Senate plans impeachment. Senate asks Nigerians to pray. Senate orders Yar’Adua to do this. Senate...
I went to my bank the other day and met a lady teller complaining about “too much talk” over the President’s ill-health while “people who should know are not hitting the nail on the head.” I was intrigued by this remark. Who are the people that should know, and how do they go about hitting the nail on the head in this matter?
“The issue is quite simple,” she said. “The president is incapacitated, and someone needs to exercise power and get the country moving. Why can’t the National Assembly understand this simple fact and do something about it, instead of talking, talking, and talking?” she asked.
She was right about the talking, talking, talking bit. I started to say something and stopped because she was not interested. She merely hissed and went back to counting money. Perhaps she sensed that I was about to convert her banking hall into another National Assembly of talk.
What I wanted to say to the lady was that the politics of Mr. President’s health is propelled by fear, bordering on paranoia. A few weeks back, there was fear that the country was moving to a point where the unthinkable could happen – such as a military takeover. It was in the air of Abuja, thick, heavy, and pregnant. State governors were flitting in and out of the capital. Added to renewed rumblings in the Niger Delta, and yet another round of bloodletting in Jos, the country appeared primed for violent change. But the military, keeping its ears to the ground, picked up the rumour, and quickly went public to dismiss it.
It was at this point that the politicos came up with a tried and tested strategy to dash hot water on our fearful bodies, and get us jumping up and down in righteous indignation. Now everyone is talking, and skirting the issue that since 23 November 2009, our president took his symbol of office to a hospital bed, and asked the country to wait for him to get well before any further key executive actions and decisions are taken!
If you needed proof of how effective the diversionary national talkshop has become, take a gallery seat at the Senate Chamber where this current national jaw-jaw was launched. Discerning Abuja residents are looking on in amusement as the group of establishment and conservative Senators have suddenly found a “radical” voice, while the traditional hotbed of radicalism – the lower House – looks on askance.
The talkshop has become a calming balm to the fearful souls of government appointees in Abuja, although they are still assailed by two monsters – the kingibe factor and the good luck factor.
The first level fear of political appointees in the Federal Executive Council is the Kingibe factor – a real fear that if one does not show absolute loyalty in words and deeds, one may be shown the door when the big masquerade makes another magical return. As a result, Nigerians who wanted to bellyache over the President’s absence were quickly shushed, and asked to instead pray and sympathise with a sick man. Although Ministers and other appointees – including the elected Vice President – prefaced their public speeches with prayers for the President’s quick recovery, no one could stop the army of political cats from mousing. Public officials continued their prayers during the day while, at night, the politicos congregated to plot power succession scenarios.
The second fear is about Yar’Adua’s deputy, the man of good luck. With wild stories circulating about how the President’s health condition was deteriorating, the prospect of Goodluck Jonathan assuming power appeared very bright. To be sure, this fear that Goodluck Jonathan could succeed Yar’Adua, was fuelled by what began as a joke in bars and other watering holes of Abuja. All through his life, so the story went, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan always succeeded his bosses. Apparently, Abuja powerbrokers picked up the rumour and did not find it funny.
The fear of Jonathan succeeding his boss became palpable when the President failed to return after a month, leaving important affairs of state unattended to. Among these were the swearing in of the nation’s new chief justice (eventually done by his predecessor on 30 December, an unprecedented move), quick response to emergency situations, such as the Jos uprising (the army was eventually deployed by the VP, another worrisome precedent); swearing in of permanent secretaries (also done by Jonathan); high-level intervention when Nigeria was branded a terrorist state to watch by the United States, and the controversial signing into law of the 2009 Supplementary Appropriation Bill (whodunit?).
Since no one knew when to expect the President’s return, it slowly dawned on the powerbrokers that they could not sustain the equivocation and continue to dismiss suggestions that the VP exercises temporary power.
Why do the powerbrokers find it difficult to entrust the Vice President with temporary power? At the core of the current political jockeying are three things – the PDP power rotation principle as it benefits the North at this time, the fear of Vice President Jonathan as an ambitious man with a running streak of good luck, and a real worry that Mr. President may not return to Nigeria in one piece. The calculation appears to be that if Mr. Yar’Adua returns to Nigeria in a state in which he is unable to exercise his executive functions, this would leave a powerful and ambitious Jonathan to run wild and free for two years at the helm. Should this happen, so the argument goes, the north may not be guaranteed another slot at the Presidency after the Yar’Adua-Jonathan mandate expires in 2011, with an ambitious and powerful VP in the saddle.
There were suggestions that the wily General of Otta planned the whole thing from the beginning. It is instructive that General Obasanjo did not find this rumour funny, and he quickly went public to try to quench it, swearing that he did not know the true medical condition of his successor at the time he was hand-picked for the job. Also, and perhaps to curb Jonathan’s enthusiasm, the ruling party crafted a subtle letter to tell the VP that “power belongs to God” (read ‘take it easy’) while simultaneously praising him for being “loyal” to the President.
