Peace Vigil - 4th December 2009 - Grace Ushang
Iheoma Obibi
In commemoration of the death of the youth corper Grace Ushang, the Nigerian Feminist Forum (NFF) and it's partners have organised a peace vigil with speakers including her family from Calabar and others working to promote and protect the rights of women.
This period November 25th - December 10th sees the beginning of the campaign around 16 days of activism against violence against women, and is important for us in acknowledging and seeking demands from our governments on the private and public violence our women face in our commuities.
We envisage taking the 3 minute walk to Alausa to hand over the petition we should all have signed to the representative of the Lagos state government either in the Governor's office or Attorney General's office. You can bring your form with you on the 4th.
I have attached a petition which we would like you to sign and hand in. Please you can scan and send back to me or visit
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Grace_Ushang_Petition?e
Date: 4th December 2009
Time: 2.00pm
Venue: Agidingbi Senior Grammer School, off Lateef Jakande Road, Agidindgbi bus stop, Ikeja, Lagos
Dress code: Black top or arm band.
Please come with friends and loved ones and lets celebrate this young woman.
Iheoma Obibi
Mobile: + 234 803 302 0779
Int' mobile: + 44 7713 401454
Skype: iheomaobibi
http://www.alliancesforafrica.org
Tony Iyare
ELECTORAL INTEGRITY BEGETS GOVERNANCE INTEGRITY
By Wole Soyinka
I am given to understand that, in this very state, there was a candidate for elective office who was considered – to put it mildly – to have underperformed during his first stint in office. Challengers within his party thereupon insisted that he should not be presented the next time round. The candidate’s father, a heavyweight, seasoned politician in his own right, begged to disagree. Confronting the electors, he advanced an argument to which, from all evidence, his audience had no solid counter. His argument went thus: look, if a student sits and fails an exam the first time, is he not given a chance to do a re-sit? Let him have another go.
True or false, I do not know but, in company with most Nigerians, I love a good ‘tori’. Additionally however, there is something about that story that sounds uniquely Nigerian. Even if, in the telling, the story has become dislocated in time, place and details, I have no doubt in my mind that it is true for some other time and place. We may be sure that it is a scenario that has been played over and over again, albeit with variations, some humorous, good for a laugh, others not so funny, and with tragic consequences for a nation at all levels - state, local government, or indeed public and business institutions and private clubs. So perhaps there is something to be said for the kind of governance system that restricts itself to one term only – four, five, six or whatever, with that one chance to exit in blazing glory or be hissed out in ignominy. Such a system might have the proviso that, if the scorecard for your departure is the former, you can always come back again – but only on one condition, a condition that is based on equality of opportunity, and a respect for the untested leadership potential of others. This condition is that, in the meantime, someone else has had a shot at the same slot. There is no law of Nature that dictates that there is only one genius allocated to one environment per generation or in a lifetime. Those who believe otherwise denigrate their own worth as human beings, since they thereby exclude themselves from the commonality of leadership capability. They declare themselves as belonging to an inferior mould of humanity. Well, it is their privilege to do this, but they must speak only for themselves, not inflict the status of human deficiency on others.
Now the foregoing, one that involves the very processes of leadership assignation - is a very large subject, and I am not about to tackle it here. One term, once for all? Two, or an unlimited number of comebacks? – it is all clearly debatable. At base is the non-debatable imperative of a people’s choice, the right of the members of any human community to express their preference periodically, as free and equal beings endowed with the faculty of discernment? Any other condition is slavehood, of which there are many forms. For now, I only wish to evoke instead the immediate question that is aroused by that ‘re-sit’ analogy, coopting it as our running thread for this address. That question is: aren’t we getting our terminologies somewhat confused? Test. Examination. Qualifier. Assessment. Sit or re-sit by these or any other names. Apart from being a field for limitless exploration in its own right, this process of testing happens to be one of the most pertinent and urgent issues of our time. In a situation where candidates, because of the incompetence, dishonesty, and partisanship of a supposedly neutral examiner are compelled to sit and re-sit their examination, go through a series of external examiners – the tribunals, appeal courts etc - in a process that may consume a period of two and a half, even three years out of a four-year incumbency, the issue of examinations must be uppermost in the minds of millions of the Nigerian electorate.
