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During the first half of this year, German and
American political leaders engaged in an epic debate. American leaders
argued that the economic crisis was so bad, governments should borrow
billions to stimulate growth. German leaders argued that a little
short-term stimulus was sensible, but anything more was near-sighted.
What was needed was not more debt, but measures to balance budgets and
restore confidence.

The debate got pointed. American economists
accused German policymakers of risking a long depression. The German
finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble countered, “governments should not
become addicted to borrowing as a quick fix to stimulate demand.” The
two countries followed different policy paths. According to Gary Becker
of the University of Chicago, the Americans borrowed an amount equal to
6 percent of GDP in an attempt to stimulate growth. The Germans spent
about 1.5 percent of GDP on their stimulus.

This divergence created a natural experiment. Who was right?

The early returns suggest the Germans were. The
American stimulus package was supposed to create a “summer of
recovery,” according to Obama administration officials. Job growth was
supposed to be surging at up to 500,000 a month. Instead, the U.S.
economy is scuffling along.

The German economy, on the other hand, is growing
at a sizzling (and obviously unsustainable) 9 percent annual rate.
Unemployment in Germany has come down to pre-crisis levels.

Results from one quarter do not settle the
stimulus/austerity debate. Many other factors are in play. For example,
Germany is surging, in part, because America is borrowing. Essentially,
we Americans borrowed from our kids, spent some of that money on German
machinery, and ended up employing German workers.

But the results do underline one essential truth:
Stimulus size is not the key factor in determining how quickly a
country emerges from recession. The U.S. tried big, but is emerging
slowly. The Germans tried small, and are recovering nicely.

The economy can’t be played like a piano – press a
fiscal key here and the right job creation notes come out over there.
Instead, economic management is more like parenting. If you instill
good values and create a secure climate then, through some mysterious
process you will never understand, things will probably end well.

The crucial issue is getting the fundamentals
right. The Germans are doing better because during the past decade,
they took care of their fundamentals and the Americans didn’t.

The situation can be expressed this way: German
policymakers inherited a certain consensus-based economic model. That
model has advantages. It fosters gradual innovation (of the sort useful
in metallurgy). It also has disadvantages. It sometimes re-enforces
rigidity and high unemployment.

Over the past few years, the Germans have built on
their advantages. They effectively support basic research and worker
training. They have also taken brave measures to minimise their
disadvantages. As an editorial from the superb online think tank e21
reminds us, the Germans have recently reduced labor market regulation,
increased wage flexibility and taken strong measures to balance budgets.

In the United States, policymakers inherited a
different economic model, one that also has certain advantages. It
fosters disruptive innovation (of the sort useful in Silicon Valley).
It also has certain disadvantages – a penchant for overconsumption and
short term thinking.

Over the past decade, American policymakers have
done little to maximise their model’s natural advantages or address its
problems. Indeed, they’ve only made the short-term thinking problem
worse, with monetary, fiscal and home ownership policies encouraging
even more borrowing and consumption.

Nations rise and fall on the intertwined strength
of their cultures and governing institutions. Despite all the normal
shortcomings, German governing institutions have functioned reasonably
well, ushering in painful but necessary reforms. The U.S. has a
phenomenally creative culture, but right now it’s an institutional
weakling.

If you look around the world today, you see that a
two-class system is coming into being. Some countries are undertaking
fundamentals reforms. In these places, weaknesses have been exposed.
Orthodoxies have been shattered. New coalitions have formed.

This is happening in Britain, where a centre-right
government is reining in a government that had spun out of control.
It’s also true in Sweden and other consensus-based countries, where
there is so much emphasis on consistent, long-range thinking.

In other countries, political division frustrates
long-range thinking. The emphasis is on fixing things for next month or
next quarter. The U.S., unfortunately, is struggling to get out of
Group 2.

© 2010 New York Times

I just saw the
movie “Invictus” – the story of how Nelson Mandela, in his first term
as president of South Africa, enlists the country’s famed rugby team,
the Springboks, on a mission to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup and,
through that, to start the healing of that apartheid-torn land.

The almost
all-white Springboks had been a symbol of white domination, and blacks
routinely rooted against them. When the post-apartheid, black-led South
African sports committee moved to change the team’s name and colors,
Mandela stopped them. He explained that part of making whites feel at
home in a black-led South Africa was not uprooting all their cherished
symbols. “That is selfish thinking,” Mandela, played by Morgan Freeman,
says in the movie. “It does not serve the nation.” Then speaking of
South Africa’s whites, Mandela adds, “We have to surprise them with
restraint and generosity.”

