The dept of American hypocrisy and shallowness, hiding under the over-beaten democracy, has never been so pronounced until now when Nigeria makes it public that it abhors the idea and practice of same-sex marriage and all other forms of homosexuality.
It is really sickening to hear America and its allies bemoaning a bill prescribing penalties for homosexuals and their promoters, which over 400 members of the two chambers of the National Assembly passed and was recently signed into law by President Goodluck Jonathan.
As a matter of fact, there is no absurd names and attribution the American government and its agents and or its allies have not made on the new law, crafted by Nigerians for Nigerians. They have not only called it ‘draconian’ but went ahead to say that it would bring about increase in the cases of HIV/AIDS. O yeh?
In this senseless war against the law proscribing homosexuality in Nigeria; homosexuality that is equivalent to sodomy, the American authorities and their cohorts have been threatening fire, including the fact that they would stop all kinds of aides to Nigeria.
The most absurd part of the American reasoning is that the law is against fundamental human rights and democracy. Which human rights? Which democracy?
This America posture has now clearly exposed it as a society that is against God and all that are decent in the sight of God and the right thinking peoples.
Indeed, if the American idea of democracy and human rights is bereft of basic morality and decency, then, democracy and human rights, from the point of view of America, are better not practiced in Nigeria and of course, other decent clime.
What the America, Britain, Canada and their likes are saying is that for Nigeria to enjoy their support and acceptance, it should join some ungodly countries in encouraging man-to-man or woman-to-woman marriages and other sexuality! Evil thought this is.
Where, in all these noise and dictation to Nigeria on what it should do, is the principle of none interference in the internal affairs of other countries? If America and its supporters in the new generation of ungodliness; if it would be breathing down the neck of Nigeria over what it feels is right for the moral standard of its citizenry, what happened to Nigeria’s independence and sovereignty as a nation?
When has homosexuality, described in religious Holy Books as the most heinous sin against God, become part of human rights that must be respected and protected at the global level? Where and how has the homosexuality connected to human rights and democracy, to the extent that the absence of one would have an adverse effect on the other?
Has America and its blind allies realized that God had once perished a generation, according to narration, simply because a single soul was involved in homosexuality only for once? And America now wants it to be venerated, made part of human rights and democracy, and universalised?
Where has the sense of reasoning of America gone to? To hell fire?

Unlike Zimbabwe or South Africa, Nigeria didn’t fight a war of liberation to achieve national independence. The Nationalist Press, rightly or wrongly, laid claim to having secured this for this country without a shot being fired. This is a realistic claim, considering that the nationalist who-is-who is largely made up of journalists, including Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Awolowo, Sa’adu Zungur, Abubakar Imam, Aminu Kano and the rest of them.
Reading the press sometimes makes you wonder if this galaxy of nationalist writers had not been a toothless tiger to the people of Nigeria.
I do not share the view that the glaring omissions on the part of the mainstream media is made up for by the courageous work against sloth, inefficiency and routine corruption by the new media.
Mainstream media need to do more than just breaking the story. It is simply unacceptable that they limit themselves to merely reporting incidents and events in an isolated sense. There has to be contextualizing, interpretation and follow-up. Without these; without the media clearing the way, this country will run into a stampede.
One way of correcting this glaring omission is for the media to make our rulers to think of duty before perks. Even when the media have to pursue commercial interests to survive in the business, today’s media must not blindside human dimensions to events they report.
Many have accused this country’s press of dwelling mostly on mundane issues of appetite as tragedies creep in day after day; that commercial interests are at times placed above public good. When you critically examine many of them, you come to dislike the short shrift they give to life-consuming incidents arising from the continuing failure to force public officials to come to account for their misdeeds.
Week after week, this country grapples with major tragedies, the one for this week over-writing the one before and the one in the week ahead almost certainly to surpass the one witnessed this week. In large measure, the media are culpable because they restrict themselves to merely breaking the story. Without a follow-up and the needed follow through, the media help to keep culprits, including judges, administrators and politicians well out of the reach of justice.
Take these three tidbits for a taste. The media did the duty of breaking the Boxing Day mishap that killed 50, mostly young men and women in a boat mishap in River Buruku, a tributary of River Benue in Buruku Local Government Area of Benue State. The tragedy happened owing to engine failure. “The villagers,” as reported by the
Guardian, “say that such incidents were common place because life jackets were both alien to operatives and passengers even as government has not taken steps to enforce its necessity so as to avoid incessant deaths.”
This “killer River” as it has come to be known, separates Buruku with Logo Local Government, Governor Gabriel Suswan’s native area. According to the
Guardian, “the federal government had, in the past, awarded a contract for a bridge “but that money had disappeared or “eaten up” according to common parlance. The state transport company, Benue Links, which provided a more reliable ferry, had had its services “grounded by corruption.”
Since reporting this incident, you ask the question, which are the media that followed up to establish the culpability or lack of it on the part of officials or government agencies?
Who has deemed it necessary to take government to task to ensure this did not occur again? What are the immediate, long-term and restorative measures anyone has taken to avert these kinds of deaths?
In October 2013 in Niger State, two similar incidents occurred. At a point near Malali on the River Niger, a boat built to carry 80 passengers sank with 150 on board. Forty-two of the passengers, mostly women and children died. One hundred were declared missing. From this point, the media lost interest in the story and moved to other things.
The actual losses remain therefore matter of conjecture. Within six days of this incident, another one occurred at Kokoli, a walking distance from Malali. This boat was meant for 30. It sank with 80 passengers with their goods. Eighteen of them died.
In December 2013 in Bayelsa State, 12 persons died in another boat mishap and in Lagos, four days later, four of the 80 passengers died in yet another boat mishap.
Worried about these endless chain of boat mishaps, the
Sun in October last year wrote an editorial in which it warned that “the time has come for federal, state, local governments and their agencies to beam their searchlights on transportation along our inland waterways, with a view to arresting the hazards and improving safety… we should begin to put value on some of the lives of our fellow citizens who have no other option than to use boats and the inland waterways.”
To me honestly, journalism can avert most of these, but it is not editorials that will do it. This is something they can help the nation do by holding officials and government agencies to account, with regard to the discharge of their responsibilities in these incidents. The
Guild of Editors, the human rights community and lawyers may also form a formidable coalition to help victims of these acts of negligence to get their rights and compensation in cases of loss of life and property.

