Nigeria:A Problem Like Rice!

By Ray Ekpu  

Over the years rice has grown into Nigeria’s stable food. It can be made in several ways: cooked, steamed, fried, ground. You can have it the way you want it, as coconut rice, waterleaf rice, jollof rice, tuo shinkafa or you can have it in a form that those who like it call “combined honours,” that is rice and beans.

*Ray Ekpu

In the 50s, in the Eastern part of Nigeria, rice was not the staple food. In the rural communities it is still not the main event today, Garri and Yams still rule the roost and rice is considered a Christmas, New Year or special occasion delicacy. But in the urban centres rice is the king. It is the king of foods because it is easy to cook; even a bachelor can cook it. It is kind to the tongue and kind to the stomach.

In the 50s, the rice we ate was grown in Nigeria. It was not polished. When it was rice day a mat would be rolled out and the rice poured on it. We would sit around and pull the rice aside in small bits and fish out the stones. It was fun since we knew that what we were doing was likely to give us food that will be kind to our teeth. It would be stone-free. We did not consider rice to be a problem.

Today, rice is becoming a problem of a sort because of its price tag. A year or so ago, you could buy a 50kg bag of rice for N10,000 or less. Today you may have to buy it for N15,000 or more. There is a report that some officials of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) were caught recently trying to rebag for profit rice that was meant for internally displaced persons in the North East. They did not know that rice, while a friendly commodity, has always had a big hunger for trouble especially when one tampers with its price. They may soon find out.

The Japanese government found that out in 1918. For about two months, July to September of that year, about 10 million people in 33 cities, 104 towns and 97 villages took part in the most notorious rice riots in history. The problem was that the price of rice had doubled within a few months while wages remained stagnant. This generated a spontaneous mass uprising particularly because rice is Japan’s staple food. The placards read “sell rice cheap” “down with wicked dealers.” The workers raided rice shops and the houses of profiteers. It took huge contingents of the police and 50,000 soldiers to quell the riots and bring the situation to normal.

Unveiling The Hijab

By Ray Ekpu  

Hijab, the veil that Moslem women wear which covers the head and the chest, is being gradually unveiled in Osun State with an immense potential for katakata. Here are the facts: Recently the Osun State Moslem community filed a case against the state government urging it to allow Moslem female students to use the hijab in public schools. Justice Jide Falola of the Osun State High Court on June 3 this year gave a verdict that Moslem female students should be allowed to wear hijab in all public schools in the state because it is their fundamental human right. The Moslems gave the verdict a storm of applause.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in the state says it will do two things: appeal against the judgment and mobilise Christian students to turn up in schools in their full religious regalia which will include choir robes and full white garment ensemble, the trademarks of some of the feuding mainstream and Pentecostal churches.

The State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, who has been in the trenches with his workers over nonpayment of their salaries, is now in the eye of a different tornado. The state government fully aware that the state may explode in a rage of religious combat is now fretting like a fuzzy storm. The truth is that even though the governor is a Moslem the state is almost evenly divided in population between moslems and Christians and the invocation of the hijab as the ultimate expression of fundamental human rights for female moslem students has convulsed the state because the Christians suspect rightly or wrongly that this may be a first step towards the Islamisation of schools in the state.

 The security agencies have invited the Moslem and Christian leaders for a meeting to avoid a breakdown of law and order. The twist in the tale is that, truly speaking, these public schools are not public schools. They are schools that were founded and funded by Christian missionaries which were forcibly taken over by military governments when they ruled the roost. In some states, these schools have been handed over back to their original owners but that is not the case in Osun State. That is perhaps the meat of the matter.

The hijab is gradually becoming a major subject of public discourse in Nigeria. It is perhaps time to fully address or undress it. In December last year, a group of Moslem youths under the aegis of Moslem Youths in Da’wab wanted the hijab introduced into the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme. They went to the headquarters of the NYSC to protest against the ban of the use of the hijab for female Moslem corps members during the orientation period. They said that the rights of the female corps members were being infringed upon if they were not allowed to use the hijab. The then Director General , Brigadier General Johnson Olawumi, told them that he was a respecter of the rights of all corps members but that the ban was for security reasons.

