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The issue of corruption in high places in Nigeria has never been a hidden fact.

However, at a recent forum in Minna, Niger State, all residual doubts were lifted by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

At a book launch in honour of Babangida Aliyu, the
governor of the state, Mr. Obasanjo, who is not known to suffer fools
gladly, bluntly accused lawmakers of being utterly corrupt and
unaccountable. He did not stop there; according to the former leader
all his efforts during his tenure as President to know the exact salary
of a lawmaker came to naught. He also accused them of inflating budgets
for their own pecuniary gains. This is no mean allegation.

A few days later, the minority leader in the House
of Representatives, Mohammed Ndume, a member of the opposition All
Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP), came out to confirm Mr. Obasanjo’s
allegations, but with a caveat. Mr. Ndume, who is also known for his
frank and brutal talk agreed that the legislature was corrupt and said
that Mr. Obasanjo was not by any means in a position to accuse anyone
of corruption. He took exception to the penchant of the former
president for casting aspersions on the National Assembly and said the
issue of corruption does not begin or end with the legislators. He
insisted that the tag of corruption should be extended to all of
“Nigeria or politicians” in general. He added: “To single the
legislature out, I think he is not being fair. Is it not Obasanjo who
bred corruption in this country? It was during his tenure that
corruption moved from low level to high level.

It was during his tenure
that he gave N50 million each to members of this House to extend his
tenure. Go and look at his account when he came out of the prison to
become the president and look at his account now. That will answer who
is corrupt. It was during his tenure that NAFCON, NITEL, refineries,
etc, were sold to girlfriends and cronies. What was that? When you look
at that, you will have the answer as to who is truly corrupt.” This
exchange between Mr. Obasanjo and Mr. Ndume brings to
mind the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s classic song, ‘International Thief
Thief’ (ITT). In that song there was an exchange of words between two
persons: one accusing the other: “You be thief!”, “You be robber!”; the
other protesting: “I no be thief!”; “I no be arm’ robber!”. The
exchange continued, with each party justifying its position.

It is this situation that is playing itself out
now between the two – Mr. Obasanjo and Mr. Ndume. In agreeing with Mr.
Obasanjo’s accusation, Mr. Ndume went further, “He is correct to say we
are padding the budget, but that is a result of government failure. If
the government built hospitals, schools, roads, there will be no need
for constituency projects.” Our take on this is that the two men have
provided the raw material and the evidence needed by the nation’s
anti-corruption agencies to institute a prima facie case against them.
Mr. Obasanjo accused the legislature of corruption; in response a
member of the accused arm of government came out publicly to admit that
he and his colleagues are indeed corrupt. He did not stop there but
went ahead to confirm what had hitherto been in the realms of rumour;
that Mr. Obasanjo is the “grandmaster of corruption” because he bribed
them with N50 million each to elongate his term.

These are serious allegations. In a society even faintly serious
about the fight against corruption, the two men would by now be
answering questions from law enforcement agencies. If Nigeria, and the
Goodluck Jonathan administration, are indeed serious about tackling
corruption, the place to start is with these two men.

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

Madness may mean a
terrible state of psychiatric disorder, lacking common sense and not
reasoning logically, or an excessive interest in something almost to
the exclusion of everything else. Is it what we are discussing today?
Or are we trying to play around the title of one of Kongi’s best
sellers – “Madmen and Specialist”? The answer interestingly is no!

I have no
intention, in anyway, to be rude or offensive. I preach and teach
respect, not only for human beings, but also for institutions,
especially those I believe are ordained by the greatest sportsman
Himself, the Lord God Almighty. Take it or ignore it, whether we like
it or not FIFA has been put in place globally to administer football
and there is nothing anybody can do about that now. This is one
organisation you can only hate to love or love to hate, especially in
Nigeria. Don’t even think of beating them. The only thing you can
successfully do is join them and do their bidding.

What ails FIFA?

But I ask once
again, is FIFA M.A.D.? Or let me simplify the question a little bit
more. Is FIFA M.A.D. in Nigerian football? Have you now got the gist?
No? Okay, I will explain. M.A.D. is an acronym for “Making a
Difference”. Aah, so now you get it and I can hear some of the readers
saying stuff like – “Paul, you must be mad”. No, I reject that by fire
and by force, but I agree, if you say I am M.A.D.

