by Dele Momodu

I had planned to say a different kind of goodbye to my ardent readers last week. A call to the Editor of THISDAY the Saturday Paper, Ms Ijeoma Nwogwugwu changed all that.

THISDAY was on holiday last Saturday, so I didn’t have to stress myself writing the Pendulum column. I had nearly completed what should have been my last piece for my THISDAY column. My target was to quit my weekly writing by the last Saturday of 2009. But that was not to be. That break turned out to be some kind of blessings, even if on some sad notes.

First was the unthinkable news of the alleged Nigerian bomber on an America-bound flight. I thought someone was cracking some cruel joke when the news broke. Nigerians have been widely advertised as the world’s happiest people. We often boast that a revolution cannot take place in our dear country for that simple reason.

We’d readily enter the Guinness Books of Records as the unsurpassable merry-makers on planet earth. How was I to believe that a 23-year old charming boy was capable of not just killing himself but also attempting to terminate almost 300 innocent souls? The story of the handsome young man remains stranger than fiction. Even as I write this the whole world is agog with the story of “The Nigerian”.

As if that was not rattling enough, I was in the ancient city of Ile-Ife last Sunday, December 27, 2009, when a text message flew into my phone like thunderbolt. I was instantly dazed by its content: MARYAM BABANGIDA IS DEAD! Like a somnambulist, I tried to clear my head of the confused state I was in.

And the journalist in me immediately took over. This was the second time in less than two months that I was receiving such terrible news. I decided to crosscheck with someone I knew was very close to the Babangidas and was able to confirm the breaking news.

I was more familiar with Maryam Babangida’s daughter, Aisha, but did not know where she was at that moment. As tradition demands in Africa, it was necessary to offer my condolences to the bereaved. I decided to send mine to Aisha and prayed for Allah to accept her mum’s soul. Surprisingly, I received a response from Aisha shortly after: “Dele, thank you very much for your thoughtful prayers. Thank you.” I could imagine how she felt at moment being a veteran of the same motherless status. My mum died over two years ago but I still cry like a baby once in a while. It is not easy to lose your mother, especially if she was as sweet as mine was.

Maryam Babangida’s battle with cancer had crept in like a thief in the night exactly ten years ago. As a matter of fact, Ovation International had published exclusive pictures of Maryam on her return from Paris where she had gone for the initial treatment in 1999. In the picture which appeared on our cover, she looked drained and darker. Our cover was a screamer of sorts: MARYAM BABANGIDA’S FIRST PICTURES AFTER HER PARIS OPERATION. But she bounced back to her usual gaiety in subsequent years and we all hoped the worst was over. In fact, she looked more radiant, and enjoyed life to the hilt.

But she had added a new kind of religious piety and her friendliness was palpable when we met at the swearing-in ceremony of Liberia’s first female President, Madam Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, in Monrovia a few years ago. She was very warm and pleasant. She made appearances here and there at birthdays, weddings and other such celebrity events. She remained a head-turner and newsmaker to the end.

I’m pleased to have had the opportunity to say goodbye to a stormy petrel whose stint as Nigeria’s First Lady was remarkable in many ways. Love or loathe her, Maryam Ndidi Babandida was a woman you couldn’t ignore. Her controversial Better Life for Women project was pursued with the agility of a wrestler. She eventually received her crowning glory when she won and shared The Hunger Project Award in 1991 with Kenya’s Nobel Peace Laureate, Professor Wangari Mathai. I was privileged to witness the powerful ceremony in London.

It was the tonic Maryam needed to continue her pet project to the very end of her tenure. Even when it seemed her husband had committed the terminal error of annulling Nigeria’s best election ever, and the people of the South-west of Nigeria felt aggrieved Maryam was the pathfinder who made it possible for the Babangidas to meander their way back to the Lagos social circuit. She was an energetic bridge-builder and a great networker.

From paying tribute to Maryam, I have the pleasure of saying goodbye to my readers. Whatever has a beginning must have an end. For me, it is time to move on. I’ll be 50 by God’s grace in a few months and I need some time to finish my books. I owe that project to the strident calls of readers who believe I must make my works permanently available to my ardent fans.

