Nigeria Content Online

No number of photo opportunities
between President Goodluck Jonathan and militant leaders from the Niger
Delta can persuade Nigerians that the Movement for the Emancipation of
the Niger Delta (MEND) had no hand in the killings that occurred in
Abuja on Independence Day. It does not really matter if Dokubo Asari
and his fellow militants shake the president’s hand thousands of times
for the cameras. The limited information available to Nigerians,
including the claim of responsibility for the bombings, points to MEND
as the perpetrators.

Prior to the tragic events in Abuja,
MEND was the only organisation in the country that had resorted to
bombings in this way, including in Warri a few months ago at an amnesty
conference organized by Vanguard newspaper. A few hours before
explosions rocked the venue, they issued an advance warning to the
public and accepted responsibility once the bombs had gone off. This
was the same scenario that played itself out in Abuja Oct. 1, with one
important difference – our security services bungled badly, and 16
people paid with their lives for that negligence.

Mr. Jonathan only made things worse
with his hasty and ill-advised decision to exonerate MEND for the crime
committed in Abuja. The perception of the president was too quick on
the draw has not been helped by the accusation made by Henry Okah, a
reputed arms dealer and prominent MEND leader, who claims an aide of
the president wanted him to blame northern politicians for the carnage.
The deep distrust that already exists between the different regions in
this country was further fuelled by Okah’s claims.

Taken together, the statements by both
Mr. Jonathan and Mr. Okah have provoked northern political leaders into
trenchant, at times unrestrained, lambasting of the president. Some
have called for his resignation. Others have gone so far as to threaten
him with impeachment.

The president’s defenders have argued,
weakly, that he didn’t do anything wrong. His aides and political
associates have made vague claims that, by virtue of his position, the
president surely was privy to information that led him to preemptively
proclaim MEND not guilty of the cold-blooded murder of innocents.

And this is the crux of the matter. If
the president does indeed have this sort of information, he has a
responsibility to share it with the rest of us.

We are disappointed, to say the least,
that the president inserted himself so publicly into a criminal
incident before law enforcement authorities even had a chance to
conduct investigations. It is not the president’s place to pronounce on
the guilt or innocence of anyone. That is why we have police, the State
Security Service, and a plethora of other agencies charged with
preventing crime and enforcing the law. All that we require of our
president, in the immediate aftermath of such traumatic events as the
bloody bombings in Abuja on Oct. 1, are words of comfort to the
survivors and their families, reassurance for an anxious public, and a
promise to ensure that law enforcement agencies brought perpetrators to
book.

While the president needlessly opened
himself to the increasingly shrill accusations from his political
opponents, among others, we are dismayed that his most severe critics
also are sounding more like opportunists who have given little thought
to the dangers inherent in the heating up of the political environment.
Our fragile country can ill afford the tensions that have risen so
dramatically in recent days.

The president must act quickly to lower
the temperature. If he has any information that would support his
initial assertion, then he has an obligation to share it with us. But
if, as we suspect, his initial reaction arose more out of panic than
any desire to mislead, then he should address Nigerians forthrightly
about the general insecurity in the land, from sectarian convulsions in
Jos to widespread kidnappings in eastern Nigeria to Boko Haram killings
in the northeast to the violent upheaval in the Niger Delta. He must
put the recent bombings in context for us all and outline the urgent
steps he plans on taking right away to protect life and limb.

Only this kind of honesty will begin to restore some of the confidence that has been lost.

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.

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.

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.

The 2005 “Ig Nobel
Prize” (awarded annually by an organisation called “Improbable
Research”, in recognition of “achievements that first make people
laugh, and then make them think”) for Literature was awarded to “the
Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail
to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions
of readers to a cast of rich characters – General Sani Abacha, Mrs.
Mariam Sanni Abacha,
Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others – each of whom requires just a
small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great
wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share
with the kind person who assists them.”

(Wole Soyinka would
be intrigued, wouldn’t he?) Every time I come across Nigeria in
newspaper articles and blog posts in the international media, a
sizeable amount of the commentary that follows chooses to ignore
whatever the theme of the piece is and insist instead on showing off
their knowledge of Nigeria as the Land of the Rising Scam, amongst many
other ills.

The chapter on
Nigeria in Richard Dowden’s book, ‘Africa, Altered States, Ordinary
Miracles’, begins thus: “Nigeria has a terrible reputation. Tell
someone that you’re going to Nigeria, and if they haven’t been there
themselves, they offer sympathy. Tell anyone who has been to Nigeria,
and they laugh.”

It was this
“terrible reputation” that so riled the Obasanjo administration that it
spent millions of dollars trying to create a new reputation for
Nigeria, as the “Heart of Africa.” (Forget the fact that when many
people think of “Africa” and “Heart”, the next word that comes to mind
is “Darkness”). Obasanjo went on CNN years ago to play the lead actor’s
role in an ad extolling the virtues of the giant of Africa. “Welcome to
Nigeria” (or something like that), he announced.

