Tag: politics

Posted in Uncategorized

Of Drink Problems and Disorderly Writing

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

The caption of the article “If Jonathan has a drinking problem” is framed in such a manner as to convey some uncertainty. Reading it however, one is confronted by Mr Adelakun’s not too concealed confirmation that the Nigerian President has such a problem. Journalists have their sources and lay people like us are expected to lap up whatever they dish out. Who are you to doubt their sources when they present these sources thus “I have interacted with associates that have also interacted with Jonathan at close range and they say, indeed, he has a blooming relationship with a certain brand of wine.” It should not matter that the evidence for this very weighty accusation is of the type I describe as “I saw a man who says he saw a man who claims he met a minister who saw the queen.” Mr Adelakun has his sources and his sources must be accurate. To doubt is to be disrespectful and one must never disrespect journalists.  It is also risky to conclude that Mr Adelakun does not drink – after all, among the irate crowd gathering to stone the woman caught in adultery to death in the Christian Scriptures were certainly some of her regular clients. Those without blemish and vices can hurl stones at us lower mortals with our frailties and foibles. Journalists are the conscience of the nation and spot sins which only their fine senses can behold. I have nothing against this – every profession has a right to some self-deceit.

 

But my questions are these – must an op-ed whose clear intention is to nail a president and diminish him also trade in stereotyping? Could Mr Adelakun not have clinched his case against the president without resorting to conveying and reinforcing damaging, outdated, irrelevant, demeaning, inaccurate ethnic smears/slurs and generalizations? Are paragraphs 6-8 of his article really necessary? What is the import of these paragraphs? Beyond revealing Mr Adelakun’s own biases and ethnic affiliations, how relevant are these paragraphs to the poorly veiled and politically motivated expose on a man’s supposed drinking problem? I was hoping that Mr. Adelakun would stop and challenge the whole basis of stereotypes, show how dangerous, damaging, divisive and unhelpful they are but that hope was in vain because he needed stereotypes to caste his slur on the president and the president’s ethnic group. And, by the way, how accurate is this statement by Mr Adelakun – “Please note, stereotypes are not always devoid of reality but the problem is that they turn into self-fulfilling prophecies”. I am reluctant to challenge Mr Adelakun’s familiarity with stereotypes but if this comment reflects that knowledge, then that knowledge must be severely limited. Journalists should be familiar with the intimate links between stereotypes, prejudice, ethnophaulism and harmful actions, but not Mr. Adelakun.

 

And how more offensive can a journalist be in his comments on other ethnic groups? His insult on women from the SS is in very bad taste and deserves an instant retraction and apology.  And how more uncritical and biased can a writer be – the stereotype for the Yorubas is slick! Slick indeed! Notice the polysemy of the word “slick” and you will understand why he chose the word in this his sad role of purveyor of stereotypes. Slick! Mr. Adelakun’s effort itself is slick – could it be that this word which drips in deliberate polysemy is the best group descriptor for his people and the one he is most at peace with?

 

Having exercised his stereotyping wizardry in its fullness, Mr Adelakun then turns his attention to alerting his readers to the disastrous consequences of the president’s supposed drinking problem for the nation! But how convincing is Mr Adelakun’s effort to link this supposed problem to some governance gaps and goofs by the presidency? I find the effort unconvincing but overdone because of Mr. Adelakun’s quest for the over-kill. Over-kill has a trade-off in life.  That trade-off is balance. If Mr. Adelakun had adopted balance as one of his guiding principles, the arguments in his last two paragraphs might have been less puny. Assuming even that Mr. Adelakun’s accusations against the president and his people are evidence based, is mockery the mature and appropriate response to it?  It certainly is not. The abandonment of balance is clearly responsible for this grossly inadequate response. Balance would have encouraged him to remember that a mature and professional response to alcohol abuse, and to any substance abuse for that matter, is compassion and empathy, not the thinly veiled rejoicing and mockery one meets in his write up. Certainly to ask a journalist to recognize that substance abuse results from the interaction of public policy, biology, sociology and psychology and for him to reflect that recognition in his write up on such a sensitive issue is not asking too much. Indeed, it is to invite such a journalist to move beyond facile and simple narratives and to embrace depth. One does not need to remind Mr. Adelakun that the absence of depth in journalism leads to its death.

