Christmas season is here. There is a certain feeling of lightness that cascades through bodies of millions of us human beings in several parts of the world, Christendom in particular. There is a certain inexplicable joy looking forward to the stupendous Event that is Christmas. Companies, factories begin to shut down from the middle of the month of December. Families plan big; transporters are busy; flight reservations are made well in advance. No group advertises the impending season than children, and they ask their mothers: “Mommy, what are you buying for us this Christmas?” Is it not instructive that it is their mothers they approach first! The mother may then say: “Go and ask Daddy?” It is simply because women are closer to Nature than men, equipped with abundant and richer spiritual endowments which connect them with Light Power more than with men for the fulfillment of their high tasks in our world. What I am getting at is that observation of simple things around us will prove to us that man is more than his physical body. You are in Jebba sleeping, and you find yourself in New Orleans attending a meeting. You have not left your bed and the eyes are closed. On awakening you discover that the experience was only a dream! With what faculty does a man go through such an experience? As with nearly all things that have suffered decline in the affairs of the modern man, the faculty to dream has not been spared. Dreams are to guide and to warn, but they have been interfered with such that in a majority of cases, what may have been dreamt does not come to pass; the warning is distorted, the guidance is of no avail, having been mangled.

All around us are activities by the unseen servants of the Creator, the Almighty Father. The conception of Almighty God by many a man is that He is a bearded old man close by who watches every movement, every activity, He is present at every meeting and listens to every conversation. He rewards and dishes out punishment. Many clerics claim that He speaks to them every now and then; indeed they had dinner with Him a few days back. Such is the audacity of man!!! This evinces lack of the knowledge of the structure of Creation which is multi-layered into planes and Realms, the vastness of which is beyond human contemplation, comprehension and grasp. It could not have been for nothing that the Lord Jesus Christ said in His Father’s House “are many mansions…” The mansions refer to Planes and Realms in the material as well as in the Spiritual. The Divine Realm, primarily the abode of Archangels and Angels, is outside of Creation. As we now know from the enlightenment of the higher knowledge made available to mankind today, the Abode of the Almighty is even outside the Divine Realm. They are separated by an ocean of flames that has no possibility of cooling as it is the natural consequence of the Radiations of God Who is Life, Light and Truth. Only His Two Sons, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit Who are Parts of Him—Christ as Love and the Holy Spirit as His Will and Justice Arms—can cross the ocean of flames because the Essence of the Father is their Essence, too, being Parts of Him in Holy Trinity. It cannot be so difficult to see that if the Lord Jesus Christ had stepped into this world with all His Powers and in all His Glory, it would have melted under His feet into nothingness. We can see from the foregoing what love and how much sacrifice He made in His coming, accompanied by angels to show human beings the way out of their derangement, chaos and confusion.

Peoples in different regions and cultures long came into recognition of the structure of Creation. The people of South West, for example, recognise the Spiritual Realm as First Creation –Akokoda Aiye and the Material Realm as Subsequent Creation–Aseyinda Aiye! They also long recognise the different planes and Realms as Dark Region, Orun Apaadi; Ethereal Region, Orun Alakeji; Light Region as Ojude Orun, the Fore Court; Paradise, Orun; Azure Island, Isalu Orun; Primordial Spiritual Realm, Ajule Orun; Summit of Creation, Oke Orun. The Ifa corpus speaks of Agbaagba Merindinlogun, the Elders at the boundary of the Divine Realm. It was not the Whiteman who brought the knowledge to them. If the Realms did not exist, they would not have recognised them. They gained recognition of them in their development and gave them names, helped in all these by Nature Beings. The eyes of some of them opened and they gave the planes names in their own language. It cannot be surprising that they made deities of these helpers and they formed religions to worship them, one of the deities being the Masquerade they call Ara Orun, that is a native of the Beyond who brought them tidings and knowledge, principal among which is that there is life after earthly life. The masquerader is usually thought to be a departed former member of the family. He may even have come to settle misunderstandings that ensued in the family after his departure, especially on land matters. The worship and celebration of masquerades is wide in many a culture in Nigeria—in the south East, South-South, North-Central, South-West, Republic of Benin and Ghana.

In the book, titled Tributes on ULLI BEIER, edited by Wole Ogundele, the renowned poet, Niyi Osundare, wrote an enrapturing poem he captioned ‘Iwa L’ewa, A Preface in Verse’. Other contributors were Bruce Onabrakpeya who was introduced as “definitely one of the most creative and best known Nigerian artists today. He has also established a successful art school, the Harmattan Workshop, at Agbarha-Otor, Delta State; Jimoh Buraimoh, said to be one of the “pioneer Osogbo artists and member of the Duro Ladipo Theatre…he has his own gallery in Osogbo, where he also trains young artists and Wole Ogundele himself who taught African and English Literature for almost three decades at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, and in the universities in the USA and Germany.” Osundare wandered near and far paying glowing tribute to whom it is due—from Pius Okigbo to JP Clark, from Wole Soyinka to Nwoko. What caught my attention more is Ulli Beier’s foray into understanding and familiarity with the culture and deities of his community in Nigeria, Osogbo. In what he titled Glossary of the Yoruba pantheon in the poem, Osundare explained that Osun is the goddess of River Osun also goddess of fertility, compassion, and justice; Oya as the goddess of River Niger and Commerce renowned as the most powerful of Sango’s wives; Sango…the god of thunder and lightning and Ogun as god of iron and metallic lore of technology. Obatala is…god of creation and guardian of spiritual and communal ethos; Ifa, Yoruba supreme medium of divination, is the source of wisdom, knowledge, and the science of being.

This is saying, therefore, that the knowledge of the elemental beings is world-wide and this arose as here and there gifted men beheld them. Because they do not wear physical bodies, they are not seen by the generality of the people—even more so today than in ancient times. Those frequently seen are Gnomes who build hills, mountains, form rocks and sands as well as water Sprites. They are more in density than those with finer consistency. Uncorrupted children who are enthralled by nature, children who are excited in playing with sand, moulding birds with clay see, and talk with them, instead of they getting carried away by toy guns and toy cars. The children are more likely to see them who run after reptiles and who pester their parents that they would like to own dogs and who are in their elements running after their cats and taking care of them. Children who would like to visit zoological gardens. Alas, what modern parents do today is to rush the children to school at the age of three years to make them precocious.

Cicero said in “The Nature of the Gods”: “For the belief in the gods has not been established by authority, customs, or law, but rests on the unanimous and abiding consensus of mankind; their existence is therefore a necessary inference, since we possess an instinctive or rather an innate concept of them; but a belief which all men by nature share must necessarily be true; therefore it must be admitted that the gods exist.”

The people of old marveled at the love, efficiency and precision of these beings and they began to worship them and they would not heed the admonitions, warning and protestations by the beings themselves to desist from doing so pointing out to them that only God Almighty is to be worshiped. The beings guide herdsmen giving them signals as may be necessary on routes and water; same to fishermen as to where to cast their nets for appreciable harvest and to potters which clay will make solid pots; and which plant fibres should be used for weaving, principal among these which turned out to be what man was later to call cotton. The beings formed the foundation for good character, loyalty and hard work as people strove to emulate them. As the Greeks were way ahead of others with their sharper perception, it is believed that the Beings inspired the early great philosophers—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle to name only three, indeed to the extent that Plato admonished a skeptical youth that “ his good or bad behaviour would have consequences” It is said of him that he regarded belief in the existence of the Nature Beings as “the most important thing for the human being.” .

The knowledge of the Nature Beings is depicted in the scriptures both in the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament for example, it is said “God standeth in the congregation of the Almighty; he judgeth among the gods (Psalm 82:1). Again in Psalm 135: 5), we read: “For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods:” In Psalm (36:2) we have stated: “God of gods.” The gods in reference are the elemental beings which the early people called gods and goddesses. The experience of Balaam and his donkey is well known when his animal refused to move on at a point on seeing a Nature Being that gave a warning signal to it. But Balaam could not see the being. He kicked the donkey three times but the animal refused to continue. The narration is contained in Numbers 22, 28-34 and it reads:

“And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?

“And Balaam said unto the ass, Because thou hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee.

“And the ass said unto Balaam, am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? Was I ever wont to do so unto thee? And he said, Nay.

“Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and he bowed down his head, and fell flat on his face.

“And the angel of the Lord said unto him, Wherefore hast thou smitten ass these three times? Behold, I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me:

“And the ass saw me, and turned from me these three times; unless she had turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive.

“And Balaam said unto the angel of the Lord, I have sinned; for I knew not thou stoodest in the way against me: now therefore, if it displease thee, I will get me back again.”

In the New testament, Apostle Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 8, 5-6): “For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) but to us there is but one God, the father, of whom are all things, and we in him: and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.”

Similarly, there is the account of the Lord Christ himself rebuking the wind and the Sea of Galilee when a violent storm headed to sink the ship in which the Lord was: “And He saith unto them: Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea: and there was a great calm. But the men marveled, saying: What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him! (Matthew 8: 26-27).

I have gone this far to demonstrate the imperative of being conscious of the primary teachers of man and the help they still render to mankind till this day, building and forming. There is so much to say about them; they are numerous and they are in hierarchies. Indeed without them life would have been impossible on earth. The Lords of the Nature Beings are in higher Realms, principal among them being Mercury. The beauty, size and majesty of some of them and their swinging in the radiance from the Power of the All-Highest got men to come to the conclusion that they were gods and in admiration and homage began to worship them. But it should be made plain that they are not God, but only the faithful servants of the Most High.

This leads me to ask the question once more: What is true worship? I apologise I cannot cover the ground today to lead to the subject, constrained by space and time. It will unfailingly be treated next week).

(References: GONE TO JOIN OBATALA: Tributes on Ulli Beier; and Gnomes, Elves, Nixies…A World-wide Knowledge by Christopher Vasey).

Former US President Donald Trump didn’t just happen to the United States. He hit the world like the climax of a horror movie. 

Scene after scene, act after act left the thoughtful in bewilderment, the reserved in shame, and even the incorrigible in doubt. Only the fantasts and ultra-right wing extremists were impressed by Trump’s macabre dance.

It was a phase like no other when he freely abused the expression, “To make America great again”.

Apart from his British double and ally, Boris Johnson, only clips from Uganda’s past, without their bloody trail, throw up a shadow of semblance in contemporary history. 

If Idi Amin, Uganda’s maximum ruler and self-styled conqueror of the British Empire, was alive, Trump would have had a living black effigy, a master of doublespeak. He shifts grounds from subject to subject, changing the narrative before the audience had time to think, and then closing the story with a conclusion neither relevant to the beginning, nor logical in its summation.

Although Amin declared himself Field Marshal and life president, he only lasted between 1971 and 1979 – roughly the same eight years Trump aspires to rule the US. Amin’s cleverer latter-day successor, Yoweri Museveni, has been, paradoxically, the one to live Amin’s dream of a life presidency. 

Museveni, who led a guerilla warfare to “liberate Uganda from Amin”, has been in office for 38 years and still counting. Now the whole world is worried about liberating Uganda from him.

With Trump, facts don’t have to be factual. Any line makes a syllogism so long as it justifies his ends. His presidency reduced the most powerful country in the world to a theatre of absurdities, an endless circus of drama where Trump was the scripter, its director, lead actor, hero, critic and more. 

