US Ambassador: Social Woes Fuelling Boko Haram in Nigeria

19 Nov 2011

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Boko Haram have attacked the Police Force Headquarters in Abuja

REUTERS

The U.S. ambassador to Nigeria has urged it to address "appalling" social problems in its restive north and ease off on heavy-handed security crackdowns if Africa's most populous nation is to overcome a growing Islamist militant threat.

Boko Haram, an Islamist sect whose name translates from the northern Hausa language as "Western education is forbidden", has been behind dozens of deadly bombings and assassinations in northern parts of the country this year.

The sect's home is at the base of the arid Sahel in the northeast, one of the West African nation's poorest regions and bordering Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

President Goodluck Jonathan has said Boko Haram needs to be dealt with like other militant groups around the world but many diplomats and aid groups have called for the government to look at some of the home grown issues that feed the violence.

Jonathan is deploying a growing military force to counter the sect's attacks but many residents say troops do more harm than good, while rights groups accuse soldiers of brutalisation and unlawful arrests that backfire into sympathy for Boko Haram.

"I think it's important for political and military leadership to impress upon soldiers on the ground that they need to do their duty but they need to do their duty in a way that doesn't violate the rights of the civilian population," U.S. Ambassador, Terence McCulley said in an interview with Reuters.

"At the same time I think it's important the government look at how to redress these social-economic indicators in the north. Pick any one you want, whether it be health, literacy or access to clean water, the situation is really appalling."

Boko Haram's ambitions are growing and its attacks are becoming more sophisticated. A car bomb exploded in the car park of police headquarters in the capital Abuja in June, narrowly missing the chief of police.

In August, the sect hit its first international target. A suicide bomber smashed a car full of explosives into the side of the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria's capital, ripping off the side of the building and killing 24 people.

Intelligence agencies and security experts believe Boko Haram has expanding ties with jihadist groups outside the country, including al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which operates in North African countries that border Nigeria.

"We've heard stories for years of individual members of so called Boko Haram or Nigerian Taliban travelling to northern Mali to train with GSPC (Group for Call and Combat), subsequently AQIM," McCulley said.

"Clearly extremists here are learning techniques and are adapting their methods based upon what they've learned, what they've seen outside Nigeria."

Jonathan won an election in April that international observers and many Nigerians said were the fairest since the end of military rule more than a decade ago.

He has since put in place an economic team, led by former World Bank Managing Director, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, that has been tasked with forging ahead with a reform programme, which is moving more slowly than international investors would like.

McCulley said Jonathan had made some "truly impressive appointments" and the U.S. was encouraged by the commitment he has shown to reforms, which include a sovereign wealth fund, removal of fuel subsidies and a plan to privatise the power sector, now a major drag on Africa's second-largest economy.

Despite being Africa's largest crude oil exporter and holding the world's seventh largest gas reserves, Nigeria only produces as much electricity as a medium-sized European city.

International investors have said Nigeria's population of more than 140 million offers huge potential gains but a common complaint is that corruption often stunts economic growth.

"It's a clearly a problem. Corruption not only saps the confidence in people in government, it also discourages both national and foreign investment and I think it's a problem Nigeria needs to tackle more aggressively," McCulley said.

He said a big step in Nigeria's development would be to put someone in charge of the country's anti-corruption agency with the integrity shown by Attahiru Jega, the man behind the successful elections in April.

