Opinion

Mr President, Nigeria must not go down by Simon Kolawole

Published

4 years ago

May 2, 2021

Dear President Muhammadu Buhari, what a hell of a week it was! Again, undergraduates kidnapped in Kaduna were slain while the ransom was still being negotiated. More bloodbaths in Zamfara claimed over 100 lives. Over 50 villages were deserted in Niger after attacks by Boko Haram, who cheekily hoisted their dark flag in one of them. Our soldiers were killed in Borno. Nine police officers, including a DPO, were killed in Kebbi. Northerners were murdered and mutilated in Anambra. Gunmen razed a police command in Imo and killed five officers. In Akwa Ibom, police stations were attacked and officers, including a female, were killed. Et cetera et cetera and so on and so on.

Your Excellency, I wrote an article on July 19, 2009 entitled ‘Mr. President, Nigeria Is Going Down’. It was an open letter to President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, whom I accused of sleeping on duty. I recall, and repeat, the opening salvo: “Mr President, I don’t know how you would take this, but there is no nicer way of putting it – Nigeria is going down. I have watched, helplessly, in the last few months as things appear to be spinning out of control on all fronts. What are you up to? At times, I wonder if you’re deliberately quiet or you are just too overwhelmed with the circumstances in which you have found yourself. The simplest of things appear to be too difficult for your administration to handle…”

Mind you, Mr President, this was in 2009 before Boko Haram became a thing, before insurgency was ever a possibility much less a probability, before bandits left our borders with Chad and came inland, before kidnapping leapfrogged armed robbery in crime statistics, before students were being routinely kidnapped, before police stations were targeted by arsonists, before the perennial herders/farmers clashes escalated and became framed as Fulani jihad — and long before the entire country became drenched in blood. I was only complaining about Yar’Adua’s foot-dragging on amnesty for Niger Delta militants and power projects. It now sounds like a joke, doesn’t it?

I will tell you a very short story, Mr President. In 2008, I travelled to the US for a conference. In my hand was a book, ‘The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States’ by Terry Lynn Karl. The immigration official, knowing I was from Nigeria, started to chat me up on the book. He asked: “What would you consider as Nigeria’s biggest problem?” I was not in the mood for a seminar. I was jetlagged. All I wanted was for him to stamp my passport and wave me on. I gave him the global template answer on Nigeria: corruption. But he offered a different perspective: “Some countries have political problems, others economic. Nigeria has both political and economic problems.”

Mr President, you came into office in 2015 declaring that Nigeria’s biggest problem was corruption — which you argued was responsible for the insecurity. You promised to tackle both. While the jury is still out on your anti-corruption war, the consensus, even among your diehard fans, is that the insecurity is getting out of hand. It is not limited to a few parts, as the case was in 2015, but spread across the country in an uncanny semblance of federal character. More so, the economy has been on a downward spiral and our political challenges are getting more complicated. So, we are battling with insecurity, in addition to economic and political crises. We are in a fix, urgently needing a fix.

I understand, Mr President, that some of your team members are of the opinion that the current insecurity is politically orchestrated ahead of the 2023 elections. But haven’t we heard this before? Some in the Goodluck Jonathan administration believed Boko Haram terrorism was politically motivated, geared towards the 2015 elections. I will tell your government exactly what I told the Jonathan administration: whether it is politics or not, it is the job of government to secure the country. The 1999 constitution does not say that if insecurity is politically motivated, we should sit down, twiddle with our fingers, watch criminals take over, and throw up our hands in surrender.

Before I proceed, Your Excellency, I want to be clear on this: I agree that there are those who criticise and hate you mainly because of religion, ethnicity and politics, not really because of what you have done or not done right. It appears this irritates you and makes you ignore or even dare your critics. But be assured, Your Excellency, that it is not peculiar to you. There were those who hated President Goodluck Jonathan because of his religion and ethnic identity too. Other former presidents had similar experiences. It is nothing new: that is the way we are wired in Nigeria and that cannot be an excuse not to do the needful in the interest of national peace and progress.

It may also interest you, Your Excellency, that there are those who support you blindly because they share your religion and ethnic identity — and even your politics. Nothing else matters to them. To this group, you can never be wrong. You are infallible. It is an emotional thing. They may be asking you to ignore criticism and treat your critics with scorn. Maybe it would also be of comfort to state that this is not limited to you: Jonathan also had his blind supporters who did not — and can still not — see that he did anything wrong in office. They even paint the picture that Nigeria was almost becoming as advanced as Singapore under Jonathan before he was “unjustly” voted out. So it goes.