Let us devote a little time to exploring what constitutes a test or an examination. I invite us to keep our minds on that field of exploration as we proceed since, very often, it goes to the heart of governance – including institutional or business management - pits performance against both eligibility and the very means to any position of responsibility. I recall an exchange that I had with the late Joe Garba at Harvard University during the Abacha political charade – an encounter to which I referred in my memoirs – YOU MUST SET FORTH AT DAWN. Joe Garba was contemplating running for the presidency, and had come to discuss his ambitions with me. I asked him a direct question: is the position vacant? He assured me that Sanni Abacha was very sincere and seriously intended to quit office. I shook my head and corrected him - No, I am not referring to Abacha who, in any case, is simply making a fool of the nation, just like his predecessor. I am asking about the man whom Abacha has locked up, the man who won an undisputed national mandate – what about him? Joe Garba’s response – and it was said with genuine regret - was that he had himself supported Abiola’s candidature, as had the majority of the armed forces. MKO had however derailed his chance. Joe Garba revealed that sections of the army had indeed been ready to move, were already mobilizing to enforce Abiola’s mandate but Abiola ruined it all by the letter he wrote to Babangida, the letter that was mysteriously leaked to the public. Joe explained further that the officers were demoralized by the sentiments expressed in that letter, and no longer felt like risking their careers – and possibly lives – for a man who was so chummy with the very cause of the political impasse.
It is an interesting coincidence, but my response was very much along the lines of our mythical Edo patriarch. Joe, I said, Abiola and his rivals took an examination to fill a vacancy. There were set rules for that exam and MKO trounced his fellow candidate in the results. He had fulfilled the qualifying conditions, taken the test, and passed with flying colours. It should not matter to you and anyone else – I added - if the candidate wrote a love letter to the very man, the incumbent, who had tried so hard to mess up the results. He was not the examiner, so there was no question of his trying to exert undue influence. Nothing in the rules stated that a candidate should not write his predecessor in the contested office – this was not part of the disqualifiers for the examination. Abiola was a politician who, rightly or wrongly, wrote a letter to persuade the incumbent to vacate office and let him take over the responsibilities of office. He had already netted the ball. You do not move the goal posts after the goal has been scored – this is a simple matter of natural justice. Well, we all know the end of that sad passage of our history.
We shall continue with that patriarch’s analogy for a few moments longer, bearing in mind that, in the first place, there is no examination that is sat without a proof of eligibility. If there are no yardsticks of eligibility, anyone would be free to apply for any position in the world. Imagine the number of applications that would come in for the position of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Even the most sophisticated computer would suffer a nervous breakdown under the weight of applicants.
In many traditional societies, passage from one age-grade to another was a form of going through an examination. In the more elaborate of such tests, you were placed in isolation where you learnt the history of your clan, the saga of the original movement and settlement, the community’s economic strategies, the ethics of, and responsibilities towards your society. You were made to undergo physical stressing, including perhaps circumcision. In some societies, depending on the phase of maturity into which you were being inducted, you had to go out on a hunt and return with bush meat. Was that simply as a hobby? Absolutely not. At base, it was a test to prove that you were able to fend for your family. In some other societies, to be inducted into an age-grade where you could begin to consider marriage, you were required to go out and tackle a predator – perhaps a leopard or even a lion. Again, there was the underlying purpose: to prove that you could defend your family and your clan.
