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When dirty linen
is left unattended for so long that it becomes aromatic, it doesn’t
help to insist that your private washing efforts are working: everybody
can smell that they aren’t; nor is there any point quarrelling with
neighbours for holding their noses when they pass your house. After
all, the unfortunates actually living in the house have been gasping
for air for years!

Such were my
thoughts as I pondered the response of the Nigeria Police Force to the
report by the US-based non-governmental organisation, Human Rights
Watch: “Everyone’s in on the Game.” (Apologies are due for seeming to
notice the problem only because a Western NGO has discussed it, but my
concern here is the response by those whose conduct is under scrutiny.
The sad reality is that reactions to the work of Nigerian NGOs – e.g.
the report on checkpoint extortion in the south-east by Intersociety –
are usually either more nonchalant, or given far less media coverage
than reactions to work by their overseas counterparts.)

Force
spokesperson, Emeka Ojukwu, recited the expected party line of
criticising the report and giving numbers of police personnel
‘sanctioned’: 764 senior officers and 8,831 junior officers for
“various acts of indiscipline”.

The trouble is,
that even assuming that “acts of indiscipline” includes checkpoint
extortion (rather than, for example, resisting sexual harassment by a
squadron commander, as Corporal Emcy Munlip is presently experiencing)
no matter how many policemen officers are dismissed for mounting
‘toll-gates’, on any single inter-city journey in this country, you
will still come across checkpoints at which bribes are openly,
routinely and efficiently collected, particularly from public transport
vehicles. This alone tells every person who sees them – from
wearily-conditioned citizens to shocked open-mouthed foreigners – that
those who were sanctioned must have done something more than- ordinary
checkpoint extortion. Moreover, when many checkpoints on ‘expressways’
are semi-permanent installations with logs, spiked bars and big oil
drums, there cannot be any pretence that what is going on is ‘unknown’
to the police hierarchy.

HRW suggested, as
many have before, that the NPF’s X-Squad must be revamped. Without
this, and expansion of the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission’s
‘sting’ operations, it will be difficult to take official protestations
seriously, since for even a half-hearted anti-corruption effort on
checkpoint extortion, catching offenders should be like shooting fish
in a barrel.

Against the
angrily defensive police response, it’s easy to forget that the
personal anecdotes in HRW’s report are what ordinary Nigerians go
through every day. Although the NPF dismissed the report, saying it
“lacked merit and should not be relied on”, nobody reading the
experiences it details can doubt their authenticity. An ear at any of
the Network on Police Reform in Nigeria and Human Rights Commission’s
Public Tribunals on Police Abuse will unearth stories as bad as, or
worse than those in HRW’s report. Even the ‘biggest’ man in the country
will have had someone ask for help with similar scenarios: seeking
either intercession with the police, or money with which to pay their
way out of (often unjustified) trouble.

The reality for
many is that it is indeed only with money, connections or influence
that they can extricate themselves from police wahala. Our congested
prisons are full of people who had neither. The NPF may genuinely
aspire to “maintain an effective internal control mechanism to check
abuses of human rights or professional misconduct”, but the case of
young Comfort Monday, who recently gave birth in prison after being
incarcerated at the instance of the man who claims to have purchased
her, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to those who can’t
pay, arrested at the behest of those who can.

Only the rich or
famous should expect any different treatment, and possibly not even
then: after all, an attorney-general of the federation was gunned down
in his bedroom and “nothing happened”. But the NPF must know that even
if today, it begins to show a serious commitment to the lives and
security of every Nigerian, it cannot succeed without the support of
ordinary people.

And right now, few
ordinary citizens feel that their security is a police priority, or
that the police are on their side; not because HRW tells them, but
because that is their experience.

For this reason,
the arrest in Lagos of a couple alleged to have killed their young
houseboy, Emmanuel Azuka (perhaps they chose not to ‘spare the rod’ in
order not ‘to spoil the child’) is at least as important as the song
and dance being made about arresting a couple of technicians just
because a rich man got stuck in a lift. With disturbing questions
raised about police power to protect or to oppress being available to
those who can pay for it, it will be important for any genuine effort
to bring ordinary people onside, to see who ends up getting justice. Of
course, ‘everymen’ Celestine Ononobi and Moses Oluremi, suspects in the
‘attempted murder by elevator’ case aren’t pregnant teenage girls, so
we may not hear much more about them. But what about the trial and
verdict over ‘everyboy’ Azuka’s death?