I love that line:
“We have to surprise them.” I was watching the movie on an airplane and
scribbled that line down on my napkin because it summarizes what is
missing today in so many places: Leaders who surprise us by rising
above their histories, their constituencies, their pollsters, their
circumstances – and just do the right things for their countries.

I tried to recall
the last time a leader of importance surprised me on the upside by
doing something positive, courageous and against the popular will of
his country or party. I can think of a few: Yitzhak Rabin in signing
onto the Oslo peace process. Anwar Sadat in going to Jerusalem. And, of
course, Mandela in the way he led South Africa.

But these are such
exceptions. Look at Iraq today. Five months after its first truly open,
broad-based election, in which all the major communities voted, the
political elite there cannot rise above Shiite or Sunni identities and
reach out to the other side so as to produce a national unity
government that could carry Iraq into the future. True, democracy takes
a long time to grow, especially in a soil bloodied by a murderous
dictator for 30 years. Nevertheless, up to now, Iraq’s new leaders have
surprised us only on the downside.

Will they ever
surprise us the other way? Should we care now that we’re leaving? Yes,
because the roots of 9/11 are an intra-Muslim fight, which America, as
an ally of one faction, got pulled into. There are at least three
different intra-Muslim wars raging today. One is between the Sunni far
right and the Sunni far-far right in Saudi Arabia. This was the war
between Osama bin Laden (the far-far right) and the Saudi ruling family
(the far right). It is a war between those who think women shouldn’t
drive and those who think they shouldn’t even leave the house. Bin
Laden attacked us because we prop up his Saudi rivals – which we do to
get their oil.

In Iraq, you have
the pure Sunni-versus-Shiite struggle. And in Pakistan, you have the
fundamentalist Sunnis versus everyone else: Shiites, Ahmadis and Sufis.
You will notice that in each of these civil wars, barely a week goes by
without one Muslim faction blowing up another faction’s mosque or
gathering of innocents – like Tuesday’s bombing in Baghdad, at the
opening of Ramadan, which killed 61 people.

In short: the key
struggle with Islam is not inter-communal, and certainly not between
Americans and Muslims. It is intra-communal and going on across the
Muslim world. The reason the Iraq war was, is and will remain important
is that it created the first chance for Arab Sunnis and Shiites to do
something they have never done in modern history: surprise us and
freely write their own social contract for how to live together and
share power and resources. If they could do that, in the heart of the
Arab world, and actually begin to ease the intra-communal struggle
within Islam, it would be a huge example for others. It would mean that
any Arab country could be a democracy and not have to be held together
by an iron fist from above.

But it will be
impossible without Iraqi Shiite and Sunni Mandelas ready to let the
future bury the past. As one of Mandela’s guards, watching the new
president engage with South African whites, asks in the movie, “How do
you spend 30 years in a tiny cell and come out ready to forgive the
people who put you there?” It takes a very special leader.

This is also why
the issue of the mosque and community center near the site of 9/11 is a
sideshow. The truly important question “is not can the different Muslim
sects live with Americans in harmony, but can they live with each other
in harmony,” said Stephen P. Cohen, an expert on interfaith relations
and author of “Beyond America’s Grasp: a Century of Failed Diplomacy in
the Middle East.”

Indeed, the big
problem is not those Muslims building mosques in America, it is those
Muslims blowing up mosques in the Middle East. And the answer to them
is not an interfaith dialogue in America. It is an intrafaith dialogue
– so sorely missing – in the Muslim world. Our surge in Iraq will never
bear fruit without a political surge by Arabs and Muslims to heal
intracommunal divides.

It would be great if President Barack Obama surprised everyone and gave another speech in Cairo – or Baghdad – saying that.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

It
was that hour of Sunday, generally a work-free day, when many would be
in church praying for God’s favour; and presumably a good time to
travel as traffic was expected to be light. But all those permutations
failed Sunday 15 August in Lagos at the Berger bridge junction on the
Lagos-Ibadan Expressway when a speeding trailer (articulated truck) ran
into a convoy of vehicles held up at a police checkpoint, igniting a
fire, which spread panic and claimed scores of precious lives.

