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Tag: Azu Ishiekwene

  • Covid-19 And That Flight From Abuja, By Azu Ishiekwene

    Covid-19 And That Flight From Abuja, By Azu Ishiekwene

    Azu Ishiekwene

     

    The trip was not planned. As concerns over the spread of Covid-19 grew and the country inched more and more towards the abnormal, I figured travel might be restricted before the end of the week. A call that Tuesday morning confirmed that feeling: I decided to travel out of Abuja immediately.

     

    What I saw at the airport and on the flight on the short trip to Lagos, was a special class on the current public health crisis. I kept thinking…

     

    Of the numerous, dizzying changes that have come upon us in recent times, one that we have had to quickly adapt to is the new social word register. New words have emerged that have fundamentally – and maybe forever – changed the way we work, play and relate to each other. Social protocol may never be the same again even long after Covid-19 has subsided or passed.

     

    Take the word, “social distancing”, for example. According to experts on public health, “Social distancing is for healthy persons, to prevent them from coming in contact with infected persons and contracting the disease.”

     

    Social distancing stands everything we know about how we live on its head. We live together, work together, play together and pray together. There’s no clearer expression of this social norm than in the transport systems and the face-me-I-face-you design of many houses in urban areas. Afro-beat maestro, Fela, captured it aptly in “Suffering and Smiling”, where 49 passengers would be sitting in a bus, and 99 standing without complaining.

     

    Also, a welcome is incomplete without a heart-hug. When we’re in line, we tend to press each other from behind, breathing hot air on the shoulders of the person in front and pressing hard, bonnet-to-bumper.

     

    Five people would easily squeeze themselves onto a seat meant for three and should anyone dare to complain, the complainant would be reprimanded that one body does not avoid another. If any space can take one, then it can take two. And if it can take two, it can take three or even four.

     

    Social hugging could be hugely inconveniencing and even repugnant in a few cases, but the motive or value wasn’t always bad. In situations where government is almost completely absent, the communal spirit was the only social safety net to depend on.

     

    Ostracism, which is perhaps the social equivalent of “social distancing”, was invoked in extreme cases of communicable diseases or to punish “social abomination.”

     

    But the public health call for social distancing does not discriminate. On this trip to Lagos, I noticed a clear difference in distancing not just at the ticketing lines, but surprisingly, at the departure lounge, where packing each other like sardines used to be passenger’s pastime.

     

    In what looked more like ostracism than social distancing, passengers sat significantly far apart from one another, with only those who appeared to be families huddling closer. And in a few cases where someone was moving too close in defiance of multiple visual daggers drawn at them, the passengers they were moving too close to simply stood up, and moved elsewhere.

     

    When we approached the boarding gate, airline staff who used to have a hard time getting passengers to stand in line for boarding, were actually begging passengers who had left unusually large distances between themselves, to move a bit closer and come forward quickly for boarding.

     

    I don’t know how much longer this situation would last but I hope we can take useful lessons about respect for decent personal space and when all is said and done, also separate a healthy social distance from paranoia.

     

    The cabin looked like a huge floating hospital theatre with well over half the passengers wearing face masks and all sorts of medical gear. Quite a number of the passengers were also wearing hand gloves, apart from face masks. Perhaps if they could find the full personal protective equipment, they would have had no hesitation buying them, even at a premium, and wearing them.

     

    I felt a bit awkward and out of place as I took my seat near the back, beside a young man who, just like me, had virtually no protective wear.

     

    I had toyed with the idea of travelling by road but changed my mind. A friend, who suspected that my decision may have been influenced by safety, said I didn’t need to worry about kidnappers or robbers at this time. Didn’t I notice that reports of kidnappings had reduced remarkably?

     

    He suggested that kidnappers and other bad people were not only observing “social distancing” since they didn’t know if their victims were infected or not, perhaps they could not afford face masks and other protective gear which might have helped them to reduce the risk in the “business”. Whatever the case, I didn’t want to find out. But sitting here on this flight and looking like fish out of water, I was wondering if flying was the right decision after all.

     

    The cabin crew also had face masks and gloves, but yet warned passengers not to touch any crew members. Passengers were advised to use the call bell if they needed anything. Don’t touch crew members.

     

    But come to think of it, what is the standard advisory about the correct use of face masks?

     

    WHO says on its website, that, “If you are healthy, you only need to wear a face mask if you are taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCovid infection. Wear a mask if you are coughing or sneezing.”

     

    So, why am I surrounded by a sea of mask-wearing passengers and crew. It’s either some of them have something to hide behind their masks – or I have something to worry about! Either way, it left me with an eerie feeling.

     

    Just before take-off, I received a message that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo had gone into “self-isolation.” That was concerning. Osinbajo had been in meetings with Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, who had tested positive to the virus. So, there were concerns for the Vice President’s health and safety, for which he had to move into separation as a precautionary step.

     

    But what does “self-isolation” mean? Our daily use of the word may permit some latitude, but the news that Osinbajo was in “self-isolation”, sent a wrong message from what was intended. To say he is in “self-isolation”, means that he has contacted the virus; which obviously was not the case.

     

    He was in quarantine, which means that though might be well, he had been exposed and therefore needed to be separated from others while he’s awaiting test results.

     

    The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) might do well to advise the raft of public officers declaring that they are in “self-isolation”, to be clearer about what they are saying. As long as they keep confusing “isolation” with “quarantine”, they will leave the public confused about what to know and believe.

     

    So, Covid-19 concerns have forced a partial lockdown of the Presidential Villa? We have seen from the last few weeks that lockdown means different things in different places.

     

    In Italy, Spain and a number of European countries, for example, lockdown means lockdown: no movement outdoors except with authorised permit and stay-at-home orders enforced by the military. In the UK, lockdown means highly restricted movement, with few exceptions made for the park and purchase of staples on a ration.

     

    In Nigeria, we are still trying to find out what lockdown means beyond restrictions on social and religious gatherings and closure of schools, international airports and the land borders. When we do, it might well be that even local flights are a dangerous luxury in a country where a national lawmaker would remove his face mask to sneeze when the Senate is in session!

     

    Ishiekwene is the MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview

  • Coronavirus: Unusual story as tragedy writes book of humour – Azu Ishiekwene

    Azu Ishiekwene

    In a world where laughter is already in short supply, the outbreak and rapid spread of Coronavirus has only left us all the more depleted. The world, as we know it, has been turned on its head. Yet, in this once-in-a-lifetime experience we have examples of fate using tragedy to write the book of humour.

