AN OPEN LETTER TO DEACON (DR) DOMINGO OBENDE: SENATOR-ELECT
“It’s an old maxim in the schools that flattery is the food of fools, yet now and then, men of wit will condescend to take a bite” – Jonathan Swift
For the umpteenth time, let me say congratulations again for your well deserved victory at the just concluded polls and your election to represent the Edo North people at the National Assembly. Congratulations to you and a big congratulation to the people of Edo North Senatorial District, for this victory is and should mark the beginning of real constituency engagement by our representative. However, I must confess that I do not envy your current position. My reason is as simple as it sounds and the following will form the core of them.
First you have been saddled with the problems of underdevelopment that have ravaged our people for the past decades. Those that have had the opportunity to hold the baton have scared away development from the place. Infrastructural and human capital development is non-existent: roads are dead traps, hospitals are mere buildings with the name hospital still hanging on them, our schools have been taken over by forest and let us not even think of job opportunity for the youths. Ironically it is not in your office to do all these but it is expected by the people that you use your God-given mandate to bring them to the attention of those in authority, especially to the state Governor who we all know is determined to bring an end to underdevelopment in the state.
Secondly, there is the problem of ethnic tension in Akoko-Edo Local Government Area (I believe this is also largely true of other Local Government Areas that make up the Senatorial District) the principal cause of this tension between our local communities is the fear of domination and boundary (land) claims which was evident during the run-up to the primaries that eventually gave you the ticket under the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). This is the time to send a clear cut message to all that you are a statesman and that you are not interested in vendetta. I know that by human nature you may hold grudges but listen to John Grisham when he says that “Life is too short to despise people who simply can’t help what they’ve done.” You must unite all by reaching out to them in bringing development to their own doorstep. And for those that said “over their dead body for you to become Senator” well today you are a living testimony and if there are still others living who still wish to continue with the same prayers, well do not worry for the God you serve is indeed a living God.Thirdly, you should be aware that some Etuno people will find it convenient to locate the road leading to your doorstep, because for the first time in our history you are the highest political office holder and for a people that have suffered marginalization for the better part of their history you should expect them to think of you as their long-awaited messiah, thus they must knock on your door. Your appreciation of the foregoing will help you to recognize those with genuine challenges for you to figure out ways to assist them.
However, having recognized the above, another reason why I am already feeling the heat for you is that your victory is that of the minority to echo Hon. Peter Ologun’s perspective. The minorities you must understand are not only the Etuno or Akoko-Edo people, the minorities are also the impoverished people of Edo North Senatorial District whose commonwealth was sacrificed on the altar of do-or-die politics. Where safe drinking water is a luxury, where roads are death traps and contracts are formulated to say thank you to political charlatans and all sorts of funny characters.
It is for the above reasons and many others which I am sure you are already aware of that I do not envy you, my Distinguished Senator. However as scary as these challenges may seem, they have also provided a clear and golden pen for you to write your name on the pages of history. How you do this is based on your adhering to Jonathan Swift’s remark above. I have in the past few weeks read and heard so much flattering statements that places you as the one and only that we never had and now have (they may be correct, please do not prove them wrong). They posit that you have done a lot in just this few weeks that you have been elected to diminish the achievements of the previous Senator (if there are any?)– I wonder where and when – even when you have not resumed office.
Many things already unfolding are the ploy of sycophants and their political acolytes to swerve you away from the real issues at hand. You are been touted as the much awaited messiah: Senator-elect you are not the messiah yet; a messiah’s success is not measured by his birth but by his/her achievements – that is your ability to tackle all the challenges highlighted above. You should be wary of career politicians for them any master is worthy of service as far as doing that would provide their daily needs.
This is the time for you to sit up and engage the electorate. Four years is far from here but you must also understand that it will come and go like yesterday. You should not go to the floor of the Senate to be a ‘siddon- look’ Senator. You must be seen contributing to the discourse on issues calling for national attention as well as those issues affecting the Senatorial district. You should research the issues as they come and have a good understanding of them before you venture into making your contributions.
Achieving greatness is not always an easy task as it sounds; however, history has always provided us with practical examples of great achievers and their achievements. The likes of Obafemi Awolowo, Adams Oshiomhole, Nelson Mandela, Raji Fashola, Alhaji Aliu Omokide to mention but a few whose songs we sing daily as practical examples of great achievers only gained prominence in our psych with popular and concrete achievements. Yes! Their achievements are popular because those achievements did not push aside the bottom-up approach in favour of the up-down approach. My Senator, research individual communities thoroughly to understand their different challenges for what is good for the goose, may not always also be good for the gander.
You should have an open line of communication with members of the Senatorial District – it is possible. They must know that you are also there for them. The team you put up to assist you do your work should not be as a result of paying back favour done during the election, because the gap between winning elections and delivering democratic dividends is a huge gulf. Your team must be up and doing especially in engaging people from the district. Because in the end, the greatest part of your achievements will not be measured by your being noticeable on the floor of the Senate but your positive attitude towards the development of the district by engaging the people.
Thank you for your time and may God give you the grace to read between the lines of Jonathan Swift’s words.
BALOGUN TREASURE OMEIZA
WARHOUSE COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED
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Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
NIGERIA’S SHINING EXAMPLES
NIGERIA’S SHINING EXAMPLES
I recently read two good books, Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs “From Third World to First” and Peter Enahoro’s book “Then Spoke the Thunder”; the former for the umpteenth time and the latter for a second time and I was struck anew with the way Nigeria was wasted. Lee Kuan Yew wrote about his first Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Lagos in 1966 and his judgement of events and Nigeria at the time, especially the demeanour and carriage of the then Finance Minister, Chief Okotie Eboh fills one with a sense that our first republic leaders were steeped in an unexplainable state of insouciance.
He went on to Ghana and the story was not much different as the Government of that great pan Africanist, Osagyefo kwame Nkrumah was fast developing into a farce papered over by hero worship. Peter Enahoro in one of the best books on a Nigerian life, indeed his own life; though he denied the book is an autobiography or memoir gave an uncanny insight into Nigerian history before, since independence and much after up until the new Century. Reading his book, one gets a fresh and often times eyewitness perspective into momentous events that shaped a distorted Nigeria and not a few African countries.
The picture of Nigeria he painted was to say the least agonizing and it grieves the heart that many leaders at every critical juncture in Nigeria’s history took the wrong turn. Many knowingly and what US Lieutenant Colonel, Frank Slade wrote is especially true of many of Nigeria’s leaders “now I have come to the crossroads in my life. I always knew what the right path was. Without exception, I knew, but I never took it. You know why? It was too damned hard” and even today some of those leaders of yore still echo the sentiments of our inglorious and ignominious past.
Enahoro’s chapter dedicated to Liberia’s Samuel Kenyon Doe and another one poignantly titled “a parade of the lions” on selected African leaders and the destructive path they charted for themselves and their countries is one of the most illumining and close quarter view of African leaders from the Niger to the Nile you will get anywhere and without exception, to the last man, these leaders failed to build their nations. Those who tried were ultimately defeated by flaws in their own character even though their countries may have done well by them if they had but a measure of temperance.
A review of Nigeria’s history paints a picture of everything a nation should not be and twelve years of democratic rule has done little to lift the gloom and show a pathway to building a proper and great nation. The stench of corruption is yet putrefying, presidential election results sired resentments in ordinary folks up North and violence erupted claiming the lives of many. The most shameful aspect of the carnage was the senseless killing of defenseless University graduates on National Assignment. Nigeria is a country where it is hard to escape the grueling suffocation of faith and dashed hopes in the nation’s future. But it is not all gloom and doom. In the midst of all these seemingly intractable and insurmountable troubles I have read in the last few days from shores afar of two Nigerians, who are products of this environment and whose lives are shining examples that Nigeria can be remade.
The New York Times, one of the most influential publications around the World wrote in a feature on Nigeria on Thursday, April 21, 2011 “one Nigerian politician is charting a new direction. Before Babatunde Fashola became its governor in 2007, Lagos-Nigeria’s business capital and Africa’s premier megacity-was known as the world’s first failed city state. The place had seen almost no new infrastructure for four decades, despite its population soaring from 5 million in 1976 to 18 million. Traffic was gridlocked day and night. Slums expanded, on stilts, into the lagoons that gave the city its name. Crime was rife, pollution choking, brown-outs constant. It was, says Fashola, a city of “very evident despair.”
The Times continued, Fashola, 47, was perhaps the only person in Lagos who saw that as an opportunity. “You are going to need more water, more roads, more jetties, schools, hospitals, space for housing,” he says. “That all means jobs.” Fashola set about rehabilitating and expanding a maze of overpasses, part of a new transport network that will connect cars and buses with trains, trams, airports, and water taxis. He unveiled plans for a new 17,000-hectare industrial zone and a gleaming new 900-hectare city center on land reclaimed from the sea that will be home to 250,000 residents and contain offices for another 150,000 commuters. All that building has indeed created hundreds of thousands of jobs. Efforts to clean the streets had the multiple effect of tidying, employing and cutting crime.
To Fashola, the new Lagos is a “statement … that things could be changed no matter how bad they were”. It’s also an example of how a new Nigeria might emerge from the old. The development of Lagos’ nonoil economy means 70% of the city’s revenue is now raised locally. Citizens not only are willing to pay tax: more to the point, by doing so they and their government reconnect, reversing decades when state and citizens lived in separate worlds.
The Times fittingly concluded “there are lessons for the whole country here. No Nigerian politician has missed that Fashola is the country’s most admired leader. Though internal ACN rivalries block any presidential bid (and Fashola in any case insists he prefers state politics to national) the governor is proving that results are possible within Nigerian politics. But while change is inevitable, it is unlikely to come fast or smoothly, because the bad old generation of Nigerian leaders will not go quietly. A western diplomat described Nigeria as having it “all to lose, rather than poised for victory.”
In a rare burst of good fortune for Nigeria in the Western press, the same Times in its reputable Annual Time 100 of Monday, April 25, 2011 which wrote of the 2011 edition; “meet the most influential people in the world. They are artists and activists, reformers and researchers, heads of state and captains of industry. Their ideas spark dialogue and dissent and sometimes even revolution” found space for a distinguished Nigerian. Nigeria’s Central Bank Governor, scion of the Kano emirate, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was named in the exalted company of 100 shaping and shaking the World – his a force for good in society.
The influential magazine wrote “the story of Nigeria's first half-century of Independence is a tale of wasted potential: sub-Saharan Africa's most populous country, home to its biggest oil riches, impoverished by thieving autocrats. A key reason a new Nigeria no longer seems fanciful is Central Bank governor Lamido Sanusi.
A veteran of an often corrupt banking industry, Sanusi, 50, took up his position at the height of the financial crisis in June 2009 and immediately turned on his former peers. He took over nine banks, sacked the chief executives of eight of them, ordered a series of mergers and named their biggest debtors. He was, he said, cleaning up not just banking but all Nigeria. Sanusi's will be a long fight and a dangerous one: death threats have obliged him to employ armed guards. But it is also essential for Africa's sleeping giant to finally awaken”.
The two New York Times publications within four days of each other confirm what some of us already know. There is a glimmer of hope in the country’s future even though it is but a flicker. We need a Million Fashola’s and Sanusi’s but if we do not find them – not to despair, a few might still suffice – history has shown that only a few sold to a committed purpose change a nation.
All therefore hail Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) and Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (OFR), the men who will change Nigeria…
Stephen o. Obajaja Esq. is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
I recently read two good books, Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs “From Third World to First” and Peter Enahoro’s book “Then Spoke the Thunder”; the former for the umpteenth time and the latter for a second time and I was struck anew with the way Nigeria was wasted. Lee Kuan Yew wrote about his first Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Lagos in 1966 and his judgement of events and Nigeria at the time, especially the demeanour and carriage of the then Finance Minister, Chief Okotie Eboh fills one with a sense that our first republic leaders were steeped in an unexplainable state of insouciance.
He went on to Ghana and the story was not much different as the Government of that great pan Africanist, Osagyefo kwame Nkrumah was fast developing into a farce papered over by hero worship. Peter Enahoro in one of the best books on a Nigerian life, indeed his own life; though he denied the book is an autobiography or memoir gave an uncanny insight into Nigerian history before, since independence and much after up until the new Century. Reading his book, one gets a fresh and often times eyewitness perspective into momentous events that shaped a distorted Nigeria and not a few African countries.
The picture of Nigeria he painted was to say the least agonizing and it grieves the heart that many leaders at every critical juncture in Nigeria’s history took the wrong turn. Many knowingly and what US Lieutenant Colonel, Frank Slade wrote is especially true of many of Nigeria’s leaders “now I have come to the crossroads in my life. I always knew what the right path was. Without exception, I knew, but I never took it. You know why? It was too damned hard” and even today some of those leaders of yore still echo the sentiments of our inglorious and ignominious past.
Enahoro’s chapter dedicated to Liberia’s Samuel Kenyon Doe and another one poignantly titled “a parade of the lions” on selected African leaders and the destructive path they charted for themselves and their countries is one of the most illumining and close quarter view of African leaders from the Niger to the Nile you will get anywhere and without exception, to the last man, these leaders failed to build their nations. Those who tried were ultimately defeated by flaws in their own character even though their countries may have done well by them if they had but a measure of temperance.
