Category: Opinion

What Facebook Has Taught Me – Part 2, By Bamidele Ademola-Olateju

Posted on by The Elites

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THE SNOOTY
These are the incurable snobs. They exist across all socioeconomic strata. Their egos are higher than cirrus clouds and you can imagine the chips on their shoulders if you have ever seen the shoulder pads of Atilogu dancers. They will never like anything you write. They exist only for their cluster of friends. No matter how incisive or insightful your comment is on their wall, they will never like it. Most snobs are closeted haters by philosophy, but they try very hard to conceal it. If they are well to do, they hang on to their SUV driving crowd and look down on everyone else. If they are not so well to do, they snob you for stupid reasons like not calling them auntie because they were your seniors in secondary school or for reasons of age. They quietly harvest your good friends who they think might make them look good. Do not be deceived, they live, eat and sleep on your wall but they will never acknowledge you. The snooty are averse to intellectual exchanges, they post on niche subjects like fashion, celebrities and the like. They are avid disseminators of in your face quotes. You read things like…”I was not created to please you, what is your stress?”

THE MENGISTU
The Mengistus are my one of my favorites. They never fail to amuse. They got on facebook because they are usually followers of trends. They had no idea what to do and how to do it. They violate all the known rules of facebook without a care in the world. They are unaware of other features on Facebook except the timeline. When you don’t take their calls, they write on your timeline…”Bamidele, I called you yesterday and you did not “pick”, call me o”. They either have not heard of facebook messenger or they have no use for it. If they are not using unflattering passport photographs as their profile pictures, you will find a picture that is upside down. They have no idea how to rotate it. They believe every hoax and repost every crap. They come on Facebook when they have bonus data or when they buy 10 megabytes. When they have data they comment on everything that comes into their newsfeed because they fear facebook may eject them if they don’t. On their wall you find stuff like…tomorrow morning stamp your feet twice, spit on your palms and rub it in your face. If you don’t do it cancer will catch you o. Post this on your timeline as a marker to ward off the evil spirit. They remind you of the Bushmen of the Kalahari. They are facebook aborigines!

THE SHOW HORSE
The Show Horse is a photograph addict. They have transformed “Share” from a caring verb to almost an intolerable verb. They share the pictures of their new shoe, the car, driving in traffic, the latest Aso Ebi, the Party pictures, nice spots in the house and everything is the Lords doing and it is marvelous in his eyes. The less affluent ones posts pictures that reflects bad taste; the portrait taken in badly kept room with stuff strewn around, the cocktail table with left over food and so on. The pictures are often taken with poses borrowed from MTV Base and mannerisms from the notorious projects of the Bronx and Chicago East side; the pouted lips, the peace sign, the sagged pants and the generous cleavage from push up bras. Then you have the facebook Amoniseni(perennial “hailers”) posting comments like; “nothing do you joor (sic)”, “fine boy no pimples”, “you look takeaway”. You look at the pictures and you shake your head. And Bamidele, the emerging like bomber will click the sympathy like. Chai!

THE PEACOCK
This is the preening dude or gal. The pictures are always impeccable, most often studio pictures. They don’t want to present any lesser image. The shirt collars are always in place, the nails always done, the smiles always fixed. If the chairs and tables are not covered in a party, no pictures be dat. You can go through all the pictures, no item of clothing is ever repeated. The peacocks confuses themselves with the Hollywood folks. They post pictures with newly acquired stuff every time and in most instances they are cheap stuff. From bogus costume jewelry that are choking hazards to Sunglasses that looks like gas masks. They prize themselves on the number of likes or adulating comments their pictures get. They hoard their own likes and do not dispense likes anyhow. No picture or update is ever good enough to be liked. I have removed quite a few of them from my list because they add nothing. I don’t do Instagram, I hear a few of them are there, doing their thing.

THE BRAGGART
Oh my God! These folks can brag! They have never heard about humble bragging. It is always about them. When I was this, when I was that. I am this and that! Even when posting comments on other peoples wall, they almost always make it about them. They project themselves richer than they actually are, yet the mannerisms and dressing tells a different story. They share common ancestry with the pretenders. Always “forming”…when you seek them out, you see them in dated stuff and the projection on facebook doesn’t match the reality.

THE FIGHTER
I don’t like fighters. They are loud, very loud! When they disagree with you, they go to their wall and write about you. Loyalty means nothing to the fighter and they are good at sacrificing friendships at the slightest opportunity. The fighter takes everything personal. He is a fanatic of some sorts. He’s just a couple of removes from ISIS level fanaticism. If you are in opposing camps politically, stay off his wall. If the fighter is a woman, and you offend her, she opens your file and everyone will know what you cooked that burned the house down. The fighter doesn’t tire out, he harbors the anger of an arsonist. Pick your friends carefully and avoid the fighter!

THE VILLAGE IDIOT
These ones are infected with foot and mouth disease. They always put their foot in their mouth. They misread every update, they don’t understand sarcasm, they don’t get the jokes, they cannot comprehend satire and they misfire like a car burning bad fuel. You find them apologizing after they are graciously corrected. They don’t understand what Google is, at the mention of anything, they ask you for the link. The village idiot doesn’t get it. He sees nothing wrong in Iyiola Omisore attempting to eat two ears of corn at once. He defends Ganduje breaking bear bottles in Kano and considers it an expression of fundamental human right. The village idiot loves his leaders to a fault and worships his pastor. He has an unquestioning character. His comments and disposition calls his morality into question. Personally, I think it is a matter of IQ. When someone’s IQ is near room temperature range, he is a village idiot. He riles me up!

To be continued…

When People Write You Off, Get Right In – Alibaba Writes On Backstabbing and Loyalty

Posted on by The Elites

imageNigeria’s king of Comedy, Alibaba recently penned down his thought on some major issues which includes backstabbing, loyalty and overcoming life’s challenges. Ali explained how he has been backstabbed severally by those he considered as friends and some he had even tried to help.

Read full piece below:

In life, there are many reasons some people will hate you. There are many reasons some will run you down. Some will say all sorts to make themselves feel important. Or get out of a tight corner. Some do it just to be happy.

The people that you should beware of are those who say things and in spite of how wrong what they said are, still try to tell you they did not mean it. Or didn’t mean what they said ‘that way’. There are those who make you feel comfortable and just when you are settling into the besto zone, stab you in the back.

I have heard all sorts in my short life time. One time, an event planner wanted me to be Mc of an event and wanted to get a female co-mc, so I suggested 2 names. One of the ladies I suggested, told the lady she should get another Mc that she could work with. Why? The event planner asked. Ali is old, get a younger Mc.

As fate would have it I still worked with her. During the event, as I wrote notes for her, to introduce several segments of the show and how to bring on different dignitaries, the event planner will come backstage and smile. She came in backstage once, while my co-mc was on stage, using an intro I gave her and said, ‘Ali you are rare.

Someone just commented on how awesome the introduction ********* (co-mc’s name) gave the last speaker was. I nearly told him you wrote it. Especially after what she said when I was trying to book her’. Not necessary, I replied. When people write you off, get right in.

Some two years ago, someone said Ali Baba‘s time has passed, I did a straight 6 hours of stand up comedy. All of my original stuff. Many of the comedians who were at the show, have since boosted their jokes arsenal with some of the materials used in that epic performance. And since that 6 hours, many comedians have received free jokes as often as we meet.

