better refineries, then you may come back and make a case for subsidy removal. The purported benefits of this removal are at best fanciful. The economy is still largely in the hands of saboteurs and traitors. Even your 2016 budget will be implemented and monitored by the same people who padded it. You said you would punish them only to end up shuffling them in the system.
10) Whatever your government is also preaching that the people will gain from subsidy removal in the long run is not supported by our history and experience. Just look at Fashola. What kind of noise did he not make about the “dividends and benefits” of higher electricity tariffs? What the people have gotten instead is higher tariffs multiplied by longer spells of darkness.
11) These are the issues. Luckily for you, President Buhari, you will get away with this subsidy removal because there is no opposition in Nigeria. When President Jonathan tried it, there was opposition against him. His opposition organized and mobilized and he was forced to reverse his decision.
12) Those who say they are your own opposition today are pea-brained caterwauling efulefus trolling the Walls of your supporters instead of mounting principled opposition to you the way those whose Walls they are now trolling mounted opposition to their hero. Fools that they are, they are heehawing over who is an APC or PDP supporter. They have been on the hunt for hypocrites in the past 48 hours, branding those who opposed fuel subsidy removal under Jonathan and are now supporting it under you. They can never organize like those who were in principled opposition to Jonathan their hero. In fact, the closest they have come to organizing in the Buhari era is to organize ‪#‎IStandWithBuhari‬ after fighting each other on Facebook over who got what from Jonathan’s campaign funds.
13) But for the fact that I gave up on them a long time ago in terms of one’s hope that they could evolve into a principled, issues-driven opposition that could grow our democracy by not letting you get away with decisions such as this subsidy removal, I would have advised them to look into the mirror in terms of their search for hypocrites. How can anybody have argued that subsidy removal was the only way to go under Jonathan but not under Buhari and then turn around to look for hypocrites?
14) Sadly, President Buhari, there is more to the tragedy that is your opposition: they hardly ever come after you. They are always after anybody they label your supporter. The absence of an opposition explains why you have gotten away with issue after issue, especially on the terrain of pre-election promises denied, modified, not kept, or ignored. They cannot take any of these issues and develop it into a coherent template for patriotic national dissent. Instead, they troll social media looking for hypocrites writ large in their own mirrors.
And you get away with things, President Buhari!