There was absolutely no short-cut, since the entire community was, in effect, your invigilators. You could not claim that because you were the child of Big Chief So-and-so, you should be exempted from the test. On the contrary, because you were indeed the son of Big Chief So-and-So, all eyes were on you to prove to the world that you were indeed worthy of being your father’s son, and more. You had to excel, over and above the performances of the others. Only then were you considered fit to assume the responsibilities that membership of the new age-grade conferred on you. If the others bellowed with pain during the circumcision rites, you were expected to utter no more than a whimper. If they whimpered, you had to be stoically silent. If they winced, you smiled. There could be no cheating, no paying heads of cattle for a substitute to undergo the rigours of such rites of passage. Quite simply, no one else could take the test on your behalf. If I may extend one of the late MKO Abiola’s favourite aphorisms which was: you cannot shave a man’s head in his absence, the equivalent of those ancient age-grade tests would be: you cannot swap your penis with another’s for the rites of circumcision. Indeed, your future wife would be the first to cry ‘Foul’!
Well then, in recent times, we have learnt that such a substitution ploy is not as outlandish an idea as you might think. An election tribunal – and I am certain there were several others - determined that, in one of the Eastern states, the name of a candidate who was never on the ballot, who never campaigned, whose face never showed on any poster and was virtually unknown to the electorate, was substituted for the winner after votes had been counted and results declared. The impostor recently resorted to an Appeal court – under what legal fantasizing, I do not know – and judgment was delivered only within the last month, the case being dismissed as an abuse of process. What the court said, in different words of course, was – you cannot engage a surrogate penis at circumcision time.
Now let us attempt to extract for our purposes the essence of age-grade and other tests. What exactly did these rites of passage signify? We have indentified some specifics – ability to provide, ability to protect and defend etc. Unifying those specifics however, is a common denominator, a core essence that reaches into the foundation of all such tests. On one level, the answer can be elicited individually – self-preparation. Preparing oneself for the burdens and challenges of existence. On the broader level however, it can be translated as community reinforcement. Each individual transformation to a higher level of human potential lifts the entire community in turn to new heights of its own potency, productivity and performance, beyond the mere quantification that goes with registering a new adult or quasi-adult in the community. The community is not abstract, it is made up of palpable beings, bound together in a culture of co-existence and collective replenishment. Given the foregoing, we easily identify the essence of our quest, the extract that embraces both individual and the collective as simply - responsibility. The age-grade tests constitute a preparation for responsibility – responsibility both to one’s self, and to the community. Yes, we need to emphasize that continually – without that preparation, that individual stressing, the community to which one belongs cannot be assured of the building of potential, and its eventual release into the common pool of productive energy.
Community is multi-tiered, and thus, so is Responsibility, hierarchical, though such hierarchies should not be considered as belonging of a strictly vertical ladder of functions. Some hierarchical positions which branch off laterally from each rung of the ladder may derive from a unique history and/or functions that render them every bit as significant as, or more impactful than the overall social architecture that culminates with an individual at the very top. If I may quickly cite three examples: in France, at least until recently, to be the Mayor of Paris was generally considered to be more prestigious and influential than to be even the head of government itself. Next, in some religion saturated societies – I do not even refer to actual theocratic systems – in some very religious societies, the religious head may wield a moral authority that is denied the overall president of the nation, and may even bring down the latter in a civil confrontation – witness the case of Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini. To come right home, quite a handful of our traditional rulers, sometimes openly, other times conspiratorially, have been known to influence or even dictate government policies on crucial issues that affect the totality.
Reinforcing our analogy of the ladder of governance and management, we might picture something like a tree where lateral branches produce institutions, be these professional, voluntary associations for creativity and research, religious bodies, philanthropic societies and so on – all reinforcing the overall structure. Not one of these fails to implicate service, responsibility, both internally, and as contribution to society. None is without its ritual of testing, formal or informal, often duofold. First, you must be qualified to take the test, second, you undergo a process – sometimes competitive – that decides whether you have passed that actual test, or others have done better than you. The electoral process - whatever form it takes - is that kind of qualifying test, a test that entitles you to assume a responsibility. In the kind of rudimentary society spoken of earlier, this would be called a manhood test , but of course even in those early times, and till today, there were also tests – or preparations for womanhood, so perhaps we should move away from gender implications and term it a character, or personality test. Even more directly, let us name it the responsibility test. In the times we live in, in the history we have undergone and, in some cases, still undergo on this continent, it is perhaps wiser not to entangle ourselves with those gender driven terms. I am not as obsessive as some others over the avoidance of these expressions; I merely suggest that we take note of them when they tend towards the approbation of abusive conduct.
