The Founding Father

By: Sam Nda-Isaiah 

The strong expressions of emotion, the statements from statesmen and virtually every head of state in the world within 24 hours of the announcement of his “departure” by President Jacob Zuma should really not surprise anyone. Nelson Mandela deserves every good thing that has been said about him since he died on Thursday.

If Mandela had not happened on South Africa, the story of the entire southern Africa would have taken a different trajectory. His speeches when he was still much younger and on the run from the evil apartheid leaders, and during the Rivonia trials, showed a leader even in those days. Those speeches would still have been great speeches today. At a time when the apartheid regime had disenfranchised and even de-civilised blacks, when it could have been in order for a black leader to call whites non-South Africans or even non-Africans, he declared as an ANC leader that he believed that South Africa was a multi-racial country. He also declared his belief in a democracy on the basis of one man, one vote. In other words, he was much more civilised than his white repressors. During the Rivonia trials, when the judgement could have been the death sentence, he gave a speech and a declaration which became the defining credo of not just the struggle for the soul of his country but of mankind itself. “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination,” he said. “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realised. But my Lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” He also repeated this statement 27 years later in Cape Town after he was released from prison, showing that truth and the best ideas always stand the test of time. During the trial, he also declared that, “We are not anti-white, we are against white supremacy… We are against racialism no matter by whom it is professed.”

In spite of all these, the apartheid regime branded Mandela a very dangerous man and a terrorist. But Mandela never gave up. He was always a leader wherever he found himself. Even in prison, the warders said he was clearly the leader. He was the most optimistic of the lot in prison. He himself said that when he discovered that everything in prison was designed to dehumanise them, he made up his mind that his oppressors would never succeed. He refused to get dehumanised or lose hope because he needed the hope to continue to lead and to defeat the evil regime. Saki Macozoma, a much younger person who was in the Robben Island prison with him, said that Mandela continually beseeched them to continue to educate and prepare themselves for leadership because South Africa was going to need people like them eventually. Nelson Mandela prepared himself for leadership.

When the apartheid leaders eventually saw that their system was not sustainable, they opened up a channel of communication with him. That was after the entire world was mobilised against them. The first apartheid leader to allow contact with Mandela was President PW Botha. Even though the world remembers PW as a vile apartheid leader, apart from his successor President F. de Klerk, Botha was probably the most reformist apartheid leader. This only gives an indication of how evil the other apartheid leaders were. He was the first to allow inter-racial marriage in South Africa. Interracial marriage had been completely banned in the 1940s. He was also the one that lifted the constitutional prohibitions on multiracial political parties. He also relaxed the Group Areas Act which barred non-whites from living in certain areas. But he was nevertheless a mean human being. That was why he and his successor, President de Klerk, never saw eye to eye until he died.

When the talks with Mandela started while he was still in prison, President de Klerk said he noticed that Mandela was more distinguished than he had imagined. It was clear that, even in prison, Mandela had better strategic clarity than the white leaders. With time, Mandela was released and the process of healing began.

While Mandela was preaching peace to the blacks after his release, another charismatic black leader who was much younger, Chris Hani, was preaching a more radical message. Hani preferred the military solution and was also the head of the Communist Party. He had lots of followers among young blacks and, even though he was considered the second most popular black leader after Mandela himself, he posed a challenge to Mandela. In a sense, Chris Hani was to Mandela what Malcolm X was to Martin Luther King. Not long after Mandela was released, Chris Hani was assassinated by a far-right Polish immigrant. A white Afrikaner lady, Hani’s neighbour who watched the whole incident, alerted the police immediately and the assassin was promptly arrested. South Africa was tensed again and was on the verge of a violent eruption. Even though Mandela was not yet president, he addressed the nation in a very presidential manner that made all the difference at the time: “Tonight, I am reaching out to every single South African, black and white, from the very depths of my being. A white man, full of prejudice and hate, came to our country and committed a deed so foul that our whole nation now teeters on the brink of disaster. A white woman, of Afrikaner origin, risked her life so that we may know, and bring to justice, this assassin. The cold-blooded murder of Chris Hani has sent shock waves throughout the country and the world… Now is the time for South Africans to stand together against those who, from any quarter, wish to destroy what Chris Hani gave his life for – the freedom of all of us.” Even the eventual statement from the president didn’t beat this one. Mandela was always a leader.

