Goodbye To These Old Politicians

By Chuks OLUIGBO

Success without successor is equal to failure. This is an incontrovertible truth. I have not been able to ascertain the origin of that saying, but I vividly recall the first time I heard it. It was on Pastor Austin Nnadi’s “Nuggets of Wisdom” on Radio Nigeria Heartland FM, Owerri, Imo State. That first time, it didn’t strike me as something to think about until recently when Nigeria’s Minister of State for Information and Communication, Dr Labran Maku, re-echoed it.

In an address during the 2010 edition of the Annual October Lecture organised by Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) in Abuja, Dr Maku decried the sorry state of affairs in Northern Nigeria, especially the inability of the Northern elders, most of whom he said were trained by the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, to train people to succeed them. In an emotion-laden voice, the Minister of State lamented: “I think that something is awfully wrong if in the last 50 years the North cannot produce younger generation of spokesmen. There is something about leadership, because the first duty of a leader is to train successors. Sardauna trained all of them as leaders, who have they trained to take their place?”

That moment my mind went to an experience in my undergraduate days in the university. In my second year, we had this professor (God rest his soul) whom we held in very high esteem as a compendium of knowledge. He was one of those few lecturers who never came into the lecture room with any piece of paper. He taught all his topics by heart, yet his facts were as accurate as any textbook. Even though a Catholic priest, he taught Islamic history as though he were an Imam, and pronounced Arabic names with calculated precision. His textbook on the history of Islam was among the very best. He also taught the Church history to third year students, and we looked forward to meeting him again then. However, he retired just as we were about to enter third year. He applied to remain in the department on contract basis, but the then Vice Chancellor turned his application down. We were somewhat dismayed, but we consoled ourselves in the hope that there would always be someone to handle the courses he used to teach. How wrong we were.

Few days into the new session, the new man who was to handle some of the courses left behind by the retired professor came to class and told us in a plain language that he could not handle the courses because he was not groomed to do so. Moreover, the professor did not leave any reference materials behind. Some days later, the department informed us that the affected courses had been dropped; we could make up for the shortfall in credit units by borrowing elective courses from other departments. It was then I realised that even though the retired professor was a personal success, he was a public failure because he had failed to plan for succession.

In yonder days, an elder took his beloved son to village council meetings. The son carried his father’s goatskin bag. But that was not the essence; it was part of training so that the son, having stayed through some of the deliberations, would easily step into his father’s shoes whenever the old man joined his ancestors. Today, wise old men die with their wisdom without transferring any or some of it to the younger generation. Not that the younger ones are not ready to learn, but the elders seem to have grown too selfish. They are perhaps afraid that the youths will outshine them. But shouldn’t a good father pray for his son to exceed his achievements?

Especially in Nigeria, old people dominate the scene, believing that they are the only ones who know it, that the younger ones do not have the requisite experience. But how can they gain experience when they are not even given the chance? The common saying around here is that the youths are the leaders of tomorrow. This long-awaited tomorrow, when will it come? And so aged parents alter their age every year in order to remain perpetually in the civil service while their sons and daughters, fresh out of school, roam the streets in search of what to do. Employers keep asking for twenty years cognate experience, but where will fresh graduates gain the experience if every employer insists on twenty years experience?

And when I recall that obnoxious statement made by General Ibrahim Babangida about Nigerian youths, my heart bleeds. In an interview on the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Babangida had said about younger Nigerians: “We have seen signs that they are not capable of leading this country and so we feel we should help them. Maybe they are not given the proper education”. Without meaning to be insolent, I ask, how old was IBB when he became the military president of Nigeria? This proper education he is talking about, whose duty is it to give? And if the youths of Nigeria today do not have the proper education, who is to blame: the older or the younger generation? And so, 17 years after IBB ‘stepped aside’, he wants to step back in, at an official age of 69?

Elsewhere in the world, nations have realised the need to entrust power to vibrant young people who are full of fresh blood needed to brace the challenges of the 21st century. Check out these examples from the developed countries of the world: United States of America’s Barack Obama is 48 years old, David Cameron of the United Kingdom is 43, Dimitri Medvedev of Russia is 45, Stephen Harper of Canada is 51, Julia Gillard of Australia is 49, Nicolas Sarkozy of France is 55, Luis Zapatero of Spain is 49, Jose Socrates of Portugal is 53, while Germany’s Angela Merkel is 56 years old. And the difference these leaders are making in their various countries remains a reference point.

But in Africa, the story is entirely different. Here, the affairs of nations are dominated by septuagenarians and octogenarians who are too fragile to catch up with the fast pace at which the present world is moving. Just take a look: Abdulai Wade of Senegal is 83 years old, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is 82, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is 86, Hifikepunye Pohamba of Namibia is 74, Rupiah Banda of Zambia is 73, Mwai Kibaki of Kenya is 71, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia is 75, Colonel Gaddafi of Libya is 68, South Africa’s Jacob Zuma is 68, while Bingu Wa Mtalika is 76 years old. The only exception, perhaps, is Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan who is still in his 50s. How then can Africa catch up with the rest of the world?

So, I say again, younger Nigerians deserve a better chance. As the 2011 general elections in Nigeria draw closer, we can start by looking at the ages of the men who are coming to rule Nigeria. While not disregarding the wisdom that age and experience bring, there is also need to consider the vibrancy and agility of youth. Nigerians can indeed insist that no one above the age of 60 gets access to the presidency of this country. For God’s sake, let these old tired bones go and rest. Where are the younger generation of Nigerians who are championing noble causes in every field in the present century? Let them be given the opportunity to contribute their quota in the governance of this country before they get too old to make any impact. This is a new Nigeria, and the future that the youths have always looked forward to is now.

Written on October 31, 2010

Is Goodluck Nigeria’s Bad Luck?

by Moses E. Ochonu 

President Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential ambition is built and sustained partly on blackmail. A beleaguered nation, held hostage to a PDP oligarchy that knows only waste and incompetence, is being asked to vote for Jonathan as a price for unity. The implied threat of disunity in the event of Jonathan’s rejection is not very subtle either. It is part of an elaborate script being advanced to make Jonathan seem inevitable and synonymous with Nigeria’s survival.

Blackmail politics kick in when a political cause lacks merit and logic, when a candidate’s record should earn him a dismissal, not a new tenure. Jonathan comes from the oil producing Niger Delta, which admittedly has given much more to the nation than it has gotten out of it. In terms of sheer national sacrifice, I can think of no other region that has given more and lost more in this troubled union of ours. The extraction of wealth from the region is accompanied by enormous and perhaps irreparable environmental damage.