Let me quickly
confess however, that this title is borrowed from Tony Marinho, a
thorough bred Nigerian, M.A.D. from his base in Ibadan.

The answer to the
question ‘Is FIFA M.A.D.?’ as far as I am concerned is no. Does FIFA
for instance not realise the fact that constitutionally, the National
Sports Commission (NSC) and the so-called Nigeria Football Federation
(NFF) are illegitimate and therefore have no right to administer
sports, especially football in Nigeria? Would anyone in FIFA claim not
to be aware of the fact that about 98% of the football teams (not
football clubs) in Nigeria are funded by government with tax payers’
hard-earned monies? I am absolutely sure that no one in FIFA can claim
not to know that “the tune is dictated by the one who pays the piper”
and it can’t be different here in Nigeria. Would FIFA claim not to be
aware of this fact – 20 years after the founding of the Nigerian
Football League, we are yet to have a football Club in Nigeria,
according to the guidelines of the so-called statutes that were meant
to establish the football clubs? Does FIFA not know that the natural
administrative pyramid that should be in place, from the local
government areas (LGAs) to the state and eventually to the National
level – that pyramid, that should provide the Associations, from the
LGAs, where genuine grassroots developmental football programmes for”
catch-them-young” initiatives – do not exist in Nigeria?

The two-faced nature of FIFA

Well, if it is true
that FIFA is ignorant of some or all of the issues raised above, then,
someone should please do us one big favour, by informing Primo Corvado,
FIFA’s representative sent in to monitor the forth-coming NFF
selection, now rescheduled for Thursday August 26, 2010, that the ‘FAIR
PLAY’ gospel preached by FIFA is still strange to us here in Nigeria.
Please let Corvado know that here in Nigeria, medical doctors,
carpenters, engineers, architects and even farmers (and I refer to them
in he most derogatory manner, for the purpose of this write-up) aspire
to become President of our football ruling bodies. Let him know for
instance that there are no football associations in most our LGA’s and
where they exist, the associations are administered by officials of the
ministry of agriculture.

Please tell
Corvado, that the selection exercise he has come to monitor is shrouded
in deceit, uncertainties and controversies. If Corvado himself believes
in decency, it behoves him as a gentle man to publicly respond to the
protests sent to FIFA by Segun Odegbami and other NFF Presidential
aspirants.

It will also be
appreciated if FIFA can declare – publicly, how much has been invested
on football development in Nigeria. Truth is that nature abhors any
form of vacuum and there is so much information vacuum as regards this
sensitive issue of funding of football. I am one of the several
subscribers to the monthly FIFA magazine and we read of millions of
dollars invested on football development especially at the grassroots
level by FIFA in developing countries. Has Nigeria benefited from this?

Permit me to end
this piece on a rather serious note. Can FIFA dare to make a difference
by calling on the federal government and state governments to stop
funding football in Nigeria?

Let FIFA call the bluff of the NSC and Bio in order to stop all the
“shakara” going on now. And finally, maybe Bukola Olapade, a.k.a.
“Ozoganga” was right when he submitted that the next NFF President
should be a mad man or woman. I would have voted for you my friend, but
unfortunately Mr Corvado of FIFA will not allow me. So, I say
congratulations in advance to whoever is chosen on Thursday. But be
prepared to be M.A.D.

It is hard not to
be impressed by the man known as Rafa Nadal. Barely in his mid-20s, he
has achieved a lot more than what most tennis players dream about. To
date, he has won eight Grand Slam titles, 18 Master titles, and an
Olympic Gold medal, amongst others. To put it in better perspective,
over the last decade, he has accomplished more in the world of tennis
than what 200 million Nigerians have achieved in the last century in
the same field.

How does he do it?
How does he manage to keep up his speed, his agility, and still find
time to shampoo and style that glorious hair of his? The answer to that
question can be found in those characteristics that have become the
bedrock of most success stories — hard work, dedication, and a lot of
good healthy advice; factors that are unfortunately in short supply
within the shores of Nigeria.

Football is
undoubtedly the leading sport in the nation today. It is played in the
fields and on the streets. It is even rumoured that a few people
actually once considered playing it on the Third Mainland Bridge.
Sometimes, the game of football appears to be the only sport that
people are willing to consider. Most Nigerians are yet to come to terms
with the idea of a Nigerian basketball league and even more Nigerians
would probably choose to work all weekend in their offices instead of
having to watch a match of cricket. Unfortunately, it is this blind
stubbornness of ours that has resulted in the dwindling fortunes of our
sports sector.

