Vanguard, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2014— —19
ABOTAGE is defined as a S deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity or
corporation through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. It is often carried out by enemy combatants, enemy groups, extremist groups, rebel organisations, subversives, underground extremists, etc. A saboteur is also described as a person who destroys or damages something deliberately, a person who performs sabotage. The categories of saboteurs cannot easily be exhausted as they range from economic, political, social to almost every sphere of human activity. I am interested here in military and political saboteurs and Nigerians at this time of our nation building. Saboteurs have been part of life and the leadership struggle for ages. Military coupists are called saboteurs if they fail, but when they succeed they become heroes and valiant men. Saboteurs are a bad dream for any leader and one of the worst challenges any leader could face in any situation. This is more so for the military where obedience, faithfulness, and commitment to the course of the command is demanded by training and all aspects of military life. The course of a
good war campaign or onslaught can be completely reversed against the attacker, or destroyed by sabotage. The saboteur for whatever his purposes or intentions may be could either mislead the war plans and execution into wrong strategies or leak the plans to the enemy; either way, sabotage spells doom for the fighting forces and their commanders. It leads to unexpected war casualties in terms of lives and materials, and brings huge discouragement and fear to the troops in any war campaign whether in fighting conventional wars , insurgency, or guerilla war fares. Nigerian military have shown themselves to be good professional combatants in many international wars, including the Second World War, the Congo, Sierra-Leone and Liberia conflicts, to name a few. But their inability to effectively contain the Boko Haram insurgents gives wellmeaning Nigerians cause for concern. The attitude and confidence of the Haramites suggest that they have some form of knowledge that boosts their morale. Two Igbo proverbs will help me here. The first says that when a masquerade dances on the road, someone in the bush is beating the drums for it, and the second is that when a child
Something must be wrong with the unity of purpose of our military that they cannot use their air and land power to contain these insurgents; I think it is sabotage
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is asked by his father to go and steal, he pushes the doors down instead. Before Chibok, the news was that our military were containing the situation on the North East, especially in Borno State. But soon there were calls by some rich and powerful individuals in that zone threatening to drag the then Chief of Army Staff to the ICC. Subsequently, one thing led to the other and he was retired, and yet some of these men still think the former Chief of Army Staff is their problem.
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hey brought campaigns on the television and social media against our military, and the result is that today, we have the Chibok girls embarrassment which has been on for three months and running. As if that was not enough, the Haramites recently
Wole Soyinka, may he never live long By Taiwo & Kehinde Oluwafunso
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T was a night of radiant quality stars, in December 2010, at the State House, Banquet Hall of the Ghanaian Government, Accra,Ghana, where Professor Wole Soyinka was awarded the Millennium Excellence Award and Lifetime Africa Achievement Prize, alongside AshaHagi the Somalian activist and woman of courage. Others equally honoured that night were Bishop Desmond Tutu, the fiery clergy from South Africa; Ismail Se Ragel Din, an international scientist of note from Egypt recognised for Scientific Research in Africa; Amaechi Ndili from Nigeria, for his contributions to Entrepreneurial Excellence in Africa; CyprilRamaphosa,the South African major investor and trade unionist, recognised for African Economic Development; Lord Paul Boateng, a member of the House of Lords in the UK, honoured for Action For Africa; James Wolfensohn, from the US, for sustainable development in Africa. Also, to everybody’s surprise, Colonel Muammar AL – Gaddafi, the late maximum ruler of Libya, emerged a recipient of one of the awards for his contributions to African Unity; but Gaddafi never showed up, he was only represented by one of his top aides. We were rocking on a boat of splashing colours into the night, especially when celebrities and heavies from all continents gathered in a place to celebrate the best of our world. Our own Asiwaju Bola Tinubu led the likes of Mr. BabatundeFashola, Governor of Lagos State; OgbeniRauf Aregbesola of the state of Osun and Dr. Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State to the event. Mr. Kunle AJibade of The News Editorial Board, Jahman Anikulapo, formerly of the Guardian
Newspapers; our very good friend, Makin Soyinka; MrAkeem Bello, S.A. to Gov. Fashola on media; Mr. Kunle Abimbola of The Nation Editional Board were present too. Interestingly, we, my twin brother and I, sat next to Glo’s Chairman , Dr. Mike Adenuga’s table, another complete gentleman, who had come like others to honour Professor Soyinka, a towering figure in the art world, a man of fine reputation, whose performance in the African literary space has been very explosive. Known and easily spotted for his magnificently snow white hair and benevolently soft and cherubic face, he is indeed a family man of great look and good attitude, a great international literary jurist, an African that can never be forgotten in a hurry, a priceless asset to Africa. He is so famous that street galleries, with arts’ hustlers in charge, adorn our public spaces with his portraits. When it was Professor Soyinka’s turn to receive his award for African Cultural and Traditional Preservation, a storm of bubbles filled the hall. With the swiftness of a jungle lion, Professor Soyinka mounted the stage, looking like a starlet in white attires. This proved to be a day of fulfillment for all proud sons and daughters of Africa. The late PresidentAttah John Mills of Ghana had this to say about Soyinka after the award ceremonies: “If Prof. Wole Soyinka is not tired now at his age we can’t afford to be tired”. His usage of English Language is legendary; if you must take up Wole Soyinka, you must first take into cognisance that he easily disarms his opponent with his command of English Language. We tend to love him more when people call him Kongi, the Lion; these are not his real names, but have become strongly synonymous with Professor