It did not apparently occur to these youths that the NYSC is a national institution that had been in existence since 1973 with its rules, regulations and a nationally identifiable uniform used throughout all the states of the federation. It didn’t also occur to them that since terrorists had made the hijab an instrument for suicide bombing something had to give if people’s lives were to be guaranteed by the NYSC authorities. It did not also dawn on them that in the hierarchy of rights the right to life is the pre-eminent right that stands atop other rights or freedoms. However, the Director General gave them a reason that was difficult to counter. They may not have been satisfied but they have been quiet since then.

Nigeria: Ants And A Cube Of Sugar

By Ray Ekpu  

The story is not one of an earthquake proportion but it seems to cause some excitement in high and low places. And what is the story? That former President Goodluck Jonathan is on exile in the Ivory Coast. He has countered the story sharply and angrily. “I am not on exile. I have no cause to go on exile. It is a wicked and malicious report. I was Vice President for two years and President for six years. I did everything I could and I served my country very well. This is what they keep saying any time I am outside the country. I was in Ecuador. They said I was on exile. This is my second time in Cote d’ Ivoire and I am rounding up my visit. It is a wicked attempt to link me with the renewed Niger Delta crisis.”

*Ray Ekpu (pix:vanguard)

Let’s connect the dots. There is a crisis in the Niger Delta. Pipelines are being broken by militants who seem to have issues with the President Buhari administration. Jonathan is from Bayelsa, a major theatre of this crisis. Some of Jonathan’s former executives have been pulled in by the EFCC on allegations of corruption: Badeh, Diezani Allison-Madueke, Sambo Dasuki, Femi Fani-Kayode, etc. Could it be that the militants think the government is trying to get their man? Does the government think these militants are sponsored by Jonathan to destabilise the government or to prevent the government from getting him if indeed they think he has some explaining to do about how he ran the country?

Jonathan has given himself a brilliant self-assessment. The report card issued by him on him reads A plus. That is reflected in his statement: “I served my country very well.” But does the EFCC think so? The Nation newspaper quotes an unnamed EFCC source as saying that although “Jonathan has been implicated in all transactions under its investigation the ex-President was not yet its target.” The “yet” in that sentence is very important, isn’t it?

The truth of the matter is that going by what has been revealed in court so far Jonathan must have made some questionable approvals. But no corruption has been directly traced to him so far. If Jonathan is “implicated in all transactions” so far investigated as the EFCC claims why is he not yet its target? Is it hoping to get more worms crawling out of the can? Or is it waiting for orders from “oga at the top?” or is it gauging the temperature of the Niger Delta or of the country to be able to determine whether or not to go for the big fish?

Let me give you a parable. In 1983, Dele Giwa was the editor of the Sunday Concord and I the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Concord group of newspapers. Dele was arrested by Sunday Adewusi’s policemen for publishing “classified government information.” I was arrested for an article titled “Sodom and Gomorrah” in which I alerted the public about the tactics of corrupt people: whenever there was fraud they would set the place on fire to obliterate the evidence. There was a huge fraud at the Nigerian External Telecommunications and I warned the government to keep watch lest the arsonists destroy the documents. The place was set on fire the day after my article was published. One person died in the incident. I was charged with murder, the press dubbed it “murder by pen.”

Dele and I were detained at Ikoyi Prison. Chief Moshood Abiola, the proprietor of Concord was a member of the National Party of Nigeria, NPN. He had stormed out of the party when he was schemed out of the presidential race. So the relationship between Abiola and the government was mortuary-cold. Our arrest and detention were seen by Abiola as an attempt to get at him. When he came to visit us at Ikoyi prison he gave us the parable of the ant and a cube of sugar. He said that the reason ants are only able to nibble at a cube of sugar is that they can’t carry it away. They would like to swallow the entire cube of sugar but since they can’t they just nibble at it. He told us he is the real target, the cube of sugar. Before he left the prison he pushed a wad of naira notes into the hands of the warder and told him “please give them whatever they want.” When Abiola left, the warder asked us what we wanted. We both said “cognac.” He brought it at three times the market cost. Cognac is a luxury drink. In prison it is a super luxury drink.