When all is said
and done, there really is no reason why Nigeria as a nation is unable
to challenge at the highest of sport levels. Outside the world of
football, in the listing of many world sporting events, Nigeria appears
to be regularly absent. What prevents a sponsored team of national
cyclers from challenging at the next Tour de France event? Why can’t
Nigerians finally break out of the mould and make an appearance at the
next Wimbledon tournament? Outside the rules, the requirements of most
sporting events are the same. People must possess the right amount of
body appendage. The last time I checked, most Nigerians have their arms
and legs in place.

Many might blame
the government for its failure to provide the structural facilities
needed for the advancement in sports but this reason is not completely
true. Today, there are hundreds of Nigerian footballers plying their
trade in foreign countries. Their successes in this field are not the
direct results of governmental intervention but simply the outcome of
their dedication and desire to succeed. To stress the point further,
sporting stars such as Rafa Nadal, the Williams sisters, and Didier
Drogba are not the direct outcomes of government programmes. They are,
instead, superstars who were raised and supported by family members
during their early years.

Unfortunately, the
desire for most Nigerians to groom children who end up working with
multinational companies has led to most parents nipping the sporting
dreams of their children before they even begin. Nigerian parents do
not want their children talking about sports. If a 10-year-old boy by
the name of ‘HC’ was to announce to his father that he wished to become
a lawn tennis player, he probably would get knocked on the head and
then enrolled in after school lessons so that his mind could be
“sharpened” on more important things. Outside the world of academics,
nothing else is ever supported. Children who would aspire to be
artists, musicians, and athletes are turned into the newest recruits
for the banking and oil-servicing companies. Instead of raising the
next Rafa ‘Onyekachi HC’ Nadal, parents are happy to settle for bank
tellers who earn less than $1000 a month.

In a couple of days, the screens of millions of televisions will be
graced with the antics of the US Open. For people like me, who happen
to be fans of tennis, our days will likely be spent watching players as
they slog it out on one of the hardest courts in the tour. I already
know exactly where my allegiance will lie. This year, as has been my
practice for the last three years, I will be rooting for a certain Rafa
Nadal. Next year, however, with any bit of luck, my attention just
might be taken by a new introduction to the world of grand slam tennis.
That of a Nigerian challenger.

It is two years
this month since Abayomi Ogundeji was gunned down by unidentified
assailants on his way from work. If anyone expected the Nigeria Police
to find his killers, the expectation was in vain as it would have
amounted to asking the Police not to be what it is – an incompetent
force.

Abayomi was a
friend. I knew him since 1992 just after our national youth service. I
first met him when he joined the African Guardian as a budding
reporter. It did not take long for Abayomi to prove the stuff he was
made of. He distinguished himself as a writer to watch. When the
Babangida government closed down The Guardian newspapers as part of its
destructive agenda for Nigeria, Abayomi joined us at Theweek magazine
in 1995 and our friendship blossomed. With the likes of the late Godwin
Agbroko and Muyiwa Akintunde as editor and deputy Editor, Abayomi’s
writing style found vent.

He returned to The
Guardian later and thereafter moved to The Punch where he became its
features editor and The Comet as its Sunday editor. After about three
years as editor, Abayomi quit in 2005 saying he was done with
mainstream journalism and started a media consultancy. His first major
client was Tokunbo Afikuyomi. Given who Abayomi was, it was
unsurprising that the relationship did not last. He then became a
publicist to Femi Pedro, Bola Tinubu’s deputy governor, and this ended
after the 2007 governorship elections.

Abayomi returned to
journalism as a member of Thisday editorial board. He had hardly made
his mark there when he was killed by agents of darkness; in the same
manner Agbroko, Thisday’s former editorial board chairman was killed.
No doubt, the police have forgotten about Agbroko’s case, a trend that
started in 1986 with the murder of Dele Giwa.

Abayomi had this
easy flow with words and communicated in a way that distinguished him
as an intellectual. I am, however, not remembering him today because of
his writings but because of who he was and what he stood for. We shared
a lot in common, principally the state of the nation. We often agonized
about Nigeria, why we are not where we should be and why we are good at
manufacturing bad leaders.