Littleman Muhammadu Buhari By E. C. Ejiogu

Posted: October 9, 2011 - 02:41

Muhammadu Buhari

By EC Ejiogu

Time and time again, my good friend Sonala Olumhense (SO) has gone on and on, and on to proclaim and advocate handing back the reins of  political power in the Nigeria project back to confirmed autocrat, Littleman Muhammadu Buhari.  SO’s persistence has been such that anyone who lacks knowledge of his pedigree and antecedent as a decent man, could with reason derived from his self-appointed advocacy role for Buhari interpret his devotion to the cause of bringing the autocrat back to power as the outgrowth of monetary or material inducement.  But one like me who has known SO personally and from close quarters since 1984 when I was a fresh-mint university graduate, can attest that he’s not only simply incorruptible, he’s indeed beyond reproach when it comes to monetary/material inducement for his views and the way he peddles them.
The only problem that I see with SO is that he is roundly dedicated to the Nigeria project.  Elsewhere, he will be called the quintessential patriot.  But when it comes to the Nigeria project, nothing can be more demeaning than calling someone like SO a patriot.  This is in the sense that for reasons that derive from the foundational maladies that afflict it, Nigeria is only fit for what it has represented ever since it was cobbled together by the British, i.e. a den and roost for evil men and women, autocrats, dictators, and the clueless who misrepresent themselves as leaders.
But if I must excuse SO’s on-and-on advocacy for the Littleman as a potential savior of the Nigeria project, the latter’s inclined fixation on returning to power cannot be excused.  His track record is clear indication that he is an evil, sinister, and treacherous character whose sole desire is to perpetuate an obnoxious contraption and use it to hold the Igbo and any other nationality especially from the lower Niger from charting the path of self determination. 
By the way, with all respect due a friend, I must add that SO’s devotion to the Nigeria project as it is presently structured and his conviction that therein lies the redemption of every distinct nationality, which was forced to constitute it could qualify as pathological altruism—“the idea that when ostensibly generous “how can I help you?” behavior is taken to extremes, misapplied or stridently rhapsodized, it can become unhelpful, unproductive and even destructive”.
Which brings me to two core queries that advocates of the Nigeria project have refused to attend to: Where is that voluntary covenant, which binds the distinct nationalities that inhabit the Niger basin in the Nigeria project?  Why then must anyone insist that the nationalities must continue to allow themselves to be entrapped in the Nigeria project even as it is evident that it hinders their progress?  I hope SO doesn’t retort with: For unity’s sake!
SO’s more recent outing was his call on the Littleman to come out of hiding and mount what he believes would amount to much needed opposition to Goodluck Jonathan’s make-believe government.  Well, well-said.  But only if the Nigeria project were a functional state and political economy to boot, and also, if the Littleman himself were a democrat.  Does anyone still remember the ancient philosopher’s mantra that says, ‘a good man lives in a good state’?.  The Littleman man is neither a good man, nor is the Nigeria project a good state.  How then would he be capable of providing an opposition therein?  Who made a gift of a coat to Mr. Toad?  In and by itself, it will be an aberration for an autocrat to provide an opposition.  Even more so, in a contraption like Nigeria that was conceived and brought into existence as a den for the practice of autocratic authority.  Just one more: Since the modern era, has anyone seen where a backward group or clique has mid-wived development or progress in society?  If you’re in doubt, take a look back, and you will see the roadway of history littered with the pathetic sight of decades of  dominance in the project by a backward group, and even some cliques.
Littleman Buhari’s antecedents have shown that he hasn’t deviated from his ancestral pedigree.  His ancestors were autocrats who lived and thrived on the hegemony they erected in the greater upper Niger and relied on to dominate and exploit others.  He was born and socialized in the same autocratic social milieu, which nourished him and he still thrives in it.  It reflects on his public life.  Samplers: Did you know that Buhari was one of the senior army officers who sustained a running complaint to Olusegun Obasanjo in 1980, only a few months after he shooed the former’s kinsman, Shehu Shagari into power in 1979 to the effect that he was funding the Police Force better than the Army?  That same lack of respect and aversion for the tenets and norms of democracy manifested in 1981 when as a division commander he disobeyed legitimate order from his commander in chief and violated an age-old tenet of healthy civil-military relations in society, which stipulates the subordination of the military at all times to civilian control, by launching “a hot pursuit operation into Chad on his own responsibility” in 1983.  He recounted that with pride in a 1993 interview to a newsmagazine.  He later capped his subordination with the overthrow of that hapless cabal headed by Shagari on New Year’s Eve 1983.  Many wouldn’t forget his often-mouthed arrogant slogan throughout his dictatorship that epitomized his disdain for popular will and concern: “I’m not running for re-election”.

He runs for election this time simply because it is roundly impossible for him to author another coup d’état to catapult himself back to the reins of state power in the project.  His legendary desperation and disregard for tolerance became evident again this last time when he resorted to incite his supporters who unleashed mayhem on innocent Youth Corps members mostly from the lower Niger after he was out-rigged by the despicable PDP.
Someone like the Littleman who claims that he is averse to the patronage-clientage system—that, is exactly the other name for what is being called corruption, which afflicts the Nigeria project—that nourished him all his life is yet to account for where he derives the funding that goes into his serial quest to assume state power again.  If he is the democrat that he is being made to resemble, why not join up the on-going popular clamor for a sovereign conference to realize a legitimate state through the restructure of the Nigeria project? 
Buhari’s messianic-tinged support for the perpetual existence of the flawed Nigeria project is his own indictment as evil in perpetuity.  His new-found democratic and anti-corruption claims don’t add up.  They are at best, dubious and fictional.
Let no one misinterpret my serious misgivings about the Littleman as an endorsement of Goodluck Jonathan.  If at all, the two of them are on different sides of the same coin—a counterfeit.
The only thing I see in and about Buhari whenever I look is his unbridled desperation to reclaim state power in the project and use it for what his ancestors did in the upper Niger more than two centuries ago, which he tried his hands at in the period 1983-1985, i.e. to cow and repress with a characteristic recklessness all in the bid to buy additional lease on time and life for the Nigeria project. 
Who would argue reasonably that a Republic of Biafra, which showed exceptional promise in the overall during its short existence, could not have been producing Nobel Prize winners in the requisite realms today, if it had been allowed to survive?  It is heart-breaking therefore that on the Eve of the Nobel awards, someone still thought that a Muhammadu Buhari has any positive role to play in the Nigeria project.  Tukiakwa!
●E. C. Ejiogu, PhD; is a political sociologist.  He is the author of The Roots of Political Instability in Nigeria, published in March by Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

Is Goodluck Jonathan Plain Stupid? By E. C. Ejiogu

Posted: November 20, 2011 - 21:49

Goodluck Jonathan

By E. C. Ejiogu, PhD

When you think you have seen it all—including the most bizarre—in the caricature land, which Nigeria is, something silly and bizarre quickly crops up in or about the place or its conscience-deficient minders.  At the time when Olusegun Obasanjo actively foisted the walking corpse, Musa Yar’Adua as president of the place, some people who have refused to write the Nigeria project off as a lost cause, still let their hopes linger on the belief that the place might be turned around someday.  Even as they hoped, it didn’t take long before it became self evident that Yar’Adua was truly dead, in fact, too dead to function credibly as the president of anywhere except Nigeria. 
He remained there all the same—shuttling regularly to Germany for what was called medical attention as his handlers indulged themselves looting and stealing public funds.  It got to the point when the Germans refused to admit him any longer in their hospital.  But the bizarre absurdity continued as the Saudis took over.  Even when the Saudis washed their hands off him, and he was parceled back on life support and left outside the seat of power in Abuja in an ambulance where he decomposed away, he was kept on as president.
As all that went on, there was Goodluck Jonathan, rolling over silently in the full view of the world, contented with being the vice president to a president who was as far as anyone knew, dead!  When they eventually knocked something together for him and called it acting presidency, he concurred, literally flashing his signature sheepish grins.
One of Jonathan’s first acts after Yar’Adua’s decomposing corpse was finally wheeled out of the seat of power, and way was paved for him to assume de facto control, of state power in the project, was to bother the autocrats in Saudi Arabia to let him come over and thank them for ‘taking care of’ Yar’Adua.  Again, he simply grinned some more after they turned him down.
In the last several months, every reasonable person watching as things continued to unfold spiral down in Nigeria has been rankled by the ease with which the Boko Haram Islamist terrorists sustain their blood-letting all the way from Abuja to several parts of the Sokoto Caliphate areas.  They have done that in a manner that fits what obtains in climes that are devoid of governance.  It got to the point where the US intelligence establishment stepped in to furnish what became the only credible security warning over the menace.  Directed at American citizens who were cautioned to stay away from two luxury hotels in Abuja, the alert came handy also for everyone else, including Jonathan and elements of his hapless make-believe government, who free-loaded on the alert that their own outfit is incapable of generating credibly, and deserted the two locations fingered in the alert.