My producer Bunmi Davies told me jokingly that if the 6hr video is made public, many people will see the source of some great jokes. But as Zakilooooo will say Judas no stop Jesus. It’s allowed. People who don’t see you in economy class are unaware you are lounging in First class… Even when you are on the same flight….

In search of Aso Rock’s Fabled ‘Chapel-turned-spa’, By Toni Kan

Posted on by The Elites

TONI KAN 2“Where are you worshipping tomorrow?” my friend asked me as he left my hotel room that night in Abuja.
“I will pray here in my room,” I said.
“Come worship with us at the Aso Rock chapel,” he invited.
My first impulse was to say ‘no thank you’ but then I realised that there could be a story there so I said yes.
Now, I have been labelled anti-APC on account of my interventions on www.sabinews.com and other platforms. The charge is wrong and false but protesting will only suggest guilt even though my interventions are always driven by the exigencies of the situation and context.
Now, I had an ulterior motive in saying yes that night. My intention was to carry out a very “anti-APC act”; look around and find out whether Mrs. Aisha Buhari, Wife of the President had really turned the Aso Rock chapel into a spa or store as I had read on many social media platforms.
I, like many others had read the report and was affronted. How dare she turn a place of worship into a beauty salon? No one asked whether the rumor was true or not, Mrs. Buhari was guilty by reason of past conduct; once a spa owner always a spa owner.
So, there I was at the Aso Rock Pilot Gate at 7.43am where I joined the throng of people I saw on their way to worship at the chapel situated right inside the seat of power. My friend had come down with diarrhea and couldn’t make it after inviting me.
There were perfunctory questions at the gate but because it was Sunday and we were going to church, there wasn’t much scrutiny. I showed my phone, my tape recorder and my camera and then was cleared after my details had been taken down.
TONI KAN
Outside, I looked up at the bright sun and long walk and baulked. I was still limping from a healing fracture and had not factored in the long walk but I was in luck, a couple driving by saw me limping and offered me a lift to the main gate where there was another perfunctory check.
Once inside the compound that houses the residence and offices of the first lady, you will find a winding tree lined pave-locked drive way bordered on both sides by masquerade trees.
There are green well-tended lawns and flower hedges on both sides of the ten feet wide driveway. The lawns on the right lead up to a cluster of white buildings which are clearly demarcated by a metal fence.
To the left is a heart shaped hedge which leads to the offices of the First Lady which must no longer be officially in use since there is no office of the First Lady in the present administration.
There is no fence to your left but worshippers arriving on foot, have to ease off the driveway and walk down a winding corridor for about 40 meters to the entrance of the chapel.
If you walk all the way to the end of the driveway, you will arrive at the First Lady’s kitchen and pantry. Beyond that and to your left is a tennis court complete with seats and further beyond is a mini zoo with giraffes and zebras and peacocks enjoying the sun. To the right of the mini zoo is a small mosque with a loud speaker to your right on the roof. The mosque a guard, I spoke with, told me was used for storage under the GEJ administration.
I hobbled around, phone to my ear, as I took surreptitious shots, while I waited for the service to begin. To get into the chapel, you are told to surrender your phone before you pass through the scanner. I did but kept my recorder and camera.
The chapel is a beautiful worship centre. Done up in white, the altar is a throwback to Jesus Christ’s charge to Peter – “On this rock I will build my church.”
I look around, there is no spa or spa equipment in sight. It is a chapel. The altar features a table literally jutting out of a rock. Behind the table on which is placed a bible resting on a gold centrepiece are six chairs for the clergy. That morning, a woman in red and pink lace is sitting there. Two other men would later join her in the course of the service.
Behind them, the wall is concrete and glass with the crucifix in blue. There is a red floral set piece draped with fairy lights. Beside the altar are two flat screen TV sets high up against the wall. There are smaller flat screen tv sets to the far right and left all of them showing bible verses, song lyrics or live feeds of the worship.
As I sit down, one of the female ushers (guards maybe), notices my camera and asks me to surrender it. I do.
A light-skinned man is leading a prayer session. He reads a bible verse and then calls on the congregation to “clap your hands and pray.” I will later learn that his name is Pastor Malomo, the Aso Rock Villa chaplain, newly resumed from Ghana.
He is energetic and passionate as he prays for Nigeria as she celebrates 55 years of independence. Then he calls on the congregation to pray against the spirit of dependency.
There is an announcement about a 55th anniversary church service later in the day before Pastor Malomo introduces the guest minister as Pastor Charles Achonwa whom he describes as his in-law.
In his message, Pastor Achonwa, who describes himself as prayer partner to Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo says the Aso Rock Chapel should now be re-christened Chapel of Change.
Commenting on the immediate past President Good Luck Jonathan, Achonwa said Jonathan was a humble man because it “takes a humble man to concede defeat” before adding that President Buhari faced a herculean task in his change crusade and fight against corruption.
His message is a riff on change but half way through it become obvious that, like many, he must have heard about the spa story and planned relocation of the Aso Rock Villa Chapel because suddenly he says “the church is not the building, it is the congregation.”
After the service, the ministers and officials of the church take a group picture and the worshippers begun to leave and even though the adults try to hedge the children along the agreed walkway, some of them stray and walk towards the First Lady’s residence which is just ten feet away and watched over by only a guard who graciously offers me his seat.
As I watch the people mill around and banter while others head for the gate I wonder why a chapel was built so close to the residence and why worshippers are allowed in from outside?
“OBJ built it,” the guard who says he has worked there for five years tells me.
“Why so close?” I ask and he shrugs his shoulders.
Could Babangida, a Muslim, have built a chapel next to the residence to be occupied by the first lady?
When I asked for the children’s church, the guard points me to a smaller structure about 5 feet from the chapel. He tells me it used to be a chalet for guests but is now being used by Mrs. Aisha Buhari as a crèche for children of her staff. The building is locked and so I am unable to access it
Sitting on the chair he has offered me, I take a few more shots and as I rise to leave I wonder where the story about the chapel being turned into a spa came from and what I would do if I was the president and the chapel was sitting that close to my wife’s residence.
Knowing myself, I would never allow the chapel or children’s church to sit so close to her bedroom and kitchen. And this is a Christian speaking.
Kan is an award-winning writer and editor. He blogs at www.sabinews.com

Wangari Maathai Was Not A Good Woman…Africa Needs More of Her

Posted on by The Elites

Environmentalist, Nobel Prize winner and pro-democracy activist Wangari Maathai was the embodiment of the idea that “good women seldom make history”.

“That Kenya still doesn’t know what to do with the legacy of Wangari Maathai says more about a country at war with itself than it does about the activist hero.”

WANGARI25 September marked four years since the passing of Kenyan environmentalist and feminist icon, Wangari Maathai. Around the world, the anniversary was marked by speeches, tree planting ceremonies and any number of other events that resonated with Maathai’s legacy as a feminist, an environmentalist and one of the foremost leaders of the post-Cold War democracy movement.

In Kenya, however, the celebrations were notably muted – a handful of disjointed events by various individuals. A few days after the anniversary, the city council quietly announced that it was naming a road after Maathai to which many reacted with a figurative shrug. There was a poorly attended family fun day at the Karura Forest that Maathai sought to protect, and even though the event was free, few turned up. There wasn’t even a hint of recognition at the highest levels of government.

