Today’s Preface

If you have followed me in this space, you will notice that I keep a rhythm in my writing.

On Mondays, I share #50PlusDad reflections, how I am delightfully doing life with my four-year-old son, my firstborn, born to me in my twilight.

From Tuesday to Thursday, I wear my egalitarian cap and comment on national issues as I see them.

On Fridays, I return to the archives of my life, first as a human being, then as a professional, sharing lessons from lived experience on the field: as a Family Attorney, a Family Strengthening and Child Safeguarding/Protection innovator, and a Parenting ideologue. These reflections draw from close to three decades of practice and engagement.

This morning, I woke up with two things on my mind.

The first was the airstrike on Nigeria by the United States of America.

The second was an article I wrote nearly three decades ago under the military junta of General Sani Abacha, published in THISDAY newspaper on August 27, 1996, when I was just 26 years old.

I picked up that article and read it again. It felt as fresh as yesterday.

What struck me most was this: Nigeria has not moved an inch. In fact, many of the issues I addressed then, especially insecurity, have not only persisted; they have worsened.

That realization set me thinking.

When we say, “Once upon a nation,” did our nation ever truly work? And if it is ever going to work, what is it that we have never had?

We have always talked about leadership failure, military leadership, civilian leadership, political irresponsibility. But I am increasingly convinced that what we have never had is a conscientised mass: a conscious people who will not only speak truth to power, but who will also be deliberate and definitive in exploring all peaceful means to give power to the people.

I am a firm believer in passive resistance. In fact, I had the cherished privilege of writing a chapter on this subject in my dearly beloved friend and brother, Dele Farotimi’s book, “Imperatives of the Nigerian Revolution,’ where I laid out my position using the principles initiated by Mahatma Gandhi and later followed, with discipline and conviction, by Martin Luther King Jr.

By God’s grace, tomorrow I will share my views on the US airstrike, its implications for nationhood, sovereignty, and all of that.

But today, in keeping with my Friday tradition of reflecting on my life on the field, I want to share this article.

It is a long read; please bear with me.

I wrote it 29 years ago, It remains disturbingly current.

“The Burden of Trust”

By Taiwo Akinlami

The article written by Anthony Ekekakhwu Meribe, published on this page on Tuesday, August 13, 1996 can only be properly located in the realm of crass sycophancy. Meribe wants us to go on our knees and offer prayers for the success of the transition programme as we did for the Dream Team during their encounters in Atlanta. But he did not explain in very clear terms why he thinks Gen. Sani Abacha deserves that costly magnanimity from the nation.

He is asking us to transfer our gratitude to the Nigerian contingent to the just-concluded Centennial Olympic Games without informing us what exactly Gen Abacha in his official capacity did to facilitate the great feats the contingent performed at Atlanta. He wrote as if he was not aware of our widely accentuated shoddy preparations for the Olympic games, which embarrassment was only precipitated by the dropping of some athletes at the eleventh hour.

The victory of Nigeria at the Atlanta Games is, in my own humble opinion, a serious indictment of our rulers. The clear statement that it (victory) is making is that the sky would have been the limit for Nigeria at Atlanta if proper and adequate preparations had been put in place for the games. This is a nation that does not contribute anything except labyrinthine obstacles and suffocating frustrations to the development of its youths.

All that Gen. Abacha and his government are doing today is to use the victory of Nigeria at the Olympic Games as a diversion from the enormous political and socio-economic problems that the nation is today pitifully facing.

I am yet to understand why Meribe wants us to use a victory assiduously laboured for by the Nigerian youths, who represented the nation at Atlanta to buy legitimacy for Abacha, his administration and his transition to civil rule programme.

Meribe urges the nation to “believe in Abacha and his promises” and give unalloyed support to his transition programme, without adducing any concrete and rational reasons for his outrageous request.

According to him, “Daddy Sani has capabilities to deliver. I have no single doubt in my mind that he can deliver as an Abacha watcher, I can assure you that from his utterances and his actions, it is easy to behold a sincerity of purpose in this man called Abacha.”

Meribe committed the serious oversight of not revealing to us those utterances and actions of Abacha that gave birth to his staunch belief in him (Abacha) and his “capabilities to deliver”. He thus left a very serious spacious room for a big jamboree of guesses.

Is he having in mind the General’s promise when he assumed power on November 17, 1993 to appoint civilian state administrators, only for him to settle down and appoint military administrators? Or is he referring to Abacha’s promise to give the nation a constitutional conference with “full constituent powers” and he ended up hand-picking a good number of its participants, who turned out to be his cronies and loyalists? One begins to wonder if Meribe can be talking about Abacha’s pledge to the nation that the constitutional conference would determine his tenure in office, only for the conference to be manipulated to change the 1996 date it earlier gave the administration to giving Abacha a free hand to determine his own terminal date.

If Meribe is alluding to Abacha’s pledge through his then Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Dr. Olu Onagoruwa, that his administration would neither detain anybody without trial nor promulgate decrees that would oust the jurisdiction of the courts, then he must be living in the moon.

Is he unaware that some Nigerians are languishing in prison today without trials? M.K.O. Abiola, Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana, Femi Aborisade, Chima Ubani, among many others are today languishing in detention.

Is Meribe drawing our minds to the obdurate determination of the government not to negotiate with ASUU, whose justifiable strike action has kept millions of Nigerian youths out of our universities for four months now? Or is he directing our attention to the fact that the man, who won a free and fair presidential election is today wasting away in detention since June 24, 1994?

Meribe may be referring to the last local government elections, which turned out to be a pure selection, after a mass of disqualification of people not favoured to contest the election. He may well be dwelling on the proscription of notable national dailies and magazines – The Punch, The Guardian, National Concord, African Concord and African Guardian for almost 14 months for the sole offence of making the truth their cardinal principle in the practice of their tasking trade; or what does one say of the killing of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders.

Think about NECON’s guidelines on party registration, which have placed a high price on democracy, that the ordinary man on the street can never dream of participating? It is democracy by the rich and for the benefit of the rich. Can Meribe be urging us to look at our bad roads, general insecurity in the country, brazen disobedience of courts’ orders by government, victimization of political opponents, mass retrenchment and unemployment, demolition of shops and houses of citizens, dilapidated health and educational systems, etc, and then believe that Abacha has the “capabilities to deliver”, judging by his “utterances and actions”?

Meribe keeps me and, I am sure, the reading public guessing and trying to locate the foundation upon which he erected his stout confidence in Abacha’s “capabilities to deliver”. Meribe may need to write again to shed light on this lacuna that his piece “Abacha! As Good As Dream Team” has confronted the public with.

Akinlami is of the Faculty of Law, Lagos State University, Ojo.