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Tag: Hope Eghagha

  • Truth spoken before its time: Professor Bolaji Akinyemi at 80! – Hope Eghagha

    Truth spoken before its time: Professor Bolaji Akinyemi at 80! – Hope Eghagha

    By Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

    Any man who has spent eighty long years on earth in good health would, ought to acknowledge longevity as God’s gift. Especially so in Nigeria where the average life expectancy is 54.69. Achieving the 80 year milestone is not by hard work. It is not because one had lived by the rules – nutrition rules, health rules, spiritual rules. Or engaged the best doctors. Employed the best nutritionists. Walked gingerly through good and bad roads. A long life as we now understand it is not by mathematical calculations. It is often outside the control of man. So, when a highly visible and iconic public figure as Professor Bolaji Akinyemi turns 80 on 4th of January 2022, we must roll out the flowers and drums with great panache in thanksgiving to God. As a man of faith, son of a cleric, my big mentor and public service model, Professor Akinyemi acknowledges the grace of God in his life!

    His signature cute and ubiquitous bow tie which became the acme of the sartorial elegance of the iconic Professor Bolaji Akinwande Akinyemi as a public official in the 1970s has remained etched in our memory and consciousness some thirty-five odd years after he left formal public office. It is true that he has quit public office, first as Director-General Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) under the Murtala/Obasanjo military administration and later as Minister of External Affairs under the Ibrahim Babangida administration. Yet, this eclectic public intellectual in the Henry Kissinger tradition has not quit the public space thanks to a very active media presence. He is an interviewer’s delight, often displaying a profound and historical if socio-scientific understanding of contemporary national and international political and social issues.

    Yet, to reduce our remembrance of Akinyemi to sartorial matters reduces, indeed profanes the gamut of intellectual contributions of this public intellectual to the development of policy framework in Nigeria. As a man who bubbled and still bubbles with big ideas on national development, foreign policy, interethnic relations, international relations, electoral reforms, and national security, Akinyemi straddles decades of public service. In all of this, Akinyemi comes forth as a man who spoke truth before its time! What else can we say of a man who in 1987 proposed the need for the ‘black bomb? Or a man who had the temerity to suggest the Technical Aid Corps idea to a military government and had the energy and gusto to see it implemented?

    In the heady days of the military in government in Nigeria, one institution that stood out both in quality of activities and presence in the media was the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) where Akinyemi directed affairs from 1975 till 1983. He worked with military Head of State late General Murtala Mohammed whom he had access to on policy formulation and implementation. No one familiar with Nigeria’s foreign policy at the time in question would forget Murtala’s ‘African has Come of Age’ speech and the tough stance Nigeria took on South Africa and the liberation movement in southern Africa. The seminars, lectures, and conferences organised by NIIA were a regular in the academic space of Nigeria, a veritable town and academia dialogue. All events were highly visible, what with the presence of who-is-who in government at the time, from both the Executive and judicial arms of government. Generals, other army officers and public intellectuals made the NIIA a regular in the calendar of social engagements. Visiting Heads of State and Prime Ministers inevitably stopped by at the NIIA for public lectures. It was during the years when public officials dared to engage in academic discourse, entertaining a variety of ideas and strategies. What ever happened to that culture? The fecund mind and energetic man behind the foremost position of NIIA was the then Dr. Bolaji Akinyemi, a returnee from American and British universities located at the University of Ibadan. How was he able to pull such quality crowds to the lecture hall of the NIIA? That that institute has become a shell speaks volumes of the man Akinyemi.

    At the Ministry of External Affairs where he held sway from 1985 to 1987, Akinyemi brought a high quality of thinking into diplomacy. It was during this period that he showed the charisma of a Kissinger in diplomatic and foreign affairs, attending and representing Nigeria in different international events. We had referred to the Technical Aid Corps (TAC) scheme which saw Nigeria exporting manpower to less fortunate countries. The purpose of the scheme was ‘to promote the country’s image and status as a major contributor to Third World and particularly African development’. Professionals such as medical doctors, engineers and teachers served in the programme and projected the image of Nigeria as a medium power in world affairs. He developed a principled framework which underpinned the trajectory of foreign policy at this time – the ‘Concert of Medium Powers’. It was dramatic to name his call for Nigeria to develop nuclear technology the ‘Black bomb’, with all the innuendos on the word ‘black’. Yet it resonated across the country and some thirty five years after, we still pine over lack of energy generation and supply!

    Outside government, Akinyemi forayed into national activism under the aegis of NADECO when the time came to challenge the fatal impunity of Maximum Ruler General Sanni Abacha. Sacrificing his comfort and safety he went on exile through the popular ‘NADECO route’, with all its hazards. The thrilling drama of a sudden exit from Lagos in full disguise, facilitated by coded actions and words and a small chain of helpers, to escape the murder squad of the Abacha days is story for another day, forthcoming in his biography. The academic became a hero in the fight for democracy. And when he returned to Nigeria after restoration of democracy, the Yar’Adua and Jonathan governments respectively appointed him to serve the nation in committee work – the Electoral Reform Panel, Committee on Boko Haram, and the 2014 National Confab in which he functioned as Deputy Chairman. He still gives lectures on policy making and implementation though in 1983, he gave a highly cerebral lecture on ‘A Farewell to Policy’!

    Professor Bolaji still carries the smile of youth in his old age, with the infinite capacity to laugh robustly when the need arises, with the appropriate anecdotes and jokes. I admire his ability to take on serious issues of national and international importance with remarkable aplomb and consummate dexterity, practically thinking on his feet. He still maintains the poise of yore, with the well-maintained afro-hair style. An ardent believer in the corporate existence of a restructured Nigeria, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi does not look 80, does not walk 80, does not work 80, does not think 80, and certainly does not think 80! His thoughts are lucid his speech pattern measured as a statesman, sure and certain; and his power of recollection almost as sharp as it was thirty years ago! What else does one ask of God at Age 80?

    In concluding this tribute at 80 to a distinguished scholar, father, and grandfather, academic, public intellectual, mentor, foreign policy adviser, team player in committee work, social-cum political activist and foremost visionary in the corridors of power I dare say that Akinyemi is a man who spoke truth before its time. At 80, it may not be creation morning; still, it is not an exit time for a man whose training in Igbobi College, Christ School Ado Ekiti, Temple University Philadelphia, Tufts University Massachusetts, and Trinity College Oxford prepared him for the world of ideas and service to humanity! And as we used to say at The Guardian Editorial Board, being 80 has implications!

  • The unknown gunman: My man of the year! – Hope Eghagha

    The unknown gunman: My man of the year! – Hope Eghagha

    By Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

    That officials of the Nigerian state have made the spurious claim that the gunmen who have unleashed a savage orgy of bloodletting and violence in many sections of the Nigerian federation are unknown, is a profound, if miserable contradiction in tragic terms. Ours is drama without a hero, of only villains in power, because there is no nobility of deeds to attract such elevated comprehension of the order if order of things we have. It is also a fundamental commentary on the question mark which currently defines and interrogates the existence of Nigeria made severe by the fatalistic detachment of the Presidency from the grim realities of everyday life in the country. But we are not surprised or shocked, not anymore. Our sensibilities have been so assaulted by official complicity in the nefarious that we now believe late Dele Giwa who proclaimed Nigeria as an ‘experiment on the impossible’.

