Author: The Nation

• By Tunji Oyelade

Since independence, Nigeria has had different governments, ranging from democratic rules to military interregnum and back to democracy. It is obvious that good governance was lacking in all the administrations we have had. Seems good governance had never been in our glossary.

During the first democracy, ethnic, regional and tribal issues led to the fall of that epoch. The military took over from 1966 up till 1979. That was the period of economic boom. The military, however, not being designed for governance, had the problem of corruption and lack of economic sense. They ruled by decrees and edicts and proclamations, in the literal sense of the word. We returned to clueless democracy and economic decline within four years, which necessitated a come-back for the military. That was a period of economic nose dive dotted by high level of corruption and bereft totally of governance, not to talk of good governance at all. Since then, it was descent into the abyss of economic woes and utmost corruption. No government had the will power and the blueprint for economic liberation of Nigerians and total annihilation of corruption.

Let me attempt a definition of good governance. 

Good governance refers to the process and manner of exercising power and authority in a fair, transparent, accountable, responsive and participatory manner. It also involves the effective and efficient use of resources, the protection of human rights, the rule of law, and the promotion of inclusive economic and social development.

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In summary, good governance is characterised by openness, responsiveness, predictability, accountability, participation, consensus-oriented decision-making, and the respect for human rights and the rule of law. Good governance involves a government doing right not because the citizens would applaud it, but because it is the right thing to do. In essence do right because it is right.

A government that does right will believe in building strong and viable institutions backed up by impregnable laws and allowed to operate freely within the law, without any form of interference. 

Good governance will enable effective and fair administration of the nation’s resources in a manner that touches every sector of the economy and the citizenry. 

Good governance will enable just, transparent and due process in government interactions and transaction with the people and enable a seamless and easy flow of such interactions and transactions.

Good governance will entail accountability from government, its parastatals, agencies and any occupier of a position within the government on a monthly, quarterly and even yearly basis as to how they fare in those positions, because they were elected or appointed to represent the people. We cannot all be in government and that is why it is representative. The people have the rights to demand accountability and give feedbacks on government activities. 

Good governance requires the legislature making laws that affect the people directly. The recent legislation on power is a step in the right direction. The states should tap into this opportunity to generate electricity, distribute it to end users to recoup their investments.

The legislature should also be willing to legislate on issues on chapter two of the constitution, to make the government responsible to her duties therein, by removing the restrictions contained therein. Such legislations would improve the economic and social well-being of the people and of course, lead to economic development of the country.

The current decision of the government to introduce tuition in tertiary institutions is a welcome development. This might not be a popular decision. Truth is, however, that no country can sustain free education alone. There can be subsidy of it but not total non-payment of fees. First, non-payment system will affect infrastructure; output of research; quality of students turned out and teachers, and of course, general decline in facilities. Example is not far-fetched. We can compare the private institutions with the public ones. The difference is so clear. We can also compare foreign education, where students pay heavily to what obtains in Nigeria.

The intending introduction of students’ loan is also a welcome idea. The government however, must not be hasty in such attempt, without putting in place a solid institution within the education sector for implementation and monitoring of the scheme, otherwise, corruption will kill it. Nigerians are quick to find loopholes within which to latch unto to perpetrate their evil against the scheme. The government can tie the loans to universities’ admission of students and to a certain cumulative grade level. The criteria of “indigentship” will not and cannot work because the children of the rich and their relatives would be end up as beneficiaries.

The judiciary, on its part must be fearless, impregnable; not high handed but acting within the laws. We advocate judicial pragmatism and borrowing of precedents in advanced climes to solve knotty issues.

Government agencies must be accountable to the government setting them up and to the people. There should be avenues to demand information and clarification from representatives and agencies without the necessary bottlenecks. 

Local government councils must be revived and given clear cut job descriptions and be made accountable to the people. Their continuing receipts of allocations must reflect the projects effected in their areas and verified by the people. 

Good governance in a democracy should empower the people in order to improve their economy and also in term of ability to demand for accountability.

A government that must succeed must have the will-power and be decisive to do, in its first tenure of four years, projects that are people oriented and deliberate institutional based efforts to rid the country of corruption. No one should be spared.

The government may be unpopular and may not have a second term but history will not forget such government.

This is a wakeup call on this new government that we can begin to do things right. Things are working well elsewhere because the institutions are working; they are not selective; they affect all the same way, which depicts fairness and are not interfered with unduly. I hope our nation will get it right this time.

