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More than a year ago the then Attorney
General and Minister of Justice, Michael Aondoakaa, wrote a letter to
his counterpart in the US asking for the names of the implicated
Nigerians. This paper also reported that the Senate and House of
Representatives also wrote to US authorities requesting the list.

In April 2009 Mr. Aondoakaa told
journalists “we are going to constitute a committee … that will be
charged with the responsibility of gathering information. If the
quality of information we receive internally is sufficient for us to
commence prosecution, we will commence prosecution.” Mr. Aondoakaa also
added that the prosecution would be dependent “on the cooperation we
have from the U.S. government.”

At the time that Mr. Aondoakaa was
blowing hot and cold NEXT had already published exclusive reports
listing some of the most prominent Nigerian beneficiaries of the
bribes, based on court documents obtained in the US, UK and France.
They included at least three former Nigerian Heads of State – the late
Sani Abacha, Abdulsalam Abubakar and Olusegun Obasanjo, a former
Petroleum Minister Dan Etete and a former Group Managing Director of
the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Gaius Obaseki.

Nigerian authorities as is their
custom pretended to be unaware of the widely available evidence, and
appeared more interested in writing letters to foreign authorities and
blaming them for not cooperating. At that time we observed, in a news
report, that “our law enforcement authorities, notably Attorney General
Michael Aondoakaa, have lately been making noises but have in reality
done little to pursue those indicted in this scandal, which reveals us
as a nation that fully justifies its reputation as one of the world’s
leading cesspits for corruption and unrestrained graft.”

In the months since then nothing has
changed. Nigeria is no closer to getting to the roots of that scandal,
or to prosecuting the implicated officials than it was when the news
broke. This is in spite of the fact that the other countries whose
nationals were involved in the scandal have since taken action and
meted out necessary punishments. Mr. Etete, sentenced to three years in
prison by a Paris criminal court in 2007, was in 2009 fined $10.5
million by a French Court of Appeal after he was convicted of money
laundering.

The money in question is believed to be
part of the Halliburton bribe payments. In September 2007, just before
this conviction, Mr. Aondoakaa wrote a letter to French prosecutors
requesting that the prosecution of Mr. Etete be suspended.

Mr. Etete has been on the run from
French authorities, and was convicted in absentia. If anyone thought
that his conviction in Paris would spur the Nigerian authorities to
bring him to justice at home, they were wrong. From all available
evidence Nigeria’s law enforcement agents are neither interested in Mr.
Etete, nor in making efforts to ensure that he is extradited to France
to face his jail term.

Mr. Aondoakaa inaugurated the
Halliburton probe Committee on April 21, 2009, and gave it eight weeks
to complete its assignment and submit a report.

Today, one year later, the Committee
has yet to submit its report. As expected, all that is coming from the
government is more empty words. “If the report gets to him, I can
assure you the Attorney General will act on the recommendations and
based on what the law says,” a spokesperson for Bello Adoke, the new
Justice Minister (who replaced Mr. Aondoakaa) said last week.

These facile assurances from Nigerian
authorities have gone on for far too long. If Acting President Jonathan
is indeed serious about making a difference in government and tackling
corruption, he should not only order the immediate release of the
Halliburton report, but also issue a query to the Committee for sitting
on the report for this long.

At
a time when Nigerian politics, education, and social life are in great
travail, especially because of wrong decisions or even lack of
decisions on the part of those who play important roles in these
sectors, one is led in the search for ideas to “dying” indigenous modes
of articulating the problem of decision-making.

In the indigenous
Igbo world, one model of decision-making, which is perhaps considered
the most faulty as well as the most risky, is the Tumbom Tumbom.
Usually enacted with the recitation of “Tumbom tumbom nkwa nwa isi
eregede, nge!” the Tumbom Tumbom is a formula often applied in the
local Igbo setting whenever a person is confronted with the difficult
task of choosing from among several options that have little or nothing
to differentiate them.

The process is
simple: the finger of the chooser is made to travel from one option to
the other in the physical space, and wherever the song ends, or where
the word “nge” falls, that is considered the inevitable choice ordained
by Fate.

Related to the
tradition of casting lots, this approach to decision making is not
really determined by any supernatural intelligence. From a simple
understanding of kinesics and spatiality, the onset point, to a large
extent, determines the termination point, or just to say, the beginning
determines the end, or rather, the end is in the beginning.

The Tumbom Tumbom
model is risky, for it makes one’s decision subject to chance. But it
is not as risky as the Zero Option one encounters when one is
challenged to handle a dilemma, “Leta ira Mbajiaku na ikwu eriri, were
otu” (Choose between making love to Mbajiaku and committing suicide).
Mbajiaku was a mad woman with sores all over her body.

Her sad condition
made people avoid her completely, and so the question of a sane man
wanting to make love to her was considered inconceivable.