We’ll be watching and waiting.

I
suppose that in order to eat meat and really enjoy doing so, many meat
eaters have to disconnect their minds from certain parts of the process
of choosing, killing, skinning and cutting up an animal.

That
has not always been possible. Even now, there are many people who just
go out, kill what they want to eat, and think nothing more about it.

Up
until about three years ago, you were considered with some degree of
disdain if you bought a chicken from Calabar’s Watt market and hung
around waiting to pay someone to kill it for you: Every well brought up
woman should know how to slaughter a chicken.

I
am the sort of person I’m talking about – the sort that glares down the
middle of a bone in the secrecy of her home, behind closed doors and
windows, sometimes armed with a knife, frustrated that the marrow won’t
detach with even the most fervent and unabashed sucking.

What
is that humbling thought that brings me to my senses? That makes me
give up my frustrated gagging over a piece of animal fat? The
realisation that I am actually sucking on an animal’s bone, and that it
is disrespectful to expect that like some baked biscuit that has had
its aesthetics and conveniences of eating considered, the animal’s
bones should make its marrows easily available for effective and avid
sucking.

The
animal was minding its own business after all. Going about its life
when someone dragged it away, slaughtered it and arranged it for sale
and did so in a way that I would not be reminded of death and pain and
open arteries and gushing blood. Wrapped it up nicely in cellophane and
stuck a supermarket name on it.

I have never killed my meat, and I am a coward. I never will.

It
is becoming fashionable among TV chefs to demand that their audiences
face the reality of what they are eating. It might actually do them
some good to understand keenly that an animal died to satisfy their
appetite. They must look the animal in the eye, take its life,
decapitate and dismember it, or they should have no right to eat it.

If this rule were applied, I would be the first person to stop eating meat.

My
neighbour Andrew Dunn is the Nigerian Country Director for the Wildlife
Conservation Society. He is a meat eater by the way. It was from him
that I first heard the story of Pierfrancesco Micheloni, some surely
eccentric Italian who follows migrating swallows from Europe all the
way to Ebbaken, Boje in Cross River State and back.

Pierfrancesco
is a birder and a conservationist who oversees three million roosting
barn swallows who fly thousands and thousands of miles every year from
Belgium, Spain, Italy, France and even Croatia to spend their winters
in the forests of Ebbaken. The British barn swallow (which overwinters
in South Africa) stops off to fatten up in Ebbaken before braving the
Sahara Desert crossing. It is incredible that a barn swallow would fly
that far, about 200 miles a day, over deserts and oceans, facing death
by storms and hunger, with no guarantee of making its destination. The
facts of this sort of migration are just amazing.

There
is something tragically comical about then imagining some Boki hunter,
without any inkling of how far the swallow has flown, finding his way
through the forest, whistling to himself, his stomach rumbling in
expectation of his dinner of foreign birds. It isn’t funny at all
actually. But every sincere meat eating Nigerian might laugh because we
know what we say and think about eccentric white men bothering
themselves about bush meat and other such things.

But
in our heart of hearts there must be some niggling about the sacredness
of life especially when we are presented with the details of how that
life is expressed.

Cross
River Gorillas are almost extinct. There are about three hundred of
them living between Cross River and Cameroun. But, if one goes to Amana
market situated between Ikom and Obudu, one can buy gorilla meat,
elephant and chimpanzee. If one finds elephant meat, it will most
likely have been killed by ivory hunters, who might have made a present
of the rest of the animal to a village near where it was killed.

The
layman’s rule of conservation is that people should not eat forest
animals or primates. Even pythons, that we love to hate, are
endangered. Porcupines, grass cutters, snails and many other available
rodents are the quick breeding alternatives.

