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“But they were ready before you!” Snapped my father angrily,
early on March, 6, 1957.

I had innocently asked: “But Dad, why did the Gold Coast get
independence before us?” There are two tiny sovereign nations, Benin and Togo,
hanging like strips of spaghetti on the map between Ghana and Nigeria. Yet,
Nigerians feel their real neighbours are Ghana. A bonding factor of colonial
experience in the way we relate to other nationals is pervasive. So, we compare
and measure ourselves with Ghana all the time – in politics and economics,
football and highlife music, education and fashion, cocoa and now oil. Luckily,
it has been healthy rivalry tinged with mutual respect, unlike the state of
affairs with our brothers to the east. Nigeria and Cameroon nearly went to war
over the Bakassi peninsula, even though ethnographically, we are closer to
Cameroon than to Ghana.

I sometimes ask what matrix or criteria are used in measuring
the Ghana-Nigeria competition, but all I hear is a savage rebuke: “Go to Ghana
and see!” Clearly, we live in a comparative world. Physics, biology, geography
and many more subjects have their comparative modules. Every life process is
compared with the other. Yet, in most cases, there is no linearity, no
parameter applied in arriving at judgmental conclusions. Our world subsists on
subjectivity, parochialism, unnecessary competition and naked prejudice.

Meeting the Queen

James Robertson replaced John Macpherson at the Marina as the
ruler of Nigeria, and had the honour of welcoming Queen Elizabeth II to Lagos.
I’ve never seen a human with a head as massive as the new governor-general’s.
He looked like an ox, and I almost ran away in horror the day he visited our
school.

Queen Elizabeth II stepped out to be confronted by the
regimental band of the Nigerian Army that could not have looked smarter and
more professional. They smashed out God Save the Queen, before advancing
through a series of Prussian martial tunes on to the lilting Blue Bells of
Scotland and the melodious Old Calabar. It was a sunny day. A broad Union Jack,
one of the most beautiful flags in the world, fluttered gracefully in the sea
breeze of Lagos. The impressive Royal Yacht Britannia bobbed and bubbled on
anchor in the murky waters of Lagos harbour.

Elizabeth’s visit in 1956 was not the first by a royal to
Nigeria. Her uncle, Edward, the Prince of Wales, was here for a week in April,
1925. I heard stories about him from my parents that he was handsome. They did
not tell me about the king’s huge appetite for married women. There was genuine
fear in England that he was going to turn Buckingham Palace into a brothel.
Eventually, Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 after just one year on the throne,
when the British government objected to his marrying Wallis Simpson, an American
divorcee. She had two living ex-husbands! My mother thought it was great and
gallant for a king to leave his throne in order to marry the woman he loved. My
father just shrugged and withheld his opinion. I asked to know what a
“divorcee” was, but got slapped down by my parents.

What didn’t we see in the way of automobiles during the Queen’s
visit – Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Armstrong-Siddeley, Austin Princess and Daimler!
A Roll-Royce epitomises everything that imperial splendour and authority
represents – silence, reverence, dignity, austerity and quality. But of all the
cars I saw in colonial Nigeria, none impressed me more than the Humber Super
Snipe.

I’ve not seen one again since 1953. A shame the British car
industry doesn’t exist anymore! In her farewell speech, the embryonic Nigerian
Army was re-christened the Queens’s Own Nigeria Regiment by Elizabeth herself.
They were terrific when it came to ceremonial occasions; the soldiers all the
same height – slim, very dark, with slightly bowed legs. Each soldier looked
like the twin of the subaltern next to him. The regiment, in heavily-starched
Bermuda shorts, marched in step like mechanised toys. Not a single Nigerian
soldier at ceremonial parades in those days had a pot belly balanced on K-legs.

“Regiment,” which insinuates command subsidiarity or a component
of a larger unit, attracted criticism in Nigeria. The army of an independent
Nigeria was not going to be something like the Scottish or Welsh Regiment
within the UK armed forces. So, a change was effected to the Royal Nigeria Army
(RNA) under the last British commander, Major-General Welby-Everard.

I hear it said now and again that the most efficient black
soldier is the one commanded by a white officer? True or false, this naïve
belief could have contributed to the downfall of Nkrumah and Abubakar Tafawa
Balewa. One cardinal error the two men made was to retain their British chiefs
of staff, well into independence.

Despite open warnings from Tawia Adamafio in Ghana and Azikiwe
in Nigeria,

Major-Generals Alexander and Welby-Everard remained in charge of
the Ghana and Nigeria armies until 1961 and 1965 respectively. The two Britons
could not have done a good job. Once they left, the armies rebelled!