    The contradiction is heightened by the fact the incumbent Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a retired Army General, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, a man who once fought for the unity of Nigeria and who promised in 2015 to bring the raging insurgency to an end within a short time. Unfortunately, neither his antecedents nor his election promises have amounted to much in the aftermath of victory. These aside, our beloved but beleaguered country is the very definition of contradictions. Rulers as brigands, brigands as protectors of the State. How? For the reasons above, I have elected to proclaim The Unknown Gunman my Man of the Year!

    The choice of the Unknown Gunman as Man of the Year was tragically easy for my one-man Editorial Board. Gory pictures of the brutally murdered always leap to my conscious and unconscious imagination each time I engage Social Media platforms. A governorship election in Anambra State was almost halted on account of the activities of unknown gunman. Imo State, and indeed the South-eastern states have witnessed high profile killings by gunmen. In the northern part of the country, gunmen have attacked serving and former state officials, with impunity. Retired Army generals have been slaughtered, men who survived the battlefield only to die in the hands of gun men whom the State says are unknown.

    Such serving Generals as Dzarma Zirikisu, Major General Hassan Ahmed former Provost Marshall of the Nigerian Army have lost their lives to unknown assassins. Retired Major General Mohammed Shuwa was murdered by Boko Haram scoundrels in November 2012. A former Chief of Defence Staff of Nigeria Air Chief Marshal Tony Badeh died from gunshot wounds after his vehicle was attacked by unknown gunmen along Abuja-Keffi Road in December 2018. Also, retired AVM Muhammed Maisaka was shot dead along with his grandson in Kaduna in November 2021. No credible security force allows killers of its senior officers to go unpunished. Undetected is outside the codes of engagement. While I was writing this essay, a news headline arrived on my smartphone: ‘Bandits Strike hard, kill, Abduct many DSS Operatives’. I have left out the names of high-profile civilians who have been killed.

    Official perfidy and an egregious embrace of all that is odious with statehood and statesmanship have become the face of governance in Nigeria. Despicable and irascible as the late General Sanni Abacha was, his submission that ‘if insurgence lasted for more than 24 hours hold the government in power responsible’ has come to confront us as we grapple with that which is, but which the government denies: the active presence of terrorists in the land in the character and modus operandi of Boko Haram and the notorious Fulani herdsmen. This denial is invariably associated with the President’s perceived reluctance to take decisive actions against his kith and kin. Some of this have to do with President Buhari’s antecedents in his days as a candidate for the Number One seat in the polity! His declaration that actions against Boko Haram were palpably anti-north has come to haunt him in a most brutal manner.

    This then is our dilemma, or the dilemma of the President and the security forces in the land. To know that herdsmen and Boko Haram are a threat to the polity, that these have been given an ethnic coloration, that the security architecture currently dominated by one region gives room for suspicion. Yet, ironically, the northern part of the country suffers the devastating impact of banditry and kidnappings more than the south. Kaduna, Katsina, Borno, Niger, and Zamfara States have been virtually turned into a special den of criminality, with some areas under the unofficial control of non-state actors. Professor Usman Yusuf writes that ‘Sabon Birni, Isa, Goronyo, Illela and Wurno LGAs in eastern part of Sokoto State are now under the control of a notorious bandit called Bello Turji’.

    This along with other factors has led to the ‘North is Bleeding’ protests that rocked some states and Abuja in the month of December, highlighted by the active participation of the sister of northern establishment poster-girl Kadaira Ahmed, Zainab Ahmed. Poignantly, the protesters declared: ‘We are here to tell the government to secure our lives. We bury hundreds of people on a daily basis yet there is no action, not even a sorry from our leaders. We are here because we are angry. Because we are children of Baba Buhari. We called on our followers to vote for Buhari in 2019 for the next level and this next level is killing us. We are dying, this is not what we voted for’. Abuja-Kaduna Road is a near-certain death trap for travellers! In December 2021 just before the President visited Maiduguri to commission projects, ISWAP launched missiles into the city to send a strong message!

    The narrative of woe is not any different in the south. Aside the federal troops onslaught in the South-eastern states, there are unexplained killings of traditional rulers, businessmen, politicians, and ordinary citizens. On Mondays, business life is paralysed on the orders of the proscribed IPOB which has proved to be the de facto government in the region. Police posts and stations have been attacked by unknown gunmen with the police recording a high casualty rate. In Delta and Edo States, Fulani herdsmen, ensconced in the deep forests, sometimes with local collaborators routinely seize wayfaring citizens and collect ransoms. Too many people have lost their lives to random shootings from these known yet unknown criminals between Sagamu and Asaba, and between Benin and Auchi. How did we degenerate into this chaotic geographical space that once held great promise for the continent of Africa?

    It is inconceivable to anybody who has a passing knowledge of the sociology of criminality to believe that unknown gunmen can operate in a country for twelve months or more without being known or detected. There is the suggestion of official complicity. There is a lie, a big lie out there, an offensive and rude one. There is a denial. A wicked reluctance to express the obvious. This denial is official criminality. It is irresponsible. It offends the collective notion and Constitutional obligation of the State versus security for the citizens who elected officials to various offices.

    By default, and by design, we, that is, the Nigerian State created the Unknown Gunman. He has emerged from the ashes of official plundering of State resources. The resources are controlled by a few who have had access to political power. How do we explain the humongous sums that have been traced to individual accounts while the nation suffers a disgraceful infrastructure deficit? If non-state actors could not gain access to wealth, was it not inevitable for the Unknown Gunman to arise? In plain terms, State capture by insensitive rulers has created the monster of the Unknown Gunman. Sunday Igboho and Nnamdi Kanu are variants or activist symptoms of the Gunman virus. Added to this is the rise of fundamentalists whose defeat in Libya, Syria and other parts of the Middle East has created a diffusion of forces to Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa.

    The Unknown Gunman lives with us, and is from us, and is us. The bandit lives with us. The savage herdsman lives with us. There are foreign elements, yes, foreign elements among the herdsmen who had been imported for political reasons as explained by some angry politicians. The incumbent government’s policy of accommodating strange elements from across the borders on account of ethnic affiliation is our undoing. They created a monster. The monster has grown beyond them. They are now eating up the flesh of innocent Nigerians for breakfast. The Unknown Gunman is the legacy of failed governments in Nigeria. It is not Buhari. Not Goodluck Jonathan. It is a collective failure of all past governments. It is the failure of the people who compromise their votes for a mess of the proverbial pottage.

