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Nigerian football appears inured to crisis.

In this New Year
as nations prepare for a loaded football season, the spectre that
brought the game to its nadir last year, rears its head again.

As Nigerians will
remember, 2010 was a year wracked by conflict with members of Nigeria’s
football community going freely for one another’s jugular. In that
year, football administration reached its lowest with key federation
officials facing trial on charges of financial misappropriation while
others had their legitimacy challenged.

In the midst of
all of this, the game suffered with the highpoint of underperformance
being Nigeria’s uninspiring performance at the FIFA 2010 World Cup in
South Africa.

That disgraceful
outing, which underlined the ineptitude of the leadership of the
Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) then headed by Sani Lulu, was to have
consequences, not the least of which was the run in Nigeria had with
world football governing body, FIFA. On that occasion the ruling body
banned Nigeria from its association for what it said was government’s
meddling in the affairs of the NFF.

But more than
perceived government interference by FIFA, it was the rash of
litigations on the football landscape that more than anything else
stymied progress for the game last year.

The National
Association of Nigerian Footballers headed by Harrison Jalla, went to
court to prevent elections into the executive committee of the NFF from
holding without state football association chairmen who would vote at
the elections first subjecting themselves to election in their states.
While this was happening, Rumson Baribote, former chairman of Bayelsa
United FC, went to court to challenge the election of Davidson Owumi as
chairman of the Nigeria Premier League insisting that his nomination
was flawed.

The effect of
these cases was that while the football federation was left without
substantive leadership for months, the premier league began well behind
schedule. Nigerians were thus relieved when the combatants agreed to
sheath their swords in the interest of the game.

That relief
appears short-lived, as old wounds have been re-opened. Jalla, who in
October had withdrawn his case from court following a settlement
brokered by suspended FIFA executive Amos Adamu, has headed back to
court. Jalla claims that the NFF has breached the agreement it reached
last October.

He is thus praying
that the order of the Lagos High Court, given on September 6, 2010
annulling the NFF elections of August 26, 2010, be revisited and that
NFF president, Aminu Maigari and other members of the federation’s
executive committee be removed from the premises of the football
federation. Additionally Jalla is asking that contempt proceedings be
initiated against Maigari and his team.

Aside the Jalla
suit the ante of conflict has also been upped by the decision of the
NFF to sack Owumi as chairman of the NPL. Two weeks ago, the football
federation at the end of its Annual General Meeting in December decided
to uphold the decision of the Akin Ibidapo Obe-led arbitration panel
which, in June last year, ruled that Owumi was not qualified to contest
election as chairman of the NPL. Owumi has ignored the decision by the
NFF insisting that he remains head of the premier league board.

This development
is clearly disturbing. With so much on our football plate this year
(the Super Eagles continue their qualifying matches for the 2012
Nations Cup, our Flying Eagles, if they do well at the Africa youth
Championship to be held in March, will be at the FIFA U-20 World Cup in
Colombia while the Super Falcons will be at the FIFA Women’s World Cup
in Germany) we cannot afford the distraction that these conflicts
create.

Our football
administrators must find a way of rising above petty and narrow
self-interest and rally to pull the game from the morass their blind
ambition has cast it in. They must realise that as they bicker, the
lives and livelihoods of young Nigerians who play the game and the
millions of fans who have invested emotionally in it, are at stake.

At a time like this we call on the National Assembly, specifically
the Senate and House Committees on Sports and elder football statesmen
to intervene and persuade the combatants that their interests would be
best served if the game is allowed to flourish.

The so-called
Shield bill, which was recently introduced in both houses of Congress
in response to the WikiLeaks disclosures, would amend the Espionage Act
of 1917 to make it a crime for any person knowingly and willfully to
disseminate, “in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of
the United States,” any classified information “concerning the human
intelligence activities of the United States.”

Although this
proposed law may be constitutional as applied to government employees
who unlawfully leak such material to people who are unauthorized to
receive it, it would plainly violate the First Amendment to punish
anyone who might publish or otherwise circulate the information after
it has been leaked. At the very least, the act must be expressly
limited to situations in which the spread of the classified information
poses a clear and imminent danger of grave harm to the nation.

The clear and
present danger standard has been a central element of our First
Amendment jurisprudence ever since Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s
1919 opinion in Schenk v. United States. In the 90 years since, the
precise meaning of “clear and present danger” has evolved, but the
animating principle was stated brilliantly by Justice Louis D. Brandeis
in his 1927 concurring opinion in Whitney v. California.

The founders “did
not exalt order at the cost of liberty,” wrote Brandeis; on the
contrary, they understood that “only an emergency can justify
repression. Such must be the rule if authority is to be reconciled with
freedom. Such … is the command of the Constitution. It is, therefore,
always open to Americans to challenge a law abridging free speech and
assembly by showing that there was no emergency justifying it.”