To be asked to
choose between making love to her and committing suicide is to be put
in a situation where it is impossible to make any choice, assuming that
the person asked to make the choice is still sane. Making love to
Mbajiaku is as horrible as killing oneself, at least in the
understanding of the local community in whose discourses the narrative
features sometimes.

The English would
call this dilemma “being between the devil and the deep blue sea”. For
the local Igbo community, the Mbajiaku script presents a situation they
can relate with as well as use in representing helplessness in the
selection of a suitable option. In a sense, it is a script used for
humiliating and subjugating an addressee.

Is one being unfair
to Mbajiaku? Is one merely exploiting her condition as a semiotic of
the reject, without a humanistic consideration about her right to
association, to company, and even to sex? Perhaps. And this means one
has to interrogate the assumptions in the cultural interpretation of
Mbajiaku, especially her representation as the outsider, as one
undeserving of what other human beings use in constructing and
maintaining their humanity. So, we must recognise the weaknesses in the
local Igbo use of the expression.

But in spite of
such weaknesses, one can still recognise the Mbajiaku script as an
important cultural statement on dilemmas in decision making, especially
in relation to crucial matters of societal and individual survival.

It is a great
misfortune for a society to find itself in a situation where, in
electing its leaders, it has to choose between making love to Mbajiaku
and committing suicide outright. One has to become like Mbajiaku in
order to be able to make love to her. She still has her teeth and could
bite. She still has her talons and could scratch. And she still has
some other “goods” she could “sell” to her crazy partner to help him to
kill himself sooner. Indeed, one has to become an Mbajiaku to be able
to approach an Mbajiaku for sexual favours. For if what the
psychoanalyst tells us about the relationship between the sex instinct
and the death instinct could be accepted, it is easy to kill oneself in
having sexual union with Mbajiaku at both the interpersonal and
societal levels.

I think that
Nigerian voters have for a long time been subjected to situations where
they have to apply the Tumbom Tumbom model of choice as well as perform
the Mbajiaku script. Sometimes they are asked to choose between two
retired military dictators who are known for their disrespect for human
freedom and human life. Sometimes they are asked to choose between an
Ivan the Terrible and a crook that loved money so much that he gave his
only begotten son in a money ritual.

It seems to me too
that when Nigerian voters are confronted with the Mbajiaku script, they
often find themselves applying the Tumbom Tumbom model, which produces
the predictable result of killing the self in the risky “either/or”
that the Mbajiaku script imposes.

With the 2011
federal elections getting closer, one is watching to see whether
Nigerians would prefer to perform an Mbajiaku script in the Tumbom
Tumbom mode, or choose to undermine and reject the electoral suicide
principle entirely.

The
wife of the outgoing Greek ambassador, Mrs. Eva Dafaranos, was quoted
as having said the following about her experience in this country:
“When I came to Nigeria…I said to myself: the Nigerian people are so
happy. There is something different about Nigeria; no matter the
diversity, the people are happy. They are kind to each other and they
believe in God. I feel Africans and Nigerians are the best of the human
race.” This characterisation brings to mind a similar one made by the
former Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Boutros Boutros
Ghali,who is said to have called Nigerians the happiest people in the
world and would wish to be born a Nigerian, were he to have a second
life. The BBC also reported in October 2003 that a study of more than
65 countries suggested,“the happiest people live in Nigeria”.

When those
statements were made years ago I felt rather good about them, believing
that they paid tribute to our resilience as a people, able to keep
their spirits up even in rather trying circumstances.

We’re obviously a
fun-loving people, drumming and dancing, seeking every opportunity to
throw a party, and apparently quick to shrug off whatever problems
assail us as God’s will. Life must go on.

This time around,
however, reading Mrs. Dafaranos’ declaration, I felt very bad indeed,
almost insulted. Six good years have gone by since 2003, and I wonder
if that characterisation still holds – or indeed, whether it is proper
for it to still hold. Those of you reading these lines, are you happy –
truly happy – about our current situation as a country?

Actually, I hold no
grudge against Mrs. Dafaranos; I am sure she is paying us a sincere
compliment. The problem is, I wonder whether this might not actually be
an indictment on us? That is, with all the difficulties facing us now
as a nation, we still come across as a happy people! Is something wrong
somewhere?

To my mind, there
are at least two ways to explain this phenomenon. The first is that
such characterisations might be based more on observations made on the
minority, party-throwing Nigerian population. After all, which category
of Nigerians do ambassadors hobnob with? Certainly not the ordinary
people on the streets! I am not sure that happiness is so easily
discernible on the face of the labourer struggling hard to eke out a
living, going home to his family of five at the end of the day with
less than the equivalent of one dollar in his pocket.

When the minister
of education feels comfortable enough to throw a lavish party at a time
when all the public universities in the nation are closed, then he must
be an incorrigibly happy person. When leaders celebrate their
children’s weddings with sums of money that far exceed the budgets of
federal institutions (hospitals, universities, etc), then they must be
truly happy, for they obviously see themselves as having been so well
favoured by their circumstances (that is, the public positions they
occupy), and they just have to let it be known.