These manoeuvres have, unfortunately failed to stem persistent unease over the prospect of a southerner becoming president, should Mr. Yar’Adua abdicate.
The fact that we are currently debating whether Yar’Adua should temporarily entrust his deputy with executive powers has proved that the PDP constitution is more important than the Nigerian constitution. Although they publicly quote the 1999 constitution to back up their understanding of the word, handover, the party people privately rely on their understanding of the dictionary meaning, and the party constitution to support or oppose it.
In the context in which it is being applied by progressive acolytes of the President, handover means to temporarily “entrust” power to Jonathan, which will enable the country move forward with critical and pending executive decisions and actions. They say that it is in the President’s interest that the Vice President assumes temporary power, so that the country could move on with governance. The common dictionary supports this interpretation, which runs through all of Prof. Dora Akunyili’s logic on the issue when she faced her colleagues at the Federal Executive Council.
In the context in which it is applied by conservative acolytes of the President, handover could very well translate to “giving up”, “surrendering”, “relinquishing”, or “renouncing” power. The dictionary also supports this interpretation, which runs through the sentiments expressed by the likes of the founder of Arewa Consultative Forum, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai. “It is unheard of for any elected leader to hand over his mandate to any other person,” he said.
The job of the National Assembly appears to leave the constitution and instead ignite a debate over the true meaning of handover, stoke it as we shout and protest in our various trademark fashions, and maintain the tempo for as long as it takes the President to return to his seat.
The success or failure of this talkshop strategy depends on how long the President continues his stay on in Saudi Arabia without the ability exercise executive power.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Tigers in Our Neck of the Woods
I am going to attempt to shoot 18 holes with this week’s letter, so I will number them accordingly.
1. Tiger Woods is a lucky man – handsome, rich, with a wonderful wife and two beautiful children. And he is a phenomenal champion golfer, who has made more money than any golfer alive (he was set to break into the billionaire earnings rank this year). You have heard the not-so-impressive story of Mr. Woods; how he was exposed as a wife cheater, with newspapers counting 13 women (all blondes) that he allegedly bedded, before or since taking his Swedish blonde wife. Tiger is so ashamed of the disclosures that he has decided to hole up in his exclusive neighbourhood, shunning press and police officers who came to ask about his late night car accident in front of his own home.
2. Reading the Tiger stories, I was persuaded to compare this other thing that Woods has done with the way that the adultery game is played in Abuja FCT. To tee off (and for the benefit of those who don’t know how the game is played), here are three things you need to know about golf, the game that Mr. Woods made famous.
3. The first is that a golf course is divided into 18 sections, also called holes. Players go through the 18 sections in the course of a tournament, from the tee (the starting point) to the end hole usually marked by a flag, a cup or cylindrical container. In between the tee and the end hole is the fairway. Players gradually propel the ball to the end cup to complete a hole before moving to the next section, on and on, until a player covers the entire 18 holes. A player wins, among other things, by his ability to use a minimum number of strokes to reach each end hole.
4. The second is the beautiful fairway, the field of play, which is a carefully tended strip of land on which the grass has been cut low to provide a good playing surface for the ball. Players must use additional skills and judgment in playing their shots to keep their balls in the fairway.
5. The third is that players who make a mistake will drive their balls flying into the rough. The rough straddle both sides of a fairway, and are covered with long grass, bushes, or trees, containing sandy, rough, or marshy sections. Where there are no such natural obstacles, artificial hazards such as bunkers (also known as traps) are constructed, filled with loose sand, mounds and other earthen embankments, or even artificial ditches, creeks, ponds, or lakes.
6. When we compare the game of adultery to a round of golf, we see immediately that Mr. Woods is not smart, after all. In spite of all that his father taught him about how to concentrate on his game and ignore side distractions, he willfully ignored the fairway and drove his ball into the rough, where blondes were lurking, willing and ready to fornicate with him.
7. Why did he choose to hunker down with the fair-haired ones in the several artificial bunkers (aka hotels) that he found on the circuit? There are two possible explanations. One can be found in the actor Paul Newman’s famous retort; “Why have hamburger out when you’ve got steak at home? That doesn’t mean it’s always tender.” Tiger has not shown his pretty face in public for over two months now – because it may no longer look pretty. Of course, no one expects that the steak at home would be showing much tenderness at this moment, what with all the tabloid stories. In fact, the picture that has stayed in my mind is of a Tiger that became unconscious after ramming his expensive SUV into a fire hydrant and a tree as he fled from unseen demons in the middle of the night, the smashed back window of his car, and a blonde bending over him with a golf club. I may be running away with my imagination but this is the powerful imagery that I took away from all the tabloid exposures.
8. A second explanation is that, on this other game of adultery, Woods was playing in unfamiliar territory. Think about it, if you have the imagination: Despite his ball driving skills, Tiger was unable to run the full 18-hole course; Over his 5-year blitz, he could not go beyond 13, and thirteen has always been a lucky number for the oyinbos.
