TheNewsGuru

Tag: Azu Ishiekwene

  • When are you going to get a proper job? – By Azu Ishiekwene

    When are you going to get a proper job? – By Azu Ishiekwene

    He didn’t say when his father asked him, but I wonder what the old man must think in his grave. Jonathan Power is now 83 and arguably one of Europe’s most widely published columnists.

    He was a young freelance journalist when his father asked him the question. Still, even if he had lived to see his son syndicated globally, including by some of the world’s most prestigious newspapers and magazines, I’m not sure his father would have retracted the question: when will you get a proper job?

    Power’s father didn’t think of journalism as a job. Instead, he considered it a lens or a keyhole through which one looks at the world’s most notable jobs like engineering or medicine. A side hustle, in today’s language. That was perhaps the whole point of supporting him to study agricultural economics, a distant cousin – but a cousin anyway – of some of the world’s proper job routes, only for his son to go astray.

    More than a betrayal

    I’ve known Jonathan Power for over 25 years. But I met him again in his new book When Are You Going to Get a Proper Job? It’s a chronicle of his 60 years in journalism, which helped me understand why he once told me that I’d be better off being a plumber than hoping to make money from syndicated writing. It also helped me understand why my son regards journalism with courteous disdain.

    But Power’s 227-page novel-like autobiography published by Noema in 2024 is more than a son’s betrayal of his father’s wishes. It’s also about relationships, love (especially eros), travel, religion and faith in the intrinsic goodness of the human being.

    When Are You Going to Get a Proper Job? divides Power’s life into three main parts: his love/family life, his travel encounters mostly related to his job as a foreign correspondent or human rights advocate, and his quest for the essence of life.

    The heart is not smart

    Power is a passionate husband and a doting father but a woefully unlucky lover. If you discount the tragic end of the Barnes in Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, in which Dickie Barnes is a principal character, Power’s account of his love and marriage life reminds you of how complications and unresolved issues in a marriage can undo even the best intentions, leaving emotional scars that won’t go away, even when it’s all over.

    I started reading Power’s 15-chapter book from Chapter 4, entitled “My long-time friend, Nigeria’s Big Man”, but quickly returned to Chapter 1, “I and Me.” I should have started here. While I could easily relate to Chapter 4, which deals with Power’s over 40 years relationship with one of the troublers of Nigeria, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, “I and Me” explores a more universal, human conundrum: love.

    “If only I had been more lucky, wise, sensible…,” Power writes. “I never found the clarity of mind, the right sound or (the) perfect female. I died with no money in the bank.” He was talking to himself.

    The women in his life

    Two women dominate the first more than 20 years of Power’s love story: Anne and Mary Jane. He met Anne when they both worked on Martin Luther King’s staff, and he met Mary, the stewardess, on the plane. He was attracted to each woman for a different reason – Anne was his philosophical soulmate, and Mary, who came after, was the Beyonce missing in Anne.

    When the tests came after three children with Anne and one with Mary – all girls – the gardens of the marriages were undermined by the foxes of irreconcilable individual differences. The endings were bitter. In Power’s earlier novel, The Human Flow, he quoted Chimamanda Adichie as saying, “You don’t fall in love. You climb up to love.” Power climbed but fell badly.

    Man on the road

    The book is more than a failed love story told by a journalist with a heartfelt, almost naïve honesty. Power’s travel diary is remarkable, not just for his travels but also for the purpose, people, sights, sounds, and smells, as well as the impact of a few of the dramatic moments, like when he was almost stranded in the Caribbean after losing his guide, and later, his wallet.

    His visits to Tanzania, Nigeria, Brazil, Guatemala, and India make for fascinating reading. Curiosity took him on some of these visits, but the quest for the truth, the desire to make a difference by chasing down the main actors – sometimes at significant personal risk – kept him returning to the trail.

    Journalism did not discover the law of gravity, invent the submarine or split the atom. However, this improper job can also be gratifying by occasionally presenting the opportunity to change the course of history by engaging those who sometimes deploy scientific inventions or power in devastating uses.

    Who knows what the world might have been if Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward hadn’t played their part in exposing Watergate or if Oriana Fallaci hadn’t tackled the Shah of Iran?

    Walking a tightrope

    From Chapters 3 to 10, Power writes about his relationship with former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere and how Ujamaa fell far short of its redemptive promise despite the iconic leader’s best intentions.

    A chunk of Power’s diaries on his encounters with influential people is devoted to his friendship with Nigeria’s former President Obasanjo, whom he met in the retired general’s first life as military president.

    The dynamic of Power’s relationship with Obasanjo is quite interesting. He stroked Obasanjo’s ego when asking testy questions, for example, about allegations of human rights abuses against Nigeria’s military – the most appalling of which was in Odi – almost spoiling the interview.

    The relentless stream of presidential guests sometimes threatened his interviews. Still, he managed to navigate it as he navigated his host’s tempestuous mood by sometimes enduring his self-adulatory game of squash. Obasanjo is a bundle of contradictions, nice and nasty in unequal measure.

    Yet, Power managed to get away with openly complimenting the “gorgeous breasts” of Obasanjo’s wife and teasing him about the misuse of oil money, the bane of all Nigerian governments. Did Power get a pass because he might have contributed to saving Obasanjo’s life by speaking to German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on his behalf when Sani Abacha jailed the general on charges of coup plotting?

    The spirit of Martin Luther King

    Power’s visits to Brazil, where, as changes in the Amazon occurred, he observed significant shifts in power relations between peasants and clergy on the one hand and politicians, including Lula, who would later become president, on the other; his incisive conversations in New Delhi with Sonia Gandhi and Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad; and his encounter with Jimmy Carter that may have, by Andrew Young’s account, tangentially been responsible for Carter’s presidency are far more than one can get by viewing history from a keyhole.

    The author’s early years of working on Martin Luther King’s staff in the ghetto slums of Chicago instilled in him the values of pursuing social change through peaceful means, fighting against injustice and discrimination, and fostering a society where everyone is treated with respect.

    Power’s views on US-Russia relations, sometimes sounding like a broken record, are also rooted in his sense of justice, respect and fair play.

    A chastened life

    These values come through, whether in his journalism or filmmaking – even intruding in his love quests, which perhaps explains why, despite the cost, he prioritises a peaceful breakup with Anne over a bitter divorce. The peacenik in him even sometimes brings him into a head-on collision with his improper job, journalism, which prefers to lead if it bleeds.

    The book ends the way it starts: with existential questions about love, life and meaning, viewed from Power’s Swedish soul chastened by adventures. If the world was his oyster, the book is the reader’s shucker. As I look for a proper job, the book’s unpretentiousness and light touch in attempting to answer life’s difficult questions will make me read it again.

  • Rasool is Africa’s missed opportunity to tackle the bully – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Rasool is Africa’s missed opportunity to tackle the bully – By Azu Ishiekwene

    The question is not where US President Donald Trump has not touched in less than 100 days in office. It is how the world is coping with the shock and devastation of his touch and the trail of chaos it is leaving behind. 

    Because of its vulnerabilities, Africa was never far from Trump’s reach. When the continent thought the looming mass deportation of immigrants and the scrapping of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) were among the worst measures in the early days of Trump’s second term, he unleashed a body blow that has left South Africa in a daze.

    As of March 23, South Africa’s Ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, arrived back in Cape Town to tumultuous cheers from large crowds after he departed Washington. He was declared persona non grata by the Trump administration on March 14 for his comments at a webinar. 

    Rasool’s ‘sin’

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio described Rasool’s criticisms of President Trump’s policies as “unacceptable”, adding that the ambassador harboured animosity towards the US president. Rubio said on X, where he also announced the expulsion, Rasool “hates America.”

    The last time the US declared a foreign ambassador persona non grata was 17 years ago, under President George W. Bush. And even then, it retaliated against Bolivia after that country expelled the US ambassador for allegedly interfering in its “internal affairs.”

    What was it that Rasool said? He told a webinar hosted by a South African think tank that Trump was “mobilising a supremacism” and also trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle” as a reaction to the demographic reality of a diminishing white population. 

    He said, “We see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the MAGA movement as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48 percent white.”

    Inconvenient truth

    That was the inconvenient truth. Could it have been said differently? Did Rasool walk into a trap, or was Rubio’s excuse a red herring? Apart from Somalia, no other African country has been targeted by the new US administration as much as South Africa.  

    First, there was an executive order freezing US assistance to Pretoria for alleged “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaans over the Expropriation Act, which seeks to redistribute land in the country, and then followed the stoppage of the USAID-funded HIV/AIDS programme that has put hundreds of lives at risk.

    Rasool did what he had to. I won’t remove anything from his words. Relations between Pretoria and Washington were already testy, and the beads holding them had been broken from the waist by Trump’s chaotic dance steps. It was not a matter of if but which way the beads would fall. 

    Behind the story

    The anti-Pretoria lobby in the US has had it for South Africa for a long time, especially following that country’s stand against Israel in the ongoing war on Gaza. 

    During my visit to Israel last December, the talk at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs was that South Africa took a bribe of $2 billion from Iran to mount a case against the Benjamin Netanyahu government at the International Criminal Court (ICC), an allegation that diplomatic sources in Pretoria have denied.

    Despite Trump’s expression of displeasure, South Africa said it would not withdraw its case of genocide against Israel, saying it is aware that “Standing by our principles sometimes has consequences.”

