US ELECTION: HOW CAN IT COST $6B?

The estimated price tag for the US elections in November is almost $6bn (£3.8bn). Why so much?”The sky is the limit here,” says Michael Toner, former chair of the US Federal Election Commission.”I don’t think you can spend too much.”

In a time of general belt-tightening, it may sound like a surprising argument, but Toner believes there should be more – not less – spending on US elections.

Anything that engages voters, and makes them more likely to turn out is, he says, a good thing.

“It’s very healthy in terms of American politics… it’s a symptom of a very vigorous election season, there’s a lot at stake here.”

On 6 November, Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, is set to challenge Barack Obama for the presidency, and polls suggest the margin between them could be wafer thin.

New figures just released by the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent research group which tracks money in politics, estimate the total cost of November’s elections (for the presidency, House of Representatives and Senate) will come in at $5.8bn (£3.7bn) – more than the entire annual GDP of Malawi, and up 7% on 2008.

It makes UK election spending look microscopic by comparison. A total of £31m ($49m) was spent by all parties in the last general election in the UK two years ago – making US spending 120 times as much, and 23 times as much per person.

“You could say we’ve gotten into a crazy world, where the cost of elections has sky-rocketed, and that we are in a wacko world of crazy spending,” says Michael Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political ads.

But, he says, “it all depends what apples and oranges you want to compare”.

Franz argues that US elections are “relatively cheap” when compared with spending on, for example, the US military operation in Afghanistan.

Michael Toner has his own favourite analogy: “Americans last year spent over $7bn [£4.5bn] on potato chips – isn’t the leader of the free world worth at least that?”

Online campaigning is the biggest area of growth, but it still accounts for a relatively modest amount of money spent.

TV campaign ads reign supreme in the battle for votes (at least in terms of costs), eating up, it is estimated, over half of all campaign spending.

“People are carpet bombed,” says Philip Davies, director of the Eccles Centre for American Studies in London.

For some in the battleground states, where ads are most densely targeted, it can get a bit much.

“It’s extremely annoying,” says Katie Loiselle, a 26-year-old teacher living in Virginia, which used to be a safe win for the Republicans, but is now a crucial swing state.

Loiselle is one of the much-coveted undecided voters. She voted for Obama in 2008, but this time she is not sure.

In theory, she should be a plum candidate for persuasion. In practice, she does all she can to avoid what, over three months before election day, is already starting to feel like an onslaught.

“I’ll change my channel when they come on… I might start flipping through a magazine or talking to someone.

“It’s not like what they are going to say is going to rouse my intelligence. It just seems they are spending a whole lot of money bashing each other.

“I’m kind of dreading these upcoming months.”

It is the presidential debates in October, not the campaign ads, that will help inform her choice, she says.

But for voters like Katie Loiselle, it could be a case of nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Some experts believe that this year the amount of airspace in key target areas, could – quite literally – run out.

And it is not just the number of ads that is up, the tone has been raised too.

“The negativity is off the charts – 2008 is quaint by comparison. It’s approaching two-thirds of all the ads so far,” says Michael Franz.

It could hardly be more different in the UK where airtime for campaign ads is free – indeed you not allowed to buy it – and tightly limited.

In the last general election, the two main parties were allowed four or five party political broadcasts each in England , and six between Scotland and Wales – compared to hundreds of thousands of ads in the US .

It is nothing new for a US election to be “the most expensive ever” – there has been a clear and sharp upwards trend for decades.

This time the increase is driven by the Congressional elections. The presidential race itself will cost an estimated $2.5bn (£1.6bn), which is actually slightly down on the 2008 figure of $2.9bn (£1.9bn) – but this time only one party has held primaries to choose their candidate.

And one key factor likely to push spending up is the rise of the relatively new – but already infamous – Super Pacs, which are making their presidential election debut, and can spend as much as they like on political advertising, as long as they do not co-ordinate directly with the campaigns.

They are the “wild cards” in this election (in the words of the Center for Responsive Politics) and predicting how much they will end up spending is next to impossible.

Super Pacs are unpopular with voters, but there seems little chance of getting the rules changed – political spending by corporations and unions was classed as a form of free speech by the Supreme Court in 2010, and is therefore protected under the US Constitution.

Any effort to restrict such spending would, says Michael Toner, probably need a constitutional amendment, and – he says – this would be both “very difficult” and “highly ill-advised”.

The US does have a government-run public finance system designed to keep a lid on campaign spending. But both candidates have opted out of it this year, giving them free rein to spend as much as they like.

Obama was the first-ever presidential contender to opt out in 2008, and many experts say the extra money he spent in the final weeks was a significant factor in his victory over John McCain.

But they have to raise it to spend it, and in practice, this means an unrelenting schedule of fundraiser after fundraiser for both Obama and Romney.