On the other hand,
the First Amendment does not compel government transparency. It leaves
the government extraordinary autonomy to protect its own secrets. It
does not accord anyone the right to have the government disclose
information about its actions or policies, and it cedes to the
government considerable authority to restrict the speech of its own
employees. What it does not do, however, is allow the government to
suppress the free speech of others when it has failed to keep its own
secrets.

We might think of
this like the attorney-client privilege. If a lawyer reveals his
client’s confidences to a reporter, he can be punished for violating
that privilege – but the newspaper cannot constitutionally be punished
for publishing the information.

There are very
good reasons why it makes sense to give the government so little
authority to punish the circulation of unlawfully leaked information.

First, the mere
fact that such information might “prejudice the interests of the United
States” does not mean that that harm outweighs the benefit of
publication; in many circumstances, it may be extremely valuable to
public understanding. Consider, for example, classified information
about the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Second, the
reasons that government officials want secrecy are many and varied.
They range from the truly compelling to the patently illegitimate. As
we have learned from our own history, it is often very tempting for
government officials to overstate their need for secrecy, especially in
times of national anxiety. A strict clear and present danger standard –
rather than an unwieldy and unpredictable case-by-case balancing of
harm against benefit – establishes a high bar to protect us against
this danger.

And finally, a
central principle of the First Amendment is that the suppression of
free speech must be the government’s last rather than its first resort
in addressing a problem. The most obvious way for the government to
prevent the danger posed by the circulation of classified material is
by ensuring that information that must be kept secret is not leaked in
the first place.

Indeed, the
Supreme Court made this point quite clearly in its 2001 decision in
Bartnicki v. Vopper, which held that when an individual receives
information “from a source who obtained it unlawfully,” that individual
may not be punished for publicly disseminating the information “absent
a need … of the highest order.”

The court
explained that if the sanctions now attached to the underlying criminal
act “do not provide sufficient deterrence,” then perhaps they should be
“made more severe” – but “it would be quite remarkable to hold” that an
individual can constitutionally be punished merely for publishing
information because the government failed to “deter conduct by a
non-law-abiding third party.” This is a sound solution.

If we grant the
government too much power to punish those who disseminate information,
then we risk too great a sacrifice of public deliberation; if we grant
the government too little power to control confidentiality at the
source, then we risk too great a sacrifice of secrecy. The answer is
thus to reconcile the irreconcilable values of secrecy and
accountability by guaranteeing both a strong authority of the
government to prohibit leaks and an expansive right of others to
disseminate information to the public.

Geoffrey R. Stone
is a professor of law at the University of Chicago and the chairman of
the board of the American Constitution Society.

© 2011 The New York Times

In his book, Africa
Unchained, Ghanaian Economist, George Ayittey writes about Africa’s
Cheetah Generation; a term he describes as a new generation of young
African professionals and graduates who analyse and view the
continent’s problems with a unique and refreshing perspective.

Though restless, he
describes these young people as dynamic, intellectually agile and
pragmatic. According to him, these young people are aware of the
crippling effects of corruption on their countries and eschew trite and
obsolete arguments that blame the continent’s failures on the legacies
of slave trade and western imperialism.

In contrast, he
differentiates them from the Hippo Generation, a class he says is near
sighted, lacking in vision and intellectually astigmatic. Unlike the
Cheetah Generation, which he describes as seeing mainly opportunities
on the continent, the Hippo Generation constantly sees problems and
serves as impediments to the realization of the aspirations of the
Cheetahs.

The late Nigerian
nationalist, Nnamdi Azikiwe explores this same theme in his book,
Renascent Africa. Though written for a different era and a different
struggle, some of his central messages remain strikingly similar and
relevant. In Renascent Africa, Zik tells a tale of two citizens; the
Nigerian youth who was thirsty for political emancipation and members
of the old guard who were sympathetic to colonial interests. At the
time, (as is the case in present day Nigeria), the political leadership
was bankrupt, ineffective and uninspiring and an ideological friction
(as again is the case today) existed between members of the new guard
and the old guard.

In Zik’s case, to
achieve his aim of attaining independence for Nigeria, members of the
new guard rallied around him, espousing his ideals (and in part those
itemized by Nigerian Statesman, Nwafor Orizu in his book, Without
Bitterness) and dubbed them Zikism. Refusing to succumb to the demands
and predilections of the old guard, they championed the ideology all
the way to independence; and they won.

Nigeria’s present
day Cheetah Generation can and should do the same. As was the case
during Azikiwe’s generation, the divergent ideologies of the young and
the old needed to engage in a battle for supremacy. If the old won,
independence would not have been attained. Likewise, in the case of
Nigerian youths, if the Hippo Generation wins, there will be no
socio-economic emancipation for Nigerians. The future of Nigeria
depends on which generation prevails over the other and on which
perspective emerges victorious. The pessimists or the optimists? The
myopic or the future seekers? The old or the new?