It is this same
reputation that annoyed Obasanjo that today riles Dora Akunyili,
Minister for Information and Rebranding. So baffled is she by the fact
that no one seems to see Nigeria for what it really is – a great nation
of good people – that she is often to be found singing Songs of
Lamentations at public events.

One imagines that
perhaps there is a conspiracy against Nigeria, and that even Nigerians
are in on it. Everybody who is anybody has weighed in and put forward
his or her own treatise. Journalist Karl Maier’s 2002 book on Nigeria
was titled “This House Has Fallen”. Diplomat John Campbell’s ‘Nigeria’
book (he was US Ambassador to Nigeria from 2004 to 2007), forthcoming
later this year, is titled “Dancing on the Brink.” Not even the CIA is
left out, years ago they announced that Nigeria has an expiry date:
2015. One wonders why they didn’t adjust it to 2014, the year Nigeria
would have been a hundred years old…

The way things are
going; the way Nigeria’s bad reputation is being ruthlessly colonised
by expat writers and journalists and pollsters and international
organisations, I will not have any NEW bad thing to say about Nigeria
in my ‘in-progress’ book – tentatively titled: “Three, Two, One…”
(you get the drift, don’t you?)- about how awful Nigeria is, and how
close it is to imploding / exploding.

Much of this year
my book has come along nicely; Nigeria has provided every ingredient
for what my synopsis (sent to publishers around the world) describes as
“the most pessimistic book ever about any country this side of the Big
Bang”: the country’s admission into the expanded Axis of Evil on the
strength of Farouk AbdulMutallab’s achievements; that most bizarre
constitutional crisis that effectively “uselessed” much of the first
half of the year; the regular as clockwork killings in Jos; the
buffoon-ridden road to Aso Rock, and so on.

My progress is
sadly being threatened by a combination of two things: the immense
international media goodwill Nigeria seems to be enjoying as it clocks
fifty (call it a “ceasefire” if you will; CNN, BBC et al have been
devoting too much time in recent days to “celebrating” the country);
and the sense of excitement that seems to have seized the country’s
citizens as October 1 draws near. For, cynical as they may appear to
be, Nigerians are ‘confirmed’ suckers for hope, and very few are going
to be able to resist the temptation to revel in the year long
merrymaking that will commence in a few days.

My only consolation
is this: that elections are forthcoming. Everyone knows that elections
always bring out the worst in Nigeria and Nigerians. 1964/65, 1983,
1993, 2007 – the pattern is clear: mind boggling rigging and violence
and entertaining dances on the brink.

With that in mind I am actually going to continue writing my book
knowing that if I’m cynical and negative enough I won’t have to alter
one bit after the elections. Hate me all you want, but when my tome
wins the inaugural CIA / John Campbell Prize for Writing on Nigeria,
you’ll be sending me a congratulatory email…

In two days Nigeria
will celebrate fifty years of political independence from Great
Britain. There has been much criticism of the material cost of
celebration as wasteful and excessive. Many say there’s nothing to show
for the golden jubilee by way of a qualitative difference in the
people’s lives, contrary to the promise of independence. A good example
is Dr. Mohammed Salami, a retired permanent secretary, who, at last
week’s Akintola Williams lecture organised by the Nigeria-Britain
Association, urged Britain to withhold or vote against any aid due to
Nigeria because it would not be judiciously spent.

There are those who
say not only is there nothing positive to show, Nigeria, indeed, would
have been better off as a vassal state of Great Britain. One of them is
Dr. Niyi Adedeji, who not only called for continued Britain’s
supervision of Nigeria’s fiscal policies at the same lecture but also
volunteered to provide damaging information about our leaders.

On the other hand
are those who say there’s a lot to thank God for. Nigeria fought a
bitter civil war and has managed to remain one while struggling to
manage its diversity. Nigeria may be small in the eyes of some
Nigerians, but a journey through much of Africa will show that it is
good to be a Nigerian, even as we set our sights on higher grounds.
Nigerians of all ethnicity and religions are distinguishing themselves
in various walks of life. Nigeria may have suffered some reversal of
fortune but she possesses the capacity to be truly the giant of Africa
in many ways.

To be sure the story of Nigeria in the last fifty years is one of mixed blessings.

From the giddy
promise of independence to serve as a beacon of hope to people of
African descent, our leaders enjoyed the grandeur of office without the
matching discipline. Avarice disconnected them from the people, which
ultimately paved way for the military’s misguided foray into
governance. From the painful and destructive civil war to the post war
effort at rehabilitation, reconstruction, and reconciliation; from the
buoyancy of the oil sector and rapid infrastructure development, to the
profligate times when Nigeria’s problem was not how to make money but
spend it; from the days of sporting glory when indigenous effort
boosted the spirit of competition and sports men and women took pride
in representing their country, to the waywardness of sports stars that
prefer to monetise honour, the Nigerian media have been part of the
success and the failure.

