www.thenationonlineng.net
FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 2012
WHO SAID WHAT
TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM VOL. 7,
C OMMENT & D EB ATE EBA
M
AGNETIC Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the medical technology that scans the body, exposing its structure, and verifying any disease state it may harbor. A physician is then able to prescribe a medical or surgical remedy to restore bodily health. This is one of the marvels of modern medicine. With its exposure of the structural malady that ails the nation, the fuel subsidy crisis, and especially the attendant protest rallies and strike action by the organised labor and civil society, is to the nation what an MRI is to the body. The question remains whether or not there is an equivalent of the physician’s ability and will in the matter of restoring health to the nation. In any case, who is to the nation what the physician is to the body? The answer is blowing in the wind. What did the mass resistance to the removal of fuel subsidy reveal about the state of the nation body? There was the good; there was the bad; and there was the damned ugly. First, what was the good revealed by the crisis? It seems to me that in spite of everything, this country is abundantly blessed with the good fortune of having a politically conscious and informed citizenry ready to defend its hard-won rights to freedom and pursuit of happiness against the excesses of a government which prides itself in the firmness of its resolve to increase their misery and expand the horizon of hardship that encompasses them. Whether it was the spontaneity of the rallies, or the creativity of the various responses, or the focus on the generalised state of hopelessness that the fuel subsidy crisis only symbolised, our people demonstrated their inherent capacity for confronting evil. In spite of the efforts to politicise the struggle and demonise the protesters as some juvenile delinquents, the rallies portrayed them as generally disciplined, focused and highly intelligent. They articulated the demands in various ways and through different media, which revealed the creative genius of Nigerians. In a show of unity, which belied the politricksters’ penchant for creating divisions, Christians and Muslims sang and prayed together for peace and justice. These were not ego-driven clerics and clergymen; they were ordinary folks who saw the same conditions of scarcity in the midst of plenty and poverty in the midst of riches staring them in the face in the anatomy of their fellow citizens of different faith. They then saw that they had more in common than they were made to believe. In a moment of truth, the scales fell off. In short, it was clear from the crisis that our people can be relied upon to resist oppression and any attempt to befuddle issues by all forms of subterfuge on the
SEGUN GBADEGESIN gbadegesin@thenationonlineng.net
The MRI of a nation
•Dr. Jonathan
part of the political class. Second, what bad confronted us? The crisis exposed the incredible insensitivity of agents of government and their inability to demonstrate an empathetic understanding of the feelings of the masses. President Jonathan stood in a unique position to show compassion for the plight of the poor and dispossessed. The majority of those who were out in the street and suffered in the hands of security agents felt that they had no choice because the only loss they could suffer was the bondage of their body and soul. Society required of them to go to school to get education, and they did. They were asked to play by the rules and expect gainful employment. They did, but society
Don’t fight MALARIA...kill MOSQUITOES!
reneged. Surely, this predicament must be understandable to a president with the background of Dr. Goodluck. Why the belligerent bullish posture? Was that a sign of strength? Consider the tone of the President’s speech of January 15 to the nation. Whoever wrote the speech for him did him a lot of disservice. Dr. Jonathan went around the country selling himself as a transformational figure with compassion and capacity for empathy, having been in similar situation with many of our people early in life. He even had a Facebook pagewhere he befriended millions of Nigerians in and outside the country. The kind of crisis we just experienced was an occasion for him to prove his genuineness as a friend of the masses. What the speech showed instead was an angry hostile man. The dominant word in the speech was “government”, a distant symbol of oppression which he apparently projected. The major loss that concerned our President was the “disruption of economic activities.” How about the loss of lives of innocent young men? He referenced a “near-breakdown of law and order in certain parts of the country”, and of course this was the justification for deploying troops to those parts of the country! But where was a validation of the President’s personal investment in understanding the pain of the people when every sentence in the speech was prefaced with reference to an impersonal and distant ”government”? In Jonathan’s speech, it is government that understands; it is government that is working hard; it is government that salutes those who conducted themselves well, ad nauseam. Even when President Jonathan urged us to show understanding, it was to give government our full support to ensure the success of deregulation, the need for which we have not been persuaded by any serious argument. This is especially so in light of the revelations that the crisis brought to the fore, including deep sea corruption in the subsidy regime.
