Strictly Personal

Tinubu and the meaning of insanity, By Tunde Odesola

Published

1 year ago

May 5, 2023

I possess neither the intellect of Albert Einstein nor the anointing of Apostle Matthew, the tax collector and Jesus’ disciple. I’m only a Lagos-born hunter from Igbajo, the Citadel of the Brave — an inheritance of Osun State. Unlike Einstein and Matthew, I’m no Jew, no scholar, no philosopher.

Never can I hold a candle to Einstein’s erudition and groundbreaking theories even if creation imbued me with a dozen brains plus the durability of Methuselah. Even if I spoke in a thousand tongues, I’d be unworthy to touch the hem of Apostle Matthew’s garment. One of the mouth-gaping miracles, aka ‘ise iyanu’ in Yoruba, that I know how to perform lies in the ability of my mouth to refrigerate frying-hot chicken or steaming ‘isi ewu’ goat pepper soup without flinching. I also blink and breathe – a complete trinity of miracles.

Despite my dwarfness when compared with the personae of Einstein, and Matthew, who was also known as Levi, I wish to use the privilege of my penmanship to comment on an issue these two great men had written about many years ago. The issue is i-n-s-a-n-i-t-y.

Einstein says, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” while Matthew preaches that the rich shall get richer and the poor shall get poorer, and I add: if both continue to do the same thing.

But I would rather be Einstein than be Matthew. Why? The Lord commanded, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it…” Genesis 1:28. Me, I’m not Mathias; I cannot ‘come and die’ like Matthew, the martyr did.

Joking apart, Einstein is matchless. His panoply of works are groundbreaking. At just 26, his innovations such as Quantum Theory of Light, Special Theory of Relativity, Brownian Motion etc planted the seeds of global advancement in the soil of boundless possibilities by providing the templates for nuclear power, Google Maps, laser invention that revolutionised agriculture, manufacturing, exploration, security and medicine, just to mention a few. Whereas taking out the gospel of Matthew from the Bible won’t render the Holy Book incomplete as the gospels of Mark, Luke and John contain almost the same essence as Matthew’s.

Insanity in Nigeria tick-tocks with the two hands of the clock counting kidnapping, unknown gunmen, Boko Haram, banditry, barbarous herdsmen, militancy and ritualism as heritages of the outgoing All Progressives Congress presidency.

Insanity is treating insecurity with levity, the way the outgoing President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has done in eight years, and expecting peace, law and order to abound. Another apostle, Paul, says, ‘God forbid’ the abundance of grace in the plantation of sin, a synonym for heaven helps those who help themselves.

Before Buhari’s tragic years, insecurity was a shy ogre booming behind the cloud, jumping out to wreak havoc, and running back into the cloud. In Buhari’s time, however, insecurity abandoned the cloud, took up permanent residency in Nigeria, physically attacking Aso Rock, violating the Nigerian Defence Academy, taking kings hostage, killing soldiers and policemen for sport, trampling on the skulls of the poor.

President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, made Buhari possible. With the èkù-idà hilt of the sword firmly in his grip after coronation, however, the king unsheathed the I’m-for-nobody sword, sending the kingmaker scampering, lest the power-drunk king walked on Iragbiji blood into the palace as rite of passage.

One hundred and two (102) international trips in a period of eight years make Buhari a top contender in the race for World Itinerant President trophy. Statistically speaking, 102 overseas travels mean that Buhari nestled abroad more than once every month with, economically speaking, nothing to show for the numerous roaming about.

When talking about the insanity of doing the same thing the same way and expecting a different result, Nigeria’s political class needs a cure. President Olusegun Obasanjo had his time in the air. His godson, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, shared airspace with birds of passage in his time.

The three leading candidates in the 2023 presidential election, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and Mr Peter Obi, held many meetings with ex-president(s), governors, ministers, senators, and other politicians in foreign city capitals, yet Nigeria laments dwindling foreign exchange earnings.