There is a sense, then, unspoken but deeply embedded in the Jonathan presidential project, that his election would compensate the region for its sacrifice and recognize its fiscal centrality to the evolution of the modern Nigerian state. Certain strains of this thinking have even mutated into a sense of entitlement. And this is the danger. It is this strain that carries an undeclared threat meant to emotionally blackmail voters into embracing the candidate of the party that engineered their current misery.

The problem with this argument is that the presidency is too big an office to be parceled out as compensation, and Nigeria is in too dire a state for voters to succumb to the crude politics of mere representation and recognition. Nigeria needs deliverance and reclamation. In this climate of need, blackmail will prove ineffective. Nigerians have been so traumatized by the ruling PDP that they are way beyond being blackmailed by the politics of entitlement and compensation. Compensation, redress, and justice come in many forms. None of these forms has a Jonathan imprimatur on it. And it is reductive to assume that a region’s legitimate aspirations can be cheapened and distilled into the power quest of one man.

But blackmail is only one item in the Jonathan presidential toolbox. Revisionist history is another.  The Jonathan presidential project has been encouraging the act of active forgetting. We are being encouraged to look past, forget, or to develop alternative understandings of events that occurred just a few years ago. No other arena has attracted this conscious project of amnesia than the Jonathan family ethical burden. The ethical troubles of the Jonathan clan, which seemed to have peaked during his governorship days only to resume when he ascended the presidency, have been well documented in oral and written forms. The oral pronouncements of Nuhu Ribadu, former EFCC chairman, constituted an authoritative indictment in their own rights. But written reports and reportage of court proceedings have supplied a thick record of multiple, spectacular ethical escapades.

Two of the alleged ethical transgressions bear recapping. There is the widely reported case in August 2006 when the EFCC seized the sum of N104 Million from one Mrs. Nancy Ebere Nwosu. Nwosu testified on oath that the money belonged to Mrs. Jonathan, then the Bayelsa State first lady, and that she was a mere mule, contracted to launder the loot. The case eventually made its way through the EFCC’s convoluted investigative hoops, ending up in the court of Justice Anwuli Chikere of the Federal High Court Abuja. Then, like all corruption cases involving favored members of the PDP family, the case fizzled out, never to be officially mentioned again. Even the fate of the seized money, which Justice Chikere ordered frozen, is still a mystery.

Another incident came to light before the dust of the first incident settled. The story, widely reported in September 2006 in the local and international media, was of yet another EFCC interception of funds traced to the then Bayelsa first lady. This time, the amount in question was an unheard of $13.5 Million. Like the previous loot, it was destined for laundering in offshore schemes.  Mr. Osita Nwajah, the EFCC spokesman, gleefully announced the seizure. Again, the case disappeared into the the PDP’s labyrinth of impunity.

At this time, the Ribadu-led EFCC proclaimed these incidents triumphantly as landmark victories in the war on corruption. Lately though, Ribadu, for reasons known only to him and his creator, has not only disowned these “achievements” but has taken the politically suicidal step of constructing a new narrative of the Jonathan clan’s innocence. But, swimming against the current of written records of this recent ethical history, many of them widely available online and in court records that can now, thankfully, be obtained through the newly passed freedom of information bill, neither Ribadu nor the clan he seeks to absolve, has been able to rewrite this record of sleaze and ethical infraction. As a result, Jonathan stands indicted in the proverbial court of public opinion, stained not just by the alleged crimes but also by the cover-ups that undercut due judicial processes in the two cases. This is why we are being stealthily hurried away from Jonathan’s ethical past and being urged to discuss the possibilities for a prolonged Jonathan presidency. Nigerians have largely rejected this campaign of forgetting and see seamless connections between Jonathan’s past as a (mis)manager of resources in Bayelsa and the groping cluelessness of his presidency.

The ethical challenge of the Jonathan campaign may prove fatal, as most Nigerians today identify corruption as the preeminent enemy of the Nigerian state and as a catalyst for our current dysfunction and decline. But ethical poverty is part of a larger corpus of deficits that Mr. Jonathan parades. The trouble with Jonathan is that his ethical history serves to reinforce a larger perception: that, like Yar’Adua before him, he does not know what to do with power because he is an unprepared, accidental, and unsure president.

Beyond the ethical baggage, then, is a more serious crisis of incompetence and waste. The Jonathan presidency has been long on spending and short on tangible accomplishments. Promises abound and continue to multiply, but nothing gets done about our chronic infrastructure problems. Like Yar’Adua before him, Jonathan has perfected the art of setting up committees to examine every problem under the sun, but he has had trouble moving from these deliberative preliminaries into actual problem solving. As a result, we have so-called strategic blueprints on power, roads, and other sectors but little else.

The underlying problem appears to be the waste and extravagance that has characterized the Jonathan presidency. It’s a bazaar of spending and cash withdrawals. The external reserve—whatever survived Yar’Adua’s cash raids—has been depleted without giving a thought to its macroeconomic impact. The problem is not so much the depletion of the external reserve as the failure to put the money to work for Nigerians. Since Jonathan took over, roads have stagnated or worsened; power remains epileptic; the health and education sectors groan under the weight of multiple deprivations; and security has gone south, insecurity north. In the midst of this deterioration, stratospheric amounts of money have been appropriated and hastily passed as budgets to feed a ballooning executive and a greedy legislature.

The Jonathan budget regime is a disgrace—heavy on recurrent spending (the lubrication of the political personnel of government) and light on projects consequential to Nigerians’ lives. One vulgar indication of this is the sheer number of aides and assistants that Jonathan and his wife have amassed in their short presidential tenure. A Jonathan foreign trip is now a jamboree of sorts, reinforcing the worst Western media caricature of African political revelry and offensive pageantry.

Instead of getting to work to earn Nigerians’ confidence, Jonathan has occupied himself with the expensive business of retaining his office. Governance has retreated as Jonathan and his camp have made it clear that retaining the presidency and its perks is a higher priority than working for Nigerians. They have worked to buy and coerce support instead of earning it through stellar statecraft.

The Jonathan presidency has all the hallmarks of a failed presidency. Lacking in substance, the only logic that feeds it is that of representation and recognition. But it is an insult to the Niger Delta people that their worthy, costly struggle should be downgraded to a mere presidential representation. How will a Jonathan presidency heal the fundamental wounds of the Delta or solve the tense Niger Delta stalemate?

