A prayer for Dame Patience Jonathan

“Rain does not fall on one roof alone” African Proverb

Just about everything that should be said about the illness and absence of Dame Patience Jonathan has been said. Her aides and Presidential spokesmen have been accused for lying, deception, cover-up, insensitivity and irresponsibility over her whereabouts and illness. Opposition parties rolled out heavy armour against the presidency for concealing the state of her health, and then for her being treated overseas. The public is being fed stories about gagged aides in Wiesbaden, Germany; failed cosmetic surgeries and desperate remedial medications. On the whole, the manner the ailment of the First Lady was handled can rightly be described as a public relations disaster and critics of the administration will say that it has lived up to its established standards.

And all these over the lady who, a few months ago was being pillaged for accepting an appointment as Permanent Secretary in the Bayelsa State Civil Service Commission, then for making a case for the legalization of the position of the First Lady. This is the same lady whose run-in with Turai Yar’Adua was so lavishly splashed on the face of a nation. A few weeks ago, Dame Patience Jonathan was even more pilloried than her husband. Now the nation is agog with stories of her illness, and all manner of speculation over her condition.

You would think the concern over the health and whereabouts of Dame Jonathan is borne out of affection and compassion from a nation she, in her own inimitable way, thinks loves her. The fact that she would be sorely mistaken is even less of a tragedy than the entire melodrama of her illness and the way it is being managed. For, no matter what we think of the lady, the fact of the matter is that she is ill enough to have stayed this long in another country, away from her husband, family and those who love her. Where is our humanity, for goodness sake? Whatever we think about the spokesmen and aides’ gaffes, the simple fact is that one of us is in need of our prayers and compassion, and we should pray for her to get well and return home to the people who love her. We should pray to God to bring her quick relief and comfort, and end her suffering and of those who love her. We should pray to God to spare us all the nightmare of having a loved one in a hospital thousands of miles away, or being that far away and having people bicker over it as if they are on a cruise around the world.

We should pray for Dame Patience Jonathan to recover and come home to her family because that is what we will do for anyone’s wife or mother. That is in our character, even though our hearts have hardened in large measure because we think our leaders do not deserve humane considerations. Not to feel compassion for her and her family and not to pray for them will make us worse than the leaders we blame for our woes. The Dame and her husband are just human, and this is one time when we should treat them as fellow humans, with all the frailties we have.

We should pray for the quick recovery and return of Dame Patience Jonathan irrespective of what she and her husband do when she is back with us. When she comes back into her stride, she and the nation will pick up where we stopped. Make no mistake about it: Dame Patience is an extremely powerful woman. Those who doubted this only need to ask why the nation will get all worked up over her absence and illness. It cannot simply be that the P.R over her absence was bungled. This is standard practice these days. It cannot even be that she is receiving the best medical attention in the world at a time when medical workers are walking out on psychiatric patients in a federal government specialist hospital in Kaduna. The collapse of our public health system has long been registered, and it will take a brave man, or a callous one in Nigeria today who will not avail his spouse the best medical treatment anywhere in the world if he can afford it, or can have the public pay for it.

We should pray that she gets back on her own two feet, and while praying, we should also pray that God will touch her heart so that she can re-direct her abundant energy in a number of areas which will help her husband and the nation even more. When she returns hale and hearty, we hope she will use her fabled influence on her husband to work with the legislature to enact a law preventing any public office holder from travelling overseas for medial treatment of any type. The humiliation which our nation is subjected to every time our V.V.I.Ps travel out is only one reason for this. The Dame’s ailment is a painful reminder of the loss of Stella Obasanjo and the tragic shuttling of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua in and out of the nation in search of cure. The very people who can make sure that we build and maintain world-class medical infrastructure have turned foreign medical trips into routine matters. We spend trillions in Naira in foreign countries seeking relief from the simplest to the most complicated ailments. This is money which builds medical facilities, trains doctors and medical personnel, and allows research in those countries. Medical tourism is now the polite term for the undignified exodus of Nigerians to Egypt, India, Ghana, South Africa, Dubai and just about everywhere else. So when the Dame returns, those close to her should please remind her that part of the agony of the distance from her loved ones could have been prevented if she was hospitalized here at home. The money spent on her treatment and the upkeep of her aides will quite probably build and equip a world-class operating theater which can treat her with the same quality the Germans did.

