Let’s go back to issue-based politics

Political contests in Nigeria often pose severe threats to the nation’s fragile peace and stability, always degenerating into battlefield situations where lives and property are lost.

The 2015 election is not likely to be significantly different from the ones before it. War drums are already being sounded and the political combatants are already arming themselves for the impending confrontation.

The Chairman, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Alhaji Bamanga Tukur hinted recently that the 2015 “war” will be as fierce as ever when he said, “I am now convinced that the opposition groups are preparing for war against the PDP as we march towards 2015. We will match them action for action, wit for wit, strength for strength, and we will put them where they belong as we have been doing since 1999.” (See The Tribune, April 21)

Election times have always been periods of turmoil, heightened violence, instability and bloodshed. The high profile killings of Chief Bola Ige, Harry Marshall, and others which preceded the 2003 election remain unresolved because such politically motivated assassinations are always masterminded by powerful murderers who operate far above the law of the land.

It was also like that in 2007 when a prominent political player said the contest would be a do-or-die affair. We still remember the post election violence of 2011 when at least 10 youths on national service were slaughtered in Bauchi and people of southern origin were targeted by thugs in the north because a southern minority Christian won the election.

Let us quickly admit that since politics is all about competition and struggle for the control of public resources and positions, ideas and personalities are bound to clash. But in developed democracies whatever conflicts and disagreements that ensue from political contests are easily resolved peacefully by institutions that are strong enough to contain them. In those climes where there are peaceful and credible elections, the electoral system is transparent and equality before the law is non-negotiable. The political playing field is fairly level for all individuals and groups.

Since it is not possible in mature democracies to rig, kill or cut corners in anyway without being caught, and brought to justice, every political contestant, no matter how powerful or highly placed, is then compelled to play by the rule. The only contest that is fierce and rigorous is the contest of ideas. And since the door to rigging, violence and other electoral shortcuts is firmly shut through proper application of the law and strong institutions, the only weapon left for contestants is that of ideas and issues on how to bring about a better society. Ethnicity, religion and other sentiments have no significant role in determining who emerges to occupy public office.

It is the brilliance of your ideas, it is the sound solutions you are able to proffer to the problems confronting the society that take you into public office.

Not so in Nigeria. Personalities are stronger than institutions and they often operate far above the law. Here issues are the last thing when vying for public office. That is why we are where we are. One step forward, two backwards. Look at public power supply. After 14 years of democracy, under the same party at the centre, Nigeria has only been able to supply a paltry 4000MW to a population of 160 million people. Brazil produces 710,000. South Africa, with a population far below ours produces 60,000MW.

Surely the ruling party is not basing its attempt to continue in office on performance. If the PDP has spent 14 years producing only 4000MW, how many more years do we have to wait to get to 10,000MW or even regular and stable power supply?  The voters should now begin to ask them why the nation with the seventh largest gas reserves in the world is unable to generate enough electricity. And still on energy, why is the largest exporter of crude oil in Africa unable to refine enough fuel for domestic consumption? Has refining become rocket science in the hand of the ruling party?

In the run up to 2015, the issue of power supply should be on the front burner because it is at the heart of real sector growth, job creation, poverty alleviation and even crime fighting and reduction. In the past decade, progress has been made in global poverty reduction, but misery has worsened in Nigeria where more than 60 percent of the population is trapped in extreme poverty. The seven per cent jobless growth often touted by those in government is not as a result of any special effort by government.  The voodoo growth is fed and fuelled by favorable oil prices and expansion in the telecom sector and other services.

And since that kind of growth is non-inclusive because it does not create jobs, insecurity arising from worsening youth unemployment has become a monster threatening to consume the nation. Those in power have disregarded the fact that the growth rate can easily go to double digits if power supply problem is fixed. They hated it when some of us told them more than five years ago that no nation could aspire to be among the 20 largest economies by the year 2020 without regular supply of electricity. Now the chicken has come home to roost. Five years to the finish line, they have now admitted that sloganeering alone cannot take us far.  You don’t run a modern economy on candles and lanterns.

The voters should therefore not be distracted by the language of militancy and war issuing out of the politicians mouth. The question remains: How is the PDP going to guarantee regular power supply between now and May 2015? If they are unable to achieve that, why do they want us to give them another term?

