by Pius Adesanmi

My title plays on the title of Professor Femi Osofisan’s inaugural lecture at the University of Ibadan, “Playing Dangerously”, and my reasons shall become apparent presently. First, an anecdote. Back in secondary school, one of my close cousins, Bola Akanbi, fell in love with Professors. Bola and I were then sharing the same bedroom in my mother’s staff quarters bungalow in the sprawling compound of Titcombe College, Egbe.

Bola’s Dad, one of those colonial, missionary-trained, no-nonsense, secondary school principals like my own Dad, was doing his doctorate at the University of Ibadan. Dr Samuel Akanbi and my father belonged in a generation of Spartan educationists who spiced their impeccable Queen’s grammar with Latin and spotted a District Officer “parting” (a straight line carved through the hair with a comb) on the right of left side of their heads. They could drive you home at the end of a school day to “cane you” in front of your parents and be thanked generously for it by your parents before your Dad proceeded to give you “jara” (supplementary) caning for the disgrace. Infrequently, Bola earned a hop-along trip whenever his Dad was going for consultation with his doctoral supervisor at Ibadan. Those were the days.

That was before the academic hemorrhage to Euro-America that Paul Tiyambe Zeleza has analyzed so brilliantly in a number of works. Many of the big names in the Faculties of Arts, Education, and the Social Sciences were still around in Ibadan. That’s where and how Bola’s love of Professors began. Bumping into some of those names must have done things to the impressionable mind of a secondary school kid. Bola would return to Titcombe from Ibadan to regale us with stories of Professor this and Professor that, laced with routine school kid’s exaggerations and a considerable swagger of superiority.

Soon, things extended beyond the University of Ibadan and Bola came to acquire an encyclopedic knowledge of the names of Professors in most Nigerian Universities. His hobby was to reel out names of professors, stressing every syllable of that word, looking at us like primitive baboons when we professed ignorance of those names. “You mean you don’t know Pro-ffe-ssssor Jacob Festus Ade Ajayi?” “What about Pro-ffe-sssor Obaro Ikime?” “Pro-ffe-ssssor Eskor Toyo?” “You don’t know them too? Suegbe l’eyin boys wonyi o”. And Bola would strut away like a royal peacock, hissing and bemoaning the fate that placed him in the company of such ignorant peers as us. In essence, if you were a professor in Ade Ajayi’s generation in any Nigerian university and you were worth knowing, Bola knew you in his little corner of the world in Titcombe college.

Then the radio announcements came in dizzying succession in the 1980s: “I Colonel Joshua Dogonyaro of the Nigerian Armed Forces” (1983); “I Colonel Joshua Dogonyaro of the Nigerian Armed Forces” (1985). “I Brigadier this, I General that”. Coups and counter-coups. We gradually became a generation that new more about martial music coming early morning on national radio than we knew about fuji or juju music. National ethos was changing. All the values we knew were being bastardized by the military before our very before. Principals like my Dad or Bola’s Dad had better watch out. You had better be able to recite the national anthem or pledge “with immediate effect” or a considerably younger Group Captain Salaudeen Adebola Latinwo, Military Governor of Kwara state, could barge into your office – through the window, always through the window – and ‘frog jump’ you. On national TV, we saw those despised soldiers publicly frog jump Nigerians in our fathers’ generation. We saw them slapped and horse-whipped in the street. In graver situations, the soldiers could deny you your share of “essential commodity” (essenco).

These changing scenarios were playing out as we approached 100 Level. During our transition from secondary school to University, Bola’s diction had changed. Now, that’s a paradox. Here was a school kid who spent his time in secondary school memorizing the names of a mind-boggling number of Nigerian Professors. This same kid got to the University and Army Generals became his new fascination. His encyclopedic mind dropped the database of Professors and replaced it seamlessly with a brand new database of Generals. He was also now less enthusiastic about University education. He was only just there at the University – going through the motion. His mind was really at the Nigerian Defense Academy in Kaduna and he spent a couple of years trying to get in. Like most Nigerians in my generation, Bola was seeing possibilities of himself as a newly commissioned military officer first serving as ADC to a military governor before participating in a coup to become a governor himself. In my own moments of messy privacy in the toilet, I would practice on top of my voice: “Fellow Nigerians, I, Major General Pius Adesanmi, of the Nigerian Armed Forces”… That sounded kinda cool.

There is however a lot more to why Professors crashed from their Olympian pedestal and eventually disappeared from the mind of Bola Akanbi. If we admit that there is a story here that we may now tentatively entitle “the rise and fall of Nigerian Professoriate in the mind of one Nigerian school kid”; if we also agree that Professors Ayodele Awojobi and Charles Soludo are at antipodal ends of this story, we need to begin to critically map and understand the trajectory that took us from Awojobi’s brightness to Soludo’s penumbra. We need to know when, where, and how the rain began to beat Nigeria’s professoriate, especially in view of an uncomfortable history of dangerous and unethical demissions that Charles Soludo has inadvertently but tragically come to symbolize.

Daniel Elombah, the prolific publisher of elombah.com has recently offered an excellent dissection of Professor Soludo’s ethical about-turns and moral summersaults. What needs to be added to Elombah’s treatise is the fact that there are broader national contexts and histories that have led us to Charles Soludo. It is a national malaise, not a regional or Anambra problem. Those contexts and histories are, in turn, linked to what Obi Nwakanma, a prominent Nigerian poet and public intellectual, likes to discourse as the collapse of “the University idea” in Nigeria. Whereas most analysis always reduce the crisis in our Universities to empirical and material details – collapse of infrastructure, outdated libraries and laboratories, etc – Nwakanma has always contended that we have in fact lost the idea behind the derelict structures. The fortunes or misfortunes of the professoriate in our recent history is a good place to start engaging the loss of the University idea.

For what, in fact, Bola Akanbi had plugged into back in secondary school wasn’t just the title of Professor or the considerable body of knowledge that the wearer of that title is normally deemed to have acquired. That school kid plugged into an over-arching halo, aura, and awe that devolved from the considerable socio-political, moral, and ethical capital that the Nigerian professoriate had come to acquire in the public space largely due to the critical interventionism and public activism of a long line of engagé Professors symbolized by the likes of Ayodele Awojobi, Wole Soyinka, Pius Okigbo, Eskor Toyo, Omafume Onoge, Bala Usman, Adebayo Williams, and Attahiru Jega, just to mention those few randomly. Add to this the collective public profile of the hot literary lefties of a certain era – Professors Biodun Jeyifo, Niyi Osundare, Femi Osofisan and others. Such critical and activist modes of inhabiting the public sphere was what created a certain national idea of the Professor-as-demiurge or the Professor-as-vates – the image and idea that mesmerized a secondary school kid.

