I am disgusted!

This afternoon, I read, with a profound sense of disappointment, a news story which claimed that Nigeria’s Minister of Sports and Chairman of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Bolaji Abdullahi, “queried national soccer coach, Stephen Keshi for going to the media” after working for seven months without being paid his monthly salary. This salary arrears situation also applies to the other members of the coaching crew of the Super Eagles, the national football team.

The news report (http://allafrica.com/stories/201311210173.html) quoted the minister as also saying that "it is unfortunate that Keshi has to bring out the issue of his salary and make it a media issue, because it is something that can be addressed internally." The minister was reported as blaming what he described as a “systemic failure” for the lack of payment of the salaries of the national senior team’s coaches. Why did the minister allow this so-called internal systemic failure to persist for seven months and beyond? A contract is what it is: a binding document. Only a mal-functioning organization would not feel a sense of shame at failing to honor the obligations of a salary contract.

My first instinct was to wish that the minister was mis-quoted by the news report. On second thought, however, I decided to register my disgust at the statements attributed to the honorable minister. I found it shocking that the minister would take a path of apparently making light of the fact that Nigeria’s Football Federation (NFF) failed to pay the salaries of the coaching crew of the national team despite the team’s track record of monumental successes during the affected period. The successes include Nigeria’s winning of the much-coveted Africa Cup of Nations in February, 2013, Nigeria’s winning of the Nelson Mandela Challenge Cup in August, 2013, and the most recent triumph of the national team over its Ethiopian counterpart in order to qualify for the 2014 World Cup Soccer finals in Brazil.

As the officer who has overall charge of sports at the federal level, the minister, in the statements credited to him, did not come across as an appreciative and sensitive manager of human resources. I expected the minister to publicly rebuke NFF for dereliction of duty in its failure to pay the salaries of the coaches. As a matter of fact, the NFF is reportedly notorious for not being punctual with payment of the salaries of certain coaches that have worked for that association (http://allafrica.com/stories/201311280590.html). As should be expected of a sensitive and responsible manager, the minister should have condemned this pattern of conduct in no uncertain terms. What sort of axiological code guides this minister's sense of fairness?

While the fans of the Super Eagles rejoiced over its spate of victories, little did they know that the coaching team that made all this possible was not being paid its richly-earned salaries! The nation’s leadership has also been busily touting the successes of this golden set of Super Eagles as indicative of the effectiveness of its transformational agenda—without apparently feeling any sense of guilt that the crew that hatched these eggs has been working without pay for seven months. How does President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan feel about these contradictions? As the chief executive of the Nigerian nation, the buck stops at his desk!

A good manager worries about the morale of his/her employees. Does this minister of sports want us to take him seriously when he was reported as saying that an employee that goes public with a problem of non-payment of his salaries for seven months acted impatiently? Has the minister not been receiving his own salaries from the federal government of Nigeria during the same period? How would he have reacted if President Jonathan, his boss, stood-by and looked the other way, if he, the minister, found himself in a position in which he was not paid his earned salaries for seven months? What is the honorable minister’s prescription for how long an employee should go without pay before complaining publicly about it? In fact, when news broke last week or so that Coach Keshi has not been paid his contractual salaries for seven months, it came across as a bitter bill, as a shameful disclosure, as an incredible act of ingratitude by the NFF to a coaching crew that has proven itself to be one of the most successful in Nigeria’s national footballing history.

One can’t help seeing a glaring irony in the fact that while on the one hand, the NFF failed to live up to its salary obligations to a set of hardworking national football coaches for alleged insolvency, the supervising minister apparently could still count on an available resource with which to “oblige Keshi additional technical support in form of foreign technical assistant, if he so requests” (http://allafrica.com/stories/201311210838.html). He reportedly went on to add as follows: "We played two matches in the last couple of weeks one in Calabar and the one in London against the Italian national team. If you look at the two games, you can see that the profiles are different. Of course, the competitions are different, but also the games are different in terms of approaches. We have received reports from outsiders but we are going to sit down with the coaches to review all these.”

The preceding statements—particularly their implicit questioning of Keshi’s capacity for effective coaching for world-stage competitions despite his status as demonstrably the most effective coach of a national soccer team in Africa and his repertoire of world cup qualifying victories—that a second news report  attributed to the minister, point to what I had suspected, all along, to be the subtext for the seeming disrespect and ingratitude that the NFF and other officialdom associated with it have been openly showing to Keshi and his crew, as demonstrated clearly by the association’s failure to pay the crew’s earned salaries for months on end and not feel any qualms about it. Instead of giving the victorious coach of the senior team and his crew all the encouragement that they deserve by at least taking speedy steps to see that they are paid their salary arrears and by also putting in place measures to prevent a reoccurrence, the minister is apparently busy scheming for some ill-defined objective—as the preceding media reports would suggest.