Critics say this takes away from the time that candidates spend with the average (not so wealthy) voter, and in the case of a president, risks detracting attention from his day job of running the country.

The media tends to focus on fundraising figures, seeing this as one sign of the overall health of a campaign (Romney outraised Obama by $35m, £22m, in June for example).

But there is a school of thought which says that both money and campaigning matter less than we imagine.

It is the big picture that counts, not the nitty-gritty day-to-day stuff, argues James Campbell, chair of the political science department at the University at Buffalo .

“Every wheeze, misstep or gaffe, every little twist and turn, is heightened for the next day’s headlines,” he says.

He jokes: “It’s like reading a cardiogram and the lines spike up and down, and it’s like ‘Oh my God, is the patient still alive?’… We are trying to get a bit more perspective.”

Campbell , like a number of other political scientists, specialises in predicting election results, and says voters make their choice not so much on campaign ads or electioneering, but based on a few key “fundamentals” – the economy being the most important one.

It is very rare, he says, for a person to change their party affiliation, so the pool of persuadable voters is small, perhaps as little as around 2% or 3% he argues, once you exclude people who will not vote.

But in a close race, tiny margins can be the difference between winning and losing.

“The ads aren’t just trying to change the undecided,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and author Packaging the Presidency.

“Most of the time, they’re trying to mobilise their base.”

“Money matters,” she says starkly. “You would be giving up the election if you decided to stop advertising

Source: BBC

‘ODESHI’



Sunday, 26 August 2012

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Home » Commentary » Columnists

 By Olu W. Onemola

I often find that the analogies I use to convey ideas stem from my past conversations. I remember sitting in the backseat of a car earlier this week in Abuja, daydreaming, yet still conscious of the multiple-lane, mile-long queue that began at the gate of a closed filling station. I remember seeing all sorts of vehicles, from the relatively infamous, oft maligned, evolved Okadas – the Keke Napeps; to the Peugeots driven by chauffeurs that work for the federal ministries; all the way to Danfo buses that were only occupied by their drivers. Although the aforementioned vehicles were the most conspicuous in the random motorcade of motionless vehicles, there were a host of others, driven by all kinds of drivers that embodied the diversity of the Nigerian people.

One thing in particular that struck me on this particular afternoon, was the fact that although businessmen in Lexus’ waited patiently alongside commercial taxi drivers in Toyotas, and civil servant mothers in their parked SUVS, perspired next to spinsters in their beat-up 1999 Honda Accords, on this particular day, they all had one thing in common – their facial expressions spelled ‘frustration.’

As we inched across the motorway – which was congested because of the extra cars that congested the driving lanes, I began to think of Nigeria in terms of cars. Specifically, a Danfo, as a ride on such a bus usually involved passengers sitting next to a vast array of people – in other words Nigeria and its many interlocking, yet separate tribes. As I thought more about the analogy, and grappled with the idea of many of our leaders being uncooperative drivers and shady conductors, it dawned on me that the same rules that govern passengers that are being driven to unknown locations against their will, also applies to citizens who are held captive by the inability of their government to adequately provide basic twenty-first century necessities like constant power in our homes and places of work, clean water in our taps, tarred roads in our cities, and most importantly, security.

After a while, I played with the idea of the passengers assertively demanding that the driver take the right course, or electing one of their own to take the wheel. At that moment, I turned to the little 14-year old who was seated beside me at the back of the car and I portrayed the analogy to her, ending with the question: “What if we finally made explicit demands of the driver, instead of just waiting for him to comply? What if we finally take the wheel?” The 14-year old in question is a lot more politically astute than many of her peers, and when I was done speaking, she casually raised her hand and pointed out the window and said: “Really? How do you expect Nigerians to take the wheel if there is no fuel in the country?”
Honestly speaking, her response had me cracking up in the car that day, as it was hilarious, simple and true. Yet, it was not simpleminded. The 14-year old was right, there was definitely a scarcity of fuel in parts of the country, and even though in a literal sense, she meant that there was no gasoline in town, symbolically, Nigerians are still without an adequate source of fuel to propel them into action. This ‘lack’ of fuel clearly does not originate from a lack of problems in our country, but by the seemingly impenetrable resilience of our people.

What I mean by this is that almost at every turn, while performing even the most routine tasks in Nigeria, we are weighed down by unnecessary complexities ranging from our friends at PHCN taking light, to our friends in law enforcement taking bribes. It is as if these issues that blatantly plague us are not enough to have us stop, look around us, and carefully examine our individual predicaments, in an effort to demand practical answers and positive change. More than anything, it seems like the more hiccups and setbacks we experience, the more ‘Odeshi’ we become.