Abayomi was a
humanist, an intellectual and a patriot. He studied history at the
University of Ibadan. He loved life. Though a Baptist from Ogbomoso, it
was not until late 2007 that I knew that he was named Paul.

When I teased him
that ‘Paul’ did not fit the near-Marxist Abayomi, he responded, “I am
not only Paul; I was a soprano in the church choir in Ogbomoso where I
grew up! Father was the head of the ushers; mother a deaconess.
Religion suffused my background, as Ogbomoso people are Baptists.

Yet I became a
Marxist at the first opportunity to be independent in University of
Ibadan. Now, I am back as an aspiring capitalist and, you never know,
possibly a pastor as old age knocks. See, we will become our fathers!”
The killers’ bullets aborted these dreams.

After I left Lagos,
we lost touch, but during the period, Abayomi married Jennifer, a
banker from Edo State. Before he was killed at 40, they had two sons, a
scenario regarding which he humoured that his wife “is petitioning the
Girls’ Guide in preparation for the third child!” His is a great loss
to his immediate family, friends, colleagues, and the nation at large.
Worse, his killers still prowl the land unmolested. To think that
journalists, who are very visible, could get killed without the
criminals being apprehended signposts the precarious security situation
in Nigeria. Often, people blame the poor handling of crime in Nigeria
on the lack of adequate funding for the Police. Nothing could be
farther from the truth.

I argue that the
police is over-funded relative to most other sectors. In yearly
budgets, provision to the NPF in particular and security/defence in
general, is one of the highest.

But two main
reasons, corruption in the police and high rate of unemployment, make
the Force unable to discharge its constitutional responsibilities. The
National Bureau of Statistics has put the number of unemployed
Nigerians at 12 million by December 2009. That is a time bomb, a ready
army for crime of all shades. So, most of the jobless youths go into
one form of crime or the other for survival.

Governments are not
providing jobs. For example the Niger Delta states receive 13%
derivation with nonexistent employment opportunities.

Except in one or
two states, unemployment is high. But these are states that receive
several billions of naira monthly from the federation account. Much of
the money is used to provide luxury facilities to be enjoyed by 1
percent of the states’ population.

The National Bureau
of Statistics records show that the national unemployment rate as at
March 2009 was 19.7% (of people aged 15 to 64), a steep rise over the
14.9% figure in the corresponding period in 2008.

In the absence of
social security, it is only when unemployment is brought to the lowest
level that crime can reduce and the police can adequately fight it. It
is only when the police are able to arrest perpetrators of crimes that
we can safely say that the likes of Abayomi Ogundeji did not die in
vain.

The cause of the Sunday morning accident in which 20 people died on the Lagos Ibadan Expressway is still a matter of debate. Going by the accounts of most eyewitnesses, the incident leading up to the tragedy started when a team of police officers decided to mount an illegal checkpoint on a part of the road. This led to a traffic snarl and when the driver of an articulated lorry reached the scene, he could not control his vehicle, which ran into other cars causing an explosion that consumed tens of hapless Nigerians in public buses and private cars.

Adding to the misery of the victims, angry witnesses started attacking security officials seen around the area. This hampered rescue efforts for a while until a police detachment restored order and created a safe environment for other agencies to work. Naturally, attention has been focused on the officers who set up the checkpoint – and the police authorities are not amused.

Both the commissioner of the Lagos State police command, Marvel Akpoyibo and the command’s spokesperson, Frank Mba have rushed to defend their men and deny any police culpability in this tragic incident. The police command gave its own rendition of what caused the accident and placed the blame on the driver of the trailer – and the victims whose slow driving must have caused the traffic snafu. What is more wondrous, the police said since none of their officers died in the incident, they could not have been at the scene.

But then the police command has also said it is investigating the incident. We wonder why this is still necessary, since the police leadership appears to have summarily dismissed the possible link between the actions of its men and the accident.

Perhaps the most positive thing that could be said about this rush to judgement by police leadership is that it was meant to control tempers and calm fevered nerves so the work of attending to the injured and bereaved could go on. But even this is hard to swallow.

The truth is the victims of this tragedy and their relatives – not to talk of the generality of Nigerians – would be hard pressed to have much confidence in the outcome of the police investigation into the situation that led to the accident. If past experience is anything to go by it is almost impossible to expect the police to castigate any of its own for this.

