New lessons I’ve learnt

Experiences of the past six weeks have taught me new lessons, opened fresh vistas to me about life, and equally brought home certain truths about our country rather vividly.  That is what I want to share in this piece today.
I lost a mum.  Some cynical people will say, so what?  Don’t people die everyday?  Yes, people die everyday, but they are not your mother, so when you hear the news, it seems like mere statistics to you.  But when it happens to you direct, then you know that he who feels it knows it.

Let us start from last Saturday, when we had the last rites of passage for the departed, and then work our way back.  The Good Book tells us to rejoice with those who rejoice, and mourn with those who mourn.  Nigerians take divine charges quite serious, irrespective of religion.  From all walks of life, from different parts of the country, irrespective of creed, tongue, tribe, people came to join the Adesina family, as we had the last dance with our mother.  Right and true were the words of our former National Anthem, which stated that: “though tribes and tongues may differ, in brotherhood we stand.”  What I saw last Saturday was the brotherhood of man, the expression of our collective humanity, in which religion did not matter, language, ethnicity or political persuasion were inconsequential.

It was a Christian farewell service we were holding, and the invitation cards sent out indicated so.  In a country so fractured, so polarized down the middle by ethnicity and religion, you would think Muslims would give the event a wide berth.  But let me do a quick checklist of committed Muslims who were at event.  Former military head of state, Gen Muhammadu Buhari.  Don’t they say he’s a religious bigot?  Yet, he came to a Christian service, in which there was singing, clapping and raising of hands in worship, and there was a preaching session, as done by the National Secretary of the Foursquare Gospel Church in Nigeria, Rev Ikechukwu Ugbaja.  Bigot, bigot, yet Buhari sat all through it, and remained for many hours after. The word bigotry sure then needs to be redefined!

Yes, I was listing the prominent Muslims. Who can be more Muslim than the Sultan of Sokoto, head of the Muslim Ummah in the country?  Sultan Sa’ad Abubakar III was represented at the event by Alhaji Aminu Idris Yaro, Sakin Hausawan Lagos.  Yet, people think religion will scatter Nigeria, and break her apart at the seams.  No, it should not happen, except the politicians exploit the unwary and misguided, as they have always done.
Ogun State governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, is a Muslim.  He came, and even spoke about the state being a huge factory of great mothers, since my late mum was an Ijebu.

Former military president, Gen Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, was represented by one of his aides, Salman Yusuf, a Muslim.  Former Inspector-General of Police, Alhaji Tafa Balogun was there, former EFCC boss, Mrs Farida Waziri, politician and publisher Chief Abiola Ogundokun, Dr Muiz Banire, former Commissioner for the Environment in Lagos, Lateef Ibirogba, current Commissioner for Information in Lagos, Hakeem Bello, Senior Special Adviser to Gov Raji Fashola on Media, Suleiman Gaya, Vice President (North) of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, and my colleague and friend, Alhaji Yusuf Olaniyonu, Commissioner for Information in Ogun State.  The list is not exhaustive, but those are some Muslims that were at the Christian service.  And it set me thinking.

Why should religion ever be a source of rift between any people?  Why should it be a centrifugal force in a country?  Today, politics is played on the altar of religion and ethnicity.  Is he a member of my church, or my mosque?  Does he speak my language?  Does he worship the same God I worship, and in the same way?   And while we major in all these minors, the country is decaying and putrefying under us.  While we neglect weightier matters, boxing the air like an expiring pugilist, the ship of state is heading for the rocks.  Nigerians, be wise.  God never intended religion to drive a wedge between us, but to lead us into harmony, even in our diversity.

Another lesson.  We should not take certain things personal, in the bid to engender the country of our dreams.  This I learnt from former military president, Gen Ibrahim Babangida. As I wrote last week, he had phoned on Thursday, 48 hours to the event, condoled me, and asked for details of the last rites.  When I told him, he promised to send an aide.  And he did.  Has it changed my opinion about the former president?  No.  For 20 years since he voided the June 12, 1993 election won by M.K.O. Abiola, I have taken against a position against Babangida.  I am still against him, even as I write now.  But is it a virulent, do or die thing?  No.  Nothing personal.  It is all about our country.  He had the opportunity to move our country forward into democratic realms, he rather stuck us in perpetual reverse gear, producing the evil regime of Sani Abacha, under which we groaned for five years.  IBB is still a culprit, but you cannot deny his personal charm and human relations.  The fact that he mourned with me at a time I was mourning showed me a new perspective of him.

And yet another lesson!  You need people, good people around you.  The Yoruba have a saying, which if translated freely means “people are the dress we wear, they are our clothing.”  Yes, I have experienced it, and can speak authoritatively now.  If not for the people around me, the volume of tears I shed would have been child’s play.  People flocked round me, sat with me, comforted me, consoled me.  I had wondered how I was going to go through the farewell service last Saturday and not precipitate an ocean at the venue with my tears, but I ended up not shedding any.  And when the preacher, Rev Ugbaja, in his homily, said what we were doing was not the last dance with my mum, that we were still going to dance with her again when we get to heaven, you needed to see the peace and comfort that flooded into my soul.  The raindrops stopped, and if they would ever come again, it would be in very private moments. How comforting the words of God can be. No wonder the hymn writer declared: “Lord thy word abideth, and our footsteps guideth, who its truth believeth, light and joy receiveth.” True.

