To the Nigerian almost hopelessly resigned to the notion that ours is a irretrievably corrupt country, the news that a 72 year old man in India (Anna Hazare) has choosen the odd method of a hunger strike is, to say the least, baffling.
The destructive effects of corruption, particularly on the most vulnerable sections of society has been documented yet how does it get resolved by going on a hunder strike? But let us give some context here...Mr. Hazare's grudge is that the Indian Parliament is not interested in enacting a tougher version of anti-corruption law which he favours. To force their hand therefore, he proceeds on a hunger strike. Aside from the fact that his opposition instigated massive street protests by ordinary Indians disgrunted at the corruption of their leaders...eventually, the Indian government and Parliament gave in and agreed to enact the controversial law.
But what is it with a hunger strike? A Nigerian will wonder how a refusal to eat can be a form of protest. My view is that Mr. Hazare's symbolic protest taps into and challenges a moral reservoir within Indian society. Let us recall that Indian independence was coloured by the moral compass defined by Mahatma Gandhi and hunger strikes as a symbolic means of protest were pioneered by him. A nearly saintly figure for many, nobody wanted to be the cause of a simple old's man death. To situate it better, imagine Nelson Mandela protesting against a policy of the South African government by going on hunger strike. Given his eminent moral stature, that policy is likely to be immediately reversed!
To be sure, in a society without a moral reservoir like Nigeria...Mr. Hazare's (or an imaginary Mandela) hunger strike would amount to nothing. In a country decidedly without a moral figure or compass, corruption rages on relentlessly. There is a sense of moral outrage by the Indian public against corruption which Mr. Hazare could count on...where is ours in Nigeria?
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The House Obasanjo built
The House Obasanjo built
___________________
“D reasons of our suffer, he don dey show im face to us...No be Obasanjo put im old paddy paddy friends for dia, d young politicians he come shuffle for one side” – Fela
As the PDP presidential primaries between General Olusegun Obasanjo (Obj) and Dr. Alex Ekwueme heated up in late 1998, a remarkable newspaper advert by the former against the latter was to the effect that the rot started in 1979. The rot in question being the progressive decay on all fronts of national life to which Nigeria, sadly, appears to have being longed wedded and Obj’s lofty pledge was to reverse that rot. The mention of 1979 is, of course, in reference to the year in which Obj as head of the then Federal Military Government handed over to the civilian government in which Dr. Ekwueme was the Vice-President. That 1979 civilian government, presided over by Shehu Shagari is permanently etched in the memory of Nigerians for its spectacular corruption and incompetence; in 1983, it was overthrown and replaced by the dour duo of Generals Buhari and Idiagbon. Democratic government was not enthroned again until May 1999 with the election of the same Obj. But what does this all have to do with Obj or the metaphorical house he built? In a moment.
If Fortune were conceived as a fair maiden, it is fair to state that she has been love struck and unfairly partisan to Obj. On more than one occasion, he has been the recipient of her benevolence. In a reprise of a James Bond movie, he dramatically escaped with his life as a UN peace keeper (allegedly in a car boot) in the Congo in 1960. He was strategically positioned too to receive the Biafran instrument of surrender in 1970. And in a move rivaling a Hollywood action script, he again escaped the bullets of the putsch that killed General Murtala Muhammed and whom he would succeed as Head of State in February 1976. His retirement to Otta farm in 1979 did not mark his decline – rather, heralded his arrival on the shore of international acclaim. Huge feathers to his cap – African Leadership Forum and more importantly, the Commonwealth’s Eminent Persons Group – which played a significant international role in ending Apartheid in South Africa. Not least of all was his 1988 nomination by Nigeria as a candidate for the position of the UN Secretary General. The upswing of his profile was scarred by his imprisonment by Abacha. He would, as we all know, be later released and secure election as president. Can anyone be luckier in Nigeria? Yet the deep grouse of this writer is not with the obviously partisan alignment of the stars in his favour, rather it is with the judgment he has historically chosen to exercise as a result thereof. As Cassius told Brutus “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings”. Underlings, I might add, to our illusions of grandeur, vanity and hubris.