Before Lagos, there was Anambra. Last May, an eerily similar accident occurred at a police checkpoint at Awka, leading to the death of close to 15 people. The

police did little other than to proffer the usual mea culpa – and a defiant statement that the checkpoint would not be moved in spite of the tragedy.

No one was queried, apparently; no one was penalised. The bugbear of civil society activists and some senior police officers is the culture of impunity that has eaten deep into the policing system. The default action seems to be to cover up genuine mistakes officers make along with some of their more egregious actions such as shooting unarmed citizens and mounting unregulated and unapproved checkpoints.

Little wonder then that despite the gallantry and sense of dedication of thousands of its officers, the Force has always found itself swimming against the tide of public opinion. Impunity and a sense of inviolability ultimately bring rot into a system – no matter how well run. The leadership of the police might have the best intentions in trying to shield its officers.

That is done across the world. But a little accountability could only strengthen the system. It would turn the officers into better professionals and restore public confidence in the men and women who often risk their lives to protect others.

The police leadership is already dealing with many challenges as they seek to reposition the force. Muddying the waters for their subordinates, as they did over the recent accident, is a distraction that leads them in the wrong direction.

Years
ago, or should I be more honest and say decades ago, since at my age
that is the unit in which I now count the passage of time, a group of
friends, consisting of three married couples watched a young and
foolish man insinuate himself into an argument between a husband and
wife. This was a seriously married couple; their union had endured for
more than a piddling decade or two.

In
fact they had been married for longer than this young man had been
alive, but such was the “undue radicalism” of this youth that he took
no note of the calm disinterest of those of us who knew that it was
more profitable to continue our own conversation and leave our two
friends to sort themselves out.

The
young fool ignored our efforts to draw him away and then like an idiot
followed the couple over to the table where they had moved for more
privacy. There was some kind of family crisis brewing, the kind that
outsiders would consider a minor hiccup but insiders know can easily
get to ground zero. Young Galahad thought he could offer comfort and
solace to the lady he imagined to be in distress, and addressed himself
to her, in front of her very longstanding husband, who knowing he was
traversing familiar territory was limiting his answers to
monosyllables. The response Galahad got for his troubles is not one I
can repeat in a family paper.

The
lesson has been repeated throughout history: never embroil yourself in
a quarrel between people in a particular type of relationship; you will
get mangled! But this is the fun part that we can all identify with. No
law has been broken, no crimes committed, no person’s rights denied.

Barely
two months have passed since former Olori Bolanle Adepoju had more than
a few Nigerians railing at her husband the now deposed Deji of Akure,
Oluwadare Adepoju for physically assaulting his wife and behaving most
unroyally, like a person with no sense of propriety and no evidence of
good breeding. The Ondo State government and the royal fathers took the
matter in hand and separated the man from his throne. I mean the
accusations that flew to and fro were most scandalous and deeply
wounding of the kind that you make when you suddenly can’t stand the
feel of the noose you have put around your own neck.

Such
is the nature of marriage sometimes and in the typical Nigerian
setting, the recourse is to approach family and seek to settle the
matter quietly and privately.

But there is no being queen without a king, such is the reality of being deposed.

Politics always rears its ugly head doesn’t it?

The
Adepojus have apparently now made up, the families of each spouse are
now reconciled and there was no confusion about the paternity of the
children. Bolanle Adepoju has appealed to the Ondo government to
rescind the deposition of her husband and asked for him to be forgiven
arguing that the fight was a family issue.

But
it was not just a family issue. Clearly Oluwadare Adepoju forgot to
remember his status when he went publicly a quarrelling with his wife,
entourage in tow and attacked her. It can be argued that he probably
did not think he was doing anything wrong. The fact is that he has
sullied his office, unless of course this is the kind of behaviour to
be expected of Ondo royalty, and while the larger traditional family
can forgive him there is the wider aspect that he has offended against
the state by assaulting another person. The victim’s status as his wife
does not give him the power to trammel her rights as a human being,
even if she decides she is not going to lay charges, as is her
prerogative.

This
issue is beyond let’s all forgive each other and be one big cultural
happy family. It is after all part of the reason why many are offended
at Senator Sanni Yerima’s marriage to an underage girl, and why the
public was outraged at the gang rape and murder of youth corper Grace
Ushang Adie in Maiduguri.