    Silent Africa

    Rasool’s eviction is another consequence of South Africa’s principled stand, and the country is taking it in its stride. My surprise is the loud silence over Trump’s decision across African capitals. The continent’s media have also treated the story like a footnote. 

    We’re not talking about the US evicting illegal immigrants or smashing drug gangs. We’re talking about an ambassador with a distinguished career in the foreign service who was first appointed to the US in 2010 under Barack Obama. 

    He served for five years and was reappointed because of his extensive US domestic politics experience and ability to navigate complex international relations. 

    Contrary to what Rubio would have the world believe, Rasool’s “cardinal sin” was championing the case against Israel at the ICC – a matter of principle for which the ambassador should have no regrets.

    Either African governments and the AU are too shocked to offer a clear response, or the continent has accepted chaos as the inevitability of the Trump era.

    Dangerous silence

    Whatever it is, silence is a dangerous option. If Trump can evict the ambassador of one of Africa’s most consequential countries for expressing an inconvenient opinion, it is only a matter of time before the less endowed countries will be in the firing line. 

    An academic and diplomat who served in many conflict areas in Africa, Professor Babafemi Badejo, said, “South Africa has, of late, been leading many countries over Gaza-Palestine. About four-fifths of African countries are, at best, lukewarm on this issue.

    “It’s not a surprise that African countries have been mute over the US Secretary of State’s action declaring the South African ambassador persona non grata.”

    If South Africa’s primary offence is its position on the war in Gaza – a position shared by many African countries – why is the continent unable to rally against Rasool’s eviction? Why is the AU silent?

    European example

     In 2018, three European countries – France, Germany and the UK – took a common stand against the US in response to Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the comprehensive action plan to guarantee the nuclear agreement with Iran. They bypassed the dollar-trading system and set up their mechanism to trade with Tehran.

    Why is Africa a spectator in its own case? “Fear of punishments and resignation to a life of minimal relevance, if at all, has been the stance of many African countries,” Badejo said. “How does a Lilliputian state begging for food aid for its people assert itself.”

    Africa’s other reasons

    There could be a less apparent reason Trump would get away with his diplomacy of bullying. Several African leaders would like to copy him. In West and Central Africa, for example, five countries – Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Guinea and Chad – are under military rule. 

    Four of them have broken away from the regional group ECOWAS. Their leaders, who might have been in soup in a different, bygone world, would now consider themselves lucky beneficiaries of a chaotic global order. The last thing they would want to do is to challenge Trump.

    Apart from the President of Cote d’Ivoire, Alassane Ouattara, whose supporters are already urging to continue for a fourth term against the constitutionally approved limit, the presidents of three other African countries are pressing for an extended term limit, the sort of thing Trump is already hinting at. 

    I didn’t expect the South African Development Community (SADC) or the AU to call an extraordinary meeting to discuss Rasool’s expulsion. But it’s a measure of how weak and resigned we have become that neither an officer of these organisations nor an African head of state can call out his eviction. 

    It’s Rasool today. Trump’s next victim is not far away. 

     

    Multichoice apartheid pricing?

    I’m usually not one to interfere with the markets, whatever the invincible foxes or forces want to do. But how can you ignore the nonsense that Multichoice has been up to lately? The pay-tv service provider has increased fees in Nigeria by 21 percent through the backdoor while cutting subscription fees in South Africa by 38 percent! Why? It said the cut in South Africa was a token to subscribers for the cost of living crisis. And in Nigeria? You know the old story – inflation, infrastructure, blah, blah. I wouldn’t mind if Multichoice had a competitor. But it’s nonsense for this monopoly to make most of its profits in this so-called high-risk environment and use it to subsidise subscribers elsewhere. 

    We had a name for it: apartheid! 

     

  • The thing between Godswill and Natasha – By Azu Ishiekwene

    The thing between Godswill and Natasha – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Many years ago, when my teacher said nothing sells like sex, crime, and money, I didn’t fully understand what he meant. Yet, over the years, I’ve repeatedly seen that a judicious mix of these socio-economic ingredients is a spellbinder.

    Apart from the tragic news about banditry, the suspense in Rivers State, and the heightened prostitution amongst politicians crossing carpet or finding new harems, nothing has hugged the headlines as relentlessly as the salacious tango between Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan.

    After weeks of trying to see, hear, and say no evil, I’m compelled to overcome the temptation of abstaining by yielding. It’s not an easy road, believe me – not for those genuinely trying to make sense of it, not for the busybodies and certainly not for the parties involved.

    Managing their libido

    It’s heartbreaking that despite the perennial underperformance of the legislature, managing the libido of its menfolk has piled on the hazards we must endure. 

    But it’s not a Nigerian thing, if that is any comfort. A 2016 study by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) on sexism, harassment and violence against women parliamentarians indicates that 20 percent of women parliamentarians globally report sexual harassment during their terms. The hospitality and healthcare sectors follow the pecking order, with power relations influencing the trend in several industries, professions, and workspaces. 

    Allegations of sexual harassment or assault have indeed been weaponised in the past. From the Central Park Five in the US to Ivan Henry, and Perry Lott, exonerated only two years ago after serving 35 years for a rape conviction in Oklahoma, the literature is replete with cases of persons wrongfully convicted for sexual offences they did not commit. Lott won’t be the last.

    What is behind seven…

    Yet, Akpoti-Natasha’s allegation should be taken more seriously than just another regular nuisance from an under-performing legislative branch. The feedback from insiders has been puzzling. Akpabio and Akpoti-Natasha have been good friends, one source told me. In Akpabio’s Senate presidency, the source said, none of the other three female senators have enjoyed the privileges Akpoti-Uduaghan has, even though she is a first-timer. 

    Jealousy, I thought, especially when my source added that apart from her appointment as chairman of the juicy local content development committee, Akpoti-Natasha had been a part of the Senate president’s entourage on trips to several enchanting destinations before things fell apart. This source, I’ve known for years, is not given to flippancy. But I pressed for more. 

    Show me your friend…

    The source added that Akpoti-Uduaghan’s husband, Emmanuel, a hard-working man, high chief, husband of one wife, and friend of the establishment but a non-legislator, had also executed several significant contracts for the National Assembly running into hundreds of millions of naira. 

    For anyone familiar with how things are done here, lavish travels and contracts for one’s buddies are only a tiny part of the fringe benefits. There is a common saying among Nigerian politicians that one does not give jobs to one’s enemies.

    Yet, if it’s also true that one’s friends can sometimes tell a lot about who they are, then anyone who is Akpabio’s friend and gets special treatment cannot claim they’re strangers to his flippancy, a shortcoming for which he cannot help himself. Akpoti-Uduaghan should know him.

    A lifestyle of rough jokes

    As governor of Akwa Ibom State, he said before TV cameras at a zonal meeting in Port Harcourt that “hungry” state party chairmen of his former party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), should be given one million naira each for snacks at Mr. Biggs. Akpabio also famously said that whatever money cannot do, more money can do. 

    The bawdier variety range from telling young protesters last year that those who wanted to protest could do so “while the rest of us would be here eating.” Not to mention his off-colour quip about the Senate not being a night club or his pre-recess gaffe to “send prayers” (meaning money) to senators just before their holiday.

    The man can’t help himself. He thinks the allegation against him is wokeism gone rogue and called it “a useless allegation of sexual harassment.” But the gravity goes beyond his insinuation that Akpoti-Uduaghan is fighting back for losing her “juicy” committee seat or his charge that she thinks of herself as finer than Snow White, a woman to kill for.

    Under the rug

    The point is that even though he has framed this dispute as a useless distraction, he should never have been the prosecutor and judge in his own case. Because he was involved – the second time in five years – the matter should have been referred to an independent panel or opened to the public.

    Allegations of sexual harassment are often difficult to prove. Many incidents occur privately, leaving no direct witnesses or corroborative testimony. Claims usually rely on the complainant’s words, and documentation of circumstantial evidence is challenging. 

    Referring the matter to the Ethics and Privileges committee was supposed to create a veneer of impartiality. Still, Akpabio’s vindictiveness was apparent long before the committee returned the six-month suspension verdict on Akpoti-Uduaghan. The Senate president was pulling the strings.

    It was not Akpoti-Uduaghan’s right to a fair, impartial hearing alone that was at stake, even though the absence of that should have been sufficient to discredit her punishment. Akpabio has also abridged the rights of the senator’s constituents in Kogi Central by this libidinous overreach. 

    He should have been more restrained. 

    A worrying record

    Discipline of members shouldn’t be taken lightly. Of eight senators suspended since 1999, three have been in the last two years under Akpabio’s presidency. In 236 years, the US Senate has censured nine members. 

    In South Africa, apart from the raft of parliamentarians who resigned after the so-called Travelgate scandal in the early 2000s, the most notable cases of censure since 1994 have been Julius Malema and Jacob Zuma, for different reasons.

    Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele has said Akpoti-Uduaghan was not suspended for her allegation against the Senate president but for multiple breaches, from refusal to sit in her assigned seat, speaking without recognition, disruptive behaviour, and failure to appear before the Senate Ethics Committee, contrary to Senate Orders 2023 as amended.

    With only four women out of 109 senators (both chambers of the National Assembly have eight of 490 members), this might sound like music to the ears of the male-dominated chamber. But in the hallways, just outside their gilded offices, the word is that after a previous sexual harassment allegation by Akpoti-Uduaghan against former presidential aide Reno Omokri, it’s time to teach her a lesson.