• Oyelade is professor of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

• By Andrew A. Erakhrumen

On May 30, (a day after the termination of former president Muhammadu Buhari’s administration) the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN), Abuja Judicial Division gave its judgement over a case, with suit number NICN/ABJ/270/2022, before Justice B. B. Kanyip (President, NICN). This was a case between federal government/Federal Ministry of Education (as claimants) and Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) as defendants. The case was a referral by Buhari’s Minister of Labour and Employment, acting pursuant to section 17 of the Trade Disputes Act (TDA) Cap T8 LFN 2004 vide a referral instrument dated September 7, 2022 with a forwarding letter dated September 8, 2022.

 This judgement, that is currently open to claimants’ appeal, gave credence to a Nigerian colloquialism: “no be person wey first go police station dey win case”. Some controversial issues, even among academics, have been settled through the judgement. The NICN was able to do justice to a case – using the words of the judge – [that] “…..remains undefended as far as the defendant is concerned…..”

 Yes, the aspect of the judgement that hit newspapers’ headline and attracted public opinion is the one relating to the interpretation of the provisions of Section 43 of the TDA CAP T8 LFN 2004 titled “special provision with respect to payment of wages during strikes and lock-outs” specifically dealing with the rights of employers and employees/workers during the period of any strike or lock-out. The claimants in the case wanted the court to answer the question: Can ASUU or any union that embarked on strike be asking to be paid salaries even with the clear provision of the law? The court was also asked to determine “whether ASUU members are entitled to emolument or “strike pay” during their period of…..strike which commenced on February 14, 2022 [and ended on the 14th of October, 2022], more so in view of our national law as provided in Section 43 of the TDA and the International Labour Principles on the Rights to Strike as well as the Decisions of the International Labour Organization [ILO] Committee on Freedom of Association on the subject. The TDA also has it that “if any question should arise as to whether there has been a lockout for the purposes of this section, the question shall on application to the Minister by the workers or their representatives be determined by the Minister [of Labour] whose decision shall be final.”

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Quickly, on the issue of legality or otherwise of the…..strike by ASUU leadership and members, hear the judge: “…And I must stress here, the legality or validity of a strike or industrial action is determined on a case by case basis. It is not carried over to another…..[since] the strike in issue had been called off while the matter was still pending before this Court…..It will, therefore, be academic to remark on the legality or otherwise of the strike…..This being so, I say no further…..”

Let us also quote the judgement on finality of Minister of Labour’s decision (according to TDA) on questions arising from whether there has been a lockout. The judge ruled that this “…falls foul of [ILO’s] Convention No. 87 when it [TDA] made the decision of the Minister to be final. In any event, the determination of the question whether there has been a lockout, is a question for the court to determine, not for the executive arm of government. To that extent, section 43(2) of the TDA falls foul of section 6 of the 1999 Constitution, which places judicial power in the judiciary, and not the executive arm of government, which is what the minister responsible for labour represents. 

Section 43(2)…..is accordingly unconstitutional, null and void.”

Let us now look at the court judgement on the issue that mainly hit the newspapers’ headline. This has to do with the federal government’s invocation of its discriminatory “no work, no pay” rule against the then-striking lecturers.

Justice Kanyip, while quoting from a May 8, 2007 judgement in the same NICN, states that “…..a strike, whether legal or not, falls squarely within the ambit of [section 43(1)(a) of TDA] and for which the strikers are disentitled from wages and other benefits envisaged by the section…..”

He further states emphatically that “…..given the self-executory nature of…..section…..43(1)(a) that it is perfectly lawful for an employer to choose to dispense with the ‘no work, no pay’ rule. In other words, strike pay [payment of wages or salaries for the period of a strike action] is lawful if an employer chooses to pay same and not to penalize the strikers in any other way for the strike. In the same vein, it is lawful for workers to agree with their employer that wages will be paid and no other detriment suffered even when strike actions are embarked on…..The bottom line is that an agreement between an employer and strikers to pay wages or salaries for the period of a strike action is legal as the agreement acquires a life of its own, and section 43(1)(a) of the TDA cannot be called to use in such a case…..”

Considering the foregoing, it is important to note, here, that ASUU has never asked for payments for work not done and/or not intended to be done! The union’s argument has always been that because teaching component of their work was suspended during strike does not mean that all their work ceased in/out of universities.

The suspended aspects of academic work during strike will be done once the strike got suspended. For those who do not know – in line with the conditions surrounding their employment – lecturing/teaching is not the only job engaged in by academics in universities, worldwide! We stand to be corrected! Thus, in the real sense, “no work, no pay” is incongruous and unimplementable concerning striking university lecturers!