    The Unknown Gunman therefore is my Man of the Year. The rapacious phenomenon has produced the rapacious Nigerian that was once hidden in the dark recesses of the nation. The federal government is complicit. The state governments, except Rivers and Benue, have been bullied into acquiescence. The federal system is in the breach in practice. It exists only in notion. The federal government is accomplice to the Unknown Gunman. Metaphorically, the federal government is an Unknown Gunman waiting to be unmasked. Hand in hand, the federal government and some gun-toting scoundrels have decimated lives, truncated dreams, traumatized millions, and seized our liberties.

    If 2023 elections will be free and fair, the Unknown Gunman will stand no chance in entering Government House at national or regional or state level. That would be our only opportunity to save Nigeria from the vagrants who now hold the nation’s jugular as bandits, herdsmen, kidnappers, policy makers, and security personnel!

  • Nigeria as a Movie – Hope Eghagha

    Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

    ​My attention was caught recently by this apparently succinct summation of the idea and personality of Nigeria as a movie, with all its implications, its innuendos, its positives, and of course deprecations – a movie analogy somewhat suggests something which does not deserve serious attention. True? You know, the ‘Alawada kerikeri’ type of movie which we often used to refer to unserious people. It was on Arise TV that I heard Ojy Okpe first refer to the country as a movie on account of the different dramatic and perhaps absurd events happening simultaneously, by both state and non-state actors. I recall a visiting American colleague Professor Jeffery Renard Allen describing driving on Ikorodu Road in Lagos as akin to ‘a sci-fi experience, no rules, no order yet no colliding cars! Little did I know that that description would invariably be applied to the homeland to about two hundred million black people.

    ​Indeed, if Nigeria is a movie, we can aver with mock seriousness that its script is written (or improvisations) in the tradition of ‘Theatre of the Absurd’, crystallised in ideological and philosophical thinking by Martin Esslin inthe seminal essay The Myth of Sisyphus and epitomised by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s iconic play Waiting for Godot! In our clime, Ola Rotimi’s play Holding Talks – a play in which characters prefer to hold discussions while the world is crumbling – captures the absurdist attitude and dimensions of governance in our beloved, boisterousbut beleaguered and endangered conglomeration of diverse and disparate people.

    ​There is drama in government and by government. Drama by the presidency. Even in the presidency, there is drama of silence, keeping mute while herdsmen are murdering hundreds as in Agatu and Uwheru, but crying loud when 49 persons are killed on the Nigeria-Niger border! Drama by state governors, as some of them spend more time in Abuja than in the State House of their States. Drama by terrorists as they ambush Nigerian soldiers after receiving tips of intelligence from saboteurs within the army. Drama in the courts of justice and injustice.Drama against Judges as a gang of scoundrels raid the home of a Supreme Court judge on the orders of a rogue Chief Enforcer of the Law. Drama by the Nigeria Police as men and officers of the Low-morale Force mount roadblocks and criminally extort citizens whom they swore to protect from criminals. Drama by religious leaders. Drama by kidnappers and bandits. Drama by some so-called opinion leaders taking sides with Boko Haram and bandits. Drama by IPOB and ‘unknown’ gun men in South-eastern Nigeria. Jail break dramas. Drama during official testimonies in the National Assembly like the one which notoriously gave birth to ‘off your mike!Drama when soldiers were ordered to fire shots at protesters during the anti-SARS protests last year. Drama about how Nnamdi Kanu was abducted from Kenya and brought to Nigeria. Drama about the freedom of herdsmen to attack and maim without official actions from government of the day.

    ​Drama on how northern governors could freely meet but how a southern governors’ meeting is viewed with suspicion, about how some South-eastern governors refused to attend a meeting of southern governors because they are eyeing the presidency to be awarded to them by the northern establishment for good behaviour. Drama about how the banned IPOB virtually rules the Southeast, giving orders on sit-at-home or participating in elections, governing the elected governors, and pushing an Igbo agenda that could hurt Igbo business models in the country. Drama about kidnappers striking in the home state of the Commander-in-chief by cheekily abducting a traditional ruler and girls from a school. Drama about bandits kidnapping an officer from Nigeria Defence Academy, the elite school for training officers in the Nigeria Army. Who says Nigeria is not a movie? Drama! Drama!! Drama!!!

    ​A movie is created for one purpose – to entertain an audience. Generally, we are taught in communication studies that movies are created to entertain, educate, and inform. These days, movies also succeed in confusing the people, with notions of alternative truths and fake narratives, superimposed pictures, and distortions. There are different types of movies produced by different entities. So, we have Nollywood, Hollywood, Bollywood, Kannywood and others. Within Nollywood we have different types of movies dictated by the taste of the producers and the target audience, some badly produced flicks with no sense of direction, hastily put together for profit. There are some that are culturally offensive, steeped in fetish and the occult, and ritually portraying our world as that of witchcraft and juju and superstition. There is the action movie, the 007 seven type which thrills one to no end. What about the horror movie which drives insane fear into the audience? Or the ones which travel into the future, predicting that which is to come? There are movies which dwell on our anachronistic past in a romantic way. There also movies which dwell on the absurd or the foolish or the mundane and jesting. So, which type of movie is Nigeria? Is our country a potpourri of different types of movies?

    ​By convention and regulation, a movie must have a director, a producer, and actors with carefully assigned roles, dancers, musicians, makeup artists and all the supporting crew of technicians. The director knows from the outset what he wants to achieve. If Nigeria is a movie, who is the director? Are there trained actors in Movie Nigeria? Are the actors picked from the roadside? Are the actors following a script or they are left to improvise on themes, following their own thoughts, biases and ideas and idiosyncrasies? Who are the scriptwriters? Are there scriptwriters? Is there a scriptwriter who revels in the macabre and outrageous with thirst for spilling innocent blood? Is the scriptwriter satisfied with the horror that is North-eastern Nigeria? The killing field that is Kaduna? The travesty that is the judiciary? The assault on freedom to protest? Assault on free movement? Satisfied with the orphanhood of the Naira? Happy with what inflation is doing to both middle income and poor families? What is the goal or mission of this silent director?

    ​If Nigeria is indeed a movie, if Nigeria is worth branding as a movie, designed to inform and educate, it needs an experienced director and a competent supporting crew, with a sense of history, connection with history, connection with the common good and deep compassion for the poor ordinary people of the country. A movie is usually a reflection of its environment. Following the requirements of a good movie and the story it tells, Nigeria is a bad movie, a bad horror movie without focus, and proper direction. It is a movie that scares its audience from the theatre. That is the reason millions of youths have ignored government and devised means of survival. That is the unfortunate reason Destination Europe, Destination America, Destination Anywhere Abroad hasbecome the sign song of desperation by the men and women whose lot it ought to be to lead the country in future. Movie Nigeria is a sad and bad horror movie, calling for re-casting and remodelling!