I use ‘Odeshi’ in the Bakassi Boys sense. In other words, instead of taking a bullet and bleeding each time we are hit by problems, Nigerians always seem to be unmoved by our daily bullets. Think about this for a second: picture our problems as a hunter in the forest with a rifle, searching for prey. As luck would have it, he stumbles upon a colony of rabbits. Each rabbit is close enough for him to shoot at point-blank range. This particular problem is great marksman, but, in order not to miss his shot and scare of all the other rabbits, he picks a target, steadies himself, holds his breath, and takes the shot. “Bulls eye!” he thinks to himself. But, once the gunpowder clears, the rabbit he picked, which should have been hit, remains unperturbed and continues about its rabbit business. Even more baffling, is that the other rabbits around it also continue about their rabbit business not paying any attention to the hunter. If you were the hunter, what would you do in this situation? More likely than not, take another shot. Then another. And another. Personally, I would keep on shooting until one of the rabbits in question gets the message. In other words, all our problems are interrelated.

Now, suppose all the huntsman’s bullets miss their target after his chamber is empty, what do you think he would do? I can only speak for myself, but personally, if I was the hunter, I would run back to the village, gather all my hunter friends (with their guns and extra ammunition), find the spot where I found the rabbits, and try to have a ‘rabbit free-for-all.’ Problems tend to magnify, when they are not dealt with.

Think of Nigeria as the colony of rabbits. We are peaceful people, who only want to go about finding our daily bread (or grass in the case of the rabbits). Suddenly, a big bothersome hunter comes along and starts shooting at us. From his perspective, the bullets are missing their target, but what we see on the ground is much different. To our left, one of our brothers has a bullet lodged in his little rabbit toe, but he just keeps on going about his rabbit business. To our right, another one of our sisters has also been hit, but she brushes it off and says: “Odeshi. It could be worse.” Then all of a sudden he brings all his friends, and they too start shooting at us – and eventually we all have a bullet or two lodged in our bodies, and they are still shooting at us. But because this is our little rabbit territory, and this is our land, we do not run away, we cannot fight back. I mean, after all, we are only rabbits. Or, are we?

Nigerians, how many more of the huntsman’s bullets do we have to take to understand that eventually, something has to break or bleed if he and his friends keep shooting at us? More importantly, what will it take to make us realize that we are not rabbits, but lions – that is why we can endure the pain of a few little bullets? When are we going to realize that yes, they have the weapons, but we have the numbers? If there were no prey, there would be no hunters. If there were no apathetic people, there would be no blatantly corrupt and shamelessly ineffective leaders.

Yes, we have all taken a lot more than our own fair share of bullets. As lions who often behave like rabbits, we have let a few hunters fire shots from weak weapons at us. Now that we know what we are capable of, now that we are frustrated about getting hit at every turn with bullet upon bullet – there should not be a scarcity of fuel to wake us up and ignite our latent but fierce fire. We need to come together and roar.

What will we do? Better yet, what will you do? Will you just continue to wait in line until the gates of the filling station open up so you can fill your tank and drive around anytime there is fuel scarcity? What is going to happen when you finally exhaust your gasoline? Will you do the same thing over and over again? Come back and wait in line, again? For a few more hours or days, like you did the last time, or the time before that. Or will you choose to do something different this time? Yes, you can say “Odeshi” and let this minor infraction slide, again. You can say, I will choose to deal with it tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. But at the same time, you can choose to be proactive. You can choose to start by taking baby steps. This week, let’s challenge ourselves and spread this message. Let us all find the numbers of our elected representatives in the National Assembly. Let us pick up a phone and call, or even send a text message (if it is a mobile number). For those of us that are able to, let us (try to) schedule meetings with our elected representatives, and let them know peacefully but surely, that we are tired of them taking implicit, explicit, deliberate or unintentional shots at us through their actions or inaction. Let them know that it is time that they begin to see us as more than just bulletproof rabbits who can take a bullet, and more like lions that are ready to bare our teeth and roar, if they do not put their guns away and get to work.

CBN 5000 NOTE,REDESIGN AND COIN:OF WHAT USE?

The Nigerian government through her apex bank, central bank of Nigeria had announced the plan to introduce 5000 naira note into the system, coin the existing 5,10,20 and lastly redesign the 50,100,200,500 and the 1000 naira note, in 2013. Since nigerians have been told officially by the CBN, there have been diverse reactions from several people including all social classes in the country.

Personally, when i heard about this, what came to my mind immediately is, another profligacy of tax payer’s money under the disguise of doing the right thing.