Champion of the world

“They said that Bassey has knocked him down! The commentator
said the man has got up! I’m not sure what they’re saying now. Eh-hem, now they
said the man is bleeding from the nose. I think the referee is stopping the
fight!” We didn’t wait for a confirmation, screaming, hugging one another, jumping
about like kangaroos. It had been a live commentary of the live commentary on
the night of June 24, 1957 at Uyo.

Our small, robust radio set was never loud enough. Someone, a
second commentator, had to stick an ear close enough to it for better audio,
and then translate the actual commentary to the rest of us. Over 50 people
crowded around this unreliable radio set on that night at the hall of the TTC,
the Teacher’s Training College.

Nigeria’s Hogan Bassey was fighting Cherif Hamia, the French
Algerian for the Featherweight Championship of the World in Paris. Tears still
well into my eyes today when I recall the Daily Times front-page headline of
the next morning that simply read, “Hogan Bassey, Champion of the World!” The
1950s were the golden period for black people in international sports. To my
generation of Nigerians, sports remain the ethos around which our lives are
built. When, in 1958, I returned from the interview for admission into Umuahia
Government College, my father was waiting anxiously, pacing about like a caged
lion on the platform at Aba Railway Station.

“So, how did it go? What questions did they ask you?” I told him
there were three white men:

the principal, Mr. Wareham; Mr. Wilson and Mr. Garrod. After
they confirmed my name, place and date of birth, Mr. Wareham began seriously,
that he had heard I played cricket, and did I know cricket was played at
Umuahia College? Would I continue to play if admitted? It was like a crown
counsel cross-examining a criminal. I answered the questions timidly, but in
the affirmative. The three men looked at each other, and then asked me to call
the next candidate. It had been such a brief encounter I thought something had
gone wrong, and these white men didn’t want to waste their time with me. On the
short train ride from Umuahia to Aba, I sat somewhat dejected.

“Ahhh,” concluded my father, “then you’ve passed!” How? It was
in 1952, when my father was at University College, London and he sent two
cricket bats, a ball and some linseed oil to condition the bats, through the
district officer of Owerri, Mr. Mann to my brother and me. It resulted from a
letter my mother wrote to him that we used the branches of coconut trees for a
bat, and old tennis balls to play cricket. My brother got into Umuahia in 1954 and
was regular in the first team by 1958. The news about a younger brother, still
in primary school, who could use a cricket bat, had filtered into the school.

I kept a scrap book in which sports clippings from the Daily
Times, the West African Pilot, the overseas Daily Mirror and Illustrated London
News were stuck. There is no doubt in my mind over who qualifies to be the most
celebrated Nigerian footballer of all time – Teslim Balogun! He was, simply,
Thunder Balogun to everyone and for a striker to bear such a frightening name
speaks volumes of his exploits, and how goal-keepers must have suffered.

Three important landmark records made the 1950s memorable for me: that West
Indian side with Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott beat England
in a cricket test series, winning at Lords, the cricket citadel; Brazil won the
football Jules Rimet trophy ( the FIFA World Cup) in 1958. There were black
players in their team – Pele, Didi, Djalma Santos and Garrincha. In the same
year, the West Indian, Garry Sobers set a world batting record of 365 not out
against Pakistan. It was a wonderful decade!

This is one endgame that is nowhere near the end.
Laurent Gbagbo continues to stubbornly hold on to power, despite no
longer being in control of the country — the area he currently ‘rules’
over is reportedly restricted to the grounds of the presidential
palace. Meanwhile, the dead bodies are piling up — late last week,
humanitarian agencies found tens of bodies of victims of mass killings
— and looters and bandits roam the streets of Abidjan unchallenged.

The French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, has
described Mr. Gbagbo’s continued hold on power as “absurd”. There are
many, including us, who share this view. But equally absurd is the
relative silence from the African regional bodies, AU and ECOWAS,
regarding this crisis.

Two weeks ago, ECOWAS, during the 39th Ordinary
Summit of its Heads of States and Government, issued Resolution
A/RES.1/03/11, which stated that “in the event that Mr. Gbagbo fails to
heed (the) immutable demand of ECOWAS (to hand over power), the
Community would be left with no alternative but to take other measures,
including the use of legitimate force, to achieve the goals of the
Ivorien people.”

