Peace Culture: A Book Bola Tinubu Must Read

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

As indicated here last week, the book, Peace Culture: A Monumental Evidence for Global Co-existence, written by Prof Ola Makinwa et al, will be used to shine a light on our offering in this column today. Many have badgered me on why I “ignored” the ongoing #EndBadGovernance protest rocking the country.

*Tinubu and Sanwo-Olu 

The protest, now in its eighth day, has become violent and bloody and the security chiefs are still talking tough meaning that it may even get bloodier in the coming days. On Wednesday night, armed security operatives raided the headquarters of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in Abuja, popularly called Labour House looking for only God knows what. Such raids will intensify as the government tries to overwhelm Nigerians and stifle dissenting voices.

The Metamorphosis Of Uncle Soyinka

 By Ugoji Egbujo

Professor Soyinka is a genius. Besides his exceptional creativity in drama and poetry, he has fought oppression like an attendant spirit. However, in the last few months, he has spent more time proving that he is human than engaging the demons of corruption and injustice. Before Tinubu, his friend ran for president, Soyinka would dwell on the credibility of the electoral process and dream of mass participation.

*Soyinka 

And if INEC spent two years seeking the authority to transfer polling unit results electronically to enhance transparency and eliminate substitution of results at collation, Soyinka would insist it was non-negotiable. And if INEC ran into a suspicious glitch on election day, leaving room for mischief at collation centres, Soyinka would worry about the integrity of INEC and lampoon the credibility of the process.

South West’s Forest Of A Thousand Demons

 By Festus Adedayo

From my personal ranking of their tragic imports, three events which occurred in the last week constitute leading narratives of where we are today. They are, one, the siege laid to Southwest Nigeria’s Lagos-Ibadan expressway by kidnappers and the suicidal plunge to death of an operative of Nigeria’s secret police, known as the Department of State Services (DSS), into the Lagos lagoon. 

The third was a video clip posted by Tolu Ogunlesi, Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Digital and New Media, in a Twitter post where details of what Buhari discussed with the British monarch, King Charles III, the aftermath of his visit to Buckingham Palace on Wednesday, were released. 

Wole Soyinka To President Buhari: The Roof Of National Edifice Is On Fire!

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Between ‘Dividers-In-Chief’ And Dividers-In-Law 

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By Wole Soyinka

I am notoriously no fan of Olusegun Obasanjo, General, twice former president and co-architect with other past leaders of the crumbling edifice that is still generously called Nigeria. I have no reasons to change my stance on his record. Nonetheless, I embrace the responsibility of calling attention to any accurate reading of this nation from whatever source, as a contraption teetering on the very edge of total collapse. We are close to extinction as a viable comity of peoples, supposedly bound together under an equitable set of protocols of co-habitation, capable of producing its own means of existence, and devoid of a culture of sectarian privilege and will to dominate.

*Soyinka and Buhari 

On Africa Day, May 2019, organised by the Union Bank of Africa, I similarly seized an opening to direct the attention of this government to warnings by the Otta farmer over the self-destruct turn that the nation had taken, urged the wisdom of heeding the message, even while remaining chary of the messenger. That advice appears to have fallen on deaf ears. In place of reasoned response and openness to some serious dialogue, what this nation has been obliged to endure has been insolent distractions from garrulous and coarsened functionaries, apologists and sectarian opportunists.

When Buhari Shamed His Megaphones

By Mike Ozehkome

It  was Izaak Walton (1593 – 1683), an English writer, who once said: “Look to your health: And if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a blessing that money cannot buy.”

Health, it is said, is wealth. And anyone who has been ill from mere headache can relate to the travails of Mr. President in recent weeks.

*Buhari 

When the president transmitted his letter to the Senate for vacation to the United Kingdom, little did we know that the subsequent events to follow would raise much ruckus and fuss within the polity.  However, for a minute, let us all sheath our ideological swords and thank God Almighty for the president, his family and Nigerians at large, for  making it possible for the president to return alive; for it could have been, indeed,  worse.  God forbid!

Nigeria is sui generis-on a class of its own. There is hardly any country in the world that is akin to Nigeria. Our ideologies, credos, languages are multifaceted and multidimensional. Truth be told, it would be a Herculean task for any leader to placate the various interests and tendencies of this nation in one breath. This has been the major challenges of previous leaders in this nation, whether military or civilian, including Abacha, Gowon, Murtala, Shagari, Shonekan, Abdulsalam, Yardua, GEJ, OBJ, IBB, et al, however well-intentioned they might have been.