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  • Dealing with Mental Illness in the family – Hope Eghagha

    One of the most difficult health challenges to deal with when it strikes in the family, or a group is mental illness. In one of our webinars, a specialist spoke on ‘Dealing with unseen illnesses’ because some mental illnesses are not seen! Can you see a mind that is troubled as we see the symptoms of malaria? Mental illness is when a person’s thinking, feeling, behaviour or mood becomes affected negatively by clinical depression, anxiety disorder, psychotic disorders, impulse control, or substance abuse. Sometimes the effect is visible. A mentally ill patient could simply go naked and run amok. In other cases, it is hidden for years, managed by the victim because they do not understand what is happening. Do you live permanently in fear, expecting the worst to happen anytime? Are your thoughts always negative? Are you paranoid about how your parents died and how you may die as they did? Do you think of death all the time like an obsession? Are you permanently sad, unable to laugh and enjoy the common things that people do? Are you in permanent grief over the loss of a loved one? Have you been unable to move on since your last breakup which took place years before? Are you having nightmares from a traumatic experience? You may need the help of a therapist.

    In some cases, especially in old age, there is dementia whereby a person forgets who they are and cannot recognize family members. Sadly, mental illness is widely misunderstood, mystified, treated with suspicion and superstition and stigmatisation. Indeed, once you tell most family members or friends that you think they ought to see a clinical psychologist, they put up a big wall of defence. Am I mad, is the question they ask? Madness for them is the only reason that someone should see a psychiatrist. This is not correct.

    Yet, mental illness is highly present in all societies. It comes in different forms. It can affect anybody, no matter the class, background, religion, or race. In the last three odd years since we started work as an interventionist NGO (Mind and Soul Helpers’ Initiative- MASHI) on mental health, using professionals to counsel and refer people, we have come to see how widespread, how misunderstood, how poorly appreciated it is in society. Today, I write not as a professional on mental health. I write as an advocate for the full recognition of and provision for mental health services in the country. I write to educate the public on why they should not hesitate to consult a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist when a person has a mental illness, that is, when a person breaks down mentally. The professionals are not allowed to advertise their work.

    Often, there are warnings, yet we ignore them. Do you have a son or daughter or cousin who lock themselves up in the room, avoid the rest of the family and remain moody throughout the day or week or month? That young man who returns from school a different person? That lady who is who suddenly said that school is not for her, that she would rather be a preacher. That young man who becomes violent in the hostel or in the house, screaming all manner of things. That young man or woman who is troubled by thoughts of suicide, thoughts of ending it all whether by jumping in front of a moving vehicle or taking the notorious sniper insecticide.

    In the last three years, we have encountered too many persons who are down today because of trauma from the past. Why do some fathers or uncles like abusing daughters sexually from a tender age? What is attractive in a five-year-old child to a father, a full-grown man? Why should a father or a brother sexually abuse a child of five years old till she gets to fifteen? Why do some mothers keep silent even after catching their husbands molesting a girl child? Many years after the experience, some ladies start feeling the effect of the trauma and go through mental illness for the rest of her life. Some of the ladies are scarred or destroyed for life. Do you want to destroy that beautiful daughter of yours for life because of your sexual peccadilloes? Think twice daddy, think twice.

    Sexual abuse is one among many. There is verbal abuse. There is physical abuse. Some parents like berating their kids, calling them all kinds of names. What such parents do not know is the indelible pain or sore such an experience leaves on the child. ‘You, ugly fool! That child grows up believing the insult of the mother or father or uncle. Some do not realise that even a baby can be traumatised. This could affect them forever.

    The truth is that any behaviour which we do not understand should be brought to the attention of health authorities. First line of course is the general hospital from where a doctor could refer the person concerned to a specialist. Some people are just scared or reluctant about taking their family members to a psychiatrist. What will people say they always ask? They will say there is madness in our family. It is not what people say that matters. It is the health of the person that is crucial.

    When a person in a family has mental health illness, family members need to show understanding. Some of the complaints, like sudden fear of doom, hot flushes in the body, seeing a dead mother daily, creeping sensations, fear that they could fall, vibrations and sensations in some parts of the body, are real to the sick person. It is not enough to say ‘snap out of it. They need help. We have encountered families who treat dementia patients with scorn and derision. One family accused the elderly woman of witchcraft. We must remember that the person concerned is not in control of his mind. True, it is difficult even trying to handle a family member who keeps returning to hard drugs or alcohol after being treated. It is double jeopardy to accuse a victim of panic attacks of stupidity or foolishness. It is double jeopardy to accuse a clinically depressed person of wickedness or deliberately disturbing the family.

    Mental illness is like any other ailment. If one has a bone problem they go to an orthopaedic surgeon. If it is pregnancy, they go to a gynaecologist. Indeed, there is a type of mental illness which comes just after a woman gives birth. She should see a specialist. If it is the mind that has a problem, they should see a mind doctor- a psychiatrist. There should be no stigma attached to go to a psychiatrist hospital. A mentally ill person should not be taken to a pastor or a babalawo to cast out spirits. Mental illness is not caused by spirits. There are prescribed medications for treating the mentally ill. Sometimes, it is a long haul, lasting a lifetime. It could also clear within a year or two, depending on the severity of the nature of mental illness.

    Finally, let us spread the awareness. Mental illness is not infectious nor is it something to be ashamed of. It is just like any other disease. As the slogan goes, there is no health without mental health. There is not enough information about mental illnesses in the country. There is also too much superstition about mental illness, even among some highly educated people. This therefore is a clarion call to everyone to take their mental health seriously. Traumatic videos and pictures should be avoided. Government should take mental health seriously. At the individual level, seek help if you hear voices.

  • Conversation Nigeriana (2) – Hope Eghagha

    Emeka: This Pantami matter a kpatakpata matter; it is a monster of a monstrous proportions for the presidency and the future of the Republic!

    Kalio: Emekus Mekus! That is big grammar o! Which one is ‘monster of monstrous proportions?

    Emeka: I mean it is a gargantuan crisis that could derail the republic!

    Kalio: Oh! You mean we are now in the stage of a ‘Descent into anarchy!

    Tunde: It is a storm in a teacup jor!

    Aboki: Is that what you say, storm in a teacup? Rome is burning and the Emperor is fiddling! Do you really mean that you don’t mind an extremist in the cabinet of our country fa?

    Obukohwo: I think he means that there are many storms in the country right now. Pantami is just one!

    Aboki: It doesn’t make the situation less sinister!

    Obukohwo: Imo State is virtually imploding. In the 1960s, we witnessed the ‘Wild Wild West’, now fifty years later it is ‘Wild Wild East!

    Aboki: Let us take these points one by one. A man who sits in Council with the president and who is Minister of the sensitive Ministry of Communications is accused of making extreme and incendiary statements in the past, the type that gave birth to Boko Haram which the nation is currently fighting, yet the government says his past should be forgotten? Has he openly denounced Al Qaeda or ISWA or Osama Bin Laden? No! He should not be left a day longer in the cabinet.

    Kalio: The allegations against Pantami are heavy, very heavy!

    Obukohwo: By the way, what kind of name is that? Pantami! No wonder he has funny views. Panta wetin? What do you expect from a man who has ‘pant’ in his name? May be a woman’s pant too!

    Tunde: Hahahaha! Obus! You have moved from the sublime to the ridiculous!

    Obukohwo: Just like Nigeria, just like Nigeria my dear!

