From Greek Tragedy to Italian Comedy: An African’s View of the Euro Zone Crisis

By: Salisu Suleiman



Hungry, destitute and homeless, hundreds of people recently froze to death on the streets of Europe. The Euro Zone economic crisis is throwing tens of millions of Europeans out of jobs and into the claws of poverty. Shocking stories of hunger and destitution that were more likely to be reported from African countries now come out of Europe on a daily basis with seemingly no end in sight. While poverty and helplessness everywhere are indicative of flawed political and economic processes that need to be redressed, the view from Africa – for so long on the receiving end of European political and economic policies – may not be particularly sympathetic.


Africa’s experience with Europe has been devastating. The first Europeans on our shores came as slave raiders and in the course of 400 years, shipped millions of Africans into slavery – and gave us guns and gin which fueled wars and dislocated whole communities. When the slave trade became uneconomical because of technological advances which replaced slave labor with machines, Europe suddenly found a ‘humanitarian’ spirit and stopped stealing Africans; they stole their continent instead. Which African was represented at the Berlin Conference of 1884 – 1885 which partitioned the continent among European powers?


In many ways, colonialism which replaced the slave trade was worse than slavery because while slave merchants owned just the slaves, colonial powers owned Africa – including the land and resources in addition to the people. So a tiny (and today heavily indebted) country like Belgium owned the Congo which is the size of Western Europe. The Belgian king could, and treated the colony like a personal possession from where gold, diamonds and other minerals were mined and shipped to Europe. (In an ironic twist of fate, Belgians are today more likely to find employment in their former colony than at home).


After the upheavals that followed World War II made colonialism untenable, it was with reluctance that Europe granted African countries independence. For decades, Europe refused to accept African veterans who fought on the side of the Allies as equals and paid them only a fraction of what European veterans were paid. Europe hung on to their African colonies for as long as they could, with Portugal granting independence to its territories only in the mid 70s. In countries that were particularly attractive to Europe like Kenya and Algeria, it took very bloody wars to win their freedoms. Many European nations supported Apartheid South Africa until the system could no longer be sustained and only hesitantly supported black majority rule.


Independence for many African countries did not bring about the much anticipated freedom and prosperity. African leaders in many of the newly independent countries that attempted to break away from neo-colonial influence found themselves overthrown or assassinated – often with Western backing. Patrice Lumumba was a prime example of how forward thinking African leaders were killed and replaced – again with Western support – by despots like Mobutu and Bokassa. African leaders that wanted to remain in power – or alive – had to accept trade and economic policies that were skewed in favor of Europe which only viewed Africa as a source of raw minerals and dumping ground for unsold goods.


To keep Africa in check, European countries fed Africa with dubious debts that further impoverished the continent. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is today synonymous with economic suicide in many African countries like Nigeria where IMF imposed Structural Adjustment Program in the 1980s helped to trap 67 percent of Nigerians in acute poverty. Across the continent, leaders that governed according to the rules set by Europe were seen as modern and reform-minded. Those that insisted on fair trade and equality soon found themselves facing political and economic sanctions. At a time, the only manufactured products to be found in Nigeria had to be ‘Made in England’. Similarly, former French colonies could only buy products of France; anything not made in Europe was ‘fake’ or branded ‘Taiwan’.


Today, Botswana is often held up as an example of democracy and development in Africa. But would that view remain the same if the country decides to stop sharing its diamond wealth with De Beers on a 50-50 basis and demand more for its citizens? What would happen if Nigeria decides to transfer management of its oil assets from European companies to Chinese and Malaysian concerns – an arrangement that would enable it earn an extra five billion dollars annually more than it currently receives? Would the British and French have bombed Libya if Ghadafi had given them unfettered access to his country’s oil wells? (Indeed, a significant quantity of the arms dropped by the French, in direct violation of a United Nations resolution, is suspected to have ended up in the hands of militias, rebels and terrorist groups now destabilizing Libya itself, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, Senegal, Niger and Nigeria).


