Operation Python Dance 2: The Winners and the Losers

The on-going military operation in the South East must be a source of concern to every right thinking Nigerian irrespective political, religious and ethnic leaning. That a government would resort to maximum force against an unarmed civilian population shows both a shocking lack of understanding of the issues at stake and an alarming lack of disposition towards national peace and cohesion as vital ingredients for development. For the avoidance of doubt, there is a zero-cost alternative to the show of cowardice the military is displaying in the South East. That is simply equity and fairness.

Sadly, the level of hatred being spewed out in the social media is very benumbing. There is also a clear misrepresentation of the issues at stake as an Igbo versus Nigeria problem. This twisted narrative, unfortunately, has not been helped by the utterances of some misguided Igbos youths as well as their ilk from across the diverse ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. But I like how one public commentator framed the issue: one way or the other, we are all Biafrans whether Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Kanuri, Nupe, Ijaw or what have you. We are all marginalised, deprived, oppressed, cheated, robbed and exposed to international ridicules. And if you look at it closely, you would find that it is the bizarre, crippling political system we practice that has been exploited by the political elites to enslave the gullible masses and ensure that nation building perpetually gets the short end of the stick.

The sad fact is that a country has foisted on itself a political and economic structure that is anti-creativity and consequently anti-development. Yet, even when it obvious that we have been wrestled down and clamped down irredeemably by this untenable arrangement, we have refused to do something about it. The real problem is that we have succeeded in elevating mediocrity, clannishness and injustice to statecraft. It is unfortunate that we have managed to successfully cage the creative energy of Nigerians by deliberatively making sure that the country is in perpetual reverse gear. Equity, justice and fairness which are vital ingredients for peace and harmony, and prerequisite for development have been given the boot.

But even as I write, I already know the attack line from the internet warriors who think that being able to buy 1.5GB of data amounts to progress or class. “When Jonathan was at helm, you never knew there was a lack of justice and fairness.” Spare me that, please! Granted that Jonathan government was profligate, do we have to move from one bad government to a worse one perpetually? Did we replace a bad government only to get a worse one? No! Jonathan was not performing and we sacked him. We expect something better, not even at par, and definitely not worse. We have to start thinking straight as a people so we can free ourselves from the mental, political and economic slavery that we have foisted on ourselves.

On the sabotage going on in the South East, we all know that in every conflict there must be winners and losers. Who are the winners? Who are the losers here? When you look all over the social media, you find a whole lot of people cheering. That is foolishness. They have not sat down to think about it and count the costs. They think it doesn’t concern them; it is only the ‘Biafrauds’ that are being killed. How naïve! While the Igbos are paying with their blood, the bigger picture is that the entire Nigeria is the loser in this unwarranted conflict and I will explain shortly.

While the conflict persists, the economy of the South East would be severely affected in an already depressed national economy. Aba, a commercial nerve centre, recovering from the devastation of the late 1990s and early 2000s occasioned by men of the underworld is again at the epicentre of this conflict. There was a massive exodus of industrialists and businessmen from Aba during that inglorious era that was just passing. Sadly, that is going to be re-enacted just when the state is trying to have a breath of life. The whole of South East will definitely lose massively as a result of this conflict. If a fight breaks out near your home, it is in your best interest to try to manoeuvre it as far away from your house as possible. Else, aside personal injuries accruable to you, the collateral damage may also be monumental. The Americans understood this theory perfectly. Therefore, when Al Qaeda brought war into the United States of America in the famous 9/11 terrorist attack, they made sure they pushed the war as far away from home as possible. How else could they have used the Tomahawks, the drones, the tanks and Black Hawks in America without scoring own goals? But now, take a look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria etc., a massive laboratory for testing out the military ingenuity of the west and Russia. It is wisdom to steer conflicts away from your home zone. While not discounting the genuineness of his agitation, Nnamdi Kanu has to craft a better strategy to prosecute his goal. He needs to find a more inclusive approach and work within the ambits of international norms. The results must match or surpass the inputs. Far too much loss of lives and the results may not have been commensurate. I remember the story of the competition between the tortoise and the hare. You’ve got to know your strengths and weaknesses in a war and strategize according to your strength.