    Aboki: Everything has become jagajaga, even the way we analyze issues has become clouded by ethnic and religious biases!

    Emeka: Let us stay on message please. Pantami! A little background to all of this will help. A local newspaper reported that Dr. Isa Pantami was on the US watch-list because he had links with terrorism. If you remember, the minister threatened to sue the newspaper. But when video and audio tapes surfaced on social media showing his deep romance and cohabitation with religious extremism that he started singing a new song!

    Kalio: How could any sane man say ‘I still consider Osama Bin Laden a better Muslim than myself? Bin Laden who threatened world peace and killed innocent men, women and children! Statements which suggest that he was happy each time non-Muslims are killed! Our country has gone to the dogs!

    Tunde: Let us be careful please. I don’t know that fellow from Adam. But if he has recanted his old views, why must we vilify him? Didn’t we as young men harbour and pursue some dangerous views which we discarded as we matured?

    Aboki: That is different, very different! We are discussing dangerous ideologies which fanatics carry in their hearts and minds, disguised by religious fervour. Such views hardly go away. The Islam I believe in does not tolerate killing innocent people. But some fellows who have been indoctrinated by some hardliners in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Yemen.

    Tunde: In that case, let him come out openly and condemn Boko Haram, ISIS and the rest. If he is indeed a hardliner and a believer, he will not do that.

    Kalio: But the government has given him a soft landing.

    Emeka: How?

    Kalio: Government’s spokesman declared that Pantami harboured such views in the past, mark you, only in the past. He is now born-again! Hahahahahaha!

    Tunde: That is possible, very possible. If you could have repentant militants in the Niger Delta whom you managed to send to Europe and America on special training, why can’t we have repentant Muslim extremists?

    Emeka: We are talking about a state official who once pronounced a fatwa and a Christian student lost his life. We are discussing a man who gloated over the death of innocent people killed by suicide bombs! How well do you think such an official will support the president in his fight against extremists? The man himself is dangerous to the president’s agenda. I hope he realizes that soon.

    Aboki: I agree with you on that. See the dangerous nonsense going on in Imo State. What exactly is going on? Are Nigerian soldiers fighting IPOB or ESN or fifth columnists who want an end to Nigeria? There are unconfirmed reports that Boko Haram and bandits hoisted a flag in Kauri in Niger State during the week. The state governor cried out on television and said that Boko Haram has taken over territories from his jurisdiction. He also said Kauri is just two hours from Abuja and so, Abuja is not safe. What is going on?

    Obukohwo: No need to ask those questions. We all know what is going on. The federal government is simply overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem. There is a breakdown of law and order. Our national territories have been compromised. Abuja or the presidency has no clue on how to solve the problem. The country should be restructured now!

    Emeka: Yes, restructuring is the ultimate. Indeed, we ought to have reduced the exclusive list well before now. But with the current shaky security situation, won’t restructuring give room for secession and different power centres that could turn Nigeria into another Libya?

    Aboki: Aren’t there different power centres already?

    Obukohwo: The Nigerian Army must protect the territorial integrity of the country. They are constitutionally bound to do so!

    Aboki: But the army is also compromised as retired General T.Y. Danjuma, former Chief of Army Staff, former Minister of Defence once declared. He even called on Nigerians to defend themselves!

    Emeka: You are going too far. The incumbent Minister of Defence has asked us to defend ourselves too.

    Obukohwo: Are we going to defend ourselves with knives and sticks against AK47s?

    Emeka: Ask me o!

    Kalio: Does Abuja realize how dangerous the situation is?

    Aboki: Put it bluntly, does the President realize how dangerous the situation in the country is? We have never had it so bad before. We read about this in other countries; now the monster is in our doorsteps, in fact, inside our bedrooms.

    Emeka: This was brought about by the likes of Pantami. Mr. President must act decisively now and give the boot to all the dangerous and ineffective cabinet members. We are in a stage of war, declared or undeclared!

    Kalio: Undeclared wars are even more dangerous!

    Professor Eghagha can be reached on 08023220393 and heghagha@yahoo.com

  • Sixty years in the Wilderness – Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

    The forty-year groping in the wilderness of the Jews, whether as a parable, a metaphor, article of faith or historical reality comes to mind as we adumbrate on sixty years of political independence of the Nigerian State. Without doubt, at 60 Nigeria is already an old man (woman?), both from the spiritual and chronological perspectives. However, in terms of commensurate maturity to its chronological age, we can only say that it is a different kettle of fish. At sixty years of age, certain fundamentals of growth and stability ought to have been established. A sixty-year old man is set, ought to be set in his ways, settled in world view, preparing for life on the other side! Yet, it takes a man who had made some plans for the rainy day to confidently assert that his focus is now on heavenly subjects! How did our notion and practice of building Nigeria fall into the pattern of groping, stumbling and perambulating through dark and bright channels, always on the precipice, standing on one foot, blustering, boasting and standing where we did not really build a solid platform for ourselves? Nigeria as currently portrayed could only have been created by Franz Kafka like in The Trial, essentially in the spirit of Samuel Beckett’s absurd theatre as captured in Waiting for Godot and Ola Rotimi’s Hopes of the Living Dead!

    For, building a nation was not adopted as a serious project ab initio especially because there were doubts about the need for and the nature of the union. Strange bedfellows came together and hoped that with time a brotherhood would be forged through hard work and conscientiousness. ‘Though tribe and tongue may differ’, we sang in our first national anthem, ‘in brotherhood we stand! Yet, we did not pull up our sleeves to work on the brotherhood. Barely six years after independence, we fought a civil war that cost us three million lives! Fifty years after that war, there is a resurgence of the Biafran spirit in the form of the now proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)!

    There was thus something tentative about the relationships of disparate and far flung ethnic nationalities which were yoked together in a political experiment created by British economic predators in 1914. It was poignant that one of the earliest nationalist leaders aptly referred to Nigeria as ‘a mere geographical expression! The portents of that statement still haunt us a people some four odd decades after.

    The biblical narratives of the exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land laid the blame of the forty-year rigmarole squarely on false reports of spies and the failure of leadership coupled with the faithlessness and foolishness of the followers. A journey of forty days was now prolonged into a forty-year odyssey, producing in its wake, a profound view of God-man relationship and how fickle man could be even if all resources were at his disposal. Golda Meir one-time Israeli PM had mused that if Moses had turned the other way, the Jews would have had the oil and the Arabs the desert! I am not sure how this fitted into God’s plan of sending the enslaved Jews into a land that flowed with milk and honey!

    Well, followership, leadership and agents of the State have become a recurring decimal when interrogating the rise and fall of empires and nations. Chinua Achebe did not mince words when he blamed the Nigerian tragedy on leadership in his seminal work The Trouble with Nigeria. He had also interrogated Nigeria and produced There was a Country to portray what life was before our descent in a freefall into serendipity and madness. In a very cynical manner Ghanaian novelist had summed up the situation in his country by asserting that The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, a picture frame that could sit very well on the Nigerian architecture! The final clincher is from the good book, the greatest book of all time, through the prophet Isaiah in the Holy Bible, which asserts in very clear terms that ‘the leaders of these people cause them to err and those that are led of them are destroyed!

