UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE

Visit Me At
www.Ugowrite.Blogspot.Com
For New And Even More Exciting Posts.
That’s Our New Home!

[In 2002, Chinedu Ogoke, a Nigerian writer and translator resident in Germany published his first novel, Under Fire. His second novel is being awaited. In this interview with UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE, Mr. Ogoke speaks on his work and the state of African Literature in relation to the still thorny issue of audience definition]

                              —————————————————————

When we talked in September 2003, after the publication of your first novel, Under Fire (2002), you said you already had the outline of another novel, how soon should we expect to read the novel? 

2003! That is already an age. You mean I have allowed so much time to pass without coming up with another work? Phew, in that time, two novels ought to have been breathing on the table.

I had thought that what I had had been brought to a stage and so laid out that one should just do a smooth drive and that would be it. How wrong I was. Some pages of the outline, which is elaborate, have gone missing. Snatched away by the wind of time. I built a pattern, though simple, that requires a reorientation to keep it going. I have found myself in an undesirable situation whereby I have to walk through the worlds I meant to depict, or replay events in those contexts. I have to rediscover our people’s speech habits and choice of words to construct such scenes. Something like that. They are not inconclusive outlines, but whole portions gone missing. You cannot insert peanuts for perm kernels and expect a flow. The right attitudes have to be found in the appropriate places.

Besides, my current research work came in and has to get priority attention. That naturally, caused some delays. Unless this current project gets out of the way, the manuscript will be lying where it is at the moment. The research work is boring. I detest conventions, and this is what I am forced to do. Rules here and there. Flowery language may be unwelcome here, which takes away the fun and the urge to move ahead with it. Assuming it were a novel, I wouldn’t need a driving license in every corner or adhering to a thousand traffic rules.

In fact, I work on the novel once in a while as a kind of push for the project at hand. Else even the project will be there, with nothing going. One third of the novel has been written, which includes the last page. Let’s see; by the end of this year, 2008, we can be talking about a conclusion of a second novel. Publishing is something else, for obvious reasons.

Chinedu Ogoke

Thank you. How much of African and Nigerian Literature is being studied in Germany?

 German society is served by as much African Studies as the country requires. A German student who finds himself or herself in a classroom for African Studies understands his or her business there is a foundation for eventual social work in Africa. When one turns to a lecturer of African Studies, the reasons might be different. From the score sheet of African studies, the University of Bayreuth takes the lead here. The spirit for which it has been recognized manifests even now. Presently, it has a series of events that runs like a continuous programme in any university anywhere.

In Mainz, there is the Ethnology Department, which houses the famous Jahn Library. The library is presently headed by a young lady, Dr. Anja Oud. It is awash with African books. The largest collection of African books in the whole world, I am told. This is mere aspiration than the fact, I guess. For all I know, a visitor will see as many books as possible. How they have been able to lift even the most unlikely books to the place is interesting. The response to the need for those books, while neglecting the use of the very books, is a great puzzle. There are insufficient courses, lecturers and purposes for so many books. So, the books lie there idle. The Ethnology Department is certainly home to the largest collection of African music worldwide. The man responsible for this is a Prof. Wolfgang Bender. He had had assistance from one Bayo. Ow-, the other name is elusive. Once, I benefited from a well-attended promo on Nollywood given by one Professor Frings.

Yet, compared with the situation in the USA, UK or Canada, African Studies here is at the kindergarten stage. In the Ethnology Department, they are under-funded. Students are brought face to face with scholars from Africa through a commendable exchange programme. Why Africans only have to come and go remains a puzzle. Like Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo was in Bayreuth some time in 2006.

Elsewhere, African literature has really not qualified to ride in the same vehicle as say American literary studies or English literary studies. This is not far removed from the prestige that accompanies these literatures and cultures. In the English and Linguistics departments the closest students may come to anything African is the encounter with the name Nnamdi Azikiwe in Langston Hughes’ poems, or Onwuchekwa Jemie’s work on Langston Hughes, all in African American Studies. In which case, Jemie’s and Azikiwe’s roots are lost. In the library, Chinua Achebe’s and Wole Soyinka’s books may lie below an often visited book, the latter hardly noticed. Their literary status here is hardly diminished, for they are well represented in people’s leisure time, especially in the hands of people desirous of good literature. Ken Saro-Wiwa is the most prominent personality.

  What do you think accounts for Ken Saro-Wiwa’s prominence, the quality of his work, his struggles or manner of death?

It has to do with the type of prominence bestowed upon oil politics. Worldwide, oil has a special place in news coverage. The quality of Saro-Wiwa‘s work has little to do with it. A girl with an African parent and I once honoured him (Saro-Wiwa) with a presentation. We were marketing what we thought was a good product. People were there yearning for their own Saro-Wiwa encounter and we had to satisfy that. In doing it, I was fully aware of what projecting him meant to my roots.

If you took away the struggle and the manner of death, and without the signature of an African dictator, the fan base wouldn‘t have grown out of probably Africa or the UK. You know, Sani Abacha was unpopular in the West, because he was stingy. He forgot the rules of the game, wouldn‘t let the naira depreciate and so made enemies with the wrong people. You don‘t get away with such acts. In spite of the disguises, Saro-Wiwa and Moshood Abiola were rallying points for them. We will never fail to point out what is injustice, which was what Saro-Wiwa‘s was. If you can get that type of picture from Africa, of the innocence associated with literature on one hand and the brutish force on the other, you will have people coil around lit candles, and dance to the drumbeats of those media people. It was all a pre-arranged fight and one of the best plots in our time. Like, I guess, it was you who once pointed that out in a write-up; they must have whispered to Abacha that Saro-Wiwa wasn‘t untouchable. If a Saro-Wiwa were to be pushed into Robert Mugabe‘s hands and no love is shown to the writer, the story would be heard far and near.

UGOCHUKWU EJIKEONYE (South Africa, 2008)

Okay, let’s return to the issue of readership of African literary works. I doubt if this matter of under-readership also applies to writers whose works are available in German. Achebe’s works, for instance, were translated into German many years ago.

The need has to be there for the works to be translated. They haven‘t taken much notice of African works. Achebe‘s is like something that is there but out of sight. Things Fall Apart is like an African Beowulf. You wonder if somebody wrote it and disappeared. That is his dilemma. The West is the giver and taker of literary life, and one in charge of the African creative estate. On the other hand, the African writer is an orphan, an adopted child. He has to operate within some accepted standards, and listen to the voice of his guardian, who reports to a higher authority, the Western reader. On the idea of transforming our society into a large reading audience, one Segun Fajemisin, a publisher in Britain, once in a private discussion, suggested that flyers of novels should be slipped into home video CD sleeves, perhaps to invoke the home video magic. That is, making literature part of the menu. This means that Nollywood could pass the message around. There is the easy-to-listen audio arrangement that has gained currency in Europe. That way, consumption of the product may not interfere with every day things like driving. So also, with incentives, we can get crowds to listen to writers read from their works.

We can begin from the home, by making entertainment literature visible in the house. By extension creating a fantasy world within the home that connects with the outside world. Parents will then routinely make their children tell them about the stories they read recently and vice versa. As a child I was myself partly led into the exciting worlds of mathematics and fiction by an elder brother. I found myself aged maybe six listening to the Medusa mythology from a sister of mine. The story was very complex, but the sensation the broken pieces therein left in my head perhaps was helpful. Besides, the powers of the images of Hercules and the two snakes held in his hands, and of orangutans from a book I won as a member of a youth volunteer society entitled Wonders of Nature really did sink in. Every household needs these siblings of mine. My parents were far removed from the scene. Sadly, it was short-lived. I also wouldn’t forget us children partly encircling a village lad and listening to akuko ifo or folk tales. Victoria Ezeokoli did try to re-enact this on TV. But you get these results if you have the African family intact. The family we have come to know today is one left to the care of the Nigerian reality. Now, we don’t know how to get our children back to schools. We need divine help to pull them out of internet cafes, from hawking on the streets, etc. The family has to be put back. Unfortunately, we let the extended family branch fall away, and every other thing is going with it.

If we talk about something being fulfilling, Nigerian society rewards people who can boast of patronage, which is what a relationship with the West brings. The question is: what are publishers looking for in a book? Readers in turn would want to spend their money and time for brilliantly written stories. The scenery as painted in a novel may fail to excite a certain reader. In Nigeria, if you draw a line around most writers, you discover they are hardly on the side of justice. They haven’t made us see that they are sincere. A danger can go on as long as the edge of the murderous sword is directed elsewhere.

Each time I hear an African writer demonstrate so eloquently this obsession with Western readers, I am always very uncomfortable; does it really mean that the success of the African writer, every African writer, must necessarily be dependent on his ability to successfully win the heart of the Western reader? 

  I observe some insincerity in the fact that for an African work to be heard it should exhibit or contain elements that will make Western publishers and readers look kindly at it. Which is the requirement for success. And, has it stopped being the fashion to seek for literary glory overseas? If the market doesn’t exist here, writers definitely will get up if they can and walk away. Besides, it is currently the puzzling nature of literary business between Africa and the West. It conforms to the postcolonial practice of the Chinese or Americans lifting your oil, a hired Italian technician (no offence intended) running to the pulpit, an unlit cigarette in his lips, to tap a malfunctioning microphone, during a church service. It was the least I expected of Nigeria during a visit that oil wealth wasn’t accompanied with ability of the locals to fix even such minor things. Youths in Nigeria live from one Premier League day to another Premier League day; that is from Arsenal-Manchester to Manchester-Arsenal, with their backs turned on Nigerian football. Factions have been built in Nigeria around these clubs. These realities have endured for so long that it’s the only form in which our lives are shaped. It all has a lot to do with literature. Like you have foreign based players, so you have writers who have certified that the material needs of their vocation cannot be satisfied within Nigeria. Let’s say that the oil boom being experienced at the moment may provide a little support for our literature, but that would still be an abnormal growth, since financial well-being derived from a condition where the Nigerian people are at the borderline of what is happening at the oil rigs, and with oil supply being unpredictable, if you don’t look past the oil gushing out of your backyard, and it dries up, if your economy is solely driven by this oil, when it dries up, you dry up. For the writer, the prize is bigger outside. Writers you referred to, can only change their minds if we make structural changes. Only then will there be hope

You seem to believe so much that literary progress is largely dependent on the economic growth in a given society?