    Spouses beware

    Akpabio cannot come clean by asking his wife to tell us what a faithful husband he has been. Or telling us stories of how he spent the night at the Dangote Cement factory to make it to Akpoti-Uduaghan’s wedding. We have an idea what spouses would say in situations like this, and where he spent the night to attend his friend’s wedding is his business.

    Enough of the salacious spellbinder. He should allow an independent investigation and publish the findings to bring closure to this sordid episode.

    Many years ago, when my teacher said nothing sells like sex, crime, and money, I didn’t fully understand what he meant. Yet, over the years, I’ve repeatedly seen that a judicious mix of these socio-economic ingredients is a spellbinder.

    Apart from the tragic news about banditry, the suspense in Rivers State, and the heightened prostitution amongst politicians crossing carpet or finding new harems, nothing has hugged the headlines as relentlessly as the salacious tango between Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan.

    After weeks of trying to see, hear, and say no evil, I’m compelled to overcome the temptation of abstaining by yielding. It’s not an easy road, believe me – not for those genuinely trying to make sense of it, not for the busybodies and certainly not for the parties involved.

    Managing their libido

    It’s heartbreaking that despite the perennial underperformance of the legislature, managing the libido of its menfolk has piled on the hazards we must endure. 

    But it’s not a Nigerian thing, if that is any comfort. A 2016 study by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) on sexism, harassment and violence against women parliamentarians indicates that 20 percent of women parliamentarians globally report sexual harassment during their terms. The hospitality and healthcare sectors follow the pecking order, with power relations influencing the trend in several industries, professions, and workspaces. 

    Allegations of sexual harassment or assault have indeed been weaponised in the past. From the Central Park Five in the US to Ivan Henry, and Perry Lott, exonerated only two years ago after serving 35 years for a rape conviction in Oklahoma, the literature is replete with cases of persons wrongfully convicted for sexual offences they did not commit. Lott won’t be the last.

    What is behind seven…

    Yet, Akpoti-Natasha’s allegation should be taken more seriously than just another regular nuisance from an under-performing legislative branch. The feedback from insiders has been puzzling. Akpabio and Akpoti-Natasha have been good friends, one source told me. In Akpabio’s Senate presidency, the source said, none of the other three female senators have enjoyed the privileges Akpoti-Uduaghan has, even though she is a first-timer. 

    Jealousy, I thought, especially when my source added that apart from her appointment as chairman of the juicy local content development committee, Akpoti-Natasha had been a part of the Senate president’s entourage on trips to several enchanting destinations before things fell apart. This source, I’ve known for years, is not given to flippancy. But I pressed for more. 

    Show me your friend…

    The source added that Akpoti-Uduaghan’s husband, Emmanuel, a hard-working man, high chief, husband of one wife, and friend of the establishment but a non-legislator, had also executed several significant contracts for the National Assembly running into hundreds of millions of naira. 

    For anyone familiar with how things are done here, lavish travels and contracts for one’s buddies are only a tiny part of the fringe benefits. There is a common saying among Nigerian politicians that one does not give jobs to one’s enemies.

    Yet, if it’s also true that one’s friends can sometimes tell a lot about who they are, then anyone who is Akpabio’s friend and gets special treatment cannot claim they’re strangers to his flippancy, a shortcoming for which he cannot help himself. Akpoti-Uduaghan should know him.

    A lifestyle of rough jokes

    As governor of Akwa Ibom State, he said before TV cameras at a zonal meeting in Port Harcourt that “hungry” state party chairmen of his former party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), should be given one million naira each for snacks at Mr. Biggs. Akpabio also famously said that whatever money cannot do, more money can do. 

    The bawdier variety range from telling young protesters last year that those who wanted to protest could do so “while the rest of us would be here eating.” Not to mention his off-colour quip about the Senate not being a night club or his pre-recess gaffe to “send prayers” (meaning money) to senators just before their holiday.

    The man can’t help himself. He thinks the allegation against him is wokeism gone rogue and called it “a useless allegation of sexual harassment.” But the gravity goes beyond his insinuation that Akpoti-Uduaghan is fighting back for losing her “juicy” committee seat or his charge that she thinks of herself as finer than Snow White, a woman to kill for.

    Under the rug

    The point is that even though he has framed this dispute as a useless distraction, he should never have been the prosecutor and judge in his own case. Because he was involved – the second time in five years – the matter should have been referred to an independent panel or opened to the public.

    Allegations of sexual harassment are often difficult to prove. Many incidents occur privately, leaving no direct witnesses or corroborative testimony. Claims usually rely on the complainant’s words, and documentation of circumstantial evidence is challenging. 

    Referring the matter to the Ethics and Privileges committee was supposed to create a veneer of impartiality. Still, Akpabio’s vindictiveness was apparent long before the committee returned the six-month suspension verdict on Akpoti-Uduaghan. The Senate president was pulling the strings.

    It was not Akpoti-Uduaghan’s right to a fair, impartial hearing alone that was at stake, even though the absence of that should have been sufficient to discredit her punishment. Akpabio has also abridged the rights of the senator’s constituents in Kogi Central by this libidinous overreach. 

    He should have been more restrained. 

    A worrying record

    Discipline of members shouldn’t be taken lightly. Of eight senators suspended since 1999, three have been in the last two years under Akpabio’s presidency. In 236 years, the US Senate has censured nine members. 

    In South Africa, apart from the raft of parliamentarians who resigned after the so-called Travelgate scandal in the early 2000s, the most notable cases of censure since 1994 have been Julius Malema and Jacob Zuma, for different reasons.

    Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele has said Akpoti-Uduaghan was not suspended for her allegation against the Senate president but for multiple breaches, from refusal to sit in her assigned seat, speaking without recognition, disruptive behaviour, and failure to appear before the Senate Ethics Committee, contrary to Senate Orders 2023 as amended.

    With only four women out of 109 senators (both chambers of the National Assembly have eight of 490 members), this might sound like music to the ears of the male-dominated chamber. But in the hallways, just outside their gilded offices, the word is that after a previous sexual harassment allegation by Akpoti-Uduaghan against former presidential aide Reno Omokri, it’s time to teach her a lesson.

    Spouses beware

    Akpabio cannot come clean by asking his wife to tell us what a faithful husband he has been. Or telling us stories of how he spent the night at the Dangote Cement factory to make it to Akpoti-Uduaghan’s wedding. We have an idea what spouses would say in situations like this, and where he spent the night to attend his friend’s wedding is his business.

    Enough of the salacious spellbinder. He should allow an independent investigation and publish the findings to bring closure to this sordid episode.

    Apart from the tragic news about banditry, the suspense in Rivers State, and the heightened prostitution amongst politicians crossing carpet or finding new harems, nothing has hugged the headlines as relentlessly as the salacious tango between Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan.

    After weeks of trying to see, hear, and say no evil, I’m compelled to overcome the temptation of abstaining by yielding. It’s not an easy road, believe me – not for those genuinely trying to make sense of it, not for the busybodies and certainly not for the parties involved.

    Managing their libido

    It’s heartbreaking that despite the perennial underperformance of the legislature, managing the libido of its menfolk has piled on the hazards we must endure. 

    But it’s not a Nigerian thing, if that is any comfort. A 2016 study by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) on sexism, harassment and violence against women parliamentarians indicates that 20 percent of women parliamentarians globally report sexual harassment during their terms. The hospitality and healthcare sectors follow the pecking order, with power relations influencing the trend in several industries, professions, and workspaces. 

    Allegations of sexual harassment or assault have indeed been weaponised in the past. From the Central Park Five in the US to Ivan Henry, and Perry Lott, exonerated only two years ago after serving 35 years for a rape conviction in Oklahoma, the literature is replete with cases of persons wrongfully convicted for sexual offences they did not commit. Lott won’t be the last.

    What is behind seven…

    Yet, Akpoti-Natasha’s allegation should be taken more seriously than just another regular nuisance from an under-performing legislative branch. The feedback from insiders has been puzzling. Akpabio and Akpoti-Natasha have been good friends, one source told me. In Akpabio’s Senate presidency, the source said, none of the other three female senators have enjoyed the privileges Akpoti-Uduaghan has, even though she is a first-timer. 

    Jealousy, I thought, especially when my source added that apart from her appointment as chairman of the juicy local content development committee, Akpoti-Natasha had been a part of the Senate president’s entourage on trips to several enchanting destinations before things fell apart. This source, I’ve known for years, is not given to flippancy. But I pressed for more. 

    Show me your friend…

    The source added that Akpoti-Uduaghan’s husband, Emmanuel, a hard-working man, high chief, husband of one wife, and friend of the establishment but a non-legislator, had also executed several significant contracts for the National Assembly running into hundreds of millions of naira. 

    For anyone familiar with how things are done here, lavish travels and contracts for one’s buddies are only a tiny part of the fringe benefits. There is a common saying among Nigerian politicians that one does not give jobs to one’s enemies.

    Yet, if it’s also true that one’s friends can sometimes tell a lot about who they are, then anyone who is Akpabio’s friend and gets special treatment cannot claim they’re strangers to his flippancy, a shortcoming for which he cannot help himself. Akpoti-Uduaghan should know him.