    The twin issues of religion and ethnicity have become an albatross, manipulated by politicians to serve their nefarious purposes. Religion in isolation, devoid of political machinations, is not a problem. Ethnicity devoid of mischievous politics is not a problem. These become problems when we use them to manipulate gullible people. To be sure, when the political gladiators sit at table to loot the nation’s patrimony, there is no exclusion or inclusion on account of religion. Followers, rather proclaimers of the two main religions have not become good or bad because of their professed faiths. Rather, they are what they are despite their faiths. Until the rapacious entry of bloodthirsty elements from the Sahel into the Nigerian geographical space recently, lowly, and middleclass citizens lived peacefully, sharing, trading, and cohabiting.

    In moments of philosophical clarity, I ask myself, inquire of friends and associates what area of national aspiration we can claim a sixty percent score of success. It is like searching for a pin in a haystack. All institutions, sacred and profane, have been patently soiled. As an incurable optimist and a believer in the ultimate triumph of good over evil, a believer in the predominance of good over evil even in this evil world, the only positive has been the human spirit as exemplified by individual acts of redemption, often carried outside public glare, not noticed by the high and mighty, often for altruistic purposes. What baffles us is our inability to translate that private good into the coffers of the common good. There seems to be a barrier created by whoever and whatever that makes the common good a thing of other climes. Is it because we do not accept the terms of the union, that the union is unnecessary, irrelevant, and unjust, that it does not deserve recognition through acts of collective positive affirmation? Is that a pointer to the spectre of a dissolution of the contraption from 1914?

    If we have spent sixty years in the wilderness, it is time we got to the promised land. The Jewish odyssey did not have all the gadgets and technology that we currently possess yet they made it in forty years, albeit with divine guidance. Certainly, we cannot declaim the presence of the divine in our collective affairs. The only challenge is how well and deeply have we listened to the voice of divinity. It is not because of a lack of prophets or visionaries that we have beat around the bush. It is because we have shut our ears and eyes to the admonitions of the wise ones.

    Of great concern is how relegated to the background the young people of this country are from the centre scheme of things, from the reins of power. Our demographics are in favour of the youth by 70% according to some statistics yet there is no programme of action designed to prepare them for leadership of a country whose future is theirs. Too many of them have resorted to dubious means to attain wealth and influence. The models before them are not exemplars of moral rectitude. This is a sure way of killing the future of the country.

    Education, health infrastructure, road network (transportation) and power generation and supply have become national nightmares, casualties of failure of leadership. We need a new approach to leadership based on accountability. The executive system of government which we borrowed from America has failed us because leaders can hide behind aides. We need to return to parliamentary democracy in a truly federal system that compels elected officials to give account of their activities during question time in parliament and which makes each region develop its infrastructure with some degree of seriousness. The current system hardly encourages competition because all stakeholders wait for handouts at the end of the month. Besides, the perceived concern that one small ethnic group has egregious plans to impose a hegemonic control over the rest of the polity is fatally dangerous. It promotes the spirit of going for broke, having been ushed to the wall. Nelson Mandela once wrote: ‘we must therefore act together as a united people, for nation building, for the birth of a new world. Let there be justice for all. Let there be work, bread, water, and salt for all. Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another’. There is hegemonic oppression being installed in Nigeria today! It must be resisted.

    Nigeria can be one, Nigeria can bring itself out of the wilderness only if and after there is justice and fairness in allocation of the federal resources. The current agitation for self determination should be given deep attention. Our elders say that ‘a river that overflows its banks before our eyes does not, should not drown us! Happy Independence!

  • The El Rufai and NBA Palaver, By Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

    The diminutive, intelligent, even brilliant, and vibrant Mallam El Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State seems to love and thrive on controversy. From his days as one of the Obasanjo boys and Minister of FCT, policy implementation seemed to end where his loud presence ended. He drove the Abuja Masterplan with the zest of a zealot and made enemies. And created friends through dispensing patronage. Sometimes, the controversies were avoidable. No boss wants an appointee who is always enmeshed in controversies that attract negative attention to the government. Time will tell whether his bosses enjoyed the times when Mallam El Rufai attracted such attention to the government. Now, in Kaduna, El Rufai is government and government is El Rufai. So, any attention he attracts to himself affects our perception of Kaduna State government. And we have not been impressed with the slaughtering going on there. If it is propaganda, the message that he is complicit in the savagery going on in southern Kaduna is deeply abroad.

    On the other hand, the NBA is a body of lawyers representing the interests of all lawyers in the country, irrespective of religion, ethnic origins, or orientation. It thrives or should thrive on the rule of law. As the foremost association of lawyers in the country, it must not only protect the rule of law, it must be seen to preserve the rule of law. To be sure, the NBA had made serious mistakes in the past by inviting serving dictators to address their annual conference. Going forward, we do hope that the principle that was applied to El Rufai will be applied across the board in future. In 2018, the NBA gave President Muhammadu Buhari its platform to address the body of lawyers only to receive a hot slap in the face when their guest declared that “rule of law must bow before national security”, a fundamental opposition to the motto of NBA.

    El Rufai was in the news recently again after the NBA disinvited him to its annual conference. What caught my attention was the letter of objection which a group of lawyers wrote arguing why Mallam El Rufai should not be invited. They argued that persons, including lawyers who criticized Mallam El Rufai were dealt with by state agents, that he threatened election observers who came to Nigeria in 2019 that ‘they would go back to their countries in ‘body bags’, Mallam El Rufai’s son, himself a Special Adviser to a Senator threatened a citizen who had criticized his father that the critic’s mother would be gang-raped, (there is no record that he chided his son for dancing naked in the public domain) that El Rufai now uses ‘security agents to arrest and intimidate journalists and activists who dare to question their actions or attempt to hold them accountable’. The group alleged that a university lecturer, Abubakar Idris, ‘better known as Dadiyata, was abducted from the gate of his house in Barnawa Kaduna, on 1st August and has not been seen since then. Bashir, one of the sons of El Rufai was said to have tweeted over Dadiyata ‘dangerous lines in the public space have consequences.

    These and many more which time and space will prevent me from mentioning are weighty allegations. Is it true, for instance, that Luka Biniyat, a journalist with Vanguard Newspaper, Segun Onibiyo of FRCN have suffered punishment in their places of work because they criticized Mallam El Rufai? Why, one may ask, have their employers danced to the tune played by El Rufai? What has the NUJ done to help these journalists? Should Mallam El Rufai not address these issues and give the other side of the narrative?

    Now, to invite a guest speaker is the prerogative of the organisers of the event. To change their minds is also their prerogative. In the NBA-El Rufai matter, ego is involved. Right now, another twist has entered. Two lawyers writing on behalf of some others want to form the New Nigeria Bar Association (NNBA). They objected to the cancelled invite and have decided to form a parallel association for northern lawyers, with the innuendo that will be Muslim dominated. In other words, their objection to the disinvite carried a religious toga. You know, religion is a whipping boy in Nigeria. The lawyers added that they will operate the new association in an ‘indissoluble Nigeria! This suggests that they know that are treading on a very dangerous ground.