We should also pray that God will also touch her heart to prevail on her husband to work with other policy makers to pass a law that should stop any public office holder from sending his child or ward to a foreign educational facility. Their children should study in Nigeria, where they have the power and resources to revolutionize education at all levels. She should lead the battle to convince her husband to transform his thinking and that of his administration to reduce the gulf which exists between elected leaders and citizens. His Minister of Power should not have a generator in his or her house. His Minister of Health should go to government hospitals for treatment. His Minister of Works should drive everywhere by the roads he builds and maintains.

She should remind him of a recent report that 130 private jets owned by Nigerians are valued at $6.3b. She should urge him to bring those involved in the subsidy and pensions scams to book. She should remind him that transformation means doing those things that his predecessor were unable or unwilling to do. She could remind him that they will live with Nigeria and Nigerians when they cease to be President and First Lady, and they will need to feel safe and satisfied that they left the nation better than they met it in 2010.

But first, we should genuinely and sincerely pray that God gives her her health back, and she rejoins her family. This will not be a favour to the Jonathans. Just the act of a humane and civilized people.

Islam and the West (II)

“Though the lion and the antelope live in the same forest, the antelope still has time to grow up” Ghanaian Proverb

The United States Government had taken up to advertising its standard position on the offensive video which has stirred up widespread muslim anger on Pakistani television in the last few days. In spite of this, the Pakistani authorities encouraged its citizens to join the popular protests against the video (read: US government) on Friday. So far the protests have claimed about 20 lives in Pakistan alone; and anger at the US does not appear to be abeting. Nigerian muslims joined the protests in numbers in Zaria and Kano, although these passed off peacefully. It is clear that the anger of muslims will take more time to simmer down, and the US and the West will make more efforts at damage control. Until the next provocation, and the next outpouring of outrage.

These periodic outbursts of anger of muslims at events which the West will see as the price to pay for a number of its non-negotiable values, such as the right to free expression and tolerance, as well as core values which are key elements in its liberal ideology that characterize the secular State and isolate it from matters of faith, will continue to feature in relations between the West and muslims. Characteristic predictable reactions to blasphemous publications against important symbols of Islamic faith are, in a way, symptoms of a deeper structural problem. Pakistan appears to have been more vociferous in its condemnations, but then Pakistan almost perfectly captures the paradox in relations between much of the muslim world and the West. An overwhelmingly muslim nation, it has lived with a love-hate relationship with the West for most of its life. It is the gateway and the strategic foothold of the US in its battle against muslim hostility in Asia. It is also on its own a virtual battlefront. It is the enemy the US tolerates and courts as a friend, because it will do much more damage otherwise. Its leadership receives billions in US aid, and encourages its citizens to hate the US for its drones; for its overbearing presence; for its comtempt for their sovereignty, and for being the US: strong, powerful and non-Islamic.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia and a number of muslim countries also play the role of facilitating the search for dominance of the West in the Middle East and Asia. Most of them are unable to assuage deep and widespread pain that their countries are made available for the weakening of the Islamic faith. Intimate relations with the US makes muslim nations reluctant or enable to take on the West on its role in Iraq; on its insistence that Iran should not develop nuclear technology; on the manner the Palestinian problem is being treated; on the impunity of Israel, and on the manner western propaganda portrays Islam as the great evil of modern civilization. Muslims watch with anguish as dictators previously propped up by western nations resist the will of their people for change; and where the will prevails, they find that it has strategic content of western facilitation and influence. The Arab Spring is still unraveling, and how the Maghreb relates to the West is still in the works. Syria’s vicious civil war will most likely end up more as a victory for the West than of the people. In this small globalized world, some muslims will feel everywhere they look they see the US and western interests.

And they will not be wrong. Muslims overwhelmingly live in poor countries, and the US and European nations have a basic utilitarian approach to the poor. Muslims are angry that they are weak vis-à-vis christians and jews. Most feel they have no business being in this position, but few bother to ask how they got into this position, and whether they are condemned as muslims to suffer the often offending dominance of nations which are secular, overtly christian, pointedly anti-islamic or fundamentally jewish.

Leaders in muslim countries have failed to build strong economies and the types of governments that should form organic solidarity with their peoples, and they are unable to shield muslims from the periodic provocations and perennial injuries from the West which they complain over. This is why riots have become the reactions of choice by millions of muslims every once in a while. But this pattern has also become routine, and since the West will not change its laws, or enact new laws which will more specifically limit the damage which blasphemy causes, these spontaneous and popular reactions will continue.