First, in what way will the redesign, coining and new 5000 note impact positively in making the hard economy friendly? Should that ought to be the priority of the CBN, when companies are folding up due to harsh economy? The premise of the CBN for the introduction of the 5000 note was that, it will aid in her cash-less policy. This is nothing but a grand olympian level of delusion and the nadir of irrational reason in this 21st century. The highest denomination is 50 pound in queen’s land, that have been practicing cash-less policy. How will the introduction of 5000 note aid cash less policy? When what you are basically doing is to propagate the continueos carriage of money by hand by nigerians. Imagine, if it won’t be easy to carry 100 thousand naira in pocket in 2013 than now. Also, with our CBN and the clueless 24-member economy team inability to manage the economy, will they be able to prevent inflation from happening as a result of the 5000 note and coining in 2013?

To be candid, sometimes, you wish it is possible to check if whether there is a functioning brain in the head of these people that are managing this economy. In Nigeria today, the 1 naira coin, is not to be found in the system and the CBN has not done anything sensible and workable to ensuring that such coin is use in the economy. Yet, they keep budgeting money to made the 1 naira coin yearly. So, what moral and financial-wise right do they have to think of coining 5,10,and 20 without having knowledge on how to ensuring its usage?

With our socio-economy reality of today, definitely, hyper-inflation is waiting for us all come 2013.However, it is disheartening that both the CBN governor, policy makers and the unscrupulous political bandits called government will not feel the heat. But the common man will have to eke out living under a cannibalism system. What a people, what a suffering!

It is now obvious that the CBN governor is void of any thing meaningful that he can do to make the economy work through right banking policy and lobbying for law that will assist the economy to move. Today, having access to loan from the government agency like Bank of Industry(BOI) is still a survival of the fittest not in ideas or qualification but in ‘who you know in Abuja’ to many small entrepreneurs and farmers, and even bank lending rate is no go area. I think what the CBN governor should be doing more, is concentrating his energy to ensuring that lending rate is lower, loan from bank and other government financial institution that can loan money for business people and farmer is easier to get in other to boom the economy that will result into grand employment to drastically reduce the unemployment rate which shows that at least 40 million employable nigerians get jobless as at today.

By the way, the CBN is still owning us how much they will spend in printing the 5000 naira note, the cost of redesigning and the cost of coining. Nigerians must know this to realise that such money would have been properly channel into project that will ameliorate the suffering of the common man and if not, for them to stand against corruption in the process. Indeed, this is Jonathan’s transformation agenda, transforming us into a paradigm of poverty of people that lives on wealth yet die of hunger…President, keep the momentum of culture of poverty going on,2015 is almost here!

BY Ifade Olusegun

NIGERIANS, TAKE THE WHEELS

BY OLU ONAMELO

The word ‘future’ is used to refer to things that are meant to occur in the time to come, just as the word ‘forget’ denotes a failure to remember past events. The parallel-nature of these notions is undisputed, as the past can never encounter the future, and the future in the vastness of all its likelihoods can never correspond simultaneously with the past. If the aforementioned explanations are employed as facts, the phrase: forgetting our future is rendered impractical and notional at best. However, the unreal nature of the phrase in question becomes contentious, especially when the time is taken to examine and weigh some of the predicaments that are presently at play in Nigeria against the backdrop of an ever-uncertain future.

What this means in the most blunt terms is that: the present generation of Nigerian leaders are aggressively and blatantly cashing out on the dreams of a better Nigeria for its future generations. Even more disturbing, is the fact that the vast majority of Nigerians are in collusion with our leaders through our apathy and overwhelming silence. With a lack of constructive foresight exhibited everywhere in our motherland, from the management (or mismanagement) of our infrastructure, all the way to our commitment (or a lack thereof) to programs that invest in our youth – the backbone of tomorrow – it is clear that the policy makers in Nigeria are accomplishing the impossible: they are forgetting to remember the future. Our collective future.

Seen within the context of the ancient Chinese proverb that states: “If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed,” let us picture the people of Nigeria as passengers on a Danfo bus, and our leaders as both the conductor and the driver of said vehicle. When a passenger needs to take a bus at a car park, more likely that not, their first interaction is usually with the bus conductor who informs them where his vehicle is headed, along with the corresponding fare to the passenger’s destination. The passenger then has a couple of choices if the bus is heading in his or her direction: he or she can negotiate the terms of ride – in order words, haggle over the fare; elect to take another bus if the rates are unsatisfactory; or take the current bus with the fare that was proposed initially.  Whatever the outcome, once the passenger gets on the bus after an agreement has been struck with the conductor, the bus driver is then obligated to take the passenger in question to the location that the passenger agreed on with the conductor.

During the election cycle, our leaders as candidates seeking our votes entice us with alluring promises. They are like a bus conductor who promises a cheap fare to our destination. However, time and time again, especially at the federal level, once we get on the bus (which corresponds to after an election) our leaders tend to drive the bus that we elected to journey upon to unfamiliar destinations.