9. I wish Tiger had visited the FCT to play in the Abuja Masters before all this happened. He would have learnt a few lessons on how to handle such a small matter. For the avoidance of doubt, the Abuja Masters is played outside the IBB Golf Course in Maitama. Those who play in the Abuja Masters are experts in the sport where Tiger has fumbled. In my interaction with those of them that I know, as I was preparing to compose this letter, I realized that Tiger made six tactical errors.
10. The first tactical mistake was to pretend to have a happy home, and to make a show of returning there from each tournament, to dutifully play another game of dotting husband and father. Players in the Abuja masters say that, since his “work” took him to all parts of the globe, he should have installed his family in Sweden where he will only visit occasionally. If the wife says that she is on her way to any of his “bachelor” locations, the distance she would cover to get there would provide ample time for him to do “sanitation” duty before she arrived. In Abuja, there are two variants of this strategy. One is to install a favorite in a plush apartment, to be visited whenever he is in heat. The other is to take them in as “spare wives”, and they would become part of the sanitation duties that must be performed before the real wife arrives. This is what has been known since 1992 as the Abuja Marriage.
11. The second mistake Tiger made was stooping to heap shame on himself, rather than stand up and act bold-faced, defiant. Remember late Princess Diana and her husband, Charles, the Prince of Wales? Prince Charles, like Tiger, initially made a show of a happy home, even as he went out intermittently to hump Lady Camilla. “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” Diana whined. To a Daily Mail reporter who dared to question him about it, the Prince showed that he was the real Tiger: “Do you seriously expect me to be the first Prince of Wales in history not to have a mistress?” he roared. Prince Charles evidently learnt from the Abuja Masters.
12. Tiger could also have protected himself with an office alibi, but he didn’t have one. I was once accused of also being an Abuja adulterer. “Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t you have a girlfriend?” the accuser shot at me. My jaw dropped, but he proceeded to produce his proof: “What of that lady who has been coming to see you in your office? The one I met and you introduced as your former colleague in the Vanguard?” I shook my head in disbelief at the man, but I understood something else about the masters. In Abuja, seeing a girl may begin and end in one’s office, all possible transactions concluded right there. This was Tiger’s third mistake: he had no office outside the golf course where he could receive white-haired visitors, or use as an excuse to return late to the waiting wife.
13. Tiger is not a sportsman. Good sportsmen are noted for graciously accepting defeat when they are licked in a tournament. Knowing this, Americans begged Tiger to show up at the Oprah Winfrey show, confess his infidelity, cry a little, and he would be forgiven. This is also the Nigerian way. In Abuja, the cheater’s wife is his Oprah, and the cry we often hear could be either the roar of a brand new car in the wife’s garage, or an airplane zooming off to an exotic destination where they will kiss and make up. But I guess Swedish blondes are made of sterner stuff.
14. The fifth mistake is that Woods has no sense of humour. Imagine how his fellow American, Chico Marx, a comedian reacted when his wife caught him kissing a chorus girl, and protested. “But I wasn’t kissing her,” Chico said, “I was whispering in her mouth.” Or imagine a powerful Abuja grandmaster that liked to proclaim to the rooftops that he is “born-again” when everyone knew that women were his weakness - old, young, pretty and ugly. Once, after the usual night of Fela's bend-bend sleep, he was challenged to reconcile his claims of faith with his previous night’s escapades. He replied with a straight face: “From here to here (pointing between stomach and forehead) is born again; from here to here (his waist down to the foot), not born again.” Everyone roared with laughter and left him alone. But Tiger? He has locked the world out, occasionally posting wooly messages on his website, hoping everything would blow away and he would somehow become famous and loved, once again. He has, instead, become infamous and despised. He needs an Abuja teacher.
15. The final mistake is that Tiger forgot that once you have a drop of black blood in your veins, you are African. African men are polygamous by nature. The likes of Fela, Abiola, and Jacob Zuma openly demonstrated it to the world. Most powerful Abuja politicians and bureaucrats marry more than one, but keep the other(s) in hiding, until they die and the “strangers” show up to collect their lawful inheritance. If we knew of Tiger’s tendencies, we could have advised him to return to the motherland; after all, we have white-haired mullatos who would be glad to play housewife while giving him elbow room to fully express his libido.
16. On a serious note, Tiger’s situation is pitiful because he failed to understand that adultery is like any other habit – easy to get into, but difficult to get out of. He also failed to realise that the world is like his golf course. One day, you are playing on the fairways where everything is green and spectators are applauding your character and skills. You may forget that on those same fields, you could be made to pay the price of success by white haired fairies that will distract you and lead you to drive your ball into the rough. Even champions who persevere to the end are not spared the indignity for they become adulterers in a biblical sense. Former President Jimmy Carter recognized this in his famous interview with Playboy magazine when he said: “I have looked on a lot of women with lust. I have committed adultery in my heart many times.” So which man has never committed adultery in the heart?