There are, unfortunately, people who associate manhood, that is, ‘acting like a man’ with irresponsible, anti-social conduct – such as, brutality, intolerance, riding roughshod over others, trampling over rules - plus any number of other forms of conduct that jettison all moral codes. In this country alone, a sizable portion of the nation’s army, taking their cue from their command, conflate military character as a readiness to terrorize and violate the civilian population, to unleash mayhem at the slightest real or imagined slight or provocation. Some of that warped mentality is wearing off, admittedly, but how else do you expect a soldier to behave if a supposedly elected President of a nation, and Commander-in-Chief of her armed forces, declares, after the random slaughter of innocents and brutalization of an entire village: “well, that’s what to expect if you assault a soldier”.
Or visit the recent scene at the sports stadium in Gunee Conakry, where the shaming conduct of the military towards civilian protesters has churned even the strongest stomachs world-wide, among them even those who thought they had already witnessed the most bestial conduct associated with soldiers. The Guinean military literally fired into fishes trapped in a fish-pond – no other description for it, pumped rounds after rounds of lead into a milling mass who had gathered for a peaceful protest in the sports stadium. That the media – both local and international – were present did not faze them one bit. As if this was not enough, they proceeded to rape a number of women, right there in the stadium. It is the kind of conduct that makes one wonder whether humanity is truly advancing on an upward scale from primates, or evolving backwards into a primitivism that even four-legged animals have lost. One sadly awaits that day when African nations, without even waiting for their own club of nations to act collectively, will express their moral revulsion at such events by expelling the diplomatic representative of such a nation from its borders, in addition to whatever measures are decided upon collectively.
To retreat once again into our own borders for admonition – just to make sure that we constantly, as the scriptures enjoin, mind the beam in our own eyes - we have the case of that same ex-president earlier mentioned, who castigated a governor with the words: ‘What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you a soldier? Go back and show them you’re a soldier.’ That governor was of course a former soja-man but now a civilian, one of the new breed we call militricians - a class with which the nation is saddled - to its eternal damnation. Exceptions exist, I concede, indeed one must emphasize that there are exceptions, but they are few, and in any case, they nearly all continue to benefit politically as a group from an improper, illegal, and immoral advantage. However, to return to this history, that governor had expressed fears to his Boss – also a militrician - that he might lose the approaching election, and sought that godfather’s advice in avoiding such a humiliation. The Boss was shocked that one of his ‘boys’ was letting the side down by so much as contemplating the possibility of electoral defeat. The state must be held, and held by any means whatsoever, hence his order that the governor should return and ‘act like a soldier’.
The governor got the message, saluted, returned to his state and embarked on a scorched-earth policy in which all decencies were flung to the wind. A damning video exists – it has been played on internet – of this governor giving marching orders to his conscripts, among them local government councllors. Thus, in order to avoid the basest values placed upon ‘acting like a man’ in the political sphere, and the competitive amoralities associated with that expression, let us simply think of the age-grade rituals as being, not so much manhood tests as - citizen tests. Passing into a phase of citizen or community responsibility. Yes, that is indeed the ultimate goal of these primary tests. Fortunately, it is not one of those tests where, should you fail, you are ostracized, banished from society or even, in some ancient times, killed. No, you live to take another test.
That is precisely where our apocryphal parent committed a most egregious error. He was within his rights in proposing that his son should be given a second chance at responsibility, but dangerously flawed in describing that situation as one of testing. A surgeon is called that because he has already taken his test, now he moves into the arena of performance and responsibility. Operating on a patient is not the test, it is the exercise of post-exam professionalism. The patient under the scalpel is no longer an experimental field where the operates through trial-and-error. Even more apt for our purposes is the architect or structural engineer. No living structure is an examination field where the walls may or may not collapse over the heads of the inhabitants and bury them under rubble. When that happens, architect, quantity surveyor, engineer etc. must face a tribunal and may end up in gaol. Elections are no different – that is when and where the people put you to the test. The rest is service. Responsibility.