Having said that, Mr President, I now want to make my point: Nigeria is going down, and very fast. I wish I could put it in a milder form, but no amount of honey can make my words sweet. Boko Haram, said to have been technically defeated since 2016, remains deadly; bandits are shedding blood in the North every day; kidnappers are behind, beside and in front of us; police stations are being attacked and police officers killed for fun in the South-East and South-South; Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB is revving up the campaign for Biafra by the minute; Sunday Igboho is leading the Yoruba in a war of independence; and some Niger Delta militants have announced a return to the trenches.

If you go down memory lane, Mr President, you would recall that one of your greatest campaign pitches in 2015 was to fight insecurity. Boko Haram was bombing mosques, churches, motor parks and shopping plazas with ease in the FCT, Borno, Kaduna, Niger and Kano states, while bandits were terrorising Zamfara villagers without let or hindrance. I acknowledge that within your first year in office, you made tremendous progress against Boko Haram: they were truly beaten back at some point. Unfortunately, for reasons I would really love to know or understand, the insurgents staged resurgence and many other areas of insecurity opened up. What exactly went wrong, Mr President?

Your Excellency, I know we are bedevilled by serious economic problems as a result of our usual ailments — low crude oil prices, low FX inflow and the inevitable devaluation of the naira — but I would not even put that at the same level with insecurity. We need to be alive first to spend the naira. While individuals and businesses can cope with rising inflation, unemployment, high interest rates and such like, only the state can tackle the insecurity that has taken hold of the land. This is not an Amotekun, civilian JTF or Arksego matter. We are not talking about pickpockets and armed robbers. How do we protect ourselves against kidnappers and terrorists bearing AK-47?

At this stage, Your Excellency, we want to see a president who is clearly on top of things and connects with our emotions. You appear too detached. A leader must be present with his people in good and bad times. There is a level of reassurance that comes with it. You were all over the country during the two electioneering cycles but withdrew thereafter as if talking to the people you lead is a burden or something beneath you. Even your most ardent supporters cannot defend this. I know some tasks can be delegated, and, yes, not all the things you are doing to combat the insecurity can be discussed openly, but we urgently need you, not just your aides, to communicate with us.

Speed is also of essence, Mr President. I have noticed that consistently, things are allowed to drag unattended to. When responses come, they are either too little, too late or they come with discordant tunes altogether. Not good, Mr President, not good. That is why many Nigerians have been questioning if anyone is really in charge. Nigerians have every reason to be sceptical or even cynical. Failure to act on time — with efficiency and the needed sensitivity — has put the country on a dangerous edge where insecurity collides with economic and political challenges. Even those who normally remain calm are now more than worried about how things could degenerate further.

I do not for a minute, Mr President, underestimate some of your strides. I do not support the view that you have achieved nothing in office as some of your dyed-in-the-wool critics would want us to believe. Those who are mocking your infrastructural projects and agricultural policies today would most likely eat their words in another five to 10 years when we begin to derive the benefits. I keep wondering what might have been if you met crude oil at $100/barrel. Oil made many Nigerian presidents shine in the past, so you have to bemoan your luck. But, Your Excellency, we need to be alive first to be able use the roads and eat the rice. At this rate of bloodshed, that is not guaranteed.

Mr President, Nigerians feel besieged. The condition is critical. They need the commander-in-chief to be the reassurer-in-chief. I know you have been taking some steps and holding several meetings, but whatever you are doing needs more firepower. It appears the criminals are this bold partly because they think they can get away with anything. I request that you begin to act in a way that even the criminals will say: “Baba is not playing o.” May I respectfully remind Your Excellency that you have only two years more in office, God willing. How you handle this delicate and defining period may eventually define your entire public service. Nigeria must not go down under your watch!

Kolawole is editor-in-chief at TheCable

Opinion

Farooq Kperogi: What Trump’s comeback may mean for Africa

Published

5 days ago

November 10, 2024

Trends Admin

Farooq Kperogi

Farooq Kperogi: What Trump’s comeback may mean for Africa

A few weeks ago, I spoke at a symposium in my university here in Georgia on the implications of the U.S. presidential election for the African diaspora. To the bemusement of my audience (who were a mix of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris supporters), I explained the curious phenomenon of African support for Donald Trump, particularly among Nigerian and Kenyan evangelicals.

