The evil that walked the rugged landscapes of Ekiti was not Segun Oni. The evil was a brand of regressive political system that President Obasanjo promoted since 2003. The guy was said to be a gentleman, Segun Oni, personable and humane, but so was Chris Ngige, who, however, would get an Abiku redemption, partly because of the public outrage that attended his mauling by Uba and co, and partly because he put up a fight at least. No matter that his was a tarnished courage: admitting to the knowledge that election which brought him to power was rigged before that Pilate who sought no water to wash his own hands off the dubious deal, Ngige should have resigned. But then man must chop. He could now be seen in the fold of ‘the progressives’, popping champagne to celebrate a well deserved victory of Dr. Fayemi. But I still don’t get it, what is the difference between Segun Oni’s ouster and Ngige’s?

‘Progressive’ as a political platform is quite movable in our definition here. You see, Ayo Arise, that implacable political mugger and the deposed governor, Segun Oni, and (horror! horror!) Gbenga Daniel, the Oloogun of Ogun State, had rubbed shoulders with Tinubu, Bola Ige and Bisi Akande during the giddy days of AD. And regally allocated a pride of place on the podium, as newly sworn in governor Fayemi addressed his supporters, was that Ajantala, Ayo Fayose, the juvenile ex-governor of Ekiti whose ridiculous sense of governance as drama and deception, outraged no less a grand reprobate than the ex- president Obasanjo. I have said it repeatedly that the success of Tinubu in politics was partly because he played his politics as fiercely as the PDP hawks, marching them fire for fire, and partly because he was able to convince his publics that his own brand of politics was better and, well, progressive. But he was a progressive with tenacity of a fascist, Tinubu, quite unlike Bisi Akande, Segun Osoba, Lam Adesina and so on in the 2003 opposition as the remaining of South west lay, another Troy, after the plunder of Obasanjo’s ruthless guile.

The Politics of Progressivism:

Progressivism in Nigerian political practice has an untidy and vague character: a long, dishearteningly ambivalent history. From the days of Awolowo and Zik, Tafawa Balewa and Okpara.- the horse trading in the first republic parliament, the peculiar mess of the south west and its causative mega egos, then the making and unraveling of certain cult personalities. The concept of ‘a little to the left, a little to the right’ that defined the political calculation during Babangida’s transitional travesty also problematised such neat categorisation. In a more familiar milieu, to people of my generation at least, we have seen people like Bola Ige, Tinubu, Buhari, Shekarau and Bisi Akande provide a kind of alternative force- a fierce and committed front of resistance- against the rampage of the ruling party in the country, but they have had to walk with most strange bed fellows sometimes. Even Abubakar Atiku, as a victimized VP, was briefly a poster boy for the ‘progressives’ during those days when he kept winning one lawsuit after the other against his overbearing principal, OBJ. In Ekiti, Fayose is such character. Well, the progressives could use the chap’s seeming grass root popularity, his dodgy antecedents in governance notwithstanding. It is almost as if you fall out of favour with the ruling elite, you are automatically accepted and investitured a progressive.

Saraki and Five-Decade Old Confidence:

The quiet but certain storm gathering on Kwara sky is not without its antecedent mythology. But the demystification of Chief Sola Saraki can only be half-achieved if the ‘progressives’ band together against Oloye’s ravenous but beneficent dictatorship. Pardon my oxymoron, it is just that a lot of Kwarans- I mean ordinary men and women, not the amphibious and largely diasporic elite, may readily describe Sola Saraki a progressive leader. It is a matter of perception .But the so called progressives (read elite) of Kwara will never rally on a common front. They always play disruptive loyalty to a common cause. I bet some of the emerging contenders for Kwara Government House come 2011 might even be paid to split the ranks of the opposition. The old man knew this as he threw jabs at the opponents during the formal declaration of his daughter, Senator Gbemi Saraki, a candidate in the next governorship election in Kwara. His was a five-decade old confidence, a knowledge of the other that the other might not even have of their own position.

The Real Progressives:

Personally, I award the medal of ‘progressive’ politics to the spirit of the people of Kano and Lagos states in 2003 and 2009 who have braved all odds to ensure their votes matter in electing their political representation.

