Enough of Thermidorian density!

Over time, the term Thermidor has come to mean the phase in some revolutions when power slips from the hands of the original revolutionary leadership and a radical regime and placed into the hands of a more conservative and repressive regime; sometimes to the point where the political pendulum may swing back towards something resembling a pre-revolutionary state. The term has its root in the epochal eighteenth-century French revolution. A faction of the National Convention (NC) in that turbulent phase of France’s evolution, in July 1794, denounced its leader, Maximilien Robespierre, as “a tyrant”. Robespierre and twenty-one of his close associates, including Louis Antoine de Saint-Just were subsequently arrested, tried and beheaded. But the rigorous demands of revolutionary leadership would prove overwhelming for Robespierre and Saint-Just’s successors; these latter would later be referred to in history as Thermidorians.

In their amateurish grasp of the intricacies of political leadership amid their crisis of confidence, the Thermidorians ill-advisedly excluded most of the principal groups who had joined in the conspiracy to remove Robespierre and Saint-Just from NC leadership. The Thermidorians thus started off on a wrong footing; their subsequent desperation for self-preservation would force them further down that dark alley of exclusion of former allies, thereby denying the Thermidorian leadership the benefits of some of France’s ablest minds. The result was all too predictable. Unprecedented unemployment, run-away inflation, and associated economic hardships coupled with massive disaffections would ignite another round of chaos in the French revolution; thus betraying the citizenry’s high hopes in the revolution and bringing the proverbial wheel to full circle.

That Thermidorian betrayal of the peoples’ aspirations by supposedly revolutionary regimes is documented by subsequent history. Leon Trotsky’s book, “The Revolution betrayed”, would refer to Joseph Stalin in rising to power following the 1917 Russian revolution as a Soviet Thermidor. Back in Africa of the 1960s, political analysts would write about “The amateurish density of the Thermidorians” in commenting on the crass incompetence of the “singlet and khaki boys” who had orchestrated the overthrow and eventually succeeded the architect of the Ghanaian independence, Kwame Nkrumah; just to mention few of such betrayals of the citizenry’s aspirations by self-professed redeemers.  

Fast forward to the 2000s, and by direct inference Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) could be fairly perceived as a party of Thermidorians. Apparently paying scant attention to the practical demands of office, the party had raised the hopes of an anxious Nigerian citizenry by making a political capital of the lackluster performance of then-incumbent Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) federal government; more so in the area of interior security – the then single most important concern in Nigeria. The fact that the APC presidential candidate was a retired army general had been decisive in sweeping PDP out of power, in the certain hope that APC would in its turn sweep away the pervasive insecurity with its ubiquitous fresh brooms. This was the citizenry’s evident least expectation of APC’s three-point agenda: Corruption; Economy; and Security.

Most regrettably, however, that least expectation of the citizenry has in three years of APC’s national leadership, proved to be as impossible as finding icicles in the tropics. Interior security in Nigeria is today at an all time high, with scores of hapless citizens murdered in cold blood across the country on virtually weekly  basis, much to the expressed alarm of the international community. (The bereaved families in the recent massacre in Plateau state are in our prayers) On the economy, conflicting, if unrepresentative economic and financial policies have propelled inflation and unemployment to record high levels; while the unacceptably low exchange-rate value of the national currency, the naira, continues to significantly de-industrialize Nigeria. It is pertinent to point out that published figures on inflation and unemployment on the Nigerian economy merely capture the “effective” and not the “actual” statistics. The actual economic situation is much more damning – this is reflected in the exponential increase in economic crimes, particularly in the previous decade. On corruption, the APC federal government manifest anti-graft approach has been widely adjudged conspicuously biased against the opposition parties, while indicted APC’s members are not investigated, let alone face prosecution. It is also hypocritical that an anti-graft government would blatantly flout Public Procurement procedures in issuing major contracts, as demonstrated in the scandalous purchase of Tucano military aircraft for USD496m without the constitutional input of the National Assembly!   