Lucy Muthoni Kibaki was buried yesterday, 9.12 am, Nigerian time, in Othaya, Njeri County, Kenya in the presence of about 300 guests and family members, after a requiem mass attended by over 3, 000 dignitaries and 20, 000 mourners. She was the wife of President Mwai Kibaki, the third President of Kenya, in office from 2002 -2013. She is definitely, one of Kenya’s most controversial public figures in the last 50 years.
There has been no other First Lady like her in the history of Kenya and perhaps in the whole of Africa. It was indeed not suprising that her casket on its journey back to Nairobi, from Bupa Cromwell Hospital, South West London, where she died on April 26, was draped in national colours and that she received the equivalent of a state burial. Mama Lucy was that type of First Lady who had she been denied such state recognition and if the dead could rise and return to sleep, would have stormed out of the casket and accuse the government of Kenya of disrespecting her. She was one hell of a woman. It seems Kenyans are afraid of her, in life, even in death. Ironically, there has been more focus on her positive attributes rather than her frightening negatives, perhaps because it is incorrect to speak ill of the dead.
Since the announcement of her death, Lucy Kibaki has been praised for her love of family values and the sanctity of the family. Some have called her the “embodiment of motherhood.” Indeed, she was a staunch defender of the interests of the poor and the disadvantaged in society, especially women, children and the girl-child. She bravely led the fight against the HIV/AIDS scourge in her country and apart from a misinterpreted statement about her saying young, unmarried men could have sex without condoms, and that abstinence is nonetheless crucial, her efforts at controlling the scourge was noteworthy. She had argued for example that government should enact legislation to compel doctors to disclose patients’ HIV status to their spouses to prevent people getting infected unnecessarily. She was later recognized for her efforts when she was made President of the coalition of 40 African First Ladies against HIV/AIDS. She was also Patron of the Kenya Girls Guide Association. She also completed many development projects in many parts of Kenya.
The outpouring of flowery tributes has however shaded the truth about Lucy Kibaki. She was an outrageous, temperamental and cantankerous First Lady. If a list of the worst African Ladies were to be compiled, in the same manner in which some agencies prepare a list of Africa’s Most Beautiful First Ladies, Lucy Kibaki will be the undisputed winner of the first prize, ahead of Aisha Hamani Diouri, Niger’s tyrannical First Lady of the 60s. Lucy Kibaki’s conduct as First Lady is one of the reasons why students of contemporary African Politics have often argued that the First Lady syndrome, copied from the United States, often without the required finesse and sophistication, should either be abolished or moderated and that elected Presidents and Prime Ministers in Africa should learn to keep their wives in check. Nobody could keep Lucy Kibaki in check during her decade-long season of influence and terror.
She was ungovernable, unapproachable and impossible. She was the most outspoken First Lady on the continent. She had no qualms giving the impression that she was Deputy President or perhaps a co-President. If President Kibaki was uncomfortable with her conduct, he lacked the power or the courage to say so, or show his displeasure. There were rumours that Lucy Kibaki was a husband batterer. She interrupted and overruled him publicly, making the President look like a woman’s wrapper. She also on many occasions, went overboard in trying to take charge of the government. She humiliated diplomats, government officials, State House staff, her own husband, members of the coalition government, and just about anyone who crossed her path. She was a violent First Lady, with an anger management problem, which could not be cured, until she suddenly dropped out of the limelight (possibly due to failing health) in the last two years of her husband’s Presidency.
Soon after Mwai Kibaki assumed office, the brand new First Lady began to show her true colours by ordering that a bar inside State House, where Ministers and other government officials often tried to have fun should be shut down and that instead of spending time drinking, the Ministers should go and work for the people of Kenya! Within a year, the State House Comptroller and Private Secretary to the President, Matere Keriri had also crossed her path. Without reference to the President, she gave him an ultimatum to resign or be sacked. Keriri had to go. She kept an informal, secret network whose assignment was to report on Cabinet Members. She summoned officials and gave them instructions as to what was expected of them as if she was their boss. They knew better, they would not dare disobey her. In one of the many post-humous accounts of her life and times, Francis Kimemia, former Head of Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet reminisces, for example, that “Of course if she called you, you prayed to your God that you had not done something wrong. But if you had, she would tell you to your face. She would correct you but she would follow up to see if things had been corrected.”