Yes, and built on a stable platform.

What of your own work, how has it been received in Germany? Also, do you think people in Nigeria have been able to discover it?

Germany is not a fertile ground for African literature. African literature cannot free itself from the continent’s images of Rwanda, Dafur, etc. Only few African works have been perceived distinctly from these accumulated images that have refused to go away. In some quarters, I have been received much more than the novel. It is difficult to classify the book. There hasn’t been consistency, I have to admit. Personally, I don’t want to be robbed of my little freedom. I have refused to meet modest success at the deserved rendezvous. I have been able to extract myself from the scrutiny associated with success of any degree, to embrace the life on the street where I would be unnoticed. With my cooperation, the novel would have asserted itself much more effectively. Creatively, I can go anywhere with my fantasy. I can roam various spheres. I am aware of my skills. On the novel, there have been gratifying forwarded messages like “Tell Chinedu Ogoke, I can’t wait to read his next novel!” The novel isn’t a lightweight among works from my part of the world. Even when I had had to write essays in German and among people of various nationalities, the content of what I had put down had often drawn attention to me. The celebrity environment is a domain writers share with other artists. This thing is of great value. If I have been received, then yes, the book has been received. How far the book can go is not in question, but how far it has gone, is difficult to say.

We don’t have figures from sales in Nigeria. That market has been left to the mobile phone marketers and so on. I haven’t reckoned with that market. If one out of every five students in Nigeria leaves the book out of his or her reading lists, then there is cause for concern. Here you have a book that celebrates them. But they haven’t discovered it. That is clear.

Chinedu Ogoke

I still believe that enough of the right things have not been done to exploit the potential large market in Nigeria. What really have Nigerian writers, publishers and educational institutions done to revive reading culture among the populace? I remember Chinua Achebe revealing the sales figures of his books in a lecture in the sixties and showing that he had more readers in Nigeria than all other places put together, so what has happened to change that?

The gulf between the huge Nigerian population and the type of literature we‘re talking about is deeper than is apparent. With the forces against change fortifying their positions, hardly anything will be achieved. Lecturers and educational institutions should be prominent voices for change, which sadly they‘re not. They should seek the type of arrangement you have in Europe. As a ruler and as a nation, you need shoulders to stand on, as well as the people‘s consent to confront the world. You can‘t lead the people with a padlock on their lips, their hands tied behind them and with guns on their heads. You can‘t demand loyalty from me when there is litigation on your office and Nigeria‘s legitimacy. The Nigerian question needs our attention, and can‘t be wished away. In Nigeria, going to federal house is always in response to ethnic summons. We can see what the sprinkle of autonomy did somewhere, when after World War 11 Onitsha Market Literature (OML) with its gracefulness held sway. The circumstance spilled over to Chinua Achebe and the rest of them, hence that comment. Think of a currently thriving OML standing condemned in an Obasanjo‘s eyes.

You can‘t build on sand dumped by sea waves. Literature has to be powered by democracy. Readers thirst for that recreation of life as stroked by the writer‘s pen. The book is something to fall in love with. It is romance that‘s involved and a directionless and insecure society chases away potential lovers. If we do what is necessary, that most cherished entertaining literature will find calm waters to drop its anchor and the people will get on board.

Despite the trying situation in Nigeria today, youths can still be encouraged to read once the right things are done. Writers’ bodies could collaborate with the electronic media to awaken society’s interest in literary works through even jingles. You would remember that as youths, we were always given reading lists for the holiday period, but all that appear to have gone now. Youths used to compete among themselves who read more books; we have to find ways of reviving all that, if the literary enterprise would see tomorrow in our society. I think the writer should naturally be at the forefront, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Yea, then there was the talk of who did what. We had to listen to someone‘s entire narration about a novel just read. It all conveyed a faith in books. One read texts inherited from relations, and distant cousins. The books contained information on the inside front covers and other places about their names, schools, like St. Catherine‘s Girls, Akabo Girls, Ndoki Grammar School, Abba Techs etc. Those people were valuable in the form of motivation. They left us with things to forge ahead with, therefore a tradition endured. We have to understand that the 50s to 60s Nigeria had some influence on that period when the books I mentioned were still available. But Nigeria has drifted too far away from that path. We don’t like the tune the West is playing but must dance to it. There is Western dictatorship in its fullness. In that 50s, 60s and into the 70s, the African merely found a new playground. He linked up with the African Diaspora to form a formidable team. He had his own share in literary criticism, where to patch and mend and what to ignore when it came to African literature. He went further to point fingers at what he felt about European literature and culture. On a good day, people hardly walked the streets of Paris without perceiving the presence of the African writer. Some writers showed assumed disrespect to the West with books like Pepper Clark’s America Their America. The West was cautious, unsure of our potentials. Now they have come knocking, everything sounds hollow. The African cultural base is now weak. The relationship is now specified. They have to endorse everything. We have scientists we can’t use, writers whose works benefit others. If you are singing before a world audience, of course, it is good to make effort to be understood, but in literature you shouldn’t carry it so far that we won’t find traces of your culture in your work.

Let us say that they have been fair with their criticism, but partly because they criticize what they allow to make it to their table. It will take that African to appreciate African art and interpret it to the world.

There is some hope, however. Recently I was a guest at literary an “Outreach Programme” organized in a secondary school by the Imo State Branch of the Association of Nigeria Authors (ANA), and I was excited at the measure  of interest the kids displayed towards literary works. If such events are intensified, I think it would go a long way to reinvent the significant interest in readership of literary works. Or you don’t think so?

The recruitment drive at that stage as you witnessed is remarkable. The benefit will be no doubt immense. But the goal shouldn‘t be raising readers from among them who would lack books to read, or people who would have stories to tell and would want to be heard, but wouldn‘t exercise any of that. Not when failure has been arranged in advance for them. Definitely, we will not spoil their fun if the institution of the right circumstances will come before or coincide with their maturity.

I notice that our celebrated writers have found themselves being mobbed by these kids during literary workshops. It‘s welcome, but it will be awkward to conceive something without directing the energies into texts. We shouldn‘t be too preoccupied with those events without raising the literacy rate or political awareness in the country. University admissions, you will agree, are now prohibitive. We are deprived of reading moving stories like the type a friend told me recently about his childhood. If you spent a part of your teen years in a village between Abeokuta and Port Harcourt, it may also be your untold story. The friend and I agreed his story was not unique, but it ought to cease being just faint images in our consciousness. It is not found in any book. Now, imagine such thrilling experiences that happened on that stretch of land never being reported. Our oral traditions made certain that such gaps or ecological dilemmas never existed. To go back to my point again, literature is very sensitive. It only thrives in a democratic setting. Nigeria isn‘t a democracy.

 What can you say about the dominance of subsidy publishing, or what the Americans call, “Vanity Press” in the Nigerian literary scene – where writers either have to print their own works or sponsor its publication?

It is disturbing. Yet, it‘s inevitable. What‘s behind it is resisting the hostile forces that intend to stem the flow of literature. Well, if there is no ladder available to climb to the top, people have to device ways of getting up there. Publishing houses can‘t assemble good teams to work with given the problems in Nigeria. Nigeria overflows with talents whose abilities publishers can tap into. Without editorial input, someone in that capacity bending over the manuscripts, like Irene Staunton, the publisher of the Baobab Press, did with some Zimbabwean writers, literature in Nigeria will only manage to stand over its mediocre neighbours,’ and short of expectations. It’s the case with a movie, which needs a director’s competence to modify certain elements for desirable results. Also, it has to be linked to a good distribution network. ANA is simply handicapped by its short-sightedness.

Like I said earlier, language may be a strong barrier in those Western nations where English is not the official language, like Germany. Because works of Nigerian writers are better known in the UK, for instance. Apart from Achebe and a few others, how many other Nigerian writers have had their works translated into German, for instance? You don’t feel some interpreters and language scholars, especially, of African descent, have not done enough in this regard?  

 Language is without doubt a factor. But the problem is more of attitude. Use of English has developed so much that the population with this knowledge at its disposal can consume the trickle that comes in. The people have a strong appetite for books. Unless you have a book that does to everyone what Things Fall Apart does to people, pushing an African book into someone’s hand is like handing him a bitter pill. The contents of African works are in conflict with the local taste. Readers are reluctant to explore Africa with Africans as tour guides. I am not making the connection of appreciating African literature because of it being unusual.

The source of the material plays a role. They dedicate their time and resources exclusively to much advertised concepts. The same thing goes for cuisine. Chinese restaurants are popular. In effect, Chinese products, including its literature, benefit from this development. The new interest area now is the Middle East. Latest events in the world make the people curious. You don’t also rule out old traditions. Assuming Africa begins to command some respect around the world, its literature will be popular here. The Harry Potter series are especially popular because the writer is a British woman. When David Beckham dons your jersey, you obviously will smile to the bank. An Austin Okocha may not get such following in spite of all the wonders credited to him on the pitch. We should find a way of redesigning the African image, clearing away the backlog of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism. Previous attempts to correct these have, sadly, been futile.

Many works by writers from Nigeria can be read in German. Saro Wiwa, Soyinka, Achebe, Chimamanda Adichie, Nkem Nwankwo, etc. And even a new guy, Francis Obimma, who just rolled up his sleeves here and started writing, debuted only in 2006 is about to join that club. Somebody looked at the young man’s work and decided the state should put its translation services at his disposal.