When he eventually won the election and became president, he made sure that he became the leader that he had always promised to be. During his inauguration ceremony, he made sure that his jailers sat side by side with his family as a sign of practical reconciliation. As he walked to the venue, he stopped to speak to a white police colonel whom he spotted standing at attention. He told the colonel that, as from that day, there shall be no “us and them”. As from today, he told him, “we have all become one South Africa”. Mandela’s white bodyguard who narrated this story said the colonel started shedding tears. Mandela also instructed all his new cabinet ministers never to sack anyone who had been loyal to the old apartheid regime. Mandela knew there can be no future without genuine forgiveness.

He was also a very fair leader. Alhaji Shehu Malami, Nigeria’s first ambassador to South Africa, remembers the day Mandela invited him to his office to send a message to General Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s head of state. That was when the issue of which African country should get the permanent Security Council seat when the issue came up to be discussed. There were then debates on whether it would be Nigeria or South Africa. South Africa was of course the continent’s biggest economy. Mandela told Malami to tell Abacha that South Africa was not competing with Nigeria in the quest. Nigeria was by far the most qualified to get it, according to Mandela. That was the quality of leadership of Mandela. Nigeria was helping to free several African countries including South Africa with its resources and was the largest black nation; why shouldn’t it be Nigeria? Mandela said.

Another leadership quality Mandela showed was serving only one term. If Mandela wanted to change the constitution of his country to serve as many terms as he wanted, he could have succeeded. Instead, after his second year in office, he practically started grooming a successor. That was leadership. That immediately set a standard for his country and, when his predecessor wanted to start playing tricks, he was quickly thrown out by the system Mandela had established. And when he left power, he did not interfere with the running of the country as we see with several African leaders like former president Obasanjo who left power but didn’t want to leave the scene.

Yes, Mandela taught the world to forgive but he also taught the world leadership. He gave us enduring leadership lessons. He was the greatest man of his generation and that is clearly obvious from the way the world is celebrating him today.

Today, Nigeria urgently needs a Mandela. We need a Mandela who will bring the whole bickering constituents of the nation together and not one who by his actions and petty private talks divides the very people he is leading. Nigeria needs a leader like Mandela who will be a leader to all. We need a leader who will harness the resources of this country to move it to a first-world nation, as we have all it takes to get there.

In announcing the passing on of Mandela, President Zuma said, “South Africa has lost its greatest son”. He was only half-correct. It was Africa that lost its greatest son. He was also the founding father that Africa would have loved to have. The world will remember him forever.

EARSHOT

Nigeria To Be A Major Exporter Of Indian Hemp?

The chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Alhaji Ahmadu Giade, has raised the alarm that, I think, we should all take very seriously. He said Nigerian farmers are abandoning traditional crops and now prefer farming cannabis because it is much more profitable. He said last year more than 1,400 hectares of land was used to cultivate Indian hemp. Knowing Nigerians very well, I predict that if the federal government does not take a tough position on this issue, this may get to 10,000 hectares within a year. If the Jonathan government treats this matter with the levity with which it has treated every serious matter, it will be a serious disaster for Nigeria. This is one issue that the president needs to give a damn.

I will seriously advise a collaboration of the local, state and federal governments on this matter. And the time to start is today. Nigeria already has enough problems. This one should not be added to the bunch. We must never acquire the dubious reputation of being the largest cannabis producer in the world, which is what could happen if we do nothing.