By moving beyond the cocoon of academia and making knowledge production an expression of the people’s will and desire, in the people’s language, and always in opposition to the organized banditry otherwise known as the Nigerian state, these engagé Professors carved a Gramscian trajectory that came to define the public face of Nigerian professoriate. You will recall that the Italian, Antonio Gramsci, by far one of the most famous thinkers of the 20th century, gave us the idea of the “organic intellectual”. In addition to analyzing social life according to systemic and scientific protocols, the organic intellectual harmonizes and expresses the consciousness and feelings of the people. In this academic professor, town and gown meet and a social vision/mission is born and pursued often at great personal costs.

It is often wrongly assumed that Ibrahim Babangida, the military despot who ruled Nigeria from 1985 to 1993, destroyed education by deliberately underfunding the Universities, wrecking academic and non-academic unions, and triggering a mass exodus of the Professoriate by making the words ‘Professor’ and ‘poverty’ much more than a matter of poetic alliteration. Those are mere empirical consequences of a much more symbolic and graver assault on meaning. Babangida was far too sophisticated a buffoon to be content with merely undoing the Professor materially. He targeted the aura and the halo, demoted the demiurge, and vanquished the vates. What Babangida undermined and put on life on support were the idea and the ideal that society had vested in the professoriate. General Sani Abacha only needed to remove the oxygen later.

Babangida’s strategy was brilliant. Part of the professoriate’s capital with the Nigerian public was the idea that an indissoluble union of character and learning inhered in it. Babangida would have none of that Siamese twin. He performed a surgical operation, severed character from learning, and threw the former into a septic tank. To demystify the professoriate, Babangida manufactured two Professor types and unleashed them on the Nigerian public: Professor Errand Boy and Professor House Nigga.

Professor Errand Boy was the man Babangida somehow convinced to leave campus and come on board “on national assignment”. He gave this Professor sufficient perks and resources to discourage any idea of a return to campuses he was simultaneously starving of funds. But the real intention was to make his public image pedestrian. That was achieved by bouncing him from post to post and office to office like ping pong. Chairman of some special agency or parastatal today, Minister of some Ministry outside of his zone of competence tomorrow, Ambassador to some backyard country next tomorrow, back to Chairman next week. Professor Errand Boy would, of course, be inherited by subsequent regimes and administrations and bounced around just like his inventor, Babangida, did.

The bouncing back and forth had consequences: in the public’s mind, the boundaries between Professor and office messenger got dangerously blurry. One would almost need a calculator to tabulate the posts held under the military by Professor Jerry Gana alone. The more aura, halo, and social capital they brought to the table, the better for Babangida. Hence he also got Professors Tunji Olagunju, Adele Jinadu, Sam Oyobvaire and a host of other distinguished academics to constitute an unimpeachable pool of knowledge producers in Aso Rock. And they ran errands with unalloyed love for the military puppeteers. Those who today make grandiose claims about the “legacies” of the professor-servicers of Babangida forget too easily that whatever the said professors did in terms of bringing so much intellectual fire power and ideas to the governance of Nigeria at the time was subsumed within the symbolic economy of Babangida’s subterranean politics: demystify the professoriate. With Professor Errand Boy, the awe was gone. The rash of quota Professors being manufactured in the northern part of the country did not help matters in terms of public respect for the professoriate.

From the standpoint of the soldiers, Professor House Nigga was an improvement on Professor Errand Boy. Here, we cross the threshold of errand running into the territory of faith. Professor House Nigga’s work for Babangida was not just an assignment he mistook for service to the nation. He saw his job as a sacerdotal mission because he was a true believer who was genuinely in love with his master. Like the house nigga in American lore, if Babangida was sick, Professor House Nigga declared to the nation: “we are sick”. If Massa Babangida went to France to treat radiculopathy, Professor House Nigga wore sackcloth, poured ash on his own head, prayed, and fasted till Massa returned. This pathological love of Massa has been known to subsist long after Massa has left office.

Consider this scenario: more than a decade after Babangida left office, you are ill to the point of death in a Boston Hospital. This man, whom you served so faithfully at the risk of your own professoral reputation, does not lift a finger to help. Yet, you remain a believer, constantly trying to smuggle the tyrant into a nice corner of Nigerian history in broad daylight. Then Babangida’s wife lands in a California clinic and you are the first to release an online statement urging prayers for her. What greater love hath a man for his Massa? We are effectively in the province of what Wole Soyinka calls “inhuman” love when discussing Senghor’s infinite capacity to forgive the colonial atrocities of France and still find a wuruwuru way to place France on the right hand of the Father “among the white nations”. This love for Babangida by a Professor he somehow convinced to believe that a research centre could forge democratic ethos under jackboots and a pile of decrees is inhuman – inhuman because “superhuman” according to Soyinka. Are we surprised that our subject is still online today celebrating his role as one of the “founding fathers” of Nigeria’s current constitution – a flawed, illegitimate document imposed on the nation by a bunch of arrogant Generals who dared to utter the solemn words, “we the people”?

In Professors Errand Boy and House Nigga, Ibrahim Babangida demystified and pedestrianized the Nigerian professoriate. This was a sophisticated way of preparing the ground for the gaggle of Professor-servicers that Sani Abacha would instrumentalize later in his own much cruder fashion. What Abacha added to Babangida’s template was his ability to convince so many credible and impeccable Professors that it was possible to work for and with a killer like him and somehow come out of it all with the squeaky-clean reputation with which most of them went in.

The combined effect of Babangida’s and Abacha’s assault on the professoriate was to erase the halo, aura, and ideal that society had invested in those persons. Ironically, lowered ratings and expectation by society meant freedom to descend even lower in the logic of he that is down needs fear no fall. This explains a new phenomenon that emerged with the advent of ‘democracy’ in 1999. I was still in graduate school at the University of British Columbia. I would phone Nigeria and ask casually after Professor X or Professor Y. You got an answer that became increasingly frequent and worrisome: “ah Prof has left o. He has gone back to his Local Government to contest for Chairmanship o. Prof is now a PDP Chieftain in his Local Government Area”.