A review of Nigeria’s history paints a picture of everything a nation should not be and twelve years of democratic rule has done little to lift the gloom and show a pathway to building a proper and great nation. The stench of corruption is yet putrefying, presidential election results sired resentments in ordinary folks up North and violence erupted claiming the lives of many. The most shameful aspect of the carnage was the senseless killing of defenseless University graduates on National Assignment. Nigeria is a country where it is hard to escape the grueling suffocation of faith and dashed hopes in the nation’s future. But it is not all gloom and doom. In the midst of all these seemingly intractable and insurmountable troubles I have read in the last few days from shores afar of two Nigerians, who are products of this environment and whose lives are shining examples that Nigeria can be remade.
The New York Times, one of the most influential publications around the World wrote in a feature on Nigeria on Thursday, April 21, 2011 “one Nigerian politician is charting a new direction. Before Babatunde Fashola became its governor in 2007, Lagos-Nigeria’s business capital and Africa’s premier megacity-was known as the world’s first failed city state. The place had seen almost no new infrastructure for four decades, despite its population soaring from 5 million in 1976 to 18 million. Traffic was gridlocked day and night. Slums expanded, on stilts, into the lagoons that gave the city its name. Crime was rife, pollution choking, brown-outs constant. It was, says Fashola, a city of “very evident despair.”
The Times continued, Fashola, 47, was perhaps the only person in Lagos who saw that as an opportunity. “You are going to need more water, more roads, more jetties, schools, hospitals, space for housing,” he says. “That all means jobs.” Fashola set about rehabilitating and expanding a maze of overpasses, part of a new transport network that will connect cars and buses with trains, trams, airports, and water taxis. He unveiled plans for a new 17,000-hectare industrial zone and a gleaming new 900-hectare city center on land reclaimed from the sea that will be home to 250,000 residents and contain offices for another 150,000 commuters. All that building has indeed created hundreds of thousands of jobs. Efforts to clean the streets had the multiple effect of tidying, employing and cutting crime.
To Fashola, the new Lagos is a “statement … that things could be changed no matter how bad they were”. It’s also an example of how a new Nigeria might emerge from the old. The development of Lagos’ nonoil economy means 70% of the city’s revenue is now raised locally. Citizens not only are willing to pay tax: more to the point, by doing so they and their government reconnect, reversing decades when state and citizens lived in separate worlds.
The Times fittingly concluded “there are lessons for the whole country here. No Nigerian politician has missed that Fashola is the country’s most admired leader. Though internal ACN rivalries block any presidential bid (and Fashola in any case insists he prefers state politics to national) the governor is proving that results are possible within Nigerian politics. But while change is inevitable, it is unlikely to come fast or smoothly, because the bad old generation of Nigerian leaders will not go quietly. A western diplomat described Nigeria as having it “all to lose, rather than poised for victory.”
In a rare burst of good fortune for Nigeria in the Western press, the same Times in its reputable Annual Time 100 of Monday, April 25, 2011 which wrote of the 2011 edition; “meet the most influential people in the world. They are artists and activists, reformers and researchers, heads of state and captains of industry. Their ideas spark dialogue and dissent and sometimes even revolution” found space for a distinguished Nigerian. Nigeria’s Central Bank Governor, scion of the Kano emirate, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was named in the exalted company of 100 shaping and shaking the World – his a force for good in society.
The influential magazine wrote “the story of Nigeria's first half-century of Independence is a tale of wasted potential: sub-Saharan Africa's most populous country, home to its biggest oil riches, impoverished by thieving autocrats. A key reason a new Nigeria no longer seems fanciful is Central Bank governor Lamido Sanusi.
A veteran of an often corrupt banking industry, Sanusi, 50, took up his position at the height of the financial crisis in June 2009 and immediately turned on his former peers. He took over nine banks, sacked the chief executives of eight of them, ordered a series of mergers and named their biggest debtors. He was, he said, cleaning up not just banking but all Nigeria. Sanusi's will be a long fight and a dangerous one: death threats have obliged him to employ armed guards. But it is also essential for Africa's sleeping giant to finally awaken”.
The two New York Times publications within four days of each other confirm what some of us already know. There is a glimmer of hope in the country’s future even though it is but a flicker. We need a Million Fashola’s and Sanusi’s but if we do not find them – not to despair, a few might still suffice – history has shown that only a few sold to a committed purpose change a nation.
All therefore hail Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) and Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (OFR), the men who will change Nigeria…
Stephen o. Obajaja Esq. is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
THE MAN WHO WILL BE SENATOR
THE MAN WHO WILL BE SENATOR
When someone wrote “every child no matter the circumstances of birth is a beacon of hope for the future” there was no means of knowing that he was speaking to the life and times of a man whose gentleness and humility knows no bounds even in the face of great wealth and an abundance of all good things life has to offer.
Deacon (Dr.) Domingo Alaba Obende was born and raised in the humblest of circumstances. His is a classic case of the much abused rags to riches cliché but he will never speak about it in the solicitous way made men in Nigeria do. The man fondly called “DD” was born on the 5th day of December 1954 in Igarra, Akoko – Edo Local Government Area in the then Western region of Nigeria now Edo State. He had his elementary education at the Local Authority Primary School (LA) in Igarra before he proceeded to Lagos, where he attended Prestige Commercial Institute, Ebute Metta, Yaba Trade Centre and subsequently the Universities of Benin, East London and St. Andrews, California, United States of America.
“DD”, holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Administration from the University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria and an MBA Degree in Public Services from the University of East London Business School, London, United Kingdom. In the year 2007, in recognition of his contribution to critical thought, business and the advancement of humanity, he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa) in Business Management by the St. Andrews University College, Riverside, California, United States of America.
After a life time of success in business, “DD” ventured into active politics and public life at the return of democratic rule in 1999. He joined the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) where he contested the Edo North Senatorial District Primaries in December 2006 but lost the ticket to Senator Yisa Braimoh in controversial circumstances at a time he was the leading and preferred candidate of the PDP. This and all the intrigues and horse –trading in the PDP at the time did not deter the loyal party man that “DD” was and he still is as he remained in the PDP to shore up its electoral fortune until his continued membership of that troubled and strife ridden party with Godless godfathers became untenable. He could have resigned from politics as his numerous businesses were obviously crying for his attention but being the man that he is, he chose to pitch his tent with the Action Congress of Nigeria as his avowed intent was to serve and lift his people from poverty.
This iconic man will not suffer fools gladly either. In a show of rare insight and awareness in today’s politics, he left the PDP, in his words, to challenge the single leadership structure of the PDP as according to him, any political system that revolves around a single individual cannot ensure a democracy that is genuine and developmental. “DD” believes that only a collective democratic system will bring dividends of democracy to the down trodden and the less privileged who are often left behind in the governance process. See how passionate this man is about the poor and the good of his people!!!
You can therefore understand why something came alive in me on Wednesday, the 12th day of January in the year of our Lord 2011, when word reached me that the Action Congress of Nigeria, our great party in Edo State has elected through transparent, free, fair and largely trouble free party primaries the Man “DD” to fly the flag of the party in the forthcoming General Elections in Edo North Senatorial District. My joy knew no bounds as this means the great man will square up against the dour, uninspiring and now unelectable Senator Yisa Braimoh of the PDP who wasted space and every one’s time for four years that are better forgotten. The only snag for me was that Dr. Tunde Lakoju, a man who likes to think he is the only person in Akoko – Edo Local Government Area went all out against all entreaties and the edifying position taken by the party leaders in the State to contest against “DD”. Well it is his Constitutional right to so do and he has indeed exercised that right but how well he was trounced!!! It is good that he did and in the process unwittingly made his demystification easy. One can only hope he has finally been put in his place and that he will learn to be less obtrusive next time. Why he thinks he is more deserving of the opportunity to represent us in a pack comprising “DD”, Comrade Peter Akpatason, the sagacious labour leader, and the distinguished Retired but not tired Assistant Inspector General of Police, the much loved and respected Chief Mike Okuo beats me silly.
Now back to the man who will be Senator. I am not one to gloat so I will not say that I told you so but nonetheless I will gleefully quote from an earlier paper where I canvassed “fairness and equity demands that an Akoko – Edo person must be senator now. The Etsako and Owan people have had more than their fair share of the largesse of office”. In the same piece I further wrote “on the basis of equity, justice and fair play, an Akoko - Edo person must be senator now. If that is true then this senator with all sense of fairness and responsibility must be an Igarra person. Even in the LGA, the Igarra people have always held the short end of the stick. In recent memory, between 1999 and now, Dr. Tunde Lakoju, who incidentally is also a Commissioner in the present administration of the Comrade Governor and Colonel Tunde Akogun (Rtd) who currently represents the Akoko – Edo people in the House of Representatives have been elected to the House of Representatives. Chief Paul Kehinde Udofe was also Commissioner in the Administration of Chief Lucky Igbinedion. The Late Chief Samson Ekhabafe before his unfortunate demise was Commissioner in 1983, He was Attorney General in the administration of Chief Lucky Igbinedion, He was again Commissioner for Water Resources in the administration of Professor Oserhiemen Osunbor and was factional Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party in Edo State. My point is by now obvious. Telling you none of these men hails from Igarra and that in all that time no Igarra man has been elected or appointed to any of these posts will be merely begging the question. So our next senator must be an Igarra person”.
How psychic and prescient this has proven. I am particularly delighted that the good people of Edo North Senatorial District, barring a few who will never outgrow the pull him down syndrome listened to the voice of reason. I do not recall a time when the Trinity (Akoko – Edo, Etsako and Owan people) agreed wholeheartedly on something as they have done on the burning and divisive Senatorial issue. I particularly am impressed with Comrade Peter Akpatason for his pragmatism and farsightedness. His political future is spread before him and I pray it be a successful and edifying one. He accepted that politics is about elite consensus and once it breaks down, there is bound to be trouble. Anyone who thinks that assessing strengths, pruning candidates, aligning, realigning, and realistically stepping down in deserving cases whether to ensure continued cohesion of a political party, forestall breakdown in law and order, maintain peace and guarantee the continued appeal of the party to the electorate is not part of the internal workings of a political party in a democracy had better get another think coming. The Comrade gentleman by his actions in the days leading to and shortly after the political considerations that saw “DD” emerge as the preferred candidate agrees with “DD” on the point that “this is no time for recrimination and it is no time to plot intrigues. This is the time to be focused without wavering. Therefore, every hand must be on deck as we fight for a common purpose”.
We may not know what will happen in the coming days because as they say, in politics, a lot can happen in the course of one day but one thing I do know is that the man who will be Senator is a gracious man. He must therefore be gracious in victory now and in the coming General Elections. It is no time to recriminate. The Senatorial project is an all embracing one. Every one is important whether they bought or did not buy into the idea. We of the Senatorial District must heed the wisdom in the recent words of that fine democrat, President Barack Obama of the United State’s as he counsels his people, a counsel which also speaks to us - “at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds”. Our creed should be that in the struggle to liberate our people from poverty, there are no winners and losers. Let it be that we all won as the good of the Senatorial District is secured.
Interestingly though, “DD” has become the face of hope for the Akoko - Edo people in the same mould Comrade Adams Oshiomole was for the people of Edo North in 2007 when he was the leading and preferred Gubernatorial candidate in Edo State before the abracadabra of the PDP and the kill joy that was Iwu’s INEC denied the people of the State the right to choose who governs them before the heroics of the judiciary vindicated the Comrade Governor’s insistence on the path of rectitude and restored the mandate of the people. The General Elections in April 2011 is “DDs” to lose. The groundswell of support he now enjoys is unprecedented in the history of the Senatorial District; Senator Yisa Braimoh’s scorecard does not inspire confidence and it will be a herculean task for him and the PDP which now enjoys thin support in the State to win the Senatorial District; a critical factor in Nigerian politics is to have the support of Party Chieftains, the State Governor and men of Power and means across the State and “DD” has this in abundance; “DD” represents the change we crave as his relative freshness in politics means that he is untainted with the muck with which the old guard is associated, infact “DDs” candidature is seen in the Senatorial District as a breath of fresh air after the suffocating years of thin ‘gods’ in Edo North and Akoko –Edo politics; “DD” is a courageous, dogged and committed fighter and this he demonstrated in quantum leaps whilst the quest to receive the nod to represent the Edo North people lasted, he neither waivered nor exercised any shade of doubt that one day we will collectively birth the vision he had for Edo North; there is a perception and rightly so that “DD” can be trusted – a man of means, influence and considerable persuasive skills who will get things done for the Senatorial District at the National Assembly.
“DD” is a man of immense goodwill and the good people of the Senatorial District know this and they seem eager to reward a man who they all agree is a gentleman and they know they will do pretty well by him. They know he understands them because he has seen it all. He has been at the valley, he has being to the mountain top, he is humane, urbane and cosmopolitan, he knows that things can be done in a better way, he knows that there is too much mediocrity here and above all the people know that he can do it. For “DD”, a man’s word is his bond and he does not give his lightly. If he says he will do it, you can be sure he will follow through. This man has the light and he will show us the way. This man has shattered the glass ceiling. He will be the first elected Senator from Akoko – Edo Local Government Area. The intangible gains for all of us are better imagined. No longer will it be that any one cannot aspire to a particular office because of untenable reasons, perceptions and ill considered cultural baggage’s.
