THE NATION FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2012 16
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EDITORIAL/OPINION
Reality Bites S
Olatunji Ololade
OME would level to their dullest perception always and praise it as common sense. Even as it becomes clearer by each passing second that the dullest perception is only ever common; it hardly gets to make sense. But sense too, like the gospel truth is always relative, according to the temperament of the individual that is trying to make sense. Brings to mind an argument I had with some Nigerian youths recently; the passionate soccer lovers that they are see nothing fascinating about the Nigerian Premier League (NPL). In an exclusive section of a popular elite bar, the youths comprising a doctor, two lawyers, an accountant, a PR consultant and four journalists – excluding me – derided Nigeria’s soccer league. Their derision was heartfelt and yet devoid of the barest pang of lamentation. And there in, subsists their tragedy. Had they, despite their acerbic wit and mockery, betrayed even the slightest twinge of regret about the deplorable state of the country’s soccer league, they could be excused for their unapologetic disdain for Nigerian soccer. They didn’t and according to them, they cannot for the love of Nigeria, subject themselves to the agony of supporting the Nigerian league. “The coverage is poor, the pitches are the worst and it parades no stars. I would rather watch the English Premiership than waste my time,” noted a journalist. Few days earlier, colleagues in a Lagos newsroom had espoused vitriol about the Nigerian league.
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Their disdain was predicated predictably on very bad pitches, poor coverage and absence of world class stars. When a colleague stated that he would rather support Enyimba FC of Abia state, he was smothered by die-hard groupies and fans of European soccer teams. They dared him to mention five players of Enyimba FC but they did not wait to see if he could; then they went on to tell him that they would rather invest their time, passion and money in supporting star-studded teams across Europe. They do not care that the coverage of the Nigerian league is poor because journalists and soccer lovers like them will never endeavour to see and report a match at the nearest stadium. They do not care that issues of bad pitches, corrupt sports administrators, insecurity and fans’ apathy among others are aggravated by such disposition as theirs’ to Nigeria’s ailing soccer sector. They conveniently forget that there was a time Nigerians were truly crazy about the Nigerian league. With remarkable enthusiasm, they understate the potentials of the local league that paraded Kanu Nwankwo, Celestine Babayaro, Stephen Keshi, Rashidi Yekini, Daniel Amokachi among others, for their beloved Arsenal FC, Chelsea FC to mention a few, to exploit. Indeed, no amount of persuasion or ideological protestation could convince such characters to cultivate a smidgen of the love they profess for Chelsea FC, Arsenal FC, Real Madrid et al for local teams like Enyimba FC,
FTER reading Mohammed Haruna’s Boko Haram, Azazi, America, and the rest of us, (The Nation February 1) I came to the conclusion that the elite in Nigeria will have to purge themselves of their pride and prejudice if Nigeria is to realise the yearnings of its founding fathers for “one nation bound in freedom, peace, and unity,” as captured in the National Anthem. When journalists of the stature of Haruna fan the ember of ethnic distrust and religious bigotry then you can be sure that it will surely be a long walk to freedom (apologies to Nelson Mandela). It is worse when they do so by twisting facts and logic. You would think that in the face of the enormous security challenges that the country is facing right now that Haruna would use his column as a pedestal for elevated discourses on issues of national importance, especially when such issues concern the peace, unity, and progress of the country. But time and time again, he has come off short; showing himself off as a rabid ethnic champion and an advocate of Islamic supremacy. In his latest article, Haruna appears to be standing truth on its head when he argued that the Boko Haram threat can only be eliminated if the media and the National Security Adviser rid themselves of bias against Muslims. But reading through his case for bias against the media and the NSA, General Andrew Owoye Azazi, Haruna once again fails to rise above parochial sentiments and cheap blackmail. To buttress his point about “the general anti-Muslim bias of Nigeria’s media” he quoted Barrister Abdullaziz Ogbui, an Igbo Muslim who sometime in 2000 griped about how the media do not report cases of marginalisation and discrimination of Muslims by the “supreme Igbo Cultural Association.” “When the Igbo cultural Association organised events”, he said, “it often called for church services, but never talked about prayers in mosques. They contemptuously ignore the minority Muslims or pretend they do not exist.” How ridiculous can a person get? By its very name, the Igbo Cultural Association is simply an association, and not an arm of the government. In law, membership of any association is voluntary, and the constitution that guarantees freedom of association also gives the individual the freedom not to associate with anybody and everybody. Haruna will have a point if Arewa Consultative Forum holds