Any keen observer of ECOWAS would have since
realised that it is no more than a serial issuer of ‘Decisions’,
‘Resolutions’ and press releases, none of which should be taken
seriously. Indeed, only last week, it issued a press statement
“[urging] Mr. Gbagbo once again to consider the greater interest of the
Ivorian Nation…”

This, coming two weeks after “recognizing that the
crisis in Cote d’Ivoire has now become a regional humanitarian
emergency”, and after vowing that it “would be left with no alternative
but to take other measures, including the use of legitimate force”, is
absurd.

Even the Resolution A/RES.1/03/11 that contains
the threat of military intervention, quickly lapses into an evasive
tone, characterised by a series of “requests”, “directs”, “urges” and
“invites” aimed at the United Nations Security Council, the African
Union Commission, and the president of the ECOWAS Commission. ECOWAS,
it seems, has now gone back to sleep, leaving the UN and French troops
to provide a semblance of security, and to prevent the country from
totally falling apart.

Waiting for the situation to resolve itself is no longer an option, but ECOWAS doesn’t seem to have realised this.

An Ouattara spokesperson has been quoted as
saying: “Mr. Gbagbo has nothing left. His arsenal is gone. His army has
evaporated. How much longer can he last?” What history, however,
teaches is that an African strongman who believes that power belongs to
him should never be underestimated. He will go to any length to ensure
his wishes. It matters little that he was once a professor of history
(with a doctorate from a French University) and one-time opposition
activist like Mr. Gbagbo, or the survivor of colonial oppression and
holder of several academic degrees like Robert Mugabe.

This, tragically, seems to be the defining story of Africa’s
leadership — revolutionaries who in the end become monsters requiring a
revolution to dethrone. Mr. Gbagbo’s actions reveal a man bent on
ensuring that his country does not outlast his reign as president. Up
north is Muammar Gaddafi, who has kept Libya in the news for all the
wrong reasons for well over a month. These men, having not only failed
the continent, but also been rejected by their people, take refuge in a
mindless, stubborn refusal to acknowledge and face reality. But when
the story of this moment in history is told, the list of those who
failed the continent will include all powerbrokers who sat and watched
with folded arms. ECOWAS, led by Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan, will be
at the top of this list. Unless it wakes up now, and moves to provide
urgent military and humanitarian intervention in Cote d’Ivoire.

It’s possible that
the Independent National Electoral Commission Chair, Attahiru Jega,
thinks that with a ‘seasoned media professional’ as his spokesperson,
he needn’t bother too much about dealing with the media or getting his
message across to the public. At least, apart from the big ticket items
like postponing elections and saying, ‘Sorry’.

That would be a mistake.

That, at least,
was my conclusion as I watched his spokesperson evading a reporter’s
question about whether rumours that Jega had resigned were true.
Instead of giving a straight answer, Kayode Idowu just kept smirkingly
repeating: “We don’t respond to rumours.” That assertion was of course
(and necessarily) at variance with the actuality: INEC had to come out
and reaffirm that National Assembly elections would indeed be held in
Lagos on April 9 in direct response to rumours that they would not. And
with the announcement that elections will now not be held in three
Federal Constituencies in Lagos State, among some 63 National Assembly
elections nationwide, it is fair to conclude that there was some truth
in those rumours.

Perhaps the gap on
INEC’s media front explains why the postponement and apology press
statements have been so badly handled. Surely, media experts ought to
have advised Jega that a press statement of the nature he made at high
noon on Saturday April 2, would either have to be supported by a
detailed technical briefing by other INEC National Commissioners, or be
followed by a question and answer session?

That, in turn, might have encouraged someone at the commission to anticipate the kind of questions that might arise.

As it is, one is
left with the distinct impression that at each stage, INEC is not quite
thinking it through, and that this, at least as much as the vital
business of clearing up the mess, is why its Chairman hurries away from
press conferences, only to try to deal with some questions that ought
to have been answered at the previous briefing when he comes to the
next. For example, why ballot papers full of mistakes were again
produced. Having consistently argued that the key to INEC’s success
will be transparency, transparency, transparency, including showing
parties what ballot papers will contain before printing them, this
writer naturally rejects the suggestion that such unnecessary secrecy
is conducive to security.

Simple questions
INEC might have anticipated at the first postponement conference and
which remain valid include: whether the commission has a means of
directly communicating with its officials in the field, and if so, why
it didn’t appear to be working and whether it will be working for
future elections in the cycle.

