news
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PRESS RELEASE
ON THE STATE OF THE NIGERIAN NATION
SYMPOSIUM |
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newsdiaryonline.com
Tuesday May 26,2009 |
NIGERIA LIBERTY FORUM
3 Birkbeck Street London E2 6JY Tel: +
44 203 0150 739 Mobile: + 44 7951 402
986
Nigeria: P . O . Box 3720 Ikeja, Lagos.
Nigeria.
Website: www.nigerialibertyforum.org.uk
E mail admin@nigerialibertyforum.org.uk
Press Statement
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press,
It is a great pleasure to address you
once again on the activities of the
Nigeria Liberty Forum. The last time we
called you out was for our peaceful
protest against the presence of the
notorious General Olusegun Obasanjo at a
conference on the Congo at the London
School of Economics. At that time, we
had a running battle with the
authorities of the LSE who felt they had
to protect their guest by banning our
peaceful protest against him. Of course,
they failed, as Nigerians, Africans and
other citizens of the world showed up
there in strong numbers to let their
voices be heard. Indeed, it is safe to
say our target heard them loud and
clear, which was all that mattered to
us. We thank you, the press, for making
it possible for the world to hear what
we were saying at the time, which was
that a man of Obasanjo’s antecedents,
notoriety and history has no business
being appointed as the peace envoy of
the United Nations Secretary General,
Ban Ki-moon in the Congo. Our Statement
issued at the time detailed our reasons
and it is on record that General
Obasanjo, or any other person on his
behalf, has not debunked any of these,
because he and those who appointed him
know that we speak the truth.
Today, however, we are calling out
Nigerians for a different kind of event.
On May 29 2009, we are organizing a
Conference to discuss the state of the
Nigerian nation. Having once again ran
the gauntlet of contrived and, we dare
say, politically instigated obstacles
put on our path by, this time, the
authorities of the London Metropolitan
University (instigated by elements from
Nigerian governmental quarters), we are
happy to say the event is still going
ahead at the venue advertised, even as
it has boiled down to us now being
forced to pay for it through our nose.
But let it be known that those whose
stock in trade is the stifling of the
public space will learn that you cannot
muffle voices that need to be heard. We
are therefore ready, able and willing to
carry on the programme as earlier
advertised. We thank you all for your
support.
Now, for those who are keen followers of
our national history, May 29, for good
or ill, has become a significant date in
our national development. It was the
day, ten years ago, that we returned to
democratic rule following yet another
long period of military interregnum.
After a year, in which President
Olusegun Obasanjo had put the democratic
experiment on the path of wanton abuse
on the first anniversary of his
presidency, he imperiously declared that
every May 29 should henceforth be
celebrated as “Democracy Day”. This
dubious proclamation was a desperate
response to Nigerians’ lukewarm attitude
to his government even that early,
principally because by this time, with
the still-comatose economy, the invasion
of Odi, the politically-instigated
communal killings and the surging
corruption sweeping all levels of
government, Nigerians were beginning to
think that the so-called return to
democracy was no different from military
rule. For nearly seven years prior to
that time, Nigerians had increasingly
seen June 12 as the true Democracy Day
as the military juntas of Generals Sani
Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar tried
everything in their arsenal to erase the
date from national consciousness without
success. Even though by this time the
winner of the June 12 presidential
election and the representative of that
democratic mandate, Moshood Abiola had
long been dead in military detention,
Obasanjo felt the ghost of June 12 could
only be effectively buried by replacing
that date with another in national
consciousness. Thus, declaring May 29
Democracy Day was his idea of a
political masterstroke.
Though Nigerians saw through the charade
and appropriately protested at the time,
but most people knew that the taste of
the pudding was always going to be in
the eating. In other words, Nigerians
were aware that a mere proclamation
would not do the magic. They believed,
as they still believe now, that May 29
can only be properly celebrated as
Democracy Day if the dividends of
democracy accrue to the people. It is a
sad commentary on our journey so far
that today, a decade after, the
overwhelming feeling in Nigeria and
beyond is that of failure of the
political class to deliver on the
promise of May 29, 1999. Thus, Ladies
and Gentlemen, we are not exactly going
to be celebrating Democracy Day on May
29; but rather, we are going to use the
opportunity of the day to once again
remind the failed Nigerian establishment
and the world exactly why we are where
we are and what needs to be done by all
to achieve our dream of true democracy
in Nigeria. There can be no better time
for this considering what is going on
right now in our country.
Today, fellow Nigerians are being shot,
bombed, strafed and killed in cold blood
in the Niger-Delta by the Nigerian Armed
Forces in the name of pursuing oil
“militants”. In one state, the governor
expelled fellow citizens from their
homes for no other reason than a claim
that they are not ethnically indigenous
to the area they’re domiciled.