The second possible
explanation might be even more worrisome, for it suggests that we are a
bunch of unthinking people, unable to recognise or feel the gravity of
our situation and act accordingly – and this is not limited to the
leaders or the society’s crème de la crème, sadly. It’s like we’re
morons living in an unreal world, a world of make-believe. We close our
eyes to the reality and continue on our happy-go-lucky way.

Many of us fall
under this category. We readily overshoot our financial abilities when
there’s an occasion to celebrate, mortgaging children’s school fees and
other important considerations in favour of a talk-of-the-neighbourhood
party.

We decide on an aso
ebi that is beyond the reach even of some members of the immediate
family – but they just have to find a way to pay for it, and they do!
People travel five hundred kilometres in ramshackle buses on terrible
roads for the burial ceremony of their boss’ friend’s husband’s
grandfather, telling themselves that they absolute have to be there.
Some of us cannot survive a party-less weekend; we are addicted to
pleasure – and the country might fall apart if it pleases! I wonder,
how did Ghana manage to turn things around for itself – by pursuing the
happiness road? I remember that when I was an undergraduate in the
seventies some Ghanaian students once came for the West African Games
and their situation was so pitiful, we had to contribute money to buy
soap, toothpaste and other basic needs for them to take back home.

Now, thirty years on, Nigerian children are applying to study in
Ghanaian schools because we have chosen to leave our own educational
institutions to rot. And I’m being told we’re a happy people! A version
of this article was first published on July 23, 2009

For most of the past eleven years, the Peoples Democratic Party has held sway over politics in Nigeria. The party, which has controlled the federal government since 1999, also produced a majority of the state executives – thus cementing its hold on the nation.

Buoyed by the attendant access to national resources that this engenders, young and wizened politicians thought it best to join the ruling party and hide under its sturdy umbrella to nurture their ambition. Its leaders, unmindful of the dangers of hubris, have also taken to boasting that the party – the largest party in Africa, according to its promoters – will continue to provide the leadership for the country in the next 60 years.

On current assessment, though, that might actually sound wildly optimistic. The party is currently locked into an internal struggle that might either remake it or mar its continued existence. Of course this is not the first crisis the party has undergone.

The party has always, over the past couple of years – especially when elections were around the corner – revealed a predilection for eruptions as its gaggle of big men and women struggle with the need to subsume their ego for party discipline.

Of late, some of those who left the party in a huff over their defeat in the run-up to the last election have started retracing their steps back. The most nationally significant of these being former vice president,

Atiku Abubakar who is leading his band of supporters back into the party.

So, the party appears to be gaining further strengths. But in this also lies its weakness. The fabled large tent of the party is now struggling with coping with the large crowd huddling under it. The party is in turmoil and unsure how to accommodate the mostly conflicting needs of its many factions.

The leadership appears to be smack in the middle of the road that these new interest groups need to pass – and it thus being stream-rolled. The national chairman of the PDP, Vincent Ogbulafor is fighting a personal battle to hold on to both his post and his liberty. On Monday, he lost a legal challenge to his arrest and trial by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Related Offences Commission (ICPC) over alleged misappropriation of millions of naira. A conviction could send him to jail for years.

One of the most coherent forces against the PDP national leadership is led by a disparate group of individuals united mostly by their disdain for the leadership of Mr. Ogbulafor and his team. These include people such as former Senate president, Ken Nnamani and a former Speaker of the House,

Bello Masari, former governor of Rivers State, Peter Odili and his former campaign director, Aleigho Dokpesi.

These politicians, who have recently been suspended by the party, say their goal is to reform the party and make it more responsive to the needs of Nigerians. There are, however, dark mutterings that this might mutate into the breakaway of the group to form another political party. This appears far-fetched; but the PDP could benefit from a well-structured reform pushed by its members if this is well intentioned.

Which is exactly where the worry lies. More hard headed analysis would show that all this commotion is little better than posturing and scheming for relevance ahead of next year’s national election. This would mean that rather than a belief in the high minded speeches they have been delivering, members of the reform group want nothing better than a smoother access to the feeding trough for themselves and their followers. Incidentally, this appears to be the assessment of the Ogbulafor-led executive of the party.

No matter. The fact that there is a very visible division in the perception of leaders of the PDP on which direction the party should follow presents immense opportunities for positive-minded members of the party (no sniggering here) to come together and inject a more civic orientation into the activities of an organisation that is tagged with the slightly demeaning title of People Deceiving People party.

Because of its size and reach, the goings-on within the PDP matter to Nigeria. The acting president, who is also the party’s number one member, should step into the party’s fray to forge a more responsive body out of this behemoth. It makes little sense to talk grandly of ensuring electoral reform at the national level when the nation’s biggest party is in thrall to the politics of gangsterism and opacity.

Nigeria’s political system is no doubt in need of reform. One place to start is within the PDP.

