Supreme Court Judgments Are Clearly Reversible

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Nigerians must with one voice put this critical question to the seven-member Supreme Court panel of judges that sacked Governor Ihedioha of Imo State and planted Senator Hope Uzodinma as his replacement: Distinguished as you all are, would you have dared to pronounce this same perversity if other than the All Progressives Congress (APC) is currently in control of the Federal Government of Nigeria?

*Justice Tanko Muhammad

The controversial Supreme Court verdict was read by Justice Kudirat Motonmori Olatokunbo Kekere-Ekun. Mrs. Kekere-Ekun was born in 1958. She earned her first Law degree from the University of Lagos, and the second from the London School of Economics and Political Science, not from backyard or quota colleges that routinely grant admissions to laggards confirmed incapable of passing basic School Certificate subjects like English and Mathematics. Called to the Bar in 1981, she was appointed to the Supreme Court 32 years later.

Notable lawyers hailed her appointment to the apex court, two of whose informed opinions are here: “I have read a few of her judgments; she is very sound in law. In other words, she suppresses technicality and allows substance to prevail. She has that equitable spirit of trying to do justice,” said Professor Itse Sagay, SAN.

Nigeria: The Chickens Have Come Home To Roost

 By Chuks Iloegbunam

I knew that Muhammadu Buhari didn’t represent any sort of change with the tiniest chance of improving the lot of Nigerians. I knew also that people of my education and perspective knew that to have a man with scant redeeming qualities at the helm of Nigerian affairs would represent a tragic setback for the entity. It didn’t surprise me, though, that during 2015 a legion of informed Nigerians ate up incredible media space promoting as sterling what they knew or ought to have known was meretricious. It was all Buhari blah, blah; Buhari blah, blah, blah; Buhari blah, blah, blah, blah.

*Buhari 

Well, the chickens since came home to roost. There had been an American flank to the nauseating valorization of mediocrity. We all always knew that once a Nigerian got educated in the United States or claimed to have gotten educated in the United States, he or she automatically became all-knowing – against the backdrop of all the nonentities they left behind in Nigeria for the trans-Atlantic flight that invariably transformed every sojourner into a genius. On and on, week in and week out, these infallible characters kept churning out tomes of anti-Jonathan diatribe and fabulous episodes on their messiah.

The Allure Of The Humanities

A Lecture by

Chuks Iloegbunam

on the occasion of the 2018 Grand Alumni/Friends Homecoming

of the Faculty of Arts

Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.

April 26, 2018.

*Iloegbunam

“Our history strongly suggests that we need to moderate strength and power with discretion and diplomacy, not only among our leaders but also among the generality of our people. It is not weakness to recognize the value of discretion. It is foolhardiness to choose death (or something close to it) in place of life.” 
– Michael J. C. Echeruo.

I decided to open today’s discussion with the above quote from Professor Echeruo’s A Matter Of Identity, his November 1979 foundational lecture of the Ahajioku Lecture Series. The reason is that it encapsulates the theme of my presentation, which is that E’kesia n’obi, ekee na mkpuke.

But, first of all, permit me to deliver to protocol its due. I count myself privileged to stand before you today, even if to do a job outside my professional territory of operation. I am a journalist who, by virtue of political appointments, has operated within governmental circles in the last 15 years. I have never been a teacher, not even a nursery school teacher. Yet, I have been pressed into service here, to deliver a disquisition to those whose primary and professional responsibility is the impartation of knowledge. In my view, it is like taking coal to Ngwo, Nigeria’s Newcastle! It has its risks and thrills. Theoretically, I could be ordered at any point of this assignment to return to wherever I came from, my thoughts and pronouncements considered no better than garble to the educated ear. On the other hand, I could be tolerated, in which case my representation could form a pedestal for firing crusts in order to extricate diamond. That would be thrilling.

Gov Obiano And Invitation Of History

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Although the world hardly knows this, the Willie Obiano administration is currently in more exciting times than during the political barnstorming that culminated in his reelection. All the meetings, all the workshops, all the strategy sessions, all the commissioned studies since initiated are aimed at one thing: LEGACY! Governor Willie Obiano currently dreams, talks, walks and exudes legacy!

*Gov Obiano

That is why Anambra State is on a pivotal date with history, the threshold of a new dawn. That dawn begins on St. Patrick’s Day – March 17, 2018 – when Chief Obiano will mount the rostrum at Awka’s Ekwueme Square, to take for the repeated, momentous occasion both the Oath of Office and the Oath of Allegiance, to mark the commencement of his second and final term of governorship.