Talking of good people, there were many, scores really, whom I never met before, but who turned up to comfort the Adesina family.  I only knew Navy Captain Abiodun Olukoya by reputation when he was military governor in Ondo State between September 1990 and January 1992.  He retired later from the Navy as a Rear Admiral.  He reads me on this page on Fridays, and we had exchanged text messages a number of times.  He was at the event, in flesh and blood, last Saturday.  That’s a good man, if you’re looking for one.

What of other people I met for the first time?  Group Captain Tola Adediji, former spokesman of the Nigerian Air Force, Lagos-based lawyer, Chijioke Emeka, public commentator, Peter Claver Oparah, Omo Oba Kolade Roberts, and many others.  We had been acquainted one way or the other in the past, never met them physically before, but they came.  Good people.  When Dr Dora Akunyili came with the campaign that we were Good People, Great Nation, I remember I had written that we were Good People, yes, but Great Nation, no.  There are, indeed, good people in Nigeria, and I’m a witness.  Even the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) sent a representative, though I have no direct relationship with the leadership of the foremost labour union.  I doff my cap.

It is a new day, a new dawn, a new visitation in a brand new way. It is another season of life. No father, no mother.  Life is in stages and seasons, with each season having its own peculiarities. But one person is common to all those seasons.  God.  When He is with you, He becomes father, mother, uncle, aunt and everything.

Buhari and 2015: The Mugabe example

By ABUCHI ANUEYIAGU

Given the example of some politicians in other parts of the world and even Nigeria, if Gen Muhammadu Buhari decides to contest for the highest political office in Nigeria in 2015, there is nothing wrong with it. The constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria guarantees him that, no matter his age, provided he does not contravene any law of the land that would inhibit him from contesting.

Apart from constitutional and natural inhibitions, Buhari and of course any other Nigerian of his age and above, is free to contest for the presidency. Apart from the very recent example of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, there are other world leaders that have reached 70 years and above, and are still in active partisan politics, including running for elective positions. How old is Cameroun’s President Paul Biya and he is still running for election? How old is the Chinese President? How old is Ahmed Karzai of Afghanistan, or the deposed Hosni Mubarak of Egypt before his fall?

Even our own highly revered Pa 7Michael Ajasin, how old was he when he ran for a second term in office as governor of old Ondo State?  If Buhari is considered too old to run for the country’s presidency in 2015, as the fear of certain elements who feel he could win indicates, how about our Mr. Fix it Chief Tony Anenih who ran for the PDP B.O.T Chairman recently and is still holding that post to the happiness of few PDP members?

Is the post of PDP national chairman that the over 70 years old Alhaji Bamanga Tukur currently holding not a top position like that of President? The fear of Buhari within some political quarters in the land is the beginning of wisdom. The vocal few against Buhari’s presidency are merely trumping up and fanning all manners of blackmail such as religious bigotry, sponsorship of Boko Haram, of being Igbo-phobic, etc. And the allegations are not substantiated. For instance, to some undiscerning or uninformed Ndi Igbo, Buhari is tagged enemy number one, without their knowing that their greatest enemies are those that had been impoverishing them and pretending to be representing them. The last time the Onitsha-Enugu dual carriageway and the Enugu-Okigwe-Umuahia-Aba-Port Harcourt dual carriage highway were in good order was when Buhari used the PTF to reconstruct them. It was Buhari’s PTF that established the Greater Oji River water scheme (a former military administrator of Enugu State, Brigadier Lucky Mike Torey is still alive and could attest to this because it happened during his tenure). The water scheme draws water from far away Oji River to Enugu metropolis, for provision of potable water to Enugu, which the present state government is now reticulating to all nooks and crannies of the Coal City, and the taps are now flowing in many parts of the city that hitherto had no pipe-borne water.

Have we so soon forgotten the intervention of Buhari’s PTF in the health and education sectors, when public hospitals had infrastructure improvement and were rid of the hitherto ‘out of stock’ syndrome that characterized public hospitals? Have we for instance forgotten soon in Igbo states that Buhari’s PTF reconstructed (not rehabilitated) some major urban roads, like in Enugu where I live, Edinburgh, Edozie, Obioma, Zik Avenue, etc? How can we be so easily swayed that Buhari is Igbo hater when he did all this in the southeast zone? The two dual carriageways earlier mentioned are today serious death traps where our people die daily, yet we have federal and state governments in place and our people are not talking.

During the era of Babangida, a construction company from Imo State was said to have been awarded the contract to reconstruct the heavily deplorable Enugu-Okigwe-Umuahia-Aba-Port Harcourt dual carriageway, but the project became abandoned after the contract fee was said to have been released. The road was left in that state till Buhari’s PTF came and reconstructed it. Before then, people traveled to Owerri, Aba and Port Harcourt from Enugu through the tortuous Enugu-Awka-Ekwuluobia-Orlu-Owerri single lane route.

Since 2000 till date, do you know the number of Igbo people that have died untimely on the federal roads in the southeast zone because of the terrible state? Was Buhari responsible? Yet since then, we have had PDP federal governments and even state governments which have the support of Ndi Igbo and in which Ndi Igbo served prominently as ministers, senate presidents, deputy senate presidents, deputy speakers of House of Representatives, federal special advisers, special assistants, etc? The harrowing aspect of it is that our political class, some of them holding very high public posts, are alleged to have cornered the contracts for the reconstruction of these roads and those of federal erosion controls and the monies became diverted into private use, yet Buhari is the Igbo enemy and not these people. Some of them now traverse the southeast by helicopter, while others go by very expensive SUVs that no bad road can adversely affect.