Personally, I have not met a Billionaire who is more humble and I have met many. “DD” has never failed to spend time with a man like me to ruminate over the state of the nation and on sundry issues that affect our local community any time I catch up with him in Igarra, Lagos and Abuja. For such a man, the three hours I spent with him alone on Christmas day 2010 will ever count for much as I saw a man who was committed and willing to make the sacrifice that will be necessary in the coming days, months and years in the cause of serving the people. “DDs” avowed belief in divine orchestration and in the Almighty God is rare in today’s politician. I will never forget his punching one liner, “Stephen, every one will fulfill destiny by God Almighty”. I cannot but thank God that God’s purpose for this man’s life will not be still born, that this man will fulfill destiny, that with this man, it will be well with the people, that this man truly believes in ‘one people, one community’, that finally the Edo North people will have a man who understands that he is only a custodian of wealth and power and that the good of the people is why noble men venture into politics, it is why men should seek wealth and power.
Finally, may God Almighty reward the man who seek him earnestly, may he bless his cause and cause light perpetual to shine on his path even as the people of the Senatorial District earnestly look forward to the election of the man who seeks to make them ‘one people, one community’, Deacon (Dr.) Domingo Alaba Obende, the Man who will be Senator to the Glory of God.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law firm of Fountain Court Partners.
When someone wrote “every child no matter the circumstances of birth is a beacon of hope for the future” there was no means of knowing that he was speaking to the life and times of a man whose gentleness and humility knows no bounds even in the face of great wealth and an abundance of all good things life has to offer.
Deacon (Dr.) Domingo Alaba Obende was born and raised in the humblest of circumstances. His is a classic case of the much abused rags to riches cliché but he will never speak about it in the solicitous way made men in Nigeria do. The man fondly called “DD” was born on the 5th day of December 1954 in Igarra, Akoko – Edo Local Government Area in the then Western region of Nigeria now Edo State. He had his elementary education at the Local Authority Primary School (LA) in Igarra before he proceeded to Lagos, where he attended Prestige Commercial Institute, Ebute Metta, Yaba Trade Centre and subsequently the Universities of Benin, East London and St. Andrews, California, United States of America.
“DD”, holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Administration from the University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria and an MBA Degree in Public Services from the University of East London Business School, London, United Kingdom. In the year 2007, in recognition of his contribution to critical thought, business and the advancement of humanity, he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa) in Business Management by the St. Andrews University College, Riverside, California, United States of America.
After a life time of success in business, “DD” ventured into active politics and public life at the return of democratic rule in 1999. He joined the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) where he contested the Edo North Senatorial District Primaries in December 2006 but lost the ticket to Senator Yisa Braimoh in controversial circumstances at a time he was the leading and preferred candidate of the PDP. This and all the intrigues and horse –trading in the PDP at the time did not deter the loyal party man that “DD” was and he still is as he remained in the PDP to shore up its electoral fortune until his continued membership of that troubled and strife ridden party with Godless godfathers became untenable. He could have resigned from politics as his numerous businesses were obviously crying for his attention but being the man that he is, he chose to pitch his tent with the Action Congress of Nigeria as his avowed intent was to serve and lift his people from poverty.
This iconic man will not suffer fools gladly either. In a show of rare insight and awareness in today’s politics, he left the PDP, in his words, to challenge the single leadership structure of the PDP as according to him, any political system that revolves around a single individual cannot ensure a democracy that is genuine and developmental. “DD” believes that only a collective democratic system will bring dividends of democracy to the down trodden and the less privileged who are often left behind in the governance process. See how passionate this man is about the poor and the good of his people!!!
You can therefore understand why something came alive in me on Wednesday, the 12th day of January in the year of our Lord 2011, when word reached me that the Action Congress of Nigeria, our great party in Edo State has elected through transparent, free, fair and largely trouble free party primaries the Man “DD” to fly the flag of the party in the forthcoming General Elections in Edo North Senatorial District. My joy knew no bounds as this means the great man will square up against the dour, uninspiring and now unelectable Senator Yisa Braimoh of the PDP who wasted space and every one’s time for four years that are better forgotten. The only snag for me was that Dr. Tunde Lakoju, a man who likes to think he is the only person in Akoko – Edo Local Government Area went all out against all entreaties and the edifying position taken by the party leaders in the State to contest against “DD”. Well it is his Constitutional right to so do and he has indeed exercised that right but how well he was trounced!!! It is good that he did and in the process unwittingly made his demystification easy. One can only hope he has finally been put in his place and that he will learn to be less obtrusive next time. Why he thinks he is more deserving of the opportunity to represent us in a pack comprising “DD”, Comrade Peter Akpatason, the sagacious labour leader, and the distinguished Retired but not tired Assistant Inspector General of Police, the much loved and respected Chief Mike Okuo beats me silly.
Now back to the man who will be Senator. I am not one to gloat so I will not say that I told you so but nonetheless I will gleefully quote from an earlier paper where I canvassed “fairness and equity demands that an Akoko – Edo person must be senator now. The Etsako and Owan people have had more than their fair share of the largesse of office”. In the same piece I further wrote “on the basis of equity, justice and fair play, an Akoko - Edo person must be senator now. If that is true then this senator with all sense of fairness and responsibility must be an Igarra person. Even in the LGA, the Igarra people have always held the short end of the stick. In recent memory, between 1999 and now, Dr. Tunde Lakoju, who incidentally is also a Commissioner in the present administration of the Comrade Governor and Colonel Tunde Akogun (Rtd) who currently represents the Akoko – Edo people in the House of Representatives have been elected to the House of Representatives. Chief Paul Kehinde Udofe was also Commissioner in the Administration of Chief Lucky Igbinedion. The Late Chief Samson Ekhabafe before his unfortunate demise was Commissioner in 1983, He was Attorney General in the administration of Chief Lucky Igbinedion, He was again Commissioner for Water Resources in the administration of Professor Oserhiemen Osunbor and was factional Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party in Edo State. My point is by now obvious. Telling you none of these men hails from Igarra and that in all that time no Igarra man has been elected or appointed to any of these posts will be merely begging the question. So our next senator must be an Igarra person”.
How psychic and prescient this has proven. I am particularly delighted that the good people of Edo North Senatorial District, barring a few who will never outgrow the pull him down syndrome listened to the voice of reason. I do not recall a time when the Trinity (Akoko – Edo, Etsako and Owan people) agreed wholeheartedly on something as they have done on the burning and divisive Senatorial issue. I particularly am impressed with Comrade Peter Akpatason for his pragmatism and farsightedness. His political future is spread before him and I pray it be a successful and edifying one. He accepted that politics is about elite consensus and once it breaks down, there is bound to be trouble. Anyone who thinks that assessing strengths, pruning candidates, aligning, realigning, and realistically stepping down in deserving cases whether to ensure continued cohesion of a political party, forestall breakdown in law and order, maintain peace and guarantee the continued appeal of the party to the electorate is not part of the internal workings of a political party in a democracy had better get another think coming. The Comrade gentleman by his actions in the days leading to and shortly after the political considerations that saw “DD” emerge as the preferred candidate agrees with “DD” on the point that “this is no time for recrimination and it is no time to plot intrigues. This is the time to be focused without wavering. Therefore, every hand must be on deck as we fight for a common purpose”.
We may not know what will happen in the coming days because as they say, in politics, a lot can happen in the course of one day but one thing I do know is that the man who will be Senator is a gracious man. He must therefore be gracious in victory now and in the coming General Elections. It is no time to recriminate. The Senatorial project is an all embracing one. Every one is important whether they bought or did not buy into the idea. We of the Senatorial District must heed the wisdom in the recent words of that fine democrat, President Barack Obama of the United State’s as he counsels his people, a counsel which also speaks to us - “at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds”. Our creed should be that in the struggle to liberate our people from poverty, there are no winners and losers. Let it be that we all won as the good of the Senatorial District is secured.
Interestingly though, “DD” has become the face of hope for the Akoko - Edo people in the same mould Comrade Adams Oshiomole was for the people of Edo North in 2007 when he was the leading and preferred Gubernatorial candidate in Edo State before the abracadabra of the PDP and the kill joy that was Iwu’s INEC denied the people of the State the right to choose who governs them before the heroics of the judiciary vindicated the Comrade Governor’s insistence on the path of rectitude and restored the mandate of the people. The General Elections in April 2011 is “DDs” to lose. The groundswell of support he now enjoys is unprecedented in the history of the Senatorial District; Senator Yisa Braimoh’s scorecard does not inspire confidence and it will be a herculean task for him and the PDP which now enjoys thin support in the State to win the Senatorial District; a critical factor in Nigerian politics is to have the support of Party Chieftains, the State Governor and men of Power and means across the State and “DD” has this in abundance; “DD” represents the change we crave as his relative freshness in politics means that he is untainted with the muck with which the old guard is associated, infact “DDs” candidature is seen in the Senatorial District as a breath of fresh air after the suffocating years of thin ‘gods’ in Edo North and Akoko –Edo politics; “DD” is a courageous, dogged and committed fighter and this he demonstrated in quantum leaps whilst the quest to receive the nod to represent the Edo North people lasted, he neither waivered nor exercised any shade of doubt that one day we will collectively birth the vision he had for Edo North; there is a perception and rightly so that “DD” can be trusted – a man of means, influence and considerable persuasive skills who will get things done for the Senatorial District at the National Assembly.
“DD” is a man of immense goodwill and the good people of the Senatorial District know this and they seem eager to reward a man who they all agree is a gentleman and they know they will do pretty well by him. They know he understands them because he has seen it all. He has been at the valley, he has being to the mountain top, he is humane, urbane and cosmopolitan, he knows that things can be done in a better way, he knows that there is too much mediocrity here and above all the people know that he can do it. For “DD”, a man’s word is his bond and he does not give his lightly. If he says he will do it, you can be sure he will follow through. This man has the light and he will show us the way. This man has shattered the glass ceiling. He will be the first elected Senator from Akoko – Edo Local Government Area. The intangible gains for all of us are better imagined. No longer will it be that any one cannot aspire to a particular office because of untenable reasons, perceptions and ill considered cultural baggage’s.
Personally, I have not met a Billionaire who is more humble and I have met many. “DD” has never failed to spend time with a man like me to ruminate over the state of the nation and on sundry issues that affect our local community any time I catch up with him in Igarra, Lagos and Abuja. For such a man, the three hours I spent with him alone on Christmas day 2010 will ever count for much as I saw a man who was committed and willing to make the sacrifice that will be necessary in the coming days, months and years in the cause of serving the people. “DDs” avowed belief in divine orchestration and in the Almighty God is rare in today’s politician. I will never forget his punching one liner, “Stephen, every one will fulfill destiny by God Almighty”. I cannot but thank God that God’s purpose for this man’s life will not be still born, that this man will fulfill destiny, that with this man, it will be well with the people, that this man truly believes in ‘one people, one community’, that finally the Edo North people will have a man who understands that he is only a custodian of wealth and power and that the good of the people is why noble men venture into politics, it is why men should seek wealth and power.
Finally, may God Almighty reward the man who seek him earnestly, may he bless his cause and cause light perpetual to shine on his path even as the people of the Senatorial District earnestly look forward to the election of the man who seeks to make them ‘one people, one community’, Deacon (Dr.) Domingo Alaba Obende, the Man who will be Senator to the Glory of God.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law firm of Fountain Court Partners.
Friday, December 3, 2010
CONSENSUS: A SAD RETURN TO ETHNIC POLITICS
CONSENSUS: A SAD RETURN TO ETHNIC POLITICS
A sad day it was on the 22nd of November, 2010, when Mallam Adamu Ciroma and 8 others against wise counsel and all entreaties and appeal to the better angels of their nature endorsed a Northern consensus candidate to vie for the presidential ticket of the PDP against the incumbent President, Dr. Jonathan Ebele Goodluck of the minority Ijaw stock of the South - South region supposedly to maintain a nebulous power rotation or zoning within the ruling PDP which delusionally refers to itself as the largest political party in Africa.
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the man so endorsed has accepted the challenge and the three other major contestants, General Ibrahim Babangida, General Aliyu Gusau and Abubakar Bukola Saraki have since congratulated and pledged to work with him. On the other hand, Presidential spokesperson, Ima Niboro has welcomed the choice of the Nine ‘wisemen’ boasting that the choice of Atiku Abubakar has further cleared the coast for his principal to coast to victory at the PDP presidential primaries. Dr. Balarabe Musa believes that Atiku’s choice is an opportunity for the opposition parties to dislodge the PDP from power as he reckons General Ibrahim Babangida would have being a more formidable choice even more so than President Jonathan Ebele Goodluck.
For whatever it is worth, the 2011 elections will come and go and we will still be here but the implications and the resonance of what Mallam Adamu Ciroma and his cohorts have done will live with us for decades. I pray they will live many more years to be haunted by the inevitable ethnic backlash that will follow this endorsement every general election year. IBB is obviously already worried; he has cautioned that the aspirants from the North should not be seen as candidates of the North, but as national aspirants. He said the position of the North on zoning had been misconstrued. Pray how else are we to see candidates who insisted that a Northerner must emerge president and who willingly submitted themselves to the Ciroma group for possible selection as the Northern consensus candidate? Atiku Abubakar is a Northern candidate pure and simple.
The sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’aad Abubakar, Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, Alhaji Maitama Sule, Generals Yakubu Gowon, Theophilus Danjuma and Domkat Bali and many other influential Northerners endorsed Atiku’s candidature as reported in the Guardian of Tuesday, November 23, 2010. If it is about Nigeria, these experienced men sure could have counseled other subtle ways of achieving the same purpose without such an open endorsement that will surely divide Nigerians more than it will unite them.
Wise counsel suggests that the Jonathan Ebele Goodluck presidency is a tide of history that we should all do well to live with. The conventional wisdom should be that there is nothing any one can do about it considering the humble man’s trajectory to power but not so with these rapacious and perfidious political elites and their collaborators who must be relevant at all cost. These same men have held power for 38 years of Nigeria’s political independence and did nothing for their people yet they will in the name of these same people demand power rotation at all cost in 2011 when a Southern minority was having a shot at power for the first time in Nigeria’s political history, something that may not happen again in One hundred years and yet these people will not see it as an opportunity to heal the nation and foster a sense of belonging, enthrone equity and justice and engender a sense of joint ownership of the Nigerian project amongst the minority ethnic groups.
Now the damage is done. How shall we counsel the Ibo man in 2015 if he insists on a Consensus Eastern candidate? How about our brothers to the West of the Niger river who will sooner than later insist on a Yoruba president and a very clear and present danger, how do you explain these to the South - South, the region which believes that without its vast oil wealth, there will be no Nigeria. It is no longer whether Atiku wins the Presidency or not. It is that from now on, every one will be justified to insist on ethnocentricity and resort to ethnic jingoism whenever and wherever the question of political office rears its head in Nigeria.
But for one or two persons amongst the ‘Nine wisemen’, and the four candidates, they have between them held all the most important offices with enormous opportunity to make Nigeria but they did not. Their arrowhead, Mallam Adamu Ciroma was Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, three times Minister of Industries, Agriculture and Finance. He was a powerful chieftain of the NPN and infact a former Presidential aspirant of that era that brought Nigeria to its knees. He is also a founding member of the PDP, a party that is destroying Nigeria today. Another prominent member of that panel is three times Minister of Establishment, Minister of State for Education and Minister of Labour, Alhaji Bello Kirfi. Chief Audu Ogbeh was a former Minister of Communications and he was National Chairman of the PDP. Major General David Jemibewon was Military Governor of Western State, First Governor of Old Oyo State and Minister of Police Affairs. He was also a founding member of the PDP. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Turakin Adamawa, rose to be Customs boss, he was elected Governor of Adamawa State and He was Vice President of Nigeria for Eight years. No one will forget the unspeakable shame the then Vice President and President Olusegun Obasanjo brought Nigeria in a war of attrition where accusations of corruption and counter corruption were bandied around to the chagrin of utterly disconsolate Nigerians. He was also a founding member of the PDP. General Aliyu Gusau has been National Security Adviser now for as long as anyone can remember. How secure is our nation today? He was also a founding member of the PDP. Everything has been said and written about General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida who is fondly called IBB and he has been accused of everything and anything under the sun. He has been accused of elevating corruption to a statecraft. He has been accused of murder and above all he annulled an election that could have set Nigeria free and flying again in 1993. The agitations that followed the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential elections brought Nigeria to the edge of the precipice and the albatross of that misadventure remains wrapped around IBB’s neck like an albatross. A Gordian knot from which he will never be able to extricate himself even if he had two lifetimes.
These men without fail failed our country. These men should hide their heads in shame for the role they played in the destruction of Nigeria. They should worry that a country they midwifed turned out this awry and leave us to sort out the mess with new ideas. There is no magic wand they have now to exorcise the evil with Nigeria that was not available to them all along – since Nigeria’s political independence these men and their ilk have held sway. These men by their antecedents cannot be trusted to lead us right or choose leaders for us.
Turaki is meanwhile prancing about the place, talking to a people whose flirtations with dementia are well known. His predilection to sound the gong of zoning from the rooftop deceives no one. So there was no zoning when he held Olusegun Obasanjo to ransom in 2003 on the eve of the Presidentail primaries of the PDP. He could well have been President or swing the support Alex Ekwueme’s way and this much he agreed were two of the three options available to him until the last minute when Obasanjo went to him cap in hand begging at the time. If Obasanjo had died in 2001, Atiku wants us to believe he would have respected any nebulous zoning or power rotation concept eh… Let the former Vice President tell that story to the marines!!!
I am bitterly disappointed because by this consensus candidate thing, we have again introduced another dangerous dimension to our politicking and one that is not easily reversed at that all in the name of ‘self interest’ is the name of the game. Just when you think it can not possibly get worse than this, it actually does get worse in Nigeria.
Resignedly, we wait with berthed breath and see where this all leads us in 2011 and beyond.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
A sad day it was on the 22nd of November, 2010, when Mallam Adamu Ciroma and 8 others against wise counsel and all entreaties and appeal to the better angels of their nature endorsed a Northern consensus candidate to vie for the presidential ticket of the PDP against the incumbent President, Dr. Jonathan Ebele Goodluck of the minority Ijaw stock of the South - South region supposedly to maintain a nebulous power rotation or zoning within the ruling PDP which delusionally refers to itself as the largest political party in Africa.
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the man so endorsed has accepted the challenge and the three other major contestants, General Ibrahim Babangida, General Aliyu Gusau and Abubakar Bukola Saraki have since congratulated and pledged to work with him. On the other hand, Presidential spokesperson, Ima Niboro has welcomed the choice of the Nine ‘wisemen’ boasting that the choice of Atiku Abubakar has further cleared the coast for his principal to coast to victory at the PDP presidential primaries. Dr. Balarabe Musa believes that Atiku’s choice is an opportunity for the opposition parties to dislodge the PDP from power as he reckons General Ibrahim Babangida would have being a more formidable choice even more so than President Jonathan Ebele Goodluck.
For whatever it is worth, the 2011 elections will come and go and we will still be here but the implications and the resonance of what Mallam Adamu Ciroma and his cohorts have done will live with us for decades. I pray they will live many more years to be haunted by the inevitable ethnic backlash that will follow this endorsement every general election year. IBB is obviously already worried; he has cautioned that the aspirants from the North should not be seen as candidates of the North, but as national aspirants. He said the position of the North on zoning had been misconstrued. Pray how else are we to see candidates who insisted that a Northerner must emerge president and who willingly submitted themselves to the Ciroma group for possible selection as the Northern consensus candidate? Atiku Abubakar is a Northern candidate pure and simple.
The sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’aad Abubakar, Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, Alhaji Maitama Sule, Generals Yakubu Gowon, Theophilus Danjuma and Domkat Bali and many other influential Northerners endorsed Atiku’s candidature as reported in the Guardian of Tuesday, November 23, 2010. If it is about Nigeria, these experienced men sure could have counseled other subtle ways of achieving the same purpose without such an open endorsement that will surely divide Nigerians more than it will unite them.
Wise counsel suggests that the Jonathan Ebele Goodluck presidency is a tide of history that we should all do well to live with. The conventional wisdom should be that there is nothing any one can do about it considering the humble man’s trajectory to power but not so with these rapacious and perfidious political elites and their collaborators who must be relevant at all cost. These same men have held power for 38 years of Nigeria’s political independence and did nothing for their people yet they will in the name of these same people demand power rotation at all cost in 2011 when a Southern minority was having a shot at power for the first time in Nigeria’s political history, something that may not happen again in One hundred years and yet these people will not see it as an opportunity to heal the nation and foster a sense of belonging, enthrone equity and justice and engender a sense of joint ownership of the Nigerian project amongst the minority ethnic groups.
Now the damage is done. How shall we counsel the Ibo man in 2015 if he insists on a Consensus Eastern candidate? How about our brothers to the West of the Niger river who will sooner than later insist on a Yoruba president and a very clear and present danger, how do you explain these to the South - South, the region which believes that without its vast oil wealth, there will be no Nigeria. It is no longer whether Atiku wins the Presidency or not. It is that from now on, every one will be justified to insist on ethnocentricity and resort to ethnic jingoism whenever and wherever the question of political office rears its head in Nigeria.
But for one or two persons amongst the ‘Nine wisemen’, and the four candidates, they have between them held all the most important offices with enormous opportunity to make Nigeria but they did not. Their arrowhead, Mallam Adamu Ciroma was Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, three times Minister of Industries, Agriculture and Finance. He was a powerful chieftain of the NPN and infact a former Presidential aspirant of that era that brought Nigeria to its knees. He is also a founding member of the PDP, a party that is destroying Nigeria today. Another prominent member of that panel is three times Minister of Establishment, Minister of State for Education and Minister of Labour, Alhaji Bello Kirfi. Chief Audu Ogbeh was a former Minister of Communications and he was National Chairman of the PDP. Major General David Jemibewon was Military Governor of Western State, First Governor of Old Oyo State and Minister of Police Affairs. He was also a founding member of the PDP. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Turakin Adamawa, rose to be Customs boss, he was elected Governor of Adamawa State and He was Vice President of Nigeria for Eight years. No one will forget the unspeakable shame the then Vice President and President Olusegun Obasanjo brought Nigeria in a war of attrition where accusations of corruption and counter corruption were bandied around to the chagrin of utterly disconsolate Nigerians. He was also a founding member of the PDP. General Aliyu Gusau has been National Security Adviser now for as long as anyone can remember. How secure is our nation today? He was also a founding member of the PDP. Everything has been said and written about General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida who is fondly called IBB and he has been accused of everything and anything under the sun. He has been accused of elevating corruption to a statecraft. He has been accused of murder and above all he annulled an election that could have set Nigeria free and flying again in 1993. The agitations that followed the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential elections brought Nigeria to the edge of the precipice and the albatross of that misadventure remains wrapped around IBB’s neck like an albatross. A Gordian knot from which he will never be able to extricate himself even if he had two lifetimes.
These men without fail failed our country. These men should hide their heads in shame for the role they played in the destruction of Nigeria. They should worry that a country they midwifed turned out this awry and leave us to sort out the mess with new ideas. There is no magic wand they have now to exorcise the evil with Nigeria that was not available to them all along – since Nigeria’s political independence these men and their ilk have held sway. These men by their antecedents cannot be trusted to lead us right or choose leaders for us.
Turaki is meanwhile prancing about the place, talking to a people whose flirtations with dementia are well known. His predilection to sound the gong of zoning from the rooftop deceives no one. So there was no zoning when he held Olusegun Obasanjo to ransom in 2003 on the eve of the Presidentail primaries of the PDP. He could well have been President or swing the support Alex Ekwueme’s way and this much he agreed were two of the three options available to him until the last minute when Obasanjo went to him cap in hand begging at the time. If Obasanjo had died in 2001, Atiku wants us to believe he would have respected any nebulous zoning or power rotation concept eh… Let the former Vice President tell that story to the marines!!!
I am bitterly disappointed because by this consensus candidate thing, we have again introduced another dangerous dimension to our politicking and one that is not easily reversed at that all in the name of ‘self interest’ is the name of the game. Just when you think it can not possibly get worse than this, it actually does get worse in Nigeria.
Resignedly, we wait with berthed breath and see where this all leads us in 2011 and beyond.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
LUCKY DUBE: RETHINKING NIGERIA’S FOREIGN POLICY
LUCKY DUBE: RETHINKING NIGERIA’S FOREIGN POLICY
Nigeria has severally avowed that Africa is the centre piece of its foreign policy. Simply put, it means that Nigeria in the conduct of its foreign policy and pursuit of her international interests will seek the peace, security and well being of all African countries and its peoples. In time past, Nigeria’s foreign policy was robust and the country was respected around the world as it put the interest of Africa first in world affairs. If America has earned the sobriquet, “Uncle Sam” on account of her leadership role in world politics, Nigeria’s was “big brother Africa” on account of her penchant for putting Africa first. For Nigeria, charity seemed to begin abroad. Nigeria’s role at the United Nations, especially in peace keeping efforts in Africa and around the world is well acknowledged.
In Nigeria, all nationalities (black and white) are well at home and thriving in several ways. Take for example, the case of Nigerien immigrants in Lagos who freely go about their business soliciting alms from Nigerians who freely give as well. Nigeria committed men and resources well worth over 50 million dollars to fight apartheid in South Africa until that evil system crumbled in 1994 with that rainbow nation’s first multi racial elections ushering in democracy and Nelson Mandela as President of the country. Nigeria was the moving force that secured peace in Liberia and Sierra Leone, committing monumental resources to both struggles. Nigeria’s effort and achievement in peace winning and peace keeping across the globe is no mean feat. Compare these two instances with the complete mess Belgium, France and the UN made of Rwanda in 1994.