At least, for Nigerians of my generation, the 1990s was one of the most exciting time. It was the decade of the June 12 struggle. Ethnicity, regionalism, nepotism and naked propaganda between sections of the country have reached their peak. This was further complicated by the harsh economic reality caused by the austerity measures which made it easier for the Nigerian elites to dribble their fellow countrymen in search of influence and political authority.
A common site after the annulment of June 12 elections at  Sabon Gari and  Unguwa Uku in Kano was the web of people migrating either side of the country, northerners from south arriving in troops, and southerners living in the northern part of the country finding their way back to the south. For those of us who did not experience the sad experience of the civil war in the 1960s, it was the age of uncertainty. International media organisations, from CNN to BBC, Voice of America etc, Nigeria was the subject of ridicule and sometimes unsubstantiated propaganda. Many thought the country could not survive, yet twenty years after that, we still have a country bearing the same name given to it by the British colonialists.
From the uncertainly of the transition towards independence in the 1950s, to the 1960s when ethnic and regional politics define the psyche of Nigeria, down to the civil war, the austerity measures of the 1980s, the ethno-religious crises of the late 1980s, military intervention in politics, lack of maturity of politicians, endemic corruption in the polity, have all characterized this colonial concoction, yet Nigeria still survives.
Since the creation of this unlikely union, one would like to ask, what are the negatives and the positives? In my opinion, there are at least three key positive things about Nigeria. First is the fact that the country has survived in the last hundred years, surmounting great challenges that saw other nations disappear.
Few countries will survive the corruption that Nigeria contends with, ethnic and religious tensions, and leadership that is lacking in patriotism and sense of direction.
The second positive thing about Nigeria is that its strength amidst these challenges provides hope for the African continent and the black people in general. The position of Nigeria is nowhere near its potential, despite these challenges on a number of occasions fellow Africans will tell you that, your country is moving in the wrong direction, but the future of Africa would largely depend on Nigeria getting its acts right. The recent account narrated on how the late Nelson Mandela feels about the mismanagement of Nigeria, and how it fails Africa is a case in point. With all the challenges and the failures of its leadership to live to expectation, yet some Africans still hope that Nigeria could provide the necessary leadership that Africa needs.
In December 2012, when we were busy debating in the British House of Commons on Chinua Achebe’s book,
‘There was a country’ a fellow African stood and said, while you are busy tearing yourselves apart, do you think of what it means for Africa without Nigeria?
The third positive thing, which to me is the most important, is the human capital and the enterprising nature of Nigerians. Within and outside Nigeria, there are people who are as qualified as any serious person you will find anywhere in the world. This human capital is perhaps the saving grace for Nigeria. You only need a purposeful leadership to harness its potential and utilize it for economic development.
As for the negatives, we always discuss and write about them. Of course, others will disagree with me, and I respect their right to do so, but there are three key historical issues that lead Nigeria to its present sorry state.
The first is the 1966 coup which eliminated the most patriotic generation of Nigerian leaders, solidified ethnic and regional hatred, and sow the seed of the civil war. This historical mistake has deprived Nigeria of its potential for greatness. The scar of this unfortunate event is yet to heal.
When the pain of this sad experience begins to heal, another event is created by the political class to revive it.
The second historical event that changed Nigeria were the harsh austerity measures of the 1980s and 1990s such as the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). This has changed the psyche of Nigerians, deprived it of its talents, created a huge economic vacuum between the rich and the poor.
The governments that followed to date have not departed from this philosophy. They only make few ‘adjustments’ even when it’s clear that the policies that helped countries like Malaysia, Singapore, China and South Korea where the exact opposite of the policies our country imbibed.
Finally, the third negative and the worst is the failure of leadership. Unless the question of leadership is resolved, and purposeful and right minded individuals lead the country. It is difficult to see the end of this mess.
So what is the solution? Our senior colleague in journalism, and a veteran in his own right, Malam Mahmud Jega has provided a blueprint in his Monday Column in the
Daily Trust newspaper of 6th January, 2014.
Before dropping my pen, one question keeps recurring in my mind; it is a question for all of us, but the consequences of its answer is for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
In the next 100 years will there be a country called Nigeria?