It cannot be seriously disputed that Alhaji Shagari was not Obj’s anointed candidate for the 1979 presidential election. The latter’s self-indulgent comments about other candidates in that election in his 1990 autobiography, Not My Will, clearly illustrates where his sympathy lay. More telling for our present purpose is that Alhaji Shagari’s well known preference was not to be president in 1979. Indeed, if experience and a sound idea of how to deploy the levers of government were the key determinants, Alhaji Shagari could certainly not have won in 1979…the year of the magical 12 2/3 of 19 States, of a suspect Supreme Court decision in the case of Awolowo v. Shagari. An apocryphal statement attributed to Obj in 1979 was to the effect that ‘an election is not always won by the best candidate’. The candidate that won superintended the subsequent four years, 1979 to 1983, in a manner that was, at best, pestilential for Nigeria.
The locusts spawned by that era continued to ravage the vital indices of national life in Nigeria and thus secured it’s near ruin under successive military regimes till 1999 when democracy was restored. Any hope that the lessons that precipitated the demise of the inglorious Second Republic had been learnt was peremptorily banished by the charade that marred the 2003 elections. Looking back, the grave irregularities of 2003 appear like innocent indiscretions now when compared with the horror of the 2007 elections. Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria had mutated hideously, with all its historical liabilities, to become the 2007 PDP of Obj. The party for whom to win that election was a ‘do or die matter’. The party that retiring Justice Oguntade of the Supreme Court recently stated that, left to him, he would have tried for contempt of Court. Aligned with the government of Obj, this was the same party that unleashed the EFCC on its own members who did not toe the party’s official line, particularly those of them who harboured the curious idea that the PDP presidential primary was a matter of merit.
With the collapse of the Third Term project of Obj and to perpetuate its grip on federal power, the anointed presidential candidate by Obj (and who else) for the 2007 election was Umaru Yar’Adua. Naturally, he won, even though he barely campaigned for the election. But the larger issue was that for the second time, the country was saddled with an unintentioned and mediocre leader. A leader who, from the onset, was plainly overawed by presidential office. His spin doctors used up acres of space to convince us that his snail paced and deliberative style were in fact, as yet, unnoticed signs of a genius carefully studying the problems before rolling out his basket of solutions. Now we know better. The signs were ominous from the onset for in a decent country, for someone who, as it has just emerged, was away abroad for six months (while being an incumbent Governor) for kidney treatment, the rigours of presidential office was always going to be an impossible job. Presumably too, then, as with now, his Deputy Governor was not formally invested to act as the Governor during that period of his principal’s absence. So, nothing new therefore in ignoring constitutional prescriptions for a second time. Early into 2010 therefore and as tenants in the House that Obasanjo built, it requires no Solomonic wisdom to discern why for Nigeria, there is a sense of drift and widespread despair. Or why our ally would easily list us, in the aftermath of the Muttallab affair, as a country of interest as regards terrorism. In alarm, a former US ambassador to Nigeria, Princeton Lyman, recently warned of our gradual sliding into global irrelevance, notwithstanding our incoherent and shameless blustering to the contrary. In marketing both Shagari and Yar’Adua as fit to rule, so much was made about their advertised personal integrity in contradistinction to that of their opponents at the time (with the insights provided by General Obasanjo, we may add intellectual capacity and broad-mindedness). Both men shared a simple and uncomplicated world view. Yet, this naiveté was a mask for their personal weakness as much as a perfect cover for the motley crowd of ignoble characters that they assembled around them to eat Nigeria to ruination.