A statement by the media team of the President-elect said a few weeks ago, “After a very exhaustive campaign and election season, President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has travelled abroad to REST and PLAN his transition programme ahead of May 29, 2023 inauguration.”

Who made Nigeria unsafe to rest and plan if not the political elite? Do leaders of sane nations go abroad to rest and plan? Our dead-from-the-neck-up leaders proudly run to doctors in foreign lands for old-age surgeries; their ostrich buries its head in the sand at home while its fantastically corrupt rump is on exhibition abroad.

Nigeria’s currencies, Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machines, military hardware and software, telephony, and other strategic equipment are sourced from foreign lands, opening up the country’s security to manipulation and attack. Is the country going to continue in this insane direction under the incoming Tinubu government, and expect development to fall from the sky?

That the retired Major General Buhari failed woefully in the simple task of policing Nigeria adequately is a sad fact. How the country, nevertheless, expected a unidimensional soldier with a contentious school certificate to effectively inspire the military and provide national security beggars sanity.

The primary and secondary school claims of the incoming President came out smeared under searchlight. Is Nigeria, again, not doing the same thing, and expecting a different result?

Recently, the outgoing president asked for forgiveness from Nigerians, without stating which of his countless sins he wants Nigerians to forgive.

I’ll pick just one sin here, and that’s the Nigeria Police. If Buhari acknowledges his failure in this regard, and sincerely asks for forgiveness, I think many Nigerians will forgive him, knowing full well that the police represent just a tip in his iceberg of sins even as this sin-and-forgiveness exercise is capable of bringing to closure the horror of the last eight years.

If Buhari was a conscious President, he ought to know that the country’s underfunded, understaffed, unmotivated police serve only the rich. When you need police service in Nigeria, you pay money to private accounts of police chiefs, who assign to you the number of police officers the weight of your money can procure. The Nigeria Mobile Police Unit is the most bastardised in this respect. Mobile policemen are now posted to churches, mosques, schools, and filling stations for various amounts of money.

Policemen and policewomen who should be guarding the citizenry are now sentries in private homes across the country in Money-for-Mopol deals between moneybags and police chiefs who swindle officers on duty by giving little or nothing to the men in the sun, despite receiving money on their behalf. The racketeering within the police is now so rampant that regular and mobile policemen are secretly and unofficially drafted from state to state to do guard duty by some members of the police hierarchy who collect money for the service provided. This is the reason why police response in times of emergency is lethargic in many states of the federation as policemen, especially MOPOL, would have been posted out unofficially to guard fat dogs in other states – for money that ends up in private pockets.

It doesn’t take rocket science or juju to unravel this security information I lay bare; it only needs a responsible President to put his ears to the ground, and do the needful. The first of the needful here is a total reformation of the police by ensuring adequate staffing, good salary, training and retraining, enticing retirement packages, housing etc.

The role of the police in ensuring security, law and order in a democracy cannot be overemphasised. The incoming President, with his foreign exposure and university education, should know this. Failure of the police is one of the sins of Buhari. Aare Tinubu should take note. Giving ill-trained, hungry and angry men guns and expecting them to act sanely is like setting a beggar on horseback – he’ll ride to the devil!

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Strictly Personal

In 64 years, how has IDA reduced poverty in Africa? By Tee Ngugi

Published

1 day ago

May 7, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

The name of the organisation is as opaque as a name can get: World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA).

I had never heard of it. And suppose I, who follows socioeconomic developments that affect Africa, had never heard of it until last week when it convened in Nairobi. In that case, likely, only a handful of people outside those who serve its bureaucracy had ever heard of it.

Maybe IDA intends to remain shadowy like magicians, emerging occasionally to perform illusions that give hope to Africa’s impoverished masses that deliverance from poverty and despair is around the corner.

So, I had to research to find out who the new illusionist in town was. IDA was founded in 1960. Thirty-nine African countries, including Kenya, are members. Its mission is “to combat poverty by providing grants and low-interest loans to support programmes that foster economic growth, reduce inequalities, and enhance living standards for people in developing nations”.