After Victor Umeh’s Senatorial Triumph

By Chuks Iloegbunam

The argument wasn’t on whether or not Victor Umeh would emerge victorious in the January 13, 2018 Anambra Central Senatorial rerun election. It had to do with the range of victory he would post. In the November 18, 2017 Anambra gubernatorial election, Governor Obiano had won in all 21 local government areas in the state. The 100 percent result had led to Obiano acquiring the new sobriquet of '21 over 21'. Was Chief Umeh also going to post a 100 percent result by winning in all the seven local government areas of Anambra Central? He did win all over, earning himself the nickname of Seven Over Seven!

*Gov Obiano and Umeh

Not surprisingly, there have been two antipodal reactions to Chief Umeh’s emphatic triumph. APGA chieftains and foot soldiers are in uproarious celebrations; the losers have been whimpering. The celebrations are not about to end. The licking of wounds will linger for a while more. Both of them are transient, ultimately. They will cease. After they have passed, the pertinent and enduring question of what next will surface and entrench itself. That is the central concern of this piece.

The Meaning Of Governor Obiano’s Reelection

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Anyone asked the impact of Governor Willie Obiano’s victory in the November 18 gubernatorial ballot in Anambra State could answer with a single word: Crushing. He won in all of the 21 local government areas of the state. His closest rivals came up in dismal second, third and fourth places. The combined total of the votes garnered by the rest of the 33 candidates managed to hit the hundreds. 

*Gov Willie Obiano

Significantly, ex-Governor Peter Obi, the godfather of PDP candidate Oseloka Obaze lost in his Anaocha local government area. Mr. Obaze himself lost in his Ogbaru local government area. His running mate, Mrs. Alexandria Chidi Onyemelukwe, famed daughter of Dr. Alex Ekwueme, lost in her Nnewi North local government area. The string of tragic losses is bewildering. APC candidate Tony Nwoye lost in his Anambra East local government area. His bankroller, the tycoon Arthur Eze, lost in his Dunukofia local government area. The loquacious PDP campaign director-general Joe-Martins Uzodike lost in the polling booth in front of his Awka-Etiti house. Indeed, APGA is a party of giant killers. All their opponents were buried in a landslide!

Governor Willie Obiano’s Staying Power

 By Chuks Iloegbunam

 The electioneering campaigns in Anambra State are grounding to a halt, making way for the governorship ballot of November 18, 2017. It is necessary to review the road since travelled, and project on expected outcomes. For those with an ear to the ground, the campaigns unofficially started when, a year after he got into office, Governor Obiano made it clear that he was not interested in being anyone’s stooge.

*Gov Obiano

Now everything is coming to a dazzling conclusion. The campaign convoys are backing out of streets and squares and veering into parking lots. Loudhailers are coming unstuck from sundry lips, stopping the torrents of flowery promises. Those that have screamed their vocal cords sore can now race to “chemist” shops for lozenges. Branded T-shirts and ankara wrappers will thenceforth constitute little other than fashion statements and bed sheets.

Anambra: APC’s Farcical Campaign Flag-Off!

By Chuks Iloegbunam

 Salvation was to befall Ndigbo! So went the media hype. Salvation’s landfall was slated for Onitsha. And once it set down, every Anambra indigene would be happy ever after. It was the APC campaign flag off for the November 18 gubernatorial ballot. Appropriately, the conveyor of the balm to turn Anambra from ill to glory was the Gombe-born Ibrahim Jalo-Waziri, APC’s Youth Leader. Given his eminence, therefore, it was with a swagger that Alhaji Jalo-Waziri found his way to the podium.

*Anambra Governor, Willie Obiano

 Given again that most of those in attendance were in their teens and twenties – as if they had been corralled from secondary and tertiary institutions – there was rapt attention and immense anticipation. The Youth Leader had hope to deliver. Most of those drowned in mire or shot dead for carrying Biafran flags and seeking self-determination were in the same age bracket as those Jalo-Waziri would address. Perhaps he would explain to them the rationale behind the heavy-handedness. The man cleared his throat. “Vote for APC,” he intoned. “Our victory will connect you to the big contracts of Abuja”!

Anambra Governorship Election: I Will Vote Willie Obiano

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Someone brought to the office a video clip of Tony Nwoye “campaigning”. Since the man is the APC candidate in the November 18 Anambra governorship election, the urge to view his message was overpowering, especially as he had been rather taciturn since the contentious primary election that threw him up as his party’s candidate.