A
neighbour sexually abuses a girl child and the parents find it in their
hearts to forgive and forget because it is ‘easier’ for them.
Kidnappers make off with our loved ones and we prefer to pay quietly.
Turai Yar’Adua has the nation’s sympathy while she is in mourning but
are we going to forgive and forget what she put this country through,
so that some future first lady can build on the precedent she set?
Where do we draw the line on anything?

Why
don’t we just forgive Cecilia Ibru and dissolve the EFCC so that Farida
Waziri can find something else to do? Why bother with a Police Force if
certain people, the ones whose actions will always get media coverage,
can just come and ask for forgiveness for whatever they did and get it;
and sometimes even when they do not ask.

Right after a JetBlue flight attendant, Steven Slater, plunged down an emergency chute last week with beers in hand, Rene Foss started thinking about working the escapade into a song for the next edition of her musical revue, “Around the World in a Bad Mood.”

“Not a lot you can do with rhyming JetBlue. But chute, that has possibilities. Chute, cute, beaut,” she said appraisingly. “Beer is too easy. Slater? Well, how about, ‘See ya later?”‘ Foss has been a flight attendant for 26 years for a major airline. Her mother was also a flight attendant. Eight years ago, she wrote a humorous book about the travails of the job that bears the same title as the revue.

The book sprang from the show, which she has staged for 10 years in theatres around the nation during her time off. The shows are sometimes a one-woman performance and sometimes a musical revue with a cast of three, plus accompanist.

These days, a flight attendant’s career, once celebrated as glamorous, has become a very tough proposition. Over the last decade, salaries and pensions have been cut while air travel has become increasingly irritating to all.

As more people flew (769.6 million boarded domestic carriers in 2009, up from 629 million in 2000), airlines cut costs by eliminating jobs. This June, domestic airlines employed 462,977 full-time workers, compared with 607,387 in June 2000, the Transportation Department reports.

Like most flight attendants, Foss was riveted by the story of Slater, who gained international fame last week after a JetBlue flight reached the gate at John F. Kennedy International Airport. As the story is told, after announcing to passengers that he’d finally had it, Slater grabbed two cans of beer from the galley, activated the aircraft’s emergency inflatable slide, rode it down to the tarmac and ran off. He was arrested hours later on charges of criminal mischief and reckless endangerment that carry a penalty of up to seven years in jail.

Initially, news accounts depicted Slater as a heroic Everyman protesting the indignities of contemporary air travel. Soon, though, the story became less clear-cut after some passengers were said to have told the authorities that Slater had been acting aggressively and strangely throughout the flight. Slater suffered a facial cut at some point, perhaps as a result of an injury caused by that bane of flight attendants, a heavy bag tumbling from a jam-packed overhead bin.

At first, “he was absolutely a kind of hero, perhaps acting on things that many flight attendants may have felt at one time or another,” said Foss. She said stressed-out flight attendants began jokingly warning one another, “‘I’m about to pull a Slater!’ or ‘If this keeps up, I’m gonna go JetBlue!”‘

With planes now mostly full, the toll on flight attendants has been tremendous. But after the initial chuckles died down, many flight attendants assessed the Slater incident and worried about the perilous precedent set by a flight crewmember throwing a tantrum. “Blowing the slide,” as activating the emergency chute is called, is a very serious matter. Anyone on the tarmac below the plane who is hit by a slide can be seriously injured. “That’s one great big airbag, right smack in the kisser,” one pilot told me. On the plane, the potential for passenger panic is real.

“The poor guy was probably at his wit’s end,” Foss said. “He’s caring for an elderly mother, meaning he’s commuting all the way across the country. And then, beyond that, he apparently has a very bad day.” She added, “Fortunately, what Slater did didn’t hurt or kill somebody.”

Whatever other consequences it may have, the case highlights the rising tensions on airplanes, including those involving stowing carry-on bags in bin space that was never designed to handle the current volume. The overhead-bin wars have become the worst part of any flight attendant’s day and a very unpleasant part of most passengers’ journeys as well.

Meanwhile, Foss remains intrigued by Slater and hopes she can entice him into a guest appearance in the next performance of her revue. “Assuming he’s available,” she said. “But who knows? Maybe he’ll get a sitcom or a reality show. Or seven years.”