    A lifestyle of rough jokes

    As governor of Akwa Ibom State, he said before TV cameras at a zonal meeting in Port Harcourt that “hungry” state party chairmen of his former party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), should be given one million naira each for snacks at Mr. Biggs. Akpabio also famously said that whatever money cannot do, more money can do. 

    The bawdier variety range from telling young protesters last year that those who wanted to protest could do so “while the rest of us would be here eating.” Not to mention his off-colour quip about the Senate not being a night club or his pre-recess gaffe to “send prayers” (meaning money) to senators just before their holiday.

    The man can’t help himself. He thinks the allegation against him is wokeism gone rogue and called it “a useless allegation of sexual harassment.” But the gravity goes beyond his insinuation that Akpoti-Uduaghan is fighting back for losing her “juicy” committee seat or his charge that she thinks of herself as finer than Snow White, a woman to kill for.

    Under the rug

    The point is that even though he has framed this dispute as a useless distraction, he should never have been the prosecutor and judge in his own case. Because he was involved – the second time in five years – the matter should have been referred to an independent panel or opened to the public.

    Allegations of sexual harassment are often difficult to prove. Many incidents occur privately, leaving no direct witnesses or corroborative testimony. Claims usually rely on the complainant’s words, and documentation of circumstantial evidence is challenging. 

    Referring the matter to the Ethics and Privileges committee was supposed to create a veneer of impartiality. Still, Akpabio’s vindictiveness was apparent long before the committee returned the six-month suspension verdict on Akpoti-Uduaghan. The Senate president was pulling the strings.

    It was not Akpoti-Uduaghan’s right to a fair, impartial hearing alone that was at stake, even though the absence of that should have been sufficient to discredit her punishment. Akpabio has also abridged the rights of the senator’s constituents in Kogi Central by this libidinous overreach. 

    He should have been more restrained. 

    A worrying record

    Discipline of members shouldn’t be taken lightly. Of eight senators suspended since 1999, three have been in the last two years under Akpabio’s presidency. In 236 years, the US Senate has censured nine members. 

    In South Africa, apart from the raft of parliamentarians who resigned after the so-called Travelgate scandal in the early 2000s, the most notable cases of censure since 1994 have been Julius Malema and Jacob Zuma, for different reasons.

    Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele has said Akpoti-Uduaghan was not suspended for her allegation against the Senate president but for multiple breaches, from refusal to sit in her assigned seat, speaking without recognition, disruptive behaviour, and failure to appear before the Senate Ethics Committee, contrary to Senate Orders 2023 as amended.

    With only four women out of 109 senators (both chambers of the National Assembly have eight of 490 members), this might sound like music to the ears of the male-dominated chamber. But in the hallways, just outside their gilded offices, the word is that after a previous sexual harassment allegation by Akpoti-Uduaghan against former presidential aide Reno Omokri, it’s time to teach her a lesson.

    Spouses beware

    Akpabio cannot come clean by asking his wife to tell us what a faithful husband he has been. Or telling us stories of how he spent the night at the Dangote Cement factory to make it to Akpoti-Uduaghan’s wedding. We have an idea what spouses would say in situations like this, and where he spent the night to attend his friend’s wedding is his business.

    Enough of the salacious spellbinder. He should allow an independent investigation and publish the findings to bring closure to this sordid episode.

  • Babangida’s long journey to sorry – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Babangida’s long journey to sorry – By Azu Ishiekwene

    You cannot quarrel about how a man tells his story. It is his business. However, the pseudo-autobiography of the former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, is more than the retired general telling a story of his own life. A Journey in Service is a long, tortuous journey to penitence, which arrives at its destination, if it does at all, leaving its memory behind.

    After 32 years of deflecting, dissembling, dodging and denial, the former military president finally gets as close as possible to remorse, then stops short of saying sorry for his betrayal of his country by blaming several dead and a few feeble living. 

    And yet, Babangida, being Babangida, reserved the best part of his book for himself. He left the worst for those who might have challenged his account and others he believes should have forgotten by now. Babangida will not change, but that’s okay. He shouldn’t also make the mistake of thinking we have all forgotten.  

    Whitewash 

    The prologue says the book is “not about finding blame, inventing excuses or whitewashing known facts.” However, apart from chapters 1 and 2 on his early childhood, chapters 11 and 13 on his home front and retirement, and perhaps one or two other chapters in between, where he struggled to restrain himself, nine of the 12 chapters of the 440-page book are filled with blame, inventions, and whitewashing.

    I start with his relationship with the press. In chapter 6, entitled, “Mounting the Saddle, Defining a Military President,” after throwing Major General Muhammadu Buhari and Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon under the bus for miscarrying their “initial rescue mission,” he praised his government for abolishing Decree 4, passed by Buhari, and granting state pardon to two journalists, Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson of The Guardian, who had been sentenced under the decree.

    Babangida said his heroic act of press redemption warmed his relationship with the media. 

    The other side of the story

    That’s one side of the story, done, like many things Babangida did, with a hidden agenda. Here’s what a report by the media watchdog Media Rights Agenda (MRA) said: “The regime of General Ibrahim Babangida (August 27, 1985 to August 26, 1993) has the dubious distinction of having closed down or proscribed more newspapers and magazines than any other government in Nigeria’s history.

    “Forty-one newspapers and magazines were victims of this practice under the administration; some closed down or proscribed on two different occasions. Twenty-five newspapers and magazines were shut down or proscribed by the Babangida administration in 1993 alone following public agitation for a return to civil democratic rule…”

    The clampdown

    The clampdown didn’t start in 1993. It began in 1987, roughly two years after Babangida came to power. The first target of this press saviour in shining armour was Newswatch magazine, which was banned for six months for publishing a report deemed injurious to the government’s political bureau. This was barely one year after one of the founders of Newswatch, Dele Giwa, was killed in a parcel bomb. 

    Press freedom went downhill from then on, with the government shutting down PUNCH, Concord, Guardian, and Sketch, among others. Another matter is how the military president, even out of office, manipulated the election of newspaper publishers.

    MRA reported that three newspapers owned by John West publications were shut down for publishing the Jennifer Madike stories that “embarrassed the president’s wife.” And when William Keeling, a British journalist with the Financial Times, dared to publish a story alleging that about $5 billion windfall from Gulf War 1 was diverted, Babangida’s government wasted no time bundling him out of the country.

    Seduced by power

    Those too young or indebted to Babangida to see clearly may believe what they choose. But it would be defamatory of reptiles to call the man a chameleon. When General Yakubu Gowon said in the Foreword that being a soldier and a politician was a virtue in Babangida, the old man was being economical with the truth. As Marshal Davout, one of Napoleon’s most outstanding soldiers, said, the best soldiers abhor politics. They take a professional stand. Many who are seduced lose their way. 

    A Journey in Service reminds us of how Babangida sucked in the crème de la crème of the academia to boost the legitimacy of his regime. Regrettably, this handshake across the Ivory Tower, which later extended to the judiciary, labour and sections of civil society, became a deadly stranglehold. Babangida’s book doesn’t contain a hint of the poisonous liaison. 

    We read nothing, for example, about how Babangida inflicted further damage on academia. Under Gowon, the field was already dented by awful interference as military administrators began appointing university visitors. 

    Our Gorbachev?

    But it got even worse. In 1988, Babangida, who framed himself as Nigeria’s answer to Mikhail Gorbachev, ordered the deportation of Patrick Wilmot, a sociology teacher at the Ahmadu Bello University, for teaching “what he was not paid to teach.”

    Yet, if you think Babangida’s attempt to rewrite history was limited only to the press and academia, then you underestimate the disservice of the book. Chapter 12, “Transition to Civil Rule and the June 12 Saga,” is at the heart of the book: it reveals Babangida for who he is – duplicity, the milder version of which is an evil genius. However, anyone remembering this trying period in Nigeria will pinch himself at Babangida’s convenient attempt to take responsibility by shifting the blame. 

    In this chapter, he blamed the Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) for going to court on the eve of the election. Then, he blamed Justice Bassey Ikpeme, an agent of his own Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Clement Akpamgbo, for granting the order to stop the election. 

    Then, he blamed the National Electoral Commission (NEC) chairman, Professor Humphrey Nwosu, for stopping the announcement of the election result. He blamed Nduka Irabor for announcing the annulment of the election from a rough sheet of paper, claiming it was without the knowledge of Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, his second-in-command. 

    Abacha as scapegoat

    Finally, he blamed General Sani Abacha for leading the fifth columnists in his government to sabotage the process. This comprehensive blame account indicts everyone around the boss. Still, it leaves the boss a generous latitude to accept responsibility for the glaring and monumental lapses without apologising to the country he had betrayed.

    “These nefarious ‘inside’ forces opposed to the elections have outflanked me”, Babangida said he remembers saying on Page 275. He didn’t say to whom he was speaking. A whitewash by the whitewasher-in-chief never looked whiter.

    What did he do to “outflank” the “nefarious forces?” By his own account, he convened the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC) after he claimed announcements stopping the elections were being made without his authority. 

    He admitted knowing when Nwosu stopped announcing the result without his approval and when Irabor made the so-called unauthorised announcement. Even before that, his minister Akpamgbo, at whose behest he insinuated that Justice Ikpeme may have acted, attended the AFRC meeting with him. Yet, the commander-in-chief present amidst the chaos lacked the courage to call the shots.

    He did something, though. He yielded to the law of self-preservation, the love of self, and then, only later, like a scoundrel, claimed he was stepping aside for the love of country. He left behind the Interim National Government, a contraption he knew wouldn’t last.