The event, on
account of its human-interest value and enormity of the loss, was
front-paged by many of the dailies, four of which we will examine. What
caused the accident, when, where, why and how many died were some of
the traditional queries tackled in the press reports in the effort to
help the reader understand the significance of the event. Although
there was near unanimity on the general details, the variations in
accounts speak of the professional vigilance and sensitivity of the
media houses in addressing the challenges of reporting.

Since none of the
reporters from these four papers witnessed the accident as it occurred,
they relied on accounts of ‘eyewitnesses’ to reconstruct what happened
before their arrival.

The problem with
eyewitnesses in emotionally stressful situations is that their accounts
can be coloured by the stress of the occasion and their prejudices.

From the headlines on Monday 16,

the papers sought
to convey the tragic nature of the event. ‘Bloody day in Lagos’, said
the Punch; ‘Day of Horror: Black Sunday in Lagos’ announced the Nation.
‘20 die in checkpoint tragedy’ asserted NEXT; while the Guardian
grouped it with similar tragedies: ‘48 feared killed, 20 vehicles burnt
in Lagos, Edo road tragedies’. All cast adequate headlines but the
Nation could have showed more racial or ethnic sensitivity to the use
of the adjective ‘black’ in qualifying that Sunday. Ours being a black
race we do not need to employ ‘black’ in any uncomplimentary context.

All were agreed
that the immediate cause of the accident was the trailer that rammed
into a commercial bus at a badly mounted/illegal police checkpoint,
leading to a conflagration, which wasted lives and property. The
Guardian, however, appeared undecided whether it was a trailer or a
petrol tanker. While it said on page 2 it was the former, it cited the
latter on page 14.

When did the accident occur?

“Around noon” (the
Nation); “around 11.27am” (NEXT), about 10am (Guardian). The Punch,
which said one of its correspondents “arrived shortly after the fire
broke out”, omitted the time. The testimony of Fadipe Idowu of the
Lagos State Fire Service in The Guardian that information about the
fire reached his office at 11.19am suggests that 11am would be a
useful, but not conclusive peg.

Where did it occur?
“On a bridge near the Berger area of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway”
(Punch; “between the Mobil Filling Station and Otedola Estate junction”
(Guardian); Shangisha bridge on the outskirts of Lagos (Nation); along
Otedola Estate, Berger Bus stop (NEXT).

On why it happened,
all speculated that the trailer’s brakes failed when suddenly
confronted by an unexpected checkpoint. The underlying anger of the
media against police checkpoint activities found vent in all the
reports. The Nation quoted Gift White, an ‘eyewitness’, who said: “The
policemen were stopping the trailer driver at the checkpoint and he did
not stop. They chased him until the man lost control and hit the
vehicles in its front. We hear they wanted to collect money from him”.

Isaac Ejuvwevwo,
who lost an SUV, also told NEXT that while held up by the checkpoint
traffic: “I just heard vehicles hitting each other behind me, then the
one behind me hit me, then I saw this trailer carrying sugar. The next
I saw fire…immediately I saw the fire, I and the other person in the
vehicle ran out. A little baby burnt in one of the cars, the parents
escaped”.

Expectedly, the Police denied complicity.

Spokesman, Frank
Mba, told the Nation: “there was no policeman at that place before,
during and after the incident. That conclusion is hasty and
unnecessary”, only to be quoted by NEXT as admitting “that there were
some checkpoints along that road but denying, “that his officers might
have caused the accident”.

On the casualties,
the figures are understandably varied. Punch’s Sesan Olufowobi showed
some enterprise in physically counting some of the charred remains to
estimate that at least 40 people died and 25 vehicles burnt.

The narrations also
had some positive sides. Punch talks of a Bolaji Bello who picked up a
13 year old, who broke her leg while fleeing the inferno, and took her
to the hospital. The hospital treated her without demanding a dime. It
will be nice to know what has since become of the girl and it will be
nice to know what will happen to the fleeing policemen, who triggered
off the disaster.

While praying for
the repose of the souls of the dead, the media should appreciate that
although police checkpoints may not disappear in the short term, they
need to be better managed as platforms for security control, and not
extortion centres. True, much evil has happened at checkpoints; some
good too has come from them. I once had a stolen car recovered there.

Darfur’s
joint U.N.-African Union peacekeepers face a dilemma in Darfur , which
could shape the future of the world’s largest U.N.-funded force.