It was under Trump that the world really doubted for the first time in many decades the primacy of the US in global affairs – whether it involved the climate debate, migration (legal or otherwise), the pandemic or even the nuclear arms challenge.

With skin tougher than a reptile’s, Trump drove through scandals, not batting an eyelid. He rigged the Supreme Court with conservative justices, trampled over Congress and bullied the press. Trump was not just a master of the alternative universe, he also sustained it with hysteria that left normal folks doubting their own sanity.

A darling of the Christian right, he may as well have borrowed his moral compass from the Crusaders, an earlier generation of Christians, who lacked the grace to accommodate what they could not change, but did not lack the courage to undermine or destroy them. 

Trump was never wrong as long as he called the shots. He must have thought Nixon was foolish to have resigned at the mere triviality that was Watergate.

Coming on the heels of the remarkable era of Barack Obama, Trump had the very effect of that bull inside a China shop. Frequently seeking judicial reinterpretation of his indiscretions, America lost its sense of outrage under him! With brazen incorrigibility, he simply blew out one scandal with another. 

When, after four difficult years Americans had the chance to choose again, the confused, frightened world prayed that American voters would find the courage to escort DJT out of the White House and back to his Towers. That’s where his alternative facts and self-serving narratives move mountains and form the operational blueprint. 

But he didn’t only resist by stirring an insurrection on the Capitol, he would go on to ask the courts and whoever cared not to accept or confirm Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Sounds like a tale from a thriller, but we lived through it.

To be fair to American voters, the majority of them didn’t elect Trump. He was the product of the Electoral College – a warped and archaic electoral system which sometimes allows the majority to have their say, but the minority to have their way.  

If that system was meant to provide some balance and comfort in America’s complex federation – and possibly stop the emergence of demagogues, as some argue – well, it failed to deliver in 2016. 

The Electoral College, that 230-year-old political contraption, became the very vehicle that took Trump to the presidency. Hilary Clinton had trounced him with a margin of 2.8 million popular votes, but the counter-democratic wisdom of the electoral college overrode the popular will of Americans.

In the words of one of the founding leaders of the US, James Madison, the Electoral College was meant to ensure that the president is elected “by men most capable of analysing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favourable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.” Trump possessed anything but these qualities.

His Democratic opponent warned and admonished most prophetically, about the man lacking the temperament and wisdom befitting of the job. The electorate heard, and adhered, but the “College” did the reverse. The world felt the impact of that mistake, and America bore this burden for four long years. 

And he stunned the world even more. He wouldn’t leave the White House without a fight and attempted a coup. He wouldn’t concede defeat or congratulate the man who beat him at the polls. He sulked, balked and bluffed. But in the end, he had to slink away like a bully humiliated by an underdog.

The mid-term elections in November in the US provided Trump with another opportunity to show-up in the ring again, hoping for a Red wave, which thankfully, did not happen. He still wants to make America great, to “save” America. 

His fanatical crowds are unrelenting, cheering him at the podium like nothing happened before. And just like before, too, the world risks the mistake of under-estimating Trump, thinking he is going nowhere.  

Whether Trump will succeed or not depends on the Republican Party, a party so beholden to Trump that it answers twice, even when he calls once. If he overcomes the loop, his brand of entrepreneurial politics and personality cult could generate a bandwagon effect that may be hard to stop.

As America approaches the 2024 elections, chances of a Trump on the ballot are a possibility not to be dismissed, considering how he pushed through the Republican primaries to the presidency in 2016. He feels even more surefooted now, despite the outcome of the midterm elections. 

He claims he wants to save America. But America desperately needs to save itself from him. He’s never been short of this messianic complex. And he knows when and how to deploy it to devastating effect.

Trump 2.0 is a possibility and the man is seriously looking forward to it. He has the capacity of a brigand; he fights – fair or foul – he just fights, anyway. The end justifies the means. With Trump, the world should never say never until he has been retired by consent or by force. 

Trump is not done, yet. And anyone who thinks otherwise should remember what his cousin, Mary, told The Guardian about him in January 2021: “He’s never had a legitimate win in his life. All that matters is getting the win, no matter if there’s an asterisk next to it.” 

Why? Because asterisks are to a demagogue what the red flag is to the bull. America, watch your back!

I—-, residing at—-formerly engaged in militant activities in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, do solemnly swear, (or affirm) that I hereby renounce all my previous acts of militancy, including my affiliation and allegiance to any militant group and/or organization; and that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and respect every constituted authority; that I shall never again engage in any act of militancy whatsoever; and that I will, in like manner, abide by; and faithfully and lawfully support every effort being made by the Federal, States and Local Governments and their agencies for the overall development of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.’ 

Each of the Niger Delta militants granted amnesty by late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in June 2009 swore to the foregoing oath. But whoever becomes president next year will inherit the challenge of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP). I recently encountered PAP Interim Administrator Major General Barry Ndiomu (rtd), and the conclusion I drew from our conversation is that like many government programmes initiated with good intention, a scandalous mismanagement of scarce resources over the years has turned PAP into another slush fund to line pockets for political patronage. And we are talking of several hundreds of billions of Naira over a period of 13 years.  

In August, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) engaged the services of an oil pipeline surveillance firm, Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited, led by Government Ekpemupolo, popularly known as Tompolo, to guard the oil pipeline network. Following the controversial decision, readers who sought my view could not understand my endorsement. While the NNPCL may have signed the contract out of desperation given the quantum of oil being lost to criminal cartels, I am also aware that this was part of the Niger Delta amnesty deal with ex-militant leaders. I should know because I had the privilege of sitting with the late president, along with his principal secretary, David Edevbie, at separate meetings with Tompolo, Ateke Tom, Farah Dagogo and Henry Okah. In fact, the only such meeting the president attended without either of us was the one held in Yenogoa with Ebikabowei Victor Ben, aka ‘Boyloaf’, but he had then Bayelsa State Governor and current Minister of State, Petroleum, Timipre Silva with him. One of the accepted recommendations from the amnesty panel was that “qualified ex-militants should be employed by Private Security outfits to perform surveillance duties on oil pipelines and installations.” 

Meanwhile, I understand that oil production has recovered from an all-time low of 1.1 million barrels per day (BPD) in August 2022 prior to signing the contract to an average of over 1.4 million BPD in November, translating to an increase of over 300,000 BPD. Data from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) also reveal that more wells and associated surface facilities that were shut down because of incessant theft and vandalism are being reopened. Similar impact is being recorded on gas production. Prior to this period, according to industry sources, outage of major trunklines had severely impacted gas production and evacuation thus depriving gas power plants and gas-based industries feedstock for operations and gas exports through NLNG. Several factors, including renewed offensive by the military and closer collaboration with the communities by industry operators may be responsible for this but one can also not discount the efforts of ex-militant leaders who know the terrain. Besides, keeping a man like Tompolo on the side of the law is a no-brainer. 

Before I make my point, let me quickly add that the amnesty programme was not an event.  It was a process designed to improve the environment, human capacity, and overall development in the Niger Delta. And it was well planned. To commence the exercise, President Yar’Adua constituted an amnesty panel headed by Major General Godwin Abbe (rtd). Members included Elder Godswill Orubebe, then Niger Delta Minister, Air Chief Paul Dike, Chief of Defence Staff at the time, Mike Okiro, then Inspector General of Police, Mr Bukhari Bello, a legal practitioner, Dr Timiebi Koripamo-Agary, a retired federal permanent secretary as well as representatives of Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Ondo, and Rivers States.  

The Presidential directive to the committee included preparation of a step-by-step framework for amnesty and complete disarmament, demobilization, and re-integration of ex-militants with appropriate timelines. By the presidential mandate, those with criminal records should not be allowed to take advantage of the amnesty while the panel was to work out the cost to government. The panel was also given the leeway to examine any other matter considered relevant to its assignment and was allowed to invite any person or group of people that could assist them.  

The first issue the panel resolved was the legal hurdle of whether the president could offer amnesty to people who had not been convicted of any offence. Their conclusion was that although the term ‘Amnesty’ is not mentioned in the 1999 Nigerian Constitution, Section 175 empowers the president to grant pardon to any person concerned with or convicted of any offence. “The same section divides the power of pardon into two categories. These are those that concern persons who have committed offences but have not been prosecuted, and those who have been prosecuted and convicted of offences. The panel believes that the amnesty being proposed would encourage the militants to voluntarily come forward and be reconciled with society. The Panel therefore recommends that all categories of militants should be allowed to benefit from the amnesty which should take the form of a presidential broadcast whereby details of it would be proclaimed to the public, including the militants and the international community,” according to their report.  

In the course of their work, the amnesty panel divided itself into four sub-committees: Amnesty, Disarmament and Demobilization, Publicity and Liaison and Rehabilitation and Reintegration and coopted many people from both public and private sectors. For the amnesty sub-committee chaired by Okiro, co-opted members included Dafe Akpedeye, SAN, G. E. Odegbaro, Bestman Nnwoka, O. J. Oworibo, Azubuko Udah and Y.M. Bichi (current Director General of the State Security Service). They were to determine categories of people to be granted amnesty, define exact procedures, identify, and recommend reporting and screening centres as well as modalities for the establishment of a database of militants from which information/profiles could be extracted. The disarmament and demobilization sub-committee chaired by Dike was to recommend procedures for disarming militants who surrender and modalities for documentation, storage, disposal of arms and ammunition and other weapons. They were also to determine the location of holding camps for screened militants. The publicity sub-committee headed by Koripamo-Agary was to identify and establish liaison with all stakeholders, including oil and gas majors, and media, particularly those in the Niger Delta. The rehabilitation and reintegration sub-committee chaired by Orubebe was to work out modalities for the rehabilitation and reintegration of ex-militants, liaise and collate views of NGOs on such reintegration process, while working with other committees to identify vocation centres where militants could acquire skills.  

In their report to the President, the panel stated that disarmament and demobilization could only be achieved when sources and means of arms procurement had been severed from the militants to prevent them from re-arming. “It is therefore important to note the close correlation between armed conflict in the Niger Delta and illegal oil bunkering. It is recommended that effective monitoring and checkmating of illegal oil bunkering is an essential requirement for arms control and conflict prevention in the Niger Delta.” The panel further wrote: “The Nigerian Navy must be adequately empowered in terms of new platform acquisition to effectively put a stop to illegal bunkering while the JTF should equally be empowered to control the proliferation of light weapons in the Niger Delta before and after the proclamation of amnesty.” 

At the end of the exercise, 20,194 ex-militants were recorded at Obubra in Cross River State where data collection took place.  But the figure soon jumped to 30,000 after Yar’Adua died. When I spoke with Ndiomu, he admitted inheriting a debt portfolio totalling over N90 billion owed to sundry stakeholders, including contractors, institutions of higher learning both at home and in the diaspora. But the bigger challenge, in addition to a lack of accountability and transparency in PAP management, is the absence of any reliable data of the real ex-militants. Ndiomu told me that efforts to retrieve information from Chams Computer, believed to have captured the initial numbers have not yielded results.   