African scholars can play a role by preparing the home turf, and letting the world know about the good news from Africa. Promise Ogochukwu is doing her part by establishing the Soyinka Prize. A writer putting up a structure and allowing another writer to walk away with $20,000! When we hold up the hands of one of our own so high, Europeans will take note. When what applies to some of our frontline books also apply to a book like Obinkaram Echewa’s I Saw The Sky Catch Fire, then we can talk about clear perceptions by African writers and critics. Standards must be maintained but African critics must employ new tactics in their criticisms. African scholars must endeavour to free Africans, Europeans, Asians and everybody from neo-colonialism. A lot cannot be reversed, but we must decolonize everybody’s mind. The result will be Africans bankrolling events like the late Zimbabwean Book Fair; organs like the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) and the African Book Collective will have to be strengthened.

Your work was not published in Nigeria. Is there any form of collaboration with a Nigerian publisher to have the book adequately exposed to Nigerian readers? 

It hasn’t been published in Nigeria. I wish the second one would first make its appearance in Nigeria, before making the trip outside. There is no collaboration to do that. I would have received a call from my publishers if there has been any interest emanating from Nigeria. Though insignificant, there has been an uninterrupted flow of copies to Nigeria. This shows that the people over there are not unaware of the book. The publishers also have this information. They have to bring the book home.

When last did you re-read your novel? Did you have any cause to feel it could do with some form of revision, or even editorial input?

Last time was late last year. I take it off the shelf occasionally to read it in a critical way. No considerable length at a time. Definitely, aspects responsible for some scary remarks about the novel have to be revised. It‘s sad if the book has to suffer more for those lapses than it is considered worthy of acclaim. There have been criticisms I consider unhelpful. One critic, Professor Shuiabu Oba AbdulRaheem, a former vice chancellor of University of Ilorin, passed a judgment on the novel with which I agree. He developed an argument using especially my novel in a paper he delivered at an annual Lecture of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (NAL) in 2005. His assessment of the novel included very severe criticisms. The judgment I find interesting was his observation that “Although Chinedu Ogoke does write vividly, the same kind of critical fate which excluded the likes of Cyprian Ekwensi’s Jagua Nana from the ranks of the great Nigerian novels will, regrettably, overtake this exciting, juvenile novel.“ I know it is necessary that the book emerges from that rear position, where it wasn‘t intended to be in the first place. Identifying its weaknesses personally isn‘t easy, though. But I am aware I still have some work to do to make it catch up with those other works. Other things have my attention now, like the one about to join the small family, which is the second novel.

—————————————————————–

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

(scruples2006@yahoo.com)

www.ugowrite.blogspot.com

April 2007

“Why do I ever think of things falling apart? Were they ever whole” – Arthur Miller, Late American playwright and essayist    

————————————————————–

I am forced by some very discomforting thoughts to remember today Bessie Head, the late South African writer and her 1989 collection of short stories entitled, Tales Of Tenderness And Power. I remember particularly one of the stories in that collection captioned,  “Village People,” especially, its opening lines which reads: “Poverty has a home in Africa – like a quiet second skin. It may be the only place on earth where it is worn with an unconscious dignity.” 

Now, this is one assertion that immediately compels one to start visualizing images of scenes and objects that readily constitute benumbing evidences of “dignified poverty” spread all over Africa, where people try to give some form of shine and panache to a very horrible situation they have somehow convinced themselves would always be with them. In those two brief lines, Ms. Head states a truth about Africa which we may find very demoralizing and objectionable, but which would remain extremely difficult to contradict. 

But is poverty the only thing we appear to have accepted as inevitable component of life in this part of the world? What about crime? How come crime appears to have gradually become too natural with us in Nigeria here, that we even go ahead to put up notices to moderate its operation? We appear to relish more the very unpleasant job of merely alerting people to it than doing anything to stamp it out. Now, if I may ask: what usually occurs to your mind each time you enter a hotel room in Nigeria and on the wash-basin, dressing mirror, bed-sheet or towel you see the following inscription: “Hotel Property, Do Not Remove!”   

If you ask me, this warning simply takes it for granted that guests would naturally wish to remove those items, and so to forestall that, care is taken to advise them not to remove those particular items as the hotel is still in need of them. In other words, the absence of such a warning on any other item should be construed as an automatic authorization any guest requires to move those things together with his personal effects, if he so wishes, at the expiration of his stay.  That’s just the implication.  Or have we not also thought about that? What are we then, by this practice, telling numerous foreign visitors that use those hotel rooms daily about ourselves?  

Yet such warnings abound everywhere, but I doubt that it in any way bothers anyone, even those public officers spending billions of naira on their so-called efforts to manage the nation’s image. Indeed, it no longer shocks us to see daily on virtually every building, even rickety, dilapidated ones, this inscription, usually written in very bold letters, even at the risk of seriously defacing the structures: “This House Is Not For Sale!!” And in most cases, they usually add, for maximum effect: “Beware of 419! Beware of  Fraudsters!” For goodness sake, is Nigeria the only country that fraudsters can be found? Is this the only country with records of incidents of people selling properties that do not belong to them? Are there no better, more decent, less socially destructive ways of protecting people from fraudsters than screaming on virtually every house out there: “This House Is Not For Sale, Beware of 419!!” Are these houses not properly registered at the appropriate offices where prospective buyers can go and verify their real owners? Today, almost every undeveloped, refuse-ridden land on every street hosts at a prominent spot an imposing signpost informing people the land is not for sale, plus the usual warning screaming to prospective buyers to beware of fraudsters and 419. The impression the continued proliferation of these warning signs can only convey is that most Nigerians do nothing else than wander all day looking for each other’s properties to sell to unsuspecting buyers; that our society is filled with so many rich, dumb buyers without the slightest awareness that checks ought to be run on properties before paying for them; that the system here is so chaotic and unreliable that people prefer to rely only on this very crude, people-diminishing method of discouraging potential property buyers with mostly badly written notices.    

Out there, my beloved sister, Dr. Dora Akunyili, is shouting herself hoarse in a determined effort to convince us that she is re-branding Nigeria or its image; she claims that she is striving to give Nigeria a positive image, but I doubt if it has ever occurred to her that this unwholesome phenomenon alone can easily destroy the best cultivated image. What for instance would a foreign visitor think of us, after observing this inscription on virtually every building he saw on a particular street he visited? There are some crooks in Nigeria, like in every other nation, but, for goodness sake, this is NOT a nation inhabited by only fraudsters! Decent people like me also exist here, okay! And it is somebody’s job to ensure that this point is cleared underlined to every ear that can hear.  

And because we appear to demonstrate through our indifference to the whole thing that these vulgar displays are in order, foreigners living among us have gone ahead to add some really ruinous sophistication to the ugly    phenomenon. In front of even some hardly known, struggling foreign companies today, you must find notices screaming: “No Waiting; No Loitering.” The next time you visit an embassy, try and look at the kind of notices placed in front of the buildings.  Indeed, United States Embassy in Lagos here appears to be the most enthusiastic offender in this regard. Only recently, while visiting the US embassy, I was suddenly moved to look at the number of large, gleaming notices in front of the compound warning people against patronizing touts, submission of fake information and documents etc. I can’t really recall now how many notices I saw in front of the same embassy gate saying the same the thing in the same words, and standing gallantly near each other, in silent competition. I have not tried to investigate whether this is what obtains at the US embassies in other countries, but I am willing to guess that this proliferation of demeaning notices may not be the case in other lands.  Inside the US embassy building itself, the rooms are generously splashed with well illustrated notices warning people that fake visas or passports or false information or documents can open many doors and but close one permanently. Even warning notices meant for the blind and deaf could not have been so generously pasted! 

Indeed, the thing is so gratuitously done that I am forced to wonder if the aim is really to discourage fraudsters or to advertise a well-cultivated opinion about Nigeria to visiting Americans and other foreign nationals who also visit the embassy as often as Nigerians.  I am tempted to suspect that the latter is the prime motivation, and as I look at Ms. Robin Sanders, US Ambassador to Nigeria, and observe the facial features she shares with me, I am forced to wonder how she is able to allow this clearly unhealthy profiling and stereotyping to continue flourishing during her tenure against the land of her ancestors.    

Yes, we can say that after all we asked for it by failing to contain the vile activities of some Nigerians that clearly portray here as a country of crooks. Indeed, there are fraudsters in this nation, as in any other country, but this is by no means, a nation peopled by ONLY fraudsters. It ought to be clear that fraudsters constitute only a negligible minority in this country, but their evil deeds seem to speak louder than the good works of the decent, hardworking majority. And although the fellows ruling us are mostly very low characters who care very little about reputation and self esteem, and whose understanding of being in public office is to loot the treasury pale, I refuse to accept that any nation’s politicians should form the basis for judging the people’s character. Else, why do Americans still speak contemptuously about the “Washington crowd,” and yet hallow their country at any given opportunity? Yes, we have the Dimeji Bankoles out there, the Iboris, the Bode Georges, Governor-General Alams, Big Tafas, Obasanjos, IBBs, Dariyes and the rest of them, who know only how to rubbish the country and give it a monstrous image, but for goodness case, this does not automatically consign all of us to the refuse dump reserved for low, dishonourable characters. The time to do a rethink and act accordingly is now. Enough of this debilitating profiling, please.                                                                                                    ——————————————————————– 

scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugowrite.blogspot.com

August 2010.

 It was a normal news report in a not too recent newspaper; the type we are used to seeing regularly, but would, most likely, merely glance through before turning our attention to more ‘important’ matters. But when I saw this particular report, confined to a small corner of the newspaper, something about it spoke a very clear message to my heart.   

Under the heading, “Cow Thief Bags 12yrs Jail,” the report said that an Oshogbo Magistrate Court presided over by Mrs. Ayo Ajeigbe had sentenced a certain Mr. Audu Mustapha to 12 years imprisonment for stealing a cow belonging to one Julie Idi. The estimated cost of the cow was N60, 000. The police had accused Mustapha of selling the cow and using the proceeds to purchase a small truck with which he conveyed ‘liberated’ cows to either where he sold or hid them. 

