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I’m
convinced that there’s something about the gutters of Lagos that calls to us.
Some, more than others I hasten to add! It must be the black, murky depths. The
fact is that the water looks (and is!) black and usually caked with oodles of
sand, or what looks like it. Maybe, the constant whiff of the quintessential
gutter odours adds to the mystery.

Some
gutters are narrow, wide, new (state-of-the-art engineering feats), old,
broken, can be easily stepped over; others require the hop, step and jump
technique of the triple jump! They surround us on all sides; in fact in some
areas of the Centre of Excellence, they are
known to run right through some homes!

The
feature that almost all these tributaries have in common (new ones haven’t
acquired it yet) is the odious, choking, pungent, ammonia-like fumes that rise
up to unclog blocked nostrils. This distinct smell doesn’t change, but
undergoes alterations in dilution as you come across various gutters. In some
places, more than others this distinct smell of human waste is the major
ingredient of this watery solution. Of all its characteristics, this is what I
think calls to us the strongest. How else does one explain this activity, that
people (seem) to delight in doing within its vicinity? For those that think
it’s the usual gentlemanly pastime, I’m sorry to disappoint you!

In
journeys about the city and even nearer home, the act of personal oral hygiene
is one that consistently takes place over the humble vestibules that collect
wastewater around the city. The bracing stench that arises from them does
wonders for the teeth and the individuals involved; else why else would many
people choose this as the place to do what the dentist recommends. One would
have thought that the sinks provided in their bathrooms would be more
appropriate. Where their absence is
regrettable, it calls into question the structures that are passed off as
accommodation in the city. The crazy rent demanded for them is topic for
another day!!

Understandably,
if a face-me-I-face-you is the current abode, then the less time spent in the
communal bathroom the better and so brushing before the usual ablution is
called for. So maybe this set of tenants could be excused, but why they’d still
choose the gutter is still highly questionable. The fact that some of these
gutters face the full glare of the public is not a deterrent; again that it
also seems to be the only place this function can be carried out is still
questionable.

Nearer
home, another open air demonstration is worthy of raised brows. For a fact, a
self-contained room is endowed with the modern conveniences and so it is a
mystery why the outdoor option is still preferred! Having more than one person
live there, two, maybe even three is still not a good enough reason.

Could
it be the freedom of splashing froth coloured water unto the ground? Maybe
seeing it dissolve, as it hits the black waters of the gutter is a sport in
itself? The companionship of other fellow open-air enthusiasts may also be
another pull. The hacking noises emanating from throats, as some attempt to
extract their tonsils sans anaesthesia maybe another clue. The very act of
spitting out the contents of the mouth and watching its aerial display could be
an appeal lost on unwilling spectators.

Whatever the explanation,
this early morning, outdoor sport will continue as the adherents heed the call
of the gutters that beckon them to cleanse their dentition. The gutters will
continue to act as the receptacles for the oral gene activities that bedevil
the human populace of our great metrop

Many
forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and
woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been
said by Winston Churchill, that democracy is the worst form of government
except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Ioseb Jughashvili was NEVER in the Imperial Russian military. As a matter of
fact he dodged serving the Tsar’s armies during the Great War against the German
invader. His role during the Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War, and
Polish-Soviet War was as a Bolshevik political commissar, not as a soldier.
However, that lack of soldiering did not prevent him as Joseph Stalin from
being the cruellest dictator of the twentieth century. In the 1930s, he
gradually removed ALL opposition to his rule in what became known at the Great
Purge of the Soviet Communist party. And it was at that point that Soviet
Russia finally slid into a full blown dictatorship.

You see, the most successful societies of the last two thousand years have been
almost without doubt Imperial Rome, Great Britain and the United States. All
three of them have had one thing in common, a vibrant opposition. The Roman
emperors, far reaching though their powers may have been, had the Senate as a
weight to check their excesses. Britain was set on its way to becoming a global
superpower after the nobles curtailed King John’s power by forcing him to sign
the Magna Carta. Some may even argue that Oliver Cromwell’s attempts to kill
off opposition during his reign, and the subsequent frowning on opposition with
the return of the monarchy actually sparked off the migrations, which lead to
English domination of what became the United States. We all know about the
constant rancour in the US Congress.