It is therefore little wonder that the wheel of the citizenry’s palpable state of hopelessness in 2014, particularly in the general area of interior insecurity, has turned full circle in 2018. The recent genocidal attacks in Plateau State should finally bring in the jury: The incumbent federal government CANNOT protect lives and property of the Nigerian citizenry, simpliciter! APC’s unfurling dispersion on the eve of an election year, an empirical proof of the party’s utter failure to deliver on its promises, is likened to PDP’s dispersion on the eve of the 2015 election. Indeed, the ongoing dispersion had been in the offing for awhile, no rational person overtly associates with deception and failure – the emerging dispersion is a classic consequence of Thermidorian density. And, like in 2015, the 2018 dispersion has made the Nigerian electorate’s work relatively easy; but, and this cannot be over emphasized, the electorate must now discharge that work most conscientiously by avoiding, like a plague, a repeat of the 2015 cataclysmically wrong judgment of replacing one set of Thermidorians with another. It goes without saying that Nigeria has had enough of Thermidorian density.

Afam Nkemdiche is an engineering consultant; July, 2018               

THE FALL OF NATIONS

Then the Blast overtook them with justice,

and We made them as rubbish of dead leaves (floating on the stream of Time)! So away with the people who do wrong! (Quran 23: 41).

In the course of a discussion of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, R. Briffault, in his book, The Making of Humanity, made some thought provoking observations, which we will do well to ponder over: A society based on false principles inevitably disintegrates. What really happens is that the phase of society, the order of things in which disregard of right is habitual and accepted, inevitably deteriorates and parishes. However much the individual may temporarily benefit by inequity, the social organisation of which he is a part and the very class which enjoys the fruits of that inequity, suffer inevitable deterioration through its operation. They are unadapted to the facts of their environment. The wages of sin is death by the inevitable operation of natural selections: And for a nation, it’s expiration.

If a nation suffers, it has brought the suffering on itself. It cannot blame it on any outside agency. The Quran has, repeatedly directed our attention to the phenomena of nations that flourished in the past but which went into ruin because of their way of life, the goals they pursued, the values around which their culture was organized, their actions and the consequences of those actions. The Quran tells us to go round the world and see for ourselves "the fate of those who defied God". History has judged them, as it will, in time, judge us:

We have already sent down to you verses making things clear, an illustration from (the story of) people who passed away before you, and an admonition for those who fear (Allah). (Quran 24: 34).

A nation which takes to destructive ways is invariably granted a respite, long or short. It is saved if it retraces its step and turns back to the right path before reaching the point of no return. This is termed ajal in the Quran.

To every People is a term appointed: When their term is reached, not an hour can they cause neither delay, nor (an hour) can they advance (it in anticipation).  (Quran 7: 34), See also (Quran 13: 38).

Success or failures are the eventual consequences of our good or bad conduct. The Quran makes this clear, see Quran 10:44. The Quran says that a nation begins to decline when it pursues wealth and takes to hoard money it should have spent for the general good. The rich, instead of helping the poor and the needy, amass wealth for themselves. The inevitable consequence was that the nation began to deteriorate. See Quran 47:38.

The consequence is clear: If a nation refuses to work for development of its people and for the establishment of Divine Order and pursues the ignoble end of self-aggrandizement, it will be supplanted by another nation carrying more weight in the balance of humanity.

The Quran says that it is the duty of the intellectuals and the leaders of thought, to discover the right path and persuade the people to follow it. When these men do not discharge their duty properly, the nation slides into injustice and tyranny and heads for ruin. The leaders of thought are bound to keep a watchful eye on the nation and to warn when it goes wrong. The leaders are to blame if the nation pursues false values. If a nation begins to decay, the process usually starts at the top. The upper stratum of the society first becomes corrupt and the corruption percolates downwards. It is strange that men of high intelligence should be the first to be corrupted. It is because they cannot resist the temptation to use their intelligence to further their own interests. The above are a glaring testimony of the state of affairs in our country today.

The masses too, are not quite blameless as they allow themselves to be misled by their leaders. As free responsible beings, it is their duty to think for themselves and reign in their leaders when they go wrong. If they fail to do this, they too cannot escape punishment. Resilience under a condition of misrule is tantamount to docility and it’s a crime. Common men, by shirking their duty to think independently, become accomplices in the crimes of their leaders. Had they rebelled, the leaders might have been brought to their senses and checked themselves. Their willing obedience to errant leaders is in itself a crime and they have to expiate it.

The blame for what Nigeria has become therefore, falls on you and me. Our wickedness stinks to the heavens; pulling down everyone and everything to become rich. We import substandard products, fake drugs and expired baby food unfit for human consumption, container loads of dangerous addictive drugs and we have the nerve and temerity to complain about leadership?

