ASUU and Abuja: ‘No agreement today; no agreement tomorrow’ (3)

By Rotimi Fasan
THERE are very practical but undesirable consequences to the terrible situation in our universities.  The wrong people, staff and students, find their way into our universities, the very space in which we expect to train and provide leadership for the country’s quest for scientific and cultural rebirth and development.

What is more, government’s failure to provide necessary infrastructure that aids university education has led to the rise of a new crop of pseudo-academics whose primary vocation is ASUU unionism. They hibernate in the system and function more or less like primary school teachers and only lie in wait for when a strike would be declared before springing into action.

They are neither regular in class nor do they see the need for research of any kind. Some hold the highest degrees possible while others remain stuck on doctoral studies begun many years ago, victims of a skewed system and/or frustrated supervisors that derive wicked pleasure in consigning students into academic limbo. Being so brutalised these pseudo-intellectuals are often brutal to their students and the system.

They lack the clear-sighted apprehension of the challenges facing university education beyond desultory mouthing of empty slogans. Nor do they possess the intellection of ASUU leaders of a bygone era.  Some have assumed cult status in their domains of influence. Their purpose is to cripple academic activities as soon as government makes another strike inevitable. These are the ‘struggle’ entrepreneurs and union warriors who have turned ASUU politics into private meal tickets. They profit from government’s lack of foresight and readiness to live up to its responsibilities by providing necessary and adequate funding for public universities.

The activities of these kinds of clowns could be curtailed if ASUU strikes could come without pay. But who is to enforce such no-work-no-pay rule where the very foundation for the short-changing of the system has been laid right from the very top by irresponsible governments and their officials whose greed and criminal pilfering has ruined everything? Yet, it cannot be denied that the fact that people get paid for job not done encourages them to be lazy and irresponsible and hurt the system they claim ‘the struggle’ is meant to protect.

In the last two months since the ASUU strike commenced, I have been at a South African university of just about 7,000- student population. But the facilities in this 109 years old university, its academic and maintenance culture, trump what you will find in any of the best Nigerian universities.

But in my local university, the ASUU was so enamoured of the ongoing strike that it opposed an academic event, a grant award organised by their own colleagues to honour some of their junior members on doctoral studies. Many of these individuals cannot embark on field trips to complete their studies for lack of funding. Yet an opportunity that came their way was spurned and thwarted by other members who claimed ASUU was on strike.

The same members ensured ASUU had no input in the conduct of the post-UTME exam for prospective students, leaving a purely academic matter in the hands of non-academic staff. I wouldn’t see what was wrong in ASUU allowing its members to conduct this event that would take just about five hours at the most. In no distant time, the same ‘aluta’ warriors would whine about the poor quality of students offered admission.

Like them, we have state officials who get paid for the wrong job or jobs not done at all. This is coming back to the case of our bloated bureaucracy of over 40 ministers in Abuja alone without looking at the states or local governments. Among the ministers are the likes of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala with double designation. There are also the substantive ministers and the (junior?) ministers of state-  all serving the same president!

This bloated bureaucracy is a drain on the economy and makes any call for sacrifice from any sector of the Nigerian public hollow. Surely this can’t be a functional bureaucracy in which everybody earns what they are paid or Nyesom Wike, the Minister of State for Education, wouldn’t be fighting a proxy battle for President Jonathan and his wife in Rivers State, while Nigerian universities are on strike.

He has had no word to utter about the strike nor did we hear of his input all through the various negotiations. What is the justification for such a man remaining in the system? When the universities are shut down for months at a time, we have no right to complain about teachers who cannot read or graduates on national service who can’t fill out registration forms.

To conclude on a personal note: While on research sabbatical at the University of London earlier this year, a student I had known back in Nigeria came to visit. He was studying for his masters in a university in London. More than any need for a leisurely visit, he had very urgent obligations for which he needed assistance. He was having trouble writing an acceptable proposal for his dissertation.

Only a couple of months before, he had submitted his long essay which he couldn’t have done without writing a proposal. While working on his long essay, I had seen him on a number of occasions and whenever I asked he had assured me he was making progress with the essay. You can then imagine the irony of him being stuck writing, not his dissertation, but the proposal, his work plan, to put it in simple terms.