What makes a Southerner happy to be a Nigerian is quite different from what makes a Northerner happy to be a Nigerian. Sometimes, this is caused by ignorance, sometimes by the weakness of the human mind, which loves to categorise. Other times, because of the various vested interests by different groups. One fact is indisputable; uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, particularly in Nigeria, a country with about 388 ethnic groups that speak over 350 languages (Onign Otite); some say over 500.

Sometimes, we forget that our leaders are also human, with their weaknesses, foibles, strengths, fears and anxieties. It would be unfair to gloss over some great things that President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) has done for Nigeria. His has been that of service to his nation, since his youth, when he was born of a Fulani family on 17th December, 1942, in Daura, Katsina State, to his father, Adamu, and mother, Zulaihat. He is the twenty-third child of his father. Buhari was raised by his mother, after his father died when he was about four years old.

Soyinka And The Shredding Of His Green Card

By Charles Onunaiju
“Our common sense is totally lost. I am embarrassed sometimes that I occupy the same nation space with some people… what is the right of any Nigerian to challenge me on my decision? Barbarians have taken over, the country using the anonymity of the internet”.
– Prof. Wole Soyinka

*Soyinka

But didn’t an erudite professor, renowned scholar, iconic playwright and social critic, who publicly threatened to destroy his document, however way it was over the outcome of a distant periodic election he did not even vote in and for which his interest is at best marginal, brutally assault common sense, that the rest of us should be embarrassed to share the same nation space with him?

Since Professor Wole Soyinka interjected prior to the anger-driven US presidential election with a threat to shred his own green card in the event of an election victory of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, he has set off a frenzy of activities on the social media. That such a towering figure as Soyinka who is familiar with real theatre could set off such theatrics as he did with a threat to tear his green card over an election outcome and expect nothing less that the frenzy that trailed it, is very strange indeed. He did not utter philosophy for which he should expect measured and rational response. In my part of the country, we say that when you bring home an ant infested wood, you have only invited lizards to feast. 

It is only natural and a matter of common sense that Nigerians are entitled to know how the distinguished professor has fared in his public threat to shred his card, after Donald Trump, the Republican candidate secured the requisite electoral college votes(more than 270) to win the U.S Presidential election. The anger and name calling that the professor has deployed to intimidate his interlocutors does not answer the question of his categorical statement to shred his green card in the event of Trump’s win.

If the professor had been led to believe the establishment media and polls projections of a victory for the Democratic Party candidate, Hillary Clinton, into the volatile gamble, there is actually no big deal in a humble climbdown. Afterall, the assorted community of media and poll watchers, who predicted that Trump would be dumped in electoral humiliation, have since moved on, inventing fresh reasons for their dull binoculars that did not see more accurately the election permutations.

Trump’s meteoric rise and consequent stunning victory is not so much about him but represents a considerably prevailing social sentiment in the US, to which he masterfully aggregated and articulated. The American traditional political elite or the Washington establishment has projected power in a way, in which the country has over-reached itself and also, the brutal effects of the financialization of capitalism has taken huge toll on the working people, even as the traditional safety net has imploded. 

Wole Soyinka's Demonization Of President Jonathan

By Dan Amor

In a feat of acerbic verbal tantrums, Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka Tuesday December 2, attacked President Goodluck Jonathan and likened the Nigerian leader to Nebuchadnezzar, the Biblical autocrat and king of Babylon who initially denounced the Living Supreme God. Soyinka who addressed a press conference on the state of the nation at the popular Freedom Garden in Lagos, said that Jonathan is tyrannical because the Inspector General of Police, Suleiman Abba, stopped the attempt by the defected speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, to enter the Green Chamber of the National Assembly with thugs. The respected professor of dramatic literature who is clearly biased in his recent pronouncements given his current alignment with top leaders of the opposition political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), said so many unprintable things against the administration of President Jonathan. 

*President Jonathan and Prof Soyinka 

Indeed, the distinguished playwright is entitled to his opinion especially in a wide democratic space in which freedom of association and of speech is the norm. But it is unfortunate that the renowned literary icon could allow his judgment to be beclouded by ahistorical considerations. By this recent act of likening Jonathan to Nebuchadnezzar, Soyinka has come down from his Olympian height as a global citizen and statesman to the sheer pedestrian rabble of petty villainy and rancour. It is a pointer to the fact that every great intellectual has his weak points. Our own Kongi is no exception. Even with the unsavory political development in Anambra State in 2004 which led to the unfortunate withdrawal of the security personnel of former Governor Chris Ngige after his attempted abduction by the police, no Nigerian, not even Professor Chinua Achebe who rejected former President Olusegun Obasanjo's national award due to that crisis, went as far as comparing the former President with Nebuchadnezzar. 