As that raged, from nowhere, the same Jonathan broke out in a speech that he made somewhere, boasting that the Boko Haram menace will fade away in less than no time.  Note his language: fade away in less than no time!  Even if his confidence was spiked by the recent disclosure by SaharaReporters.com that the US Pentagon had infiltrated special forces through Niger and Chad to stalk and combat the Boko Haram Islamist terrorists, no reasonable president would go as far as declaring victory a-priori that way. But he wasn’t done yet.  Jonathan’s response to the humiliation that Chinua Achebe rightly smeared him with when he tried to bribe him with the hollow ‘national honor’ was an expression of ‘surprise’ that Achebe is unaware of the ‘progress’ that his transformation agenda has already splashed all over the land.  This pattern of response that fits a fantasy gambit that he brandishes each time whenever he senses that his ineptitude is being rightly ridiculed is a worrisome indicator of a problematic persona especially about someone who is president.  The other time, he loudly grumbled that US president, Barack Obama appreciates his string of lofty achievements while people at home prefer to disparage him.

All of these canalize into a sad reality: Goodluck Jonathan, his sterile-brained butterfly of a wife, their unfortunate exploits in public life, indeed, everything about them constitute yet additional indicators that the Nigeria project is, in Graham Green’s description, a burnt out, in fact, a basket case. 
I don’t know about you, regardless of the façade of being president—to that I say, president gbakwaa oku!—as much as I have seen of this Jonathan, there is simply nothing extra that I need to see in or hear from him to sufficiently de-convince me that the man is not plain stupid, I mean silly!  It’s only a stupid person that will buy into the absurdity, which is being whispered into his ears by the likes of the flotsam-jetsam character like Ruben Abati who presume that paid cheap public relations blitzes in esoteric magazines—some are currently running in the November issue of South Africa Airways in-flight magazine, Sawubona—constitutes their so-called transformation, which clearly translates to deceit.   
Worrisome as this reality is, it is not a surprise though.  A social ecology in which—as the late Obafemi Awolowo once said during his lifetime—dogs devour lions, is an aberration.  It is only a plain stupid man like Jonathan who would delude himself daily that he is waxing successful as president even when it is plain clear that the land is falling into pieces literally. 
•E. C. Ejiogu, PhD, is a political sociologist, and the author of The Roots of Political Instability in Nigeria published in March by Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
 

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Where Do We Go from Here?

13 Nov 2011

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Simon Kolawole Live!: Email: simon.kolawole@thisdaylive.com

Those who think Boko Haram is a fleeting menace must be reviewing their position by now. Agreed, we still don't have enough information to be able to fully explain how the organisation is structured, where it gets its funding from and—very critically—how it intends to actualise its political-cum-religious mission of Islamising Nigeria. Rather, the much we can say for now is that Boko Haram is, operationally, well-organised, at least enough to be able to launch successful attacks on the Police headquarters and UN House, both in Abuja. More worrisome is the pattern and targets of attacks. While the Niger Delta militants targeted their terrorist attacks at oil installations and security forces, Boko Haram seems intent on wiping out the civilian population. Also, Boko Haram targets festive periods (like Sallah and Christmas) to unleash major attacks—although it also carries out minor strikes in-between.

Despite their regular phone calls to journalists to claim responsibility for the terrorist attacks, we still know pretty little about Boko Haram’s leaders. How much do we know about them and their whereabouts? The planning and execution of attacks clearly suggest that there is a High Command. We can easily say the improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—the nickname for explosives not manufactured by legitimate means—can be made by anyone with basic knowledge, but we should not lose focus of the co-ordinated execution of the attacks. They look well-organised and on target, even if they are still prone to the odd mistake as evident in the failed bids on JTF and Police headquarters in Maiduguri, Borno State, at Sallah.

It would appear two distinct "strains" of Boko Haram have fully formed. The original sect pursued a non-violent religious agenda aimed at criticising the political leadership for riding on the back of Sharia to win elections and failing to abide by its principles thereafter. The result was a long-drawn battle with the political leadership with whom the sect members had previously been cosy. Threatened by the street popularity of Boko Haram, the politicians began to witch-hunt them, launching their own counter force and also employing security forces to hunt them down.  A clash was inevitable. The result was a crackdown leading to the deaths of thousands in 2008, mainly in Borno and Bauchi States.

The Nigerian state thought it had suppressed the virus, but I think it mutated and two “strains” emerged. The first launched a revenge mission against the security agencies with pockets of strikes. The attacks were mainly on policemen and stations. However, a deadlier “strain”, obviously aligned with international terrorist groups, began a full-time, large-scale terror campaign. I am not ruling out other "strains", neither am I trying to suggest that the two dominant "strains" are not related, but developments along the line strongly show that the organisational structure is a bit loose, perhaps factionalised, possibly with many cells emerging and operating out of Plateau, Niger and Kaduna States. Not all of them seem to favour a terrorist campaign against civilian targets.