Metaphor of the round leather (4) (Portrait of a journalist in his youth) Nassarawa United, Gateway FC and Ocean Boys. The Nigerian journalist, apparently, is not left out in the mad scramble for escape from his societal insanities, however temporal. Thus he devotes quality time on and off work to European soccer while he scoffs at his severely underreported local league. Like other fanatics of European soccer, he seeks to forget infinitely, that he is no different from the proverbial wretch who rejects his penis because his Caucasian neighbours’ seem bigger; with whose shall his wife scion his kids? Thus is the tragedy of the Nigerian soccer fanatic. It gets more interesting when he is a journalist. Then, his mystifying love for European teams as his barbed vitriol against the NPL attains a perplexity of sort; oftentimes he attempts to intellectualize the unintelligible. He desperately engages in the pursuit of happiness like a bliss-bandit seeking joy where he has not sown. Thoreau would equate this to seeking safety in stupidity whereas Lord Byron would dismiss such passionate disdain for one’s heritage as the petrifaction of a plodding brain. This is the predicament of the Nigerian journalist cum European soccer groupie. Perhaps it’s because he is only human. Were it that he would dedicate a similar amount of time and effort as he commits to the coverage of the English Premiership, a “reality TV” show or shenanigans of Lagos and Abuja’s “high societies” for instance, on one NPL soccer match at a time, the fortunes of Nassarawa United, Dolphins FC, Wikki Tourists to mention a few, may eventually improve. It’s not a shame to seek entertainment by the sportsmanship and for-
tunes of a European champion like FC Barcelona or popular English club side like Manchester City; it is, when a Nigerian, particularly a journalist, does so believing that his nation is incapable of elevating soccer to such fantastic height. Such journalist, without doubt, seeks to be less than. Measured with and without his vanities, he presents no exception to the Nigerian human social anomaly; he is essentially a perpetuation of it. Thus if you are a Nigerian journalist in your youth and you are reading this, chances are that you epitomize a similar state of mind. You are probably contemptuous to everything Nigerian. Chances are that you do not believe in the possibility of a star-studded Nigerian soccer league. Chances are that you do not believe that Nigeria could eventually become a Mecca of sort for international soccer players and pundits seeking to make a fortune and a name. Chances are that your inferiority complex cuts deeper than that. You probably consider Nigeria incapable of greatness of any kind. Chances are that you do not believe in the evolution of a truly conscientious Nigerian leadership and citizenship. Chances are that you do not wish to be judged by the same standards by which you judge others. You probably don’t believe in the continuity of the Nigerian project. You are probably reading this with undisguised contempt and you definitely wouldn’t admit that you personify all these and much more. Such is the temperament of a Nigerian journalist. He represents an abject negation of the vision, fortitude and sincerity he ought to embody. He hardly seeks to set an agenda or elicit positivity thus contradicting the agenda-setter cum social responsibil-
Mohammed Haruna’s naked dance By Jackson Ekwugum church services as part of its programmes. Continuing the age-worn accusation against the so-called Lagos-Ibadan press axis, Haruna castigated The Punch and Tribune for giving sensational headlines to the story of the Igbo beer seller who was whipped by some Kano residents for violation of Sharia law. He wondered why the same media did not give the same prominence to the story of some Muslims who led a delegation to the then Edo State Governor Lucky Igbinedion to complain about “the deliberate omission of Islamic Religious Knowledge in the curriculum of public schools in the state.” First of all, the media were right to highlight the ordeal of the Igbo beer seller who was subjected to inhuman treatment against his fundamental human rights as guaranteed by the Nigerian constitution. One would have thought that Haruna would be more interested in getting justice for the hapless man instead of moaning about the media coverage given the story. Haruna is clearly dancing naked in the market square with his charge of discrimination against Muslims in the south particularly in the South –west where, according to him, Muslims “are almost head to head with the Christian population”. As someone who once lived in the north, I find it ironical that Haruna should be talking of discrimination against Muslims in the south and ignoring the terrible deprivation and persecution that Christians in the north have endured for decades. The sufferings of Christians in the north are best captured in these words by Archbishop Peter Jatau and Elder Saidu Dogo at a press conference on June 1, 2004. “Today we are not only being denied freedom of worship, but also freedom of association. We were told at the early stage of the Sharia introduction that it will not affect nonMuslims. We can tell you without fear of contradiction that this is far from the truth. For example, while churches have been demolished in some of the Sharia states, a number of others have also been marked out for demolition in Zamfara state. The case in Kano has
