TELL IT

By Ochereome Nnanna WHEN the Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF, election politics was raging and some commentators said Their Excellencies were wasting time on an irrelevant issue that had no bearing on the average Nigerian, I laughed. It reminded me of what Mohandas Gandhi said about religion and politics: “Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics don’t know what religion is”. They did not remember that a governor is first of all a politician, and a politician’s first reflex is to play the power game. The NGF election of May 2013 was a dress rehearsal for the shape of things to come, especially in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. The PDP knew it was going to expose the treachery, disloyalty and rebellion of the governors bent on ensuring that President Goodluck Jonathan does not win his second term. [caption id="attachment_412041" align="alignnone" width="412"] PDP Special National Convention: Delegates casting their votes at 2013 PDP Special...

By Ochereome Nnanna FOR passengers on an Arik Air flight from Benin to Lagos, Saturday, August 24,2013 will be a day to remember like no other. On that day, they climbed down the gangway of their flight at the General Aviation Terminal in Lagos and met with a spectacle that gave them the psychedelic shock of their lives. A young teenager of about fourteen years old sporting a pink polo shirt with a cream Catholic rosary hanging loosely around his neck, climbed down from the tyre hole of the aircraft! He was also carrying what looked like a school bag. Then, in typical Nigeria fashion of shutting the gate after the horse has bolted away, security men swooped and led him away. His name was later given as Daniel Oikhena, a boy said to be a loner and an aficionado of action movies which he watches till late in the night. I call him Boy Oi. When I examined the countenance of this kid as he was being dragged away, I did not see the fear or trepidation that hits when one has just escaped deat...

By Ochereome Nnanna BETWEEN 2005 and 2006, the regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo started elaborate amendment of the 1999 Constitution. He empanelled the National Political Reform Conference (NPFL). The effort died on the floor of the Senate due to Obasanjo’s insertion of a clause seeking to extend his tenure. Shortly after being elected in 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan also inaugurated the Justice Alfa Belgore panel to review outstanding issues of our constitutional conferences since independence. On Tuesday, 12th July 2012, the Committee submitted its report. Based on this, the National Assembly embarked on the latest round of large-scale amendments of the constitution. Bearing in mind that during President Umar Yar’ Adua’s reign the constitution was also amended, we are left with the grim conclusion that every regime will have to tinker with the constitution. We are in this constitutional mess because the military bequeathed a document that is simply unviable, inchoate and di...

By Ochereome Nnanna BEFORE I proceed, let me recap the essentials of the first part of this essay. I described the Nigerian civil war as an “unjust war”. It follows that the ex-military officers who gathered last week in Lagos to launch General Godwin Isama-Alabi’s book, including their comrades living or dead, were soldiers of this injustice. I noted that the immediate causes of the civil war were the “Igbo coup” of January 15, 1965 and Col. Ojukwu’s declaration of secession. I also mentioned that the remote causes included the rapid emergence of the Igbo people to, in 30 years of exposure to Western education and civilisation, become a dominant force both in their native Eastern Region and the nation at large. Their inability to manage their new-found success, coupled with the impatience of their idealistic young military officers over the corrupt, inefficient and clannish ways of the ruling establishment spearheaded by the North, led to actions that prematurely terminated their mani...

By Ochereome Nnanna ON Thursday July 18th 2013, the cream of generals and political/bureaucratic czars that worked for the federal side during the Nigerian civil war gathered in Lagos. They were at the Nigerian Institute for International Affairs (NIIA) to honour retired General Godwin Isama-Alabi, who presented his memoirs. Late reggae singer, Peter Tosh, once sang: “any time I see these men, my blood runs cold”. Among these were cold-blooded murderers who killed innocent civilians during the pogroms in Northern and Western Nigeria; war lords who rounded up and hacked innocent and defenceless civilians to death in Asaba and other fallen theatres of the civil war; people who, in their youth, took great pleasure in operating the policy of hunger as a legitimate weapon of war and sent thousands of children to their untimely graves through starvation. [caption id="attachment_404749" align="alignnone" width="412"] *The Public Presentation of the Book The Trag...