Author’s note: If there was a competition on my personal blog for which of the articles out there is my magnus opus, this particular one
would in my not so humble opinion would be very high on the list. It was
written at a point in my life when I was going through what I now know to have
been the only heart break I have ever suffered. All the previous ‘heart breaks’
were nothing more than puppy love issues as compared to that one. Whereas when
I suffered heart break back in UNIBEN, the only effect really was to go a
little mental, but recover as soon as the next pretty face strolled along, and
they were not in short supply, in this case, I lost almost 10 kilos in weight,
lost a whole lot of sleep, was made redundant at work (was it because of the
recession or because of her?), and was for a brief period of time engulfed in a
level of hatred that I frankly did not know I was capable of. Thankfully as
things pan out, I have managed to move on from all of that.

What reminded me of
all that was a conversation I had with a friend this morning. He is in exactly
the same situation, and seeing it eating him up was pathetic to say the least.
Uwa my guy, there are only two reactions in such a situation, either you bend
or you break. It would be most unfair for you to let this break you, so bend a
little, then shape up, wax lyrical, and life has to go on. We dey your back…

My son, you do not know me yet. But there is time for that to
change after you are born. My name is Chxta, I am your father. I am writing
this down as my testament to you, a few words of advice to dispense, just in
case I forget to do it whenever the time comes. That I may forget to do it
serves as my first lesson to you. Yes son, I am fallible. Just like any other
human out there. I will make mistakes over time, you will be disappointed in me
once in a while. But like you are going to be, I am only human, and making
mistakes is the most fundamental human right there is out there. What really
matters is the person’s acceptance of his mistake, and more importantly, his
determination not to repeat that mistake. So, whenever I make those mistakes or
do things that are not in line with what I have to say now, bear in mind that I
want you to do as I say, not as I do.

Over the
years I have quietly observed a lot about people, and the world we live in. And
I have come to the conclusion that life is indeed worth living. The only
problem with it however is that you only have one, one that will be full of
mistakes and thus regrets, but one that will also be full of achievement and
thus joy. Try to live so you have more of the latter.

Make every
effort to enjoy your youth, so that you won’t grow up with regrets. The best
time in your father’s life so far were his undergraduate years. Those should be
yours as well, so you have some time to wait yet. However be careful to avoid
excesses, and above all take your studies seriously. A good education is the
only safety net you will ever have. Be mindful to have a complete education
though, a complete education encompasses everything you learn, not just the
school curriculum. Always remember that whatever certificate you might receive
in life would read that you were found worthy in ‘character and learning’. Note
that the character always comes before the learning…

Always plan
ahead. But whenever you plan keep two things in mind, firstly always try and
make alternative plans. As religious people say, ‘man proposes and God
disposes’. Again always keep in mind lessons learned from previous successes
and failures. There are bound to be failures in life as there are bound to be
successes. But remember that you can never know where you are headed if you
don’t know where you are coming from. And then again, there is no point living
life if you don’t have a solid idea of where you are headed. In making plans
never underestimate the value of intelligence. There aren’t many truer sayings than
‘to be forewarned is to be forearmed’. The real value of knowing all there is
to know about a potential foe or situation is that when things go wrong as some
surely will, you will not so much as not be shocked, but you would be in a
better position to absorb the shock.

Sometimes I
will not follow you, your siblings and your mother to church. This is not
because I don’t believe in God, I believe He is there alright. Rather it is
because my Bible starts and stops at Matthew 7:12. The ethic of reciprocity.
You must always bear in mind that you are what you are because of all the other
people around you and nothing else. If they were any less, you would be less,
and if their circumstances improve, so would yours. Keep that in mind and
always be good to the people around you. Your father is no masochist, so he
would never go out of his way to cause pain to anyone around him lest the
person turn around and hurt your father as well. Those are lessons that I
learned quite a while ago. Be nice to people, always offer to help in any way
you can. Don’t offer to help when you can’t do what is needed, don’t offer to
help when it would spite you. Whenever you help, do not forget that you helped
such a person. If the person turns around someday and spurns you, know then that
you are a better person, but never entertain thoughts of vengeance. Nothing
wears down a man more. Always be grateful, and never hesitate to express your
gratitude. Remember, as simple as it sounds, the words ‘thank you’, go a very
long way in making someone repeat a feat of assistance to you. More importantly
though, your actions in expressing that gratitude go even longer. Never demand
assistance. If it comes, don’t spurn it. If it doesn’t shrug your shoulders and
life goes on.

Make new
friends, but keep the old ones. One is silver, and the other is gold. Never
forget that. Be loyal to your friends. True friendship is more important than
all the gold in Fort Knox, and let the friendship flow from you. You don’t have
to wait for the next person to always make the first move. Ensure that your
friends’ problems are your problems. That way when you have problems they would
be their problems. Try not to keep enemies, but sometimes that can’t be
avoided. Make sure that your enemies are also the enemies of your friends.
Always be truthful to your friends. However, try and have the wisdom to know
when to be economical with the truth. It may be better on some occasions to be
economical with the truth as that would help the situation a lot more than the
blatant truth. Never tell a barefaced lie. That only complicates matters more.
Hang on desperately to the friends who improve you as a person. Those who don’t
improve you, keep at arm’s length. Even though I asked you to strive as much as
you can to keep your friends, some would prove themselves not worth having as
your friends. Give such people as long a rope as you possibly can, and when the
rope has grown too long, cut it, but never look back in anger.

