Nigeria Content Online

Nigerians, who are
renowned for their strong attachment to the quirks of fate and fortune,
should be forgiven for thinking and expecting so much of Goodluck
Jonathan. This line of thinking has been given an added fillip no doubt
by the acting president’s name which readily conjures optimism and
hopeful expectation especially for a country bracing for its inevitable
date with destiny.

As usual in matters
of this nature, there are those who will seek to cash in (literarily)
on the situation using their privileged positions in society to offer
opinions, which on critical examination will neither provide respite to
the nation in its search for solutions, nor even help the acting
president deliver on the genuine expectations of Nigerians.

By far the most
important and significant challenge facing the nation is the 2011
general elections. It is the one item that all the hopes and
aspirations of the nation rest on and which has the potential of
rubbishing the symbolism of the acting president’s fortuitous rise to
power and the expectations arising there from, if not satisfactorily
handled.

Given the short
time available within the constitutional term limits of the
Yar’Adua/Jonathan tenure, the acting president will need above all else
to summon extraordinary reserves of courage and determination to focus
on the following areas, not necessarily in pecking order:

He must not contest
in the 2011 elections. The first step towards delivering a credible
2011 elections will be for the Acting President Jonathan not to stand
as presidential candidate, painful as that step may be. The acting
president should in taking this step be guided by the fact that owing
to our chequered experience with electioneering in this country, the
2011 election presents possibly the last opportunity for Nigeria to get
it right.

Owing to the
circumstances of his coming to power, Jonathan should aim to etch his
name in history as the man who broke the monkey of election failures in
the country. Such a step will position him to play the role of an
unbiased umpire in the proceedings, for which he will earn the eternal
gratitude of the country, and from that stead a possible overwhelming
vote as president in future elections.

One cannot help
noticing that around the acting president currently is a phalanx of
individuals who are seeking to draw him into their own orbit. It is
true that some of them may have proved useful in resolving the impasse
that followed President Yar’Adua’s illness and subsequent prolonged
absence from office, paving way for the acting president to assume
office. But at some point soon, Jonathan must make a conscious effort
to distance himself from them, especially as he takes on the task of
superintending the 2011 elections.

Not a few of them
have been known to have played active roles in the past in subverting
the course of democracy and the people’s will. Indeed some of them are
closely linked to prominent political actors and may seek to wheel
Acting President Jonathan into favouring their political godsons or
clients in the 2011 elections. If Jonathan must play the role expected
of him in the elections, he must not allow these distractions.

He should be wary
of foreign do gooders. It is gratifying to note that the Americans have
come on strong on the matter of deepening democracy in Nigeria. This
may perhaps be due to the fact one of our kind is presently occupying
the White House. A certain Johnnie Carson who goes by the nice sounding
but possibly redundant title of Assistant Secretary of State for
African Affairs, seems to have been made the focal point.

Following the
prolonged absence of President Yar’Adua, in a statement that sounded
like being more Catholic than the pope, he was heard saying that
America wanted a young and healthy person to take over from the ailing
president.

It is instructive
that the Americans have been swooning all over Acting President
Jonathan since he came on. He was hastily invited to a Nuclear Summit
where American slick was laid on thickly and smoothly. The overall
impression to take from this is that the eternal do gooders that they
are, the Americans would want to encourage and back Goodluck Jonathan
for president in 2011.

How much of this American interest in Nigeria is out of genuine concern for democracy and how much is it for our oil?

How far is this
tied to the strategic game plan to keep China out of the Nigerian
equation seeing how Sudan was lost to the Chinese? Was it not too long
ago that American Intelligence estimates concluded that Nigeria would
be a failed state in the not too distant future?

The acting
president needs to evaluate all these factors in his engagement with
the Americans. He must not allow this American handshake to get to the
elbow.

In conclusion,
Acting President Jonathan stands on the threshold of history and
destiny. All that fate and fortune have been preparing him for in his
political journey will be determined by how he handles the challenges
of the 2011 elections.

The choice is his whether to become a hero or a villain. He needs our support and prayers.