There is also the issue of transport system which remains chaotic and dysfunctional after 14 years of democracy. They have talked about reforms and transformation but the rail system remains worse than the colonial masters left it. How do the parties intend to give us a modern rail system? What are they going to do about these roads that look like those in war torn countries?

We should also ask those in power to tell us why they have always pocketed over 70 per cent of the budget as salaries and allowances for themselves and others in public office, leaving too little for development. We should call their attention to the iniquitous inequity in the nation’s income distribution. Should the political office remain the shortest route to wealth? If not how do we hope to cut the soaring cost of governance?

The PDP should begin to dwell more on its achievements if it has any, and tell us why it should be returned in 2015. The opposition should refrain from mud slinging, producing superior ideas to solve the nation’s problems and concentrating on why it is a better alternative to the ruling party.

with Adebolu Arowolo

That the future may live – Wole Soyinka

Touching, whimsical, idealistic and anxious, these are windows into the mind of today’s Nigerian child, the mind of “the future” that remains opaque to most adults – to judge by their conduct in the here and now.

Recalling my own instructive days when I would openly eavesdrop on the discourse of adult circles around my father, a school Headmaster, or of another and more famous educationist, an uncle, the Reverend I.O.Ransome-Kuti – see AKE, the Years of Childhood – I often wonder what nature of discourse today’s children elicit from their own parental circles. How to milk the nation of a few millions in a project set up for that very purpose? Where to stage the next extravaganza of a wedding – Dubai? Venice? Johannesburg? Do they take children into confidence regarding where they hide millions stolen from the Pension Funds accumulated by dint of unrelenting work over a lifetime by millions of their own fellow beings?

Even more critical however, is their plight in a time of dire siege, with their own peers on the front line as direct targets, taking casualties, often in the most brutal fashion. Some of the participants in this Essay competition have certainly lost friends and siblings to daily carnage, perhaps barely escaped with their lives. Several bear physical or emotional scars from their encounter. Even those placed at remote distances from these traumatizing zones cannot escape knowledge of the fate of members of their age grades. How do these events affect their lives? Their perspectives on the future? What transformations take place in their minds?

How sad, and discouraging, that a victory – of sorts – was recently conceded to these forces of sheer evil when a governor closed down schools in his state on advice – at least temporarily – after yet another school dormitory was turned into a killing field! Each time such butchery takes place, my mind leaps to the faces that crowd my house on an agreed day, ever since a bunch of enthusiasts chose to inflict my birthday on me, beginning a few years ago. It is with regard to those faces – slightly older versions, admittedly – that, first a governor, soon followed by a former minister, blithely commented, “one life is not more important than another”. That ex-minister, who actually nurses aspirations to preside over the future of the nation, has proceeded to enshrine his ‘ideology’ in a self-serving book that purportedly documents his illustrious career.

Is this call to the deadening of moral outrage equally applicable to the ongoing decimation of our secondary, primary school populations? More relevantly however, I wonder what our youths think of such utterances. Well, while there are still survivors among them and, if only for the sake of record keeping, any exercise that induces them to set down their thoughts is to be welcomed. In essay, poetry, or pictorial form – such as ‘Vision of the Child’ (Lagos Black Heritage) competition – these imaginative and intellectual exercises provide a continuing challenge that stretches their minds. And it is a battle for the mind in formation that confronts the nation at this moment, hence the targeting of places of learning, and the brutal, sadistic assault on their inmates.

It may come to some as belated schooling, but some of us have absorbed the truism, all the way from infancy, that each life is to be valued in its own right. By the same token, we have also imbibed the moral imperative that the frustrations and grievances of any individual or group – from whatever cause – should never be taken out on other lives, and that such proceeding is damnably impious, cowardly and blasphemous when that ‘other’ is the innocent, the vulnerable, the yet unfulfilled. One anticipates, indeed concedes the right of dissent to the complacent, the sated, and visionless. The vision of youth however also has a fundamental entitlement to be expressed, and that can only be done by living material. It deserves better than to be filed away as a “Last Will and Testament” of those eager, bright and hopeful faces that now annually besiege the sanctuary of this aspiring octogenarian.