One of the tenets of democracy is rigorous and uncensored debate. In the most common market places all around our country, even to our corporate boardrooms, Nigerians are known as skilled negotiators. I once saw a Nigerian man ‘price’ a pair of shoes from N8000, down to N1200 at Wuse Market, Abuja. With this being the case, it often baffles me as to why Nigerians – especially those who are educated enough to understand the complexity of the issues at stake – choose not to thoroughly negotiate the cost with the conductors and prospective drivers of the bus known as Nigeria before we allow them to drive us. Make no mistake, picking our leaders without mediating the terms of their election allows them to (yes, pun intended) take us for a ride.

Yes, we are a young and somewhat unpredictable democracy. However, if we choose to follow the tenets set forth by our constitution, the everyday Nigerian needs to understand that our leaders work for us, and their policies must reflect as such. Correspondingly, our leaders need to understand that we put them in power (in the event that they are popularly elected), and in this regard, if they choose to be inattentive to the needs if this 160 million strong nation of diverse individuals and beliefs, democracy gives us the option of removing them from office.

Albert Einstein once defined insanity: “doing the same thing over and again and expecting different results.” As passengers on this bus, the current generation of Nigerians have chosen to be the model of this definition on multiple occasions since our return to democracy; electing leaders that have delivered only undeliverable promises. This situation has not only affected Nigeria as we know it today, but has put Nigerians in a situation where the only options that future generations of Nigerians are left with are to either sit back, relax, and enjoy the bitter ride to an unwanted destination; jump off the bus; or rally with the other passengers – who have also been ripped-off – to demand that the drivers of this bus change course and take us where we need to go.

If we look around us today, many passengers on this bus have been journeying on it for a while. Many still, have chosen to jump off and embark on less fulfilling journeys on other buses, moving to other countries and draining our nation of some of its brightest minds. However, for those of us just getting on – the Nigerian youth – who are beginning to understand that the drivers of our country seemingly have no regard for the passengers, and continuing travelling on this road will have devastating consequences for our future, what will we do? We have been forgotten. Soon, if we do not make a choice, another generation of passengers will come on board, look around, shake their heads and curse us under their breaths for being complicit in their deception through our silence, and cowards for not taking the wheel.

RELIGION IS A MUCH GREATER FORCE FOR EVIL THAN IT IS FOR GOOD

BY EMMANUEL OWUSU-ANSAH

The pros and cons of religion, or the question as to whether or not religion is relevant in the contemporary society, has been the subject of extensive debate within the fields of sociology and anthropology.  The intention here is thus not to repeat what has generally been posited by academics, but to present a brief personal commentary on the issue. The decision to come up with this write-up is partially influenced by the philosophy contained in the documentary film, ‘Religulous’, which blatantly mocks religion and religious belief.  

Please note, that the term religion, which of course has a very extensive connotation, is used quite narrowly in this piece to refer specifically to Christianity and Islam.

The Christian and Islamic religions are supposed to safeguard human dignity, and promote friendship, love, unity, harmony and righteousness. Ironically however, these two religions are fast becoming a much greater force for evil than they are for good in today’s society. The former has unfortunately come to be associated with promiscuity, money and deception; and the later, intolerance, violence and killings.  

A considerable number of Christians and Muslims, as many are aware, are hiding behind a façade of religion to commit some of the mightiest atrocities in human history – crimes ranging from theft and sexual misconduct, through deceit and riot, to terrorism and genocide. Many of these are crimes that even the “non-religious” may not contemplate, let alone executing them.

The appalling comportment of members of these two major religions is inducing some people (chiefly agnostics) to pronounce that the world is safer and humankind is better off without religion. Even though I disagree with this school of thought, the evidence in support of its proposition is so overwhelming that convincingly contesting it becomes a colossal task.

Obviously religion helps humans to find answers or explanations to those phenomena that cannot be subjected to empirical investigation. Both Christianity and Islam serve as a means of explaining the unexplainable; they provide answers for how we got here, why we are here, who brought our world into existence, and where we go from here. Even though their explanations might not be the objective truth, such responses give humankind a huge sense of relief, direction and purpose in life.

The contribution religion makes towards the socio-economic development of communities is supreme. It has played and continues to play a massive role in the areas of education, health, sports, science and technology, and even governance; not to mention the moral and emotional support it offers, as well as its unifying role.

But in the name of this same seemingly wonderful institution – religion, humankind has committed some of the most outrageous deeds in the history of humanity – sex crimes, manipulation and exploitation, persecution or torture, mass suicides/murders, terrorism (i.e. suicide bombing, hijacking and kidnapping), and wars which ultimately lead to underdevelopment and poverty. Religion seems to be losing sight of its own principle of serving, helping, and living peacefully with others regardless of their personal beliefs and ideologies.