Yet this is Professor Wangari Maathai. The first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The first Kenyan woman to earn a doctoral degree. An icon of Kenya’s democratic movement who repeatedly put not just her mind but also her body on the line in order to secure a better future for Kenyans and their natural environment.

Maathai was a consistent thorn in the side of the autocratic administration of Daniel arap Moi which lasted over two decades up to 2002, and she revolutionised the act of protest in Kenya by centring it on the female body. In urging the protesting mothers of detainees to strip when threatened by security officers who were threatening to break up their protests, Maathai wove traditional beliefs on nudity and gender together with contemporary political struggles to foment a decisive moment in the struggle that brought women into the centre of a political discourse in which they had only previously been included peripherally. She was an intellectual and an activist who ultimately did more to spur on the democratic movement in Kenya than nearly anyone else.

It’s not that Maathai doesn’t have some kind of standing in Kenya. Most people recognise that she accomplished something. Her name will roll off the tongue if one is pushed to identify iconic women in the country. She stood up to the Moi administration and seemingly won at a time when most Kenyans believed it simply could not be done. Most Kenyans get that this is important.

But Maathai’s standing in Kenya is definitely ambiguous. She is beloved by feminists and environmentalists, and tolerated by everyone else, a fact that underscores the culture wars that pervade the Kenyan public sphere. The collision between traditions – mainly codified and preserved by outsiders through a stagnant colonial education and a pick-and-choose aspirational modernity that sees the value in keeping some traditions as long as they benefit power – has created many problems, particularly for women. Women are expected to look backwards on guidance on what it means to be “good” – where “good” is primarily defined by men – but not too good because that makes women less interesting to men.

The Madonna/Whore paradox is prevalent, and to navigate it many women live a Janus-faced existence that hides elements of their sexuality, their ambition or their personality from the male gaze. They are forced to pretend to be “good” to satisfy societal expectation and navigate the relatively small social and political space that remains.

But this was not Wangari Maathai. Maathai was brash and unapologetic. Her PhD was one thing, but she also divorced her husband at a time when divorce was still a major taboo and was roundly and publicly attacked for it. She insisted on leading from the front, rather than spectating while men battled for the soul of the country.

Because private morality is still so determinative of public standing, especially for women, most Kenyans still don’t know what to do with Maathai’s legacy. Kenya loves “good women”, but Maathai was not a “good woman”. Rather, she was an embodiment of the modern proverb “good women seldom make history”.

Even in death, Maathai’s legacy pays the price for this. For instance, every few months, Kenyan social media is seized by a paroxysm of misguided Moi nostalgia while by contrast Maathai’s anniversary barely registered. Parts of the forest she fought to save have been cleared for diplomatic missions and contested commercial development. Although she rose to the rank of Minister under the 2002 administration of Mwai Kibaki, she roundly lost in local elections in Tetu constituency in 2007 – a mere three years after she had won the Nobel Prize.

If an alien landed in Kenya this week they’d think Moi was a hero and Maathai a mere footnote in national history.

Maathai’s legacy is a victim of both the casual misogyny and the political schizophrenia that characterises Kenya’s public sphere. Like all other female politicians, when substantive policy critiques failed, her private life was laid bare for public consumption, particularly during her divorce. These stories would be replayed everywhere throughout her political career as a cautionary tale for women choosing to enter into politics – a reminder that only those with near virginal moral standing should be considered eligible to venture into mainstream politics. In Kenya, we want women to be strong and opinionated, but not too strong and not too opinionated – not like Maathai.

Kenyan politics will hold up women as emblems but denies them full participation in the highest levels of government, instead publicly referring to female politicians as “flower girls” and creating a political ghetto in the women’s representative positions that effectively wrote women out of mainstream politics. Maathai wanted to be more than an emblem, and Kenya still doesn’t know what to do with that.

Those who love her – primarily similarly insubordinate women who recognise the suffocating restrictiveness of the country’s political misogyny – do so passionately. Meanwhile, those who dislike her go beyond badmouthing her legacy to ignoring it completely, slowly and systematically writing her out of the democracy movement even though arguably it was her Mother’s Protest that set off the active phase of the pro-democracy demonstrations. Consequently, an entire generation is growing up that, worse than not liking Maathai, simply doesn’t know her.

Casual misogyny in the public sphere in Kenya can reach mind-boggling levels. We live in a time in which an MP is caught near red-handed in the act of rape and the country’s most popular comedian responds by questioning why she was with him. In which the president responds to the brutal sexual assault of a 4-year-old girl by her uncle and his friend by asking “where was her mother?” In which a national television station warns women who study beyond undergraduate level that they will never find a husband. In which women seen as being “indecently dressed” are violently stripped on the streets, with the vocal support of prominent public figures.

The situation in Kenya is such that US President Barack Obama can give a speech at the Kasarani National Stadium, observing at one point that “you cannot get ahead if half of your team isn’t playing”, and a journalist with a full spread in the most popular newspaper can say “I agree with everything Obama said, except that thing about women”. We live in a society in which silence around violence against girls and women is pervasive – 25% of women in all age groups have endured some kind of sexual and physical violence – and yet the first question victims of violence are asked is “what did you do to bring this upon yourself?”

Maathai’s legacy wrote against this toxic narrative. She was imperfect but somehow more effective for that fact, as she marshalled her imperfections as if to say “if I can do it, so can you”. She did more to give Kenyan women space to simply be themselves in the context of this casual misogyny and political schizophrenia than any woman of her generation merely by refusing to be a “good girl”.

That Kenya still doesn’t know what to do with this legacy says more about the country than it does about Wangari Maathai – a testament to a nation deeply at war with itself over what to do about women who refuse to be “good”.

Nanjala Nyabola is a Kenyan writer, humanitarian advocate and political analyst, currently based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Vincent Enyeama: Exit of A National Icon? By Arc Nya-Etok Ezekiel