17. So, Mr. Tiger, you did cross the line but this is no reason to kill yourself. Learn the proper lessons (er.. not the Abuja lessons!) from this episode, be honest about your ball driving errors, apologize to those you have wronged, mix in some humour, and continue with your fairy tale on the fairways. Your father taught you how to push away distractions on the fairway, and you are no longer a poor man. You want to become the greatest golfer in the world by the number of wins you post, and if your sponsors leave you, you can live well on your match winnings alone, to achieve your goal of meeting and surpassing the record set by Sam Snead to become the greatest golfer ever. Luckily, it seems your wife has forgiven you, so what else do you need, Tiger, to roar and bound out from the posh cave where you are currently cowering in fear and shame, and take over the fairways once more?
18. Stop being such a wimp!
1. Tiger Woods is a lucky man – handsome, rich, with a wonderful wife and two beautiful children. And he is a phenomenal champion golfer, who has made more money than any golfer alive (he was set to break into the billionaire earnings rank this year). You have heard the not-so-impressive story of Mr. Woods; how he was exposed as a wife cheater, with newspapers counting 13 women (all blondes) that he allegedly bedded, before or since taking his Swedish blonde wife. Tiger is so ashamed of the disclosures that he has decided to hole up in his exclusive neighbourhood, shunning press and police officers who came to ask about his late night car accident in front of his own home.
2. Reading the Tiger stories, I was persuaded to compare this other thing that Woods has done with the way that the adultery game is played in Abuja FCT. To tee off (and for the benefit of those who don’t know how the game is played), here are three things you need to know about golf, the game that Mr. Woods made famous.
3. The first is that a golf course is divided into 18 sections, also called holes. Players go through the 18 sections in the course of a tournament, from the tee (the starting point) to the end hole usually marked by a flag, a cup or cylindrical container. In between the tee and the end hole is the fairway. Players gradually propel the ball to the end cup to complete a hole before moving to the next section, on and on, until a player covers the entire 18 holes. A player wins, among other things, by his ability to use a minimum number of strokes to reach each end hole.
4. The second is the beautiful fairway, the field of play, which is a carefully tended strip of land on which the grass has been cut low to provide a good playing surface for the ball. Players must use additional skills and judgment in playing their shots to keep their balls in the fairway.
5. The third is that players who make a mistake will drive their balls flying into the rough. The rough straddle both sides of a fairway, and are covered with long grass, bushes, or trees, containing sandy, rough, or marshy sections. Where there are no such natural obstacles, artificial hazards such as bunkers (also known as traps) are constructed, filled with loose sand, mounds and other earthen embankments, or even artificial ditches, creeks, ponds, or lakes.
6. When we compare the game of adultery to a round of golf, we see immediately that Mr. Woods is not smart, after all. In spite of all that his father taught him about how to concentrate on his game and ignore side distractions, he willfully ignored the fairway and drove his ball into the rough, where blondes were lurking, willing and ready to fornicate with him.
7. Why did he choose to hunker down with the fair-haired ones in the several artificial bunkers (aka hotels) that he found on the circuit? There are two possible explanations. One can be found in the actor Paul Newman’s famous retort; “Why have hamburger out when you’ve got steak at home? That doesn’t mean it’s always tender.” Tiger has not shown his pretty face in public for over two months now – because it may no longer look pretty. Of course, no one expects that the steak at home would be showing much tenderness at this moment, what with all the tabloid stories. In fact, the picture that has stayed in my mind is of a Tiger that became unconscious after ramming his expensive SUV into a fire hydrant and a tree as he fled from unseen demons in the middle of the night, the smashed back window of his car, and a blonde bending over him with a golf club. I may be running away with my imagination but this is the powerful imagery that I took away from all the tabloid exposures.
8. A second explanation is that, on this other game of adultery, Woods was playing in unfamiliar territory. Think about it, if you have the imagination: Despite his ball driving skills, Tiger was unable to run the full 18-hole course; Over his 5-year blitz, he could not go beyond 13, and thirteen has always been a lucky number for the oyinbos.
9. I wish Tiger had visited the FCT to play in the Abuja Masters before all this happened. He would have learnt a few lessons on how to handle such a small matter. For the avoidance of doubt, the Abuja Masters is played outside the IBB Golf Course in Maitama. Those who play in the Abuja Masters are experts in the sport where Tiger has fumbled. In my interaction with those of them that I know, as I was preparing to compose this letter, I realized that Tiger made six tactical errors.
10. The first tactical mistake was to pretend to have a happy home, and to make a show of returning there from each tournament, to dutifully play another game of dotting husband and father. Players in the Abuja masters say that, since his “work” took him to all parts of the globe, he should have installed his family in Sweden where he will only visit occasionally. If the wife says that she is on her way to any of his “bachelor” locations, the distance she would cover to get there would provide ample time for him to do “sanitation” duty before she arrived. In Abuja, there are two variants of this strategy. One is to install a favorite in a plush apartment, to be visited whenever he is in heat. The other is to take them in as “spare wives”, and they would become part of the sanitation duties that must be performed before the real wife arrives. This is what has been known since 1992 as the Abuja Marriage.