From the list of 30,000 ex-agitators, each of whom earns N65,000 monthly, Ndiomu has been able to weed out 1,900 persons. But with dwindling resources from the federal government, there are challenges ahead. Ndiomu also shared insights on the current state of the five Vocational Training Centres (VTCs) whose construction commenced in 2012 by the Jonathan administration under Kingsley Kuku as PAP chairman. The centre in Agadagba, Ondo State and Gelegele, Edo State are both 80 per cent completed without hostels for students while the equipment installed in both is now obsolete. The centre in Bomadi, Delta State is also 90 percent completed; with no equipment installed. The centre in Jamestown, Rivers State, is only 30 percent completed, without hostels for students and no equipment installed. Perhaps the real sad story is at Boro Town, Kiama in Bayelsa State where the centre was completed and fully equipped before it was vandalised. So, effectively, none of the five VTCs is operational and, according to Ndiomu, it would require a minimum of N15 billion to complete and equip them, as well as train the instructors. “I inherited a scholarship debt of about N6 billion for just this academic session (2022/2023) alone. I am hoping there will be some intervention”, Ndiomu said while sharing his frustrations. “In the case of on-going vocational training for short duration ending in December this year, there was a debt of N4.5 billion which I renegotiated down by a whooping sum of N1.3 billion. That proves conclusively that these training costs were grossly inflated.” 

Meanwhile, the amnesty programme was structured to run in three phases: Training, Empowerment and Engagement—after which the beneficiary is expected to exit. That the number of ‘ex-militants’ continued swelling is evident of a racket, even though many of the original agitators are not among the emergency billionaires strutting all over the place. Scholarships running into billions of Naira that are ordinarily meant for Niger Delta indigenes are also being offered to people from the Southwest, Southeast and the three zones in the North, in what has become another avenue for political patronage.  

Notwithstanding, I still believe that the Niger Delta amnesty was well-conceived. But for the programme, it would have been difficult to contain the violence that had made the region ungovernable at the time. It is also doubtful if the oil and gas industry could have survived the intensity of sabotage. Now, we are only talking about oil theft, which can be resolved with the right tools and requisite political will. As for PAP, Ndiomu believes it can be redesigned as a social investment programme, rather than winding it down totally. That may not be a bad idea but for it to happen, there must be a structure that will ensure better transparency and accountability. 

Overall, the idea of pursuing a community-based initiative to deal with pipeline vandalization by engaging ex-militants was sanctioned by President Yar’Adua as part of the ‘Equity Matrix’ for Niger Delta designed by the late Emmanuel Igbogah, then special adviser to the president on petroleum. The challenge of the moment therefore is not Tompolo conducting legitimate business, as opposed to when he led a gang of outlaws in his ‘Camp 5’ at Chanomi creeks. Rather it is that we have not managed the amnesty programme well and the dire implications that portends for the future of our country.  

With the recent ground-breaking ceremony at the Kolmani River oil and gas field that straddles the Gongola Basin, the Northeast is now effectively an oil producing region. The federal government must therefore take onboard lessons from our failings in the Niger Delta. We must begin to pay more attention to issues of accountability, environmental protection, and most importantly empowerment for the oil communities and critical stakeholders.  

Obasanjo, The Letter Writer 

One man who has cultivated the habit of writing letters at critical epochs in our history is President Olusegun Obasanjo. Well-timed and brutally delivered, Obasanjo takes no prisoners when he decides to write a letter, especially if the recipient is in a position of power and authority. It is therefore little surprise that Musikilu Mojeed, one of the few genuine investigative reporters in the country (and co-founder/editor-in-chief of Premium Times) has decided to dig deep into Obasanjo’s letters in his book, ‘The Letterman’ that will be publicly presented in Abuja today. By putting context to these letters, including some that are already in the public domain and others that are private, the author has given us a window into the mind of Obasanjo.  

After spending considerable time at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta, Ogun State capital to research the book, the author attests to the incredible record-keeping capacity of the former president who retains huge volumes of personal correspondence, including many more than 70 years old. “For instance, I saw a letter written to Obasanjo by his father, Amos, dated 16 February 1952. There were also at least nine letters written to him by his mother, Aje, between 2 February 1952 and 11 November 1955. Also preserved for posterity are at least nine letters to Obasanjo from his late younger sister and only sibling, Adunni. So are letters by his children to him, beginning with one by his eldest daughter, Iyabo, dated 28 January 1977,” Mojeed wrote. 

With a foreword by former Commonwealth Secretary General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the 462-page book opens with the behind-the-scenes drama of how the author scooped Obasanjo’s December 2013 letter to the then incumbent President Jonathan and the varied reactions that followed the damaging publication. But there was nothing unusual about the letter, given the history of the writer. According to the author, Obasanjo “has been writing to almost every key person who played important roles in the affairs of Nigeria, Africa and the world since 1969” and many of those letters are captured in the book. “Some letters are just goodwill messages, salutations, or expressions of appreciation for favours done to him or telephone calls made to him. Other letters deal with issues of governance, they contain Obasanjo’s suggestions to public officials in Nigeria and elsewhere on workable solutions to some burning controversial matters. Several letters are however strongly worded criticisms and expressions of anger and irritation at certain events.” 

Among those who have received intemperate letters from Obasanjo are the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Second Republic President Shehu Shagari and General Sani Abacha, as well as General Ibrahim Babangida, Chief Audu Ogbeh and Archbishop Peter Akinola. There are also several civil war exchanges with military colleagues. But Obasanjo also wrote endearing letters like the one to Austin Jay Jay Okocha in 2002, asking the mercurial midfield football player not to retire from the Super Eagles and another to American tennis legend, Serena Williams, through her father.  

As explained to the author, Obasanjo did not have copies of his own letters that elicited replies from his parents because “he was not smart enough at the time to make duplicates for his files. But some of the letters clearly indicate they were replies to missives from Obasanjo.” I found this admission rather interesting because of my own experience, which confirms Obasanjo’s love for letter writing and meticulous record keeping.  

On 12^th November 2007, the first Council of State meeting held under the late President Yar’Adua and as usual, Obasanjo was at the Villa. Even though he acknowledged greetings from other presidential aides, he ignored me, and it was not the first time. As it would happen, during the Council of State meeting, my seat was directly behind Obasanjo’s and as the session progressed, I grew increasingly uncomfortable. At a point, I picked up the papers in front of me and wrote Obasanjo a note seeking forgiveness for whatever I may have done to rile him so much. He read it, looked back, and smiled. About five minutes later, he handed me a piece of paper on which he wrote a terse reply: “Dear Segun, you are forgiven and restored. O.O.”  

The next day, as I walked to the office of then Chief of Staff, Major General Abdullahi Mohammed (rtd), he handed me a piece of paper, “This is a photocopy of your handwritten note to Baba. He said I should collect from you a photocopy of his own response.” That experience taught me the importance of keeping even the seemingly minutest of records. Meanwhile, despite that professed ‘forgiveness’, Obasanjo still reserved ten pages in Volume Two of ‘My Watch’ to deal me (and my late principal) heavy blows in response to my book, ‘Power, Politics and Death’ on the Yar’Adua years. But right now, I am in good standing with the tireless and perpetually restless ‘old soja’. 

In ‘The Letterman’, Mojeed offers readers a treasure-trove which, as Kadaria Ahmed, points out in the blurb, “provides significant insight into the philosophy and politics (life and times, head, heart, and soul) of one of the most consequential post-colonial African leaders, former President Olusegun Obasanjo.” It is a book I strongly recommend, especially for those to whom President Obasanjo may have (at one point or another) prefaced his remark, ‘With all due respect’, before wielding the sledgehammer!  

At first, the story of First Lady Aisha Buhari ordering the arrest and detention of a young man who had made fun of her physical appearance seemed improbable. I insisted to the person who shared the story with me that there had to be more to the account. There was no way Mrs Buhari would be so small-minded that she would pay attention to a random guy on Twitter that had snidely remarked that she had grown fat feeding on the masses’ money. Days after the news was initially reported, neither Mrs Buhari nor the Department of State Services that allegedly went to the university campus to arrest the undergraduate denied their part in this ridiculous story. That must mean they are as guilty as charged.

Even more bewildering is the account of how the young man in question, Aminu Adamu, was first taken to the state house where he was allegedly tortured in the presence of Mrs Buhari before he was incarcerated. I still cannot fathom the devil that pushed Mrs Buhari and the DSS to go after a young man whose name you would otherwise not have known. We have always known that the DSS, a government agency still mired in the tactics of arrest and torture that earned them notoriety during the military era, has long lost its way. Arresting Adamu is indelible proof that they are not ready to get started on the path of self-redemption. None of those they sent on the errand to arrest Adamu had the balls to point out that such pettiness was illegal, needless, and would backfire?

While I find comments about people’s bodies unnecessary and even distasteful, I do not subscribe to abuse. She could take him to court for slander but chose the path of power abuse that earned her husband infamy in 1984. Given that Adamu represents a demographic of the society that worshipped the very ground her husband, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), stepped on, his comment must have suggested to her that they had fallen from the people’s graces. For one of those same youths who once saw the president as a patron saint of the masses to have referred to his wife as an eater of their destinies, it means they no longer respect him—or her.

Mrs Buhari likely went to that crazy extent because the truth of his words stung her.

Adamu’s choice of words might be inelegant, but his observation about a First Lady who has achieved nothing for society and had only luxuriated in their resources is spot on. Besides bringing their family squabbles into the public, arranging lavish weddings for her children, and hibernating in Dubai for an extended period, what is her legacy? In what ways has she helped Nigerians? Everything about her since 2015 has been about her serving herself.

It is also interesting that the woman’s photo that Adamu shared, and which must have embarrassed her, was taken during one of their APC campaign stops. Look, what she has done to Adamu—which she has not denied—is another reason no reasonable person should vote for the APC. If she could do that in a campaign season, only God knows what else she would do to anyone who crosses her if their party wins again. Anyone who can abuse their power over a lame comment has not yet understood democratic freedoms and civic rights. She probably thinks what we call “democracy” is that quadrennial event whereby a political party hires crowds to fill campaign grounds, women like her show up to take photos, their presidential candidate speaks in gibberish, and the whole affair culminates in power transfer. She seems to forget that being imbued with political power does not apportion you with two heads.

Yes, you are the First Lady, but that young man had every right to say what he said. There is no law whatsoever that compels him to speak to you or about you in ways that you might consider respectful. If you do not like his attitude, you have the option to return to Daura and nurse your wounded feelings. Arresting him is lawlessness, and he should be promptly released with an apology.

Ironically, these were the same people who came to power seven years ago promising to stamp out corruption but have turned out to be the perfect embodiment of it. In 2019, it was the same DSS they used to abuse and prosecute the African Action Congress presidential candidate, Omoyele Sowore, for insulting the president. Now it is the wife using the same DSS to harass someone who executed his inalienable right to free speech. Their serial abuse of power is telling. We are being led by people who want all the spoils of power that democracy endows them but do not even believe in democracy enough to let it be practised. Next time Buhari goes around schooling the world about how badly Nigerians reek of ‘kwaraption,’ he will be reminded that he and his wife are shameful personifications of the breach of democratic ethics.

Just so we are clear, there is nothing wrong with being fat. Until the beauty industry sold us the idea that the ideal female figure must be a similitude of a Coca Cola bottle, nobody made a fuss about women with fuller figures. Nowadays, beauty standards are determined by the corporations that also sell products that heighten our anxieties about our appearance. They push us to activate our innate Obatala gene and re-create ourselves in our own vainest imagination of ourselves. From cosmetics to surgeries and even supposedly harmless photo filters that help us superficially rid our bodies of unwanted features, humans worldwide have taken it upon themselves to correct what they take as the imperfections of God’s creation.