We even steal from widows, orphans, and refugees. We take the food of IDPs and sell it for profit. A conscienceless people; nothing is sacred. From the construction of substandard roads and buildings, all for profit at the expense of human life; an invaluable item which all our profit and contract sum cannot buy.

One would think this behaviour is reserved for urchins but it would surprise you that this is the character of many decent looking people who appear to be normal but are not: They are Christians, Muslims, husbands, wives and sadly youths. We pervert justice and enthrone injustice and inequality. Slave traders pale to insignificance in comparison to what we do to ourselves: No surprise, after all, we sold our people to the Whiteman for looking glass and gin. We are wickedness personified. We fast and starve ourselves believing that we are bribing God; we pray and go into trance, speaking in strange language called tonging, hold deliverance services and vigils during which we call upon the ‘holy ghost’, invoking the sacred name of God in vain.

Our problem today is beyond prayer and fasting. We are fast approaching the precipice and about to fall into the great abyss. We have reached the point of no return.

Everything is upside down. Like they say; everything is scatter, scatter and its now ‘rererun’.  Where is the hope for our children and our children’s children; when the father steals and the children display profligacy with reckless abandon; the poor honouring those who robbed the commonwealth instead of stoning them? Where is the hope?

May we not fall into ruin; that is why we have to make a hard choice and pursue change so that we may avoid the path which led others into demise.

The great lesson that the Quran teaches us is that individuals as well as nations are the architects of their own fate. Their destiny lies in their own hands.

Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater than we have strength to bear. Blot out our sins, and grant us forgiveness. Have mercy on us. Thou art our Protector; Help us against those who stand against faith (Quran 2:286)

Barka Juma’at and a happy weekend!

Babatunde Jose
+2348033110822

Post-Helsinki summit Cold War echoes

The presidents of United of States of America, more so from John Fitzgerald Kennedy to Barak Obama, have tended to impact history more for the brilliance of their public remarks than the perspicacity of their policies and actions. And political analysts have variously observed that mastery of the spoken word has more than its conventional significance on the fate of US presidential candidates. But the current holder of that all-powerful office, Donald Trump, promises to be the exception that would prove that rule. President Trump would not, by any standard, pass as a brilliant public speaker, but the proven efficacy of his policies and actions in less than 24 months in office dwarf the full-term achievements of most of his predecessors. In most instances Trump has succeeded with seeming ease in international situations which his predecessors had considered impossible.

For example, in over sixty years since the Korean war, the western world could not tame the military adventurism of North Korea. But Trump somehow not only managed to get the North Koreans to resume communications with their estranged southern brethren, but he also succeeded in making the North Korean leadership see reason in commencing negotiation talks on dismantling its nuclear armament programme. He has also put a measure of effective check on Bashar al-Assad genocidal excesses in Syria’s protracted civil war. Next, Trump looked China (US leading trading competitor) in the face and accused her of cheating through currency manipulations; and consequently imposed tariffs on imports from China. Trump’s immigration proposals have been just as audacious. He proposes to wall-off illegal immigrants from one of his southern neighbours, Mexico; just as he enacted a novel ban on would-be visitors from select terrorists-infected countries. The effects of these actions and policies have been phenomenal; US economic indicators have since headed northwards. But reactionaries are fanning the embers of counterproductive-Nativism against the president; with some members of Congress lobbying for impeachment proceedings on Trump, on the allegation that he colluded with the Russians in meddling with the US 2016 presidential election that brought him to power. That controversy rages on.

President Trump’s just-concluded European official tour was no less unconventionally bold, if controversial. In Brussels, Trump openly railed against fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member-nations for failing to meet the 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) target set for the organization’s annual budget. The US would altogether opt out of its obligations to NATO if other member-nations continued to come short, the US president threatened. The defaulters immediately retorted by labeling him “a disruptor” of international bodies. Trump was acting out a Russian script, the defaulters alleged, since NATO was essentially set up to check the expansionist excesses of the Russian Federation. Trump was dauntless; he would stir up even more stinging controversy in the United Kingdom, even amid growing protests against his visit. When a journalist at his joint news conference with the British prime minister, Theresa May, asked about his views of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin; Trump unequivocally said, “Putin is not my enemy; he is my competitor. I don’t know him that well; he is not my friend either; we could be… But he is not my enemy.” The statement expectedly elicited strong emotional reactions across the western world. How could a US president publically deny that Russia is an adversary of the west? Most of the western world has been asking.