Back to the Euro Zone financial crises: With this kind of history between Europe and Africa, it is difficult for many Africans to empathize with Europeans. As someone put it, “when the Europeans came to Africa, they came without visas and stayed for as long as they wanted. Today, when Africans want to go to Europe to pick apples and sweep streets, they are denied visas. Let Europeans experience what poverty feels like”. Rightly or wrongly, the conclusion is that as long as Europe dealt with Africans unfairly – from slavery and colonialism to uneven trade practices, Europe remained buoyant. But faced with real competition in a fast evolving global landscape, Europe is crumbling.


The tables have truly changed; there are no more new territories left for Europeans to conquer and plunder. Increasingly, African raw materials are finding their ways to China and India. The IMF is now thoroughly discredited and is probably more needed in Europe than Africa. Many Africans are now buying choice real estate in London and Paris – property currently beyond the reach of many Europeans who are being pushed to the margins. A young Portuguese today is better off emigrating to Angola or Mozambique. Whatever little that Europe produces hardly reaches Africa – where cheaper Chinese imports are everywhere. African students are now to be found in top universities across Britain – at a time when many in Britain cannot afford university education, nor find work when they graduate.


Unfortunately for Europeans, things may not improve soon; the level of public debts are simply too great. Much attention has been focused on Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy, but the contagion is likely to spread. Today, public debt in Britain is about $2 trillion and still growing despite huge cuts in spending. Europe’s economy is shrinking and no jobs are being created. The French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who orchestrated the Libyan intervention partly to project assumed French power, is becoming something of a clown, clinging desperately to the handbag of an averse Angela Merkel to stay afloat. An apt title for the stage show would be ‘The Clown and the Chancellor’s Handbag’.


European economic and political power may be in terminal decline because European prosperity was hinged principally on agriculture, manufacturing and services. Today, those areas of comparative advantage are largely gone; without state subsidies, European agriculture is not competitive. Similarly, a significant percentage of finished goods at present – including those on the shelves of Europe – are made in China. The services sector like international finance – on which Britain banked its hopes and lost, is increasingly moving from London to Dubai and Shanghai. India produces more software engineers than Europe. British icons like Jaguar and MG are now owned by Indian and Chinese investors. Twenty years ago, African roads were dominated by French Peugeots. Today, Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans are everywhere, while Chinese automobiles are making inroads. European presence is waning daily.


So are Africans gloating? Not necessarily; Africans know the ravages of poverty too well to revel at Europe’s misfortunes. For now though, we watch with amusement as the European Circus moves from a Greek tragedy to an Italian comedy. Incidentally, while Europe harps on, and has harried Africa on democracy, neither the prime minister of Greece nor Italy are the products of elections.

A boy without shoes to man without pity

Salisu Suleiman


Last year, in the run up to the presidential elections, a few Nigerians saw through the ruse of the world’s most corrupt political party and warned that the PDP simply wanted to impose a weakling on Nigeria and milk the country dry in the process. We tried to tell Nigerians that we had nothing against Jonathan as a person, only that his antecedents as Bayelsa state governor do not qualify him to manage the affairs of a country as large and complex and a people as difficult as Nigerians.

Very few heeded those warnings. We were labelled northern apologists, unwilling and unable to accept a southern Christian president running Nigeria. Of course the claims were preposterous because just a few months earlier, many of us had marched in the scorching sun of Lagos and Abuja in support of Jonathan against a Muslim northern president who was violating our Constitution. But the voices of reason were drowned; the PDP machinery, with access to unlimited government funds bribed, blackmailed and bludgeoned its way into power.

To make matters worse, no other Christian and southern candidates presented themselves for consideration, so every opposition to candidate Jonathan was conveniently passed off as anti-south and anti-Christian. Many of those opposed to Jonathan had far greater prospects of benefiting from a Jonathan administration than from a northern president, but knew that the man simply didn’t have the mettle to tackle Nigeria’s myriad challenges. It was tragic, watching intelligent Nigerians falling for the hoax of the son of the fisherman who had ‘no shoes’, seduced by the promise of ‘fresh air’ and the ‘transformation’ of politics and administration in Nigeria.

And so Goodluck Ebele Jonathan came to office with a landslide.