Of Brigandage and Demagoguery:

Parenthetically, however, what actually troubles me is the lack of creativity among the new crop of political actors, quite unlike their Pentecostal clergy buddies. We are being short changed on two fronts: these guys refuse to delight us through precarious but entertaining demagoguery of politicking, yet deny us development value of democracy. They do not serve us juicy histrionics, ala Adelabu , to make us give them the due of having at least ‘worked’ for the spoils. Neither do they weave elaborate webs of guile through practiced charm and gift of garb or through real and vibrant grassroots’ irruptions ala Saraki. These are the qualities that defined the political practices of older times. The endearing gravitas and charisma of the stormy petrel of South West, Adegoke Adelabu for instance or the ironic lyricism of SLA Akintola’s oratory or even the corrosive colourfulness of Okotie Eboh. What about the structural socialist attitude of Sola Saraki in Kwara. Adedibu’s welfarist tyranny would have come to mind here, if not for the notorious garrison commander role he ended his political life with.

But the new crop of politicians since 1999 is an irreverent lot- brash, brazen, rash and irresponsible. They simply force their way to power, through elaborate system of distortions and terror. They do not canvass your vote; the campaigning is just a celebration of victory. They are so insensibly corrupt that IBB points at them to play down his own mega sleaze! Was he correct or was he? Check out the macabre dances in the House of Assembly. Not only that they do not want to play politics through gradual connection to the constituent interests, not only that they see the patronage of the Godfather as highly modern and politically correct, they also see public service as a direct opposite of politics, almost a taboo converse. Well, I know, like all of us now, they are a by-product of military incursion into politics, that is, when they were not indeed the military. I could almost Imagine David Mark or Oyinlola barking ‘move, move, double up’ to his infantry of thugs during electoral rampage.

Now these famous (or infamous depending on who you are) names I mentioned above – Saraki, Adelabu, and probably Adedibu, are some of the best minds of their generations. They are counted in the league of the great politicians like like Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, Aminu Kano or Alex Ekwueme, Adesanya, Enahoro, Adebanjo and so on, no matter how you see them. But more importantly, in my mind, those guys typify the real demagogues, imbued with trickster unsettling tendencies for systemic disruptiveness. You detest the plan but adore the mind; you abominate the politics but salute the strategy and argument. And that exactly is my point, my allegation against the Iboris and the Alams, the Oyinlolas and Daniels.

It isn’t easy to capture public imagination let alone a fair chunk of the people’s loyalty. I recall that the late Dadakuada crooner, Odolaye Aremu, while singing the praise of Adedibu, said Adedibu was literally half of Ibadan. And this was the time before garrison politics of Ahmadu Ali and OBJ, a time when the former Awo’s follower commanded a large followership in political decision in Oyo state. So if Adedibu was half of Ibadan, all he needed practically was only one head, a sole accomplice, to become the majority! Same Odoolaye Aremun once said of Olusola Saraki that he was like the sole raining season in Kwara, which permeated with relief.

Fayose and Alao Akala nearly typified this tendency towards emotive populism among the new guard of the south west. Giving the way Fayose captured public imagination of the highly sophisticated electorate of Ekiti, his undoing was his unbridled immaturity, lack of common sense and tacky combativeness. Akala, on the other hand, has always been a grassroots man, even before he ventured into politics; he’s an avatar of sorts (believe it or not) in his Ogbomoso north constituency, a place where his limited talent and education would have continued to loom large if he had been wiser and stayed in there. Now he has to contend with the idiotic smugness of largely sybaritic elite of Ibadan whose ‘non-Ibadan indigene’ credo negates even the constitution of the city’s monarchical democracy. Good thing, the other two near- demagogues in Ibadan, Dr. Victor Olunloyo and Richard Akinjide can see through the smokescreen of their less talented compatriots of the ancient city. But they can help Akala get better by goading him into assembling a cabinet of young and visionary professional to run his policies, like in Lagos- an almost impossible feat, I know, given the man’s bucolic and visceral bombast.

A Big Man with Two Houses!