    Who could have believed that Mexico would be contemplating border restrictions with the US or that vacationing Italians will choose to be refugees in Ethiopia or Tunisia instead of returning to their country which, until recently, turned away hundreds of migrants from Africa and the Middle East?

    But this unusual turn of news is spreading just as rapidly as Covid-19, the strain of the Coronavirus that has gripped the world.

    Last week, Al-Jazeera reported that the Mexican authorities were considering restrictions along the border with the US after the virus spread like wild fire across the US, impacting 50 states and forcing President Donald Trump to announce extraordinary measures to contain the spread.

    In California, a US state which shares a border with Mexico, eight million residents were forced into shelters this week. Only a few years ago, Trump’s greatest desire was to build a 2,000-mile long wall, cutting off Mexico from the US. He said at the time that Mexicans, those good-for-nothing drug dealers, coyotes and rapists, would also pay for the wall.

    But all the talk about building a wall has now gone quiet and Trump was at his meekest last week after a close shave with Covid-19. In a tragic turn of humour, while US citizens and businessmen are complaining that any border restrictions at this time might adversely affect the supply chain in US factories, Mexicans are asking themselves why they didn’t take up Trump’s earlier offer to build the wall.

    Even if they had to pay for it, it certainly would not have been with their lives as they may be obliged to do if persons fleeing from the US spread the virus from across the San Ysidro border.

    A similar spectacle of irony is also playing out in Ethiopia where 35 Italian tourists had gone on holiday. The tourists, whose visas had expired, refused to return home, preferring to stay on in Ethiopia as refugees, rather than return to Italy, which is currently in lockdown.

    Who would have thought that a day like this would ever come? At the height of the migrant crisis in Europe three years ago, a story leaked that would have brought tears to the eyes of even those who may have eaten the proverbial head of the tortoise. It was a video of dozens of refugees from Africa and Syria, drowning in the Mediterranean Sea in 2013.

    Their boat was only a few miles from the Italian port of Lampedusa and the distressed migrants could see the shore. Then, suddenly, their boat started taking in water and began to sink. They cried out to the Italian Coast Guards who were nearby for help. Mohammed Jammo, who identified himself as a Syrian doctor aboard the sinking boat, could be heard in the video crying to the guards: “Please hurry, the boat is going down!”

    One of the guards replied: “Because you are near Malta, call Malta directly very quickly, they are close. Ok?”

    Jammo then called again, “We are dying, please.” And the Italian guard replied: “You have to call Malta, sir.”

    That was the last call. The boat capsized, and all the passengers died.

    To be sure, Italy recorded a number of heroic interventions during the migrant crisis, but incidents like Jummo’s will forever taint Italy’s humanitarian record. Addis Ababa does not need to repay the 35 Italian tourists in the coin of the coast guard. That is the only way to tell the “call Malta” guard and millions of people like him around the world that we’re all in the same boat. Who knows where the wind will blow next?

    The Covid-19 irony does not end there. Also, this week, a British cruise ship which had been marooned at sea since February ending was finally called to shore in the most unlikely of places: Cuba. The ship, owned by a British cruise ship company had been denied berthing throughout the Caribbean – and that includes Barbados, a country with strong British heritage and ties.

    Even though there were 667 Brits out of the 682 passengers on board, Barbados took a deep, long breath and asked the cruise ship, which had only five confirmed victims onboard, to look elsewhere for help.

    Help came, not from longstanding British allies in the Caribbean (not even Barbados fondly called ‘Little England’) or North America, but from Cuba, the Communist cauldron which British intellectuals love to hate.

    While Cuba was opening the door to the British cruise ship, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s best friend, Trump, was extending travel ban to UK citizens, in spite of US-UK mutual claim to a special relationship.

    Yet, this gift of irony is not only in the relations among countries. Even within national boundaries and from the heart of a number of the most impacted communities come remarkable stories of the triumph of the human spirit. Citizens trying to help have formed clusters of compassion around the world, such as, Covid-19 Mutual Aid Facebook and Kindness Pandemic Facebook, sharing online help forms, tips and messages to millions desperately in need of help.

    In Turin, Italy, every night since the countrywide lockdown started two weeks ago, people come to the balcony or stay at their windows to play a guitar or sing the national anthem or a folk song. Despite their isolation, they still find a way to stay connected.

    And did you notice that the same Chinese who were left by the rest of the world to stew in the virus when it first broke out were among the first group of foreigners to arrive in Italy to help stem the tide when Italy’s neighbours were closing their own borders?

    In the UK, a charity, Mutual Aid, is plowing the streets with messages of help for the elderly or those in self-isolation. And in one particularly telling story in the US, an elderly couple stranded in their car for hours, frightened and unable to stand in the long lines just to buy groceries and loo rolls, finally got help from folks who offered to shop for them while they waited inside their car.

    And then, of course, there’s the indescribably odd bit. Whereas gun sales in the US tend to rise after an election or a mass shooting, there was a report during the week of long lines of customers at a gun shop in Los Angeles.

    One of the customers said he decided to arm himself, just in case things get “a bit crazy” in low income neighbourhoods: that is, he thought he needed to arm himself in case rioting broke out in poor neighbourhoods where, at the current rate, staples could run out of supply.

    But think of it: who is more likely to clean out the shelves, buying what they don’t need and sowing the seed of trouble? The man who can afford a gun or the man who can barely buy bread? Someone should have told the man that long before staples run out, love runs out first.

    These are not your regular stories. Or regular times. But even in Wuhan this minute, tragedy is writing the book of humour; the story of the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

    Ishiekwene is the MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview

  • Literature? What Literature?, By Azu Ishiekwene

    By Azu Ishiekwene

    Literature, like other art forms, is a reflection of society. It is from the society that creative writers get their ideas. Society is the subject matter of literary expression. This is one of the reasons why literature is viewed in relation to the era or age it reflects.

    For instance, we have literature of the various centuries across the world. Here, we have the precolonial, colonial, postcolonial and contemporary Nigerian literature. Literary works could reflect pieces in a puzzle of political, social, religious and scientific changes of a particular age.