The modalities of that test, we will all agree, are varied. Each society evolves, adopts, or adapts its own modalities. We may not agree that these represent the best testing methods but, once laid down and accepted, those modalities must be adhered to, strictly. Some are variable, all are subject to opinion. For instance, I remain unpersuaded till today that television debates should be made essential for candidates running for office. My reasons? The television format, while it may reveal aspects of the persona underneath, is no satisfactory indicative of that candidate’s performance potential. Some people are simply better thinkers than they are speakers, better at planning in tranquility and executing methodically, than they are at the glib repartee, the witty comeback, or verbal putdown of their opponents. They may perform miserably on stage but perform like a genius at desk or in the field of organization. They may possess sound leadership qualities which suffer from stage fright but explode with initiatives in a people’s emergency. Sure, the television debate is only one of the yardsticks of assessment, but when you consider what an impact the television medium makes on public perception, you understand its ability to promote the superficial, the trite and unreflective at the expense of the profound. All that is merely by the way and, I freely admit, debatable. What is not open to question is the meaning, essence and purpose of an electoral process, including even television debates: it is a test to measure acceptability. Its ultimate barometer is the electorate and its quantifier is – the aggregate of individual votes.
When that test has been taken, accurately and honestly, all that can be said is said, all that can be done is over. The rest is service, and success in service itself is critically reliant, once again, on our already established criteria: meeting certain qualifying tests. This is the phase at which the tests become more specialized, more focused on designated zones of responsibility. In that connection, let us illustrate with a real-life, ongoing situation that cannot fail to resonate in the mind of any citizen as proof of the dangerous consequences of neglecting, tampering with, or bypassing the rites of passage in the allocation of responsibilities in any community. Nowhere, in the history of Nigeria, has this been more crudely illustrated than in the unraveling saga of the Head of Customs and Excise, whose credentials or non-credentials have kept the nation’s profile alive in the international album of negative marvels from one end of the world to another. I referred to this case only two weeks ago at a lecture in Lagos, but am convinced that it deserves to be kept in constant public view, given the critical consequences that may attend the culture of shortcuts to positions of responsibilities, political or otherwise. What is worse, it may burden the nation with a constant deficit in the volume of solved murders, mystery disappearances and sometimes – mysterious silences.
Those silences may be traceable to threats and intimidation, or indeed – material ‘settlement’ of those who courageously warn that certain critical tests have not been met by those saddled with national responsibilities. Such voices of concern, of conscience, then confront a crucial test for which their own rites of passage have hopefully prepared them. They are saddled with a choice – to stand firm, or to fall by the wayside, sometimes becoming actively inducted into the cycle of corruption and social subversion, a conscript into the army whose motto is – if you can’t beat them, join them! The consequencies of negative cooption belong to what is known as a multiplying, not a simple additional effect. When we learn that a journalist was indeed looking into such a case when he was murdered, we have to insist that the police do not fail the nation yet again in its duty to investigate any possible connection. Else we are left with only one conclusion – that the police command has yet to pass its qualifying test, even with re-sit after re-sit, as witness the numerous unsolved murders of the past decade.
Electoral tests must be held sacrosanct – just like the traditional age-grade test. The being that comes out of the political crucible – once the rules have been followed – is the collective voice and arm of the entirety, not of cabals, since the consequences of his success or failure are not limited to narrow cabals, but fall on the entire community. They must live with it. If you doubt this, you need only refresh your mind with the emergence of Barrack Obama from the furnace of American electioneering, recollect how he came up from being underdog to Hilary Clinton’s formidable machinery to holding the whip-hand that determined the ultimate results. Now try and imagine what would have ensued if any atavistic forces had attempted to hold back or subvert the harvest of his rites of passage.