Readers of my blog would recall a pertinent commentary that I posted on 2/12/2013 (http://okemnwch.blogspot.com/2013/02/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html) on a reported threat by Coach Keshi to resign after winning the Africa Cup of Nations in February, this year. Below is an excerpt from that commentary, which I deem applicable to pronouncements now coming out of the mouth of the honorable national minister.

As a football management entity, the NFF appears to be in a suffocating, unrelenting and unholy grip of a bureaucratic cabal which has a notoriety for meting out indignity to Nigerian coaches, and it's high time that someone put those bureaucrats in their proper place! It's apropos to recall, for instance, the humiliation that ex-national coach, Christian Chukwu suffered at the hands of this bureaucratic cabal that seems to be so well-entrenched that it survives successive federal administrations. I also recall how another ex-national coach, Shaibu Amodu was displaced by this same crop of alleged foreign-estacode sniffing NFF bureaucrats after he succeeded in qualifying the Nigerian national team for the summer 2010 World Cup soccer finals. Applying a questionable logic and a dose of disparaging media propaganda against the coach about his alleged deficiencies in technical expertise, the NFF got rid of the goose that laid the golden egg--that is, the man who performed the feat of qualifying his national squad for participation in the elite world cup finals at a time that many other African nations failed to make it into the list of six African countries that were featured in that global final contest in South Africa.

The NFF and its supporting officialdom should be careful not to act or speak in ways or not to continue to act or speak in ways--no matter how barely disguised--that may foment or nourish a crystallizing public impression that a successful national football coaching team constitutes a nuisance, nay an annoying barrier, one that must be frustrated, to a potential foreign exchange extravaganza (yet another means of milking a dehydrated Nigeria in the name of "technical assistance"). Each time the Super Eagles qualify for yet another World Cup Soccer Finals competition, NFF's officialdom should see it, and rightly so, as a feat, as a justifiable accomplishment for an increase in the incentivization package for the coaching crew and qualifying team--and never as an opportunity for a self-serving foreign exchange adventure.

An example of a constructive leadership response to the national team's recent qualification for the 2014 World Cup Finals in Brazil came a few days ago from the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, Hon Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, who, in a statement reported to have been issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Malam Imam Imam, "charged soccer administrators in the country to ensure that the team prepares for the global event early so as to make the necessary impact" (http://allafrica.com/stories/201311181655.html). Yah, I, myself, had entertained the same thought, namely that the Super Eagles should be given an opportunity for a protracted training regimen in preparation for Brazil, 2014. Such a pre-Brazil protracted training regimen could enhance the team's sense of cohesion.

In any case, given emerging news reports about Nigeria’s minister of sports, it seems that those who should be listening, did not pay attention to my advice in that blog of 2/12/13. In conclusion, I beg to say that if not that sometimes, Nigeria’s officialdom appears to allow itself to be perceived as an anything goes establishment, the statements that the news media recently attributed to the sports minister should earn him a rebuke—at the very least—from all parties that are concerned about the future of Nigeria’s Super Eagles.

Congratulations, Gallant Boys!

Yah, those gallant boys made us all proud. I hasten to add that they brought joy to our hearts! Nigeria's under-17 team beat Mexico, 3-0, today, 11/08/13, to win the 2013 under-17 World Cup Soccer competition (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw-LUHopVNA). I watched all of the team’s under-17 World Cup matches, including its resounding opening,  group-stage 6 - 1 victory against the same Mexican team.  In fact, it was after that rare global-stage soccer victory against a reigning world champion that I predicted that 2013 was Nigeria’s year for winning the global soccer trophy—yet again. In defeating Mexico today to clinch the world cup for the 4^th time, Nigeria made world history by becoming the first team in recorded history to win that global trophy for the 4^th time. Previously, Nigeria won this under-17 world cup in 1985, 1993, and 2007. At the conclusion of this year's competition, Nigeria also made world soccer history by scoring 26 goals in the tournament—two goals more than Germany which, up until now, held a world record of scoring 24 goals in the competition.

I must confess that this tournament was the only moment in my life time when I watched soccer with a sense of relaxation, as a loved team played. Why? The boys' track record of solid victories made me watch each of the matches that they played, during the tournament, with a sense of confidence. As each game began, I was not worried about any possibility of those gallant boys losing; instead, reclined in my couch, as I watched each game, I confidently looked forward to not whether they would lose, but to how many goals they would score. Not even Enugu Rangers International (the darling of my youth) ever game me this sense of stability, pride and confidence--as I watched a Nigerian soccer team play--either at the national or club level.

Though the senior team, the Super Eagles, has its own splendid track record of accomplishments, including its winning of the much-coveted Africa Cup of Nations earlier this year, it still can borrow a leaf from this crop of under-17 Nigerian soccer players--in terms of how to play football with a consistent sense of victory, cohesion, rhythm and camaraderie. Though I understand the fickle nature of soccer, I would like to see the Super Eagles inspire a degree of confidence in its fans similar to what the under-17 team pulled off during the latter’s crusade through the just-concluded 2013 FIFA under-17 world cup soccer championship games. Indeed, earlier in the week, I was not surprised to read that the coach of the Brazilian 2013 under-17 team openly commended these Nigerian lads and said that their trilling field performances amounted to "what football is all about." 