However, whereas the South East may be the biggest losers, no Nigerian should gloat. We are all losers in the end. The resources being committed to this needless conflict could buy a few more drugs for our ill-equipped hospitals and reduce our legendary maternal and infant mortality. It could settle the grievances of the resident doctors and send them back to work. If we channel it to our schools, it could build a few more schools and increase access to education for all. It could satisfy some of the demands of the lecturers and take some of our children out of crime and back to school. It could buy a couple of laboratory equipment to give life to our ghost laboratories in the secondary schools and make learning more meaningful. If the amount being committed to this senseless operation were to be channelled to incentivising our farmers, fewer of our people will go to bed hungry each night and more people will be taken out of unemployment. In the end, we are all losers, Nigerians we are all losers.

Nevertheless, there are some winners in this conflict. But Nigeria is definitely not one of them. And the winners are the Americans, the Russians, the Iranians, the Turks and many others who sell their military hardware to us. We are funding their economies and creating jobs for them while our ailing economy is further asphyxiated. As we burn, they boom; our pains are their gains. Theirs is a no loss situation. And it has just begun. As we dance towards the precipice, they are right now strategizing to sell more weapons to us, officially and through the black market while they sit down and watch over the cables as our country go up in flames. Why should we allow the Americans and Russians to test their newest weapons technology in Nigeria? Too sad!

The buck stops with Mr. President. He should demonstrate leadership and be a father to all without favouritism. You don’t bomb your children because of a disagreement, no good father does that. He should immediately drop this belligerent approach, de-escalate tension, pull back his soldiers to the barracks and put on his thinking cap. Happily, he doesn’t have to think through this alone. He should sit down with reasoning men and women and find solutions to the myriads of problems plaguing this country. Those that have access to Mr. President should tell him that Igbos are not the problem, South East is not the problem. If it were, South West, South South, North Central, North East, North West would have been havens of sort and prosperous examples. But all over the country, there is palpable hopelessness, escalating hunger, mounting tensions, deteriorating quality of life and increasing ‘everything negative’. No, the Igbos are not the problem, Kanu is not the problems; these are mere metaphors and symptoms of the problem. The problem is inability of government at all levels to govern for all and deliver services to all.

We should never deceive ourselves that silencing Kanu or putting fear in the Igbos today is a solution. No! We fought a civil war in the late 60s with the attendant devastations but since then, agitations have continued. The only sustainable solution is service delivery at all levels of government. Equity and fairness will have to be enshrined in our national culture if we are to make progress as a people. Look at all the stable nations of the world. Their governments deliver services and uphold the equality of their citizens. In return, the citizens invest their loyalty in the country. We can command fear by the barrel of the gun, but we definitely cannot command loyalty that way.

Fellow Nigerians, we are all Biafrans and we are all losers in this senseless conflict. We can do better as a people, we deserve better as a people. Time to think and be free!

Chinedu Asogwa writes from Lagos. All reactions to teamupafrica@gmail.com

NEPA'S PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

                                             Fig: A NEPA Sub-station

Before you crucify me, I know that ‘NEPA no longer exists’ at the moment, at least in name. But I deliberately choose to retain the name as a matter of philosophy, in protest if you like, and why not? The change we desire is in service not necessarily in name. How?

When the federal government of Nigeria unbundled the leviathan called NEPA, or PHCN depending on your predisposition, not a few Nigerians were exhilarated at the prospects of bringing in the much needed efficiency into an institution that had clearly failed the people dismally. The dismemberment was subsequently followed by the privatization of the successor companies further heightening the expectations of the people. And, would you blame the beaten populace for having such high hopes? According to the Vietnamese born global spiritual leader, poet and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh, “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” At the end of hope are violence, anarchy and suicidal proclivities. Besides, there had been a precedent.