With the second
statement further postponing the National Assembly elections to
Saturday, April 9, this time (thankfully) coming before we got all
dressed up again with no place to go, the obvious question, which
remains valid, would have been why the whole timetable was being pushed
forward. Why couldn’t the April 9 Presidential election go ahead as
scheduled? Certainly, with the further postponement of some National
Assembly elections to April 26, suggestions that INEC would not be able
to cope with conducting three elections (President, Senate and House of
Representatives) at the same time sound particularly hollow, since some
areas will now have to hold four elections (Governor, State House of
Assembly, Senate and House of Representatives) on the same Easter
Tuesday! Again, while holding the National Assembly elections first
might have been justifiable when time was not so tight, we must now
bear in mind that it is the newly-elected and sworn-in President who
inaugurates the National Assembly, but that he must be in place by May
29. What happens if there has to be a run-off election? Or two? With
governors also subject to possible run-off elections but bound by the
same May 29 deadline, what is the thinking behind pushing their own
election forward to April 26, particularly when the courts have struck
down the National Assembly’s attempt to fix the order of elections?

At times like
this, Nigerians tend to resort to the French language, what with voters
being urged to come out en masse hoping that voting materials that were
en route will have arrived in time.

But the French
expression that I’m hoping will tell the story is réculer pour mieux
sauter. It’s what jumpers do: they go right up to the take-off board,
but instead of jumping immediately, draw back for a long run-in so that
they can make a much better jump. As Salomé probably said the next
morning: I have no use for this man’s head! But by the time of reading,
with so much chicanery already exposed, we’ll know whether Jega has
indeed been able to make a better jump.

There’s been no
shortage of text messages in a bid to sway us one way or another; many
forward these messages as if their lives depended on them. Maybe! So,
should one cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face? In wanting
something, should one deprive oneself of even more benefits for the
sake of what one seeks to achieve? And this is so crucial to the
overall success of the elections, including its overall aim, which is
to bring development to the people via the combined effort of all arms
of government.

Are we forgetting
that this is participatory democracy? How effective will the governor
of any state be, if he is the only one elected from his party without
other party members getting any elective office? What type of
government would that governor form? Would he always be able to call
the bluff of hostile non-party members of his administration? Or can we
hope as we have recently seen, that once elections are done and won,
all other elected members of government who are not of the same party
as the governor, will defect to the party of the ruling governor, to
make everyone’s life easier in the state and truly develop the state?
This logic is warped.

Don’t forget that
there are three arms of government; none can be efficient without the
other. Will a governor get co-operation from a hostile State House of
Assembly for instance? Have we not witnessed how a state’s legislature
can hold any governor to ransom, just to fulfill some inordinate
desires? Have we not seen a State House of Assembly closed for so many
months in a state where both the executive and legislators were/are of
the same party? What manner of relationship could we then hope for
where legislators and executors are from opposing camps?

Nevertheless, one
totally understands why these people are jittery: they rationalise that
since a party’s leadership decided to ‘impose’ candidates and
admittedly so, then the people also have a right to NOT vote for those
seemingly selected and imposed. The illogical argument conveniently
forgets that Babatunde Fashola himself was imposed ab initio by this
same party; so why are they now insisting on backing this old “imposed”
and not the new? If it is because they feel Governor Fashola has
‘performed’ so well to justify a second term, how do they know that the
new set of people imposed by the same party, won’t do as well or
better? After all, if the party got it right with Mr.Fashola, why can’t
the party also get it right for the leader’s wife, son or in-law? Is
one less efficient because one is related to the boss?

I suppose that is
why Mr. Fashola’s fans are behaving as if he is an independent
candidate. They even recommend what party to vote for in place of ACN.
But think about how this democracy works for a minute: ours is not
built on the collective will of the elected to do good things or
deliver dividends, as we say locally. How will Mr. Fashola push his
manifesto without his party’s elected? Ours is not an environment where
politicking stops and governance begins; the difference is blurred. Our
politicians NEVER allow the politics to end, never mind beginning the
process of governing. In fact, if a party’s candidate is elected as
governor, after displacing an incumbent whose party has majority seats
in the State Assembly, the new governor will know no peace.

Assemblymen often
see it as their duty to rile the chief executive of a state, especially
if he is not from their party. And the truth is, if they have a good
relationship with the governor, people will say they’ve been bought
over; If they don’t, the governor’s camp will say members of the
Assembly don’t want progress for the state, and are ‘only’ being
selfishly hostile to the executive because they want some goodies.