The muslim community needs to ask some very difficult questions. Are muslims doomed to take to the streets and suffer tear gas and bullets from their leaders every time some mischief maker decides to publish an offensive material over what they hold dear? Are there avenues to pressurize the US and western nations to tighten laws and regulations on they types of irritants which muslim countries can utilize? If it is a crime to deny the existence of the holocaust; and it is legal for people of same sex to marry, and there are laws against calling certain races certain names, and even the Patriot Act, which seeks to shield US citizens by curtaiting many of their privileges, why are western nations indifferent to addressing grievances of muslims in a world where the West has so much at stake in peace?

To paraphrase a medieval philosopher, in politics as in everything else, the strong will do as he will; and the weak will suffer as he must. If muslims want the type of respect from the US and western nations which will make them sensitive to its values, they must be strong enough to earn that respect. The biggest liability of muslims across the world is not the US and Europe. It is their leaders who hide under the cover and support of the US and Europe to weaken their own people. The West does not necessarily represent christianity, or even Judaism. Islam can live in peace with christians and jews, but it has to resolve some fundamental contradictions which weaken it. At the heart of that contradiction is a weak and corrupt muslim leadership which is propped up by the West.

The National Horrors List

“Stealing a drum is easy, but finding a place to beat it is not.” Nigerian Proverb

The uproar which greeted the publication of this year’s National Honours list has been very unfair to the majority of the those honoured. Most critics ignored the fact that many people on the list have eminently earned their recognition and rewards. A few are borderlines. If you lowered the bar for who should be honoured in a nation of 160million people, where values of hardwork, service and enterprise have been severely damaged, but are still basically standing, you will not lose sleep over their inclusion in the list. If, on the other hand, you believe the bar should be raised so that a nation desperate for role models, genuine heroes and heroines and distinguished patriots should reclaim vast ground lost, you will keep them out. It is those who have no business being on a list of rare Nigerians who deserve to be identified as honorable men and women who embody all our values in their lives and works that have drawn all the negative attention to the list. The list, like many before it, has failed to distinguish between the good, the bad and the ugly, and the good have been unfairly besmeared.

Naturally, the federal government has defended its decisions on the list, including bestowing the second highest honour on Mr Mike Adenuga, a prominent Nigerian whose business of politics and politics of business has brought him under very close scrutiny of the nation. The heavy presence of politicians, and a large number of people whose qualification, if one is charitable, can be described as unknown; and if one is not, as dubious, have also been roundly condemned. Others have questioned why distingnished jurist Kayode Esho should be given only the award of the Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR). There a few more “misplaced” recipients, and loud voices against the insulting number of women and young persons, as well as persons with disabilities. On the whole, this year’s list appears to have attracted more condemnation than previous years, but President Jonathan will shrug this off as typical, a characteristic response from a nation which has been more critical of him than all his predecessors combined.

There will be some sympathy for President Jonathan’s defence of his list as consistent with previous patterns and practice. Perhaps so, but this will render this otherwise useful mechanism for national celebration of service and excellence even more questionable in terms of its values. The fact is that politicians at federal and state levels have long turned the national honours award into a major source of bestowing political patronage. The quality of the list has progressively deteriorated with every year, and it is doubtful if many of the recipients themselves now feel genuinely honoured when they look at the entire list and find the names and history of those they are honoured with.

Under the chairmanship of late Malam Liman Chiroma, the nomination committee, worried by the seeming lack of rigorous criteria and existence of strong political influence in the exercise which was obviously compromising the quality of the Awards, recommended some far-reaching amendments to the criteria and modes of selecting those deserving honour. Among the recommendations made, these stand out:

a.   Awards should not exceed 100 in any one calendar year. This figure may be reviewed every four years;

b.   There should be a ratio of 60 men to 40 women in any one year. The ratio may be reviewed every three years.

c.   No public office holder, including President, Vice President, Leaders of the Legislature and members of the Judiciary, Public Service or the military and para-military should receive a National Honour while occupying office. The Award is to be seen as recognition of unblemished service, not a trapping of office.