By Ochereome Nnanna IN an earlier article ("Amaechi’s rebel war", June 3, 2013) on the ongoing political crisis in Rivers State, I made this observation on the Governor of Rivers State: “Chibuike Amaechi is an intelligent man. But he is not a wise man. He is action-packed, but he lacks self control.” The dance of shame on the floor of the Rivers State House of Assembly on Tuesday, July 9 presented a prime opportunity to demonstrate this attribution. Five members of the House opposed to him had gathered early in the day and later announced they had impeached the Speaker,  Otelemabala Amachree, who had the support of 27 other members. The group’s ringleader, Evans Bipi, announced himself as the new Speaker. Later, there was a breakdown of law and order in the House and we saw videos of members trying to murder one another. The faction loyal to Amaechi alerted him on telephone about the crisis. The Governor mobilised his security and invaded the House chamber. Not surprisingly, ...

By Ochereome Nnanna IT was horrible in the corridors of power in Port Harcourt on Tuesday last week. If it were a scripted Nollywood home video, it would have been either age-barred or altogether banned by the Nigerian Video Censors Board. An “honourable” member had a heavy, blunt object in his two hands. He swung it over his head and delivered a hit on the forehead of another “honourable” member. Rather than the victim turning tail and running for dear life as fast as his feet could take him, he was spinning around like a headless chicken. Perhaps, he was too dazed to run. He was repeatedly attacked until he found himself near an exit door. Just before he plunged into it, his assailant released a final hit across back in the waist region. We later heard the blunt object was a camera tripod – a steel object! Someone described that cold-blooded assault as an “attempted murder”. That assailant, whoever he is, must be prosecuted accordingly. The victim could easily have fallen down and lo...

By Ochereome Nnanna A  LITTLE over six years ago, Jigawa State was rated by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, as the poorest state in Nigeria. At a public lecture in Kaduna, former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Prof Charles Soludo, after reviewing the figures from across the North, reached the sad conclusion thus: “Poverty is still a Northern phenomenon”. I had the opportunity of touring the state in June 2007, paying particular attention to the rotten educational facilities and infrastructure. Six years later, after many postponements due to security uncertainties in the North, I returned to the state to assess the situation. I can comfortably report that Jigawa State is not only in a new world, it is also in a world of its own. It has almost completely overcome its infrastructural deficits, especially in the areas of roads, education, water supply and health. Though surrounded by terrorism flashpoint states such as Kano, Bauchi and Yobe, Boko Haram staged only one raid in t...

By Ochereome Nnanna LET me observe, first of all, that the ongoing merger effort by the political parties wanting to form the All Progressives Congress, APC, is approaching a milestone. It has got to the level of sharing of interim national offices, with the expected charged outcomes. Its traducers are accusing the APC of being a Muslim-dominated party, and the party through its interim Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, is calling them “purveyors of falsehood”. [caption id="attachment_359345" align="alignright" width="412"] Governors of the new mega party, APC in Lagos last week[/caption] If they overcome the challenges of this level of evolution, the next obstacle will be the selection of presidential candidate for the 2015 election. In the short and medium term, management of the group’s “natural” fault lines – the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, All Nigerian Peoples Party, ANPP and Congress for Progressive Change, CPC and other sub-group interests – ...

By Ochereome Nnanna I AM beginning to lose enthusiasm about seeing United States President, Barack Obama, in Nigerian on state visit. The romance factor has all but worn off. If Obama comes tomorrow, he will still have a lot of people eager to watch him on television. After all, he is still Barack Obama, the first Black person to be elected to the highest political office in the world. Some people call him “our son” because he has African ancestry. I am somewhat bored by the snobbish attitude that Obama and his officials have maintained towards Nigeria since he was first elected in 2008. This is totally at variance with the eagerness with which our own President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, welcomes every opportunity to visit the White House. Since he emerged as our president GEJ has been to the White House at least twice. Obama has come to Africa on two occasions. The first was shortly after he was inaugurated in 2009. He was on his way to L’Aquila in Italy but stopped in Accra and Cape Coa...

By Ochereome Nnanna I READ Martins Oloja’s front page story on The Guardian (Monday, June 24th, 2013) with interest and decided to put in a word. Oloja, the Editor of the newspaper, interviewed Ambassador John Campbell in Washington DC. Campbell was the chief envoy of the United States of America in Nigeria. When he was through with serving his country, he wrote a controversial book: Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink. Campbell describes himself as “a friend of Nigeria”, who is so concerned for the unity of the country that he opted to speak “the truth” about the situation in a country bedevilled by instability and threatened with an uncertain future. The aspect of the diplomat’s assertions that tickles my interest is his contention that the “core North” (Arewa, or the Muslim North) is “alienated”. He is concerned that Nigeria’s leaders are not doing enough to address the “discrepancies in the social statistics” that portray “alienation” of the region. These, he insinuates, manifest in viol...