We Have Many More David Abwos

Whether Christiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Ahmed Musa or Mikel Obi, all football superstars come from grass root clubs. There are hundreds of thousands of grass root clubs around the world. Many of them, however, remain unheard of as long as they have not been able to produce a star.

Weyi (left) and Kwa (right). Picture source: Yiro Abari

In the mid-seventies, a club by the name of Volcano Babes emerged from the town of Miango in Plateau State, Nigeria. It was named after the volcanic hills that greet one arriving the town. Later, younger members of the club pulled out and formed another club by the name of Forest. The name, Forest, came from the forest just after the volcanic hills. Since the formation of Forest in the 1980s it was unable to produce a star beyond the boundaries of the town until David Solomon Abwo emerged from it in 1999. To become fully known, David went through JC Raiders of Jos, Niger Tornadoes of Minna, and Enyimba of Aba. Currently, he plays for Giresunspor of Turkey. While at Niger Tornadoes he was invited to the Nigerian Under-20 squad. The team went to as far as the runners-up in the FIFA Under-20 football tournament, Holland 2005.

It is the rise of Abwo that called the attention of Forest handlers to the reality that the club, as indistinct as it is, has the capacity to produce a star of Abwo’s caliber. Knowing this, the club started keeping an eye on its players with the hope of producing others like Abwo.  Right now, the coaches at Forest feel that they now have not just a player but two that can rise to the height to which Abwo has risen. John Weyi and Rozhi Kwa are two players the coaches strongly feel have the quality.

“Isn’t it possible that a good player would always find a club?” I asked coach Sunday Witeh, who also mentored Abwo.

“In a place like Nigeria, the prospect may not always there,” Witeh told me.

Witeh went on to tell me that even Abwo needed some kind of bridge to walk to where he now finds himself. This he found in the former member of the Nigerian House of Representatives, Lumumba Dah Adeh. Adeh on becoming a member of the National Assembly founded JC Raiders with the primary aim of helping boys from Miango town where he also hails.  JC Raiders played at a lower rung of the Nigerian Football League but was able to bring Abwo to the noticed of Nigerian football administrators, finding his way to Niger Tornadoes. 

Right now, with JC Raiders defunct, Witeh strongly feels that all that his two boys need is another ladder on which to climb to the sky. At the moment, he says, he is looking up to Abwo himself. He has been trying to reach him but it is just that when one rises to that height there are always a lot of issues in his mind. For now, he is the only hope they have, and pray he would find time to look in their direction, while they also seek help from anywhere they can find.

Buhari and the Sacred Cows

Since the regime of President Muhammadu Buhari took over Aso Rock people have watched keenly the anticorruption fight. There are Nigerians who feel that the fight is biased and targets certain individuals, mostly from the opposition, and the fight is bogus as a result. 

Buhari’s critics feel that somebody like Rotimi Amaechi, the former Governor of Rivers State and Ahmed Bola Tinubu, former Governor of Lagos, are persons deemed to have been highly corrupt during their stints as governors, but whose issues the Buhari administration have chosen not to look into, for the mare fact that they helped his journey to the Presidency.  Generally, former governors who are major agents of corruption in Nigeria, are seen not remain untouched by the administration. 

Buhari did say, during his electoral campaign, that he will draw a line, and will not look into cases of corruption behind that line. Instead he will look only ahead of the line. This is because the filth behind is so overwhelming that taking time to clean all of it would end up consuming his time such that he will have little or no time for the other activities of nation building. But it could be true that President Buhari is been selective and overlooking glaring cases that should attract his attention. However, it said that governance is a process and not an event. This means that Nigerians succeeding Buhari as the President can always look into cases he failed to look into, either by omission of commission. The administration could also investigate the President, if it is deemed that his own administration was equally corrupt.

This column is personally of the view that the fight is a good start. Corruption is not a piece of furniture that one could just pick and toss away, especially in Nigeria where corruption has grown deep tap roots. If we consider corruption to be a hill that has to be pulled down, and someone comes around and takes off 60% of it, then we are making progress. This is because another person would come, and as long as he is committed to getting rid of that hill, he could bring his contribution towards its totally removal.