    The choice of this theme to mark one year of the passing of our good friend, Ikeogu Oke, who quit the stage at a time he was beginning to make his mark in the field of literature, is apt. We may all agree that literature is not quite in the scheme of things when it comes to reactions to developments in the society. It is understandable that there are now several other channels of expression including motion pictures (Nollywood), but they should still complement and enrich literature.

    Literature has been an integral part of our culture beginning from the oral tradition which, in turn, informs the greater part of what we know as our history. We should all work to restore the centrality of literature to our cultural narrative.

    What better documentation of the Yoruba cultural landscape would have been greater than the works of D.O. Fagunwa, especially in The Forest of a Thousand Demons(1938) – as translated by Wole Soyinka; or the commercial exceptionalism of the Igbos more than Pita
    Nwanna in his pioneering work, Omenuko; or Muhammadu Bello Kagara’s Gandoki (1933) which captures the protagonist’s struggles against the colonial regime – a theme also explored in greater measure in Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-wine Drinkard (1952).

    We must work to develop a body of literature that is reflective of this age. It was done during the colonial and post-colonial times in various countries in Africa. All our first-generation writers did it here in Nigeria; Mariama Ba, Sembene Ousmane and Cheikh Hamidou
    Kane did it in Senegal; Amadou Korouma did it in Cote d’Ivoire; Ferdinand Oyono and Mongo Beti in Cameroon; Kofi Awoonor in Ghana; Camara Laye in Guinea; and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o in Kenya, to mention a
    few.

    The political gladiators themselves were not left out. Jomo Kenyata of Kenya; Leopold Senghor of Senegal; Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, and anti-apartheid icons like Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko adequately expressed themselves in literary works. No event in Africa, apart from colonialism, has inspired more literary works than the Apartheid regime in South and the Nigerian Civil War. The civil war in Nigeria in particular has continued to inspire works by writers who were not even born during the time of the
    conflict. A prominent example is Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

    Our creative writers should rise to the occasion and begin to reflect contemporary events including thos of the past few decades and further enrich our body of literature and develop an aesthetics that provides the latitude for literature to serve society. We all know the works of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark and several of their other contemporaries. The societal ills and contradictions that informed the body of literature of their generation pale into insignificance when juxtaposed with what is happening today in Nigeria.

    How can the demagoguery reflected in Achebe’s A Man of the People be compared to what happens in today’s political landscape or the theatrical religiosity in Soyinka’s The Trials of Brother Jero and today’s schizophrenic expression of religiosity?

    While recognising the tremendous sacrifice of our contemporary creative writers, we cannot shy away from the fact that there is quite a lot happening today to spark creativity than there has ever been in Nigeria.

    Nigeria has passed through full-blown military dictatorships and bloody struggles for the restoration of democracy. Our country has seen democracy undergoing remarkable redefinition, characterised by egregious impunity, a loss of premium on human life, and an utter lack of decorum and empathy in the civic space. Our literature should reflect and document all these.

    In his essay, “The Novelist as a Teacher”, Chinua Achebe describes the writer as an organic part of society. In this essay he expresses concern about the social responsibilities and obligations of the writer noting that the writer in Africa is one who is looked up to as a teacher and is in a position to inspire societal reawakening and rediscovery. For Achebe, art is essentially instructive and propagandist. In other doesn’t aim to beat the media to the headlines.

    It would be remiss of me to conclude this address without saying a word about the corpus of Ikeogu Oke, who passed a year ago (on November 24).

    Whether in Where I was born, Salutes without guns, Songs of success and other poems for children, or Heresiad (which won him the NLNG prize for literature); or indeed in his numerous published journalistic articles, Ikeogu reflected in his works of poetry, as in his life, the agonies, hopes and aspirations of the Nigerian and challenged society to celebrate its better self; to recognise its diversity, yet to nourish and harvest its utilitarian values; to live and let live.

    While we grapple with free speech and its ramifications today, Ikeogu tells us in Heresiad that free speech is a canon of democracy, but he reminds us also that this canon carries responsibility for the modern writer. We sometimes grieve that younger people today have lost their way. Perhaps that’s a subject for another day.

    But is there something literature can do, if not to help them find what we think is the way to, at least, engage them in a discussion on why they think we left them stranded on a crooked path? If they are running away from books in printed forms can literature do more to meet them in films, videos, skits and in the netherworld of augmented and virtual reality (AR)? I ask because I know that these were a few of the issues that engaged Ikeogu in his last days. Can we carry them forward? The creative writer in Nigeria should step forward and assume his rightful place as the conscience of society and agenda-setter. Wider literary exploration and enrichment of content and how and where content is distributed/delivered might as well be, if not the panacea, at least the catalyst, to the renewal of sagging reading culture and societal dormancy.

    Ishiekwene, MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview,presented this paper at the first memorial of the passing of Ikeogu Oke organised by the Association of Nigerian Authors and the Abuja Literary Society on Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at the Savannah Suites, Abuja

  • One Life, Many Lessons – Azu Ishiekwene

    By Azu Ishiekwene

    Even though the attention of the world was focused on the role of the media in elections and democracy on the World Press Freedom Day, the shadow of last year’s murderous attacks on free speech still loomed large.

    Will this be the new normal?

    In July, The Economist, quoting a report by Freedom House, described 2018 as the year when the muzzling of journalists and independent news media was at its worst point in 13 years.

    And that was before the Philippines’ reprobate President, Rodrigo Roa Duterte, slammed frivolous and repressive charges of tax fraud and cyber libel on journalist Maria Ressa, an outrage only preceded in scale and ruthlessness by the state-sponsored butchering of Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi inside the Saudi Embassy in Turkey.

    Somehow, in that grim year, Nigeria also moved up three places on the Freedom House ranking index. In light of what we know about the odyssey of press freedom last year, however, the Editor-In-Chief of Premium Times, Dapo Olorunyomi, whose online newspaper is a relentless thorn in government’s side, must be asking himself if much has changed since the 1990s when state-sponsored terror against the press forced him into exile.

    The military may be gone, replaced by politicians in civilian dress, just as surely as decrees have been replaced by a constitution with elegant provisions for press freedom, but old habits die hard.

    That’s why the Nigerian military authorities descended on Olorunyomi two years ago. They did not quarrel with the facts reported by Premium Times that the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Yusuf Buratai, had bought houses in Dubai beyond his means. Their grudge, a hangover from the military era, was the fact that the newspaper had the temerity to expose the acquisition, without a thought for the potential “national security implications.”