The strategy of Obama’s campaign ensured that, unlike previous incumbents of that position, he assumed office free to choose his own team, taking them through his own testing parameters, without looking over his shoulders at Big Moneyed Interests, Big Corporations and other powerful caucuses of American policy influences. He had derived his mandate through the millions of individual contributors and volunteer organizations that spread throughout the entire country, including traditionally conservative and even, racist bastions. I was fortunate to have been engaged on some lecture rounds across the American landscape during that period, and witnessed the volunteer power of mobilization, saw how youths, youths especially, were motivated, then motivated their parents and elders in turn. I visited some of the campaign offices and saw a generation on the move, literally, saw the nation heave with long restrained forces that said to themselves, this is our time, and this is our protagonist. I saw enough, heard enough, analysed confidently enough to be able to declare, in a lecture in Los Angeles, several weeks before the election, that Obama would win, and win with a clear margin. I regretted I was not the betting kind. I would have retired with my winnings immediately after that election – but enough of that digression, whose purpose will be clear as we proceed.
Let us invoke just one more illustration in the critical connection between the political protagonist and professional, sometimes semi-autonomous agencies, that are vital to the full flowering of a political mandate. In that connection, I shall pluck my example once again from our host state, Edo. The episode is of a recent order, and exceedingly troubling. I have referred already to the lateral branches of responsibility that go towards the fulfillment of a national mandate, pointing out that while those lateral occupancies may seem merely tributary in hierarchical order, they may carry a critical weight in the overall organum of societal responsibilities. I am sure not many people will contest the proposal that a people’s educational system is of a most fundamental import to their material advance, welfare, spiritual and intellectual states of being. Obviously, some universities agree, thus the appearance of an advertisement such as the following, only in last week’s media. Headed APPOINTMENT OF VICE-CHANCELLOR, item No. 3, subtitled the Post, lists the requirements for that position thus:
A candidate aspiring for the vacant post of Vice-Chancellor should hold the rank of a full Professor, with vision, proven academic of national and international repute. He should have a solid background of administration, managerial ability and public relations. Other requisite qualities are transparency in private and public life, integrity, firmness, courage and commitment to “due process” in the exercise of assignments. The right candidate should also be of robust health, resourceful, and should have the ability to develop linkages with external communities to meet the emerging needs of the University, command the respect and engender cooperation and loyalty of staff and students of the University.
Seeing that this was an advertisement for a university in Anambra, and with the recent saga of controversy over the qualifying yardsticks for a similar position here in Edo state, one should be forgiven for expecting that the requirements for this position would be, not merely attested citizenship of Anambra State that reaches all the way back to a period when Anambra state did not exist, but that the prospective candidate must be a registered member of the Okija shrine! I feared that the prospective candidate would be required to prove how many goats he had slaughtered on the threshold of the Obi’s palace, how many ozu titles he had taken, how many cows he had buried alive etc. etc.
I was mostly pleasantly disappointed. By contrast, let us take a look at what happened in Edo. Really! What atavistic affliction has overtaken this historic state that the position of the Vice-chancellor of a university – emphasis on the word ‘university’ and its implications of universalism, forget for now even the fact that it is a federal institution - should be reduced to such a narrow, parochial concept of entitlement, simply for the fact that such an institution is situated on its own soil. And if it were an atomic energy institution that was being proposed here, or a Space Research Centre, would such an institution be handed over to an ogogoro brewer as long as he or she hailed from a local constituency? So how far down the atavistic path must we go in order to turn retrogressive sectarianism into a post-modernist virtue?
The impropriety, indeed illegitimacy of such parameters of choice has grave consequences for the running of the university. Can one confidently propose that the product of such a system is not immediately obligated to those very forces that brought him or her to office? Achievement at the national apex depends as much on the integrity of direct, vertical hierarchical lines as it does on these lateral branches of near-autonomous entities that we must continue to stress – certainly the educational system at the tertiary level. This is where the think-tank, the specialized work-force of the nation is developed. Just as the central plinth of governance must be headed through fair, transparent, manifestation of the electoral will, so as to be free of manipulation by negative, self-centred forces, even so must those lateral, constitutive forces be free of debilitating antecedents.