Make sure
you learn a language other than that which we will speak at home. Make sure you
learn as much as you can in that language. Also make sure that you learn the
basics of as many languages as you possibly can. There is no telling if the day
would come when a simple knowledge of the question, ‘quo vadis?’ would
be all that stands between you and a lynching. Learn Igbo. It is the language
of your father, his father before him, his father before him, his own father
before him, und so weiter…

Love
completely and like a fool. You will meet girls as you grow up, you will be
infatuated with some, but you will fall out of it. This thing called love is a
placebo, and when you are on the other side of it, it hurts terribly. Never
forget that. Always keep in mind however that the really tangible things in a
relationship are respect and care. Any other physical yearning will diminish
given time and lack of proper care. As a man however, when you are in love,
give your all completely. Don’t hold back, don’t expect anything in return. If
you fall victim of unrequited love, hang on for as long as you can, then like
in all other relationships, walk away without looking back. Nothing destroys a
person’s confidence more than unrequited love. If you are lucky to find someone
who loves you back, walk in the air and return her love completely. There is no
greater feeling than when you are with a girl and you know that she belongs to
you completely. I know that because your mother loves me completely. Do not
under any circumstances think that ‘complete’ love cannot die. Like a plant
that is denied of nourishment, it would die. If fed, it would flourish. This is
a topic I won’t dwell on however because it is full of contradictions. Two
things you must take away from it however are these, first true love between a
man and a woman comes only when you have learned about the baggage which she
carries, and are able to accept that she has that baggage, and put up with it.
The second thing you must understand is that there with one exception, there is
no such thing as unconditional love. The one exception is the love a mother
feels for her child at the moment of birth, the one she will feel for you on
that day in the not too distant future when you are born. Even the love of God
which the religious people will tell you about has strings attached; if you
mess it up, He will burn you in hell for eternity.

NEVER keep
secrets. There aren’t too many more correct statements than that of Tigran
Petrosian, ‘there is more deception in chess than in poker, but while in poker
you hide your hand, in chess everything is out in the open’. Live in such a way
that no one can use some dark secret against you in future. However even with
all that openness, learn what is most valuable, and keep that close to your
chest. Always speak your mind. That way you will have a clear conscience and
you will sleep better at night. People will ridicule you for it, some will make
statements such as ‘you talk carelessly’, but as your father can tell from his
own experiences in life, when the chips are down they will seek your counsel.
There is something in the human being that appreciates brutal honesty.

Keep at the
back of your mind that he who must have peace must be ready for war. With that
in mind, never back down in the face of provocation. However, always be mindful
that YOU, not your adversary should be the one to select the time and place for
the fight.

Eat healthy.
My body has felt a lot better since I began to cut down on the junk, so would
yours.

The next one
is one that I’m only beginning to come to terms with, image is everything. Be
mindful of your appearance. The way you are dressed will be the way that you
are addressed. Always be neat and well manicured. It will open doors.

Never be
afraid to show off your knowledge. If people around you do not like the fact
that you are more knowledgeable than they are, direct them to the nearest
toilet with the appropriate instructions on how to insert their heads inside
the bowl.

The last I
can think of now my son, and extremely important: don’t watch football. That
game has an evil spirit, and your father is possessed. I don’t wish that on you
my son, my IfeChukwude. I love you son.

P.S: Another letter to the boy for reference.

Federal character
is one of those peculiarly Nigerian phrases. The principal formed part
of the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy
in the 1979 Constitution of Nigeria’s second republic. In 1996 it was
institutionalised with the setting up by the Sani Abacha government, of
a Federal Character Commission.

The principle is
now enshrined in the current 2009 Constitution, a section of which
prescribes the setting up of the Federal Character Commission that will
have the powers to:

“(a) work out an
equitable formula subject to the approval of the National Assembly for
the distribution of all cadres of posts in the public service of the
Federation and of the States, the armed forces of the Federation, the
Nigeria Police Force and other government security agencies, government
owned companies and parastatals of the states;

(b) promote,
monitor and enforce compliance with the principles of proportional
sharing of all bureaucratic, economic, media and political posts at all
levels of government;

(c) take such legal
measures, including the prosecution of the head or staff of any
ministry or government body or agency which fails to comply with any
federal character principle or formula prescribed or adopted by the
Commission; and

(d) carry out such other functions as may be conferred upon it by an Act of the National Assembly.”

This federal
character principle also shows up in another part of the Constitution:
Section 147 compels the president to, “appoint at least one minister
from each state, who shall be an indigene of such state.”