*Gov Willie Obiano

What was his governorship ambition all about? Decked out in a dark suit, a cordless microphone appeared glued to his lips. “Willie Obiano is a thief,” shouted Tony Nwoye. “His wife also is a thief.” He mouthed this abuse for the second and third times. Like a repeater station, the voice of an unseen fellow echoed his foul words. A few of his listeners clapped. In a minute the clip ended. What an anticlimax, I thought.

Tony Nwoye’s sacrilegious tongue apart, there was the more serious tenor of malicious prejudice in this unsubstantiated accusation. Was his fulmination the sum total of the APC’s manifesto? One assumed that, in soliciting for political endorsement, effort must be made to portray the candidate as deserving of support. Did the outpouring of invectives ever solve any society’s problems?

The Asaba Massacre Trauma, Memory, And The Nigerian Civil War

–A Review By Chuks Iloegbunam 

Authors: S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M. Ottanelli.

Publishers: Cambridge University Press (2017).

--------------------------------------------

We find this introduction in the book:

“In October 1967, early in the Nigerian Civil War, government troops entered Asaba in pursuit of the retreating Biafran army, slaughtering thousands of civilians and leaving the town in ruins. News of the atrocity was suppressed by the Nigerian government, with the complicity of Britain, and its significance in the subsequent progress of that conflict was misunderstood. Drawing on archival sources on both sides of the Atlantic and interviews with survivors of the killing, pillaging, and rape, as well as with high-ranking Nigerian military and political leaders, S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M. Ottanelli offer an interdisciplinary reconstruction of the history of the Asaba Massacre, redefining it as a pivotal point in the history of the war. Through this, they also explore the long afterlife of trauma, the reconstruction of memory and how it intersects with justice, and the task of reconciliation in a nation where a legacy of ethnic suspicion continues to reverberate.”

Having read the book, I attest to the veracity of the above claim. The credibility of the publication is grounded in the impeccable academic credentials of the authors. Bird is Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. She has to her credit more than 80 articles and chapters on popular culture, media, heritage, and memory, as well as five books, two of which are award winning.

Ottaneli, her co-author, also of the University of South Florida, is Professor of History. He has authored and co-authored four books and several articles and essays on radical movements, ethnic history, and comparative migration in the twentieth century.

Yet, credibility often rides on more than the currency of academic triumph. On Africa, for instance, notable literary voices like Chinua Achebe and Ngügï wa Thiong’o have argued that the continent’s stories are better rendered by Africans and in their own tongues. But their standpoint does not invalidate the benefit of detachment often achieved by non-partisan non-Africans. This point profits from the consideration that, through half a century, Nigerians have failed to agree on what actually happened in Asaba on October 7, 1967.

The authors are mindful of the fact that they are liable to the charge of appropriating and running with a story not their own, a charge that, of course, pays scant attention to the reconstruction of today’s world as a Global Village in which what happens in Alaska is much the business of its denizens as it is the concern of the inhabitants of Sarawak. Thus, they take the pains to state that funding for their book did not come from Africa, while the story they have told is the result of extensive research, and the aggregation of the voices of massacre survivors, the relations of the victims and other assorted quarters. All told, 77 people were interviewed. The result is a 239-page book of six chapters:

The Ozubulu Catastrophe And Governor Obiano’s Deft Hand

By Chuks Iloegbunam 

When news of the terrible development hit the Awka seat of power early that morning, many scenarios taxed the imagination. Nothing of the sort had previously happened in Igbo history. There was a bizarre angle to it, of course, that was of tremendous import: Anambra State, reputed to be an oasis of safety and security, peace and placidity in tumultuous Nigeria had taken a vicious bang on the jugular. 

*Gov Willie Obiano

Who had done the violent action? To what end? Since it is often the case that “when it hits, it reverberates,” was the impunity set to spread? These were some of the questions Governor Willie Obiano tried to think through while, at the same time, receiving Security and Intelligence debriefing. Taking little time, the Governor’s convoy negotiated the 48 kilometres from Awka to Ozubulu, and hit the scene of the bloodbath. 

Armed with both the truth of what had happened and the spins sprouting in the social media, Governor Obiano inspected the carnage inside the St. Philips Catholic Church, Amakwa, Ozubulu. Twelve congregants whose only “offence” was attending the 6am mass to worship their God had been brutally massacred in an orgy of gunfire. Eighteen others sustained gunshot wounds, some of them life threatening. 

Biafra Not Nigeria's Problem

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Biafra is not one of the problems besetting Nigeria. Those un­able to appreciate this fact may require a dose of creative thinking. Nigeria's stubborn thorn in the flesh is its adamant repudiation of the self-evident concept of the changelessness of change, upon which sits a crippling unwillingness to engage that same constancy of change. There are two random but famous declarations – one little remembered today, the other something of a mantra – that neatly wrap up the na­tional antiparty to inexorable change and its management.