I sincerely thank both my fanatical supporters as well as my vociferous critics for making it possible for me to enjoy the cult followership I seemed to have commanded in the past few years. I’m particularly flattered and bemused that I have my chief critics who hate my column with so much venom but can’t wait to read and attack it every week. I’ll surely miss you all.

This voyage began about 30 months ago. I had just landed in Lagos that brilliant morning from my base in Accra, Ghana. As soon as we touched down, I had planned to speak to the THISDAY publisher, Mr. Nduka Obaigbena, on some important issues affecting a few of our mutual friends.

I was already on the Third Mainland Bridge when I got through to Nduka and he told me he was on his way to the airport to catch a private flight to Benin City. He insisted I must join him on the flight in order to discuss the matter of our friends. In less than one hour thereafter, we were already airborne and cruising towards the ancient city of the once powerful Benin Kingdom.

It was in the course of our flight that Nduka revealed that Segun Adeniyi was on his way to joining the Yar’Adua team in Aso Rock. I asked what would happen to his extremely popular column, and Nduka said he would find a good replacement. He asked if I was interested, and if I’ll be able to find the time from my very hectic lifestyle to write a regular column and I answered in the affirmative. I love challenges and the discipline required to oil it. I was ready to resurrect Pendulum again, and that was it.

It was really a kind of homecoming. I had been a part of the foundation that packaged the birth of Leaders & Company, the parent company of THISDAY newspapers, as far back as 1992. I had secured the services of some of the key staff at that tough beginning in the Ikoyi office. THISDAY would always be dear to my heart for that reason. I’m proud that the THISDAY media brand has grown into an octopus with fingers in many pies. It was only natural that I’ll always love to contribute to its phenomenal growth.

My biggest challenge was the difficulty of creating the time every week to write the column. The fact that I was constantly on the move made matters worse. A lot of the times, I found myself typing frantically on the plane. There were times I had to contend with the problems of time difference and internet connections, even in the United States.

I was fortunate to have had to deal with understanding editors like Simon Kolawole, at first and later Ijeoma Nwogwugwu and Laurence Ani, who gave me some flexibility. Ijeoma in particular became my chief critic. We discussed issues a lot and I found her extremely knowledgeable. She was as comfortable with financial matters as with political topics. Her versatility extended even to the choicest wines in the vineyard. Nigerians should watch out for this terrific Amazon in the future.

A second challenge was how to respond as quickly as possible to a nation and a people perpetually on the fast lane. News items are often produced in Nigeria with the rapidity of popcorn. Keeping up sometimes could be breath-taking. We also had a cynical public to deal with. They sometimes know you more than you know yourself, and they judge you by your appearance than by your real thoughts. The critics sit in the comfort of their homes to dictate who you should be and not what they should become.

Some people have taken permanent residence on the internet to attack fellow citizens without any justification. My only sin is that I publish a very popular magazine that gives space to saints and sinners to feature their events. Our magazine is largely pictorial, and we don’t write editorials which glorify “thieves and rogues”. My critics can’t seem to appreciate the risk I take by speaking up against those they claim to be my friends. Is it not easier to dine with the devil and see no evil?

There is also the issue of literary appreciation which has become lacking in our society. Some readers find it hard to appreciate the literary skills of a writer. They are only interested in his message. But writing is not always about its didactic relevance, the literary styles of the writer must be enjoyed and enjoyable. Experience they say is the best teacher. But when a writer writes from his personal experience and encounters, he’s often attacked as a boastful, name-dropping and egoistic columnist.

My favourite columnists and reporters are those who throw themselves into their art. May Ellen Ezekiel’s column, MEE, was extremely influential and inspiring because she was able to feed her readers with her incredible life experience. It is difficult to forget her Classic, Over Cognac, in which she detailed what she had to go through to have a child, including being asked to drink concoctions made from her own body fluids. An ambitious writer must be bold and be ready to shock sensibilities.

There is no law that says all columnists must write alike. That is why a column is the personal property of the writer. A reader is at liberty to read his favourite column and ignore the ones he doesn’t like. You may choose one for his message and read the other for its literary style. It is wrong to insist that every writer must embrace the same ideology and methodology. A writer is a member of our society.