Leadership

Dons at war: Fallout of Prof Uka’s Interview

There are many issues contending for attention this week. For one, last week’s Sideview entitled, “JONATHAN AS THE FIDDLER IN CHIEF?” stirred the hornet’s nest in many quarters, yielding so many responses that deserve a space.
But the biggest story, of course, is the passage of one of the world’s greatest personalities of the century, Nelson Mandela. If all things remain equal, it would be my desire next week to explore the spirit of Mandela.
But before then, one of the principles for which Mandela is revered is dogged integrity, especially in public office. If so, the article below by Dr. Peter J. Ezeh of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, who is challenging the disingenuous and less than honourable way Professor Emele Mba Uka became the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria, adding to himself a strange honorific for a Presbyterian, “Prelate and Moderator” and splitting the church in the process, seems a germane subject to explore on the eve of Mandela’s exit. Beware though, for Ezeh’s article published below, may set off a battle of the dons:      The beam in his eye.
By P-J Ezeh 
Sunday Sun’s interview with Professor Emele Mba Uka, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria (10/11/13), makes an interesting reading. It brought out in high relief the problem that some of us who are familiar with the Presbyterian tradition knew that this eminent clergyman and scholar would have any day he tried to comment on Nigeria’s national issues. After he came to his present office the way he did, Professor Uka lost the moral ground to comment on any social or political issue that has to do with institutional, in contradistinction to individual, strength. Unfortunately, excepting the biographical bits the rest of the interview under reference was all about how Nigeria as a polity grapples with its current institutional challenges. It was pathetic to read how the clergyman went from one point to another entangled at each turn by bundles of contradictions, vis-à-vis the situation that he has helped to create in his own church.
But it is only human to find it all too easy to counsel on how another person or group may correct their ills but not see how enmeshed in equivalent or worse things you yourself or your group is. It made me think of the words of that unbeatable wit, Mark Twain: “Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” And before him, it was Christ himself who had famously said, “Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Matthew 7: 3).  Beam as the vehicle in this metaphor is a long piece of timber.
Anyone who is familiar with the Presbyterian global tradition and the excellent record of that church in the history of modern Nigeria was worried about the trouble that Professor Uka’s mode of access to the headship and his controversial style of leadership might create in this ecclesiastical system. These would be in two basic ways. One is the loss of the seriousness that the voice of the Presbyterians had always been taken in Nigerian national life. If you can’t intervene by the example of your own conduct as a group, or as a person, no one considers you as credible. All you manage to say amounts to no more than hot air. Second, the Presbyterian Church in Nigeria will become a negative institutional crackpot in the family of the Presbyterians in the world. It becomes all the more disconcerting when the basis of this discrepancy lends itself to being construed as being motivated by a quest for power and grandioseness, the very opposite of the reputation that the Presbyterians have earned themselves everywhere in the world.
Now, let us look at the key points of the clergyman and professor in that interview. Apart from the remarks on his life story, other points were about his disappointment on how Nigeria was founded and how it is being run. For him, the amalgamation in 1914 was, to quote him, “a great error”.
As a citizen he is entitled to his view. There are also those who think that the problem with Nigeria is not that people of diverse ethnicities are grouped together as one nation-state. The entire Africa can be run as one nation-state very effectively as long as the institutions are treated seriously, much less Nigeria. It is not about size, or religion, or ethnicities, or whatnot. It is whether there is respect for the rules of live and let live, expressed in the institutions of the nation-state. Once institutions are vitiated even if you make a small rural community a nation-state it still won’t work. Recall that a survey of the world economies by the Michigan State University in 1963 rated Eastern Region of this self same Nigeria the fastest industrialising economy in the world. Why? Institutional strength, which we have now lost. Professor Anya O. Anya referred to this in 1993 during an immortal speech on an anniversary of Hope Waddell Institute, one of those tremendous contributions to modernization of Nigeria that the Presbyterians have made.