•Being Prof Wole Soyinka’s forward to Memoirs for Our Future, a book produced by WS79 organisers, Zmirage Multi Media Limited, in honour of children and presented in London recently

2015: Between devil and deep blue sea

In the days of yore, when schools were still schools, this would have made an interesting topic for a debate or impromptu speech competition of any school’s annual literary and debating day. But then, just like many good things that have depreciated in our land, schools are no longer what they used to be, and it is “debatable” if there are still days set aside for literary and debating events / competitions.

  The literary giant, Chinualumogu Achebe asserted as far back as 1983 as follows, “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility; to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.”

   Some, however, argue that followership is rather the problem, that the past and present leaders definitely emerged from the crop of bad followers and therefore, the leaders were products of a dysfunctional followership. Only a terrible followership could have consistently produced disappointing leaders that Nigeria has been bedeviled with. Something is, therefore, fundamentally wrong, one may conclude, with this system which continually produces bad leaders.

  The year 2015 is just around the corner and the war drums have started to be beaten. The gladiators are the ruling party and the newly registered leading opposition party. We have started hearing the electoral jargons – capture, defect, decamp etc. According to Mr. Fix-It, while on a visit to a former president, the ruling party will continue to win, using its time-tested formula. Is your guess as good as mine? 

   Before the euphoria of the APC’s recent registration dies down, it is imperative to warn fellow Nigerians that “it is not yet Uhuru (freedom)”, even though the son of the late Kenyan President, Jomo Kenyatta, who coined the expression, is the current Kenyan president – Uhuru Kenyatta. Without much ado, the difference between APC and PDP is like between six and half a dozen. It is like the proverbial choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.

   Let’s face it, there are very good people in APC, and so are there some very controversial people. So much just like PDP. There is no vice that you will find in PDP that is not inherent in APC. You will find in APC people who are spartan, and waged war against indiscipline and corruption, just as there are those whose source of stupendous wealth is shrouded in mystery.   Some of their leading lights have not discharged themselves equitably in their business and personal dealings but want to be trusted with the national treasury. One of their prominent leaders even used religion to justify his marriage to an under-aged girl of exotic species. 

Another was even an accidental public servant while yet another was the famed anti-corruption czar.

   Talking of the ruling PDP, most rational people have long given up on the party. A party that could make barking, raving dogs out of a PhD holder and a medical doctor, both from an area that first got in contact with the missionaries / Western education in the country, is probably beyond redemption.

   So what choice is there then between the devil and the deep blue sea? Some would readily assert that the “the devil you know is better than the angel you do not know”. My own take is that from all their antecedents, perhaps the lesser evil should be experimented with for now. It could be likened to two students, one with a score of 39 per cent and another of 25 per cent, which are both failures in undergraduate courses but clearly the former had outperformed the other by one-and-a-half times. Change is said to be the only permanent thing, so it is imperative we use our voting powers to change our leaders from the worst set to the worse, so as to send the right signals to our current lame duck leaders that they can be dispensed with, and further encourage good materials to come out and eventually change our situation to the bad, then the good, then the better, then eventually the best.

  I wonder if any of our living past and present leaders would attract so much goodwill, prayers and best wishes like the Madiba Nelson Mandela has done in his current fight against lung infection. I dare say most, if not all would rather attract curses or at best indifference while on sick beds. And I am certain that they would not be admitted to hospitals in Nigeria. That is food for thought.

   I really have neither admiration nor respect for leaders who cannot say “Amen” to anti-corruption prayers, or who do not give a damn about being open about their self-worth (they must have something to hide if same was publicly declared four years earlier – what has changed?), It is such disdain for ordinary citizens that have made average performances of the likes of Governor Babatunde Fashola and Speaker Aminu Tambuwal the talk-of-the-town, rather than one-eyed kings in the land of the blind which they truly are.