Between
November and December 2007, Ebbaken locals killed thirty thousand
swallows for food, but since then and because of Pierfrancesco’s
initiative and the locals’ goodwill, the barn swallow’s place in the
world is secure for now.

But
of course that is not the end of the story, because vegetarians and
vegans and animal rights people will tell us that if we dare worry
about swallows and gorillas then we have a moral obligation to worry
about goats and cows and bush rats and crickets and rain termites and
the debate will go on and on until we are all forced to give up meat
altogether.

One step at a time is my suggestion. Some people will never give up
eating meat (“as surely as Adam and Eve were given dominion!”). Some
people believe it is “UnNigerian” to empathise with the life and pain
of animals. Some people believe that they need to eat meat to stay
healthy and some eat meat because they just love to eat meat. Whatever
the rationale, I propose that it is at least essential to think about
the life of the animal that one is eating.

Last Tuesday, the
long running battle of wits between the Oyo State government and the
leadership of the state’s chapter of the National Union of Road
Transport Workers (NURTW) came to a head when, in a moment of
reactionary impetuosity, the chairman of the drivers union wrote a
letter to traditional rulers and leaders of thought in the state
warning of an imminent collision between his men and state officials.

It is an unusual
step. But it is also a sign of how things have degenerated in the state
that prides itself as the political capital of the southwest. The only
thing that is sadder could only be the perception that the usually
unruly louts of the NURTW are actually more civil in this altercation
than officials of the state government.

As usual, the
crisis has its roots in politics and permutations of the state
governor, Adebayo Alao Akala to win a second term in 2011. The two men
at the head of the two contending agencies – Mr. Alao Akala and Lateef
Akinsola Oluwatoki, otherwise known by the fanciful moniker ‘Tokyo,’
can both trace their ascendancy to a certain notorious politician in
Ibadan, the late Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu.

Tokyo and his men
were the fists with which Mr. Adedibu ruled the roost and enforced his
dictates – including the elevation of Mr. Alao Akala (a former deputy
governor of the state) into the governorship office at the expense of
his then principal, Rasheed Ladoja.

When Mr. Adedibu
died, the state governor came into his own and Tokyo lost his major
backer. He also fell out with the governor. He was subsequently
arrested by the police for alleged murder and detained for months
before he secured his release.

While Tokyo was
away, his deputy was railroaded into office as chairman of the drivers
union. The man, Lateef Salako (aka Elewe-Omo), is seen as an ally of
the governor and things were going swimmingly well until Tokyo was
released. Since then, the man generally derided as little better than a
tout has kept to the sunny side of the law.

Rather than embark
on a street fight as expected to win back his headship of the NURTW,
Tokyo went to the law courts to pursue his case and the judge found in
his favour. Even when the other faction resisted – and police stalled
in carrying out the court order – Tokyo went back to the court to seek
an enforcement, which was also granted.

But rather than
allow this process to work itself out, the state government decided to
take the legally dubious step of suspending the state chapter of the
union.

It also transferred
the power to collect dues at parks – the lifeline of the union and its
leaders – to local councils, thus effectively neutering the legal
victories of Tokyo and his gang.

This action would
surely make any maximum ruler proud and does not fit a democracy, even
one as malformed as our current one. We can only wonder whether the
state Attorney General has any input in this action and speculate on
the kind of thinking that led to the pronouncement. The state
government cites the need to maintain peace and security in the state,
as one reason for suspending the NURTW, but the legality of this act is
doubtful and its import sinister.

Any overfed
executive could use this excuse to ban any other forms of association
across the country, thus denying Nigerians their right to association.

It could also be
used as a cover for cracking down on unwanted opposition. It therefore
deserves to be condemned and exposed for its dubiousness. If the state
government were truly desirous of ensuring peace, it should back the
court’s ruling on this case and allow security agencies to deal with
anyone found to be acting against public peace.

But the aggravation
by state officials should not be an excuse for the kind of threats
contained in Tokyo’s letter to state leaders. He should realise that he
would be the ultimate loser if his boys were to unleash mayhem on the
state as he has threatened. Why, his opponents could even now start
violence and blame him for it.