Posted on by The Elites

imageIn November of last year, Vincent Enyeama, the then Nigeria’s No1 Goalkeeper and Captain, was short listed as one of the 5 finalists for the BBC African Footballer Of The Year Award. It was a rare feat to have a goalkeeper on such a list.
I came to this forum to solicit support for him. My post was titled “Vote For ENYEAMA, Vincent Inem,–Talented, Humble, God-Fearing”
The reaction was overwhelming. The post was viewed by over 400,000 people. About 2,300 people “Liked” it, while over 1000 people posted superlative comments in his support.
Enyeama personally went through ALL the comments, and gave me a call that was very emotional. ‘Chairman”, he said, “For the love that my people have for me, I will do anything to make Nigerians proud and happy…”
Fast forward—-
Not long ago, there was controversy over his failing to appear for a national call up. Unknown to many, he had just lost his mother to whom he was very attached. The burial was done this last Saturday.
Within hours after the burial, he took the next available flight to meet his team mates in Belgium.
What followed was very sad. First, not withstanding that his national coach was not by his side at the burial, -which he very well understood, what was really shocking was the total absence of any form of sympathy. Then came the bombshell, as the team got together for the usual coach briefing, what came was not condolences to a mate that has just buried his mom, but a stripping of that same person of the captainship without the least of prior confiding.
When Vincent, in utter shock and confusion sought to know if he had done anything wrong or if it was simply a change of administration which the coach was entitled to. Unfortunately the coach would have none of that and ordered him to sit down. As the longest serving player, he believed he could be treated with a little more consideration or respect.
Not done, the coach in the next meeting, named his five key players that he would work with. Enyeama was visibly ignored. When asked, he said he didn’t know “any Enyeama”, and was not interested in knowing whoever he was.
It was at this point that Enyeama, having all considered, thought it wise to honorably resign from the national team.
I have had very long discussions on phone with him from yesterday to some hours back. I have also tried very hard to dissuade him from calling it quits as Nigerians have shown him som much love.
BUT for a man that is considered as one of the best goalkeepers globally, to be seen as the third choice keeper, is to humiliate him. This will not auger well for his professional career.
My main concern now is what is informing our decisions on national assignment. I do not for a moment believe that there is anyone that we cannot do without. I also very much believe that we need to put out our very best if we want to go far in any competition. If Enyeama who has been seen by Nigerians as being very level headed and humble, can be treated this way, how will other players feel? Is this the best way to honor our longest serving player? Is it not the job of a coach to MANAGE his players? Is this the best way to MANAGE a man that has just buried his mother? How are the other players feeling?
Enyeama has been an inspiration in levelheadedness and humility, to the Nigerian youths. The Governor of his state (Akwa Ibom State), Mr Emmanuel Udom, said this much when he personally, with his Deputy and almost the whole state EXCO, went for the mother’s burial.
Feelers that I have received is that even the players who do not agree with Enyeama, are unanimous that he does not deserve the treatment that he has received from the coach. As he told me, “the coach obviously hates even the very sight of me. To try to stay back will be to create the sort of spirit in the camp that will not be okay for the team. I love my country and if it takes my taking the fall for the nation to have a united team, it is a price I am willing to pay for our country” Wow!!!
Fellow Nigerians, should Enyeama, after these years of service, be disgraced and frustrated to the national team this way? Is it ok?

Arc NYA-ETOK, Ezekiel.
Nigeria.

SLS: What Will Not Stick, What Will Stick, By Pius Adesanmi

Posted on by The Elites

President Buhari must send a bouquet of flowers to His Royal Highness Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Emir of Kano. When you miss a side meeting on Boko Haram at the UN General Assembly, which was not on your schedule and to which you were not invited, and your media team characteristically makes a spectacular mess of explaining something as simple as you were not even invited to the said meeting, and there is national outcry and a feeding frenzy by wailers who would have complained about the colour of your Kaftan had you attended the said meeting anyway, nothing works like the gift of a 54-year-old modern, urbane, cosmopolitan Emir – with an ever-present hint of a British accent – yielding to his libidinal urges and marrying an 18-year-old lady.

Sanusi’s marriage is an auspicious gift of national distraction for the President’s team in New York. Femi Adesina, Garba Shehu, and Kayode Fayemi must be thanking their stars and secretly hoping that Sanusi would add a fifth 17-year-old wife to the tally next week when President Buhari releases or does not release his ministerial list. If he releases the list, there will be outrage because it is doubtful that there will be a single person on the said list who has not eaten yams. Like I said on Twitter yesterday, the Nigerian who has not eaten yams does not exist. It is either you have eaten yam or its derivatives: yam porridge, yam flour, etc. Or you are related to and benefiting from a Nigerian who has eaten yam or its derivatives; or you are waiting and anticipating your access to yam or its derivatives. On the other hand, if he does not release that list, there will be hell to pay on account of yet another promise not fulfilled. Release the list and be damned, don’t release the list and be damned. That is President Buhari’s tricky position for which he is singularly responsible. I am not sorry for the President but SLS can help with marriage number five next week.

I had initially decided not to dabble into the raging controversy over SLS’s marriage to an eighteen-year-old lady until I encountered some of the arguments being pushed by his outraged detractors. One argument particularly stands out for me. It is said that he would not have been able to get away with this in the civilised world. My understanding of this submission is that those making it have Euro-America in mind when they refer to the civilised world. And this is why we must hasten to educate them that Europe and America – the West – should not always be their default reference for ways of seeing and ways of being. Africa has zilch to learn from Europe in this specific instance.

I am raising a daughter in the Western culture that is being presented as superior to Sanusi’s Fulani culture by some of his detractors. That means that I am prepared for a great deal of Western ways of being and seeing that I do not necessarily like or approve of but how man for do? Already, in kindergarten, she comes home everyday waving newly-acquired territories of Western individuality in our faces. We shall be lucky to have any real authority over her beyond age ten. By the time she hits her teenage years, we become effectively parents honoris causa. That is when she gets to start screaming at us: “Mom, Dad, it’s my life!” If she decides to move out of the house at 18 – they are always in a hurry to move out in this culture anyway – and get married, we’d be extremely lucky parents by Western standards if she allows us to be involved and play our roles as parents and give her out. She could fly to Las Vegas with her fiance on her 18th birthday, get married, and phone us from there to announce gleefully that she is married to some boyfriend we have never met and that would be absolutely normal in this culture.

Of course we pray and hope that none of this will happen and we are prepared to play our roles of Nigerian cultural parentage within limits allowable by the law here in Canada. We cannot discipline beyond giving her time out for now. When she hits the rebellious teenage years, Canada’s idea of discipline when she misbehaves is that we should ground her, put her on curfew, and take away her telephone, computer, and car privileges for a while. And there is even a limit to this idea of discipline o.

However, we still hope to do our best and see her off to Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins or McGill, all the way to a Ph.D in whichever field she chooses. I was even hoping that she might want to become a brain surgeon until I encountered Dr. Ben Carson and that idea became very unpalatable. But if, God forbid, she decides to marry at 18, ain’t jack we can do about it but support her. At 18, she is a legal adult here, everywhere in the West, and in Nigeria. So, stop hoisting the West as reference in this Sanusi higi haga. It is a silly argument that won’t stick.

The other argument that won’t stick is the constant referencing of Sanusi as a pedophile and the coupling of his action with that of the Sharianist of Zamfara, Senator Ahmed Yerima. The way I see it, those dragging legalese into this argument are talking nonsense. Personally, I believe that Sani Ahmed Yerima is a pedophile for marrying 13-year-olds twice and should be in jail and not in the Nigerian Senate (APC take note: there’s a pedophile in your ranks!) No amount of “our culture in the north and our religion permits it” coming from Yerima’s apologists will cleanse him of disgusting pedophilia. But Sanusi isn’t one. His marriage is legit. The lady is 18. She is an adult. Stop calling SLS a pedophile. Stop it at once. He isn’t one.

The only argument that will stick against Sanusi – and that is the argument I am making, that is my position – has already been made by my younger brother, Dr AnoDavinci Ebirim. Fifty-four year-old Sanusi’s marriage to an 18-year-old is a symbolic disaster. In fact, it is a tragedy. I am so disappointed in this man that I admire so much that I am seething with rage. Not everything that is legal is ok. Not everything that is sanctioned by your culture or religion is ok if you are in a postion to wield moral, political, and even secular authority over society by the power of your personal example. If I need to break down the symbolic disaster of Sanusi’s action to you, then you are not a worthy addressee of this treatise. Grow a brain.