I have recounted these instances in light of the recent revelation that the killers of the reggae music maestro and icon, Lucky Dube mistook him for a Nigerian. If he were, why will they kill any one because he is Nigerian? South Africa did not dismantle apartheid only to replace it with Xenophobia which has come to the fore in recent times. Will the miscreants go after an American in that manner just like that? The South African Government has a lot of explanation and apology to make to Nigeria if this is indeed true. Black South Africa gained political independence and since 1994, their Government has done little to gain them economic advancement and lift the majority of the black population with poor education from poverty as all most of them ever knew was the struggle. Now crime has skyrocketed and instead of seeking answers to this and sundry social cultural issues plaguing the black majority, the ANC, in the manner of many popular parties that won independence for many of Africa’s countries is derailing on account of leadership tussle between former President Thabo Mbeki, who has left the party and his erstwhile Deputy, Jacob Zuma who has corruption charges wrapped around his neck like an albatross.
The understandable anger of the South African people should be directed towards their Government and not innocent Nigerians, many of who work and contribute to the advancement of the former apartheid enclave. I have no sympathy for the South African Government. I only feel for the family of Lucky Dube and the man himself, who was Africa’s biggest musical export. His death was particularly cruel. It is ironical that a man who preached peace, advocated non violence and the common humanity of mankind was claimed by violence in a senseless manner. Perhaps the South African government will now appreciate the enormity of the economic problem and crime in South Africa and set about combating it now it has claimed one of theirs and Africa’s best.
This Lucky Dube incident I do hope will in the coming months elicit debates among Nigeria’s many public commentators. But there is one question I want them to avert their minds to as the significance of the Lucky Dube incident which is not an isolated case must not be lost on us. They must ask themselves and Nigerians why we are hated and despised around the world despite our best efforts in the committee of nations. The other day I heard our otherwise respected information Minister talking of Re branding Nigeria. What is she re branding? Was there ever a brand? Are there no lessons for her to learn from history? What became of the last vain attempt to launder the image of Nigeria? What did they call it? “The heart of Africa campaign.”
Well if those who should know do not know what the problem is with our country, I will tell them. The problem with Nigeria is that we have mismanaged everything imaginable so badly that we do not even know how to start righting them. But it is obvious where to start if we will. Our “little brothers” do not respect us because of the kind of Leadership we have had overtime. If our leaders will run Nigeria right then there is no image to launder. The consultancy fee for these intangibles at times are mind boggling and simply unjustifiable by the results. Apart from the consequences of the misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one is attacking Americans. Hostility towards French men and Britons inside Europe is virtually unheard of. These people put their people first and their leaders are committed to their welfare. Whenever and wherever they suffer wrongs, their Governments will protect and get redress for them and the rest of the world takes note. Can we say the same of our country? Nigeria with its potentials should be king in Africa and well respected across the globe. But what do we get. Nothing.
No one respects a country whose leaders willfully undermine the will of the people, plunder their common patrimony/commonwealth, deliberately bungle elections and in the most hypocritical and wicked manner imaginable turn around to ask the people to learn from Ghana. It is fast turning out that the perfidy of many Nigerian leaders and politicians know no bounds.
There is so much wrong with Nigeria and her foreign policy. In the aftermath of the war in Iraq, American companies are involved in re building Iraq; America has continued to secure the gulf because of its strategic and vast oil interests, America’s huge industrial military complex supplied the armaments in America’s war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. What strategic advantage has Nigeria ever secured from playing big brother? After 1994, we could not reap anything from our support for the freedom of South Africa and the dismantling of apartheid there. Infact apart from the fact of liberating fellow blacks from the shackles of apartheid, all our efforts in South Africa went down the drain in one fall sweep – politically and economically. In 1995, Nelson Mandela, the man who benefited most from Nigeria and Nigerian’s large heartedness mobilized the rest of the world to suspend Nigeria from the Commonwealth of Nations and thus began the pariah status from which we are yet to fully recover. Without holding brief for the Late Head of State, General Sanni Abacha, probity demands Nelson Mandela should have been more circumspect in canvassing for sanctions against Nigeria at least in retrospection for the big brother Nigeria has been and besides, General Sanni Abacha did not at the time approximate to the Nigerian state.
With the dismantling of apartheid and the opening of a new market vista, it was expected that Nigerian businesses will invade South Africa. What did we see instead? The South African’s actually invaded us. The biggest telecommunications company in Nigeria today is a South African company, one of the biggest banks in Nigeria is now controlled by South African’s. I am unaware of any African country today where Nigerian businesses and businessmen hold sway in strategic sectors of the economy. Liberia and Sierra Leone is now being rebuilt. Who is doing the rebuilding? What percentage of the contracts has been awarded to Nigerian businesses? Again, as with the experience of South Africa, Nigeria and Nigerian’s gain nothing for their monumental sacrifice in winning peace for our two West African neighbours. These are the things we are talking about when we say that Nigeria should rethink and overhaul its foreign policy thrust. This naiveté charitable thinking must give way to a pragmatic and self edifying foreign policy. Whatever sentiment informed the choice of Africa as the centre piece of Nigeria’s foreign policy is no longer as valid as it was in the 1970’s.
In 1975, when the late Head of State, General Ramat Murtala Mohammed made the inspiring “Africa Has Come of Age” speech at the Meeting of the Heads of Governments of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) one could see the need for Africa to bond together in light of its then recent colonial history and the unsure footedness of the newly independent states in a continually fractious world between the East communist philosophy and the West’s capitalism. If anything, the countries of Africa are now rife to take advantage of their individual identity in a continent wide political union or each African country in the absence of that, especially Nigeria must make itself and its people the centre piece of its foreign policy. It is only after the internal contradictions and problems which in Nigeria’s case has threatened to consume us has been brought to a manageable proportion that we can again stick out our neck either for a continent wide Government or for pretensions of being any one’s big brother. Who needs a big brother who cannot take care of even himself? Another way, with a big brother like Nigeria, bullies will have a field day.
It is never too late to do the right thing though as Martin Luther King Jr. reminded Americans in 1963, One Hundred years after Abraham Lincoln signed the proclamation freeing slaves, that though the negro remained in bondage everywhere, the time was propitious to start the process of the final emancipation of America’s black people even if it is starting One Hundred years late. Nigeria and her leaders must start doing the right thing from this moment onwards and the right thing is to refocus and retool Nigeria’s foreign policy. The welfare of Nigeria’s people should become the centre piece of her foreign policy while at the same time accommodating the best interests of the African continent but when it comes to any areas of conflict between the interest of Nigeria and that of Africa that of Nigeria should take precedence.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a partner in the Lagos law firm of Fountain Court Partners.
Nigeria has severally avowed that Africa is the centre piece of its foreign policy. Simply put, it means that Nigeria in the conduct of its foreign policy and pursuit of her international interests will seek the peace, security and well being of all African countries and its peoples. In time past, Nigeria’s foreign policy was robust and the country was respected around the world as it put the interest of Africa first in world affairs. If America has earned the sobriquet, “Uncle Sam” on account of her leadership role in world politics, Nigeria’s was “big brother Africa” on account of her penchant for putting Africa first. For Nigeria, charity seemed to begin abroad. Nigeria’s role at the United Nations, especially in peace keeping efforts in Africa and around the world is well acknowledged.
In Nigeria, all nationalities (black and white) are well at home and thriving in several ways. Take for example, the case of Nigerien immigrants in Lagos who freely go about their business soliciting alms from Nigerians who freely give as well. Nigeria committed men and resources well worth over 50 million dollars to fight apartheid in South Africa until that evil system crumbled in 1994 with that rainbow nation’s first multi racial elections ushering in democracy and Nelson Mandela as President of the country. Nigeria was the moving force that secured peace in Liberia and Sierra Leone, committing monumental resources to both struggles. Nigeria’s effort and achievement in peace winning and peace keeping across the globe is no mean feat. Compare these two instances with the complete mess Belgium, France and the UN made of Rwanda in 1994.
I have recounted these instances in light of the recent revelation that the killers of the reggae music maestro and icon, Lucky Dube mistook him for a Nigerian. If he were, why will they kill any one because he is Nigerian? South Africa did not dismantle apartheid only to replace it with Xenophobia which has come to the fore in recent times. Will the miscreants go after an American in that manner just like that? The South African Government has a lot of explanation and apology to make to Nigeria if this is indeed true. Black South Africa gained political independence and since 1994, their Government has done little to gain them economic advancement and lift the majority of the black population with poor education from poverty as all most of them ever knew was the struggle. Now crime has skyrocketed and instead of seeking answers to this and sundry social cultural issues plaguing the black majority, the ANC, in the manner of many popular parties that won independence for many of Africa’s countries is derailing on account of leadership tussle between former President Thabo Mbeki, who has left the party and his erstwhile Deputy, Jacob Zuma who has corruption charges wrapped around his neck like an albatross.
The understandable anger of the South African people should be directed towards their Government and not innocent Nigerians, many of who work and contribute to the advancement of the former apartheid enclave. I have no sympathy for the South African Government. I only feel for the family of Lucky Dube and the man himself, who was Africa’s biggest musical export. His death was particularly cruel. It is ironical that a man who preached peace, advocated non violence and the common humanity of mankind was claimed by violence in a senseless manner. Perhaps the South African government will now appreciate the enormity of the economic problem and crime in South Africa and set about combating it now it has claimed one of theirs and Africa’s best.
This Lucky Dube incident I do hope will in the coming months elicit debates among Nigeria’s many public commentators. But there is one question I want them to avert their minds to as the significance of the Lucky Dube incident which is not an isolated case must not be lost on us. They must ask themselves and Nigerians why we are hated and despised around the world despite our best efforts in the committee of nations. The other day I heard our otherwise respected information Minister talking of Re branding Nigeria. What is she re branding? Was there ever a brand? Are there no lessons for her to learn from history? What became of the last vain attempt to launder the image of Nigeria? What did they call it? “The heart of Africa campaign.”
Well if those who should know do not know what the problem is with our country, I will tell them. The problem with Nigeria is that we have mismanaged everything imaginable so badly that we do not even know how to start righting them. But it is obvious where to start if we will. Our “little brothers” do not respect us because of the kind of Leadership we have had overtime. If our leaders will run Nigeria right then there is no image to launder. The consultancy fee for these intangibles at times are mind boggling and simply unjustifiable by the results. Apart from the consequences of the misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one is attacking Americans. Hostility towards French men and Britons inside Europe is virtually unheard of. These people put their people first and their leaders are committed to their welfare. Whenever and wherever they suffer wrongs, their Governments will protect and get redress for them and the rest of the world takes note. Can we say the same of our country? Nigeria with its potentials should be king in Africa and well respected across the globe. But what do we get. Nothing.
No one respects a country whose leaders willfully undermine the will of the people, plunder their common patrimony/commonwealth, deliberately bungle elections and in the most hypocritical and wicked manner imaginable turn around to ask the people to learn from Ghana. It is fast turning out that the perfidy of many Nigerian leaders and politicians know no bounds.
There is so much wrong with Nigeria and her foreign policy. In the aftermath of the war in Iraq, American companies are involved in re building Iraq; America has continued to secure the gulf because of its strategic and vast oil interests, America’s huge industrial military complex supplied the armaments in America’s war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. What strategic advantage has Nigeria ever secured from playing big brother? After 1994, we could not reap anything from our support for the freedom of South Africa and the dismantling of apartheid there. Infact apart from the fact of liberating fellow blacks from the shackles of apartheid, all our efforts in South Africa went down the drain in one fall sweep – politically and economically. In 1995, Nelson Mandela, the man who benefited most from Nigeria and Nigerian’s large heartedness mobilized the rest of the world to suspend Nigeria from the Commonwealth of Nations and thus began the pariah status from which we are yet to fully recover. Without holding brief for the Late Head of State, General Sanni Abacha, probity demands Nelson Mandela should have been more circumspect in canvassing for sanctions against Nigeria at least in retrospection for the big brother Nigeria has been and besides, General Sanni Abacha did not at the time approximate to the Nigerian state.
With the dismantling of apartheid and the opening of a new market vista, it was expected that Nigerian businesses will invade South Africa. What did we see instead? The South African’s actually invaded us. The biggest telecommunications company in Nigeria today is a South African company, one of the biggest banks in Nigeria is now controlled by South African’s. I am unaware of any African country today where Nigerian businesses and businessmen hold sway in strategic sectors of the economy. Liberia and Sierra Leone is now being rebuilt. Who is doing the rebuilding? What percentage of the contracts has been awarded to Nigerian businesses? Again, as with the experience of South Africa, Nigeria and Nigerian’s gain nothing for their monumental sacrifice in winning peace for our two West African neighbours. These are the things we are talking about when we say that Nigeria should rethink and overhaul its foreign policy thrust. This naiveté charitable thinking must give way to a pragmatic and self edifying foreign policy. Whatever sentiment informed the choice of Africa as the centre piece of Nigeria’s foreign policy is no longer as valid as it was in the 1970’s.
In 1975, when the late Head of State, General Ramat Murtala Mohammed made the inspiring “Africa Has Come of Age” speech at the Meeting of the Heads of Governments of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) one could see the need for Africa to bond together in light of its then recent colonial history and the unsure footedness of the newly independent states in a continually fractious world between the East communist philosophy and the West’s capitalism. If anything, the countries of Africa are now rife to take advantage of their individual identity in a continent wide political union or each African country in the absence of that, especially Nigeria must make itself and its people the centre piece of its foreign policy. It is only after the internal contradictions and problems which in Nigeria’s case has threatened to consume us has been brought to a manageable proportion that we can again stick out our neck either for a continent wide Government or for pretensions of being any one’s big brother. Who needs a big brother who cannot take care of even himself? Another way, with a big brother like Nigeria, bullies will have a field day.