Buhari came and tried to sanitize our polity in 1983 but the bad eggs in our society, the parasites that are the clogs in the country’s wheel of progress, did not want him. He is accused of being a religious bigot and anti-Christianity but when he had autocratic power as military head of state he never took Nigeria to the dreaded Organization of Islamic Countries (O.I.C), rather Ibrahim Babangida who ousted him on August 27,1985 was the one who did.

On Boko Haram, Buhari may have forthrightly spoken his mind on the heinous sect, but my mind tells me that some of the secret prominent accomplices and promoters of the Boko Haram group may not be totally outside the circles of the northern Islamic political elites that have nothing to do with Buhari but may even be among the membership of the ruling political party because of the pursuit of their own political interests. Such characters turn around like the fox to push the Boko Haram insurgence to Buhari, just because he warned against election rigging.

I had sometime ago said it on this page that as onye Igbo, I would want an Igbo person to lead this country in 2015, but from the look of things, I’m yet to see the Igbo man with the liver to come out to take over from Jonathan. I have been looking forward to seeing a Patrick Utomi or a Charles Chukwuma Soludo or any other credible Igbo personality strongly running for the Presidency in 2015, but my sight seem to be failing me, as I can’t see such credible people of Igbo stock on the block, and it seems already late.  From the public utterances and body language of some Igbo politicians, they have once again conceded the Igbo right to aspire to the country’s highest political post to President Jonathan again, as they did in 2011. If you’re interested in something, you should be bold enough to go for it, but where you are being lethargic, it means you don’t know what you want. You should therefore not turn around to rub mud or throw sand on some other fellows who have the will and courage to run for the post you have already conceded for mere porridge.

So, let us leave Buhari alone, and if he’s the one that will provide the desired or required good governance, as I believe he can, then let it be. What I am simply saying is that Buhari has the constitutional right to run for any post in the land, just like any other good citizen, if he so desires. Most of those pointing fingers are no better than him.

•Abuchi Anueyiagu, Public Affairs Commentator/Veteran Journalist, 08080242128, “mailto:buchisbuchis@yahoo.com” buchisbuchis@yahoo.com

TheSun

Gunmen abduct Bini traditional ruler

Mr Patrick Igbinedu, the Iyase (Prime Minister) of Udo, near Benin, was on Wednesday abducted by unknown gunmen.

Sources at the Iyase’s Palace told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday that the monarch was abducted by some armed fierce looking young men.

They said the Iyase was playing the game of draught in his palace when he was abducted and driven away in an Audi car to an unknown destination at about 6 p.m. on Sept. 11.

The sources said that Igbinedu is the elder brother of one of the wives of the Oba of Benin, Solomon Erediauwa.

Confirming the report, the Chairman of Ovia South-West Local Government Area, Mr Morrison Oggunrobe-Ovia, said the council was working with the police in Iguobazuwa, the administrative headquarters of the council, to secure the release of the traditional ruler.

According to Oggunrobe-Ovia, the abductors have yet to make any ransom demand.

The Public Relations Officer of the Edo Police Command, DSP Moses Eguavvoen, could not be reached, but a competence source who prefer to remain anonymous, confirmed the story. (NAN)

DailyPost

Femi Fani-Kayode: A time to ponder

Today a great march and protest is taking place in the Catalan region of the ancient and beautiful nation of Spain. According to the polls 52 per cent of the people from that region wish to break off from Spain and to establish a new European sovereign state.

Later this year the people of Scotland are having their own referendum to determine whether or not they will stay in the United Kingdom and again, from the polls, it is very clear that the majority of Scots wish to have their own new sovereign state and that the Scottish Nationalist Party enjoys massive support. Nobody in either Spain or the United Kingdom has insulted those people or labelled them as ”ethnic jingoists” or ”primitive tribalists” for wanting to break off from the greater whole and establish their own country.

This is because everyone respects the right of the various ethnic groups and nationalities within their wider nation to exercise their right of self-determination which is an integral and fundamental aspect of international law. Exercising that right does not turn them into villains and does not make them any less patriotic than their compatriots who do not share their views. It just means that they have a different perspective and that they believe, as many believed before Malaysia and Singapore broke up, that the interests of their various peoples are better served when and if they go their separate ways.

They opted to be friendly neighbours rather than to be compelled to remain within the same territory against their collective will. As we in Nigeria approach the 100 year anniversary of our 1914 Lugardian amalgamation and, as the 2015 elections are fast approaching with both the northern region and the south-south zone desperate to take or to hold on to power at any cost respectively, we need to begin to ask ourselves some basic and fundamental questions about our future. For example is our interest better served by remaining as one nation or is it time for those nationalities that wish to leave the federation in a peaceful and orderly way, as a result of a legitimate and honest referendum, be allowed to go?

If the breaking up of larger countries into smaller and more viable ones is good enough for India (which broke into three), the Sudan (which broke into two), Czechoslovakia (which broke into two), Yugoslavia (which broke into 5), the Soviet Union (which broke into 15) and numerous other countries over the years why is it not good enough for us? Again why should those that believe that Nigeria ought to break up be subjected to so much suspicion, ridicule, contempt and insults from those that do not share their views? Some of the questions that need to be answered are as follows- firstly is our union working? Secondly is our marriage a good one and if it is is it a happy one as well? Are we satisfied with what has essentially become a country that has been turned into nothing more than (with apologies to Chief Bode George) ”Turn by Turn Nigeria?” where each ethnic group simply looks forward to enjoying its time to control the federation and all the nations resources from an all powerful centre? Are we not meant to be far more than this? Is this what the founding fathers of our nation envisaged?

