In nineteen eighty four, when we all stood in awe of Decree Four; to differ from officialdom as represented by
Nigeria’s military junta headed by Muhammadu Buhari was a perilous path to
perdition. The soldiers brooked no dissent as they waved the draconian law
before all, notably newsmen.
Then this scary one: The martial ruler was given the power to prohibit
the circulation of an ‘’offending ‘’ newspaper for one year. He was also at
liberty to revoke the license granted any broadcast medium or order its closure
or forfeiture to the government if he was satisfied that its untrammeled
existence was ‘’detrimental to the interest of the Federation’’ or any part of
the country.
Still more frightening and utterly alien to jurisprudential
convention, this: ‘’the burden of proving…the charge is true…shall,
notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any enactment or rule of law, lie
on the person charged.’’ There was no escape if this law caught up with you.
One of the two journalists of The Guardian newspaper jailed under
Decree 4, Tunde Thompson, would later write in his book, Power and the Press:
‘’…those charged under the decree were first to be regarded as guilty and to
prove they were not, whatever the odds against them.’’
Thereafter journalists were shy to write on local issues. You didn’t
know when Buhari’s Procrustean-bed law could make you lie in it, regardless of
your size. It was an elastic contraption that took in everyone, fat, skinny,
tall or short, or averagely formed.
So, Nigerian journalists, columnists especially, would opt for
far-flung foreign events. And the Soviet and US proxy war in Afghanistan was
the talk of the day. The writers suddenly became experts in global conflict
resolution, leaving the larger domestic challenges unattended to. Their own
home was on fire; but what sweet relief they got on flights away from hell. If
you wrote on such issues in order to dodge the radar of the military, you were
said to have gone Afghanistan.
I also want to go Afghanistan today. Not because home issues are too
hot to handle. No. I think running from them would keep them hot and make them
hotter. But then we need to discuss something close home: the visit of a
devastating cyclone to Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi last week.
It’s a week after Cyclone Idai struck Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi,
all in Southern Africa, leaving hundreds confirmed dead and leveling
communities and sending hundreds of thousands into refugee camps. A Mozambican
government spokesman declared that human casualties could go up with the
records indicating that 15000 persons are missing. Even the military struggle
waged to liberate Mozambique and Zimbabwe did not throw up such statistics of
fatalities and destruction at a go. But this did.
There are also security and grave health concerns. Those displaced are
diseased and hungry and revolting. There are food and fuel shortages in the
three countries. The United Nations World Food Programme coordinating food
flights says it needs to sustain supplies over the next three months to
stabilize the situation in Zimbabwe. In Mozambique where Idai began its march
of death, the director of a Christian charity has warned Africans to prepare
for a long recovery. “This is a catastrophe,’’ Edgar Jone of Tearfund, a
charity body laments. He adds: ‘’Cyclone Idai has destroyed so much in an
instance and it will years for people to recover what they have lost.’’ And a
couple of international aid agencies have sent an SOS saying they are ‘’racing
against time’’ to rescue the perishing, because they can’t reach survivors
trapped in areas of Mozambique, where some villages are buried in floods.
We should not be consoled by the flood of aid stuff and messages from
African leaders commiserating with their counterparts in Southern Africa. Nor
should we be unduly stirred by the presence of US military teams joining the
cyclone rescue effort in Mozambique.
We should be more elated to see African nations and the African Union
with the other regional bodies on the continent rise to the occasion to supply
the needed succor to our brothers and sisters in the afflicted areas. Agreed
this is an international humanitarian crisis brought about by nature, requiring
all humanity to come together to battle. But our leaders go to sleep, and
expect the outside world to seize the initiative from them.
It is a disease of lethargy that has bedeviled our leaders
continent-wide. Even Cyclone Idai we are all demonizing didn’t spring on us.
For instance, BBC’s reporters Jack Goodman and Christopher Giles have quoted
the Zimbabwe Minister of Defence Oppah Muchinguri as saying her government was
alerted by the meteorologists on the imminence of Idai and its route, but the
authorities ‘’failed to anticipate its strength’’, and that undermined the
level of preparations for evacuation of those in the trajectory of the cyclone.
That is what we are saddled with in Africa. Our governments are not
anchored on vision that looks into the next century. They live to exhaust the
perks of office of the moment. Our town planning strategies are for urban
centres that don’t see beyond five years or so. We are compromised such that we
approve buildings put together that wouldn’t withstand sharply inclement
weather.
Years ago while shooting a documentary in Delta State I was stupefied
at the shapely sight of the General Hospital, Ugheli. There were no cracks. Our
guide told me it had been in that pristine state over the decades. The plaque
corroborated him: it was built in the days of Obafemi Awolowo, first premier of
the old sprawling Western Nigeria that stretched from Ikeja to the banks of the
Niger. The hospital block and wards with the steel beds were as though they
were commissioned yesterday by Awolowo.
Only leaders with an agenda set for the next century and beyond
deliver a citizenry and monuments that stand against the treacherous elements
of misgovernance and nature.
*Mr. Ojewale, a public affairs analyst, is a regular contributor
to this blog
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