It is never too late to do the right thing though as Martin Luther King Jr. reminded Americans in 1963, One Hundred years after Abraham Lincoln signed the proclamation freeing slaves, that though the negro remained in bondage everywhere, the time was propitious to start the process of the final emancipation of America’s black people even if it is starting One Hundred years late. Nigeria and her leaders must start doing the right thing from this moment onwards and the right thing is to refocus and retool Nigeria’s foreign policy. The welfare of Nigeria’s people should become the centre piece of her foreign policy while at the same time accommodating the best interests of the African continent but when it comes to any areas of conflict between the interest of Nigeria and that of Africa that of Nigeria should take precedence.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a partner in the Lagos law firm of Fountain Court Partners.
Monday, October 11, 2010
CHINUA ACHEBE: TIME TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE EMERITUS NOBEL LAUREATE
CHINUA ACHEBE: TIME TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE EMERITUS NOBEL LAUREATE
What is it with the Nobel Prize in literature? Why has not Professor Chinua Achebe won the prize?
Chinua Achebe, renowned writer and author of the 1958 classic novel, Things Fall Apart, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, Arrow of God, Home and Exile and many more has sold over 20 million copies (Things Fall Apart alone has sold over 10 Million copies) and translated into several languages has won yet another prize; the 300, 000. 00 U.S Dollars Dorothy and Lillian Gish prize thus joining the esteemed list of Bob Dylan, Arthur Miller, Robert Redford and a select few who have won the prize which is one of the largest and most prestigious awards in the arts. Chinua Achebe is currently Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University in Providence, R.I, United States of America.
Achebe, whose incisive writings and critical thinking examines the impact of colonialism on African culture and politics in the pre and post colonial world has won several other awards and he won the Man Booker International Prize (2007) which recognizes a life time of work, sponsored by the Man Group and established in 2005 to complement the Man Booker Prize, the Man Booker International Prize rewards one writer's overall achievement in literature and their significant influence on writers and readers worldwide. The award is therefore a recognition of the writer's body of work, rather than any one title.
Achebe's novels focus on the traditions of Igbo society, the effect of Christian influences, the clash of values during and after the colonial era and he has also written about the missed opportunities and squandering of the continent’s high hopes at independence. He has variously been described and held in high esteem by the literary world. When in 1987, he released his fifth novel, Anthills of the Savannah, about a military coup in the fictional West African nation of Kagan, the Financial Times hailed him thus, “in a powerful fusion of myth, legend and modern styles, Achebe has written a book which is wise, exciting and essential, a powerful antidote to the cynical commentators from 'overseas' who see nothing ever new out of Africa”. The magazine, West African, also wrote that the book which was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize of that year deserved to win the prize, and that Achebe was “a writer who has long deserved the recognition that has already been accorded him by his sales figures”.
In June 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize. The judging panel included U.S critic Elaine Showalter who said he "illuminated the path for writers around the world seeking new words and forms for new realities and societies"; and South African writer and Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer who said Achebe has achieved "what one of his characters brilliantly defines as the writer’s purpose: 'a new-found utterance' for the capture of life’s complexity". Now in 2010, Achebe has been awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize “awarded to a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life” in the words of one of the creators of the trust, Lillian Gish.
According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and I copiously quote “Achebe has been called "the father of modern African writing", and many books and essays have been written about his work over the past fifty years. In 1992 he became the first living author to be represented in the Everyman’s Library collection published by Alfred A. Knopf. His 60th birthday was celebrated at the University of Nigeria by "an international Who's Who in African Literature". One observer noted: "Nothing like it had ever happened before in African literature anywhere on the continent".
Many writers of succeeding generations view his work as having paved the way for their efforts. In 1982 he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Kent. At the ceremony, Professor Robert Gibson said that the Nigerian author "is now revered as Master by the younger generation of African writers and it is to him they regularly turn for counsel and inspiration." Even outside of Africa, his impact resonates strongly in literary circles. Novelist Margaret Atwood called him "a magical writer – one of the greatest of the twentieth century". Poet Maya Angelou lauded Things Fall Apart as a book wherein "all readers meet their brothers, sisters, parents and friends and themselves along Nigerian roads". Nelson Mandela, recalling his time as a political prisoner, once referred to Achebe as a writer "in whose company the prison walls fell down."
Of his extra-ordinary classic – Things Fall Apart, Time magazine wrote, “a novel of great power that turns the world upside down”. Time magazine also acknowledged the book as one of the best 100 English language novels written between 1923 and date. Things Fall Apart, is thus in good company, and ranks with other seminal works of our time, like Gone with the Wind, The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, The Grapes of Wrath, The Blind Assassin, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, An American Tragedy and Blood Meridian.
Achebe is the recipient of over 30 honorary degrees from universities in England, Scotland, Canada, South Africa, Nigeria and the United States, including Dartmouth College, Harvard, and Brown University. He has been awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, an Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Nigerian National Order of Merit (Nigeria's highest honour for academic work), and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Professor Chinua Achebe, received The Medal of Honor for Literature from the National Arts Club in New York City in 2007. The Medal of Honor for Literature, one of America’s most prestigious and distinctive literature honors is given for a body of work of literary excellence. Achebe will become the 39th recipient of the medal since it was instituted in 1968. It is noteworthy, that Achebe is also the first black African and second black writer to receive this honor.
How come such a man has not received the Nobel? In 2006, when the Nobel Prize for Literature went to Turkey’s novelist Mr. Orhan Pamuk, it was widely believed that the other four (though unconfirmed) nominees were a Nigerian, an American, a Syrian and a Peruvian and if this would-have-been Nigerian laureate was Achebe as many have since then speculated we will never know until fifty years hence when in keeping with tradition, the 2006 runner-up status is made public. For me personally and I take umbrage (not without good cause though) with the academy in Stockholm, why no Nigerian has won the Nobel prize in any field of human endeavour in the intervening 24 years since Professor Wole Soyinka in 1986 beats me silly. There is nothing left for Chinua Achebe to do to deserve the recognition. Some have argued that the literary prize is too Eurocentric and they may not be far from the truth, the 2009 Nobel prize for literature as an example was awarded to Roman born German poet and novelist, Herta Muller with the Swedish academy describing Muller as a writer “who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed”. Though she is relatively unknown, she has been celebrated as one of Germany’s best writers in a long while. American’s it was reported were shocked at the choice of Muller. If American’s were shocked at the choice of Muller because no American has won the prize in a couple of years then Africans ought to be enraged. In its 110 years old history, only five Africans have won the Nobel prize for literature despite the obvious glut of iconic literary talents on the continent – Wole Soyinka of Nigeria in 1986, Naguib Mahfouz of Egypt in 1988, Nadine Gordimer of South Africa in 1991, J.M Coetzee of South Africa in 2003 and Iranian/Zimbabwean/British Doris Lessing in 2007 and more outrageous is that Chinua Achebe is much more distinguished than these writers. Achebe even bested Doris Lessing to win the Man Booker International Prize in 2007.
It is a testimony to the impeccable character of the man who has also been described with such superlatives as “the most translated writer of African heritage”; “one of the great intellectuals and ethical figures of our time”; “one of the 1, 000 makers of the 21st Century responsible for defining a modern African literature that was truly African” that when Wole Soyinka won in 1986, he joined the rest of the world in celebrating the first African Nobel laureate in literature. He lauded Wole Soyinka’s works and remarked that he was “most eminently deserving of any prize”. On this vexatious issue he told Quality Weekly in 1988; “My position is that the Nobel Prize is important. But it is a European prize. It's not an African prize. Literature is not a heavyweight championship. Nigerians may think, you know, this man has been knocked out. It's nothing to do with that”. See how this man has bore and still bear it all with equanimity and good grace uncommon in these times and age.
Achebe’s biographer Ezenwa-Ohaeto suggests a possible reason why the Stockholm academy continues to shun Achebe: Achebe once refused to attend a Conference on African literature in Stockholm, Sweden. With his characteristic humility he explained that he “consider(ed) it (in) appropriate for African writers to assemble in Europe in 1986 to discuss the future of their literature. Ezenwa-Ohaeto implies that in all likelihood the act was perceived as a snub by the Nobel committee, who assumed that this refusal was an indicator that Achebe would refuse the Prize itself if awarded.
Again, Achebe had in 1975, at the Chancellor lecture at Amherst, Massachusetts criticized Joseph Conrad, the tradition of racism in the west and pointed out that racism was the core of Conrad’s critical book “The Heart of Darkness”, asserting that the book more than any other work displays that “Western desire – one might indeed say the need – in Western psychology to set up Africa as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest”. To Achebe, “Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as “the other world,” the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality”.
Now Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is considered in the West as one of the great works of art produced by any man and is about the best read book in the English Departments of European and American Universities. Apart from emphatically denying that this book is a great work of art, Achebe even had the “temerity” to criticize another one considered great in the West, Albert Schweitzer, a 1952 Nobel Peace Prize winner who Achebe described as an “extraordinary missionary who sacrificed brilliant careers in music and theology in Europe for a life of service to African’s” but who could not ultimately accept the equality of the African as he gleefully quotes “the African is indeed my brother but my junior brother” and he went on to build substandard hospitals appropriate to the need of junior brothers. Westerners were scandalized and many appalled that Achebe could criticize a man honoured in the West for his service to mankind and advocacy of Western liberalism. The West never forgave him and Stockholm took note.
Perceptibly, it does seem that literary reasons are no longer the sole consideration for awarding the Nobel in literature any more. Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk won in 2006 because “in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native land has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing cultures”. Austria’s Elfriede Jelenik in 2004 for revealing “the absurdity of society’s clichés and their subjugating power”. In 2010, Peruvian, Mario Vargas Llosa has won for “his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat”. This all smacks of Political correctness. No longer will anyone win the approval of Stockholm again if he simply “in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence” without more.
Ike Okonta writing in the Thisday of October, 29, 2006 came as close to the truth as anyone who has written on the subject before when he wrote “the reading world, including the Nobel Committee, know this fact: Chinualumogu Achebe is not only the greatest writer to come out of Africa, he is also, perhaps, the one writer in the world today who, through his work, single-handedly changed the way in which one people, their history and culture are perceived by another. After the publication of Things Fall Apart in 1958, the myth of a dark Africa, peopled by savages, without history and so without a story, a myth assiduously cultivated and peddled by European explorers and mercenary soldiers of the Frederick Lugard variety, was smashed forever. The guardians of the Western literary cannon in Oxford and Stockholm and Harvard have not forgiven Chinua Achebe for this ‘heresy’. He is widely seen as an ‘uppity nigger’ who does not know his place, who does not accord white ‘Massa’ sufficient respect. Above all Achebe is considered the cultural equivalent of Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral and Patrice Lumumba, great African’s who made it clear from the outset that their life’s mission was to rid the continent of the armed robbers and rapists that had held her down for five centuries. It is significant that all three were removed from power by the West, and in the case of Cabral and Lumumba, murdered in cold blood by agents of Western imperialism. Had Achebe’s terrain been politics, there is no doubt in my mind that he too would have gone the way of the others, felled by a bullet fired from London or Washington. ‘Heretics’, those that challenge the status quo, are meant to burn at the stakes, after all. Is it likely that the Nobel Committee, which in truth is merely the cultural arm of a rapine project intent on gobbling up all that is non-Western, will reward Chinua Achebe for insisting so powerfully and so brilliantly in his novels, essays, and poems that Africa was not one long night of savagery before Europe came calling in the fifteenth century?”
But does Chinua Achebe really need the Nobel Prize to validate his pre eminence in African literature? As the ‘Eagle on the tallest Iroko?’ Many think not and Obi Wakama captured it in good sense when he wrote in 2002, “frankly, I think that Achebe does not need the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize will merely dignify itself if it is awarded to Chinua Achebe. Everyone recognizes that he is among the greatest writers living on earth today. The real significance of Achebe was captured by that announcement in London two years ago in 2000, when he, Wole Soyinka and Derek Walcott were invited to a special program. The announcement read: ‘Two Nobel Laureates and a Legend’. There is no greater honour”.
The continued disregard for Achebe by Stockolm has truly not diminished him a bit. Achebe would win the Nobel either in life or in death but unfortunately the prize is not awarded posthumously and Achebe will be 80 years in November 2010. Simply, if Achebe does not win the Nobel price anytime soon, then he will never win it. This will not diminish him in our eyes but it will sure diminish him in the eyes of the next generation of literary connoisseurs who may never have the good fortune to know and understand what we know now. But then Achebe will loom large even in death and his place in African literature will never be discountenanced. More than any other African writer I know, see how Africa remains the focus of this great man’s thoughts? In 2007 when he won the Man Booker International Prize, Achebe reacted thus: “It was 50 years ago this year that I began writing my first novel, Things Fall Apart. It is wonderful to hear that my peers have looked at the body of work I have put together in the last 50 years and judged it deserving of this important recognition. I am grateful.” In essence African literature has flourished for 50 years, critically galvanized by Achebe’s monumental work, Things Fall Apart. Three years on in 2010, he said about the Gish Prize "When I was a boy, growing up in Nigeria, becoming a novelist was a far-away dream, now it is a reality for many African writers, not just myself. The Gish Prize recognizes the long journey my fellow colleagues and I have taken, and I am proud and grateful for that." Quintessential Achebe on the difficult road less travelled he took in 1957 and the thousand African writers who will be joint heirs to the throne. Ngugi wa Thiong’o for example, another one who should be a Nobel laureate one day if Stockholm does the right thing.