More than anything else the recent igbo/yoruba debate over the issue of the status of Lagos state and the deportation of a handful of igbo destitutes back to the east has proved to me that we as a people are very different from one another and that our interests may be better served if we are no longer bound together as one. I dare to voice this opinion even though many Yorubas share it but will not say so publicly. Is it not time for us to begin to accept the bitter truth that our marriage is uncomfortable and unhappy and that it may not have been made in heaven or ordained by God? Is it not clear that each region or each nationality ought to be able to develop at their own pace? Is it not time for us to have a confederation of nationalities in Nigeria and to restructure the country drastically to give maximum autonomy to the various regions and nationalities or indeed is it not time to just break up and go our separate ways?

Many may disagree but one thing that I believe that we can at least agree on is that perhaps it is time for us to be courageous enough to begin to talk about these issues openly and debate them. We must not sweep our differences under the carpet and ignore them as if they do not exist but instead we must find the courage and muster the resolve to acknowledge them and understand them. As far as I am concerned this is the challenge of our time and these are the questions that need to be answered. Whatever happens in 2015 and whoever wins, whether it be a northerner or Goodluck Jonathan of the south-south, I see blood on the horizon and I see disaster approaching. Stark promises from notable players such as ”there will be bloodshed if Goodluck is not re-elected” do not help and are not encouraging. There are equally strident and bellicose murmurings from the other side as well and some have threatened that if there is a repeat performance of the massive rigging that the north witnessed in the Presidential election of 2011 anywhere in the country in 2015, ”Nigeria will burn” whilst another key player said that ”both the dog and the baboon shall be soaked in blood”.

These words must be taken very seriously indeed and they reflect the thinking and mindset of millions of people from both sides of the political and regional divide. Worst still, whether we like to admit it or not, religion has now become a major factor in our politics with Christians being told in their churches that it is their solemn duty to support a christian presidential candidate and Muslims being told in their mosques that it is theirs to support a Muslim. We are sitting on a keg of gunpowder and in my view 2015 really will be the year of make or break for Nigeria. Sadly, in my humble opinion, it is far closer to ”break” than it is to ”make”. If we wish to avoid the road to Kigali we must change our mindset and make the necessary concessions that we need to make. We must begin to think outside of the box and be far more innovative and adventurous. For example why is it a must in the minds of some that the PDP must field a christian as it’s presidential candidate and why are some in the APC of the view that the party must field a northern Muslim as its own? These hard and fast fixed positions are most unhelpful and the right thing and proper thing to do is to completely discard them and attempt to find a presidential candidate that is a Nigerian before being a northerner, a southerner, a christian or a Muslim. And thankfully there are quite a few of such people around in the new generation if only the system will be far-sighted and enlightened enough to allow them to emerge and run. Failing that we must open up the space now and consider the unpleasant assertion that the premium that a united Nigeria attracts may not be worth paying simply because we are getting nothing but failure after failure and sorrow after sorrow as our consistent return.

I do not have all the answers and neither do I claim that I do. Indeed I may well be wrong which is why I would be interested in hearing the views of others and particularly those from the younger generation who may see things very differently. Whichever way it goes and regardless of what we all think let us not allow this debate to be driven by the uninformed or ignorance, pettiness, hate and acrimony. Let us not insult one another or act as if any tribe or nationality are a collection of angels whilst others are nothing but demons. Let us join issues and exchange ideas in a civil, restrained and decent manner without hurling insults at one another or allowing our emotions to becloud our thinking.

At the end of the day we all want the same thing- namely, to put in place a system that is in the best interest of the Nigerian people and to empower a new leadership that will allow them to achieve their full potentials? That is the objective and that alone. Over to you.

DailyPost

Ever notice how a 4-year-old's voice is louder than 200 adult voices?

"Several years ago, I returned home from a trip just when a storm hit, with crashing thunder and severe lightning. 
As I came into my bedroom about 2 a.m., I found my two children in bed with my wife, Karey, apparently scared by the loud storm. I resigned myself to sleep in the guest bedroom that night.

The next day, I talked to the children and explained that it was okay to sleep with Mom when the storm was bad, but when I was expected home, please don't sleep with Mom that night.

They said okay.

After my next trip several weeks later, Karey and the children picked me up in the terminal at the appointed time. Since the plane was late, everyone had come into the terminal to wait for my plane's arrival, along with hundreds of other folks waiting for their arriving passengers.

As I entered the waiting area, my son saw me, and came running shouting,

"Hi, Dad! I've got some good news!"

As I waved back, I said loudly, "What's the good news?"

Alex shouted, "Nobody slept with Mommy while you were away this time!"

The airport became very quiet, as everyone in the waiting area looked at Alex, then turned to me, and then searched the rest of the area to see if they could figure out exactly who his Mom was.

 Pearl Ijeoma Ezeokeke

Scott Mackintosh, Utah Dad, Wears Short Shorts To Teach His Daughter A Lesson

A Utah dad fed up with his daughter's short shorts decided to do something that would make her realize they might not be as cute as she thinks.

Scott Mackintosh, a husband and father of seven, recently headed out with his family for some bonding time, he describes on his wife's blog, Becky Mack's Blog of Mild Chaos. The plan was to go to dinner and play miniature golf. Before leaving, he heard his wife asking his teenage daughter to put on some longer shorts. When the girl responded "no," Mackintosh decided to "make a 'small' statement on how her short-shorts maybe aren’t as 'cute' as she thinks!"