    More questions than answers

    Writing off the book as a triumph of cowardice and dissembling would be harsh. There are a few strands of consistency. For example, Babangida admitted that Dele Giwa was his friend but didn’t say and has never said what became of the multiple investigations into how Giwa was killed by a parcel bomb decades after the tragic event. Yet, Giwa was his friend.

    Babangida said 159 persons, mainly middle-level military officers, were killed in the C-130 NAF aircraft crash in Ejigbo, Ikeja, because of poor aircraft maintenance, but failed to say whose responsibility it was to maintain the aircraft or what happened to the negligent officers in charge. 

    His Mamman Vatsa coup story was also conveniently consistent. Vasta had always envied him from secondary school, even though they sometimes shared bed spaces and clothes. He wasn’t surprised Vatsa would bribe soldiers—one of them with N50k—to put his head on a plate despite the consequences of such a treasonable act. 

    Plea for Vatsa

    Why didn’t he commute the death sentences on Vatsa and others despite the cloud of suspicion around their sentencing and his promise of a review after strong appeals by many, including Nigeria’s leading literary lights, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and JP Clark? Again, he was conveniently consistent. It’s an elementary fact, he says, that plotters don’t live to tell the story, except if, like him, they succeed. 

    But Babangida conveniently forgot at least two notable exceptions of commutation: Kukoi Samba Sanyang’s failed coup against Gambia’s President Dawda Jawara in 1981 and Olusegun Obasanjo/Shehu Musa Yar’Adua failed coup against Abacha in 1995. 

    Perhaps the book’s most surprising accounts included his admission that his friend MKO Abiola won the June 12, 1993, election hands down and his rare praise of Buhari for cleaning up his mess by acknowledging Abiola as “a former head of state” 25 years later. This is surprising because when I interviewed him nine years ago, he said the presidential election result was “inconclusive.” He knew he was lying at the time.

    The five-letter word

    It would be remarkable if Babangida took responsibility for his mistakes and apologised. He is right that life can only be understood backwards. However, to complete the quote by the Danish philosopher and existentialist Soren Kierkegaard, whom he did not name but quoted in part, honesty in living forward is essential for understanding life backwards.

    Instead of the five-letter word – sorry – Babangida tried vainly to use 111,281 words to exorcise the demon within. He failed. In his book On Writing, Stephen King, one of my favourite authors, said honesty is necessary for good writing. Babangida’s pseudo-memoir fails that test.

    A heartfelt thank you…

    My profound thank you to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a man of all seasons, and all who sent messages and prayers on my 60th birthday. I’m overwhelmed. May your kind wishes and prayers return to bless you and yours.

     

    Ishiekwene is the Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • Ribadu’s Fury Over Canada Visa Refusal – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Ribadu’s Fury Over Canada Visa Refusal – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Many Nigerians experience visa refusal daily. They don’t need the National Security Adviser, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, to invoke hell against any country to make the point.

    Unfortunately, Ribadu’s fury after the Canadian High Commission refused visas to Chief of Defence Staff General Christopher Musa and other officials for the winter Invictus Games in Vancouver Whistler was directed at an unlikely target. Canada can be criticised for many things, but Ottawa’s faults do not include consular meanness.

    In the last five years, Canada has been the third-biggest destination for Nigerian immigrants, especially students, after the US and the UK. Multiple sources, including reports by Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), suggest that Canada, New Zealand, and the United Arab Emirates have relatively friendly visa policies for Africans.

    Schengen refusals

    If Ribadu needs any idea of what a visa hell looks like, he should look at Europe, specifically the Schengen area. According to a BusinessDay report, Nigeria ranked among the top five countries globally for Schengen visa refusals between 2022 and 2023.

    Nigerian applicants submitted 86,815 requests three years ago, with 39,189 rejected—a 45.1 percent refusal rate. By 2023, the number of applications had increased to 105,926, but 42,920 were denied, reflecting a slightly lower rejection rate of 40.8 percent. At the rate at which President Donald Trump is going, sooner than later, the US might upstage Schengen as the world’s meanest visa gateway.

    There will hardly be anyone to speak up for the casualties. When ordinary citizens are denied visas, they must deserve it, right? But General Musa is not an ordinary citizen. He is the jewel of Nigeria’s military top brass and should receive full consular courtesies on a good day without a fuss.

    What happened?

    So, what happened? Why did the Canadian High Commission refuse to issue visas to General Musa and the delegation of military officers for the Invictus Games? Let’s dial back.

    Many years ago, citizens didn’t need visas to visit other Commonwealth countries, at least for the first 60 days.

    Even by 1962, when many of these countries imposed visa requirements due to immigration pressures, a few, including Canada, maintained visa-free policies longer than most. It still maintains a visa-free policy for a few Commonwealth countries, while Britain has a much longer list of visa exemptions for some Commonwealth countries, including Malawi and Botswana.

    Africa talks the talk

    Today, even intra-African travel is a big struggle for Nigerian passport holders, despite all the talk by AU about visas on arrival. Thanks to the shameful conduct of a few desperadoes who have elevated the risk factor of the green passport and successive irresponsible governments that have plunged the country into the current mess, travelling with a Nigerian passport is not easy.

    If the country’s status has moved from visa-on-arrival up to the early 1970s in many Commonwealth (and even non-Commonwealth countries) to a status of cautious admission and even outright hostility toward ranking government officials, Ribadu does not need to invoke hell. It’s a metaphor that painfully reminds us of our odyssey.  Why was a four-star general in the Nigerian army denied a visa in a manner that has turned into a street brawl?

    Cracks within

    A few days after Ribadu asked the Canadian High Commission to “go to hell”—an expression that might have shocked even the hosts of hell’s consular services—it came to light that the refusal may have had more to do with the tardiness of a desk officer at the army’s protocol department than with the Canadian High Commission in Abuja.

    The Nation newspaper quoted competent sources as saying that the Army failed to attach the note verbale from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that should have accompanied the visa applications.

    If that is correct – and the military authorities have not denied the report – how was that Canada’s fault? The question still needs to be asked: How did 14 of the 21 soldiers enrolled get visas when the officials and delegation leader could not be processed?

    Calm down…

    Ribadu is not just another government official. He would be justified in feeling slighted about a perceived diplomatic slight on Nigeria’s contingent, even if it was a contingent attending the Munich beer festival. But his office demands a sober and dignified response, not the sort of thing Idi-Amin might have said on the eve of evicting thousands of Asians from Uganda.

    The report of official tardiness was sobering enough, but the purpose was no less puzzling. Of course, Prince Harry’s brilliant idea of the Invictus is to give wounded servicemen and veterans a chance to connect and bond with others as they remind us of their sacrifices for our safety and security and rediscover meaning in a shared humanity. But since its start in 2014, Invictus has been a summer game.

    Their winter games

    If the organisers decided to extend it to the winter to include adaptive sports, such as alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, skeleton and wheelchair curling, among others – hardly core Nigerian sports – that is fair enough. Yet, how any of these sports seriously concern Nigeria when only 15 African countries have participated in the Winter Olympics in 58 years between 1960 and 2022, and of this number, only seven have done so more than once, is another matter.

    Winter is not our thing. The urgency of the task at home – a stubborn rise in the wave of insurgency in the Northeast and North West, despite reported gains in some areas – requires the full attention of the military’s top command. General Musa should have delegated attendance.

    How not to be angry

    Managing the refusal was no less scandalous. If a bunch of secondary school students on a Sudoku exhibition tour to Kathmandu was refused visas and decided to moan about it on TikTok, I can understand that.

    But it defies common sense that Nigeria’s top security adviser would dramatise a matter well within his reach to investigate and take remedial steps, if necessary. Ribadu neither did himself nor General Musa any favours by his intemperate remarks. He gave ordinary folks something to jeer about and made the country look ridiculous.

    Can’t stay down

    Idiots may have brought the country to its knees, down from a place where Africa, the Commonwealth, and the rest of the world looked up to us and our passport ranked among the most respected. But nothing says we must stay there.

    The job at hand is to dig us out of that hole, a significant point Ribadu made but sadly lost in his fit of anger. Modern consular diplomacy includes, among other things, a timely, trusted, and secure data-sharing system that gives parties to a transaction reasonable comfort. Where that fails, nasty surprises are inevitable.

    Not much can get done by tantrums or by a false sense of entitlement.

  • Understanding the nonsense about State creation – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Understanding the nonsense about State creation – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Many years ago, when my son was completing paperwork for a job with the Lagos State government, he was required to fill out a form that included his State of Origin. He paused.

    It had been marked a compulsory field, and he wanted to know if not filling it would affect his chances. I said it would. He replied that he wouldn’t fill it, even if it meant losing the job. It didn’t make sense to him that his chances might come down solely not to his competence, merit, or the fact that he was born in Lagos, where he has resided all his life – but to the state where he is from.

    He didn’t fill it and didn’t get the job, though I cannot remember if there were other reasons. Nigeria is the only country I know where a citizen or resident is compulsorily required to fill out their state of origin and local government and provide details of their forbears to the fourth and fifth generation as a basis for getting a job or contract.

    In the beginning

    It’s mainly a public sector thing – the sector that has been our blessing and bane. In its original form, “state representation,” apart from being a core unit of the federation, was also supposed to be a form of affirmative action. It was supposed to be a tool to encourage fair representation and protection, especially for ethnic minorities. The colonial government laid the foundation with the Sir Henry Willink Commission in 1957 to examine the agitation of minorities on the eve of Nigeria’s independence.