The problem wasn’t that Profs were leaving in droves to join politics. I believe that our tragedy as a nation devolves from the fact that the best among us have abandoned leadership and governance to the Orangutans among us. The problem was the kind of politics the Professors joined and the terms of engagement – electoral politics as defined and determined by the PDP, by far one of the most corrupt and oppressive institutions ever to bestride the African continent. This is no place to rehash the sorry, disgraceful, and embarrassing profile of that bastardy of a political party. Suffice it to say that unrivalled ability to lie and loot and a one hundred per cent deficit in integrity are the two most important membership requirements of the party. When Wole Soyinka described Abacha’s regime as “the open sore of a continent”, he was describing a counterfeit or “bend down” open sore. The Peoples Democratic Party in Nigeria is the genuine or original open sore of the African continent.

This purulent political institution benefited immensely from the demystification of the professoriate by the military. With the road to demystification smoothly paved by the soldiers, all the PDP needed to do was to create a worse personage than Professors Errand Boy and House Nigga. Enter the PDP’s Professor Nutin Spoil. Where Professor Nutin Spoil is not a regular jobber like Professors Errand Boy and House Nigga before him, he is neck deep into everything that makes the ordinary people of Nigeria sick and tired of the accursed democracy that has held them hostage since 1999. As electoral umpire, Professor Nutin Spoil is otherwise known as Maurice Iwu; as participant in and beneficiary of the PDP’s culture of electoral violence, massive rigging, and and daylight political robbery, his name is Oserheimen Osunbor.

This, in essence, has been our compulsory rite of passage to the unfolding tragedy that is Professor Charles Soludo, Nigeria’s latest and, according to Daniel Elombah, palpably most disappointing Professor Nutin Spoil. Suddenly we are dealing with the familiar and the strange united for better for worse in the same body. There is the Charles Soludo that we know: one of Africa’s most brilliant economists. A stellar academic trajectory saw him become one of the youngest full Professors of Economics ever to emerge from Nigeria. Then there is the Charles Soludo that we don’t know: he becomes Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank; becomes an overnight billionaire; buys up choice properties in London; sends his kids to private schools in London that only the kids of Middle East oil Sheikhs should be able to afford; joins PDP politics; gets himself an offshore godfather in a dubious character like Chief Tony Anenih; participates in the subversion of democratic ethos within the PDP to emerge as the party’s governorship candidate in the forthcoming Anambra elections; roams the land now in a convoy of thugs and loads of money that he is distributing to buy the election.

Where is the Professor of Economics? Where is the Economics he taught as a Professor at the University of Nigeria? Even in secondary school Economics when we read those famous textbooks authored by O. Teriba and O.A. Lawal, one sort of got the impression that Economics is all about the prudent management of scarce resources. Would the students Professor Soludo trained – especially the doctoral students he supervised – be able to square up his gargantuan profligacy with the theories he taught them? What did he teach those students about looting and plundering the resources of the state in Africa? Did he attend graduation ceremonies in his years on campus? Did he wear an academic gown? Did he mouth the usual platitudes about “character and learning” as the graduands filed past the academic staff? What does he think of all these things now as he spends looted in the attempt to buy the office of Governor of Anambra state? How does he plan to recoup that investment? What’s in it for Chief Tony Anenih, his offshore godfather from Edo state? How does the Professor feel about bringing himself so low that a charlatan and a buffoon like Chris Uba now feels sufficiently enamoured to ask Nigerians to determine who the criminal is between himself and Charles Soludo? The horror! The horror!

Questions. Questions. Questions. Yet, Professor Soludo just happens to be the most famous Professor Nuting Spoil around. Others abound in the system, contributing a restless run of nails to the coffin of what they once professed. Sometime last month, some Professors in the Senate of the University of Benin, led by Professor E.P. Kubeyinje, acting Vice Chancellor of the University at the time, put their heads together and somehow concluded that it was a great idea to invite Elder Chief Stakeholder James Ibori to deliver the University’s 2009 Founder’s Day Lecture! A thoroughly embarrassed Nigerian cyber community has sufficiently addressed this unbelievable violence inflicted on the very idea of the University by the Professors in Benin.

Here are some facts that the specific Professors Nutin Spoil responsible for the invitation knew about James Ibori: (1) he was convicted twice in London in the 1990s for theft and shoplifting; (2) he is wanted in London for money laundering and other related charges; (3) he is still standing trial in Nigeria for corruption. None of these facts discouraged these Professors in Benin from giving this convicted felon a university pedestal to address graduating students. Apart from Professor Kubeyinje, the Nigerian people need to know which Professors actually sat down in a lecture hall to listen to James Ibori. Hopefully, they had the decency to at least forget their academic gowns at home?

When next our folks in Benin want to invite a guest lecturer, let them borrow a leaf from Obafemi Awolowo University. OAU has just reduced the shame brought on us all – us is the Nigerian academic community – by the University of Benin when it recently invited the globally acclaimed human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, to deliver its Distinguished Alumni Lecture.

Let the Professors in Benin not tell us that they can find no better alumnus of Uniben than a third class graduate of that institution convicted twice for theft by the Queen of England. If James Ibori wants to invest part of his huge loot in education as part of a broader process of restitution, there are ways to do it.

Yet, Nigerian Professors abound, at home and abroad, who are doing this thing the way it ought to be done: quietly, diligently, and steadfastly. From Toyin Falola to Eghosa Osaghae, from Jimi Adesina to Aduke Adebayo, from Demola Dasylva to Obioma Nnaemeka, from Dele Layiwola to Onookome Okome and thousands like them, Nigerian academe remains the root and home of so many bright stars in the firmament of global academe. But, in the nature of things, the good apples don’t get to define the public face of the professoriate. The political jobbers do.

by Okey Ndibe

Friday, November 13, will be remembered as a day of hope for the people of Anambra State, nay Nigerians. That day, the Enugu Division of the Court of Appeal dismissed a misconceived lawsuit by Emmanuel Nnamdi Uba – widely known as Andy Uba – seeking to be foisted, via judicial fiat, as the governor of Anambra. The court’s five justices unanimously refused to grant what Justice Sylvester Nwani Ngwuta aptly described as “judicial blunder.”