After God, it was Lucy Kibaki as First Lady. George Satoiti, former Internal Security Minister during the 2009 Sachangwan oil tanker fire tragedy will not contest that either. He was on that occasion publicly tongue-lashed by Mama Lucy for making insensitive comments, not showing enough empathy over an accident that led to the death of over 200 and many more injured. When at a public event, a State House official introduced Lucy Kibaki with a wrong name, calling her Mary Wambui, the rumoured hidden wife of her husband, the fellow got a dirty slap, delivered promptly and ferociously.
When the former Vice President, Moody Awori, also had a tongue slip and called her a second lady, (a veiled reference again to the existence of Mary Wambui, also known as Wambui ma Mwai), Lucy Kibaki did not hide her discomfiture. She stood up and walked out of the State Luncheon. In March 2009, amidst continuing speculations that the President had another wife or a mistress, Lucy Kibaki got her husband to hold a World Press Conference on the lawns of the State House, to declare his “one man, one wife” status. She stood beside him, growling like a headmistress with a cane in hand. She later grabbed the microphone and abused journalists who did not like her and her family and were always writing nonsense stories. Imagine a First Lady upstaging a President at a press conference?
Lucy Kibaki never liked journalists. She believed that they did not know their job and she always offered lectures on how best to be a journalist. In May 2005, she stormed The Nation Media Group offices in Kenya to protest what she called negative media coverage. She and her bodyguards actually held the media house hostage till 5. 30 am, the following day. When one of the reporters, Clifford Derrick Otieno, tried to record the ugly scene with his camera, Lucy Kibaki wrestled with him for control of the camera and slapped him. She was particularly good at dealing out slaps. Later, a member of parliament, Gitobu Imanyara, who had been Otieno’s lawyer, was a special recipient of that same Lucy slap. State House officials were already used to it: any minor mistake fetched them a tingling slap.
They wouldn’t dare retaliate when it was open secret that even the President was being battered almost on a daily basis. She would later report columnists of The Nation and The Standard newspapers to the Media Council of Kenya for writing articles that she considered disrespectful. Nothing came out of this eventually, but she just couldn’t stand columnists expressing radical opinions. I recall writing a column in this newspaper, The Guardian (Nigeria) on her anti-media indiscretions. I also got a protest letter and a phone call from the Kenya High Commission in Nigeria. This drew rich laughter from the very bottom of my then emerging big belly. The poor folks at the Kenya High Commission needed to be seen to be doing their job, of course, lest they lost it on Lucy Kibaki’s orders.
What a woman! She once went to a police station, wearing shorts, to report a World Bank official, for playing loud music and disturbing the neighbourhood. The official was holding a farewell party and was a tenant of the Kibakis. Mama Lucy wanted him arrested. Nobody was beyond her radar, not even members of the then Liberal Democratic Party led by Raila Odinga who formed a coalition party, the NARC, with her husband in 2002. When she felt they were not co-operating enough, she told them to go ahead and resign and get lost, because in any case, “Kenyans do not eat politics.” She loved to give speeches but there was always trouble if anyone disagreed with her. She once shut down parliament building because she felt Presidential Advisers did not appreciate her point of view, which she considered to be in the national interest, while they, in her reckoning, were pursuing personal agenda. She declared the programme ended, and ordered that the building should be locked.
No other first Lady in Africa has been more insecure and disruptive. Her defenders insist she was motivated by a burning passion to protect her family and relationship with Mwai Kibaki, especially as Mary Wambui, her nemesis, perpetually hugged the limelight and operated as a Presidential spouse. Even a Kenya State House press statement originally denying Ms Wambui was unsigned! Presidents are human beings. Every household has its drama. But when a President emerges, he or she has a duty to serve and concentrate and not disturb us with his or her household politics. Marital melodrama should not stand in the way of governance. What Amina Mama calls “femocracy”: the misappropriation of state power by Presidential spouses, should never be allowed. This is the big lesson of Lucy Kibaki’s legacy. Luckily for President Kibaki, Kenya prospered under his watch, even if ethnic irredentism and corruption as reported by Michela Wrong and John Githongo, cast a slur on everything else. Sadly, he remains known as the smart technocrat and indecisive President, who was always willing to sit on any fence, including Lucy’s. The Nigerian Government should remember to send him a condolence letter.

