Opinion

Tinubu’s risky Niger gamble, Shetty’s embarrassment, by Farooq Kperogi

Published

1 year ago

August 7, 2023

Tinubu’s risky Niger gamble, Shetty’s embarrassment, by Farooq Kperogi

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu recently wrote to the Senate to inform it of an impending “Military build up and deployment of personnel for military intervention to enforce compliance of the military junta in Niger should they remain recalcitrant.” This is a dangerous, ill-advised, potentially self-destructive gamble Tinubu would do well to give up because it has the potential to consume not just him but also Nigeria.

I detest military regimes because I am repulsed by any system that imposes unequal, predetermined structural limits on the aspirational compass to leadership. It is for the same reason that I despise the unearned, inherited authority that monarchies represent. Everyone should, at least in theory if not in practice, have the latitude to aspire to the highest level of leadership in the land.

Military rule limits leadership to professional people, as monarchies limit leadership to bloodline.
Additionally, as someone who came of age during totalitarian military regimes, I loathe the brutality and dehumanization that accompany all military rules and wish that no country would ever have to endure the nightmare of military monocracies.

But going to war with another country because it unfortunately devolved into a system of government that, in our judgement, is abhorrent, is unwarranted arrogant, provocative, and reckless. This is particularly more so because, at least for now, the new military junta in Niger Republic enjoys enormous goodwill among the vast majority of the citizens of the country.

I have seen massive demonstrations in support of the new military regime in rural and urban Niger— and against President Bola Tinubu whom demonstrators have rechristened “Ebola Tinubu” to signal the toxicity and ‘unwelcomeness’ of his intrusion into the internal affairs of their country. Nigeriens obviously have no problems at the moment with the junta in power. When they do, they’ll find a way to deal with it. Who are we to tell them how they should conduct their affairs and whom they should prefer as their rulers?
Plus, in Nigeria, the tide of public opinion is overwhelmingly against any form of Nigeria-led military aggression to restore civilian rule in Niger. Nigeria is itself wracked by disabling internal turmoil on multiple fronts, which the Tinubu administration hasn’t yet shown any willingness to confront, much less contain. Why is Tinubu igniting a fire in another person’s home to “resolve” a squabble there instead of putting out the enduring conflagration in his?
And who is paying for this unsolicited, foolhardy misadventure? Nigerians have been pushed to the very edge of existence (and several have already fallen off the cliff) by the cruel removal of fuel subsidies, yet the Tinubu administration will expend billions (that it repeatedly says the country doesn’t have) to start a needless and avoidable war in a country that is at peace with its anomaly.
Is it the 1 trillion naira the government claimed it has saved from the removal of subsidies that it will use to fight a thoughtless war in Niger that has neither tactical nor strategic benefits for Nigeria? It makes absolutely no sense.

Nigeriens don’t want a war. Nigerians, too, don’t. On whose behalf is Tinubu starting this pointless war then? “Democracy”? Whose “democracy”?
Well, if preservation of civilian rule is the sole motivation for Tinubu’s intervention in Niger, why is he unconcerned about military rule in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea, which are also members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)?

True, Tinubu wasn’t president when these other coups took place, but what’s stopping him from adding Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea to his list of West African countries that must reinstate their ousted civilian presidents if “democracy” is his overriding concern?

The only thing that makes sense at this point is the widespread insinuation that Tinubu is doing the bidding of Western imperialist powers whose approval he seems insanely desperate for. Since his conservative, stultifying, and asphyxiating economic policies, which have paralyzed the country, are already merely a page from the World Bank and the IMF, it’s apparent that his greatest aspiration isn’t to serve Nigerians but to be a dutiful poodle of the West.
On the instructions of the West, he is killing his people with hunger. On the instructions of the same West, he wants to kill his neighbors with war.

In a private communication, famous University of Texas history professor Toyin Falola pointed out that this is France’s war. “France can give up Mali and Burkina Faso, but Niger is the only country it will not give up without a fight,” he said. “Agadez is the life wire of France, without which it will be using generators like Nigeria. No gas from Russia, and uranium is what it uses for its nuclear energy power. Nigeria cannot use its resources and army to work for France.”
Is Tinubu committing Nigeria to a violent entanglement with Niger on behalf of France because Paris is now his second home—like London used to be Buhari’s second home?

Another dimension to the situation in Niger that Tinubu and his advisers seem oblivious of is that Mohamed Bazoum was a deeply unpopular president who, as Professor Falola said, didn’t win his election. “His predecessor planted him there and gave his [i.e., predecessor’s] son a cabinet appointment,” Falola said. “Niger is a democracy on paper. The mafia distributes rent. Niger has the highest number of land cruisers per capita in Africa.”
What Professor Falola describes isn’t exclusive to Niger, of course. It’s the feature of most “democracies” in Africa. But when you throw Niger’s identity politics into the mix, you are staring at a really combustible situation.

Bazoum comes from Niger’s Arab ethnic minority (with roots in Libya) who constitute less than one percent of the population.
The Hausa constitute a little over 50 percent of the population. The Zarma (whom Hausa people call Zabarma, which probably influenced the Yoruba Sabarumo) are a distant second with a little over 20 percent of the population, although they dominate Niger’s military and civil service. There are other minor groups in the country such as Dendi (whose language is mutually intelligible with Zarma but who consider themselves different from the Zarma), Tuaregs, Kanuri, Fulani, and Gurma.
Former President Mahamadou Issoufou is Hausa, but for personal gains he rigged Mohamed Bazoum, a minority Arab, as his successor. Bazoum was overthrown by Abdourahamane Tchiani who appears to be Zarma going by the region of the country he comes from, but who enjoys the support of the Hausa.
The Zarma and the Hausa (who together constitute more than 70 percent of the population) were resentful that an Arab (with a minimal command of the Hausa language and probably zero proficiency in Zarma and whose people are less than one percent of the population) was imposed as president over them without actually winning a legitimate election.

Forcing the return of Bazoum as president would be a declaration of war against more than 70 percent of the country’s population. But that’s not even my worst fear. In the event of an all-out war, there would be refugees from Niger all over northern Nigeria, which could, in fact, flare up a Yoruba-Hausa ethnic strife in Nigeria because the narrative would be that a Yoruba man is killing Hausa people.
Should that happen, that could end the Tinubu presidency. Is it worth it? I don’t think so.

Maryam Shetty’s Unexampled Ministerial Embarrassment
I had no idea who Maryam Shetty was until I saw what seemed like an unremitting cornucopia of congratulatory messages directed at her on Facebook on her appointment as a minister by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
I saw jokes about how almost every (northern) Nigerian on social media somehow found a way to establish connections to her. I was going to join the joke by saying I was connected to her, too, because she shares the same first name as my second daughter, graduated from my alma mater in Nigeria, and even got some sort of certification from Emory University in Atlanta where I live.
Then I woke up Friday morning to the shocking news that her nomination had been withdrawn. I don’t recall if there is any precedent for this kind of embarrassment. Why was her name announced when the president hadn’t made up his mind that he wanted her on his cabinet? The public ridicule she has been subjected to can’t be redeemed by any compensatory appointment.
I thought her appointment sent a symbolic message to young women that they, too, matter. Kwara State governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq has already blazed a trail in appointing everyday young women with no roots in political dynasties into commissionership—to the annoyance of political old stagers. I thought President Tinubu was following in Abdulrazaq’s lead and was going to write a full-length column to commend this.
The embarrassing but totally preventable flip-flopping of the Tinubu administration is becoming truly unsettling.

* Kperogi is a Nigerian-American professor and columnist

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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

5 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?