In a church, in a country, in a university; in anything else, once respect of rules is lost; once the principle of might is right is enthroned, nothing else can be firm, or orderly or make progress. Once you start splitting up along racial lines as in United States Jim Crow laws or Apartheid South Africa; ethnic lines as in present-day Nigeria; sectarian lines as in Northern Ireland of recent history, present Syria, or even the burgeoning Boko Haram experience in these parts; once you start giving undue space to a negative us/them dichotomy, every truly useful thing is lost. And the loser will include the stupid side that imagines itself as the top dog. It happens that in such an ill wind everything is always dangerously in a state of flux.
But the cases of the United States and South Africa have also demonstrated very clearly that once the people return to fairness and genuine rule of law, most social defects are healed. So, pace the likes of Professor Uka, the problem of Nigeria is not amalgamation.
It is the problem of the loss of the mental attitude of love of one’s neighbour which all great religions preach. Here the term, neighbour, is used in the meaning that Christ himself gave it in his parable on that topic (Luke 10: 29 – 37). Free will in terms of choosing a geo-political, or any other human group is important but it is not a sufficient condition. If it were, you will not be having the sort vicious politics that goes on in such micro political groupings as the village assemblies, university senates, local government councils, national assemblies, churches (including currently the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria), and so on.
If it were, such post-Independence federations like the Mali Federation (merging Senegal and former French Sudan), and Senegambia (merging Senegal and Gambia) that were formed by Africans themselves would not have collapsed. Mali Federation did not even last one full year.
So, the strength of a country is as good as the strength of its institutions, which in turn is as good as the attitude of the ruling class to those institutions. But more importantly for the purposes of the present discourse, the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria under Professor Uka’s leadership is mired in the same malaise of disrespect of its own institution, and so the erudite clergy man lacks the moral ground to preach to Nigeria on how to cure its own political illness, which is very, very comparable to that of his church.
He came to the leadership of the church through a process which a great number of his members allege was rigged. Indeed the protestation that greeted it (first of its kind in the nearly 170 years’ history of that church in Nigeria) has lead to a split. In consequence there are, scandalously, now two factions of the Presbyterian Church in Nigeria. As that goes on, Professor Uka takes up the title, Prelate and Moderator. This is another negative first.
Two things stand out from this. One, it suggests self-aggrandisement in that it flies in the face of everything that is known about the Presbyterian Church historically and everywhere else in the world and previously at any other time here in Nigeria. Presbyterianism is the opposite of Episcopalism.
The first is a system that is rooted in the position of the French church reformer, John Calvin, borrowed by his pupil, John Knox, who took it to his native Scotland and eventually spread it wider in the world. Presbyterianism is the humble position that church government is in hands of elders, clergy and laity. The person who is called the Moderator at the national hierarchy of the church is therefore a mere primus inter pares; first among equals. Episcopalism is a system of church government whereby the Bishops or the Prelates are in charge and hold sway over the rest of their members. This is the one that is now accepted by Professor Uka.
This seems wrong on three grounds: Episcopalism and Presbyterianism are contradictory in terms; you cannot be both Presbyterian and Episcopal at the same time. Second, no other Presbyterian Church anywhere in the world is in a similar position. Third, there seems to be no sustainable justification for this in the Nigerian case, except perhaps in the apparent prestige of the title, Prelate, itself, which contradicts the humility with which Presbyterianism was founded and has carried on with in all other places in the world, as well as in Nigeria, before Professor Uka’s tenure.
Here again Professor Uka is on a precarious moral ground when it comes to advising on Nigeria’s secular politics. When he said during the interview under reference, “Worldliness is creeping into the church”, I am one of those who agree completely with him. But then that is the irony. If the world and the church are now in the same boat, then the church should first of all remove the beam in its eye before it can advise on the mote in the eye of the world. Professor Uka should go and put in order his own organisation that is much less complex before coming to advise us Nigerians.
Dr Ezeh teaches anthropology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and is the Coordinator, Social Sciences Unit, School of General Studies of the same University,  HYPERLINK “mailto:pitjazi@yahoo.com” pitjazi@yahoo.com, Tel: 08052377132