So in the innermost recesses of the minds and in the heart of African’s and 20 million readers across the globe, Achebe is the unacknowledged Nobel laureate and to the Nobel Committee they have assigned the task of carrying the burden of their snub of a literary giant, more eminent than scores of men in their honours list and who in their hearts they acknowledge a legend and a Nobel laureate several times over.
All therefore hail Africa’s emeritus Nobel laureate, Professor Chinua Achebe!!!
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
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What is it with the Nobel Prize in literature? Why has not Professor Chinua Achebe won the prize?
Chinua Achebe, renowned writer and author of the 1958 classic novel, Things Fall Apart, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, Arrow of God, Home and Exile and many more has sold over 20 million copies (Things Fall Apart alone has sold over 10 Million copies) and translated into several languages has won yet another prize; the 300, 000. 00 U.S Dollars Dorothy and Lillian Gish prize thus joining the esteemed list of Bob Dylan, Arthur Miller, Robert Redford and a select few who have won the prize which is one of the largest and most prestigious awards in the arts. Chinua Achebe is currently Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University in Providence, R.I, United States of America.
Achebe, whose incisive writings and critical thinking examines the impact of colonialism on African culture and politics in the pre and post colonial world has won several other awards and he won the Man Booker International Prize (2007) which recognizes a life time of work, sponsored by the Man Group and established in 2005 to complement the Man Booker Prize, the Man Booker International Prize rewards one writer's overall achievement in literature and their significant influence on writers and readers worldwide. The award is therefore a recognition of the writer's body of work, rather than any one title.
Achebe's novels focus on the traditions of Igbo society, the effect of Christian influences, the clash of values during and after the colonial era and he has also written about the missed opportunities and squandering of the continent’s high hopes at independence. He has variously been described and held in high esteem by the literary world. When in 1987, he released his fifth novel, Anthills of the Savannah, about a military coup in the fictional West African nation of Kagan, the Financial Times hailed him thus, “in a powerful fusion of myth, legend and modern styles, Achebe has written a book which is wise, exciting and essential, a powerful antidote to the cynical commentators from 'overseas' who see nothing ever new out of Africa”. The magazine, West African, also wrote that the book which was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize of that year deserved to win the prize, and that Achebe was “a writer who has long deserved the recognition that has already been accorded him by his sales figures”.
In June 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize. The judging panel included U.S critic Elaine Showalter who said he "illuminated the path for writers around the world seeking new words and forms for new realities and societies"; and South African writer and Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer who said Achebe has achieved "what one of his characters brilliantly defines as the writer’s purpose: 'a new-found utterance' for the capture of life’s complexity". Now in 2010, Achebe has been awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize “awarded to a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life” in the words of one of the creators of the trust, Lillian Gish.
According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and I copiously quote “Achebe has been called "the father of modern African writing", and many books and essays have been written about his work over the past fifty years. In 1992 he became the first living author to be represented in the Everyman’s Library collection published by Alfred A. Knopf. His 60th birthday was celebrated at the University of Nigeria by "an international Who's Who in African Literature". One observer noted: "Nothing like it had ever happened before in African literature anywhere on the continent".
Many writers of succeeding generations view his work as having paved the way for their efforts. In 1982 he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Kent. At the ceremony, Professor Robert Gibson said that the Nigerian author "is now revered as Master by the younger generation of African writers and it is to him they regularly turn for counsel and inspiration." Even outside of Africa, his impact resonates strongly in literary circles. Novelist Margaret Atwood called him "a magical writer – one of the greatest of the twentieth century". Poet Maya Angelou lauded Things Fall Apart as a book wherein "all readers meet their brothers, sisters, parents and friends and themselves along Nigerian roads". Nelson Mandela, recalling his time as a political prisoner, once referred to Achebe as a writer "in whose company the prison walls fell down."
Of his extra-ordinary classic – Things Fall Apart, Time magazine wrote, “a novel of great power that turns the world upside down”. Time magazine also acknowledged the book as one of the best 100 English language novels written between 1923 and date. Things Fall Apart, is thus in good company, and ranks with other seminal works of our time, like Gone with the Wind, The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, The Grapes of Wrath, The Blind Assassin, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, An American Tragedy and Blood Meridian.
Achebe is the recipient of over 30 honorary degrees from universities in England, Scotland, Canada, South Africa, Nigeria and the United States, including Dartmouth College, Harvard, and Brown University. He has been awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, an Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Nigerian National Order of Merit (Nigeria's highest honour for academic work), and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Professor Chinua Achebe, received The Medal of Honor for Literature from the National Arts Club in New York City in 2007. The Medal of Honor for Literature, one of America’s most prestigious and distinctive literature honors is given for a body of work of literary excellence. Achebe will become the 39th recipient of the medal since it was instituted in 1968. It is noteworthy, that Achebe is also the first black African and second black writer to receive this honor.
How come such a man has not received the Nobel? In 2006, when the Nobel Prize for Literature went to Turkey’s novelist Mr. Orhan Pamuk, it was widely believed that the other four (though unconfirmed) nominees were a Nigerian, an American, a Syrian and a Peruvian and if this would-have-been Nigerian laureate was Achebe as many have since then speculated we will never know until fifty years hence when in keeping with tradition, the 2006 runner-up status is made public. For me personally and I take umbrage (not without good cause though) with the academy in Stockholm, why no Nigerian has won the Nobel prize in any field of human endeavour in the intervening 24 years since Professor Wole Soyinka in 1986 beats me silly. There is nothing left for Chinua Achebe to do to deserve the recognition. Some have argued that the literary prize is too Eurocentric and they may not be far from the truth, the 2009 Nobel prize for literature as an example was awarded to Roman born German poet and novelist, Herta Muller with the Swedish academy describing Muller as a writer “who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed”. Though she is relatively unknown, she has been celebrated as one of Germany’s best writers in a long while. American’s it was reported were shocked at the choice of Muller. If American’s were shocked at the choice of Muller because no American has won the prize in a couple of years then Africans ought to be enraged. In its 110 years old history, only five Africans have won the Nobel prize for literature despite the obvious glut of iconic literary talents on the continent – Wole Soyinka of Nigeria in 1986, Naguib Mahfouz of Egypt in 1988, Nadine Gordimer of South Africa in 1991, J.M Coetzee of South Africa in 2003 and Iranian/Zimbabwean/British Doris Lessing in 2007 and more outrageous is that Chinua Achebe is much more distinguished than these writers. Achebe even bested Doris Lessing to win the Man Booker International Prize in 2007.
It is a testimony to the impeccable character of the man who has also been described with such superlatives as “the most translated writer of African heritage”; “one of the great intellectuals and ethical figures of our time”; “one of the 1, 000 makers of the 21st Century responsible for defining a modern African literature that was truly African” that when Wole Soyinka won in 1986, he joined the rest of the world in celebrating the first African Nobel laureate in literature. He lauded Wole Soyinka’s works and remarked that he was “most eminently deserving of any prize”. On this vexatious issue he told Quality Weekly in 1988; “My position is that the Nobel Prize is important. But it is a European prize. It's not an African prize. Literature is not a heavyweight championship. Nigerians may think, you know, this man has been knocked out. It's nothing to do with that”. See how this man has bore and still bear it all with equanimity and good grace uncommon in these times and age.
Achebe’s biographer Ezenwa-Ohaeto suggests a possible reason why the Stockholm academy continues to shun Achebe: Achebe once refused to attend a Conference on African literature in Stockholm, Sweden. With his characteristic humility he explained that he “consider(ed) it (in) appropriate for African writers to assemble in Europe in 1986 to discuss the future of their literature. Ezenwa-Ohaeto implies that in all likelihood the act was perceived as a snub by the Nobel committee, who assumed that this refusal was an indicator that Achebe would refuse the Prize itself if awarded.
Again, Achebe had in 1975, at the Chancellor lecture at Amherst, Massachusetts criticized Joseph Conrad, the tradition of racism in the west and pointed out that racism was the core of Conrad’s critical book “The Heart of Darkness”, asserting that the book more than any other work displays that “Western desire – one might indeed say the need – in Western psychology to set up Africa as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest”. To Achebe, “Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as “the other world,” the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality”.
Now Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is considered in the West as one of the great works of art produced by any man and is about the best read book in the English Departments of European and American Universities. Apart from emphatically denying that this book is a great work of art, Achebe even had the “temerity” to criticize another one considered great in the West, Albert Schweitzer, a 1952 Nobel Peace Prize winner who Achebe described as an “extraordinary missionary who sacrificed brilliant careers in music and theology in Europe for a life of service to African’s” but who could not ultimately accept the equality of the African as he gleefully quotes “the African is indeed my brother but my junior brother” and he went on to build substandard hospitals appropriate to the need of junior brothers. Westerners were scandalized and many appalled that Achebe could criticize a man honoured in the West for his service to mankind and advocacy of Western liberalism. The West never forgave him and Stockholm took note.
Perceptibly, it does seem that literary reasons are no longer the sole consideration for awarding the Nobel in literature any more. Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk won in 2006 because “in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native land has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing cultures”. Austria’s Elfriede Jelenik in 2004 for revealing “the absurdity of society’s clichés and their subjugating power”. In 2010, Peruvian, Mario Vargas Llosa has won for “his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat”. This all smacks of Political correctness. No longer will anyone win the approval of Stockholm again if he simply “in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence” without more.
Ike Okonta writing in the Thisday of October, 29, 2006 came as close to the truth as anyone who has written on the subject before when he wrote “the reading world, including the Nobel Committee, know this fact: Chinualumogu Achebe is not only the greatest writer to come out of Africa, he is also, perhaps, the one writer in the world today who, through his work, single-handedly changed the way in which one people, their history and culture are perceived by another. After the publication of Things Fall Apart in 1958, the myth of a dark Africa, peopled by savages, without history and so without a story, a myth assiduously cultivated and peddled by European explorers and mercenary soldiers of the Frederick Lugard variety, was smashed forever. The guardians of the Western literary cannon in Oxford and Stockholm and Harvard have not forgiven Chinua Achebe for this ‘heresy’. He is widely seen as an ‘uppity nigger’ who does not know his place, who does not accord white ‘Massa’ sufficient respect. Above all Achebe is considered the cultural equivalent of Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral and Patrice Lumumba, great African’s who made it clear from the outset that their life’s mission was to rid the continent of the armed robbers and rapists that had held her down for five centuries. It is significant that all three were removed from power by the West, and in the case of Cabral and Lumumba, murdered in cold blood by agents of Western imperialism. Had Achebe’s terrain been politics, there is no doubt in my mind that he too would have gone the way of the others, felled by a bullet fired from London or Washington. ‘Heretics’, those that challenge the status quo, are meant to burn at the stakes, after all. Is it likely that the Nobel Committee, which in truth is merely the cultural arm of a rapine project intent on gobbling up all that is non-Western, will reward Chinua Achebe for insisting so powerfully and so brilliantly in his novels, essays, and poems that Africa was not one long night of savagery before Europe came calling in the fifteenth century?”
But does Chinua Achebe really need the Nobel Prize to validate his pre eminence in African literature? As the ‘Eagle on the tallest Iroko?’ Many think not and Obi Wakama captured it in good sense when he wrote in 2002, “frankly, I think that Achebe does not need the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize will merely dignify itself if it is awarded to Chinua Achebe. Everyone recognizes that he is among the greatest writers living on earth today. The real significance of Achebe was captured by that announcement in London two years ago in 2000, when he, Wole Soyinka and Derek Walcott were invited to a special program. The announcement read: ‘Two Nobel Laureates and a Legend’. There is no greater honour”.
The continued disregard for Achebe by Stockolm has truly not diminished him a bit. Achebe would win the Nobel either in life or in death but unfortunately the prize is not awarded posthumously and Achebe will be 80 years in November 2010. Simply, if Achebe does not win the Nobel price anytime soon, then he will never win it. This will not diminish him in our eyes but it will sure diminish him in the eyes of the next generation of literary connoisseurs who may never have the good fortune to know and understand what we know now. But then Achebe will loom large even in death and his place in African literature will never be discountenanced. More than any other African writer I know, see how Africa remains the focus of this great man’s thoughts? In 2007 when he won the Man Booker International Prize, Achebe reacted thus: “It was 50 years ago this year that I began writing my first novel, Things Fall Apart. It is wonderful to hear that my peers have looked at the body of work I have put together in the last 50 years and judged it deserving of this important recognition. I am grateful.” In essence African literature has flourished for 50 years, critically galvanized by Achebe’s monumental work, Things Fall Apart. Three years on in 2010, he said about the Gish Prize "When I was a boy, growing up in Nigeria, becoming a novelist was a far-away dream, now it is a reality for many African writers, not just myself. The Gish Prize recognizes the long journey my fellow colleagues and I have taken, and I am proud and grateful for that." Quintessential Achebe on the difficult road less travelled he took in 1957 and the thousand African writers who will be joint heirs to the throne. Ngugi wa Thiong’o for example, another one who should be a Nobel laureate one day if Stockholm does the right thing.