How many people asked what Jonathan’s economic policies were? How many Nigerians could point to anything the man had done as governor of Nigeria’s least populated state but with one of the highest revenues? Did Jonathan make any promises to tackle corruption? Did the president make any commitment to cut down on the costs of government? Did we ask questions when thousands of groups emerged overnight, all very well funded, to promote the Jonathan agenda? Did we even ask what the agenda was? Where are those groups today? Did Nigerians not vote for ‘Jonathan’ and not the PDP?

So what are Nigerians protesting about? Why are Nigerians marching against the removal of fuel subsidies and the resulting dramatic increases in the prices of transport, food stuff, petrol, firewood, kerosene, rent, school fees, and other things? Why didn’t we ask important questions when we had a chance to? Many people thought it was humorous when Jonathan avoided the presidential debate organized for candidates and chose to debate himself. Are we only just seeing through the veneer of deception? Who is having the last laugh now?

The situation we find ourselves should not be surprising. If anything, GEJ has always demonstrated an uncanny similarity with President Ibrahim Babangida to get into and remain in office. IBB ‘settled’ his cronies with fief-like political appointments to go and ‘chop’; GEJ gave them what to ‘chop’ directly by doling out cash, including dollars from our excess crude oil account and foreign reserves. In the first four years of the Yar’adua/ Jonathan administration, our foreign reserves were depleted from $47 billion to about $33 billion; excess crude account from $6 billion to almost zero and our foreign debts shot up from about $3 billion to $40 billion. Did Nigerians expect not to pay a price for this profligacy?

The reason behind Jonathan’s removal of petroleum products is not because government wants to commit the funds to other more pressing areas as claimed. If that was the case, why should the Presidency propose to spend N300 million in 2012 just to buy dinner sets for the villa? Why is the president ordering a new jet to add to its already bloated fleet when most Nigerians cannot travel without a ‘security report’ from all routes and towns along the way? Why should government spend almost three-quarters of the 2012 budget on salaries and allowances of a mere 1% of the population when 20 million Nigerian youth are unemployed? Why should a former teacher refuse to honour its agreements with ASUU? Did we not fall for ‘fresh air’ without asking whose fans will blow the air?

And what is it about the psychology of Nigerian leaders so that craves praises from the West?

It is a fact that when the World Bank and the IMF praises the government of any developing country, the ordinary people of that country are in for a hard time. IBB was the first to deregulate critical sectors of the economy to acclaim from the West. We are yet to recover. OBJ ceded Bakassi to Western eulogies, demoting our brothers into second class citizens in their ancestral lands. GEJ has removed subsidies to cover up huge gaps in our finances and at the behest of the West. Overnight, a majority of already impoverished Nigerians have been pushed into deeper poverty.

It seems that the boy who grew up with no shoes has grown up to be a man with no pity.

Second Term for President Jonathan...

By: Salisu Suleiman


Now that we are beginning the year with massive increases in the prices of petrol, transport, foodstuffs, school fees, rents and everything else, it is imperative to creatively earn additional income. In the last two years, the most lucrative occupation in Nigeria was supporting President Jonathan at all costs and by all means. Thousands of groups emerged overnight to plead, beg, cajole and threaten mass suicide if Jonathan didn’t run for president. In the end, he ‘reluctantly’ allowed himself to be persuaded.

Today, all members of those groups and anyone who actively supported Jonathan are billionaires and millionaires. True, a few of them have sold the SUVs they bought and have been thrown out of the hotels they were living, but most of them will not feel the rising cost of living nor participate in the meaningless protests over fuel subsidy removal. The rest of us must find ways to survive Mr. President’s New Year gift. Ironically, the most lucrative way is to support him early and vigorously - for a second term in office. It is not too early. Remember, the early bird catches the worms. In our own case, the early supporters will catch the dollars....

But more seriously, in a proper democracy, Goodluck Jonathan would not have been governor, much less president. Everyone knows last year’s elections were massively rigged and outrageous amounts spent to buy or coerce support for him. And because religion and region were used to blindfold many Nigerians, the PDP had its way. The rest should be history, except that today, we have to live with the consequences of that decision: devolution of corruption, delegation of poverty and democratization of insecurity.

