By Is’haq Modibbo Kawu
LAST week, a few events significantly impacted upon my thoughts about our country. The first was the national response to Bola Tinubu’s 60th birthday; it galvanized tremendous enthusiasm for Tinubu’s political acumen and the role he has played in the nation’s political space, especially since 1999.

For our notoriously fractious political elite, there was genuine envy that amongst them, at least a political tendency was able to give the PDP a bloody nose and in the process, wrest control of an entire region of the country. Everybody therefore lined up to acknowledge Tinubu’s political ability and staying power.

Bola Tinubu’s dogged pursuit of his political agenda, even if one does not necessarily share his platform or philosophy, is certainly an indication of what is possible.

The second event is the picture which made the front page of many newspapers at the weekend. It showed JAMB Registrar, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, displaying “handsets-embedded slippers”, allegedly smuggled into halls where candidates wrote university matriculation examinations last Saturday.

It was revealed that over 1.5million candidates wrote the examinations nationwide, but as has been the pattern in the past five years or so, we have again harvested massive failures in the examinations. We are lurching frighteningly towards a Federal Republic of Failure, as whole generations of students are making a habit of failure, endangering the country’s future! The desperate young people in the ‘handsets-embedded slippers’ scenario merely took a cue from a national trend of fraud,corner cutting and an erosion of the ethos of hard work, reigning in our society today.

Senegal‘s lessons in politics

Theall-round collapse is swamping us all, and ought to concentrate the minds of patriots. Against the backdrop of national problems that we all lament, the Ekiti state Governor, KayodeFayemi was also in Abuja during last week. We discussed various issues of politics in the country and the West African sub-region, with the comprehensive defeat of Senegalese President, MaitreAbdoulaye Wade, in Senegal. Senegal taught lessons in politics that Nigerian politicians must eat humble pie, and learn from.

Most central is that the number of political parties in a country, is not necessarily a handicap in the search for power. Senegal has about 60 political parties, but by pulling effort, Senegal’s political elite built the alliance which stopped Wade’s attempted subversion of the political system.

They consistently worked for the best interest of their country, placing those above parochial interests of various political tendencies. Parties of the left found common interests with those of the centre to ensure the survival of Senegal’s democratic culture.

The 2015 election is firmly at the heart of the Nigerian political process. PDP’s last convention was an elaborate project to position the party for President Jonathan’s 2015 ambitions. The opposition owes the Nigerian people the determination to break from its fractious ways.

The PDP is the greatest threat to democracy in the country as things stand today. But the PDP will continue to ‘win’ elections for as long as the opposition cannot make a strategic break from the old ways of doing things. We agreed with KayodeFayemi, that we need an alternative opposition platform to the PDP. But it will be height of delusion to begin to search for unity or alliances, a few weeks to the 2015 elections! Members of the political opposition will have to reign-in their very  tall egos and sometimes unrealistic personal ambitions, in the interest of a new political project of positing an alternative to the PDP’s hegemony. The hegemony has done more harm than good since 1999.

The groundswell of frustration in Nigeria today, has seeped into the violence consuming a huge swathe of Northern Nigeria.

It is a national problem even if there are some who cynically think it is a problem for Northerners alone. Today’s problems are largely rooted in social injustice, which must be addressed at the level of responsible governance and of politics. The PDP constitutes the major obstacle to finding a solution to basic social problems of underdevelopment and the mind-boggling levels of graft and corruption.

The opportunity has therefore opened for a new set of political actors to pitch for power, if the appropriate political unity can be cobbled out of the disparate opposition forces. This is the historical responsibility that Nigeria’s opposition must carry or it will end up largely irrelevant,boxed into little corners around the country.

There is no hiding place for a bumbling opposition that cannot face its historical responsibility of helping the Nigerian people to overcome the yoke of an absolutely incompetent ruling party and its clueless administration. 2015 is just a few years away and the PDP is not resting on its oars; it is re-invigorating itself, by sucking in political actors outside its fold, to widen the scope of its hegemony. We await the opposition’s response.

Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon: Man of God, adovocate of peaceful co-existence

A FEW weeks ago, I sent a text message to the Anglican Bishop of Kaduna, Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon. It was a message that I had to send! I have admired the priest for long time, for his erudition, especially his knowledge of Islam, and his untiring effort at building inter-faith dialogue in Northern Nigeria.

Until I read the interview he gave to SATURDAY SUN of March 31, 2012, I did not even know, or really bothered, about where he came from! Just like we all took to the writings of then Rev. Father Mathew Hassan Kukah, during the years of military dictatorship,

I have been drawn to the works of Bishop Idowu-Fearon. With the interview, I understood the context within which his consciousness formed and largely explained his work for improved inter-faith relationships in the North. Like me, Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon was a child of the Northern Nigeria of the 1960s, and he grew up in his hometown of Lokoja.

Lokoja was a melting pot of peoples and in the context of the period, children like the young Idowu-Fearon, grew up in a multi-lingua world of Nupe, Ebirra-Koto, Hausa and Yoruba.

Muslims and Christians lived together and often shared the feasting which accompanied various religious festivities. The Northern Nigerian government of the Sardauna was committed to consolidating a Northern Nigerian identity amongst its diverse peoples; and because the basis of governance was selflessness and justice, people bought into the vision. Nigerians from other parts of the country were also part of the mix thatmoulded the priest. As he told his interviewers: “I was brought up to think as a Nigerian.

So, I will say, I have been very fortunate and God brought me up as a Nigerian”. The environment of the sixties were very interesting: “When we were growing up in the 60s, we did not see ourselves as Christians and Muslims; we saw ourselves as one people with different religions and the religion didn’t matter. For example, those of us from Kabba Province, who came to Zaria Military School were four.

We were two Christians and two Muslims, but nobody thought of me being Nupe, Ibrahim Ahmadu being an Igala, Paul Ajiboye being Ogori and Musa Dantsoho being Hausa or Muslim. We saw ourselves as young boys from Kabba Povince, coming to represent our Province…” But things have changed, in these days of identity politics: “Unfortunately, today we think in terms of religion and ethnicity.

And that is why the North is not the North we used to know, just because of what I will term marginalisation…because of our allowing our religion and different tribes to come between us as a people from the North. And that is bringing the lack of development because if there is no unity, if there is no trust, there is no cooperation, there cannot be even development. So, the present North is not the North I grew up in”.

This deeply felt worry informed the consistent work the clergyman continues to do for Northern Nigeria. Idowu-Fearon said “I am not going to comment on the national CAN; it is not my business…Here in the North we must get our [acts] together, as Christians and Muslims, because we have common problems that do not wear any religious façade.

As a Christian from the North, I want to be given an equal opportunity, as my Muslim brother who is also from the North. That is what the non-Muslims are saying; that if we have to build the North together, we have to be given equal opportunity to make our contributions. We had that during the time of the Sardauna”.

Underlining this, is the advocacy for inter-religious understanding: “if there is understanding between Christians and Muslims, an understanding of what each religion teaches, we would be able to see that the differences can be lived with…” Happily, the need for understanding is being taken up all over Northern Nigeria. During January, Kano Muslims went into churches in the city with a proclamation of understanding and brotherhood.

The JNI has been doing a lot of inter-faith work and just last week, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah hosted an inter-faith roundtable in Abuja. These are all part of a growing awareness that when the North is divided within itself, it will continue to fail in the struggle against underdevelopment. Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon is one of the most consistent voices for dialogue, peace and development in Northern Nigeria, and I think his work must be better-known around the country, and should be applauded!