After violence left
five people dead in the highly volatile Kalma Camp, six refugees sought
sanctuary in the UNAMID force’s police base there. They are thought to
be rebel sympathisers and the government accuses them of instigating
the camp clashes, demanding that UNAMID hand them over.

Kalma, just outside
Darfur’s largest town Nyala, has long been a problem for the Khartoum
government, whose offices in the camp were burned down by angry
refugees. Rebel supporters in the camp have obtained arms and there
have been clashes with government police in the area.

Now if the six are
responsible for the violence, which was between refugees who support
rebel leader Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur and those who took part in
peace talks, which Nur rejects, then it is Sudan’s right to try them in
a court of law.

However the
government is headed by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, a man wanted
by the International Criminal Court for presiding over genocide and war
crimes against these same Darfuris,

which is why they are in the refugee camps in the first place.

Repeated reports
during the seven-year conflict of the torture of Darfuri detainees give
a pretty good indication that they are unlikely to get a fair trial if
UNAMID hands them over.

So what to do?

This is the stuff of nightmares for U.N. peacekeeping officials.

If they hand them
over they lose the trust of the 2 million Darfuri refugees they were
sent to protect and could be subject to attacks by rebel forces, who
would see them as an enemy. But if they don’t hand them over, they are
stuck in a standoff with Khartoum.

The force relies on
cooperation with the government for its own security. The government
also allocates visas for staff, allows equipment in through customs and
gives travel permits. And the government has shown it is ready to use
these powers against any foreign organisation that annoys it.

According to U.N.
sources, the instruction came from New York not to hand over the six
refugees without a bona fide arrest warrant based on real proof they
had committed a crime and guarantees they would get a fair trial, which
UNAMID would need to follow very closely and publicly.

As one UNAMID staff member told me,

“If we can’t even do that we may as well go home.” Catch-22.

Should UNAMID hand them over?

Can UNAMID guarantee them a fair trial?

Can UNAMID continue to defy the government request?

In 1811, the popular novelist Fanny Burney learned she had breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy without anaesthesia. She lay down on an old mattress, and a piece of thin linen was placed over her face, allowing her to make out the movements of the surgeons above her.

“I felt the instrument – describing a curve – cutting against the grain, if I may so say, while the flesh resisted in a manner so forcible as to oppose & tire the hand of the operator who was forced to change from the right to the left,” she wrote later.

“I began a scream that lasted intermittingly during the whole time of the incision – & I almost marvel that it rings not in my ears still.” The surgeon removed most of the breast but then had to go in a few more times to complete the work: “I then felt the Knife rackling against the breast bone – scraping it! This performed while I yet remained in utterly speechless torture.”

The operation was ghastly, but Burney’s real heroism came later. She could have simply put the horror behind her, but instead she resolved to write down everything that had happened. This proved horrifically painful. “Not for days, not for weeks, but for months I could not speak of this terrible business without nearly again going through it!” Six months after the operation she finally began to write her account.

It took her three months to put down a few thousand words. She suffered headaches as she picked up her pen and began remembering. “I dare not revise, nor read, the recollection is still so painful,” she confessed. But she did complete it. She seems to have regarded the exercise as a sort of mental boot camp – an arduous but necessary ordeal if she hoped to be a person of character and courage.

Burney’s struggle reminds one that character is not only moral, it is also mental. Heroism exists not only on the battlefield or in public but also inside the head, in the ability to face unpleasant thoughts.

She lived at a time when people were more conscious of the fallen nature of men and women. People were held to be inherently sinful, and to be a decent person one had to struggle against one’s weakness.

In the mental sphere, this meant conquering mental laziness with arduous and sometimes numbingly boring lessons. It meant conquering frivolity by sitting through earnest sermons and speeches. It meant conquering self-approval by staring straight at what was painful.

This emphasis on mental character lasted for a time, but it has abated. There’s less talk of sin and frailty these days. Capitalism has also undermined this ethos. In the media competition for eyeballs, everyone is rewarded for producing enjoyable and affirming content. Output is measured by ratings and page views, so much of the media, and even the academy, is more geared toward pleasuring consumers, not putting them on some arduous character-building regime.

In this atmosphere, we’re all less conscious of our severe mental shortcomings and less inclined to be sceptical of our own opinions. Occasionally you surf around the Web and find someone who takes mental limitations seriously. For example, Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway once gave a speech called “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment.” He and others list our natural weaknesses: We have
confirmation bias; we pick out evidence that supports our views. We are cognitive misers; we try to think as little as possible. We are herd thinkers and conform our perceptions to fit in with the group.

But, in general, the culture places less emphasis on the need to struggle against one’s own mental feebleness. Today’s culture is better in most ways, but in this way it is worse.

The ensuing mental flabbiness is most evident in politics. Many conservatives declare that President Barack Obama is a Muslim because it feels so good to say so. Many liberals would never ask themselves why they were so wrong about the surge in Iraq while George Bush was so right. The question is too uncomfortable.

There’s a seller’s market in ideologies that gives people a chance to feel victimized. There’s a rigidity to political debate. Issues like tax cuts and the size of government, which should be shaped by circumstances (often it’s good to cut taxes; sometimes it’s necessary to raise them), are now treated as inflexible tests of tribal purity.

To use a fancy word, there’s a metacognition deficit. Very few in public life habitually step back and think about the weakness in their own thinking and what they should do to compensate. A few people I interview do this regularly (in fact, Larry Summers is one). But it is rare. The rigours of combat discourage it.

Of the problems that afflict the country, this is the underlying one.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

Last
week, residents of the Eti-Osa Local Government Area of Lagos State
took to the streets to protest the plan by the state government to
impose tolls for passage into the Lekki area.

No doubt, the gut
reaction to this move would be support from the general public. An
peaceful attempt by citizens to protest oppressive or thoughtless acts
of government is most welcome in any democracy that hopes to thrive –
and on the face of it, this civil action is as basic as they come: a
people already finding it hard to maintain a comfortable quality of
life should not be made to bear unnecessary burdens.

However, this matter is not as cut and dried as it seems.

The state
government in April 2006 signed an agreement with Lekki Concession
Company (LCC) under the Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) scheme for a
period 30 years; an agreement under which the company would upgrade and
expand the busy road and recoup its investment before handing ownership
back to the government.

The company is
presently test-running at the newly constructed toll gate, and
residents are already convinced that the toll will be too high and are
very reluctant to pay any sum for going to their homes and offices
anywhere on the 24km road.

This knee-jerk
response against paying levies for infrastructure provided is worrisome
even if understandable. For years, Nigerians have cried for private
sector participation in order to inject efficiency into public
infrastructure. True, government – at various levels – has seemed
intent on muddling up these arrangements where they have occurred,
whether with Virgin Nigeria or with the Bi-Courtney Group for the
Murtala Muhammed Airport Terminal Two. But, in the case of the Lekki
road, there seems to have been a structured approach to the agreement,
especially when seen in line with the massive road construction efforts
of the Babatunde Fashola-led government. In many parts of the world,
where governments seek to provide basic services such as roads, water
and electricity, citizens have found that you have to pay a little
extra for the convenience. These extras include congestion charges,
council tax, vehicle tax, road taxes and others borne from an
understanding that in the final analysis, there is no gain without pain.

At the very least,
as with MMA2, Nigerians should be motivated by the fact that they know
the services they are paying for will be delivered.

This, of course,
does not mean that the government should abdicate its responsibility to
ameliorate and avoid hardship for its citizens where it can. To this
end we find Mr. Fashola’s comments on the day of the protest troubling.

The governor, who
was held up for hours by the protestors, finally showed up and
addressed them, even though they would not listen. However, his mien
was strange for a leader in a democracy. There was mixture of disdain
and condescension, surely unacceptable since these are people he is
answerable to.

“This protest is
not necessary,” he said. “This is a commercial issue, don’t turn it
into a political issue. I don’t think it is fair to paralyse this road;
people are going to earn their livelihood; children are going to
school.” There seems to a trend with Mr. Fashola where he thinks that,
as long as what he is doing is for the public good, he owes the people
neither explanation nor empathy. This attitude, should as a matter of
urgency be discarded. In a democracy, the people’s feelings matter, the
people’s opinions – however misinformed they appear – must count.

In any case, the
protesters have a point. Has the road been completed? Is the toll too
high? And what about the promised toll-free lane that is yet to
materialise even after a committee set up by the government reportedly
agreed to this?

Add to that, the
mode of collection of the monies, as well as the apparent hurry in
effecting this (the collection of tolls is starting barely a month
after the gates went up) shows a reluctance to think this policy
through or even to engage people so that they can connect.