Wole Soyinka Celebrated At Major Italian Festival

Honoured With The Key To The City Of Pordenone

Begining on Saturday, March 10, at the Teatro Verdi in Pordenone , there will be a dedication as well as a solo exhibition this year at an international Festival in the Italian city of Pordenone focusing on Nigeria's Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka.

Wole Soyinka At The 10th Calabash International

Literary Festival In Jamaica On May 30, 2010

Poet and playwright, novelist, essayist, lecturer, Soyinka was the first African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. Celebrated as an independent thinker, with a gift for intense versatile and lucid prose, he has also been a leader for the quest for social justice and for decades has been at the vanguard of efforts to bring democracy and respect for human rights toNigeria and throughout the post-colonial world.

The programme for the festival includes poetry reading, exhibitions, theater adaptations, workshops and runs through March 24,2012 involving the whole town.

Wole Soyinka

Professor Wole Soyinka, who will arrive from Lagos (Nigeria), will stop in Pordenone until Monday evening and will also attend the Sunday morning opening of the exhibition of fellow Nigerian artist and photographer Akintunde Akinleye.

On Monday Soyinka will receive the Seal of the city at city hall attended by local, state and national dignitaries from all over Italy . In anticipation of the august writer's attendance, over 200 school students from throughout the district have studied Soyinka's work in recent months and that will also have the privilege of an exclusive meeting with the distinguished writer

NDIGBO SHALL REGAIN POLITICAL RELEVANCE IN NIGERIA, IN MY LIFETIME — By CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU-OJUKWU

ADDRESS BY HIS EXCELLENCY DIM CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU-OJUKWU, CHIEF GUEST OF HONOR AT THE PROFESSOR CHINUA ACHEBE INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM ON FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS IN NIGERIA

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Providence, Rhode Island, 11^th December 2009

TITLE:
NDIGBO SHALL REGAIN POLITICAL RELEVANCE IN NIGERIA, IN MY LIFETIME


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

Distinguished Ladies and gentlemen.

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

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

CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU-OJUKWU

 

We salute you today as we did over fifty years ago when you told our story in “Things Fall Apart”. It became the mother of all firsts in African Literature. We salute you today because you continue to make us proud through your values and ideals; and your commitment and courage in standing up for what is right and just in society. We hold that these are true hallmarks of Ndigbo, Nigerians and indeed all sane human beings. We jubilated and today we thank you for spurning the “national honour” to be given to you by then President Obasanjo at the height of impunity and abuse of the Anambra State Government and people. By that action of yours whatever pride was being trampled upon by the powers that be at the time was retrieved by your courage.

Ndi Anambra salute you. Thank you. Ndigbo and well-meaning Nigerians salute you for standing tall at the time. More importantly the Igbo soul yearns for more Chinua Achebes, clear thinkers, lucid writers, men of courage, crusaders against injustice, true sons and daughters of their fathers. Today I say to you, dear Chinua that you are a true son of Ogidi, Anambra, Ndigbo, Nigeria and the world. As you wrote more than fifty years ago, “the body of Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu” on behalf of Ndigbo salutes you. Deme, Deme-Deme.

Professor Chinua Achebe: Conference Convener

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


Let this, our resolve, be impregnable. Let us face the matter of free and fair elections in Nigeria with the same fervor and courage as our founding fathers faced the struggle for Nigeria’s independence. It is that serious; for the future and well-being of our nation depends  on this.  As we seek to accomplish this mission, we must, as a people, be determined to deal ruthlessly with any who obstruct the genuine will of the people.  Such people who benefit from electoral malpractices and the political instability which follow in their wake, must be decisively and summarily dealt with. 

In the words of Pandit Nehru, the late Prime Minister of India, “a moment comes but rarely in history when we step out of the old, into the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation long suppressed, finds expression.”  The struggle for free and fair elections in Nigeria, which I prescribe at this colloquium today, cannot be avoided.  It should be regarded as an irreversible mission of national retrieval and rejuvenation.  It shall be the last struggle of true and genuine Nigerian patriots to save the fatherland and propel it to greater heights.