Among other things he told me, his lecturers had wondered how he got his degree given his obvious deficiencies. At the time he came to me, his supervisor had been so frustrated she had totally refused to offer further advice on or read his work until he made personal efforts of his own.

His confession and discomfiture told me he had been sufficiently chastened for me not to remind him of my warnings and questions only a few months before. Yet what he experienced, not necessarily in similar terms or to the same degree, is what even many of us academics face when we travel abroad.

This is the tragedy of university education in Nigeria, that we are neither creating competent manpower nor opportunities for the next generation. President Jonathan, as a former academic, can make his contribution to the reversal of this deplorable situation by acceding to the demands of ASUU and fulfilling the terms of the 2009 agreement between the union and Abuja.

 

Will Jonathan address challenge of legitimacy in Africa? (2)

By John Amoda
GENERAL T. Y. Danjuma’s observation that there is yet to be a government in Nigeria that the people can defend is the thesis addressed in that Presidential Address.

We propose that President Goodluck Jonathan make as his agenda for the present and the future the laying of the foundation on which can be instituted "The Government That Can Be Defended By The People of Nigeria- A Democratic Republican Government".

The following quote from the 1988 address serves an executive summary of the seven and half-page address.

“If we are to truthfully confront the history of our existence as an independent national society, we cannot escape the implications of the fact that under the present conjunction of forces and interests that a planning of alternate futures for Nigeria must begin with an acknowledgement of the place of the Nigerian Military in our political process. This is all the more important because we have presented ourselves to the world and its comity of nations as a Republic.

The preponderance of the Military in our politics therefore brings to the fore its relationship to the Republic. We often forget that the opposite of the Military in any Republic is not the civilians or politicians; that military rule in a republic is not the opposite of civilian rule by politicians. The dominance of the military in a republic implies the collapse and or underdevelopment of republican institutions.

The inter-play of military and civilian forces in this sense describes the collapse or underdevelopment of republicanism in Nigeria.

It is, therefore, not surprising where our political history and discourse have been structured and articulated in terms of military-civilian incumbency of government, that we have been unable to build solidly the foundation of republicanism in Nigeria and to comprehend fully the character of Nigerian government itself.

The result has been an unfortunate, if not tragic dichotomy, of Government versus The People. Government has been severed from its base and exists on presumptions. This is why General Danjuma arrived by a wrong path of reasoning to a correct conclusion.

Yes, General Danjuma is correct when he opines that we may never enjoy democracy in our life time. Yes, he is correct that we are yet to have a civilian government we can defend. He is correct because no civilian government can be defended by the people because civilians, even where elections are not sheer exercise in fraudulent practices, operate an anti-republican government.

He is correct beyond his own calculation. Government so long as it is anti­-republican, whether it is good military government or excellent civilian government cannot be defended by the people. The reasons for this is because Government, as it is instituted, is animated by the spirit of colonial rule and authority! Government as it is instituted in Nigeria is Colonial and not Republican.

This is the true contrast. The contrast of military versus civilians, good military versus bad civilian governments are false contrast with real implications. What was papered over through the euphoria of independence was the takeover of the powers of the colonial government; the state, economy and society as instituted under colonialism were not changed. What changed was the administration and administrators of these structures.

Thus, whether the First Republic civilians had been more or less democratically selected, whether or not they and their successor had been more patriotic than they were judged to be, so long as independence was administered as change of incumbents of a colonial structure of economy and governance, in time the spirit of colonial autocracy would destroy the emerging spirit of republican democracy. Right from the beginning, the structure of the polity was hostile to republicanism in Nigeria.

This is why the civilians have been easy victim of coup d’etats and this is why good civilian government cannot be the antidote to military rule; indeed this is why section 2 of the 1979 Constitution was a piteous and normative affirmation of Nigerian republicanism”.

The agenda of laying the foundation of republican democracy in Nigeria would create a new political progressive constituency-the present so­ called progressives, Awoists, Aminu Kano followership, Labour, ASUU, pro-democracy civil society will be uncomfortable together under any other one umbrella; such an agenda identifies what the military are and what must be changed to transform them into republican democratic Armed Forces of Nigeria.