(The founding continent and the founder effect)

Basil Davidson calls it the Blackman’s burden— a savage and ironic jibe at the Whiteman’s burden, the self-imposed historical duty of stamping rational order and humane civilization on the rest of the human race. Yet two hundred and fifty one years after the infamous Berlin Conference which partitioned Africa among the colonial powers(1814-1815), It is now obvious at least in Nigeria and many African countries that the messianic burden the imperialist masters imposed on themselves is facing its toughest challenge.

Based on their current circumstances, these colonial chimeras pose a grave security risk to western modernization and its expansive notion of accelerated and unimpeded progress, particularly after the triumph of liberal democracy over the Soviet Communist model. With wars raging in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa and with famine, poverty and epidemics of dereliction the lot of the populace, it is just a question of time before the Dark Age is re-enacted.

When you now factor into this the virtual implosion of a vast swathe of the Middle East and the biblical outpouring of refuge attendant upon this, you get a feel of human suffering and misery on a scale unprecedented in history. The wanton brutality, the Stone Age cruelty and callous disregard for the sanctity of human life displayed by sectarian militias from Boko Haram in Nigeria, through ISIS in the Levant and the Taliban in Afghanistan suggest a new low that has not been seen since the Jewish pogrom of the Second World War.

If one theme is common to all these multi-dimensional conflicts, if there is one single and solid cause that unites the disparate combatants, it is the written and unwritten disavowal of the nation-state paradigm which has been imposed on their people by triumphant western modernity.

With the Islamic sects, from Boko Haram in Nigeria to the militantly state-evaporating al-Qaeda and ISIS, it is a violent and conscious rebuff of the nation-state arrangement and the colonial cartography which radically redrew the old map of Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

The Islamists are stuck with the old notions of a theocratic world in which religiously homogenous communities could not be abridged or disrupted by the political distraction of nation-states. The Islamic empire-state cannot be curtailed and carved up like that except on the field of battle.

It has not occurred to the sectarian ideologues that it was the defeat of the Ottoman Turks in battle in old Serbia which made this possible and inevitable, just as the introduction of French artillery to modern warfare made nonsense of the weak Italian city-states and their pretensions to both nation-hood and state-hood. Machiavelli had been proved right in his strident call for a powerful new state which would put an end to the political caprices of the Italian mini-royalties.

In contemporary Africa, although the rebellion against the nation-state is neither conscious nor stringently articulated as you find in Islamic disavowals, it is obvious that some of the largest colonial contraptions on the continent have been chafing under the colonial yoke that boxed together people of diverse and mutually contradictory cultures and political orientation.

This is the basis of the endemic instability and perpetual conflicts on the continent, particularly in four of the largest countries, namely Nigeria, Sudan, CAR and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In Nigeria, a thieving ruling cartel until recently presided over the systematic brutalization and decimation of the populace occasioning casual bloodletting of which the Boko Haram insurgency and bloody clashes between pastoral herdsmen and local farming populations are recent manifestations.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo where the Mobutu-Kabila kleptocracy has been continuously in power for fifty one years, the country has technically evaporated in a series of civil wars occasioning much human suffering and misery. In Sudan, Omar Bashir who has been in power since 1989, has presided over the dismemberment of the country. In CAR, the state has collapsed in chaos and mayhem as bitter ethnic feuding with a religious coloration has led to an effective partitioning of both capital and country.

In many African countries where the nation-state paradigm limps on — Angola, Mozambique, Egypt, Liberia, Sierra-Leone, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Congo Brazzaville, Algeria, Cote D’Ivoire, Mali and Kenya—it has been after bloody civil wars fought among enemy nationalities which have sown deep seeds of discord and rancour in the body politic.

Others such as Togo, Cameroons, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Egypt, Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Zimbabwe stumble on by becoming an expensive charade of liberal democracy which is the political and historical deity of the modern nation-state or by transmuting into the worst examples of one-man despotism.

It should be obvious from the foregoing analysis that except for a few shining exemplars such as Botswana, Namibia, Senegal, Tanzania, Benin and Ghana, the nation-state paradigm has fared very badly in Africa. These nations in terms of political mass and economic pull are not enough to form the critical mass that will rescue Africa.

It is a profound irony that it is in Africa, the very cradle of civilization and from where our human ancestors first began their epic slouch towards Asia, Europe and the rest of the world that colonial hubris and narcissism has met its Waterloo. Even in captivity,It is not easy to force one’s political deity on others.

But the objective cost of the structural and spiritual resistance to the nation-state paradigm in Africa is the continuous regression of the continent in all parameters of inclusive governance and developmental indices.In all available data of human progress, African nations comfortably pick the rear. The nation-state may not be perfect, but it is an obvious historical improvement on fiefdoms and kingdoms.

The fact remains that history, in all its all brutal and alienating necessities, waits for no laggard society. While we are still sulking about the nation-state, African countries are being frog-marched to the post-nation frontiers in the age of relentless globalization. We can no longer have the Berlin Conference all over again. That epoch is gone forever even where there are residues of the old empire system everywhere.