These are moot points, again. But I refer you to Kwara one more time. Pardon my blooper, I know Kwara isn’t supposed to be in South West but it’s just that it really is, forget the dodgy political permutations. So chief Sola Saraki, knowing full well that the constitution of Kwaran society, highly patriarchal and supremely Islamic, will have a problem accepting the candidature of her daughter, Senator Gbemi Saraki, informed the people that he did not request for her to be turbaned as the Chief Imam. He, he reminded them, who famously owns only two houses in all his almost sixty years in politics and public service, did not want the hungry horde to erode his son’s achievement in the state. His chief wish for them was to bequeath vital continuity governance in which the sister would build on the achievements of her brother. Oloye often speaks to his folks like a leader who recognizes the servitude of his position. And two houses for the ‘whole’ Saraki in this era of Cecilia Ibru, of Ibori, of David Mark, of Obasanjo! Sad though that the senator, in her pursuit of history as the first female governor in Nigeria, might not stand up to the competition on her own legs. Needless to say at the end of that declaration fiesta, old palms were greased and new ones motivated. The crowd unleashed into the traffic that evening was hugely joyous.

The dichotomy of indigene/settler is not exactly clearly spelt out in the constitution, as it were and despite our so-called federalist arrangement, people relate to one another in practically all aspects of life based on tribal memory and religious differencing and, of course, the consequent narratives of otherness permeate the political economy. Plateau state has been the recurrent theater in which the tensions and implosion of our tardy federalism are being violently enacted in recent memory, but we all understand that it can happen any where in the country. In a country where even the armed forces men are implicated in murderous ethno-religious conspiracy, how more can we be bound to violence?

We are in fact in more trouble than we thought. Reading Olakunle Abimbola of The Nation newspaper’s Feedback from his March 16th Republican Ripples column – ‘Jos and a Nation’s Dirty Underbelly’ published on 21st, one will be inclined to hesitate a while before calling Gadaffi a mad man. The partisan sentiments expressed by most of the reader-commentators are so astonishingly idiotic that the columnist has to write an italicized preamble before the text messages, warning readers that what they are about to read may yet ‘be more lethal than brainless marauders, sent by evil sponsors, massacring defenseless women and innocent children’. Most of the comments constitute the most base in our ethnic and religious sentimentalism.

Despite the knee-jerk reactions attending Gaddaffi’s unsolicited and shortsighted comment from the government people, one cannot deny that his summation has some sentimental value among the much victimized Nigerians. Most of the southerners that commented on Abimbola’s piece simply desire the peace that self determination which splitting the country will bring about can afford them, while the Northerners see Abimbola’s piece as partisan and anti-north. Some one wrote: ‘The Fulani Arab Jihad moves on inexorably. So stab the sky with your index finger and shout one Nigeria or Allah Akbar!’

It is still a wonder to me how much of the identity consideration of the Nigerian by another Nigerian wraps around each’s religious belief. Yes, most of the violent clashes in northern Nigeria arise from the contention for resources control and political power struggle, but yes again, religion is the platform for mobilization to violence. After all, there are a lot of peripatetic Igbo people which their mercantilist presence in Jos and its environs. Is it a miracle that there has not been any major violent clash between them and their Berom hosts? Or between the large communities of Yoruba settlers who have been in the state as far back as the Hausa-Fulani settlers. In fact there is a belief, albeit unconfirmed, that a Yoruba had once been Gwom Jos!

Is it then any wonder that those who usually mouth the ‘let’s divide Nigeria’ dictum are usually from the south divide? And this doesn’t necessarily have much to do with oil resources being in the south (although the north’s hard federalist stance might have something to do with that fact). And they are not for most part unaware of the fact that separation of a patch-work country like Nigeria along any line (religious or geographic) will surely be untidy and will definitely deepen the schisms we seek to remedy. The reasoning is that homogeneity of culture and value system tends to produce in-built mechanisms for conflict resolution: think of it, in a place like Kwara, Oyo and Kogi, where large populations of Moslems and Christians co exist, you don’t usually have mobilization for economic or political struggles riding violence on the wheels of religion. At any rate, a Yoruba Moslem is just a little better than an infidel in the core north.

