25042019 - Free web operators threaten national security — EXPERTS

The return of Tiger Woods
ERHAPS nothing had
Pbestirred the sporting world
in the last many years than the
dramatic manner Tiger Woods
returned to the top ranks of golf
on Sunday, April 14. That day I
became glued to my set watching
the Masters, hoping for a miracle
to happen.
Though Tiger Woods was among
the bunch competing towards the
close, not many gave him half the
chance to make it at the end. I
wasn’t much hopeful like many
others watching the same match
all over the world. But when at
some critical juncture one of the
leading contenders sent his shot to
a tree which bounced off and
headed to water, the excitement
started building up.
Suddenly it was the name of
Tiger Woods that was ringing all
over. And when he made that final
shot to clinch the title I was really
ecstatic. But the pleasure wasn’t
mine alone. It was shared by many
lovers of golf particularly those
that had followed the career of this
golf icon who had been focussed
in the last few years to getting back,
after a career setback. A setback
that had shut him off from the very
top of the league where truly he
belonged. Winning this
tournament was Tiger Woods' first
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
MONDAY, April 22, was the 81st
birthday of Gani Fawehinmi, the late
brilliant and successful lawyer and one of the
very few credible human rights activists that
ever walked on Nigeria’s soil. As rulers impose
themselves on the people and ride roughshod
on them with utmost impunity, Gani’s brand
of selfless activism is being sorely missed. He
was a true hero.
Sadly, Nigerians of today are very good at
crowning false heroes. Just open any Nigerian
newspaper you can find near you and see how
many people that are recklessly described on
its pages as “credible” politicians, “honest
and selfless” Nigerians, or worse,
the “conscience of the nation”. You would be
shocked to see the number of people who
carelessly allow themselves to be associated
with such superb, ennobling qualities even
when they are fully aware that by their personal
conducts, it might even appear as a generous
compliment to dress them up in the very
opposites of those terms.
Over the years, these words and phrases have
been so callously and horribly subjected to the
worst kinds of abuses in Nigeria with hardly
anyone making any attempt to intervene and
seek their redemption. I won’t in the least,
therefore, be surprised to wake up tomorrow
and hear that decent people in this country
have begun to protest and resist any attempt to
associate them with such grossly debased
terms.
As a people sharing the same country with
an ever-growing tribe of shameless, exceptional
experts on the egregious art of effective and
perpetual devaluation all that ought to inspire
awe and noble feelings, it should not come to
us as a shock any day to be assaulted by the
news that some Nigerians felt grievously
insulted that their dogs were, for instance,
nominated for “National Honours”. Even the
poor dog may bark all day to register its dismay!
But do we need to wait for this to happen before
we quickly rouse ourselves from our longlasting
moral slumber and hurriedly stop this
overly revolting charade of “honouring”
C
M
YK
major win in 11 years. Already this
feat is being touted as the greatest
sporting comeback in history. But
that is arguable, of course.
Nevertheless, I liken the
dramatic manner Tiger Woods
returned to the golfing top to the
moment, in October 1974,
Mohammed Ali the boxing icon
defeated George Foreman, then
the reigning World Heavyweight
Champion, to reclaim the title. The
title was yanked away from him in
1967 when he refused to be drafted
into the US Armed Forces. His
boxing licence was suspended for
many years. And when the licence
was restored, and he returned to
the rings, he was a bit rusty and
had a couple of defeats before he
was set up to fight George
Foreman, in a bout that was fought
in Kinshasa, Zaire.
The fight that was dubbed, "The
Rumble in the Jungle", was said to
be one of the greatest sporting
events of the 20 th Century. It was
watched by a record estimated
television audience of one billion
viewers worldwide, making it the
most-watched live television
broadcast at the time. I must have
been counted as part of that
statistics, because I recall watching
the gruelling match while resident
in Kongo campus, ABU, Zaria
Who is Nigeria’s conscience?
people whose only contribution to their
fatherland may just be their ecstatic
participation in the mindless looting of its
resources and effective supervision of its
wholesale devastation.
Yes, Nigeria’s “National Honours List” has
indeed worked extremely hard to distinguish
itself as a worthless piece of paper always
starring people who ought to be in jail for the
humongous effort they had contributed to the
brutal abortion of this country’s lofty dreams
and aspirations.