TheSun

No to ‘Supplementary Mandate’!

The Verdict By Olusegun Adeniyi; olusegun.adeniyi@thisdaylive.com

It would appear as if nothing in our country is ever straightforward. To secure admission to schools at virtually all levels, examinations are usually conducted. But gaining entrance into such schools does not necessarily depend on the scores of candidates because there is also the ubiquitous “supplementary admission” list which often accounts for all manner of under-the-table deals. Job placements in either the private or public sector are also not complete until you wait for the “supplementary employment” list. And the only job some Northern governors do now is to fund and preside over “supplementary marriages”. Of course with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), winners hardly emerge from elections until they have gone through the rigours of “supplementary polls”!

Yet, if anyone considers the foregoing as absurd, Nigerians are now being told by no other than Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu that we should expect a “Supplementary Mandate” of two years for the current office holders who were elected in 2011 to serve a four-year mandate. The import of that proposal is that the 2015 general elections that have taken the eyes of our public officials from governance--such that the ruling party has even contrived to create a “supplementary PDP”--may not hold after-all.

Apparently flying a kite at a dinner with select reporters in Lagos, Ekweremadu said the National Assembly might consider extending the tenure of the president and governors which ordinarily should expire in 2015, for another two years, as part of the initiatives aimed at resolving the threat that the coming general elections could pose. By his logic, the additional two years would simply allow the present actors to be eased out of office without any tension.

“So I believe that if the players in the politics or stakeholders are able to come together one way to deal with the situation, it could be a win-win situation for everybody. I believe that the way it could work now is that people have been elected for four years, so let everybody complete the four years tenure for which they were elected. And then, through the doctrine of necessity and some sort of jurisprudential approach, do some kind of transition of two years in which case those present occupiers like the president and state governors who are finishing their tenures, will do another two years that would end in 2017...You can see that those fighting the president have hinged their complaints on the fact that if the president gets his second term by the time they are gone, he would start to chase them. So if we all agree, that is a way to solve the problem, after two years, both the president and other governors will exit. I believe that the fear would not be there and there would not be much pressure on the polity,” Ekweremadu said.

I have never heard anything more self-serving and asinine than this proposition which feelers suggest might actually be a well-oiled campaign that is antithetical to the good of our country. Pray, how does adding two more years to the mandate of the current office holders address the myriad of problems confronting the nation? Even at that, what is the guarantee that the demon the idea seeks to run away from will not still be waiting by 2017? How should the fear of political persecution by some individuals be a basis for subverting the constitution under which they were elected into office? What can be more cynical than changing the rules in the middle of a game?

Unfortunately, at about the same time that Ekweremadu was propounding his dinner table theory on tenure elongation in Lagos, some Boko Haram insurgents were attacking an airforce base, an army barrack and a divisional police headquarters in Maiduguri, Borno State. Students of our public universities have also been marooned at home now for six months and may effectively have lost one academic session to the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Yet Ekweremadu and fellow travellers are only concerned about making political permutations on how to stay in power beyond their mandates.

It is indeed noteworthy that the idea being touted is not even original. It was also initially mooted during the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency as a prelude to the failed third term attempt. The excuse then also was that the 2007 elections could lead to a national implosion. Incidentally, it was the deputy senate president at that time, the then all-powerful Ibrahim Nasir Mantu, who supervised that ill-fated project. So in a way, the current deputy senate president is merely reading from the same script he inherited from his predecessor. But if history were any guide, the cold calculations that failed under Mantu will also fail under Ekweremadu.

However, what is more worrying is that a situation in which successive political office holders would want to change the laws and rules that govern political transition for selfish reasons is an open invitation to anarchy.  Against the background that a certain penchant for lawlessness and opportunism underlies the crises that characterize our political culture, the toxic suggestion by Ekweremadu for a collective tenure elongation by major political office holders beyond 2015 is a clear indication that most of our political leaders have become hostages to power and its corruption. What a shame!

Blame Not The Envelopes

Righ of Reply

Ben Akabueze

Dear Segun,

Your column last week titled “The Illusion of Budget Performance” aptly captured one of the flaws in the way budgetary performance is usually reported in our country. I agree with you that there is often an undue focus on expending the budgetary provisions without commensurate emphasis on the quality of the expenditures in terms of both priorities and value-for-money. While we cannot avoid expressing budgetary performance in percentages, performance measurement must go beyond that to also include Impact Assessment in terms of the budget’s actual outputs and outcomes vis-a-vis set targets. I know this can be done based on our practice in Lagos State.
However, I part ways with you in your attribution of the deficiencies in budgetary performance measurement to the “envelope system”. The problem may be with the way the system is practised, and not with the system per se. The “envelope system” is not inconsistent with establishing budget priorities. For instance, in Lagos State, our practice of the “envelope system” actually entails a two-tier establishment of priorities, first at the level of individual Ministries, Departments & Agencies (MDAs) and secondly at the overall state level. Practically speaking, how much ends up in each MDA’s envelope depends on how it fares in this hierarchy of priorities. If our priorities change unexpectedly in the course of the fiscal year, we re-cast the budget accordingly.