It is going to be the most difficult thing in the world whatever can make Nigeria achieve the ‘trans-ethnic’ and ‘post ethnic’ identity that Professor Biodun Jeyifo talks about. And the process is not even being thought about let alone initiated. What with the people with the most inflexibly tight and un-hyphenated identity in the country, people whose cities are divided permanently to reflect physical ascription of otherness fight in, and over, another’s land on the basis of national identity!

We can intellectualize these things all we want, but there are no more startling discoveries to be made as far as the causes of violence in northern Nigeria are concerned. Olakunle Abimbola’s getting a lot of verbal bashing (sentimental fool, people like you will rot in hell, among other verbal stabbing), because he dared to damn political correctness and nail the issue home to its proven veracity. If the self-indulgent Katsina legislator that was throwing empty verbal darts at Gadaffi on TV the other day had expressed such outrage at the Jos carnage similarly on air, may be we would have been on the way to true consideration of a federalist identity. Struggles for economic and political empowerment might still be less unwieldy within the federation of this crazy quilt if we de-emphasise the factor of religion as basis for ethnic and territorial identity and for violent mobilization in the northern Nigeria.

Even when the president has been absent- some say missing- for more than 50 days; even when the legislature seems grounded in timid idiocy; even when the Federal Cabinet is hushed in cultic embrace of criminality watching, as the nation is reduced to aspirations of 4 or 5 individuals led by the First Lady but cheer-led by the ever consociated minister of justice, we stick to our foreign passion. And you would have thought the attempted bombing by citizen Farouk of a plane over the USA would have caused a solemn break, however brief, from soccer frenzy, to ruminate on human elements of our systemic collapse. No. On 26th of December, the day after the incident that shocked the whole world, my people were still seen at the bar and other places discussing stale victories and losses of foreign leagues .Maybe they could not be bothered. Maybe football offers a kind of therapy, an escape, from the sordid realities around them. What more, it is better to lavish your emotive resources on a thrilling, sensually pleasing spectacle of football than waste them on impassioned commentary on the polity, which will not reduce the subscription fee of the cable networks. Even an a-soccer cynic like me allows a glance or two, once in a while, for the kinetic spectacle of the round leather game.

That was what I was thinking, nursing a lone bottle, last night at a bar in Ilorin, Kwara State, when someone shouted at someone else, amidst a rather frenzied football argument, to shut up and stop behaving like Mutallab. There was a momentary cessation of the babelling, I supposed a lot of people had not heard what preceded the mentioning of the name, and within like 20 seconds ,eyes passed from face to face until all heads turned to the owner of the voice; he apologetically shrugged and said quietly, I mean fanatic. I could have sworn I saw a momentary fear in his eyes, a moment before voices rose again. I took a good look at this guy, he looked like a banker that had come to the bar straight from work- tie and all. Probably not a Muslim in a town preponderantly Muslim, he could have realised at that suspended moment, that there was no way to gauge what people in Ilorin thought of Mutallab and his action.

Yes, we know a larger section of world Muslims frown at terrorism and that many governments in Arab world are participating in the global effort to rid the world of Islamic terrorism, but when we have a respected local opinion shaper like Mohammed Haruna reminding us why Abdulmutallab was possible in the context of American hegemony and murderous interference in the political economy of many a Arab country, we could not be sure that we, as a nation, collectively condemn Mutallab’s idiotic adventure. Haruna, writing in The Nation, reminded us that US’s self-serving foreign policies, powered by her interests in Big Oil in the Arab nations, which have seen criminal invasions of Arab countries and killing of thousands in the process made, global terrorism possible. This is not a new argument, yet Haruna dedicated two columns, two weeks, to tell us how American economic imperialism in the Middle East has continued to criminalise Islamic beliefs and practices, therefore making people like Mutallab take to terror as a weapon of protest. One would have thought, killing of innocent passengers on board, some of whom might be muslims, would not have led to evacuation of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. But then, the statement would have been made, wouldn’t it? And if other Muslims had perished in that plane, one cannot be too sure of their chances in the after-life, even if one conceded Mutallab his eternal bliss of multiple virgins, as they might not think of themselves as fighting any holy war.