As he must have realised from his earlier actions, the legal process
actually does work. Tokyo should return to the courts to challenge the
suspension of the union he heads. He has the law on his side and he
should not allow shortsighted politicians to foul up his newfound
respect for due process. He appears to the saner head in this contest.
He should stay that way.

If you google aso ebi the oyibo equivalent that confronts you is the word uniform.

That
in normal parlance means a single standard, a sameness or exactness
that identifies a group or a set of rules with uni implying one measure
or set of the same form.

In
Mao’s China where the ideology aimed to establish a utopian ideal of a
classless society the drab blue or black of the “Mao suit” was supposed
to be

the living embodiment of everyone being the same, no haves and have nots in the peoples army.

South
Africa’s militant labour unions often wear identifying uniforms as they
toyi toyi in protest, singing as they perform that acrobatic step of
throwing their feet in the air. Any visitor could be excused for
thinking this is a major boogie down party rather than a belligerent up
yours to the owners of industry.

For
Thailand’s red shirts there is no party going on, it is a serious
matter of political protest to peacefully topple the government in
power.” Fight and be tired for a few more days. This is better than
being tired for the rest of your lives due to injustice” ousted prime
minister Thaksin Shinawatra told his supporters in April in the third
week of their mass rallies.

These
are none of the sentiments with which we associate aso ebi. Yes town
unions and ethnic groups in the home-away-from-home Diaspora will make
uniforms to identify their members as they meet weekly or monthly out
in the wide metropolitan denizens of Lagos or Kano to commune together
and maintain their links with their roots. In this sense tying the same
cloth worn in the same style, dissolves those divisions created by
income disparity.

Who
can forget President Goodluck Jonathan decked in resplendent Igbo
attire in a photo op uniform threesome welcoming Theodore Orji from his
political odyssey by way of the PPA, APGA and hopefully finally into
the PDP?

Textile mills all over the continent have been busy for decades rolling
out bales of cloth emblazoned with the faces of Kwame Nkrumah, Mobutu
Sese Seko, Robert Mugabe, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Jomo Kenyatta, Milton Obote,
to name a few. When we identify we go the whole hog, warts and all.
Supporters of convicted Bode George pulled no punches about showing
their colour at his trial and turned up to be identified.

Only
when it comes to sports like soccer do we share our allegiance and
accommodate different personalities and teams in one body.

But
that is aso ebi (family cloth) in the narrow definition, in the much
wider sense with which it now identifies every celebration or
announcement or launching, the purpose seems less about blending in
than about standing out. Nothing wrong with that per se, it is just
that the peculiarly Nigerian tension between being the same and yet
standing out as eminently capable of affording more, since that is how
we ‘measure’ a persons status, produces some interesting ironies.

A
man wants to attend the wedding of a lifelong friend. Before he invites
a female associate to accompany him he has to factor in how much the
aso ebi is going to set him back, what different and unexpected
categories of it might he be expected to put out for: jewelry, shoes,
handbag or all inclusive? The levels can be dizzying and impoverishing.

My life for your party?

The
organisation and security aspects of the celebrations of the well
heeled have taken on different dimensions in today’s Nigeria. There is
fear of kidnapping which has significantly altered the freedom of
movement of those whose means should have opened up new possibilities
for them. And those smartly turned out ushers at the entrance to a big
do are there to keep an eye out for the ‘uninvited’ who think that
wearing a version of the aso ebi will give them the opportunity to
drink and eat well for a day.

A friend described to me an encounter at a reception some ten years ago in Lagos.

Being
the host he had intended to save some bones for his guard dogs and
returning after seeing a guest off saw his driver and reminded him to
fill the bowl for the dogs. People who had been pressed against the
fence watching the festivities heard this and were incensed. Here they
were hanging around to see if any leftovers would come their way and
this man was saving food for a dog!

Levels; yes indeed, but it does seem that for a long time to come
the message for any young person starting out in this tough world might
be buy a sewing machine. In the immortal words of the late great Fela:
uniform na cloth, na tailor dey sew am.