Many people know that Jonathan is a poor advertisement for the Niger Delta. It would be great if he were a stellar, capable candidate. That would give the country an opportunity to solve both the representation problem and the more substantive challenges of our arrested national development. In Jonathan, however, we would have a token Niger Delta president, incapable and lacking the will to solve the Niger Delta crisis and the national one.

What then is the case for Jonathan in this election? There are Nigerians who will vote for the Jonathan/Sambo ticket on the basis that it represents both a generational break and a break from the tripodal politics of the three big ethnic groups. Some members of minority ethnic groups may set aside their issue-based reservations on Jonathan and see in him the possibility of upending the unwritten but entrenched exclusion of minorities from the electoral politics of the presidency and from the rotational arrangements of the PDP. This type of vote will be a choice based on affinity and identity, a vote for the symbolic possibility that a Jonathan presidency secured in his own right as a candidate will enable minorities to dream of entering political spaces previously closed to them, the most visible of which is the presidency.

As a member of a minority ethnic group myself, I sympathize with this thinking, although I cannot bring myself to put it ahead of my economic interest and of larger national interests. Symbolic political victories are important, but there are minorities who will conclude that this is the wrong time and the wrong election to make a symbolic political statement with their vote. The margin of the minority support for Jonathan may indicate the degree to which this constituency can anchor his victory. This margin will partly turn on the degree to which voters are willing to overlook the PDP’s awful record and vote for Jonathan as an individual.

There is also the seemingly insignificant intangible of Jonathan’s personality. What the president lacks in intellectual curiosity, competence, and charisma, he tends to make up for in a disarming personality marked by humility and simplicity. Jonathan, for all his deficits, has an unassuming personality and is humble almost to a fault. In a culture where humility is a virtue, many Nigerians who have stuck with him  through his gaffes and fumbles have cited their attraction to his simple, humble persona. It would be foolish for watchers of this election to discount this factor as a variable in the chances of Jonathan.

Perhaps Jonathan has cultivated this personality for the proverbial political purpose of stooping to conquer. Perhaps humility comes naturally to him. Either way, it is working for him in some quarters. Jonathan has been able to disarm some important power brokers in unlikely places. He has charmed his way, for instance, to many important circles in the North, drawing surprisingly candid, sincere, and even enthusiastic support from the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emir of Gwandu, the two most important traditional rulers in the Caliphate hierarchy. When Dr. Olusola Saraki, the political Godfather in Kwara State, spoke glowingly about Jonathan’s candidacy recently, he focused solely on Jonathan’s humble mien and accessibility.

Jonathan is clearly a do-no-harm politician. He would not derail the applecart and would not disturb the status quo in Abuja. Under his presidency, every political group will have its way and path to the national patrimony. The tradition of appropriating more money for the perks of elected and unelected government officials than for infrastructure and services will continue. Members of the political elite will thrive as long as they don’t threaten the system. A Jonathan presidency would therefore be the preference of the political elites. They would simply make peace with a candidate that will not curtail their privileges and excesses. They will make this choice even if they disagree with Jonathan politically and think that he is incompetent. The viable alternatives to Jonathan—Buhari and Ribadu—represent, at least in theory, a threat to the interest of members of the multi-ethnic national elite, who are often more afraid of radical change than they are of each other. Will the fear of the alternative coalesce into a pragmatic elite consensus in favor of a “harmless” Jonathan?

Will a humble personality, minority affinity, and pragmatic acceptance by the elite propel Jonathan (back) to the presidency? Will these factors mitigate his intellectual, ethical, and performance deficits? More importantly, and given Nigeria’s precarious condition and the misery of its people, can any candidate win the forthcoming election without a track record of problem solving, without articulating a sound understanding of our national challenges, and without outlining a clear vision for overcoming them?

Anambra Airport: The Politics, The Controversies

When Governor Peter Obi revisited the issue of the long abandoned Anambra Airport Project, hopes were high that succour had come at last. Many years later, the project is yet to take off. It has been nothing but politics, controversies, abandonment of sites, and relocation of sites. 

By Chuks OLUIGBO and Odinaka ANUDU

Anambra is one of the five states that make up the present-day South-Eastern Nigeria. It is home to the commercial cities of Onitsha and Nnewi. Onitsha harbours the famous Onitsha Main Market, the largest market in West Africa, while Nnewi plays host to the Nnewi Motorcycle Spare Parts Market, easily the largest motorcycle spare parts market in Nigeria. Nnewi is also called the Japan (or Taiwan) of Africa.

The idea of siting an airport in the vicinity of Onitsha was first conceived in the late 1970s, shortly after the creation of Anambra State. Anambra then comprised the present-day Anambra, Enugu, and parts of Ebonyi State. The airport as conceived at that time was to be a cargo airport that would mainly serve the transportation and commercial interests of Onitsha and Nnewi.

The idea was popularly welcomed not only by Anambra people but also by the entire people of the South-East for the promises it held and the quantum development it was expected to bring to the area. Feasibility studies were quickly undertaken and the suburban town of Oba in Idemili South Local Government Area of the state was chosen for the project. Thenceforth, the project became known as Oba Airport. Work began in earnest at the Oba site with initial clearing and grading. The extent of work done was such that on two of his visits to Anambra State, the late Pope John Paul II landed at the Oba Airport site.

Unfortunately, over thirty years after the idea was conceived, Anambra people are still waiting in vain for the actualization of the airport project. Part of the reason for this was that shortly after the initial clearing and grading, the project lost its momentum and was abruptly abandoned. The government of the day claimed that work had to be suspended because of paucity of funds. Successive governments did virtually nothing about the project. At a point, rumours made the rounds that transporters in Nnewi and Onitsha, especially ‘luxury bus’ owners, were strongly opposed to the idea of locating an airport in their vicinity because of the apparent fear that the realisation of such a project would affect their land transport business negatively. They envisaged, it was claimed, that many travellers would prefer to catch a flight from Oba to Lagos, Abuja or Kano rather than go through the excruciating pains of travelling many hours on the dilapidated Nigerian roads. In order to see that their fear is mitigated, the rumours said, these ‘luxury bus’ owners bribed successive governments so as to stall the airport project.