At the end of day,
both sides in this matter need to get off their high horses and
meaningfully engage each other to fashion out a system that is mutually
agreeable. Development will take pain and patience; and that truism is
applicable both to the concessionaires who seem a bit too eager to
recoup this investment at the expense of the people, as well as
residents of Lagos who need to come to terms with the fact that we
surely cannot conjure progress as a nation from thin air.

It
was that hour of Sunday, generally a work-free day, when many would be
in church praying for God’s favour; and presumably a good time to
travel as traffic was expected to be light. But all those permutations
failed Sunday 15 August in Lagos at the Berger bridge junction on the
Lagos-Ibadan Expressway when a speeding trailer (articulated truck) ran
into a convoy of vehicles held up at a police checkpoint, igniting a
fire, which spread panic and claimed scores of precious lives.

The event, on
account of its human-interest value and enormity of the loss, was
front-paged by many of the dailies, four of which we will examine. What
caused the accident, when, where, why and how many died were some of
the traditional queries tackled in the press reports in the effort to
help the reader understand the significance of the event. Although
there was near unanimity on the general details, the variations in
accounts speak of the professional vigilance and sensitivity of the
media houses in addressing the challenges of reporting.

Since none of the
reporters from these four papers witnessed the accident as it occurred,
they relied on accounts of ‘eyewitnesses’ to reconstruct what happened
before their arrival.

The problem with
eyewitnesses in emotionally stressful situations is that their accounts
can be coloured by the stress of the occasion and their prejudices.

From the headlines on Monday 16,

the papers sought
to convey the tragic nature of the event. ‘Bloody day in Lagos’, said
the Punch; ‘Day of Horror: Black Sunday in Lagos’ announced the Nation.
‘20 die in checkpoint tragedy’ asserted NEXT; while the Guardian
grouped it with similar tragedies: ‘48 feared killed, 20 vehicles burnt
in Lagos, Edo road tragedies’. All cast adequate headlines but the
Nation could have showed more racial or ethnic sensitivity to the use
of the adjective ‘black’ in qualifying that Sunday. Ours being a black
race we do not need to employ ‘black’ in any uncomplimentary context.

All were agreed
that the immediate cause of the accident was the trailer that rammed
into a commercial bus at a badly mounted/illegal police checkpoint,
leading to a conflagration, which wasted lives and property. The
Guardian, however, appeared undecided whether it was a trailer or a
petrol tanker. While it said on page 2 it was the former, it cited the
latter on page 14.

When did the accident occur?

“Around noon” (the
Nation); “around 11.27am” (NEXT), about 10am (Guardian). The Punch,
which said one of its correspondents “arrived shortly after the fire
broke out”, omitted the time. The testimony of Fadipe Idowu of the
Lagos State Fire Service in The Guardian that information about the
fire reached his office at 11.19am suggests that 11am would be a
useful, but not conclusive peg.

Where did it occur?
“On a bridge near the Berger area of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway”
(Punch; “between the Mobil Filling Station and Otedola Estate junction”
(Guardian); Shangisha bridge on the outskirts of Lagos (Nation); along
Otedola Estate, Berger Bus stop (NEXT).

On why it happened,
all speculated that the trailer’s brakes failed when suddenly
confronted by an unexpected checkpoint. The underlying anger of the
media against police checkpoint activities found vent in all the
reports. The Nation quoted Gift White, an ‘eyewitness’, who said: “The
policemen were stopping the trailer driver at the checkpoint and he did
not stop. They chased him until the man lost control and hit the
vehicles in its front. We hear they wanted to collect money from him”.

Isaac Ejuvwevwo,
who lost an SUV, also told NEXT that while held up by the checkpoint
traffic: “I just heard vehicles hitting each other behind me, then the
one behind me hit me, then I saw this trailer carrying sugar. The next
I saw fire…immediately I saw the fire, I and the other person in the
vehicle ran out. A little baby burnt in one of the cars, the parents
escaped”.

Expectedly, the Police denied complicity.

Spokesman, Frank
Mba, told the Nation: “there was no policeman at that place before,
during and after the incident. That conclusion is hasty and
unnecessary”, only to be quoted by NEXT as admitting “that there were
some checkpoints along that road but denying, “that his officers might
have caused the accident”.