It provides the new INEC their mission statement and strategic objective. Right now all they have as an aim is to deliver a fair and free election under the present structure of government, economy, society and the state. Stability and security will remain problematic as long as we ignore the fact that since slavery and colonialism all hierarchical arrangements with attached class privileges are intrinsically non-traditional and are therefore products of improvisation of problem-fraught legitimacy.

 

Mummy Patience Jonathan, one wife too many (1)

By Rotimi Fasan
YOU only get to see one even if there are many more living out of public glare in semi-retirement. We are talking here of executive wives, women married to men of means and ways- inflated balloons turned power houses by virtue of straying into the corridors of power either by the imposition of powerful brigands misnamed godfathers or rigged elections.

From the presidency down through the state to the local councils, these crops of women of no consequence whose only claim to glory is on account of their connections to political men manage to flaunt their emptiness in the face of those they consider less fortunate members of society.

[caption id="attachment_313261" align="alignnone" width="412"] *Patience Jonathan[/caption]

By their public posturing, monogamy seems the preferred way of Nigerian leaders, be they soldiers or civilians. But for one or two odd cases who, perhaps for reasons of quiet acceptance of their polygamous status, respectfully kept their many women back in their out-houses, far from the presidential palaces, choosing to run a ‘bachelor’ presidency, all other Nigerian leaders have pretended to be monogamous.

They introduce to the nation and indeed go around with only one woman, even if this is the latest and youngest addition to the ever-expanding harem. Most times this one woman has a larger-than-than-life persona, living the joint splendor and attention of all the other unacknowledged women combined, and this not for reason of any worthy achievement.

Often it is for the very absence of any worthy achievement beyond the tolotolo puffing that comes with the awareness of being close to power that these women stand out. This is the disgusting paradox of an unknown quantity, a puff of wind that proclaims its presence by its very worthlessness.

It is the nature of our executive wives. Just one of such in the house of a political husband is more than enough to enact for the sheer madness of it the bitter rancour of a polygamous household. One such wife is often too many for a man- indeed one like President Goodluck Jonathan whose wife seems to have convinced herself she has better uses for power than her husband.

Patience or Pepe as her friends in the waterside areas of Okrika would most probably call her is obviously thick-skinned. Pity then that she is the wife of the President. The country needs a sensitive, perceptive woman able to take a hint and recognise the limit of spousal misconduct.

Just when you think this woman has been sufficiently chastened by the welter of public criticisms that followed her recent misbehaviour and abuse of state power in Lagos through to Rivers, just when you imagine that the series of editorials, columns and verbal condemnations have served their purpose, there you see the wife of the President out with another faux pas, evidence of her naivety in matters political.

Indeed her case reminds one of the necessity of compulsory orientation for political spouses, men and women whose spouses occupy public office.

It is obvious this doesn’t happen for immediately these public office holders get into office they become all-knowing and are treated as such even if only the day before nobody reckoned with them.

Even in our local communities, new occupants of an office, say a traditional ruler, have period of seclusion before formal ascension, time during which they are oriented to their new office, informed of the expectations of their position, the dos and don’ts.

And this extends to their immediate and extended family. An aside: In the early 1990s an episode played out before me in which the wife of the newly-crowned ruler of my town was chastised openly by a man when her son held her across the shoulders in the affectionate fashion common between today’s youngsters and their parents. Not even the Olori’s (King’s wife) explanation that the young boy (a fact the man obviously knew) was her son would satisfy the man.

For him the traditional taboo that no man openly displays such affection to the wife of the king holds even with family members.  Perhaps the young man could do that in the confines of the palace but not in the full view of the world! We are talking here of modesty. The kind which makes Wole Soyinka asks that President Jonathan’s wife seek first to be a lady before being a ‘First Lady’.

Talking of which, I can’t recall seeing a photograph of the Queen of England openly kiss the Duke of Edinburgh or any member of the royal family for that matter. Have you? If not, then the same principle that held in Ondo probably holds in London!

What business has the President’s wife issuing a press statement through a spokesperson, a hired scribbler suddenly filled with a sense of self-importance, purporting to respond ‘in kind’ to her critics? If one could understand Reuben Abati or even Doyin Okupe responding to the President’s critics or simply explaining a point involving the President, what do we make of the President’s wife issuing similar statements through her so-called office? In what capacity is she speaking? She went on to give what a respondent to this column last week has called ‘her side’ of the story, pertaining to her disagreement with Rotimi Amaechi over demolitions in parts of Rivers State.