In Africa, religion has ironically become an anchor, holding people back from their marital and societal responsibilities, and from developing socio-economically. It seems to show no respect for basic laws and human life. Many people have been jailed or executed, particularly in Islamic countries for attempting to propagate a “rival” faith, Christianity.  Others have been tortured or lynched, mainly by some so-called Christian religious figures, on suspicion of being witches and wizards.

It is probably this obnoxious behaviour of “religious people” that compelled the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, to declare that ‘God is dead’, and Mahatma Gandhi to make that paradoxical statement: ‘I love your Christ but I hate your Christians because your Christians are unlike your Christ’.

Nonetheless, calling for the ‘elimination’ of religion on the basis of its identified demerits is certainly an unintelligence cause to champion. Thus, it will not just be hasty and simplistic, but foolhardy of any group or individual to conclude that religion is a force for evil and should be rejected in human society. Humans, according to an Oxford University study, are predisposed to embrace religious concepts. One may not need religion but sound conscience to know the difference between right and wrong, but they will certainly need religion to constantly guide their thoughts and actions and to provide the needed moral impetus.
 
In the documentary film, ‘Religulous’, Bill Maher, like Rene Descartes, suggests, that ‘doubt’ is one of the most important human attributes; and that our ability to doubt and question things such as authority, existence or nature and society, is vital for human progression.  But religion, according to him, suppresses doubt by replacing it with a false or unsubstantiated surety (i.e. God and heaven). He thus concludes that our authentic progression, which he believes is achieved through doubt, is often lost within religion.

I find his argument interestingly shallow, as he fails to convince his audience as to how he arrives at the conclusion that the ‘surety’ he claims religion has replaced with doubt, is false. He refuses to realize that, even though the veracity of that surety (God or Heaven) may not be compellingly proven; no one has also ever succeeded in convincingly demonstrating that it is not authentic.

Because neither the existence nor nonexistence of the Divine can be persuasively proven, each and every individual is given the freedom to decide whether to embrace religion or reject it. This is what the French religious philosopher, Blaise Pascal, calls a ‘wager’ or gamble, in which the chances of winning and losing are equal (50 – 50). So if Maher thinks ‘doubt’ is or leads to the truth, let him immerse himself in the pool of doubt; and if others believe that religion is or leads to the truth, let them stick to it. Pushing one’s ideologies down other people’s throats is certainly not on. After all, gambling that God exists, is clearly the wiser option as one has all to gain and nothing to lose.

It is apparent that humankind is inherently evil, but sadly, some despondent folks are consciously or unconsciously using religion as an excuse to unleash the mischievousness (greed, lust, theft, fraud, hate, violence, etc.) in them. It is quite tempting to perceive therefore, that if religion didn’t exist, many people would find nothing as an excuse to commit crimes. But we should also have every reason to believe that even if religion did not exist, people would still hide behind the façade of other seemingly harmless ideologies such as environmentalism, individualism, hedonism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, etc. to commit heinous crimes as it is happening now.  

No one can deny the huge number of entities and situations that religion has transformed from bad to good. It could in fact be argued, that the wickedness and misery being witnessed on earth today would be twofold or bigger if religion didn’t exist.

The core principle, in fact the substance of Christianity and Islam is love, human wellbeing, peace, unity and hope. But some miserable elements, out of selfishness, greed and/or the lack of understanding of the doctrines of their own religion, are committing serious crimes using religion as a defence. The problem therefore is not with that entity called religion; the problem is with the disposition of that group called followers of religion.

It follows therefore, that religion, like almost all human institutions, has both merits and demerits, and individuals are affected differently by it. So the debate should not focus solely on the relevance or credibility of Christianity and Islam in today’s world, but also, and more importantly, on what could be done to make these religions reflect their true values and principles – love, hope, harmony and progress.

A TRAUMATIZED NATION

BY MALCOM FABIYI
Since the turn of the 4th republic in 1999, over 50,000 Nigerians have been killed in the seemingly endless cycles of ethnic, sectarian and political crises that have ravaged the nation. About 14,000 of these deaths have been due to sectarian and religious conflicts. These gory statistics imply that the fourth republic has surpassed all others in the peacetime killings of Nigerians.

Most of these deaths have come about as a result of mob action. The anatomy of sectarian mob killings is simple. A group of people motivated by their hatred for those who do not share their faith or zealotry swoop down on innocents and murder them in cold blood.

The paradox of mob action is that while each member of the mob is as responsible as any other for the murders they cooperatively perpetrate, the anonymity offered by the crowd, allows for a phenomenon that social psychologists call de-individuation to occur. The consequence is a feeling of guiltlessness, by the perpetrators of even the most heinous crimes.