I hope that your interest in how we can make budgets work for the generality of Nigerians will be sustained beyond your last article. You can count on my support and continuing engagement in any such effort. The reality is that the budget process currently does not generally serve our people across the tiers of government. Why is the perennially late approval and low budget performance of the Federal Government not a matter of sufficient concern to Nigerians? How many state governments currently routinely measure and report their budget performance? How many local government areas even seriously prepare annual budgets at all? The questions to be asked abound.

•Akabueze is the Lagos State Commissioner for Economic Development

ThisDay

APC Crisis: Nyako, Marwa, Stakeholders to Meet in Abuja Tomorrow

Gov Murtala Nyako

Daji Sani
A former governorship aspirant of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in Adamawa State, Brigadier General Buba Marwa (rtd), has disclosed that the national leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has invited the state Governor, Murtala Nyako and some party’s stakeholders for a meeting in Abuja, to address some of the issues bedevilling the progress of the party in the state.

Marwa, while speaking yesterday at a press conference he convened in Yola, told journalists that the purpose of the press conference was to douse tension among the party's supporters, who have vowed to leave APC because of the defection of Nyako and his supporters into the party.

He said according to their supporters, Nyako’s coming to highjack the political structures of party might not be in their interest if they remain in APC, hence their resolve to move to another party that would accommodate their interest.

Marwa explained that Nyako’s defection into the party was done without consultations from the party’s stakeholders in the state, stressing that even though if the governor was sacrosanct to the party, the method of his defection to the party was wrong.

“However, we also want to make it clear that Nyako advisers did not advise him well as to the method of his entry into APC because when you enter a new place that was already occupied, it is expected of you to knock at the door first and introduce yourself to the occupants unfortunately Nyako and supporters undermine the occupants and went straight into the bedroom without permission by calling a meeting of the APC at the grassroots,” he said.

He claimed that Nyako and his supporters ought to have met with the party’s stakeholders in the state, adding that it was not too late for an amendment to be made.
Marwa said himself, a governorship aspirant on the platform of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Mr. Markus Gundiri, and Nyako, who joined the party recently alongside some APC stakeholders in the state were invited by the national leadership of party headed by Chief Bisi Akande, to address some false insinuations that the party structures have been handed over to Nyako and his men.

“That is why the national leadership of the APC has called for a meeting between Nyako and us the stakeholders of the legacies parties that made up the APC because a lot of worries and fears from our members that the national leadership has given the soul the party to the governor, which is not true that is we ceasing the opportunity to inform them that insinuations are not true,” he said.

ThisDay

APC to‘re-strategise’ for 2015 general elections

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Mr. Babalola Fabunmi, on Tuesday expressed the determination of the party to put its house in order ahead of the 2015 general elections.
Fabunmi, who said this in a chat with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lokoja, said the measure was necessary to arrest the crisis rocking the leadership of the state chapter of the party.
Fabunmi said the national secretariat of the party had rescheduled its congress for December 12.
He called for unity among party members in the state, saying that unity was all they needed to succeed.
Fabunmi expressed optimism that if the congress was successful, the next election would be a huge success.
The chieftain commended the leadership of the party for its prompt response in resolving the crisis that rocked the party recently.