It turns out that in this narcissistic world where individuals self-doubt their worth based on their appearance, even the First Lady is not immune to the tyranny of lookism. For her to go as far as getting Adamu arrested, tortured, and detained, she must be seriously embarrassed by her appearance. Her issue with the comment could not have been that she ate the masses’ money—it is an accusation too commonplace to bother any politician. She must have been triggered by that unflattering photo of herself that accompanied Adamu’s tweet, and the accompanying caption that insinuated that Mrs Buhari had gobbled up all the goodwill and faith the masses invested in her. While it is human for her to be hurt by body shaming, there is no justification for subjecting the young man to such abuse. As a public figure, she should have known that she would be routinely subjected to all kinds of indecorous comments by the same public that invested her with importance.

Now that she has communicated her insecurities about her body size to the world and even demonstrated the extent she would go to restrain anyone from mentioning her size, she has also handed a license to everyone who wants to body shame her but was previously incommoded by social etiquette. Under the guise of commenting on Adamu’s unfortunate plight, people can legitimately turn her body around in their minds and project all kinds of voyeuristic fantasies onto her anatomy. When she appears in public, the paparazzi will train the camera on the parts of her body that will yield juicy gossip on the internet. No thanks to her indiscretion, she is being objectified and treated like a sum of meat parts.

A major part of the 62 years of Nigeria’s independence, has been characterised by suffering, pain, distress, and outrightly traumatising experiences for individuals, families, and communities. It is estimated that over 80 percent of Nigerians have been exposed to one form of trauma stress or the other in the cause of their lives. No wonder we hear the expression these days, that “Nigeria has happened to him!” or “Nigeria has happened to her!” To pick up our history of trauma from post-independence times, is not to ignore the brutal and ignominious legacy of the trans-Atlantic and trans-Sahara slave trade, which lasted for over four hundred years, and was sustained by the greed, the wickedness, and the callousness of our local leaders, (the Chiefs, Obas, Obis, and the Sarkis), who conspired with the unscrupulous foreign merchants to prosecute the reprehensible trade in human cargo, until the Whiteman changed his method of exploitation from slave trade and slave labour in the Americas, to colonialism, and then compelled our autochthonous conquerors to toe the line.

Thus, the present generation of Nigerians are descendants of the perpetrators as well as the survivors of that most callous and notorious shade of man’s inhumanity against man, by which fellow human beings were raided, sold into slavery, and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to a land of no return, or they and generations of their descendants were condemned to a dehumanising life of servitude within the country. Following closely after the four hundred years of slave trade was another one hundred years of colonial exploitation, which has left behind devastating consequences on the individual and corporate psyche of Nigerians, as indeed is the experience with people of other colonised African countries. With the short time available for this presentation, I resolved to limit myself to post-independence Nigeria, and the series of traumatising events that have turned us into such a wounded and hurting group of people, that are constantly acting out our individual and intergenerational traumas in wounding and hurting our fellow sufferers.

From the Operation Wetie of Western Nigeria that started in 1962, to the 1966 Coup and the infamous pogrom against Igbos that followed in the North, which all culminated in the unfortunate civil war of 1967 to 1970, an event that unleashed unprecedented horror on individuals, families and communities, the same civil war that was the excuse for the Asaba Massacre of October 7, 1967, when callous or vengeful officers of the 2nd Division of the Nigerian Army ordered the execution in cold blood, of over 700 unarmed men and boys, who assembled in one location to welcome the Federal troops upon the liberation of the Midwest from the Biafran Army. Hundreds of others were rounded up from their homes, their farms or their hiding places and executed. It is reported that the massacre was so comprehensive, so total, that there were no men left to bury the dead. While many of the victims were buried in mass graves, some courageous women and girls dragged the corpses of their fathers and husbands, and uncles and brothers, from where they were executed to their homes, where they used hoes to dig shallow graves for the dead. There is the story of a particular boy who witnessed the soldiers asking a young man to dig his own grave, and thereafter callously pushing him into the grave with a torrent of bullets! There is hardly any family in Asaba that did not lose three or four male members – fathers, sons, brothers, and uncles. And indeed, there are families that were wiped out entirely, as three generations – grandfather, father and sons were killed during the massacre. I am not aware that the individual and communal trauma of the Asaba people were ever seriously addressed in any programmatic manner. The victims and survivors were expected to simply move on with life. Yet the trauma of the massacre must have left its devastating impact on not only the survivors, but also the generations that have come after them, who today may be occupying positions of power and authority as public officers and corporate executives, senior functionaries in the judiciary and law enforcement agencts, university administrators and lecturers, human resource managers, and organisational or industrial psychologists, as well as pastors, imams and local chiefs and heads of families. Without addressing the individual, communal and intergenerational trauma that these people may be carrying around, they are likely to visit their trauma on those around them, and especially those over whom they superintend by a myriad of maladaptive behaviours.

And with regard to the perpetrators, it is widely believed that it was the 9th Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division of the Nigerian Army under the control of Ibrahim Taiwo and Murtala Muhammed respectively that carried out the atrocities. With the 1975 coup that ousted General Gowan, Taiwo and Murtala become Governor of the old Kwara State, and Head of the Nigerian State respectively. And what can we say about the possible state of mental health or ill-health of many of those that made up the 2nd Division of the Nigerian Army at the time? There is a seemingly insignificant but important detail regarding the perpetrators of Asaba Massacre that should be of interest to Psychologists, and especially those undertaking research and documentation on the impact of traumatic experiences on the human brain and the subsequent (post-trauma) behaviour of sufferers, if such devastating experiences are not properly integrated through a series of intervention mechanisms.
The important detail is as follows: The 2nd Infantry Division of the Nigerian army was quickly formed in the lead-up to the civil war. It is alleged that many of the men that ended up as conscripts in this Division under the control of Murtala Muhammed and Ibrahim Taiwo, were so ill-trained and so undisciplined that they could hardly be called “soldiers.” It is alleged that a good number of them were recruited from among death row prison inmates, and from among motor park touts. They did not have the benefit of any thorough training in the conduct and ethics of warfare. Instead, they were largely wounded, disoriented, or traumatised men who were simply conscripted and empowered with deadly weapons – and propelled by the hysteria and madness of war, they committed unspeakable atrocities not only in Asaba, but also elsewhere in the then Midwest and across the Niger. It is also alleged that the same 2nd Division that carried out the Asaba massacre, soon met their waterloo as they lost almost five thousand men while crossing the river Niger, and several hundreds more at the deadly contest in Abagana. (Source: Interview with the Late Col. Paul Ogbebor, referenced in the Nigerian History Platform on October 7, 2022)

Those who fought the gruesome civil war as middle and senior level officers took over the reins of power, and superintended the political, economic, social, and cultural lives of Nigerians for much of the next thirty years! After the 30 months war, the trauma of these officers – these psychologically and emotionally wounded perpetrators and victims of the war, was never diagnosed, let alone treated. Instead, these war veterans (who would have been suffering various degrees and combinations of psychopathologies on account of war trauma), appropriated the legislative and executive powers of state at all levels, and also superintended the conduct of the judiciary – drafting decrees, establishing military tribunals, appointing and dismissing judges, etc. They ran the country from the barrel of the gun and militarised practically every institution and agency of state.

The modus operandi of the military, the command-and-control culture, became the dominant national culture across the national spectrum. They humiliated respected public figures, including world renowned university professors and those repositories of the accumulated knowledge of the civil service that used to be referred to as “super permanent secretaries.” They brutalised and imprisoned Human Rights and pro-democracy lawyers, journalists, and other social critics, despatching a number of them to their early graves, leaving behind a trail of blood and tears, and rendering many young women and children widows and orphans. Like a locust invasion, the military destroyed practically all the institutions and infrastructures of state that were built up over the decades by the colonialists and the political leaders of the first republic. They went further to forcefully take over missionary schools across the country and saw to the near-total destruction of almost all of them before they stepped aside in 1999.

WE ARE ALL VICTIMS OF THE NIGERIAN ONGOING TRAUMA STRESS
The series of negative or adverse experiences unleashed upon successive generations of Nigerians – which often overwhelm our capacity to cope (that is technically referred to as psycho-trauma), have left their toll on the individual and corporate psyche of multiple generations of Nigerians. We are all bearing and having to struggle with one or more forms of trauma stress that the Nigerian state is constantly unleashing on its citizens: The 3-year-old toddler, who is vicariously bearing the trauma of the parents that have just been ejected from their slum settlement in Abuja and rendered homeless; the 5 year old girl, kidnapped along with other children from an Islamiyya school in Niger State; the 10 year old street kid in Gusau, who has never been enrolled in school, and is already learning the art of banditry; the 15 year old girl forcefully abducted and married out (against her will) to a terrorist kingpin in Maiduguri; the 20 year old student in Kaduna who is yet to complete his 200 level studies, after four calendar years in the university; the 35 years old State House of Assembly member in Lokoja, Kogi State, whose life is in danger, for daring to identify with the opposition party; the 40 year old market woman in Yenagoa whose house and shop were completely swept away recently by the flood, but who has not received any help from any government agency; the 50 year old Senator in Abuja, who recently received intelligence reports that he is being trailed around town by “unknown gunmen;” the 55 year old State Governor whose mother-in-law was kidnapped by bandits, and is yet to be released; the 63 year old professor of mathematics, who receives less than USD600 a month salary, and who today has been denied eight months salary, for daring to join the ASUU strike to compel the federal government to implement the agreement it signed with the Union since the year 2009; the 66 year old former Deputy Senate President who has been languishing in a U.K. detention facility for most of the year, with Nigerian leaders simply moving on, as if he were a common criminal; and the 78 year old president of the federal republic, whose wife has come out to publicly confess that he is an untreated patient of PTSD.

Indeed, all of us are often unaware and undiagnosed victims of varying degrees of what has been described “Ongoing Traumatic Stress Disorder” (OPSD)! We are distressed, wounded, and hurting victims of our national ruination that has been superintended over the years by a succession of punitive overlord who themselves are victims of the endless cycle of physical, psychological, and emotional violence that the Nigerian population has been through. No wonder we witness such a high degree of the phenomenon known as re-victimisation or re-traumatisation. It is widely acknowledged in Trauma Literature, that “HEALED PEOPLE HEAL PEOPLE,” and that conversely, “HURTING PEOPLE OFTEN HURT PEOPLE.” The fact that wounded people often go on to wound others, has been sufficiently demonstrated by researchers. Yes, there is abundant evidence today of the long-term devastating effects of traumas that have not been treated or sufficiently integrated.

A NATION SUPERINTENDED AND VIOLATED BY TRAUMATISED LEADERS
My dear friends, as I was reflecting on what to share with this elite group of Organisational and Industrial Psychologists at this Conference, the news broke out of the public confession of Madam Aisha Buhari, the President’s wife, that her husband suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that his chronic trauma condition was neither acknowledged, nor formally diagnosed and treated. But she said she had to bear the brunt of it all. She says, and I quote:
My husband served the Nigerian Army for 27 years before he was overthrown in a coup d’etat. He fought the civil war for 30 months without rehabilitation; he ruled Nigeria for 20 months and was detained for 40 months without disclosing the nature of his offence… You can imagine myself at the age of 19 years, handling somebody that went to war, suffered a coup d’etat, then lost several elections, and finally getting to the Villa in 2015… So, at the age of 19, I had to figure out how to tell somebody of his calibre that he was wrong or right, and that was the beginning of my offence in his house, and contesting elections in 2003 and failed, 2007, failed, and 2011, the same thing – all without rehabilitation. I became a psychotherapist!