Whilst that question yet buzzed Trump gave a practical effect of sorts to his unexpected remarks in the UK at his Helsinki summit with the Russian president. In a seeming subtle attempt to create a room for Trump to assuage the perceived emotional injuries of his surprise remarks, a US reporter asked his president to elaborate on his relationship with Putin. “We have all been foolish in dealing with each other over the years…a lot of mistakes were made in the past. It is time to correct those mistakes. Putin is not my enemy; he is a competitor…and I say that as a compliment…”, Trump responded in part, reiterating the point he had made just before departing the UK. Conservative America is now loudly calling for Trump’s head in all but words.

This has been the intractable challenge of mankind almost from creation: the inability of the human mind to evolve from a traditional position. Trump didn’t say anything new in Helsinki. He hadn’t minced words throughout his 2015 campaign in commenting about the Russian leader. He even went as far as wistfully stating that he looked forward to being friends with Putin, because according to his reading of history, “the world would be a much better place if the US and Russia got along well”. All true pacifists would agree on this. A conciliatory relationship between the two global superpowers would certainly signal the beginning of a nuclear-arms-free world, a much coveted phase of human evolution. That envisaged conflicts-free phase of human evolution has actually been within grasp since the world unanimously condemned the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council, decades previously. But few world powers, notoriously the US, have had the greatest challenge abiding by the spirit and letter of the non-WMD-proliferation UN Charter. This was the genesis of the destabilizing arms race between the US and Russia – otherwise dubbed the Cold War. The ongoing reductionist outrage against Trump’s Helsinki-summit performance is a confirmation that, indeed, the Cold War still rages in the minds of many in both America and the Russian Federation. My “Buying the same horse twice” article made the point on these pages, and it is pertinent to quote relevant section of the piece in extenso:

“But, as the proxy wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and other places have since demonstrated, Perestroika and Glasnost didn’t stop the cold war. The western and eastern doctrines have since resumed their ego-centric struggle, albeit in a modified form as decreed by dialectics. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s every action points nostalgically to a ‘reformed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ while US President Donald Trump talks just as nostalgically of a ‘great native America’. Let us hope that the two modern leaders will be humble enough to connect the dots leading to the twenty-first century synthesis: a more equitable world order. That depends on if the two can trust each other. Even the lead actors of Perestroika and Glasnost, US president Ronald Reagan and Comrade Mikhail Gorbachev, had expressly recognized this when they agreed to ‘trust but verify’ each other. It was therefore a good pointer to hear presidential candidate, Donald Trump, rhetorically ask his supporters, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if Putin and I get to like (read trust) each other?’”

Indeed, the emerging reality of climate change and rapidly declining global resources enjoins cooperative relationship between all nations, going forward. So, by all means, nations should compete among themselves for excellence; but that excellence should not be for the vainglorious purpose of national aggrandizement and bullying weaker nations as has been the case. Rather, nations should compete to excel in promoting the wellbeing of the human race; for, as all the Holy Writs make clear, all knowledge is for the sole service of mankind to the eternal glory of the Magnificent Creator. This should be the global response to the post-Helsinki summit Cold War echoes from the western world.

Afam Nkemdiche is an engineering consultant

PIB: a bill too many

        

“I believe that if the EIA Act is religiously administered …the PIB would hardly be necessary…”     The Guardian, April, 11, 2016

The general perception that most of our elected officials are painfully wanting in diligence, respecting their constitutional responsibilities may well be the reality, most regrettably so. A section of the leadership of the First Estate of the extant Realm winked me that hint most recently. I was rudely taken aback to read on the electronic media that at a recent one-day Host Communities (HostCom) colloquium, organized by  a so-called OrderPaper Advocacy Initiative group in Abuja, co-chaired by the House of Representatives’(HoP) chairman of Ad-hoc Committee on the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), Alhassan Doguwa, and the Chief Whip of the HoP, a spokesperson of one the communities urged the National Assembly to speedily pass the pending Petroleum Host and Impacted Communities Development Bill (PHICDB) and other related pending bills under the contentious Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB). In the spokesperson’s knowledge, according to the news report, “in order to inspire a sense of shared ownership and prosperity… there was an urgent need to fill the existing lacuna in law which has left host and impacted communities short-changed over the years…”. Having regard to Nigeria’s extant laws, that was a poignantly ignorant statement to make in public, let alone in the presence of ranking lawmakers. And the fact that the lawmakers, there present, blissfully took in the ignorant statement, lock, key and barrel, speaks eloquently of the diligence of our elected officials.