d.   Honours may be bestowed post-humously to deserving persons;

e.   The Presidency and Governors should not nominate more than one quarter of the Award recipients in any one year;

f.    All Honour Awards should be made only in recognition of excellent and unblemished service and transparent honesty. They should seek to reinforce our values of hardwork, enterprise and innovation, create role models, and should be inclusive and innovative;

g.   All nominations, except those made by Federal and State governments should be published at least 3 months before confirmation. Clearly spelt out guidelines which should assist professional groups, civil society and communities in making nominations should be published. No person who has not consented to being nominated should have his or her name published;

h.   Awards should be withdrawn after establishing that recipients have fallen below clearly spelt-out criteria involving personal integrity, records of service or conviction for fraud or embezzlement;

i.    Awards should not bestow any other privilege on recipients;

j.    Service and professional group awards should be encouraged, but these should be guided by strict rules which should protect merit and integrity.

There were a few more of these recommendations, which, needless to say, were rejected. To be honest, even those who made them knew that they were merely a wish list. Looking back, one wishes it were possible for President Jonathan to re-visit them and stamp his authority on history as the President who reversed the corruption of one of the hallowed traditions of recognizing and rewarding increasingly rarified values in our nation. While he is at it, he could also stop the bastardization of the awards of Honourary Degrees by our Universities. He could re-visit the criteria for awarding the Academic Merit. And why not re-assess the qualification, experience and integrity of the people appointed to serve as Ministers, Special Advisers and key officers in the public service? He could ask where it is gospel that politics necessarily involves the sacrifice of excellence and experience, and encourages mediocrity and sycophancy as cherished qualities. He can ask how many of his Ministers are qualified to head Ministries made up of vastly experienced civil servants who would run circles around them the moment their incompetence or greed shows. He could ask how many of his advisers are qualified to advise him on anything, and why the overall performance of his administration has made it the object of national and international derision. The answers, he may discover, are not beyond his reach. They are the very people he interacts with every day, people he trusts to deliver targets and services.

When Professor Chinua Achebe rejected the award of the third highest National Honour last year, the second time he did this, many people hoped that the Presidency will take a hard look at the manner this Award business is being handled. True, old man Achebe did not hold up his nose at the stench from his fellow Award winners. He did it against his country, saying it was not good enough to honour him. There will be people in this year’s list who will toil with the dilemma of accepting a deserved honour, or doing an Achebe. They should not. Many people on the list deserve their honour, and we congratulate them. The few who do not will grab it with both hands. It will not redeem them. They and the government that gave them the award have done a great disservice to a nation desperate to find quality and respect in its leaders and citizens.

Islam and the West (1)

“Though the lion and the antelope live in the same forest, the antelope still has time to grow up” Ghanaian Proverb

A major casualty of the fury in Muslim nations over a movie made in the United State which insulted the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.) was the U.S Ambassador and three other US citizens. They died during a siege in Benghazi, a city which has been the frontline and symbol of the Libyan people’s uprising against their late leader, Muammar Ghaddafi. That uprising involved the very active, and some may say, even decisive involvement of the US and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The events in the last few days in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and many other Muslim countries has refocused attention on the difficult relations between the West and Islam. I have decided to start this two-part series on Islam and the West with a comment I made for our Radio and Television station which was broadcast on 25^th September, 2011, almost one year ago. It was titled, “Post-Ghaddafi Libya: A Difficult Road to Many Destinations”:

The National Transitional Council which provided the political leadership for the insurgency which ousted and killed Muammar Gaddafi last week led the celebration for Liberation Day on Sunday, 23^rd of October. The world watched hundreds of thousands of Libyans formalize a victory in Benghazi, the city which provided the bulwark of the resistance against Gaddafi virtually for his entire reign, but particularly since the insurgency built up and took on much of the traditional cultural and political fault lines of the Libyan nation. It is difficult not to share some of the relief of the Libya people that the 9-month old insurgency has come to an end. Nonetheless, even as they celebrate, it is not difficult to see that the road ahead for them will be fraught with many challenges, some of them with the potential to rob them of the benefits of removing Gaddafi. This is a time for deep reflection, and friends of the Libyan and African people should have the courage to give them honest and practical advise as they commence the difficult task of national reconstruction and reconciliation.