These are the ancillary factors, the lateral posts that contribute to apical achievement. Ultimately however, the success or failure of the main protagonist – Prime Minister, president, governor or Council Chairman - is dependent on the calibre of people he chooses in fulfillment of the mandate of his own elevation to office. It does not matter whether we are speaking of law enforcement, of agricultural production, security, power, or water supply, trade and industries, youth, sports or culture, revenue arms, such as Customs etc. etc., the authenticity of the process of the rites of passage – the examination fields - of such servicing agents on their own specialized tiers of responsibilities will be related to the genuineness of the processes that produced the apical authority. To be able to insist on a choice based on the capability of such agents to perform, power at the apex must itself be free of illegitimate encumbrances.
Now consider a situation where that protagonist must oblige a blackmailing, often rapacious set of forces that must be placated for the security of his own position. Good will is already a sufficient burden, since human nature is never adverse to some kind of recognition. Rarely is material support towards an election totally altruistic. We know of some, yes, those rare individuals who donate, and expect nothing in return but, generally, material support mostly expects some form of recognition, hangs around with accusing eyes and may even turn vengeful and obstructionist if neglected . But now imagine that, on top of all these, there is also a bond of fraudulence, where the Protagonist is not a product of authentic rites of passage – in short, if he is one of those candidates who, impossible as it may sound, has actually had his penis circumcised through a surrogate? Along comes the surrogate who says, Chief, I lent you my manhood only for the election – now I want it back – with interest! Otherwise I shall tell on you.
Sadly, we need not travel far for harsh lessons on the consequencies of such pacts with the devil. Anambra remains permanently on our cautionary radar, where the nation bore witness to the brazen sack of that entire state in a siege that lasted two, three days. The seat of justice, state television station and a number of other public buildings were razed to the ground by the aggrieved party to the electoral process, while the agents of law and order looked on as impassive observers, clearly under orders to do nothing. I need not remind you of the sordid details of that episode, where it turned out that the governor had derived his powers, not from the electorate, but from a cultic cabal. I believe this was the time that the expression ‘political godfather’ really took shape in public apprehension. A messy, sordid affair of hand-picked choices elected to by-pass the open examination hall, dodge the public examiners and pay obeisance instead to a cultic shrine, stripped to their birthday suitss, to take an examination that is not known in any constitution or electoral process. Came payback time, and then the problems began. The Arbitrating Elder, in his own public submission, revealed that both plaintiff and defendant brought the case before him. One looked the other in the eye and said, “You know you did not undergo that circumcision, don’t you?” And the other replied, “Yes, I do”. And you know the man who was circumcised, who actually underwent and survived the rites of passage? Again, our man nods - Yes. And what did the Elder say? He did not summon the Elders who had somehow been deceived, and had circumcised the wrong man. No, his claim was that he was morally offended and simply told them, “This is a case of one thief calling the other thief, take yourselves from my sight!” Now that was the situation as narrated by the one-man Arbitrating Elder himself, the man sworn to probity, equity, law, justice etc. etc. In fact, his earlier pronouncement was even more striking. On that earlier occasion, he had blurted out, “You too, go and pay back what you owe him”. Not from his pocket mind you, but from the state coffers.
Yes, that was the calibre of leadership that directed the affairs of this nation for eight years. Was he elected? Or was it just another selection? Did he undergo the rites of circumcision? The records, the testimonies of both internal and external observers remain as damning judgement. Under his watch, that entire state was sacked, trashed by an invasion force, and not one individual was every brought to account, neither charged to court nor compelled to rebuild what he had destroyed of public property. Anambra is yet to recover from the fall-outs of that imbroglio, since the dramatis personae are still very much around, basking in the protective rays of immunity. Worse still, the shadowy hatchet-man of that mayhem, the Man Friday of that discredited protagonist appears all set to take over in that state. If he does, no prizes will be awarded for the calibre of people with which he surrounds himself.