Let us return to the West. Their adult daughters commonly marry at 18. Many obtain permission to marry even younger. But it must be said that many of such ladies marry men closer to their own age. Of course, in Hollywood and other celebrity spaces, it is common for 70 year-old libidinous Western men to marry 18-year-old trophy wives. Don’t be surprised if Hugh Hefner of Playboy Magazine shows up with an 18 year-old playmate next year. But the West as a society has attained a level of advancement in so many spheres – especially education and human capital development – that they can afford certain luxuries, indulgences, and stupidity that should not even be in the contemplation of desperately poor, desperately backward, and desperately underdeveloped societies.

Generation after generation of northern leadership has continued to ensure that the said region is one of the worst basket cases of underdevelopment in Africa. The other day, another younger brother of mine, Chxta Bee, was referencing a 1991 lecture by the famous Dr. Bala Usman in which he holds northern leadership exclusively responsible for the north’s condition. I am even tempted to borrow a leaf from Walter Rodney and write a book: “How Northern Leaders Underdeveloped the North”. In this desperate 21st century, the only symbolic message that should be coming out of the mouths and actions of northern leaders is: development, development, development, catch up, catch up, catch up.

The said development and catch up should be envisioned with the north’s immense agricultural resources which should be massively industrialised and not with a parasitical dependence on oil money and the national cake in Abuja. That envisioning should include the massive education of women. They should be encouraged and given the means to stay in STEM all the way to the doctoral level. The body language of the northern establishment should be: we want to flood Nigeria with female engineers, medical doctors, architects, nuclear scientists, agricultural scientists, etc. Not marry them at 18 just because we can!
I repeat: no matter the urgency of your libido, you should not give the impression that you want to be marrying them off at 18 just because it is legal and your culture and religion sanction it.

If you come to the issues I have raised here screaming that 18-year-old girls can always do all these things in their husbands’ houses, I will take a coconut and crack it on your unteachable head. I have no time for nonsense today.

Bilkisu Yusuf: Legacies of A History of Winning, By Jibrin Ibrahim

Posted on by The Elites

imageThe death of Hajiya Bilkisu Yusuf in Saudi Arabia during a stampede on September 24th provoked in all who knew her deep sadness on the passing away of this great teacher, human rights advocate, networker, committed practitioner of inter-faith dialogue and frontline fighter against poverty and all forms of social exclusion. Her life is a story of winning so many battles on so many fronts to improve society and leave it better than she found it. She fought and won battles in so many organisations over a forty-year period. While I knew her in our days as students in Ahmadu Bello University, I started working with her closely in 1982 while establishing the organisation, Women in Nigeria (WIN). She was one of the founding WINers and I reproduce below her own account of the story of the origins of the organisation. It is just one of the many organisations she devoted her life to founding, developing and using as platforms for struggling and winning.

WIN: In the Beginning

By Bilkisu Yusuf, WIN Conference, Kano, 2006

Introduction
The organisers of this conference have chosen a relevant organisation to focus on and also an appropriate topic. From the time it was established to the time it started experiencing the seam bursting dynamics of growth, Women In Nigeria (WIN) was the most militant and active women’s NGO in Nigeria. That WIN made considerable impact in the women’s movement is undisputable. However, what many of the founding members, and indeed the diverse and teeming members who subscribed to the WIN vision did not expect was the pathetic and anaemic state to which the vibrant, vocal and articulate organisation has been reduced. Could this comatose state of WIN have been avoided? Can this trend be reversed? What does the future hold? Can the vision be recaptured, reviewed, or drowned? This paper examines the emergence of WIN, its vision, and mission, growth and decline. It makes recommendations on the way forward.

In the Beginning Was a Vision
In 1982 a group of women and men who were lecturers in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria decided to organise a conference on Women In Nigeria (WIN). They were mainly drawn from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and particularly from the Sociology and Political Science departments. Foremost among them were Ayesha Imam, Sule Bello, Jibo Ibrahim, Rauf Mustapha, Renee Pittin, Hauwa Mahdi, Norma Perchonock, etc. They reached out to lecturers in other universities and women outside academia, from other spheres of life to join them as participants at the conference. From other universities came Ifeyinwa Iweriebor, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Arlene Enabulele, Edwin and Bene Madunagu. From the media came Bilkisu Yusuf, Therese Nweke, Hauwa Dangogo, Elizabeth Obadina etc. The aim of the conference was to discuss and analyse the condition and status of women in Nigeria and identify strategies to uplift their status.

The Vision
At the end of the conference, which featured paper presentations, participants resolved to establish an organisation which later came to be known as Women In Nigeria (WIN), a name drawn from the conference theme. From that time, the women and their male supporters never looked back. Fired by their vision of mobilising all for social justice, they designed WIN as a membership organisation. Its aim was social transformation and this it hoped to achieve through engaging in research, policy making, dissemination of information and action aimed at improving the conditions of women. WIN envisioned an equitable society that is free from oppression and where women have equal access to education and other resources that would enable them to shape policies that affect their lives.

WIN’s Objectives Are:
• To promote the study of conditions of women in Nigeria, with the aim of combating discriminatory and sexist practice in the family, the workplace and in the wider society;

• To defend the rights of women under the Nigerian Constitution and the United Nations Human Rights Conventions and other instruments such as CEDAW;

• To provide non-sexist alternatives to government and institutional policies;

• To fight against the harassment and sexual abuse of females in the family and elsewhere;

• To promote equitable distribution of domestic work in the family;

• To provide a forum for women to express themselves;

• To ensure for women, equal access to equal education;

• To combat sexist stereotypes in literature, the media and education materials;

• To form links and work with other organisations and groups fighting sex and class oppression;

• To fight for social justice.

A Feminist Group Emerges
WIN from the beginning made it clear that it was a feminist organisation. The organisation defined feminism simply as “belief in the principle that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men”. At that time, there were groups supporting feminism, but no women’s groups that emphasised their support for feminism existed. Some out of fear of being called a “women’s liberation” group which elicited antagonism from many people, especially men who traced any such group to western style women liberation groups, promotion of male traits, their “bra burning,” anti-family attitudes and inclinations to upset the natural order of biological relations between the sexes.

WIN insisted that it was not a “western style” liberation movement, emphasising that over 70 percent of Nigerian women are part of peasant farming families to whom such a movement is irrelevant. Further, WIN stressed that it was an African Women’s organisation, conscious of its socio-cultural milieu and committed to the advancement of women, using the Nigerian constitution, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex as a point of entry. How can any Nigerian disagree with or oppose this constitutional provision? Why would any citizen of the world oppose UN human rights conventions that seek to make the world a better place for all women and men?

WIN used the Marxist-feminist model to explain the condition of women in Nigeria emphasising that women’s struggle must be linked to the wider class struggle in the society. “In this system, women and men are both exploited as members of oppressed groups. Within the system of class oppression, however, women suffer particular forms of exploitation, thus they are subjected to double oppression.”

Women on the Move
One of the early activities WIN carried out was a research on the conditions of women working in the factories around Kano. Other activities included annual conferences and publication of the proceedings, prompt response through press releases to policy issues, particularly those that have implications for the advancement of women, articulation of WIN position on economic, and political polices, documentation and dissemination of such views, participation in international conferences. WIN was represented at 1985 UN Women’s Decade Conference in Nairobi, Kenya where the UN strategies for the Advancement of Women was developed and adopted.