What side does she have in this? We are talking of the constitutionality of her position! She can speak and express her disagreement with a state official as a Nigerian citizen, even as an indigene of Rivers State. But she must do that as a private citizen; not corral the apparatus of state power to prosecute a private agenda or simply showing off- blocking roads and impeding traffic, openly holding meetings with persons known to be opposed to the state governor,  where she is not making frivolous statements about the person of the governor.

This issue is not about the rightness or otherwise of Amaechi’s politics, not about his alleged fraternizing with opposition elements or his Governors’ Forum issue with Jonathan or the PDP or rumoured presidential ambition; it is about the mode of engaging him on these matters and who is doing that.

Prior to her husband’s presidency, how many times did Patience Jonathan take on her new-found activist role? Only months ago she was lamenting the fact that her husband had been reduced to reading newspapers in office, as she sarcastically put his sidelining by Turai Yar’Adua and Co in the wake of Yar’Adua’s ill-health. But now she’s grown to challenge a governor in a state he has constitutional right to govern- all because she is the wife of the President. Yeye dey smell!

Jonathan’s privatisation and misuse of power

By Rotimi Fasan
EVIDENTLY President Goodluck Jonathan, as the Yoruba proverb goes, has eating his fill of his food  and is now actively looking for what will deflate his round belly.

In other words, trouble  sleep yanga go wake am. This is another example of weak breed leaders Nigeria routinely throws up; men heedless of the lessons of history and are therefore doomed to repeat it.

[caption id="attachment_402483" align="alignnone" width="412"] President Goodluck Jonathan (centre) inspecting parade during the Nigerian Army Day Celebration in Abuja On Saturday (6/7/13)[/caption]

His ambition to continue in office beyond 2015, a legitimate one if he so pleases, but without prejudice to the right of other people to the same office- Jonathan’s post-2015 ambition has blinded him to the necessity of recognising he does not hold the patent to the presidency.

But he is gradually going for broke, given the unfolding chaos in Rivers State where a minority of five legislators are bent on imposing their will on 27 others in their determination to oust the current speaker, Olelemaba Dan Amachree from office.

Nobody needs to be told that Nigerians would see the barely concealed hands of Jonathan behind the badly plotted drama in spite of his sneaking out to China on the eve of the event as if that was enough to conceal his involvement.

He has learnt from past masters like Obasanjo and Babangida the logic of flashing a good smile at those already marked for the guillotine.

It was only days before these lawmakers’ drama that Jonathan held Amaechi in warm embrace on a visit to Rivers State.

But Nigerians only need to recall his frosty relationship with Chibuike R. Amaechi, the State governor, to connect Jonathan, rightly or wrongly, with last week’s event in that state where police commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu and Nyesom Wike, Minister of State for Education, have with Abuja’s goading been taking on Amaechi.

Jonathan could claim Evans Bipi and his four accomplices are free agents exercising their democratic rights in seeking to oust Amachree but we are not fools as Doyin Okupe foolishly imagines by his disclaimer of Abuja’s involvement.

Jonathan wouldn’t be a Nigerian politician if he acted contrary to his present behaviour. His misuse and privatisation of power is much in character, a peculiar affliction of Nigerian politicians, including many of his present critics across the political spectrum.

Yet for his own sake and those of the likes of Chief Edwin Clark whose pronouncements sometimes imply Jonathan was born Nigerian president, we need to retrace Uncle Joe’s trajectory to Aso Villa.

And I do this by way of a long excerpt from a piece that first appeared here in the tail end of 2009, after President Yar’Adu’s fateful trip to Saudi Arabia. That piece was titled ‘The good in Jonathan’s luck’-

There’s, perhaps, nothing better than the destiny of a man who has thrust upon him what many struggle, kill or get killed, to get. A man like that would be the envy of his mates. Such is the story of Nigeria’s Vice President, Goodluck Jonathan, who in the space of a few years since he became a politician seems to be living to the hilt the full meaning of his first name, Goodluck.