Mrs. Buhari’s public confession on the reality of undiagnosed and untreated trauma among many in positions of authority in Nigeria, including the presidency, is a graphic illustration of a major part of my presentation today. Nigeria as a corporate entity, and Nigerians as a people have been groaning under the heavy burden of widespread undiagnosed and untreated intergenerational and personal psycho-trauma, whose devastating impact includes the many maladaptive behaviours and psychopathologies that we witness daily in our national landscape. What is more instructive is that perhaps some of the more traumatised persons among us (with a whole range of undiagnosed psycho-emotional pathologies) are the very ones who catapulted themselves into positions of political power and economic influence and have consistently unleashed their trauma on the hapless population, and seem determined to sink the ship of state entirely.

With the military takeover of power, suddenly, a 32-year-old Lt. Colonel whose only preparation and experience is the art of war, became Head of State or Governor. He appointed and sacked Chief Justices, Ministers, Commissioners, Vice Chancellors of Universities and Ambassadors. He had the power to sign the death warrant on condemned persons, and also had the discretion of the prerogative of mercy. Yet, many of these veterans of the civil war, are not only perpetrators, but also victims and survivors of the trauma of a bitter civil war, along with the multiple coup d’etat that became a pastime for ambitions and power-hungry soldiers. They often exhibited a range of maladaptive behaviours that in the context of their war trauma experience (and their experience of multiple coups), are perhaps quite understandable.

These include the widespread and well-known alcohol addiction among senior military officers, and their propensity for humiliating, bullying and brutalising junior officers, as well as those of us whom they often arrogantly and disdainfully referred to as “bloody civilians.” Elements of the Nigerian Police Force have sometimes openly boasted before innocent citizens that, “I will shoot you, and say that you are an armed robber, and nothing will happen.” Executive Lawlessness and widespread impunity came to characterise governance at all levels in Nigeria, leaving numerous individuals, families, and communities traumatised, and their trauma experiences have hardly been acknowledged, let alone treated. Yet the negative impact of these layers of trauma in the Nigerian population are manifested everywhere in maladaptive behaviours.

Though we have since 1999 been operating a democratic system, Nigerians have not witnessed a significant shift in the general conduct of political leaders, from the military approach to a more civil approach. Instead, we have continued to see office holders execute the business of governance as if it were state capture, and they relate with the people who elected them to office in the same way as ancient emperors or primitive feudal lords related with the conquered people whom they called subjects. The inexplicable level of corruption is another maladaptive behaviour among our leaders that is worth investigating as one possible knock-on effect of the successive intergenerational and personal trauma that Nigerians have been through. How else does one explain the monumental Abacha loot, the Cecilia Ibru loot, the Deziani Allison Madueke loot, the Abdulrasheed Maina Police Pension loot, and the Accountant General Ahmed Idris loot, and that of numerous other public officials, who allegedly have stolen funds that they and their family members cannot spend in a thousand years? How does one explain the widespread stealing in the most irrational and humongous manner, if these are not glaring manifestations of some undiagnosed and untreated psychopathology? A critical observer recently crafted a post regarding what he sees as the madness that has plagued the Nigerian public official on a WhatsApp group to which I belong. Part of the post reads:
…the Nigerian public official, although filled and belching with excess, would still hide stolen meat within the corners of his mouth at a dinner, stuff fried rice into his socks, and try to shuffle moinmoin into his shoes. Madness you say. But who else would steal 80 billion Naira except a mad fellow? …God, open the eyes of our elites to see and know that they don’t need what they steal. For only a mad fellow gathers stones and pans that are needless.

How does one explain the fact that those who belong to the Nigerian political and economic elite, the majority of who came out of very poor families and villages, having themselves enjoyed high quality public education (often with Federal or State Government scholarships and bursaries), have decided to destroy all our public educational institutions, and send their own children to expensive private schools at home and abroad? The same crop of Nigerian elites has superintended the ruination of our public health infrastructures, while they themselves frequent the UK, the US and Dubai for their healthcare needs; how else does one explain such behaviour pattern, except that we may be dealing here with disoriented minds that require psychiatric attention? How does one explain that there may be over a thousand private jets in a country that cannot own or maintain a national carrier; or that the 6th largest producer of crude oil in the world cannot have its own refinery, and as a result we witness incessant chronic fuel shortage, with the attendant punitive consequences on motorists who must spend extremely long hours queuing for fuel?
How does one explain the fact that university teachers could be so shabbily treated in a developing country with critical manpower needs, and that leaders can go to bed and sleep well through the night, when public universities across the country are closed for eight months, and nearly two million of our most endowed young people are roaming the streets, and enlisting in criminal ventures? And how does one explain the abysmally poor quality of persons that our country continues to throw up for leadership positions at all levels, when we are a nation endowed with some of the best intellectuals, technocrats, and administrators, that can successfully govern such technologically advanced countries as the UK, the US and Canada?
Perhaps it is on account of these baffling contradictions and absurdities in the conduct of leadership and the widespread mismanagement of critical national affairs by a succession of those who have occupied high political office in Nigeria that Dr. Uche Ojinmah, President of the Nigerian Medical Association recently called for a mandatory psychiatric evaluation of all who present themselves for the office of President and State Governor in the 2023 elections. Earlier in the year, Brig General Buba Marwa, Chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, called on political parties to include drug integrity tests, as part of the screening processes for candidates.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN UNADDRESSED TRAUMA AND OUR NATIONAL MISFORTUNE
I have in recent times heard many Nigerians ask the question, “Who has done this to us?” meaning to say, “who has bewitched us, becharmed us, or held us spellbound?” Perhaps instead of asking, “who has done this to us,” the more appropriate question should be, “What has happened to us?” And my answer is that “We have undergone a series of multiple personal, communal, and intergenerational traumas, which have taken a heavy toll on our individual and corporate psyche. Part of the impact or devastating consequences of the series and layers of psycho-traumas we have suffered over a period of many generations, are the maladaptive behaviours we have seen with our successive leaders at all levels, and among the generality of Nigerians in nearly all sectors of the society. Ours is a society in which the experience of brokenness is all pervasive. As is reflected in the well celebrated poem of W. B. Yeats (and used by Chinua Achebe as the title for his first novel), “Things Fall Apart, the centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

In many societies, trauma happens because of just one painful event, such as a fire disaster in which one experiences severe burns, or the sudden loss of a loved one in a car crash. In Nigeria however, we are often victims, survivors, and witnesses of multiple series of devastating events, occurring in quick succession, each one of which can overwhelm our capacity to cope. So, we are often dealing with multiple layers of personal and vicarious trauma, on top of the multi-generational trauma of which we were already victims from birth. The experts refer to this painful situation as “complex trauma” which in Nigeria is manifesting in a whole range of maladaptive behaviours, including the following:
1. ANGER: Many Nigerians today have very low threshold for the discharge of anger. We witness this everywhere, including in state and national legislative houses.
2. AGGRESSIVITY, of which Police Brutality and Extra-Judicial Killings, Domestic Violence, including the Physical Abuse of Nannies and Children, Sexual Violence, Verbal Abuse, as well as the widespread politics of acrimony, are classic illustrations… We also witness ample manifestations of PASSIVE AGGRESSION, shown in silent withdrawal from others or disconnection with the issues of society – a disposition known locally as “sidon look.”

3. NUMBNESS and INSENSITIVITY to the pain of others, witnessed in what appears to be the flight of compassion, wickedness, and callousness in dealing with, or responding to the needs of the poor, the weak and the vulnerable (including teachers that have been thoroughly disempowered, retirees, as well as the phenomenon of bullying in our schools and colleges. Persons with personal or family history of trauma (that is undiagnosed and untreated), who become Presidents, Governors, Local Government Chairpersons, Police Officers, Judges, Senior Civil Servants, Doctors, Teachers, School Administrators, Corporate Executives, Line Managers, and Human Resource Managers, etc., could exhibit a pattern of behaviour that amounts to visiting their unresolved trauma on those over whom they exercise some power or authority.

4. WIDESPREAD ALCOHOL ADDICTION AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE: Personal and intergeneration trauma stress are implicated in the alcohol addiction and the abuse of psychotropic substances that are assuming epidemic proportion in today’s Nigeria. Dr. Gabor Mate, renowned Canadian addiction expert, has sufficiently demonstrated with cutting edge scientific research, that “all addictions originate in trauma and emotional loss.” He observes that the core objective of the addictive process is the self-soothing of deep-seated fears and discomforts, and he concludes that “all addiction is in fact human development gone askew!”

5. LOW SELF WORTH and a measure of INFERIORITY COMPLEX, by which many Nigerians believe that anything foreign is better than their own – including skin pigmentation, texture of hair, and the latest fads and fashions from Europe and America. Low self-worth may also be implicated in the intense pressure which many Nigerians feel they are under, to be like the Joneses, to buy the reigning cars, and send their own children to the expensive schools that their neighbours patronise, to celebrate expensive wedding and funeral ceremonies, even when they lack the resources, etc. This pattern of behaviour on its own can be a major driver of the systemic corruption we witness in Nigeria.

6. SCARCITY COMPLEX: Intergenerational trauma stress resulting from extreme material deprivation and social insecurity in a particular family or community, can eventuate in “scarcity complex” or “scarcity mentality” in the descendants of the originally traumatised persons. Such complex is often responsible for the propensity of sufferers to hoard large quantities of money, fuel, food, cars, houses, etc. The number of landed properties that rich persons have acquired legitimately or by corrupt means, for their children and grandchildren (who are schooling or working abroad, and who may never return to Nigeria), is simply mindboggling!

7. LOW LEVEL OF PRODUCTIVITY: Personal and intergenerational trauma often compromise the energy and vitality, as well as the zeal and enthusiasm of sufferers. Since mild and chronic depression are among the comorbidities that traumatised persons can present, it is not surprising that many able-bodied persons are often operating below optimum level in various departments of life. We often witness abysmally low level of productivity especially in government offices, where there is little supervision, and where persons are often not held accountable for their actions. There are stories of government staff who often arrive at the office by 11.00 a.m. and close by 2.00 p.m., and hardly do any work, even when a large stock of documents is piling up on their tables, calling for attention. Such lack of zeal and commitment to work may be implicated in the gross inefficiency generally observed with the Nigerian government bureaucracy.

8. WIDESPREAD CRIMINALITY, BANDITRY AND GANGSTERISM: It is to be recalled that Nigeria armed robbery was hardly ever known in pre-civil war Nigeria. Such violent crimes emerged and quickly spread across the country in the aftermath of the war. It is alleged that among the daring daredevil pioneers of this dastardly crime that emerged in the early 1970s were recently discharged soldiers who had been exposed to the horrors and traumas of war. Criminality has only intensified in the intervening fifty years. Some of the research carried out so far on the root causes of the phenomenon of killer bandits that are today killing, maiming, raping, and abducting thousands of innocent people, including school children, point to years of criminal abuse and neglect of a bourgeoning population of young people in the states of Northern Nigeria. Across the country, young people are mobilised as thugs to prosecute electoral violence, and after the elections, they are often abandoned by the political leaders to a squalid and miserable existence.
A child who suffered physical, emotional or sexual abuse, may not have learnt appropriate ways to respond to stress, and as an adult, he may not know other ways of responding, and therefore often enacts physical abuse on others, including their spouses and children at home, as well as their subordinates, colleagues and clients at work. And when in some cases there is no significant change in the conditions that led to their initial trauma (such as extreme material deprivation, then they would be further traumatised. The consequence of intense, repeated and/or ongoing trauma, is a heightened stress response to future stressors or traumas.