Corruption has conquered the nation to
the extent that no one can convincingly
say that graft is not the operative
principle of state policy at all levels
of government. We have just witnessed
another disgrace of an election, with
the attendant loss of lives and property
in Ekiti State. Yet, it was not too long
ago that our own Professor Wonder,
Maurice Iwu boasted that Americans
should be taking lessons from us in
conducting elections. Yet, given a space
just about the size of the second
smallest state in the United States,
Delaware and with a population far
lesser than Chicago city, students of
credible elections worldwide are left
tongue-tied by Iwu’s Armageddonian
product. Nigerians are filled with
trepidation helplessly waiting for what
will be another of his bloody experiment
in Anambra State next year.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we can go on and
on reeling out a list of what is wrong
today with our country, but that is
partly what the forthcoming Conference
is about and that is why it has as its
theme, “The State of the Nation”. We
know it is a cliché to say the state of
the Nigerian nation is precarious; but
saying so today has more resonance to
it, because it does look increasingly
likely that we are moving sharply to
some kind of denouement, for good or
ill. The negative political winds sowed
by successive military and today’s
supposedly democratic governments are
now sprouting their whirlwinds in all
sectors and more crucially, as a social,
political and economic construct the
centre definitely can no longer hold.
Sadly, at the helms of affairs in Abuja
is a man whose health and lack of vision
stunt development and conflagrate the
embers of a nation already charred
beyond recognition when General Obasanjo
dubiously imposed him on the nation. Of
course, the Nigerian Supreme Court has
since given him a legal leg to stand on,
but his legitimacy remains extremely
doubtful and his slothfulness helps no
one, irrespective of whether or not he
has good intentions.
Really, the tragedy that is Nigeria is
written on the faces of the common man
and carried forth in their voices
wherever they are, be it at home or
abroad. We in Diaspora have never
relented in contributing our ideas and
resources to the national cause, but
like those at home, we’ve always been
beaten back by an establishment that is
unyielding in its commitment to national
disgrace. A nation of bright, dynamic
and hardworking people has been reduced
to a laughing stock around the world.
But we cannot give up! We must continue
the mission of reaching our people with
the right ideas! We must believe the
time will come when we shall actualize
our massive potentials as a nation! We
have to keep on voicing our concerns and
acting on them as much as we can, for
our sake and the sake of our children,
born and unborn! Yes, we must speak up,
because the counterfeit coin of silence
isn’t good enough to buy us the
necessary peace of mind!
To this end, the Nigeria Liberty Forum
has lined up an impressive speakers’
list of some of the most respected
Nigerians for this Conference. They
include Professor Wole Soyinka, Mr Nuhu
Ribadu, Mr Femi Falana, Dr Okey Ndibe,
Mr Omoyele Sowore and Sister Affiong L.
Affiong. Jean Lambert, a Member of the
European Parliament representing the
London area shall also join the talk.
Professor Sola Adeyeye, a former member
of the Nigerian House of Representatives
and Mr Kennedy Emetulu of the Nigeria
Liberty Forum shall be the Moderators
for the day. Mr Kayode Ogundamisi shall
deliver an address on behalf of the
organizers.
As you all know, the name Professor Wole
Soyinka loudly rings a bell. In October
1986, he made history as the first
African to be awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature. Though, it was a
well-deserved honour for his work as a
thinker and writer, his political
activism is no less compelling. Indeed,
his thought and activism have always
been two sides of the same coin.
Soyinka’s intellectual precociousness
opened our country’s eyes to a new
political dawn on October 1, 1960 when A
Dance of the Forests premiered as the
official play for the Independence Day
celebrations. But the play itself is not
a celebration. It is a strong warning, a
prophetic disrobing of our political
Olympians, whose pettiness, greed and
cowardice have all rubbed off on the
people leading to almost half a century
of anomy. Nearly seven years later,
while the giants of the intellectual and
political class took their oaths of
costly silence as Nigeria stumbled into
a Civil War, only one man outside
government stood there, risking his
life, to once again tell his countrymen
and women that it was a senseless war.
For his troubles, he was shackled and
packaged off to jail by the General
Yakubu Gowon military junta and left
there in the years the hostilities raged
on, only to be released two months
before the official end of the war.
Soyinka has walked the Evil Forest of
Nigerian politics, confronting all its
human demons eyeball to eyeball,
challenging them to do their karmic
worst as he speaks scorching truth to
power. It is true to character that his
scrapes with death during the General
Sani Abacha era and his principled
opposition to the Obasanjo civilian
regime have also produced some of the
most seminal moments in opposition to
bad governance in Nigeria.