Prior to the licensing of the GSM operators in 2001, Nigeria had a total of about 425000 telephone lines made up of some 400000 fixed lines and 25000 analogue mobile lines for its 120 million people translating to a tele-density of about 0.3%. The first time I used a phone was while I was in my third year in the University! To make my first ever telephone call, I had to queue up at a NITEL office for some 1 odd hour waiting for my turn! Then enter the GSM operators, initially very expensive. I recall the unfortunate bomb explosions at the Ikeja military cantonment in 2002. I was then engaged in my mandatory, one year national service. Although the GSM operators were already licensed and in operation, I could not yet afford a mobile phone because the prices were prohibitive; SIM cards cost as much as 20000 to 25000 naira, the cheapest handsets cost about as much or even higher while call rates were generally 50 naira per minute; the mobile operators insisted per second billing was impossible. After the bomb blasts, it took my traumatised mother several days to reach me through my office line in order to confirm that I am safe! How can we ever forget the multitudes that met their avoidable, untimely death in that melee? The deaths were avoidable because they were largely a result of lack of information. Today, we have phones for 2000 naira and less; SIM cards are given away free. Telephone subscriber base stands at 152,467,198 as at March 2017 with a tele-density of 108.91% for the same period, contributing a whopping 9.8% of GDP as at June 2016 according to official statistics from the NCC. The meaning of these figures is that virtually every Nigeria has a phone, majority with smart phones, except for the underage and people outside coverage areas. If that bomb incident were to happen today, the information would be in everybody's fingertip in minutes minimising the damage. Nigerians are clearly happy with this turn of events in the telecommunication sector.

It was against this backdrop that Nigerians wholeheartedly welcomed the privatisation of the NEPA, excuse my insistence on using NEPA, for since the new entities that took over have chosen to clamp services at the level of NEPA or even worse, why should I bother dignifying them with a name change? I would rather continue to associate them with the shame of NEPA until they elevate their services above that level. Anyway, back to the point. The righteous expectation of Nigerians was that the privatisation of NEPA will usher in the kind of growth and development recorded in the telecommunication industry bringing both improvement availability and ultimately reducing costs per kilowatt. There was the expectation that the cost would be high initially but will start to reduce over time following the GSM template.

But what have we seen in reality?  Join me in part 2 of this series…

Chinedu Asogwa - teamupafrica@gmail.com

Battle of wits: An appeal for wisdom

On December 7 1941, the imperial Japanese military launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, Hawai in the United States of America. Within a twinkling of an eye, they virtually wreaked the whole of the US pacific fleet sending 2390 lives to an early grave and wounding several hundreds more. The battle of Pearl Harbour was a decisive win for the Japanese. Indeed, the US stood little chance in this battle.

However on December 8 1941, as a direct consequence of this brutal attack, the US which had been on the fence in WWII up to this time declared war on Japan formally entering World War II. And on September 2 1945, standing on the 60,000 ton, 3-football-field long, twenty stories high battleship – USS Missouri – General Macarthur accepted the unconditional surrender of the Japanese, ending WWII and giving the US the last laugh. The Japanese won the battle of Pearl Harbour but lost the war badly! The battle of Pearl Harbour, with hindsight, was after all an unwise one.

Life at all levels is a war. A war is made up of several battles. It is often a tragic error to pick your battles unwisely. There are some battles you can afford to lose voluntarily in order to keep your eyes on the bigger picture which is the war! Beating a retreat in some battles may yield some strategic benefits. Conversely, winning some battles may result in painful losses. The Japanese saw this first-hand!

In the light of the foregoing, one wonders what strategic benefits the face-off between the senate and the CG Customs, Hameed Ali would yield to Nigeria. Or what benefits will accrue to Nigeria by the current imbroglio over the confirmation of the Ag EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Magu. It is my opinion that Nigeria stands to gain nothing from these needless wars, irrespective of who wins in the end. These are classical cases of battles chosen unwisely. Worst still while these battles rage, the necessary war to reposition Nigeria is being lost.