It can actually be
argued that the decision of the ruling People’s Democratic Party to
zone the presidency is an extension of federal character.

There have always
been those staunchly against the idea of quota systems for
appointments, arguing that its geographical considerations encumber
merit, and allows mediocrity to thrive. It is quite easy to argue that
there is a link between federal character and the dismal levels of
efficiency in the civil service.

One problem that
the principle immediately throws up is that of defining indigene-ship.
In a country where many people have made homes for themselves outside
the states to which their parents traced their roots, what
justification is there in insisting on legislating indigene-ship
according to where one’s father hails from? We recall that when the
list of ministers was released earlier this month, newspapers were full
of reports of groups protesting that certain appointees were not
indigenes of the states listed against their names.

This kind of
thinking, of course, makes little sense. As much as it is important to
carry every section of the country along, the most important questions
we should be asking regarding persons who will be holding public office
should be about their managerial abilities and competence, as judged by
past and present record.

This is why it is
heartwarming to hear that the Nigeria Police Force will be jettisoning
certain aspects of the federal character principle. Parry Osayande,
Chairman of the Police Service Commission (a retired Deputy Inspector
General of Police) announced last week in Abeokuta that the Police will
no longer base promotions on the principle of federal character.
According to our news report: “In order to ensure that everybody merits
the elevation, Mr. Osayande said short listed candidates for a
particular rank will be made to write tests on modern day policing,
adding that only those who pass such tests will be allowed to get to
the next round… In the new arrangement, he said, the system will not
only reward diligence and dedication to work, it will also sanction any
form of inconsistency with the dictates of the new efforts.”

For a Police Force
that is often in the news for less than salutary reasons, this is a
commendable decision. It reinforces the arguments that the flaws of the
federal character principle outweigh its benefits. From Mr. Osayande’s
statement it is clear that what we have today is a Police Force in
which people are promoted not because they are in themselves deserving
but because they come from a part of the country that is deemed to be
due for its quota of members in office.

We can only imagine
the havoc that this system has wreaked on morale within the Police
Force. It is the same system of ‘ethnic entitlement’ that pervades our
political space, when persons are prohibited from contesting for
elective office on the basis of their family origins.

This is not the way
to think in the 21st century. It is not a path that should be followed
by any country that aspires to a position of global leadership in the
world. Originally conceived of as an instrument for redressing
historical imbalances it can become counterproductive and simply serve
as an instrument for sharing positions and enthroning mediocrity,
especially when the other key components of that policy, improving
access to education and opportunity are not vigorously pursued. Federal
character was only intended as part of the means to an end and not the
end itself.

We call on other government bodies to emulate the Nigeria Police
Force. We also urge the National Assembly to take advantage of the
ongoing Constitution review to revisit the federal character clause
reexamine its usefulness and manner of implementation thus far. Whether
for the civil service, or for elective office, we consider the
principle of zoning anachronistic, and most undeserving of retention in
the Nigerian Constitution.

I am going to stick my bald head out on this one…

“Price of Hair
extensions to increase” read the headline right next to the photograph
of a “glorious” mane of multi-toned synthetic tresses. I thought to
myself, e never do for this fake hair?

Time was when a man
with a toupee was the source of much mirth between female friends. I
know some pretty ribald jokes about pulling that furry animal off his
shiny pate. But you can’t crack those with your girlfriends anymore.

I challenge you,
dear reader, to stand in any public arena and take a count of the
number of women wearing their own hair; if you get two in ten that’s
high.

You arrive at a
function anywhere, multiracial citadel like Johannesburg, or bang in
the middle of Sandgrouse market Lagos and every woman has long silken
tresses, pony tailed, pageboy bobbed, curled, twirled, blow dried or
crimped. The colours run the gamut from blond to beetroot.

This has gone way
beyond the wigs of the sixties. A beloved late Aunt of mine wore hers,
as was the fashion then, with the glossy black curls forming a nest for
her head tie. With her elaborate jewelry, (Boulos no less) lace blouse
and intricately worked george wrapper, handbag and matching shoes, she
was the very pink of fashion.

However, the first
thing she would do when she arrived at our house would be to whip the
whole thing off her sweating head. “Kam wepu dis artifission,” she
would declare.

You can’t just
fling it off anymore. The fake hair is woven between the natural braids
or glued, so that it stays conveniently attached until it is due for a
change. Now due is the operative word here. These days when you see a
woman suddenly land a dangerous slap on her head you know the devil of
an itch is buried deep beneath the ‘hair.’

Weaves and
attachments are one up on chemically straightening (relaxing) the hair;
that was so eighties. Note, that relaxing is a much more friendly
expression than straightening and was in turn an advancement on the hot
combs of the fifties that effectively fried the hair in order to tame
the tight curls.

But maintenance was
a mission. You had to go for regular retouching of the roots at a
salon, and many women went to bed with hairnets and rollers to save
their styles. I used to wonder how men felt about sleeping with all
this hardware. It served to confirm the fact that fashion with its
often draconian rules has very little to do with convenience.