And as you look at the haggard and
impoverished nature of a country that
celebrates this long list of “illustrious” and
“honest” sons and daughters who are honoured
for their “selfless” and “invaluable” services
to their fatherland, you cannot help wondering
why it is very difficult, if not impossible, to see
any positive impact their so-called “immense
contributions to the growth and progress” of
their country were able to register on that same
country and its people.
Why is a country that has over the years
accumulated such a very long and
intimidating list of “patriotic achievers” and
“nation builders” still be one of the most
backward in the world despite being also
endowed with rich, abundant natural
resources? How long shall this debilitating selfdeception
continue to plague Nigeria? What
beats me is why some otherwise decent people
still allow their names to be used to add some
pinch of dignity to that totally worthless list
and actually carry themselves to the venue of
that festival of the philistine to be decorated
with those medals of dishonour?
The problem is that when we look around
and there are no genuine heroes to celebrate,
we simply invent some. For instance, today, it
can safely be said that Nigeria as a country no
longer possesses any “conscience”. If we had
any persons who truly qualified to be described
as such, they are long dead and buried or yet to
hug the limelight. But because we are unwilling
accept that very stark reality, we just had to
pounce on anyone we find around and
proclaim him the “Conscience of the
Nation”, whether he merely represents a
where I was a fresher in the School
of Business.
Not many people gave
Mohammed Ali a chance because
Foreman was then at the peak of
his career. A brutal fighter who was
reputed to have lately seen off
equally brutal fighters, Joe Frazier
and Ken Norton, the two who had
previously defeated Mohammed
Ali on his return to boxing
reckoning. Just like in this case of
Tiger Woods, Mohammed Ali went
all the way to give a good account
of himself to defeat George
Foreman by a technical knockout
and reclaim the title of World
Heavyweight Champion.
I must confess that the game of
golf had never meant much to me
before Tiger Woods arrived the
scene in April 1997 to win his first
Tiger Woods made
the game of golf look
less elitist while
expanding its field of
popularity; even those
who did not play it at
the time picked
interest in watching it
on TV
major, the Masters, one of the four
major championships in
professional golf. He was the
youngest, at the age of 21, to win
the tournament but the attraction
for us in this part of the world was
the fact that Tiger Woods was the
first Black to win that important
cup. Two months later, he was also
said to have set the record for the
fastest ascent to the number one
position in the official world golf
Vanguard, THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2019 —17
17
ranking. He went on to win the
PGA Championship in 1999, the
US Open in 2000 and the
following year. Winning just
became routine to him, taking all
the major championships and
garnering laurels all the way.
He became to many of us a
symbol worthy of emulation. Tiger
Woods made the game of golf look
less elitist while expanding its field
of popularity. Even those who did
not play it at the time picked
interest in watching it on TV. I did
not pick up the game of golf until
when in 2003 I was posted to the
Nigerian Institute of Policy and
Strategic Studies, NIPSS, Kuru to
act as Secretary/Director of
Admin. The National Institute was
then a haven for golf players. When
I reported to Kuru, the National
Institute was still mourning the
sudden death in 2002 of its muchloved
Director-General, Major-
General Joseph Garba, one-time
Nigeria’s Foreign Minister in the
1970s, and later in the 80s,
Permanent Representative to the
United Nations.
One thing staff and participants
in the Institute remembered the
late DG was his fervent love for
golf. His everyday life revolved
around the office and golf. The
General had even constructed a
one-hole golf course a few steps
from the administrative building
adjacent to the main gate for all to
tee off at will. But Jos itself is
Nigeria’s home of golf, as the
Rayfield Course built in 1913
would probably be the oldest in the
country, older than the one built in
Kaduna in 1921 and Ikoyi in 1938.
Coincidentally General M.C.
Osahor, whom I met in Kuru as
successor to Joseph Garba, is
another golf enthusiast and he
gave orders to the staff to help guide
debasement of that term or not.
It should be quite clear that anyone seeking
to be crowned “Nigeria’s conscience” should
be able to rise above partisan and other
considerations in his interventions in the
country and always stand on the side of the
truth and the oppressed. It is not everyday that
we produce the likes of Gani Fawehinmi or
Chinua Achebe who would always use the same
yardstick to evaluate either an Obasanjo or a
Jonathan, and if they were still alive today,
would use the same for a Buhari.