Listerning to Obj as he shamelessly and disingenously sought to exonerate himself from the albatross that the president’s health has become was always bound to elicit shocked incredulity and disdain for the revisionist that the former president has become. Judging by the tenor of respondents so far, Obj appears to have convinced only himself as to his noble role in imposing Yar’Adua on us. Anyone who has interacted with a kidney patient, as I have, knows that even those who have had a transplant are never the same again. Kidney problems are usually allied to an even more grave bodily problem that impairs the full working of the body. We may never know the medical experts, if any, that Obj spoke to and whose opinion convinced him that all was well with Yar’Adua in 2007. But could Obj have reasonably expected Yar’Adua declaring him unfit to contest in 2007? Yet but for that inexplicable dark spot of the human mind, should Yar’Adua not have voiced his own limitations for the office about to be imposed on him in 2007? The refusal, inability or unwillingness of Yar’Adua to constitutionally transmit presidential powers to his Vice has eased Nigeria into an avoidable constitutional crisis. Regrettably, this is a crisis that advances no principle; at best, it is the latest in the tragic narrative of the Nigerian story. If anything, its total ramifications are still so ill-digested, far-reaching and malignant as to compel a sober retreat by all those who committed us or are committed to this road. Everything is compromised: from our half attempts for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council to the seriousness with which Nigeria is viewed as a viable foreign investment destination. Was the foisting of Yar’Adua by Obj intended as a spiteful rebuke for the North’s alleged lack of support to his failed third term project? If true, the riposte from him was probably to the effect that ‘if you won’t support me for a third term, then I will anoint the most unfit of you [again] as president’.
One of the abundant truths of this episode is that, whether or not he fully recuperates, Yar’Adua has been so politically diminished him as to rob him of any honest chance of a re-election in a free and fair poll in 2011. But beyond the doomed and selfish permutations that prompted the foisting of this President on us; just for how long will the likes of Obasanjo be allowed to continue imposing their vision of the future on us? Sadly, the names of contenders allegedly jostling to fill the offices of the Vice-Presidential office now and the presidency in 2011 merely confirm that Nigeria’s leader is yet to emerge anytime soon. The names of these jostling contenders all have their own dubious sponsors lined up behind them; all wanting to dethrone Obj as the sole builder of future Houses for the rest of us. Obj has, on two historic occasions, spectacularly failed to build a House that can last and that is our collective failure and burden; not his or anyone envious of him anymore. And as for his statement invoking God to punish him if he knowingly imposed an invalid on us...no guesses for what my affirmatory retort to that is.
___________________
“D reasons of our suffer, he don dey show im face to us...No be Obasanjo put im old paddy paddy friends for dia, d young politicians he come shuffle for one side” – Fela
As the PDP presidential primaries between General Olusegun Obasanjo (Obj) and Dr. Alex Ekwueme heated up in late 1998, a remarkable newspaper advert by the former against the latter was to the effect that the rot started in 1979. The rot in question being the progressive decay on all fronts of national life to which Nigeria, sadly, appears to have being longed wedded and Obj’s lofty pledge was to reverse that rot. The mention of 1979 is, of course, in reference to the year in which Obj as head of the then Federal Military Government handed over to the civilian government in which Dr. Ekwueme was the Vice-President. That 1979 civilian government, presided over by Shehu Shagari is permanently etched in the memory of Nigerians for its spectacular corruption and incompetence; in 1983, it was overthrown and replaced by the dour duo of Generals Buhari and Idiagbon. Democratic government was not enthroned again until May 1999 with the election of the same Obj. But what does this all have to do with Obj or the metaphorical house he built? In a moment.
If Fortune were conceived as a fair maiden, it is fair to state that she has been love struck and unfairly partisan to Obj. On more than one occasion, he has been the recipient of her benevolence. In a reprise of a James Bond movie, he dramatically escaped with his life as a UN peace keeper (allegedly in a car boot) in the Congo in 1960. He was strategically positioned too to receive the Biafran instrument of surrender in 1970. And in a move rivaling a Hollywood action script, he again escaped the bullets of the putsch that killed General Murtala Muhammed and whom he would succeed as Head of State in February 1976. His retirement to Otta farm in 1979 did not mark his decline – rather, heralded his arrival on the shore of international acclaim. Huge feathers to his cap – African Leadership Forum and more importantly, the Commonwealth’s Eminent Persons Group – which played a significant international role in ending Apartheid in South Africa. Not least of all was his 1988 nomination by Nigeria as a candidate for the position of the UN Secretary General. The upswing of his profile was scarred by his imprisonment by Abacha. He would, as we all know, be later released and secure election as president. Can anyone be luckier in Nigeria? Yet the deep grouse of this writer is not with the obviously partisan alignment of the stars in his favour, rather it is with the judgment he has historically chosen to exercise as a result thereof. As Cassius told Brutus “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings”. Underlings, I might add, to our illusions of grandeur, vanity and hubris.