  When elections become truly free and fair, most of the charlatans in the corridors of power will not get there in the first place. Nigerian voters showed their sophistication on June 12, 1993, where the ‘son-of-the soil’ lost in his polling booth in Kano.   This was also repeated in 1999, where the ‘son-of-the soil’ similarly lost in his polling booth in Abeokuta. When we get the electoral process right, where true winners are declared, that will be the very first step towards Nigeria’s re-discovery. This puts a lie to the zoning mentality. To choose a leader based on accident of birth is the greatest error any society could make. No one has ever had a choice as to where he would be born or to whom he was born. I have not seen anyone in need of the attention of a surgeon or a medical specialist insisting that only the ones from his tribal enclave must be the best. Similarly, I have not seen any air passenger who chooses flights based on the ethnic origin of the pilot. A leader Nigeria needs now can be likened to a pilot or a surgeon.

 An error in choice could be fatal. Competence, rather than ethnic background, should be the selection yardstick. I believe the average Nigerian voter would vote for competence over tribal affinity. Perhaps if the USA and France had adopted zoning, Obama, Sarkozy and Rawlings, whose fathers were of different nationalities, would never have had presidency zoned to them.

  The next steps for the next administration will be creation of an enabling environment for job-creation, starting with fixing of electricity, which has defied all solutions up till now. There must also be reforms in the educational system, police, law enforcement/judicial administration and transparency in governance. There must also be emphasis on enhancing the productive base of the economy, especially agriculture. The quick wins will be the drastic reduction in, and curtailment of the very high recurrent expenditure, which arose via the ridiculous and embarrassing legislative and executive jumbo salaries and allowances, as well as abolition of security votes.

  As we march towards 2015, the opposition should be reminded that those who have held the nation captive will not let go easily and willingly. Just as Mugabe has defied all machinations to leave the scene long after the ovation was loudest, the Nigerian Pharaohs have deeply entrenched themselves for the past 14 years, so no one should be deceived that they will leave on their own terms. The leading opposition group must therefore come up with a fool-proof strategy to win voters’ endorsement and also counter rigging. The other fringe opposition groups like the Labour Party and ideology-based parties like Gani Fawehinmi-founded National Conscience Party need to make deliberate efforts to start wooing the youths and the disillusioned in order to become the new future opposition and perhaps another government-in-waiting in years to come.

   I wish to remind our present crop of leaders of the quotable quote by Dele Giwa, the celebrated journalist, editor and founder of Newswatch magazine, who was killed by a mail bomb in his home on October 19, 1986 - “No evil deed can go unpunished.

  Any evil done by man to man will be redressed. If not now then certainly later. If not by man, then by God, for the victory of evil over good can only be temporary.”

Written By Dipo Dosumu

 • Dosumu wrote from Lagos

Ango Abdullahi’s ‘born to rule’ mentality

“The North, on the basis of one man one vote can keep power indefinitely in the present Nigeria State…….. the demography shows that the North can keep power as long as it wants because it will always win elections.” I am personally disappointed in President Goodluck Jonathan’s handling of the Nigerian state in the last few years and how he is letting by the golden opportunity to untie and let loose some historical chains with which his people in the Niger-Delta and the rest of the oppressed peoples of Nigeria have been bounded.

If his predecessors have failed as presidents, that should not be his excuse to tread the path of failure too. I am leery to be supportive of him because of this. But at the same time, I am unwilling to be against him because of people like Ango Abdullahi, who in my own book is a political professor and a very dishonest man who seems to think that Nigeria belongs to him and his Fulani ilk.Ango Abdullahi, who believes that it is his and kinsmen’s birthright to rule Nigeria perpetually. This is regardless of the Fulani small number relative to many other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. Any form of challenge to the Fulani dominance of political and economic space is intolerable by them in the land where they are actually foreigners.

The dexterity of the Fulani oligarch to use divide and rule to subjugate others is one of their sources of confidence. They have loyal satellites in all the ethnic nationalities who would gladly do their bidding. This is why there has not been any outcry from other sections of the country on Abdullahi’s recent vituperations in the media about the North having the capability to “always win elections” and control the Nigerian political levers indefinitely. One would have expected leaders from the South-South, South-West and South-East to come out and challenge his claims about the assumed numerical strength of the North and put nonsense to it. But alas! This is not the case because these satellites in all these regions are unwilling to offend their “paymasters.”