Get more on these battles later on this space. But in the meantime, can we all shout it loud and clear, using every means possible and tell these protagonists that Nigeria is burning while they are playing and we can no longer hold our peace, that is where there was one anyway!

Teamup Africa!: Back from a journey!

Teamup Africa!: Back from a journey!: Fellow Africans. It's been well over two years since I posted on this blog. That's quite an incredible length of interlude! Well...

Back from a journey!

Fellow Africans.

It's been well over two years since I posted on this blog. That's quite an incredible length of interlude! Well, it's just one of those things; I got bogged down with a couple of projects and could only write with my mind. lolz:)

Notwithstanding, my unflinching faith in the enormous potentials of Africa remains rock-solid. I am as persuaded today as ever before that this sleeping giant called Africa will one day arise! I am equally convinced that it would take you and I to rouse this sleeping giant and unleash its full potentials.

Truth be told, I feel very excited to be back on this blog. Besides, new things are in the offing. Henceforth, you have a voice in this space. How do you think Africa can rise? What are the things you feel strongly about? No need to bottle them up anymore! You have a voice here. Feel free to make your contributions to the growth and development of Africa.

The job of repositioning Africa is by no means an easy one. Nevertheless, together, we shall win!

A LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT, NIGERIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION

Dear Dr Obembe,

In this season of open, leaked letters and counter bullets, I am a little hesitant to write to you using this medium. Yet, I am constrained to adopt this medium because I sought your personal e-mail address and could not get it. It was actually a surprise to me that I found it so difficult to get your email; I had expected that I could somewhat manage to get the email address of someone of your status without too much hassles. I was wrong.

Therefore, using the only means available to me, I write to you this day as a concerned Nigeria, and one with multiple interests in the ongoing strike action embarked upon by the Nigerian Medical Association - multiple because I am a recipient of your services on the one hand and on the other hand, I have about Eight friends and family members who are Medical Doctors. You can see that I would naturally be sympathetic to your demands.

However, I am pleading with you to call for a temporary suspension of this protracted strike on humanitarian grounds. I know this may not be popular with some of your colleagues. Nevertheless, you would agree with me that great leaderships are not built on sheer populism but on sound reason, empathy and courage. I therefore urge you to show empathetic leadership and prevail on your colleagues to call of the strike at this time for reasons including below:

1.  It would be redundant for me to presume to tell you that the strike action is taking a huge toll on innocent Nigerians, who are already unfortunate victims of an extremely harsh and inefficient health system. Prior to your strike, Nigerians already get one of the worst medical services obtainable anywhere in the world. Now, with the NMA strike, we have a double tragedy on our hands. Multitudes of people who cannot afford the exorbitant fees charged by private hospitals are dying daily, some painfully slowly.

2.  Furthermore, I know for certainty that you are following developments on the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. We have so many other nationals volunteering and staking their lives to come to Africa and help out at this critical times – The Chinese, the Americans, the French (with Medecins Sans frontiere) etc. I feel it would be an honourable thing for NMA to call a temporary truce to help with the Ebola outbreak. After the outbreak is contained, NMA would be on a higher moral ground to push its demands and people will even be more sympathetic to their course.

3. Whereas the Ebola outbreak is an emergency, the issues leading to the strike are not; they can still be pursued even after dealing with the common enemy - the Ebola virus is as much a threat to Medical Doctors as it is to every other Nigerian. Dealing with the Virus now will help ensure that even Doctors are preserved to continue to pursue their demands.

4. The NMA can still continue to pursue their demands through the negotiation table even within the temporary truce while they continue to contribute to the battle against this deadly virus.