Now, if Mustapha who had earlier served a jail term in Ilorin for a similar offence, does not have a powerful, well-connected godfather, especially, in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), or other equally criminally powerful places, he should, as you read this article now, be in one of our dilapidated and uninhabitable prison houses enduring the just recompense of his grave sin against the State, and dreaming about his young (and probably beautiful) wife and their three tender children. 

Was The Cow 'Liberated' By Mustapha As Robust As This?

  I must hasten to add that nothing can justify Mustapha’s ungodly action. Even people poorer than he is are resisting the temptation to steal; he knew the dire consequences of his chosen career and still tarried in it, because, it had juicy promises of quick, undeserved wealth. Now, the excruciating day of reckoning is here, and he has no choice but to quietly savour the bitter reward of his criminal endeavours. I will only sympathise with his family if they were unaware that in order to put food on their table, Mustapha was cruelly dispossessing other people of their fat cows. This can only teach one lesson: when crime is punished, deterrence is instituted.  

Now, if that is always how all such cases end, society would really be a better place for all of us. While down here, we, in an impressive show of self-righteousness, may haul condemnations further down on Mustapha with every scorn and unmitigated rage befitting a common criminal, more discerning people would rather view him as an unfortunate victim of a disastrous accident on his way to the exalted circle of the nation’s elite class. I suspect that he did not bother to study the rules of the game very carefully and so may have easily run foul of a very important law of the game, namely: Thou shall not be too greedy.  

What this means is that if he had generously ‘settled’ the OC’s at the checkpoint (All correct, Sir!), or even  ‘cleared’ with the DPO of all the police stations on his route, he would most likely had escaped the humiliating appearance before the learned judge in Oshogbo, even if he had stolen a human being! In fact, he would have been a free man today, doing his ‘honest’ business without let or hindrance, and even getting the opportunity once in a while (that is, if he prospers very well) to attend state banquets and shake the smooth, soft hands of the high and mighty, more so, if he had allied himself with some influential ‘responsible’ party elder in his community, secured a Molete-kind of immunity, and regularly donated handsomely to help the ‘great party’ secure its ‘fraudslide’ victories.  

The truth we all know today is that many of the people parading themselves as prominent Nigerians today climbed to the top through the Mustapha route or variants of it. At the risk of repeating myself, assuming Mustapha was not caught and disgraced this early in his career, and his business had thrived and he had been wise enough to invest his wealth in the installation of many of his less-successful colleagues in power, he would today be dinning with ‘highly distinguished and  honourable’ lawmakers, governors, foreign and local diplomats and even the president, and being invited regularly to chair high profile events where brilliant sermons would be delivered on integrity, transparency, anti-corruption and good governance – citing his exceptional industry and sterling honesty as  worthy of emulation by today’s youths.  

But, while he would now languish in jail for twelve years for stealing a cow that sells for about N60, 000, very important convicts like Big Tafa, Governor-General Alams and Boy George got a few months’ ‘rest’ each in cosy prison suites for playing around with the nation’s billions. And many of their more daring colleagues in criminal accumulation are still out there throwing expensive parties and hobnobbing openly with the nation’s rulers whose ‘zero-tolerance for corruption’ is universally acknowledged!  

Something must be wrong with a nation that severely punishes small thieves and celebrates bigger criminals.     

In 1999, Gen Olusegun Obasanjo, whose farm had failed, was practically a poor man, and he did not hide it. One of his closest aides had even told the nation that what the man had in his account was only N25, 000. But now, as former president, his Bells University and Secondary School is valued at billions of naira. There is also his multi-billion naira farm, a couple of other companies and investments, a Presidential Library Project for which billions of naira were raised through a method Prof Wole Soyinka aptly described as “Presidential extortion”, and his famed bottomless pocket which has effectively crowned him as one of the richest billionaires this side of the Atlantic.  

Indeed, until a decent and patriotic leadership emerges in Nigeria , Obasanjo would never be compelled to explain the sources of his mysterious wealth, or how $16 billion spent on well-advertised power projects only plunged Nigerians into deeper, thicker darkness. Nor, will anyone ever ask Gen Ibrahim Babangida (who is scheming to rule Nigeria again) how $12 billion suddenly developed wings and flew away right under his nose as military president.    

As cases of suspected graft (and they are legion) are swept under because the calibre of the persons involved, impunity is effectively entrenched. Influential Nigerians abound whose sources of boundless wealth are shrouded in very deep mysteries. Nigerians know many of them and quietly dismiss them as Very Important Criminals (VIC), but the government and even the media celebrate them as ‘statesmen’ and ‘patriots’.  

Unlike Mustapha, they were able to avoid being caught early in their career until they amassed enough wealth to qualify for admission into Nigeria ’s privileged class of untouchables.  Some of them even get National Honours and are appointed or ‘elected’ into highly exalted positions of power and influence, where they characteristically help immensely to deregulate and institutionalize stealing and political corruption.  

What all these go to show is that in Nigeria , it is, perhaps, safer and more rewarding to be a successful criminal than a poor man – which is very saddening indeed.  

Successful criminals are either in power or its corridors, or friends and associates of those in power. They are those set of ‘law-abiding’ citizens who are able to purchase and build palatial homes in ‘approved’ places. But the poor are the confirmed criminals, always hounded and oppressed by the government, for being able to only afford to seek refuge in the slums, which governors, ever thumbing their noses at them, have either sacked or already marked out for demolition and prompt reallocation to the same members of the privileged class.  

We all know that it is usually the honest poor that get arrested on the mere suspicion that their haggard, hungry looks suggest they might be criminals, or even for such non-existent offences like ‘wandering’, and dumped and forgotten in detention camps for being unable to buy their freedom. Yes, they are the same people that suffer most the consequences of bad roads (they can’t afford to fly), power failure (they can’t afford healthy alternatives), insecurity  and increases on the price of petroleum products, which in turn jack up prizes of goods and services. In Nigeria , where crime is class-defined, poverty has since been criminalized. The rich only get into trouble when they are on the wrong side of the power equation, and their ‘trials’ are celebrated to prove the point that “no one is above the law.”  If you, dear reader, don’t know all these, then you hardly know anything yet about Nigeria .

———————————————————————

scruples2006@yahoo.com

WWW.ugowrite.Blogspot.Com

August 2010
]]> http://ugochukwu.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/when-did-poverty-assume-the-colour-of-crime/feed/ 0 ugoe Was The Cow 'Liberated' By Mustapha As Robust As This? http://ugochukwu.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/nigeria-the-high-cost-of-greed/ http://ugochukwu.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/nigeria-the-high-cost-of-greed/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 20:53:59 +0000 Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye http://ugochukwu.wordpress.com/?p=286 ]]> By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Now, the truth we can no longer afford to deny today is that anybody, in fact, any animal can rule Nigeria. I mean that even a baboon can be Nigeria’s president or governor. It is that simple! All it will take, after all, is for the baboon to get a Maurice Iwu to rig him in and then learn the simple art of stuffing dirty bags with dirty naira notes and delivering them at the appropriate quarters and at the appropriate time, and Nigeria is his to pillage and desecrate as he likes any day! 

Acting President, Goodluck Jonathan

And if he is lucky enough to be blessed with the kind of morally challenged characters presently encumbering our political space, and the tragically light-minded National Assembly headed today by David Mark and his cousin, Dimeji Bankole, he can as well wrap the entire country up, confidently put it away in one of the folds of his wife’s wrapper and retire to an oxygen bed for a long, refreshing sleep. And the heavens will not fall! 

Instead, supposedly sane and rational human beings would unleash their revolting selves on the citizenry, with convoluted, toxic arguments about how Nigeria would immediately cease to exist if the baboon suddenly picked offense and retrieved Nigeria from where it was rotting away and gave it back to the Nigerian people. It is not a new malaise, mind you. Mr. Alao Aka-Bashrun, the esteemed former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) stated it more elegantly many years ago when he said that even if some armed robbers got together and seized power in Nigeria that he knew some of his colleagues who would immediately rush in with their CVs to seek to “serve” in the regime of those bandits. A country whose political elite is driven mainly by self-serving considerations rather than ennobling altruism is a country that that will go nowhere. And that is why Nigeria is yet to demonstrate any signs that it is going anywhere. 

Mrs. Turai Yar'Adua

There is something called self-esteem, and it is very sad that it remains grossly in short supply in Nigeria, especially in the pool from which Nigeria is, most unfortunately, drawing its irredeemably greedy rulers. Time was when all a leader wanted was to leave a glorious name and sterling legacy behind. But the set we have been stuck with for sometime now does not appear to care about such things. Call them thieves to their faces, and they would not even blush. All that excite them are the fat accounts and choice properties they have criminally accumulated across the world. And when they advance any opinion, one searches in vain for the slightest hint of conviction and principles. Sadly, such terms, it would seem, are totally alien to their entire worldview. They appear driven by only the expected immediate gain to be carted away, and clearly lack the capacity to even appreciate that Nigeria needs to remain there till tomorrow for them to even find something more to steal. 

How a society became so unlucky as to leave its destiny in the hands of mostly dregs and scum in its midst is one dilemma that might engage the most learned sociologists and experts on behavioural studies for ages? When then would Nigeria’s reclamation commence? Can the Acting President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, be relied upon to represent the beginning of the much awaited recovery? 

Nigeria always fills any sane and decent person with unqualified sadness and even despair. At no time in our history has a country been so badly diminished by raw greed. 

As I watched in utter disgust the series of poorly scripted and unsightly drama periodically unleashed on the polity by a bunch of ultra selfish and unpatriotic entities led by Mrs. Turai Yar’Adua to discourage any attempt by Nigeria to get on its feet again after being horribly crippled by her husband’s lamentable lack of vision and  gross inertia even long before his evacuation for medical resuscitation; as they undertook several desperate moves to destabilize the country by instigating ethnic and religious tensions just to maintain their stranglehold on the country’s resources, it was just unbelievable that men and women empowered by law and paid from the public purse to put a halt to the whole nauseating nuisance were sitting passively and watching helplessly, as the hideous activities of an irresponsible few threatened the peace and stability of the country and further diminished it before the rest of the world. In which civilized country can such bunch of low creatures dare to stretch impunity beyond its malleable limit like that and get away with it? These are some of the factors that deepen the enduring feelings of hopelessness and despair in Nigeria!