However, with the spokesmen saying they intend to establish an Islamic state, declaring that they do not recognise the government of President Goodluck Jonathan, we can safely assume that they have a political ambition. So what next? Overrun Abuja? Take over government? Set up a Taliban-style system of government? In truth, we don't know their political plans or strategies in that respect. Nevertheless, despite the dearth of precise information on Boko Haram, I am of the opinion that it does not have the capacity to overrun the Nigerian state. Yes, it will continue to wreak havoc on civilians, which is the most disturbing part. Yes, it will continue to attack government buildings and security agents. It will continue to instil fear in Nigerians. That is how terrorism works. It thrives on bloodshed and panic. It aims at destabilising the state.

But the Boko Haram agenda is so divisive and destructive that gaining the critical support it needs to take over the state would be extremely difficult. In fact, with more diligence and competence in the security system, Boko Haram can be neutralised. The sect continues to wreak havoc on this scale because, in my opinion, the security agencies are yet to figure out its backbone. It has taken the US years to strike at the very heart of the formidable Al Qaeda and limit its capacity. I hope it won't take our own government decades to get to the basics. Too many lives have been lost. The sooner we find a solution the better for everybody.

Finally, I've heard many Southerners declare that "the North should go its way" because of the Boko Haram menace. Let the North have their Islamic Republic, I've heard some declare. There even seems to be some suspicion—or suggestion—that the activities of the sect are backed by the Northern political elite. Some go as far as to say Boko Haram is a device by the North to regain power after losing out in the 2011 presidential election. Jonathan's sympathisers often refer to "political motive" and "sponsors" when discussing the activities of this sect. This is Nigeria; I don't rule out anything. But these two assumptions need refining.

One, it is assumed that most or all Northern Muslims are comfortable with Boko Haram. This cannot be true. The desire of the Northern Muslims to live under an Islamic system is different, in the main, from the desire of Boko Haram to impose an Islamic system. There is a difference between a Taliban-style state and, say, the Islamic political system in Saudi Arabia or Iran. The Talibans say women should not go to school, people should not watch TV and men must keep beards, among other strict rules. That is very similar to what Boko Haram is preaching. To worsen matters, Boko Haram is preaching against anything Western, notably education. Its street name, "Boko Haram", literally means "book (Western education) is an abomination". In which case, ABU, BUK and University of Maiduguri—to name but a few key universities up North—would be demolished by Boko Haram or turned into Qur’anic schools.

Now, I don't know how many Northern Muslims would support that idea. Apart from the fact that Muslim intellectuals contributed a lot to what is known as Western education today, how many Muslims want to live in a modern world where all they can do is recite the Holy Qur’an? In addition to reciting the Holy Qur’an, Muslims, I guess, also want to be engineers, doctors, economists, sociologists, political scientists, architects and journalists. To support Boko Haram, therefore, is not in their best interest. For this reason, I am not persuaded that Northern Muslims are enthusiastic about a Boko Haram Republic.

Two, Southerners who suggest the balkanisation of Nigeria based on Boko Haram activities always ignore the realities on the ground: there is a sizeable non-Muslim population in the North. I often wonder why this fact escapes the attention of these campaigners! Southern Borno, for instance, is home to a large population of Christians. Gombe, Adamawa, Taraba, Bauchi—all in the North-east—boast an impressive population of “indigenous” Christians. There is a Christian belt that runs across Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Kano and Jigawa. We are not talking of some Igbo or Yoruba Christians doing business in these places. We are talking about "indigenes". What would be their fate if Boko Haram Republic succeeds? If a majority of Northern Muslims cannot countenance living under a Taliban-style government run by Boko Haram, how much more Northern Christians?

Therefore, the urgent task before us now is how to get out of this problem rather than how to dismantle Nigeria. I believe that our inability to address basic economic needs is fuelling criminality in the country. When people have no jobs, when the standard of living is so low, when the quality of life is so miserable, there is no way Boko Haram (and other criminal gangs) will not gain following. There’s a link between abject poverty and vulnerability to crime. We think human beings do what they do because they are naturally bad. That is not the whole truth. If the economy improves today, a lot of young people will not be available for criminal activities. But as long as this economic imbalance continues, the symptoms will persist. So it goes.

And Four Other Things...

Brutish Airways?
The decision by the Federal Government to reduce the frequency of flights by British Airways into Lagos (from seven to three per week) has raised a lot of dust. It was obviously a retaliatory action following a seeming British conspiracy to stifle our own Arik Air. For all you care, BA may have nothing to do with the “conspiracy”, but then business and politics are forever linked, even in the most liberal countries. The Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) is, after all, as political as it is commercial. The Nigerian government thinks hitting BA—the ultimate symbol of British aviation business—would force a solution to the crisis over slot allocation to Arik Air at London Heathrow. This is one of the few occasions where the government is actually standing up for a Nigerian business. Nevertheless, what we need is a solution to Arik Air’s problem. Arik’s profits are reinvested in our economy; BA’s profits are flown back home. Arik employs thousands of Nigerians; BA doesn’t. In fact, Kola Olayinka is the first Nigerian to be appointed Country Manager by BA since it started operations in Nigeria over 75 years ago. That says it all.