And just when you think that the quality of leadership in Nigeria cannot possibly sink any lower than it has with Goodluck Jonathan, take one look at those warming up to succeed him and it becomes immediately obvious that the president – dull, uninspiring and visionless as he, is not necessarily the worse specimen the world’s most corrupt political party – PDP - can throw up. A look at the two potential successors within the party – Vice President Namadi Sambo and Senate President David Mark sends shivers down the spines of those who know the two men – and their largely nondescript, even poor records in public service.

As a major government contractor, Namadi Sambo has always been part of government. There are claims that his firm hardly completed projects, even at grossly inflated sums. Incidentally, contract for a major water supply scheme to his hometown was awarded to his company. He didn’t complete it as a contractor and couldn’t be bothered as governor; most parts of Zaria still do not have water. As governor of Kaduna state in an election he clearly didn’t win, Namadi Sambo only succeeded in taking huge loans that simply disappeared. Beyond that, he had nothing to show. How two non performing governors ended up as president and vice president is a serious indictment of our political system.

As for Senate President David Mark, this man represents all that is wrong with leadership in Nigeria. From the post war panel to resolve ‘abandoned’ properties of the Igbo after the civil war, this man has been part of government for ever. He was a regular at Dodan Barracks in the 1970s and later emerged as military governor of Niger State when the military disrupted our democracy. Not many people in the state remember any solid legacy he left behind before his reassignment as minister of communications where his most important achievement was his statement that ‘telephones are not for the poor’.

David Mark is currently serving his fourth term in the senate, but most people in his constituency would swear that he didn’t win any of those elections. But because he understands the corrupt Nigerian system so well, he thrives in the chaos and injustice. With his tremendous wealth, the only thing has achieved for his people is a golf course in the outskirts of Otupko (where no one plays golf and whose residents would rather have the water from the golf course in their homes). The roads are bad, but he visits by helicopter. He couldn’t even influence the placing of a federal university in his constituency last year when government was ‘sharing’ universities for political ends. Mark supported Obasanjo’s third term ambition – and the sharing of the booties – to the bitter end.

So back to Goodluck: With his laid-back mien and outward unwillingness (though his calculating and cruel character is creeping out) it is easy to underestimate President Jonathan. But the man is a much more consummate power player than we give him credit for. The greatest myth around Jonathan is the notion that he has always been a reluctant politician and that by some divine miracle, power has always come to him. To have successfully sold that dummy is one of the smartest acts of political subtlety in Nigeria.

We may all want Jonathan out of office before he completely destroys Nigeria, but if he decides to run, what can stop him?

The fact is, by 2015, Nigerians may be in for another rude shock. At the appropriate time, and with the fitting level of reluctance, Jonathan will ‘unwillingly’ allow himself to be persuaded to run for a second term. He won’t be running because he wants to remain in office. He will run only after ‘deeply reflecting on the calls from the Nigerian patriots home and abroad, traditional rulers, state governors and out of respect for the wishes of the Nigerian people’. It will be his ‘patriotic duty to run for president in Nigeria to consolidate the achievements of the last few years’.

So to survive 2012 and beyond, block your nostrils to hold off the stench; suffocate your conscience; lay to rest your pride; close your eyes to his ineptitude and support Goodluck Ebele Jonathan for a second term in office and watch your bank accounts grow. What do you think the $8 billion saved from subsidy removal will be used for?

Boko Haram: The Three Phases of Terror

By: Salisu Suleiman


The amount of money an emir expends on a single trip to Europe for medical check-up would build a clinic big enough to serve a community of 5000 people; the amount of foreign exchange a top civil servant pays yearly to educate a single child abroad would build a primary school capable of providing basic education to hundreds of pupils; the amount of money a politician spends to sponsor his wives and children’s trips to Saudi Arabia for lesser pilgrimage, to Dubai for shopping and Europe for holidays annually is enough to establish community banks and provide access to capital for thousands of small businesses or fund poverty alleviation projects in several communities.

What do the emir, top civil servant and politician have in common? They are all western-educated, blinded by a culture of corruption and nurtured on the plundered public resources. So to the ordinary citizen whose pregnant wife dies in labour for lack of basic healthcare; whose child cannot get basic literacy and numeracy skills due to the collapse of education and whose entire life is a painful journey through biting poverty and hopelessness, if western education produces a system as insensitive, an elite as heartless and a society as unjust, then that form of enlightenment (boko) should be anathema (haram). This is the figurative definition of Boko Haram.