 

Journalists are the conscience of the nation. In this role, we lay people have certain expectations of them. Writing as if they were punch drunk is certainly not one of such expectations. Otherwise, we may also begin to suspect that journalists who display such traits either in their logic or choice of examples or lack of empathy could have even more damaging personal problems than those they “deign” to show up and castigate!

Posted in Prose

Tortoise, famine and the other animals

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel Ihebuzor

Once there was famine in the land of the animals. Animals starved. Every animal was emaciated. Hunger played music on their empty stomachs. Hungry played tricks on their minds. Things got more desperate with each passing day. The tortoise, the wisest and most cunning of all the animals, suggested that each animal kills his/her mother. If they did this, the gods would be struck by the enormity of the sacrifice that the animals were making and perhaps end the famine. Besides, by eliminating their mothers, the heroic animals would be reducing the number of mouths to feed during these hard times, tortoise persuasively argued. Some of the animals – the cock, the dove, the elephant and the bat initially objected but gradually tortoise wore down their objections.  In the end unanimity was reached. Difficult times required difficult decisions; special situations demanded special sacrifices, tortoise had argued and real heroes and nationalists never hold back from making tough decisions and carrying them out. Only cowards and the short-sighted hold back when destiny beckons, tortoise pontificated. The animals all agreed. Fiam, gbam, gbum, kagbum – each animal went home and fell on his/her mum and killed her. Matricide became the sign of courage and belongingness.

Unknown to the other animals, tortoise had hidden his own mum in the skies. He had designated a spot on a hill where his mum would send a rope from the skies to enable him climb up to visit her, chat with and enjoy all the joys of a mother’s love and care. And he would go up in most evenings to send her portions of choice meat from the slaughter below.

One day, the rest of the animals found out what the tortoise had done. A mixture of shame, regret and anger took hold of them and they set off to go and capture the tortoise. On sighting them, tortoise took off and started racing to the spot where his mother would normally let down the rope. As tortoise’s mum sent down the rope for her son to climb up to the skies, the other animals caught unto the rope and the agile ones – the cheetah, the leopard, the chimpanzee – all started climbing up and chasing after the tortoise. Soon they were catching up with him. When tortoise saw this, he shouted to his mum to cut the rope. The mum cut the rope and all of the animals came crashing down to earth, including tortoise. Tortoise broke his back in the fall. He also got a good beating from the rest of the other animals for his deceit. His back had to be patched and stitched together in hundred places as a result of the fall and the beating that he got. This is why the back of the tortoise looks so patched up always.

The morale of the story is that people should always be very suspicious of the person or group of persons who tell you to kill your mum whilst they secretly keep theirs safe, alive and very healthy. As with Tortoise and the animal kingdom, so with contemporary politics, and those politicians who invite you to commit matricide whilst their own mothers are safe and alive.

Posted in Uncategorized

No Principles but New Principals

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

I am sharing two documents we must all read. Both articles were signed by Nasir El-Rufai.  One was written to President Obasanjo and the other was written to President Yar Adua

These two articles are also published in the Village Square and the link lines to them are appended below –
In one paper, El-Rufai must have assumed that he was the front runner  of all OBJ successors and that OBJ would thus  so annoint him. He came up in this paper with such democracy destroying suggestions that would even make a Stalin shudder.
Read this

“The use of the unutilized power of federal electronic media in the propaganda war is unavoidable being a weapon that is readily available in the arsenals of the ruling party and therefore all obstacles to its deployment must be anticipated and removed immediately. 