The underlying point here is the importance of a vibrant opposition.

Tolu Ogunlesi, a writer at NEXT has received many thinly veiled threats ever
since his article appeared on Wednesday criticising the rather silly statements
made by our president last Saturday. On my Facebook page, I also criticised
those statements, and I have had a lot of vitriol (and Bible verses) flung in
my direction. It all reminds me of a statement once credited to the current Osun
State governor, Oyinlola, when on receiving new decampees to the PDP he
enjoined other people to “stop playing politics of opposition and join the
winning party”.

There are two points that can be brought out here; Nigerians generally do not
know how to take criticism. Nigerians generally do not have ideals. All of this
is displayed in our political class.

On the first point, I called for the president to resign on a radio show on
Wednesday morning. Before getting to the office, people had already called my
boss to ask if that was NEXT’s official position on this matter. No it is not.
It is MY opinion, and I am entitled to it.

For the sake of clarity, the only printable word I can think of to describe
President Jonathan’s conduct since the October 1 affair is goof. And ‘goof’ is
the only word I can think of to describe a lot of things that he has done since
just about the time he became substantive president. I believe, and strongly
too, that the President, Federal Republic of Nigeria ought to be a strong
character who knows his left from his right. Sadly the man currently occupying
the office is neither, and it has shone through in a lot of his decisions. If
he were stronger, a lot of the flux around Abuja would not be happening.

Again, no matter how you cut it, the president is the Commander-in-Chief of our
security forces. A failure of our security personnel is a failure of the
president, and the buck stops at his desk. If he cannot call them to heel, then
he is not fit for the purpose, and he should leave the stage.

What
we had on Saturday was one of the most embarrassing incidents ever, where the
President publicly exonerated the ONLY group to have claimed responsibility for
Friday’s atrocity BEFORE the security agencies had settled down to begin investigating
anything. That action alone prejudiced the investigation before it started
because the security agencies would not want to contradict their boss.

Then
the subsequent actions of those agencies do smell of a political witch hunt
against the campaign of Ibrahim Babangida. One must wonder at the sudden
efficiency of our security agencies in catching people with text messages when
Aba is full of kidnappers and has been full of them for going on two years, yet
there has not been one prosecution, not to talk of conviction.

The point must be made here that as far as I am concerned, IBB has no business
being our president or in government ever again, and if Nigeria were a normal
country where there was justice, he probably not be in the position he is
now. But as things stand, IBB has NEVER
seen the inside of any Nigerian court much less been convicted, so in reality,
and according to the Nigerian Constitution he has EVERY right to run for
office. It then becomes the duty of Nigerians to go out on election day and
vote against him. This attempt to use underhand tactics to get him out of the
presidential race is unseemly, and is a method that could be used in future to
shackle the opposition.

You see, in any normal environment there are two extreme ends of the political
spectrum, the extreme conservative end, which is also known as the far right,
and the extreme liberal end also known as the far left. Typically, people on
the far right see any form of change as a bad thing and are opposed to it, while
people on the far left tend to always want to change things. But then those are
stereotypes. In reality, there is no human being who is entirely conservative,
neither is there anyone who is entirely liberal. What you have are people who
are more conservative than liberal, or more liberal than conservative. With
that in mind, it only makes sense that at any point in time, not everyone will
agree on the same points and we will have opposition. Opposition IS ESSENTIAL
to the survival of democracy.

Unfortunately in our country, what we have is a culture of the big man always
being right. Hence someone like Uche Chukwumerije can yo-yo between three or
four parties in less than a year and see nothing wrong with it. People who have
possibly killed other people on behalf of the PDP in my home state (Edo) have
all swung over to the AC simply because the current governor is from that
party, and trust me, if he is kicked out in the next elections, all of these
people would sashay back to the PDP like it’s nothing new, while those who say
things as they are suddenly become enemies.