It’s been 10 long
years since the Palestinians and Israelis last came close to
establishing a permanent peace, in January 2001 at Taba in Egypt.
During my career in the Egyptian Air Force, I saw the tragic toll of
war between the Arabs and Israel. As president of Egypt, I have endured
many ups and downs in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Egypt’s decision to
be the first Arab state to make peace with Israel claimed the life of
my predecessor, Anwar el-Sadat. Ever since the day in 1981 that I
witnessed his assassination by extremists, I have tried to turn the
dream of a permanent peace in the Middle East into a reality.

Now, after a nearly two-year hiatus in direct negotiations, we are opening yet another chapter in this long history.

Many claim that
this new round of talks – which begins with meetings between President
Obama; Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel; the Palestinian president,
Mahmoud Abbas; King Abdullah of Jordan; and myself here on Wednesday –
is doomed to fail like all the others.

However, Obama’s
determined involvement has revived our hopes for peace and we must
seize this opportunity. The broad parameters of a permanent
Palestinian-Israeli settlement are already clear: the creation of a
Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 with
Jerusalem as a capital for both Israel and Palestine. Previous
negotiations have already resolved many of the details on the final
status of refugees, borders, Jerusalem and security.

The biggest
obstacle that now stands in the way of success is psychological: the
cumulative effect of years of violence and the expansion of Israeli
settlements have led to a collapse of trust on both sides. For the
talks to succeed, we must rebuild trust and a sense of security.

How do we do this?
First, we must safeguard the peace process from further outbreaks of
violence. To that end Egypt stands ready to resume its efforts to
resolve the many difficult issues surrounding Gaza: mediating a
prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza,
bringing an end to Israel’s blockade and fostering a reconciliation
between Hamas and its rival Fatah, which controls the West Bank.

All this is
critical to achieving a two-state solution. The Palestinians cannot
make peace with a house divided. If Gaza is excluded from the framework
of peace, it will remain a source of conflict, undermining any final
settlement.

For an
Israeli-Palestinian peace to succeed, it must also be embedded in a
broader regional peace between Israel and the Arab world. The Arab
Peace Initiative, endorsed by all Arab states, offers Israel peace and
normalisation in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from Arab territory
and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee issue. But in the
interim both sides must show that this dream is within reach. Arab
nations should continue to demonstrate the seriousness of their peace
initiative with steps that address the hopes and concerns of ordinary
Israelis.

For its part,
Israel should make no mistake: Settlements and peace are incompatible,
as they deepen the occupation that Palestinians seek to end. A complete
halt to Israel’s settlement expansion in the West Bank and East
Jerusalem is critical if the negotiations are to succeed, starting with
an extension of Israel’s moratorium on settlement building, which
expires this month.

For both sides trust can be built only on tangible security.

Security, however,
cannot be a justification for Israel’s continued occupation of
Palestinian land, as it undermines the cardinal principle of land for
peace.

I recognise that
Israel has legitimate security needs, needs that can be reconciled with
the Palestinians’ just demand for a complete withdrawal from occupied
territory. Egypt believes that the presence of an international force
in the West Bank, to be stationed for a period to be agreed upon by the
parties, could give both sides the confidence and security they seek.

Finally, Egypt
stands ready to host the subsequent rounds of negotiations. Every major
Palestinian-Israeli agreement has been reached with active Egyptian
involvement, in close collaboration with the United States. The 2001
talks in Taba, on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, were the closest
that the two sides have ever come to an agreement to end the conflict.
Let us pick up where we left off, and hope that the spirit of
engagement that accompanied those last talks engenders success.

We live in a world
that is suffering from the bitter lash of extremism. A permanent peace
between Israel and the Palestinians would bring the light of hope to
the Middle East and to people everywhere. As someone who has witnessed
both the ravages of war and the hope for peace, I appeal to all sides
to make this new round of negotiations the one that succeeds.

(Hosni Mubarak is the president of Egypt) © 2010 The New York Times

Nasir Ahmad
El-Rufai. It is almost impossible to remain neutral at the mention of
this name. Few personalities in Nigeria evoke as much passion and
debate. Mention his name anywhere and you’re likely to get responses
ranging from outright dislike to extreme adulation. One thing is clear
though – he has as many admirers as he has detractors.