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu taking
 the oath of office as the Head of State of the Republic  of Biafra in 1967 

On January 15, 1970, there was a ceremony at Dodan Barracks, Lagos, the then seat of political power. Biafran acting Head of State, General Philip Effiong, Colonel David Ogunewe, Colonel Patrick Anwunah, Colonel Patrick Amadi and Police Commis­sioner Patrick Okeke had gone to submit Biafra's docu­ment of surrender, which of­ficially marked the end of the civil war. "The so-called rising sun of Biafra has set forever," declared Head of State Gen­eral Yakubu Gowon, on that occasion. In the leaps and dips of Nigeria's turbulence, it is common to hear politicians of varying persuasions de­claring, as a way of "helping" to stabilize the listing ship of state, that "Nigeria's unity is not negotiable."

Between Gowon's pre­sumption of Biafra's finality, which rode on the crest of tri­umphalism and was hailed as prescient by many, including Gowon's biographer Profes­sor Isawa Elaigwu, and the incessantly voiced exclusion of terms on Nigeria's one­ness, lies the country's prob­lematic. General Gowon is alive and bouncing. Were he to honestly comment on his 45-year old declaration today, he would readily admit to not having thoroughly considered all sides of everything. For it is clearly outside the bounds of political authority to decree the irreversible amputation of human predilection and proclivity. The current hoopla around Biafra lends credence to the assertion.

Now, there is something baffling in the oft-repeated statement on Nigeria's unity not being negotiable. The statement does not mean that Nigeria's unity is a fait ac­compli. It simply insists on a spiteful denunciation of any thought of mapping out a sus­tainable road on which the assumed or anticipated na­tional unity must travel, free from iniquity and cataclysms; a method for mastering the imperatives of national unity which is, anywhere in the world, a particularly daunt­ing proposition. It is because Nigeria has kept its back ob­durately turned to change that even the littlest molehill on its uncharted road invariably becomes a precipitous moun­tain. 

Defending Anambra’s Light

By Chuks Iloegbunam

 Anambra State marked its silver jubilee on August 27, 2016, emitting rays of brilliant colours that emphasize the uniqueness of its people as wonderfully crafted by God, continuously demonstrating to the entire world that they are endowed with the dominant infrastructures of greatness, unsurpassed pacesetters in all noble walks of life – the arts, entrepreneurship, leadership, scholarship, the sciences, sports, statesmanship, etc. How apposite that this land of a blessed people has as its slogan the revealing title of Light of the Nation! There isn’t any aspect of national life in which Ndi Anambra do not excel.

*Gov Willie Obiano of Anambra State 

Little wonder that Jubilee Governor Willie Obiano waxed prophetically lyrical in, Please, Let’s Do It Together, his speech to mark the anniversary: “Anambra state will be the food basket of Africa in the next 25 years. In the next 25 years, Anambra will not depend on federal allocation. It will be known as a state that transited to become the Taiwan of Africa. We are number one among states that were created 25 years ago. We pay salaries as and when due. We are the safest state, and we have attracted billions of dollars in investment to the state.”

Yet, Anambra State’s great future, and the fact that its affairs are currently under the controls of a pair of capable hands, belies the palpable dangers that lie ahead. The situation evokes the sort of apprehension that informed the late great poet, Christopher Okigbo’s writing of his 1966 poem entitled “Come Thunder”, the first four lines of which go thus:

Now that the triumphant march has entered the last street corners,

Remember, O dancers, the thunder among the clouds…

Now that laughter, broken in two, hangs tremulous between the teeth,

Remember, O dancers, the lightning beyond the earth…

The smell of blood already floats in the lavender-mist of the afternoon.

What seeks Anambra’s negation? What strives to dim its brilliance and turn the people’s joys into one long, dark night of bewitched recrimination and retrogression? The answer is FALSEHOOD. Deliberately manufactured falsehood! Let’s illustrate.

I recently took a telephone call from an educated friend domiciled in the United States since the 1970s. To my astonishment, he exhibited a rage uncharacteristic of his calm and urbane nature. “Obiano will never have a second term of office,” he bawled, swearing that I had made a fatal mistake by recently accepting appointment as the Anambra State Governor’s Media Director. On and on he railed, his voice rising to a crescendo. When I managed to put in a word edgewise, I reminded him that our friendship mustn’t be confused with the relationship between a cane-wielding village headmaster and a recalcitrant truant. We were basically friends. Could he possibly hold his peace and take a listen? He agreed, having screamed three principal complaints: (1) He had heard that Governor Obiano ordered soldiers to gun down peaceful IPOB demonstrators. (2) He had read from a Nigerian-owned, UK-based online newspaper a July 25, 2016 story entitled How Governor Obiano Embezzled N75b In Two Years. (3) He was despondent at another newspaper report that widows had been “forced from their stalls” and consequently rioted in Onitsha.