Alert ‘Haram’
The Federal Government felt betrayed by the terror warning issued by the US embassy in Nigeria to the effect that Boko Haram could attack prestigious hotels in Abuja during the Sallah. So angry was the government that it wrote to the Department of State to protest against the conduct of the US embassy. Indeed, the likelihood of attacks on these targets is not fresh and US was aware security had been beefed up around them following a tip-off. Why then did the US embassy still go ahead to issue a fresh warning? This is my guess: they don’t trust our security agencies. Every Boko Haram attack is deadlier that the previous one. So no matter how angry the Nigerian government is, the US has a responsibility to its citizens in Nigeria. If we are able to stop more attacks and incapacitate Boko Haram, then everybody will relax, believing that the government is indeed on top of the situation.

Deadlock Lurks…
Presidency is proposing changes to the constitution which governors are opposed to—and vice-versa. Presidency wants the joint state and council account to be separated so that councils can get their money directly. Governors are saying no way. Presidency also wants the State Independent Electoral Commission, which conducts council elections, to be scrapped because of the one-way direction of results. Governors are saying no. Meanwhile, governors also want states to get a bigger share of the federal allocation but Presidency is not amused. Governors are therefore vowing to use the state Houses of Assembly to scuttle the proposed amendments to the constitution. My conclusion, therefore, is that any attempt to fundamentally alter the status quo will fail, owing to self-interest. We will continue to move from crisis to crisis.

Babalakin, Go!
I’ve been very impatient with Dr. Wale Babalakin over the delay in transforming the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. His company, Bi-Courtney, was granted the concession under the Public Private Partnership scheme of the Federal Government years ago. I understand the economic environment has been difficult, and getting finance is one of the most difficult adventures these days. But what we need is result. At last, it appears, everything is set. Last week, Group 5, a South African firm, announced a deal with Bi-Courtney on the project. Officials of Group 5 and one of South Africa’s biggest banks, Rand Bank, visited Works Minister Mike Onolememen in Abuja on Thursday. Finally, everything seems to be falling in place for construction works to start. To Babalakin, I say: congrats; on your marks, ready, go! We need that road badly.

Pliny comes to Philly

By Tatalo Alamu 13/11/2011 00:00:00

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•Joe Frazier

(Joe Frazier as Trope)

With the death of Joe Frazier last Tuesday, the boxing world has lost one of its greatest icons ever. By the time he succumbed to the cell-splitting blows of cancer, "Smokin Joe" had already passed into boxing legend. Frazier had taken many blows in the ring, but the sledgehammer of cancer is as mortal as it can get.