11. The second mistake Tiger made was stooping to heap shame on himself, rather than stand up and act bold-faced, defiant. Remember late Princess Diana and her husband, Charles, the Prince of Wales? Prince Charles, like Tiger, initially made a show of a happy home, even as he went out intermittently to hump Lady Camilla. “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” Diana whined. To a Daily Mail reporter who dared to question him about it, the Prince showed that he was the real Tiger: “Do you seriously expect me to be the first Prince of Wales in history not to have a mistress?” he roared. Prince Charles evidently learnt from the Abuja Masters.
12. Tiger could also have protected himself with an office alibi, but he didn’t have one. I was once accused of also being an Abuja adulterer. “Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t you have a girlfriend?” the accuser shot at me. My jaw dropped, but he proceeded to produce his proof: “What of that lady who has been coming to see you in your office? The one I met and you introduced as your former colleague in the Vanguard?” I shook my head in disbelief at the man, but I understood something else about the masters. In Abuja, seeing a girl may begin and end in one’s office, all possible transactions concluded right there. This was Tiger’s third mistake: he had no office outside the golf course where he could receive white-haired visitors, or use as an excuse to return late to the waiting wife.
13. Tiger is not a sportsman. Good sportsmen are noted for graciously accepting defeat when they are licked in a tournament. Knowing this, Americans begged Tiger to show up at the Oprah Winfrey show, confess his infidelity, cry a little, and he would be forgiven. This is also the Nigerian way. In Abuja, the cheater’s wife is his Oprah, and the cry we often hear could be either the roar of a brand new car in the wife’s garage, or an airplane zooming off to an exotic destination where they will kiss and make up. But I guess Swedish blondes are made of sterner stuff.
14. The fifth mistake is that Woods has no sense of humour. Imagine how his fellow American, Chico Marx, a comedian reacted when his wife caught him kissing a chorus girl, and protested. “But I wasn’t kissing her,” Chico said, “I was whispering in her mouth.” Or imagine a powerful Abuja grandmaster that liked to proclaim to the rooftops that he is “born-again” when everyone knew that women were his weakness - old, young, pretty and ugly. Once, after the usual night of Fela's bend-bend sleep, he was challenged to reconcile his claims of faith with his previous night’s escapades. He replied with a straight face: “From here to here (pointing between stomach and forehead) is born again; from here to here (his waist down to the foot), not born again.” Everyone roared with laughter and left him alone. But Tiger? He has locked the world out, occasionally posting wooly messages on his website, hoping everything would blow away and he would somehow become famous and loved, once again. He has, instead, become infamous and despised. He needs an Abuja teacher.
15. The final mistake is that Tiger forgot that once you have a drop of black blood in your veins, you are African. African men are polygamous by nature. The likes of Fela, Abiola, and Jacob Zuma openly demonstrated it to the world. Most powerful Abuja politicians and bureaucrats marry more than one, but keep the other(s) in hiding, until they die and the “strangers” show up to collect their lawful inheritance. If we knew of Tiger’s tendencies, we could have advised him to return to the motherland; after all, we have white-haired mullatos who would be glad to play housewife while giving him elbow room to fully express his libido.
16. On a serious note, Tiger’s situation is pitiful because he failed to understand that adultery is like any other habit – easy to get into, but difficult to get out of. He also failed to realise that the world is like his golf course. One day, you are playing on the fairways where everything is green and spectators are applauding your character and skills. You may forget that on those same fields, you could be made to pay the price of success by white haired fairies that will distract you and lead you to drive your ball into the rough. Even champions who persevere to the end are not spared the indignity for they become adulterers in a biblical sense. Former President Jimmy Carter recognized this in his famous interview with Playboy magazine when he said: “I have looked on a lot of women with lust. I have committed adultery in my heart many times.” So which man has never committed adultery in the heart?
17. So, Mr. Tiger, you did cross the line but this is no reason to kill yourself. Learn the proper lessons (er.. not the Abuja lessons!) from this episode, be honest about your ball driving errors, apologize to those you have wronged, mix in some humour, and continue with your fairy tale on the fairways. Your father taught you how to push away distractions on the fairway, and you are no longer a poor man. You want to become the greatest golfer in the world by the number of wins you post, and if your sponsors leave you, you can live well on your match winnings alone, to achieve your goal of meeting and surpassing the record set by Sam Snead to become the greatest golfer ever. Luckily, it seems your wife has forgiven you, so what else do you need, Tiger, to roar and bound out from the posh cave where you are currently cowering in fear and shame, and take over the fairways once more?
18. Stop being such a wimp!
Monday, February 1, 2010
The Anambra Solution
It is breathtaking to watch the politics of Anambra, the shining star of the East. The other day, IGP Onovo invited the army of governorship aspirants and made them sign an undertaking to be of good behaviour in the election that will take place this weekend, 6 February 2009.
Of all Igbo states, Anambra has the greatest number of world-class intellectuals, produces a disproportionate number of Igbo professionals and senior federal civil servants, and boasts the greatest number of Igbo millionaires per square meter of land. Consequently the citizens of Anambra – academics, moneyed class, and commoners alike – are exceedingly proud of the fact that they are the cultural, political, and economic bastion of Igboland.
But Anambra is, alas, a state at war with itself. It is a land where money is lionized, far and above other virtues. Because it has abundance of intellectual and material juggernauts in almost equal measure, a war of supremacy has arisen between the two. This contest, between intellectualism and materialism, is largely fought on the political plane and is intense, fierce, and unending.
In the beginning, Anambrarians who elected to pursue money and wealth at the expense of education – mainly boys – ended up being the laughing stock of those who went to school, because their grammar and diction made them misfits in the larger Nigerian setting, and because they could be impoverished with a stroke of government policy. The situation of the unlettered class changed somewhat during the long years of military rule, when succeeding generals pitched camp with the Anambra moneyed class, and bred a group of powerful but unlettered billionaires who turned up their noses at the school types. Their reign was, however, severely threatened during the Shagari Administration, partly because an intellectual from Anambra became the Vice President, partly because inflation and world-wide economic recession entered the survival dictionary of nations and individuals, and partly because of politics. At any rate, it was during this time that the political trouble besetting Anambra today was reared.
The intellectual and material class staged a final battle over the soul of Anambra when President Ibrahim Babangida blew the whistle for party politics in 1987. In 1989 the moneyed class, as expected, pitched their tents with the National Republican Convention (NRC), while the intellectual class moved to the rival Social Democratic Party (SDP). Anambra would always vote the intellectual class, and knowing this, a subtle maneuver was launched by the moneyed class to also snatch the governorship ticket of the SDP.
One of the frontline contenders for the SDP governorship ticket was an interesting gentleman called Chief (Dr.) Okey Odunze. The intellectuals of Anambra were, however, not impressed with the lofty achievements of this candidate, who paraded a combination of formidable traditional and academic titles. It was sold to the public that Odunze was either a 419er himself or is being promoted as the front for the 419ers and drug barons, in line with their desire to take the state. To back up their claims, these disgruntled party members alleged, among other bizarre revelations, that Chief Odunze bagged his Ph.D long before he earned a primary school certificate!
Okey Odunze was not intimidated by the insinuations and blackmail of the little minds in his party. Neither were majority of his party members persuaded by the 419 and other allegations that were placed on the primaries voting table, to try to halt the hurricane of victory provoked by the Chief and his group. The first of the primaries was conducted and Chief Odunze, the barely literate moneybag, won handily.
There was consternation. Anambra being what it is, this primary was voided and a return match called. He won that too, with a wider margin. Anambra academics and federal civil servants were incensed and moved decisively to checkmate the series of embarrassing outcomes. But the Chief and his group were ready, and shut them up when he posted a most resounding victory at the third and final primaries.
There was agony and gnashing of teeth at the intellectuals camp. Money was apparently talking and its voice was heard clearly in the Anambra State branch of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). What made the situation so unacceptable to the intellectuals was that another Anambrarian, Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, chair of the National Electoral Commission, had earlier told Nigerians that SDP, a government creation, would be “a little to the left,” meaning that it was the party of the intellectuals and their bedfellows, the labour movement. How could a moneybag highjack it in the state?
Chief Odunze’s run of political luck ended when the late, world-renowned economist, Dr. Pius Okigbo, allegedly rallied the Anambra intellectual class and retired policy makers to prevail on President Babangida to cancel the Anambra primaries “fraud”, and ban Chief (Dr.) Odunze. As soon as IBB allegedly gave the nod, Prof. Nwosu immediately added Chief Odunze to the list of old politicians that government removed from the contest, and gleefully announced his immediate ban on national television. It was a spectacle to behold. The SDP primaries introduced Nigerians to a formidable Anambra State political juggernaut called Chief (Dr.) Okey Odunze. But from the lips of Prof. Nwosu on NTA (when he announced the ban), we heard that his full names were Mister Raymond Okechukwu Odunze.
Chief Odunze, a dogged fighter, moved on. We heard that, after this political setback, prompted by his lack of sufficient education, he learnt what every Anambra trader now knows – that for one to really arrive, one is required to parade an authentic academic certificate, in addition to one’s impressive certificates of bank deposit. We hear that he subsequently went to London to obtain a bachelor degree, and later crowned it with an authentic master degree in political science from the University of Lagos! But by then it was too late – his rising political star was irredeemably dimmed by the intellectuals. An authentic academic, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, Harvard-trained and retired federal permanent secretary, became the beneficiary of his misfortune and ruled Anambra for a short while, before June 12 befell us and destroyed the fledgling democracy.
Since the Odunze debacle of 1989, the political war between the intellectuals and the moneybags has continued to rage in Anambra.