Whether these rumours were true or false, we cannot authoritatively say. But for whatever reason, the airport project remained in limbo until April 2007 when Andy Uba, former special assistant on domestic affairs to General Obasanjo, became governor of Anambra State and again revamped the hope for the state’s airport. He subsequently used every opportunity that presented itself to announce to Anambrarians that he would soon mobilize all necessary resources to complete the project. At a point, it was even claimed that he had re-awarded the contract and that some heavy construction machinery were already heading towards Oba for groundbreaking.

Many in the state dismissed Uba’s promises as mere political sloganeering and empty propaganda, arguing that he was merely using the airport project to play on the sentiments of the citizens of Anambra in an attempt to make them accept him as their governor, considering the way he came to power. But before Uba would have the chance to prove whether he meant business or not, he was kicked out of the Anambra Government House by the nation’s Supreme Court, and Mr Peter Obi, the present governor of the state, was sworn in.

On coming to power, Mr Obi, who had said on many occasions that an airport would form part of the proposed mega city being planned by his administration around the Omambala area of the state where there is enough land for development, revisited the Oba Airport project with renewed vigour which raised the hopes of Anambra people. But again, his approach to the issue has further exacerbated the frustrations, controversies, intrigues and politicking that have already trailed the project.

A Harvest Of Controversies

The first and mother of all controversies came when Mr Obi announced that he had carried out an environmental impact assessment of the project at the Oba site, and that the EIA proved that the Oba site was unsuitable for the project. As a result of this new discovery, he said, the Oba site was going to be abandoned, and Umuleri, a place said to have endless amount of land, was to be the new site for the project. Umuleri, also known as Umueri, is a town in Anambra East Local Government Area of the state. It is located within the Anambra Valley and bordered by Anambra River (Omabala River) and Anam in the north, Nteje in the south, Aguleri and Nando in the east, and Nsugbe in the west.

On Tuesday, November 3, 2009, the then Anambra State Commissioner for Information and Culture, Majah Umeh, told journalists in Awka that the Federal Ministry of Aviation had approved the establishment of the airport at Ifite Umuleri, around the operational area of Orient Petroleum Resources Plc, whose operational site, according to Hon. Chief Henry Mgbakogu Jideani, a leader in Ifite-Umuleri and former DG/CEO of Lands and Survey, Anambra State, “was properly, pertinently and relevantly acquired by the Anambra State government during Governor Chris Ngige’s tenure in 2004”.

Justifying the abandonment of the Oba site and the relocation of the project to Umuleri, the then chairman of the 15-man Anambra Airport project committee set up by Mr Peter Obi in June 2008, Engr Ignatius Ewuzie, said at a press briefing that Oba is inadequate for the airport site for reasons of limited land for expansion, erosion menace and PHCN high-tension cable near the Oba site.

According to Engr Ewuzie, the committee looked at Oba, Igbariam and Umuleri sites and knocked off the first two sites as it considered Umuleri the most suitable area which has possibilities for expansion and not prone to erosion. He also claimed that the committee’s decision to site the airport at Umuleri was purely technical and devoid of politics, adding that the committee needed a site that would provide about 5.64 km in length by 3 km wide on a tableland, and that the committee was proposing two parallel runways, cargo building and other ancillary facilities needed in an airport of international standard.

On 30 November, 2009, The Nation, in a news report titled “Controversy rages over N20bn cargo airport in Anambra”, stated thus: “The proposed N20 billion Cargo Airport by Anambra State government, being sited at Umuleri in Anambra East Local Government, is no longer a reality because of the controversy that trailed it.” This report followed the controversial dissolution of the Engr. Ewuzie-led 15-man airport committee. Others in the committee included the Secretary to the State Government, Paul Odenigbo, four commissioners, among others. Some members of the committee, it was said, were accused of using the committee to pursue selfish interest, while some had already given up on the project as a failed one even before the dissolution.

The committee after its inauguration had promised that the clearing of the site would take place by the end of 2008 and it would provide a runway by December 2009. None of these was ever realised. But before the committee was dissolved, it was rumoured that the site had been moved to Nteje in Oyi Local Government Area in place of Umuleri for political reasons.

The Nation report further said that Orient Petroleum Resources Plc asked the government to hands off the project for it to take it up and that some communities around Umuleri, who were not comfortable with the idea of development coming to the war-ravaged community, worked against the establishment of the project there. It was also reported that Bank PHB, Oceanic Bank, Intercontinental Bank, BGL Limited, and Fidelity Bank had bidden for the project before Orient Petroleum entered.

The news of the abandonment of the Oba Airport site did not go down well with the people of Oba, and indeed the entire people of Idemili and Nnewi, who felt that the governor deliberately used the E.I.A. report to deny them a privilege that was long granted to them. Vowing to resist the relocation of the project, the people wondered why the government would abandon a site where a significant infrastructure had been completed. They attributed the move to vendetta politics, saying that Governor Obi simply wanted to punish Oba and Nnewi because he was not getting along well with Dame Virgy Etiaba, his Deputy then, who hails from Nnewi.

Analysts seem to reason along the same line with Oba and Nnewi people. According to them, the government has not told the people the true reasons for moving the site away from Oba. For one, if the E.I.A. report actually exists, then it would be making nonsense of the administration that sited the project there. Does it then mean that feasibility studies were not done on the Oba site before government started investing huge sums into the project? The said high tension cables, were they installed before or after the site was chosen for an airport? Whatever the answer, can’t high tension cables be relocated? If massive buildings are pulled down and whole towns re-settled in order that development projects could go on, why can’t PHCN cables be relocated? The erosion menace, if it really exists, was it there when the Oba site was chosen? Was it not the abandonment of the site over the years that paved way for erosion to wreak havoc? And why will a government that says it is willing to build an airport abandon an already developed site because of erosion instead of looking for means of solving the erosion problem? The foregoing questions, or answers to them, analysts say, reveal that there are other reasons beyond the ones given by the Obi government for abandoning Oba.

Economic Viability Of Oba Airport

As already stated, when the idea of the airport was conceived, Oba was chosen because of its strategic location as a mid-point between Onitsha and Nnewi and the quantum development the project would bring to Anambra State and the entire South-East. Many analysts who have written on the issue amply captured some of these benefits.

One analyst, Acho Orabuchi, in an article titled “Cargo Airport in Anambra: An Economic Panacea”, opined that “An efficient Oba-Onitsha Cargo Airport venture would spur massive economic activities such as the concentration of forwarders, air cargo carriers, truckers, including the support and ancillary services that would in turn have huge multiplier effects. Oba-Onitsha Cargo Airport would attract the location and expansion of shippers, distribution channels, manufacturing and suppliers in and around the airport to take advantage of multi-modal services accruing as result of the airport. The manufacturers and distributors would salivate to locate around the airport because of the ease to transport high-value goods.”