And so to the
present when even sweet five-year-old darlings have mastered that quick
toss of the head to flick their long hair off their faces and all women
regardless of race can commune at the same salon.

Let me illustrate
again the draconian nature of fashion. My grandmother would complain
constantly about my shorn head, telling me I looked like a prisoner and
not even a female one at that. For thirty years my mother regularly
reacted with the same astonished inquiry whenever I had a haircut as if
it was something completely out of the blue for me.

African Americans
have this unending debate about “good hair” which is not nappy or
crinkly but presumably straight and fixable: like Caucasian hair.

Gone are the days
of black consciousness in the United States and in South Africa where
wearing your hair in its natural form, was a political statement. In
Nigeria we just followed fashion, our roots were not in question were
they?

The January 2009
edition of the South African Marie Claire magazine has in its debate
column the topic, “Is wearing a weave selling out”. It is notable that
the two women who spar off are black and both have at one time or other
worn their hair natural and used relaxers and weaves. Many white women
also wear weaves, and perm, (read relax) their hair and change the
colour as they please. But the editors of this white oriented magazine
in the new multiracial South Africa like to keep it simple. In South
Africa when magazines similar to Marie Claire publish articles on hair
they are kind enough to distinguish between styles that suit “ethnic
hair” (this would not be good hair in American parlance) and those that
suit, well, just hair.

I listened to an
acquaintance in Johannesburg explain why she had gone back to braiding
her hair the African way. At work one day her white co-workers who had
never paid her that kind of attention before, greeted her with warm
compliments about her new relaxed hairstyle: that was when she realised
that she looked good to them, once she looked like them.

The vogue among
white women for African style braids lasted about a minute in the
eighties and was confined mainly to Bo Derek, the actress who wore the
style in a forgettable movie called ‘10″.

Fashion and politics, they both change with the seasons anyway. Very
few black women who wear fake straight hair, see it as a betrayal of
their heritage. It’s just about looking good and it is astonishing how
global this concept has become. Whether this is good or bad is another
can of hairspray altogether.

This month, the Pew
Centre in the United States released the results of a major survey they
had carried out entitled “Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity
in Sub-Saharan Africa”. They had interviewed 25,000 Africans in 19
countries. Much of what they discovered is well known to the initiated:

Africans are among the most religious people in the contemporary world;

We define ourselves as Christians or Muslims; Although we live together, we tend to know very little of the other faith;

We claim to believe
in democracy but a majority of those interviewed argued that democracy
should be based on the Bible or the Quran;

Although we say we are Christians or Muslims, over half of us engage in sacrifice to ancestors and spirits;

When we are sick, it is not a natural occurrence; some malevolent spirits sent by enemies must be responsible.

The message of course is syncretism; we mix our Islam or Christianity with age-old pagan beliefs.

The research also
points out that statistically, there is almost no conversion between
the two religions. This means Christians are not being converted to
Muslims nor are Muslims being converted to Christianity. Why then do we
have these suspicions about the supposedly devastating implications of
proselytisation of one group over the other?

Why do Christians and Muslims in Jos feel so threatened by the other?

The report made me
recall one of the unsigned texts roving around cyberspace as an alleged
letter from God to Nigerians. The text invites us to rethink our mode
of relationship and our sincerity with God. I quote extensively from
the letter:

“Beloved Nigerians
(yes, I call you beloved even though many of you are among the world’s
most unrepentant sinners), I’m going to be blunt. I am getting
impatient with what you call prayers. Many of you let out deafening
screams and shrieks in the name of praying. It’s as if you think I’m
deaf – that I won’t hear you unless you shout, punching the air like
bad boxers, and contorting your faces into strange expressions, like
unseasoned Nollywood over-actors.

In fact, if I weren’t indestructible, I would since have lost my hearing for all the noise many of you make while praying….

You have other
habits that really, really gall me. One is how you bother me, day and
night, to give you the things I’ve already granted you in prodigious
quantities. Another is your ceaseless pleading that I do for you what
you should be doing for yourselves. What great gifts haven’t I bestowed
on you Nigerians? I gave you a huge supply of rich arable land that
should make you the envy of other nations. You can grow all kinds of
food on this land – yam, cocoyam, groundnuts, rice, potatoes and more.
Yet, a few among you bask in greed and wallow in conspicuous
consumption while the majority goes hungry.

Then I buried
massive reserves of some of the most treasured natural resources in
your land, among them tin, coal, and oil – the 20th century’s black
gold. Again, you have allowed a gluttonous few among you to steal the
wealth that should belong to all. Look around you, how many of your
African neighbours can boast even a fraction of the resources I have
blessed you with? Each year, your politicians and rulers pocket
hundreds of billions of Naira that should be spent on roads. Instead of
sending them off to jail, what do you do? You garland them with empty
titles and include their names on your roll of national honour. Instead
of calling them criminals, you celebrate them. Instead of covering your
noses in their presence, many of you grovel before them. You flatter
them with the names of “Leader,” “stakeholder,” “prominent Nigerian,”
or “Mr. Fix-it.” You baptize them as chieftains when you ought to
address them properly, as thieftains.”