(All views expressed are strictly personal)

As a writer, Olusegun Obasanjo has carved a genre for himself. From his many books-“My Command” to “The Animal Called Man” et al-there is a frightening tone of military fury.
His public letters fall within the same class.
His writings are evidently tall on justifiable anger but regrettably short on facts.
On November 10, 1999, President Obasanjo wrote a letter to Governor Alamesiegha of Bayelsa State, threatening to declare a state of emergency in the state. Part of the grounds he gave for his threat was a rape incident in Choba where soldiers had allegedly gone on a raping spree, accompanied by photographers who dutifully took shots of their animal acts. The obscene pornographic pictures-with soldiers in uniform doing their thing-were put in wide circulation.
Whether the whole thing was stage managed or true is outside our scope today. The fact remains that Choba is in Rivers and not Bayelsa State. So, our President was threatening to punish a Governor and a State for an act which took place outside its borders!
The Presidential anger over the incidence at Choba had not abated and may in fact have  been responsible for a full scale military invasion ordered by the President on a Bayelsa community that was accused of killing soldiers and policemen. As a result of that order, Odi, a tiny and sleepy community was completely razed down and many innocent civilians killed. That was late in 1999.
Two years after, in 2001, the President gave a similar marching order. This time a whole Senatorial Zone in Benue state was invaded.
Like in the case of Bayelsa, the Benue community was punished because of the death of some soldiers. But unlike in Bayelsa where the invading soldiers claimed they were pursuing unknown murderers, the identity of those who killed the soldiers in Zaki Biam was well known.
For, in a bewildering demonstration of criminal naivety, the murderers invited photographers and posed for photo shots with their victims and also of their butchering that followed!
At the National burial arranged for the murdered soldiers, Obasanjo announced that he had ordered security agencies to “fish” out the murderers. This was an easy task to perform since the identity of the murderers was exposed by the bizarre pictorial sessions they engaged in before and during the murders.
The truth is that the soldiers were not sent to fish out the killers as advertised. They were sent on a revenge mission.
The Nigerian media has wrongly termed what happened in Benue that year as the ‘invasion of Zaki Biam.’ The truth however is that Zaki Biam is just the headquarters of Ukum-a Local Government in a senatorial zone of six Local Governments. This whole zone was cordoned off by soldiers with an armada of armored tanks that were given air cover by helicopter gunboats.
The military juggernaut then proceeded to unleash systematic terror on unarmed civilians, a type that has not been heard of in Nigerian history.
The Human Rights Watch did a very detailed and painstaking report on the invasion. It includes the atrocities at Gbeji where soldiers gathered unarmed people in the market square, supposedly for a peace meeting and shot many of them at point blank range to death. Others at the gathering were shot in the legs, drenched in petrol and then set ablaze–incinerated alive! Over a hundred people died in this incidence alone.
A special target for the invading army was the country home of Obasanjo’s former Chief of Army staff General Victor Malu. A few months before then, he had disagreed with Obasanjo over military issues and was dropped. His family house at Tse Adoor in Katsina Ala local Government was raced to the ground; his mother of over 80 years was drilled and beaten while his blind uncle of over 90 years was thrown into a burning house where he roasted to death as his shocked wife watched. She was later shot to death.
Roadblocks were mounted and Tiv tribesmen who were travelling in vehicles brought down and shot. In fact, the damage done to human life at Zaki Biam was minimal because as news of the mass slaughter of Tiv men by soldiers spread, they all fled the town into the bush. Still the soldiers made sure they leveled all buildings in Zaki Biam, including that of Hon Benjamin Chaha, former Speaker House of Representatives.
Obasanjo never went to see the damage that was done by his soldiers but he allowed his Vice President Atiku Abubakar to go. The Vice President expressed horror at what he saw.  Chuba Okadigbo, then Senate President also went and in disbelief said the brutality used to destroy Zaki Biam was not used even during the Biafra civil war.
The first reaction of President Obasanjo was to deny the involvement of Nigerian soldiers in the massacre. Then as evidence became irrefutable, he argued that what happened in Benue is what people should expect when they kill soldiers.
Due to domestic and international pressure, Obasanjo’s reluctantly set up a panel under Justice Okechukwu Opene to investigate communal disturbances in Benue, Plateau, Nassarawa and Taraba states. It looked like a diversionary panel, still, people cooperated with it and by 2003, it submitted it’s report.
The report went the way many other panels set up by governments in Nigeria go–thrashed and forgotten.
It is believed that the government of Obasanjo refused to release it because it said one or two things in its conclusions that were not in favor of his government. This was reinforced by the fact that his successor, Umaru Yar’adua and his army chief tendered a public apology to the people of Benue for the conduct of the military during the massacre.
The massacre also attracted litigation. Dr Alexander Gaadi who claimed to have suffered physical torture, loss of property and relations during the invasion took the government to court and won his case. A Federal High court in Enugu granted him the over 40 billion Naira he claimed as damages.
The military invasion of Benue is one issue Obasanjo hardly talks about in public.
On January 1, 2003, he gate crashed into an obscure local church in Makurdi and apologized for the massacre. On February 14 2003, Valentines day, he told his audience at IBB square in Makurdi that he launched his re-election campaign on that day because he wanted to show the Benue people how much he loves them. He also wanted to ask for forgiveness over the massacre.
Strangely enough, in 2011 he traveled to Makurdi and announced that George Akume, the former Governor of the state–who has never been an army commander-should be held responsible for the massacre.
But, the greatest evidence that Obasanjo treats facts and figures with contempt is to be found in General Alabi Isama’s book-“The tragedy of victory.”
Large sections of the book are a point by point rebuttal of Obasanjo’s claims in his first book, “My Command.”
General Alabi argues his case with great details, illustrating every point with maps, pictures and statistics. This book has finally put a lie to Obasnjo’s pompous claim that the civil war came to an end because of his lone military exploits.
Of particular interest to me is the claim by General Alabi that Obasanjo was a blundering General who often led his troops to doom. After one particularly disastrous battle, he says, Obasanjo took to his heels and was shot in his buttocks by the Biafrans.
Obasanjo has, of course, denied the embarrassing charge. But whenever I meet Obasanjo, I will play the doubting Thomas and ask him to strip down and show me his buttocks. Just to be sure.