The limited success
in building a nation out of many nation-states is as much a consequence
of failed leadership as it is the handiwork of a media more polarised
than professional. Historically, media organs in Nigeria tend to rely
heavily on politicians and public funds in their hegemonic contest for
supremacy. Media reporting is often no more than the extension of the
war of the stomach coloured by ethnicity and religion. Ideas are seldom
bad in themselves in our media without wearing a coloured toga,
especially when they touch on our political livelihood. If the country
has been unable to produce a quality professional group of leaders
because of an absence of consensus on the much needed requirements, the
same is true of the media.

As the media
pitched tents with political parties in the first republic, they
parroted their masters’ voices under military rule when the media were
predominantly state-owned and shamelessly went to bed with the highest
bidder in the second republic.

Today, there is a
discernible parochial pattern in the editorial positions of our media.
Many are not even bothering to reflect some balance in their reporting.
The focus is increasingly on the moment, not the hereafter. So, a major
broadcast network cedes its CEO to an aspirant for party candidacy and
every other candidate barely gets a mention.

When they do it is
with distorted visuals or audio sound. What will happen when the proper
inter party campaign commences? At a time the country should be
searching for quality people to find solutions to our stunted growth,
too much energy is being dissipated on the zonal origin of a candidate
and not the character and content of programmes.

If the new
experiment must succeed the media need to reduce the current hysteria
that dominates much of the reporting and focus more on tomorrow’s
progress that can only come from the lessons of the past. The fresh
effort at building democratic governance can turn round things for the
better if we rid our sights of myopia.

We note the ongoing
efforts of our new political umpires to succeed where others have
failed. We urge for more vigilance to ensure they are in tandem with
the national assignment. As the parties search for their candidates,
the media must challenge them to demonstrate clearer vision that they
can do things better than those they seek to replace.

The general public must show greater sensitivity to the issues that
define their existence by going beyond clichés and demanding relevant
programmes and greater commitment to service from the candidates.

Very few novels make clear and provocative arguments about
American life anymore, but Jonathan Franzen’s important new book, “Freedom,”
makes at least two.

First, he argues that American culture is over-obsessed with
personal freedom.

Second, he portrays an America where people are unhappy and
spiritually stunted.

Many of his characters live truncated lives. There’s a woman who
“had formerly been active with the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) in
Madison and was now very active in the craze for Beaujolais nouveau.” There are
people who devote their moral energies to the cause of sensitive
gentrification. One of the “heroes” experiences great fits of righteous outrage
when drivers ahead of him change lanes without the proper turn signals.

The central male character, Walter, is good but pushover-nice
and pathetically naive. His bad-boy rival, Richard, is a middle-age guy who
makes wryly titled rock albums and builds luxury decks to make ends meet. He is
supposed to represent the cool, dangerous side of life, but he’s strictly
Dionysus-lite.

One of the first things we learn about Patty, the woman who
can’t decide between them, is that she is unable to make a moral judgment. She
invests her vestigial longings into the cause of trying to build a perfect home
and family, and when domesticity can’t bear the load she imposes, she falls
into a chaos of indistinct impulses.

In a smart, though overly biting, review in The Atlantic, B.R.
Myers protests against Franzen’s willingness to “create a world in which nothing
important can happen.” Myers protests against the casual and adolescent
language Franzen sometimes uses to create his world: “There is no import in
things that ‘suck,’ no drama in someone’s being ‘into’ someone else.” The
result, Myers charges, “is a 576-page monument to insignificance.”

But surely this is Franzen’s point. At a few major moments, he
compares his characters to the ones in “War and Peace.” Franzen is obviously
trying to make us see the tremendous difference in scope between the two sets
of characters.

Tolstoy’s characters are spiritually ambitious – ferociously
seeking some universal truth that can withstand the tough scrutiny of their own
intelligence. Franzen’s modern characters are distracted and hopeless. It’s
easy to admire Pierre and Prince Andrei. It’s impossible to look upon Walter
and Richard with admiration, though it is possible to feel empathy for them.

“Freedom” is not Great Souls Seeking Important Truth. It’s a
portrait of an America where the important, honest, fundamental things are
being destroyed or built over – and people are left to fumble about, not even
aware of what they have lost.

“Freedom” sucks you in with its shrewd observations and the
ambitious breadth. It’ll launch a thousand book club discussions around the
same questions: Is this book true? Is America really the way he portrays it?

My own answer, for what it’s worth, is that “Freedom” tells us
more about America’s literary culture than about America itself.