El-Rufai stirs up
so much passion that any effort to contextualize him becomes embroiled
in controversy. Any writer voicing an opinion about the man is accused
of either being on his payroll or is branded a hack writer, paid to rub
the man’s name in mud. I am not a praise singer, and obtain no gain
from rubbishing anyone’s reputation. This is just an attempt to
separate Nasir the man, from el-Rufai the myth.

The most invariable
accusation against el-Rufai is that he is arrogant. I almost titled the
piece ‘the criminality of arrogance’, but avoided the distraction.
Being arrogant is not a criminal offence anywhere in the world.

But that aside, how
does one define arrogance? Ask most people why they think el-Rufai is
arrogant and they will be stumped. They have probably never met the man
and are only passing on the myth of el-Rufai.

Nasir, the man
carries his luggage and laptop himself. He would rather be called
‘Nasir’, not any of the multitudes of flattering names and titles that
abound. He is first to extend greetings, mixes with all and quick to
assist even people he has never met.

El-Rufai the myth is arrogant; Nasir the man has no pretensions.

Critics say he has
been indicted in the disappearance of N32 billion from the sale of
government houses. But the FCT itself and the Finance Ministry
confirmed that the money is intact. That explains why the EFCC case
against him is crumbling. In truth, the entire case against el-Rufai
was a vendetta by the Yar’Adua cabal who saw him as a threat. So
hurriedly put together were the allegations that they actually accused
him of breaking laws that had been repealed years earlier!

Those who object to
el-Rufai with a passion will say that he allocated lands to his family.
True, there may be ethical issues, but he broke no laws of the land.
That aside, anyone with something to hide would have used fictitious
names to allocate the lands to his family. That real names and
identities were used, when el-Rufai himself made the process open to
public scrutiny is not indicative of hidden motives.

For objectivity, it
is important to look critically at the nine years he served in the
public sector and do a ‘before’ and ‘after’ analysis. Only those who
lived in Abuja before 2003 would appreciate the level of sanity
el-Rufai brought into the territory. Was he wrong to demolish houses
built on sewage outlets? Was it arrogance to revoke illegal allocations
of lands on public parks?

Did he lack vision
to have banned commercial motorcyclists from the city centre? Ask
commuters what they think of ‘el-Rufai buses. Was it an offence to have
eliminated the mafia around land allocation? What it criminal to
facilitate home ownership for thousands of people and relieve
government of unmanageable burdens?

Criticism of
el-Rufai is not different from that of other achievers in Nigeria. Many
claim to desire positive change, but turn around to demonise change
agents. Consider these examples: Awolowo was one of Nigeria’s most
principled politicians, but some people vilified him till death as an
ethnic jingoist. Gen. Murtala knew development was impossible without a
thorough shake-up of the bureaucracy. Today, some people accuse him of
destroying the civil service. Buhari’s War Against Indiscipline served
to reverse the moral decay and decadence that stifled public conduct
before he became head of state.

Today, people call him a fanatic.

Similarly, for the
first time in Nigeria’s history, we had a public officer that stood his
ground and arrested some of the biggest crooks in the land. Today, some
people accuse Nuhu Ribadu of waging a selective anti-corruption
crusade. So if people call el-Rufai names for executing his various
tasks with vigour, it is in line with a trend.

The freedom of the Internet age makes it possible for us to assume all sorts of aliases to insult and malign others.

This will be no exception. But if we truly want change in Nigeria,
we must recognize agents of change and appreciate their vision, if not
their person. In the case of Nasir el-Rufai, we should start by
dispassionately separating Nasir, the man from el-Rufai, the myth.

As kids, a musician
named Marvel from Uromi town used to torment us. Marvel enjoyed the
monopoly of being the only highlife musician around. News of a
performance by Marvel would spread like fire on dry grass. Boys would
be scrambling to tailor’s shop to sew new outfits and treetop Afros
would spring from girls’ heads. The news of an upcoming Marvel concert
could whip the eight villages that make my clan into a whirlwind of
euphoric anxiety.