Long before the governor of Ebonyi state, Martins Elechi dismissed the opposition All Progressive Congress (APC) as an empty noise maker that will get nowhere, I had been trying to put my thoughts together on the growing numerical strength of the party and the impact it is looking up to exert in the 2015 general elections.
Of course, there has been a lot of bitter cross-firing and pure insults thrown around by members of the two opposing groups-those in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and those in the APC, especially by the new entrants from breakaway PDP. As a matter of fact, anger and insinuations are the main stock-in-trade between the two groups.
So much have the two groups engaged in political mudslinging that most times, the realities are buried, even if they are contained in such insulting posturing.
Just before governor Elechi threw his jibe at APC, the Delta state governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan had come out with a sensible political postulation that in politics, anything can happen: people can change from one party to the other at the time one least expects.
Such are the issues in the nation’s political front burner that are actually trying to overshadow what seems to be the Governor Elechi’s matter-of-fact statement.
Yes, governor Elechi spoke out of pent-up anger, but does the reality on the ground show a different scene all together?
In other words, governor Elechi’s view about APC being an empty noise maker that will get nowhere (in winning elections) may appear as an extreme view by an angry and highly biased man, but, does the reality on the ground not pointing towards the direction the governor spoke?
If history is anything to go by, it would be recalled that in the second part of the second republic, similar political scenario, as it is now playing out amongst the opposition political parties, played out. That was when the opposition political parties, such as Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP), Great Nigerian Peoples Party (GNPP), Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) and, to some extent, the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), formed an alliance against the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN). The alliance (which many political pundits saw then as a gang-up), was principally meant to stop NPN from winning the 1983 general elections after it swept the 1979 elections across the major parts of the country.
There are some similarities in the ways the PDP and old NPN emerged and being operated. The two were firmly rooted in grassroot and tailored to etch themselves in the consciousness of the people at the grass roots.
The founding fathers of PDP, like NPN, broadened their outlooks beyond just the existence of a body called political party; they wanted and built an enduring all-encompassing system, even if it lacked directional ideology.
As a mass movement conglomerate, PDP gradually turned into one big system, with presence in every home, in every hamlet and village. And, of course, these are where the winning votes always come from in any election.
Conversely, most of the opposition parties do not have the same type of penetration into the nook and crannies of the country. As a matter of fact, some of the opposition parties are regional-based, and try as they can to spread their reach across the country, they discover that they cannot go beyond their regions.
And, like it happened in the second republic, alliance for the purpose of wrenching power from the ruling party, in some cases, used to produce the exact opposite.
Even more dangerous is that the principal actors in the ongoing political re-alignment appear to have embarked on the exercise before they would begin to think of how to spread the party’s tentacles into the hinterland.
The gladiators in the new blocked opposition may not have realized that what, in deed, is remained of PDP still have enough muscle to flex for the simple fact that, at least, for now, they are confidence that the uneducated and old people in the remote villages have PDP running in their blood stream.
Chances are that, such people, innocently, may not have even heard of the exploits of other party or parties.
And, of course, the incumbency power, which, incidentally appears to be the object of the formation of APC and the current massive defection to same, still poses some kind of potency, especially, with the mentality of the leaders desperately insisting on clinging to power.
Opposition, or more appropriately, APC, therefore, needs to do more to gain an upper hand over PDP, especially, by spreading like wild fire in dry harmattan to the remote parts of the country other than receiving decampees from PDP around Nigeria’s big cities and making noise (empty or otherwise) about it.
Massive decamping by members of PDP to the party (APC) in the major towns and cities may look very attractive and humiliating to PDP, but, it may be deceptive and dangerous, for, as governor Uduaghan said, anything can happen in politics.
One cannot be so sure until the chips are down!