Many of our young people were born into poverty and are growing up in circumstances of acute material deprivation. Many are uneducated and unskilled, and therefore they are unemployed, and unemployable. Many of them have learnt to live by extortion or by making themselves available to desperate politicians as killer thugs or members of their private militia. Those among them who keep struggling to make an honest living through hard labour, are often daily re-traumatised by a callous and punitive socio-economic system that will not let them break out of the cesspit of poverty. Turning to petty crime, to armed robbery, to banditry, and even to the yahoo-yahoo and yahoo+ enterprise now witnessed among university students, may not be altogether maladaptive behaviours, considering their awkward circumstance of complex intergenerational and ongoing traumatic stress.

9. WIDESPREAD MARITAL DYSFUNCTION AND THE HIGH RATE OF DIVORCE: Untreated and unintegrated intergenerational and personal psycho-trauma may be implicated in the high rate of marital dysfunction divorce in our society today, as it is well known that traumatised persons often have their capacity for wholesome intimate relationships grossly dysregulated.

10. THE PHENOMENON OF SUICIDE IDEATION AND UPSURGE IN SUICIDES RATES:
Suicide ideation is one of the possible co-morbidities associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. When persons experience trauma, it can change the way they interact, and those around them. Trauma very commonly causes an individual to distance themselves from others and to disconnect emotionally, socially, and spiritually, and eventually also to disconnect existentially, that is, even from themselves. Suicide ideation and actual suicides are not farfetched under those circumstances.

11. THE PREPONDERANCE OF NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES: A very high percentage of Nigerians above 50 years of age are permanently on medication, treating one life-threatening illness or the other. This is not surprising, considering the degree of trauma prevalence in society. It has been well established by researchers on the dialectical relationship between the psychological and physiological dimensions of the human reality, that excessive and prolonged stress triggers the release of such stress hormones as cortisol in dangerously high doses, exerting undue pressure on our entire endocrine system. Critical organs of the body soon begin to malfunction. And among the disease conditions that are direct complications of this multiple organ malfunction are High Blood Pressure, Heart Disease, Auto Immune Disease, Type 2 Diabetes, and Cancerous cells propping up in different organs of the body.

12. THE NORMALISATION AND GLAMORISATION OF ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOURS:
Those whose thinking processes have been badly distorted and dysregulated by a series of traumatic experiences; those who have been raised in dysfunctional families; those who have been abused for the umpteenth time by a criminally punitive and unjust social system; many of these people have today found temporary escape in the often-vile entertainment offered by the popular musicians and comedians whom we call “celebrities.” They have capitalised on the psychological and emotional distress of the traumatised (youth) population to normalise and glamorise all manner of socially deviant behaviours and thus laying the grounds for a future generation of Nigerians whose mental faculties may be even more dangerously compromised. Imagine what some of the children being born to the socially deviant Baby Mamas and Baby Daddies today could grow to become!
The foregoing analysis is my attempt at demonstrating that in Nigeria trauma is not just on our plate. No. In Nigeria, trauma is the plate itself. The layers and layers of undiagnosed and untreated intergenerational, multigenerational, communal as well as individual traumatic experiences, have effectuated untold neuro-psychological injuries and impairments on not only the individual psyche of Nigerians, but also the corporate psyche of Nigeria as such. The numerous adverse experiences that we have borne through the cause of our national history, several of which are still ongoing as

we speak, have taken their toll on shaping our brains, and influencing how we respond to subsequent stressors and traumas, how we function in our workplaces, and how we conduct our professional, social, and domestic relationships.
It is thus my humble submission that unaddressed intergenerational and personal trauma may be implicated in the often excessively indulgent, corrupt, reckless, punitive, impervious, and insensitive conduct of many among the successive generation of leaders and office holders at all levels in this country, including presidents and governors, educational administrators and corporate managers, judicial officers, and functionaries of security agents. We may continue to fumble, bungle, and wobble along with our political, economic, social and even religious affairs, and keep on descending on the path of national ruination, until we wake up to the recognition that there may be fundamental neurological impairments that are plaguing our countrymen and women, (on account of inherited and personal trauma), which must be addressed as a major public health concern, in a programmatic manner, and on an ongoing basis.

CONCLUSION:
THE CHALLENGE BEFORE PROFESSIONALS IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES
I consider it an existential imperative for Organisational and Industrial Psychologists, and for professionals in the Psychological Sciences as a whole, to pay greater attention to the prevalence of chronic intergenerational and personal trauma stress, and the complications and co-morbidities that are a consequence of this reality on the one hand, and to mount a major advocacy campaign for adequate investment in human and material resources towards putting up the necessary structures, and training the much needed personnel, that will make Nigerian individuals, families, and communities, as well as corporate organisations and agencies of government, more trauma aware, more trauma sensitive, more trauma informed. A national campaign that is aimed at making our public and private institutions more trauma informed, must start from sensitising professionals in the psychological sciences themselves, since they are the ones that can more easily sell the idea to the rest of society.
Organisational and Industrial Psychologists must begin to approach their work with a keen awareness of and sensitivity to the trauma that practically everyone in the public and private workplace may be silently and often unknowingly struggling with. My charge is for professionals in the psychological sciences and the Nigerian Psychological Association itself to consider it a critical element of their calling, to help raise the awareness of a cross section of the Nigerian elite regarding the reality of not only the layers and layers of trauma that individual Nigerians have suffered over the years, but also the widespread inter and multigenerational traumas that have characterised the lives of families and communities across the country – yes, families and communities that have been violated or subjected to a range of social injustices, which have never been publicly acknowledged, let alone addressed.
The post-apartheid South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the post-genocide Rwandan Gacaca (public or community) justice system, were efforts of the leaders of those countries to heal the wounds of their past. But the Nigerian leadership elite (in their presently skewed and warped perception) believe that we can close our eyes to the horrors, atrocities, and traumas of our past, pretend that nothing happened, and simply move on. Unfortunately, trauma does not just away. If it is not addressed, is not only stored in the individual and corporate psyche of sufferers, but also genetically passed on to succeeding generations, who may have no active memory of the traumatic experience of the original sufferers. On the psychological level it is acted out in a range of maladaptive behaviours, including those listed above. No wonder that with regard to our much-desired national development, it has been all motion, but no movement, and some would even argue that we have been regressing at an alarming rate.

After creating public awareness and inspiring some measure of sensitivity to the reality of intergenerational, communal, and personal trauma in the Nigerian society, the next challenge before the professionals in the psychological sciences will be that of spearheading the transformation of our families, communities, organisations and institutions, including religious organisations, corporate organisations, schools and college, government offices, legislative houses, police stations and courtrooms as well as hospitals and correctional centres, etc, into trauma informed organisations and institutions. The process will involve a workplace culture that takes into critical account available knowledge about trauma, about trauma prevalence, about the possible impact of trauma, and how people recover from trauma. Public Officers and Legislators, Corporate and Human Resource Managers, Judicial and Police officers and School Administrators, Teachers and Counsellors, Pastors and Imams, and young people preparing for marriage, etc., should be made to undergo some basic training in psycho-trauma awareness. For a saner society to emerge, perhaps every adult in the workplace and at home, should be introduced to the now well-known SAMHSA’s Six Principles of Trauma Informed Care which are also an imperative for Trauma Informed Leadership, and Trauma Informed Human Resource management. (Cf. the American Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration @ samhsa.gov).
Let me end this presentation by saying that my organisation, the Psycho-Spiritual Institute of Lux Terra Leadership Foundation, has over the last six years been actively engaged in this critical area. In collaboration with the Department of Psychology, Nasarawa State University, Keffi, we regularly run short but intensive training courses in psycho-trauma awareness and in basic skills, tools and resources for psycho-trauma healing. The course (which involves one week in-class sessions, followed by a six-week period of supervised counselling practice), is designed for professionals and volunteers, including psychologists and social workers, doctors and nurses, emergency relief workers and functionaries of security agencies, imams and pastors, schoolteachers and counsellors, as well as sundry volunteers, who in the course of their daily work do encounter trauma survivors and victims. After six years of our modest efforts in this area, we recognise that we are only scratching the surface, and that more elaborate training interventions are required to equip tens of thousands of professionals and volunteers to help facilitate the healing of the many wounded persons in our society. I thank you for your attention.
POSTCRIPT
The six principles of a Trauma Informed Care, (which I say are also an imperative for trauma informed leadership and trauma informed human resource management are:
i. Safety – create and foster an environment in which everyone feels safe physically, psychologically.
ii. Trustworthiness – Foster positive, trusting, and transparent relationships among colleagues at work, as well as clients and customers.
iii. Peer Support – Engage persons to work together on issues of common concern. Experiencing support from and having the opportunity to provide support for others is a major source of empowerment and healing.
iv. Collaboration and Mutuality – Promote the involvement of all in the workplace or community, as well as partnership among agencies pursuing similar objectives.
v. Empowerment – Ensure there are ample opportunities for the growth of everyone. Provide for voice and choice!
vi. Diversity (History, Culture and Gender) – Value and support diversity, including history, culture, and gender.

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently came out against a ban on rainbow armbands at the World Cup tournament in Qatar, which various European team captains had intended to sport in support of LGBTQ rights and against discrimination. Blinken flagged the ban as “concerning” and a restriction on “freedom of expression”.

The secretary’s scolding came on the heels of another rather “concerning” development on the world stage: a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in the US state of Colorado that killed five people and wounded 18 others. This, in a country that fancies itself the global role model in terms of respect for freedom of expression, human rights, and all that good stuff – and yet where it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to exercise their right to not be massacred at nightclubs, elementary schools, places of worship, shopping malls, and so on.

In 2016, the US witnessed its worst mass shooting in history when 50 people were killed in an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

This year, an independent UN human rights expert found that LGBTQ rights in the US are “under a concerted attack” and being “deliberately undermined” by state governments. Add to this landscape the institutionalised racism and discrimination that constitutes “freedom” in the US, and it seems US officials might have slightly more pressing matters to attend to on the home front than World Cup armbands.

Indeed, as this year’s World Cup host, Qatar has come under intense US and European fire on the issue of gay rights as well as migrant worker exploitation (not to mention the violation of the apparent human right to drink beer in sports stadiums). After all, Orientalism dies hard – and what better backdrop for the release of pent-up Western chauvinism than a football tournament in a bona fide Middle Eastern desert, enduring Orientalist symbol of Arab backwardness and resistance to progress?

The point of calling out Western criticisms is not to contend, crassly, that the Gulf emirate is categorically beyond reproach. It is, rather, to highlight the massive hypocrisy that is on display when countries that continue to commit more human rights abuses than Qatar could ever dream of decide to unilaterally award themselves the moral high ground.

It’s kind of like when the US rails against oppressive government behaviour in Cuba. The critiques are not necessarily invalid in and of themselves, but they command zero moral traction given the US’s superior track record of oppression, including its barbarous 60-year embargo of the island and its operation of an illegal prison and torture centre on occupied Cuban territory in Guantánamo Bay.

As the old saying goes, look in the mirror before you judge others.