This article is not an attempt to justify the killing of innocent Nigerians, Muslim or Christian. Those acts cannot be rationalized and are totally condemnable. But to understand a problem requires that we get to the bottom of the real issues. Boko Haram started because many young people, unable to live with the growing level of poverty and social injustice, opted to move out of the periphery of society to live in isolation, embracing an interpretation of Islam as their ideology. The group did not have a violent outlook and only sought to live in their own alternative reality, however Utopian.

However, when the police attacked and killed several of their members during a funeral procession without provocation or an apology, the arena was set for a fierce backlash. Even at that stage, it was not too late to make amends, but the same ‘Bokoed’ elite that forced them to the margins of society now sought to criminalise them. When the group made the mistake of taking arms against the instruments of state, government found the excuse it needed and ordered that the group be crushed. The military went in with force and shelled populated areas indiscriminately. Some observers estimated that as many as 7000 people, mostly innocent women and children were slaughtered; nobody bothered to count. For several months, the stench of dead and decaying bodies pervaded Maiduguri and its environs.

Even at that stage it would have been possible to manage the situation, but government chose not to and proclaimed victory, forgetting that an ideology was not a military target. Soon, pictures and video of the cold blooded murder of the group’s leader and top echelon, as well as the brutal killing of young children and many handicapped people by the police began to surface. Very little has been done to bring the police officers - many of whom can clearly be identified in the videos – to justice. Obviously, the state was above its own laws.

Several unanswered questions remain regarding government response to terrorism. Why did late President Umaru Yar’adua not visit Maiduguri where thousands of lives were lost, mostly in hands of the military? Why has President Goodluck Jonathan not visited Bauchi Gombe and Yobe where thousands of lives have been lost in communal and religious unrests? Why did her turn down the mediation offer by Borno elders? Are the people being killed in Plateau state second class citizens? Why are we turning a blind eye to what can only be described as genocide in Southern Kaduna? Why was there so little media coverage of the Sallah day attacks that killed hundreds of Muslim worshipers in Jos? What is the response to the recent massacre in Ebonyi state that left at least 60 people dead?

Clearly, government has no answers.

In typical Jonathanian fashion, the response has been to throw money at problems. The average spending on security last year was 2 billion naira every day of the entire year. What Nigerians got in return was the bloodiest peace-time year in history. Undaunted, the president plans to spend a quarter of this year’s budget on security. The combined security and defence spending in this year’s budget proposals would average about 3 billion naira ($20 million) daily. This is the highest ever peace time spending on security, but the measures being taken are tragically comical, revealing fundamental flaws in Nigeria’s security and defence thinking.

Many major streets in Abuja have been barricaded and the flow of traffic diverted from potential targets. All roads leading to the city have checkpoints that only create traffic chaos and misery. And for those who didn’t know, the offices of the Department of State Services (SSS) are now more visible than before; security posts are being constructed at the previously obscure entrance of the Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA); all roads bordering the Defence and Police Headquarters are now blocked. It would be catastrophic for Nigeria to fight a war with another country because all it would take to decimate our top military cadre is an attack on the Defence Headquarters where the Army, Air Force and Navy have their offices – in a single compound!

Government has also awarded a $600 million contract to install close circuit cameras in parts of Abuja. Don’t ask if they work and if we have the data base from which to identify persons of interest. At the current rate, all roads leading to churches will soon be blocked; all routes leading to mosques will be barricaded; all schools will soon be guarded by bomb squads; battle tanks will be stationed at the gates of hospitals, and all markets will be guarded by elite troops and military helicopters....

While these laughable ‘security’ measures are being put in place, the real challenge – Boko Haram has metamorphosed through the three phases of terrorism.

Initially, the group was guided by their peculiar interpretation of an ideology. The second phase came when they decided to carry out revenge attacks on perceived enemies – mostly policemen and the ‘Bokoed’ elite. And because government failed to act responsively, they quickly moved to the third phase which is marked by indiscriminate killing and bombing. This phase is not about protecting an ideology or even in retribution for perceived injustices. They now kill simply because they can. And no one is safe - Muslim or Christian, northerner or southerner: Nigeria is under siege.