So, he grabbed a pair of jeans, cut them into a tiny pair of shorts above the pocket and threw on a T-shirt reading "Best. Dad. Ever." The family got stares at the restaurant and stares at the mini-golf course, but his daughter still didn't seem to mind. Finally, when they ended the night with milkshakes, she decided to stay in the car instead of going through any more embarrassment.

There was no “Dad I get it” or “Dad you’re the best…. thanks for that awesome lesson.” ☺ I don’t think my object lesson of “modest is hottest” made the statement I had intended. But no matter if social media gets the story mixed up and twisted, my daughter will always know that her dad loves her and cares about her enough to make a fool out of himself.

His daughter posted the photo of her dad to her Tumblr, writing, "My mom told me to change my 'slutty' shorts before we went to dinner. I said no. So my dad cut his jeans to fit in. We went to dinner and then mini golf like this." The post has since gotten over 130,000 notes. The photo also made its way to the social sharing site, Reddit.

After the story got picked up by various news outlets, Mackintosh decided to clarify a few things about his purpose.

"I simply did this in hopes that my daughter would know of my great love for her and that she knows of her great worth," he said in a statement to Deseret News. "Now that it has gone viral, I hope that young women everywhere understand their great worth. I will look like an idiot any day if that point gets across."

Mackintosh told Salt Lake City's KSL that he has not seen his daughter' short shortssince then.

"She's dressed a little bit better since then," he said. "Yeah, she has."

Mackintosh's story comes on the heels of a national debate about whether adults should be telling kids what to wear following a "slut shaming" viral blog post written by a Texas mother. While some parents shake their fingers at short shorts, otherparents are fine with letting their children wear whatever clothing they desire.

As for the practice of public shaming, which involves potentially embarrassing one's child in a public manner as a means of discipline, some view it negatively.

"It's not just that humiliating people, of any age, is a nasty and disrespectful way of treating them," Alfie Kohn, author of Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason, previously said. "It's that humiliation, like other forms of punishment, is counterproductive. 'Doing to' strategies -- as opposed to those that might be described as 'working with' -- can never achieve any result beyond temporary compliance, and it does so at a disturbing cost."

This story has been modified to include background on public shaming.