Perhaps the best and most succinct tribute to the great man came from the normally inarticulate and stuttering Mike Tyson who described him as a great gladiator. This is as poetic as it can get. All great boxers are unacknowledged great poets. At its most rarefied heights, boxing is the personification of poetry. The combinations, the cadences, the fine calibration of blows and the rhythmic violence suggest that boxing is poetry conducted and orchestrated with fists.
For a heavyweight, Joe Frazier was a small man indeed. Physique ought to have been a problem. Smokin Joe lacked the height, the bulk and the intimidating presence of the truly magnificent heavyweight. But what he lacked in heft he made up in sheer heart. It was the heart of an old African lion. It was the heart of a pure prizefighter. Relentlessly advancing and with the predatory precision of the king of all animals, Frazer forced bigger men to back off and to wince and grimace in acute pains.
Built like a compact fighting machine and set for demolition exercise at short notice, Frazier was a robotised contraption primed and packaged to inflict maximum punishment. He was not averse to taking cruel punishment himself, but he gave as much as he got. He packed some dynamite in his punches and his vicious left hook could pole-axed even a five hundred pound gorilla.
It was this formidable left hook that exploded on Mohammed Ali’s jaw and sent him to a shuddering crash in the first of their epic trilogy. Ringside spectators looked on in dazed disbelief. It was only the second time in his professional career that Ali had been so spectacularly up-ended. The first time around, the great Ali rose from the ruins to give Henry Cooper, the British gentleman-boxer, the hiding of his life.
But on that lonely and memorable night at Madison Square in 1971, and before a hostile American audience braying for his blood, there was to be no come back for a ring-rusty Ali. Unwisely enough in that epic encounter, Ali had tried to psyche out Frazier by repeatedly telling him that he was God himself. Frazier had responded by informing "God" that he was in the wrong place that night and he was going to get a terrible whipping. And oh lord, Ali got the shellacking of his life.
In a sense, then, Frazier was the Great White Hope. The American establishment had been looking for a nice, well-behaved black chap who would do the boxing and entertaining beat and leave out the ugly racial politics and the revolutionary rhetoric about the fundamental injustice that underpins and powers the American society.
In Ali and his brilliant bravura, his contrary comeliness, his telegenic tantrums and taunting, there was too much echo of John Authur Johnson, a.k.a Jack Johnson, an earlier Black boxing legend who had beaten the white boys black and blue only to take their women serially and with swashbuckling aplomb.
Once when he was pulled over for speeding, the impudent Johnson handed over a hundred dollar bill for a traffic offence of fifty dollar. When the traffic cop complained that he did not have money for such a refund, Johnson asked him to keep the change since he was going to return at very much the same speed. The American power mafia were not going to have another uppity nigger cock a snook at the establishment. Frazier would seal up the lousy Louisville lip with his scary and scarifying fists.
But if Frazier was the perfect foil for Ali in that regard, he was nobody’s house nigger for that matter. While he hated Ali’s guts, he had a deep respect for his preternatural pugilistic gifts. The troubled and troublesome wizard of the ring was a source of unending fascination for Frazier. He could not bring himself to genuinely hate the mad boy from Kentucky.
Sonny Liston, a former street mugger and partially rehabilitated thug, had entered the ring hatefully bent on sending Ali to his maker. But he was decisioned in two epic encounters by Ali who took his hate-filled mass to the cleaners with his scientific magic. A quiet decent chap of muscular Christianity, Frazier was born in Beaufort in the deep south of South Carolina but was raised in Philadelphia where he ended up a butcher boy.
Surgeons and butchers have one thing in common. They both carve up bodies. But while surgeons carve up human bodies only to sew them back, butchers carve up animal carcasses with professional urgency. Detached almost to the point of stony stoicism as his fists dripped with the blood of his victims, Frazier must have picked one or two things from the butchers’ shop. He was a cool customer.
If boxing is an art or poetry in motion, it is also a precise science demanding phenomenal concentration and ferocious focus. Both Ali and Frazier have these qualities in abundance, and it probably explains the secret of their great success in the ring, The boxing ring is like a nuclear reactor plant. A momentary lapse of focus or concentration could lead to an apocalyptic tragedy. A misdirected punch or a silly error of distance or closeness could bring the whole human edifice toppling like an Iroko tree,
But because Frazier boxed more with his lion heart rather than his head, he was very vulnerable to a more fearsome slugger or the cerebral tactician cunningly and foxily wearing him down in a colossal war of nerves and attrition. Relying on his massive left hook and relentless and remorseless crouching advance, he was like a primitive hunter who did not feel obligated to the wiles of superior strategy. Just keep smoking and going forward and somebody is going to get badly hurt in the long run.
In the event, Frazier’s reign as world heavyweight champion was very brief indeed and it was the Beaufort-born butcher who got badly hurt in the short run. In 1973, Frazier ran into the equivalent of a human hurricane in Jamaica in the guise of an even more brutal slugger named George Foreman. Foreman literally carved Frazier up in two savage rounds and sent him serially to the canvas. A crazed sadist in his prime, Foreman was to later explain that once he entered a ring, his intention was to clear up everything in sight, including the referee if he was foolish enough to wander into the eye of the hurricane.
Thereafter, the more wily and brainy Ali would beat Frazier in two memorable encounters. The 1975 "thrilla in Manila " has been just celebrated for extending the frontiers of endurance and the human capacity to absorb punishing blows. It was a small step for two exceptionally gifted prize fighters but a giant leap for the human race in its confrontation with the beast within. Toe to toe, Ali and Frazier slugged it out with some of the best shots that had ever been landed in boxing. By the end of the fourteenth round, it was obvious that both boxers had arrived at the gates of heaven. Either wanted to throw in the towel but it was Frazier’s camp that moved first, and the rest is boxing history.
They just don’t make heavyweights like these anymore. In the tortured and tormented career of Mike Tyson we see the reason why. Tyson who once boasted that he was privy to certain punches to certain parts of the body which could make even an elephant topple over in delayed reaction may yet be honoured for a signal if inadvertent contribution to the advancement of human civilisation.
And it is not because the deranged pugilist once crowed that he loved to make big men cry in the ring. In Tyson, Androcles finally met his lion. By returning boxing to its primitive default setting of a bare knuckle contention between evolving man and savage beast, Tyson might have forced the world to face up to the unpleasant consequences of boxing as a brutal and cruel sports. If the so called civilised world takes a sadistic pleasure in watching two men boxed into a ring tear at each other unto death like savage beasts, then we had better prepare for the real thing.
Like a psychotic animal, Mike Tyson chewed off the ear of his opponent when he couldn’t contain the sledgehammer blows. It doesn’t get more savage than that. As the Yoruba memorably put things, even biting is part of fighting. Yet as civilisation advanced, the so called primitive societies substituted animals for human sacrifice or abandoned the savage ritual altogether.
But as Walter Benjamin has put it, there is no record of civilisation which is not at the same time a record of barbarity. Western civilisation puts a humane gloss on its fundamental barbarity by casting the other as savage. But the pristine savagery and cruelties of modern boxing puts a lie to that hollow ritual of self-ablution and exposes the violent decadence for all to see.
When Pliny the second famously observed that something new always came out of Africa, he was referring to the endless array of oddities, oddballs and superhuman oafs transported to ancient Rome from Africa as galley slaves to serve at the pleasure of the Roman imperial court. Many of them ended up in the arena as gladiators in bare knuckle contention against ferocious beasts or even more ferocious humans.
Several epochs and the American empire later, it is the descendants of African slaves forcibly transplanted to work on American plantations who serve as boxing gladiators at the pleasure of the American imperial court. Joe Frazier was one of the most distinguished of this breed. But just as it fell on Spartacus, a former galley slave, to lead a revolt of slaves against the Roman Empire, it has fallen on Barack Hussein Obama, a descendant of Africans, to lead a democratic revolt against the oppressive injustice of the American empire. Spartacus failed spectacularly, but the Roman Empire did not survive for long. Something new always comes out of Africa indeed. If boxing is poetry, poetic justice is the ultimate poetry.

Women with balls

By Tatalo Alamu 13/11/2011 00:00:00

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Madeleine Albright, the former American Secretary of State, called it cojones, which is going back to its Spanish etymology. With her withering stare and caustic tongue, Albright who is now a distinguished professor at Georgetown University could freeze any man in the dark alley. So while we are still on the subject of boxing and its plentiful supply of brains and brawns, it is meet to deliberate on great women who pack the three "bs," which is brains, brawns and balls.