A strategy should also be evolved to snatch away the international wire services from the opposition. Equally important is the need to cultivate FM radio stations for effective deployment against the enemy whose dirty deals and shameful conducts the print media has been largely paid to conceal. All stringers of the international wire services resident in Nigeria and their editors abroad should be identified for engagement, neutralization or deployment against the enemy that has used these effectively.

Condition survey needs to be conducted in a good time to ascertain the PDP’s popular support in all the senatorial districts before the national convention of the PDP. This exercise would pave way for the ranking of such constituencies on scale A, B, C, D and E.”

In another paragraph, he stops just short of actually saying how elections are best rigged! Read this –
“The function of the core-group is to systematically coordinate the use of Police, SSS, EFCC, ICPC and other state organs as per their respective roles before and during elections based on new approaches which subject matter will be detailed out subsequently”.
 In the second document, OBJ has by-passed him and selected UYA and the clever Nasir is now struggling to ingratiate himself with Umaru –

“Presidential Burdens and Qualities

We learnt that you were reluctant to run for President. It is quite understandable. No normal person who understands the burdens of the office will be eager to aspire to the Nigerian Presidency. But it is vital that decent people run for the office so that the nation is not destroyed by some of the vagabonds that ran around the country ‘aspiring’ and annoying the sensibilities of the people. Most of the eager and early aspirants saw only an expanded domestic treasury and foreign reserves ready for looting, rather than the heavy responsibilities of running a country containing one out of every 40 human beings on earth. And in a positive sense Nigeria needs the very best leadership if we are to become a great country; you have the opportunity to provide this leadership.

We were therefore relieved when you joined the race. You have emerged clearly as probably the most honest state governor in the country. John Steinberg (1966) in writing about the American Presidency said “The President must be great, but not better than all”. As Governor, you are probably better than all the governors, so what remains is for you to become a great President.

Early in this process, some of us – Tanimu Yakubu included got into real trouble because we made suggestions that you should be the sort of person to be drafted to run for President. We were essentially guided by lessons learnt at the Georgetown Leadership Seminar 2000, wherein Paul Begala, an aide to President Bill Clinton listed four qualities of a good President” 

How desperate can one get? How more obsequious can we get? The same character is now strutting around, fawning and trying to ingratiate himself with GMB and APC all in the hope of landing a post for himself should the GMB/APC ticket win the race! How low can one go? El-Rufai is nothing else but a chartered and certified political jobber. Hoha, no more needs be said about him. His principles do not change. His principals may change.

Noel

 

Posted in Prose

Discouraging Deserters and Defectors

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel A. Ihebuzor

 

Twitter abounds in twitfights – fights between foes as well fights between former friends who have now parted ways for one reason or the other. When fights are between former friends who now find themselves on different sides of the political divide, the clashes tend to be very mean and vicious. The acrimony betrays the persisting bitterness and hurt that one party or both feel over the parting of ways. It is as if the fighters ignore one basic fact of life which is that some good friends must part someday, and that associations do not all always last forever. In life, friends do often fall out and part ways. This basic truth appears to be lost on quite a number of persons. Such persons hold on to a position which I call the permanence of associations and immutability of views position. Parting of ways or rethinking of positions by the other party are often very strongly resisted to the point where the person who decamps or changes his/her view is often treated as a deserter, a defector and a sell-out.

Positions of the type described above abound in the thriving twitter political party activist community. (I use this term to describe a community of persons who use Twitter mostly to actively promote the cause of a particular party. Members of this group, the political party activist group, must be distinguished from political activists. The former tweet and blog more like political party agents. The latter maintain more objective positions and tweet on governance, political, and accountability issues without favouring any political party. This distinction is important as a lot of unnecessary misunderstanding is caused by a conflation of the two terms).