Nigeria, a Heavy Burden for One Man, II

As said in part one of this write up the Nigerian rot has become deeply entrenched due many years of its being and has become a culture. In order words, illegalities have gone unchecked for so long that they have lost their semblance of illegality. There are so many persons reaping bountifully from the filthy practice and have constituted themselves into cabals to ensure they fight anything that tries to stop them from enjoying what has made them first class citizens over the decades; what has helped them to ensure their children are born in Western hospitals thereby guaranteeing citizenship of those nations for the newborns, what has helped them to raise those kids in those nations so that when they return there is really nothing Nigerians about them. This, to me, is the highest point of treason.

The first visible cabal is the Nigerian Senate. Today, the Senate has proved that whatever is spent so sustain it actually goes down the drain. It has failed in its role of checking the excesses of the Executive. As a matter of fact they go hand-in-hand with the most notorious executive and sabotage the aims of a popular executive.

The cabal (in Nigeria) are people who have defrauded the nation so  much or have so much political power that they have become nations in themselves, deploying such wealth or powers to fight anybody who tries to take what they have acquired or what they wish to acquire. 

The Senate, as everyone knows, has the constitutional responsibility of legislating for the purpose of ensuring the prosperity of the nation. The Buhari administration came at a time when oil revenues (the backbone of the Nigerian economy) are the worst in so many decades. There is the need to embark on austerity measures but the Senators of the Federal Republic insisted on the purchase of 108 official SUV Toyota vehicles at the rate of about N 36 million each. To add insult to injury, this price is actually two times the actual price.

The governors of the 36 states are also among the powers in the country that have chosen to abuse political power against people who stood in the full glare of the sun to vote them. Currently, it is said that 26 of the 36 governors owe unpaid salaries, the least of which is four months. This is despite the bailout given the states by the Buhari administration to settle inherited salary arrears.  Some governors claim the crashing oil revenues are responsible for the accumulation. In the last four years of the Jonathan administration there weren’t enough issues bordering on poor oil revenues as to warrant the accumulation of the salaries. This lends credence to the general truth that this habit of holding back salaries is a tradition of the Nigeria governors which often the result of fraudulently managed reserves. 

While the governors point fingers at dwindling revenues as the cause of their inability to pay salaries, the Governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomole, a former labor leader, on 2016 Workers’ Day, announced a increase of the minimum wage in his state by 39%. This is despite the fact that Edo State is one of the poorest in the Niger Delta. What about wealthier states like Lagos, Kano, Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, Delta, etc? 

States in Nigeria are places where corruption is conceived and bred at an alarming rate. A larger number of the governors come from the All Progressive Party, APC, which is a coalition of political parties that brought Mr. President to power. It is expected that they should have a common ideology and, hence, should be seen replicating the ideology of Mr. President. Sadly, there is hardly any meaningful anticorruption at the state tiers of the government. Could it be that corruption is nonexistent at the states? I don’t think so, and a lot of Nigerians will agree with me. 

It was obvious to politicians with the intention of becoming governors that the bus conveying Mr. President seemed strong, with the promise of taking the presidential aspirant to his political destination, beyond all doubts. They took advantage of the opportunity, despite knowing that their intending for the country and that of the presidential aspirant are divergent. The governors are expected to share the burden of the nation with Mr. President as he alone would not be able to carry it most favorably.

Nigeria, a Heavy Burden for One Man, I

Nigerians love to talk about their nationalist with a deep longing, wishing they were still with us in order that we continue to enjoy the benevolence of their rare traits. Those nationalists inherited a healthy baby-nation in 1960, from the British colonial administration. Six years later issued erupted and there was a civil war. 

The fact that there was a civil war in just six years of independence should tell us that perhaps those leaders were not exactly what we thought they were. Rather than simmer down our despicable issues continued to flourish, reaching a point where the nation is perpetually at war today. At different times, it is either Sharia Killings in Kaduna, tribal and religious conflict in Jos, or war of emancipation in the Niger Delta, or cattle theft and killings of revenge in Benue and Enugu, or voodoo killings in Nassarawa State. Yes, the revolt just gets relayed from one state to another like a baton in a tract event.

These continued problems underscore the character of every Nigerian, stretching back to the so called nationalists. If there was any good in the years directly following independence it was the remnant of colonial legacy. 