    If they did not know, let us tell those lawyers and those who reason like them that the unity of the country now is very fragile. There is a narrative out there that one part of the country has seized power and is progressing to appropriating all the natural resources of the land to itself. There are strident underground calls for a pulling apart as IPOB has repeatedly called for. The Yoruba Congress of Elders led by Professor Akitoye has also made references to the creation of a Yoruba nation. By splitting the NBA along regional lines, those two lawyers will be serving a dish that they cannot feed from.

    Mallam El Rufai was not disinvited because of his religion or because of his northern background. It was strictly on his human rights records according to the NBA. There is deep disenchantment in the country right now about the use of power by the federal authorities. The impudence of RUGA and the temerity of the Water Resource Bill that attempts to invest power to control water resources all over the country in an incompetent and clannish federal government is inimical to the collective survival of the Nigerian people.

    The bottom line in the saga is that public officials should realize that people know when they have taken enough for the owner to notice if I may borrow a proverb from Igbo folklore as captured by Chinua Achebe. Often, we hear that El Rufai wants to be president of Nigeria. The impression he has created of himself is that he is an irredentist. No doubt, he has a sharp mind. And a sharp tongue too. A sharp mind that is negatively deployed to the common good is as vacuous as that of a nitwit!

  • On the matter of zoning – Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

    Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

    Every nation develops its own framework of association through years of experience guided by peculiarities and historical realities. In some cases, two countries which have adopted a similar model of development, could work out details of association dependent on circumstances, culture, language, ethnic groups, religion and religious affiliations, and other factors. For example, the federal system practiced by the United States is different from that of Germany or Switzerland or Nigeria. Very early, the people of Nigeria decided on a federal system of government through the constitutional conferences from the 1950s. One of the unwritten codes of political engagement in Nigeria is the control of power between the north and the south at the centre, what is now referred to as zoning.

    The premise of my discourse is this: because of the power of incumbency and to create a sense of belonging, political power in the centre has be rotated with some understanding. To be sure, there is no constitutional provision for power rotation. It emanated from the political parties when the nation embraced the executive president model. But before them, the military administrations right from the time of General Yakubu Gowon tried to reflect the diversity of the country both in religion and ethnicity, especially in the composition of the Supreme Military Council and the position of Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters. Gowon/Akinwale Wey. Murtala Mohammed and Olusegun Obasanjo, Obasanjo and Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Ibrahim Babangida and Ebitu Ukiwe/Aikhomu. General Buhari was the only military ruler who did not pay any attention to such an arrangement by picking a Muslim Tunde Idiagbon from the north as his deputy! In the military governments though, because they shot their way to power, the succeeding administration did not have time for the niceties of ceding power to someone from the south.

    The immediate reason for this essay is Mamman Daura’s public declaration about excellence being a major consideration on who takes over from President Buhari in 2023. ‘This turn-by-turn, it was done once’ Mamman Daura said on BBC, ‘it was done twice, and it was done thrice…it is better for this country to be one…it should be for the most competent and not for someone who comes from somewhere’. He did not bring up this argument before his benefactor came to power in 2015! How self-serving can some people be in their arguments. The subtext is that zoning of the presidency to the south should not be considered for stability and sense of belonging. The assumption is that competent presidential material can only be found in one section of the country!

    It is true that our federal system has been infused with elements of the unitary form of government, courtesy of our years with the military. But we have voted for and developed a constitution that ought to entrench federalism. A federation is ‘a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or regions under a central government’. The First Republic was closer to a federal system even though it was a parliamentary form of government. if the nation had been allowed to develop along those lines, our history would have been different. A unitary state is ‘a state governed as a single entity in which the central government is ultimately supreme. Unitary states stand in contrast with federations, also known as federal states’.

    There is a mood in the country which reflects our perception of the Buhari administration. This is the first all northern administration we have had in the country. If the president is aware of how badly people in the south feel about his policies, he does not give a hoot. PANDEV has sued the Buhari administration of its skewed appointments. Even if the suit is lost (as it may likely happen, again, the result of the way the courts have been constituted) the point would have been made. This is certainly how not to run a federation. Added to this is the blatant manner in which some foreign herdsmen have ensconced themselves deep in the bushes of some southern states. These are not Nigerians. The visa-on-arrival policy of the Buhari administration seems to favour these men. Indeed, even without this policy, infiltration through the borders into the country has been legendary. How do we define, identify the true Nigerian?

    It is against this background that we view the statement of Mamman Daura about competence as being clever by half. He cannot beat his chest anywhere in the world to assert that this is the most competent administration that the nation has been blessed with. We do not see any competence in this administration. What we see is incompetence and intransigence and a refusal to respect the codes of social and political engagements that had held this county together since independence. Power must rotate between the south and the north. If some of never expressed this in clear terms before now, the current state of things makes it imperative for us to declare this openly. The ship of state has become rudderless. How long can we go on like this? Added to this is the perception that the south does not count in power sharing. The resources plundered from the Niger Delta are being frittered away and building structures (where the government summons the ill to do so) in other parts of the country. Enough is enough.

    Different groups have taken up the cry on restructuring the country. The cry has become strident. This is because of the fear of northern domination. Abuja does not care what the people think. The creation of Amotekun in the southwest is one of the reactions of the south. Other states are following this route in varying degrees. Somebody in Abuja should listen. Sometimes, I wonder how southerners who are in this government ‘really’ feel when they defend the government. Do they believe those words which they offer? I have my doubts. The situation is getting precarious and dangerous to the corporate survival of the entity called Nigeria.

    Rotation of power will make it possible for the errors of one administration to be corrected by the next administration. So, if we really believe in ‘One Nigeria’, power must go south in 2023. Competence is found in all parts of the country. This government is the best example of how not to be competent as espoused by Mamman Daura. Let us be mindful of the overall interest of Nigeria, not the primordial benefits of s few being in power just for the sake of controlling the levers of power.

    Eghagha can be reached on 08023220393.

  • Apocalyptic Metaphors in ‘Downpressor Man’ – Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

    It was the tragic spectacle of the entire world locked down by a tiny virus that brought back the powerful metaphors in the lyrics of Peter Tosh’s 1977 ‘Downpressor Man’ reggae track to my immediate memory. It was the trio of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer who first drew my attention to the deep thinking that informed reggae music of the 1980s as practised by the three original wailers. Of course, I had enjoyed the rhythms of such reggae artistes as Jimmy Cliff, U-Roy, Burning Spear, Toots and the Maytals, Third World, and Mighty Sparrow. But when it came to appreciating the radical potentials of reggae music, it was Bob Marley and Peter Tosh that won the day for me. I still remember Marley’s ‘Four hundred years of slavery’, ‘Babylon System’ and ‘Buffalo Soldier’ tracks like gospel songs.