In this political party activist community, change of positions and perceptions is viewed as a clear indicator of defection and desertion, offenses that are seriously viewed. Such changes are viewed as some form of social “apostasy”. And apostasy is perceived as a grievous sin, a perception that is most accentuated in communities with tendencies to self-ascribed moral righteousness. “Apostates” must be condemned to “social” disgrace and demise. Apostates must be treated as social lepers. They are to be ridiculed and subjected to all forms of social pressures. And all of this because apostates are a danger to the group they left. They possess a Snowden-type risk potential and precisely because of this, their credibility must be seriously eroded and progressively destroyed.

Matters are also not helped by the attitudes of the deserters/defectors, these modern day social apostates, themselves. Like most fresh converts to new faiths and belief systems, these social apostates consistently betray excessive zeal typical of neophytes as they try to settle in to their new camp. Most exhibit a tendency to dwell on and detail the evils of the groups they have left, a tendency that irks that group and one which then further exacerbates the already seething acrimony between the deserter and his/her former associates. Soon, the leaders, gate keepers, enforcers, whips and foot soldiers of that group are up in arms, defending the honour of their group and attacking the deserter. They have recourse to a variety of strategies in doing this.

These strategies include naming, recalling of previous tweets which the attacking group believes are diametrically opposed to the deserter’s current position and shaming the deserter. The deserter’s reasons for leaving are trivialised, ridiculed and made to look pecuniary and materialistic. The tweets and comments of the “apostate” are unearthed and hurled in his/her face just to show how inconsistent and unreliable he/she is. The strategic goal here is to call attention to glaring inconsistencies between present position and previous tweets – the end game is to undermine the credibility of the defector. Taunts abound. Wicked jibes and hurting jabs fly around. A campaign of name calling is unleashed on the deserter, a campaign where no punches are pulled and which may even go as far as in one case to saying that a deserter was so poor that he “used to drink garri” in his undergraduate days. People watch from the sides, either amused or too frightened to wade in as the gladiators engage in bloody, vicious but mutually demeaning bouts and jousts.

The attack on the defector is an eye opener and dampener to those within the circle who may have been contemplating either changing camps or moving to more neutral positions. The message to such persons is clear. This is what you are likely going to get should you ever desert us. The attacks are thus not fortuitous but have a functional intent – to discourage and deter other potential deserters. Successful defection deterring strategies keep members in – once you are in, you cannot leave – a bit akin to what I call the Hotel California syndrome – you can check out anytime you want but you cannot leave!

Most deserters/defectors act as if they cannot understand the flurry and fury of the attacks on them. A little reflection should make any deserter/defector understand why those attacks are necessary and likely to come.

  • First, a defector must realise that his/her defection is a threat to his/her former associates. You know too much. Your former associates are not sure how much you will give away. They will want to put you away socially for good before you can do their group any harm. Basic survival principle, not ideology or any higher order principle, I believe, is what drives the chief whips of your former group as they come after you.
  • Secondly, a defector must also realise that he/she is also a threat to the his/her former associates in the sense that he/she is a reminder to those inside that they too could defect one day.  Now, that must be an uncomfortable feeling because it introduces some gnawing doubts in the minds of persons who cannot afford to have their present beliefs or rightness of their present positions tested/questioned. Remember what George Santanaya said about some group of persons re-doubling their efforts in situations of doubt – well a defection creates one of such a situation.
  • Thirdly, a defector should realise that his/her defection hurts the pride of his/her former associates. And when people are hurt, they hit out, and hitting out on impulse does not subject itself to the controls and norms of rational conduct.

The foregoing should enable the deserter to understand the onslaughts against his person. Desertion is not cost-free. You should expect them to come after you. But you must not fight them each time they come after you. Choose your battles! Don’t go galloping into every battle! One key aspect of successful military strategy is knowing which battles to fight and which ones to walk away from. Walk away, avoid the fight – even if they call you “Coward of the County”. Walk away, “walk on by”. If you do not respond, they are likely to get tired and find other things to spend their energies on.