5.  Finally, you would agree with me that the response to this Ebola outbreak has been quite commendably decisive and the results remarkable. If this disease is comfortably contained as the possibilities show with NMA on strike, I fear that it would diminish the significance of NMA strikes in future.

With the foregoing and knowing you to be a kind, compassionate and consummate Medical Doctor, I urge to consider and suspend this strike temporarily in the public interest. Nigerians I know would be profusely appreciative of the gesture and you can count on their reasonable support in future.

This request is without any attempt to disregard or trivialize the effort you had made in the past to suspend the strike. However, I suggest you step down your feet and if your colleagues reject every entreaty to fight on the side of the Nigerian people in the face of this severe threat, the most honourable thing for you is to follow your conscience, resign for good and let whoever wants to preside over an association without a human face to take the saddle. It is difficult to justify the fact that people are coming from all over the world to help Africa contain this epidemic while our doctors continue on strike.

Thank you as I count on your positive response.

Yours Faithfully,

C.J. Asogwa

teamupafrica@gmail.com

Complicity in the Chibok Saga?

I am publishing this article here again. The reason is that it captures the questions I had asked, and many continue asking, much better I could put it. Nigerians have left the meat of the meeting convened by the First Lady and are instead pursuing crumbs. We need to sober up!

Following the piece “North: The Two Missing Freedoms”, which appeared in this column two weeks ago, there have been reactions and also revelations suggesting very disturbing thoughts and possibilities. If the truth must be told, the issue before us is not just a matter of lapses in security. Within the intervening period, the office of the first lady convened a stakeholder's meeting that threw up very alarming signs of negligence (and possibly complicity) on the part of those who have responsibility for managing the school and taking care of the children. At the said meeting in Abuja, the chairman of the area's local government explained that two out of the three routes into (and out of) Chibok were manned and blocked by the police. The other route was also manned and blocked, this time by the military.

So which route did the abductors take to get out of Chibok, when all the routes allegedly were blocked? That was one of Mrs Patience Jonathan’s recurring questions at the meeting. How long did it take the abductors to assemble the girls and board, before departing? How can anyone explain the fact that the children actually trekked for nearly two kilometres to where the vehicles of their abductors were packed, before boarding and leaving? Were there no villagers, officials or security men who saw all of this?

The talk today is how to rescue the abducted Chibok girls, and rightly so. But in the heat of it all, and especially following the media mauling of the federal government, many fundamental questions are not only in danger of not being asked at all, but of actually being dismissed as unnecessary.

In the aforementioned article, this column held: “There used to be one northern Nigeria, with one voice. It had the profile of an impregnable monolith, with leaders who enjoyed untrammelled freedom ‘from’ fear and the freedom ‘to’ act and determine means and ends in the Nigerian state. The leaders, elders and titled men were all nearly deified. But the story is different today. As I write, emirs, prominent persons and other leaders are in the line of fire from an amorphous invasion with unclear intentions. There are some as yet unverified allegations to the effect that some prominent northerners are aiding the mayhem. If this is true, then the persons concerned obviously do not see their political and economic graves down the road they are treading at the moment. Freedom is on the run and they cannot see it.”

Is it not curious, as was revealed at the first lady’s meeting, that the ‘abducted’ students not only trekked for long minutes through the land before being finally taken away, but were taken away in such a well-choreographed manner as to suggest that there was more to the entire saga than exists in the public domain? There was no coherent response at the said meeting, when questions were raised regarding why the Borno State Government ignored the letters of the Minister of Education and WAEC calling for postponement of the examinations, the need to relocate the students to the state capital and/or provide serious security. Why was it only after the kidnapping of the students that the remaining students were moved to a safer place for their examinations?

Why, for instance, did the Borno State Ministry of Education and the school authorities provide only day security in a school that has arranged for the girls to sleep in the premises after the examinations? To recall the SS3 students to write their WAEC exams against extant warnings and directives and without providing security seems to be more than a mere administrative slip, if you ask me.