Moral authority begets practical competence, and establishes the integrity of office. Power is accessible to any individual, even a moron, with sufficient lack of scruples, ruthlessness or unlimited resources, but none of these guarantees a moral authority, or indeed any other form of authority. Power, one must stress again and again, is not the same as authority. The former can be seized. Sometimes, by being in the right place at the right time, it may even fall into one’s hands – all you have to do is extend your arm and, by one of those one-chance-in-a-million odds, it actually falls into your hands. The latter, Authority, is however a fruit of legitimacy, and can only be conferred. It is this conferment that makes it possible for anyone in a position of power to ensure that he or she is served only by those who are proven to have undergone the necessary rites of passage, that they alone are entrusted with responsibility at the various tiers of governance, vertical and lateral. Otherwise, Power itself becomes either powerless or power-drunk. The former condition exists when Power, in order to survive, must first pander to his erstwhile collaborators in the misappropriation of that commodity, accept whatever conditions are placed upon him by such co-felons in the execution of his mandate. The second condition is manifested when, again in order to survive, all energies are bent towards the destruction of the very accessories through whose illegitimate means by which Power was derived. The infighting that ensues not only impoverishes but endangers the polity that has been entrusted to such a beneficiary. It’s the stick and the carrot – mammoth bribes for those who can be bribed, and the heavy stick, often studded with nails to draw blood and ensure fatalities, descends on those who have proved recalcitrant. Divide-and-rule tactics occupy the time, energy, bedevils even the daily repose of Power that now finds itself under siege, on the firing line of the very batteries that launched him onto the Power orbit.
A final reminder: the ultimate test that must be undergone by ‘he who goes forth’ as the people’s protagonist is this: approbation through electoral will. The more specialized test, a series of tests on the human agencies – both lateral and vertical - through whom the daily actualisation of that mandate is manifested, translating the manifestoes, promises and visionary undertakings into reality, are no less crucial. Illegitimacy thrives on, begets illegitimacy, and that multiplier effect guarantees the failure of governance, no matter how lofty its pronouncements. A nation may imagine that it does not matter that one or two, among several rungs are insecure. However, ladders do not enjoy a disconnected function, where one rung can be sustained at the expense of others. When you place a foot on the rotten rung of a ladder, you come crashing down, and the full weight, compounded by the accelerated force of gravity, sends it crashing through even the sound rungs of the ladder of governance. It takes only a few seconds and there is nothing but splintered wood where the remnants of the state lie scattered, like Humpty-Dumpty, in the dust. This is what is designated a failed state.
And so, the only admonition left to me is this: the forces of treason are gathering, and I translate treason through the lessons of history as a conspiracy to thwart a people’s will, since there is only one eternal, sustainable sovereignty, and that is the sovereignty of the people. We are gathered here in Edo State where over a century ago, a colonial force, under a certain Captain Phillips, an alien, sought to challenge that will by crudely interrupting the spiritual moment of a people. He paid the penalty, though not without the subsequent exaction of a revenge by his imperial backers. The nations that make up this artificial entity called Nigeria, are accustomed to such sacrifices. Their leaders will go down however in utter obloquy if, after such exactions at the hands of aliens, they continue to submit to the imposition a local cabal of proven predators, indistinguishable in colour and skin. I speak directly to the vindicated protagonists of every state. If you all think that the forces of retrogression, bred, fed, and bequeathed to this nation by an exposed hypocrite, and obsessive manipulator from my own state, Ogun, the fountainhead of much of the current woes of the nation, have not learnt their lesson, and are not, even as I speak, perfecting strategies for undermining the next examination process at all levels, you are all tragically mistaken.
If you all make the mistake of contesting the next election under rules to which you, your people and mine have never given assent, you are lost, even before the first vote is cast. Those rules, and the operators of those rules – the head of that corporation Maurice Iwu especially - must be changed. If they are not, and you truly believe in the sovereignty of the will of your people, of our people, then prepare to lead. Not only was this nation crudely deflowered, it has been subjected to a routine regimen of gang-rape, and by perverts who have make up their own diabolical rites of passage, So, when the people say, ‘Let us march’, do not hold them back. Do not say, I’m all right Jack, my position is secure. No! The Salvationist creed for this moment in Nigerian history is: “Very good, I am ready. Line up behind me – it is time to move”.