“Marvel go come
so?” We would ask, seeking support and reassurance from one another
because it was not unusual for him to take advance payment and go to a
more profitable venue like the burial ceremony of a wealthy patron’s
mother. On several disappointing occasions like that we would sulk to
bed dreaming of the aborted fiesta in our sullen sleep.

After we had
thoroughly stewed in our anticipation, the same way we waited for
politicians to redeem their promises of pipe borne water, electricity,
good roads, and had our hopes dashed like eggs carried by a leper,
Marvel would magically show up with his band members in a beat up
Peugeot 404 pickup.

This motor was a
combination of hard jagged metal and wires on wheels, a relic that
belonged more to the Museum of Natural History if Nigeria had one. Then
again, Marvel’s pijoti was built for the unpaved deadly roads to my
village. The driver would blast his horn and rev the engine that
emitted black smoke into the air to announce Marvel’s arrival. We would
let out ear shattering screams, jumping up and down – “Marvel vale,
Marvel vale, Marvel vale! Marvel has arrived!”

Marvel would remain
inside the pickup, wearing dark sunglasses like Ray Charles
nonchalantly smoking a Gold Leaf cigarette, while his boys unloaded the
musical equipment.

Catching a glimpse
of his weathered, battered, red guitar was like seeing Jesus Christ
walking on the River Niger from Asaba to Onitsha.

Speakers and
keyboards and drums and the most taunting instrument, the microphone,
would be unloaded by men with cigarettes hanging from their quivering
lips. Then the pickup door would open, and Marvel would gingerly test
his steel-toed stiletto shoes on the red earth, before heaving himself
out, slowly. Standing up full length, you would think Elvis Presley had
risen, except Marvel was as black as Idi Amin. He never smiled; he
would just walk straight to a cool-off area reserved for him by his
host, downing bottles of hot Crystal lager beer, until his men finished
setting up.

At about 8pm, the
atmosphere would be aromatically frothing like fresh palm wine. If the
clouds were kind, we would have moonlight, otherwise fireflies provided
enough illumination to help us wander round the venue. The only
electricity lights were a few bulbs powered by Marvel’s small Yamaha
generator, whose sole purpose was to run the musical equipment. In any
case, light was not required, for at Marvel’s highlife party, things
not meant for illumination usually took place.

By now the band would have finished setting up the equipment, plucking at their guitars (not Marvel’s) in tuneless succession.

There were only two
microphones, one for Marvel and one to be shared by three backup
singers. There was no proliferation of microphones back then, it seemed
you had to earn the right to use one because other band members just
bellowed away with their God given throats.

With a bulb
dangling above his head in the shaded area, Marvel would strap his
guitar round his shoulder and adjust the belt a couple of times, all
this while a cigarette would be hanging from his lips tremulously.
Eventually, he would pull a long drag on the Gold Leaf and drop it
disdainfully, grinding the butt viciously with his stiletto. Grabbing
the microphone, the very first words that would come out of his mouth
would be “Testing Microphone…one, two…testing
microphone…one-two.”

While we waited for
the real show to start so we could gyrate in the corner because we were
not old enough to hold girls by their waists and grind the night away
in the middle of the dance floor, Marvel would continue to test the
microphone for an eternity. He would fiddle with knobs in the old
amplifiers and twang his guitar endlessly. At some point, we would have
fallen asleep on benches in the fringes. Earlier excitement would have
worn our young minds out by the time Marvel was done with “testing
microphone”.

We did not know the extent to which this endless testing annoyed grownups, until one night.

Agoslow, a man
whose head was the size of cinder block, walked straight to Marvel,
seized the microphone from him and cleared his throat: “The microphone
is working, play me music and let me dance and enjoy myself, I come
from a far village.”

And today as I wait
for Goodluck Jonathan to declare his intention and he is still dilly
dallying and meeting with the Buharis of this world, the immortal words
of Agoslow come to me. So I am telling Mr. President to stop testing
the microphone and declare his intention and let the dance begin in
earnest.

Enough of this waiting game.