The myth and the controversy generated by the alleged letter written by Iyabo Obasanjo, daughter of former president Olusegun Obasanjo suggested that it is in the interest of the media organization to acknowledge the source of the information. To date, no one can say with absolute certainty whether the letter was genuinely written by Iyabo, or whether it is a political fabrication.

The second observation regarding the letter from Obasanjo is the growing rivalry between traditional and new media. Online publications have one major advantage; they can easily break stories, and continue providing update within a 24 hour news circle, not all the traditional media enjoy the luxury of having separate editorial boards for the online and traditional outfits, each taking independent decisions in running its stories while at the same time complementing each other.

Recent trends in journalism suggest that for the traditional media to compete with online news media, they need more investment in building new media platforms. The Washington Post, New York Times, Daily Mail are typical examples of how they use online news platforms to break stories. They understand that the 21^st century audience does not have the patience to wait for 24 hours before getting in-depth analysis and update on the story.  They do that with an eye on other online news competitors such as BBC News online that is run by separate editorial teams.

The issue of positioning also comes to mind here, a lot of the emerging online news organizations do not have adequate journalistic training, compared to those in the traditional media, therefore some of them are quick to break stories in order to solidify their market positioning, and increase popularity but do not always pay attention to following a rigorous editorial procedure in order to ensure the accuracy of the story.  The traditional media needs to make a decision between quickly jumping on the bandwagon to break a story, and ensuring the credibility of the information before making it public. I believe both the traditional and new media need to learn from each other.

The third observation the controversy generated is on ethics, originality and courtesy. There are a lot of ethical challenges faced by the media industry, some of which are universal and others peculiar to the Nigerian situation. This controversy has highlighted the inability of a section of the Nigerian media to live up to the basic standard of the journalism profession. There are a lot of factors responsible for this. First is journalism training itself. The institutions that train our journalists, from polytechnics to universities suffer from shortage of  the basic infrastructure required to train future journalists.

Second, the imbalance between academics who teach journalism, and professionals from the industry who train the students on ‘the field experience’ is so wide, to the extent that when students graduate from the college or university, they are not ready to go into practice, rather, their new employers have to retrain them, before they could be ready to function as proper journalists.

Third, journalism is a profession that goes with passion, and you have so many people who joined simply because they could not get job elsewhere. Therefore whatever comes their way; they append their names on to it and send to their bureaus.

The Nigerian Union of Journalists has an important role to play here by revisiting the code of conduct of the Nigerian media, and devise ways to address the future confrontation between sister institutions.  Media houses themselves, should create partnership among themselves which in practice even the global media industry pursues.

I do not see any reason why Premium Times will not establish partnership with the Daily Trust or Guardian or Blueprint newspapers, or Sahara Reporters with the Punch, Leadership or People’s Daily newspapers. Such partnership exists for instance between CNN and ABC News, with that kind of official partnership, if none exists already, the news organisations that publish purely on online platforms, and the traditional ones that produce both hard copies and publish online versions, can easily exchange stories, train staff, use the bylines of reporters, and even share offices in the areas where only one of the partners has a bureau. This could go a long way in solving the accusation and counter accusation of plagiarism, originality and ethics. What do you think?

The stunning take-over of the House of Representatives by opposition Action Peoples Congress at the expense of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party continues to flutter from last week when it occurred. All that the ruling party could muster in terms of action was to put out a ridiculous, no less a hypocritical call on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Speaker of the House to expel the decamping members by declaring their seats as vacant. The whole world has since been forced to sit up and take notice of the unfolding political developments in Nigeria.

The question everyone has been asking is: is this just a flash in the pan or a precursor of a major political shift in the country’s politics?

Thinkers in our country are already drawing comparisons between a much reduced and diminished PDP, wittingly carving itself into a party of the old Eastern Nigeria and the old National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons,(or Nigerian Citizens) NCNC. As a political party, the NCNC was set up to champion the interests of the West African sub-region but later came to be associated with the exclusive interests of the old Eastern Region. Even at that, the NCNC faced challenges from strong leaders such Wanike Briggs who associated with the old Action Group and Dappa Biriye who led the Niger Delta Congress into an alliance with the Northern Peoples Congress which  controlled the federal government.

If the President as the leader of the PDP and Alhaji Tukur, the embattled Chairman will remove their tainted lenses, they will see that the party once touted as Africa’s biggest now flounders and is whittled. With an absolute control at every level of government – local government and state, and an unbroken dominance of the two   arms of government at the centre, that is, the parliament as well as  the executive in Aso Rock Villa in the 14-15 years of the 4th Republic, PDP has essentially dwindled and is in danger of, not only of losing its majority control but becoming a party of a section of the country.