It’s amazing how these kinds of organisations have developed a language that distorts reality. In George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, the totalitarian state of Oceania devises a new language. “Newspeak” limits the thoughts of citizens of Oceania so that they are incapable of questioning whatever the regime does.

Let’s juxtapose the reality in Africa against IDA’s mission. Africa has some of the poorest people in the world. It contributes a paltry two percent of international trade. It contributes less than one per cent of patents globally.

The continent has the largest wealth disparities in the world. Millions of people across Africa are food insecure, needing food aid. A study has indicated that Africa is among the most hostile regions in the world for women and girls, because of residual cultural attitudes and the failure of governments to implement gender equality policies.

Africa has the largest youth unemployment rate in the world. Africa’s political class is the wealthiest in the world. Africa remains unsustainably indebted. The people who live in Africa’s slums and unplanned urban sprawls have limited opportunities and are susceptible to violent crime and natural and manmade disasters.

As speeches in “Newspeak” were being made at the IDA conference, dozens of poor Kenyans were being killed by floods. These rains had been forecast, yet the government, not surprisingly, was caught flatfooted.

So in its 64-year existence, how has IDA reduced poverty and inequality in Africa? How has its work enhanced living standards when so many Africans are drowning in the Mediterranean Sea trying to escape grinding poverty and hopelessness?

As one watched the theatre of leaders of the poorest continent arriving at the IDA illusionists’ conference in multimillion-dollar vehicles, wearing designer suits and wristwatches, with men in dark suits and glasses acting a pantomime of intimidation, and then listened to their “Newspeak,” one felt like weeping for the continent. The illusionists had performed their sleight of hand.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator

Strictly Personal

This Sudan war is too senseless; time we ended it, By Tee Ngugi

Published

1 week ago

April 28, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Why are the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RPF) engaged in a vicious struggle? It is not that they have ideological, religious or cultural differences.

Not that people should fight because of these kinds of differences, but we live in a world where social constructions often lead to war and genocide. It is not that either side is fighting to protect democracy. Both sides were instruments of the rapacious dictatorship of Omar el-Bashir, who was overthrown in 2019.

Both are linked to the massacres in Darfur during Bashir’s rule that led to his indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. They both stood by as ordinary, unarmed people took to the streets and forced the removal of the Bashir regime.

None of these entities now fighting to the last Sudanese citizen has any moral authority or constitutional legitimacy to claim power. They both should have been disbanded or fundamentally reformed after the ouster of Bashir.

The SAF and the RSF are fighting to take over power and resources and continue the repression and plunder of the regime they had supported for so long. And, as you can see from news broadcasts, they are both well-versed in violence and plunder.

Since the fighting began in 2023, both sides have been accused of massacres that have left more than 30,000 people dead. Their fighting has displaced close to 10 million people. Their scramble for power has created Sudan’s worst hunger crisis in decades. Millions of refugees have fled into Chad, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

The three countries are dubious places of refuge. Chad is a poor country because of misrule. It also experiences jihadist violence. Ethiopia is still simmering with tensions after a deadly inter-ethnic war.

And South Sudan has never recovered from a deadly ethnic competition for power and resources. African refugees fleeing to countries from which refugees recently fled or continue to flee sums up Africa’s unending crisis of governance.

Africa will continue to suffer these kinds of power struggles, state failure and breakdown of constitutional order until we take strengthening and depersonalising our institutions as a life and death issue. These institutions anchor constitutional order and democratic process.

Strong independent institutions would ensure the continuity of the constitutional order after the president leaves office. As it is, presidents systematically weaken institutions by putting sycophants and incompetent morons in charge. Thus when he leaves office by way of death, ouster or retirement, there is institutional collapse leading to chaos, power struggles and violence. The African Union pretends crises such as the one in Sudan are unfortunate abnormally. However, they are systemic and predictable. Corrupt dictatorships end in chaos and violence.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator.