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While we’ve been otherwise engaged, events in Africa are being dictated by old and new colonial powers.

It is hard to know
which was more dramatic: in Côte d’Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo was detained
by Alassane Ouattara, just as he had been when the latter was prime
minister in the 1990s. No doubt Gbagbo was an oppressor, and it is not
the intention here to try “settling the precedence between the flea and
the louse” over whether it is his supporters or Ouattara’s who have been
responsible for the most human rights abuse, rape, mutilation and
massacre in the struggle for supremacy in Côte d’Ivoire. Gbagbo should
perhaps have followed the example of his Senegalese counterpart,
Abdoulaye Wade, who – by his own reckoning – had in the past twice
swallowed the bitter pill of a stolen election rather than plunge his
country into conflict. (Yes, of course, there’s a message there for
Nigeria!)

But the
intervention of France in the events that led to Gbagbo’s arrest
(notwithstanding its disingenuous attempt to present sending a convoy of
25 tanks and armoured personnel–carriers to assault his hideout as a
‘protecting civilians’ activity, with Gbagbo’s subsequent arrest due
solely to pro–Ouattara forces who just happened to be on the spot)
cannot be dismissed as merely the result of French President, Nicolas
Sarkozy’s positioning for electoral advantage back home. Rather,
Gbagbo’s fate sends a powerful message to other African leaders who
might try stepping out of line.

It certainly trumped the efforts of the ECOWAS on the Ivorien crisis.

Meanwhile, in
Libya, British Foreign Secretary William Hague’s insistence that
“Muammar Gadaffi Must Go” at the very time when an African Union
delegation to Tripoli had secured Gadaffi’s agreement to a ceasefire
followed by talks, and was on its way to Benghazi to see whether the
opposition Libyan Transitional National Council might also agree to a
ceasefire and talks, seemed designed to trump anything the AU might come
up with too.

The LTNC gave the
AU team a civil enough reception in public, being careful not to dismiss
them out of hand; but although Libyan pro–freedom groups can find yards
more examples of democracy and resistance to oppression in Africa than
in the Arab world, they have hardly hidden their contempt for Africa and
Black Africans, and after rejecting the proposal for not accepting all
their demands, were sneeringly wondering what conflicts Africans have
ever resolved. Mind you, since South African President, Jacob Zuma, had
diplomatically withdrawn from the Benghazi leg of the trip, they might
have forgotten the liberation of the entire southern part of the
continent and Nelson Mandela’s resolution of the Lockerbie matter, to
name but two.

With Western
powers openly demanding régime change, the LTNC was emboldened to not
only reject even a negotiated cease–fire unless Gadaffi stood down, but
to demand that their Western protectors provide them with weapons:
presumably so that they can outdo Gadaffi in slaughtering their
fellow–citizens.

The excuse that
previous cease–fires have not been observed is thin. After all, those
were self–proclaimed by Gadaffi, whereas what the AU took to Benghazi
was a proposal that Africa was ready to back and seek wider
international support for. If there was justified concern that Gadaffi
would continue moving his troops into position under cover of cessation
of hostilities, what stopped guarantees on that from being part of the
negotiations?

By the end of the
week, the goal of regime change was even more baldly stated with
Sarkozy, David Cameron of Britain and Barack Obama of the U.S.A.
threatening to continue bombing Libya until Gadaffi was removed. With
no cease–fire in place, the ‘protecting civilians’ mantra was still
available to the triumvirate. But it is an increasingly discredited fig
leaf.

Britain’s World
War II Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, once famously advised that
“Jaw Jaw is better than War War.” His 21st Century heirs seem bent on
encouraging peoples who would often be better off with an imperfect
peace on which they can build, to instead continue conflicts which they
themselves are only sporadically interested in seeing through to
conclusion.

The brutality that
many Libyans suffered under the ‘Brotherly Leader’ makes it impossible
not to sympathise with their resistance to ever again coming under his
control, and while Black Africa might not expect a particularly warm
relationship should the LTNC succeed in ousting Gadaffi, his own record
on the continent is hardly such as to cause undue sorrow over his
personal fate. But a negotiated cease–fire would not have re–imposed
Gadaffi’s control over those parts of the country that had risen against
him, and could well have re–emboldened unarmed civilian protesters in
those parts of Libya that had not. So why the insistence on “War War?”

PS: I’d intended
to write something rebutting the Youth Mafia’s complaints about my
article on ‘De Yoot Vote’ this week. But I realised that I would only
be repeating my ‘The Young Do Grow’ article of May 9, 2010.
(http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Opinion/Columns/5565422–182/story.csp)
In any case, they only attacked with words — what Churchill might have
called “Jaw Jaw.”

It is very
disappointing that we still have not found a way to organise elections
without too much drama. The South Africans do it year after year, like
changing tires. The Senegalese do it. And so do the Ghanaians and the
Beninois. And the Costa Ricans and Indians, for that matter. It is worse
than disappointing that aggrieved citizens took the law into their own
hands in several parts of the north of our country on Monday. It is
positively alarming.

As daylight struck
Kano, Kaduna, Gombe, Adamawa, Sokoto and other parts, so did gangs of
disaffected citizens, who decided to vent their frustration at the
defeat of their preferred presidential candidate in last weekend’s
election, Muhammadu Buhari, by targeting the homes and palaces of
suspected “collaborators” for razing. A few people were killed. The
streets were thick with smoke from burning tires, and curfews have now
been imposed on large swaths of the country.

Final results
released by INEC showed that Goodluck Jonathan, who was seeking to
escape the shadows of his predecessor and be elected to high office on
his own steam, avoided a runoff by winning 25 percent of the votes in 31
states. Quite clearly, many citizens have concluded that the margin of
victory – if not the victory itself – is suspiciously overwhelming. As a
result, they started lashing out at many symbols of authority, be it
the homes of prominent businessmen, police stations or, most alarmingly,
even the palaces of emirs and other traditional rulers. If not handled
with care and despatch, this violent rampage may threaten the political
system and the social cohesion of the nation as a whole.

The northern part
of the country has been seething for a while. The region has felt
abandoned for much of the 12 years of PDP rule, even when a northerner,
Umaru Yar’Adua, paralysed by illness, was at the helm for about 30
months. The brief economic boom of the mid-2000s almost completely
passed the north by. The region has the worst unemployment, the most
grinding poverty, the poorest education, and the shortest life
expectancy of any region of Nigeria. So stark and repulsive is the
poverty, and so thoroughly alienated have the people become, that even
this contested election can be seen as little more than an outlet for
the expression of deep-seated grievances.

As the south
experienced the bounce from the telecoms boom, privatisation, and the
explosion of capital accumulation from the banking sector reform, much
of the north watched from the sidelines. Local elites were, of course,
well taken care of by the gushers of cash from Abuja. But the tide
receded for ordinary citizens, who lost faith in their conventional
leadership and sought solace with extremist groups such as Boko Haram,
and priests with an apocalyptic view of the world gained footing amidst
the misery.

The collapse of
traditional and other formal authority in the north was fully manifested
in Monday’s violent convulsion. Gangs of youth were targeting emirs’
palaces for destruction. They were torching the homes of prominent
politicians and businessmen. Even the Sultan of Sokoto was reportedly
pelted with sachets of “pure water”. The old order crumbles and there’s
nothing, yet, to replace it.

So where do we go
from here? The first step, it seems to us, is that President Jonathan
and his court must avoid any hint of triumphalism, plus the president
should immediately address the nation to call for calm. He should tell
the people that he will use all the powers of government to ensure that
legitimate grievances are addressed speedily and comprehensively.

It would also be
useful for the president to signal to our northern citizens that he
understands their profound sense of alienation, and that it will be his
continuing duty as the president, now and in the future, to take urgent
steps to assuage those feelings.

Second, we call on
Mr. Buhari to continue to demonstrate his love of country by publicly
remonstrating with his inflamed supporters to stop the violence and
allow a peaceful resolution of this political conflict. Mr. Buhari had
earlier stated that he would have nothing to say until INEC has formally
declared the final results. In that case, silence was not golden, and
was clearly taken by his supporters as acquiescence. We cannot blame
Mr. Buhari for the violent outbreak. But we can ask him to continue to
demonstrate leadership by taking urgent steps to calm the roiling waters
and prevent his country from tipping over the edge. We note that he, as
well as his party, the CPC, have issued statements calling for calm.
This is necessary but insufficient.

Finally, we ask
the INEC chairman, Attahiru Jega, to make clear to the public that the
commission is taking every due care, as normal, to assure the integrity
of the election, including internal audits, where deemed necessary.

Our country labours under the dead weight of a self-destructive
political class. It is our common duty to ensure that they don’t bring
the house down on all of our heads.

Together with our
NATO allies and coalition partners, the United States, France and
Britain have been united from the start in responding to the crisis in
Libya, and we are united on what needs to happen in order to end it.

Even as we
continue our military operations today to protect civilians in Libya, we
are determined to look to the future. We are convinced that better
times lie ahead for the people of Libya, and a pathway can be forged to
achieve just that.

We must never
forget the reasons why the international community was obliged to act in
the first place. As Libya descended into chaos with Col. Muammar
Gaddafi attacking his own people, the Arab League called for action. The
Libyan opposition called for help. And the people of Libya looked to
the world in their hour of need. In an historic resolution, the United
Nations Security Council authorized all necessary measures to protect
the people of Libya from the attacks upon them. By responding
immediately, our countries, together with an international coalition,
halted the advance of Gaddafi’s forces and prevented the bloodbath that
he had promised to inflict upon the citizens of the besieged city of
Benghazi.

Tens of thousands
of lives have been protected. But the people of Libya are still
suffering terrible horrors at Gaddafi’s hands each and every day. His
rockets and shells rained down on defenceless civilians in Ajdabiya. The
city of Misurata is enduring a medieval siege, as Gaddafi tries to
strangle its population into submission. The evidence of disappearances
and abuses grows daily.

Our duty and our
mandate under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect
civilians, and we are doing that. It is not to remove Gaddafi by force.
But it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Gaddafi in
power. The International Criminal Court is rightly investigating the
crimes committed against civilians and the grievous violations of
international law. It is unthinkable that someone who has tried to
massacre his own people can play a part in their future government. The
brave citizens of those towns that have held out against forces that
have been mercilessly targeting them would face a fearful vengeance if
the world accepted such an arrangement. It would be an unconscionable
betrayal.

Furthermore, it
would condemn Libya to being not only a pariah state, but a failed state
too. Gaddafi has promised to carry out terrorist attacks against
civilian ships and airliners. And because he has lost the consent of his
people any deal that leaves him in power would lead to further chaos
and lawlessness. We know from bitter experience what that would mean.
Neither Europe, the region, or the world can afford a new safe haven for
extremists.

There is a pathway
to peace that promises new hope for the people of Libya – a future
without Gaddafi that preserves Libya’s integrity and sovereignty, and
restores her economy and the prosperity and security of her people. This
needs to begin with a genuine end to violence, marked by deeds not
words. The regime has to pull back from the cities it is besieging,
including Ajdabiya, Misurata and Zintan, and return to their barracks.
However, so long as Gaddafi is in power, NATO must maintain its
operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the
regime builds. Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an
inclusive constitutional process can really begin, led by a new
generation of leaders. In order for that transition to succeed, Gaddafi
must go and go for good. At that point, the United Nations and its
members should help the Libyan people as they rebuild where Gaddafi has
destroyed – to repair homes and hospitals, to restore basic utilities,
and to assist Libyans as they develop the institutions to underpin a
prosperous and open society.

This vision for
the future of Libya has the support of a broad coalition of countries,
including many from the Arab world. These countries came together in
London on March 29 and founded a Contact Group which met this week in
Doha to support a solution to the crisis that respects the will of the
Libyan people.

Today, NATO and
our partners are acting in the name of the United Nations with an
unprecedented international legal mandate. But it will be the people of
Libya, not the U.N., who choose their new constitution, elect their new
leaders, and write the next chapter in their history.

Britain, France
and the United States will not rest until the United Nations Security
Council resolutions have been implemented and the Libyan people can
choose their own future.

(Barack Obama is
the 44th president of the United States. David Cameron is prime minister
of Britain and Nicolas Sarkozy is president of France.)

New York Times

The old man was
amusing us with stories of early 70s Lagos, the Volkswagen factory
where he worked, and the radiance of the Army officers who visited.

“You know that
engine oil that the Germans make? The one that drips in such clear
tones that you almost wish you could drink it?” he asked. Someone said
we sure did. “Well, that was how Babangida’s skin shone back then,” he
said.

He looked around
him, pausing, like a good storyteller, to gauge the reaction of his
audience. A woman sighed and said, “Na wa o.” The man had our
attention, all right. He continued. “The hairs on his hand were so
fine, and the skin so light, that you could see the veins,” he said.

More passengers
bent their ears towards the man. You wouldn’t think to look at his
spare frame, thick skin, and forsaken shoes. But he was someone
important once. He said while Volkswagen Nigeria existed, he was the
fellow you saw when the German manager was away. Or was too busy at the
Bar Beach. “The white man trusted me. He would say, ‘Tunde, take care
of everything, I am going to relax.’ And he would be off for the whole
day.”

I liked the way he
told his story, the lack of drama, in a gentlemanly sort of way. “The
day Babangida came, I was the most senior man around. I met him at the
gate and apologised for the absence of our manager, but IBB just smiled
and waved it away. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, real nice chap.” “What was he
at the time?” asked a banker who had just taken a call from his pastor
and couldn’t stop talking about the man of God. I tried to get the name
of this wonderful Christian but it was impossible without asking
directly. Besides, the story of how Volkswagen worked, the staff morale
and German efficiency, was riveting.

“Babangida was
commander of the armoured corps,” said our storyteller. “He was a
dashing young colonel. They were all so dashing then: Babangida,
Buhari, Yar’Adua. They all lived in Dodan Barracks. It was such a great
time to be in Lagos.” The banker nodded in admiration. “These people
have been enjoying for a long time,” he said. And then the talk shifted
to how the country had been ruled by the same group for too long; how
charmed their lives have been compared to our drudgery.

The conductor was
the only person who was not impressed. He had just parted with N50,
which the police insisted on collecting for no reason, so talk of
authority was hardly endearing to him.

“Dem be thief, all of them,” he said, looking directly at the storyteller, daring him to contradict his assertion.

The old man was
thrown out of his stride. Before now, the conversation had been light,
peppered with anecdotes. But the conductor’s tone had been hard, like
his stony face. Some of those who had listened to the anecdotes in rapt
attention suddenly withdrew, as if they had been caught doing something
shameful.

“I am not defending
anybody’s actions,” offered the man. “This talk is not about that.” But
the conductor was not interested in subtleties. He was like a dog who
had got hold of a good bone and was not about to let go. On the other
hand, the old man seemed to want to avoid any crudities; any talk with
someone so obviously disgruntled could not stick to the niceties of
polite conversation.

“Oga, you wey dey
talk about how another person skin dey shine like oil,” began the
conductor, spoiling for a quarrel, “You for follow thief money now make
your own skin too shine.” The banker fellow must have felt the old
man’s embarrassment. “No be everybody be thief,” he said to the
conductor. “We are even talking of the 70s when you had not even been
born.” The conductor sneered, “How you know when dem born me?” he
challenged.

At this point, the
old man rallied. “You know, the time I was talking about,” he said,
taking time to address his words to the young banker, “Babangida was
just a colonel. He had not become president then,” he said and the
banker fellow nodded in understanding.

He turned to the
conductor and said, lightly, “You see, no be your money make the man
skin dey shine,” he said, “Na nature.” The conductor had lost interest.
‘’Thief na thief,’’ he said.

Now that we have
chosen our president for the next four years, we will do well to think
through what we can expect to feature on his to-do list, every day,
until this stage is reached again at the start of the next election
cycle. Ordinarily, it would help to start with the different planks on
the party platform of our preferred candidate. Trouble is, even when
these were bruited about on the campaign trail, they did not amount to
much. Even as sound bites, these policy platforms always sounded
hollow. Apparently, all the candidates were sure that no section of the
electorate was going to interrogate their manifestoes (and the numbers
behind them) too seriously.

Still, there are
reasons why any election pledge in this country should be taken with a
liberal dollop of salt. Across sectors, the economy’s need is so
substantial and so fundamental. Especially with infrastructure, where
promises to remedy the dearth must contend with the 48 months lag
between the contract award ceremonies and when the projects come on
stream. In the absence of low-intensity, high-impact solutions, it thus
means that any genuine investment today, will only begin to yield
fruits after the first four-year term. This is one of the more perverse
incentives of representative democracy: it forces executive focus on
near-term upside gains with medium-term downside consequences.

This does not,
however, obviate the need for such investment, or the equally important
need for the incoming government to deliver on a few low-hanging
fruits. The Petroleum Industry and Nigerian Sovereign Investment
Authority bills are two versions of the latter type of investment.
Because of the unconscionable delay in passing the former bill,
investment in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry has
tailed off considerably. Desirable though it might be to cap the oil
wells as part of a radical response to the failure of our fiscal
federalism, we cannot run away from the size of hydrocarbon export
revenues’ contribution to the national budget.

Prompt passage of
the bill is also consistent with acknowledging what the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) describes in its latest comments on the global
economy, as “long implementation lags for discovery, exploration, and
capital investment in minerals industries”. In addition, there are
significant gains to be had in the current environment. The signals
from current elevated market prices for crude oil would seem to
indicate that, along with the pressures from new demand from newly
industrialising economies in Asia, there have been significant
“downshifts in trend (crude oil) supply growth”.

Moreover,
macroeconomic policy has fallen behind the curve over the last two
years. Despite strong terms-of-trade gains, as commodity prices firmed,
we have not accumulated reserves as rapidly as would have been
expected. Instead, the central bank has run down these inflows in
support of an inflexible exchange rate regime. Has this moderation of
domestic exchange rate movement been beneficial to strengthening
domestic demand? Another question touched by the domestic demand worry
is, “What is holding back private investment in this economy?” Soft
final domestic demand is one answer. But there’s another argument. If
our policy is to support the growth of private investment, shouldn’t it
aim to boost net capital formation within the economy, while reducing
the domestic cost of doing business?

The needed
structural reforms go further than this though. The central bank’s
quasi-fiscal interventions in the economy in the last two years have
been anomalous. Returning the funds on to the public balance sheet is
essential for fiscal transparency and in order to clean up the balance
sheet of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The trouble with this
course of action is that the public debt profile is rising. Adding
debits from the CBN’s balance sheet would further reduce government’s
room for fiscal manoeuvre. Nonetheless, fiscal consolidation is key to
the economy’s medium-term fiscal outlook. Rising inflation is one (but
scarcely the only) reason. Fiscal support was necessary to keep the
banks from going under and to a lesser extent to keep domestic demand
ticking away despite second-round pressures from the global financial
and economic crisis.

But the banks have begun to post healthy results. And it is doubtful
(because of the infrastructure constraints) that domestic demand did
indeed respond to the fiscal stimulus. Thus, it is important for a
positive medium-term fiscal outlook to return immediately to the oil
price-based fiscal policy rule!

After the heady
wine of post-election euphoria, we will have to come down to the real
business of governing. The German economist and sociologist, Max Weber,
in his famous essay, “Politics as a Vocation”, remarked that a
statesman worth his calling must be able to reconcile ultimate ends
with an ethic of responsibility. From Aristotle to our day, politics
has always been about how to promote the good life for all citizens –
how to expand the possibility frontiers of happiness and collective
welfare.

Our failure to live
up to the promise of greatness has been the nightmare of our
generation. Despite our stupendous oil wealth, some 50 per cent of
Nigerians live below the poverty line. We rank 142nd out of 169
countries on the Global Human Development Index. Millions of the youth
being churned out annually from our ramshackle education industry have
no hope of securing gainful employment. Many will take to the highway
and the seedy streets to make ends meet. Meanwhile, our roads continue
to consume thousands of our people, even as money meant for the
railways ends up in foreign bank accounts. And we are the last to know
that electricity is the first condition of civilisation in our 21st
century digital age.

There are, of
course, no magic solutions. It takes a whole village to raise a child,
our people say. The greatest challenge for leadership in our era is how
to broker a national consensus on the Nigerian Project. We need to heal
the bitter wounds that have drawn us apart, particularly in the north,
where there has been a great deal of disenchantment; where I have seen
heartbreaking poverty in places such as Ingawa, Jibiya, Potiskum,
Darazo and Azare. There is also the abiding challenge of the Niger
Delta, with its structural violence and ecological catastrophes.

I cannot but
mention the role of our parliament in all this. The National Assembly
appears to be the weakest link in our democracy at present. It is an
irony that our elected representatives, who ought to be the fountain
and spring of the law, have sometimes behaved with such wanton
profligacy. They have not been immune from what I would term
“parliamentary dictatorship”, having on more than one occasion upped
the budget by the order of magnitude of 25 per cent. They presumably do
not care where government goes to borrow to finance the deficit.

Of recent, the high
judicature, whom we all respect, is becoming joke. The public
disputation between Aloysius Katsina-Alu, Chief Justice of the
Federation; and Umaru Abdullahi, Court of Appeal President; has become
an embarrassment to the judiciary as a whole. Through the dark times of
our history, the likes of Adetokunbo Ademola, Teslim Elias, Fatai
Williams, Udo Udoma and Muhammad Bello acquitted themselves as
righteous and fearless judges. The very public quarrel between the two
giants of the law – with undercurrents of political intrigue – cannot
augur well for the image of the judicature.

It was Nelson
Mandela who famously noted that anyone in a public office must see
himself or herself as a servant of the people, not their master. There
must therefore be a change of mindsets and attitudes. To make Nigeria
work, the elites across all the sections and corners of our country
must come together and agree on certain irreducible minimums for the
practice of politics and the conduct of public life. If our country is
to survive and flourish, we must reincarnate our national ideals in a
fundamental grundnorm founded on liberty, justice, truth, religious
tolerance and the indivisibility of our federation. We must also
redefine our collective purpose and destiny.

Whatever anyone
thinks, Nigeria is the heart of Africa. We are the guardians of the
African Standard of Civilisation. We therefore have a world-historic
vocation to build a country worthy of the grandeur of our continent and
the dignity of the Black Race.

The
President-elect, whoever it turns out to be, has an enormous task
ahead. Top of the agenda are the following: security and the rule of
law; infrastructures and power; food security; employment; and human
development, including education and health. Leadership and public
policy are the keys to successful governance. Nigerians expect a team
of technocrats who can work together to implement a carefully designed
programme of structural transformation anchored on agriculture-led
industrialisation.

Whereas our
constitution requires that every state in our federation must be
represented in the cabinet, it does not say expressly that such
individuals can only be nominated by the executive governors of their
states. The practice whereby ministers are nominated by governors is a
convention that produces pernicious results. A friend of mine from one
of the western states confided to me that he once complained to his
governor that the minister nominated by him was performing very poorly.
The man laughed and said it was precisely why he sent him to Abuja! It
is therefore vital that the new president chooses his cabinet carefully
and that each minister has a set of measurable targets that can be
evaluated on an annual basis. Those who do not perform must be
resolutely shown the door. Former US Secretary of State, Henry
Kissinger once lamented that political office taxes intellectual
capital. People simply cannot give what they don’t have. Caution and
wisdom, therefore, are the watchwords.

It is hardly a new
thing to hear of men who assault their wives. After years of advocacy
and encouraging women who have been domestically abused to speak out,
their plight is hardly unknown to the world. But an interesting
phenomenon is emerging. The tables appear to be getting turned. We are
now hearing more about women who beat up their husbands.

We seem to be
oblivious to this fact because the shame and ego-bashing attached to
the idea of a wife (woman) beating her husband (man) will not allow or
encourage some men to report such abuse. The notion that men are
victims of domestic violence can be unimaginable to the extent that
some men would rather not report.

The impact of
domestic abuse is less apparent when it is men who are at the receiving
end than women. For instance, when a married man is seen with bruises
or burns or any sort of injury, it is always assumed that he got it in
a bar fight or domestic accident. No one ever thinks his wife might
have given him that black eye as is the case of women with bruises.

There was a report
on 234next.com website about a 75-year-old man, Fatai Bakare, who
appealed to an Ikeja High Court to save his life from his wife. He
wanted his 18-year-old marriage dissolved on grounds of domestic
violence and “wickedness”.

Mr. Bakare alleged
that his 55-year-old wife was very violent and would beat him up at the
slightest excuse. He said he was scared for his life since he was an
old man.

When one reads or
listens to stories like that, the image of a giant woman pounding a
small man comes to mind. “Just how huge must this woman be to
successfully beat up her husband?” many of us would wonder.

On March 1, 1999,
The Oprah Winfrey Show aired a show on wives who beat their husbands.
On that episode, it was ascertained that while men beat their wives to
shut them up, women beat their husbands to make them listen. Some
abused men who spoke at the show said the reason they did not speak up
was because they felt they were supposed to take it like a man. So like
women who have been physically abused by their husbands, they usually
cover up for their wives when people ask them about a bruise or injury.

Gone are the days
when women were referred to as the weaker sex. Most women now want to
take up the mantle of leadership in every sphere of their lives,
including their homes. Some do that in the most derogatory ways as they
abuse their husbands both physically and verbally. In a way, what women
do not consider domestic abuse almost always comes across to their
husbands as abuse.

Domestic violence
to both men and women involves physical acts like beating, shoving,
hitting, kicking but domestic violence can also be emotional or mental.
Unkind and cruel words hurt and linger longer in different ways for
different people. According to an expert, men hurt more from emotional
abuse than physical abuse.

Many women no
longer find sitting at home to bear children and tending the home
comfortable. Most have taken charge to the sad point of flexing muscles
with their husbands. They have forcefully pulled the pants from their
husband’s waists, replaced them with wrappers and amended the pants to
their own size.

Where women lack
physical strength, they make up with verbal power. Sometimes, you are
left aghast at the words some women use on their husbands.

How much more
abused do you expect a man whose wife calls a coward, impotent or lazy,
to be? Domestic violence in any form is bad and even more cringe-worthy
is the fact that more women seem to resolve to the act.

It is an evil that
needs to be flushed out because it ends up having an adverse effect on
the seeds of a marriage. The children grow up believing that a normal
home is one defined by a feisty and fire-spitting mother.

There is a dire need for domestic violence to be discouraged,
regardless of who is giving or receiving it, in order to breed saner
generations of men and women.

One of the biggest
pet peeves that I have with responses to requests or questions in the
Nigerian context, as is the case in many developing countries, are the
phrases – “By God’s grace,” or “If God wills.” For example: “By God’s
grace, good leaders will be elected during our elections,” or “If God
wills, the dress will be ready on Wednesday,” or “By God’s grace, the
university will reopen in June,” or “If God wills, the flight will
depart on schedule.” I could go on and on.

I am a big believer
in the grace and power of God and I have seen it manifest in my life
time and time again. I also recognise the myriad challenges and risks of
operating in our country, where every day is an adventure and there are
no guarantees about what one can experience when they step out of their
house on a daily basis. However, I also recognise that God has given us
the grace to achieve results, and that His will for us is that we
deliver on the commitments that we have made to people. Too often, we
hide behind these phrases to excuse us from taking responsibility for
our own actions or from getting angry enough when others use them to
make excuses for their inability to deliver.

Somehow, by using
these phrases, we basically shift the responsibilities and
accountability of our actions or inactions to God, who has given us more
than enough to work with. For example, as humans, we have the ability
to plan events, manage our time effectively, and to understand how to
prioritise tasks. We also have the ability to plan for uncertainties and
to develop ‘Plan B’ strategies or hedge our risks, in order to minimise
the cost of uncertainties. Clearly, because of our ability to transfer
most of the responsibility to God, we get a little lazy about fulfilling
our end of the bargain.

In an effort to
institute systems and structures within AACE Foods, our start-up
agribusiness, I introduced penalties for late deliveries on projects.
For example, we hired a carpenter to build lockers for the staff. During
the negotiations process, we asked him to indicate when he would be
able to deliver the lockers. He picked a date two weeks after the
start-date, and used the same phrase – “By God’s grace, I will deliver
the lockers by January 8.” We explained the penalty system to him – that
he would be charged 5 per cent of the balance on the payment for every
late day. We asked him, once again, if January 8 was still reasonable or
whether he would like to change the date to the 10th or even the 14th.
He repeatedly stated that the 8th was more than enough time and
proceeded to sign the contract stating that he understood the terms and
would deliver.

You can guess the
outcome of the story. On January 5, we called the carpenter and he said
that the wood for the lockers was still drying, but that “if God wills”,
he would still deliver the lockers on the 8th. On the 8th, we called
again, and he told us that he was on his way. We waited, and waited. He
eventually delivered the lockers on the 15th and was extremely upset
that we chose to penalise him for the late delivery.

While one might
argue that we were unfair to the carpenter who could have faced some
uncertainties which compelled him to miss the deadline, the reality is
that he needed to take full responsibility for his actions, and deliver
on his commitments or face the consequences.

Too often, we make
excuses for ourselves and others – “there must have been some serious
traffic, the downpour was unexpected, an okada hit the car, they took
the light and there is no diesel”, etc, etc. In our context, sometimes
these excuses sound as silly as “the dog ate my homework”. The reality
is that as unpredictable as many of these occurrences appear to be, they
are more of our everyday realities and we have to plan for them. Even
more important is the fact that one missed deadline or an inability to
deliver in one area affects a range of other activities, which will
invariably escalate the challenges that we all face.

And if for some
‘real’ reason, we cannot deliver, at least call to explain, instead of
waiting for the customer, client or friend to be the one to call to find
out why the lapse occurred.

God has truly
blessed Nigeria, and Nigerians. It is time we stop passing or sharing
the responsibilities of our actions or inactions with Him – and start
doing our part.