Had Uba succeeded – God forbid! – he and his coterie would certainly have assaulted logic and sought to give God a bad name by categorizing their triumph as ordained by divinity. They would have staged a fiesta of carefully orchestrated celebration to leave the impression that Mr. Uba’s ascendancy had popular appeal.

Instead, the justices did not just decide to rain on the parade; they chose to send Mr. Uba’s paid puppeteers and hired jesters home. Ngwuta struck a powerful note when he declared that the effect of obliging Uba’s petition would be “too disastrous to contemplate.” The reason, said the judge, is that the April 14, 2007 election that purportedly elected Uba “was not conducted in accordance with the supreme law of the land.” Therefore, to grant Uba’s prayer to be established in Government House, Awka effective March 17, 2010 (when the tenure of incumbent Governor Peter Obi will run out) would be, in Ngwuta’s pertinent metaphor, to “bury the rights of Anambra State people.”

Beyond the death knell to Uba’s dreams to sneak into power by any means, last Friday’s verdict also held out other judicial, moral and political lessons. The universal spree of celebration that attended the judgment demonstrated Nigerians’ desire to achieve nobility. All too often, I encounter Nigerians who believe that there’s no hope for their country. They insist, for example, that every Nigerian, given the opportunity, would steal or cheat.

This brand of despair is fertilized, one realizes, when too many public officials leave office with wealth they cannot account for – and nobody makes an attempt to investigate, much less prosecute, them. Negative attitudes about Nigeria and Nigerians fester when the electoral commission proclaims clear losers in an election as the winners. Nigerians cannot help thinking the worst of themselves and their fellows when craven or corrupt judges, sitting on electoral tribunals, shamelessly validate beneficiaries of stolen political offices.

There’s nothing worse than a judiciary that is perceived as open to accepting cash inducement in exchange for bizarre or patently illogical verdicts. But last week, we saw a panel of judges who spoke clearly, boldly, and fearlessly. Even better, their pronouncement was in consonance with what the Nigerian public, including lawyers, recognized as the right – if not inevitable – conclusion.

That verdict had an electrifying effect. In Anambra, Enugu and elsewhere in Nigeria, millions of people heaved a sigh of relief. There was widespread boisterous celebration. I got calls from friends, relatives and even total strangers from different parts of the world – Sweden, England, Nigeria. Each caller bore witness to a sense of hope, an expectation of greater things to come.

Let’s be clear: Nigeria has spent close to fifty years slipping into a crisis that is, properly speaking, a profound morass. Nigerians who are under thirty years of age may not know that there was a time when embezzlement or kickback on contract was at the level of five percent. Today’s going rate of embezzlement hovers around eighty percent. Many young Nigerians would not know that there was a time when students were a veritable force for positive change in society, instead of the situation today when student cult groups seek distinction in savagery and self-indulgent debauchery. There was a time when student unionists sought to give a headache to Nigeria’s dictators and traitors, in uniform or agbada. Today, many student unionists merely seek a seat at the dinner tables of “thieftains.”

My point is this: it will take a while to rescue the country from the mire of social and political dysfunction and economic stagnation. The Nigerian judiciary exists within the same disordered space in which moral and ethical considerations are besieged, even often erased. The same system that enabled Andy Uba to accumulate inexplicable wealth after eight years in a fairly low-level political post has given birth to magistrates and judges who sell their bench.

Even so, Nigeria cannot – should not – be reduced to its lowliest elements. It is, we must remember, a nation of intelligent, sagacious and morally exemplary heroes, living and dead. Far from being only the country of crude, venal and grasping parasites, Nigeria also boasts many proud and productive people in all fields – from the mechanic to the medical scientist – who do the right thing daily and expect the best from themselves and their fellows.

Last Friday’s verdict against Uba no doubt dismayed those who profit from corruption and iniquity, the shameless men and women who thrive in the culture of impunity. But the verdict, above all, buoyed the vast majority of Nigerians who dream, and work, to achieve a Nigeria where sanity reigns, where all citizens are deemed and treated as equal, where no occupant of a political post may help himself to the public treasury and then get away with it.

Uba’s defeat translates into the legal and political burial of part of Obasanjo’s reprehensible legacy. I predict that, in time, Nigerians will demand that Mr. Obasanjo be compelled to answer for the manifold crimes committed during the eight years he occupied (and tainted) the office of President of Nigeria.

Many of those crimes were committed against the interests and people of Anambra State. The most egregious was the November 2004 destruction of public property by hoodlums who stormed the state in many trucks. As these hired wreckers went from one government-owned installation to another, setting things on fire, they were escorted – cheered on – by police officers. The bonfire, which was broadcast on Nigerian television, saddled Anambra with a price tag estimated at N30 billion.

Obasanjo was not bothered a bit – as if Anambra were not part of the space he swore on the constitution to govern. He never saw fit to issue a query to the then Anambra Commissioner of Police. This nonchalance led many to suspect that the mayhem had the tacit blessing of a president who desperately wanted an occasion to declare a state of emergency in order to remove then Governor Chris Ngige. The ruling party had imposed Ngige as governor. But when the man balked at orders to hand over the state’s treasury to the president’s closest friends, his erstwhile sponsors came up with depraved plots to remove him. But the battle against Ngige soon became a war on the assets of Anambra. The campaign essayed to remake Anambra into a state of anarchy.

Anambra has paid a steep price as the theatre of political perfidy. The challenge – now that the Uba specter has been decisively expunged – is to ensure that the state achieves a different, salutary distinction. It would be fitting, then, if the state’s forthcoming governorship election (scheduled for February 6, 2010) sets a standard for transparency and credibility. That would send a clear message that Nigerians want to reclaim their nation and their lives from the hands of mindless, self-serving politicians.

My fear is that, everything considered, this might prove a difficult dream. One good reason for anxiety is that the electoral commission under Maurice Iwu has seemed all-too willing to act less as an impartial umpire than an arm of the PDP. Truth is that, with Iwu running the election, many voters are apt to write it off as another ruined opportunity. There’s little or no prospect of persuading Iwu to step aside. Having survived Obasanjo and Uba, the people of Anambra ought to cultivate the art of political vigilance. They should be on guard against any and all predators and parasites, and use every means to protect their sovereignty.