I proceeded to provide him with the correct version of things. Although a national daily had so claimed, there never was a women’s riot anywhere in Anambra State including Onitsha. Here are the facts: there is a street market on the main road that issues into Onitsha through the Niger Bridge. It stands on a land owned by Nath Okechukwu, the boss of Interbau, the road construction giant. Chief Okechukwu had ceded the land to a younger sister for temporary business purposes, pending its conversion into his firm’s headquarters. But the sister had leased it to agents who made an instant vegetable market out of the land, collecting “landing” fees and rents without remitting any taxes to government. Every so often vehicles plowed into the market, causing casualties. The place has no toilets, a veritable eyesore.

50th Anniversary Of Africa’s Bloodiest Coup d’état

By Chuks Iloegbunam

The first shots shattered the peace of the night at the Abeokuta Garrison of the Nigerian Army a few minutes after midnight on July 29, 1966. Three casualties lay instantly dead in the persons of Lieutenant Colonel Gabriel Okonweze, the Garrison Commander, Major John Obienu, Commander of the 2nd Reece Squadron, and Lieutenant E. B. Orok, also of the Reece Squadron. It was the beginning of the much-touted revenge coup of Northern Nigerian army officers and men against the regime of Major General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi. By August 1, when Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon assumed power in Lagos as Nigeria’s second military Head of State, the bullet ridden bodies of both Ironsi and his host, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi, the military Governor of Western Nigeria, lay buried in shallow graves at Iwo, outside Ibadan.  “Within three days of the July outbreak, every Igbo soldier serving in the army outside the East was dead, imprisoned or fleeing eastward for his life”, observed Professor Ruth First in The Barrel of a Gun: The Politics of Coups d’Etat in Africa [Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London, 1970, p317.]

*Yakubu Gowon

But Africa’s bloodiest coup did not stop at that stage, despite the shooting deaths of 42 officers and over 130 other ranks, who were overwhelmingly Igbo. The killing sprees and ever-expanding killing fields spread like wild fire across most of the country. There were three phases to the coup – the Araba/Aware massacres in northern Nigeria pre-July that called for northern secession, the July Army bloodbath, and the ethnic cleansing that went on for months after Ironsi had been assassinated and his regime toppled. The maelstrom prompted Colonel Gowon into making a radio broadcast on September 29, 1966. This was the kernel of what he said: 

“You all know that since the end of July, God in his power has entrusted the responsibility of this great country of ours into the hands of yet another Northerner. I receive complaints daily that up till now Easterners living in the North are being killed and molested, and their property looted. I am very unhappy about this. We should put a stop to it. It appears that it is going beyond reason and is now at a point of recklessness and irresponsibility.”

But Gowon’s salutary intervention changed nothing, as the massacres continued unabated. Northern soldiers and civilians went into towns, fished out Easterners and flattened them either with rapid gunfire or with violent machete blows, leaving their properties looted or torched. According to the Massacre of Ndigbo in 1966: Report of the Justice G. C. M. Onyiuke Tribunal, [Tollbrook Limited, Ikeja, Lagos] “…between 45,000 and 50,000 civilians of former Eastern Nigeria were killed in Northern Nigeria and other parts of Nigeria from 29th May 1966 to December 1967 and although it is not strictly within its terms of reference the Tribunal estimates that not less than 1,627,743 Easterners fled back to Eastern Nigeria as a result of the 1966 pogrom.”

This is contemporary Nigerian history, only 50 years old. But when experts like Dr. Reuben Abati and Professor Jonah Elaigwu write about it, they lose all sense of numeracy and statistical acuity, and glibly state that the July 29, 1966 counter-coup cost “many” Igbo lives. Well, the truth is that the July 29 counter-coup appears to be the bloodiest in the world’s recorded history because the casualty figures it posted far outstrip those registered in decidedly bloody coups like the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in which King James II of England was overthrown by an invading army led by William III of Orange-Nassau; the 18 Brumaire of 1799 coup in which General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directory on November 9, 1799; the Wuchang Uprising of 1911 that overthrew the Qing Dynasty and led to the establishment of the Republic of China; the Bolsheviks October Revolution of 1917 that led to the creation of the Soviet Union; and the Iraqi coup d’état of 1936, the first among Arab countries. Each of these coups/revolutions led to war. But none of them managed anything near the sea of blood occasioned by July 29, 1966.

