The Ango-Clark offence pact

In my tribute to Segun Okeowo last week, I made reference to the heroic role Nigerian students played in the abortion of the proposed Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact in 1960. Fifty-four years after that round of protests, we are watching with mouth agape as two of our great achievers in the evening of their lives seem […]

In my tribute to Segun Okeowo last week, I made reference to the heroic role Nigerian students played in the abortion of the proposed Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact in 1960. Fifty-four years after that round of protests, we are watching with mouth agape as two of our great achievers in the evening of their lives seem devoted to dismembering the same country their generation had labored so much to build.
Professor Ango Abdullahi is an accomplished Nigerian intellectual. A product of Barewa College, he bagged his first degree in 1964, Masters in 1968 and PhD in 1976. He is widely regarded as an erudite agronomist but he is more widely remembered as a two-term vice-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
In the same vein, Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, a former school headmaster who rose beyond his circumstances to graduate from the Holborn College of Law in 1964, is a distinguished Nigerian. He has been a federal minister, senator, university pro-chancellor and is currently addressed as the Ijaw National Leader and President Jonathan’s godfather-in-chief.
Both Abdullahi and Clark have one thing in common: unguarded statements that help to nurture hate and ethnic suspicion. If Clark is not threatening those opposed to President Jonathan’s undeclared second term bid with fire and brimstone, Abdullahi is justifying his outlandish allegations of ethnic cleansing against former army chief Azubuike Ihejirika- thereby activating a backlash from Igbo. Both men have repeatedly been heating up the political space, all in the name of protecting their ethnic turf.
I would be the first to acknowledge that both men have a right to freedom of expression. But considering their station in life, perhaps it is about time they are reminded that a lot more is expected of them than being ethnic or regional champions. To be sure, they are not alone in this game. If you listen carefully enough, you will find their soul mates in every other region of the country. We are only using Abdullahi and Clark as contact points for all those elders in Nigeria whose utterances give us the impression that they are in violent disagreement with the author of “Desiderata” who wrote, “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth…”
 The single most common denominator of our people’s existence is poverty. Now, I have not seen Hausa poverty; neither have I seen Ijaw penury. But I know that all that Northern Nigeria has to show for the many years their sons spent in power is poverty. I also know that although a selected number of so-called militants in the South-South are being given fishes instead of being taught how to fish, and in spite of the fact that their son is currently our president, 90 percent of the people are living on less that $2 a day.
One would have expected people like Abdullahi and Clark whose palm kernels had been fortuitously cracked by benevolent gods, to be the ones sensitizing the people that poverty has no tribe, no region, no religion, no colour. Poverty is poverty. It ravages Tamuno as well as Dike and would not spare Hadi and Adunni.
It would be a sad day indeed when Abdullahi and Clark are routinely dismissed along with professional carpetbaggers on the political scene. Since the return to democracy, we have witnessed the emergence of ‘professional politicians’ who are no more than carpetbaggers and hate dispensers. Such people give those in power the impression that they have the key to unlocking one region or state, or local government or even linguistic group. They are well compensated for their projected worth. However, when such people are confronted with a one-man-one-vote situation they unleash terror on the same constituencies they are supposed to have had in their pocket. Better to disrupt elections than allow a situation where the opposition would carry the day and demystify the carpetbagger.
There ought to be people speaking for Nigeria. One of our major problems in this political dispensation is that too many people are speaking for their villages, their ethnic groups, their clans; and too few people are standing up for Nigeria. This year marks our centenary as one country. We cannot continue to curse the darkness instead of lighting the candle. I can understand that it is too late in the day for some of those who made their fortune by setting brother against brother, sister against sister; it is the only way they know to put bread on the table. But anyone who wants to be seen as a statesman, or elder statesman in the Nigerian parlance, has to rise above the fray.
On paper, there may be nothing wrong with the various ethnic/regional pressure groups – Afenifere, Ohaneze, Arewa Consultative Forum, South-South Consultative Assembly, Middle-Belt Forum, Ijaw National Congress, etc–as long as they are not converted to fora for insulting other groups and seeking the enforcement of very narrow interpretation of empirical reality.
It is this unfortunate resort to tribe and linguistic group and religion that accounts for the inability of otherwise intelligent people to realize that impunity by one group has grave implications for others and for the nation. Some ethnic champions insist that any thief from their part of the country must be allowed to go free because thieves from other parts of the country who stole in the past were walking free. So, when are we ever going to begin to remake this country?
It is my humble opinion that we can do without the tendentious implications of the unsigned Ango-Clark Offence Pact aforementioned. The generation of these venerable old men ate up our yesterday. They shouldn’t foul up our unborn tomorrows.
Rumble in the Senate?
Our legislators like to waste precious time on nonsense. Senate President David Mark is rattled that so many senators are leaving PDP for APC. Whether he reads their letter of intent or not, they have changed camp. Instead of the circus generated by the matter, the decamping senators should demonstrate where they belong with the way they vote in the senate. That would be louder than any unread letter.