He’s not a saint on account of being a social critic. He must feed his family and pay his bills like the rest of us. He’s not a masquerade from heaven. His mission is to seek for a better society, not necessarily a perfect society, because none exists in our world today.

Those who attack Segun Adeniyi for doing his job today are very unrealistic. What do they expect of him? Once a man accepts a job, he must obey his boss. He may privately advise his boss, but it would be reckless of him to criticise him in public. Segun has not behaved like the usual loquacious spokespersons of government. He has comported himself with decorum. The vicious attack on people like him is one reason good people are afraid to serve in government. The alternative is for bad people and rogues who don’t care about the name-calling to continue to rule us.

I have been asked by many readers why we bother to write in a nation where leaders don’t seem to read, and even if they do they don’t really care. My answer had always been that I write personally as a form of psychotherapy. It heals my mind to think that I can talk freely when others have been cowed. I feel good that I can risk my business and everything to criticise a system that has kept us down as a people. Writing for me is a personal victory over the principalities that inhabit our corridors of power. Nobody should take that joy away from us.

We must all engage in constructive criticism. Abusing people for fun will never change any system. Our country needs to be rescued, and we can no longer afford to keep our arms akimbo. The days of arm-chair criticism should be over. It has led us nowhere. If we truly love our country, we must join hands to liberate Nigeria from the backwardness that stares us all in the face.

I have had great fun on this page and I’ll always treasure the memory of the wonderful goodwill the Pendulum column has brought to me. May God bless us all.

Happy New Year.

by Chidi Amuta

She was waiting at home that morning. An appointment for yet another routine visit with the General had been restructured while I was air borne. When I arrived the residence in Minna, the security personnel directed me to see madam for a message from Oga. After pleasantries, she said firmly and nicely: ‘ My instruction is to make you feel at home even though this is your home… Oga had to rush off to Abuja at very short notice. I am sure he must have been trying to get you on the phone…He says to do everything possible to make you spend the night if possible…I have to obey the last order, remember! Any objections?.’ She led the way while I followed straight in the direction of…? Wait for it… The kitchen!

Beside her fairly elaborate office at the residence, she has another work desk adjacent to the kitchen, a sort of working anteroom. I mused: ‘Hajia, the kitchen is big enough an office. Why attach this one to it?’ With a very sophisticated sense of humour, she retorted: ‘ The kitchen is the main office. This my desk is the annexe…oh!’ This was perhaps the same sense of the complementarity of the home front and the public responsibility that informed her activation of the office of First Lady in the days of the Babangida presidency.

While the cooks were busy, she would dash in and out of the kitchen while keeping an eye on my comfort. Each return trip she made to the kitchen earned me a few more snacks until I began a mild protest. She reminded me that I had taken the first flight out of Lagos and had obviously skipped breakfast. Moreover, it was part of her marching orders from ‘the boss.’

In between general conversation about public issues, she reached for a drawer beside the desk and pulled out a document. She was due to attend a major international conference on women empowerment in Kenya and from there head for a UN round table in New York on the Millennium Development Goals. In each case, she had been specially invited in a lead role. There seemed to be quite some demand for her experience gathered from initiating the Better Life for Rural Women Programme in Nigeria. She had a draft address which she wanted me to look at and freely comment on. Like the General, she is an avid listener and beneficiary from a broad consensus of views on any subject.

So keen was her sense of perfection that every word mattered. Nothing important must be left out. No assumptions should be unexamined. That painstaking aspect of her character was just dawning on me as we both quickly went through the editorial part. Then she took the lead in discussing the major issues that unite women’s empowerment programmes around the world.

Active engagement with the women empowerment movement for over two decades had equipped her with so much information, so much anecdotal treasure that I just had to listen and learn. I listened attentively, asking questions here and there to sharpen the focus of what was obviously an encyclopaedic knowledge of the problems of lowly women everywhere in the world. These were matters like discriminatory customs, unfriendly legislations, lack of access to credit, gender barriers to high pubic office, overt government policies that were hostile to women empowerment as well as silly bureaucratic bottlenecks put in the way of under privileged women. She was particularly emotional when we came to widowhood practices among some of our nationalities.