Sometime long ago, a writer by the side of Walden Pond decided
that middle-class Americans may seem happy and successful on the outside, but
deep down they are leading lives of quiet desperation. This message caught on
(it’s flattering to writers and other dissidents), and it became the basis of
nearly every depiction of small-town and suburban America since. If you judged
by American literature, there are no happy people in the suburbs, and certainly
no fulfilled ones.

By now, writers have become trapped in the confines of this
orthodoxy. So even a writer as talented as Franzen has apt descriptions of
neighborhood cattiness and self-medicating housewives, but ignores anything
that might complicate the Quiet Desperation dogma. There’s almost no religion. There’s
very little about the world of work and enterprise.

There’s an absence of ethnic heritage, military service,
technical innovation, scientific research or anything else potentially lofty
and ennobling.

Richard is an artist, but we don’t really see the artist’s
commitment to his craft. Patty is an athlete, but we don’t really see the team
camaraderie that is the best of sport.

The political world is caricatured worst of all. The
environmentalists talk like the snobbish cartoons of Glenn Beck’s imagination.
The Republicans talk like the warmonger cartoons of Michael Moore’s.

The serious parts of life get lopped off and readers have to
stoop to inhabit a low-ceilinged world. Everyone gets to feel superior to the
characters they are reading about (always pleasant in a society famously
anxious about status), but there’s something missing.

Social critics from Thoreau to Allan Bloom to the SDS authors of
The Port Huron Statement also made critiques about the flatness of bourgeois
life, but at least they tried to induce their readers to long for serious
things. “Freedom” is a brilliantly written book that is nonetheless trapped in
an intellectual cul de sac – overly gimlet-eyed about American life and lacking
an alternative vision of higher ground.

© 2010 New York Times News
Service

On Friday, the
government of the United States took Nigeria off its list of major drug
traffickers where its National Drug Law Enforcement Agency had first
placed this country in 1991, during the administration of President
Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida.

According to the
NDLEA, the president of the United States acknowledges that, though our
country used to be a focal point for the global drug trade, it has
taken a number of bold steps to fundamentally alter that state of
affairs, making counter narcotics a major national security issue.

According to the
report, Nigeria, Brazil, and Paraguay were recently removed this year
from the list because they no longer meet the criteria for placement
according to US law. Indeed, for many years, Nigeria was at the centre
of a narcotics trade that transcends national boundaries.

The government has
got this impressive result based on a mixture of imaginative measures
including drug interdiction; effectively blocking off exit entry
points, relentlessly pursuing drug barons and dealing with this problem
with an admirable dispatch and professionalism.

Reacting, Ahmadu
Giade, the Chief Executive of the NDLEA, claimed credit for his bureau
– as he should. In news reports almost daily, there is a steady stream
of information about drugs seized at airports, in aircraft and in other
hideouts. Evidently, the anti-narcotics squad has been working steadily
-this result is not some accident or stroke of good luck; it is the
culmination of consistent and committed efforts towards engaging this
problem.

It brings to mind
something Nigerians do forget – that a lot has changed in Nigeria. At
times of frustration, certain Nigerians – understandably – begin to cry
for the ‘good old days’ of military rule. And there are indices that
can encourage such thinking – certainly the naira, for instance, was
stronger in years past. And the economy was on much surer footing.

However, it is
easy to forget just how bad it was, just how much of a pariah nation
our country had become, and how there was a near breakdown of law and
order. Drug trafficking, the near-industrialisation of advanced fee
fraud and forgery (including, for instance, the evolution of places
like the Lagos centre of forgery called Oluwole or the rise of
counterfeit products in Aba) are living examples.

All of this went
largely unchecked because the country was held hostage by a revolving
door of bandits who found little to fear from the country’s law
enforcement agencies, and managed to confound international crime
detectors too because of the ease with which they operated here.

All that changed
with democracy – one of its consequences being the opening of the civil
space, and the response to the needs of the populace as well as concern
for the country’s place in the comity of nations. The consequence of
this is that successive governments especially – and to his credit –
that of Olusegun Obasanjo – began to aggressively tackle this problem
with the establishment of new anti-corruption agencies, as well
attention to as the importance of transparency and the rule of law.
Above all, giving true authority to the agencies fighting these crimes
helped in no small way.

In addition to
this, there is the transparent fact that with democracy has come the
renewed flourishing of enterprise. New industries have grown – from
telecoms to entertainment – that have ensured viable alternatives for
creative hands. It might not be enough and there is still a whole lot
to be done, but there has been appreciable growth.

This news give us
a certain re-assurance, that though our politicians continue to fail
and that some of those given charge of the commanding heights of the
economy continue to abuse our trust, there are certain bright spots
where dedication and a concrete vision can make change happen.

As Mr. Giade said, “It is a call to duty that demands higher commitment on our part.”