    In retrospect, it may sound like a laughing matter. But it’s not. In a country where the police still use outdated sedition law against the press; where the state oil corporation insists that it is outside the reach of the Freedom of Information law; and where the army raided a newspaper house last year and trashed its computers, journalism that makes powerful state officials uncomfortable could carry a heavy prize.

    Yet, this is precisely the type of journalism that Olorunyomi has dedicated over 30 years of his life pursuing: journalism of consequence. An alumnus of the Kwara-based Herald, he later moved to Lagos where he joined African Concord magazine. One of his major cover stories, entitled, “Has Babangida Given Up?”, was a damning story of the military president in hostage.

    That story led to the closure of Concord Press by the Babangida regime, after the Editor-In-Chief, Bayo Onanuga, refused to apologise to the military authorities in spite of the publisher’s advice.

    By the time Olorunyomi arrived at The News (after a stint at the African Guardian), with Onanuga, Kunle Ajibade, Babafemi Ojudu, Seye Kehinde, and Idowu Obasa, his talent for roaming dangerous territory was advanced and famous.

    Onanuga told me that Olorunyomi “is a journalist with a huge appetite for risk, wholly invested in pursuing truth and helping younger journalists imbibe the same culture.” He continued: “Often looking like an almajiri, Dapo spent himself broke looking out for others’ professional wellbeing.”

     

    That virtue appears to be in short supply. The awareness of consequential journalism whether on elections or immigration, is disappearing; never mind the willingness to pursue it.

     

    Across Africa, at least 14 countries will hold major elections this year. A few, including Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal and Guinea Bissau already have. Will these elections be free, fair and credible? Will they reflect the genuine choice of citizens about who they wish to govern them? Will the press provide fair, balanced coverage and inspire enlightened choices?

     

    If the media hopes to play any consequential role in these elections, it must first examine itself.

    It’s a fact that threats to press freedom from state and non-state actors are rising, and therefore, collective global action by citizens, institutions and responsible governments must continue. But if Olorunyomi’s career tells us anything, it is that even though outside threats have become somewhat malignant over the years, they are not new. Journalism must examine itself to play any credible role in elections and to deepen democracy.

    A few of the deadly worms eating the profession are inside; they must first be purged. There is a proliferation of the multiple-hat journalist: the journalist-politician; the journalist-entrepreneur; the journalist-consultant; and the journalist-agency. It’s an egregious form of specialisation, which takes care of everything, except what it should really be taking care of: journalism.

    The consequence is that professional boundaries have become so blurred that they are, in fact, almost non-existent. If there was a time when facts were sacred and comments free, the transactional genius of many newsrooms have now merged facts, comments and “factcom” into a single commodity, shortchanging press freedom and damaging ethics.

     

    Credibility is a casualty most times, but especially so during elections. This is not helped by the shoestring budget of many newsrooms and proprietorial pressure on editors by media owners who treat their organisations like the media arm of their political party or tribal newsletters.

     

    Pandering to big business, to cushion the effect of poor funding, has also weakened the capacity of the media to play an effective role in deepening the democratic process, while fake news, fake websites and marketing remain a clear and present danger.

     

    In “Can you trust the media?”, a book that mocks the mainstream media’s claim to the custodianship of public trust, Andrian Monck, said, “I believe that instead of asking whether media can be trusted, we need to teach people to live in a world where trust is something that is withheld.

     

    “People need to be skeptical as a matter of course. Then, they won’t be disappointed. Skepticism is the faculty to which they should be appealing, but instead the media is tying itself in knots over credibility and trust.”

    That’s fine. But we cannot throw up our hands or be rooted in a spot until our feet is overgrown with the weed of self-doubt. A day like this not only serves to remind us of the work that needs to be done, it also points us to icons like Olorunyomi who, in spite of the odds, remains a shining example.

    We have seen from Premium Times, for example, how it is possible to tackle resource limitation by collaboration. Think of the collabo between the newspaper and the international consortium of journalists that produced the Pulitzer-winning Panama Papers. Can we have more of that?

    Change may sometimes be slow in coming, like the case of former Communications Minister, Adebayo Shittu, still twisting in the wind by a shameful thread, months after he was exposed for dodging national service and lying about his NYSC certificate.

    But we have also seen that if journalism persists long enough, it may lead to inevitable tremors – the removal of former Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, and presidential pension task force chairman, Abdulrasheed Maina, being two examples.

    As Dapo Olorunyomi leads Premium Times in the newspaper’s struggle to become a sustainable business model, without which it may become increasingly vulnerable to predatory interests – or predatory poverty – it would also be interesting to see what other media houses may learn from its current funding mix of advertising, crowdfunding, and perhaps monetisation of differentiated content.

     

    Press freedom is not given. Nor does it make sense to mark it once every 365 days. It is freedom that is earned daily and every deadline minute, through toil, diligence and refusal to settle for mediocrity in the search for truth.

    There are examples to inspire us, if we care to look and see. Olorunyomi is one.

     

    Ishiekwene is the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview and member of the board of the Global Editors Network

     

  • Cloned Buhari: Oyedepo and the perils of satire – Azu Ishiekwene

    Azu Ishiekwene

    It’s difficult to say which one was worse: the original falsehood or the misinterpretation and rebroadcast of its parody as gospel truth.

    The fugitive and self-acclaimed leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, is credited with inventing the fabulous tale that the real President Muhammadu Buhari died in London sometime in January or April, after a prolonged illness, and that the resident cabal in Aso Rock immediately replaced him with a body double, one Jubril al Sudaniya from Sudan.

    When the falsehood wasn’t spreading fast enough, Kanu shared pictures of the “former” right-handed Buhari, whose body double was now left-handed, and also highlighted facial differences, including those around the earlobes, to prove that the Buhari in Aso Rock today is not the Buhari that Nigerians voted for.

    That withering creative madness was the tipping point. Over 500,000 people have now viewed the body double video and perhaps the 500,001th viewer was Bishop David Oyedepo, leader of one of the largest Christian evangelical denominations in Nigeria.

    Oyedepo went further than just viewing the video. If there were any residual doubts in his mind about what he had seen and heard, they were settled by an article written by Professor Olatunji Dare in The Nation of November 27, entitled, “Buhari’s Double”, under a miscellany of short articles.