President Barack
Obama is embarking on something I’ve never seen before – taking on two
Missions Impossible at the same time. That is, a simultaneous effort to
heal the two most bitter divides in the Middle East: the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Shiite-Sunni conflict cantered in
Iraq. Give him his due. The guy’s got audacity. I’ll provide the hope.
But kids, don’t try this at home.

Yet, if by some
miracles the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that opened in Washington
on Thursday do eventually produce a two-state solution, and Iraqi
Shiites and Sunnis do succeed in writing their own social contract on
how to live together, one might be able to imagine a Middle East that
breaks free from the debilitating grip of endless Arab-Israeli wars and
autocratic Arab regimes.

Obama deserves
credit for helping to nurture these opportunities. But he, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and the newly elected leaders of
Iraq need to now raise their games to a whole new level to seize this
moment – or their opponents will.

Precisely because
so much is at stake, the forces of intolerance, extreme nationalism and
religious obscurantism all over the Middle East will be going all out
to make sure that both the Israeli and Iraqi peace processes fail.

The opponents want
to destroy the idea of a two-state solution for Israelis and
Palestinians, so Israel will be stuck with an apartheid-like,
democracy-sapping, permanent occupation of the West Bank. And they want
to destroy the idea of a one-state solution for Iraqis and keep Iraq
fractured, so it never coheres into a multi-sectarian democracy that
could be an example for other states in the region.

I hope that one of
my personal rules about the Middle East is proved wrong – that in this
region extremists go all the way and moderates tend to just go away.

Obama was right to
keep to his troop-withdrawal schedule from Iraq. Iraqi politicians need
to stand on their own. But this is tricky. The president will not be
remembered for when we leave Iraq but for what happens after we leave.
That is largely in Iraqi hands, but it is still very much in our
interest. So we need to retain sufficient diplomatic, intelligence,
Special Forces and Army training units there to promote a decent
outcome; because all the extremists are now doubling down.

Last week,
insurgents aligned with al-Qaida boasted of killing 56 innocent Iraqis.
On Tuesday, Palestinian gunmen murdered four West Bank Israeli
settlers, including a pregnant woman; Hamas proudly claimed credit. In
Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who heads the largest ultra-Orthodox party,
Shas, used his Shabbat sermon to declare that he hoped the Palestinian
president and his people would die. “All these evil people should
perish from this world … God should strike them with a plague, them
and these Palestinians,” Yosef said.

Trust me, this is just the throat clearing and gun-cleaning. Wait until we have a deal.

Even if Israel
agrees to swap land with the Palestinians so that 80 percent of the
Jewish settlers in the West Bank can stay put, it will mean that 60,000
will still have to be removed. It took Israel 55,000 soldiers to remove
8,100 Jewish settlers from Gaza, which was never part of the Land of
Israel. Imagine when today’s Israeli Army, where the officer corps is
increasingly drawn from religious Zionists who support the settler
movement, is called on to remove settlers from the West Bank.

None of this is a
reason not to proceed. It is a reason to succeed. There is so much to
hate about the Iraq war. The costs will never match the hoped-for
outcome, but that outcome remains hugely important: The effort to build
a decent, consensual government in Iraq is the most important democracy
project in the world today.

If Iraqi Sunnis,
Kurds and Shiites can actually write a social contract for the first
time in modern Arab history, it means that viable democracy is not only
possible in Iraq, but everywhere in the region.

“Iraq is the
Germany of the Middle East,” says Michael Young, opinion editor of The
Beirut Daily Star and author of a very original book about Lebanon,
“The Ghosts of Martyrs Square.” “It is at the heart of the region –
affecting all around it – and the country’s multi-ethnic,
multi-sectarian population represents all the communities of the
region. Right now, what is going on in Iraq represents all the worst
trends in the region, but if you can make it work, it could represent
the best.”

The late Israeli
leader Yitzhak Rabin used to say he would pursue peace with the
Palestinians as if there were no terrorism and fight terrorism as if
there were no peace process. That dual approach is one that Iraqi,
Arab, Palestinian and

Israeli moderates are all going to have to adopt.

I hope the forces of moderation are up to it.

© 2010 New York Times News Service