It cannot be seriously disputed that Alhaji Shagari was not Obj’s anointed candidate for the 1979 presidential election. The latter’s self-indulgent comments about other candidates in that election in his 1990 autobiography, Not My Will, clearly illustrates where his sympathy lay. More telling for our present purpose is that Alhaji Shagari’s well known preference was not to be president in 1979. Indeed, if experience and a sound idea of how to deploy the levers of government were the key determinants, Alhaji Shagari could certainly not have won in 1979…the year of the magical 12 2/3 of 19 States, of a suspect Supreme Court decision in the case of Awolowo v. Shagari. An apocryphal statement attributed to Obj in 1979 was to the effect that ‘an election is not always won by the best candidate’. The candidate that won superintended the subsequent four years, 1979 to 1983, in a manner that was, at best, pestilential for Nigeria.
The locusts spawned by that era continued to ravage the vital indices of national life in Nigeria and thus secured it’s near ruin under successive military regimes till 1999 when democracy was restored. Any hope that the lessons that precipitated the demise of the inglorious Second Republic had been learnt was peremptorily banished by the charade that marred the 2003 elections. Looking back, the grave irregularities of 2003 appear like innocent indiscretions now when compared with the horror of the 2007 elections. Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria had mutated hideously, with all its historical liabilities, to become the 2007 PDP of Obj. The party for whom to win that election was a ‘do or die matter’. The party that retiring Justice Oguntade of the Supreme Court recently stated that, left to him, he would have tried for contempt of Court. Aligned with the government of Obj, this was the same party that unleashed the EFCC on its own members who did not toe the party’s official line, particularly those of them who harboured the curious idea that the PDP presidential primary was a matter of merit.
With the collapse of the Third Term project of Obj and to perpetuate its grip on federal power, the anointed presidential candidate by Obj (and who else) for the 2007 election was Umaru Yar’Adua. Naturally, he won, even though he barely campaigned for the election. But the larger issue was that for the second time, the country was saddled with an unintentioned and mediocre leader. A leader who, from the onset, was plainly overawed by presidential office. His spin doctors used up acres of space to convince us that his snail paced and deliberative style were in fact, as yet, unnoticed signs of a genius carefully studying the problems before rolling out his basket of solutions. Now we know better. The signs were ominous from the onset for in a decent country, for someone who, as it has just emerged, was away abroad for six months (while being an incumbent Governor) for kidney treatment, the rigours of presidential office was always going to be an impossible job. Presumably too, then, as with now, his Deputy Governor was not formally invested to act as the Governor during that period of his principal’s absence. So, nothing new therefore in ignoring constitutional prescriptions for a second time. Early into 2010 therefore and as tenants in the House that Obasanjo built, it requires no Solomonic wisdom to discern why for Nigeria, there is a sense of drift and widespread despair. Or why our ally would easily list us, in the aftermath of the Muttallab affair, as a country of interest as regards terrorism. In alarm, a former US ambassador to Nigeria, Princeton Lyman, recently warned of our gradual sliding into global irrelevance, notwithstanding our incoherent and shameless blustering to the contrary. In marketing both Shagari and Yar’Adua as fit to rule, so much was made about their advertised personal integrity in contradistinction to that of their opponents at the time (with the insights provided by General Obasanjo, we may add intellectual capacity and broad-mindedness). Both men shared a simple and uncomplicated world view. Yet, this naiveté was a mask for their personal weakness as much as a perfect cover for the motley crowd of ignoble characters that they assembled around them to eat Nigeria to ruination.