    Oyedepo read Dare’s article in full to a church congregation of tens of thousands of worshipers on Sunday with thousands more logged on. As he read it aloud, carefully emphasizing the incredulous demand by the family of the fictitious Jubril of Sudaniya for a share of federal power in perpetuity, in addition to 50 percent of the country’s oil revenue and the threat to spill the world’s best-kept sordid secret if the demands were not met, the faithful ughed! and aahed! in fits of amazement and subdued rage.

    Like a master puppeteer, Oyedepo maintained his cool. He gave the impression that reading newspapers was actually a waste of his time, but that he condescended to perform this task because the author, “one Dare”, had said the information was obtained “authoritatively.”

    Perhaps the bishop also thought that since the article said the UK authorities were already mediating in the matter, it merited his attention.

    But there were two problems with Oyedepo’s sermon on the Buhari Double, taken from the Book of Kanu the Fugitive. The first was that anyone with a measure of educated skepticism who had looked even casually at the Kanu video would have seen it for the creative fudge that it was. It was a monstrous piece of fiction, which even Kanu knew it was.

    The second problem was that the author of the piece which Oyedepo used as the final authoritative evidence of the authenticity of Buhari-turned-Jubril-al-Sudaniya story was not just “one Dare,” as he said. Olatunji Dare is a renowned professor of mass communication and one of satire’s all-time best gifts to Nigeria.

    Was it possible that Oyedepo, pro-chancellor of two universities, did not genuinely know that Dare’s piece was a satire or was he too blinded by his dislike of Buhari that the satire not only played to his instincts but also became a convenient tool to incite his base against Buhari?

    As I watched the Oyedepo video again and again, it reminded me of how Donald Trump, then simply Celebrity Trump, retrieved from the gutter a despicable tale about Barack Obama not being an American and went ahead to launder and popularise it among a lunatic fringe called the birthers. The tale was later mainstreamed.

    Whoever heard of a “Barack Hussein” as anything other than a woebegone Muslim from a shithole country? Twenty-five percent of adult Americans actually believed this tale and, like Trump, propagated it. Not even when Obama took the unprecedented step of publicly presenting his birth certificate did the doubters give him a break.

    There are other recent examples of tale-bearers remaking the world. Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson demonised immigrants as good-for-nothing spongers, saying that the National Health Service would be saving at least £350m weekly if Britain left Europe. Life would be so glorious that every true Brit would once again feel the sun rising over the Empire.

    A good number of British people believed this fiction and voted Leave before finding out the morning after, that their leading politicians had sold them down the river. They didn’t know what they voted for.

    I admit that in this age of cynicism worsened by growing, unmet expectations and low-performing politicians, fiction is seductive. For example, it’s easier for politicians to play the ethnic card than it is for them to accept that poverty cuts across ethnic groups and to find common sense solutions; it’s easier for politicians to create a false universe of “we” and “them” and to stoke images of a siege mentality than it is for them to accept that head or tail, they hardly lose.

    But fiction serves politicians well, because in politics as in religion, the masses have an increasing appetite for manufactured solutions, which celebrity politicians and rock star religious leaders have in good supply. Why think when someone else can think for you?

    So, when Oyedepo says that it would be irresponsible for Buhari not to respond to the tale that he is not Jubril al Sudaniya, for example, he is telling church members not to bother processing the fiction anymore. He, Oyedepo, with his education, enlightenment and exposure, believes the fiction – and that is enough.

    There’s a sense in which it might be argued that the official secrecy about the nature of Buhari’s illness could only have encouraged speculations about his health including, in fact, exaggerations about his death. But nothing in the realm of rational thinking or even common sense, can encourage any serious-minded person, not just to think, but to believe that Nigeria is being ruled by a character from Nnamdi Kanu’s book of fiction.

    Yet, belief is a powerful thing. Those who doubt it only need to ask the talebearers whether Buhari’s refuttal in Poland has done anything to clear the doubts. An egregious aspect of modern politics is manufacturing discontent. And belief is a vital ingredient.

    Oyedepo does not have to like Buhari – and it’s obvious that he doesn’t. Which is fine. But a man of his stature and learning ought to know better than to inflict on church members and propagate publicly a piece of monstrous fiction which, frankly, discredits him.

    Those who accuse him of being a closet Buhari hater, citing his public appearance at the first Obasanjo-Atiku public meeting and the open-cheque lobby with a major Abuja-based Pentecostal pastor to prevent Godswill Akpabio from defecting to the All Progressives Congress, have Dare’s satire as more stick to beat him over the head.

    And by the way, has the bishop seen Dare’s postscript? Will he also read it in full to the congregation on Sunday?

     

     

    Ishiekwene is the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview and member of the board of the Global Editors Network

     

  • IDPs As The Next Time Bomb, By Azu Ishiekwene

    By Azu Ishiekwene

    Internally Displaced Politicians have been on a speed dial to hook up with new partners for next year’s general election. With 68 political parties and still counting – the horde of defectors, including the perennial rolling stones – would find willing partners.

    The real Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are, however, having a torrid time. And they appear to be the last thing on the minds of politicians at this time. Displaced persons are living a nightmarish existence, which is getting worse with the escalating conflict in the North East and the senseless killings in many other parts of the country.

    A report in ThisDay on Sunday, July 1, quoting a report by the United States Council on Foreign Relations, said 19,890 persons were killed in violent attacks since June 2015. In the first quarter of this year alone, over 1,000 persons have been killed in violent attacks in different parts of the country, especially in the North Central and North East.

    As the number of the dead mounts, tens of thousands – many of them children, women and other vulnerable groups – are being uprooted from their homes and families to face a miserable and uncertain future.

    One of the only four Nigerian psychologists working in Borno, Fatima Akilu, said last year, “These kids are (coming) back to our communities. There is no plan to reintegrate them properly into the society. A lot of them are on drugs. Most of them are out of school. I see that we have potential problems.”

    That was putting it mildly. The problems are compounded by a) government’s eagerness to tick off the boxes on the shooting war with Boko Haram; and, b) official preference for ad-hoc solutions, in spite of evidence of limited results.

    The government has repeatedly celebrated its “technical victory” over Boko Haram but as long as there are over two million displaced persons from among whom Boko Haram can easily find new recruits, and a number of who have in fact declared that they would rather stay with Boko Haram than return home, the war is far from won.