Given their interest in posting photographs and videos on the Internet by Instagram and Snapchat, and advertising mostly poor language on Facebook and other such portals, today’s Nigerian youths may know next to nothing about what led to the catastrophe of July 29. But the details follow here for those of them interested in learning. The problem sat rigidly on the superficiality of Nigeria, a geographical expression contrived by colonialist Britain. At Independence in 1960, the country operated a federal system of government with three powerful regions that didn’t take dictation from Lagos, the nation’s capital. A fourth region, the Midwest, with capital in Benin City, was created in June 1963. But destroying the very fabric of the artificial political entity were tribalism and corruption, corruption which by today’s standards, would seem like cloistered nuns delightfully engaging in a game of Ping-Pong!

Marching In Circles, Walking In Circles

By Chuks Iloegbunam

We must invite Hon. Yakubu Dogara, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to come to our immediate assistance. On Thursday June 9, 2016, Mr. James F. Entwistle, the United States Ambassador to Nigeria, petitioned Speaker Dogara, accusing three members of the lower chamber of the National Assembly of improper conduct, attempted rape and soliciting for prostitutes while participating in a political programme in America.

*Buhari 

The following is a part of the Ambassador’s petition: “It is with regret that I must bring to your attention the following situation. Ten members of the Nigerian National Assembly travelled to Cleveland, Ohio, as participants in the International Visitor Leadership Programme on good governance. We received troubling allegations regarding the behavior of three members of the delegation to the U.S. Government’s flagship professional exchange programme.

“The U.S. mission took pains to confirm these allegations and the identities of the individuals with the employees of the hotel in Cleveland. “The conduct described above left a very negative impression of Nigeria, casting a shadow on Nigeria’s National Assembly, the International Visitor Leadership Program, and to the American hosts’ impression of Nigeria as a whole. Such conduct could affect some participants’ ability to travel to the United States in the future.”

The Ambassador requested “in the strongest possible terms” that the Speaker should share his government’s apprehension with the National Assembly so that the members will understand the “potential consequences” of their actions. The Ambassador had acted appropriately. As was to be expected, the matter sacked every other topic in the Nigerian media, orthodox and social. Calls sprang from the four corners asking for the heads of the accused legislators. Some, more merciful, demanded their imprisonment or, at the very least, their letters of resignation. It was at this point of cacophony that Speaker Dogara stepped in with a dose of fresh air. He called the American Ambassador’s petition by its real name, which is Allegations. And he tweeted severally: “He who alleges must prove. That’s the law. As we speak, no evidence has been put forward other than the letter sent to my office and copied to many others.”

Elephantiasis Of The Scrotum

By Chuks Iloegbunam

My late mother, Gwamniru!, bless her soul. She used to tell us, her children, during discussions on placing a finger on the truth of any circumstance or situation, that a man accused of suffering from hydrocele or elephantiasis of the scrotum had his job neatly cut out. If his scrotal sac wasn’t a mighty calabash filled with fluid of indeterminate composition, he enthusiastically stepped into the market place, abruptly shed his clothes, and danced in a number of directions, thereby convincing ora na eze, or ira ni igala, or the mighty and the lowly – in short, all comers – that his accusers were disreputable scoundrels.

 

*Buhari

Of course, the people, whose voice was the voice of God, would never deny the evidence of their own eyes, to wit that the man allegedly accursed with the deadweight of pumpkins in a difficult portion of the human anatomy was, in fact, free of any such encumbrance. No one, except the deranged or those previously afflicted by a touch of fencham – characters never to be taken seriously – would ever again charge that, between his thighs, was an outsized, water-laden keg, the sort that impeded movement, and made the unsurpassed joys of strolling such a nightmarish contemplation.

Thus, if you accused Chuks Iloegbunam of owning no university degree; if you swore that all that grammar he purports to blow on newspaper pages was gathered listening attentively to white men and women during his decade-long sojourn in the United Kingdom, or assiduously garnered by reading innumerable thrillers of the James Hardley Chase vintage, he would have, a straight and direct path to refutation. Chuks Iloegbunam would readily produce his degree certificate, signed in 1980 by the then Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ife (now, Obafemi Awolowo University) Professor Cyril Agodi Onwumechili, and two others – the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and the University Registrar. If rats, blasted vermin, had eaten up his certificate, or fire’s incendiary flames had reduced it to ashes, he would drive for less than three hours from Lagos to Ile-Ife, and get the revered institution’s authorities to give word that he had, indeed, earned a degree there.