been worst.” The Christian leaders also listed among their grievances “refusal to grant C of Os for the building of churches, refusal to allow the teaching of Christian Religious Knowledge in government institutions, and use of government funds to promote Islam and Islamic institutions against those of Christians.” In a deliberate attempt to whip up sentiments against the NSA, Haruna wrote that “Azazi has never bothered to hide his anti-Muslim bias. One clear evidence of this was his assertion in July, last year that “terrorism is a new phenomenon in Nigeria.” Then in a desperate attempt to twist facts and rewrite history, Haruna traced the history of terrorism in Nigeria to Adaka Boro’s attempt to carve out a Niger Delta republic. I am hard put to see how that statement by the NSA, mischievously rephrased and taken out of context, translates into bias against Muslims. Gen. Azazi spoke extempore after the National Council of State meeting in August, last year. Excerpts: “…We have reviewed what we believe was the true situation. There are security issues all over: problems in the Niger Delta, crisis in Jos, kidnappings in parts of the country, but I think the focus was on what was considered topical – explosions everywhere, especially at the police headquarters and UN building. Although there are claims as to who was responsible, the important thing is that we as a nation should realise that we are facing challenges that are relatively new to us. It has happened in different parts of the world but today it is happening in Nigeria….These problems of religious sect and all that could have started may be over 15 years ago and have escalated up to this point. The problem is that we were not as a nation prepared for this new level of terrorism.” Clearly, any unbiased reader could see that the NSA was putting our current security challenges in proper perspective and did not exempt any group or make excuses for them. In talking about the “new level of terrorism,” Azazi was simply stating a fact that was obvious to all. The bombing of the police head-
ity theories of the press. “No government or nuclear weapon is as powerful as the press,” it is said. This saw is definitely not about the Nigerian press; not because it’s bereft of such formidable power but because it has programmed itself to seldom exploit it. Recently, I asked that if the Nigerian journalist in his youth is assessed by the same standards by which he judges others, would he be adjudged as excellent, conscientious and honorable? Not a few colleagues bellowed an unconvincing “Yes!” When I suggested otherwise, someone claimed that I had made a sweeping statement. Another queried – albeit mischievously – that what is the yardstick for determining a distinguished journalist; he said: “Is it by winning a CNN or Nigerian Media Merit Award?” A good newspaper, supposes Arthur Miller, is a nation talking to itself; a good journalist, I suppose, is a patriot, pricking his nation’s conscience. Funny how convenient it is to loathe the proverbial looking glass by which we screen others and decry their faults. Guess we dread the reflection we might see. •To be continued…
‘Like other fanatics of European soccer, he seeks to forget infinitely, that he is no different from the proverbial wretch who rejects his penis because his Caucasian neighbours’ seem bigger; with whose shall his wife scion his kids?’ For SMS only 08038551123
quarters was the first case of suicide bombing in Nigeria, and signalled a new twist to the problem of terrorism in the country. And as for Azazi inviting Americans “to solve the BH problem,” Haruna is simply crying wolf where there is none. All that the NSA has said is that “we would benefit greatly from American know-how and other forms of support as we develop our new counterterrorism strategy.” It is common knowledge that in today’s global village, countries maintain security assistance programmes with one another, and Nigeria is no exception. Many countries have intelligence officers here as we have in several other countries. So what is Haruna paranoid about? Or better still, what is he afraid of? It is hardly surprising that Haruna fingered Adaka Boro as the progenitor of terrorism in Nigeria. It is part of an insidious plot to muddy the waters and deceive Nigerians, and more importantly, the international community. He is following in the footsteps of his co-traveller, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who has come up with a strange logic concerning the Boko Haram insurgency. According to the CBN governor, Boko Haram is the result of the uneven distribution of the nation’s resources in favour of the Niger Delta. “There is clearly a direct link between the very uneven nature of distribution of resources and the rising level of violence,” Sanusi told the Financial Times in an interview arguing that it was now necessary to focus funds on regenerating other regions if Nigeria wants to secure long-term stability.” After the Kano all-out war, which more by default than by design made no discrimination between Muslims and Christians, we are suddenly being told by Haruna and the ACF that more Muslims have died from Boko Haram attacks than Christians, without them telling us how they arrived at that conclusion. As for Sanusi, the Islamic scholar, it would seem that being a Boko Haram insider, he is now helping them to articulate an economic rationale for the mindless violence unleashed on people and structures of state by a headless group that claims its goal is to enthrone Islam in Nigeria.The times we live in call for real statesmen, not ethnic champions and religious bigots; we need men and women who will rise above primordial sentiments and selfish ambition to fight a common enemy and preserve our collective destiny. • Ekwugum is publisher of LifeWay magazine in Lagos.