(okeyndibe@gmail.com)

by Sam Omatseye

From the outset, I must confess loyalties. I owe no passion for any of the football fancies of the day. I am an agnostic in this feverish play of pieties that exalts the foreign to the asphyxiation of local talents.

While many of us, in our post-colonial imbecilities, may throw our weights behind Manchester United or Arsenal or Chelsea or Liverpool, I am light with indifference.

When loyalty mattered, I was a fan of two teams, Bendel Insurance and Ilerika’s Stationary Stores. I glory in my antiquity.

Yet the prompting for this article is not that sport where a leathery round object plays bride to 22 purposeful wanderers. I am writing in the province of politics.

The other day, I heard a young man, who happens to be a longsuffering Chelsea fan, call out Manchester United as PDP. I asked why that correlation. Was it because the team, which plays a game of lacklustre fruitfulness, often dominates the league?

No, said the young man, in his ungainly stride and rhetorical stumbles like many lowly Chelsea fans. His point was that Manchester United cheats its way to glory like PDP in Nigeria’s elections.

First, I thought that was sour grapes. He should ask his team to win rather than quibble over the pettifogging matters of officiating. The referees, he countered, often ruled for Man U, when justice belonged to the other team. I learned later that this spurious deployment of metaphor was very common among Nigerian football fandom.

I tried to examine some recent developments in the country. If Man U. style of soccer was pitted against the political style of the PDP, the comparison would stand as superlative flattery for the PDP. The PDP guys play such foul games that the fans who make such links manifest a weak command of imagery. I understand fans of Arsenal, which plays with winless elegance, and Liverpool who walk alone in serial stumbles, share in this collective fever of cursing.

There is too much sticking by the rules in Man U. to warrant such flattering fuss. The games, unlike the doings of the PDP, take place before all and we see how rules are followed by players and officials.

The recent acts of the PDP that caught my attention included the farce developing in Anambra State and the Bode George saga.

Let us examine the kidnapping of Pa Soludo, the father of ex-CBN chief who has abandoned the nifty suite for the politician’s native garb. He is running for governor on the platform of the PDP. We know that Man U. could not have won a game the way Soludo won the ticket. But I have dwelled on that matter in the past few weeks.

But the latest episode was a farce. The man, 78, is old enough to be the grandfather of those who carried out this outrageous remaking of the old gbomo gbomo syndrome. But this is no omo or child. This is gbagba gbagba (elder kidnap) syndrome, as some of my internet readers suggested after my recent column on that subject.

The story is the sort you read in a gangster movie, like the Good Fellas. In his quiet village, ostensibly immune from the perversions of politics, the man was whisked away. Who are the kidnappers? The farce began. Soludo’s men said it was an act of political brigandage (my words). Chris Uba, the lean, restless maelstrom of Anambra politics, said it was politically motivated (not my words). The camp of Peter Obi, Anambra governor, said it was politically motivated. So everyone seems to believe that the wayward who demanded N500 million for Pa Soludo’s release were not mere desperados for cash. They carried out a revanchist scheme to make Soludo pay for spiriting away the party ticket. What happened to his father may be called Dadnapping.

But eyes have not left Chris Uba, not necessarily because he masterminded this one. We all remember that the last time a high-profile figure lost his freedom in the giddy night of abduction, Anambra was the theatre. Ngige, then a governor, was the victim. And who was the man in the middle of the story? Chris Uba. He deflowered the state into a romance with human heist for cash. Chris on the one hand is believed to have lost out to the PDP at the centre. The same way he lost out in the regime of Ngige. His brother Andy, juvenile with judicial appeals, is pushing his luck. Both brothers seem to be losing out in a show of a dysfunctional family.

But what is really tragic about this is the lack of respect for a cardinal element of our civilised culture: reverence for elders. It is one thing that makes us African. Remove the respect for elders, and we lose the right to be Africans. Respect for elders does not mean succumbing to the wisdom of age. It does not mean genuflecting before injustice from the old. It means, whatever our position or our ideology, we shall not treat them as though they are not older than we. It means we have no right to kidnap them. Even in Western societies, senior citizens have a special place, in public institutions, in buses, etc. They are treated with respect.

What happened in Anambra amounts to what our foremost novelist Chinua Achebe, also an Anambran, described as a “loss of the sense of the ridiculous”, in his latest book of essays, The Education of a British-Protected Child. What he meant was a sense in which nothing is beneath us anymore. Kidnapping is barbarous enough, but kidnapping an elder is beyond the pale. That is sort of thing Achebe lamented.

We no longer have limit but that defined by the beastly instincts inside us. Some writers like German novelist Erich Maria Remarque say Bushmen were better. In All Quiet on the Western Front, which critics call the greatest war novel ever, he said Bushmen are better because they can improve.

“Bushmen are primitive and naturally so,” he laments. “But we are primitive in an artificial sense, and by virtue of the utmost effort.” Remarque poured into his classic novels his experience in the First Word War.

Our attitude as Nigerians to these events also recalls what Remarque describes as “the indifference of wild creatures.” No matter the absurdity, we take in our strides. Just like animals.

The other incident was the jailing of Boy George or, as his parents named him, Bode George. I do not gloat as many do over his fate. He was convicted, but what many think about is how he had taken part in the initiation of injustices in electoral heists of the PDP in the Southwest. The farce was prepossessing as the man who owned Nigeria with his acolytes was asked to slip on prison uniform, forfeited the right to eat meals from home and is seeking to live a special life in prison, above the law, as he did when he was outside, the very thing that landed him in jail.