WIN: An Organisational Development Cycle
In the past two decades, various theories and frameworks for analysing organisations have been developed. Organisations are defined as “collections of people, joining together in some formal association in order to achieve group or individual objectives”. Galbraith (1987) focused on organisational structure, which is “the formal configuration between individuals and groups with respect to the allocation of tasks, responsibilities and authority within organisations”. The organisational structure holds the organisation together as a cohesive unit, providing the mechanism for its control and ensures coordination between activities, allowing for differentiation and integration.

WIN in its formative and active years had a very effective organisational structure at the national and state levels. There were elected national officers and state coordinators who provided the mechanism for control. The constitution provided an anchor for due process while the various chapters had enough autonomy to provide for differentiation and diversity. So what could have gone wrong?

Organisational development theorists posit that organisations like human beings have a life of their own, they are “highly complex, dynamic systems which emerge, develop and decline in diverse and changing technological, economic and social contexts. What is appropriate in one context may be totally unsuitable in another”. In analysing organisations, six characteristics are taken into consideration. People, strategies and plans, technology, environment, structure and culture.

The People
This focuses on the members of the organisation and their associates, their attitudes, values, aspirations and experience. This is the most important component of the characteristics that is critical to analysing the problems and the sources of stress and strains that WIN faced as it developed and later declined.

In the beginning, WIN relied on the spirit of voluntarism, members paying their way to meetings and staying with friends and relations. There was commitment. As the organisation grew, clash of values and aspirations became imminent, between the Marxists, and non-Marxists, those who opposed acceptance of grants from imperialist governments and those who wanted to network with all women across borders, the academics who were research focused and non-university based members who wanted WIN to diversify its projects and activities and concentrate less on research and conferences.

However, given that the organisation was gender focused, the source of tension that was a paradox as was the attitude of the men in WIN. Some of the men felt marginalised by the opportunities that feminists said the women who were the only ones who could be leaders in WIN were reaping such as attendance at International conferences, and national recognition as leaders of civil society. The men started opposing such activities as opportunism, diversionary actions, and designed to compromise the organisation. The men started pulling their weight to ensure that only women who shared their views emerged as leaders of WIN. There were rumours of the women compromising themselves just to earn male support in order to win elections.

Others argued that the men in WIN were not envious, rather they were “purists” who were unhappy about the general corrupting atmosphere that pervaded WIN which had been turned into an avenue for making deals with donors and a “platform where people accumulate wealth and make connections for future use.” According to a male supporter, “most of these ambitious women see these men as obstacles to their ambitions. The persistent call for a return to the original creed is seen as a strategy for male domination and manipulation”.

While WIN was battling with these internal dynamics, an external threat emerged. As the organisation was preparing for the Enugu AGM where elections were to be held, two of the candidates contesting for leadership were supported by different factions. One was supposed to be an employee of “an imperialist government donor agency” and her opponents argued that her election would amount to outright sale of WIN to capitalist movements. The other contestant was described as a federal government agent, paid to infiltrate and capture WIN. This would neutralise its militant and critical approach to issues and compromise its ideological stand. There were allegations that plain clothes security officers and policemen were drafted to the venue of the Enugu AGM to prevent the non-government candidate from emerging as WIN leader. After the Enugu conference, the organisation at the national level split into two factions. However, both contestants and their followers became too preoccupied with other issues – one got a job abroad and the other an appointive and prestigious position in government. The immediate past president migrated to the United States claiming that she was being hounded by the Abacha regime for her criticisms of government. Without a leader, WIN at the national level ebbed into oblivion. The state branches tried to survive on their own but it became too difficult for them. They gradually ceased to function, and have become dormant as members joined other NGOs or founded their own. As I write, only two state branches of WIN are still active, the Kaduna and Bauchi state chapters.

…And Today
The reality today is that some of the predictions of an anxious WIN member shortly before the stalled Enugu AGM have come true. “It can therefore, be said that a fierce class struggle is raging in WIN. If the feminist/opportunists win, then the organisation will degenerate and join NCWS in the dustbin of history. However, should the purists win or force a compromise, then WIN may retain some relevance to the struggle for liberation and class justice in Nigeria.” Committed members of WIN can still make an effort to revitalise the organisation, beginning with re-activation of state branches.

A strategic thinking workshop to assess WIN to envision a future should be convened using the Strength Based approach also known as Appreciative Inquiry.

Appreciative Inquiry
Appreciative Inquiry is particularly recommended for development workers who tend to be bogged down by problems and often focus too much on solving problems that they forget to see the strengths they can tap from organisations or communities they want to assist. Appreciative Inquiry is a way of being and working, it is deliberately positive and hopeful. It believes that the past is a source of wisdom, and a learning experience, it therefore values organisational history. Appreciative inquiry believes that something works in every organisation and in every community (Abantu 1998). For the civil society activists concerned with charting a new path for WIN and documenting the organisation’s history, appreciative inquiry is the relevant concept to apply in arriving at the reality of WIN’s past and its ability and strengths for taking full charge of the future.

Appreciative Inquiry “is an approach for fostering innovations in organisations and communities that translates images of possibility into reality, beliefs and practices. It focuses on “doing more of what works” as opposed to the Problem Solving Approach which focuses on “doing less of something we do not do well”.

I hope this conference will look beyond today and assist those WIN members who are still committed to the organisations ideals to chart a new path for all who want to see social justice reflected in all aspects of life.

Hajiya Bilkisu Yusuf who passed on recently during the Mecca, Saudi Arabia stampede of September 24, 2015 was a journalist by profession and a political scientist by training. She was the first newspaper editor from Northern Nigeria and was very active in the Nigerian civil society for over four decades. She made this presentation at the WIN Conference in Kano, 2006

REVEALED: How Buhari Miraculously Improved The Power In Nigeria Overnight

Posted on by The Elites

By Dr. Peregrino Brimah

imageMany have been puzzled and piqued over this question. How did the new Buhari/Osinbajo government suddenly and rather drastically improve the power situation in Nigeria literally overnight? Apart from Asari-Dokubo and the people of Borno, most Nigerians have celebrated stretches of uninterrupted power like never before. My niece and nephew were overheard arguing on if it had been a full 24 hours of uninterrupted light. One said it was, the other said it was over 20 hours but not 24. In the past they barely had 20 hours of light per week. It’s been so across Nigeria, an unexplained miracle of the new “change” government.

Some die-hard Jonathanians have claimed the glory, “Jonathan did it,” they say, “after all has Buhari repaired any power plant?” Some have even accused Buhari and Osinbajo of sabotage, claiming they kept the power down for the 16 years of PDP to pave way for their 2015 election victory.

Let There Be Light

I believe I figured out what the miracle was today and realize the answer is simple and rather painful. While chatting with a friend and ENDS General, who rejoiced that he had not turned on his generator for a whole month, it suddenly hit me. I asked how much fuel he bought into his generator per month, “N30,000″ he replied. I asked how much fuel he bought into his car monthly, he said, “about N5,000 a week, about N20,000 a month.” It was so clear. I called up several other friends and asked the same question. One said, no, that he doesn’t use more petrol for his home generator than his car, then he said, actually I use the petrol for my office… “yeah, I do spend more fueling a generator than my car.”

You have been kept in darkness for the 16 years of PDP, not so much because of the generator cabal, but because of people more wicked than them. Because of the fuel cabal. It is the fuel cabal that ensured that you never had power, the same cabal and for the same reason that they ensured that your refineries never worked. They are the ones that said, “let there be darkness over Nigeria.”