For some years now, especially since
after the assassination of Bola Ige, the
former Attorney-General and Minister of
Justice under Obasanjo, Soyinka has
become preoccupied with the task of
unmasking the cult of death within the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In his
characteristic boldness, he declared
that the party harbours within it “a
nest of killers” or “rogue cells”
masterminding the numerous
assassinations that perforated the
regime of General Obasanjo. The fact
that up till this day, the police and
the justice administration system have
solved none of these murders rankles
greatly with all patriots.
Characteristically, Soyinka isn’t giving
up. Indeed, such a puzzle may find its
way into his art, because it is a
phenomenon that challenges our humanity
and what seems like our collective
helplessness and these in themselves
stir the calmness of his intellectual
waters. Convinced that the writer or
political artist can be a man of action,
if and when his special circumstances
call for it, Soyinka did not hide behind
his art when the need arose. In endless,
set-piece actions of national
importance, Soyinka has interacted on a
personal level with nearly if not all
the movers and shakers of the Nigerian
nation since the grant of flag
Independence and has remained ever so
effervescent in pursuit of the Nigerian
project. So, if anyone can talk Nigeria,
Soyinka can. If anyone can inspire us
all to heal Nigeria, he can.
Nuhu Ribadu may not be everybody’s cup
of tea, but there are things even his
staunchest critics cannot deny. From the
moment he came to national prominence as
the Chairman of the then newly created
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
(EFCC) in 2003, he showed an uncommon
zeal in the job of taking on corruption.
Between then and when he was
unceremoniously removed in 2007, he
never relented in his mission to bring
to book as many nation-looters as he
could lay his hands on. No doubt, there
were some cases of over-zealousness,
high-handedness, selectiveness and even
abuse of the rule of law and there are
those who would say he was no more than
an instrument of political vendetta for
Obasanjo and his cohorts. They may be
partly right, based on some evidence we
cannot deny; but when all is said and
done, no one outside the highest echelon
of government has endeared
himself/herself to the hearts of
Nigerians as an anti-corruption fighter
than Nuhu Ribadu. Now, it is not because
Nigerians do not recognise his
fallibility in the high politics that
frustrated and to a great extent
distorted the fight against corruption
at the very top, they do. Nonetheless,
what mostly impressed them was that for
the first time, they witnessed someone
who set out and succeeded to a great
degree to fight the then prevalent crime
notoriously known as “419”, which had
the nation and its reputation on
tenterhooks. That alone was able to
remove Nigeria from the blacklist of the
Financial Action Task Force on Money
Laundering (FATF) and restore the nation
to a degree of credibility.
But no matter the divide you belong to
in the Ribadu debate, the way he was
unceremoniously removed from office and
his travails today with the police
authorities in court in Nigeria tells
the story of an establishment man who is
being sacrificed because he has values
and standards he just would not lower.
For some of us, Ribadu is today far more
important and far more useful than when
he was in government. Then, he was a
political tool whose zeal and
credibility were used to achieve some
not-so-wholesome ends by his political
superiors. But today, he’s at Oxford
learning and still working on
anti-corruption efforts. That is the
mark of a man who is ready to correct
the mistakes he made in the past if he
has the opportunity in any capacity
again in the future. Ribadu must not be
discarded. He must find a home amongst
progressive Nigerians, because he’s
still got more to offer and, of course,
more to learn.
If a vote were to be taken amongst the
Nigerian political establishment at the
highest levels on how to classify Mr
Femi Falana, an overwhelming majority
will declare him a troublemaker. Now, it
is not that the man has picked up an
AK47 or a Colt and gone after them;
rather, in the tradition so championed
by the indomitable Gani Fawehinmi (a
friend and a mentor), Falana, who is
also a prominent politician, has used
the instrumentality of the law in a
society so enslaved by lawlessness at
all levels to successfully challenge, on
numerous occasions, the excesses of the
state. In the effort of the latter
through corrupt and failed leadership to
run roughshod over ordinary citizens,
more often than not, they have had to
contend with Mr Falana. And for this, he
had been clamped in jail several times
by regimes that have no patience for his
courage, steadfastness and relentless
pursuit of justice for the ordinary
citizen.