A mere cursory study is all that is required to know that seven years before the birth of the Fourth Republic in 1999, the federal government promulgated an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)decree, which was later legislated into an EIA Act No. 86. Section 2 specifically, and other subsections of the Act, categorically recognize host and all other impacted communities as bona fide stakeholders in project developments. By enacting the EIA Act, the federal government had only followed the lead of the World Bank, which consequent on its commissioned studies on both the long-term socio-economic and environmental consequences of project developments across the globe, concluded that for the purposes of sustainable development, host and other impacted communities are thenceforth to be factored into the total cost of project implementation as stakeholders. Project developments are therefore to be preceded by an EIA report/certification.  

It is crucial to state that the operative phrase in the EIA Act is: sustainable development. Since development projects invariably degrade socio-economics and the environment to varying degrees, the EIA Act demands that project developers plough part of their huge proceeds back into the exploited environment for enduring socio-economic equilibrium. Thusly, the host and other impacted communities own a percentage of the project, ab initio - the particular percentage for any project is expected to be collectively derived through the various stakeholders and project-proponents engagements in the course of preparing the EIA report on the project. During this process the project-proponents are required to fully educate the host and other impacted communities, in the presence of other stakeholders, related government agencies and industry regulators, of the hazards and merits of the proposed project, and the proposed measures to mitigate the identified hazards. Consequently, all the stakeholders are expected to reach a consensus that the net effect of the proposed project would be positive on existing Baseline socio-economic and environmental data; otherwise an EIA certification would not be issued on the proposed project.

The implication of an EIA denial is that a project cannot go forward; but as is common knowledge that has not been the case in Nigeria, where laws are observed more in the breach with impunity; and, in most instances, with the active connivance of regulatory agencies, one is compelled to add. What’s more tragic is to observe that cases abound where EIA certifications are issued without the statutorily required Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between project-promoters and the communities. These rampant major omissions are the principal cause of all the troubles between the International Oil Companies (IOCs) and the Niger Delta communities. Self-same crises-ridden omissions had inspired my April, 11, 2016 article, “Petroleum-assets vandalism and the EIA law”, of which relevant section is worth restating here:

“Furthermore, all the anxiety and clamour for the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) would also not have been necessary, for the simple reason that the PIB, properly interpreted is another version of the EIA Act. Still wondering why industry-operators are complaining of multiple duplications in the PIB? I fully agree with them. The National Assembly should exhaustively study the extant EIA Act prior to passing the PIB. I believe that if the EIA Act is religiously administered with adequately empowered ministries of environment (federal and states), the PIB would hardly be necessary. I have hinted at adequately funded ministries of environment with a keen sense of responsibility, for I’m less-than-comfortable with the current practice where these ministries wholly depend on project-promoters or funds to carry out their supervisory functions.”

Truth is, had successive leaderships of the National Assembly, all the more so the chairman of the 8^th NASS who incidentally chaired the Senate Committee on Environment in the 7^th NASS, diligently digested the 33-page EIA Act document, as amended, Nigeria wouldn’t be wasting huge resources and time discussing some superfluous Petroleum Industry Bill. Whilst we are yet on the subject of diligent execution of legislative functions, it is necessary to wonder aloud about the 10-odd point ultimatum, magisterially issued to the head of the executive arm government few weeks ago. One imagines that the ultimatum excited a lot interest in the citizenry because of the weighty matters it raised. In case our cocooned legislators have not noticed, alarming interior insecurity, extreme poverty – Nigeria was  officially declared the world’s poorest nation only recently, destabilizing youth unemployment, mindless looting of the national treasury, etc are all still on the rise.

Distinguished Legislators, your plate is overflowing with many a pressing issue, not excluding the acquisition of teeth for the legislature, but the PIB is certainly not one of them.  I so submit.         

Afam Nkemdiche is an engineering consultant; July, 2018