But Haruna was right; and he would have been more so if it had happened that Mutallab had taken Yemeni citizenship before his misadventure. His misadventure would have been a mere shock to us rather than the catastrophic dimension it has now taken, if he had renounced his Nigerian citizenship before boarding that plane. Nigerians are not all Muslims and we might not all share in the Islamist romanticism and sense of injustice that inspired young Mutallab, but now we are all going to be told to step out of line and be strip-searched at airports all over the world; we are all going to be punished for politico-religious convictions of an impressionable young man. There is nothing sensible for any Nigerian, even if muslim, to fight an Arab war at our collective expense.

These are things we expect public commentators like Mallam Haruna to address. Many enlightened Nigerians- muslim or Christian (like the enlightened American commentators that Haruna copiously quoted)- are aware of and sympathetic with the colossal injustice going on in the Middle East for instance, but we still object to these things erupting unwarranted violence in our country. So we expect public commentators, when they question America’s reason for including Nigeria in the list, to remember that we have always lived with such extremist tendencies in Nigeria. America overreacted, yes, but we are also known to have overreacted more than once when we decided to slaughter people for holding different religious views. Terrorism need not be targeted at the US, need not be global, to be deemed so; the routine massacres that occur in Kano and Kaduna and a lot more northern cities in the name of religion and ethnicity are terrorism. Remember the recent Bokom Haram atavism. Yet unlike global terrorism, there is nobody to be held responsible, to be prosecuted, no country to be bombed- a case of unknown Yankaba, I guess. And do we really think the little Jihads that dotted home landscape did not contribute to Mutallab profound ignorance and his fantasy of Islamic millennium?

Let us not be so bothered in locating Mutallab geography and psychology of influences in his foreign education, his existential loneliness, his background of privilege. Let us be bothered more by the ruination of Nigerian body politic. As Princeton Lyman pointed out, Nigerian has been deconstructed by its internal contradictions. Corruption and bad leadership have continually made project Nigeria a still birth; our sullied international profile has taken another feather of ignominy- thanks to Mutallab: we are done f or. Let’s not even start to wonder if Mutallab was Ghanaian, would American include Ghana in the terrorism list. No!, they would not: Ghana, despite her sizable muslim population is not known for violent extremism. Ghana has shown commitment to sustainable democracy, forward-looking economic planning and leadership that is ready to work with people in mind. Besides, Ghanaian president would have contacted President Obama immediately for resolution after the failed terrorist attempt, but we don’t even have a government in place. So how much different are we from Somalia that we object to sharing pride of place with on that list? When we get our acts together and resolve the avoidable implosions of our national structure through good governance, we might not need to shout ourselves hoarse before Nigeria, as an international brand, becomes credible again.

Back to my bar moment: There could be a justification in the tag of Mutallab that the gentleman put on his overzealous interlocutor. Football is a game of extreme passion, fierce faith, dogmatic commitment, irrational belief. Have I described a religious temper? Yes, football can take on religious experience and it has recorded its own bloody history all over the world, hasn’t it? And if Mohammed Haruna can deploy Mutallab’s action as metaphor for liberating impulses, why couldn’t our man equally see the zealousness of this fanatic fan of an English team in such terms? My thoughts couldn’t have been more beer-sodden, could they?

 Nigeria celebrated its last Independence anniversary under a pall of a series of explosive image-attacks. The ones that seemed most irritating to the fire brand Mrs. Minister of Information appear to be (a) the portrayal of Nigeria as a country of fraudsters in the Sony website ad and (b) the portrayal of Nigerians as enterprising ritualists in the Hollywood-South African movie, District 9.Do not mind the intractable spate of arbitrary and unexplained assassinations in the country; nor the rot in the education sector ; nor the total collapse of security and economy; nor the endemic corruption among the ruling/ political class, and its corollary among the dispossessed youth- desperation for quick wealth, a situation that  makes Sony’s wise-assed slur possible in the first place. I cannot be sure if the irony of it all struck Dr Akunyili when the chairman of her own branding project committee, the actor Pete Edochie, was recently kidnapped.