What excites me is the brilliance of the judge, Justice Bunmi Oyewole, a man I knew as a student at the University of Ife. I am glad he turned out this way. He was an exceptional student in our union days. He evinced sharp mind, panache and an ideological steadiness. At the Students representative Council, he was always a joy to watch and hear. His scientific mind was already blossoming at school as a clear-headed exponent of ideas. I recall, he started his points by saying, “in the first case…”

He is the sort of angels we need in our courts, men with incorruptible dossiers. Remember the Reverend King saga and the man who sliced him to size? Yes, it was him. We need him in the Court of Appeal. I hear they have recommended him.

by Reuben Abati

WHY won’t the NPA Six who were convicted by Justice Bunmi Oyewole’s court, a court of competent jurisdiction, and who have since been kept in prison not wear prison uniform? The only explanation that can be gleaned from reports in yesterday’s newspapers is that Nigeria runs a two-prison system: one for the rich convict, another for the poor. The Sun newspaper in its “Life inside Bode George’s Cell” (October 31, p.13). and The Vanguard in its “Why Bode George, others refused prison uniforms” (October 31) offer a sad picture of all that is wrong with the justice administration system in Nigeria. The import of legal conviction and imprisonment is to remind society of the supremacy of the law and of the equality of all persons before the law. In reality, Nigerian Prison authorities allow a variation of this when they receive convicted persons into custody. If the reports in The Sun and Vanguard newspapers truly reflect the situation in Bode George’s cell, then whoever is in charge of the Kirikiri Maximum Prison has some explaining to do. Besides, higher authorities must find out why those in charge of the Kirikiri prison have allowed it to be turned into a PDP party secretariat.

We are told that Chief Bode George stays in a special cell, in a VIP section, and one asinine prison warder suggests that no one should expect a big man like that to be kept in the same section with pickpockets and armed robbers because after all, there is a classification of convicts by the prison authorities. Need that fellow be told that indeed pickpocketing and armed robbery may be a lighter than the grounds of the NPA six’s conviction and that the kind of privileges that Chief Bode George and co. are said to be enjoying violate the intent of their conviction by the court of law? Chief George, the papers report, has refused to wear prison uniform and the prison authorities have allowed him to bring along with him, a suitcase of clothes. A few days ago, we were informed that Chief George’s measurements had been taken and that his prison uniform would be ready by Friday. So why won’t he wear it? There is only one uniform for Nigerian prisoners. The case of the NPA six has already been determined; they may be granted bail pending the determination of their appeal for bail, but until then, they have to abide by the rules of prison life. At the moment, Chief George and his men are behaving as if the success of their bail application is a foregone conclusion but that is presumptuous and outrightly contemptuous.

Chief George is said to be taking this in his stride and reassuring his supporters that his imprisonment is the handiwork of his enemies and part of the price of leadership. The supporters reportedly arrive very early and they practically fall over each other to see their Godfather. To all intents and purposes, the Kirikiri prison has been turned into a car mart and a party secretariat. The Sun report states that Chief George starts holding court by 8 am. He obviously thinks that his conviction is a joke and the prison officials also see it as such! The big man does not eat prison food. Every day, his family and friends bring special delicacies for him to wolf down. Does he drink beer? Or wine? Or fruit juice? And is he also having that while in prison custody? I can imagine all the prison officials falling over themselves also to pay homage to the PDP chieftain.

One of them is quoted as saying that the likes of Bode George will always have their way in prison because an average warder’s salary is so poor; he survives by depending on the generousity of rich inmates. Corruption within the prison system compromises the justice system. No wonder it was disclosed not too long ago that persons who had been convicted and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for drug-related offences found their ways out of prison and the records were doctored accordingly to cover them up. This was the finding of a panel set that was set up to probe the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency under the previous administration. There has been no further word on that scandal. A fresh probe of Nigeria’s prison system is long overdue.

The only inconvenience that Chief Bode George suffers, The Sun newspaper states is the lack of electricity. The prison generator is put on at 4 am and it is switched off at 6 am reducing the PDP big man to a fighter of mosquitoes, using every available fan to ward off heat and insects. If Bode George gets his bail and he gets out of this, he would at least have learnt that special lesson: no condition is permament. He must also have learnt one or two lessons about public service: namely that it is a double-edged sword for those who play games with the demands of integrity. Another lesson about human behaviour: prior to his conviction, he must have considered himself a sacred cow, an untouchable Godfather, but now he must know that he is human after all and that the law is no respecter of persons. He must not complain. What has been proven through him is that President Yar’çdua takes the rule of law seriously or that he does so when he so wishes.

This year alone, he has watched quietly as bank CEOS who donated to his campaign fund and that of the PDP were publicly humiliated. He has also refused to get involved in Bode George’s trial. Hopefully, all the persons who think that they are rich and privileged would learn from this, taking to heart the last line in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex that no man should consider himself happy until he takes that happiness to the grave in peace. The air of happiness that is being created around Bode George’s presence in Kirikiri Maximum Prison is false. When all the visitors who see him in batches of five at a time leave, he would be left alone with mosquitoes and the eerie darkness of damp prison walls. He needs to be reminded that if he had been in China, he and the five others may have been given the death sentence. If he had been a Frenchman, he would not think that being convicted for corruption is a joke. Jacques Chirac, 76, former French President who has been charged for corruption is showing more sobriety than Bode George and he has not even been convicted yet. Chief Bode George and his men should stop behaving as if they are in a Guest House at Kirikiri. They are in prison. The reports about the special privileges that they seem to be enjoying should lead to an investigation.

But there is a flip side to all of this: with Bode George turned into a common criminal, and public opinion concretely against him and the malfeasances of the NPA six, the PDP elite may find in this a good excuse to launch a war through the courts against members of other political parties who may have skeletons in their cupboards. Allegations would have to be proven in a court of law of course, but should it happen and certain opposition figures get convicted, they would have no moral justification to complain about political persecution. The PDP hawks have made an example out of their own men, they may spare no knife in hacking the “political enemy” . Once this is upheld by the court of law establishing actual wrong-doing, so be it. More interesting scenarios await us before the 2011 general elections. But in the meantime, higher authorities should put an end to the offensive “Owambe”scene that Bode George and his supporters are allegedly staging at the Kirikiri Maximum Prison. Allowing a two-prison system that is based on class discrimination defeats the purpose of that system. There should be no hierarchy among prisoners, no double standard, no VIP-treatment behind prison walls.

Soludo’s Baptism Of Fire

PROFESSOR Charles Chukwuma Soludo would remember when he was baptised Charles at his family church. But that is nothing compared to the kind of baptism that he is currently receiving in Anambra state. His 78-year old father has been abducted. The kidnappers want N500 million, another group, OMEGA 12, has asked him to pay N5 billion. Is it possible for two different groups to kidnap one man? Soludo’s wife and children have since been relocated abroad. He has also moved his mother out of the family house. He and his supporters insist that whoever is behind this cannot break their will. But how much price is Professor Soludo willing to pay to realise his ambition of becoming the Governor of Anambra state in 2010?