HuffingtonPost

Pius Adesanmi: Parable of the Shower Head

I never come again. I still dey faraway. Make you wait till I reach where I dey goooo… I wasn't going to Fela's Kalakuta Republic. My destination, two years ago, was Abuja in faraway Nigeria. Professor Iyorwuese Hagher, my very good friend and Nigeria's former High Commissioner to Canada, was launching his new book in the Nigerian capital and had invited me to the launch as book reviewer.The flight from Ottawa to Abuja via London was mentally draining. I spent a lot of time agonising over mode of delivery, level of language, and length of the lecture largely because Professor Hagher had assured me that all the state governors, federal ministers, senators, etc, invited to the event had confirmed to him personally that they would attend – and it turned out to be so.
My agony stemmed from my knowledge of the intellectual laziness and mental indolence of the Nigerian political class. If I was going to deliver a lecture in a Transcorp Hilton hall crowded by governors, ministers, senators, etc, what were the chances that that sort of crowd would understand anything or even listen to me beyond the first few sentences? Would they not be waiting impatiently for the book launch proper to flaunt how many copies of the book that they would buy for how much? Should I reduce the intellectual intensity of the engagement to take care of a class of people whose disdain for intellectual matters has consolidated a national apathy for books and erudition? Are these moneyed people not allergic to dogon turenchi? I concluded, rather ungenerously, that only Professor Hagher, the author, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, Chair of the event, and yours truly, the speaker, would be there for my own part of the event – the intellectual part of things. If Chief Anyaoku liked the lecture, I concluded, it would be a privilege of a lifetime and any intellectually impecunious government official in the room could go and jump in the river Niger for all I cared.
This inflight mental stricture over which level of grammar to blow ensured that I got to my hotel room in Abuja completely exhausted. I travel so often for lectures that jetlag is no longer an issue for me. My tiredness, I thought irritably, had to be a consequence of worrying about the lecture I was billed to deliver the following evening. A long hot shower was the way to go! As I got ready to enjoy a shower, I took a mental note of the posh and gloss that the hotel had to offer and looked forward to a luxuriating experience under the water. In that environment, one could be forgiven for momentarily forgetting that one was in Nigeria, the earthly address that Satan rents to provide temporary accommodation for the occupants of hell whenever he needs to service the furnaces in hell.
Then came the reminder of where I was. Nigeria will never allow you to bear a false witness of efficiency against her. Nigeria will never allow you to accuse her wrongly of getting at least one thing right all the time. In all that luxury and mimicry of First World standards, I turned on the shower and hot water gushed out of only about four or five holes in the shower head. Remember that a shower head has hundreds of holes and it is the combined gushing, pulsating power of all the holes that provides the rounded shower experience. I called Reception and complained. Profuse apologies laced with sir sir sir and a promise to send the engineer (plumber, but they said engineer) up to my room right away.
The uniformed 'engineer' arrived less than ten minutes after my complaint. Ope o, I thought, not only was the Receptionist exceptionally professional, the service I requested was also in my room in record time. I made a mental note to report that positive side (one insignificant case but it was progress all the same) of Nigerian service delivery whenever I wrote an op-ed about that trip. Good evening sir, I hear that your shower is not working, he said, flashing a professional courtesy smile. Na so I see am o, my broda, di ting no dey work well, I offered in pidgin, reciprocating the smile.
His professional smile disappeared, replaced by a NAFDAC-certified Nigerian boisterous laughter: evidence that he now considered me a broda, a propa shon of the shoil, one of us, arawa ni, arawa ni bobo yen, arawa ni. In the spaces of sociality where Nigeria's notoriously obnoxious and snobbish moneyed class circulate, such as posh restaurants and five-star hotels, they treat the staff much the same way they treat their drivers and domestic staff at home: like shit. Switching to pidgin often sends a message to such staff that you are not one of those useless ogas and their useless wives or concubines. It can ensure that an offended waitress will not spit in your food or urinate in your water before bringing it to your room or table to punish you for your snobbery.
Ah, oga, you sabi blow pidgin like dis? Make I go repair the di shower one time for you, he said, dancing his way into the bathroom. I made a few phone calls to Canada while waiting for him. Moments later, his strident calls of oga oga oga from the bathroom interrupted my phone calls and I rushed to join him there. His face was a blissful marriage of confusion and consternation. The shower was running, all of the four or five functional holes of the shower head hissed, coughed, and spat out water in furious staccato bursts. Oga, shebi you say dis ting no dey work? See am now. No be im dey work like dis? See, bucket even dey dis side in case you wan run di water for inside bucket sef. I understood what was going on. It was one of those situations where an utterance devours the response one would have offered. Oro di hun. Oro p'esi je o oro di hun. I apologised to him and attributed my not noticing that the shower was running perfectly to tiredness and he obliged me with more encouraging banter before leaving my room and disappearing into the hallway.
After one and half weeks in the hotel, I finally moved early this week to my official quarters on the campus of the University of Ghana at Legon. I'm here in Accra for one year as a Carnegie Diaspora Visiting Professor in African Studies. As I opened the door and breezed into the living room of my apartment for the first time, it told the story of First World standards. Cozy, posh, brand new appliances, from gas cooker to split airconditioner to toilet to bathtub to shower to king-size bed. I felt the usual pang of frustration that Nigerians feel whenever they are treated to a good dosage of Ghanaian infrastructural superiority and efficiency.
I took a shower a day after I moved into my apartment and was relieved that only four of five holes in the brand new shower head were working. Boy, was I happy! After nearly two weeks in this country, something to finally complain about! Something that ain't working! Something to bring Ghana to the embarrassing level of Nigeria. Eta nu! I was going to milk this situation to the maximum. I was going to flog this horse and flog its carcase when it dies! I placed a call to maintenance and complained very bitterly. Listening to me, you'd think the world was coming to an end because my shower wasn't working properly. Apologies, apologies, apologies. We'll send someone to come and look at it tomorrow, Prof.
The technician woke me up the following morning. I showed him the bathroom. He turned on the shower and four or five shower holes obeyed his command. Prof, this is unacceptable. We are so sorry. I brought a replacement shower head. I'll fix it for you. About an hour later, a replacement shower head was on duty, spitting out water from every hole on its surface. A dozen strings of apologies followed and the technician was on his way.
Two countries, two technicians, one problem: only four or five holes in a shower head are working. Their stratospherically different instinctive reactions, upon visual apprehension of this singular problem, tells in one powerful narrative brush the story of how either country arrived where she is today. It tells the story of the power of civic instruction and awareness. It tells the story of the only type of psychology that could power a country out of the backwaters of underdevelopment and set her on the course to joining the rest of civilized humanity in the 21st century.
It was the demeanour of the Ghanaian technician that I found so painful –painful is to be understood in the context of the statement that the said demeanour makes about my own country. His embarrassment was patent, his dissatisfaction written all over his face. You'd think that the fate of his country, Ghana, rested on him rectifying the situation and making sure it never happens again. Above all, there is that psychology of his that even if a single shower hole is blocked and ninety-nine others are working in a shower head, it ain't right.
The Nigerian technician comes from a different world. One sordid and shitty world of rationalizing mediocrity, created by 160 million people and the useless political leaders who rule over them. All 160 million of us are responsible for this atrocious and unpatriotic psychology. Sometimes, it is difficult to tell who is more unpatriotic: Goodluck Jonathan and the bunch of corrupt clowns he leads in the political class or the people who are their victims. For the average Nigerian, in his daily treatment of Nigeria, ranks among one of the most unpatriotic citizens of any nation on earth.
Every time you accept less than perfect, justify it, impose it on people around you, you are killing Nigeria softly and unpatriotically. A taxi driver musters the courage to resist bribing a police officer, you, his passengers, turn against him. Why not settle them and stop wasting our time? How much dem dey ask sef wey you no wan roger them? Useless driver like you. Ordinary to roger dem 20 naira, you siddon here dey waste our time. If police shoot you now, dem go say na your mama co-wife cause am. Eventually, you force the taxi driver to bribe the officers. You are killing Nigeria softly with that unpatriotic psychology.
Don't tell me. I know what y'all would have said were you in that hotel room with me and the technician and I had continued to insist on every hole in the shower head working. You would have descended on me like a ton of bricks: Oga, wetin be your own sef? You fall my hand well well o. How you go say dis ting no dey work? You think say na jand you dey? Na so una go come home dey do gra gra like say una no dey shit. Every time you agree that a shower head is working well because only five of its holes are blocked, you are killing Nigeria softly. Every time you see only about five or six pot holes in a 7-kilometre stretch of road and you continue to scream, ah, dat road good o, dat Governor try well well, you're killing Nigeria softly for if there is even one pothole on it, the road ain't good and you should scream for it to be fixed as if your life depended on it.
Take your average resident of Ilorin in Kwara state. He beats his chest over the spectacle offered by Ahmadu Bello Avenue. That is one of the poshest and glossiest streets in the Kwara state capital, the address of Kwara Hotels, Government House, and most ministries. At night, it is always very brightly lit. Yet, for every ten poles of street light, there are one or two bulbs missing or dead. That gives you about one or two black patches for every block of that stretch of beautiful government district road. Yet, the Ilorin resident beats his chest everyday: ah, ina wa ni be yen o. There is light there. The Governor is really trying o. The day we get this average Ilorin resident to understand and feel genuinely dissatisfied that one street light bulb ain't working on Ahmadu Bello Avenue is the day we shall begin to win the battle for Nigeria.
I am saying in essence that the battle against corruption is not as urgent as the war to rewire the wrongly wired psychology of the Nigerian. Nigeria's deadliest enemy is the psychology of the Nigerian, not corruption. Take corruption out of the picture, let us assume that a miracle happens and our rulers suddenly stopped stealing, from Aso Rock down to the local government headquarters, would that be a guarantee of progress? I think not. So long as the psychology of rationalization and excuses persists, we cannot make progress. Where public services are supposed to function 100%, if citizens are given 20% once in two weeks and they prevail on other citizens to be thankful to government for providing even that 20%; where they treat anyone who insists on 100% service as an outcast and an alaseju; where they collectively make it clear that we should all manage am like dat, zero corruption is no guarantee that such a people would ever make progress. Reno Omokri, the silly fellow in charge of Facebook and Twitter in Aso Rock, would even jump up and tweet silly photos of one or two roads tarred and exhort the people to gratitude.
This explains the 21st century embarrassment that is Nigeria. I'm afraid I also failed Nigeria very badly by giving up that evening in that hotel room in Abuja. I felt I didn't even know where or how to start teaching the guy that he was wrong in his assessment of the shower situation. I didn't bother to educate that 'engineer' that even if na only one shower hole block and ninety nine dey work, na im be say di whole shower head no dey work gabadaya be dat. I ought to have instructed that mind and won it for the Nigeria that we are fighting for. That was a teachable moment I ought to have seized to go to work on that Nigerian national psychology of elevating mediocrity to the rank of the last thing God created, saw that it was good, and rested on the seventh day.