Now, were there no persons and institutions empowered by law in Nigeria to investigate the sources of the alleged limitless resources with which the crude, dangerous desperation flaunted by those fellows was being generously funded? There were suspicions that the slush fund flowing around like polluted rivers had ensured the silence and passivity of those who ought to do something. And so the nauseating dramas kept being enacted to the shame and embarrassment of all of us. There were also several ungodly alliances that we were told must be maintained at the expense of the country and its long-suffering masses. What a tragedy! For goodness sake, how long shall we continue to hide under the debasing excuse that this is a badly run country where anything is permissible, and where decency and development would continue to remain elusive to a long suffering people? When shall we lay claim to a better testimonial? How long shall a country greatly endowed like Nigeria remain grossly diminished before those it ought to be better than? 

No doubt, the consequences have been enormous. Because of the kind fellows we allow to take charge of our affairs in this country, there is decay everywhere, because they lack the capacity to appreciate the need to build enduring features for posterity. The only language they understand is grab-and-plunder, which has caused the country to bleed profusely and die gradually. Consequently, Nigerians are fleeing their country in droves daily as if it is involved in a very devastating war. In all manner of countries they are being subjected to all manner of unimaginable humiliations and debasing deportations. 

 Did you hear that Nigerians are also now being deported from Sudan, of all places? How low can a country sink before it decides to seek self-rediscovery? Which day will the timid majority resolve to confront the tiny gaggle of defeatable thieving minority and rescue the country from their cursed hands? When shall we all stand up and bellow a big ‘No More!’ to their hellish determination to never even minimize their mindless plunder of the country’s resources? 

 Public officers and rich Nigerians now send their children to schools in Benin Republic, imagine that? Our rulers have deemed it fit to watch the schools here to rot away, while they carted away the funds that could have turned the institutions in Nigeria into international centres of excellence. 

I felt deflated the other day while attending a forum at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, when I found out that Americans, Britishers, Chinese and people from diverse nations of the world were proudly studying there. In 1993, I met an America Professor of Economics who proudly announced to me that while he studied for his Masters Degree at the University College, Ibadan, (UCI) in 1958, he stayed at Kuti Hall. I wonder if he can advise any American child today to get near that same Kuti Hall he spoke so glowingly about, or encourage the child of his worst enemy to attend a Nigerian University. 

While a friend and I took a walk around midnight on a Saturday at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, we felt so safe, despite the several trees in the well landscaped and beautified compound that lent the school its serenity, but which could also provide cover for cultists to strike. As we stood on a walkway, about eight American youths hopped across, chattering, laughing and feeling so much at home and happy with themselves. 

Children of countless Nigerian government officials are enrolled in this school, generating huge funds for Ghana with which it offers divers scholarships to its own citizens. These prodigal rulers would prefer paying all the money to Ghana than improving and making our own schools qualitative and safe so that youths from several parts of the world can also come to Nigeria (as used to be the case) to study. 

Nigeria has enough resources to buy up the entire Ghana. No doubt, Ghanaians do not have the drive and innovativeness of Nigerians. Under sincere and honest leaders whose eyes and hearts are not focused only on the treasury, nothing can stop Nigeria from becoming one of the greatest countries in the world?  It offends me each time anyone attempts comparing Nigeria with Europe or America. From Swaziland, Botswana to Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia to Uganda, Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast to the Gambia, Nigeria is, perhaps, the only country in the whole of Africa that is yet to achieve stability in its energy supply. What a pity. 

Maybe, there is a silver lining on the horizon, although doubts still abound. Dr. Jonathan, instead of making himself the head of Petroleum Ministry (Nigeria’s cash cow) has elected to be the Minister of Power. Let’s hope that this is really a sincere effort which will mark the end of debilitating, pitch darkness in Nigeria which has killed industries and left the country prostrate. 

But sometimes, one wonders whether Nigerian masses are even worth fighting for? The same people who are exploited and oppressed daily by heartless and godless public officers are the same people who would eagerly agree to be rented as brainless crowds to demonstrate and whip up support for sinking corrupt and/or incompetent officers. When will Nigerian masses see their oppressors for who they are and learn to distance themselves from them, no matter the peanuts they offer each time any of them is being made to account for his or her role while in office? Those who agree to be rented are using their own hands to perpetuate their own slavery. When shall we learn?     

———————————————————————————————-

WWW.Ugowrite.Blogspot.Com

WWW.Ugowrite.Blogspot.Com

scruples2006@yahoo.com

The Achebe Colloquium on Africa at Brown University, recognizing the crisis at the moment in Nigerian history, invited scholars and government officials from Nigeria, Europe and the United States to examine the problems and prospects of the upcoming Nigerian elections and to suggest solutions. The Colloquium was well attended by delegates from around the world. Highlights of the Colloquium included the insistence by the Convener, internationally acclaimed literary icon, Professor Chinua Achebe, “that peaceful elections are not impossible in Nigeria”.

Chinua Achebe: Always Seeking A Better Nigeria

The Colloquium notes the fact that elections in Nigeria have become progressively worse in quality over the years, and that this fact has gravely affected the country’s international strategic significance.  Among the resolutions advanced at the Colloquium are the following:                                                                                                   

1. National Dialogue.

The Colloquium acknowledges the fact that it has taken over three decades to bring Nigeria to the current decadent state. The country is at a critical moment that requires urgent intervention through a National Dialogue to consider issues of constitutional review and electoral reforms. The present crisis is an opportunity for Nigerians to discuss and adopt a new approach to deal with recurrent socio-political problems. Nigeria’s experience in the last ten years shows that the country’s democratic institutions have dangerously retrogressed. Nigerians as well as members of the international community, including other African nations, are deeply concerned about Nigeria’s fading international significance, Nigeria’s crisis of identity, and her future as a corporate entity.

 2. The Colloquium calls for free, fair and credible elections as a way of arresting and then reversing the downward spiral witnessed during the 2003 and 2007 election cycles. The Colloquium notes that the role played by the Nigerian judiciary during this period has been positive but uneven. The forthcoming Anambra elections will be a litmus test of the political will of the Federal Government and her agencies to conduct free, fair and credible elections in 2011 and beyond.

 3. The Colloquium calls on the National Assembly to ensure that the Executive arm of government adopts, as a matter of urgency, the report of the Justice Uwais-led Electoral Reforms Commission (ERC). The set of reforms should be enacted into law in time for the 2011 general elections. The Colloquium notes that the autonomy of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as recommended by the ERC is paramount for free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria. 

4. The Colloquium recognizes the important role of a credible and accountable political opposition to the survival of democracy in Nigeria, and calls for the emergence of a vigorous opposition in an atmosphere devoid of political violence and intimidation. The Colloquium is concerned by the policy vacuum in the political parties and urges politicians and leaders of thought to begin the process of re-orienting party politics along policy lines.

 5. The Colloquium calls on civil society to engage in robust issue-based voter education, longer monitoring of elections, promotion of democratic institutions and protection of the public mandate expressed by the ballot. The Colloquium recommends credible public opinion polling, conducted well in advance of elections, as one way of monitoring candidates’ performance as well as safeguarding the sacred mandate of the electorate. We urge local and international observers to begin monitoring elections in Nigeria right from the crucial party primaries rather than concentrate on Election Day activities. Our collective experience in Nigeria shows that election malpractices begin from voter registration, through the party primaries, climaxing on Election Day in the theft of ballot papers and other criminal activities.

 6. The Colloquium notes that widespread disregard for accountability and transparency fertilizes corruption and fosters a culture of violence in electoral contests. The Colloquium recommends that the overall financial package for Nigerian office holders should reflect the services they provide as well as the leanness of the country’s resources. In keeping with the practice in many countries, Nigeria should consider tying legislators’ compensation to the days they sit. 

 7. The Colloquium recommends an immediate revision of Nigeria’s immunity laws, with the specific end of ensuring that elected officials who criminally abuse their office are not protected from investigation and prosecution. In addition, the Colloquium suggests that Nigeria should abandon the practice of entrusting governors and the president with huge monthly allocations of public funds under the heading of security votes. In line with the practice in many other countries, such budgets for matters bearing on security should be handled by a body made up of various security agencies, and this body should be required to give periodic accounts to an appropriate legislative committee at the state and federal levels.

8. The Colloquium encourages Nigerians in the Diaspora to increase their agitation for credible elections and responsive governance at home through the use of innovative electronic media that have played such an important role around the world in deepening democracy. Widespread poverty and uncertainty in Nigeria continue to promote a culture of corruption and impunity.

 9. The Colloquium notes the Obama administration’s proactive engagement with Africa based on the doctrine of reciprocity and shared responsibilities. It reviewed the growing danger of Nigeria’s diplomatic and strategic irrelevance, and observed that this decline can be reversed through credible elections. The Colloquium urges the United States of America, in line with its strategic partnership with Nigeria, to further support the cause of democracy in Nigeria by rebuffing any future Nigerian government that emerges through a questionable electoral process.

 10. The Colloquium calls on Nigerians at home and abroad to join hands during this time of crisis and uncertainty and take the necessary steps to build a country of which they can be proud.

                                      ———————————————–

Providence, Rhode Island, 11^th December 2009

TITLE:

NDIGBO SHALL REGAIN POLITICAL RELEVANCE IN NIGERIA, IN MY LIFETIME

Our host; the very distinguished; our own beloved and revered Professor Chinua Achebe, I salute you.

Distinguished Ladies and gentlemen.

I wish to begin this address by greeting everyone who has made time to attend this very important Colloquium. May the Almighty God, the God of the universe, the Omnipotent and Omniscient God, the creator of all peoples of the earth, the creator of Nigerians, the creator of Ndigbo, bless you.