On the same day that Nigeria celebrated its 50th Independence Anniversary, the iconic time travel film ‘Back to the Future’ was re-released in the UK to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

The film is about a
teenager who accidentally goes 35 years back in time, using a time
machine constructed by an eccentric scientist. He meets his parents as
they are about to embark on their lives together and he inadvertently
disrupts the course their lives would ordinarily have taken, risking
that his parents will not marry and that he himself will not be born.
He has to repair the damage to history and to his own future that his
actions have caused and find his way back to the future within a week.

As I reflect on the
flavour of the past week and Nigeria’s independence 50 years ago, it
seems very apt that the film’s re-release coincided with our
celebrations. I have read newspaper articles about how the founding
fathers of our nation got it wrong, and did not foresee the fault lines
in the nation they put together.

Other articles
blame the ‘state of the nation’ on divergence from the original plan
these same founding fathers put in place for our nation-building.

Then, there are the
parallels. October 1, 50 yearsago marked the culmination of the
struggle for independence from external governance that our thinkers
and workers felt was exploitative, repressive and unjust. Now, we are
witnessing internal struggles for autonomy from a centralized
government.

Over the past week,
we have been taken back to the past through photographs of 60s fashion
and screening of newsreel and documentaries from that time. In a
country where it is easy to feel that we have no documented history, it
has been wonderful to read and see historical references to what life
was like in 1960.

It made me proud to
learn that Independence Building was designed by a Nigerian architect
and president of the Nigerian Institute of Architects from 1968-1970
-Augustine Akhuemokhan Egbor.

I enjoyed the
chronicle in the newspaper of Nigeria’s romance with musical genres in
every decade since the 60s. We really had excellent musicians and great
music, and now that spirit is captured on Broadway and in a West End
Theatre with the truly excellent and invigorating Fela! Musical. Our
magazines have featured the fashionable knee-high style of wearing
traditional dress for the ladies, and men’s dapper dressing reminiscent
of Malcolm X with short afro hair styles with side partings, sharp
suits and traditional ethnic wear.

It has felt like a
period of renaissance. Like a time when we have the chance once again
to re-invent ourselves to a time before the schism and deprivation of
the civil war; to a time when positive change rather than destructive
division may emerge from the storm of competing interests and positions
brewing in our Local, State and National Assemblies.

It has felt like a
point from which we may be able to depart from the rigid roles that
seem imposed on the south south, the northwest, the east, the south
west, the middle belt and the north east; when we can leave the past
where it is and only carry the learnings from it into our newly
envisioned future as a true federation with national representation
that takes us forward instead of holding us back.

The world is
watching Even though we have so much to celebrate as a people, there is
not much in our everyday lives to celebrate as a nation; and nothing
spectacular or inspirational to show for the billions spent on marking
the event during an economic downturn when the fortunate are under
pressure to make a living, and the unfortunate are struggling to find
something to eat. Even so, all the elements that were present at our
founding are back again – back from the past for us to take into our
future.

We have proud,
young, educated and patriotic Nigerians ready to serve our nation. A
resurging focus on pride in the armed services and on efficient service
in our ministries is evident. Flourishing music, dance, fashion,
creative arts and crafts and pride in vocations. Nigerians excelling
around the world. A country opening up to investment, investing in mass
infrastructure, new technologies, new ventures and new development
partners.

Opportunities for export of proudly-made-in-Nigeria products and the expansion of our enterprises across the world.

We are also once
more the cynosure of the world and not just for negative things. The
world is watching. We have had 50 years to stretch, grow, learn painful
lessons, and indulge in vices until we are sick. The early stages of
cancerous growths have been identified. Are we going to swallow bitter
medicine, and suffer them to be cut out before they permanently embed
the tentacles that have been spread? Or are we going to ‘go out with a
bang’; decide that we are doomed anyway and gorge ourselves
irresponsibly until the choice is taken from our hands.

I can see the
future in the back of my eyes where it has retreated to as the years
passed. It is a beautiful, orderly, free, safe, and prosperous tropical
nation with people who laugh a lot, live large, and who celebrate
life’s little joys and mourn its small sorrows together in harmony.
Let’s work to bring that future back. We will all be the better for it.