    But like all good things politicians touch, they have managed to debase it. It’s convenient to argue that it was not politicians but the military that started it. States have been created five times since former Head of State General Yakubu Gowon created 12 from the four regions in 1967 to weaken Biafra.

    But Gowon did it at the behest of politicians, as has every other military leader after him, including military President Ibrahim Babangida, who loved it so much he did it twice.

    Growing obsession

    Nigeria has since grown from 12 to 36 states. Former Head of State General Sani Abacha delivered the last set of sextuplets of states in 1996. Yet, the urge for more has not only become a national pastime. It is perhaps the next single biggest obsession of politicians after “budget padding”, a practice that permits lawmakers to inflate the annual appropriation bill to gratify themselves.

    All 10 National Assemblies since 1999 have never failed to mention and pursue the creation of more states. Committees on state creation have travelled the country at substantial public expense, selling new states as the snake oil to “marginalised” communities.

    At the end of such jamborees, including the collection of tonnes of memos that only feed the public a false hope, the politicians leave expectant communities high and dry until the following memo collection by a new set of politicians who lie to themselves that state creation is the medicine for social injustice. Not exactly true.

    Not a joking matter

    State creation is a serious business. For example, the request for a new state in Nigeria must be supported by at least two-thirds of the representatives from the area, from the councils to the state and National Assembly.

    That’s the first step. After that, it must undergo a referendum that must be ratified by a simple majority of all the states in the federation and by a simple majority of members of the National Assembly. Military governments in the country created states without much resistance because of their unitary command and control structure. Even at that, deadly disputes among splintered states lingered and still linger on for years.

    The assets-sharing dispute between Kano and Jigawa States lasted 18 years, while the boundary dispute between Cross River and Akwa Ibom continues after 38 years, with many lives lost. The Oyo-Osun post-state creation clashes rank high on the violent dispute ladder, stoking agitation for the creation of the New Oyo State. The case between Bauchi and Plateau remained a low-intensity dispute that later morphed into ethnoreligious clashes.

    States abroad

    It’s not for nothing that none of the world’s most prominent federations, such as India, the US, Canada, or Brazil, has created a new state in the last 50 years. This is not because of a lack of demand or because these countries have no ethnic minorities who feel endangered. Instead, they are evolving ways of managing their diversity that reduce the salience of statism as a basis for social justice, such as prioritising merit and competence.

    Agitation for more states remains a recurring problem in Nigeria because politicians have managed to frame it as perhaps the most viable route to development – the channel connecting neglected communities to Abuja’s drunken sailors.

    Many governors have praised state creation not necessarily for the opportunities they have created from the exercise by looking inwards but because of their access to Abuja’s monthly pie. For being a state, however miserably governed, Nigerian states are entitled to 26.72 percent of the monthly revenue from the federation account, which can run into billions of naira. Among politicians, the lust for a share of this pie or monthly allocation is at the heart of the relentless demand for new states.

    Making it 67?

    The House of Representatives’ bill to create 31 additional states to bring the number to 67 is a joke. As far as demands for new states go, the most rigorous effort in the last 20 years was in 2014, when President Goodluck Jonathan’s government set up the National Conference to discuss mainly structural issues facing the country.

    The conference recommended 18 additional states to bring the number to 54. The main arguments were the arbitrariness in previous exercises by the military. In the case of the South East, the point was made that the region has remained maliciously underserved in political representation, making it look like a continuation of Nigeria’s Civil War by other means.

    A fundamental difference between the conference’s recommendation and others before and after it is the suggestion for six equipotent zones (with the same number of states), which would form the basis of the federating units with the centre. The conference further recommended that each zone could create more states if it deemed desirable and could finance it.

    An unlikely adventure

    There was no final agreement. “My experience at the conference,” Chief Ajibola Ogunshola, one of the members representing the South West, wrote in a paper in 2017, “suggests that it is highly unlikely that the establishment of zonal governments now or in the near future can be achieved through voluntary, peaceful negotiations.”

    It’s even more unlikely now that the Federal Government is almost broke and only four of the 36 existing states are solvent. A 2023 report by the public sector transparency watchdog, BudgIT, said 32 states relied on Federal Allocation for at least 55 percent of their monthly revenue.

    What matters

    Are politicians genuinely interested in social justice, inclusiveness and development for their communities? They must look beyond the random creation of new states, quotas, privileges and other forms of affirmative action, often a disincentive to merit, resourcefulness and innovation.

    States are not in short supply, yet because of primordial greed, the campaign for more will not abate until each of Nigeria’s 350 ethnic nationalities has one. Politicians know the difference between greed and necessity but will not dare to make the right choice. They earn a living by feeding their communities false hope.

     

    Ishiekwene, Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP, is the author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • From America first to America alone: The lab meets the street – By Azu Ishiekwene

    From America first to America alone: The lab meets the street – By Azu Ishiekwene

    It’s nearly 20 years since Mark Steyn wrote a non-fiction book, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.

    Steyn, a Canadian newspaper columnist, could not have known that the kicker of this book title, which extolled America as the last bastion of civilisation as we know it, would become the metaphor for a wrecking ball.

    Steyn thought demographic shifts, cultural decline, and Islam would ruin Western civilisation. The only redeeming grace was American exceptionalism. Nineteen years after his book, America Alone is remembered not for the threats Steyn feared or the grace of American exceptionalism but for an erratic president almost alone in his insanity.

    The joke is on Steyn

    In less than one month of his second presidency, Donald Trump has declared an imperial intention to seize property outside the US and rename international boundaries. He has hinted at annexing a sovereign country, criminalised migration, and dragged his largest trading partners, including his neighbours, to the negotiation table at gunpoint.

    When America Alone is mentioned today, it’s not a defence against threats to Western values or civilisation; it’s simply that Trump’s America First has turned the country into a clear and present danger to the values that built and prospered America and the rest of the world. America is losing its way, alone and aloof, in a brazen insularity that evokes pity and surprise in equal measure, even amongst its harshest critics.

    Yet, as Trump danced on the grave of Adam Smith by instigating a trade war that has left the world on edge and global markets in turmoil, the president appears determined to take America beyond pity, surprise, and loneliness. America will soon be ignored.

    Trump’s case

    What is Trump’s case against Mexico, Canada, China, America’s neighbours and its most significant trading partners? The US president accused the first two of not doing enough to control the flow of fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid analgesic more than 50 times more powerful than morphine, into the US.

    Apart from his perennial accusations against China of stealing US technology and other unfair trade practices, Trump also accused Beijing of sending ingredients for making fentanyl to Mexico. Mexico has been Trump’s punching bag since his first term when he wanted to build a wall funded by that country to keep out the so-called human caravans, drug cartels and other criminal gangs from entering the US.

    Polariser-in-Chief

    Perhaps Trump has a just cause to take America back from drugs and crime, not to mention his redemptive mission for aliens in some parts of the US now reduced to “eating the dogs and the pets.”

    However, for a president who said in his second inaugural address that his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier,” instigating a chaotic trade war, once described by Adam Smith as “beggar-thy-neighbour”, is anything but a peace offering.

    Tariffs might be the most beautiful word in Trumptionary. However, nothing sets the world on fire in the lexicon of international trade, such as tariffs, quotas, and sometimes subsidies.

    A different world

    Even when the world was far less interlinked than it is today, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 (enacted to protect US farmers and businesses from foreign competitors), which imposed a 20 percent tariff on imports, was resisted with retaliatory tariffs by 25 other countries, creating significant distress around the world and worsening the Great Depression.

    The reality in today’s profoundly connected world is worse. Within hours of the president announcing the 25 percent tariffs, the Canadian dollar and the Mexican peso fell. The Canadian dollar reached its lowest value in 20 years, while the peso hit a four-year low. Stock markets lost billions, and commodity prices surged.

    Counting the cost

    Before the one-month tariff pause between the US and its neighbours, analysts forecast the tariffs would hinder US GDP growth by approximately 0.25% to 0.3%. The tariffs on Canada and Mexico alone could decrease overall economic output by around $45 billion, with potential losses escalating to $75 billion following retaliatory measures.

    Of course, these are all aside from the potential impact of unilateral tariffs on US jobs and consumer prices and a global supply chain crisis in fragile recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The pause does not affect China, and a tariff war between the world’s leading economies is afoot. In what must rank as one of the cruellest ironies of these times, China, not the US, is honouring the rules-based system by first taking its case to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), while Trump threw tariff bombs on Truth Social.

    The jury is out on the immediate and long-term damage caused by this trade war. It did not leave any winners the first time Britain used it in the 19th century, when it enacted the protectionist Corn Laws, or when OPEC used it in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War. America First is a long winter in America Alone. The damage to the US and the rest of the world will linger long after the Trump years.

    Dagger in Africa’s back

    Africa is not spared in the all-out war. The continent is perplexed that USAID, one of the longest-standing tools of US soft power, is folding in the chaos of America First. The independent US government agency created by Congress 64 years ago to deepen the strategic partnership between America and Africa on issues ranging from security to health and the environment is closed for now, not by an Act of Congress, but by a Trump fiat.

    No one is precisely sure what his official auctioneer, Elon Musk, plans to do with USAID or what will replace it. What is certain is that this bridge is broken.