Umar Lukman is Consultant/Publisher Octopus Communications

This month, the Pew
Centre in the United States released the results of a major survey they
had carried out entitled “Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity
in Sub-Saharan Africa”. They had interviewed 25,000 Africans in 19
countries. Much of what they discovered is well known to the initiated:

Africans are among the most religious people in the contemporary world;

We define ourselves as Christians or Muslims; Although we live together, we tend to know very little of the other faith;

We claim to believe
in democracy but a majority of those interviewed argued that democracy
should be based on the Bible or the Quran;

Although we say we are Christians or Muslims, over half of us engage in sacrifice to ancestors and spirits;

When we are sick, it is not a natural occurrence; some malevolent spirits sent by enemies must be responsible.

The message of course is syncretism; we mix our Islam or Christianity with age-old pagan beliefs.

The research also
points out that statistically, there is almost no conversion between
the two religions. This means Christians are not being converted to
Muslims nor are Muslims being converted to Christianity. Why then do we
have these suspicions about the supposedly devastating implications of
proselytisation of one group over the other?

Why do Christians and Muslims in Jos feel so threatened by the other?

The report made me
recall one of the unsigned texts roving around cyberspace as an alleged
letter from God to Nigerians. The text invites us to rethink our mode
of relationship and our sincerity with God. I quote extensively from
the letter:

“Beloved Nigerians
(yes, I call you beloved even though many of you are among the world’s
most unrepentant sinners), I’m going to be blunt. I am getting
impatient with what you call prayers. Many of you let out deafening
screams and shrieks in the name of praying. It’s as if you think I’m
deaf – that I won’t hear you unless you shout, punching the air like
bad boxers, and contorting your faces into strange expressions, like
unseasoned Nollywood over-actors.

In fact, if I weren’t indestructible, I would since have lost my hearing for all the noise many of you make while praying….

You have other
habits that really, really gall me. One is how you bother me, day and
night, to give you the things I’ve already granted you in prodigious
quantities. Another is your ceaseless pleading that I do for you what
you should be doing for yourselves. What great gifts haven’t I bestowed
on you Nigerians? I gave you a huge supply of rich arable land that
should make you the envy of other nations. You can grow all kinds of
food on this land – yam, cocoyam, groundnuts, rice, potatoes and more.
Yet, a few among you bask in greed and wallow in conspicuous
consumption while the majority goes hungry.

Then I buried
massive reserves of some of the most treasured natural resources in
your land, among them tin, coal, and oil – the 20th century’s black
gold. Again, you have allowed a gluttonous few among you to steal the
wealth that should belong to all. Look around you, how many of your
African neighbours can boast even a fraction of the resources I have
blessed you with? Each year, your politicians and rulers pocket
hundreds of billions of Naira that should be spent on roads. Instead of
sending them off to jail, what do you do? You garland them with empty
titles and include their names on your roll of national honour. Instead
of calling them criminals, you celebrate them. Instead of covering your
noses in their presence, many of you grovel before them. You flatter
them with the names of “Leader,” “stakeholder,” “prominent Nigerian,”
or “Mr. Fix-it.” You baptize them as chieftains when you ought to
address them properly, as thieftains.”

Pluralism and
religious conflict have become a major theme in Nigeria’s political
development over the past few decades. In our history, the development
of both Islam and Christianity has depended on their capacities to
convert believers in traditional religions. In the 1931 census, 5O% of
the Nigerian population were registered as “pagans” with the percentage
of pagans declining to 34% in 1952 and 18.2% in 1963; leaving Islam
with 47% and Christianity with 34% of the population as of 1963.

Almost nobody today defines themselves as pagans and yet our
behaviour is miles away from the love, peace, honesty and morality that
both Islam and Christianity impose on their adherents. If we are to
confront our desire for peace, democracy and development, we would
really need to interrogate the relationship between our God and us.

I am going to stick my bald head out on this one…

“Price of Hair
extensions to increase” read the headline right next to the photograph
of a “glorious” mane of multi-toned synthetic tresses. I thought to
myself, e never do for this fake hair?

Time was when a man
with a toupee was the source of much mirth between female friends. I
know some pretty ribald jokes about pulling that furry animal off his
shiny pate. But you can’t crack those with your girlfriends anymore.

I challenge you,
dear reader, to stand in any public arena and take a count of the
number of women wearing their own hair; if you get two in ten that’s
high.

You arrive at a
function anywhere, multiracial citadel like Johannesburg, or bang in
the middle of Sandgrouse market Lagos and every woman has long silken
tresses, pony tailed, pageboy bobbed, curled, twirled, blow dried or
crimped. The colours run the gamut from blond to beetroot.

This has gone way
beyond the wigs of the sixties. A beloved late Aunt of mine wore hers,
as was the fashion then, with the glossy black curls forming a nest for
her head tie. With her elaborate jewelry, (Boulos no less) lace blouse
and intricately worked george wrapper, handbag and matching shoes, she
was the very pink of fashion.

However, the first
thing she would do when she arrived at our house would be to whip the
whole thing off her sweating head. “Kam wepu dis artifission,” she
would declare.

You can’t just
fling it off anymore. The fake hair is woven between the natural braids
or glued, so that it stays conveniently attached until it is due for a
change. Now due is the operative word here. These days when you see a
woman suddenly land a dangerous slap on her head you know the devil of
an itch is buried deep beneath the ‘hair.’

Weaves and
attachments are one up on chemically straightening (relaxing) the hair;
that was so eighties. Note, that relaxing is a much more friendly
expression than straightening and was in turn an advancement on the hot
combs of the fifties that effectively fried the hair in order to tame
the tight curls.

But maintenance was
a mission. You had to go for regular retouching of the roots at a
salon, and many women went to bed with hairnets and rollers to save
their styles. I used to wonder how men felt about sleeping with all
this hardware. It served to confirm the fact that fashion with its
often draconian rules has very little to do with convenience.

And so to the
present when even sweet five-year-old darlings have mastered that quick
toss of the head to flick their long hair off their faces and all women
regardless of race can commune at the same salon.

Let me illustrate
again the draconian nature of fashion. My grandmother would complain
constantly about my shorn head, telling me I looked like a prisoner and
not even a female one at that. For thirty years my mother regularly
reacted with the same astonished inquiry whenever I had a haircut as if
it was something completely out of the blue for me.

African Americans
have this unending debate about “good hair” which is not nappy or
crinkly but presumably straight and fixable: like Caucasian hair.

Gone are the days
of black consciousness in the United States and in South Africa where
wearing your hair in its natural form, was a political statement. In
Nigeria we just followed fashion, our roots were not in question were
they?

The January 2009
edition of the South African Marie Claire magazine has in its debate
column the topic, “Is wearing a weave selling out”. It is notable that
the two women who spar off are black and both have at one time or other
worn their hair natural and used relaxers and weaves. Many white women
also wear weaves, and perm, (read relax) their hair and change the
colour as they please. But the editors of this white oriented magazine
in the new multiracial South Africa like to keep it simple. In South
Africa when magazines similar to Marie Claire publish articles on hair
they are kind enough to distinguish between styles that suit “ethnic
hair” (this would not be good hair in American parlance) and those that
suit, well, just hair.

I listened to an
acquaintance in Johannesburg explain why she had gone back to braiding
her hair the African way. At work one day her white co-workers who had
never paid her that kind of attention before, greeted her with warm
compliments about her new relaxed hairstyle: that was when she realised
that she looked good to them, once she looked like them.

The vogue among
white women for African style braids lasted about a minute in the
eighties and was confined mainly to Bo Derek, the actress who wore the
style in a forgettable movie called ‘10″.

Fashion and politics, they both change with the seasons anyway. Very
few black women who wear fake straight hair, see it as a betrayal of
their heritage. It’s just about looking good and it is astonishing how
global this concept has become. Whether this is good or bad is another
can of hairspray altogether.