Navid Zarrinnal, a scholar of Iran and the Middle East at Stanford University in California, remarked in an email to me that “Western supremacist attitudes and cultural imperialism” are being showcased at the World Cup – “disguised”, as usual, as “advocacy for human rights”. This arrangement naturally makes it difficult for Western states and NGOs to “prioritise self-reflection over their saviour anxieties”.

The people who are “parachuting into Qatar to lecture them about gay rights”, Zarrinnal said, are ignorant of the long history of homosexuality in the Arab world, which is “reflected in their poetry, visual art, and social history”. He continued on to describe how Western powers, now with their footballers at the vanguard, have instead reduced the panorama to a simplistic narrative of repression – salvation from which depends entirely on whether Arab homosexuality can be “molded into the same LGBTQ identities they have in their own countries”.

On the eve of the World Cup kickoff, Gianni Infantino, the Italian president of FIFA, delivered a rambling speech, which – a couple of patronising detours into Orientalism notwithstanding – took some valid hits at Western hypocrisy: “I think for what we Europeans have been doing in the last 3,000 years, around the world, we should be apologising for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons to people”.

He also slammed the selective denunciation of migrant worker abuse in Qatar when Western firms had long been content to profit from labour conditions in the country – which he contended had improved considerably in the context of the World Cup – and when Europe’s own lethally xenophobic anti-migration policy is to blame for thousands upon thousands of refugee deaths in the Mediterranean Sea and beyond. (Of course, European racism and xenophobia can be selectively curtailed in the interest of football; there weren’t many Brits complaining when 21-year-old Nigerian British footballer Bukayo Saka scored two of the goals in England’s first World Cup match this year.)

As for what the US has been doing around the world for much less than 3,000 years, this includes killing Native Americans, enslaving Black people, and serving as the architect of a global capitalist system predicated on vast inequality, the mass trampling of rights, and the subjugation of workers.

Even as the US violates everyone else’s borders to sow military and economic havoc, it furiously fortifies its own – a practice that, as in Europe, has rendered US-bound migration a frequently deadly undertaking. Not that life is a peach for those who successfully cross the border, many of whom perform services crucial to the US economy and yet are drastically underpaid, demonised by society, and utilised as political scapegoats.

In other words, it’s all pretty “concerning”, to borrow Blinken’s term. Just as it’s concerning that a country that has bombed countless human beings to bits feels qualified to sermonise on any matter relating to human rights.

Writing recently at the Guardian, David Wearing – a University of Sussex lecturer and the author of AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain – observes that much of the discourse surrounding the current World Cup is driven by “racist caricatures” pitting an enlightened West against an irreparably uncivilised Middle East. This “self-serving mythology”, Wearing notes, obscures regional history and legitimises Western interference (civilised bombing, anyone?) – it also “externalises and circumscribes the blame for human rights abuses… while preserving a narcissistic sense of western innocence”.

Wearing concludes that the 2022 World Cup, far from being a phenomenon “alien” to the West, is in fact a “representative example of the world that western power built”. And as concerned parties remain up in arms over the perceived contravention of Western values at the tournament, it’s high time to bust out that proverbial mirror.

Since the Buhari administration launched the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) six years ago  a lot of queries have been raised by experts and the public at large about the poverty-alleviation programme.  Among the several criticisms of the NSIP as it is currently implemented is that despite the hundreds of billions poured into social investments the programme is not yet institutionalised. This policy lacuna  has also  been pointed out on this page several times. 

President Muhammadu Buhari seems  to have responded to the criticisms  with the bill to provide “legal and institutional framework”  for the components of NISIP.  A letter in respect of the bill  was read yesterday  at a session of the Senate by its  president, Senator Ahmad Lawal.

The executive bill on social investments  is coming a year after the House of Representatives began processing a legislation with a similar objective to the one stated in the President’s letter to the Senate.  House Speaker  Femi Gbajabiamila and 11 other members of the House sponsored the bill which also covered elements of NSIP such as N-Power, Conditional Cash Transfer, Home-Grown School feeding Market Moni and Trader -Moni.

The National Social Investment Programme Establishment Bill is expected to  rekindle the old debate on the concept of the programme. It would be in the public interest if the making of the social investment law could benefit from ideas based on the divergent perspectives of the enthusiasts and critics of the programme.

The National Assembly should harmonise the diverse ideas so that  social investments could be transformed into a sustainable institution.

Conceptually, some critics of NSIP insist that the huge resources allocated to the implementation of the programme constitute a drain on the public purse. Such critics would rather the money is  spent more productively on supporting small-scale enterprises and creating jobs.  Buhari appears to have addressed this criticism in the letter to the Senate when he says that  the NSIP is meant  “for the assistance and empowerment of the poor and vulnerable people in Nigeria.”  And that is the point that is often lost on many of the critics of the programme. The category of the poor people who should benefit from NSIP is quite different from the categories of  people who should be targets of other forms of socio-economic empowerment. Social investments as framed here are  for  the poorest of the poor, the most vulnerable in the society.  A 90-year old  man in an  impoverished village, who is daily  confronted with hunger, is not your archetypal candidate for empowerment in a small-scale enterprise. What the poor man  direly needs  is simply cash transfer.  

It is hoped that the debate on the bill will bring about a clarity of purpose on the idea of social investments as part of poverty -reduction strategy.

Political parties and their candidates should consider  what to do with social investments in the  anti-poverty aspects of their manifestoes. Those seeking power must take definite positions on social investments within a broad anti-poverty  strategy. It costs a lot money to execute the programme in a widespread fashion. 

Doubtless, beyond theory social investments could be implemented with a huge success given the right  policy environment.

The Brazilian  example is a practical testimony to the efficacy of social investments. It happened under the leadership of President   Lula, whose success with one form of  social investments, cash transfer,  in his first coming received a universal acclaim. Incidentally, Lula won another presidential election a fortnight ago to return to power  despite the right-wing persecution of the genuinely  progressive leader.

Attention was drawn to Lula’s success with cash transfer on this page six years ago  as follows:

“…The influential magazine of the American Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs, devoted its January/February 2016 edition to ‘Inequality: What Causes It; Why It Matters; What Can Be Done.’  In searching for what is to be done, the Managing Editor of the journal, Jonathan Tepperman, discussed ‘Brazil’s Antipoverty Breakthrough’ in a very illuminating chapter.

“It is an analysis of the stupendous success story of conditional cash transfer called Bolsa Familia (Family Grant) in Brazil. The programme has moved over 55 million persons out poverty and has reduced inequality by honestly integrating the poor into the economy. This feat was performed by the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a labour leader who won election at the fourth attempt. During the campaign towards  the 2002 presidential election, Lula promised radical antipoverty programmes.

“The experts at home and abroad became jittery and scoffed at the promised experiments. For instance, Goldman Sachs reportedly began to warn investors of risks in Brazil in a “Lulameter,” in case Lula won the election. Lula won!  He experimented with the cash transfer, which has gone down in history as the biggest and most successful cash transfer among such experiments in  over 40 countries that have implemented the policy.

“Reflecting on the prospects and challenges of implementing the programme later, Lula reportedly said; ‘When millions can go to the supermarket to buy milk, to buy bread, the economy will work better. The miserable will become consumers.’  Our own experts and technocrats who scorn the idea of cash transfers cannot imagine that many families especially in remote rural areas are effectively outside the economy. Meanwhile  the experts  are wont to  celebrate the Credit Rating and brandishing  size and jobless growth rates of  the economy.

“The extremely poor are just incapable of effective demand. In fact, as reported by Tepperman in Foreign Affairs, Lula put the matter more graphically: ‘It sometimes bothers my educated friends when I say this… but the number one teacher in my life was a woman who was born and died illiterate: my mother. With all due respect to experts and academics, they know very little about the poor. They know a lot about statistics, but that’s different, sabe? To an intellectual, putting $50 in the hands of a poor person is charity; an academic has no idea what a poor person can do with it. But that’s because at  the university, they don’t teach you how to care for the poor. And it’s because most experts have never experienced what the poor go through every day. They’ve never had to go to work without breakfast. They’ve never lived in a flooded house, or had to wait three hours at a bus stop…’ 

“To some experts, a social problem like inequality exists  only numbers.

“Lula does not claim to be an expert or a technocrat, but the cash transfer programme he fought for politically has been described by a political scientist as ‘the single largest ten-year change to a country’s class structure since Japan after World War II.’  And at least 63 countries have reportedly sent their own experts to Brazil to see how Lula did it. So it is not enough to dismiss the programme as mere hand-outs to the poor. And by the way, the elite should learn to answer the pointed poverty question by at least respecting the dignity of the human person of the poor.

“The poor are fellow human beings like  the rich and powerful with equal rights enshrined in the constitution…

“The context might be different, but the Brazilian experiment is replete with useful lessons for Nigeria. Take a sample. Critics say cash transfer will be unworkable in Nigeria because of lack of capacity for implementation, corruption and politicisation.

“Now, hear Lula’s reported answer to these legitimate worries: ‘Part of the reason Bolsa Família has been so successful is because the money is paid directly, with no intermediary. It is the beneficiary who goes to the bank with a plastic card to withdraw the money. So, this person doesn’t owe any favours to the president, to their governor, to their congressman, or to their mayor.’

The challenges of implementing antipoverty programmes are actually surmountable. That is the basic lesson from Brazil.”

Those who are interested in debating the NSIP bill should ponder the foregoing words of Lula.

Indeed this bill is six years late in coming given the centrality of poverty reduction to the agenda of the Buhari administration. This is partly explicable. It should be remembered that there was a lot of hesitancy on the part of the Buhari administration before the programme took off in 2016. Besides, the trajectory of  the implementation is also reflective of the enormous contradictions the administration has had to grapple with  to sustain the programme till now.

The proposed law should transform the programme in concept and practice. 

And only three years ago,  in what could somewhat be regarded as a parting shot while leaving office as  the Managing Director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, made a case for greater social investments so as to strengthen the global economy.

According to the former IMF chief, who is now the President of the European Central Bank, “social spending is not just an expense, but rather can be among the wisest of investments in the well-being of our societies.

“Expansion of access to education and health generates broader productivity across the population, allowing all citizens to flourish. To reap the rewards of stronger global economy societies must begin by strengthening social programmes today…”

Lagarde spoke at a forum organised to celebrate the centenary of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). 

The foregoing  statement is recalled just to point out the fact of the global nature of the debate on social investments.

The necessary debate in Nigeria  on the institutionalisation of social investments must reckon with  the obvious flaws in the current implementation of the programme.  Some pertinent questions raised about the programme cannot be ignored. These include questions of  institutional structures, transparency and accountability in the course of implementation. The proposed law should, therefore,  help in removing these flaws for the purpose of effective policy implementation. 

All told, if implemented honestly and competently a social investment programme could significantly help the cause of social protection.

Contrary to initial predictions that the on-going FIFA World Cup tournament in Qatar would be the dullest ever in the history of the World Cup, it is in fact defying all such doomsday calculations and turning out to be a most exciting event. The quality of play is very high, the various players are superbly motivated, the fans are enthusiastic and as the tournament progresses, it all gets even more exciting. I find myself glued to the TV set every day to keep abreast of this historic event. Initially, politics almost overshadowed the event, with FIFA having to write to all the 32 teams playing a total of 64 matches in this year’s edition to focus on football, and not the protests that had been planned around the issues of human rights record of the Qatar government, LGBTQ+ rights in particular, and the abuse of 30, 000 migrant workers who were hired to build the infrastructure for the World Cup. The government of Qatar built 7 new stadia, an airport, 100 hotels and a fan park. The politics was so much that seven Captains of the participating European teams in fact announced that they would wear “One Love armbands.”  Denmark said they would wear “tone down” shirts. Paris and other French cities threatened that they would not screen the matches in public areas. 