HARDBALL
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‘The country needs a new IGP who will be ready to partner with the management of the State Security Service (SSS) to combat the menace of terrorism’ FEMI FALANA Compare President Jonathan’s speech with the speech delivered by Governor Fashola of Lagos State. There was a clear difference. Almost every paragraph of Governor Fashola’s speech started with the first person singular pronoun “I”, thus demonstrating his personal investment in the people. In reference to the loss of a young man, Ademola Aderinto, the governor shared the pain of the loss with the deceased’s loved ones: “I am truly saddened by that ugly development. While I condole with his family, I pledge the commitment of our government to bring the alleged perpetrator to justice.” Nationally, estimates of lives lost to the crisis varied between 20 and 30. Does it detract from the elevated position of a President to pause and mourn those lives? Fashola made what appeared to me to be the salient point. When politicians canvass for votes, they do anything including the most silly. They dance with the people and make fools of themselves. They don’t then see the people as ruffians; they don’t then dismiss the people as thugs. But when these same people react against the policies that they consider to be against their interests, suddenly they are treated as lepers, and in the words of the President, promoters of “discord, anarchy and insecurity to the detriment of public peace.” Really? Finally,what is the “damned ugly” revealed by the crisis? The flawed structure of the union that we like to deceptively regard as divinely ordained was x-rayed. The sectionalisation and ethnicisation of a struggle which is transparently common is not a new thing. We have been through this path before and it is a sad experience to have repeated, especially with the rhetoric that, in such cases, usually accompanies dissension. It is a truism that poverty knows no section; and injustice doesn’t discriminate between ethnos. Why is it that a candidate appeals to all for votes but after getting into office, a section claims him or her as theirs and dares any individual or group to criticise him or her?Is it that ours has been a stunted growth in democratic politics? Or is it that the structure on which the foundation of our existence was laid is irremediably defective? If this is the case, would all these struggles for liberty, justice and progress for all ever succeed? Surely a united front against these ailments in the nation body is a prerequisite for success, and if we cannot expect such unity because of inherent divisions that work to the advantage of the common oppressor, where is the hope? In the matter of this national disease, who is to the nation what the physician is to the body? •For comments, send SMS to 08057634061
•Hardball is not the opinion of the columnist featured above
Boko Haram’s disappearing and infiltrating acts
T
HE hottest news in town is the disappearance from Police custody of a Boko Haram militant, Mallam Kabiru Sokoto, who was arrested a few days ago over last year’s Christmas Day bombing at Madalla, on the outskirts of Abuja. Apart from the fact that some 43 worshippers perished in the inferno triggered by that morning’s blast, the outrage that visited the incident, the remorselessness of the sect and the empathy showed by the rest of the world combined to make any arrest over the incident of such weight that no one could toy with it. Unbelievably, the police, which had long been accused of both complicity in some of the terror crimes and incompetence, managed to allow the prime suspect to escape. The suspect was being led to his house for a search. There are contradictory reports of how Mallam Sokoto escaped. But this is hardly the main issue. What is more important is that whether through carelessness or complicity, the suspect is gone. The InspectorGeneral of Police, Mr Hafiz Ringim, has been asked to explain what went wrong. In addition, the officers involved in the disap-
pearance have been suspended and placed in detention. Let us hope that they also will not carry out jailbreak. It will be recalled that President Goodluck Jonathan himself recently told a stunned church audience in Abuja that Boko Haram militants had infiltrated virtually everywhere, including the security services, to the point that no operative knew who among his colleagues was or wasn’t a member of the sect. When Boko Haram militants do not escape from custody in questionable circumstances, they fight their way out in jailbreaks. With such a violent predilection, it would have been expected that moving terror suspects around would be done under heavy security, especially given the repercussions of their crimes and the divisiveness of their activities. Instead, the Federal Government frequently assigned heavy security escort to political dissenters, as the deployment of troops in Lagos showed, rather than spare its heavyhandedness for agents of terror. The escape of the terror suspect is already being probed. It is hoped that lessons will be learnt from that appalling show of sloth-
fulness, even as concerted efforts would be made to apprehend the fleeing suspect. However, the disappearance of Boko Haram suspects, their sometimes audacious jailbreaks and their infiltration of the security services all point to the massive incompetence that undermines governance in Nigeria. The regrettable fact today is that the Nigerian government is so abysmally incompetent that it is a wonder the country has held together for more than 50 years. The government has in turn got so used to getting by on little efficiency and minute competence it now probably assumes it is chic to be slothful. The escape of the Boko Haram suspect reflects how the country itself is governed. The frightening revelations pouring out of the National Assembly probes of subsidy payments and downstream sector of the oil industry are so bad that Nigerians are surprised worse security breaches had not occurred before now. As it attempts to put its security house in order, the government should ponder what else it needs to do to make the country better run. It would be shocked if it tried.
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