Listerning to Obj as he shamelessly and disingenously sought to exonerate himself from the albatross that the president’s health has become was always bound to elicit shocked incredulity and disdain for the revisionist that the former president has become. Judging by the tenor of respondents so far, Obj appears to have convinced only himself as to his noble role in imposing Yar’Adua on us. Anyone who has interacted with a kidney patient, as I have, knows that even those who have had a transplant are never the same again. Kidney problems are usually allied to an even more grave bodily problem that impairs the full working of the body. We may never know the medical experts, if any, that Obj spoke to and whose opinion convinced him that all was well with Yar’Adua in 2007. But could Obj have reasonably expected Yar’Adua declaring him unfit to contest in 2007? Yet but for that inexplicable dark spot of the human mind, should Yar’Adua not have voiced his own limitations for the office about to be imposed on him in 2007? The refusal, inability or unwillingness of Yar’Adua to constitutionally transmit presidential powers to his Vice has eased Nigeria into an avoidable constitutional crisis. Regrettably, this is a crisis that advances no principle; at best, it is the latest in the tragic narrative of the Nigerian story. If anything, its total ramifications are still so ill-digested, far-reaching and malignant as to compel a sober retreat by all those who committed us or are committed to this road. Everything is compromised: from our half attempts for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council to the seriousness with which Nigeria is viewed as a viable foreign investment destination. Was the foisting of Yar’Adua by Obj intended as a spiteful rebuke for the North’s alleged lack of support to his failed third term project? If true, the riposte from him was probably to the effect that ‘if you won’t support me for a third term, then I will anoint the most unfit of you [again] as president’.
One of the abundant truths of this episode is that, whether or not he fully recuperates, Yar’Adua has been so politically diminished him as to rob him of any honest chance of a re-election in a free and fair poll in 2011. But beyond the doomed and selfish permutations that prompted the foisting of this President on us; just for how long will the likes of Obasanjo be allowed to continue imposing their vision of the future on us? Sadly, the names of contenders allegedly jostling to fill the offices of the Vice-Presidential office now and the presidency in 2011 merely confirm that Nigeria’s leader is yet to emerge anytime soon. The names of these jostling contenders all have their own dubious sponsors lined up behind them; all wanting to dethrone Obj as the sole builder of future Houses for the rest of us. Obj has, on two historic occasions, spectacularly failed to build a House that can last and that is our collective failure and burden; not his or anyone envious of him anymore. And as for his statement invoking God to punish him if he knowingly imposed an invalid on us...no guesses for what my affirmatory retort to that is.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
IDEAS RULE THE WORLD
_____________________________
_____________________________
“Everything that can be invented has been invented” – Charles H. Duell,
Commissioner for US Patent and Trademark Office, 1899.
In retrospect, sitting under an apple tree would ordinarily not qualify as the most remarkable thing to do as a preface to giving birth to modern Physics. Well, not if your name is Isaac Newton and instead of promptly eating a fallen apple, as I daresay many would have, he proceeded to theorise on the seemingly mundane question - what made the apple fall? Several centuries later, the answer to that question has come to lie at the heart of some of the more spectacular achievements recorded by science and what it is yet to unfurl.
As centuries go, the 20th typifies so much of the sovereignty of ideas. Ideas represent a template for change; quite often they portend a revolt. Henry Ford brought to life the possibility of everyone owning the then new cranky device known as a car. Some ideas are matchless in their simplicity; the ubiquitous paper clip and Post-it pad arose as means to hold and flag documents respectively. Yet ideas can equally be profound enough to lay the foundation of a nation: the United States was founded on philosophical ideas. At other times, ideas have also emasculated nations: both Louis XVI’s France and the defunct Soviet Union eventually succumbed to the idea of freedom which it so resented for decades. Naturally, nations have warred over their cherished ideas: the Allied and Axis Powers clashed in World War II. Slavery, the Cold War, Apartheid and similarly discarded concepts were eventually slain by the antithesis of the ideas they represented.