If we assume that the rampaging mobs that wreak death and havoc during sectarian crises are made up of 10 to 50 persons, the 14,000 deaths caused by sectarian crises since 1999 have therefore involved about 140,000 to 0.7 million perpetrators. Because the crises have tended to occur in a limited number of cities across Nigeria – Bauchi, Kaduna, Kano, Jos – some of the perpetrators are likely to be repeat offenders.
Each of these crisis prone cities has endured at least five incidents of sectarian conflicts since 1999.

Assuming that these perpetrators have participated in at least one attack leading to the death of innocents during each of those crises, we arrive at the troubling proposition that there might be anywhere from about 30,000 to 140,000 Nigerians who might have participated in murder and mayhem, who are walking our streets and prancing around as if nothing has happened.

None of these tens of thousands of murderers have paid any price for their crimes. Their misdemeanors have gone unpunished, as if those whose lives they have taken were stray animals, and not fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters who were violently taken away from amongst us.

Every single review of conflicts that have occurred in Nigeria since 1999, has noted the involvement of prominent citizens in the instigation and the funding of sectarian and ethnic conflicts. Despite the damning evidence, there hasn’t been a single conviction of any of the perpetrators, or of their masterminds and paymasters.  

And so, even as the bodies of the dead continue to pile, the sponsors of these heinous crimes have gone unpunished. The clerics whose words fuel the fires of discord, the political opportunists who stoke the embers of hate, and the ethnic irredentists who fuel the inferno of intolerance are left untouched, and unscathed. If anything, they are rewarded for their crimes. The more rabidly hateful their utterances, the more unyielding their demands, the more invested they are in the marketing of hate; the more they are rewarded with positions, influence and contracts.

There are only two ways to change behavior. Any action that is not punished is either tacitly or expressly encouraged. The Nigerian state, by electing to ignore murderers and the purveyors of violence has invariably created an environment that nurtures and provides incentives for sociopathic behavior.

For those who have ever wondered why carnage seems to swoop down upon Nigeria without warning; for those who are amazed at how cities like Kaduna, Jos, Bauchi and Kano can appear to be normal in one minute, and turn into a burning hell in the next instant, they need not wonder any longer. There are murderers amongst us, and with each massacre that is swept under the carpet, with each killing that goes unpunished, with each sponsor and instigator of violence that is allowed to taunt justice, we tighten our embrace of impunity and stand the risk of elevating sociopathic tendencies to the new social normal.
How many more must die, before justice is done?

THE RISE OF THE GAINFULLY UNEMPLOYED

BY TATALO ALAMU

Before the fireworks, let us begin with some lollypop. This column salutes members of the Anonymous Authors Association (AAA) who have enriched and deepened the discourse on this page. They are the unsung heroes of this intellectual gymnasium , and snooper applauds the cult-like devotion of some of them.  Your columnist listens in to all the commentaries on this column. Nothing escapes our attention even when the meta-commentaries suddenly swing at each other and bitter confrontation ensues.  Hunters often turn on themselves. That is the original curse of the profession.

Snooper has learnt a lot from these readers who often supply a fresh and unusual perspective to issues. The true knowledge seeker must learn to humble himself before the incredible knowledge machine that is the contemporary human mind.The more you know, the more you know that you don’t know. Column-writing in the post-modern world, with what Hayek has called the dispersal of knowledge, has become an interactive affair in which the commentary is incomplete without its meta-commentary and the writer is incomplete without the alter-writer.

This phenomenon is perhaps due to the rise of counter-hegemonic knowledge. The explosion in knowledge and the democratisation of modes of learning have made the job of hawkers of knowledge very difficult. Gone are the days of infallible leaders of men who treat fellow citizens as ignorant and feckless children. Gone are the days of writers as oracular supermen dispensing nuggets of wisdom to lesser beings from their Olympian fountain.

Even in journalism, the authoritarian monologic discourse is being replaced by a demotic and dialogic culture of talking back.  The single voice of authority is displaced by many voices who talk back and talk to each other. In human affairs, the struggle against tyranny often commences with the refusal of the baby to be baby-fed. Once again, snooper commends those who have contributed to the multi-voice pluralism of this column. At least it can be said for them that they are gainfully employed.

Whichever way you look at it, it is, however, the rise of the gainfully unemployed that is the greatest bane of  contemporary Nigeria. At the last count, there at least four distinct groups of the gainfully unemployed who are actively involved in bringing the nation to heel. Although each may have its nucleus in a particular section of the country, they are indeed pan-Nigerian groupings with membership that cuts across religion, region and ethnic lines.

The first group of the gainfully unemployed are some old politicians who have passed their professional sell-by dates. Ordinarily, they ought to have morphed into great statesmen whose profound wisdom and wise counsel ought to serve as panaceas for national woes. But in the evolutionary fiasco of post-colonial Africa, they have metamorphosed into political grubs who are guided by only the demands of their stomach.