Spend a trillion dollars to fight terrorism and what will you get? More terrorists! That is what the American experience in Afghanistan shows. Even President Jonathan, callous and obtuse as he is (whatever happened to the fresh air) must realise that military action will not solve what is essentially a problem born of social injustice and hopelessness.

According to Bolaji Abdullahi, the Minister of Youth, 20 million Nigerian youth (41.6%) are unemployed. This should be the focus of all security strategies in the country, not the massive procurement of arms. How many citizens can government kill? The three billion naira the federal government alone plans to spend daily on security would be better spent on building safety nets below which no Nigerian should fall. All 36 states’ security votes, running to hundreds of billions would better serve to create jobs or introduce unemployment benefits to millions, not stolen by governors.

Boko Haram or not, as long as the level of poverty, unemployment and social inequality continues to rise, no amount of money voted for security or quantity of arms bought will make Nigeria secure. And the president’s unilateral decision to withdraw subsidy on petroleum products will certainly not help matters. Ironically, Jonathan seems to have gone through his own three phases: Jonathan the Clueless, Jonathan the Congenial and Jonathan the Cruel.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT, LOCAL PROBLEM

By: Salisu Suleiman

Local Government Chairmen in Nigeria live in a world of their own, completely detached from reality. Most of them have full retinues of bodyguards and are driven around in convoys of SUVs, with police orderlies to open and close doors for them. Getting appointments to meet them is virtually an exercise in futility. They dispense favours to acolytes and praise-singers with the thoughtless abandon: the entire local government funds are theirs to spend as they wish.

At the Local Government Secretariat, they are surrounded by meaningless protocols; their paraphernalia of office would embarrass the head of state of a small country. They can in turn be brash, arrogant, suave, solicitous and crude, but one thing they share is a well-horned capacity to detect the slightest opportunity for fraud. Their word is law and they believe they know everything.

Except what the job description of a local government chairman is.

At a lower level, local government officials also live like royalty. As administrators, they help themselves liberally from the public purse by exploiting the weaknesses of the archaic accounting systems still in use. They are just as powerful as chairmen because they are the institutional memories of councils and know where every kobo is, and therefore how to steal it. Local administration in Nigeria today embodies theft, serving only serve to devolve poverty.

How did we get to this point?

Prior to military intervention in politics, the Native Authority structures comprised two-tier multipurpose units of governance, made up of the parent local government council at the upper level, and the subordinate council at the lower level. The military introduced the area development committees at the District or Zonal levels of local government administration. They abolished the District Officer, Local Authority and City Manager systems that were in place prior to 1975.

When the Murtala Administration initiated the process of local government reform through Decree No 32 of 1975 (10), the policy aimed to fast track development in the rural areas. The intention was to enhance development at the local level and give people a voice in the democratic process. It certainly did not envisage that council chairmen would become the local tyrants we see today, strutting about with no ideas of what their functions are. They are experts in awarding grossly inflated contracts and diverting public funds, or as Nuhu Ribadu would say, ‘direct stealing’.

Nigeria’s Constitution recognizes local government areas as the third tier of government after the federal and state governments. Their functions are clearly defined. They are entitled allocation of funds from the federation account for use in carrying out their functions. All of Nigeria’s 776 local councils each receive billions of naira in allocations, but nobody knows where these monies end up. Where are the local roads, dispensaries, schools and markets? Where are the projects to speed up development? Where are the trillions? No wonder it is now vogue for chairmen to own houses in London, Dubai and South Africa. And because there are little checks, accountability is weak and audit systems compromised. The public is generally disinterested.

And so, the looting goes on.

That is why today, there are places in Nigeria that cannot be reached by any form of motorized vehicle; reaching those places entails abandoning vehicles and trudging on foot. That is why in some areas today, medical emergencies are transported to clinics on motorcycles or donkeys. That is why in many places pupils still study under trees in lieu of classrooms. That is why we must ask: Where are the boreholes that are supposed to provide potable water? Why do so many people die from preventable diseases like malaria, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, and meningitis? Why do we have mountains of refuse and clogged drainages all over the country?

If you seek answers to these puzzles, look no further than your local government officials.