The late Golda Meir, the former Israeli prime minister, was a woman of unsurpassable courage and brains to match. She had the great guts of her Ashkenazi Jewish forebears. Thinking that they could outwit her, the Americans once came up with a delicate and dangerous proposal. Why couldn’t America and Israel exchange two of their greatest generals? Golda Meir promptly concurred. The wily Americans then put forward the names of the two most outstanding Israeli warrior-generals.
"In that case", Golda Meir retorted, "we shall take General Motors and General Electric". The American beat a hasty retreat. That was the last anybody ever heard of such a loony proposal.
In traditional societies, when men foul up, they usually abandon the mess for the women to clean up. In order to avert a violent revolution, Nigeria’s diseased and disgraced elite may have to hand over the reins of power to women. This is not lightly mooted. Has anybody been watching Marylyn Ogar, the SSS public face, fielding questions on television of late? She appears more presidential, more assertive and more confident than the sad pedestrian rabble we have been saddled with. It may be that some supra-natural voice is speaking to us from outer. Mothers of Nigeria, are you going to watch this country disappear just like that?

Regime change and popular disaffection

By Tatalo Alamu 06/11/2011 00:22:00

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Buhari

In most of Africa, peaceful regime changes are so infrequent that violent seizures of power or loss of hegemony by a particular faction of the ruling class often appear like revolutionary upheavals. By the time the storm clears and the din of contention recedes, it is obvious that nothing has changed, or that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Whereas in advance democracies with durable and well-developed institutional mechanism for regime change, fundamental changes in societies often appear normal and routine developments.
   Just about a century or so ago, it would have been unthinkable for a female to accede to the reins of power in leading western countries. Yet today, and barely a century after adult suffragette was extended to women, you have female leaders firmly in pole position in several western countries. Britain had earlier elected the tough no-nonsense Margaret Thatcher. America, a deeply conservative and thoroughly patriarchal country despite grandstanding to the contrary, has had three female Secretaries of State in quick succession, namely Maidelene Albright, Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton. In 2008, the USA elected its first black president ahead of a female president. 
  Despite deeply entrenched vested interests against change, institutional mechanisms that facilitate peaceful changes allow these countries to experience revolutionary changes without revolutionary upheavals. In most of Africa, on the other hand, the absence or weaknesses of these institutional changes often lead to violent ruptures or even a temporary collapse of the state when it comes to a mere transfer of power from one faction of the ruling class to another. 
In Liberia, the two Congos, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Burundi, Cote D’Ivoire, Uganda,  Angola and many others, elections that ought to have heralded peaceful change led to civil wars and a calamitous collapse of the state. In Nigeria after the debacle of the June 12 1993 presidential election when the dominant military faction refused to hand over power to the legitimate winner, it took some intricate elite pacting and the Obasanjo Settlement to effect a transfer of power from the military to a pan-Nigerian civilian coalition.
  As this column never tires of preaching, elections do not resolve national questions. In fact, they often worsen and exacerbate the national question, leading to a dramatic resurgence of ethnic, regional and religious polarities. Despite being hailed as relatively and reasonably free and fair, the 2011 presidential election would appear to have worsened intra-elite contention for power in Nigeria and its nuclear fall-out. Never in its modern history has the country appeared more spectacularly adrift and rudderless. There is an upswing of national disaffection on a scale that has never been seen before. Once again, the storms are gathering. This is the time for the political elite to put on their thinking cap. 
   Yet despite sharing in the continental aberration of non-democratic elections, Nigeria remains a unique and perplexing paradox. In the last presidential election, power appears to have been prised away from a power cartel that has held the nation hostage either directly or by sly proxy since independence.  Goodluck Jonathan’s mandate appeared to have been divinely ordained; a darkly mysterious intervention in the body politic and a pan-Nigerian resurrection of the great national dream. It spoke to the possibility of a new beginning if a famously “shoeless” boy from the tidal backwater of Otueke could accede so effortlessly to the Nigerian imperial presidency.
  Ordinarily, this ought to have greatly warmed the heart. It ought to have strengthened our collective resolve for a new beginning. We have been looking for signs and signals of that new beginning, of a great stirring of the huge black behemoth. Alas, it has turned out to be a backbreaking mirage; a damp squib that suffers a huge disconnect from the great yearning of the Nigerian multitude. Apart from its profound symbolic possibility, the Jonathan presidency is turning out to be a continuation of the past by other means.
   Because it was ordered from above through the instrumentality of state power and its coercive machinery, because it was a product of a manufactured elite consensus rather than a genuine national rupture of the old order, what we thought was a peaceful revolution has turned out to be nothing more than a mere revolt by an ascendant faction of the ruling class. In the event, we have been saddled with a mere change of personnel rather a change in the personality of the post-colonial state. Some will even aver that that will do for now.
    Part of the problem stems from the fact that many voted for Jonathan for different and mutually exclusive reasons. In the restive riverine enclave which has been clamouring for resource control and power shift based on the ownership of a mono-cultural economy, Jonathan enjoyed the home-boy advantage. 
  The west gave him a tactical nod in order to give the “auld” northern enemy a historic black eye. But it hedged its bet by giving complete power to a party campaigning for regional autonomy and the resuscitation of the old federalism and  the fiercely competitive spirit which drove change and innovation up to the demise of the First Republic. The east played the traditional good boy naively and opportunistically hoping that this good gesture will guarantee its eventual turn at the till. 
  The north was fissured, fractured and fragmented down the line. While the masses were obviously yearning for change powered and driven by one of their own, the traditional power barons, outsmarted at their own game of divide and rule, outfoxed on their own natural turf, lapsed into a surly bewilderment and bitter misgiving which has continued till date.