I described how a surprising number of African Christians (and, in fact, some Muslims) consider Trump “God’s chosen one,” a valiant defender of conservative religious values whom they imagine will take on global LGBTQ rights with righteous vengeance.

The audience was incredulous and struggled to reconcile Trump’s infamous moral transgressions with his appeal to African conservatives. When I explained that these supporters see Trump as a warrior against the “cultural liberalism” they believe threatens their faith, eyebrows raised.

The eyebrows raised even further when I pointed out that there are Muslims who are so disillusioned with the Biden/Harris administration’s support for Israel that they prayed for a Trump win even when Trump is more manifestly hawkish than Biden/Harris and so disdains Muslims that he enacted a “Muslim ban” (which actually included non-Muslims) within the first few months of his first presidency.

But here’s the crux: Donald Trump is no more interested in religious morality than he is in the theological reveries of his African fan base. He is, in truth, a transactional man, a walking paradox of deals and calculations, utterly bereft of the very spiritual or moral foundation his African supporters so naively project onto him.

Trump’s “faith,” such as it is, is at best a performance, an asset to be deployed for strategic gains among America’s own conservative Christians, whom he has calculatedly courted for votes. To imagine Trump as the champion of conservative religious values is to mistake calculation for conviction and propaganda for principle.

His record speaks louder than his rhetoric. In 2015, for example, at a gathering of conservative Christians in Iowa, he openly admitted he never asks God for forgiveness, a theological anathema for any believer.

Later, on the campaign trail, he betrayed his biblical unfamiliarity, when he clumsily referred to “Two Corinthians” rather than the more common “Second Corinthians.” A slip of the tongue, perhaps, but in a subsequent interview, he tried to salvage his Christian credibility but ended up quoting a verse that doesn’t even exist: “Never bend to envy,” he offered, an adage Christians say is found nowhere in the Bible.

Farooq Kperogi: What Trump’s comeback may mean for Africa

Farooq Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based Professor of Media Studies.

Opinion

Of Kings, King Kong and honour

Published

6 days ago

November 9, 2024

Trends Admin

Of Kings, King Kong and honour

By Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, November 8, 2024)

Since 1933, when it hit the cinemas in the United States, the classic movie, King Kong, has undergone no fewer than 13 remakes. King Kong is a giant prehistoric ape ruling the mysterious Skull Island, where he is worshipped by dinosaurs, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs and numerous other monster creatures.

In the 1933 version, the story begins when an ambitious filmmaker, Carl Denham, takes his cast to Skull Island in the Indian Ocean territory for a jungle shoot, and the First Mate (assistant captain) of the ship, John ‘Jack’ Driscoll, falls in love with the deuteragonist, Ann Darrow. A deuteragonist is the second lead character while the protagonist is the lead character in a drama or movie.

The blond and beautiful Ann is captured by Skull Island natives who offer her to their king as a befitting sacrifice, setting humans and animals on a collision course which encapsulates the themes of man’s perpetual violation of nature, racism, exploitation, fear and love.

More powerful than any monster ever, the 25-foot tall King Kong falls in love with Ann, and gingerly holding her in his palm, remains determined to protect Ann from love-struck Jack and other crew members trying to rescue her. Though he’s a beast, King Kong navigates the intersection between primal instinct and civility by exuding love for blondie Ann, a human being, smoothening the jagged edges of animal-human borders.

In violation of nature, the crew captures King Kong, the protagonist, ships him to New York, and presents him to Broadway theatre audience in an exhibition dubbed “Kong, the 8th Wonder of the World,” with Jack and Ann posing beside Kong, rendered unconscious by a gas bomb since he was captured on Skull Island.

The blinding light from photographers’ cameras irritates the dazed Kong, who breaks loose, wrecking buildings, trains, vehicles, public utility poles and cables etc, as he picks Ann up like a piece of fried plantain and makes a dash for the 102-storey Empire Building which he climbs to the zenith.