Federal character
is one of those peculiarly Nigerian phrases. The principal formed part
of the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy
in the 1979 Constitution of Nigeria’s second republic. In 1996 it was
institutionalised with the setting up by the Sani Abacha government, of
a Federal Character Commission.

The principle is
now enshrined in the current 2009 Constitution, a section of which
prescribes the setting up of the Federal Character Commission that will
have the powers to:

“(a) work out an
equitable formula subject to the approval of the National Assembly for
the distribution of all cadres of posts in the public service of the
Federation and of the States, the armed forces of the Federation, the
Nigeria Police Force and other government security agencies, government
owned companies and parastatals of the states;

(b) promote,
monitor and enforce compliance with the principles of proportional
sharing of all bureaucratic, economic, media and political posts at all
levels of government;

(c) take such legal
measures, including the prosecution of the head or staff of any
ministry or government body or agency which fails to comply with any
federal character principle or formula prescribed or adopted by the
Commission; and

(d) carry out such other functions as may be conferred upon it by an Act of the National Assembly.”

This federal
character principle also shows up in another part of the Constitution:
Section 147 compels the president to, “appoint at least one minister
from each state, who shall be an indigene of such state.”

It can actually be
argued that the decision of the ruling People’s Democratic Party to
zone the presidency is an extension of federal character.

There have always
been those staunchly against the idea of quota systems for
appointments, arguing that its geographical considerations encumber
merit, and allows mediocrity to thrive. It is quite easy to argue that
there is a link between federal character and the dismal levels of
efficiency in the civil service.

One problem that
the principle immediately throws up is that of defining indigene-ship.
In a country where many people have made homes for themselves outside
the states to which their parents traced their roots, what
justification is there in insisting on legislating indigene-ship
according to where one’s father hails from? We recall that when the
list of ministers was released earlier this month, newspapers were full
of reports of groups protesting that certain appointees were not
indigenes of the states listed against their names.

This kind of
thinking, of course, makes little sense. As much as it is important to
carry every section of the country along, the most important questions
we should be asking regarding persons who will be holding public office
should be about their managerial abilities and competence, as judged by
past and present record.

This is why it is
heartwarming to hear that the Nigeria Police Force will be jettisoning
certain aspects of the federal character principle. Parry Osayande,
Chairman of the Police Service Commission (a retired Deputy Inspector
General of Police) announced last week in Abeokuta that the Police will
no longer base promotions on the principle of federal character.
According to our news report: “In order to ensure that everybody merits
the elevation, Mr. Osayande said short listed candidates for a
particular rank will be made to write tests on modern day policing,
adding that only those who pass such tests will be allowed to get to
the next round… In the new arrangement, he said, the system will not
only reward diligence and dedication to work, it will also sanction any
form of inconsistency with the dictates of the new efforts.”

For a Police Force
that is often in the news for less than salutary reasons, this is a
commendable decision. It reinforces the arguments that the flaws of the
federal character principle outweigh its benefits. From Mr. Osayande’s
statement it is clear that what we have today is a Police Force in
which people are promoted not because they are in themselves deserving
but because they come from a part of the country that is deemed to be
due for its quota of members in office.

We can only imagine
the havoc that this system has wreaked on morale within the Police
Force. It is the same system of ‘ethnic entitlement’ that pervades our
political space, when persons are prohibited from contesting for
elective office on the basis of their family origins.

This is not the way
to think in the 21st century. It is not a path that should be followed
by any country that aspires to a position of global leadership in the
world. Originally conceived of as an instrument for redressing
historical imbalances it can become counterproductive and simply serve
as an instrument for sharing positions and enthroning mediocrity,
especially when the other key components of that policy, improving
access to education and opportunity are not vigorously pursued. Federal
character was only intended as part of the means to an end and not the
end itself.

We call on other government bodies to emulate the Nigeria Police
Force. We also urge the National Assembly to take advantage of the
ongoing Constitution review to revisit the federal character clause
reexamine its usefulness and manner of implementation thus far. Whether
for the civil service, or for elective office, we consider the
principle of zoning anachronistic, and most undeserving of retention in
the Nigerian Constitution.