We’ve even seen states where the governor’s opponents from within
his party, don’t want him to achieve anything even if it affects their
party’s fortunes in providing deliverables. If a governor and president
for that matter can be so opposed from within their own camps, is it
another party that will embrace them more? If one votes Mr. Fashola
alone from the ACN, then members of other political parties to the
National and State Assemblies, will the governor enjoy support
unhindered by party differences? Will they all look beyond party
affiliation and agree to Mr. Fashola’s ideas especially if the ideas
are good? Or will they choose, after winning, to play politics with
people’s lives?

It seems only a
matter of days before Laurent Gbagbo, usurper of the office of
President of Cote d’Ivoire, ceases to be president of the bunker which
he inhabits below the grounds of the Presidential Palace in Abidjan.
His has been a tragic decline: a history professor who struck a blow
for competitive and peaceful alternatives to presidential office
running against Cote d’Ivoire’s first president himself, the late
Houphouet-Boigny in 1990; then, ruler of Cote d’Ivoire throughout the
2000s; today, a presidential usurper in control of a solitary
underground bunker. The arc of his transformation from socialist
democrat to a tyrannical African ‘strong man’, sowing dissension, death
and disease in the thousands among poor Ivoriens, is an extreme example
of the cancerous lust for perpetual power to which too many rulers have
succumbed in history. We can begin to ponder the significance of his
impending departure, with the timely assistance of the former colonial
power, France, and the United Nations.

There are three
striking features about the path to Gbagbo’s defeat. The first is that
bravery of urban masses gets results, albeit at a terrible human cost.
Cote d’Ivoire has wallowed in misery and humanitarian crisis since
2000. So has Zimbabwe. Ivoriens are about to see the back of the leader
who reigned throughout that crisis. No one knows if Robert Mugabe,
another person notorious for disseminating the virus of economic
collapse and civil dissension, will ever leave office. Why the
difference in fates? One reason has to be that the Ivorien masses have
been willing to face martyrdom in challenging Mr. Gbagbo. More people
seem to have been killed in Abidjan by the army since the November 2010
elections than in Harare in a decade.

Think of the march
of mothers shot in cold blood in Abidjan a few weeks ago, for example.
I realise that many Zimbabweans have been tortured, beaten and maimed
since the emergence of the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe.
Yet, somehow, my impression is that President Mugabe has been far more
successful in cowing urban protests than any Ivorian leader, military
or civilian. He has had a far more congenial regional setting in which
to handle his opponents than Mr. Gbagbo.

Burkina Faso has
been a strong supporter of Ivoriens opposed to Mr. Gbagbo. It may be
that the presence of so many Ivorien relatives of the Burkinabe people
forced the Burkinabe government to support steadfastly Mr. Gbagbo’s
opponents. By contrast, Zimbabwe does not seem to have harboured as
many descendants of immigrants from its neighbours. Whatever the
reason, there can be no denying that, other than Botswana, no southern
African country has provided strong support for Morgan Tsvangirai and
his supporters. In turn, that absence of powerful regional support
might have cooled the willingness of urban Zimbabweans to defy openly,
at huge personal cost, Mr. Mugabe and his ruling party.

It is no easy feat
for unarmed civilians to face armed men. Thus, I cannot condemn any
person for refusing to take the risk of losing his or her life in
Zimbabwe. But, it does seem that the shedding of the blood of unarmed
people by a government or its armed supporters is much more likely to
precipitate intervention on the side of the protestors than furtive
resistance. I salute the bravery of the Ivorien people.

The second
noteworthy feature is the unanimous support for a democratic electorate
process and outcome exhibited by ECOWAS and the West African peoples.
They did not waver for one moment in rejecting the so-called African
solution of “unity governments” so beloved of Eastern and Southern
Africans, enabling losers to cohabit with victors. West Africans have
set a powerful example for other parts of Africa about the appropriate
reaction to electoral theft. Nigeria’s position, in particular, calls
for praise. If Goodluck Jonathan had waffled in his condemnation of Mr.
Gbagbo’s behaviour, it would have been much more difficult to present a
unified West African response.

The third feature is the limited power an African ruler unable to
print his own currency has in tough times. Mr. Gbagbo was denied the
weapon of a hyperinflationary tax of printing new currency because Cote
d’Ivoire uses a regional currency. Mr. Mugabe used that weapon to
deadly effect against his people. Regional currencies and regional
central banks curb the powers of national rulers. Time will tell
whether Alassane Ouattara is the statesman for which Cote d’Ivoire is
crying. Mr. Gbagbo was no statesman. Good riddance!