He further stated that airports and related airport activities generate significant employment and income for the cities around the airports. The rise in employment and income of the region would in turn spark enormous economic growth and reduce poverty in the affected areas.

The Oba-Onitsha Cargo Airport, according to Orabuchi, would provide economic competitiveness through increased freight connectivity, efficiency, and easy access to various markets such as Onitsha, Nnewi, Enugu, Asaba, Benin, Orlu, Owerri, Umuahia Aba, Port Harcourt and other markets. The airport would have the potential to attract new businesses thereby providing economic competitive advantage to the State and the region.

Efficiently run Oba-Onitsha Cargo Airport, he further asserted, would not only provide access and facilitate commerce, but also it would generate employment and wealth with its direct, indirect and induced impacts lasting for decades. It would have wider catalytic benefits to the entire Southeast region because of its potential to serve numerous large markets. Also it has the budding to bring capital investment to the affected or surrounding areas as its share of international trade increases.

In his own view, another analyst, Alfred Obiora Uzokwe, stated thus: “Every time I drive past that airport site in Oba, I always imagined how much development the project would bring to the area. A landing strip for commercial cargo means that warehousing and real estate business would thrive in the area. More employment opportunities will also be created for our teeming young population."

These are just few examples. The pertinent question now is: will a cargo airport in Umuleri have the same economic viability as the Oba airport?

Endless Search

In Umuleri, the indigenes of the town seemed not know anything about the airport project, not to talk of knowing where it is to be sited. Those who claimed to know about it pointed in the wrong direction. It took us almost the whole day to locate the site, a mere empty stretch of land with nothing to show that the project is going on. Rev John Paul Mozie, Pastor of Christ the Saviour Church, Umuleri, who spoke with the present writers, explained that the lack of awareness could be attributed to the low level of education of many of the villagers. He also hinted that the project was being carried out by Anambra State government in collaboration with Orient Petroleum Resources Plc. Despite this explanation, the fear is that either the state government is short-changing the villagers or that few learned individuals in the host community are cashing in on the people’s ignorance to short-change them.

The same situation of non-awareness replicated itself in Igbariam, which was to host the airport after it was moved away from Oba. Most of the shop owners and motorcycle operators at Igbariam Junction said they only knew about the Oba Airport. If the airport had been moved away from Oba, or if at any point Igbariam had been considered to host the airport, they never heard. The few who said they knew something about it pointed at the Awkuzu-Igbariam border, while others mentioned Nteje.

In Oba, the original site of the airport, the indigenes were not eager to talk. All attempts to get their reactions to the abandonment of the Oba site and the relocation of the airport to Umuleri proved abortive. The only person who spoke to us was the traditional ruler of Oba, Igwe P. C. Ezenwa, Eze Okpoko I of Oba, who incidentally is the president-general of Oba town union. He was obviously disgusted with the governor’s action, and he did not hide his disgust.

Said Igwe Ezenwa, “The idea of the Oba Airport was mooted long ago. The site was commissioned in the late 1970s and work began at the site, but the work was abandoned in the guise that the government had no money. Then suddenly, Peter Obi said he was abandoning Oba because there was ecological problem, claiming that the money he would spend to remedy the erosion problem at Oba would be enough to build the airport. We have been watching since then. They moved to Igbariam where they encountered even a more serious problem. Even in Umuleri, we hear that the site they chose is water-logged. Nobody knows what is going on again. We are just watching the government.”

The monarch, who earlier said he was no longer interested in the matter, also said he had talked so much about it, written several letters, published many articles, and even embarrassed the government on the issue, all to no avail. His continued comment on it, he said, would make it appear as if he was after some personal interest.

When we visited Orient Petroleum Resources Plc office at Awka, a source there confirmed that the Anambra International Cargo Airport, as the project is now called, is indeed a joint venture project between Orient Petroleum Resources Plc and the Anambra State government. He, however, declined to comment further or give details of the agreement, saying that the state government was in a better position to give details.

Promising that the airport would take off in a short while, he said: “An airport is one of the easiest projects to carry out. Once you’ve done the runway, you can use anywhere within the airport as your control tower; what matters is the equipment you’ve put in place. So, we are on course.”

 We also called on the state Commissioner for Works, Housing and Transport to make further inquiries. The commissioner, who spoke through his personal assistant, said he was not in a position to say anything about the project. “There is a committee in charge of the airport project, and I am not the chairman of that committee. The chairman is Barr Chima Nwafor, the state Commissioner for Commerce and Industry. He is the right person to talk to you,” he said.

We then proceeded to the office of the said Commissioner for Commerce and Industry but gathered that he travelled out of town.

Then Enter Asaba Airport

While successive governments in Anambra played politics with the Anambra airport project, the Delta State government took the lead and came up with the idea of an airport in the state. The proposed airport, a C-category, was to be located just off Asaba-Benin expressway, on a 5,000-hectare site, with a 3km runway and taxiway with provision for expansion and a modern-looking terminal building, a 10-storey control tower equipped to international standards and a construction duration of 24 months. The state governor, Emmanuel Uduaghan, included the project in his 2008 budget. The N6.5 billion project was approved, and the ground breaking ceremony was performed in May 2008. By December of that year, the access road into the airport had already been constructed and the terminal building and runway already at a decent stage. At present, the airport is almost completed and is expected to be operational soon.

With an airport already sited in Asaba, barely one hour from the furthest parts of Anambra State, with an estimated distance of 12 km to Oba, 8 km to Ogbaru, and 18 km to Umuleri, analysts are asking what purpose another airport in Anambra State would serve. The geographical location of the Asaba airport implies that 80 percent of the passengers arriving there would be South-East bound. This means that an airport in Asaba would almost play the same transportation role for Anambra State citizens as the Oba airport would have played. With this development, Delta State is has obviously positioned itself to competently take the advantage of the commercial and industrial cities of Onitsha and Nnewi which Anambra had long neglected.

Varied Reactions

Meanwhile, traders at Onitsha and Nnewi have been reacting to the news of the relocation of the airport to Umuleri, which they said is too inside the hinterland and therefore largely inaccessible to them. Many of the traders who spoke to us said that the relocation of the airport would go down in history as the greatest blunder of the Obi administration, maintaining that the airport at Asaba would serve them far much better than an Anambra Airport in the heart of an evil forest.