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By Clement Udegbe
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Saboteurs and Nigeria
took over the Gwarzo LGA in Borno State after killing their Emir! Something must be wrong with the unity of purpose of our military that they cannot use their air and land power to contain these insurgents. I think it is sabotage. People may write and talk politics, but could it be that sabotage is among the reasons that prevented the Commander-inChief of the Nigerian Armed Forces from visiting Borno State till date? He must have some information which we do not have, and no right thinking Nigerian would want our President exposed to any booby trap.We pray that something be done to flush these Haramites from Nigerian soils. Political sabotage will involve deliberate actions aimed at weakening us through subversion, obstruction, disruption or destruction. The political and economic saboteurs of Nigeria first ensured that we do not have regular electric power supply, then they killed the Nigerian land phones system. They knew that without electric power our industrial take-off will be very difficult to achieve. For them, we must depend on imported goods to survive, and without industrial production, high unemployment would hit our youths, thereby weakening them, and making them pawns as cultists, thugs and political jobbers. They know too well, that the future of this nation lies in our youth, and where the youth development and empowerment is obstructed and disrupted, there will be no bright future for the country. This is sabotage of the goodwill of the people by the political class.They
Prof. Soyinka has been our idol right from our childhood days; facing up the skies and eaglespread, we read his poems to ourselves on grass coated fields of our secondary school in Ibadan
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Soyinka over the years. In the midst of several violent and retrogressive African regimes, Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize For Literature in 1986, the first African to be so honoured.
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n 1994, he was designated (UNESCO) Goodwill Ambassador for the Promotion of African Culture, Human Rights, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communication. He endured imprisonment for 22 months as Nigeria backslided into a 30-month gruesome civil war, surviving only on the jailers’ food. A man of dogged determination, his writing always captures the picture of a continent on the brinks; through his writing he preaches that love is never found in the theatre of cruelty, that religious fundamentalism and fanaticism could be very alcoholic. What makes us cry oils the wheels of his creativity. A man of large heart, he remains the symbol of political resistance in the flesh of undemocratic government. Even the hostile political climates of other nations of South America and Europe had so many times become the focus of his (writings) work. Soyinka looks very different from every each one of us; he must have come from a revolutionary planet yet to be identified by man, he has continued to be a beacon of
cross-carpet between parties at will, support whatever that leads them to power, collect federal allocations and use them with impunity to do so little, without accountability. The ease of defections between the ruling PDP and the opposition APC means that there is only a very thin line of ideological difference between the two parties. In some states, with elections around the corner, armed robberies are now on the increase, insecurity is very high and politicians are not concerned even as some of them sponsor cultism and politcal thuggery. When the report of robbery is made, the politicians will trade blames without helping the police or the people to get the culprits prosecuted. Why do politicians need thugs? Except to truncate the destinies of these youths and sabotage the will of the people? Our leaders need to be very firm in the handling and dealing with the use of thugs in politics in this era and age. Politicians using thugs should be black listed and disqualified by the INEC, no matter their position in the party. This is one way to reduce the sabotaging of the will of the people through the wrong use of the youth whose lives have been disrupted by bad leadership. What greater sabotage to the plan of God for a people, than for a few persons to corner the common wealth of the people, and divert same into private bank accounts and investments around the globe?
*Mr. Udegbe, a legal practitioner, wrote from Lagos.
hope to men, women and children bound in straps of oppression around the world. Soyinka is like a musical note of highpitched rhythms cleverly inspiring generations after generations, up to this present generations, after eight decades running. There are these dynamism, charisma and beauty surrounding his personality, becoming myths always and leaving this sense of satisfaction at the foothills of our eyebrows whenever we see his portraits. As twins, Prof. Soyinka has been our idol right from our childhood days, facing up the skies and eagle-spread, we read his poems to ourselves on grass coated fields of our secondary school (Community Grammar School, Akanran) in Ibadan. Thirty years later,Prof. Wole Soyinka on a certain happy day spoketo us on phone. Talking to Prof. was a dream fulfilled; though poets ourselves, we drank from his own still waters of poetry to nourish our writing talent at infancy. Let us share with you our experience one afternoon in Abeokuta, where Soyinka hails from. We were paying a visit to Chief DotunOyewole, the scientist of Abeokuta, a mentor to us, with his twin brother, the late Chief Femi Oyewole (the famous Oyewole twins). Dotun Oyewole is presently 94 years; his wife, Madam LapeOyewole, who died last March at the age of 84, said something about Prof Soyinka, that touched us so much. “We were classmates with Wole. But suddenly, he was promoted from Primary 2 to5, leaving us all behind; we envied him, as we were not happy about the whole development. The news spread like a wild fire, without knowing it is pointing only to his future glory as seen today."
Continues on Monday on pg 18 *Taiwo and Kehinde Oluwafunso, representatives of Panafest, wrote from Lagos.