Bravo to brilliant, effective-but-humble and gentle-spoken coach of these adorable Nigerian under-17 players, Manu Garba for selecting and grooming a highly skillful, dedicated, cohesive and happy soccer team. He has emerged as a national hero! No doubt, Garba has also earned a historic distinction as one of the most effective soccer coaches in Nigerian,  African, and world history.

With all due humility, I call upon Nigeria’s National Football Federation (NFF) to adopt Manu Garba and his under-17 team as the leadership and group of players that should represent Nigeria in the next under-20 FIFA world cup soccer competition.  All things being equal, I trust that this cohesive, highly skillful, victorious and entertaining team and its leadership are likely to do us proud again in the not-too-distant future. Once again, hearty congratulations to coach Manu Garba and his gallant under-17 world soccer champions!

A smart move by the Commander-in-Chief

In my view, President Barack Obama acted wisely this last week of August, 2013 by taking a cautious step of seeking Congressional approval for his announced intent to take a measured type of military action in Syria as a muscular rebuke of the Syrian government for its alleged use of chemical weapons. It would appear that the earlier action of the British parliament, on Thursday, 08/29/13, of voting against Prime Minister David Cameron’s similar desire to act militarily in Syria probably influenced Obama’s follow-up decision, announced on Saturday, 08/31/13, to go beyond mere consultations with key Congressional leaders on his Syrian military plan. It’s also possible that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s reported urging of the US,  earlier on 08/31/13, to hold off military action on Syria (http://www.chidioparareports.blogspot.com/2013/08/videonews-putin-urges-us-to-hold-off-on.html)  might also have nudged Obama towards his latest move, namely his decision to go to the people’s representatives in the US Congress to seek for a mandate. (Take note that the Russian government supports the Assad-led government side of the ongoing civil war in Syria, while Obama’s administration backs the rebels). Obama’s stance might also have been influenced by internal factors, such as public calls made by a cross-section of US political leaders and pundits, including a mix of Republican and Democratic members of Congress, on the president to request for a Congressional authorization before acting militarily in Syria.  Obama acknowledged this factor: "over the last several days, we have heard from members of Congress who want their voices to be heard. I absolutely agree. We should have this debate, because the issues are too big for business as usual" (http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/31/20270696-obama-will-seek-congressional-approval-before-any-military-action-against-syria?lite).

All of this contrasts sharply with President Obama’s approach to Libya in 2011. Acting in concert with NATO and following an affirmative resolution of the Arab League, President Obama gave the go-ahead for US warplanes and missiles’ pulverization of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan war machine merely on the basis of pre-consultations with Congressional leaders but without a prior formal Congressional approval (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/africa/22powers.html?_r=0)). In the Libyan case, what started out as a no-fly zone operation, on the part of a US, NATO and Arab League coalition of the willing--ostensibly meant to protect an endangered population of Benghazi’s district of Libya--eventually metamorphorized into a regime change mission. Gaddafi was not only dislodged from office after ruling Libya for 42 years, he also lost his life; and, political power shifted into the hands of the then rebel forces, who until the US intervention, were the underdogs in the military confrontation between internal Libyan insurrectionists and Gaddafi’s government forces.

One notable trait that was evident on the part of Obama, during the Libyan case, was cautious decision-making. It will be recalled that before Obama eventually joined the “no fly-zone bandwagon,” it all seemed much more like a Western European-led pre-occupation championed doggedly by the former French President, Nicolas Sarkozy. In eventually authorizing US military action in Libya, Obama clearly came across as a reluctant combatant. To a certain extent, this model of cautious decision-making is playing itself out now in the Syrian case and admirably so. Although by August, 2011, Obama had publicly advocated that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go (he said as much about Gaddafi before the US’s decisive air-based military intervention in Libya), he has not rushed into a military action. He has been acting in a step by step fashion.  In June, 2013—several months after stating publicly that President Assad must go and several months after being badgered by Senator John McCain for not siding with the rebel forces--the Obama administration announced a decision to begin a provision of material aid (described as small arms and ammunition) to the rebel side of the Syrian civil war (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/world/middleeast/syria-chemical-weapons.html?pagewanted=all). Back in August, 2012, Obama announced his now famous red-line on Syria. Specifically, he was reported as saying that “any attempt by Syria to move or use its chemical weapons would change his administration’s “calculus” in the region” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-issues-syria-red-line-warning-on-chemical-weapons/2012/08/20/ba5d26ec-eaf7-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_story.html).