Four planes face King Kong with fire, trying to shoot him off the building. He places Ann, his beloved, in a safe place and faces his adversaries, swatting and destroying one of the planes. In destroying the plane, Kong is injured while the gunfire intensifies. Momentarily, Kong takes his eyes off the planes and looks towards Ann, a fatal error that enables the three other planes to have good shots at him. He falls off to the ground, where a bewildered crowd quickly gathers in the final moments.

Fittingly, Jack reunites with his love, Ann. Denham, who makes his way to the scene of the fallen beast, overhears a policeman saying the planes got Kong, but he responds, “Oh, no, it wasn’t the planes. It was Beauty that killed the Beast.”

There are kings and there are kings. King Kong ruled his Skull Island. The eagle rules the air. The elephant rules the jungle. The blue whale rules the sea. I know an oba in Osun who rules with dignity and honour on the àpèrè of his forefathers.

Genealogically, the road to the palace is not paved with gold alone. It is also caked in the blood of revolution and hate. Faced with dwindling economic fortunes, the high cost of monarchy, political upheavals and the appeal democracy offers, many countries have consigned their kings and queens to the dustbin of history.

On January 21, 1793, King Louis XVI lost both his crown and head to the guillotine – in the aftermath of the 1792 French Revolution, making him the last monarch to live in the Palace of Versailles, taking to his grave the fitting nickname of ‘Louis the Last’.

The ruler of Russia, Tsar Nicholas II, bit the dust during the Russian Revolution of 1917, drawing the curtain on monarchy in the Soviet country. And in 1918, after World War I, Germany kicked out its king, Kaiser Wilhelm I, and locked the palace forever. After Mussolini fell and a republic was established in 1946, a referendum nailed the coffin of monarchy in Italy just as China transited to a republic in 1912 during the Xinhai Revolution which abolished the Qing Dynasty.

Brazil sacked its king in 1889 after a republican military coup while Greece showed King Constantine II the exit door of the palace in 1973, following a referendum by military coupists. But Spain, which abolished monarchy between 1931 and 1939, restored it in 1947. Indeed, red and gold are the road to the palace.

In the 20th Century, monarchies were abolished in Afghanistan (1973), the Ethiopian monarchy that lasted for almost 3,000 years ended with Haile Selassie in 1974, Vietnam (1945), and Iraq (1958). Recently, Nepal and Barbados kicked out the monarchy in 2008 and 2021 respectively.

Unlike Africa and Europe, monarchy remains strong and vibrant in the Middle East though social reforms are gradually tempering the sword of absolutism with change.

In Nigeria, the desirability or otherwise of monarchy is like the waves of the sea, rising and falling, peaking and ebbing, a mixed bag of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Among the Ugly is the Canada-returnee jailbird king who oversmokes Indian hemp, beats his wife and royal colleague, and fights culture and tradition; a madcap desecrator of the throne who will never heed the caution of the odíderé until he perishes.

Among the Bad are the kings who run errands for politicians and support bad government policies – like that Abacha-dark-goggled king who advised the Igbo to go and perish in the lagoon so that the son of the owner of the brass mortar may reign. As a lover of culture, I won’t call for the abolition of monarchy in Nigeria though the temptation is high.

There are many good kings in Yorubaland, though the eyes cannot miss some black sheep among the flock. But lest I be accused of nepotism, I’ll name one oba in Osun, my state of origin, though Lagos is my state of birth; I’ll name one oba in Ondo, one in Ogun and one in Oyo as exemplars of nobility. This is not to say there are no good kings in Lagos and Ekiti states. There are many, but I’m probably not close enough to them – to talk about them.

At times, I wonder how lucky the Ekimogun people of the Ondo kingdom are by having as the Osemawe, Oba Adesimbo Kiladejo. Another worthy king I know is the late Towulade of Akinale kingdom in Ogun State, Oba Olufemi Iyanda Okesooto Ogunleye, journalist and lawyer, who died on June 19, 2024, after bagging a PhD at 80.

On October 22, 2024, I was strolling on Facebook Street when I saw a post by Diran Odeyemi, a popular Peoples Democratic Party chieftain in the South-West. The post says, “Do you know this school? Abolarin College, Oke-Ila, Osun State. No school fees. Free hostel. Free food. Free internet. Free uniform. Free laptop for every child. 24/7 power supply. All paid by the town’s king. The king teaches too in the school. We should celebrate such a Nigerian. What makes this school remarkable is that one major criterion for getting admitted is being poor. If your parents are rich, you cannot get admission.