Can this be a reason for the instruction, from the former Minister of Labour and Employment, to pay salaries to some ASUU members who also went on the 2022 strike?

In determining whether ASUU has the right to embark on strike over disputes as [was] the case…..by compelling the federal government to deploy University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) developed by ASUU in payment of salaries and wages to academic staff of universities as against the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS)…..the court ruled that the claimants were wrong to have imposed IPPIS on the defendant as “…..ASUU is the union for academic staff of universities. Federal government owned universities are governed by their respective enabling statutes as well as the Universities (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) Act 2003…..[which] amended the Universities (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act No. 11 of 1993 and made new provisions, among other things, for the autonomy, management and re-organization of the universities in Nigeria.”

 According to Justice Kanyip, “autonomy…..does not mean that government no longer has a say or stake in the universities…..but section 2AA as inserted provide as follows: The powers of the council shall be exercised, as in the law and statutes of each university and to that extent establishment circulars that are inconsistent with the laws and statutes of the university shall not apply to the universities. Section 2AA dealing with independence of the council in exercise of its functions, on its part, as inserted, provides [among others] thus: …..(2) The council of a university in the discharge of its functions shall ensure that disbursement of funds of the university complies with the approved budgetary ratio for – (a) personnel cost; (b) overhead cost; (c) research and development; (d) library developments; and (e) the balance in expenditure between academic vis-a-vis non-academic activities…..University autonomy would, therefore, mean the independence of the university from the state and other pressures of the society in order to make decisions regarding its self-governance, finance, administration and establish its policies……”

Consequently, those displaying unfathomable ridiculous ignorance by shouting that “you cannot tell your employer how you are to be paid” should now know where ASUU’s argument on this is anchored.

• Erakhrumen teaches at the University of Benin.

On the day the 10th National Assembly (NASS) was inaugurated last week, there was a fluke report on some online sites that the Department of State Services (DSS) had arrested Clerk of the National Assembly Sani Tambawal and some other parliamentary staff. The inauguration held on Tuesday, 13th June, and it was reported that agents of the secret police on Monday night picked up Tambawal alongside other senior officials in NASS bureaucracy in a bid to coerce them into manipulating the assembly’s standing rules to favour certain candidates in the leadership contests. It was an unsubstantiated report that didn’t gain traction beyond the few sites which posted it, and many of those sites pulled it down soon after flying the headline. Fluke as it was though, the report illustrated the crass image the DSS has acquired.

Few days earlier, pandemonium was reported at the Anambra State House of Assembly as operatives believed to be from the DSS attempted to arrest then lawmaker-elect for Nnewi North constituency, Mr. Onyekachukwu Ike. The eighth Anambra assembly has since been inaugurated and Ike has become a substantive lawmaker. But it was at the valedictory thanksgiving mass for the seventh assembly, penultimate Thursday, that heavily-armed men  rode into the legislative complex in three vehicles and grabbed the politician, who was attending the ceremony. Reports said the armed operatives bundled Ike into one of their vehicles and assayed to whisk him out of the complex when assembly security personnel moved swiftly to block the exit gate. No one knew why the operatives came for the lawmaker, and neither did they offer advance notice; Acting Clerk Mrs. Esther Aneto and other senior assembly staff were reported saying the agents informed neither members of the legislative house nor police personnel on security duty at the assembly complex before trying to nab the lawmaker. One of the operatives was, however, overheard explaining in the ensuing pandemonium that they had a court order.

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It reportedly took the intervention of House Speaker Uche Okafor and Anambra Deputy Governor Onyeka Ibezim, who was at the valedictory event to represent Governor Chukwuma Soludo, to dissuade the armed agents from taking Ike away. When contacted on the incident, spokesman for the Anambra State police command, Tochukwu Ikenga, indicated the DSS was involved. “No cause for alarm, it has been resolved. I think it was DSS operatives that were on that mission, but I think everything has been resolved,” he said, adding: “I was told that the Deputy Governor and the Speaker of the House intervened. So, everything was resolved but I don’t know the circumstances surrounding serving him (Ike) an invitation.”