    The ad-hoc interventions have not helped. The Presidential Intervention for the North East (PINE) was engulfed in a controversy over charges that the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, mismanaged funds meant to resettle displaced persons, while the T. Y. Danjuma-led intervention has snagged on the face-off between Danjuma and the government.

    Individuals like Aliko Dangote have done their part, with his Foundation committing an estimated N7 billion to IDP causes in the last seven years, while a few other local and foreign NGOs, including the Red Cross, have provided front line support and assistance to displaced persons in extremely difficult situations.

    After ad-hoc attempts proved catastrophically inadequate to deal with what one writer described as “the growing feed mill for a potential second wave of insurgency,” the government set up the North East Development Commission, to stave off the time bomb.

    The commission was supposed to harmonise the functions of the various ad-hoc groups, provide a more permanent framework for tackling the problems of the IDPs and also help them rebuild their lives and reintegrate into their communities.

    It was also supposed to ensure greater accountability and transparency in the management of resources for displaced persons.

    It’s remarkable that since the bill setting up the commission was signed into law in October, the only thing that has happened is that the ink with which President Muhammadu Buhari signed the bill has dried and the paper has turned brown.

    After Buhari signed, both Speaker Yakubu Dogara and Senate President Bukola Saraki hailed the commission as the most coherent and comprehensive attempt yet to help millions of displaced persons rebuild their lives and get a fresh start. Nearly ten months after, the commission exists only in name.

    What is it about getting the commission up and running that needs ten months to fix after the bill has been signed? Why should an intervention that is supposed to be a significant step forward in the attempt to reduce the misery of millions of IDPs end up as another paper tiger?

    Of course, it would be naive to assume that the commission would be the talisman for all the problems of IDPs. If the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has taught us anything, it’s that creating bureaucracy for its own sake can sometimes leave beneficiaries worse off.

    Yet, the only thing worse than creating a bureaucracy is announcing its formation with fanfare and then just watching life drain out of it from inaction. The Commission for the North East is supposed to benefit from the shortcomings of the NDDC and get on quickly with the task of helping displaced citizens rebuild their lives.

    The communities in the affected areas have reached the end of the rope and it’s doubtful if there’s any home in Borno, Yobe or Adamawa that has not opened its doors to displaced persons. With the deadly conflict in the area not abating, there’s only so much that already distraught neighbours can do to help displaced persons.

    But how can government fill the slack when it has not made even the most basic appointments ten months after the commission came into being?

    With 2019 around the corner, politician will be more concerned about the electoral value of displaced persons that they will be about how to resettle them and give them a fresh start in life. But stopping the deadly clashes by herdsmen, farmers and bandits and having a structured plan to resettle displaced persons are not mutually exclusive.

    Only recently, displaced persons comprising mostly women and children from the North East visited President Buhari in Aso Rock to thank him and inform him that they planned to return to their homes soon.

    Except if the President plans to provide them – and millions of others like them – permanent residency in Aso Rock, one small but vital step to secure their return would be to ensure that the development commission finally gets off the ground.

    Displaced persons deserve more than to be objects of pity or cannon fodder.

    Ishiekwene is the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview and member of the board of the Global Editors Network

  • Buhari, How Did Dapchi Happen? Azu Ishiekwene

    Azu Ishiekwene

    CNN anchor, Isha Sesay, is right about what she said on her Twitter handle. The kidnap of the 110 girls of Government Girls Science Technical College, Dapchi, is not a national disaster as President Muhammadu Buhari had described it; it’s a national disgrace.

    The only thing worse than the disgrace is the incompetent response of Buhari’s government and the buck-passing in a moment of national grief.

    How do we tell a world that still cannot understand how 256 girls got missing in Chibok, that after four years of trying and managing to rescue 100, another 110 girls are now missing without trace?

    How do we explain to the parents and families involved that one week after their children were taken away from school by terrorists neither lawmakers representing the constituency, nor the state governor, nor the policemen in charge of the area, nor the soldiers, can give an account – any kind of coherent account at all – of what happened?

    Buhari promised to keep Nigerians safe and secure. How can he look at himself in the mirror today and not think that if the missing 110 schoolgirls is a national disaster, then his personal failure to keep his promise is the father of that disaster?

    When it happened under former President Goodluck Jonathan, Buhari’s All Progressives Congress, then the opposition party, said it could only have happened as a result of malicious incompetence.

    That may have been correct. Jonathan’s government did not make any pretensions about honesty or competence. Army generals were diverting funds set aside for the war on Boko Haram into their private pockets and angry troops, tired of fighting with their bare hands and buying their own medicines at the war front, were shooting their commanders or fleeing across the border.

    One hundred Chibok girls are still missing today because Jonathan believed some of those who were around him, who said the story of the missing girls was a hoax by the opposition to undermine his government.

    Have you noticed how the rank and file of Jonathan’s party, the Peoples Democratic Party, has jumped on the bandwagon to flog Buhari?
    The same people who said Chibok was a scam and on whose watch Boko Haram grew from a homeless status to become a landlord?

    I know that politicians must play, but to play with the fate of children whose lives they endangered by their callous negligence is unforgivable.

    It’s surreal to think that we’re right where we were four years ago; that in the same Yobe where 29 boys were murdered by Boko Haram in their hostels, 110 girls were later abducted and Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau, is saying the government is taking steps to ensure that this does not happen another time.

    Well, there’ll be another time for Dambazau and all those who have shamelessly let the country down yet again. There’ll be another time for Army spokesperson Onyeama Nwachukwu; the Yobe State commissioner of police Sunmonu Abdulmaliki, and for their bosses who sent them to rub salt in our wound by trading blames.

    There’ll be another time for Governor Ibrahim Geidam who had falsely announced the rescue of some of the girls even before seeing the parents of the girls and hearing their own side of the story.

    Sure, there’ll be another time to announce that more billions of naira has been poured into the war on Boko Haram and anyone who wants can now have a picnic anywhere in the North East. There’ll always be another time to deepen our misery.

    But there won’t be another time for the 110 missing girls or for the parents and families who are haunted by the bizarre thoughts of just where their girls are or what is happening to them.

    There won’t be another time to repair the future of those children and hundreds more like them who will see no point at all in going to school.

    It is not Dambazau saying that the government is taking steps to ensure that this won’t happen again that doesn’t make sense to me. It is the fact that the government has not said what it would do to prevent more girls from being kidnapped or more boys from being murdered in their dormitories.