This write-up would not be complete without a brief mention of what happens in the camp that receives the “decampee”. It is simple. The strategy of attack and damage is reversed:

The new “decampee” is presented as someone who has seen the truth, who has suddenly become aware of the folly and evil in his/her previous ways, one who has seen the sinfulness and greed of former associates and as one who now regrets ever associating with such evil people in such an evil party. The devil, who is a convenient scapegoat, takes a good bashing in this new dance of the converted and the redeemed.

  • The decampee’s conversion narrative is cleverly spun and elevated to achieve about the same dramatic intensity as Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. A blind eye is suddenly developed to everything that the new convert and prized acquisition ever said whilst a member of the opposite side.
  • New spins are put on any comments such a convert may have made on persons, character flaws, fat bank accounts, crimes and indiscretions of members of the group he/she is now joining. Damaging comments on how non-electable some members of the receiving group are get blacked out! An unwritten rule which places an embargo among the “faithful” on ever remembering or writing on these telling social comments, except to excuse them as either slippages or works of the devil immediately comes into effect.
  • A package of rewards and incentives, including mentions and praise, is made available to the new convert to encourage continued membership…and all is rosy and honky-dory until there is a falling out. And then the dogs of war are unleashed and we are back full cycle.

There are some lessons in all of this. And I will summarise these as bullet points

  • Be careful who you associate with on Twitter.
  • Be careful who you dine with
  • If you must dine with the devil, go with a long spoon.
  • You do not have to belong to the “in-crowd” to be relevant.
  • Do not let others be the ones to determine your relevance
  • All that glitters is not gold.
  • Shine your eyes
  • Free your mind
  • Use your mind.

It is good to belong on social media but please do not sell yourself or your soul to belong. You can use social media to grow, to learn, to engage and to share but that same social media can kill your mind and stunt your thinking if you allow yourself to be sucked into unhealthy associations. Engage wisely!

Posted in Uncategorized

New Chefs

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

 

The big pot on the fire

slowly cooks a rot of a plot,

rotters, revellers and rioters,

sing and rejoice, copiously salivating

the glimmering prize in sight, tantalizing

We must not talk or sulk or balk

 

 

The dropping romps of the cooks and crooks

too obvious to even non-looking eyes,

the fevered stirring of this sticky broth

a mish-mash pot-pourri cobbled by a medley

of assorted chefs of drooping and dangling mores,

tired and tiring broth

to be served for our famished jaws

We must not talk or sulk or balk

 

 

Doom beckons coyly in this season of declining bloom

nimble fingers play with our minds chords,

clever tongues sing swans to dull us

the ever hungry lion

spins his wealth on our common loom

glows and swims in an ocean of wealth

whilst all around us

lame lambs drown in pool of poverty

in a season of plenty

We must not talk or sulk or balk

 

 

And all this dance of drunken lizards and

dead beat rats racing almost dazed,

looking for who to bait and bite.

We must not talk or sulk or balk

We must like Isaiah go the slaughter

with laughter, “shuffering & Shmiling”

but with no salvation in sight

Posted in Poetry

Achilles unchained

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

 

Achilles rode headlong into

headlong battle,

riding in a cranky chariot of straw and smoke

vision dim and dimming,

still he charged into the fray,

in loosening losing circles

against imagined enemies

 

And in the ever widening void of his mind

he battled them all,

he disgraced them all,

he speared them all

with his blunt sword

soaked in the iron oxide

that dripped from him,

he spared none

He staked all,

the impostors, the stateless,  stake-less stakeholders,

pretenders, false claimants, heritage grabbers,

ingrates and gate crashers,

the uncultured, the crude,

their women, his “claimed wenches”

 

Their battered remains,

he drags in rags round his city walls

a conjecture and structure,

spawns of a fertile but fetid imagination,

where truth is tried, tied down, tortured

and twisted tall tales are told and sold

 

The blue sheen of the filling up moon,

Blending with a seething red and

a sickening dull green,

swirling and swelling within him

fill his mind, dulling and lulling his thoughts

 

The battle words he froths now,

the battle incantations he speaks

are all whisperings from what he hears

the moon speak to his dangling mind

the enemies he sees outside are from within him

sad but gleeful denizens of the forest and bush

he carries in his darkening soul, demons –

a thousand and one of them

who prey on, void in and void his mind

and put his own heel in his mouth

Posted in Prose

Femi Fani-Kayode as the servant of truth

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

I read Femi Fani-Kayode’s article and I am responding to the claims in the excerpts below. (I prefer to leave responses to other sections in his very revealing write up to persons with about the same skill sets and mindsets as he has).