Until it changed its name in 1959, the NCNC had a West African vision. It included the Cameroons in its catchment not because of any hegemonic designs but a patriotic aspiration to capture the Southern part of that country for the East and for Nigeria through a process the United Nations would design.

Readers will recall that after the Allied Forces defeated Germany in the Second World War, they confiscated all German territories. These were then placed under the UN administration as Trust Territories. At a later period, a plebiscite was held, giving citizens the choice of either sticking with the French Cameroons or becoming a part of Nigeria.

As the ruling party in the Eastern Region, the NCNC lost their campaign to have Southern Cameroons in Nigeria but the opposite was the case in the North where the ruling NPC successfully wooed the northern half, the now Sardauna Province which voted to come to Nigeria.

In a way similar to what is happening to the PDP, the NCNC as briefly stated did not set out to become an Igbo, or a regional party. As a West African political movement, the NCNC was formed by a union of two massive organizations, the Nigerian National Democratic Party, and the Nigerian Youth Movement, NYM. Inside the NCNC you had a combustible potpourri of several nationalist parties, cultural associations and the labor movement. Like our own PDP at the beginning, it embraced different sets of groups including religious and trade groups as well as those that were cultural, such as the Egbe Omo Oduduwa and the labor-related including the Nigerian Union of Teachers.

It is difficult to say at exactly which point things began to go wrongly for the NCNC but the breaking point evidently came in 1951. The party won enough seats in the parliament in the Eastern Region to form the government and came second in the West. Historians say the NCNC would have formed the government here as well but for the alleged betrayal of an important ally, an Ibadan community party which crossed the carpet to back the Action Group.

Most historical accounts agree that this incident marked the formal beginning of ethnic politics in Nigeria. From here, Zik was to move to the East to remove the sitting Leader of Government Business, Eyo Ita, a non-Igbo to take over the government of the region supposedly for his Igbo kins people. This was seen to have set the stage for the ethnicisation of politics at the regional level.

Zoom to today and you will see a basis for comparison between the NCNC and the forlorn PDP which has completely lost support in the old West and seeing its support in the North gradually melt away. A party in the driving seat for 14-15 years with an absolute majority in the 774 locals councils; at one point in control of 28 of the country’s 36 states and, until a week ago in firm control of the two arms of the legislature and the the executive got the shock through its loss of majority in the lower arm of the parliament. A similar showdown is equally imminent in the Senate.

Before this time, five governors controlling states with  15-20 percent of the country’s voting population jumped ship, and more are said to planning to join them. The party continues to trumpet the view that those who leave won’t be missed. Its South-south and South-east planks go on swearing to the rest that it is either Dr Jonathan continues in 2015 or …To all who have  eyes to see and ears to hear, the times have changed. The oppressed and victimized peoples of Nigeria are speaking. They don’t see a future for the country in a communally divided Nigeria. They want to throw away the evil that is corruption and wish to have a government that is open and accountable, which the present government does not represent.

The people have sounded the bugle and come 2015, they want to build a new Nigeria with the PDP if they are willing to change their ways and certainly without them should they continue to minimize the  party into a deaf and  a regional or tribal Organisation.

TAIL PIECE

Kudos to Dr.Jonathan

Kudos to President Jonathan for what I consider a befitting response to President Obasanjo, the man who haughtily believes he made him. Someone likened the former President to the one who sold goats but won’t let go of the rope. He manipulates the system to make leaders, and wants to perpetually retain control.

Dr Jonathan impressed me by the “cool” manner of his remarkable response. As sat I  in Cairo cafe reading this brief and intelligent treatise sipping my tea, I could not but feel a deep sense of appreciation for how the President kept his calm to  effectively respond to Obasanjo’s  fire point-by-point without himself using fire. That  would have been a distraction. Jonathan destroyed Obasanjo’s credibility, assuming he had any left, showing him as an over-bearing master who vilified everyone in power before and after him- Murtala, Shagari, Babandida,Shonekan, Abacha, Abdulsalam, Atiku, Yar’adua and now himself.

Dr Jonathan was not cogent and convincing in everything he said. He chose word to escape precision in some of his answers. But he achieved something, which is that if the former President had irredeemably damaged him in his reputation as many now believe, he too has equally achieved the same or even worse effect without a resort to the crudity and indecency in language and presentation that Obasanjo manifested in his own letter.

As the two elephants go on  trampling the grass, one outcome is certain, and that is the attainment of Mutually Asured Destruction (MAD).

