One of the underbellies that the President’s medical vacation may reveal to us is that, Nigerians are so ignorant about themselves, their rights and their governments. We act as if ancient African tradition which glorifies the behemoth monarchies of old defines our understanding of power. We thus easily transpose, for instance, the office of the imperial obas, emirs and in some instances, obis to the high offices of political office holders, thus ascribing the majesties and Kabiyesiness of those traditional stools to political offices.
First in this category is that the King can do no wrong. In this regard, you will recall the maniacal dispositions of Chaka the Zulu and Carthaginian general, Hannibal while they purported to seek redemption for their peoples. It is also such perceptions that have fertilized the embarrassingly long stay in office of African despots like Robert Mugabe and his co-power mongers like Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Mobutu Sese Seko and others. Because their people saw them as replicas or reincarnates of those fiery kings of old, profiling them as next to gods or even representatives of God on earth becomes easy.
Second is the perception that the king cannot take ill. Because he is perceived in the mould of gods, he not only is incapable of failure of health like mere mortals, even when he does, the fact should be concealed from his subjects, lest the powerful throne be subjected to tantrums. That is why, till today, when a king sneezes in Yorubaland, his coterie of subjects who make a shield round him scamper to outdo one another in murmuring k’ara o le o! (may the King be permanently healthy).
The above perception was at the heart of the shield that the minders of General Sani Abacha, Umaru Yar’Adua and lately, President Buhari, have woven round the issues of their health. Only General Ibrahim Babangida, even as a military Head of State, breasted the tape of disclosure of his health challenge. He told us then that he had to travel to Germany to treat a jaw-breaking ailment called radiculopathy. These attempts to godify – pardon this coinage – our leaders, in my estimation, is behind public lies that are told at their behest.
For instance, all manner of funny shrouds and illogical rationalisations have been given to explain the departure of Buhari to London by those paid from the public purse to speak for him. If Minister Lai Mohammed was not speaking off tangent on it, Senior Special Assistant, Garba Shehu is punching logic and commonsense on their faces, with the intention of defacing those two time-worn friends of truth. The result is that, presidential aides have succeeded in making little the personality of Buhari who is perceived as a man of truth.
Shehu’s recent riposte to a social media commentator is in sync with his litany of ill-logics. The commentator had claimed that the Air Force One (NAF 001) which took Buhari to the UK, had been parked at the London Airport since the last 56 days, 51 days previously and had been attracting daily fees of £4000, approximating N1.8 m and thus, N193.2m in 107 days. Shehu’s response even compounded the whole messy story. Presidents all over the world are conferred such rights for national prestige and national security, he said. The charges, he said, were in the neighbourhood of £1000 (N460,000) daily.
To confer substance on his words, Shehu should give an example in history of a nation’s President who parked the presidential jet in a foreign airport for 107 days, tell us the insecurity faced by Pope John Paul who boards the commercial plane, Alitalia whenever he is travelling abroad, or more still, Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Theresa May’s jets. None has. By now, it should be clear to all that only lazy theorists take recourse to that old-fashioned lingo called national security. It has always been a shield run into whenever they lack explanations. National security as a phrase has lost its usefulness in a democracy which requires openness, transparency and accountability. If you recall that same Shehu was behind the circulation of the meaningless Buhari Hausa Sallah message, the hypocrisy in high places will be in its full throttle.
One single thread runs through the statement of the Ekiti State governor, Ayo Fayose and governors after their FEC meeting where the latter pilloried Fayose for claiming that Buhari was on a life-support machine. They both sounded like Shekau’s. When you make it difficult for truth to be heard by the people, you, by that very fact, make lies easy to be traded on the streets. What is difficult in telling us the true state of health of the President and the amount spent on him from our national coffers? Methinks the truth behind this non-disclosure is for proper covering of skeletons in presidential cupboards. An open society has no space for exclusive darkness.
The war of Yahoo Boys
A very horrible vermin is wriggling itself into the Oke Ota area of Ibeshe in Lagos State. In one fell swoop, 26 persons are reported to have been killed in a year. It is the cult group called Badoo, with a very bloody imprimatur of killing its victims in a very horrendous manner. The cult group wipes out families with a clinical finish, rapes girls of the community and women and leave sorrow, tears and blood in its trail. Since June 5, 2016 when its activities came to limelight and became a source of concern to all lovers of peace and communal tranquility, the cult group has held the Ibeshe community with vice grip.
If a cult group could hold a community to ransom this hopelessly and for one year, no clue has been found to its gory activities, it behoves on us all to join forces together to impress law enforcement agencies to stamp out this malady from the community. One obvious strategy is to get the Lagos State Commissioner of Police relocate to this black spot and amass all strategies in his arsenal towards bringing the malady to a stop.