My primary duty today is to welcome you to this conference being hosted by one of the very best that the creator has given to the world from the Igbo stock, a citizen of the world but who is proud to be Igbo; our very own Chinua, Chinualumogu Achebe, we your people love you.

CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU-OJUKWU

We salute you today as we did over fifty years ago when you told our story in “Things Fall Apart”. It became the mother of all firsts in African Literature. We salute you today because you continue to make us proud through your values and ideals; and your commitment and courage in standing up for what is right and just in society. We hold that these are true hallmarks of Ndigbo, Nigerians and indeed all sane human beings. We jubilated and today we thank you for spurning the “national honour” to be given to you by then President Obasanjo at the height of impunity and abuse of the Anambra State Government and people. By that action of yours whatever pride was being trampled upon by the powers that be at the time was retrieved by your courage. Ndi Anambra salute you. Thank you. Ndigbo and well-meaning Nigerians salute you for standing tall at the time. More importantly the Igbo soul yearns for more Chinua Achebes, clear thinkers, lucid writers, men of courage, crusaders against injustice, true sons and daughters of their fathers. Today I say to you, dear Chinua that you are a true son of Ogidi, Anambra, Ndigbo, Nigeria and the world. As you wrote more than fifty years ago, “the body of Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu” on behalf of Ndigbo salutes you. Deme, Deme-Deme.

Professor Chinua Achebe: Conference Convener

The founding fathers of Nigeria won for us after a bitter struggle with our colonial masters the right to be governed by leaders of OUR OWN CHOICE. Today we must apologize to our founding fathers for our inadequacies, for our lack of courage, indeed for our cowardice which made it possible for us to lose this right to be governed by leaders of our own choice via massive electoral malpractices. This situation just cannot continue. We as Nigerians must resolve today, not tomorrow, to conduct free, fair and credible elections. We cannot afford to fail in this all-important task. And we shall not fail. For it is true that no violence, indeed nothing can stop a people once they have decided to win back their rights. Therefore I say to this Colloquium today that our collective future in Nigeria as one nation under God, lies in our collective resolve to organize free, fair and credible elections.

Let this, our resolve, be impregnable. Let us face the matter of free and fair elections in Nigeria with the same fervor and courage as our founding fathers faced the struggle for Nigeria’s independence. It is that serious; for the future and well-being of our nation depends  on this.  As we seek to accomplish this mission, we must, as a people, be determined to deal ruthlessly with any who obstruct the genuine will of the people.  Such people who benefit from electoral malpractices and the political instability which follow in their wake, must be decisively and summarily dealt with.  In the words of Pandit Nehru, the late Prime Minister of India, “a moment comes but rarely in history when we step out of the old, into the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation long suppressed, finds expression.”  The struggle for free and fair elections in Nigeria, which I prescribe at this colloquium today, cannot be avoided.  It should be regarded as an irreversible mission of national retrieval and rejuvenation.  It shall be the last struggle of true and genuine Nigerian patriots to save the fatherland and propel it to greater heights.

Chinua Achebe And Wole Soyinka --Kongi was there too

Let me warn that throughout history, struggles have never been for the faint-hearted.  As we know, struggle by its very nature entails suffering and sacrifice.  However, we also know that suffering breeds character, and character breeds faith, and in the end faith always prevails.  Consequently, we shall embark on this mission to exorcise Nigerian politics of the demons of electoral malpractices, which have stood before Nigeria and greatness, knowing that our future as a nation depends on it.  It will not be easy.  But it has to be won in the Anambra State Governorship elections on February 6^th, 2010, and in the nation-wide general elections in 2011.  God being our strength, and with aggressive vigilance of citizens in “community policing” of their votes/mandate, we shall achieve the objective of free and fair elections in Nigeria.

I wish to continue this address by affirming my personal resolve and commitment that Ndigbo shall regain political relevance in Nigeria, in my lifetime.  I am a Nigerian.  But I am also an Igbo.  It is my being Igbo that guarantees my Nigerian-ness as long as I live.  Consequently, my Nigerian-ness shall not be at the expense of my Igbo-ness.  The Nigerian nation must therefore work for all ethnic nationalities in Nigeria.  This is the challenge, the key part of which is nation-wide free and fair elections.

Good Governance Will Ensure No One Searches For Dinner In A Lagos Dustbin

Back to Ndigbo.  They are the most peripatetic ethnic group in Nigeria.  In the words of another great writer, Professor Emmanuel Obiechina, who is well-known to our host, “Ndigbo forgot that they also had a farm of their own to tend and spent their youth and vigor working on other people’s farms whilst their own was overgrown with weeds.”  Now, the weeds have taken over and Ndigbo must engage in two struggles simultaneously – to rid their own farms of weeds while insisting on free and fair elections throughout Nigeria.  It is like jumping over two hurdles, vertically stacked. 

Compounding the Igbo predicament are the after-effects of their post civil war political and economic emasculation by the Federal Government of Nigeria.  Their shrill cries of marginalization were ignored by others and by the Nigerian Government, and they have come to terms with the reality of their present position in Nigeria.  But we Ndigbo will never give up.  It is not in our character to succumb to inequity.  Being a very major ethnic group in Nigeria, we will not accept our present marginalized status as permanent and we shall continue to seek and struggle for justice, fairness and equity in the Nigerian politics.

NIGERIA, We Hail Thee

My commitment, because I am seriously involved, is to work with all well-meaning Nigerians to bring about the Nigerian society as promised by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.  When this happens, and all glass ceilings and other unwholesome practices designed to keep Ndigbo, or any other ethnic groups in Nigeria marginalized are dismantled, I shall feel fulfilled.  When this happens, Ndigbo shall regain their political and economic relevance in a fair, just and egalitarian Nigerian society.  This remains my mission.  It is my commitment to Ndigbo.  It is my commitment to Nigeria, Africa and the world.  And it shall happen in my lifetime.  Not after.  This is both my desire and a promise.  I therefore urge this generation of Ndigbo, especially the youths, to gird their loins to safeguard their votes in the coming elections as to elect leaders of our choice.  We shall either achieve this in the February 6^th, 2010 Anambra State Governorship elections and 2011 General elections in Nigeria or forever hang our heads in shame as a failed generation.  Let us not be intimidated by coercive forces of Government.  The mandate belongs to us collectively, and not to government.  As for me, I cannot be intimidated, and I know that together we shall triumph.

Let me hasten to add that some of the glass ceilings have begun to disappear with some recent appointments by the Federal Government of Nigeria.  This gives me hope that previous water tight exclusion of Ndigbo from key national positions is being positively addressed.  One hopes that these positive developments shall be sustained as we continue to sustain the Government that follows.

However, over and above these tokens of de-marginalization, is the central and fundamental issue of electoral reform and the eradication of electoral malpractices in the Nigerian system.  This is at the root of continued marginalization of various groups in Nigeria.  For example, it is no secret that Governorship aspirants of the few Igbo State in Nigeria (the Igbo geopolitical zone has fewer states than the other geopolitical zones ) strive to be endorsed from outside Igboland.  When such a Governorship aspirant gets “elected”, “imposed” or “appointed” as Governor of an Igbo State, he remains loyal and accountable not to the electorate in Igboland, but to the godfathers outside Igboland that endorsed, “imposed” or “appointed” them.

This modern-day enslavement of Igbo politics must end.  And I worry as I see the same scenario about to be re-enacted with the February 6^th, 2010 Anambra State Governorship elections.  And I say, God forbid.  Chukwu ekwena.  Already, there are invasions of Anambra State by political heavyweights from outside of the State seeking to foist their preferred “Governors” on Ndi Anambra.  Before then , there was an attempt to politically castrate the political organization – the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) which I lead and which currently enjoys the mandate of the people of Anambra State.  That attempt failed.   And the incumbent Governor remains the APGA candidate for the February 6^th, 2010 Anambra State Governorship Elections.  Let me assure all gathered here, and the entire people of Nigeria, that I shall be physically out there in the field to ensure that the mandate of Ndi Anambra is not stolen again.  We shall meet the invaders in the field.

Worst Hit By Bad Leadership

A curious observer may ask, “Why Anambra?”  The answer is there – Anambra State was chosen in the best-forgotten days of “garrison politics” in Nigeria as the entry point for the emasculation and enslavement of Igbo politics.  But like Horatio, APGA stands firm at the gate, refusing to yield.  In case we have forgotten, Anambra State was the only state in Nigeria where an incumbent Governor was denied a chance to seek re-election by his political party, in 2003.  In case we have also forgotten, Anambra State was where the political party which I lead, the APGA, won elections in 2003 but the elected Governor was not allowed to exercise the mandate freely given by the people because of scandalous electoral fraud that became a national shame.  The courts declared APGA as the winner of the election – the legal process taking the better part of three years.  Also, it is only in Anambra State where there have been five “Governors” – one elected Governor and others, in the same period.  The other States in Nigeria have had one or at most two Governors.  It is in Anambra State that no Governor has served two terms of office.  And finally, lest we have forgotten, it was the crass impunity and political happenings in Anambra State that incensed our host, Professor Chinua Achebe, to reject publicly with an admonition, a national honour richly deserved by him, but coming from a Presidential hand that was heavily soiled in the Anambra political mess.

Consequently, my firm resolve this time, with the political party to which I belong (i.e. the APGA), is to undertake a state-wide, grassroots community-based campaign and mobilization of Ndi Anambra against electoral malpractices in the February 6th Governorship elections.  We insist that the votes of the people must count.  We insist that the votes shall be counted, recorded and announced at the various polling centers throughout Anambra State.  The people must elect a Governor of their choice.  Ndi Anambra shall not be dictated to from outside – not from Abia, nor from any other geopolitical zone.  Ndi Anambra will not succumb to intimidation.   The invading forces of politicians must retreat from Anambra State.  The state has bled enough.  The hemorrhage must stop.  Let the February 6^th, 2010 Anambra State Governorship elections be canvassed by Anambra people, for the people, so that families and communities shall see the faces of traitors and saboteurs among their own.  In the end, let the TRUE WINNER of the elections govern.  My party, APGA, and I will always respect the will of the people.  That is what gives meaning to my life.  When this happens, that is, when the people of Anambra State effectively resist electoral fraud and ensure that the choice of the people emerges as Governor, I will retire.  As I retire, I expect that other Igbo States and the Nigerian nation will do what has to be done to exorcise the demons of electoral malpractices from the 2011 general elections in the country to ensure that these also become free and fair.