Another governorship contest is in the offing and many political pundits are claiming that it would be a straight fight between three intellectuals: incumbent Anambra Governor Peter Obi, his predecessor, Chris Ngige, and another former “Governor” Charles Chukwuma Soludo. Among the pundits is former Governor Chukwuemeka Ezeife, the man who benefited from Odunze’s political waterloo. Okwadike (that’s Ezeife’s title) says that no matter what happens, Anambra State would have an intellectual servant-ruler come February 2010. What he is saying in essence is that the intellectual camp, once again, has the upper hand, and that the moneybags would have to wait for another day?
Dr. Andy Uba, the Labour Party candidate, and Chief (Dr.) Okey Odunze have something in common. Uba, the former senior special assistant on Presidential Household Matters to ex-President Obasanjo, has powerful backing. Despite the hues and cries of Anambra intellectuals in 2006, he was able to bulldoze through the PDP primaries, sweep the governorship contest organized by INEC, and was sworn in as Governor of Anambra State in May 2007.
But Anambra being what it is, it was no surprise that the intellectual camp, once again, rallied public opinion against Uba, and made a compelling case for his ouster by the Supreme Court. Like Odunze before him, Chief (Dr.) Andy Uba, you will recall, was also accused of being a fraud. Among the many bizarre allegations against him was that he got a Ph.D long before he got a secondary school certificate! Like Odunze before him, he was not intimidated by the antics of the little minds, and has continued to roll over everyone like the political bulldozer that he is.
Dr. Pius Okigbo is now late, and that leaves former Vice President Alex Ekwume to lead the charge and apply the Anambra Solution in order to oust Uba permanently from the PDP, and from the leadership of Anambra. Ekwueme has apparently made his choice, in the person of Prof. Soludo, and appears to have thrown a spanner in works for Ngige, the popular candidate who belongs to a “wrong” party, as well as the struggling but able incumbent.
Are we back to 1988, when a formidable intellectual and technocrat benefitted from the Odunze misfortune through the application of the Anambra Solution? In the February 2010 contest, Andy Uba has refused to be intimidated out, but has rather resurfaced in another party, where he is, once again, staking a claim to leadership of the state. Will an intellectual and policy wonk give him a solid and final defeat, or will Chief (Dr.) Andy Uba be the one that gives the intellectual camp reason to rethink their Anambra Solution, which they have hitherto successfully applied whenever anyone they consider an unlettered moneybag stakes a claim to the leadership?
It is breathtaking to watch the politics of Anambra, the shining star of the East.
Of all Igbo states, Anambra has the greatest number of world-class intellectuals, produces a disproportionate number of Igbo professionals and senior federal civil servants, and boasts the greatest number of Igbo millionaires per square meter of land. Consequently the citizens of Anambra – academics, moneyed class, and commoners alike – are exceedingly proud of the fact that they are the cultural, political, and economic bastion of Igboland.
But Anambra is, alas, a state at war with itself. It is a land where money is lionized, far and above other virtues. Because it has abundance of intellectual and material juggernauts in almost equal measure, a war of supremacy has arisen between the two. This contest, between intellectualism and materialism, is largely fought on the political plane and is intense, fierce, and unending.
In the beginning, Anambrarians who elected to pursue money and wealth at the expense of education – mainly boys – ended up being the laughing stock of those who went to school, because their grammar and diction made them misfits in the larger Nigerian setting, and because they could be impoverished with a stroke of government policy. The situation of the unlettered class changed somewhat during the long years of military rule, when succeeding generals pitched camp with the Anambra moneyed class, and bred a group of powerful but unlettered billionaires who turned up their noses at the school types. Their reign was, however, severely threatened during the Shagari Administration, partly because an intellectual from Anambra became the Vice President, partly because inflation and world-wide economic recession entered the survival dictionary of nations and individuals, and partly because of politics. At any rate, it was during this time that the political trouble besetting Anambra today was reared.
The intellectual and material class staged a final battle over the soul of Anambra when President Ibrahim Babangida blew the whistle for party politics in 1987. In 1989 the moneyed class, as expected, pitched their tents with the National Republican Convention (NRC), while the intellectual class moved to the rival Social Democratic Party (SDP). Anambra would always vote the intellectual class, and knowing this, a subtle maneuver was launched by the moneyed class to also snatch the governorship ticket of the SDP.
One of the frontline contenders for the SDP governorship ticket was an interesting gentleman called Chief (Dr.) Okey Odunze. The intellectuals of Anambra were, however, not impressed with the lofty achievements of this candidate, who paraded a combination of formidable traditional and academic titles. It was sold to the public that Odunze was either a 419er himself or is being promoted as the front for the 419ers and drug barons, in line with their desire to take the state. To back up their claims, these disgruntled party members alleged, among other bizarre revelations, that Chief Odunze bagged his Ph.D long before he earned a primary school certificate!