One man who saw and played a role in the politics of the years following independence, and who is still alive today, is Alhaji Maitama Sule. In his oratory speeches he constantly and flawlessly eulogizes the impeccable traits of his contemporaries, until he was cornered recently by a BBC journalist who noted that he had seen video footages in which the “saints” of Nigerian politics were said to have been seen carrying smoking guns. At that point the orator was compelled to make an admission in which he agreed that there were streaks of corruption there were, nonetheless, not as fanatical and crazy as what we see today. In the same interview a tape was played of another man who witnessed the politics of the early 1960s narrating how members of the opposition parties were denied agricultural loans, and even killed for their political views and beliefs. 

The most important thing to note about the revelation is that the issues we faced today were actually sown and watered by those pioneers of a politically independent Nigeria.  So, all Nigerians must address one issue: the lowest level of patriotism that is, perhaps, fantastically the greatest in the world. 

But our issue is deeply rooted and as treacherous as a land underlain by booby traps. It became so entrenched because it has been allowed to flourish for over half a century, and as such it has grown to be a culture, a lifestyle, a band wagon that everyone wants to be part of. 

Today, though, we have a rare personality who has the will and fearlessness to face and tackle our problem until there are just signs that it once existed. The patriotism and courage of President Mohammadu Buhari, for long, has been impressed in the consciousness of Nigerians, but it is just that we have pretended to be ignorant of it. It is often said that the taste of a pudding is in the eating. With Boko Haram bitterly marking the climax of our soaring complacency, it is clear that millions of Nigerians have now fully tasted the consequences and are now turning to Buhari while he is still alive.  

Buhari made promises: fighting terrorism, fighting corruption, improving infrastructures, reviving the economy and creating jobs. In the past, series of administrations serially fooled Nigerians, and at the end of the first year when there was nothing to show, people are simply fed with blinding rhetoric’s. Nigerians would aware that the persuasions were rhetorical, but would have no option than to fold their hands while hoodlums and gangsters continue to intensify the rot. In the first one year of Buhari as an elected president, however, there are things to show. All territories from Boko Haram have been retaken, and the refugees, the insurgency has created, are now returning to their homes. 

When the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, boss talked spoke on radio sometimes this month he said the anticorruption war has recovered more loot than the commission has ever recovered since its creation in 2003. Extraordinary men do extraordinary things. 

However, the burden of Nigeria is still too heavy for one man. Luckily, Nigeria is a nation of 170 million men and women and should be able to carry the burden, with unanimity and concentration of efforts.

Review – Genesis –Tope Folarin

For weeks I had visited the website of the Caine Prize for African Writing, hoping to see the publication of the 2016 shortlist. I kept seeing only the new face of the website. Eventually, I became tired and decided to take a break. It was only at that point that the shortlist was published, behind my back. I stayed for days without knowing, until I ran into the notice on Facebook. 

My attention was drawn by the story, Genesis, by Tope Folarin, whose story, Miracle, won the prize in 2013. Should he win again he would become the first writer to have won the prize more than once.

Genesis, a single story with two conflicts and two resolutions, is, thus, a double-edged sword. It is about a Nigerian couple in the United States. The first conflict is played up when the wife became mentally ill, forcing the breakup of the marriage. The result: two homes, with the man left in the first and the wife and their two kids in the second. Since the first child resembled his father he became his mother’s victim of constant violent abuses. Resolution came when, before a judge, the kids chose to stay with their father. 

The first kid, in whose voice the story is narrated, was often accompanied by an old white woman midway as he trekked to school. As they walked she would tell him that she would like him to serve her in the afterlife; she believed that all white people would be served by black people in heaven. This is the second conflict of the story. 

When the boy’s parent learned about the old woman and her notion the boy was made to understand that, in heaven, there is flawless equality for all races. The boy’s mother, while still sane at the time, started walking the boy to school. When old white granny caught up with them she was told of the racial equality of heaven. This point marks the resolution of the second conflict. 

The story writes another story outside the margin of its pages. I find myself using a microscope to locate the African component of Genesis: it is the mere allusion to the Nigerian origin of the couple and the fact that, eventually, the mentally sick wife returned to Nigeria with nothing more heard of her.

 

Folarin perhaps found himself in a tunnel where he could neither see the sky nor light at the end, as he tried to play up the Africa element in his story; he was not only born and raised in the United States, but lives there –I think that it is much easier handling a story that is set in a locality you have known very well.

If writers, like Folarin, born and raised by African parents outside of the continent must write stories with a good African presence then they must have to take occasional visits to the continent. Living and mingling with Africans for just a month can throw up a good number of story ideas, exploring virgin territories with related nuances. 

I wish Genesis and all the other stories the best.