Yar’Adua and the witch of Romania

THE charge of favouritism in federal appointments has been slammed on the wrist of President Umaru Yar’Adua. According to reports, even the Federal Character Commission has been apprised with this lopsidedness on the part of the president. The socio-cultural organization, Afenifere, which has positioned itself as the avant-garde sculptor of government’s conscience, has also deployed what it calls “this dangerous drift,” alleging that that the president awards his kinsmen “juicy” offices while landing the other two legs of the tripod with many but spineless appointments.

Why would equal partners in a federation be made to play such backroom roles?
Those who lay this charge against the president, especially the Afenifere, seem to be meticulously marshalling their points. From the position of the president, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, to key appointments made by the Yar’Adua government, there reek therein smelly tang of ethnic-propelled sentiments. While, under normal circumstance, we should all be bothered about the ultimate delivery of the proceeds of our nationhood on our collective doorsteps, the fact of our forced togetherness dictates that the tribal scarification on the faces of the appointees should matter more than all that superficial mantra of our collective destiny.

Aware of the danger of constant underscore that leads to profiling, the President’s publicist, Mr. Segun Adeniyi, a few days ago, went specific in his denial of the charge.

Zone by zone, Mr. Adeniyi itemized the nationalism of the presidential appointments of the last one year. But as it is, his denial, detailed as it was, does not constitute an answer. The president’s image-maker is well aware of the cleavages of tribe and tongue that separate Nigerians and the race to corner juices of the federation into ethnic and provincial pouches. When these juices are placed on a scale and one tilt seems to outweigh the other in an unreasonably partial dimension, Babel in the polity follows.

The president and his publicist would do well to conduct a scientific enquiry on what indeed went wrong as to warrant this dissent at this particular intersection of our existence. It is over a year now since Yar’Adua was invested with the presidency, isn’t it? Nigerians, at inception, were so relieved by the evaporation of the mis-government under ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo that they were essentially consumed by the need to have a leader who would make a u-turn from the high-handedness and inclement policies of the past. Even though there were very audible murmurs on the state of the ladder that he climbed into the Villa, nobody bothered about the tribal signposts on the faces of Yar’Adua’s appointees. And this was a novelty in a Nigeria where the three main ethnic groups interrelate with one another with mutually bellicose but suppressed suspicion.

Because of the experiences of the past about the Nigerian pseudo-federalism and the collective nature of our federal candy which however belongs to nobody, Nigerians have always scampered to have sizeable bites of the juice. This is why, whenever anybody lands such “opportunity”, he is bombarded by his village heads and all manner of kinsmen seeking to make the best of “our time.” Heavy “reception” ceremonies are organized in honour of “our son” who is going to Abuja to bring home the ubiquitous federal spoils, with the unprinted proviso that he was going to be democratic in the sharing of “our” booty. So, to dismiss a people’s apprehension about being invested with dross juices is to unrealistically live in Uranus and dance to the drum they beat in Saturn.

Mr. Adeniyi and Mr. Yar’Adua, I expected, should brainstorm on why this sudden u-turn from a people who had hitherto sheathed their primordial feelings, only to bare it at this juncture. The answer to this is that, in the last few months, the president, who has beautifully established a dissonance between his government and the gangsterism of the Obasanjo years, is gradually losing grip of governance and it in turn is sliding into the infamy that goes with griplessness. This is why the patience of the people seems to be running out and is replaced with apathy and pessimism.

One year down the ladder, nothing seems to be improving and there cannot be said to be any policy in place that clearly and significantly says bye to the immobility of the Obasanjo era. Except for the fact that there is some measure of stability – sans the Niger Delta uprising, of course – hunger is still wracking the bellies of the populace and the wounds dug by the worms in the belly are not healing. We would have loved to be patient and bond with the optimism pronounced by government aides and Yar’Adua himself in sweetened speeches and innocent demeanour but the festering of the vermin that surround the government compel the people to ask what it is in this nation for them, NOW! The power sector has collapsed and all we hear are daily votes of trillions and billions for its reactivation, sums that would, from antecedents, disappear into the rapacious purses of red tape and greedy leaders.

The Afenifere disclaim of the well-reeled out defence of the presidential publicist is an in-depth articulation of the grouses of a people that you cannot describe as frivolous. If the North considers the East and the West as equal legs of the tripod that holds the Nigerian federation, it will amount to an insulting slap to see the North invested with such disproportionate candies that have been padded to its laps, while the others are left with mere sour grapes.

The bottom of the whole issue, as I earlier said, is the collapse of good governance, otherwise, no one would have bothered, for example, whether the Minister of Power was Nupe or Ibariba so far as the bulbs light the darkness of our homes. The rising voices of dissent are as a result of the apparently gradual but at present difficult-to-separate colour of this government from its predecessor, in terms of motionlessness.

While the latter made so much noise with so little on ground, the former makes little noise and has sparse in its kitty as testimonial. Afenifere should be commended for its consistency on issues as this as it never shirked the responsibility of drawing the former president’s attention to infamies as this in his government.