Since we cannot unscramble egg that is already scrambled, a lot would depend on African nations and nationalists to find within themselves the strength, energy and vision to reform the colonial incubus that they have been saddled with by the imperialists before they can join the mainstream of humanity. As Marx famously puts it, verily one day Germany would find itself on the road to ruins with Britain and France without having achieved their economic prosperity.

Just as it happened with the internationalization of the slave trade which caught the people of Africa napping because of their lack of maritime and military innovations, the absence of viable nation-states on the continent may prove perilous to the people in the global sweepstakes that will follow the “opening” up of hitherto remote possibilities by the relentless onslaught of globalization.

No one is sure of what the new frontiers of human evolution will look like, whether it will lead to a modification of the existing nation-state paradigm, its transformation to something more refined or its superannuation by something totally novel.

But we can glimpse the emerging world order in the rise of new economic superpowers, the deepening poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, the accelerating gap between the rich nations and the poverty-wracked hell-holes on earth , the rise of the new right both as a political as well as a spiritual category and the advent of a new class of international mega-citizens who play and operate beyond the nation-states.

All these developments will no doubt rebound on Africa as a passive object of history and a mere pawn in a play of giants. But there is a sense in which Africa will play a leading role in the emerging global configuration that is if the founder effect as propounded in the field known as population genetics is applied to global population and the phenomenon of the nation-state.

But what is the founder effect? Put simply and with bald brevity, founder effect is the thinning and shrinking of genetic pool when people set out from their original homestead to find new colonies and new countries as the case may be. Consequently, the genetic variation available is increasingly limited and with that the possibilities of human expansiveness and talent formation.

As the original homestead of the human race, Africa retains its largest genetic pool and possibilities of genetic recombination in infinite permutations. What this means—and as we are beginning to find out— is that as time goes on the most physically, intellectually and artistically gifted people among the human race will come from Africa: the best athletes,singers, footballers, philosophers, writers, actors, scientific geniuses and intellectual avatars.

What impact will this rare species of humanity, this special breed at the summit of human evolution, have on Africa, the founding and fathering continent? Practically nil, unfortunately as long as the nation-state does not come to scratch in Africa.

As it is already happening, this new breed of super-people will shun the chaos and disorder of Africa for the safe and liberating confines of the civilized world where they will gladly and joyously pay Value Added Tax for the value that the refined world has added to their life away from a dark and savage continent.

If care is not taken by visionary African nationalists, it is possible that by the time the third wave of globalizationis fully with us, the fate of the continent as a perpetual human plantation for growing exceptionally endowed export to the west and a nursery for the transplantation of talents to advanced countries would have been sealed.

By then, it will not matter to the rest of the world, whether Africa has viable or functioning nation-states. As it was the case with oil until most recently and earlier with the procurement of slaves what will be important is the uninterrupted flow of human talent from Africa to the west. The Portuguese, the first bearers of western modernity to Africa, have taught us in Guinea Bissau and to a lesser extent in Angola and Mozambique that you don’t need a nation to have a plantation or slave depot.

WhenPliny the Second famously observed that something new always comes out of Africa, he was not only referring to the endless assortment of African oddities, oddballs and crackpots that entertained the Roman imperial court. He was also referring to the illustrious retinue of great African generals, writers, philosophers, actorsetc who graced the Roman imperium. Several thousand years later, something new is still coming out of Africa, just as it was in the beginning.

By Whyte Habeeb Ibidapo

Just like the thought of Micheal Moszynski on Ben Murray-Bruce that it is Common Sense that the common man should finally share in this prosperity and if not we will see a different type of Revolution that will make what happened in France over 200 years ago look like an amuse bouche. I have always advocated for a proper revolution from the Nigerian Youth constituency. When I mean revolution, I do not mean revolution that comes with altercation of flesh and blood but the one that comes from the mindset. A mindset that is breed on good guts for development and compounded with intellectualism devoid of sentiments, hatred, ethnicity and bigotry. I still maintain irrespective of the change mantra that we are witnessing, some set of leaders are still using us to play a game of ludo. They throw the dice and whatever comes out of it is for their immediate benefit. So sad, the youth constituency still red carpets them upon their crimes. There is a loss of responsibility within the Nigerian youth constituency. We are very eager to cast blame on our leaders for actions and inactions that we tolerated from them.