For all its utility, ideas have not been without its traducers. The Luddites violently opposed the new inventions wrought by the onset of the Industrial Revolution. And even more recently, hasn’t the Computer seem to threaten the established patterns of work for some? Ideas are the spark that translate dreams, the fuel that drives our passion, it is indeed a summation of mankind’s ability to generate, express, develop, improve and regenerate ideas that stand us out as the prime tenant on earth. The unsettling truth is that notwithstanding the abundance of resources, a deficit of the directional influence of ideas confines it all to the pitiful condition of much of sub-Saharan Africa – “a scar on the conscience of humanity”.
Into the 21st century, Isaac Newton’s answers and for that matter, of so many other great men of thought have continued to change our world. But wait a minute; is that to say that these ideas are cast in stone and immutable? Maybe. Perhaps, when next we see some fellow lounging under an apple tree, it may just be prudent to let him be. Who knows what question he’ll answer for the rest of us?
Commissioner for US Patent and Trademark Office, 1899.
In retrospect, sitting under an apple tree would ordinarily not qualify as the most remarkable thing to do as a preface to giving birth to modern Physics. Well, not if your name is Isaac Newton and instead of promptly eating a fallen apple, as I daresay many would have, he proceeded to theorise on the seemingly mundane question - what made the apple fall? Several centuries later, the answer to that question has come to lie at the heart of some of the more spectacular achievements recorded by science and what it is yet to unfurl.
As centuries go, the 20th typifies so much of the sovereignty of ideas. Ideas represent a template for change; quite often they portend a revolt. Henry Ford brought to life the possibility of everyone owning the then new cranky device known as a car. Some ideas are matchless in their simplicity; the ubiquitous paper clip and Post-it pad arose as means to hold and flag documents respectively. Yet ideas can equally be profound enough to lay the foundation of a nation: the United States was founded on philosophical ideas. At other times, ideas have also emasculated nations: both Louis XVI’s France and the defunct Soviet Union eventually succumbed to the idea of freedom which it so resented for decades. Naturally, nations have warred over their cherished ideas: the Allied and Axis Powers clashed in World War II. Slavery, the Cold War, Apartheid and similarly discarded concepts were eventually slain by the antithesis of the ideas they represented.
For all its utility, ideas have not been without its traducers. The Luddites violently opposed the new inventions wrought by the onset of the Industrial Revolution. And even more recently, hasn’t the Computer seem to threaten the established patterns of work for some? Ideas are the spark that translate dreams, the fuel that drives our passion, it is indeed a summation of mankind’s ability to generate, express, develop, improve and regenerate ideas that stand us out as the prime tenant on earth. The unsettling truth is that notwithstanding the abundance of resources, a deficit of the directional influence of ideas confines it all to the pitiful condition of much of sub-Saharan Africa – “a scar on the conscience of humanity”.
Into the 21st century, Isaac Newton’s answers and for that matter, of so many other great men of thought have continued to change our world. But wait a minute; is that to say that these ideas are cast in stone and immutable? Maybe. Perhaps, when next we see some fellow lounging under an apple tree, it may just be prudent to let him be. Who knows what question he’ll answer for the rest of us?
Friday, October 16, 2009
Is civilization overated?
Why is religion such a source of hate, bigotry and violence worldwide? Is it not strange that the Abrahamic faiths are particularly prone to this?
Why don't we hear of religious violence within the ranks of Bhuddists or adherents of Shinto? Even the followers of traditional African religion can rightfully lay claims to a tranquil peace that has fast escaped places like 'modern' Nigeria.
Maybe civilization is afterall, overated!
Why don't we hear of religious violence within the ranks of Bhuddists or adherents of Shinto? Even the followers of traditional African religion can rightfully lay claims to a tranquil peace that has fast escaped places like 'modern' Nigeria.
Maybe civilization is afterall, overated!
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