Mr Falana, who is the recipient of the
International Bar Association Human
Rights Institute’s 2008 Bernard Simons
Memorial Award for the Advancement of
Human Rights is also the President of
the West African Bar Association. His
activism within the labour movement,
including several pro bono
representations for groups and members
of civil society, has made him a highly
visible leader in the Nigerian and
African human rights community. Falana
was originally sounded out to be a
member of the Justice Muhammadu Uwais-led
Electoral Reforms Committee, but he
turned down the chance on the basis that
they couldn’t give him a guarantee that
the government will not tamper with the
Committee’s Report. Today, with the
barefaced butchering of the Report by
the National Council of State and the
Federal Executive Council, the man has
been proved right! It is now patently
clear that Nigerians cannot
realistically look forward to a free and
fair elections come 2011 based on what
the government is peddling now as
“reforms”. Falana believes that free and
fair elections and protection of and
respect for human rights are strong
indices of a working democracy and as
far as these continue to be absent in
Nigeria, we can trust that he would
continue to lend his considerable
professional and personal weight to the
continued fight to entrench them.
Dr Okey Ndibe can best be described as
the man who ably synthesizes the
literary and political values of two of
Nigeria’s greatest writers of
conscience, Professors Chinua Achebe and
Wole Soyinka. Arrows of Rain, his first
novel combines the story-telling ability
of an Achebe and the controlled chaos of
Soyinka’s drama, leaving us with the
hope that he would grow into a master
tragedian like his eminent mentors.
Ndibe has added a journalistic dimension
to his writing; his prolific output
today being in the tradition of the old
pamphleteers. Whether on the Internet or
in his column in the Nigerian Sun
newspaper, this Elijah powerfully and
consistently voices a truth hardly
understood by those within his
profession. His crisp use of language
and freshness of thought at once embrace
and intimidate. When the infamous
Obasanjo’s Man Friday, Andy Uba bought
everything and everyone in sight in his
accursed mission to seize Anambra State
in the 2007 gubernatorial election, one
price he couldn’t pay was Dr Ndibe’s. As
the latter harrumphed relentlessly in
the nooks and dark crannies Uba reached
out to pluck the evasive apple, all
sorts were thrown in his path to keep
him off the scent. But he never relented
until Uba vanished into political thin
air! No doubt, this man’s head is wanted
on a plate, but no sword can slash it,
because like his literary and political
mentors, he’s still got more to say and
do. He is today, a living example that
the glory days of intellective and
convictive journalism aren’t over.
Omoyele Sowore is today associated with
advocacy journalism as one of the
founders of SaharaReporters, the online
citizen-journalism website that has
become the Mecca of pro-good governance
and anti-corruption patriots. From his
days as a students’ union leader at the
University of Lagos through his running
battles with the Abacha dictatorship,
Sowore exhibited a restless spirit that
saw him champion popular pro-democracy
causes that had him clamped in jail
eight times. The body blows did not
knock him out and settlement in the
United States never presented him a
convenient excuse to look the other way.
Today, this uncommon patriot has made
SharaReporters the nemesis of political
criminals whose minds are no longer at
ease at any given day until they check
SaharaReporters to know Sowore and his
crew haven’t yet plastered their latest
crimes on their front-page. Of course,
this is just an expression of Sowore’s
conviction that those in public service
in our country must be held accountable.
Today, even without the Nigerian
government saying so publicly, we know
he is a persona non grata in his home
country for the simple reason that he’s
been able to mobilize ordinary citizens
under the banner of alternative media to
produce a bastion of genuine information
and education on national affairs.
Last, but not the least, we shall also
be hearing from Sister Affiong L.
Affiong, a formidable Pan-Afrikanist,
cultural ambassador and women’s rights
advocate. She is the Secretary General
of the international political advocacy
and women solidarity network, Moyo wa
Taifa and is well-known in the UK Black
community as an astute political
organiser, human rights campaigner,
immigration, employment and
anti-discrimination advocate. She is
best known as the Coordinator of the
Jubilee 2000 Africa Campaign, which was
part of a worldwide rally against
poverty and third world debts. Her
perspective on national development is
essentially continental. She believes
that the national problem of every
African state can be linked directly to
colonialism and the false consciousness
imposed on us by its effects. To her,
positive change will come only if we do
away with the artificial boundaries and
return to our real cultural roots,
because these are the main things needed
to make our society whole again.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press, again
we salute you. We salute your
steadfastness and commitment to help us
spread the word amongst members of our
community at home and abroad and amongst
those with influence to change things
for the better for Nigeria nay Africa.
Of course, we members of the Nigeria
Liberty Forum are not under any
illusions as to what is required to put
Nigeria on the map of good governance
and real development, but we are not
intimidated. We stand with the Nigerian
people in the struggle to wrest our
future from the hands of political
brigands masquerading as democrats. We
may not have set out at dawn, but we can
still reach there, because it’s our
strong belief that it’s never too late
to save the soul of a nation.
Thank you.
Signed:
Kayode Ogundamisi
Zainab Abdullahi
Kennedy Emetulu
(For and on behalf of Nigeria Liberty
Forum)
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