   Rather than a genuine national consensus, this was the cocktail of contradictions that has borne the Jonathan presidency aloft and may yet shipwreck it. It requires a sober rectitude, tactical astuteness and strategic brilliance to plot one’s way out of the labyrinthine maze of conflicting and conflicted passions. But for a man who has found himself in a great foxhole, Jonathan has continued to dig in with frenetic fury. Apart from a series of unforced errors, Jonathan has been helped along in his perilous misadventure by a string of inexperienced advisers and the stony resolve of the general who will be democratic president.
   Enter the tall ramrod war-lord with the aristocratic forbearance of his Fulani forebears.  In certain moments of history and in the tumultuous flow and ebb of vital events, a particular exceptional individual may incarnate the contradictions of the age to an unusual degree. No other contemporary personality encapsulates or emblematizes the paradox of the contemporary Nigerian situation and the dilemmas of democracy more than the taciturn and ascetic former infantry general. His short spell as military dictator was distinguished by its draconian measures and the sheer ferocity of the effort to turn Nigeria to the path of rectitude. 
  Riding on the crest of popular revulsion with politics and politicians, the general did not even bother with a programme for the return of civil rule throughout his tenure. Even after he was kicked out in a palace coup masterminded by his Chief of Army Staff, Buhari has never publicly expressed any remorse over that seeming lacunae. If this abiding contempt for politics and politicians is his sterling strength, it is also the source of his undoing as a contemporary political figure.
    It is a perplexing irony that it is an unabashed former military autocrat who has done most to deepen the democratic process and to return sovereignty to the Nigerian electorate in the Fourth Republic. Buhari’s quest for the Nigerian presidency has become the stuff of fabled legends. In fact it has become the general’s odyssey and far more intriguing than his military exploits on Chadian territory or the battle fields of the Nigerian civil war.
    General Buhari has already bested Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s record appearance at the presidential polls. He has also been at the Appellate Court to overturn presidential verdicts more than any other Nigerian living or dead. In the process, he has helped to deepen the judicial process and gifted the judiciary with some landmark dissenting judgements, particularly Oguntade in 2007 and the brilliant minority judgement of 2003.
    Slowly and imperceptibly, General Buhari has also transformed from a military dictator to a cult political figure particularly among the northern masses who view him as the messiah in waiting and the equivalent of the mythical twelfth imam. For a man who is not gifted in the elocution department and who disdains oratory as sheer fraudulent rhetoric, this is no mean achievement. For the old northern political class and its diminished power masters, the fear of Buhari is the beginning of wisdom.
   Snooper has had the opportunity of watching and interacting with the general at close quarters. One cannot but be impressed by his stark simplicity and sincerity of purpose and the patriotic fervour that underlines every statement of his. There is an incandescent rage about the plight of Nigeria and its people. If only Buhari  can lay his hands at the scoundrels.
   But there is also a misdirected piety; a puritanical self-righteousness which sits oddly with a politician and which is touching in its idyllic and idealistic naivete. This leads to a mental, professional, ideological and spiritual blockage which prevents the general from seeing the total picture as it is and not as it ought to be. Politics is the art of the possible. The paradox is that General Buhari is a non-professional politician. In the murky jungle of Nigerian politics, that is as short as a suicide note can get.
    In the light of this, it is a bit rich for the Federal Executive Council to attempt to prevail on General Buhari not to seek redress at the Supreme Court. This is a classic case of chutzpah. It is reminiscent of the man who has murdered his parents asking the court to set him free on the grounds that he is an orphan. Where were they when the judicial stakes were being openly manipulated and deliberately rigged in favour of a preferred outcome? This column warned then that the removal of Justice Ayo Salami from the Appellate would strip the judgement of any legitimacy and authority. This is precisely what has happened.
    It is feeble and futile at this point to ask General Buhari to act in the greater national interest when the temporary and transient custodians of the same national interest act in a way and manner that threaten national interest. This is either cynicism gone haywire or some idle postprandial rap. Of course it is obvious that the dour and impassive general would treat the appeal with stony and affronted contempt.
   But having said that, it is now time for General Buhari to take political, spiritual and ideological stock of the struggle for the democratic emancipation of Nigeria and his own signal and sterling role in this. As a tested general, he should know that there is no point fighting a new battle with old weapons. All over the world, the adjudication of presidential electoral disputes is rigged beforehand in favour of the status quo. Luckily for Nigeria, this is not an ethnic, religious or regional affair but a pure class act.
   The protocol of judicial elders who adjudicate in these matters belongs to a caste within a class. Their revered lordships may frown and scowl but they are also not disposed to disrupting an on-going party. In any case, it is standard practice in boxing adjudication that to dethrone a reigning heavyweight, you not only have to beat him, you have to beat him up. If General Buhari’s sole ambition is to enrich the judicial process, he can continue with his quest for justice but out there in the real power canvas, the PDP will have to be beaten silly before it agrees to go home punchdrunk.
   Luckily Jonathan is providing ample ammunition to the enemy on that front with ill-judged anti-people policies and his flagrant misreading of the national mood. But first Buhari’s party will have to put its own house in order. This is bound to be time-consuming and energy-sapping. As it is, the CPC is neither cohesive nor coherent. It is a mass-action movement gone haywire. 
  The masses may vote en-masse all right, but they lack the discipline and organization to see this through. Once the vote-counters appear to shortchange them, they desert in droves to look for petrol cans or burn their voters’ card in a ritual act of electoral suicide and political self-immolation. This was what happened in the north the last time which allowed the PDP to claw its way back into contention in a suspect and suspicious manner.
    A period of sober strategic reflection is now imperative for the much-admired general. To start with, the CPC will have to break out of its regional and ethnic cocoon to become an authentic national platform. In the absence of that, the party will have to cut the much detested deal with other opposition parties. If the general finds the wheeling and dealing, the shabby horse-trading so customary of contemporary Nigerian politics too dishonorable, too disreputable and too demeaning for his puritanical mind-set, it may be time to yield place and become the Mathama Ghandi of his movement. Here is wishing Mohammadu Buhari many more years of patriotic service to the fatherland.