Why I did not write a column

Rather than shop around for a plausible excuse to give them, the complaints reminded me of an episode that took place during the Second Republic. Some GNPP members announced that they were defecting to NPN. The reason they gave for defecting was that their party had not said anything for a long time. They also […]

Rather than shop around for a plausible excuse to give them, the complaints reminded me of an episode that took place during the Second Republic. Some GNPP members announced that they were defecting to NPN. The reason they gave for defecting was that their party had not said anything for a long time. They also said that whenever GNPP’s leader Uncle Waziri Ibrahim chose to speak, he ended up doing katobara (gaffe).
An FRCN Kaduna reporter went to seek the reaction of GNPP’s national publicity secretary Alhaji Lawal Isa. [Alhaji Lawal died recently, but I believe I have his permission to repeat this story because I discussed it with him some years ago and he was highly amused by it.] Lawal Isa’s reaction was, “Just because you are a politician, do you start talking when there is nothing to talk about? They themselves, who stopped them from talking? Did anyone tell them that they should not talk?”
Let me borrow a leaf from Alhaji Lawal Isa. Just because you are a columnist, do you start writing when there is nothing to write [home] about? All those people who are saying that I did not write a column for three weeks, who stopped them from writing their own columns? Don’t they have hands? Biros and paper are available everywhere in Nigeria and these days we even have desktops, laptops, iPads and iPhones so anybody can write whatever he or she likes. Which our youths are doing in abundance these days, posting things on Facebook and Twitter, often before they think about them. This is the age of the social media and whoever hears something will not wait to verify it; everybody wants to be the first person to break the “news” on social media. If things continue in this way, we may be headed for the communication cliff-edge.
I asked one particularly persistent fellow why it mattered to him that I did not write a column. After all, all the columns that have been written since the founding of Nigeria, of what use have they been? He said I should have written the columns to proffer solutions to some of this country’s problems. I therefore asked him: all the solutions that columnists have been proffering all these years, what did we do with them? Is there any issue left in Nigeria that has not been tackled by one columnist or the other? Some Nigerian newspapers appear to have more columnists than reporters. Everyone has an opinion that he wants everyone else to accept. Some people cannot believe it if other people disagree with them; they think that what they say is so profound that no one but a fool will disagree with it.
Sometimes when I read the mail, I wonder why some people bother to read the columns at all because they tend to be totally disappointed when the writer fails to reflect their point of view. I had to remind one thoroughly disappointed reader that as far as I know, I am supposed to reflect my own point of view in the column, not his own. Often some of the most strongly held views are those based upon conspiracy theory, selective memory and downright make believe. At least one man told me back in 2011 that my columns were no longer reflecting the mood in the North. When I was told in 2006 to begin writing columns in Daily Trust, no one said they must reflect any mood other than my own. Even if I want to reflect the mood in the North, it is not always clear what that mood is.
I often thought about what a TIME magazine writer once wrote when President Bill Clinton was under intense attack from American conservatives for everything from policy options to personal conduct. The writer said Clinton, being a liberal, was on the wrong side of the tolerance divide. While a liberal minded person easily concedes that another person can hold a different viewpoint, a diehard conservative does not see any reason why another person should hold a different viewpoint except if it is due to idiocy, hypocrisy, Devil’s influence or settlement.
Among the many issues that people were saying I should have commented on was the stampede at the Immigration Service recruitment interview. What is there to say about that? It is not as if an Immigration Service job is the smartest in Nigeria. Any mention of Immigration reminds me of an encounter I had with its men near Damaturu in 1990. I was on my way to Maiduguri when our taxi was stopped at a checkpoint. The immigration officer looked at the passengers’ faces and said I should come out. He proceeded to ask me a barrage of questions. Where are you coming from? I said, “Kaduna.” Where are you going to? “Maiduguri.” You are a native of where? “Sokoto.” Apparently my monosyllabic answers raised his suspicions so he said, “Speak in Hausa, let me hear.”
From his accent, I could tell that he was a non-native Hausa speaker. My fellow passengers in the taxi were looking at me intently, clearly thinking that a Chadian had been caught. I pondered at my circumstances. One false move and I will be on my way to N’djamena. My mind raced back to my primary school text books to recall the most tongue-twisting Hausa sayings. So I said, “Kai dan tsuntsun tsurullu tsaya tsaf. Karon kajin Kano da karon kajin Katsina suka gamu karkarar Karofi suna kaurayya. Wa zai kaure wani? Karon kajin Kano zai kaure karon kajin Katsina, ko kuwa karon kajin Katsina zai kaure karon kajin Kano?…”  
The Immigration officer laughed and said, “So you are a Hausa man! Proceed!” I laughed inwardly and said, “For the second time you are wrong. I am not a Hausa man. My great great-grandfather arrived from Borno in the 19th century!”
Immigration stampede aside, there was no shortage of topics that some people thought I should have commented upon these past three weeks. Someone said I have not commented on the national conference. Is it my comment that will make the Presidency to cancel a (werewolf) project on which they have already voted N7 billion, three times more than was voted in the budget to rehabilitate the war-ravaged North East?
You see, I was the one who wrote here sometime ago that the reason why so many foolish items end up in the federal budget is because the President does not exercise political leadership during the budget preparation. If for example the president conceives three or four major programs that cost N2 trillion, he only has to tell the DG Budget Office, “I want these ones in the budget.” When that happens, most of the fancy budget items brought forward by agency bureaucrats requesting for bullet proof cars, more generators, more aircraft and banquet halls will not find a place in the budget. For example, if the president had not conceived The National Conference, the Budget Office would have spread those N7 billion to other lesser projects. Is National Conference the kind of priority program that I had in mind when I made my suggestion? Not by a long stretch!
Finally, someone also said that I did not comment on APC’s complaint that PDP is plotting to replace its three governors in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States with soldiers. I have commented on this matter before and I don’t intend to dignify it with another comment. You know what? PDP may actually be right that the war will be fought better if soldiers are placed in charge of the respective state government. It will not be long afterwards that someone slinging an AK-47 will come up with the interesting suggestion that the Boko Haram war will be best fought if the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces too is an Army General.