If, instead of taking this easy and rational course of action, Chuks Iloegbunam chose rather the labyrinthine and prohibitively expensive option of hiring a dozen or more advocates, attorneys, barristers, lawyers and solicitors, to bring down the courthouse with a torrent of polysyllabic casuistry and sophistry that is bereft of the tiniest particle of evidence, to the effect that he has a B. A. (or a Begin Again), he would, of course, cause the raising of a million eyebrows. He would lead people into thinking that work was no longer being carried out on the appointed site. He would incite people, his detractors and supporters alike, into the avoidable temptation of thinking or believing that he was no more than a butterfly pretending to be a bird. The entire development would leave him somewhat like dirty linen indecorously spread on a clothesline next to a busy thoroughfare. The surprised, the alarmed and the outraged may then have no alternative than to consider the viability of posing that kind of question found in Blackie na Joseph, a 1960s folksong by the inimitable crooner Okonkwo Asaa, alias Seven Seven: “Is this your residence that we have entered, or is it some other person’s residence that we have entered?” So asked the village belle, Blackie, upon venturing into would-be lover Joseph’s house, only to find the place filthy and disordered!

Buhari’s Speech: A Nut Bereft Of Kernel

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Two things leap disa­greeably out of Presi­dent Muhammadu Buhari’s first-year-in-office anniversary speech of May 29, 2016. In the broadcast’s 2624 words, not once did he mention the words Fulani herdsmen, let alone address the real and pre­sent danger they constitute to Nigeria’s continued existence as one political entity. Was this unfortunate omission because he is himself of the Fulani eth­nic group? Or was it because he considers a final stop to have been put to the herdsmen’s mur­derous rampaging throughout the country? Or is it because the destructive army is a law unto itself, above censure and sanc­tion?

*President Buhari

And this: “We are fully aware that those vested interests who have held Nigeria back for so long will not give up without a fight. They will sow divisions, sponsor vile press criticisms at home and abroad, incite the public in an effort to create chaos rather than relinquish the vice-like grip they have held on Nigeria.” In rendering the above two sentences in the present continuous tense, wasn’t Presi­dent Buhari suggesting his gov­ernment’s lack of total control, much in the manner of a mon­arch unable to hold his goblet?

Sidelining the connotative meaning of these sentences as down to clumsiness by presi­dential speechwriters, and also not minding the grammati­cal mistakes in the speech, a fundamental worry is evident. Consider this: “They will sow divisions, sponsor vile press crit­icisms at home and abroad, in­cite the public in an effort to cre­ate chaos…” If you interpreted this official attribution of trea­sonous quality to a robust media as the first decisive step to the systematic emasculation of pub­lic opinion, your apprehension would sit on a solid foundation. Is it not often said that truth – read an unfettered media – is in­variably the first casualty in any dispensation’s charted course to a repressive bastion? Suddenly, a government that rode straight to power on the wings of the re­lentless and remorseless media battering and badgering of the Jonathan administration is talk­ing about a “vile press”!

The “vile press” must, of course, have no future in this democratic march, must not fea­ture in the dynamics of change. So, let’s take a more detailed look at the President’s broadcast, em­ploying the instrument of con­tent analysis. “By age, instinct and experience, my preference is to look forward, to prepare for the challenges that lie ahead and rededicate the administration to the task of fixing Nigeria,” said Buhari. Yet, about half the speech was on the past, rather than an expatiating on the “tri­umph”, “consolidation”, and “achievements!” he vaunted. He moaned about Boko Haram’s devastations. He moaned about the collapse in oil prices. He moaned about decayed infra­structures. He moaned about the preceding government that did not live up to expectation. You would expect the elaborate exercise in threnody to be fol­lowed by his administration’s rectifying “achievements!” That turned out to be a fatuous dream.

A Stronger Challenge Than Swatting A Fly

By Chuks Iloegbunam

The fight against insur­gency is not as straight­forward as swatting a fly. In the past week, I have snatched every free time that strayed into my schedules to criti­cally look again at two invaluable books on Nigeria. Professor Ben Nwabueze (SAN), one of Africa’s most renowned constitutional lawyers, authored both. The one book is How President Obasanjo Subverted Nigeria’s Federal Sys­tem; the other is How President Obasanjo Subverted the Rule of Law and Democracy. Gold Press Limited, Ibadan, published the books simultaneously in 2007. These seminal works, each of 22 chapters, pack a combined pagi­nation running to nearly a thou­sand pages. They demonstrate incontrovertibly that Nigeria’s primary political problem issues directly from the bastardization of its Federal constitution.