    Just like it happened in Chibok, it took Boko Haram one to two days of doing a recce and bedding in before the girls were rounded up and herded away in trucks.

    There was a calamitous failure of intelligence between Dapchi and either Geidam or Damaturu – both places where soldiers attached to Operation Lafia Dole had at least not been withdrawn and which are only about 60 kilometres from Dapchi. This failure paved the way for the girls to be taken away with the casualness of a practice match.

    What is Buhari going to do about it? How many schools are still open outside the capitals of Yobe, Adamawa or Borno? And why is it impossible to deploy vigilantes or drones or some minimum form of technology to complement the effort of the brave soldiers on the front lines to secure schools and other soft targets?

    Unlike Chibok, which happened in the forest area of Sambisa, Dapchi is miles and miles of flat land, stretching all the way up to the arid borders of Niger Republic. I’m lost for words that in a zone that is practically at war, nearly half a dozen trucks plied the major Damaturu-Bayamari Road for hours on February 19, 2018, with distraught schools crying for help and nothing happened.

    To say there won’t be a next time does not mean it won’t happen because Dambazau said so. Buhari’s government has put Boko Haram on the back foot. Yet, if the rising wave of other forms of violence is a parable of how much work still needs to be done, then Dapchi is a clear statement that the government has been too eager to give itself a pass mark.

    And soon we’ll forget. The only reason why we’re still talking about Chibok is because Oby Ezekwesili and members of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign group have refused to give up, despite the odds.

    Dambazau and others can say it won’t happen again because they know that, like Chibok, we’ll get used to Dapchi and, as usual, just get on with our lives; leaving the matter to God and surrendering ourselves as willing victims of the next idiocy.

    Are we all right?

    Ishiekwene is the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview and member of the board of the Global Editors Network

  • Fagbenle: Tribute to the pundit emeritus – Azu Ishiekwene

    By Azu Ishiekwene

    We love to blame most of our miseries on the older generation – the corruption, the greed, the rot and decay, and the rise in ethnic politics; everything that has held us back.

    It’s okay to beat that generation over the head with our woes, but I’ve been thinking of what my world, my professional world, would have been without these folks; that is, the good folks among them that we often lump with the bad.

    I’ve told the story before of how Olatunji Dare helped to give me my first writing job and how after meeting Ray Ekpu and shaking his hand at the lying-in-state of Dele Giwa in 1986, I refused to shake anyone else for the rest of that day to preserve the fragrance and memory of that contact.

    There’s yet another man from the older generation of writers that I owe more gratitude than I could repay: Egbon Tunde Fagbenle. His writings have inspired me, but knowing him has inspired me even more.

    He was 70 on October 4 but is still as passionate about a Nigeria that works for all, as he was when I first met him in the 1990s.

    I can’t remember what struck me the most in those early days – his writings, his personal warmth and hearty laughter or his frequent swear words. I think it must have been his writing above all – his breezy, conversational style and that ability to call a spade by its name. But for a long time, I never quite matched his face with his writings.

    I don’t know what it was Fagbenle was discussing with Ademola Osinubi (who was then PUNCH General Manager) on that day. But even before I entered Osinubi’s office where I met Fagbenle for the first time, I heard the echo of his laughter like a boomerang, rocking the plywood panels of the wooden building that used to be the company’s first office in Onipetesi, Lagos.

    We hit it off from that first meeting and I still remember the ease with which he switched back-and-forth from English to Pidgin English, swearing intermittently as he did so.

    In the small talk that followed, I sensed the anger and frustration in his voice as we talked about the annulment of the June 12 election. The country had been brought to its knees by the refusal of the military government to hand over to the winner, MKO Abiola and Abiola was not going to take it lying down.

    In the showdown that followed, it was clear that the worst was yet to come. And the military government, egged on by selfish politicians who would soon sell Abiola down the river, didn’t care if the country burned.

    “Dem madness no get cure, I swear!” Fagbenle said repeatedly of the military government. Madness no get cure. And that was saying it as it is.

    He was in his late forties then. His eyes twinkled fairly rapidly. Though you could see that he was not a very young man from the greying strands of his goatee, yet he joked with the conviviality of a teenager. In my relationship with him over the years – and I have come to see that that is how he truly is – he never wears his age on his sleeve.

    Fagbenle gives as much as he takes. He praises effusively, rolls with the punches and, damn it, as anyone at the receiving end of his attack might agree, he strikes like a rattlesnake. Love or hate him, you can hardly deny the honesty in his writings.

    If age calms rage, I’m still looking for that soothing effect in Fagbenle about two decades after he made that blistering comment about the “incurable madness” of the Babangida/Abacha military regimes.

    A collection of his articles in Nigerian newspapers from 2010 to 2016, under the title, “And that’s saying it the way it is,” published to mark his 70th birthday shows that Fagbenle is still as enraged about the state of affairs in the country today as he was many years ago.

    The transition from the earlier title of his articles “Damn It!” to “Saying it the way it is”, did not change the force or cutting edge of his message.

    Take the article, entitled, “Time to sack the National Assembly,” for example. The article starts with four stanzas of “Crazy baldheads,” by Bob Marley. Likening the legislators to rogues who reap where they have not sown, Fagbenle calls out Representatives and Senators, who were on a combined annual salaries of N136billion – and hold on for this – after former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Professor Itse Sagay had also criticised the legislators’ pay!

    “We need to chase them crazy baldheads out of Abuja,” Fagbenle said. “The impunity and recklessness with which our legislators have so far carried on allotting to themselves all sorts of allowances and funds for their so-called constituencies…it is time the people take their own fate into their own hands…and chased the crazy baldheads out of town!”

    Well, that article was published nearly seven years ago but it still sounds like a soundtrack for the crazy baldheads in today’s Abuja. Fagbenle, Obasanjo and Sagay – all over 70 now – who crooned about the wasters, are still at the barricades; while the harried public can only guess what the legislators earn moons after they promised to make it public.

    Also in this collection, his “Conversations with Mandela”, a purely imaginary encounter, which touched a nerve on the question of Winnie, is so real and so authentic you’ll have to read it more than once to believe it’s a work of fiction. It’s a master class in creative writing and I wonder what Mandela thought, if he ever got to read it.

    Fagbenle’s life, like that of most writers, is an open book. In the six years covered by his collection, he wrestled with two major public figures – former President Goodluck Jonathan and President Muhammadu Buhari.