“How will I leave Asaba and land in a remote hinterland like Umuleri, which is far removed from the express road, and then from there begin to wriggle my way to Onitsha? Except of course they are not building it for the people,” one respondent said.

Another respondent, Mr Chibuike Ogbuji, said, “If Obi insists on building the airport in Umuleri, then it will be clear to us that the airport is not meant for us. Unless he is building the airport for himself alone. Why did he abandon Oba in the first place?”

For some Anambrarians, however, the location does not make any difference, so long as the state has its own airport. “Our own is our own,” Chief Donatus Ifedi said. “We need our own airport in Anambra, no matter where it is located, so that we can be like others. They should stop playing dirty politics with an important project like an airport.”

           

On his part, Mr Tony Okoro, an Awka-based businessman, said that siting the airport in Umuleri is economically viable as it will bring development to Umuleri and other communities in Anambra East, which are easily the most backward and underdeveloped parts of Anambra State. He also pointed out that it was a great disservice that Anambra State, which has produced great figures in politics, business, ICT, literature, and other fields of endeavour, is yet to have an airport.

Whatever be the case, we are only worried that the Anambra Airport project has taken too long in materialising. How come an airport that was conceived over thirty years ago is yet to see the light of the day when planes are already taking off and landing on ones conceived just few years ago? If the Obi administration is sincere with the project, then it is not showing it. Moreover, the situation on ground seems to lend credence to the speculations of dirty politicking, given the controversies that have so far trailed the project, especially since the Obi administration.

Between Ohakim And Okorocha

By Chuks OLUIGBO

When sometime ago Ikedi Ohakim, the incumbent governor of Imo State, reportedly told Imo people that he was Ikiri, an animal known to hold on to whatever it grabs, even unto death, many laughed it off without much thought. When he said that he was holding power passionately to his heart, they laughed again. And when much later it was alleged that he called himself agu ji egbe, a gun-toting lion, they laughed yet again. Until he began to show that he meant every word of what he said by bulldozing whatever tended to stand between him and power.

Ikedi Ohakim

Citizen Ikenna Samuelson Iwuoha, the self-acclaimed Gani of Imo State, is still nursing his wounds for daring to expose what he called the maladministration, devaluation of leadership, and unreasonableness of the Ohakim government. In an interview with an Owerri-based newspaper, Mr Iwuoha recounted how he had received over 120 strokes of koboko from Governor Ohakim right inside the governor’s office.

Rochas Okorocha

Last year, 2010, Ohakim’s anger against perceived opponents turned fiery. On Saturday, September 25, Owelle Rochas Okorocha was denied access to Grasshoppers International Stadium, Owerri, proposed venue for the celebration of his 48^th birthday, even when he was ready to pay more than the usual rate for the place. The government in power probably thought he was going to use that forum to declare for Imo governorship. Rochas Okorocha shifted his venue to Township Primary School, Wetheral Road, Owerri. Even there, some touts, acting probably on order from Willie Amadi, so-called Special Adviser to the governor on Sanitation and Transport, stormed the place to disrupt activities, but they were promptly arrested by security operatives of Okorocha.        

Two days later, on Monday, September 27, key Igbo leaders, including the highly revered Second Republic Vice President of Nigeria, Dr Alex Ekwueme, former governor of Imo State, Chief Achike Udenwa, former governors of Anambra and Ebonyi, Dr Chris Ngige and Dr Sam Egwu, immediate past governor of the Central Bank, Prof Charles Soludo, former Minister of Education, Mrs Chinwe Obaji, among others, were locked out of Sam Mbakwe Hall of Concorde Hotel, Owerri, which had earlier been booked for the proposed Igbo Summit convened by Chief S. N. Okeke. It was probably suspected that the gathering was anti-Jonathan. For as Dr Ngige said in his speech at the summit, he received a text message on his way to the venue accusing him of attending an anti-Jonathan rally.

In December, the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, was also denied the use of Grasshoppers International Stadium, Owerri, even after the party had paid for the place for their rally. The rally was postponed. Days later, the gates of the stadium were thrown open when it was learnt that the erstwhile governor, Achike Udenwa, now a senatorial candidate of the ACN in Orlu zone, threatened to break down the gates if his party was not allowed to use the facility it paid for. On the day of the ACN rally, perhaps in its bid to see to the failure of the event, the PDP in Imo fixed an emergency congress in the three zones of the state, Orlu, Owerri and Okigwe. Yet people turned out en masse for the ACN rally.

Sometime earlier, the overzealous Willie Amadi had issued an order that only Ikedi Ohakim and Goodluck Jonathan had the right to paste campaign posters in Owerri. Other persons wishing to do the same were to get clearance from Willie Amadi himself before they could paste posters..

Much later, there was a massive vandalism of posters of non-PDP contestants in the state. Most recently too, unknown persons have been circulating a text message in the name of Samuelson Iwuoha reads in full: "Ndi Imo, now that Rochas Okorocha who claims to be a philanthropist and apostle of free education has been exposed. One then begins to wonder and imagine why some students who are beneficiaries of his free education die mysteriously. One also begins to wonder and imagine why nobody in the real sense of it has ever benefited from his so-called philanthropy without encountering problems. It is time to fast and pray for our state. May God save Imo State!"

Up until now, the people behind that obnoxious SMS have not been uncovered, and Samuelson Iwuoha, when the present writer spoke with him on phone, denied ever sending the text. Evidently, this is a case of sheer politics of calumny aimed first at discrediting the man Rochas Okorocha, and secondly, putting Samuelson Iwuoha in the bad books of Okorocha supporters.   

I can understand the desperation of an incumbent governor. Many who have tasted power, with all its allures and intoxication, would probably do everything to hold on to it, at least as long as the constitution allows them. That is, for those who have respect for the constitution.

But sadly, there are others in Imo who are as desperate as the incumbent, or even more so. Martin Agbaso, Ifeanyi Araraume, Achike Udenwa, et al, are all desperate politicians. The multiple litigation instituted against Ohakim and all the schemes aimed at making the state ungovernable for him since 2007, the unholy Redemption/Destiny alliance, the deadly battle for the control of the state PDP, and the eventual crossover to ACN are all acts of desperation, one way or another.