The closing weeks of August, 2013 saw a disclosure that there had been a chemical attack in the ongoing civil war in Syria—the second such reported use of such weapons in this war but this time on a scale that was considerably larger, producing a casualty rate of over 1400 deaths. In the wake of this second chemical attack, the United States government took the position that the attack was planned and carried out by the government side of the civil war. Secretary of State John Kerry has led a spirited defense of the US position on the reported late August, 2013 chemical attack in Syria. On Friday, 08/30/13, Secretary Kerry strongly laid out the US government position before a nation that appears to be not too eager to plunge into another war after budget-busting US invasions and prolonged occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. While Obama has since pulled US forces out of Iraq, the president is now in the middle of dismantling the 12-year-old US military mission in Afghanistan—the longest in US history, with the last batch of US troops scheduled to leave by December, 2014 (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-13/leaving-afghanistan-is-a-7-billion-moving-task-for-u-s-.html). In speaking to the nation on Friday, 08/30/13, Kerry was mindful of all this history but urged the nation not to be deterred by it:

As previous storms in history have gathered, when unspeakable crimes were within our power to stop them, we have been warned against the temptations of looking the other way. History is full of leaders who have warned against inaction, indifference and especially against silence when it mattered most.

Our choices then, in history, had great consequences. And our choice today has great consequences. It matters that nearly 100 years ago in direct response to the utter horror and inhumanity of World War I that the civilized world agreed that chemical weapons should never be used again. That was the world’s resolve then. And that began nearly a century of effort to create a clear red line for the international community.

And it matters deeply to the credibility and the future interests of the United States of America and our allies. It matters because a lot of other countries, whose policy has challenged these international norms, are watching. They are watching. They want to see whether the United States and our friends mean what we say.

It is directly related to our credibility and whether countries still believe the United States when it says something. They are watching to see if Syria can get away with it, because then maybe they too can put the world at greater risk (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/running-transcript-secretary-of-state-john-kerrys-remarks-on-syria-on-aug-30/2013/08/30/f3a63a1a-1193-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story.html).

Kerry also addressed a rather philosophical but pragmatic question that hovers over a possible US military action in response to the reported chemical weapons-usage in Syria. Here is how he put it:

Now, we know that after a decade of conflict, the American people are tired of war. Believe me, I am, too.

But fatigue does not absolve us of our responsibility. Just longing for peace does not necessarily bring it about. And history would judge us all extraordinarily harshly if we turned a blind eye to a dictator’s wanton use of weapons of mass destruction against all warnings, against all common understanding of decency, these things we do know.

Obama said as much during his announcement, on Saturday, August 31, 2013, in front of the White House, that he had decided to get the Congress formally involved in the process of formulating policy on a possible US military course of action in Syria. He did not mince words or weaver in his conviction that the situation called for a US military degradation of Syrian government’s war-making capability. He reasoned, most wisely, that although he believed that, as president, he has “the authority to carry out this action without specific congressional authorization, our country will be stronger if we take this course."

Beyond a need to rally the nation behind the president’s quest, there are other compelling reasons for proceeding cautiously. First, in the case of Libya, both NATO and the Arab League were on board. In contrast, in this unfolding case of Syria, NATO seems nowhere to be found, and the usual US ally on such foreign military ventures, namely Britain, has backed out. Second, in its latest reaction to the Syrian crisis, the Arab League stated that the Syrian government was responsible for the chemical weapons attack and called on "the United Nations and the international community … to assume their responsibilities in line with the UN Charter and international law by taking the necessary deterrent measures" (http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/09/20139118235327617.html). This can be decoded to mean that the League does not favor a unilateral military action by the United States. Third, in the case of Libya, both Russia and China were supportive, but so far this time, they seem to be in opposition. Fourth, the United Nations’ inspection tour of Syria—in the wake of the chemical attack—is yet to file its report. Fifth, a war is not cost-free. In light of the budget sequestration faced by federal agencies, including the Pentagon, it makes sense to have the law-makers debate both the military and budgetary implications of what might become a new US war abroad even though President Obama has characterized his planned Syrian action as being limited in scope and not open-ended.

The unfortunate blood-letting in Syria once more reminds all of humanity of the imperative of doing all that two disputing sides can muster in order to resolve matters peacefully through compromise. One side can’t have it all. Civil wars, by their nature, tend to be internecine, though the weak side tends to suffer more in terms of human and property casualties, as well as the opportunity costs of war. Once shooting starts and blood begins to spill, it becomes much more difficult to get the influencial elite of the disputing parties to lay down arms and make difficult give-and-take decisions that may re-create viable space for mutual peaceful co-existence in the midst of cultural, racial or religious diversity or all of the above.  It’s thought-provoking to suggest that in peace times, the elite of a society enjoys most of the privileges. Yet, when members of this same elite quarrel over their inability to agree on how to continue to procure the lion share of “the national cake,” the people that eventually bear the brunt of their elite’s inability to govern fairly are the ordinary citizens who, in the first place, received only the least portion of the pie while the going was good.  All too often, a root cause of what ultimately leads to a combustion—that is, a breakdown in national tranquility and stability—is a lingering and an unresolved sense, on the part of one segment or the other of a national population, that national affairs are not being conducted fairly. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, goes a common adage. And so it happens that due to what seems like innate human selfishness, there tends to be an invariably counter-productive and centrifugal tendency,  on the part of a dominant group that finds itself controlling the levers of power within a polity, to become self-absorbed, self-centered, arrogant and insensitive to the rights of other constituent communities of the nation to a proportionate seat at the table of power.