In the circumstances, they lapse into political and religious deviancy in the hope of regaining lost relevance through carefully orchestrated tribal and religious hysteria. In the past few weeks, these gainfully unemployed old men from all corners of the country could be seen and heard causing trouble and generally raising the political temperature of the nation with wild and inflammable pronouncements. At this rate, they don’t seem to mind if the nation collapses on their head.

The second group are in fact religious leaders who ought to have transformed into metaphysical gurus and spiritual patriarchs of the nation. But they have taken to fanning the embers of religious hatred. They speak to an elite polarisation of religion in the nation for selfish purposes. The most potent form of gainful unemployment is spiritual indolence.  With the Boko Haram scourge in the north and the creep-ing hysteria in the south, the parasites of religious passion seem to be having a field day. Our religious fathers have taken to political and economic deviancy.

The third group consists of those who by virtue of their exposure and standing in the society ought to know better but who have chosen to develop in other directions. As Norman Mailer once famously observed, one can either develop vertically or horizontally. In the humid tropics things decompose and decay very easily. In other to shore up their relevance in the perpetual battle of state formations for the allocation of resources, they resort to stoking up the fire of separatism, secession and other more severe forms of severance .

The fourth group consists of the truly gainfully unemployed. It is from this class of unemployed rabble that this piece takes its title. They are the ticking bomb.  It is the realm of absolute no-hopers. Just take a look at the accompanying picture of the train from Lagos. It is an apocalyptic snapshot; a peep into impending disaster.  Like human ants, the youths of this nation cling to every available space  on the outer keel of the train. In any civilized society, the picture would have been enough to spark civil unrest.

 It is obvious that these desperate denizens of urban ghettoes are not the commuting workers that the train was meant for in the first instance.  The irony of it all was that the partial resuscitation of the rail line was a great tribute to responsive governance. The great Nigerian railway network finally succumbed to corruption and mismanagement. But in putting a smile on the faces of workers commuting to Lagos from the oumost  surburbs of  the city, the government merely succeeded in showcasing an even more potentially devastating social menace.

The rise of this brazen underclass is the greatest threat to contemporary Nigeria. The new joy riders we see clinging to the roof of a moving train are not coming from work, but they are coming from ‘work”. In an attempt to stay afloat, social outcasts and urban renegades will resort to any sort of self-help or self-employment , ranging from petty thieving, purse-cutting, kidnapping to outright murder.   

Although these troubled youths are akin to joy riders in the purely technical sense of the word, there is nothing joyful about their life or mission for that matter. The balloon of pompous bluff bursts even before the pin probe. It is a measure of their low self-esteem and lack of a sense of self-worth that they take immediate  offence at prying eyes wondering what they are doing at the roof of a moving train. This week, they beat a professional photographer trying to take their picture to a pulp.

It is obvious that  a country with this kind of youth unemployment is bound to implode sooner than later. There is a nexus between youth unemployment and the crippling crises facing the nation. These desperate unemployed youths serve as the foot soldiers and canon fodder to political deviants who deploy them for political violence against opponents. They serve as suicide bombers to jihadists and other religious deviants. They serve as  raw recruits for separatist groups and economic saboteurs.

 The situation is likely to worsen. The demographic graph continues to show a balance of number in favour of the youths. Seventy percent of the current Nigerian population are young people. Many of these people even after they have gone to the university and other tertiary institutions still find it impossible to secure regular employment. An idle brain is indeed the devil’s workshop.

 Yet rather than coming up with well-reasoned and powerfully integrated  economic credos that will lift more of our people out of the unemployment trough such as has been done from Brazil to India, our economists have continued to mouth shopworn shibboleths from the Bretton Woods institutions as if the world is one huge undifferentiated society and as if what worked in the west must work in Africa. Economy came before economics, but this time around it is the tyranny of economics over economy.

It will be foolish to imagine that the staggering inequity and the galloping inequality between the filthy rich and the desperately poor such as we have in the country will not result in some social upheaval eventually. The signs are already there in the Boko Haram insurgency which is ,among other things, essentially a class warfare disguised as religious inquisition. They are also discernible in the various social  and political commotions currently going on in many parts of the nation. Youth is not only a stuff that will not endure, as Shakespeare famously noted, youth is also a stuff that will not endure itself to be wantonly wasted.

While we still have the time to think in some peace, it may be useful to contemplate one scary possibility. One of the reasons why the victorious Khmer Rouge of Cambodia drove out the entire city population of the nation was because they felt that city dwellers had an unfair class advantage over rural folks. That singular act resulted in the death of a third of the population. God forbids a revolution in Nigeria in which gainfully unemployed  suburban scum return to the metropolis. That will be holocaust itself