The secret police department has been assertive and up front in tackling down top officials of government who lately fell from grace. No sooner had word gotten out that former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele had been suspended from office by the Bola Tinubu presidency, penultimate Friday, than speculations ran wild that he had been picked up by the DSS. The agency initially had to deny that was the case, but it came round shortly after to confirm the disgraced banker had been taken into custody for investigative reasons. Details of Emefiele’s arrest indicated he was arrested by DSS operatives at his home in Lagos and flown to Abuja on Saturday in a private jet. A visual clip of the conveyance that  emerged showed the former apex banker being hauled to the stairway of the aircraft waiting on the tarmac in a Hilux van, and then herded into the aircraft by DSS agents – one of whom ominously brandished a pair of handcuffs.

The alleged sins of Emefiele are horrendous and are for the courts to prove. But whether the manner of his arrest couldn’t have been more civil, considering the libertarian dispensation we are in, is arguable. We could ask what difference it would have made if he was simply invited by the DSS and given a timeline to report; with personnel at all the country’s gateways posted on a watch-out just in case he entertains the idea of fleeing, or indeed his movements surveillanced if it comes to that. Besides, human rights lawyer Femi Falana (SAN) has contended that the DSS lacks constitutional power to probe and prosecute the suspended apex banker. Emefiele, according to him, should rather be handed to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which he said was better placed by law to deal with charges stacked against the banker. Citing a legal precedent, the senior lawyer in a statement said DSS “lacks the power to investigate and prosecute Mr. Emefiele  in respect of allegations of money laundering and other economic crimes. Therefore, after investigating the alleged involvement of Emefiele in terrorism financing, the DSS should transfer him to the EFCC for the purpose of investigating the allegations of money laundering and allied offences.”

Only that EFCC now has challenges of its own, and it is the DSS interrogating. President Tinubu, last Wednesday, suspended erstwhile EFCC Chairman Abdulrasheed Bawa from office to allow for a probe of weighty allegations of abuse of office levelled against him, according to a statement by the office of the Secretary of the Federation. And no sooner was that suspension announced than the secret police called Bawa in for questioning, with DSS spokesman, Dr. Peter Afunanya, saying the invitation “relates to some investigative activities concerning him.” Here again, we could argue that the charges of graft Bawa faces fall ordinarily outside the mandate of the DSS. But the agency pulled him in anyway and detained him for grilling last week. He was luckier than Emefiele though, because he on his own reported to DSS in response to an invite, not arrested and bundled into detention.

It was an ironic twist for Bawa whose agency, two weeks earlier, was at loggerheads with the DSS over property rights at No. 15A Awolowo Road in Ikoyi, Lagos, where both organisations share offices. DSS operatives had on 30th May blockaded the property and prevented EFCC personnel from accessing their workstations, in a tussle over ownership that the DSS tried to play down but the EFCC acknowledged. “It is not correct that the DSS barricaded EFCC from entering its office. No. It is not true. The service is only occupying its own facility where it is carrying out its official and statutory responsibility,” Afunanya equivocated in a statement, as he insisted  the EFCC couldn’t be contesting ownership because the building was the base of predecessor-organisations of the DSS. In its reaction, however, the EFCC decried the blockade since both agencies had amicably cohabited at the property for two decades. “By denying operatives access to their offices, the commission’s operations at its largest hub with over 500 personnel, hundreds of exhibits and many suspects in detention have been disrupted,” EFCC spokesperson Wilson Uwujaren said in a statement. Eventually, the EFCC got the upper hand in that tussle, because the Tinubu presidency ordered the DSS to lift its blockage on the property and continue cohabiting with the anti-graft agency as before. Notwithstanding, if you asked me, the siege marked an unsightly show of brawn and aggression by the secret police in a security ecosystem that should be characterised by civility and mutual sobriety.

There is some stealth, self-effacement and peculiar gravity that ideally should characterise secret policing, but which the DSS seems to lack. When agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) happen upon a scene in the United States, you know the matter at stake goes beyond mere criminality to hazarding state security in a manner that overreaches the remit of the conventional police. Even then, operatives of that agency are held to strict codes of avoidance of rights abuses. Only last week, senior officials of the Joe Biden administration in Washington announced new disciplinary measures to prevent further FBI abuses under a controversial surveillance program that will expire at year end (2023) unless Congress renews it. Deputy FBI Director Paul Abbate intimated the Senate Judiciary Committee about a new “three strike” policy by which FBI analysts would be disciplined, or even fired, for three incidents of misuse of the intelligence program.

In our clime, DSS operatives are everywhere for every cause, including those you would think fall within the purview of other conventional agencies. But worse is that they sometimes resort to Gestapo tactics, in a dispensation where we should be careful to safeguard our nascent freedom. We shouldn’t be at ease with such. Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of liberty.

•Please join me on kayodeidowu.blogspot.be for conversation.