While I was composing this essay and constructing a constituent theme to the effect that world leaders should explore and pursue a means of helping the warring sides in Syria to lay down their arms—at least in the form of a ceasefire—and then have their representatives get onto  a round-table to negotiate a new formula for mutual co-existence in their nation, I was cheered to learn that Pope Francis, Jordan’s King King Abdullah II and his wife, Queen Rania have just called for dialogue as a way out of the internecine civil war (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-civil-war-pope-and-jordans-king-abdullah-say-dialogue-the-only-option-8789871.html).

Since both sides of the Syrian war do have self-admitted powerful external backing (that is, in the main, the United States government backs the rebels, while the Russian government supports the government-side of the conflict), why is it that the emphasis of the external backers is not on getting the warring sides to a round-table--without preconditions--for a negotiated end to the senseless killing of their own people?

 

  

A Half a Century Later

August 28, 2013, marks the 50^th anniversary of the 1963 historic march on Washington at which the late Revered Martin Luther King, Jr. made his national transformational “I have a Dream" Speech.  That march, which was attended by a crowd of over 250,000, along with its famous speech, occurred in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It was a pivotal moment in a national grassroots social change movement whose overall goal was to transform the United States from a society that was legally based on a social doctrine of separate but equal to a de jure system of racial integration. An excerpt from that speech aptly encapsulates the state of affairs then for Americans of African descent:

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition (http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/08/24/3580335/full-text-of-martin-luther-king.html#storylink=cpy).

Globally-speaking, King’s speech was one of the most powerful oratories of the 20^th century. Though a national holiday has been proclaimed in his honor and a national monument, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial,  has also been erected in Washington, D.C. in recognition of the greatness of the civil rights leader, Dr. King, jr. did not live for long on this earth after that speech of 1963 (on April 4, 1968, he lost his life to an assassin’s bullet). Indeed, the Civil Rights Movement proved not to be a fad. Through a set of legal reforms (such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the now-Supreme Court-diluted Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Equal Housing Act of 1968), the movement revolutionized the United States from a society where racial discrimination was legal and overt to one where it is supposed to be illegal. As the events of the past few days, which were meant to commemorate the 1963 March on Washington, must have conveyed, it’s of vital importance for us to remember that the Civil Rights Movement was not a one-day affair involving a single speech--though powerful in its content and oratory--that instantly changed everything and everybody. By 1963, when King delivered his now inter-generationally famous “I have a Dream" Speech, he had been playing a leadership role in the Civil Rights struggle for eight continuous years, dating back to 1955 when the young 26-year-old church minister was recruited to lead the Montgomery Improvement Association in the wake of Rosa Parks’ much-celebrated refusal to give up her bus seat for a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. And, long before the speech, the 1954 Brown judgment of the Supreme Court which enthroned racial desegregation of the school system of the United States—and, in effect, overthrew the earlier century’s 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson’s Supreme Court’s ruling that affirmed racial separatism in the social life of America—had emerged as an affirmation of a long, post-Reconstruction African American struggle to get America to live up to its ethos that “all men are created equal [and] they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights [, including] life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” (http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html).

In the context of world affairs, the Civil Rights Movement of the 20^th century was not an isolated event. It partly coincided with and was spurred on by an across-the-globe upsurge for freedom and for self-determination. The 1948 declaration of Universal Human Rights by the United Nations was a major impetus. So was Cold-War geo-politics. Specifically, as part of a global movement, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States flourished alongside continental mass struggles for freedom from colonial rule in Africa,  following India’s achievement of independence from British colonial rule in 1947. The legendary Mahatma Gandhi spear-headed that Indian independence movement through his tactical deployment of mass civil disobedience. Following in his footsteps years later, Dr. King championed America’s own Civil Rights struggle through his non-violence philosophy and tactics.  Thus, symbolically and ideologically, these trans-continental movements fed upon one another. As another example, while prominent leaders of the African movement for independence from colonial rule included personalities, such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria (both of whom studied in the United States) and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, who studied in London, England, and in doing so, received inspiration from black protest and Pan-Africanist visions of the W.E.B Duboises, George Padmores, the Eric Williams, the C.L.R. James, and the Ralph Bunches of the African American world, the attainment of independence by a succession of African countries mostly in the 1960s (though Egypt became independent of Britain in 1953, followed by Ghana in 1957), in itself became a source of pride, inspiration  and affirmation of black humanity in a United States whose racial history includes an academically-valorized notion of black biological inferiority--in tandem with a similar posture of Western civilization as a whole. The emergent African independent nationhood was an asset that the leaderships of the Civil Rights Movement could show off to the cynical among their white compatriots about a black ability to take charge of black social, political and economic life without white tutelage.