After paying staff salaries every month, the party begins. Bogus contracts are awarded and re-awarded at grossly inflated rates but never executed. Salaries are paid to hundreds and thousands of non-existing workers. Unnecessary workshops and conferences (including to the UK to learn local government administration!) are paid for. Unneeded consultancy and feasibility studies are commissioned, paid for and promptly dumped. Boreholes with no water are displayed as achievements. Classrooms that will be blown away by the next rains are inaugurated. Cheap motorcycles are distributed to youth in the name of poverty alleviation. And by the time the orgy of spending is over, allocations for another month would have arrived. So the madness continues.

Is it any surprise that local government areas, for all intents and purposes have become local problems?

As ASUU Strikes Again

By: Salisu Suleiman
   I write to inform you that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the umbrella body of Nigerian university teachers has embarked on yet another series of strikes. As you read this, all 177 public universities have been shut down, with no date set for their reopening. But this letter is not about ASUU strikes – that happens every year. I write to inform you about what school and learning are like even when ASUU isn’t on strike.
   Today, nothing is as you recall. School may have given you some of the happiest years in life, enlightenment, education and a future. What I see today are bleak, blank faces, gazing at bleak, bland futures. I do not see the cheery days and starry nights you recall so fondly. The tower you remember has crashed down to the dungeons of decrepit desolation and disrepair; from an incubator of fresh thinking, it is now a prison of dead thoughts. What I perceive from the prism of this prison is a picture not of enlightenment at its highest peak, but ignorance at its darkest pitch.
   What I see is truth tethered on the tentacle of lies and facts fanned by farce. What I see is a dearth of research, paucity of original thinking and plentiful of intellectual inertia. I see teachers who grimace at the embrace of technology then retreat to their comfort zones of submerged subterfuge, prostituting posterity for pittance. They teach in public schools, but all have children in private schools.
   You say you made your best friends in school, but through the miasma that shrouds the clouds of today’s comradeship, what I see are the bonfires of the occult as they sweat, shiver and shout; they see everything and nothing; they strangle, shoot and stab; they climb a mound of skulls for a moment of transient clout that is premised on pretexts, lies, fears and tears. I see no lasting friendships in that fraternity.
   I interact with students who know everything about soccer, nothing about Socrates; all about Arsenal, nothing about Aristotle; all about Maradona, nothing about Michelangelo; all about Pele, nothing about Plato. I see the mast of memories misted by the fog of foiled, failed folios. Next time you tell me I can’t speak, read or write English, I will tell you that I speak better English than my teachers. Next time you say youths today are without creativity or intellect, I will tell you that I am taught by professors who have published nothing in a dozen years.
   Through the prism of so many prisons, I see once cherished values dragged into the gutter of moral penury; I see students storming through a million pages without comprehension for a piece of parchment; I see culture confined to the cellars of a confused continuum called civilized conduct; I see scions reject time honored symphonies to go searching, picking and parodying primordial patterns from which they obtain no education, no enlightenment and nothing of the nuances needed to knead a livelihood.
   In school today, the search for truth means nothing; students lie and cheat with sacred texts that meant something to get scores that leave them sharing no shade and no shelter from once shielded sanctuaries, now synods of sybaritic sacrilege. Today, merit is wasting and cheating is paying; dirges announce the birth of new ideas and pyres precede professors powerless to pirate patents. And because government is on a stretched, secluded sabbatical, it has lost touch with my teachers. So they teach for three months and strike for six.
   In the hostels you recall like yesterday, I am awakened by the bedlam of students scurrying to fetch water to wash their faces and cook their meals; I see 16 students crammed into the single room you once lived alone. On the shelves where you kept your books are kerosene stoves; in the wardrobes where you once hung your shirts are sacks of food; in the hands of graduate students, I see lecture notes stenciled from back in the 1980s; the libraries are homes to books of antiquity and today’s seminars, a bizarre bazaar of intellectual ineptitude.
   In class, we are plied with new lies to quell old fears. What I see is the deliberate death dance of a fast fading educational system. I see ivory towers anchored on the rusty chains of complacency and I fear the emptiness of an education that is stilted, shapeless, shrouded in mystery, mindless, meaningless.
   What I am trying to say is that even when ASUU isn’t on strike, I go out to class every day with a numb mechanical monotony, seeing nothing, learning nothing.