The second important lesson of leadership, according to Professor Gergen is what he calls “A Central Compelling Purpose.” According to him, “just as a president has a strong character, he must be of clear purpose. He must tell the country where he is heading so he can rally people behind him.”
If you look at successful leaders around the world, one thing that becomes clear about them is this sense of purpose. They know the direction they are taking their countries to. The message will be so clear that even those who disagree with them will have no option but to support their cause.
In contemporary times you will be talking of world leaders like Mahathir Muhammad of Malaysia, who made his vision clear about transforming Malaysia into a developed country and making sure that the ethnic groups in the country; the Malays, the Chinese and Indians agree to share the same country even if they have reservation about the union. The story of Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, Malaysia’s neighbour is another interesting story of how purposeful leadership can transform a nation. Within 26 years, Lee Kuan Yew transformed Singapore from a struggling third world country into a developed first world economy.
Within Africa, the vision of Murtala Muhammad, despite leading the country for only six months, showcases leadership with a ‘compelling purpose’. He has achieved in those six months what other leaders could not dream of achieving in eight years. It is not for nothing that the likes of Kwame Nkurma, Julius Nyerere, Thomas Sankara or even the likes of Jerry Rawlings are fondly remembered. Whatever their imperfection, they have demonstrated that leadership must be for a reason, and within the brief period they have been in office, they tried to make a difference.
The third lesson, according to Professor Gergen is “A capacity to persuade.” The absence of this quality could perhaps explain the failure of leadership in African countries. How many times did our leaders found it imperative to carry the followership along by trying to persuade them to buy into their programmes? A key ingredient of the third lesson is the ability of the leader to be a motivational speaker, one who can win the hearts of his audiences, and bring them to his fold even if they disagree with him.
It is quite surprising that under civilian administrations, various African governments will rather employ dictatorial approaches than working to convince their citizens to accept their agenda. Not even in political rallies during electioneering campaign would you see the power of persuasion at work in our continent. With television, radio, and the internet at our disposal, yet the energy of political office holders will be spent strategizing on how to rig elections, than convince people even in matters that they can easily swing public opinion in their favour.
The fourth lesson of leadership, according to Professor Gergen is “an ability to work within the system.” Different countries have different political systems. But whether in democracy or dictatorship, there are certain mechanisms for checks and balances. There is a procedure for doing business.
For leadership to be successful, it should respect these procedures, and never attempt to circumvent them. In fact, the ability to work within the framework of the existing political system, whether it is through the national assembly, the judiciary, or abiding by civil service procedure, is a sign of leadership that is well meaning, sincere in its intentions and ready to leave a legacy for the next generation to follow. Desperation from political leadership to bypass the political system and create its own procedures for short time political gain is a sign of weakness, and a leader that is surrounded by selfish and incompetent advisers.
The leaders that have succeeded in other countries did not descend from Mars; they are human beings, who just like each and every one of us, where born and brought up by fellow human beings. The difference, though, is that they possess some of the qualities we have mentioned, while others are battling to understand themselves, before they could even understand the people they lead.

It will take a political storm like the one released from Ota farm by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to displace the series of events marking the death of Nelson Mandela from the pages of Nigerian newspapers. The storm was so powerful it has arguably created the hottest debate in the polity and overshadowed other stories.

In this specific contribution, my interest is not in the letter itself, but the debate it has generated among various media organisations within Nigeria, particularly the acknowledgement of sources, which I believe has an implication in both the theory and practice of journalism. I hope students are following the debate with keen interest because I could see a lot of areas for postgraduate research which if pursued could contribute greatly in enhancing the quality of journalism in Nigeria.

Of particular interest in the debate is the exchange between Premium Times, an online news outlet, which got the scoop and breaks the story to the world, and newspapers like the Punch, an old timer in the field of traditional journalism, and Leadership, another newspaper that is gaining ground in Nigerian journalism.

Before discussing the issue of attribution which created the hot exchange between various newspapers, let me discuss some of the issues observed which would help us in understanding the underlying issues which contributed in the allegations and counter allegations between the various news outfits.

The first observation highlighted by the cold war between these newspapers is the challenge that online journalism is posing against traditional media. This challenge should not be seen in a negative way. While newspapers around the world continue to increase their online presence, the need to satisfy their audiences who rely on traditional means of communication still consumes their energy.

Online journalists are dealing with a set of new audiences who are hungry for news, prefer to access information from the internet and enjoy the interactive nature of the online news media. Despite the attempt of the online news outlets to break stories and give their contribution to journalism, there is still skepticism about the quality of journalism produced on the internet. That skepticism could partially explain the resistance of the traditional media to acknowledge stories they sourced from the internet.

I do not think the challenge posed by the online media will overtake the influence of traditional newspapers, it will simply require the traditional outlets to change their business models, which some are doing well, while others are still trying to adapt. This point was aptly captured by the French newspaper Lemonde Diplomatique, “that in the history of communications the introduction of new media has never succeeded in chasing out the preceding technologies”.

There are two key noticeable issues which need to be settled in this debate; lack of aknowledgement of sources and sometimes outright plagiarism, and secondly how far can you go in acknowledging the sources of the original story. Ethically speaking all sources of information should be attributed, and this is in the interest of anyone who lifts a story from a secondary source. The attribution enhances the credibility of the medium, but it also protects it from falling into legal disputes should the story be a fabrication or contains libel or defamation.

On the other hand when a story breaks, as many journalists know, serious media organisations would always make an effort to explore other angles from the story in order to make their own mark, but at the same time to outdo their competitors. Certainly some media organisations would have done that on the “storm from Ota farm”. I do not see any conflict here, its simply part of basic ethics to acknowledge the source of the story, and the same is expected from the media organisation that break the story to acknowledge its competitor, should it quote a different angle from its competitor.