Okey Odunze was not intimidated by the insinuations and blackmail of the little minds in his party. Neither were majority of his party members persuaded by the 419 and other allegations that were placed on the primaries voting table, to try to halt the hurricane of victory provoked by the Chief and his group. The first of the primaries was conducted and Chief Odunze, the barely literate moneybag, won handily.
There was consternation. Anambra being what it is, this primary was voided and a return match called. He won that too, with a wider margin. Anambra academics and federal civil servants were incensed and moved decisively to checkmate the series of embarrassing outcomes. But the Chief and his group were ready, and shut them up when he posted a most resounding victory at the third and final primaries.
There was agony and gnashing of teeth at the intellectuals camp. Money was apparently talking and its voice was heard clearly in the Anambra State branch of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). What made the situation so unacceptable to the intellectuals was that another Anambrarian, Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, chair of the National Electoral Commission, had earlier told Nigerians that SDP, a government creation, would be “a little to the left,” meaning that it was the party of the intellectuals and their bedfellows, the labour movement. How could a moneybag highjack it in the state?
Chief Odunze’s run of political luck ended when the late, world-renowned economist, Dr. Pius Okigbo, allegedly rallied the Anambra intellectual class and retired policy makers to prevail on President Babangida to cancel the Anambra primaries “fraud”, and ban Chief (Dr.) Odunze. As soon as IBB allegedly gave the nod, Prof. Nwosu immediately added Chief Odunze to the list of old politicians that government removed from the contest, and gleefully announced his immediate ban on national television. It was a spectacle to behold. The SDP primaries introduced Nigerians to a formidable Anambra State political juggernaut called Chief (Dr.) Okey Odunze. But from the lips of Prof. Nwosu on NTA (when he announced the ban), we heard that his full names were Mister Raymond Okechukwu Odunze.
Chief Odunze, a dogged fighter, moved on. We heard that, after this political setback, prompted by his lack of sufficient education, he learnt what every Anambra trader now knows – that for one to really arrive, one is required to parade an authentic academic certificate, in addition to one’s impressive certificates of bank deposit. We hear that he subsequently went to London to obtain a bachelor degree, and later crowned it with an authentic master degree in political science from the University of Lagos! But by then it was too late – his rising political star was irredeemably dimmed by the intellectuals. An authentic academic, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, Harvard-trained and retired federal permanent secretary, became the beneficiary of his misfortune and ruled Anambra for a short while, before June 12 befell us and destroyed the fledgling democracy.
Since the Odunze debacle of 1989, the political war between the intellectuals and the moneybags has continued to rage in Anambra.
Another governorship contest is in the offing and many political pundits are claiming that it would be a straight fight between three intellectuals: incumbent Anambra Governor Peter Obi, his predecessor, Chris Ngige, and another former “Governor” Charles Chukwuma Soludo. Among the pundits is former Governor Chukwuemeka Ezeife, the man who benefited from Odunze’s political waterloo. Okwadike (that’s Ezeife’s title) says that no matter what happens, Anambra State would have an intellectual servant-ruler come February 2010. What he is saying in essence is that the intellectual camp, once again, has the upper hand, and that the moneybags would have to wait for another day?
Dr. Andy Uba, the Labour Party candidate, and Chief (Dr.) Okey Odunze have something in common. Uba, the former senior special assistant on Presidential Household Matters to ex-President Obasanjo, has powerful backing. Despite the hues and cries of Anambra intellectuals in 2006, he was able to bulldoze through the PDP primaries, sweep the governorship contest organized by INEC, and was sworn in as Governor of Anambra State in May 2007.
But Anambra being what it is, it was no surprise that the intellectual camp, once again, rallied public opinion against Uba, and made a compelling case for his ouster by the Supreme Court. Like Odunze before him, Chief (Dr.) Andy Uba, you will recall, was also accused of being a fraud. Among the many bizarre allegations against him was that he got a Ph.D long before he got a secondary school certificate! Like Odunze before him, he was not intimidated by the antics of the little minds, and has continued to roll over everyone like the political bulldozer that he is.
Dr. Pius Okigbo is now late, and that leaves former Vice President Alex Ekwume to lead the charge and apply the Anambra Solution in order to oust Uba permanently from the PDP, and from the leadership of Anambra. Ekwueme has apparently made his choice, in the person of Prof. Soludo, and appears to have thrown a spanner in works for Ngige, the popular candidate who belongs to a “wrong” party, as well as the struggling but able incumbent.
Are we back to 1988, when a formidable intellectual and technocrat benefitted from the Odunze misfortune through the application of the Anambra Solution? In the February 2010 contest, Andy Uba has refused to be intimidated out, but has rather resurfaced in another party, where he is, once again, staking a claim to leadership of the state. Will an intellectual and policy wonk give him a solid and final defeat, or will Chief (Dr.) Andy Uba be the one that gives the intellectual camp reason to rethink their Anambra Solution, which they have hitherto successfully applied whenever anyone they consider an unlettered moneybag stakes a claim to the leadership?
It is breathtaking to watch the politics of Anambra, the shining star of the East.
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