The Nigerian fuel cabal make their trillions from fuel subsidy payments. The more petrol Nigeria consumes, the more money they make so long as the fuel is imported and not made by our refineries. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, fuel accounts for over 40% of Nigeria’s total foreign exchange expenditure on imports! When Nigeria is in darkness, there is a party in the fuel-cabals’ homes. We saw the generators as noise makers and income for the generator marketers, but we rarely recognized them as a cash cow, magic money for fuel cabal. Nigeria uses possibly double the fuel it uses for transportation, for providing power. Like a magic trick, our eyes were covered from realizing the real hustle of generators – doubling Nigeria’s fuel imports.

And this explains why, the minute Buhari and Osinbajo came into power and they repaired those refineries, banned those 120 ships and called all the fuel cabal to line-up and account for and return the billions in payments they have gotten for supplying fuel they don’t even supply, that same minute the power became steady.

We are talking of $5 billion in imports a year, more than double what it should be, thanks to our generator consumption. There is a long chain that makes money in this scam, from the government to the banks, to importers, to the supply chain and fuel stations. The banks for instance make as much as $100 million annually on premiums on forex sold to marketers to import this fuel.

How did the fuel-cabal keep the power off? The Buhari government must investigate old NEPA, they must investigate PHCN. There are people in those agencies that were on the payroll of the fuel cabal who kept the light switch off. Of course the privatization needs to be reversed as many have said. Imagine, the very same fuel cabal invested in keeping Nigeria in darkness bought PHCN assets and now controlled the switch their very selves! That’s getting the wolves to tend the sheep. The fuel cabal must sit in the dock! I have mentioned before that our refineries were never really that spoiled. Our power was always better than we suffered through. What Nigeria suffered for 16 years was people so wicked they kept us in darkness to fill their pockets. After all how can stuff built in early post colonial “prehistoric” era be impossible for us to build and maintain for 30 years of PDP and PDP’s godfathers? Of course not. We could have solved our refinery problems 10 times over and our power problems 20 times over had the fuel cabal not collaborated with the IBB and his PDP sons’ governments all these years to shut off our refineries and shut down our power supplies so they raked in their billions.

How the lack of steady power hindered Nigeria’s development can never be overstated. I believe these matters must be seriously considered, investigated and there must be justice for any and all culprits.

Dr. Peregrino Brimah; http://ENDS.ng [Every Nigerian Do Something] Email: drbrimah@ends.ng Twitter: @EveryNigerian

As Cabinet o’clock Draws Close By Tolu Ogunlesi

Posted on by The Elites

imageSometime this month, Nigeria’s government should finally get a cabinet, as promised by President Muhammadu Buhari. Some commentators have erroneously described the more than one hundred cabinet-free days as as the longest such period in our history. We, in fact, went without ministers for a fifteen-month stretch from January 1966 to April 1967 (the six months of General Ironsi and the first nine months of General Gowon); Permanent Secretaries ran the bureaucracy during that turbulent period following the January and July 1966 coups. (It’s a point I make merely for the sake of historical accuracy, and not in defence of the decision to delay naming a cabinet. The circumstances of that time were clearly different – those were military governments, and the situation at that time approached martial rule, which could justify the absence of ministers in a way today’s circumstances couldn’t).

The constitution says every one of Nigeria’s 36 states should be represented, so it’s clear we won’t have fewer than 36 ministers. What is likely to change radically is the number of ministries. Based on the recommendations of the Transition Committee – widely reported in the media – our existing 31-ministry structure will give way to an 18-ministry one. For now we have no idea who our new ministers will be (I’m hoping there will be a sizable number of women!); it seems that the long wait has ended the feverish speculating that was once habit. In the early weeks of this administration the rumour mills ran overtime, and one interesting narrative quickly gained ground that 33 of 36 originally proposed names had failed an ‘integrity’ test.

It’s hard to sift truth from fiction in this hyperactive age of social media, but what lends some credence to the rumours is an interview the President did with NTA at the end of July. In it he said, regarding the delay in assembling his cabinet: “It is taking so much time because a number of knowledgeable people have been compromised. They have been compromised by people who would like to depend on them to damage our economy and security.” He added: “We cannot rush to give this responsibility to people that have unfortunately been compromised.” He had a name for those “compromised” souls: “hostages.”

With this in mind, there will be those who will consider the incoming ministers unlucky. Especially when you recall the sort of leeway the previous set of ministers had. Knowing what we do of President Buhari, it is highly unlikely that there will be untouchable ministers; the sort that a President will come on national television to shamelessly defend against allegations of corruption.

Now, when that ministerial list eventually comes out, expect, as surely as the sun rises upon the earth, the cries of marginalisation. Because this is Nigeria, where ‘marginalisation’ is the oxygen of public engagement. Encoded into our DNA as Nigerians is the perception of a ‘juiciness’ spectrum upon which public office can be classified, which means that it is guaranteed that people will feel short-changed when the ministers are given portfolios.

This juiciness spectrum appears to be based on a number of things. One is the ministry’s annual budgetary allocation – the bigger the juicier. This can however be misleading, because the ministries with the largest budgets tend to allocate more than 90 per cent of their funds to recurrent spending (salaries, debt payments and running costs), leaving only a small portion for capital projects, aka ‘contracts’. According to Budgit, a civil society organisation focused on government transparency, the only ministries that will be spending more on capital projects than on recurrent needs in the 2015 budget are Works (71 per cent capital expenditure), Niger Delta (89 per cent) and Water Resources (56 per cent).

Another factor that determines perceived ministerial juiciness is the number and types (is it revenue-generating or not?) of agencies and parastatals overseen. By that criterion, Petroleum, Finance, Education and Health are top-of-the-range. Defence has a huge budget, but not only is most of it for paying salaries, it’s also lacking in parastatals that have the mandate to generate revenues. Aviation could also be considered important, because of FAAN and NCAA; and Communications Technology because of the NCC and NIGCOMSAT). The Ministry of Water Resources has 16 parastatals under it, 12 of which are River Basin Development Authorities which oversee several billions of naira annually in capital spending. You get the drift. Ministries that will rank low on that score include Youth (take NYSC out and there’s really nothing left), Women Affairs, Labour and Sports (full of sporting bodies that appear to be perpetually cash-strapped).

It must however be pointed out that with the proposed restructuring, there will no longer be any ministries that anyone will be able to dismiss as insignificant. For example it has reportedly been proposed that the Ministries of Women Affairs and Social Development, Sports, and Youth Development, be merged into a single ministry to be known as Ministry of Gender, Family Affairs, Youth and Sports, to be run by one minister and two ministers of state. What this means is that in the absence of insubstantial ministries, and in light of the fact as much as half of the cabinet will have to make do with junior-minister status, the marginalisation debate will shift to this turf. Someone will come up with a count of how many ‘northerners’ are senior ministers, as compared to the number of southerners, and the newspapers and blogs and social media will be busy with predictable ranting for until the end of the year.

Another interesting area to watch will be the screenings in the Senate? Will the Bukola Saraki-led Senate insist on carrying out a thorough public screening of the nominees? How much bow-and-go are we going to have to endure? Will the inevitable flood of anti-nominee petitions throw up anything interesting? What will happen if Senator Saraki has to preside over the screening of a Kwara State candidate whose nomination he doesn’t support? Will the Senate refuse to confirm any of the candidates? (While not common, it’s certainly happened before).