Iyayi's Death: Autopsy Shows No Bullets – Medical Source

Festus Iyayi 

 

By Saharareporters, New York

A medical exam conducted to unravel the cause of death of Festus Iyayi showed no evidence of bullets, a source familiar with the autopsy has informed SaharaReporters. Mr. Iyayi, a professor of business management at the University of Benin who was also a well known novelist and academic activist, he died November 12 in an automobile accident near Lokoja. Mr. Iyayi was on his way to attend a meeting of the Academic Staff Union of Universities when the vehicle in which he was traveling was hit by a car in the convoy of Governor Idris Wada of Kogi State.
Our source said that a team of pathologists who included experts and witnesses from ASUU, medical doctors at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital and the Nigerian government carried out an autopsy and unanimously determined that Mr. Iyayi was not shot.
With the official report of the autopsy still being put together, our source disclosed that the participants in the autopsy confirmed the presence of holes in Mr. Iyayi's body, even though they could not trace the piercings to any bullets. He added that medical examiners recovered no pellets from the late Professor's body.
The autopsy was reportedly done about a week before the commencement of Mr. Iyayi's funeral. The late academic’s funeral ended yesterday with a “thanksgiving Mass at Saint Mathew’s Catholic Church in Ugbegun, Edo State. Mr. Iyayi's remains were buried in the same town on Saturday.
A renowned Nigerian writer and activist, Mr. Iyayi was a former national leader of ASUU. He also served as a former President of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR).
SaharaReporters disclosed that Mr. Iyayi was killed in a crash involving the notoriously reckless convoy of Kogi State Governor, Mr. Wada. Mr. Iyayi was on his way to Kano to attend a council meeting of ASUU executives to discuss the next step in a long-running strike by lecturers that has grounded Nigeria’s public universities and mired the country’s education in a crisis.
 However, members of the late Professor Iyayi's family and activists close to him said they have not been informed of the final results of the autopsy. His son, Omole,  told Saharareporters earlier today that the family had not received any official autopsy reports from doctors in Benin. He said they were therefore surprised at the conclusions.

Sadly, Jonathan lost the Mandela momentum

by Azuka Onwuka

Azuka Onwuka
 

It was sad seeing the United Kingdom and the United States – two countries which supported the vicious apartheid regime of South Africa and the incarceration of Dr. Nelson Mandela – in the limelight when Mandela died last week, while Nigeria, which led the African onslaught against apartheid, played the second fiddle.

Shortly after President Jacob Zuma of South Africa broke the news of Mandela’s death in the night of Thursday, December 5, President Barack Obama of the US and Prime Minister David Cameron of the UK addressed the media. The US, France and other countries announced that flags would be flown at half-mast. Conversely, our country issued a statement signed by Dr. Reuben Abati, the media aide to President Goodluck Jonathan.  Because ours was a statement signed by Abati while those from the US and UK were speeches read by their chief executives, naturally our TV and radio stations, while broadcasting the news of Mandela’s death the next day, gave priority to Obama and Cameron.

To further buttress our unpreparedness, an announcement came from the Presidency later in the day declaring three days of national mourning for Mandela with flags flying at half mast. It looked like an afterthought done because others had done so. Rather than setting the pace as the acclaimed Giant of Africa on such an African matter, we allowed others to take the glory and momentum.

Many excuses would be given for this. One would be that the President was not in the country when Mandela died. The second would be that Mandela died at night, while it was still day in the United States, which gave them a head start. But these are what they are: Excuses. And excuses do not rate highly among those who are strategy-driven.

Through his illness, Mandela warned the whole world for many months about his imminent departure. Even a few days before he passed on, it was announced that he had relapsed and could not recognise people anymore. That was his final warning.

Therefore, the Presidency had enough time to prepare for Mandela’s departure: in terms of what to say or do whenever he died. Even though the President was in Europe when Mandela died, nothing stopped him from addressing the Nigerian media that travelled with him and sending the clips to Reuters, AFP, NAN, NTA, etc, for broadcast.

Such a live broadcast would have given Jonathan the opportunity to subtly chip in the role Nigeria played in the life of Mandela and the fight against apartheid. For example, many of our people do not know that when the apartheid regime was looking for Mandela to jail him in the early 1960s, that he ran to Nigeria and Nigeria’s President, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, handed him over to Chief Mbazulike Amaechi – a parliamentarian then – to give him refuge for six months before he eventually decided to go back, and was arrested in August 1962, tried and jailed.

Many of our people do not know that during the Murtala Muhammed/Olusegun Obasanjo regime that a contributory fund was set up for students, civil servants and other Nigerians to donate money to support South Africans and the fight against apartheid. Nigeria was like a home to many African National Congress leaders and South African students. Many ANC leaders had access to the Nigerian passports to enable them to travel round the world because the apartheid regime seized their passports.