“The igbo had little to do with the extraordinary development of Lagos between 1880 right up until today. That is a fact. Other than Ajegunle, Computer Town, Alaba and buying up numerous market stalls in Isale Eko where is their input”?

“for Chinua Achebe records in his book, and we can roughly confirm that there were not more than a few thousand Igbos in Lagos before the civil war”.

The excerpts are amazing and reveal a lot. One thing they reveal for sure is how much economics and history Mr Femi Fani Kayode actually knows. For one thing, he appears to ignore the fact that contributions to economic development can take several forms – hard and soft. Some soft contributions, in the form ideas and the projection of certain work ethics can and do catalyze development even more than the building of infrastructure. Secondly he does not recognize the facts of multiplier effects. Thirdly the claim that there were not more than a few thousand Igbos in Lagos before the war would be more meaningful if the reader was informed of the population of Lagos and the distribution according to ethnic groups during the same period. Were the other ethnic units in their millions in a geographical space where the total population was in its thousands? (The total population of Lagos was 272, 200 in 1952 and 665,000 in 1963 according to the Federal Office of Statistics). Fourthly, concerning the ethnic supremacist claim that one ethnic group’s efforts were largely responsible for what Lagos is today, were the industries in Lagos established in the industrial estates in Apapa, Mushin and Ikeja the work of one ethnic group alone? What of the Federal Government infrastructure that helped facilitate growth and development in Lagos – The Port, the Airport and the Railway – were these the work of one ethnic group alone? Fifthly and coming to the present, there are quite a number of institutions with Headquarters in Lagos which are either fully owned by persons from the South East or which have strong South East ownership. These include quite a number of successful high street banks and financial institutions. One can easily list a number of insurance, oil marketing and several South East owned SMEs companies operating in Lagos and making invaluable contributions to the development of Lagos State. These institutions pay taxes, provide employment and their presence creates secondary employment and a number of other ripple effects with net positive development impacts on Lagos State. Mr Femi Fani Kayode either failed to take such contributions into consideration when making his dismissive and sweeping statement or he was simply not aware of them.

I could go on and on citing such non-indigent contributions to the development of their host states inspired by the need to present commentators on public issues with information which could help them to push back the frontiers of bias and inaccuracies. Inaccuracies (half-truths and untruths) and bias in articles arise from a number of sources – one of these is the tendency to want to rush to be the first to publish, a tendency which causes quite a number of persons to leap before they look and to talk before they think. Sometimes too, they result from the fact, that over time,  some people have become impervious to facts and truths and become resistant to the time tested methods of searching for them. There might not be any malice in such people. Such people deserve prayers and compassion, not condemnation.

Incidentally, Mr. Femi Fani Kayode is always at pains to inform his readers and listeners that he is a historian. He tells us so in this article as he also did in his comments on late Chinua’s Achebe’s TWAC.  I am sure he also aspires to be a good historian. Good historians are “slaves”, not just servants, of truth and facts. Good historians are never servants or slaves to emotions. True, there is a role for emotions in life, but in contributions to discussions on important and sensitive matters of national importance, emotions should always be reined in and disciplined by facts and truths. To do otherwise would be to court folly.

Noel

@naitwt

Posted in Uncategorized

How do we evaluate a presidency?