Moreover, she was very conscious of her anticipated audience and the need to maintain the lead which her Better Life Programme has established around the world in the now universal drive for women empowerment. Over 16 years after leaving office as First Lady and Chairperson of the Better Life Programme, her commitment to the project had grown. It had become a passion and her contributions to women empowerment had been vastly documented by major international organisations. The invitations kept pouring in just as she kept the programme alive at home through her own resources and a trickle of private donations and meagre institutional support. Instead of the original emphasis on rural women, she had renamed her programme Better Life Programme (BLP) to give it a wider coverage and lend it a more international relevance.

As we drifted from the subject of women empowerment, I began to ponder what would be driving this very privileged woman’s passion for the empowerment of less privileged women. If her interest in the matter was merely to justify the office of First Lady which she gave meaning during her husband’s presidency, she should have quit the diversion after more than one and a half decades out of office. More so, she has El Amin International School and other cottage businesses to worry about. But she remained steadfast, committed and engaged with the cause of a better life for women, unknown to most Nigerians, till the very end.

In between, a member of staff came from her school with vouchers and cheques for her signature. She briefly switched off me and the kitchen staff and meticulously went through all the supporting documents, asking questions, issuing instructions and finally signing off before returning to me. I later managed to negotiate with her to allow me return to Lagos same day against the instructions she had been given. ‘Madam, I am a civilian living in a democracy. If you compel me to sleep in Minna today, I could go to court to press for my rights!…’ she smiled and as she made towards her car, she reminded me: ‘Don’t forget to report that I carried out my instructions but you spoilt it with your democracy…!’ Then she hopped into her car and drove off to take care of other business. In less than one and a half hours, the totality of her personality had been in full display: a wife, a mother, an engaging social worker, a business woman, a lively company and a very humane person.

It is not possible to step into the home of the Babangidas without coming face to face with the overwhelming presence, nay, influence of the former First Lady. Her sense of order is everywhere in evidence. Her love for nature as evidenced in the ubiquitous peacocks that roam freely in the landscape. A certain unaffected sense of the aesthetic in the home decor speak to the handiwork of a woman whose commitment to the public good was matched by a rigorous pursuit of order and harmony in the home front. Members of taff testify to a woman who was a workaholic and a stickler for excellence and order. Her sense of authority came from a certain personal inner strength of character, not just from a sense of whose wife she was. Like her husband, her dominance of the space around her was achieved without too many words.

And yet, she was one of the most unassuming women of her class. A natural leader of women, they were drawn naturally to her because of an unmistakeable ability to provide effective leadership as and when necessary without alienating her colleagues. While her husband’s numerous friends and associates naturally deferred to her partly on account of the General’s awesome followership and expansive influence, she was in her own right a “general” in the sense that her presence defined the limits. You knew the lines without being shown where they were.

In a sense then, Maryam Babangida was largely the force behind the awesome power of the great General. And yet hers was the soft kind of power; subtle, unabrasive and without the usual pomposity of the moneyed class. She was sophisticated without being over adorned, elegant in simple ankara outfits and no make up and yet stylish without the kind of deliberate adornment that transforms otherwise beautiful women into mannequins and painted idols.

Between the late First Lady and the General, there was a certain utopian love that still defies precise characterisation. Each time I have stepped into the general’s office, I have never failed to take another count of the number of portraits of Hajia in that single room. At the last count there were four. Sometimes, it grows to six. Every bathroom in the guest wing of the house has towels with ‘Maryam Babangida’ monograms. This almost totemic devotion becomes more significant when we realise that General Babangida is unquestionably a devout Muslim.

As we pay our last respects to Mrs. Babangida, here is a hope that Nigerian womanhood will come to treasure her landmark strides in reminding us all of the vast humanity that lies locked away by poverty in the rural areas. But most importantly, we are celebrating the life of a woman that married power and privilege with responsibility and commitment to the cause of those that may never taste either power or privilege.