©2010 New York Times News Service

In strong contrast to the wishy-washy speculation that a bowl of
simple fish stew can be used to bewitch a man, is the notoriety of a
potent love charm or potion that guarantees total infatuation from the
object of one’s affections; if indeed affection is the right word. It
facilitates the creation of a love slave or fawning fool, or it tames
straying husbands, or gives a woman the compelling ability to have any
man that she likes or wants.

The muscle that such a charm carries cannot be overstated not only in
Nigeria where men in relationships tend to be all powerful, but in
Africa,
where women are always getting slapped in the face by cultures that
allow their men to marry many wives and keep many more mistresses.
African women are (supposedly) always outwardly shrugging at their
“predicament”, at their alleged underdog positions in marriages.
If a Nigerian woman’s husband cheats on her, and she is asked to give a
response, there is a strong likelihood that she won’t do a Sandra
Bullock.

That response of giving up a man, divorcing him and moving on
with one’s life does not altogether make sense in the context of
Nigeria or Africa. A Nigerian woman never wins by pouting and being
nonsensical …when she can dig her heels in and really win by lassoing
him back in. The winner is the woman who gets to keep the man, or a
part of him, (if he must be shared) no matter how dog-eared, how
rickety, how completely unsavoury the man is:
A great irony if ever there was one.
But what has this got to do with food? It is a question that I myself
am always asking. Why is the typical Nigerian or African love charm
ingested?

Why are all the symbolisms, the figures of speech centered on
food and drink?
Gbelekokomiyo that central Niger Delta phenomenon that casts strong
shadows of self-doubt in the hearts of Nigerian men is a complex, mind
bending, dynamic thing. The strongest symbolism as well as the Constant
is not sex but food. A man eats food or drinks drink laced with
“something”. That something is strong medicine and only the Lord knows
what it is. No one really seems to know what Gbelekokomiyo as ominous
as it sounds means.
It appears the onomatopoeic knocks in the syllables are engineered to
strike fear in the hearts of men and women.
Ikhide Ikheloa gave me a definition that works well because of its
simplicity.

He says it stands for a man drinking his wife’s “Kool Aid”
And supposedly, after drinking said Kool Aid he does her bidding for
the rest of his bewildered life. It of course works not only for wives,
but for any woman who has the access the willingness and the stomach to
spiritually override a man’s will. The end result interestingly is not
the undying love of an individual with all his senses intact.
It is not really the advertised product. It is not a peeling away of
layers, allowing the man to see the intrinsic value in the woman who
has gone to the effort of charming him. It is adding on more layers,
with strains of deep painful self-hatred, retribution, diabolic
mischief,
death. It is like the devotion of a zombie to its master.

Why would
anyone want to be loved by a zombie?
If Kool Aid is too foreign a concept, then perhaps African peppersoup
is more apt. African peppersoup has as many versions as the idea of
Africa allows, and the same can be said for the love charm. Every
dialect of every language of every village in every African country has
its own name for Gbelekokomiyo. Gabonese love charms are famed as some
of the strongest.
Togo’s version echoes the Yoruba language word for word. It is called
“Gbo temi”. Moving East in the Niger Delta, one inevitably runs into
the Efik “Kop mo mi” which translates simply as “gree for me”.
These charms are all administered, stirred in, spooned into the mouth,
eaten.
Some people say that it is best administered in “soups that draw” or
mixed in with cooked snails, or fish stews, or whatever. Some say the
failsafe recipe is for a woman to bend over her cooking pot and wash
“parts of her anatomy” into it. Or at least that is what it sounds like
when it is transliterated.
The million Naira question is does it work? If Nigerian men believe it
does and Nigerian women believe it does, then in a fashion, it does
work.
Almost all the Nigerian men and women that I asked admitted that they
believe that putting something in someone’s food can make them love
you, and that this is usually the craft of women.
Do I believe it works? The very fact that one has to make another
person love one has already negated love. Love is foremost an act of
the will.

I do believe in foods being aphrodisiacs because here the mouth
is eating and the brain is thinking and consenting, and observing
psychological and cultural rites, and there is proof that some foods
regarded as aphrodisiacs produce true biological reactions in the body.
But that I can be forced against my will to love someone by simply
eating food… this I consider completely impossible.