My God is Richer than Yours

By: Salisu Suleiman


As Nigerians join the rest of the world in congregating for Hajj, our ironic preoccupation with religion comes out once again. A few years ago, a survey showed Nigeria to be the most religious country in the world, with 90 percent of the population believing in God, praying regularly and affirming their readiness to die for their beliefs. The survey, "What the World Thinks of God" also showed Nigeria coming tops as a praying nation at 95 percent, compared to 67 percent in the US.

Our brand of Christianity has assumed a uniquely Nigerian character: loud, colorful, vigorous and patently overdone. At a time when many are fleeing churches in droves and church attendance are at record lows, the business of worshiping Christ is a trillion naira concern in Nigeria – and growing. Apart from controlling public vaults, the easiest way to own a private jet in Nigeria is probably to talk-smooth on a church podium.

And Muslims will not be outshone. Our brand of Islam is just as peculiarly Nigerian: pretentious, ignorant, obtuse and grotesquely expensive. A quick way to power and influence in Nigeria is to affect a religious mien, grow a huge beard, don a turban and deliberately pepper conversations with Arabic words and phrases. Political and business leaders of all shades and persuasions – Muslim and Christian - would flock to pay homage and seek patronage.

But none of these is new. A growing trend is the calculatedly obscene manner some eople spend money to demonstrate religiosity. At no place is this more evident than during lesser Hajj or Umrah, when people seem to be paying for exclusive access to God. To start with, this ritual is not an obligation, yet some people beg and borrow just to keep up with peers who travel every year. In the midst of such desperate exhibitionism, genuine devotion is a derivative.

The less affluent task themselves needlessly to perform Umrah, while the rich definitely go for the overkill. During the last Umrah, $100,000 was paid at a luxury hotel for a state governor for 10 nights; he stayed only two. This was a needless waste of $80,000. Worse was the case of a well-known politician who had wired $250,000 as payment for a 10 night stay, but didn’t show up. At current exchange rates, that is 40 million naira. My grouse is not that he didn’t show up; even if he had exhausted every cent of the amount, such pricey prayers probably pry out true faith.

The math is simple. Which would be a worthier act, spending N40 million for a few days of luxurious devotion, or using the same amount to change the lives of at least 100 Nigerian families forever? For a university graduate who doesn’t mind driving a cab, N400, 000 would buy a taxi. The same amount can kick-start many small businesses as take-off capital. For a farmer in my hometown, that amount would buy land, farming implements, a bull and an irrigation pump – and a passport to wealth. For a desperate young man in a village who wants to get married, that amount would build him a house – and pay all marriage expenses.

Even these are very generous estimates. The entire contents of some kola nut hawkers’ tray – from which they feed their families is often less than N3000; the entire assets of some sellers of ‘pure water’, chewing gum, handkerchief, orange, biscuit – and a variety of other things – are often between 1,000 - 2,000 naira. If our pious politician had chosen to spend his N40 million by changing the lives of 1,000 countrymen by giving just N40, 000 to each, how many potential armed robbers, kidnappers and prostitutes would have been recovered for society?

But for the Nigerian rich, the worship of God has a class component – with a seeming competition to spend outrageously, ostensibly to please God. The unspoken assertion seem to be ‘my prayers are more exclusive than yours’, while the more brazen proclaim: ‘I could see the Holy Mosque from my hotel room’; ‘I haven’t missed one pilgrimage in the last 20 years’; ‘I brought my entire family with me’; ‘I stayed at the Intercontinental because Hilton’s standards are falling’ or ‘I stayed at Raffles. Try it next year’. In the midst of such chest thumping exertions to outspend others in the service of God, it is easy to forget that we left many homeless and hungry compatriots back home.

If the keys to Heaven could be bought with money, Nigerians would probably outbid every other people in the world, with change to spare. The contradiction in using stolen funds to build mosques and churches is often lost; in the same breath, monies are stolen from the treasury and transferred to numbered accounts - and the change used to sponsor friends and family to Mecca and Jerusalem. Ours is a bizarre bazaar where everything goes. In the midst of such frenetic exhibitionism, true religion is a rarity.