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By 

Noel A Ihebuzor

balance 2

The presidency of Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has been the subject of numerous formative evaluations and appraisals, some formal, some not so formal, some by presidential spokespeople, others by members of the public and others by vocal persons from the thriving Naija blogger community. I suspect that we are going to see an increase in the number of such evaluations in the coming months and years and I share these thoughts to invite reflection and discussion as to what should constitute relevant criteria in evaluating a president. So, here are my thoughts on these criteria to kick the discussions off.

  • Political and Policy leadership – what is the quality of policy under his/her watch?  To what extent has he/she provided steer and direction to policy and strategic policy changes?  To what extent does he/she exercise influence on the other arms of government – the judiciary and the legislature? Does he/she respect the doctrine of separation of powers?  Is leadership achieved through consensus building or through bullying and arm twisting?
  • Policy implementation – to what extent are agreed national policies and development plans implemented? And what has been the impact of the implementation of these on such socio-economic indicators as GDP, U5MR, MMR, Nutrition, Literacy, Poverty and Gender Equity, for instance? How has the nation fared in globally accepted measures of development – say the HDI, for instance? Have there been improvements or deterioration?
  • Related to the above, to what extent have the “hard” (infrastructure) and soft (process and behaviour change) components of development interventions been effectively carried out under his/her watch? Here we could look at the following – energy generation and distribution, water supply and sanitation provision, education and literacy levels, primary health care provisions? Who and which social class have benefitted the most from these? How has the rural space opened up?  How effectively has domestic space for dialogue and information been opened up? How have personal freedoms been respected under his/her watch?
  • Economic and Fiscal policy – Is there a discernible and consistent economic policy in place? How is this applied? Does the fiscal policy in place promote growth? Is it pro-poor? How does the policy impact the domestic economy? How does it impact foreign direct investments (FDI)? How is inflation?
  • Internal stability – how stable is the polity under his/her watch? What measures are being taken to stabilize the polity? How is internal security? What efforts are made to unite the different ethnic and religious groups that make up the polity? How neutral/objective is the president in matters of ethnicity and religion especially as these as affect governance? What is the speed of his response to internal security challenges? What is the default response mode to such challenges? Force deployment? Dialogue? or Graduated escalation?
  • How are governance indicators, especially corruption, accountability and people participation/voice, under his/her watch? How has the nation fared on measures of corruption, say by Transparency International? Has the nation’s ranking changed positively or negatively? Are measures in place to check and limit corruption and ensure accountability? Are these measures applied with consistency?
  • Presidential vision – what type of vision does the president convey? Bold, imaginative, positive and long range? Remember the passage – “my people perish for lack of vision”
  • Gravitas, Character and Integrity – how does he/she fare here? Gravitas is difficult to measure objectivelyJ! For Character and integrity, is he/she honest, dependable, trustworthy, steadfast and reliable, for instance?
  • Effective executive control – To what extent does the president project executive control but not micro-management. Micro-management is a negative. So, here we are looking for that “being in charge” leadership that is yet brave, confident and large enough to allow the president to delegate to and empower his/her ministers.
  • Presidential appointments – to what extent does the president attract persons of high technical/professional competence and probity to his/her administration? To what extent are geographical spread, diversity and gender recognised in these appointments? How fair and equitable are these appointments? Is balance sought in the use of excellence and inclusiveness as drivers in presidential appointments?
  • Problem Solving ability/Crisis management – How are problems solved? How is crisis managed? Are multiple stakeholders recognised and engaged? Are several options and scenarios recognised? How calm, composed, calculated and dispassionate is the response to crisis?
  • Emotional intelligence and social skills – How sensitive and adaptable is he/she? How does he/she reach out to convince, persuade and carry people along? How measured and guarded are his utterances? How motivational are his speeches? Public speaking and presentation skills are important here but the public must be on the guard against demagogy and populism. Leadership involves taking the occasional hard decision and staying with it, in a spirit of tough love! As the Governor of Edo state said during the oil subsidy debate, and I paraphrase, – leadership is not about a beauty contest! Some decisions may make a leader unpopular but they may still be worth taking in the long term strategic interest of the polity.
  • Perception by the other levels of governance – state and LGA. How well does he/she relate to the other levels of government? How well is he/she perceived?
  • External perception and foreign standing – how are the president and the country perceived and respected under his/her watch? In our specific case,  the key external institutions would be countries in our immediate neighbourhood, the ECOWAS, the AU and the UN. How is our standing with these? Are we recognised as a country as possessing a sphere of influence and are we consulted on matters involving countries in that sphere of influence?