Nigeria currently
stands at the cusp of one of the greatest youth transformations in its
history with seventy percent of its population under the age of 35.
According to a recent report on Nigeria’s young generation commissioned
by the British Council titled Next Generation Nigeria, “youth, not oil
will be the country’s most valuable resource in the twenty first
century.”

Nigeria’s young
people (her Cheetah Generation) are currently at odds with the nation’s
Hippos. During the struggle for independence, the Hippo Generation was
reluctant to relinquish power and grant the young Nigerian nationalists
independence. Similarly, Nigeria’s present day Hippo Generation is
reluctant to hand over the mantle of leadership to the Cheetahs. This
is why like the Hippo Generation did in the 1950s, former 2011
presidential aspirant, General Ibrahim Babangida, a member of the Hippo
Generation in an interview with the BBC earlier this year emphasized
that he did not think the younger generation could effectively lead the
country.

President Babangida’s recent resignation from the 2011 presidential
race is a sign of perhaps positive things to come for Nigerian
Cheetahs. Prior to independence in the 1960s, Zikists were ridiculed
for being naïve and overly headstrong in the face of the colonialists
but their resolve eventually won them independence. In the same vein,
if Nigerian youths are able to tap into the Pan-African consciousness
that drove Nigeria’s founding fathers to struggle against British rule,
and continue to demand for free and fair elections and a competent,
forward looking leadership in 2011, then success awaits them.

I’m in the market again shopping for food. I love and hate the process.

I often complain
that the world really belongs to extroverts and in it, we introverts
are marginalised and treated like aliens. Market shopping is an
extroverted affair. The swagger and wit and pretence of casualness; the
false sociability and the endless superficial “how’s your familys”; the
skilful or otherwise haggling and speedy brain calculations of whether
one is hearing an absolute truth, a half truth or a blatant lie is
overwhelming.

In contrast, there
is something soothing about supermarket aisles and their aloofness,
about the inward negotiation of choices.

I much prefer to go
to the market with my neighbour and friend who I call Local Government
Chairman! Everyone knows her and she knows everyone. And with bright
flashing smiles she wraps them round her finger and chops every price
they offer in thirds.

When we first used
to go to the market together, I would walk behind her and pretend I was
her mute relation from Cameroun. It gave my brain the freedom to really
negotiate the sights and sounds. I believe that a necessary organic
relationship with food and the accompanying skill or common sense that
allows one to recognise fresh good produce that has not been tampered
with or force ripened or presented to hide rot or decay, is becoming
obsolete.

A young lady who I
sometimes send to the market astounds me every time by bringing back
the freshest most delicious produce at considerably lower prices. She
has a feel for the market and for food sold in the market that I don’t
have even in an elementary capacity. She can keep her head against the
tide of loud smells and conversations and confusing banter, somehow
project her mind into every tomato and yam and green leaf and know that
it is the best to eat or the very worst. She has a relationship with
food that is significantly more cultured than my weekly urban mute
visits to the market. She has grown her own food.

How I hate that
line: “Aunty Okro no dey,” or “carrot no dey,” or “yam no dey.” I want
to shout at the vendor, “That’s completely meaningless! What do you
mean e no dey!”

The meaning is
plain. It is rarely about whether the vegetable or fruit that one is
attempting to buy is in or out of season. It is more likely that a
scarcity has been declared by the produce vendors in order to get the
best sale price.

Some conversations
I have had in the market are so ridiculous that they confound reality:
Once a goat vendor followed me through the market in an attempt to
convince me that his goat which only looked slightly bigger than a
puppy was a good buy. He told me that I was not to worry; once the goat
had been fed and watered it would increase in size and become
comparable to any other goat in the market.

As much as I hate
the sweltering loud smelly assault on the senses that the market place
is, on Thursdays, you will inevitably find me standing in front of
Mumsie’s smoked and dried fish stall. My head will almost be level with
her reeking roof of suspended stockfish worth as much as the plaster of
Paris ceiling in my house. Mumsie will be standing to the right of a
table piled high with smoked impaled Shinenose, rolled up catfish and
shimmering white crayfish. On the wall behind her, the letters YHWH are
scrawled, yet around her neck she wears a catholic scapular. She will
be hacking into the belly of a smoked Shinenose with a saw, and I will
practically be begging to buy a piece that is falling apart. She will
turn her nose up, hold the piece of fish together with rubber bands and
declare that that one piece is worth the price of one whole smoked
catfish.

WHY?!

If you ask too
insistently, she won’t sell it at all! Or she will ramble on and on
about how the Ijaw men who fish have all disappeared into thin air and,
“fish no dey!”