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you for listening.  I thank our host, Professor Chinua Achebe, who in his work titled “The Trouble with Nigeria” diagnosed our national malaise as the absence of effective leadership, for showing effective leadership by convening this conference.  May God bless him and his family.  May God bless Ndigbo.  May God bless Nigeria.

 Virtually every Nigerian knows and strongly believes that any day Nigeria is able to make up its mind to end its obscene and ruinous romance with the stubborn monster called “Corruption”, this country will automatically witness the kind of prosperity no one had thought was possible in these parts. Just imagine the amount of public funds being stolen and squandered daily under various guises by too many public officers and their accomplices, and the great transformation that would happen to public infrastructure and the lives of the citizenry if this organized banditry can at least be reduced by fifty percent!  

 Now, is this monster divorceable? Of course, yes. But are there any signs that anyone in the corridors of power is interested in ending the strong grip it maintains on the very soul of the nation? That is the problem. It is sheer foolishness to expect any of them to willingly block the very hole from which great goodies also flow to him or her just because some other persons are also benefiting from there. No, you can neither fight corruption with soiled hands nor retain monopoly of it! It spreads like cancer. And the whole thing has now been horribly compounded by the emergence and empowerment of a very formidable class whose sustenance and longevity solely depend on its ability to continue sustaining the culture of corruption and bleeding the nation pale.

 This problem began when public office gradually ceased to be a platform for rendering selfless service to the people and transformed into the easiest route to financial empowerment. And since then, several generations of public officers have passed through public office, looting the nation blind with utmost impunity, and retired into abundance and incredible plenty, without any fear of anyone ever prying into the clearly unearned wealth they flaunt with utmost abandon.

 Thus, an ever-swelling Cult of Looters has emerged, whose nuisance value and the ruinous culture they are perpetuating, are now the undisputed headaches of the nation.  And since it is now almost impossible to find any former council chairman, governor (military or civilian), minister, president (military of civilian), army general and several other categories of public officers who is not sitting on boundless accumulation of unearned wealth, it has also become impossible to persuade the current rulers to resist the temptation of surpassing their predecessors in the stealing contest – the only thing that qualifies them for the membership of the great Cult of Corruption.

  Indeed, wealth has become everything and no one cares any more about leaving behind sterling legacies and a good name. And so, virtually no Nigerian governor, for instance, would find it ennobling to wake up every morning, after he had left office, to engage in honest labour to earn a living. That would automatically demean him, and present him as “inferior” to his colleagues; in fact, even his people may begin to call him a big fool for returning from the Government House a “poor man.” And, so the desperation to retire into boundless wealth and comfort is the reason for the mindless stealing going on everywhere.  

 Who now will break this circle? Well, he must be a person with no inclination to steal! And who is that person – who does not want to retire into billions after public office? Is it the president, governors, ministers, or even the chairpersons of the so-called anti-graft bodies set up to battle the monster to the ground? That’s one question we need to answer sincerely, because, it is difficult to find any person among those ruling us today who is more interested in acquiring a good name than accumulating unearned riches. No doubt, the Cult of Corruption is an attractive assemblage of the nation’s political and economic elite, and the sole qualification for initiation into this elite cult is wealth, boundless wealth, stolen from the public treasury, and ownership of a couple of exquisite mansions in choice areas in Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kaduna, London, New York, Paris, Dublin, Dubai and so on. I doubt if the point being made here should in the least sound strange to anyone who has lived in Nigeria.

 Now, was it not late Sunday Afolabi, who, while working for the irredeemably corrupt Olusegun Obasanjo regime, told us that those who were offered political appointments were actually invited “to come and eat.” At least, the man was sincere about his understanding of the whole thing. Gone were the days when people went into public office to serve the people and make a good name for themselves.  No, not any more! Today, people go there to serve themselves and make boundless wealth. And they usually end up losing the capacity to feel ashamed, so much so, that even if they are called thieves to the faces, they remain unperturbed.

 How then can this monster be tamed? How can anyone make all the past public officers to give up all they had stolen and live normal lives with resources whose sources are explainable, in order to make those currently in office to resist the temptation to steal? Where would any one possibly start? And who would lead such a campaign? When will Nigeria be made a functional state so that people would not need to go to great lengths to steal in order to provide for themselves the amenities and comforts they failed to put in place for the entire citizenry when they were in power?

 With this dreadful cult in effective command at all our public institutions, including INEC, how then can we possibly hope to have a free and fair election in this country? Because, having criminally accumulated so much money while in office, these fellows only enthrone themselves as formidable godfathers and kingmakers, and deploy the billions at their disposal to install and remove governments at will. Many of them can single-handedly found and fund political parties without the slightest impact on their bottomless pockets. They also have all it takes to frustrate any attempt to pry into their slimy and hideous pasts. The very negligible few among them who manage to get “messed-up” in the “anti-corruption war” are those foolish enough to find the trouble of those more powerful than they are, or get into some really complicated situation that it would be difficult to extricate them without a serious backlash that might  threaten the peace and stability of the entire cult. So, he is carefully sacrificed to preserve the whole house from going under.

 The Cult of Corruption also has many quiet and more deadly members. These include “very successful and wise” fronts, errand boys (and girls), thugs whom the ‘ogas’ use (or had used) to prosecute their criminal accumulations, and, also, the countless mistresses, concubines and “state prostitutes” who take care of the leisure moments of the ogas. These, too, in the process of time, acquire their own wealth and clout, and gradually rise in prominence to become “successful business moguls” or “party stalwarts.” Others get into government as Special Advisers, Commissioners, Ministers, council chairpersons, State or Federal lawmakers, or even governors. A nation is judged by the quality of persons leading it. On this score, Nigeria has been most unlucky.   

 Now, with such a very formidable criminal elite controlling the politics and economy of the nation, with many of them even maintaining effective hotlines to the Presidency, how can anyone pretend to enthrone transparency in the governance of the country? How can corruption be rooted out? How can progress be recorded? Do the fellows ruling us even understand what it means to build a country? By the way, where would the person intending to root out corruption even start from?  The sheer number, clout and destructive ability of members of this Cult of Corruption are simply too intimidating. Some have over the years even matured to become refined, patrician “elder statesmen” (and women) with vast “family business” empires, commanding enormous respect, but still doing enormous harm to the nation. Yet the only day jobs anyone could remember they ever did were serving as either ministers or ambassadors, local government chairmen, governors, presidents, army or police officers, special advisers, commissioners, permanent secretaries or just as a “director in the presidency.” 

 But should we give up? No! Never! No society should ever sit passively and watch the scums, scoundrels and dregs in its midst seize its tomorrow and murder it. That nation is doomed which has shameless thieves as its kings.  Ask yourself today: What are the antecedents of my governor, lawmaker or councilor? Can a thief possibly succeed in rebuilding the very house he is busy plundering? It amounts to unqualified foolishness on the part of the majority to  allow themselves to be perpetually enslaved by a criminally-minded minority? A time comes in the life of a nation when the people must rise with one voice and bellow a big NO! And that time is now! Especially, as 2011 general elections  approaches.

 scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.blog.com

“Something startles me where I thought I was safest,

I withdraw from the still woods I loved,

I will not go now on the pastures to walk…”

– Walt Whitman (1819-1892) in the poem, ‘This Compost’.

 In October 2004, Professor Chinua Achebe told Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s “civilian” ruler at the time, that Nigeria under his watch was unarguably “too dangerous.” That was about five years ago. Today, words would fail anyone, including Achebe himself, to describe Nigeria’s current state. And if by any stroke of misfortune the 2011 general elections still throws up this same band of (mis)rulers, whose insatiable greed and obscene display of unearned wealth now constitute the greatest and most effective incentive for the prolongation of Nigeria’s current nightmare of kidnapping, violent robberies and ritual murders, what this country will become in the next few years from now is better imagined.

President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua And Queen Elizabeth of England

Mid-last month, July 15, 2009, to be precise, The Nigerian Tribune carried a very brief story whose significance may have been lost on many people. At 3.00 am on the Sunday of that week, a thief was caught in the bedroom of Mr. Sule Lamido, the Governor of Jigawa State. The story, according to the newspaper, has been duly confirmed by the Governor’s Director of Press, Muhammad Sanu Jibrin. Before now, who could have imagined that a thief, any thief, would have been able to violate the sanctity of a governor’s bedroom? But that has now become part of our history. I won’t be surprised to hear tomorrow that a governor or his wife has been kidnapped and taken to an unknown destination, from the safe confines of the Government House. Given the horribly complicated security situation in this failed state we call our country today, such a possibility already stares everyone in the face. 

 There is always a huge price to pay when a nation is left in the hands of an irresponsible and wayward elite to do the only thing it knows how to do with it, namely, primitively bleed it pale and callously run it aground. That is today the story of Nigeria. And the situation is becoming horribly complicated. Those outsmarted in the grab-and-plunder game have taken up arms to get their own share of the cake, provoked mainly by the sudden wealth being flaunted by the “lucky few” with easy access to public funds. Now, the smell of blood and death hangs in the air, like a dreaded epidemic! Fear walks on all fours. Yet, the looters are still busy plundering, hoping to use what they have accumulated to purchase safety and comfort for themselves in the midst of death and destruction. What a foolish thought.

On Their Own: Who protects these ones?