These are just my suggestions on possible criteria. There could be others. Certainly, all the criteria do not carry equal weight and I have not presented them in any order. But I think it is important to recognise criteria such as these in any judgment/evaluation of a president. Perhaps more work involving a cross section of stakeholders will be needed to further refine, streamline and validate these criteria, including coming up with agreed indicators and guidelines on how to apply them. It is also important that in our choice of indicators, we focus, not just on indicators of input and output, but also on indicators of process, outcomes and impacts. Finally, relevant baselines and benchmarks would also need to be agreed upon and used to enable us reach more informed judgments even as we apply the refined and finalised criteria.

To conclude, we need a tool that would enable us to come closer to more objective evaluations/appraisals of political post holders. Such a tool would save us from the errors of bias and lead us to greater and demonstrable balance in our judgments. This is especially needed in our judgments and comments on persons holding the highest elected post in the land. The post of president is a heavy one. Evaluations of the performance of holders of that post must be done with some seriousness and not with levity.

Posted in Poetry

Peace and Pieces on a Chessboard

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

ChessSet

On an uneven chessboard, across

boundaries of squares, fading

lines almost erased by coarse rough moves

pawns lurch around in drunken

lounging leaps

 

 

To the beckon and rhythm of the imperious,

rooks regal in a flurry of frenzied

moves, cavort in wobbly diagonal swoops

the dance of hubris revs and raves,

in the dawning madness

sense swims poorly and eventually drowns

 

 

We sit and watch the king’s ungainly ambles

the queen’s sauntering about

all over and everywhere

in kinky dizzying circles and cycles

in spins like a dancer

possessed and guided by the moon

 

 

Voice hoarse with passion, she

chants the moon is mine

that star is yours

but the sun is mine, mine to have and hold

as I please

 

 

And in this maddening clamour

of screams and scrambles like from fevered dreams

all that emerges,

ugly like a noisy fart at prayers

is a fight for portions of a cake

we did not bake

but “reason” now belongs to treason

to the loud and the lewd

 

 

Pawns and persons move,

associations form and un-form,

permanence is fluid

fluidity, permanent

 

 

During this dance of pawns and rooks,

of crooks, new saints,

canonized in their halls of infamy

play new strains of strange chimes of fiefdom

suggestive of floating notes

from tunes of thiefdom

 

 

In these moves and countermoves

the loudest is always right

the cloak of might and night

threatens the light of truth

 

 

Soon the haze of a dawning evening

catches pawns, bishops, king, queen and knights

unawares, night soon blankets them,

while the stars above blink and wink

at the now dispersing crowd,

seduced and befuddled onlookers

still clutching the half full bowls of porridge

for which they sold their soles and souls

and pawned their very voices

 

 

Posted in Poetry

Flowers you test by

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By Noel Ihebuzor

Flowers you test by

sight, smell and feel; concerts by

sounds, sights and ambiance;

Perfume spelt by

by her  smell, pull and

her voice, suggestive.

The test for a group

where creed sags,  hazy, buried

blurred by greed is tough

Passions, power grab

freeze reason, open the path

to nought and rot

the vast plains remain

gridlocked by greed, choked in the

fumes of raucous groups

all greed, grab and no creed

The morning tells the day

the weak wobbly legs of the malu

speak louder than the soothsayer’s beads

telling an amused world whether this malu

will make the trek from Ogwumabiri to Ariara.

**Malu means cow.

***Ogwumabiri and Ariara are market in Owerri and Aba respectively