TheParadigm

Continuity and Change

Guest Columnist : Akin  Osuntokun

Vice-President Atiku Abubakar could possibly have made a good president. He is cosmopolitan, intelligent, broadminded, ambitious, courageous and a deft political player. These qualities must have informed his choice as running mate to President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999. And the latter had big plans for him. His choice was deliberate.

Obasanjo’s projection was to make Atiku succeed him after two terms in office. His age was taken into account and it was a crucial factor in his rating against other good but older contenders. Pitted against another similarly younger contender, Abubakar Rimi, it was his ability to remain cool and collected under pressure that scored him higher. Beyond these general attributes, there were two significant instances that bore testimony to his capacity for leadership. He was the most forceful and clear sighted, in making the case for conceding the presidency to the South-west among his peers in 1999.
He equally and at considerable cost to his political prospects, stood up to be counted against ‘political sharia’. But I fear the oppportunity to become president may be long gone.

In his first term in office, President Obasanjo spent a lot of time travelling the world-to rebrand and reintegrate Nigeria back into polite and civilised company. And the efforts were remarkably gratified. Nigeria became a destination of choice for many important international events including the aborted Miss World pageant; Commonwealth Heads of States, Non-Alligned G-77 conference and the Commonwealth Games.
Nigeria won favour in the sight of the Lord and his creatures and became attractive to numerous world leaders. Above all, it signally fed into the highly consequential decision to write off a substantial proportion of Nigeria external debt.

There was also a component to this peripathetic itinerary  that was obscured and not known to the public. That default component was to groom the vice-president for succession to the office of the president by ceding and giving room for him to grapple with Nigerian governance duty and responsibility. The role was to be reversed in the second term by assigning him to numerous international engagements to prepare him for this complementary role when he takes over as president. But this was not to be. As it is now with President Goodluck Jonathan, claims were being repeatedly made that Obasanjo was only signed on for one term, that this was the agreement he had with his shadowy ‘northern backers’. There were orchestrated admonitions for Obasanjo to take the ‘Mandela option’; to follow the precedent of Nelson Mandela and step down after spending one term in office. There were covert and subversive manipulation of the media to render Obasanjo so unpopular as to make him unelectable. All this anti-Obasanjo propaganda were being linked to the Atiku political machine.

This trend eventually degenerated into a cold war between the two and guaranteed the subsequent hostility of Obasanjo to any talk of Atiku’s aspiration to succeed him. Whether by design or default, it became apparent that Atiku was not enthusiastic about a joint ticket with Obasanjo in the 2003 presidential election.
And again as it is presently, the case with President Jonathan, a number of state governors had mutinied against Obasanjo’s candidacy and pushed Atiku to go all the way against his principal and step forward to challenge for the presidency in his own right. The uncertainty on what Atiku will do subsisted right on to the eve of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential primaries-when he gave an interview to the BBC Hausa Service. Asked on his intention and position concerning the primaries, he said he had three options. One was to run with Obasanjo, another was to run with former Vice-President Alex Ekwueme and the third was to put himself forward as a candidate. On the question of which option he would take, he said he had not made up his mind.