Now, let’s fast-forward to the post-Civil Rights era and do some stock-taking. There is no question that the United States of King’s era is not the United States of today. Only someone who does not have knowledge of that era would find a basis—though one that’s obviously ill-informed--for contesting that fact. Though racial inequities persist, we live in an era of legal racial integration. Much like other multiracial and multicultural societies of the world, the United States still faces its share of racial and ethnic antagonism and bigotry. Be that as it may, and thanks to both Civil Rights Movement’s induced-transformational education and significant demographic shifts that brought about record changes in the people-of-colors’ share of the United States’ national population, the first decade of the 21^st century witnessed the emergence of a black President of the United States. Though both in the first (2008) and second (2012) elections (check out a Pew Research Center’s analysis of the 2012 presidential election), President Barack Obama received a minority of the white vote, much in sync with modern trends in US politics whereby Republican presidential candidates attract more white votes than their Democratic counterparts--but the totality of the votes cast by people of color tipped the electoral scale in his favor--the United States, as a society, still deserves credit for those earth-shattering electoral triumphs of a US president who demographically comes from a segment of the nation that accounts for less than 14% of the national population.

Society must keep in mind that history repeats itself unless the people of the present generation make a conscious effort to learn from it. In order to learn from the mistakes of history, the present generation of America must be educated meaningfully and truthfully about its national history.  In guiding the education of the present generation about its past, the powers-that-be must resist temptation to sugar-coat that past. For such sugar-coating would inevitably become the equivalent of a medical doctor’s deliberate rosy but inaccurate diagnosis of a medical ailment, which, in turn, would lead to an under-estimation  or misdiagnosis of the nature of the problem. Such a misdiagnosis of the patient’s ailment could then give rise to an inadequate or incorrect prescription that, invariably, would fall short of what’s needed in order to make the patient wholesome again. If education must continue to serve as a basis for positively reforming humanity and for continually moving the world forward towards a just society--and not backwards--the leaders who are entrusted with its stewardship, must not lose sight of the moral lesson inherent in the preceding medical physician analogy. As we commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the 1963 march on Washington for freedom and for jobs, we should also use the occasion to recommit ourselves to the educational transformations brought about by the parent Civil Rights Movement of that era—transformations that, by and large, enabled the United States to achieve a deeper self-understanding necessary for social tranquility and progress.

Ex-Federal Minister Femi Fani-Kayode: a mirror of what nationhood is all about in contemporary Nigeria?

No doubt, ex-Federal Minister Femi Fani-Kayode was inflammatory in his August 10, 2013 essay, entitled “the Bitter Truth About the Igbos.” He was primarily reacting to fellow Nigerians who publicly expressed outrage over Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola’s “deportation" of a set of individuals  (who were said to be Igbo and destitute) to Anambra state.  There were conflicting news media reports of the number of persons who were affected by the "deportation." While some reports placed the number at 70, the Lagos state governor claimed only 14 individuals were involved.  I suggest that another diatribe is not a useful response to Fani-Kayode's rhetorical over-reach. Remember the old adage that two wrongs do not make a right. However, the controversy generated by his essay presents an opportunity for one to re-visit constitutional issues and challenges triggered both by his vexatious opinions and Governor Fashola’s own action that provoked all this brouhaha.

First, I would like to advise that those of us who might have been looking at the unfolding issues from the standpoint of their living experiences in the United States, should remember that in practical social terms, Nigeria is not the same kind of nation as the United States although constitutionally (as this essay shall demonstrate), Nigeria aspires to be like the former. Nativism or indigenousness, statism and tribalism prevail in Nigeria and do impact significantly on the life chances of individuals. Whereas what predominantly matters in the United States is one's state of residence (although covert racial intimidation and ethnic intimidation, powered by racism and its institutional support structure, do still rear their ugly heads from time to time) due mainly to the immigrant basis of its national formation, in Nigeria, on the other hand, an important life-chances determining factor is one's state of origin or even one's local government. So, to that extent, Fani-Kayode’s essay merely reminded all of us of the social realities of Nigeria--realities that may strike those of us who have become accustomed to the US system of social organization as oddities.