On the casualties,
the figures are understandably varied. Punch’s Sesan Olufowobi showed
some enterprise in physically counting some of the charred remains to
estimate that at least 40 people died and 25 vehicles burnt.

The narrations also
had some positive sides. Punch talks of a Bolaji Bello who picked up a
13 year old, who broke her leg while fleeing the inferno, and took her
to the hospital. The hospital treated her without demanding a dime. It
will be nice to know what has since become of the girl and it will be
nice to know what will happen to the fleeing policemen, who triggered
off the disaster.

While praying for
the repose of the souls of the dead, the media should appreciate that
although police checkpoints may not disappear in the short term, they
need to be better managed as platforms for security control, and not
extortion centres. True, much evil has happened at checkpoints; some
good too has come from them. I once had a stolen car recovered there.

Last
week, residents of the Eti-Osa Local Government Area of Lagos State
took to the streets to protest the plan by the state government to
impose tolls for passage into the Lekki area.

No doubt, the gut
reaction to this move would be support from the general public. An
peaceful attempt by citizens to protest oppressive or thoughtless acts
of government is most welcome in any democracy that hopes to thrive –
and on the face of it, this civil action is as basic as they come: a
people already finding it hard to maintain a comfortable quality of
life should not be made to bear unnecessary burdens.

However, this matter is not as cut and dried as it seems.

The state
government in April 2006 signed an agreement with Lekki Concession
Company (LCC) under the Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) scheme for a
period 30 years; an agreement under which the company would upgrade and
expand the busy road and recoup its investment before handing ownership
back to the government.

The company is
presently test-running at the newly constructed toll gate, and
residents are already convinced that the toll will be too high and are
very reluctant to pay any sum for going to their homes and offices
anywhere on the 24km road.

This knee-jerk
response against paying levies for infrastructure provided is worrisome
even if understandable. For years, Nigerians have cried for private
sector participation in order to inject efficiency into public
infrastructure. True, government – at various levels – has seemed
intent on muddling up these arrangements where they have occurred,
whether with Virgin Nigeria or with the Bi-Courtney Group for the
Murtala Muhammed Airport Terminal Two. But, in the case of the Lekki
road, there seems to have been a structured approach to the agreement,
especially when seen in line with the massive road construction efforts
of the Babatunde Fashola-led government. In many parts of the world,
where governments seek to provide basic services such as roads, water
and electricity, citizens have found that you have to pay a little
extra for the convenience. These extras include congestion charges,
council tax, vehicle tax, road taxes and others borne from an
understanding that in the final analysis, there is no gain without pain.

At the very least,
as with MMA2, Nigerians should be motivated by the fact that they know
the services they are paying for will be delivered.

This, of course,
does not mean that the government should abdicate its responsibility to
ameliorate and avoid hardship for its citizens where it can. To this
end we find Mr. Fashola’s comments on the day of the protest troubling.

The governor, who
was held up for hours by the protestors, finally showed up and
addressed them, even though they would not listen. However, his mien
was strange for a leader in a democracy. There was mixture of disdain
and condescension, surely unacceptable since these are people he is
answerable to.

“This protest is
not necessary,” he said. “This is a commercial issue, don’t turn it
into a political issue. I don’t think it is fair to paralyse this road;
people are going to earn their livelihood; children are going to
school.” There seems to a trend with Mr. Fashola where he thinks that,
as long as what he is doing is for the public good, he owes the people
neither explanation nor empathy. This attitude, should as a matter of
urgency be discarded. In a democracy, the people’s feelings matter, the
people’s opinions – however misinformed they appear – must count.

In any case, the
protesters have a point. Has the road been completed? Is the toll too
high? And what about the promised toll-free lane that is yet to
materialise even after a committee set up by the government reportedly
agreed to this?

Add to that, the
mode of collection of the monies, as well as the apparent hurry in
effecting this (the collection of tolls is starting barely a month
after the gates went up) shows a reluctance to think this policy
through or even to engage people so that they can connect.

At the end of day,
both sides in this matter need to get off their high horses and
meaningfully engage each other to fashion out a system that is mutually
agreeable. Development will take pain and patience; and that truism is
applicable both to the concessionaires who seem a bit too eager to
recoup this investment at the expense of the people, as well as
residents of Lagos who need to come to terms with the fact that we
surely cannot conjure progress as a nation from thin air.