So in the innermost recesses of the minds and in the heart of African’s and 20 million readers across the globe, Achebe is the unacknowledged Nobel laureate and to the Nobel Committee they have assigned the task of carrying the burden of their snub of a literary giant, more eminent than scores of men in their honours list and who in their hearts they acknowledge a legend and a Nobel laureate several times over.
All therefore hail Africa’s emeritus Nobel laureate, Professor Chinua Achebe!!!
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA
FOUNTAIN COURT PARTNERS
36B, OGUDU ROAD
OJOTA
LAGOS.
08052066172.
Friday, September 24, 2010
2011 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS: IMPERATIVE FOR THE UNITY OF EBIRA PEOPLE
This brilliant piece on the need for unity, equity and fair play in the Governance of Kogi State was contributed by Mr. Omoiza Balogun, an Igarra man and consummate media practitioner who lives in Abuja and is passionate about the good of this country.
2011 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS: IMPERATIVE FOR THE UNITY OF EBIRA PEOPLE
Query: are the Igalas preventing other tribes from clinching the number one seat in the State? This will be the central focus of this write up with a pointer at the Ebira people.
Created on the 27th of August 1991, Kogi State is undoubtedly one of the most heterogeneous states in the country. The State is mostly dominated by the Okuns (Yorubas) of the Western Senatorial District, the Ebiras of the Central Senatorial District and the Igalas of the Eastern Senatorial District. The State is also home to other tribes like the Bassa Komos, Bassa Nges, Kakandas, Kupas, Ogori-Magongos, Nupes, Oworos, Gwaris etc. Added to these differences, the State is blessed with a large deposit of human and natural resources; that if well harnessed the over dependence on oil will be a thing of the past as internally generated revenue is sure to rise to hitherto unimaginable levels.
At the national level people from the state have also distinguished themselves as a force worth reckoning with. The State has produced top politicians, academicians, businessmen/women, captains of industry, armed services top brass who have contributed in no small measure to the development of the present democratic dispensation in the country. However in recent times the State has witnessed a lot of distrust in its polity that was further projected by the recent visit to the state of President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan to commission some projects executed under the present administration of Alhaji Ibrahim Idris. Prior to the visit, those in opposition (both within and outside the ruling party) rose to condemn the State Governor for not carrying them along in the running of the State affairs. They complained of deep and chronic marginalization by the Igalas (note that the Governor and his predecessor in office are both of Igala extraction) who always seem to be in charge of running the affairs of the state since the State was created in 1991.
This complaint may not be unconnected with the alleged Igala boast that in the event no one is left in Igalaland to lead the state, they (the Igalas) will make their dog Governor; rather than allow any other tribe especially the Ebiras to control the sharing formula of the states goodie-goodie. Thus, as the sound of the drums of political participation begin to emit again from all angles, those conversant with power-play fear that the Igalas might again be plotting to continue their hold on the ticket, thus the widespread call that they (the Igalas) should fictionalize the alleged boast by allowing other tribes to occupy the number one seat in the state.
The Ebira people are undoubtedly one of the dominant tribes in the state, thus if number alone is the determining factor in winning elections, then the Ebiras have nothing to worry about. What the Ebiras need right now is unity which will either make or mar any candidate from Ebiraland that is interested in occupying the number one position in the state. The Ebiras should first put their house in order before they slug it out with any other contestant from the other districts. It is no longer a secret that the disunity among the Ebira people has cost them this precious opportunity in the past. Now the march is on again, observers like me anticipate that the Ebiras will unite as one and support a candidate who has the interest of the Ebiras at heart. Ordinarily it should be a thing of joy that a fellow tribesman is seating at the helm of affairs especially the exulted position of a Sate Governor, but the bad blood politics amongst the Ebira people will not allow this and it is very disheartening to say the least.
The disunity among the Ebira people is an age long thing and it has not in any way brought about any development; rather violent clashes has characterized almost every socio-political gathering of the Ebira people. This disunity is usually fuelled by works of local artists and musicians who are supposed to use their music to point out social decadence and call for measures that will attract development to Ebiraland. They have in time past used the power of their music to further fuel the disunity among the Ebira people.
However, recent trends show that the younger artists have found a new voice and instead of being subjective in their works; they have chosen to use the power of their lyrics to reach out to the Ebira people. So the Igalas are not in any way preventing anybody, especially the Ebiras from producing the state Governor rather it is the Ebiras who are the architect of their own problems.
The dog-eat-dog politics of the Ebira people is a sad story to tell. During the 2007 gubernatorial elections for instance, the whole Ebiraland was turned into an orgy of senseless violence as a result of the two prominent contestants who also happen to be brothers, Prince Abubakar Audu of the ANPP and Alhaji Ibrahim Idris of the PDP who are both Igalas. Lives and properties worth millions of naira were lost in Okeneland the capital of Ebiraland. While in places like Idah the story was different, there they witnessed relative peace with little or no clash in the whole Igalaland. So tell me what manner of brother will rather fight/kill his own brother for the interest of an outsider?
Just as the clamour for zoning or power shift at the national level has been vehemently introduced into the nation’s political vocabulary, so also is the trend fast creeping into other levels of Government as well as political representation. But the question will remain thus: is zoning the issue or is good, tested and trusted leadership the ‘koko’? This should be the central focus of the Ebira people. Since the Ebiras have also joined in clamouring for zoning, well-meaning Ebiras should as a matter of urgency rise up to the task of unifying the hitherto different factions in Ebiraland as well as the PDP in the State. Thus, using the opportunity to reach out to other stakeholders from other tribes, so as to gather support for an Ebira candidate to emerge as the next Governor of Kogi State come 2011. For now the support seems to be favouring the PDP especially with the recent developmental efforts of the State Governor.
The sitting deputy Governor, Mr. Philip Salawu, an Ebira man has indicated interest to run and in most quarters he has been fingered as a favorite to win the PDP’s ticket. That he is the sitting deputy is no reason why he seems to be commanding so much favour, Mr. Salawu has displayed loyalty and good leadership potentials and he has being a good follower; he stood by the governor through thick and thin. Therefore it is only reasonable for the Governor to in-turn give his deputy this much needed support especially for power to shift to other parts of the State for the first time since its creation. The Governor is known to be an advocate of peace, a man who believes in dialogue in resolving issues; he has stated in many fora that every Kogite has equal stake in the affairs of the State. But will Salawu’s kinsmen allow him? Or would they rather give their support to another tribe just to satisfy their ego that they have hurt a man who they would see as coming from the other divide of the tribe. Only time will tell and trust that history as usual will be a keen recorder of events as they unfold.
Balogun Omoiza is a senior staff in WarHouse Communications Limited a media outfit with headquarters in Abuja. He can be reached on 08034522903.
djomeiza01@yahoo.com
BALOGUN OMOIZA
WARHOUSE COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED
SUITE 12B LANDMARK PLAZA
NO. 1, YESDERAM STREET, OFF IBB WAY, MAITAMA
ABUJA.
2011 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS: IMPERATIVE FOR THE UNITY OF EBIRA PEOPLE
Query: are the Igalas preventing other tribes from clinching the number one seat in the State? This will be the central focus of this write up with a pointer at the Ebira people.
Created on the 27th of August 1991, Kogi State is undoubtedly one of the most heterogeneous states in the country. The State is mostly dominated by the Okuns (Yorubas) of the Western Senatorial District, the Ebiras of the Central Senatorial District and the Igalas of the Eastern Senatorial District. The State is also home to other tribes like the Bassa Komos, Bassa Nges, Kakandas, Kupas, Ogori-Magongos, Nupes, Oworos, Gwaris etc. Added to these differences, the State is blessed with a large deposit of human and natural resources; that if well harnessed the over dependence on oil will be a thing of the past as internally generated revenue is sure to rise to hitherto unimaginable levels.
At the national level people from the state have also distinguished themselves as a force worth reckoning with. The State has produced top politicians, academicians, businessmen/women, captains of industry, armed services top brass who have contributed in no small measure to the development of the present democratic dispensation in the country. However in recent times the State has witnessed a lot of distrust in its polity that was further projected by the recent visit to the state of President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan to commission some projects executed under the present administration of Alhaji Ibrahim Idris. Prior to the visit, those in opposition (both within and outside the ruling party) rose to condemn the State Governor for not carrying them along in the running of the State affairs. They complained of deep and chronic marginalization by the Igalas (note that the Governor and his predecessor in office are both of Igala extraction) who always seem to be in charge of running the affairs of the state since the State was created in 1991.
This complaint may not be unconnected with the alleged Igala boast that in the event no one is left in Igalaland to lead the state, they (the Igalas) will make their dog Governor; rather than allow any other tribe especially the Ebiras to control the sharing formula of the states goodie-goodie. Thus, as the sound of the drums of political participation begin to emit again from all angles, those conversant with power-play fear that the Igalas might again be plotting to continue their hold on the ticket, thus the widespread call that they (the Igalas) should fictionalize the alleged boast by allowing other tribes to occupy the number one seat in the state.
The Ebira people are undoubtedly one of the dominant tribes in the state, thus if number alone is the determining factor in winning elections, then the Ebiras have nothing to worry about. What the Ebiras need right now is unity which will either make or mar any candidate from Ebiraland that is interested in occupying the number one position in the state. The Ebiras should first put their house in order before they slug it out with any other contestant from the other districts. It is no longer a secret that the disunity among the Ebira people has cost them this precious opportunity in the past. Now the march is on again, observers like me anticipate that the Ebiras will unite as one and support a candidate who has the interest of the Ebiras at heart. Ordinarily it should be a thing of joy that a fellow tribesman is seating at the helm of affairs especially the exulted position of a Sate Governor, but the bad blood politics amongst the Ebira people will not allow this and it is very disheartening to say the least.
The disunity among the Ebira people is an age long thing and it has not in any way brought about any development; rather violent clashes has characterized almost every socio-political gathering of the Ebira people. This disunity is usually fuelled by works of local artists and musicians who are supposed to use their music to point out social decadence and call for measures that will attract development to Ebiraland. They have in time past used the power of their music to further fuel the disunity among the Ebira people.
However, recent trends show that the younger artists have found a new voice and instead of being subjective in their works; they have chosen to use the power of their lyrics to reach out to the Ebira people. So the Igalas are not in any way preventing anybody, especially the Ebiras from producing the state Governor rather it is the Ebiras who are the architect of their own problems.
The dog-eat-dog politics of the Ebira people is a sad story to tell. During the 2007 gubernatorial elections for instance, the whole Ebiraland was turned into an orgy of senseless violence as a result of the two prominent contestants who also happen to be brothers, Prince Abubakar Audu of the ANPP and Alhaji Ibrahim Idris of the PDP who are both Igalas. Lives and properties worth millions of naira were lost in Okeneland the capital of Ebiraland. While in places like Idah the story was different, there they witnessed relative peace with little or no clash in the whole Igalaland. So tell me what manner of brother will rather fight/kill his own brother for the interest of an outsider?
Just as the clamour for zoning or power shift at the national level has been vehemently introduced into the nation’s political vocabulary, so also is the trend fast creeping into other levels of Government as well as political representation. But the question will remain thus: is zoning the issue or is good, tested and trusted leadership the ‘koko’? This should be the central focus of the Ebira people. Since the Ebiras have also joined in clamouring for zoning, well-meaning Ebiras should as a matter of urgency rise up to the task of unifying the hitherto different factions in Ebiraland as well as the PDP in the State. Thus, using the opportunity to reach out to other stakeholders from other tribes, so as to gather support for an Ebira candidate to emerge as the next Governor of Kogi State come 2011. For now the support seems to be favouring the PDP especially with the recent developmental efforts of the State Governor.
The sitting deputy Governor, Mr. Philip Salawu, an Ebira man has indicated interest to run and in most quarters he has been fingered as a favorite to win the PDP’s ticket. That he is the sitting deputy is no reason why he seems to be commanding so much favour, Mr. Salawu has displayed loyalty and good leadership potentials and he has being a good follower; he stood by the governor through thick and thin. Therefore it is only reasonable for the Governor to in-turn give his deputy this much needed support especially for power to shift to other parts of the State for the first time since its creation. The Governor is known to be an advocate of peace, a man who believes in dialogue in resolving issues; he has stated in many fora that every Kogite has equal stake in the affairs of the State. But will Salawu’s kinsmen allow him? Or would they rather give their support to another tribe just to satisfy their ego that they have hurt a man who they would see as coming from the other divide of the tribe. Only time will tell and trust that history as usual will be a keen recorder of events as they unfold.
Balogun Omoiza is a senior staff in WarHouse Communications Limited a media outfit with headquarters in Abuja. He can be reached on 08034522903.
djomeiza01@yahoo.com
BALOGUN OMOIZA
WARHOUSE COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED
SUITE 12B LANDMARK PLAZA
NO. 1, YESDERAM STREET, OFF IBB WAY, MAITAMA
ABUJA.
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