Not for them the sudden,
unabashed revision of their well-considered
and widely circulated opinion on an any ruler,
not because of some new “evidence” of
redeeming qualities they have suddenly
stumbled upon about him, but merely because
the fellow has now banded together with their
friends to capture political power. Those who
truly qualify to be referred to as a “country’s
conscience” always put their country first -
always place the welfare of the hapless, longsuffering
citizens far above the primitive
interests of their politician friends.
We should just tell ourselves
the plain truth: for now, this
country has no conscience;
indeed, conscientious and
discerning people will know
when one eventually emerges
When President Jonathan, for instance,
sought to decorate Achebe with a “National
Honour”, the legendary writer rejected it by
saying that the situation that made him to
earlier reject the same “honour” awarded to
him by the Obasanjo regime had not changed
under Jonathan; and so, he had to once again
excuse himself from it. That was his way of
telling those rulers that unless they deployed
conscientious efforts to fix Nigeria and make
life more tolerable for the citizenry, they lacked
the qualification to honour him. Achebe would
have told the same thing to the now clearly
groping Buhari regime were he still alive and
me pick up the game. I did, and
played a lot particularly at the
picturesque grounds of Rayfield
and the one-hole course in the
National Institute.
Playing golf in that period
inevitably got one to focus on the
number one golfer of the time,
Tiger Woods. It was exhilarating
watching Tiger winning
tournament after tournament.
However, the winning streak
floundered about 2008 when his
career seemed to have unravelled
and he just went downhill.
He had some extramarital
indiscretions and being the
celebrity he was, the media made
a mountain out of the affairs, left
him with no breathing space, with
lurid stories of his frolics
highlighted here and there. This
must have caused him endless
stress. To worsen matters for Tiger
Woods, he was beset with elbow,
knee and back problems requiring
rounds of surgeries over the next
many years. Obviously all these
had impact on his performance, his
ranking and earnings.
Many even began to worry about
his mental stability when he fired
his long time caddie in 2011. His
performance still continued to
deteriorate until his ranking fell
to an abysmal low. Somehow after
that bad spell his performance
seemed to lift away and he started
to improve. It was a slow journey
for Tiger Woods to come up again.
There was one set back or the
other. At a time due to the surgeries
Tiger missed all the four majors
and hardly played any golf in
2017. But by the end of that year,
his performance at the Hero World
Challenge in Bahamas was
sufficient to give notice to the
golfing world that the tiger is back.
Welcome Tiger.
such an “honour” extended to him?
Of course, Gani would have done the same
thing too. He was not one to brazenly take
sides in a political conflict, offering high-profile
support to one party in the conflict even when
it was public knowledge that he was in some
way benefiting from his association with the
public officers he was lending some support.
He would have hastened to realise that there
was something called “conflict of interests”,
and that you do not unduly stretch the people’s
trust, beyond its malleable limits. Put another
way, you don’t sleep on Delilah’s lap and hope
to wake up in Abraham’s bosom.
Somebody who allows himself to be
described as “Nigeria’s conscience” cannot
afford the luxury of a credibility perennially
stained by his very close association with (if
not public endorsement of) people generally
perceived as strategic, generous contributors
to Nigeria’s current chronic problems, a people
whose mere appearance anywhere
immediately inspires unqualified disgust in
the citizens. Anybody can occasionally throw
front-page-grabbing “bomb shells” (it is not
rocket science), but such pronouncements only
make sense to informed people if the person
who throws them is able to demonstrate that
he is not merely a “situational activist” who
only finds his voice when the target is a “safe”
one. To him, corruption does not lose its
egregious hue when accusing fingers are
pointing at a friend.
The danger now is that a growing number
of people have already begun to look a bit too
closely and have begun to discover that even
the loud “king” whose ill-fitting, borrowed
costume had engaged their unqualified
admiration and awe for a very long time now
is actually unclad like the rest, and that beyond
well-aimed pronouncements, much of what
they had witnessed so far is just an unduly
stretched farce, despite the unending, drab
“oriki” booming from tireless praise singers.
I think we should just tell ourselves the plain
truth: for now, this country has no conscience!
Indeed, conscientious and discerning people
will know when one eventually emerges.
When Gani was here, we all knew and
acknowledged his worth.
•Ejinkeonye, a public affairs analyst , wrote
from Lagos