When the ministers are finally sworn in, they will be people under pressure. Not only because it is unlikely the President will tolerate the kinds of failings that his predecessor failed to give a damn about, but also because they will come face to face with the weights of citizens’ expectations, against the backdrop of a distressed economy. When Jonathan’s cabinet took office four years ago, oil was around $100 per barrel. Buhari’s will be a $50-oil cabinet.

From all indications none of the new ministers will find it easy. But they will also be coming into office on what is possibly the strongest policy footing in recent history. The 800-page Buhari Transition Committee report, as well as the final report of the APC Policy Summit in May, are robust documents; any incoming minister, who disregards them, will be doing so at her own peril. They not only eloquently set out the problems, they also shine a light on the solutions. The new ministers shouldn’t even need a presidential directive to elevate those reports to Magna Carta status.

One final piece of advice for those incoming ministers who want to shine: Pay some attention to the Akin Adesina Ministerial Effectiveness Handbook. The immediate past Agriculture Minister’s adoption of ambitious goals, mastery of communications (focusing on numbers and metrics, and setting out his goals and vision in impressive presentations and documents that he always found an opportunity to enthusiastically share), enlistment of presidential attention, and masterful use of international connections to procure goodwill and development financing – all of these combined to produce for him a fairly remarkable tenure.

Adesina was by no means perfect – every now and then the sanguinity that accompanied his trumpeting of his successes strayed into hype territory – but his standing-out amidst the Jonathan cabinet was no fluke. He worked to make it happen, and in approaching his ministerial work the way he did, leaves behind a worthy model for the incoming set of ministers.

Follow Tolu Ogunlesi on Twitter: @toluogunlesi

The Aches and Pains of Explaining Nigeria By Okey Ndibe

Posted on by The Elites

imageOne of the burdens of being a longtime commentator on issues Nigeriana is that people frequently search me out, via email, text messages, and phone calls to ask questions about Nigeria. These questions come from Nigerians and non-Nigerians alike. For me, what’s fascinating is not that so many people feel tempted to put questions to me; it is that, as a rule, they expect me ALWAYS to offer a coherent response, if not the answer.

Yet, the most insightful of my fellow laborers in the vocation of analyzing Nigeria would tell you that the country is one of the most impossible to have a grip on. As a friend of mine once said, with less malice than admiration, Nigeria is a place where absurdity makes sense.

I mean, how do you explain this confounding entity whose people, all too often, defy predictions? It’s a country where a famished pickpocket who steals N50 to eat is garlanded with a tyre, doused with fuel, and set on fire. If you extrapolate from this that Nigerians must be outraged by their politicians’ billion naira heists, think again. No, lots of Nigerians venerate those who steal hundreds of millions from them. They’d festoon the paunchy robber with church knighthood and flamboyant sounding chieftaincy titles.

When you hear the phrase “s/he is a major stakeholder” applied to a Nigerian, look out. Chances are that the object of such adulation has scraped all the way to the bottom of public funds entrusted in their care. If any “disgruntled element” as much as casts an angry eye at the embezzling politician, he is thoroughly dressed down. He’s accused of not being a “constructive critic.” He’s dismissed as an ethnic jingoist. Those who would not demand that public officials live up to their oath as custodians of public trust will be quick to lecture the critic on the imperative of according respect to a thief-in-chief.

In the odd event that anti-corruption agents arrest a billionaire thief, you can count on all manner of people rallying to the beleaguered thief’s cause. His pastor, imam or chief dibia would declare him a God-fearing philanthropist. A delegation of traditional rulers would plead his case, proclaiming him “a proud son of the soil.” A gang of hired writers from his ethnic group, church, state or hometown would ask whether he’s the first corrupt person, or the most. And they would point to all the drivers he’s hired to drive his fleet as proof that the man was not greedy but a creator of jobs, not parochial and self-centered but a generous apostle of trickle down economics, a deliverer of the dividends of democracy.

On a recent vacation in St. Petersburg, Florida, I had a funny exchange with an African American.

Once he discovered I was Nigerian, he asked, “Didn’t you guys win the happiest people on earth survey or something?”

I confirmed that, some years ago, a European pollster had indeed named Nigerians as the happiest people on planet Earth.

“But I hear there are lots of poor people in the country,” he remarked.

“Yes. And they’re some of the happiest,” I responded, inciting him to roaring laughter.

Seriously, though: How does one explain a country that has one of the world’s vastest reserves of crude oil, but whose citizens continue to wallow in levels of squalor and privation impossible to believe unless encountered? Yet, these same people, crushed to the ground by the actions and inactions of their rulers, continue to intone, “No wahala,” “God is in control,” I full ground,” “Nothing spoil”? How, in other words, do you analyze a people who (appear to) take such ludicrous delight in their impoverishment?

Nigerians fare worse than the residents of several war-ravaged countries in certain social indices. Numerous state governments and companies owe their workers months of unpaid salary at any given time. Even so, the workers dutifully report to work month after unpaid month. When they see oga, the man who quaffs and gorges while denying them their salaries, they genuflect and hail him as “Baba.” How does one explain that behavior, that cooperation with one’s oppressor?

After President Muhammadu Buhari’s official trip to the US, Governor Adams Oshiomhole, who was on the delegation, claimed that American officials had exposed a case of a former minister who pocketed $6 billion of Nigeria’s public funds. In many other countries, public fury would have been instant and sustained. Different sectors of society would demand that the government name and shame the looter—and then bring him/her before a magistrate. Not in Nigeria. So some greedy former minister allegedly stole $6 billion of Nigerians’ collective patrimony? Madam, ejor, bring another bottle of Star. And another plate of nkwobi.

In recent weeks, the trending questions for me have pertained to Boko Haram, the terrorist group that has a quarrel with western education and well nigh everybody and everything else. Why, people ask me, have we seen a resurgence of the group after Mr. Buhari’s inauguration in office? The question has come from those who believed the silly fiction that Buhari was a sponsor of the group. It has also come from those who were certain that his election would scare the insurgents into retreat.

A few days ago, one person asked a question that I had been thinking about myself. He recalled that, soon after Nigeria’s 2015 general elections were postponed for six weeks, troops went on an offensive against Boko Haram. Day after day, we were told that Boko Haram had fled another town they had captured months before. In fact, the soldiers went into the infamous Sambisa forest, routing the insurgents and rescuing hundreds of women they had seized.

So, this friend asked, if Nigerian troops had indeed dominated Boko Haram, how did the group manage to regroup to menace targets and victims in Borno State and other parts of the northeast?

As I often do, I told this questioner that I was just as mystified. I confessed to not knowing the answer.

Last Saturday, Boko Haram fighters reportedly ambushed the convoy of Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai. From the military’s account of the encounter, the terrorists were worsted, losing more men and ammunition than the army did.

But here’s what I know—or think I know, at any rate. That the Islamist fighters felt emboldened enough to take on the military’s top man is a grave sign. That daring, if suicidal, attack tells me that Boko Haram is feeling more confident, not less. When you factor in news that the group had strengthened its alliance with ISIL, then you have a potentially explosive scenario.

What’s the solution? I’ll tell you, honestly: I don’t know. But here’s what I know, or think I do: the Buhari administration and the Nigerian military have their work cut out for them. They must out-think, out-strategize Boko Haram—to be able to triumph.

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(okeyndibe@gmail.com)