The Ukrainian FA also called for Iran to be banned for “systemic human rights violations”. Ahead of the tournament, Qatari authorities had to go after persons who had made fake World Cup trophies – 144 counterfeit trophies were seized, even counterfeit clothes with World Cup logos were seized. In the second week of November, a luxury liner dubbed by The Sun newspaper of London, as HMS WAG, ferrying the wives and girlfriends of England’s World Cup Squad set sail for Qatar. The players, we were told, were banned from setting foot on the massive ship, but nobody talked about the WAGs going on land to visit their men in the hotel bubbles to which they were going to be confined. There was also the issue of the consumption of alcohol. Alcohol consumption is against the country’s Islamic laws and beliefs. Homosexuality also carries a penalty of a fine or seven years imprisonment in Qatar. 

The irony is that Budweiser, a beer manufacturing company, with a $75 million deal with FIFA, is the major sponsor of the tournament and has been a FIFA sponsor for about two decades. FIFA first announced that it would be possible to drink beer in fan zones, but it eventually reversed itself and Budweiser was told to serve only zero-Bud within the vicinity of the stadiums. Now, Budweiser says the winning country will take all of its unsold beer from Qatar. FIFA would also later agree that persons who wanted to wear rainbow bucket hats or wrist bands could do so, after the Football Association of Wales protested vehemently over the maltreatment of its fans, but as we now know, Qatar’s officials refused. Even after FIFA’s assurance, fans wearing rainbow colours or symbols were arrested or rough-handled at train stations. The only man no one could do anything about is Tottenham Hotspur superstar, and England’s Captain, Harry Kane who decided to go around off-pitch with an 18-karat, diamond-encrusted, Rainbow Rolex watch worth about $950 million – a massive show of wealth, but Kane simply was protesting in support of the LGBTQ+ community and indicating his angst over FIFA’s threat that any player wearing a One Love Band will get an automatic yellow card. Kane could not wear the armband during England’s 6- 2 win over Iran.  Germany also responded last Wednesday before their Group E match kick off against Japan by covering their mouths. Germany’s Interior Minister, Nancy Faeser also wore a One Love arm-band, sitting in the stands, next to Gianni Infantino, the FIFA President. She later took it off, and of course did not get a yellow card -  she, not being a footballer. 

What Qatar represents in my view, is as I pointed out earlier in a parenthetical, prior comment on this page, now built up into an extended commentary, on what I have seen so far, is the clash of civilizations, between a conservative Middle Eastern culture, and a liberal, hypocritical Western outlook. The hypocrisy of the West is writ large. It is okay to collect sponsorship funds from Budweiser, only to turn around and breach contractual agreements and put the entire blame on the recalcitrance of Qatar. The big question in this World Cup is: should Qatar have been granted hosting rights in the first place as far back as 2010? And now 12 years after the fact, the West is complaining about human rights? This looks like a case of the money is good, bring it, but the culture is not good enough. Hell-ooo! In any case, if the World Cup is a game for the whole of humanity, no part of the world should be discriminated against, and what the people and government of Qatar are showing is that if their money is good enough for France, England and all the other Western countries, the onus is on them to also respect their culture and conservative preferences. One clear point from the politics of the current World Cup in Qatar is that the West likes to overdo things, and wittingly too, as they seek to re-write principles of international law in a manner that should be of interest to teachers and students of the subject. 

The most egregious example would seem to be the brazen manner in which the United States Soccer Federation decided to alter the Iranian flag last Saturday and chose to replace the Islamic emblem on the flag with a graphic representing the Group B standings in the FIFA World Cup. The US says it did so “to demonstrate support for the women in Iran fighting for basic rights.” This amounts to interference in the affairs of a sovereign state, but the US as a superior power is accustomed to writing its own rules of engagement with other countries of the world. And hence, it would get away with it, despite Iran and the TASNIM, the official news agency of Iran, saying that the US has violated the FIFA Charter and should be kicked out of the Qatar World Cup. Iran is slated to face off against the US today. Ahead of that encounter, the US is clearly waging a psychological war against Iran by interfering in its internal affairs. FIFA will not impose any sanctions, and thus delicately avoid getting involved in the conflict between both countries that dates back to 1980.  It will be recalled however that the Iranian team at the World Cup refused to sing their own country’s national anthem during their first World Cup game in Qatar.  The meeting between Iran and the USA today will be another “mother of all games”, a rematch of their 1998 World Cup group stage encounter which Iran won 2-1. The US may have already won the match off-pitch. 

Indeed, so political is this year’s edition of the World Cup tournament, even at the group stage level, on and off-pitch that Canelo Alvarez, the Mexican WBA, WBC, WBO and IBF super middleweight boxing champion has vowed that if he sets his eyes on Lionel Messi, he would teach him a lesson or two with his fists about how not to disrespect Mexico. Messi is accused of having pushed aside a Mexico jersey with his left foot as he tried to take off his shoes after a Group C match in which Argentina slammed Mexico 2- 0.  Messi’s fans have said that the incident was inadvertent, but Alvarez says he is keeping his fists waiting for Messi. Lionel Messi may be good at playing football, and he has done well for his country in Qatar, matching Diego Maradona’s record but I doubt if his lithe frame can take one small, punch from Alvarez’s big fist! When politics and emotions are mixed with sports, the outcome can be very dangerous. Indeed, in July 1970, El Salvador and Honduras went to war – the Soccer War or the 100-Hour War - over a World Cup qualifying match, triggered by underlying conflicts between both countries.

The World would also forever remember the Captain of the Colombian team in the USA ‘94 World Cup, Andreas Escobar, who scored an own goal and caused Colombia’s early exit from that World Cup.  He was the other Escobar. There was Pablo Escobar, not a relation of his, a blood-thirsty drug warlord who was hunted down by the police and murdered. Andres’s offence was that he scored an own goal. Six bullets were pumped into his back at the El Indio nightclub in Medellin, later described as revenge action by gangsters who made heavy losses betting on Colombia at the World Cup. “Football,” as I wrote previously, is “worse than opium”. This year, last weekend, riots broke out in Belgium and the Netherlands, after Morocco, the Atlas Lions, handed the Belgium National team a 2- 0 defeat in a Group F match. A car was burnt down in Brussels. There was violence in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Antwerp and Brussels. The police had to use water cannons to disperse crowds and enforce some arrests.     

All of this drama about the 2022 World Cup in Qatar notwithstanding, I suspect that what would be remembered hereafter, would not necessarily be the attendant politics, but football itself, and how dominant it is as a game. The tournament is still at the group stage level at the time of this writing, but we have seen much to compel the view that this is turning out to be a remarkable event. History is being made, and it is becoming obvious that there are no underdogs on the pitch. All the 32 participating countries are in Qatar to make a statement and quite a few have been able to do so. Almighty teams, tipped to be potential winners have been humiliated by smaller teams on the FIFA ranking table. Could anyone ever imagine that Saudi Arabia would beat Argentina, 2- 1? But it happened. The King of Saudi Arabia himself found the feat so unbelievable, he had to declare a national holiday to celebrate the achievement. It doesn’t matter how Saudi Arabia fares in this World Cup, it is firmly on record that Saudi Arabia humiliated Argentina! The second major upset after this was the spectacle of Morocco beating Belgium, 2- 0. 

The victory was such a major upset it caused riots in Belgium and the Netherlands!  In a Group E opener, Germany lost to Japan in a 2 -1 upset. Germany, a football superpower, is now alive, after managing to force a draw with Spain. It now faces a must win match against Costa Rica, as it confronts the prospect of finishing bottom of its group as happened in the 2018 World Cup. Another: Canada was beaten 4-1 on Sunday night by Croatia, but it managed to score its first World Cup goal through Alphonso Davies. Canada may exit the World Cup but what the team has achieved so far- that one goal, within 67 seconds, the country’s first at the World Cup was enough to keep the pubs open in Canada on Sunday. The World Cup is a place to make history, and many are in it for the special experience and the opportunities it offers. Wales showed up in Qatar this year, the first time in 64 years. It would be difficult for Wales to reach the last 16, from Group B, sitting at the bottom of the Group, having played a draw against the USA, beaten by Iran 0 – 2, and now having to face England tomorrow.    

At least one commentator has attributed the determination and the revolt against traditional assumptions that we have seen on display at this World Cup to money: the fact that the FIFA World Cup is one of the biggest prizes in sports – the total prize money in Qatar 2022 is about 440 US million dollars, $40 million more than the previous World Cup in 2018. The winner of the tournament will walk away with $42 million. For participating at all, every team will get a minimum of $9 million. The clubs whose players are at the World Cup would get a largesse of $209 million to be distributed across the world. The referees at the tournament will get a base fee of $70, 000 and $3, 000 for every match that they oversee. FIFA already gave every participating nation $1.5 million to aid preparations.  But I don’t think what defines the World Cup is money no matter how high the paycheck is, although it must also be admitted that host country Qatar is set to cash out big time!  It is something more: the thrill of participation, nationalism and the opportunity to be on the world stage. 

The kind of energy that has been put into the game is further demonstrated even by the African teams: Ghana showing that it truly deserves a place in the sun: see what the Black Stars did in the match against Portugal on Nov. 24. They lost 3- 2, but they were formidable. In their match against South Korea, yesterday they fought like true stars, and recorded an impressive win, beating South Korea 3-2!  Before then, Morocco trounced Belgium 2-0. Cameroun forced a draw with Serbia, 3-3 in an explosive, thrilling, entertaining encounter. Serbia was leading 3-1, but the Cameroonians roared like lions and cancelled out the deficit.  Senegal lost to the Netherlands, 0-2, but they defeated Qatar, 1-3. They have survived to fight again today when they meet Ecuador. Tunisia has not done badly so far also at the World Cup. They played a draw with Denmark, in Group D, and lost to Australia, 0 -1. Their next match is against France on Wednesday. France has so far been a dominant defending champion. Les Blues are proving unstoppable, but this is again a World Cup like no other where underdogs are taking on the traditional champions and burying established reputations. The aggregate gainer is football, and the fact that football has become effectively a science, rather than 22-men running up and down, looking for the goal post. What I have been watching, to speak for myself, since the World Cup began in Qatar on November 20 looks to me like an interplay of artistry, science, and individual talent. It is a glorious testament to the capacity of the human mind and body, and how the world continually reinvents itself in time and space. The underlying and perhaps overt political and ideological currents speak to the inequalities and dissensions at the centre of geo-politics which in the long run are unresolvable given the balance of powers. 

But for giving us an opportunity to laugh and get entertained beyond the perils of COVID-19, high inflation, cost of living crisis, and the doomsday predictions of economists, the World Cup is serving a great purpose at an appropriate time. When last, did the entire world laugh and cry along the full emotional spectrum therapeutically, over something as refreshing as sports, the interplay of talents, emotions and national pride? COVID-19 blocked our joys. The World Cup is setting our emotions free. And so, as the beat goes on, let the games continue, and may the best team triumph.