Most of our leaders that we found their lives enviable have made a way for themselves and that of their children either through legal or illegal means. They have what it takes to live the dream we long throat for. They have what it takes to shut us out of the existence of reality as far as governance and politicking is concerned. During their youthful age, heaven smiled at their agitations in the inclusion of governance, they feast heavily on the dividends of governance. The more lucky ones wine and dine in business with ease. The economy that the then leaders before the Fourth Republic afforded was favourable enough to see them triumph as world class merchants. Under the shield of being a Nigerian, the struggles of better life and acceptance in the International community was overwhelming. Life was not easy though but they had a strong will that is missing within this day Youth Constituency in Nigeria. What is missing today is the common sense that is common with uncommon usage. The only common usage of our common sense mostly thrives on illegalities and this is the point where most leaders note as an excuse of denying us what is ours. Little wonder, in the year 2015, on the 13th day of October, the Vice President through a tweet attributed to him via the handle @ProfOsibanjo said that, ‘we could not find some outstanding Nigerian youths to form cabinet is a challenge to our youths to brace up #MinisterialScreening’’. This statement is not only embarrassing to the Youth constituency but emotionally harassing because it has in all attributes an iota of truth. The iota is just the way and manner in which we have presented ourselves. The elders’ due is our doom

I guess the marginalization of the Youths by themselves is a typical Nigerian Youth business. We do things mostly for crooked profits or benefits. We do not put passion on things that would make us better in the world at large. We are good to a large extent at procrastination, make undue profits and swagger. Our love for complaints is so great that many of us do not see beyond getting a white collar job after university convocation. I can imagine a whole lots of complaints been made by our constituency towards this present administration. Most complaints directed to this administration is coming from us and I keep wondering what have we done as youths to ease the burden of this administration. How many of us have applied common sense in starting small scale businesses to help grow our economy. And those of us that have started, how are we hoping to sustain and make the best out of it. To those that have not started, how are we encouraging those that have started? Are we patronizing the locally made goods? How are we helping our naira to grow when we do not even patronize our own locally made goods? Our love for foreign made goods is alarming. We are growing another country’s economy from every single purchase of goods we make. Unfortunately, most of what we purchase are made or initiated by youths in those countries. Their initiative to the development of their economy makes them to be relevant in governance and decision making processes. They dictate because of their firm involvement in development of their countries. That is why they have a proper leadership template to ride on. How many of us have given wide range of suggestions to the present administration as to what the youth constituency needed. How many of us are tapping from the neglected sectors of our economy irrespective of our university degrees? How many of us? Our application of the common sense message by Senator Ben Bruce comes to place at this point.

If common sense is required by the Youths of this country to make life easy for them, I would want to believe that common sense is also required by the government at all levels to create an enabling environment where businesses can triumph. Our economy could even be said to be sick at the moment. Anybody that fails to see this may be living in denial. This is not about party or interest group affiliations; it is about the reality of the moment. No youth, and I repeat no youth of this country can compete favourably when he/she is been denied of basic amenities that can make him/her function well. Senator Ben Bruce has put it rightly as he had urged the government and the party in power to have an ear to the ground and soup up advice. Who knows where the solution to our economic situation will come from if not from the empowered youths? It is time for the government to adopt brain infrastructures and not tired and old machineries. This is the common sense to economic progress. The youths!

(WHYTE HABEEB IBIDAPO is a Lawyer, United Nations Award winner, Africa International Arbitration Award winner, Coca cola/ The Nation Campuslife Award Winner, Promasidor Runner-up for the Best Future Writer in Nigeria, i-Hustle Campaign Initiative – Ambassador and Editor – Egba Youth Awards Foundation.

Email: whyte287@gmail.com

@whytehabeeb