    The image of the dead and beaten up body of Gaddafi being dragged by a crowd made up of supposedly civilised Libyan Muslims will remain indelible in the mind of a global audience. It will dent the joy and accomplishment of the celebrations even in Benghazi. It will particularly leave a negative image in the minds of other Muslims who believe that a dead body, anyone’s dead body, deserves to be treated with some dignity. When Americans threw the dead body of Osama Bin Laden into the ocean for fish to feed on, they at least claimed that they gave him his rites as a Muslim, and did not humiliate and violate his dead body and gloat over their actions on television.  When the US captured Saddam Hussein, they tried and hanged him, instead of killing and desecrating his dead body. Now, even NATO nations who provided the fire power and the intelligence which led to the ouster, capture and eventual killing of Gaddafi are joining the chorus of demands for enquiry into how or why he was killed after his capture. Nothing will come out of this hypocrisy.

     The savagery which was shown on global television by some Libyans has exposed the soft underbelly of the revolution. Gaddafi’s 42years in power, much of it spent in brutal suppression of opposition must have robbed many Libyans of their basic humanity. The nine months of bitter and brutal campaign to oust him had further affected every Libyan very badly. Both sides adopted the most inhuman methods in the conflict, and in the end, the struggle to remove Gaddafi had stripped Libyans of their civilisation and humanity to their bare bones. Those who fought these bitter battles against each other, including those who dragged a dead body through the sand, are going to continue to live within Libyan communities. They will also keep their arms and ammunitions. And some of their memories and bitterness. And they will count graves, and injuries and bullet holes. And others will ask how all these will be justified by the outcomes of the revolution.

     There will be many who will be counted among the defeated. They will continue to live in Libya, but may have to pay a price for siding with, or defending Gaddafi. They too will have their reasons and justification for their choices. And they will have their arms and ammunitions; and their grievances and bitterness. They too will ask how the revolution will be better than Gaddafi’s rule. There are yet many who will wake up to a new Libya which has been thrown wide open to NATO countries. They will ask how the new Libya will or should relate with Europe and the US. They will ask deep and searching questions over the cost of reconstruction; which nations among the NATO coalition will get the biggest contracts for rebuilding what NATO bombers destroyed; and what type of constitution and political system Europe and the US will now insist is adopted by Libyans. Those among them who may retain some pride in being an independent people that, although at great price, stood up to the US and Europe under Gaddafi in the past, may resent the possibility that their faith and culture will suffer to the degree of NATO influence in their lives. They too will have their arms and ammunitions; and their memories and their sympathisers.

     There are tribal leaders, religious leaders and leaders of factions who will each jostle for a place in the sun in the new Libya. Many will test the powers and the resolve of the NTC, and its NATO backers. They will quarrel and bicker on the type of constitution to adopt; on how victors and vanquished should be treated; how Arab and Islamic they want the new Libya to be; and how to deal with the many legacies and liabilities of Gaddafi’s 42 year rule. They will have to fight over, and learn how to elect new leaders; how hundreds of thousands of young people can be disarmed and demobilized; and how trust can be rebuilt among and across communities. And they will have their arms and ammunition; and their memories and bitterness over the course of the last 9 months.

The Libyan people have come through one of the worst crisis any people can go through. The killing of Gaddafi and the bestial treatment of his body may have given a small number of Libyan people some satisfaction. But now the real work of reconciliation and rehabilitation has to begin. There is no easy way forward. Every challenge they will meet has the potential of opening up new theatres of conflict. They need a strong and broad-based leadership which should disarm citizens and begin the process of reconciling the people. They need NATO to lower its profile, and retreat sufficiently to allow some semblance of Libyan influence in deciding a Libyan future. They need to re-integrate with Africa and the Arab world in a manner that acquires support for them to reduce the influence of NATO, as they embark on the difficult road to a new life. They need to look at the abuses and excesses on both sides of the conflict, and commence the process of addressing the requirements of guaranteeing basic human rights, particularly for the thousands of black people who have been imprisoned on sundry and questionable suspicions. The journey of the Libyan people will be difficult because there will be arguments over routes and destinations. It will be tragic if a post-Gaddafi Libya continues to suffer because its people and leaders fail to appreciate the fact that the reverse side of Gaddafi is the emergence of a democratic system that gives every citizen a fair chance to make concrete choices over how he lives, and who governs him. It will not be easy to build that system; but failure to build it will mean an unending conflict and real potentials for prolonged civil war. This is the one destination Libyans should avoid at all cost