While we all concentrate our attention disproportionately on another vermin who is reputed to be a billionaire kidnapper, who is dragging his police accomplices to court for not observing the tenets of espirit de corps, let us spare a thought for the scores of people murdered in cold blood by this murderous group. Jamming the phone lines of the Inspector General of Police and his Lagos Commissioner to do the needful would be a sure way of rescuing this besieged people of Ibeshe from the hands of the vicious blood-suckers called Yahoo Boys.
Tragedy called el-Rufai
James Hardley Chase is renowned for stating, in one of his classic crime thrillers, that a liar must have a good memory. The governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, last Thursday on a Channels Television programme, acted this true to type when he accused some top-placed Nigerians of being opportunists. According to him, such people’s opportunism comes to light because they opposed the concept of restructuring while they were in office but have now joined the bandwagon of those who campaign for it. el-Rufai thereafter went into what he believes to be the nitty-gritty of true federalism as practised by the current federal government. One, he said, was that state governments are now involved in economic policies at the national level and that six nominees among the governors have now joined the national minimum wage negotiation committee. Such puerile logic.
Still on this, during the week, the Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Chief Odigie Oyegun, was asked why his party had flagrantly failed to restructure the country. That accursed word, he seemed to have labeled the concept of restructuring, is not on the cards of activities penciled down by the party. If you recall that restructuring of the country along the line of the practice of true federalism is written in black and white as a major credo of the APC manifesto, you will understand why they say that the heart of a Nigerian politician is as slippery as that of an eel.
Disappointment will be incapable of capturing the true sense in el-Rufai’s tendency to be reversible. Hardly had his attack on federalism cooled off than Facebook archivalists shoveled out his strong defence of federalism and restructuring some years back. If you add this to Oyegun’s posturing over the years as being a federalist, you would be forced to see nothing but hopelessness in the horizon for this country. Why men suddenly turn apostates of their earlier advocacies the moment they taste the candy of office can hardly be explained.
el-Rufai’s chameleonic disposition is indeed legendary. One time, he is on the side of equity and good governance, the other, he sides with revanchists to destabilize the essence of good governance that he claims he stands for. With his suave tongue, the diminutive governor is capable of standing with the hare and dining with the eel with same dexterity. That is why he finds it easy to dine with the oppressed and breakfast with the oppressor within a twinkle of an eye.
But, If condemnation awaits apostates, what then should we give one who has supposedly turned a new leaf from his previous ways? Recall that former President Ibrahim Babangida, last week, gave thumbs up to restructuring as the only panacea for the ills that plague the country. According to him, Nigeria needed to return to the First Republic practice of federalism where the centre was weak and the component units stronger.
Who can countenance that a Babangida, who throughout his eight years of iron fist rule, strengthened the federal government and made states lackeys of the centre, is the same person canvassing for a proper restructuring of the Nigerian state?
It is most logical to state that IBB, having seen the calamities of the unitarist system of government he helped foist down the throat of a plural society like Nigeria, is in a state of penance. It is also convenient to state that El-RufaI and Oyegun are interested in paying lip-service to the status-quo which currently butters their bread. May God save Nigeria from politicians whose stomachs are the only sons in whom they are well pleased.
As books leave the menu
Professor Lenrie Aina, the Chief Executive Officer, National Library of Nigeria, who is also the National Librarian, dropped a bombshell recently. At a Readership Promotion Campaign (RPC) in Enugu recently, he literally dipped his fingers into the Nigerian eyes and brought out the mettle that had inhabited our sockets for decades. Aina told us that, from statistics recently gathered, Nigeria is not rated among book-reading countries in the world. A recent study on countries globally, he said, shows that Nigeria was not mentioned in the ranking of such nations. According to him, Egypt and South Africa got the rating of the study.
As horrible as this report is, it cannot be surprising to anyone who has noticed the slide in our appreciation of books and intellect as a nation in recent years. Books have suddenly become an anathema that we run from. As values make somersaults from the Nigerian polity, they were replaced by a very strong knack for the god of Mammon and embrace of modernism without variation. The result is that books have fled from our menu list and a survival-of-the-fittest craze for acquisition without qualification is served us a la carte.
But no nation can flourish with this kind of mindset. From the Greek city-state, to the Roman empire, the period of renaissance, the time of the Church fathers etc, the thirst for knowledge and books was unrivaled. Indeed, governments of those ancient periods sponsored men of intellect to think for them and theorise the way forward for their societies. Studies therefrom have become imperishable theoretical cornerstone that scholars of today build upon to bring about awesome inventions.
What this means is that, that Nigeria is regressing as this cannot be a surprise to anyone who knows the import of book in the life of a society. Voyeurs, singers, thugs, dancers, etc have assumed greater ascendancy than those who excel in reading or manifesting the output of reading. It is a sure indication that Nigeria is at the precipice.
However, we all know the economic situation of the country. We are like a people besieged by war, and in a war situation, survival is the first law. How can a besieged people make out time to read?
This is why governments and all patriots must canvass a quick return to the day of normalcy in our economy so that all things bright and beautiful in Nigeria which have somersaulted can regain their luster. And we can take our pride of place in reading books.
and then