Over the past few
days remarks made by Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the former Chairman of EFCC
during his lecture at the late Bola Ige birthday event have earned a
caustic response from the Oyo State government through Chief Gbade
Ishola.

I think it is a
welcome thing that regeneration of Ibadan has become a topical issue.
It is however an issue that requires a different discourse than that of
a partisan political nature. I will avoid choosing sides because what
is at stake is far more significant than who is right or wrong nor is
it about the coming election.

The city of Ibadan
represents a totally unique space in the history and potential future
of the nation. It has been the largest indigenous city of its kind in
Africa but also the intellectual cradle of the Nigerian state. If we
valued anything in our current transactional mindset it would be this
city that evolved through a unique, meritocracy into a warrior republic
using a constitutional experiment that remains largely intact today.

She carries three
powerful dimensions for our future; a habit of cultural innovation that
includes the first television station; a platform for intellectual
curiosity and academic expression that spawned the first university; a
network of informal commerce that is translated into scores of open air
markets including the largest market for indigenous textiles in Oje. To
say that Ibadan has regressed is not to focus blame on any one party in
what should be a partnership to preserve her legacy and generate a
vision to renew her.

Ibadan is perhaps
the only city in Africa that is bucking the trend in urbanisation
especially in the number of young people she has lost. The downward
trend for the city started with the much vaunted Structural Adjustment
Programme of the Babangida regime in the mid 1980s.

This policy that
decimated the Nigerian middle classes destroyed the vibrancy of Ibadan
which was the most middle class of all cities in Nigeria.

The disdain in
which the universities, research institutes and that almost uniquely
local focus – publishing- was treated, wiped out the intellectual
values, skills and industries. The lack of priority for education also
destroyed the place as an education destination for the country.

The middle class
values of community, perseverance and long term effort were killed and
replaced with neo liberal individualism leading to the triumph of the
hustler class. Shame died and became replaced with wanton materialism.
Ibadan has never recovered.

Subsequent
governments, local and national have neither had the desire nor have
had the resources to prioritise Ibadan above other things they feel
necessary. It does not start with the present government in Oyo State.
There is of course the inevitable structural problem of a potential
world centre in a largely rural, agricultural state.

Maybe the challenge
of renewing Ibadan might be a drain to development in other parts of
the state? The false divisions amongst the citizens of our metropolis
have not helped these challenges. The identification of indigene versus
resident is a very poor choice. The founders of our great city came
from all over Yoruba land to find fortune through valour and might
rather than from birthright and bloodline. Nowhere was merit more
forcefully enforced as the standard of excellence than in the ancient
home of Oluyole.

We as citizens have
also failed our city in not creating a large enough umbrella as is our
tradition. We failed to make talent, excellence and love for the
betterment of our land as the only standard for determining whether one

qualifies as Ibadan
or otherwise. No great city is a creation of government alone, but a
result of the collective vision and contribution of her people,
businesses, civic organisations and government in partnership.

Even if the Oyo
State government believes it has done some things, the honest truth is
that there is a lot more to do. Our city now has a shop front in every
house; our roads struggle to absorb traffic because of the number of
cars struggling for space. Nowhere are there more research institutes
than in Ibadan but they are not connected by the highway of this
century in fibre optic broadband.

The publishing
industry on Magazine Road is a very pale shadow of the capital of West
Africa that it was. I know from Mallam Ribadus comments that he cares
and I know from my limited interaction with Chief Gbade Ishola that he
is passionate about Ibadan. We can have a civil dialogue about the best
way ahead.

Last year we started this process with the Mesiogo initiative (outside of government and

politics) to work
across stakeholders for long term regeneration for our city. Lets
continue this dialogue and effort without succumbing to self-serving
partisanship. No one has a monopoly of ideas or responsibility as we
strive to continuously evolve Ibadan not just to the greatness of her
pioneering past but also to the possibilities of prosperity for many
more generations to come.

Adewale Ajadi is a social entrepreneur and Ibadan is his hometown.