Then came Rochas Okorocha, the one they call a great philanthropist, a man of the people, a devout Catholic, and the Messiah Imo has been waiting for. When he was locked out of Grasshoppers, I was one of those who felt for him. I argued then that it was most unfair. Even if he wanted to use the place for political purposes, what did it matter? Jonathan declared for presidency at the Eagle Square in Abuja. Ibrahim Babangida, his strongest opponent at the time, also used it. Likewise many others who wished to. But later developments have proved to me that Mr Okorocha may not be a saint after all.

In December 2010, Okorocha, alongside his thugs, allegedly beat up the chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, in Imo State for daring to say that the party in the state would never abandon Martin Agbaso, the party’s governorship candidate in 2007. He, Okorocha, earned his party’s suspension for that action. The issue was later resolved within the party and Okorocha got his party’s ticket to run for governorship.

Most recently again, he has exhibited how intolerant of criticism he can be. Early in March 2011, following the Reformed Ogboni Fraternity’s congratulatory message to Rochas Okorocha felicitating with him on the way he was warming himself into the hearts of Imo people, Nigerian Horn, an Owerri-based tabloid, published an article in which they asked whether Okorocha was a member of Ogboni Fraternity. For this reason, Rochas Okorocha was reported to have descended on the paper with a sledgehammer as his men allegedly stormed the newspaper’s office, destroyed equipment belonging to the newspaper, and beat up the editor and other staff of the company.

It is not my aim to discredit anybody here. I am only worried that, given that the two key contenders for the Imo number one seat are desperate men, Imo State may be heading towards a blind alley once again. April is here already. As Imo people prepare to choose the man who will lead them for the next four years, let them not forget that it was this same attitude of let’s have a change at all costs that landed Imo in the mess it found itself in the last four years. There is absolute need to look well so as not to take a dangerous leap in the dark. All that glitters is not necessarily gold. Imolites, your destiny is in your hands.

Awka: Future Hospitality Capital Of South-East Nigeria

By Chuks OLUIGBO

From just a little town renowned only for its smithing activities, Awka has gradually become a name in the hospitality industry in Nigeria, with prospects of taking over the hospitality business in the whole of South-East Nigeria

Awka, the capital of Anambra State, South-East Nigeria, located almost mid-way between the two big cities of Onitsha and Enugu, has over the years grown into a big city, and has now become a name to be reckoned with in the hospitality industry in Nigeria.

Awka’s rise to prominence began in 1991 when the old Anambra State, comprising the present-day Anambra, Enugu, and parts of Ebonyi State, with its capital at Enugu, was split into Anambra and Enugu States. Anambra itself was originally part of the old East Central State, consisting of the five states of what is now known as South-Eastern Nigeria. In 1976, the old East Central State was split into Imo and Anambra States, and both existed side by side until 1991 when the military administration of Ibrahim Babangida created additional states in Nigeria, taking away Enugu from old Anambra.

With this development, Enugu city automatically became the capital of the newly created Enugu State while Awka, until then only renowned for its smithing activities, became the capital of the new Anambra State.

This new status greatly buoyed the emergence of Awka as a city. In less than no time, individuals, businesses, and corporate organisations began to cluster there. With this too, Awka instantly became an ancillary town to the commercial cities of Onitsha, Nnewi, and even Enugu.

Development attracts further development. So it was that with the congregation of individual and corporate businesses, civil servants, as well as financial institutions like banks in Awka, the hospitality industry too began to boom. As all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, workers and other individuals within Awka and its immediate environs, plus numerous other people who had one or two businesses to transact, needed places to relax, or just to pass the night in the case of travellers, and the emerging hospitality industry in Awka was handy to provide these needs.

So, from just a few manageable guest houses in 1991, Awka has increased in leaps and bounds. Today, virtually every corner of the city is dotted with gigantic structures as hotels, guest houses and suites, most of which boast of state-of-the-art facilities like tastefully-furnished rooms, swimming pools and exquisite pool sides, other recreation facilities like lawn tennis pitch, gym and aerobics equipment, amusement park for kids, table tennis and volleyball pitch, among others. Many of them also have nite-clubbing facilities for night crawlers.

Some of these hotels and suites include Tourist Garden Hotels and Suites (located along Awka-Enugu Expressway), Mano Hotel, De Exchequers Hotel, Cosmilla Suites and Hotels, King David Garden and Suites, Queens Hotels, Hyton Hotels, Mercy-En Hotels, De Limit Hotels and Suites, Irish Garden Suites, Golphins Suites and Hotels, Parktonian Hotel, White View Hotel (located at Ifite Road, new Nnamdi Azikiwe University), De Olde English Hotel (purportedly owned by the erstwhile governor of Anambra State, Chris Ngige), Palos Verdes Hotel (located at Iyi-Agu Estate, Awka), Brownsville Hotel and Suites, Numac Hotels Limited, Swiss Cottage Holiday Inn, Century Guest House, Lake View Rendezvous, Grand Riviera Hotel, Malikwu Suites and Spa, Desires and Leisure Hotels Limited, J.Jumac Hotels and Towers, Basino Hotels and Tourist Village, among others.

There are also a good number of fast food joints and exquisite kitchens that serve a variety of mouth-watering African, continental and Oriental dishes, as well as numerous local delicacies like Nkwobi, Isiewu, Ugba, Abacha, and so on, as well as assorted drinks, including unadulterated nkwu enu (fresh palm wine). Some of these include Phronesia Afican Kitchen, Crunchies Fried Chicken, Next Level Restaurant and Bar, MacDons Fast Foods (just off Arroma Junction, by High Tension), Bejoy Centre Point (Arroma Junction), Gelly’s Garden (Arroma Junction), Mr Biggs, Doris Kitchen, Bamboo Garden, among others. These places also provide excellent gardens and relaxation spots.

Awka also enjoys some level of serenity, without the regular do-or-die hustle and bustle of many a Nigerian city. For this reason, it serves as a buffer zone for businessmen, corporate individuals and others resident in the rather noisome commercial and industrial cities of Onitsha, Nnewi and Enugu. Because many of these people work tirelessly from Monday to Friday, at the weekends, they usually look out for places to relax, unwind, and get away from the madness of commerce that characterise their daily living. But it is not only Enugu, Onitsha and Nnewi that Awka serves; it also serves people from other states of the South-East as well as other parts of Nigeria.

With all this in place, Awka is no doubt set to compete favourably with, or even surpass the records already set by Owerri, the Imo State capital, which had a headstart in the hospitality industry, and where the governor, Ikedi Ohakim, has boasted to have upped the number of hotel rooms from 2,300 in 2007 to 10,800 in 2010, or even Enugu, which emergence as a city dates back to the discovery of coal in the town in the early years of the twentieth century.