Unlike other schools, Abolarin College wants poor kids who are very brilliant. From what I gathered, the king has only one wife. He’s not using the money of the kingdom to accumulate wives or properties.

Every Osun journalist worth their salt knows Oba Abolarin, whose nickname is Doxy. I got to know the 66-year-old king when I worked in Osun. I know his school, too.

I know students from the North, East and West of Nigeria are in his school. I also know he has two first degrees – one in Political Science, the other in Law – both from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

As an honourable king and ègbón, I know Doxy up-close; he’s highly cerebral and doesn’t brook conflict or crave attention. Like the almighty sun in heaven that dries up wet clothes on earth, you will see the actions of Doxy without seeing his person.

Two other Nigerians whose actions pleasantly shocked me in recent times are the Asiwaju of Igbajoland, Chief Adegboyega Awomolo, and a former House of Reps member from Ogun State, Hon. Lanre Laoshe, both of whom refunded a Federal Government student loan they received in the 1970s.

Asiwaju means leader and Awomolo leads on many fronts. He is Osun’s first Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice as well as Osun’s first Senior Advocate.

He told me in an interview that he had been contacting the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation since 2012 to pay his student loan indebtedness but no official told him what account to pay into, adding that each time he saw his loan affidavit, he became weighed down.

“The idea behind student loans is good. I commend President Tinubu for resuscitating the scheme. I spoke with four different Accountant Generals of the Federation since 2012 when I wanted to pay N50k.

“In 2018, I wanted to pay N1m, but I just followed God’s direction and I’ve now paid N2m for a loan of N1,000 I took in 1975 If NEFUND wants me to pay more, I will.”

Laoshe, who took a student loan of N1,200 in 1976, repaid N3.1m, reportedly using a table of average annual exchange rates from 1972 to 1985 from the Central Bank of Nigeria to calculate what he owed the government.

My father and mother didn’t owe student loans. Please, ask your parents to pay up if they are owing. As we, the masses, hold government accountable, we should look at ourselves, too. Surely, Nigeria needs more men and women with conscience.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

Facebook: @Tunde Odesola

X: @ Tunde_Odesola

Opinion

(Opinion) Oyo Assembly trespasses over illegal suspension of Oyo East LG Chairman

Published

2 weeks ago

November 2, 2024

Trends Admin

(Opinion) Oyo Assembly trespasses over illegal suspension of Oyo East LG Chairman

Like executive, like legislature in Oyo State, rascality is now the order of the day as Oyo State is now synonymous with illegality and power exuberance. The only Governor which condemned Supreme Court landmark judgment on local government autonomy is the Oyo State fanatical emperor; Governor Seyi Makinde as the Oyo State House of Assembly was reported on Thursday October 31, 2024 to have also suspended the Chairman of Oyo East Local Government, Olusola Oluokun, over a viral video that was purportedly obnoxious and unbecoming of a Chairman of a local government. While the Governor deliberately attacked the Supreme Court judgment to discredit the then Chief Justice of Nigeria who hailed from Oyo State, did the Assembly also want to discredit Alaafin of Oyo Empire symbolizing Yorubaland which Oyo represents?

To be sincere, apart from Ladoja/Akala regime which witnessed thugs’ incursion into Oyo politics, the current administration is the most ruthless that even elevated hooliganism in the State and made thugs of undisciplined people disciplinary committee Chairman of Transport Arms of the terror network. An absurdity of highest order to the Pace Setter State!!!

Actually, the atmosphere in Oyo State House of Assembly since 2019 has shown that the house is either full of political puppets or novice in legislative duties, No wonder, the house members do not even know their limit in law making nor know the laws they are supposed to superintend. There was a day I even asked my own Assembly member from Orelope State Constituency copy of a Law passed when he joined the House but I was surprised that he said he did not have a copy of the bill apart from political brag by telling me he did not know the person he was responding to despite introducing myself formally as usual before making my request. As activist, I did not know more than 65% of people I have attended to their cases. They only got my contact and when they explained their situations, I proffer the solutions where there was no need of seeing me. And once they got result, that is the end. If an honourable has no copy of the law he was part of the makers, do we need to ask them what oversight functions they perform when they do not even know what to do?