Why was it only the female students who were in the boarding facility without security, while their male counterparts could come and go during the day? Why were there no security/gate man, no house parents, and no light on the night of the incident? What provided the ambience for the students to believe that uniformed men who suddenly appeared in their school were there to protect and rescue them? What were they told that they were being rescued from, anyway? How come the local government chairman could not relay an early warning signal sent to him by an informant? How come he also did nothing after receiving information from the Director  of SSS on the same matter?

And now, the clincher: no security operative or apparatus could reach the location of the broken down vehicles carrying the abducted girls. So their abductors made a leisurely exit with their ‘booty’ unchallenged; out of a town with three well-guarded (and even blocked) exits. This entire saga, and especially with the details that came from the first lady’s meeting, sounds very much like fiction masquerading as an account of actual happenings. It is a beautifully scripted piece of insanity that will put the writers of Disneyland to shame.

But the public reaction to that meeting in Aso Rock has created what can best be described as an atmosphere of melodrama on a matter that does not call for frivolity. The good intentions behind the meeting, as well as the frightening revelations that emerged from it, may seem to be now overshadowed by the distortion of its actual intent. While everyone is griping about what the federal government is doing or not doing, the primary focal persons in Borno State to whom the nation actually handed over those children have maintained a degree of nonchalance that can best be described as incomprehensible. Before the meeting, neither the principal nor the governor’s wife had visited the school after the incident. The principal and state officials could also not explain why, knowing that Boko Haram killed some WAEC invigilators in Borno State last year, decided to go along with an examination they had been told to put off; and without making any security arrangements whatsoever?

The principal admitted that the SS3 students were asked to return to their hostel to write WAEC exams without power supply, house parents nor any security arrangement in spite of threats in the area. Then it also came out that the women that demonstrated in Abuja, were not parents of the children and mostly did not come from Chibok but reside in Abuja. A special case was made of Naomi Murlah, a Deputy Director in the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), in this regard.

There are simply too many other baffling twists, conflicting revelations and distortions of statements and other details. The principal, who claimed to be residing in the staff quarters, only going to Maiduguri fortnightly for diabetic treatment, was found not to be riding in the school premises. Stakeholders were aghast that her school could go ahead and register males and over aged candidates (60 years and above) as internal students for WAEC at GGSS in Chibok, despite the security threats. To register overaged males who are actually not known and regular students of the school as day students, and then have the bona fide females enrolled as borders without any form a security is quite incredible.

Those who attended the meeting in question included the wife of the deputy senate president, wives of governors and their representatives, female legislators at the federal and state levels, the minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, special advisers, leaders of women organisations, focal persons in the Chibok abduction saga, women opinion leaders and other stakeholders. What have they done after that?

Besides the Borno State commissioners for health and education, the state’s commissioner of police, director of SSS, the principal of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, divisional police officer in charge of Chibok, the army commandant in charge of Chibok, the chairman of Chibok Local Government, the head of WAEC National Office and the WAEC zonal co-ordinators for North-east and North-central were also present at the meeting. Do any of these people have any public position in what is going on today?

Many are celebrating the advertised challenges the federal government seems to be facing at the moment. We forget that peace is disappearing everywhere. As was said here two weeks ago: “The north is disappearing as I write. The leadership can still wake up to a reality it seems to be reading wrongly. The problem is not the bombs, or the mutual recriminations among politicians. It is not the pretended indignation of an elite that does not see how it can claim the moral high ground by being seen to distance itself from partisanship in this moment of national crisis”.

Some may celebrate the negative global media focus on Nigeria, believing that they are ‘dealing with Jonathan and his peoiple’. Meanwhile it is all of ‘us’, as a people. Chibok is only symptomatic of a dimension of the malaise. Beneath it lies several brands of folly, all of which are predicated on the wrong assumption that somebody who perpetrates evil in order to make another look bad is thereby doing something good. Far from it!

...Credits - Okey Ndibe, Thisdaylive.com