One cannot but emphasise the ‘good’ in VP Jonathan’s name, the truth being that not every luck is good. Some luck can be the very opposite of good, but that’s not the case of Goodluck Jonathan….

But it is a measure of the man’s loyalty or, perhaps, lack of confidence or colour or, indeed, all three that he was virtually railroaded into the substantive position of governor even when it had become clear that Alamieyeseigha had forfeited his claim to the office despite a disgraceful guard of honour mounted for him following his Alcatraz-like escape home. Goodluck Jonathan would have nothing to do with the position of governor of Bayelsa, he continued to prevaricate until it became impossible to pretend he couldn’t be governor in the absence of DSP.

His tenure thereafter did not witness any landmark achievement. As with his present position as Vice President, the only thing remarkable about his time as governor of Bayelsa, aside trying to prove loyal to Alamieyeseigha even in jail, was the complete lack of charisma or remarkable achievement.

But governor Jonathan became and not longer after that the race started for the 2007 presidential election. Several prominent politicians from the aggrieved Niger-Delta showed their interest, including Dr. Peter Odili and ‘fine boy’, Donald Duke. Given their closeness to the ultimate kingmaker then in Nigeria, the man who had the knife and the yam, President Obasanjo, many expected either of the two men, especially Odili, to clinch the prize as PDP presidential candidate.

But the wily farmer had something else up the folds of his agbada. And so it was that he sprung ‘Umooru’, Musa Yar’Adua, lately governor of another laidback state, Katsina, on Nigeria….Yar’Adua had neither indicated interest in the race nor was he one of the frontrunners. But Obasanjo knew best. And to complete the surprise mainly he and, maybe, a few other cultists in the PDP chose Goodluck Jonathan, just a few months before deputy governor of Bayelsa, as his running mate.

The unlikely pair from the PDP, both former school teachers, went on to win the race respectively for Nigerian President and Vice President in 2007. The administration had hardly been inaugurated when signs started showing that another good luck was in the corner for Jonathan, to wit, that he might sooner than later become Nigeria’s president.

The reason was no other than that from even the campaigns, candidate Umar Yar’Adua had, on account of his fragile health, shown remarkable incapacity for the position he was aspiring for. The campaigns had no sooner taken off than he was bundled off to Germany for medical attention. He has since been in and out of hospital several times, the latest being in Saudi Arabia.

With about 18 months left of their first term and the President again in hospital, many Nigerians, including the prominent and not-so-prominent have been calling for his resignation and attention has once more shifted on the man who is constitutionally positioned to take over in the event President Yar’Adua chooses to go take a deserved rest in order to fully take care of his health….the moment he chooses to leave the office on any of the grounds prescribed by the Constitution, the man to take over is his deputy and that happens to be Goodluck Jonathan...Should Jonathan then emerge president, it would be yet one more good in his luck. ‘’

Perhaps Jonathan’s waterloo, not his luck, is upon him. Let him who stands watch it!

 

Madiba: Autumn of the Patriarch

By Rotimi Fasan
THE Eastern Cape Province is the birth place of Nelson Mandela, the 94 years old ailing father of South Africa’s multi-racial society. It is the natal home of the Xhosa and arrival point of the 1820 settlers.

It was in this region, specifically the village of Qunu, that Mandela hails from even though he was born in Mvezo which has of late been in the news on account of the family feud tearing the Mandela clan apart.

[caption id="attachment_150306" align="alignright" width="315"] Nelson Mandela[/caption]

Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Steve Biko, Govan Mbeki, Thabo Mbeki and Chris Hani are among well-known South Africans from the Eastern Cape, the rugged region with its rolling hills and undulating valleys that is sometimes called South Africa’s Frontier Country.

Like the rest of the country, this Province has been gripped by fears of Mandela’s ill-health. Even though he is in far away Pretoria, in the Mediclinic Heart Hospital that has been his home since June 8 following a lingering lung infection, no day passes without reference to Madiba.

If prayers are not being organised for his quick recovery somewhere, a march is going on in some other place in his name. These indeed are anxious days for South Africans. Days before my arrival here it all seemed the worst was about to happen after news filtered to the world that Madiba’s health had taken a sudden turn for the worse.