    I had walked into my room as Senior Prefect of Baptist High School Port Harcourt in 1977 when I picked up the lyrics of a song from my little transistor radio. Tosh sang the following lines to the heavy rhythm of guitars and drums using the most emotive power that the voice could summon: ‘Where you gonna run to/Downpressor Man’ and ‘You gonna run to the sea/But the sea will be boiling/All along that day! Not done, he went on to croon: ‘You gonna run to the rocks/The rocks will be melting/When you run to the rocks! These lines capture for us the apocalypse, when the end shall come and the ‘sinnerman’ would have no where to hide. My first reaction was to interrogate the word ‘Downpressor’. What did it mean? In my usual style I picked up the dictionary. There was no such word. Further enquiries made me understand the use of Downpressor as oppressor. They and us, the dialectic of the oppressor and the oppressed, powerful and the weak, the under-privileged and the privileged became for me a reason to listen to Bob Marley and his fellow travellers. Reggae was not all about smoking ‘ganja’ like ruffians as the official narrative dictated at the time!

    Picture the sea boiling when sinners have dived into it to be safe from the trouble of the times. He then extends the doom to the rocks melting for those who run there for salvation. He goes plain when he says ‘you can run but you can’t hide’; yet this does not diminish the poignancy of the message embedded in the song composed some forty odd years ago. Events in the world now show that though one can run, he cannot hide. This is at two levels. The level of the power of intelligence gathering. And the level of a disease that has made it impossible for anybody to run anywhere for safety. The American cannot run to Europe in order to escape the virus. Africans cannot run to America or Europe to escape COVID-19. Has Peter Tosh’s doomsday prophecy come to pass? Are the rocks melting now somewhere? What has happened to the arctic sea? Is it melting? Certainly, not boiling.

    Peter Tosh it was who also sang ‘Everyone is crying out for peace/none is crying out for justice in the album Equal Rights. Of course, it is an old track. But it is still very relevant to contemporary experience. Within the context of global politics, for example, this is very significant and prophetic. The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi still stinks from the throne of the Saudi monarchy. Such blatant termination of life ought to be met with tough sanctions from the comity of nations. But America as leader of the free world has not taken the incident seriously. Yet everyone cries out for peace!

    Metaphors! There is a sense in which the world can be said to be on the boil currently. Boiling with diseases. With wars, major and minor. Rumours of wars. Threats of war. Conspiracy theories. Earthquakes. Violence and fury of nature from tsunamis, hurricanes, and storms. The 21st century can showcase all the benefits of technology. Yet, it carries within intense dissatisfaction with the quality of life, the quality of leadership across the world. Even where there are bright minds, mediocrity is the order of the day. The flash in the pan type of popularity. Populism. Eternal values are being interrogated and discarded. In biblical terms, these are portents long predicted that the evil system of things would soon come to an end.

    COVID-19 has proved Peter Tosh right. Where can one run to now, that the entire globe is shutting its borders? The best hospitals in America cannot cater for the entire world. When the disease hit Europe and America, Africa appeared safe. Not for long. The raging bull of a virus soon reared its ugly face on our continent. The boiling metaphor has come full circle. Globalisation brought benefits; but it has left a sour taste in the mouth. We cannot do without one another. Yet, wisdom says that we must build our homeland. Not that our homeland would be safer in the final analysis when the apocalypse does come. For the people in charge of policy development and implementation, now is the time to create our world the way it ought to be. Billions of dollars stolen and stashed away in the vaults of Europe and the Americas cannot save the world when the boiling returns the next time. Safety can only be found when we embrace the Creator of the universe whose timeless principles urge us to return to Him so that though the sea will be boiling, in him ‘we shall have peace because he has overcome the world!

    Eghagha can be reached on 08023220393

  • Urhobo leaders call on Buhari to tame spate of killings in Delta communities

    Urhobo leaders call on Buhari to tame spate of killings in Delta communities

    Urhobo leaders under the auspices of Urhobo Renaissance Society (URS) has called on the Federal Government of President Muhammadu Buhari to quickly tame the spate of killings, rape and maiming by armed-wielding herdsmen in Urhoboland, especially in Uwheru Kingdom in Delta State.

    National Chairman of URS, Professor Hope Eghagha, who led a delegation of prominent Urhobo sons and daughters including renowned law professor, Chief (Prof) Joseph Abugu, Prof (Mrs) Rose Aziza, Prof Sunny Awhefeada and Chief Joseph Okoro, made the call on Friday.

    They lamented that the unabated attacks and killings of their kinsmen by herdsmen believed to be mostly foreigners from Chad, Mali, Niger and other African countries without proactive intervention of government is emboldening the hoodlums in their criminal trade.

    URS, a body of renowned academia, businessmen and Urhobo professionals, spoke on Friday during a visit to the graveyard of slain victims of last month herdsmen repeated attacks in Agadama community where the victims were given mass burial on Thursday.

    They had earlier visited the palace of Odion R’ Ode (Ovie) Of Uwheru Kingdom before proceeding to the community town hall and graveyard to pay their last respect to the deceased.

    Prof Eghagha, speaking while presenting relief materials to the people of the affected communities, said URS is working with the apex socio-cultural umbrella of Urhobo Nation, Urhobo Progress Union (UPU) to ensure that the killings of Urhobo indigenes by herdsmen is urgently addressed.

    He stated that URS is touched by the gruesome killings and condemned a situation where members of the communities who are predominantly farmers are now scared to visit their farms over fears of being killed, raped or attacked by herdsmen.

    Eghagha, a professor of English Language at University of Lagos (UNILAG) and former commissioner for Education in Delta, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to protect Urhobo people from further attacks and invasion by herdsmen.

    He stressed that Urhobo Nation will not cede any portion of their land through any guise to foreigners or local invaders.

    The former commissioner called on the international community to intervene in the helpless situation of Uwheru Kingdom by directing the Nigerian government to ensure that Urhobo people are protected from herdsmen’ attacks.

    He also appealed to heads of security agencies in the country to diligently investigate and prosecute its men who are alleged to have taken sides with the marauding herdsmen in the attacks against the people of Uwheru Kingdom.

    According to him, “We are here to commiserate with our kith and kin who were attacked by strangers in their land, and during this last attacks ten people lost their lives. The President-General of the community spoke earlier on saying over 80 persons have lost their lives.

    “Sometimes, their wives are raped and killed. You know what it means for your wife to be raped in your presence. People were slaughtered and burnt. This is unacceptable by any standard. By the laws of the land, you cannot bear arms except you are licensed. The people here are defenceless.

    “So, we are calling on the federal government to perform its duties and obligation to Urhobo people specifically towards the people of Uwheru Kingdom by ensuring that security forces protect them. I emphasize; protect them (Uwheru people). The narrative out there is that some of the security forces took sides with the invaders. That is very unfortunate.

    “It’s our view that such persons in our security forces who took sides against our people should be invited and interrogated. Where it’s established that such murderers took sides against our people due sanctions should be invoked against them.”