This is the thing
about the marketplace; its animation is addictive. I have lived almost
forty years but had no clue about the incidental delicacy that the
belly of a Shinenose is. One day, I was in the market, and in an
organic moment, I was introduced to imperfectly smoked fish, one part
dry the other moist, and for this imperfection, one pays an arm and
leg, and pays rapturously. In Okro soup or in Ogbono, this piece of
fish is so delicious; one’s tongue is in perpetual danger of being
bitten in half.

In the last few
months in the markets in Calabar, I also discovered at least three
different genres of Okro; fresh bush pepper berries, red and gorgeous,
harvested from the forest, heavy on stalks before they are dried into
the black sullen pellets that everyone knows as black pepper; edible,
ferociously addictive native chalk the colour of onyx on the outside,
grey dust on the inside, a true enigma when it tastes like one is
eating sand; local pink apples shaped like bells that disappeared off
my radar in some distant point in childhood.

What I am trying to say in effect is that the market is the place
where my inspiration for food is most fired, not among antiseptic
supermarket shelves, but among disdainful traders selling in their
nightgowns and headscarves, inflatable goats, stockfish roofs, absolute
lies and disappearing Ijaw men.

There is a lot
that is distasteful about Laurent Gbagbo, recalcitrant president of
Cote d’Ivoire, the second biggest country in West Africa and home to 21
million people. For the past ten years that he has been president the
country has fought a bitter civil war and its residents have lived on
edge, divided right down the middle by their support or opposition to
the policies of the Gbagbo government.

Hitherto the most
vibrant economy in the sub-region, Cote d’Ivoire has also taken a hit.
Statistics from the World Bank show that its per capita income has
declined by 15% since 1999. Although it is increasingly reliant on its
growing oil and gas sector, the majority of the populace still depends
on agriculture – especially of cocoa and coffee – and this has been
affected by the political instability brought about by the government
of Mr. Gbagbo.

This also means
that rather than play a positive role in the development of West
Africa, Cote d’Ivoire under Mr. Gbagbo has been a source of conflict
and distraction for regional leaders. Tied up as it were in its
self-inflicted internal battles, the country has not played its part in
the resolution of conflicts in other countries in the region,
especially in the francophone club of nations of which it was the
leader.

Worse, the country
is now host to a United Nations force – and a drain on international
peacekeeping funds. It has also become a net exporter of refugees, who
are now streaming into neighbouring countries such as Guinea and
Liberia that are, themselves, just recovering from crises.

And all of that
was before Mr. Gbagbo decided not to respect the outcome of last year’s
presidential election, adjudged by local and international observers to
have been won by his bête noir and opponent in the race, Alhassan
Ouattara.

Things have
speedily degenerated since then, leading to the inauguration of both
Messrs Gbagbo and Ouattara as president of the country. Of course this
did not tell the true picture, because the reins of government are
still very much in Mr. Gbagbo’s hands and the armed forces of the
country are still loyal to him.

His opponent, Mr.
Ouattara, is left to dawdle in a hotel where he is holed up, protected
by United Nations forces and occupying himself with receiving streams
of foreign dignitaries who drop in to shore up his confidence and
reaffirm his mandate.

A number of these
have been from the West African regional body, ECOWAS which, along with
the African Union has taken a firm stance against Mr. Gbagbo. These
bodies have insisted that power must be handed over to the winner of
the election, Mr. Ouattara and that the end has come to the rule of the
big man in Cote d’Ivoire.

Apart from the
many carrots being dangled before Mr. Gbagbo – including asylum in
several countries – is a hard stick option of military action against
him.

Now, the Ivorien
military is not what it was. It is yet to recover from the bruising
civil war against rebel forces and most of its aircraft had been
degraded by the French after some soldiers of that country died during
an attack on their base by the Ivorien air force during the civil war.
But that does not mean they would roll over in the face of an invasion
by West African countries.

With most of the
army stationed in and around Abidjan, the country’s biggest city and
Gbagbo’s seat of power, a fight to remove the man is likely to be
bloody and destructive. If it finally succeeds, an enthronement of Mr.
Ouattara would then be little more than a hollow victory for his
backers, as he would have to deal with the bitterness of victims of
such an operation.

Plus, the cost of
such a multinational operation would not be small either. Nigeria, the
country that is expected to provide the bulk of such a force, is hardly
in a good position to do so. The country is facing strain in its own
finances and it has a major election coming up in a couple of months.
An invasion will also jeopardise the lives and livelihood of millions
of West African nationals – a large number of who are Nigerians –
living in Cote d’Ivoire.

As President
Goodluck Jonathan said this week, the matter is delicate. The first
rule in conflict resolution is not to aggravate existing conditions.
So, West African leaders should continue to, gently but firmly nudge
Mr. Gbagbo towards taking the decent action of leaving office in the
interest of the country he professes to love. He is already feeling the
heat and will eventually capitulate. It will be a sweeter achievement
for our leaders if this is done without firing a shot.