Nigeria’s National
Pledge, one of those interesting macro speech acts in which the Patria
plays with the intelligence of the citizen by presenting a command(ment) as
if it were the voice of the citizen making a commitment, requires
Nigerians “to serve Nigeria with all (their) strength.” From the way
government and its agencies treat pensioners who had in their working
lives been subjects of this national oath, it would seem as if serving
the country has become a crime. Judging from the narratives of woes
that pensioners recount concerning how they are being tossed around by
government agencies responsible for the payment of their entitlements,
one can clearly glean an attitude of extreme callousness and
heartlessness being presented to these ex-civil servants as the reward
for their years of service.

These elderly
individuals are made to travel long distances to attend fruitless
verification exercises. Given the risky nature of Nigerian roads, it is
only predictable that some of them breathe their lasts on the way to or
from where they have gone in pursuit of their monies. Some slump and
die while waiting to be attended to at offices where their fellow
Nigerians sit on their files and their monies.

Or, has it not
almost become common that many of these pensioners turn to beggars
either to be able to travel back home after failing to get positive
answers to their requests, or have taken to regular begging as their
post-retirement employment, in a country where rebranded politicians
earn and spend millions monthly?

Other Nigerians who
are still in the service of the government have learned to look towards
their days of retirement as the most dreaded days of their nunc
dimitis. Little wonder that many indeed die shortly after their
retirement, being unable to face the agony of travelling up and down to
pursue their entitlements. Some others try as much as they can to steal
enough money from government to cater for their retirement. Gofment
work no be chop make I chop?

And what happens if you no chop belefull before dem ring bell talk say e don do?

To retire from
government service no longer means to go for a deserved and highly
desired rest. It rather seems to mean the beginning of another struggle
for survival, a very punishing type since many of these retired
individuals are actually tired of Nigeria’s wahala. But are they not
forced by the difficult pension life in Nigeria to present themselves
again as “retired but not tired,” framing their lives as the rhyme of
endless suffering, a kind of “work, work till you drop”?

Many of them who
are able to secure contract employments after retirement from
government service are thrown back into the pool of suffering that
defines civil service life in Nigeria.

Some of these
elderly individuals have ended up being consumed in accidents on
Nigerian roads as they shuttle between home and their new service
locations. In a very frightening sense, dying on the road as they
search for means of survival after retirement seems to suggest the
fatality of one’s journey to a Nigerian life, a life that is a road
bedeviled by risks, and Nigerians, it seems, can never “retire” from it
except through death! I dare not think of the curses that could
possibly be coming out of the lips of the elderly Nigerians as they
drop dead while looking for means of post-retirement survival.

To think
of those curses is to invite masked spirits to start chasing me in my
dreams! Death, as the only retirement from Nigerian life, of course,
provides another opportunity for the government to extend the
punishment to the next-of-kin of the deceased retiree who would come
forward brandishing a death certificate to claim an entitlement. Hello!
Did you say “entitlement”? Does that fellow making a noise out there
not know what he or she is entitled to? Please, tell that fellow that a
next-of-kin is entitled to what his or her dead relative is entitled
to! Make dem come tomorrow. Over! Is one therefore surprised that some
people in government service see what retired workers are passing
through and conclude that it is not worth it being “faithful and
honest” or serving Nigeria “with all (your) strength,” that it is better
to serve oneself first with all of one’s strength?

A dangerous and
unpatriotic orientation, one would say. But it is indeed what the
system has established as the “right” orientation and those who fail to
recognize and follow it are characterized as not just the mugus in the
system, but also the obstacles that others have to watch and deal with.

It is important for
those in government service, and indeed all Nigerian workers, to take
the issue of planning for retirement very seriously and not wait till the last few years of their service before they start thinking of
what to do with themselves after retirement. Such planning, to put it
bluntly, should not be synonymous with scheming to steal from a system
that “steals” from its subjects.

A government that treats the affairs of its retired workers with
indifference confesses that it is grossly irresponsible and
mischievous. The Nigerian government needs to view the case of
pensioners in the country as a crisis situation and take urgent
measures to rectify it. The chaotic arrangement that currently exists
in the transfers and updating of workers’ pension accounts by the
Pension Commission (PENCOM) and Pension Administrators (PFAs) is
terribly frustrating for workers and has further intensified the
tradition of inflicting additional but undeserved punishment on those
who have served “Nigeria with all (their) strength.”