Furthermore, Nigeria antagonised many of the countries that supported the apartheid regime, especially Britain. For example, Nigeria privatised British companies in Nigeria, notably the Britain Petroleum, which it converted to National Oil. Nigeria boycotted some international meets, especially the Commonwealth Games. All these measures were meant to pressurise the UK to set South Africa free.

Mandela was very appreciative of Nigeria’s contributions to the fight against apartheid. For example, Nigeria was one of the first countries he visited after his release from prison after 27 years in February 1990. Not only that, when Nigeria and South Africa had a match to play for the 1994 World Cup qualification, Mandela was asked which country he would prefer to win. He said South Africa was his country, while Nigeria was like a country to him. So, he did not know the country he preferred to win. Nigeria eventually won that match and qualified for its first World Cup. Mandela was to reciprocate by rallying Africa and the Commonwealth to sanction the dictatorship of Gen. Sani Abacha after the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in November 1995.

Unfortunately, we have allowed our people to be taught history by the CNN, the BBC and other Western media. And the Western media would always tell every story from their perspectives, and not ours. Our people know how George Washington fought the British for America’s independence but don’t know how Azikiwe fought the British for Nigeria’s independence. We know how Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa lived for the downtrodden of India but do not know how Tai Solarin, Mallam Aminu Kano or Chief Gani Fawehinmi lived and fought for the downtrodden, or the Talakawas, of Nigeria.

In Christianity, for example, Christ taught that pure charity is when you give with your right hand without your left hand knowing. But in relations between a nation and other nations, it is not counted as vain or arrogant for a nation to draw attention to its contributions to any country or cause. What it does is that it guides the nationals of the benefitting country whenever they are taking any action concerning the other nation. For example, if young South Africans know the contributions of Nigeria to their nation’s freedom, whenever any xenophobic statement or sentiments are expressed by any of them concerning Nigerians, there would be some voices among them that would sue for caution, pointing out that Nigeria was very supportive during their time of need, and now that Nigeria is experiencing its own economic apartheid, caused by years of military-cum-civilian misrule and corruption, it would not be fair for South Africans to be hard on Nigerians living in South Africa.

Before his death, Mandela was the greatest living human being on earth. That cannot be diminished by envy or anything. In 2009, the United Nations General Assembly gave him the rare honour of declaring his birthday (July 18) Nelson Mandela International Day. His 27-year incarceration was the pedestal to his fame, but his pursuit of love and forgiveness, instead of hate and revenge against those who oppressed and killed his people, made him stand taller than any of his contemporaries. The Western world had taken advantage of his fame, naming monuments after him and erecting statues in his honour even before his death. What have we done to claim Mandela as our own, being the biggest Black nation in the world? What can we name after him even before his burial on December 15? If we knew how to play our cards well, we could have secured an agreement with the South African Government to have his body lie in state in Nigeria before burial or have Nigeria make a special presentation at his burial. Strategic planning is not an accident.

Mandela is indescribable and irreplaceable. For me, he is the greatest human being of all time. When he was ill, I had written a eulogy on this page for him on June 18, entitled “What is the fuss over Mandela’s health?” Since his passing, I have been short of words about what more to say about him. But I feel sad seeing our leaders and common people eulogising him, even when we continue to spread bitterness, hate and vengeance among our compatriots, causing bloodshed at the least misunderstanding, promoting corruption in our little spheres of authority, always thinking about ourselves and family first in all our dealings, and seeking power and clinging to it as if our life depended on it. Again, that he never got medical treatment abroad was also part of the South African pride. In our case, even sprains and headaches make our leaders seek treatment abroad because of our poor state of health care. We no longer feel embarrassed when our leaders and private individuals die abroad. It is telling enough that as he was dying in his South African home, the remains of Chief Solomon Lar were being brought from the US where he died recently.

Mandela has taught us that the life that is celebrated is a life of integrity, sacrifice and service to others. Anyone who lives like that never really dies.

Punch