Pluralism and
religious conflict have become a major theme in Nigeria’s political
development over the past few decades. In our history, the development
of both Islam and Christianity has depended on their capacities to
convert believers in traditional religions. In the 1931 census, 5O% of
the Nigerian population were registered as “pagans” with the percentage
of pagans declining to 34% in 1952 and 18.2% in 1963; leaving Islam
with 47% and Christianity with 34% of the population as of 1963.

Almost nobody today defines themselves as pagans and yet our
behaviour is miles away from the love, peace, honesty and morality that
both Islam and Christianity impose on their adherents. If we are to
confront our desire for peace, democracy and development, we would
really need to interrogate the relationship between our God and us.

Nigerians, who are
renowned for their strong attachment to the quirks of fate and fortune,
should be forgiven for thinking and expecting so much of Goodluck
Jonathan. This line of thinking has been given an added fillip no doubt
by the acting president’s name which readily conjures optimism and
hopeful expectation especially for a country bracing for its inevitable
date with destiny.

As usual in matters
of this nature, there are those who will seek to cash in (literarily)
on the situation using their privileged positions in society to offer
opinions, which on critical examination will neither provide respite to
the nation in its search for solutions, nor even help the acting
president deliver on the genuine expectations of Nigerians.

By far the most
important and significant challenge facing the nation is the 2011
general elections. It is the one item that all the hopes and
aspirations of the nation rest on and which has the potential of
rubbishing the symbolism of the acting president’s fortuitous rise to
power and the expectations arising there from, if not satisfactorily
handled.

Given the short
time available within the constitutional term limits of the
Yar’Adua/Jonathan tenure, the acting president will need above all else
to summon extraordinary reserves of courage and determination to focus
on the following areas, not necessarily in pecking order:

He must not contest
in the 2011 elections. The first step towards delivering a credible
2011 elections will be for the Acting President Jonathan not to stand
as presidential candidate, painful as that step may be. The acting
president should in taking this step be guided by the fact that owing
to our chequered experience with electioneering in this country, the
2011 election presents possibly the last opportunity for Nigeria to get
it right.

Owing to the
circumstances of his coming to power, Jonathan should aim to etch his
name in history as the man who broke the monkey of election failures in
the country. Such a step will position him to play the role of an
unbiased umpire in the proceedings, for which he will earn the eternal
gratitude of the country, and from that stead a possible overwhelming
vote as president in future elections.

One cannot help
noticing that around the acting president currently is a phalanx of
individuals who are seeking to draw him into their own orbit. It is
true that some of them may have proved useful in resolving the impasse
that followed President Yar’Adua’s illness and subsequent prolonged
absence from office, paving way for the acting president to assume
office. But at some point soon, Jonathan must make a conscious effort
to distance himself from them, especially as he takes on the task of
superintending the 2011 elections.

Not a few of them
have been known to have played active roles in the past in subverting
the course of democracy and the people’s will. Indeed some of them are
closely linked to prominent political actors and may seek to wheel
Acting President Jonathan into favouring their political godsons or
clients in the 2011 elections. If Jonathan must play the role expected
of him in the elections, he must not allow these distractions.

He should be wary
of foreign do gooders. It is gratifying to note that the Americans have
come on strong on the matter of deepening democracy in Nigeria. This
may perhaps be due to the fact one of our kind is presently occupying
the White House. A certain Johnnie Carson who goes by the nice sounding
but possibly redundant title of Assistant Secretary of State for
African Affairs, seems to have been made the focal point.

Following the
prolonged absence of President Yar’Adua, in a statement that sounded
like being more Catholic than the pope, he was heard saying that
America wanted a young and healthy person to take over from the ailing
president.

It is instructive
that the Americans have been swooning all over Acting President
Jonathan since he came on. He was hastily invited to a Nuclear Summit
where American slick was laid on thickly and smoothly. The overall
impression to take from this is that the eternal do gooders that they
are, the Americans would want to encourage and back Goodluck Jonathan
for president in 2011.

How much of this American interest in Nigeria is out of genuine concern for democracy and how much is it for our oil?

How far is this
tied to the strategic game plan to keep China out of the Nigerian
equation seeing how Sudan was lost to the Chinese? Was it not too long
ago that American Intelligence estimates concluded that Nigeria would
be a failed state in the not too distant future?

The acting
president needs to evaluate all these factors in his engagement with
the Americans. He must not allow this American handshake to get to the
elbow.

In conclusion,
Acting President Jonathan stands on the threshold of history and
destiny. All that fate and fortune have been preparing him for in his
political journey will be determined by how he handles the challenges
of the 2011 elections.

The choice is his whether to become a hero or a villain. He needs our support and prayers.

Umar Lukman is Consultant/Publisher Octopus Communications