Chinua Achebe And Wole Soyinka --Kongi was there too

Let me warn that throughout history, struggles have never been for the faint-hearted.  As we know, struggle by its very nature entails suffering and sacrifice.  However, we also know that suffering breeds character, and character breeds faith, and in the end faith always prevails.  Consequently, we shall embark on this mission to exorcise Nigerian politics of the demons of electoral malpractices, which have stood before Nigeria and greatness, knowing that our future as a nation depends on it.  It will not be easy. 

But it has to be won in the Anambra State Governorship elections on February 6^th, 2010, and in the nation-wide general elections in 2011.  God being our strength, and with aggressive vigilance of citizens in “community policing” of their votes/mandate, we shall achieve the objective of free and fair elections in Nigeria.


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

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

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

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

NIGERIA, We Hail Thee

My commitment, because I am seriously involved, is to work with all well-meaning Nigerians to bring about the Nigerian society as promised by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.  When this happens, and all glass ceilings and other unwholesome practices designed to keep Ndigbo, or any other ethnic groups in Nigeria marginalized are dismantled, I shall feel fulfilled.  When this happens, Ndigbo shall regain their political and economic relevance in a fair, just and egalitarian Nigerian society.  This remains my mission. 

It is my commitment to Ndigbo.  It is my commitment to Nigeria, Africa and the world.  And it shall happen in my lifetime.  Not after.  This is both my desire and a promise.  I therefore urge this generation of Ndigbo, especially the youths, to gird their loins to safeguard their votes in the coming elections as to elect leaders of our choice.  We shall either achieve this in the February 6^th, 2010 Anambra State Governorship elections and 2011 General elections in Nigeria or forever hang our heads in shame as a failed generation.  Let us not be intimidated by coercive forces of Government.  The mandate belongs to us collectively, and not to government.  As for me, I cannot be intimidated, and I know that together we shall triumph.

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

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

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

Worst Hit By Bad Leadership

A curious observer may ask, “Why Anambra?”  The answer is there – Anambra State was chosen in the best-forgotten days of “garrison politics” in Nigeria as the entry point for the emasculation and enslavement of Igbo politics.  But like Horatio, APGA stands firm at the gate, refusing to yield.  In case we have forgotten, Anambra State was the only state in Nigeria where an incumbent Governor was denied a chance to seek re-election by his political party, in 2003.  In case we have also forgotten, Anambra State was where the political party which I lead, the APGA, won elections in 2003 but the elected Governor was not allowed to exercise the mandate freely given by the people because of scandalous electoral fraud that became a national shame. 

 The courts declared APGA as the winner of the election – the legal process taking the better part of three years.  Also, it is only in Anambra State where there have been five “Governors” – one elected Governor and others, in the same period.  The other States in Nigeria have had one or at most two Governors.  It is in Anambra State that no Governor has served two terms of office.  And finally, lest we have forgotten, it was the crass impunity and political happenings in Anambra State that incensed our host, Professor Chinua Achebe, to reject publicly with an admonition, a national honour richly deserved by him, but coming from a Presidential hand that was heavily soiled in the Anambra political mess.

Consequently, my firm resolve this time, with the political party to which I belong (i.e. the APGA), is to undertake a state-wide, grassroots community-based campaign and mobilization of Ndi Anambra against electoral malpractices in the February 6th Governorship elections.  We insist that the votes of the people must count.  We insist that the votes shall be counted, recorded and announced at the various polling centers throughout Anambra State.  The people must elect a Governor of their choice.  Ndi Anambra shall not be dictated to from outside – not from Abia, nor from any other geopolitical zone.  Ndi Anambra will not succumb to intimidation.   The invading forces of politicians must retreat from Anambra State.  The state has bled enough.  The hemorrhage must stop.

  Let the February 6^th, 2010 Anambra State Governorship elections be canvassed by Anambra people, for the people, so that families and communities shall see the faces of traitors and saboteurs among their own.  In the end, let the TRUE WINNER of the elections govern.  My party, APGA, and I will always respect the will of the people.  That is what gives meaning to my life.  When this happens, that is, when the people of Anambra State effectively resist electoral fraud and ensure that the choice of the people emerges as Governor, I will retire.  As I retire, I expect that other Igbo States and the Nigerian nation will do what has to be done to exorcise the demons of electoral malpractices from the 2011 general elections in the country to ensure that these also become free and fair.


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