Second, it's common knowledge that by and large, Nigeria's federation's resources were used in creating modern Lagos, which used to be the capital city of Nigeria up until 1991, when the capital was moved to newly-constructed Abuja. It’s also common knowledge that as a federal capital, Lagos was regarded by all Nigerians as a commonly-owned territory of the Nigerian nation even though there was a simultaneous understanding that Yoruba-speaking Nigerians are much more native to that land mass. Thus, even if one were to play a devil’s advocate of a Fani Kayode revisionist-history declaration of Lagos as an exclusive ethnic enclave-- given the territory’s history of being developed with Nigeria’s federation’s resources and simultaneously being vested in by Nigerians across ethnic and class lines-- Lagos, to Nigerians in general, is still not an Ibadan, a Kano, an Enugu, a Jos or a Calabar. To Nigerians in general—probably both in their short-term and long-term memories--Lagos is still more like Abuja even though the latter has taken the official place of the former as the federal capital territory. Its continued dual attribute of being both the most populous city in Nigeria and the nation’s economic nerve center, despite losing its erstwhile status as the center of the federal administrative machinery, is reflective of a historic place that it has occupied in the imagination of Nigerians in general as a viable source of life support in the form of jobs.

At this juncture, one must recall, however, that 46 years ago, specifically in 1967, the Federal Military Government, headed by General Yakubu Gowon made a politically-expedient decision of granting statehood to Lagos, when it created the first set of 12 states (they have since grown to 36 states), which necessarily broke up the tripartite regional stranglehold over the neck of the Nigerian federation but also clipped the wings of the emergent Biafrian secession through its divide and conquer act of carving out Cross River and Rivers states from what used to be Eastern region. (The defunct Republic of Biafra was meant to cover all of the territories formerly known as the Eastern Region of Nigeria, or what today are known as the south-eastern states of Nigeria.) By granting statehood to Lagos (an action that would be the equivalent of granting statehood to Abuja), Gowon’s federal military government laid the foundation for and played into the hands of the kind of claim of exclusive ethnic ownership of Lagos that the Fani-Kayodes of Nigeria are now asserting—that is, that Lagos belongs exclusively to Yorubaland. If Lagos had been preserved officially as a federal capital territory, instead of being granted statehood, there would have been a stronger political and pragmatic basis for contemporaneously challenging that claim. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on where you stand on this vexed issue, Lagos is a state of its own. It's in that context that Fani-Kayode apparently disagrees with a point of view that Lagos is "a no man's land." Given that the Nigerian ruling elite of the 1960s made the afore-mentioned political mistake of conferring statehood on a territory built up, by and large, with both federation's resources and collective, across-the-board contributions and investments of ordinary Nigerians, including Yorubas—in much the same fashion as present-day Abuja--Fani Kayode and other Nigerians who reason like him, were handed a basis for stretching that political mistake to mean that Lagos is now exclusively owned by Yorubas, and, therefore, fellow Nigerian Lagosians, who happen to be non-Yoruba, are merely temporary guests.

Be that as it may, Nigeria is indeed a country of profound contradictions—contradictions that keep her from realizing her full potentials. So, while Nigerians, in general, view their states as “states of origin” and remain psychically attached to their given ethnic groups, the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria does not label or categorize any state as belonging to any ethnic group. Whether we like it or not, the idea of "nativity" or indigenousness is deep-seated in the Nigerian ethno-cultural ethos, and clearly, it transcends both statehood and nationhood. Each of us, don’t we, believes that we are a native or indigene of this or that town/village in Nigeria. In that case, we always distinguish "indibeanyi" (that is, natives/indigenes) from "indibialabia" (that is, residents or persons who came from elsewhere) no matter how long such residents have lived in our midst.  Though culturally in vogue and deeply-rooted in the consciousness of Nigerians, there is no provision for an Igboland, a Yorubaland, an Hausaland, an Ijawland, or a Nupeland in the currently-operative 1999 Constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria. What that constitution says in chapter 1, part I (2) is that “Nigeria shall be a Federation consisting of States and a Federal Capital Territory.” Sub-section 3 (1) of that chapter then provides that “there shall be 36 states in Nigeria, that is to say, Abia, Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Borno, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Enugu, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara.”

It is also instructive that under the Nigerian constitution (part IV, section 318 (1)), the term, “government” is interpreted as “the Government of the Federation, or of any state, or of a local government council or any person who exercises power of authority on its behalf.” Thus, there are three categories of “government” in Nigeria: the federal government, the state government and the local government. The constitution spells out a list of matters that are under the exclusive legislative authority of the federal government and also matters that are shared by both the federal and state governments, known as a concurrent list.  The “functions” of local governments are spelt out.

As this discussion unfolds, It is important that the reader keeps in mind the preceding definition of “government” under the Nigerian constitution because it will help us to put in its proper context the functions that are vested in that entity, be it at the federal, state or local level of “government.” The constitution (chapter II, section 13 (2b) declares that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” As one of 36 state manifestations of “government,” each state administration, constitutionally, is therefore responsible for “the security and welfare of the people” that are located within its territory. Notice that the constitution refers to the security and welfare of “people,” not just of “indigenes” of a state, as responsibilities of government.  A state is merely a component administrative expression of “government.” So is a local government.