But it felt good to hear how things improved shortly after. Yet the anxious days are not over.

Even while there is nothing new to report other than the regular tit-bits from ANC officials, including President Zuma that the old man is improving, news of him or about his grand children still fill the front pages of South African newspapers. It’s all about Mandela all the way. Not even Barack Obama’s visit could take the front page from Mandela.

South Africans are beginning to come to terms with Mandela’s mortality, however, reluctantly. Graca Machel, his wife, seems reconciled to this fact when, at a fundraiser for the Mandela Children Hospital Trust, she praised her husband for his selfless service of providing unity to his nation, service she said would not be forgotten no matter the outcome of his stay in hospital.

A Black tour guide, Michael, taking me around the local university I’m staying had turned to me and asked, during a conversation, if I didn’t think it was time the old man was left alone to go and rest.

I thought he was alluding to the report that Mandela was on life support. My reply was that nothing that could be done to keep him alive should be spared for as long as he was not in a vegetative state.

There have been little by way of information to confirm that Mandela is on life support. Not much information is being released on this.

A report last week says he is on a respirator. My impression is that Mandela is still conscious and for as long as this is so, every effort should be expended to keep him alive.

The fears of the world about Mandela are quite understandable. Widely revered and adored, his presence had done a lot to stabilise South Africa and Black-White relations since he left office in 1999.

The ANC has been largely held together by his presence and leaders of this party definitely have a lot to do to keep things together in the post-Mandela years. Mandela is the wise elder that could be consulted for direction when things seem to be going wrong.

His image loomed larger than life and for as long as he was around, even when not actively in politics, South Africans knew they had a father whose name everyone revered. But those days are sadly in short supply for, no matter what, old age has taken its toll on Mandela’s direct input in ANC or South African politics. Indeed, the feud that has torn his immediate family apart points to Mandela’s waning influence in the affairs of those closest to him to say nothing of the rest of the country and the world.

Mandla, Mandela’s grandson and surviving male heir, has been pitched in battle against the rest of the family, especially his aunts and brothers over his decision to move the remains of Mandela’s three children from their burial site in Qunu to Mvezo, Mandela’s birth place.

Mandela himself would want to be buried in Qunu. But Mandla in his own wisdom and, perhaps throwing his weight around as a local chief and surviving male heir, moved the remains of the deceased family members to Mvezo in 2011 well before Mandela became as fragile as he is now.

It all became a serious point of bitter dispute which the presence of Mandela himself could not resolve for it took the courts to order the return and reburial of the remains in Qunu on July 4.

Amid the in-fighting in the Mandela family the country still has cause for some kind of celebration on the side. It was the National Arts Festival season and South Africans had celebrated their arts, crafts and culture in different ways.

For 11 days, from June 27 to July 7, the small town of Grahamstown, traditional host of the annual festival, came alive as South Africans from different parts of the country converged on the town. Rhodes University, the 109 years old university that defines the cultural life of Grahamstown, was venue for many of the festival events.

The National Arts Festival is reputedly the largest such festival in Africa and perhaps the second largest in the world after the Edinburg Festival. There were film shows, theatre productions, art exhibitions and street dances and the usually quiet town was awake 24 hours. But not even this elaborate festival could completely take the mind off the fact that Mandela was in hospital.

A good number of the events during the festival centre round the Mandela years, the fact of his mortality and the way forward in the post-Mandela years.

The sun may be setting on the Mandela epoch but the memory of this great son of Africa, icon of freedom and citizen of the world would forever linger in the minds of present and future generations of Africans and the world.  Your people want you home Madiba; the world loves you.

 

Nigeria, the desperate giant

By Rotimi Fasan
ONE wouldn’t know if the Jonathan administration has made any official pronouncement on the matter but the issue seems serious enough to warrant a response from senior members of the Obama administration.

This was on the planned visit of the American president to Africa, the second since his inauguration as the first American leader of African descent in January 2009.

In his first visit to the Continent Mr. Obama felt Ghana was more central to America’s interest than Nigeria and promptly flew into the waiting arms of our smaller but more respectable neighbour where he was given a once-in-a-lifetime welcome.