 On July 18, 2009, Saturday Independent reported the gruesome murder of two former aides to the Education Minister, Dr. Sam Egwu, at the burial ceremony of the father of a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain in Nnewi, Anambra State. A Federal lawmaker, Paulinus Igwe Nwagwu, who was also hit by bullets from the same gunmen, however, still has his life intact, and was at the time of the report receiving medical attention at an undisclosed hospital. It was even reported that due to “the deadly onslaught of this gang of killers”, Gov Sullivan Chime of Enugu State, and Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who were already set to attend the funeral in Nnewi became scared and retreated indoors. Do you blame them? When a state fails, not even governors or deputy senate presidents can appear safely in the open, despite the intimidating security apparatus at their disposal.

And make no mistake about it: this can only get worse until the political and ruling elite decides that looting and plundering of commonwealth must not remain inextricably intertwined with governance, and that Nigeria needs to be healed and rebuilt and not continuously gang-raped. Well, the bad (or good) news is that very soon, treasury looters may no longer find any safe ground to ply their lucrative trade. The words of British clergyman, Willaim Inge, may soon come alive to everyone: “A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can’t sit on it.” Indeed, no one can sow the wind, and expect NOT to reap the whirlwind. Nigeria appears to be the only country where people are busy eating and drinking poison, and yet wishing to live. Our rulers live their whole lives destroying the country, and yet wake up each morning expecting to see it flourishing like a May flower. No, you don’t bring home ant-infested faggots, and expect to be excused from the visit of lizards. For goodness sake, Nigeria is too young to die. It has never been this unsafe. And no part of the country is immune.

Living Dangerously: Who Cares?

A couple of weeks ago, on a Friday, a heavily armed gang reportedly raided two commercial banks in Nsukka, Enugu State; they took their time to thoroughly clean out one bank before moving to the other to repeat the same exercise, killing a Divisional Police Officer (DPO) in the process. While the reign of terror and bullets persisted, no form of resistance came from any quarters. When they were through with the banks, they moved with an even greater fanfare to the Nsukka Police Station, where all the ill-equipped and poorly motivated policemen had fled for dear life. Then they opened the cells, released all the inmates and razed down the police station. After the robbers had finished their operations and gone, the Enugu State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mr. Ebere Amaraizu, told Saturday Independent (probably from his hideout in Enugu) that the Police Commissioner had dispatched some more policemen to Nsukka to go and help catch the robbers. Nigeria, Great Nation, Good People!

Face of Danger: No Place To Hide

Whether we like it or not, the rise of violent crimes is to a large extent being provoked by the massive, unrestrained looting going on in public institutions. Time was when everyone, including criminal elements among us, watched passively as those in government, their relatives, mistresses and errand boys became rich overnight and obscenely flaunted their ill-gotten wealth before every eye that could see. Now the situation has changed. Those without access to government coffers now have access to guns. But in their determination to “make it” like their counterparts in government and politics, they are unable to achieve reasonable discrimination between those who acquired wealth by dint of hard work and those who bled the treasury pale. I have heard it said several times among the populace that if the robbers and kidnappers would direct their efforts solely on those carting away public funds, no one would bat an eyelid. It would then amount to a balance of criminality. They steal from the public; the thieves and kidnappers steal from them! And so long as those outside this godless ring remain untouched in the desperation of the two camps to out-steal each other, no one would complain. Imagine such a reasoning flourishing in supposedly sane country!

Tender Victims: Usually The Worst Hit In A Dangerous Country

 Welcome to Nigeria, a country no one wishes to slave or die for. Nigeria is like a collapsing House, cordoned off by the Ruling/Eating Class, who are busy day and night carting away the much they could before it goes down. No one is interested in rebuilding it so it could remain for all of us. But the marginalized out there have taken up arms to force their own portion out of the looters. There is “war” in the land which might become more complicated, ensuring that there would be no more places to hide. And as 2011 approaches, it is bound to get worse. But why can’t we decide today to halt this massive looting and start rebuilding Nigeria? If graduates get jobs tomorrow, will they steal and kidnap? We better open our eyes to the stark reality of today’s Nigeria and act fast to fix our country for the safety of both the ruler and ruled. But if we continue pigheadedly on this path of perdition, even a blind man can see what this place will become tomorrow.

———————————————————-

 scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.blog.com

Recently, the Bayelsa State Commissioner for Information, Orientation and Strategy, Mr. Asara Asara, told reporters in his office that the state government spent over N456 million on the recently cancelled two-day “working visit” of President Umar Musa Yar’Adua to Bayelsa. According to him, the initial budget for the visit was N1.2 billion, but when the Due Process and e-Governance Bureau reviewed it, it found reasons to abridge it to N456 million. And the State Governor, Mr. Timipere Sylva, who was eager to have the president in the state, wasted no time in approving the sum.

President Yar'Adua: Too Many, Meaningless, Expensive Trips

Now, according to reports, the president was coming to Bayelsa solely to commission some projects completed by the Sylva regime and perform the foundation laying ceremony for the Bayelsa International Cargo Airport in Zarama-Epie, Yenogoa Local Council Area. Nothing more, nothing less, dear readers! Yet, some fellows thought that this simple activity provided sufficient reason for Bayelsa State to fritter away N1.7 billion just like that! If this does not amount to obscene profligacy and prodigality, somebody should tell me the right words to describe the very outrageous decision.

Toiling Under The Sun Daily To Subsidize The Profligacy Of Their Leaders

Okay, the money was eventually reduced to N456 million. Indeed, to the fat cats at the corridors of power, this may be just be some “little change,” which may even be insufficient to host one night of riotous party for a couple of public officers with university girls and state prostitutes, but pardon me for insisting that N456 million is indeed, a big sum – too big for such a simple activity. And I fail to see how the mere act of the president flying into Yenogoa to commission some projects and lay the foundation for an airport project should gulp such a huge sum. It is just wasteful, to put it mildly. Indeed, such a sum can easily give numerous boreholes to some communities and make the people there happy drinkers of potable water in a region where virtually every stream has been horribly contaminated in the course of oil exploitations. Why do our public officers find it so easy and natural to callously squander public funds without any restraints while masses of deprived people in their domains yearn each day for very essential amenities that may never be provided? Sadly, every insignificant event provides excellent opportunity for wallowing in profligacy and self-enrichment.

 And at the end of the day, it may turn out that only an insignificant fraction of the budgeted sum was spent on the event, while the larger part found its way into private pockets. Now, let’s return to Yar’Adua’s botched visit. Apart from the Central Working Committee headed by the Bayelsa Deputy Governor, Mr. Peremobowei Ebebi, there were also more than 16 sub-committees, all put in place to ensure a successful presidential “owambe.” Six masters of ceremony were hired to feature at the event. No doubt, all these committees, sub-committees or sub-sub-committees have their huge budgets to play around with, to give the impression that a really big event is taking place, to justify the huge sums of money being squandered with unpardonable recklessness. There is also the publicity committee headed by the Information Commissioner himself, whose job may just be to organize media coverage for the programme, hire the six MCs and place adverts in the media welcoming president – a job just one man can successfully execute within two days. In fact, what some of the committees and sub-committees might undertake with excessive fussiness and fanfare, to justify the huge funds allocated to them, could be perfectly carried out by just one person with only a telephone.

Gov Sylva of Bayelsa: Chief Host Of The Expensive, Meaningless Trip

The commissioner said that since the trip had been cancelled, unspent funds would be returned, as the various officers and committee heads render accounts. It also means that those who had overshot their budgets would also seek reimbursement. The trip, according to my brother, Doifie Ola, the Governor’s Chief Press Secretary, was cancelled so the governor can attend to some “pressing state matters.” But the story out there is that Yar’Adua was scared stiff by some benumbing security reports, and had to cancel the outrageously expensive and wasteful trip. There is also the joke that if Yar’Adua was kidnapped in Yenogoa, the ransom would not be anything less than N500 billion. It is high time we spurned all these wasteful activities that contribute nothing to the lives of the citizenry, like useless presidential visits to “commission projects” and carry out “foundation-laying ceremonies.” Such side attractions only provide momentary excitement and nothing else. They contribute nothing to progress and development. Yar’Adua should sit back in Abuja and face the mounting national problems staring him the face.

 Indeed, governance should be a more serious business than some governors and presidents are showing it is.

—————————————————-

An Ever Unserious House?

Recently, it was reported that the Honourable Members of the House of Representatives deemed it appropriate to adjourn plenary to have lunch with President Yar’Adua’s Special Adviser on National Assembly Matters, Mr. Abba Aji.

Speaker Dimeji Bankole: Heading A Visionless House

The motion for this dishonourable act was moved by the House Leader, Tunde Akogun. Before they rushed out to have the lunch, only one out of the seven items listed in the Order Paper for that day had been treated.

And, on this particular day, the House had commenced its sitting scandalously too late, about three o’clock. Yet, they had the effrontery to look Nigerians in the face and abandon such very important national assignment committed in their hands to go and do “longer throat”.

Nigeria's House of Representatives: Idling Away In Abuja At Huge Costs

We must be worried by the quality of minds that periodically show up at our National and State Assemblies to make laws for us. Readers of this column know that in several essays published here, I have been unable to contain my sorrow and deep pain over the quality of lawmakers we end up with each time, and how such a misfortune continues to sabotage our best expectations for progress and development, since all it does is to extend generous incentive to the Executive to celebrate its insufferable ineptitude and directionlessness with indecent fanfare.

As our decadent politics continue to inflict the nation with grossly underweight and light-minded fellows as lawmakers, that is, individuals who neither have any acquaintance with sound ideas nor the capacity to appreciate the gravity of the assignment they are supposed to be performing in Abuja, what the nation gets in return can only be retrogression and unchecked decay. What has remained sadly true is that for most of the lawmakers who had diminished our legislative chambers with their uninspiring presence these past few years, their real reason for showing up in Abuja has been to just scramble over dirty naira notes like wanton street boys over balls of akra suddenly falling off the tray of an indiscreet hawker.

Indeed, these were mostly down-and-out fellows dusted off from here and there, easily excited by such little things as a sumptuous lunch with presidential aides, and they would emerge each time from such feasts feeling so high that they would forget their very important brief in Abuja. So sad. scruples2006@yahoo.com                                                                                          www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com