It is also important for the reader to note that chapter II of the Nigerian constitution, otherwise known as “Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy” provides that “the composition of the Government of a State, a local government council, or any of the agencies of such Government or council, and the conduct of the affairs of the Government or council or such agencies shall be carried out in such manner as to recognize the diversity of the people within its area of authority and the need to promote a sense of belonging and loyalty among all the people of the Federation.”

It is also of importance to recall that chapter II, section 17 (1) provides that “the State social order is founded on ideals of Freedom, Equality and Justice,” and sub-section (2b) complements it by adding that that “every citizen shall have equality of rights, obligations and opportunities before the law.” Along those same lines, sub-section 18 (1) provides that “Government shall direct its policy towards ensuring that there are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels.” Thus, as I have argued in a previous write-up, Nigeria’s state governments’ explicit or implicit practice of using  “state indigenousness” as a criterion for admission to state higher institutions of learning is an unconstitutional act that abridges the right of all Nigerians to “equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels.” 

In addition to the afore-mentioned directive principles of state, Nigeria’s constitution contains a set of fundamental rights for Nigeria’s citizens. Here is a sample. Section 42 (1) stipulates that “a citizen of Nigeria of a particular community, ethnic group, place of origin, sex, religion or political opinion shall not, by reason only that he is such a person:-

(a) be subjected either expressly by, or in the practical application of, any law in force in Nigeria or any executive or administrative action of the government, to disabilities or restrictions to which citizens of Nigeria of other communities, ethnic groups, places of origin, sex, religions or political opinions are not made subject; or

(b) be accorded either expressly by, or in the practical application of, any law in force in Nigeria or any such executive or administrative action, any privilege or advantage that is not accorded to citizens of Nigeria of other communities, ethnic groups, places of origin, sex, religions or political opinions.

(2) No citizen of Nigeria shall be subjected to any disability or deprivation merely by reason of the circumstances of his birth.

It is also of notable importance to call attention to the fact that section 43 of Nigeria’s constitution provides that “subject to the provisions of this Constitution, every citizen of Nigeria shall have the right to acquire and own immovable property anywhere in Nigeria." 

Earlier on, I noted that every government within Nigeria is responsible for the security and welfare of the people within its area of jurisdiction. I also noted that “people” does not mean only natives or indigenes of the affected area. Juxtaposed with that constitutional imperative is the fact that the formula for disbursing federal revenue to the states and local governments includes "population." The population in question covers all of the persons/people who are domiciled in a given state or local government area. So, it's hypocritical for a state to circumvent the constitution by engaging in statism—that is, the act or practice of focusing state resources on state natives or state indigenes--after collecting money from the federation’s account partly on the basis of the official population of human beings within its borders. In real terms, isn’t statism, what predominates in Nigeria?  Isn’t statism—as opposed to constitutional federalism—the basis upon which Governor Fashola had his state agents round up and “deport” 14 or 70 persons, described as Igbos, to Anambra state? Is statism not the basis upon which Abia state government, not long ago, expelled fellow Igbos, who are not state indigenes, from his state’s public employment? Those of us who experienced the Nigerian civil war, even as teens, would have thought it impossible or unimaginable that a future Igbo leader would, someday arise, who would achieve a notoriety in history for dismissing fellow Igbos from his state civil service on account of the fact that such expelled Igbos belong to a different administrative unit called a state. What about some states’ practice of extending “contact-only” appointments to non-state indigenes? Are such non-state indigenes not, thereby, being treated as second-class citizens in their own country?

As America's President Abraham Lincoln once famously warned while condemning a dual labor system that prevailed in the United States during the era of slavery (wage labor in the North and slave labor in the South, prior to the 1865 termination of 250 years of African enslavement in the United States as a result of the North's victory in the civil war of 1861-1865), a country divided onto itself cannot endure. For how long will Nigeria continue along the deceitful path of full citizenship here and half-citizenship there--within the same country--for her own citizens?

It’s clear that due to statism, Nigerians are consigned to a life in which they are full citizens only in their “states of origin” but they are defacto second-class citizens in other states of Nigeria where they may reside. This will continue to be a source of tension, ethnic antagonism, tribalism and alienation from the nation-state of Nigeria. It’s clear from the preceding passages that Nigeria’s constitution does not provide for any form of diluted citizenship for any Nigerian anywhere within Nigeria, but the prevailing political culture promotes second class citizenship for non-state indigenes. The term, deportation, is usually applied to expulsions of unwanted individuals from one country to another. The subjection of fellow nationals to “deportation” from one part of a country to another is not an action that’s in conformity with both the spirit and letter of the Nigerian constitution. As a centrifugal form of behavior, it undermines both national cohesion and national camaraderie.

I must not close without mentioning that given his past exulted role as a federal minister, Femi Fani Kayode should be expected to rise above petty ethnic squabbles and to see and conduct himself as part of a national elite that would help uphold and valorize the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, promote national unity, and foster a sense of belonging among the linguistically and religiously-diverse people of Nigeria.

I rest my case.