The country rose as one to receive their respected visitor even if only for a few hours. Nigeria chafed but kept her grumblings to herself and the rest of the world pretended not to notice the apparent snub. During his earlier visit as senator, Nigeria was not on Mr. Obama’s itinerary.

On his 2009 visit to Egypt during his first visit as president, he made a major policy statement on America’s relations with the Arab and Islamic world and the rest of the world cheered. That visit was a major milestone for the president and America.

On this his second visit, the American president has once more made it clear that his country’s strategic interest is better served elsewhere on the continent. And he did draw up an itinerary that did not include Nigeria even if Senegal, Nigeria’s smaller, French-speaking neighbour in the West African sub-region made the bill. So did Tanzania in the east and South Africa that has been catching a cold from sneezes induced by Mandela’s ill-health.

If one could explain away Obama’s snub on his first two visits, his third is one too many and the thick-skinned bulls of Abuja appear bruised.

But as I said above, I can’t be sure if Abuja has said anything about this officially. But Nigerians and other embarrassed observers are not keeping quiet, perhaps in the hope of reminding Abuja that there is something the matter with the way we view ourselves and how others view us.

Yet the Americans would want us to believe that all is well between their country and ours. The only problem, they claim, is security- or the lack of it. Which is why, they say, Obama would not be shaking hands with Goodluck Jonathan.

In a joint briefing by Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Advisor, Grant Harris, the Senior Director for African Affairs and Gayle Smith, Senior Director for Development and Democracy, the Americans cite Nigeria’s security issue, no doubt caused by extremist groups operating mostly in the North, as responsible for their president’s reluctance to step on Nigerian soil.

But we do not all have to be trained diplomats to know this is a lie or just a nice way to say something ugly. American presidents have demonstrated support for countries faced with difficult security issues but of strategic interest to them by carefully scheduled visits. Details of such visits are often left till the last moment or are simply left unannounced until the visit is over.

But they are nevertheless made. Can Nigeria pose more security challenge to the safety of Obama than Afghanistan or Iraq? But Obama has visited both countries, the former on at least three occasions. George W Bush visited Iraq in the heat of the post Saddam Hussein difficulties. The question is one of strategic interest- how much of this does Nigeria represent to America?

We are not here saying that America must be sure it can, say, exploit our oil for her president to find ours an attractive diplomatic destination. No, the point doesn’t have to be that starkly self-serving.

But even in Africa itself, how much of leadership does Nigeria provide as to command the attention of the world? Which of our leaders possess the kind of charisma or political stature as will direct attention to their words? In what way does this so-called giant of Africa prove it’s a leader to be taken seriously beyond her huge demography?

Is big just for nothing? How well do our leaders respect the democratic options of the people as expressed through the ballot when ‘the power of incumbency’ that ensures a sitting politician is never defeated in an election is as rife as ever? Both Ghana and Senegal only recently had elections in which a popular party and/or incumbent candidate were defeated.

Can this happen in the Nigeria of today where President Jonathan turns the heat on an elected governor on mere suspicion he harbours presidential ambitions? What type of democracy do we hawk where 36 governors cannot elect their own chairperson without secret videos emerging as to how somebody voted or did not vote? Or where the president brazenly shows his hands in the confusion that is rocking his own party?

What are we doing about corruption where thieves who pocketed so-called oil subsidies are best friends with our leading politicians? Would a visit by Obama not be taken by our small-minded politicians, no better than tribal warlords at the best of time- would an American president’s visit not be taken by these mere politicians as endorsement of their corrupt ways?

You can be sure that some fecund-minded politician would turn the photograph of a handshake with Obama into a campaign poster- evidence of America’s support for their candidacy or validation of the amount of ‘dividends of democracy’ they have brought to their communities where they build a public toilet or village borehole and declare public holidays to celebrate their mediocrity.

On the issue of insecurity, how ready or serious is the government to take on the cowards masked as religious activists when many of our politicians are known sponsors or sympathisers of these terrorists? How can Obama feel safe in such company of potential suicide bombers?

That we are chafing under the imagined slight of not being considered fit host of an American president says much about our fatuous claim of being Africa’s giant. We are a middling giant, too desperate for attention we have done too little to deserve. The best of our tantrums could only make us look like a snubbed first wife not the youthful favourite.