There is no doubt that he is strong-willed. When he ran into trouble as CBN Governor over the redenomination of the Naira and he was practically disowned by the Presidency, he refused to heed the advsie that he should resign his appointment. If he is driven by the same resolve in this matter, he may choose to dare his opponents and damn the consequences. But if his father manages to survive the attempt on his life, Soludo would have to relocate him too. He may also have to relocate his siblings. And his nephew. And his in-laws. Even his associates. And he has to constantly look over his shoulders, lest he too is kidnapped. In the same Anambra state which he wants to govern, a sitting Governor was once abducted from the Government House. And those who did so are still active in that state, obviously.

Soludo’s travails have been linked to the manner of his emergence as the PDP Gubernatorial flagbearer in Anambra state and Chris Uba’s highly revealing outburst this week would further confirm that assumption. Hear Chris Uba as reported: “Soludo is a visitor in the state, he is a visitor in the party, but when he came we started the primaries, and in the delegate election he got only five, and when he got these few votes, Soludo himself went and brought a court order and told me, Chris Uba, that he brought that court order. He later came to my house to beg me for us to discuss. I told him to go first and vacate that court order, he told me the court order cannot be vacated. He also told me that he has about three court orders in his pocket….He has been calling me, begging me to soft pedal; and I said I will not soft pedal, that he must vacate because he came in through the backyard and he must leave through the backyard…

Soludo is not a member of our party, Soludo has not attended meeting anywhere… Soludo is a blackmailer but he cannot blackmail me to stop. I will continue to fight the cause I believe in…I will continue to fight his candidature till I get him out of office. He can’t try this in this party, he has ruined all the banks in Nigeria and he wants to ruin the party, it can’t happen. He knows the whereabouts of his father, let him bring back his father. Soludo is not at peace with his people, he is fighting with his people, he created an autonomous community. I want Nigerians to judge me and Soludo who has a skeleton in his cupboard…I am fighting a just cause and I have followers and my followers will not support illegality as exemplified in Soludo’s candidature.”

Weighty words, quite interesting but would Chris Uba be willing to tell us what the “skeleton” in Soludo’s cupboard is and how in specific terms he has as he alleges, “ruined all the banks in Nigeria?” And as for him, is he saying there is no skeleton in his cupboard? Does Chris Uba remember any one called Chris Ngige at all? Soludo is being exposed to so much harrassment because he wants to be Governor. Chris Uba says he came to beg him. A Professor of Economics and former Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank going to beg Chris Uba? Did he prostrate? How much book dis Uba read sef? I hope Soludo will not fall into the trap of swearing to an oath at a shrine! Howsoever the drama of his Gubernatorial ambition plays out, Soludo must see in this the urgent need for him to join the campaign for electoral reform. And hopefully, also, he would see good reason to keep away from the PDP: a party with an unlimited supply of strange characters and incidents.

In the end, the Anambra debacle is all about the underdeveloped nature of Nigeria’s political process and the failure of the PDP. By 2011, there may be more copycats kidnapping the parents and relations of candidates. And if all aspirants have to start the race by first relocating their relations to neighbouring countries, this would not only drive up the cost of political particpation, it will also shut out well-meaning candidates and compel us to ask: who would be left to vote in Nigeria’s elections? An electoral system that requires political aspirants to send their loved ones on exile to prevent their abduction belongs to the age of barbarians. Kidnapping for whatever reason is unjusitifiable, it is criminal. The kidnappers of Pa Soludo must be found and the innocent man must be brought back home. This is another test case for the Nigerian Police.

by Reuben Abati

“MI’LORD has caught a big one. In fact not one, five. It is a wonderful day for Nigeria”.

“You always like to jubilate when someone falls on bad times. What’s the matter with you?”

“Why shouldn’t we jubilate? No, tell me, why shouldn’t we roll on the floor with laughter from rib to rib? When last did the long arms of the law catch up with big men who have mismanaged public resources? Madam Farida Waziri’s EFCC has been busy with too many cases in progress. Everyone who wanted progress with the anti-corruption war started yearning earnestly for Ribadu, the action-packed former Chairman of the EFCC. Now something big has happened”.

“I know. Mrs. Waziri has been beating her chest. President Yar’Adua must also be pleased”.

“But it is the judge that we should praise. He has shown courage and determination. It doesn’t matter what they do to him after this. He will be remembered for his courage in sending six big men to jail in one day, without the option of fine. What was it again? – the splitting of contracts, abuse of office, and disobedience of lawful orders.”

“Heavy matter”.

“And the whole matter took 14 months. The case began in August 2008 and now, it has been determined. Some other judges allow cases to drag on endlessly. And lawyers would be allowed to keep making frivolous applications just to delay the course of justice”.

“I hear this Oyewole is a no-nonsense judge. I recommend his example to other judges. Take a case, stay with it, do justice in record time”.

“You know for a moment, I thought Chief Bode George was going to get away. I mean the man is a big man in every sense of that word in Nigeria. Former Governor of Ondo State. Former Principal Staff Officer to the No: 2 man in the Abacha Government. National Deputy Chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (South West). The topmost chieftain of the PDP in Lagos State. A friend of the one and only OBJ of the do-or-die politics fame. A judge looked at the man straight in the face and sent him to jail?”.

“They are already sewing his prison uniform at Kirikiri. Have you not heard? He will get it today. The moment he arrived, the prison authorities took his measurements. The law is no respecter of persons. Nobody is above the law. That is the good news in all of this.”

“Even those five others are big men. We are talking of Board members of the Nigerian Ports Authority and a former Managing Director of the NPA. The NPA is one of those lucrative departments. When a man is given a high position in a body like that, he throws a party”.

“But there is something about the case that I still don’t quite understand. I think there is an escape route for the NPA Six when the matter goes on appeal”.

“It doesn’t matter. What we know at the moment is that the men have been convicted. That is the position of the law. Did you not read that when Chief Bode George arrived at the Kirikiri Maximum Prison, one of the first inmates to welcome him was Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, Abacha’s Chief Security Officer who has been in that prison for nearly nine years”.

“Ten”

“Whatever”

“No condition is permanent, my brother”.