We could understand the minister’s especial grouse with the movie: aside making a hash of her much refrained-branding project, her political benefactor and former president of the country, General Obasanjo rtd., has had his personal image mauled in the ritual mud  of  District 9’s Obedsanjo. But wait awhile: who was trying to implicate the former president in the wizards’ brew of some screen-created pagan Nigerian exiles? Who had such audacity to tie the General’s name with his conquered country’s marauding diaspora of alien flesh eaters? For those who do not know, the name Obasanjo is not really a common Nigerian name, not even in Egba from where the former president comes. I think someone had mischievously chosen that name for the leader of the District 9 Nigerians to drive home a sly, rubbishing point. See, why not Adesanjo, Olusanjo and other such ‘Sanjo’ mutations that are more common? What, were they trying to paint the Nigerian community among those aliens as a macrocosm of Obasanjo’s Nigeria?

I did not see District 9 until recently. In fact too recently, for it was on the same day that Mr. Segun Ajayi, Action Congress agent in Ido Osi, caused a commotion at the on-going Ekiti Election tribunal. The man, whose leg had been amputated due to a gunshot attack from the PDP thugs during the election, brought the putrefying rump before the sitting, as an exhibit (or a kind of evidence in case the PDP lawyers attempted to claim he had never really had a leg before the election). While the whole court went into an odour-attack from the moldy leg-evidence, a tragic image flashed through one’s mind, a sad, ironic association of that amputation, a symbol of political violence and ritual dismemberment, with the other- an alien dismembered limb thrust on Obesandjo in District 9.And the tragic irony becomes more biting when one remembers that former president  Obasanjo was, by indirection (no thanks to his  political credo of ‘do or die’ which his party took to heart in Ekiti), responsible for the violent reduction of  Segun Ajayi’s leg.

No doubt, as it has been famously expressed, that most of the dark impressions of Nigerians as a ritual-minded, scam-minded people get exported largely through the efforts of Nollywood movies. A Nigerian reviewer of District 9 suggested that the movie has bought into the sentiments of Nollywood creations but without the context. For really who was the Dibia that divined the ritual potential of the alien flesh to Obedsanjo and co? There must be a Dibia, a Babalawo, the Wise One, if the creators of District 9 had thorough digested the Wooden lessons of Nolly ventures.

I recently came across a series of Pieter Hugo’s photographs on Time Online photo gallery, taken from a book about Nigerian movie industry, Nollywood: The Stars of Nigeria’s Movie Business.  The photographer had asked the actors to ‘recreate Nollywood myths and symbols’ like they do in movie sets. The results of these re-enactments are a bit unreal, even for Nollywood movies. There is one odd photograph of a Escort Karma in Long Jacket, a comic mask and an axe, standing on the middle of a road with a captured, fuzzy image of traffic about him. I think that picture could well be taken from a scene of any Hollywood horror film. A particularly horrifying one features Gabazzini Zuo in a suit and tie, standing over a disemboweled cow in a ritual setting, holding its bloody entrails to his chest- a ritualist in suit: could you think of a more fitting oxymoronic image of a sophisticated savage? Aside the fact that the names of most of the actors that posed for those photographs are not easily recognized in Nollywood, their bizarre representations also stretch the imagination of the Nollywood’s costuming really far.

Those photographs are captioned with insights that are no doubt from the book: ‘the plot revolves around situations familiar with the audience’ and these are listed, ‘witchcraft, bribery, prostitution’. Also Nollywood’s preferred aesthetic is ‘loud, violent and excessive’ and this aesthetic is supposed to spring from our ‘rich oral and written story telling’ and ‘deeply rooted in the local collective imagination’. But Nigerian story telling aesthetic is not loud and violent. Those Nollywood movies and their ritual templates do not exactly represent the realities of Nigerian experience. Those barely literate film makers have no time for research or historical truth, and they do not know the word aesthetic; they are only interested in creating their own fantasies for pure commercial purposes. Nigerians of District 9 are part of the damage Nollywood is inflicting on Nigerian image.  Here we are, ye good woman of Brandingville.