So, when next you have a reason to be in Anambra, or in any part of the South-East for that matter, please do not be in a haste to leave. Stop over at Awka and experience true hospitality, the brand which Awka alone can offer. The taste of the pudding, they say, is in the eating. Welcome!

‘Younger Nigerian Writers Have Better Chances’

Helon Habila, poet, author, and Creative Writing teacher at George Mason University, Virginia, the United States of America, was born in Kaltungo, Gombe State, Nigeria, and was educated at the University of Jos and University of East Anglia, England. His first novel, Waiting for an Angel, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for New Writing, and his second novel, Measuring Time, won the Caine Prize. Helon, who was also the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College in 2005, was in Abuja, Nigeria in July 2010 for the week-long creative writing workshop organised by Fidelity Bank Plc, and he spoke with Chuks OLUIGBO.

You started here in Nigeria before you moved to the United States. What has the experience been for you, the period between your starting point and where you are now?

Well, it’s been very interesting, that’s one way of looking at it. There’s been a lot of challenges; a lot of happiness; a lot of sadness here and there, disappointments and successes. But it’s been interesting; that’s the best way to put it. It’s been a long journey, you know, from Bauchi, where I was teaching, then to Lagos, Hints Magazine, then to Vanguard, then to London for a fellowship, then PhD, and then moving on to America to do the Achebe fellowship and then to start teaching there. So, it’s been three continents, lots of movement; it’s almost as if one has gone the farthest from home in terms of distance that one could go. And of course there is family, children, and all of that. Another way of looking at it is that it has been a moment of growth. There is the physical distance, and there is the mental distance, and then there is growth. One has kind of grown in terms of one’s profession; in writing, one has learnt a lot because of the exposure and the people one met on the way: teachers, fellow writers, one has learnt a lot from them. So, it’s been quite interesting, and one has grown older too, physically. And one has become wiser in so many ways, and one has learnt to appreciate what one has, where one comes from, and to respect one’s culture, one’s history in so many ways. So, it’s been good.

I know this is not the first time you are holding a workshop with a group of young people, teaching them how to fine-tune their writing techniques. Looking at it now, do you think that writing in Nigeria has any hope? That young Nigerian writers can still make it, and maybe get to the point where you are now? Is there hope?

Yeah! I think their chances of making it are even better than mine at that time when I was still coming up, when I was an aspiring writer. We have a democracy now, even though it is not where we want it to be. But basically, things are freer now. There are actually indigenous publishing companies that publish, places like Cassava Republic, places like Farafina, you know, there are more of them. There wasn’t any when I was trying to get published in 1999, 2000. It was bleaker then, plus there was a dictatorship; you couldn’t think; you had no freedom; you couldn’t do what you wanted to do. But now I think it’s much better. Now they have models. There are people like Chimamanda who have done it; and if you want to look at men, there are people like me who have done it, people like Bi Bandele, and so on. So, they can actually not say that they can’t do it because it’s not been done, or because it’s impossible. They have exemplars, they have people who have done it, and we started from here. It’s not as if I was born in America or London, no; or I wrote my book there, no. Actually, I lived here and I wrote it here and I got it published here. People like Tricia are even living here now and they’ve won Commonwealth prizes. So, I think things are better than they were, and any other person who wants to do this has no excuse not to achieve, or not to go as far as the skies, if that is what you want.

Looking at the short stories you have gone through at the workshop, what can you say?

You know, it’s good. These writers are all at a stage where what we are looking at is not perfection but promise, and then we work with that and kind of polish it. Writing is very hard, you know. But I think, as a teacher, one understands that what one is looking for, like I said, is promise, and one understands how hard it is for young people here, either because they are not exposed, either because they have not read a lot of writers, either because they have not had the chance, or even some because maybe they did not have a degree in Literature or English. Some are medical doctors, some are accountants, and all that; they all come from different backgrounds. So you just learn to be patient, not to be too hasty in judgments, and to always know that a writer can get to where he wants to if he works hard at it. That’s why I keep emphasising to young people: keep hard at it; writing is hard work, it’s like any other thing; it’s like making a table or like riding a car. You keep practising, the more you practise, the better you get. That’s my belief. That’s how I look at writing, and that’s what I keep repeating in all the workshops I’ve taught. But Nigeria has talents, there are young people, and what I like is energy, their willingness to listen to you, to trust you, and to work hard. Sometimes we go late, sometimes we stay there all day, and the young people don’t complain, you don’t know where they are coming from, they have their challenges and difficulties but they are always there. So, I’m impressed.

You talked about Farafina and Cassava Republic, and the rest of them. One problem around here too is that sometimes you see that they want to publish only people who have made a name; they are not looking at these younger people, and that is one aspect of discouragement that younger writers actually get here. Is there any solution? Is there any way the problem can be solved?   

I see what you are saying, but also you look at it from the point of view that these publishing companies are just starting; most of them are owned by young people, entrepreneurs; they are not like multinational corporations, they don’t have the money that some publishers have. So they have to play safe, they have to be cautious, they have to go for sure things, and I think the more they do that, the more established they get, then they will begin to diversify. You don’t just start a business and start doing everything at once. You’ll have a plan. Maybe the plan is like: for the first five years we publish these established names, and when we are established, we move on to unknown writers. They may have their plans, but I do understand; they are being cautious. And they need to be if they want to grow; you don’t want them to start to just open and then disappear or be over-ambitious in trying to discover young writers. If they publish ten known writers and publish one unknown writer, I think they are doing something. So, I think they will get there eventually.

You’ve written in Nigeria; you’ve also written in the Unites States. Comparatively, how do you weigh the two sides?

Well, one thing with Nigeria is, for so many reasons you are at home. Your mind is at ease because you are in a familiar place; you are not scared of anything. By scared I mean you are not a stranger; you know what to expect because you are born here; this is your natural environment. But when you leave here, you are living in an alien environment; no matter how long you remain there, you are a foreigner in a way, you are also a stranger. That’s the difference in the first place. The second difference is that there, the conditions are more amenable; conditions are more helpful. The infrastructure is there, you can send your stories to magazines, you can get books in the library, you can do research, there is always light for you to write. So, in that materialistic, physical sense, it is easier there, but here, the consolation here I think is more psychological, you know exactly where you are. They have benefits, both of them have their benefits; I can’t say one is better than the other; they all have their own benefits.