Before joining the campaign, Obasanjo had spoken to me at length on his plans for his deputy-as earlier indicated. He told me that important personalities from the ‘north’ had approached him and repeatedly urged on him to drop Atiku as his running mate; that this was the position of the ‘north’. On each occasion,  he told the interlocutors that he had made up his mind to stick with Atiku.
Ironically a big part of Atiku’s grouse was that at his declaration to run for second term, Obasanjo had been silent on who would be his running mate. In the end, both of them ran together and handily won the primaries and the election. The rest as they say is now history. Anybody who remembers this precedent will not be too surprised at the latest twist and turn in the PDP presidential election politics.

The implosion of the PDP had been long in coming and was easily predictable. In the first place, it started not as a political party but as a nationalist movement. And it is too big to make a competitive party system in Nigeria realisable. As a matter of fact, in all the seven states of the disaffected governors, it was in only two -- Rivers and Kwara that President Jonathan won in the 2011 presidential election. Understandably so. The reasons for this loss had only intensified in the interim; and those reasons are not even within the capacity of the five governors to resolve. If they ever return to the PDP - it would hardly make any difference on the outcome of the coming presidential election. For the governors from the core northern states, their political survival would to a large extent be determined by how strindent they are in bellowing anti-Jonathan rhetorics. Anger and antipathy against PDP presidential incumbents had been seething in the core north since 2003. The truncation of the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua presidency had only escalated the trend. Temper and emotion are running at an all time high on the vexed issue of where the presidential pendulum will swing in 2015.

Let us attempt to put these things in some perspective. The principle of presidential rotation between the north and the south anticipates that each incumbent - as proxy for his zone, will claim the prize for two terms. If we assume that Jonathan cedes the presidency in 2015 what will happen to the balance of four or three years for the south (Souths-south)? By the same token if the candidate from the north wins the election in 2015, will the three years of Yar’Adua presidency be deducted from the entitlement of eight years? These are not easy questions to answer precisely because the possibility of truncation was not taken into account when this important permutation was being determined. Similarly the possibility that an incumbent could be defeated was not factored into the equation. It is also important to note that political boundaries in Nigeria are not coterminous with the north and south gap but among the six zones.

The presumption of a two-way division implies for instance that all the three zones in the south sat together to agree that it was the turn of the South-west to become presidential nominee for the south in 1999 thereby adopting the South-west zone as its representative; or the assumption that the three zones in the north adopted the North-west to fill the northern slot. This assumption falls flat on its face in the division of the political map of Nigeria presently. We have a situation where substantial parts of the north seem not to buy into the notion of a northern candidate who does not originate from the Christian north demography.

The principle of rotation is a specific product of Nigeria’s political history and the many ambiguities it posed can be addressed by measures that have been proposed before. One it is not even a constitutional provision, it is a pan Nigerian initiative of a dominant political party; and so one option is to jettison it altogether. There is the Ekwueme personified proposition of having six vice-presidents corresponding to each of the six zones - which would have adequately addressed the kind of problematique posed by the death of Yar’Adua. The vice-president from the affected zone would simply step into any such accidental vacuum. Third is the proposal of a single term in office. They are all fine on paper but how do they stack up against the political reality on the ground?

In social science circles there is a malaise called the resource (oil) curse. It is a syndrome that predisposes a society to socio-economic dysfunction where there is no positive correlation between productivity and reward. It fosters massive corruption and indolence among the elite on account of its opaque and arbitrary transactions. It breeds a passive and unresponsive citizenry who are unable to make rigourous demands on governance because national revenue is derived largely from the oil resource endowment rather than taxation. In addition to all this, oil has come to constitute an unstated political veto in the balance of forces within the Nigerian federation. And as we go forward, the veto is looming larger and larger. Hitherto disparate and playing second fiddle in political calculations, the South-south has now been forged into a formidable political bloc by the growing indispensability of oil.

The fortuitous presidency of Jonathan has crystallised and massively reinforced this ascension on the ladder of power politics. They have for long suffered a persecution complex both in relation to their hegemonic Igbo neighbour and by the dismissive attitude of Nigeria towards them. Before Jonathan, nobody from that zone has had the privilege of becoming the president of Nigeria; and their populations have suffered, mostly in silence, at the deleterous consequences of oil exploration, mining and consequent pollution. A document was recently published revealing their poor representation among Nigeria’s oil wealth elite. Stories have been told of the catatonic shock experience of Niger Delta first time visitors to Abuja at the other worldly glitter of a city built with resources from their region.

Truth is the mood of that region does not conduce to the departure of Jonathan from that villa in Aso Rock neighbourhood anytime soon.
Beyond the do-or-die contention for that seat, there is a lot of work crying for our individual and corporate attention. We need a period of respite and introspection not muscle flexing and sabre rattling. We need to mend broken relations between Christians and Muslims in the north; we need to phase out the old brigade politicians who feed and thrive on cleavages and divisions; we need to recreate a new pan Nigerian political elite of the younger generation; we need to break the cycle of predictable periodic crisis and interim government of national unity. No matter the level of disappointment, let us stop projecting presidents of this country as enemies to be routed and decimated. There is an element of good in each and everyone of us and I believe that regardless of personal excesses, there is not a leader of this country who does not harbour goodwill for Nigeria. Some of them are as much a victim of circumstances as you and I.

Nigeria needs a period of uninterrupted political stability and peace if we are to achieve the routinisation of civil democratic rule. We should not rush in blind fury to 2015 and damn the consequences. Even (as a prominent pugilist in a couple of presidential elections) if I stand guilty of being wise after the event, let us look less at the next election and look more to the legacy we want to bequath to the next generation.

ThisDay