In fact, that President Jonathan’s political operatives are quiet about this unhealthy happenings that his political machine is devoid of fast thinking ability and is probably arid intellectually if not oblivious of historical facts. They should have come out with statistics to expose Abdullahi’s claim about the assumed numerical strength of the North as a lie and a figment of a corrupt and confused imagination.

It is not true that the North has more population than the South.  Land mass does not automatically translate to big population. Canada has more land than th USA. But the USA is ten times more populated than Canada. It is a lie that has been put in place since the 1950s by the colonial masters who believe that imposing the malleable minority Fulani on the majority would be a way to guarantee the British unfettered access to Nigeria’s wealth.

Granted that Olusegun Obasanjo as a Southerner has been a tool in the hands of the Hausa/Fulani oligarchy all his life to be able to attain the apex of politics that he has attained, what about Jonathan who has good luck on his side to be where he is today and avail himself the opportunity to loosen the chain of bondage for his people? Why won’t he correct some of these historical lies dressed in the garb of “truth” and accepted unquestioningly by the contemporary political leaders of other regions? When empirical facts could not support any claim, such claim ought to be discarded and replaced by a more verifiable ones.

It is internationally proved, known and accepted that the following variables determine the demography of any environment: (a) Access to water (b) Climate condition (c) Food among many others.

Of all the above three variables, the South is more favoured than the North. It is only in Nigeria that the Sahara Desert is more populated than the Savanna and the thick Forest. Compare the population density of the Nigerian desert states with that of Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso and others like that to recognise the enormity of lies that Ango Abdullahi is peddling and that are not being challenged by the contemporary leaders of other ethnic nationalities.

This fallacy about the Northern Population advantage has been perpetuated through the use of government tools against the reality on the ground. Every time there is a Census exercise, this lie is reinforced through the cooking of figures to portray the North as having more population than the South.  It is amazing that this lie is being accepted as the “truth” by the dealers calling themselves leaders in the South.

For example, in a reaction to a book review by this author, Forshow3 had noted that according to modern satellite, an area of Kastina State (about 60% of the entire state) is seen to have 9,800 houses that anyone who knows how to count can do.  The fraudulent 1990 census allotted 935,677 persons to this area. In 2006 the population Census also allotted 1,444,123 to this same area. Doing the elementary Mathematics to find out the population density of this area, you would divide the population of 1,444,123 by the number of houses, 9,800.  This will give you 147.064 per house.

Where in the world is it possible to have almost 150 persons living in one single house? How big could the house be?  And to have 98,000 of such? It should not also escape our cognizance that most of the “houses” in this region are huts. Every idiot knows that 147 people cannot live in a hut. Haba! Why is it that our so called leaders are not challenging this monstrous falsehood? Are they so intellectually challenged? Or are they cowards? Why are they quiet about this lie? What other way to prove this lie of population majority of the North except through technology that everyone had access to?

Also Jigawa State is given the population figure of 4.3million. Yet this is an entire state that has only 60,000 houses and or huts. If you use the same mathematical procedure, this will give you over 71 persons per house and or hut! How is this possible? It is physically implausible, untenable and indeed impossible.

So, the question arises, where did the voter register giving all these mammoth figures to these Northern States come from? They have been cooked figures aimed to giving the North an undue advantage over the South and installed apartheid on Nigeria. It is on the basis of this lie that the political professor Ango Abdullahi is threatening President Goodluck Jonathan and the rest of Nigeria that the North could win elections indefinitely.

Others, for pecuniary political interests could not summon the courage to fight for the truth and fairness.In an article “The Unmaking of Nigerian Federalism”, I had quoted the request of the Sardauna of Sokoto and the Premier of Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello’s request in 1952 to the Nigeria’s Colonial Secretary, Mr. Oliver Lyttleton as follows:

“If you want us (the North) to be part of this Nigeria you have in mind, then   we want 50% of the membership of the National Assembly.”that the Northern seats included that of Yoruba Kwara. This means that if the Kwara people were not lumped with the North, they would still have less number of seats than 79, since this was based on population. This shows that the South of Nigeria has always been more populous than the North of Nigeria.

By REMI OYEYEMI writes from Lagos