    Choosing between the two was not easy for him. Jonathan’s “inept and incompetent” government exasperated him to the point where he asked, in one headline, “How many times would one have to forgive Mr. Jonathan?” Yet, Buhari’s “arrogance” and “narrow-mindedness” rankled him no less.

    So deep was Fagbenle’s frustration with the two candidates that he endorsed Pius Adesanmi’s call for Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah to join the presidential race in 2015.

    But I’m sure he knew that was wishful thinking. Nigeria is not Rome. His idealism had obviously gotten the better of him, sweeping into distant memory his own political adventure as a candidate of the National Conscience Party in Osun State and the gallant but disastrous aftermath of that odyssey!

    Fagbenle has paid his dues and his candour and humanity shine brighter and brighter. If 70 is the new 60, why should he keep his pledge to go backstage and stay backstage. He should make yet another cameo appearance as “Pundit Emeritus.” I swear, just one more…

    And why not? That’s saying it the way it is!

    Ishiekwene is the MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview magazine and board member of the Paris-based Global Editors Network

     

  • How to solve a problem like Magu – Azu Ishiekwene

    Azu Ishiekwene

    This National Assembly appears quite anxious to make laws that might improve our lives. One example is the bill this week by the Senate for victims of gunshot wounds to get treatment without first paying with their blood.

    There has been quite a basketful of bills like that, promising to show us that federal lawmakers have hearts of flesh.

    The dangerous edge to their zeal is the growing feeling among them that they can make the law, interpret it and also enforce it and no one can do anything about it.

    After a bruising fight with the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola, over whether or not the National Assembly can top up the appropriation bill, including removing significant national projects and replacing them with budgets for boreholes and similar “constituency projects” in their constituencies, the Senate turned on Acting President Yemi Osinbajo for insisting that the EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu, will not be removed.

    In a disgraceful tit-for-tat, they vowed that Magu would only be confirmed over their dead bodies, adding that they would withhold further screening and confirmation of executive nominees until Magu is removed.

    The Clerk of the National Assembly may well order body bags and call in the ambulance because we’re fed up with politicians who are so obsessed with their ego that they hardly show any regard for the common good.

    What’s wrong in a healthy debate?

    Osinbajo is Acting President and the Senate may disagree with him without insisting that he has to sacrifice his freedom of expression to retain his post. That is wrong.

    Recently, I’ve found Osinbajo’s tentativeness on a few matters quite annoying. So, I was pleased when he told the Senate pointblank that 1) the National Assembly has no business topping up the budget and, 2) the Senate has to get used to Magu being EFCC chairman or wait for possibly another six years.

    What is it about the appropriation bill that they cannot keep their sticky fingers in check and use it as a tool to get the best value for the country for every naira budgeted? Why should the National Assembly become so blinded by the narrow interests of its members that it would, for the second consecutive time in a row, disregard an existing high court judgment against mutilating the budget to its own advantage?

    And as for Magu, what is his crime? Politicians, at least those in the ruling APC, say they want to fight corruption. Magu has been doing his bit for the last 18 months without a letter of appointment and in spite of opposition from the same politicians and career influence peddlers who say they want to fight corruption.

    Where the lawmakers want to make a law to grant amnesty to looters, Magu has said he is determined to follow through their prosecution. Where they considered themselves sacred cows, he has called them out. And where they have tried to blackmail him, he has defended his integrity.

    It’s a matter for regret that the convictions have been few and slow but that’s precisely because politicians, judges and senior lawyers have made no secret of their vested interest to frustrate the process and protect one another.

    They think we’re helpless, that’s why they insist on fighting corruption on their own terms and when they are challenged they threaten to take the government hostage. The arm twisting and blackmail have gone beyond the limits of subtlety. They have become glaring and dangerous.

    The federal legislators consider themselves so infallible and their seats so impregnable that Senate President Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, told us that the only sovereign that can remove a senator is the Senate itself – everything else, including a constitutionally provided recall process, is a waste of time. Without seeming to know it, they are constituting themselves into a body of hostage takers, with the country, its people their interests as their supposedly helpless victims.

    It’s also a measure of the conceit of the National Assembly that not only does it remorselessly whip any dissenting member into line; it thinks it is entitled to deal with non-members with the same ruthlessness.

    That explains why they summonsed Customs CG, Hameed Ali, for not to wearing uniforms; PACAC Chairman, Itse Sagay, for rebuking them; and Fashola for appealing to their conscience and commonsense.

    And it’s precisely because of this their exaggerated sense of their worth that they have threatened to paralyze government if Magu is not removed.

    Of course the government itself has not made Magu’s job – or the fight against corruption – easier. For example, in spite of two separate court orders asking it to publish the names of treasury looters since 1999 and the recoveries made so far under President Muhammadu Buhari, the government is still speaking in tongues.

    The combination of a spiteful Director of State Security, a weak Attorney General and Minister of Justice and a dithering, almost aloof, President, has often produced mixed signals about the government’s resolve to fight corruption openly and relentlessly.

    I’ve heard lawmakers complain that the press treats the National Assembly unfairly, that there’s more corruption and lawlessness in the executive branch than anywhere else, but that the executive has learnt through years of practice and connivance with the press, to hide its dead bodies.

    Maybe that’s true, even though it’s the moral equivalent of saying if two wrongs don’t make a right, try a third. Instead of mounting barricades of greed and self-interest in the way, without a care in the world for the public good, lawmakers will be in a stronger position to face the executive if they put their own house in order first.

    But there’s little evidence that self-examination is of any interest to them. They prefer to blame the press – perhaps justifiably up to a point – for their “over-exposure”, and for helping to pile on pressure from their constituencies that leave them perpetually broke.

    Yet, they conveniently forget that for every Dino Melaye that parades his collection of exotic cars on social media; for every senator that hosts a sex fair; for every senator that is a fugitive from justice; and for everyone of them who makes a dance video, there are millions of people out there who think that only two things happen in Abuja: clowning and money sharing.

    Federal lawmakers are in a hurry to make record bills that might save us. That’s grand. They should start with the small things: homework, punctuality and a little honesty with their constituencies and about their remunerations.

    Their failures in these areas, and not Magu’s continued stay at the EFCC, have done them and the country far greater disservice.

     

    Ishiekwene is the MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview magazine and board member of the Paris-based Global Editors Network