    Countries like Nigeria received $1.02 billion in 2023, Ethiopia $1.7 billion the same year, and Kenya $512 million in 2024. Others, including Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, and South Africa, also received various sums to fund their food security, humanitarian, and health programmes. USAID was neither perfect nor America’s Hail Mary for Africa. It was, by and large, a mutually beneficial programme. But Africa must now look elsewhere, or better inwards.

    In addition, it’s unlikely that a tariff-obsessed Trump would renew the expiring African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which opens the US to duty-free access to over 6,000 products from the continent.

    Elsewhere, the war may be about human caravans, fentanyl, or pirated chips. In Africa, whose immigrants in the US face deportation in large numbers, it’s about all of these and more. It is about losing friendship with a country that was once an inspiration and, more often than not, a moral force for good.

    Pyrrhic victory

    The White House may be enjoying a victory lap, but chaos was not the only way for Trump to settle his grouse or to save America from the world. For example, under President Joe Biden, Mexico deployed 10,000 troops to the US border before, without a threat. For Canada, the price of appointing a fentanyl czar is far less than the long-term damage to US-Canada relations.

    We already know how the war against China will end: Beijing will make new friends and spread its influence elsewhere, while Washington will make new enemies.

    Africa must accept that America First is more than a slogan under Trump. It is where the unfinished experiments of his first term and the promise of chaos during his last campaign meet the street: America Alone.

     

    Ishiekwene, Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP, is the author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It. 

  • Preparing for Trump deportation copycats in Europe – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Preparing for Trump deportation copycats in Europe – By Azu Ishiekwene

    I can understand if many people outside the US wish to forget about President Donald Trump and get on with their lives. However hard you try, you can’t keep up with the chaos in the White House since January 20.

    It would be a defamation of the animal kingdom to call Trump a bull in a China shop. He is worse. Regrettably, Trump is inspiring copycats around the world, and it won’t be long before they start following his example, especially his anti-immigration hysteria.

    Trump didn’t create the migrant crisis facing the world. He wasn’t there when the Huns, Goths, and Vandals invaded Europe, marking the first recorded significant migration and reshaping European demographics. Conquests, geography, tyranny, wars, or the sheer human desire for new frontiers have always led to different kinds of migration. Even the contemporary rise in migrations had nothing to do with Trump. 

    Before Trump

    For example, the Syrian Civil War, the destabilisation of Central Asia, and later the conflicts in Sudan and Central Africa, all of which also had nothing to do with Trump, have been some of the biggest migration triggers in the last nearly two decades.

    However, the cruelty of Trump’s approach has been different, something that otherwise civilised countries—including Britain—are surprisingly fascinated by. Deporting undocumented migrants using military planes and hunting them down in sanctuaries by executive orders that read like martial laws is, let’s put it plainly, fascist. 

    We saw a bit of it in his first coming, but the fragile balance in Congress restrained him. Now, there are nearly no guardrails except perhaps the courts. Under Trump, this new face of US exceptionalism may gradually gain appeal in other parts of the world, mainly Europe.

    More than a report

    On January 22, The Telegraph of the UK carried a story whose timing could hardly have been fortuitous. The story, published as the first batch of Mexican immigrants were being herded aboard a military aircraft at the US southern border, was entitled, “Up to one in 12 in London is an illegal migrant.”  

    The story said, “Government ‘must do more on deportations’ as new estimate suggests more than one million people are illegally living in the UK,” with London, the largest haven, hosting 585,000 of these illegal immigrants.

    The report said these numbers may even be underestimated and blamed illegal immigrants for the pressure on the health service, public utilities and infrastructure. The Labour government must crack down on illegal immigrants, the report said, to save Britain from imminent ruin.

    Stoking the flames

    Immigrant bashing is not new in Britain. That was one of the main reasons for Brexit. Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Co. fabricated numbers to suggest that not only foreigners from faraway places but also eastern Europeans were stealing British jobs and making the country hell when many of these immigrants were doing odd jobs that British citizens were not interested in. Farage’s Reform UK party rode on the back of this illiberal sentiment to get 14 percent of the votes in the last election. He is still stoking the flames.  

    In a slight reinvention of what Abraham Lincoln did with Liberia in the 19th century, UK Conservatives under Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak made a deal that could potentially ship off about 52,000 asylum seekers to Rwanda in a few years. As controversial as this deal remains, it’s considered better than the misery under which migrants, including children, were held indefinitely in detention camps.

    The danger of the Trump model

    However, if the prevailing Trump model takes hold in Britain or elsewhere in Europe, even detention camps in Manus or Nauru may soon look like redemption centres. Grabbing people from wherever they may be found, handcuffing them and herding them off to the airports to be deported on military flights like war criminals may appease right-wing sentiments in the short run. Still, it hardly addresses the root cause of the crisis: though the decision is hardly random, people will go wherever they believe they will have a better life if they can pay the price.

    The other side of the argument is that governments must also take action to protect their citizens and their countries. Yet, in doing so, civilised countries recognise there are international conventions, including the Geneva Convention on Refugees, that protect migrants, especially those fleeing persecution. The current Trumpian model tears families – including children – apart, treating potential deportees like animals. 

    Mind the gap

    It’s a model that Britain and the rest of Europe must resist. Trump is an aberration, even though the next four years may feel like a lifetime. It doesn’t matter how hard he tries; the US, a country with a significant immigrant gene (13 percent of the population is born outside), will hardly shed it in four years of a chaotic government. 

    One of the most iconic Republican Presidents, Ronald Reagan, once said, “Our nation is a nation of immigrants. More than any other country, our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands.”

    Schengen countries, particularly Greece, Italy, France, Spain, and Belgium, tend to face more significant pressure due to geographical and historical ties with non-European countries. Yet, this is the more reason Europe needs to resist being Trump’s copycats because we have seen that xenophobia has far more deadly effects on the stability of these societies than it might have in the US, with a larger, better-adjusted migrant population. 

    Changing attitudes

    It’s fair to argue that the resurgence of violent extremism, the narcotic trade, not to mention other franchises of criminal gangs trafficking in humans, have blurred the lines between genuine migrants and refugees, putting host countries at serious risk. Yet populist politicians do severe damage by exploiting the fears and magnifying the problem. 

    After 9/11, attitudes towards migrants, especially those from largely poor Muslim countries, have been exploited by Western politicians often to create the trope that their culture and civilisation are under siege. Yet, in a country like France, for example, with a significant Muslim population, studies have shown that people believe the number of Muslims to be four times the actual figure. At the same time, in the UK, their presence was overestimated by a factor of three.

    Historically, migration has never been in one direction, even for countries that were once major destinations. Yet Trump’s recent actions evoke Idi-Amin framing Indians and Pakistanis as the problem with Uganda decades ago, after which he brutally expelled 50,000 of them or the Nigerian government in the 1980s under Shehu Shagari expelling thousands of Ghanaians, only for Nigerians to find that the real problem was an incompetent political leadership.

    Migration is not a destination

    Thomas Sowell’s book Migrations and Cultures: A World View, a classic on the subject, records that even though the migrations of conquerors, refugees, slaves, and sojourners have been outstripped by those of migrants going to settle permanently in new lands, “It has been estimated that, between the mid-1830s and the late 1930s, approximately 30 million people left the Indian subcontinent and nearly 24 million returned.”

    Any country anxious to emulate Trump should remember that migration is a process, not always a destination. While some sojourners never leave to return to their countries of origin, some keep moving, and others, like Trump’s grandfather, who emigrated to the U.S. from Germany to avoid military service, return despite the odds. 

    Migration can be harmful and good, but the single narrative that frames it as the root cause of nearly all of today’s social problems is lazy populism, which denies even the personal odysseys of its propagators. 

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • Trump’s message from God for Africa – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Trump’s message from God for Africa – By Azu Ishiekwene

    It’s hard to argue when U.S. President Donald Trump says that God saved him to save America. Not only is a rational argument often suspended or lost when God enters the matter, but Trump’s return as the 47th president defies logic.

    A leader’s job is never done. But how do you rationally explain Kamala Harris’s defeat in the presidential election and, along with it, the routing of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in the Congress? If the election were a boxing match, it would have beaten the record of Vitali Klitschko vs Shannon Briggs’s 2010 fight as one of the most one-sided in boxing history.

    Biden’s sins

    And it’s not a laughing matter. Trump was a joke, but God, they say, uses jokers to teach serious people some lessons. I don’t mean his sordid personal record just yet. I mean where Biden had taken America compared to where Trump left it in 2021. Recovery from COVID-19 was largely exemplary, thanks to Biden letting data and science lead. The management of inflation on his watch (average 5.2 percent) has been the envy of most of the world, especially Europe.

    The negotiations with Big Pharma to review the prices of prescription drugs saved taxpayers billions, not to mention the benefits of peace of mind.

    He added 16.6 million jobs, achieved the lowest unemployment in five decades, and invested over $300 billion to rebuild roads and bridges. In contrast to climate change denier Trump, who pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, even though experts have described climate change as one of the world’s biggest threats in the next two to ten years, Biden returned America to the agreement and aggressively pursued investment in clean energy.

    Forget the record!

    But it turned out that whatever logic or facts might offer, God had other plans, according to Trump. It could only have been divine because how come voters didn’t remember Biden’s record or, if they did, we are now told the record didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was how they felt at election time – a concept obviously outside the realm of logic.