One does not have to be the Gypsy witch of Romania who is said to predict the future with accurate certainty to know that, unless there is a change for the better in the policies of the Yar’Adua government, these fissiparous tendencies would soon almost burst at their seams. Already, the discontent with the slide in affairs is getting to boiling point while good government that should have been a buffer to the discontent is fast disappearing on the menu list. Even the transparency and zero tolerance for corruption that were this government’s refrain seem to have been weakened at their knees. Cases of fraud in high places in this government are soon to out-manoeuvre the Obasanjo government’s. A newspaper report last Friday was even to the effect that government would soon soft-pedal with ex-governors on whose wrists the manacles of the graft-agencies are slammed. Ultimately, the impression is given that this government is merely shamming on its transparency mantra. I just pray that I am merely a prophet of doom.

An elegy annulled

OF all philosophies about man and his existence, the one about the brevity of life attracts me most. This is why Albert Camus is a philosopher at the core of my heart. Of all the verses of the Bible, the one that teaches me the greatest lesson is the epistle of James comparison of man’s life with the ephemeral haze of vapour. That is why I relish every opportunity to visit the grave or the hospital. It helps me to curtail every budding attempt to build life castles in the air or any desire to cling to the temporary glow of life’s miasma.

Upper Thursday, providence had cause to draw me to the thinking table again. My friend and benefactor, Dr. Wale Adebanwi, whom I consider, in our generation, one of nature’s most generous deposits of cerebrum into a human skull, had, due to hyper exhaustion, slumped, gone into coma, almost fatally spraining his ankles. As he was being wheeled to the Casualty Ward of the UCH in Ibadan, a lot of thoughts struggled for my brain.

One of the rare brains of our time who, a few weeks back, defended his thesis at the University of Cambridge for a second doctoral degree, this time in Anthropology, Adebanwi would have passed on without a trifle, but for providence.

As doctors struggled to save his life till the wee hours of the second day, it occurred to me that all these earthly fripperies like honours, certificates, money, fame and others will be useless the day the owner of life demands His bill. But for Him, the B.Sc (Mass Communication), MSc (Political Science), PhD (Political Science), M.Phil (Anthropology, Cambridge), PhD (Cambridge), conference contributions in virtually all countries of the world and those cerebral journal contributions would have, like vapour, vanished.

I also learnt the eternal potency of that Yoruba wise-saying that we should feign dashing foot on the stone and watch who will rise in our empathy, posture as if dead and watch who will commiserate at our assumed departure. I saw humanity demonstrated to the fullest. From eminent University of Ibadan Deputy Vice Chancellor, Professor Adigun Agbaje, who traversed the nooks of UCH, almost in the process mistaken for an Adebanwi assistant; UI Political Science head, Professor Bayo Okunade, whom you could pardonably take for a hospital assistant caught in the sympathy melee, to the Tribune MD who shuttled drug stores, to Dr. Adeolu Akande, former Atiku Abubakar media man whom we concluded, due to his deft wheeling of the trolley, that he should have been a medical assistant, or that he had, in the first coming, been one, humanity and humility jammed each other freely. As Adebanwi got set to leave the hospital, he and I philosophized about what had happened: That of all those appurtenances of life that we shoulder, the most enduring is what you sow into the lives of others.

The evil of Mary

FROM where do I begin to tender my apology?
Should I lapse into escapism by roping in that ubiquitous, time-imme-morial culprit - printer’s devil - as the architect of the evil of last week? I think I should be man enough to acknowledge that my civics failed me. In my main peace of last week, I committed the unpardon-able factual blunder of attributing the stoppage of slave trade to Mary Slessor, instead of William Wilberforce. Poor Willy, I must have stirred his interred bones! Hardly had the ink dried Sunday morning when my friend of about 25 years now, Osasere Adagbonyin, whom, I must acknow-ledge, taught me the rudiments of writing, sent me a text message, screaming blue murder. Other texts and calls followed in tow, almost convulsing me out of a quiet Sunday and alerting me that, if we were in Greece of old, I would have been forced to swallow the Aristotelian hemlock for corrupting people out there. I ask all for forgiveness. Though I have never deluded myself about my fallibility, I am further reminded that even if all else fail, mistakes like this should humble one.

Igbo are angry!

I am happy at that press conference reportedly held by Senator Ikechukwu Obiora (Anambra South), where he, like a Gani Fawehinmi, spat out balls of fire on the marginalization of the South East by the rest of Nigeria. What led to Obiora’s anger was the “inequality” said to have jutted out in the sharing of board appointment largesse by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) recently which was said to have disfavoured the East. I am happy that somebody is beginning to kick against the unfair backbencher role which the Ndigbo has been thrown in Nigeria. But it goes beyond spitting fire at unequal sharing of perks. Ndigbo should wonder why the whole of Nigeria, especially the ruling cabal, finds it easy to throw the easterner into the pig-sty. I dare say this is essentially due to his love of self above the collective and his - perhaps mythified - tendency to betray his brother so far the ego is right. It is only when there is an intra-cleansing of the Igbo man’s perception of himself and his acts that the psychology of the two other legs of the tripod can be purged. Ndigbo, kwenu!