“I’d like to see more big men in jail. May be that will curtail their greed”.

“Like who and who?”

“Like all the ones whose cases are still pending.”

“Name one person”.

“I don’t want to be charged for contempt; only a Court of Law can determine who goes to jail”.

“You see? You are a coward. You don’t want to offend anybody”.

“Okay, you too, name somebody you think also deserves a prison uniform and a special welcome by Abacha’s CSO.”

“Walahi, prison no good o. So, where do you think they will keep Chief Bode George. Will they give him a VIP suite?”

“You think Kirikiri Maximum Prison is a five-star hotel?”

“I understand it is organised like one and you can stay in a VIP suite if the price is right. You may even get a chance to have your wife sneak in for an overnight stay, again if the price is right. This is Nigeria. Were you not in this country when the wife of a prominent prisoner took in while he was still in prison and it was reported that the pregnancy was his. At night, you may even be allowed to go home and return at dawn before anyone notices your absence”.

“One of these days, this your mouth will put you into trouble. But whether there is a VIP suite in prison or not, I don’t think Chief Bode George will find it funny”.

“I hear he is not taking prison food.”

“Don’t worry, he’d soon adjust.”

“But why are you talking about Chief Bode George? What about the other five?”

“This is Nigeria. Don’t be surprised if they are granted amnesty sooner than you think.”

“You think they will be granted bail pending the hearing of their appeal?”

“I suspect the men will be released at the Court of Appeal. I have been reflecting on the grounds of their conviction. Splitting of contracts, Abuse of office. Disobedience of lawful orders. These look to me like administrative irregularities. I mean when did a contract become an atom? Is Bode George a scientist turning contracts into atoms, and splitting them to create a bomb?”.

“Yes. A bomb of free cash. It swells the pocket, the mouth, the belly, and it can send a man to prison… Because public funds are involved, when you split contracts in order to top up prices, you are violating the law. This case should teach Board members of public institutions that if they abuse their fiduciary responsibilities, they may go to jail”.

“How will those big men look in prison uniform”

“That is not important. They don’t do fashion parade in prisons. A prison uniform is a prison uniform. One elewon is not different from the other”.

“Jesus Christ, the husband of widows!”

“I understand Chief Bode George’s supporters wanted to make trouble at the court premises. They became unruly, raining curses on the judge, and threatening journalists”.

“If they are not careful, they’d join their man in prison.”

“And to think Chief Bode George caused all this by suing The News magazine for libel. If he had known, he would have kept quiet.”

“It is like Jeffrey Archer and the UK Daily Star. Look, it simply means that big men should watch how they behave. A big man today can wear a prison uniform tomorrow. That is the way of the world”.

“Even if they sew prison uniform with damask, may my enemy never wear it”.

“Why? Your enemies should wear prison uniform. What kind of prayer is that?”

“You know I am a Christian. We are taught to pray for our enemies.”

“Well, don’t pray for people who split things that shouldn’t be split”.

“Like who?”

“Like the kidnappers of Pa Simeon Soludo, the father of Prof. Charles Soludo”.

“Prof. Chukwuma, please. He has retired his Charles.”

“Look, that is not important to me. What kind of country is this? Why would anyone kidnap a man, an old man, 78 years old, just because his son wants to be governor?”

“Some people’s wives and mothers have been kidnapped before now. And this is the second time they’d take Pa Soludo. When his son introduced banking consolidation as CBN Governor in 2006, and some banks lost their licenses, he was also abducted. He lost an eye during that incident”.

“It is a clear sign of Nigeria’s underdevelopment.”

“More like the failure of the Nigerian state.”

“It is obvious that certain elements are determined to intimidate Prof. Soludo, and frighten him”.

“The kidnappers are asking for N500 million.”

“What price must a man pay to be part of the Nigerian governance process”?

“Certainly not the life of a father.”

“It is called collateral damage, though”

“It is pure criminality and it should be condemned. It raises serious questions about human security.”

“This Nigeria tire me, no be small”.

“Look at what is happening with the U-17 football tournament that we are hosting. When other countries host such an event they end up making profit from ticket sales and endorsements. Nigeria is losing money. Other countries gain international recognition and pride, but Nigeria is ridiculing itself”.

“I hear FIFA is not happy with the Local Organising Committee. They are complaining about low turn-out at the stadium”.

“But I have seen some improvement this week”.

“Artificial improvement. To keep the tournament going, the Nigerian authorities are renting crowds to fill the stands”.

“I know”.

“For the Nigeria-Honduras match, 40,000 tickets were given out free to encourage spectators to come to the Abuja National Stadium”.

“In many of the centres, school children are taken out of school and forced to make up the numbers at the stadium, I don’t remember which match I was watching. It was around 7.30 p.m. and I saw these helpless children, secondary school pupils, watching a football match they probably were not interested in. That’s child abuse”.

“In Lagos, the state government provides free transportation to and from the stadium”.

“In Bauchi State, Governor Isa Yuguda is buying up all the tickets for the matches, and asking people to just come to the stadium. He is paying N20 million.”

“All the governors and Ministers who are buying up tickets for free distribution, I hope it is their personal funds they are spending. I really hope so.”

“It is not only the Nigerian authorities that are bribing the spectators. I read a story in the Nigerian Tribune about how the Italian U-17 team decided to distribute sweets and T-shirts to spectators.”

“Wonderful.”

“And trust Nigerians. They supported the Italians.”

“When are they going to serve food? I beg if you know where they are serving food, let me know.”

“Hungry man.”

“But you know, the biggest scandal of the U-17 tournament occurred on Wednesday in Enugu. It rained heavily and the Burkina Faso-New Zealand match had to be suspended. The artificial pitch was flooded. It became bloated.

“I saw it on television. I saw concerned officials using buckets to drain water from the pitch’

“Nobody used a plastic bucket. You sef?”

“You mean you did not see people frantically using towels to drain water? I saw people using knives and blades to rip the flooded pitch open”

“And that is a pitch that was specially imported and installed. Expensive installation.”

“You never know. May be someone split the contract, and the contractor had no option but to do a shoddy job.”

“It is a shame.”

“Don’t worry. Soon, it’d be over.”

“That thing I said about food, don’t forget eh/”

“Mr. Food.”

“I just want to split some dollops of pounded yam.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t end up in Kirikiri for that.”