    Follow divination

    Trump’s sordid record didn’t matter in this solemn divination, this act of God. At the peak of his trials, Trump faced 91 criminal counts and multiple indictments. He was convicted on 34 counts for falsifying business records during his hush money trial and impeached twice. Just at the door to the White House, he was sentenced for a felony but received “unconditional discharge.”

    Voters knew his record up until November 5; nothing was secret. Yet, in a divination that spared him to redeem America—one of the few countries, apart from South Africa, Sweden and Finland, where a candidate can be elected even with a convict’s milestone around his neck—Trump won resoundingly.

    It’s pointless trying to figure it out. Trump is here to finish what he couldn’t in his first coming. At the Inauguration on Monday, he announced a glorious new American dawn, the very purpose for which 1) the hand of fate made voters turn a blind eye to Trump’s chaotic record and 2) God saved him from being killed twice. Who can argue against that?

    While we’re getting used to the political science of feelings and divinations over facts and logic, it might be helpful to ask what this second missionary journey means for Africa. It does seem that God saved Trump not only to save America from itself but also to save America from Africa.

    Relief, at last

    His victory is a relief for several countries with strict LGBT laws. Nigeria has an anti-LGBT law that criminalises same-sex marriage and public display of affection by persons of the same sex, with a fine of up to 14 years imprisonment.

    It battled to hold its ground against US pressure for over a decade. When Biden was going out the door, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed a law banning homosexuality in the military – something that may have played out differently if Harris of the Democratic Party had won.

    But Nigeria’s anti-LGBT laws are not even close to those of Uganda, which imposed the death penalty, a move that Biden described as “a tragic violation of universal human rights” and on whose watch Uganda was removed from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), among other reprisals.

    Tanzania and Ghana were not too far behind a backlash under Biden for their stringent anti-LGBT laws, a misery from which they have now been delivered. In his second missionary journey, Trump has condemned all forms of “social engineering” and declared from day one there are only two sexes in the US – male and female.

    This second coming is not only about the sexes or gender. Money—well, not precisely real money—is involved, too, for Africans. Crypto is getting popular on the continent. Data from Creditcoin’s blog suggests that African youths, particularly in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, are playing big. One source says that 35 percent of those aged between 18 and 60 in Nigeria owned or traded crypto assets in 2022.

    The year before was a nightmare for crypto traders in Nigeria after the Central Bank banned trading in crypto assets, and it has been a long winter since. Well, the new crypto godfather has just arrived on the scene. In what signalled a brave new dawn for the token and its youthful lovers on the continent, Trump and his wife, Melania, launched personalised cryptos and became crypto billionaires hours before the President’s inauguration.

    Flipside

    Yet, the flipside of this balance sheet is concerning for Africa. AGOA, which provides duty-free access to over 6,000 products from the continent, is due for renewal this year.

    Some African countries have benefited significantly from it. For example, Ghana’s exports to the U.S. grew from $206 million in 2000 to $2.76 billion in 2022. Kenya’s AGOA-related apparel exports grew from $55 million in 2001 to $603 million in 2022, while South Africa’s automotive exports also increased. Angola and Nigeria have also gained.

    These gains are at risk from Trump, who described “tariff” as the most beautiful word in the dictionary.

    Trump’s America First policy means the continent may have to look out for itself, which it does poorly even at the best times. This is hardly good news for subregional institutions like the ECOWAS, whose fragile multinational security arrangement was recently further weakened by the exit of four West African countries.

    Nor are swathes of African migrants still trying to find a footing in the U.S. going to see Trump’s second missionary journey with its promise of criminalising migration as funny. The President’s attack on the bishop of Washington who asked for mercy for migrants tells the whole story.

    Ask God

    It doesn’t matter. Trump is not pretending he is on this mission to save the world. He’s not in it to save the climate, make his neighbours happy, champion a global moral force for good, or prevent chaos in international trade. He is sure not on this journey for Africa that was not on the ballot when he was elected, warts and all.

    Conservatives, especially African evangelicals, who love him do so for the same reason Christians swear by Israel in the mistaken belief that it is a Christian country. It is not, in the same token, by which Trump’s piety is skin deep. But that is immaterial now.

    Anyone who doubts that Trump is on a divine mission can take up the matter with God.

     

    Ishiekwene, Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP, is the author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It. 

  • Trump, again…. – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Trump, again…. – By Azu Ishiekwene

    On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 45th President of the U.S., on January 19, 2017, I wrote an article I could easily write now. It was entitled “A Memory of America on Obama’s Last Day.” With minor edits, it’s worth repeating as Trump happens again as the 47th President of the U.S. 

    Only exceptionalism could have offered that opportunity. Only exceptionalism could produce a Barack Obama and, eight years later, bring forth a Donald Trump—one neoliberal and the other a neo-anything-is-possible.

    The peculiar aspect of the U.S. is that everything is extraordinary. If any doubt remains, the election of Donald J. Trump, who takes office on Friday as the 45th President of the United States of America, resolves the matter.

    Everything about Trump is unsettlingly peculiar. He has weakened his party, exploited voters’ most basic instincts, ignored the media, and mocked U.S. allies. Nonetheless, he has secured a victory that has made him even more powerful and audacious. Everyone else, including the party and the nation, seems weaker, more bewildered, and divided.

    In Trump versus the rest of the world, Trump is the indescribable enigma. The rest are demystified and stranded.

    As the new Trump world order emerges, exceptionalism – once a distinctly American concept – assumes a different significance. I grappled with that word when I first encountered it from my lecturer, Ayo Akinbobola, many years ago in school.

    Exceptionalism. How do I explain it? It’s that special quality for which most people love America; the idea that you can become whatever you wish to be, whoever you are, regardless of your background; that through hard work, persistence, and innovation, you can attain grace from grass; that America is the only place on earth that confronts its diversity with courage, not shying away from its own worst demons; that America is a land of both genius and demagogue, each pursuing their path, but within a system that also strives to protect the weak and vulnerable while, some would add, paradoxically creating its own weak and vulnerable.

    I learned from my US-trained teachers in school and saw from the cowboy movies I watched growing up that this made America unique.

    My first American friends embodied the generosity of spirit I had always heard about. Melvin and Paula Baker, whom my family and I met during a holiday in Florida over ten years ago, have consistently treated us like family, offering themselves and everything they have at our disposal whenever we visit.

    Melvin and Paula are white, but colour or creed has never been a concern—whether we or they are visiting. Occasionally, I’m amused to see them sweating over a meal of pepper soup, even when it contains the mildest spices.

    America is exceptional not because it is perfect but because, despite its flaws, people like Melvin and Paula made it extraordinary.

    Then 9/11 happened. Fear took hold, and exceptionalism faced its most significant test since Vietnam. The political elite and the military leaders started a catastrophic war in Iraq by dressing up fear and suspicion as facts.

    That changed everything. Al-Queda, the Taliban, ISIL and other terror franchises around the world were born by the mother of all wars from which America and the world have not recovered.

    I felt the change around this time seven years ago when I visited the U.S. before Christmas. A young Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had planted a bomb in his pants to bring down a commercial plane over Detroit. Coming at America’s vulnerable moment, there was a severe backlash from that incident. 

    During my visit in January 2010, many U.S. airports and border posts opened a black book for Nigerian travellers. The intrusive body searches at these airports and the cold, hostile stares at non-whites left me in no doubt that something was changing in America.

    But Barack Obama’s election was supposed to halt the tide; it was supposed to send a message that America had not wholly forsaken exceptionalism, that if a black guy with a funny Muslim-sounding name could become president in America, you could be what you want to be – no matter who you are – if you work at it.

    That’s Obama’s story, which he calls “the audacity of hope.” How else could someone born to a Kenyan father and raised by an Indonesian stepfather become a senator and then the 44th president of the United States?

    Yet, some say that it is precisely this exceptional quality that is the trouble with America. They say it is exceptionalism that produced an Obama who is not black enough to meet black expectations, not white enough to be accepted by whites, and not brown enough to attract the sympathy of those in between.

    Evangelicals regard him as the anti-Christ for endorsing stem cell research and despise him for his late remarks on gay rights. Millions of Nigerians will also not forgive him for never once visiting the world’s most populous black nation during his eight years in office, opting instead to throw stones from Ghana, the country’s backyard.

    It’s a deep bucket, but who can deny that America’s exceptionalism produced a miracle that Martin Luther King could only dream of?

    Eight years ago today, America was on its knees, broken by a catastrophic terror war and greedy Wall Street.

    Globalisation was also taking its toll and would become a significant factor in U.S. politics. To think that this was the moment when the country elected its first black president –when the lines of failure seemed to have fallen in the most unpleasant places – is hard to imagine now.

    But it happened, and Obama made the most of his lemons. In several ways, he’s leaving America better than he found it: jobs growing, the country cured of its addiction to oil, its economy in better shape, and its youth unleashed and innovating.

    Obama is leaving without the scars of scandals that marred many of his predecessors. The dignity of his office is intact.

    Only exceptionalism could have provided that chance. Only exceptionalism could produce an Obama and eight years later produce a Trump – the one neo-liberal and the other neo-anything-is-possible.

    In the days ahead, no one is exactly sure what to expect – not pollsters, pundits, or even members of Trump’s cabinet. But we’ll see, one tweet at a time, just what is left of what has made America exceptional.

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It.