With all its shortcomings journalism in Nigeria remains one of the most vibrant in Africa, at least the media is relatively free to bring such issues of national importance to public domain.

I have heard the legend of the no-nonsense king and the loose cannon in an unnamed kingdom. The loose cannon was so famous for his gaffes throughout the kingdom that the community had no option but to report him to their disciplinarian king. A man who would open his mouth to slander just anything and anyone had thus become a problem to everyone.

The king said “No problem. If it is a problem with a man saying too much, we know how to fix him”. He directed that the loose cannon to be brought to the palace to sit before him as did the courtiers every day. Whenever the loose cannon opened his mouth to utter the wrong things as he got used to doing all the time, the local Chief asked the courtiers to give him a severe beating. On this particular day, the king was about to end his sitting and the palace closing for the day when a courtier observed that Mr. loose cannon had said nothing throughout. “Mr. large mouth has said nothing today to warrant a beating. Surely, the king’s methods have worked!”

With all eyes on him, Mr. loose cannon looked at the king, cleared his throat to launch the biggest insult of his career saying “yes I am free of the king’s torture today. Let him have his mother to beat!”

Since the release of his letter to the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, President Obasanjo has come under intense scrutiny relating to his motives, rather than the message and this is for a good reason. Over the last three or so decades since he left the office as Military Head of State, the former President is known to have written letters to each and all of the governments that followed his own, with such letters coming at crises points in the lives of those administrations or, where non-existed, fomenting trouble of the sitting government. Governments are known to rise and fall with Obasanjo’s letters.

In discussing the contents of the last of these letters, many have said the one he has written to Dr. Jonathan which is the most acerbic only confirmed what everyone believed – that we have a government loaded with stupendous scams, corruption and double-talk. Under Dr. Jonathan, a government unwittingly manifests tribalism and religious discrimination against sections of the country; infrastructure has not grown significantly and corruption has engulfed the economy. Obasanjo’s letter also had the point that essentially and fundamentally, the President is working against the party that put him in office, and the nation.

For me, the biggest cause for immediate concern is the allegation he made that government was putting together a killer squad of 1000 snipers to go after perceived enemies. Nigerians are more inclined to believing the former President on this because the government of the day is found to be dishonest in more ways than the citizens can imagine. What are they doing with a suspected murderer in their bosom? Why would the President intervene and have a foreign government release a citizen, allegedly arrested in connection with weapons smuggling?

There are also all sorts of stories you hear concerning the re-mobilization and re-armament of the dreaded Abacha’s Strike Force. When they took over government upon Abacha’s death, the Abdul-Salami Abubakar-led interim administration considered the sort of sophisticated training received in Israel and North Korea by the hundreds of the operatives of the Strike Force and considered that it would be dangerous to release them into the civilian population. They therefore integrated them into the army as a measure of containment. It was later discovered that many of them used to money and the independence of action enjoyed under the Strike Force did not fit into the army and left. Now, the stories abound that even the few who managed to stay back have started handing in their letters of resignation to the army giving clear indications that they are headed back to where they came from.

When they criticize President Obasanjo for his letter, many say the former leader is merely shedding crocodile tears because he, as the architect of successive transitions since he left office, is solely responsible for bringing the country to this sorry pass. They say that he, in consort with his cronies such as Nuhu Ribadu and Nasir El-Rufa’i, and without the least consideration for national interest chose a sick man, Umar Yar’Adua and Dr. Jonathan Goodluck, a man they thought was an idiot and imposed them on the population in order to retain power and exercise it from his farmhouse at Ota. If Yar’Adua as governor could not govern well a rural state like Katsina, it is better imagined how he could deal with a complex setting that is the Nigerian federation.

It is clear from all of these things that Obasanjo and his gang have mortally harmed the country and morally speaking, there is no basis on which they can pontificate to anyone.

This obvious hypocrisy however notwithstanding, there are many national interest issues in that letter which ought not to be swept under the carpet. As a senior lawyer said in the press last week, take the message and cut the hand (of the giver). So far, the President and his people have only been personalizing the issues. We have only heard a reflexive response from Dr. Reuben Abati, the President’s spokesman, charging the former leader with insincerity and bad faith. The President has no option but to give a reflective response. He needs to show a full contextual understanding; have a correct reading of the mood of nation, and come clean before the citizens on all charges contained in that letter. That is the only way he can redeem the government he leads. A good and honest government will lend ear to good advice wherever it is coming from. If not, that government is doomed to fail. The latter ought not to become true of the Jonathan government.

As the nation waits for him with bated breath to know what next steps he decides to take, let him not make the mistake of putting Obasanjo to trial or detention. With Mandela just buried and therefore out of the way, there are many old men on the continent who would do anything to fill the vacancy. This letter issue is big, big issue. It calls for a response beyond the reflexes and rash abuse coming from the President’s camp. What the nation expects is a reflective, blow-by-blow, point-by-point account of why the government should not be held guilty as charged.