This indictment appears on the blurb of How President Obasanjo subverted the Rule of Law and Democracy: “This is an account of how President Obasanjo turned Nigeria from a law-governed state, a legal order, bequeathed to us by the British colonialists, into a lawless one; from an organization of power and coercive force limited and regulated by, and to be exercised in accordance with, law into a system of personal rule in which law was replaced more or less by arbitrary whims and personal political interests of one indi­vidual, and in which government actions were determined largely by might, by the application of organized coercive force in the exclusive monopoly of the state, altogether careless of legality.”

Anyone who reads these books will find detailed exam­ples, page after page, of how a man elected to promote the development of his country’s nascent democracy behaved, by words and actions, like a bull in a china shop.

Professor Nwabueze detailed how Obasanjo’s government wantonly bastardized the concept of the separation of powers, how, in illegality, it forced Governors DSP Alamieyeseigha (Bayelsa State), and Rashidi Ladoja (Oyo State) from of­fice; how it illegally impeached Governors Joshua Dariye (Plateau State) and Ayo Fayose (Ekiti State); how that government compromised the judiciary; how it turned the De­partment of State Security (DSS) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) into Leviathans for the annihila­tion of perceived opposition; and how Obasanjo routinely violated Governors’ constitutional im­munity. The books detail count­less other anti-Federal acts and actions perpetrated under Oba­sanjo’s watch.

Two questions arise:

(1) How did Obasanjo literally get away with murder?

(2) Is today’s Nige­ria a regression into a nightmar­ish replication of Obasanjo’s to­talitarianism?

There is for every cause, a con­sequence. During Obasanjo’s despotism, Odi was flattened; Zaki Biam was pulverized. These resulted in the massacres of in­nocent thousands. Of course, the military expeditions were not altogether surprising, com­ing as they did from a man who, as military Head of State, had set up the Ita Oko penal island, where Nigerian citizens were banished into oblivion. Is Nigeria banished now to the avoidable and intractable consequences of despotism, at the hands of someone who, as military Head of State, condemned Nigerian citizens to death on the strength of a retroactive decree? These questions are apposite, given the volatile developments unfolding in the Niger Delta. All kinds of militant groups are emerging or re-emerging, destroying pipe­lines and oil installations. In their first incarnation, President Oba­sanjo failed to halt and reverse their threat and potentiality for knocking the country down to its knees. He thought the problem could be combated and defeated by the brutish application of mili­tary force. He failed woefully. 

Are You See What I’M Saw?

By Chuks Iloegbunam 

"Are you see what I’m saw?" Chief Zebrudaya Okoroigwe Nwogbo, alias 4.30, often asked his co-actors this question in the New Masquerade, the soap opera that held millions, especially east of the Niger River, spellbound during the 1970s and 1980s. Each time he put that question, there was something astonishing or peculiar. Often that peculiar or astonishing “something” formed the bedrock upon which a specific offering of the episodic sitcom was developed.

 

*Buhari and Cameron 

In borrowing from Chief Zebrudaya’s lingo, to ask whether or not readers of this column are in awareness of certain things all too obvious to this columnist, the intention is simply to point to confounding and bizarre happenings that are plenteous in the entity today.

A few of these developments deserve a mention, and possible exploration, here. British Prime Minister David Cameron pronounced Nigeria “fantastically corrupt”. A leaked document showed that Minister of Information Lai Mohammed had transgressed the antiseptic integrity of the Change Administration to seek a loan in excess of N13 million from a parastatal under his Ministry, and for an international junket. The government, after months of insistence to the contrary, devalued the Naira. Or did it? The government, after a prolonged stretch of inchoation in the petroleum sector of the economy, inflicted an upward spiral of over a hundred percent in the pump price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) or petrol.

All these happened at such a dizzying speed as to impel the weary and unwary to demand a stoppage of the world so they could hop off. All these happened, predictably, when the Steersman of the Ship of State, was blissfully abroad, attending yet another one of his innumerable conferences across the length and breadth of the globe. All these, predictably again, prompted reactions as numerous as they were conflicting.

It may be easiest to start from an astonishing development, one that incongruously escaped critical examination, despite its underlying ominous implications. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour cornered President Buhari in London, where he was busily attending the anti-corruption summit put together by the one who had cheekily pronounced his country “fantastically corrupt”, and prized from him an interview slightly in excess of six minutes.

As the short interview progressed, Ms Amanpour asked how the Nigerian government was killing corruption in order that corruption doesn’t kill the country. Buhari responded by discussing those he claimed had pocketed billions meant for the fight against terrorism. The interviewer’s follow-up was inevitable: