Category: Friday

Opalaba just called, ostensibly to see how I was doing. He is my good friend after all. But you do not have a tree in the backyard without knowing the type of fruit it bears. So after the exchange of pleasantries, Opalaba-way, I volunteered a thought.

“Finally, the list is in and the Senate is in session. Mr. President cannot wait to have his men and women of distinction to help with his change agenda. Thankfully, Senate is up to the task and the screening has been as thorough and as fair as it can be under the circumstance. We must all be proud of this new momentum. Perhaps now, we are just witnessing the new beginning that we welcomed on May 29.”

I did not hear a response from the other end and I thought that the Almighty Network had played a fast one on both of us. “Hello! Are you still there?” I enquired.

“Of course, I am here.”

“But why didn’t you respond to my observation? It is unusual for you to be out of words? Is everything alright?”

“No, you can be sure that I am not short of words. I am only trying to decide which one best captures your naivety and unpardonable ignorance.”

In truth, I could not pretend to be shocked. I know that my friend would not ordinarily call unless he had a bone to pick. And what else is current on the political horizon than the list of ministerial nominees and the Senate screening of same. That I volunteered a positive outlook was obviously too much for him. He had apparently called to complain!

“Oh! Seriously? What seems to be the issue? Were you expecting to be nominated?” I asked.

That only added fuel to the fire in my friend’s angry belly.

“Expecting to be nominated? Did you just ask that of me? And did you really think that I am so dumb and hopeless?”

I knew what he meant. The original Opalaba and his friend Arohanran had taught us the relationship between action and reaction; between doing and receiving; about how one good turn deserves another. Simply put, you should not expect to reap where you did not sow and you may expect to step on a wet ground only if you or someone had taken the initiative of throwing water ahead. Without having being involved in Mr. President’s or his party’s campaign, Opalaba’s point was that it can only be a dumb and hopeless person that would expect to be a ministerial nominee.

“Well, then, what is your problem? Is it with the list? Or is it with the screening? It better not be with the list because that is the President’s prerogative, and right from the moment he was announced as the winner, he did not hide his intention to choose his cabinet without any intervention.”

“Yes, I am aware of the President’s position”, Opalaba responded. And I cannot fault the wisdom of the choice that he made to be his own man who belongs to everyone and to no one. If I might add, he did a great job of assembling competent hands for the most part.”

“So what is your concern? I prodded my friend. In what sense did you accuse me of political naivety and ignorance?”

“Hmm!” Opalaba took a deep breath and cleared his throat.  “A 20-year-old pounded yam can burn the fingers”, he responded. “When a hunter performs the traditionally prescribed thanksgiving ritual on account of the multiple games that come his way, the gesture is more for the purpose of claiming future blessings than it is for the present.  And it is imprudent to burn your escape bridge after getting to the other side of the river.”

My friend was going to hang up on me after what appeared to me to be a new dimension of speaking in tongue. And to my question for a little more specificity, he only volunteered an additional balderdash: “I presume that you are an “Omoluabi” and as they say, you only need a half of a word.”

“Alright then, what about the screening exercise? I asked. “I thought that the Senate did a remarkable job and the leadership deserves a pat on the back.”

“Yeah, sure”, he responded. “They performed the job of an inquisitor on some and adorned others with colourful garland. They stuck to the local parliamentary tradition, which required them to respect former members of NASS and SASS. It does not matter whether those individuals have some ugly skeletons in their cupboards that need to be X-rayed for public examination.”

I agreed with my friend on this point. However, it also occurred to me that Senate was handicapped and could not do a thorough screening without knowing what portfolio a particular nominee was going to handle. The questions that were posed to the nominees were only based on educated guesses on the part of the senators. Thus, for instance, those nominees with legal backgrounds were asked questions relating to assignments in the Ministry of Justice, while those with finance background were asked questions relating to operations in the Ministry of Finance.

Even with such efforts on the part of the senators, they could not ask follow up questions when a nominee appeared to give an answer that demanded further clarification. For example, a nominee volunteered a thought on “change” which he asserted was “not a concept, but an ideology.” There are many senators in the chamber who could have asked for clarification of what the nominee meant. This is especially important since the whole agenda of the administration and the APC that controls the Senate centres around “change.” How might this distinction between concept and ideology influence or affect the job of a minister?

It was the same nominee who suggested that corruption can only be defined by the law and that we must avoid bringing morality into law. This is a positivistic outlook on the law and if such a nominee has the portfolio of justice, the question must be asked how he would handle the task, especially since we also know that morality is the foundation of the law.

Did the nominee mean that moral considerations have no role to play in the making of the law? That is certainly not true because they do. Or did he mean that once we have our legal framework in place, morality should have nothing to do with its interpretation and execution? There was a good opening for addressing such concerns by Senate. But under the circumstance in which the distinguished Senators operated in the 36 hours of screening, they could not do full justice to their sacred assignment.

The tradition in other places, including the constitution that we copied and modified, is that ministerial nominations come with assigned ministries or portfolios. The screening is done by committees with senators who have expertise in the tasks handled by the particular ministries. Thus the Senate Committee on Justice would handle the screening of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice and the Committee on Health and Human Services would deal with the screening of the Minister of Health. After a thorough screening of the nominees, which includes public hearings, the committees make their recommendations to the Committee of the Whole, which takes the final decision by vote.

Hopefully, we would adopt this serious model of ministerial screening and thus improve the credibility of the system. As we saw in their performances, candidates for the exalted positions are all too willing to demonstrate their competence and integrity. Unfortunately, by the way that Senate handled their screening, one can only conclude that the nominees have not been accorded the seriousness and respect that they and their assignments deserve.  They also deserve our best wishes and prayers for a successful tenure, and speaking for Opalaba, my good friend, all the President’s lieutenants can count on ours without reservation.

African states are multinational because they were creations of colonial invaders, who had no regard for national boundaries, and whose main concern was administrative convenience. If it is desirable to have the boundaries of nations and states coincide, and if it is desirable that a state must arise out of the sense of mutual affection and needs of its components, then the process that led to the carving out of Africa at the Berlin conference, and its outcome, are anomalous and undesirable. This much is agreed to by the majority of Africans and their sympathisers.

African people had no choice in defining the boundaries of their political obligation. This was in part responsible for the various crises that erupted shortly after flag independence in the early 1960’s, of which the people, not the colonisers, were the victims. They suffered untold hardship; and were unfairly blamed for betraying irrational primordial feelings and tribal jingoism.

There are two related reasons for this blame game. First, the world community, on account of its own interest, would not encourage balkanisation because it would disrupt existing alliances and lead to the instability of the world system. Second, former colonisers and imperialists were genuinely concerned about losing the interests and loyalties they had established if the boundaries of states were reviewed. Both of these were selfish reasons.

But a third reason, arising from the idealism of Africans, cannot be judged selfish. With an undeniable pan-Africanist credential, Kwame Nkrumah and some of his peers believed that the prosperity and greatness of Africa depended on its political unity, with a United States of Africa as the ideal. From this perspective, the agitation for redrawing boundaries was ill-informed.

Nkrumah’s reasoning was utilitarian: African boundaries must not be redrawn to create homogeneous nation-states. Indeed, Africa must unite as one state because she would benefit from political unity. The truth of the proposition cannot be denied out of hand without serious investigation as to the probable consequences of political unity.

There is a non-utilitarian argument, one that seems to take the imperialist-imposed boundaries as sacred and inviolable just because it is there. It is a conservative argument because it seeks to preserve or conserve what there is simply because it is. It occurs at state and continental levels. Thus Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has argued ad nauseam that the unity of Nigeria is inviolable because it is divine. But what is divine about a so-called unity that was imposed by foreigners who needed the structure for their own interests? The answer to this question is inaudibly loud and vaguely clear.

The boundaries of African political communities are not based on the common interests of their members. They could not have been since those interests were not consulted. Since they are in large part multi-national states, they are not based on the common nationality of their members. Therefore, if these were desirable bases for grouping people as fellow-citizens, it would appear that present-day political boundaries should not be declared sacred.

Of course, it is one thing to draw this inference; it is another thing to come to terms with the practical impediments to the realisation of the desirable outcome.  Many people have, on the bases of the difficulties, refused to make the inference itself. But that is not philosophically sound. One could make the inference; determine the difficulties in moving towards the ideal, and end with measures that, while not radical in their outcomes, may still effectively resolve the problem. This is a reasonable approach to a recurring challenge.

I believe that African political boundaries are not ideal. I believe that their external imposition is itself an insult, and that those who imposed these boundaries did not mean well for Africans. Therefore, there is nothing sacred about the boundaries.

However, I also believe that much as it is desirable to redraw these boundaries, the difficulties of accomplishing this task cannot be overestimated. Therefore, we must be creative in dealing with the problems of cultural, linguistic, and religious differences and the consequent absence of a sense of community in the externally imposed multi-national states of Africa.  How?

The main feature of these states is their multi-national and multi-cultural character. Deriving from this feature is that citizens see themselves first as members of ethnic nationalities. This is not anybody’s fault.

First, there is something natural about it. Where other groups exist, the water of nationality will seek its own level; the birds of the same ethnic feather will flock together.

Second, this is the “divide and conquer” design of the colonial imperialists while they were in control. After their departure, it was just too easy for each nationality group to see the others as its rivals. In this kind of environment, democratic citizenship—which ensures that every citizen enjoys equal treatment—cannot just be a question of “one person one vote”. Other measures have to be taken.

There are two answers to remedy the situation created by (a) the externally imposed character of the boundaries of African political communities and (b) the multi-national character of the ensuing states.

First, the character of these states as external impositions has to be remedied by a conscious effort to give them legitimacy. Nationalities and cultural communities were insulted when outsiders capriciously violated their space, partitioned their land and assumed ownership over them. Even Mill cannot provide an adequate justification for this rape of the land of Africa because these were communities that had developed systems of government for centuries before the coming of the colonial invaders.

An approach to legitimacy is for these states to organise a conference of their various nationalities at which they could voluntarily come to terms with their situation as it is or revisit and review the terms of their forced association. Each nationality, on the basis of equal representation, can then propose the terms under which they would continue in the association, and in the process, all nationalities can be expected to reach a compromise, which would serve as the new beginning of their state.

The second answer is based on a presumption of the kind of compromise that these nationalities would reach at their conference. In this I follow the insight of Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

Recall that from his own historical-philosophical account, Awolowo observes that “it was the passionate desire for peace amongst them, and for mutual defence or protection against those outside their union, as well as for the procurement of economic benefits, which led to the emergence of, first, the village states, then the city states, followed by the nation-states or multi-nation states.”

We may make three assumptions. First, no nationality would want to give away all of its members’ rights to the union. They would retain their right to their culture and to raise their young ones according to their cultural traditions. Therefore cultural matters would be left in the hands of each nationality.

Second, each nationality has, over its long history, developed some unique economic activities, which are unknown to the others. Therefore the advancement and promotion of these activities will be left in the hands of nationalities.

Third, one of the activities that every nationality would agree to leave in the hands of the union is the defence of their common border against any external threat. This is because no one nationality would be able to do this effectively.

This, then, is how one may expect a rational discussion at the conference of nationalities to go. In other words, because of their different cultural traditions, different economic endowments, different educational needs, common defence needs, the nationalities would agree to a constitutional arrangement that is truly federal in character.

Surely, however, while the constitution, in itself, cannot provide an absolute guarantee for stability and prosperity, without a true federal constitution, derived from the will of its component units, a multinational state is not politically legitimate; neither can it serve as a sure foundation for political stability. Therefore, if we truly desire legitimacy, stability and prosperity, we must deal with the elephant in the room and summon the political will to resolve the nationality question.

Today, on the 26th anniversary of the passing on of my father, Joseph Olanrewaju Gbadegesin, and in appreciation of his acute understanding of the responsibility of parents to educate the children they bring into the world, I provide an update on my 30 months old piece on family involvement in education. It is a befitting tribute to a man who gave all for the education not just of his children, but also of close and distant relations.

My 2013 piece on Family Involvement in Education was part of a series on education in which I argued for the need to bet on our innocent children who we voluntarily choose to bring into the world. I submitted that we bet on them when we create a future that is worthy of them and the country which they in turn can be proud to call theirs.

I observed that we create that future by investing in their education from the cradle so that from the first time they open their eyes, they see a nation that cares and educates, just as they behold the love of an extended family of mother, father, siblings, uncles, aunties and grandparents who first welcome them with loving hands and cheerful faces.

The observation that it takes a village to raise a child is as African as the origin of the human race. This is why the entire neighbourhood and the web of extended family members take time to nurture the child because therein lies a bright future for all. But as our people also understand, there has to be a demarcation of ownership in a matter of joint property.

Parents have to take effective ownership of family responsibility in the education of their children. And this has always been our tradition even in the pre-colonial days when our focus was on practical education for skills that were considered essential for a successful life—farming, trading, crafts and family professions.

Parents secured apprenticeship for their children and developed good relationships with the masters training their kids. And when “western education” was introduced, in spite on their deficit in that area of knowledge, many parents understood that the future of their children was in the hands of the teacher and the school. So they got involved in various ways.

The moment I was conscious of being a human being with needs was the moment I noticed my father’s willingness to invest in my future with his taking interest in everything educational. That willingness was put to a stressful test in December 1957 when it appeared that I was going to stay at home for at least one year after completing primary school. His wish for me to attend the newly- established Baptist High School, Shaki was thwarted because a trusted teacher had mishandled the application fees of all sixth graders in my school. There wasn’t going to be an alternative. But my father found a way out!

My dad and his friend, Pa Salawu Omotosho, the father of Iyabo Salawu (later Mrs. Ojeleye) decided to try their luck for their son and daughter respectively. They placed each of us on their bikes and rode to Ipapo, then Okaka, and back to Okeho, covering more than 20 miles. They had no luck as all the schools were fully enrolled! Their final hope was Baptist Secondary Modern School, Koso, Iseyin and with the help of his pastor, my father got both of us admitted. That was a moment of great joy for him and he made the most of it.

My father was fully involved in my education, never missing a Parent-Teacher Association meeting of my schools, and even after I left the schools, he still attended those meetings. For his and his fellow parents, just as there are student alumni, there are parent alumni with responsibilities to be involved.

A self-taught reader and writer, dad was always proud when he would converse with me in English language in the presence of his friends. In my student days away from home, I always enjoyed reading his letters in what I thought then was an archaic, cursive writing until my children had to learn cursive in the elementary school in the United States.

I followed my father’s example almost to a fault. While he had no choice but to let me leave home for higher education, since there was no secondary school or secondary modern school in Okeho after my completion of the primary school, I had a choice, and my wife and I decided in favour of keeping our children close to us. All our children gained admission to the popular Unity Schools when those schools were supposed to be the best. But we decided that they would be better off with us if we were actively involved in their schooling.

We chose to be active in the Parent-Teacher Association of Moremi High School, Ile-Ife, a public school located on the campus of Obafemi Awolowo University. I served as the chairman for a couple of years. I knew that the school had dedicated workers led by Deacon J. A. Ogunwuyi, who is now a proprietor of his own school. And of course, my children still tell tales of how hard it was for them in the house when they had to study for several hours a day.

The point is that a school is what its clientele make it and these include teachers, students and parents.

The literature on parental involvement in education is convincing. There is copious evidence that when the family is actively involved in the education of their children, it has a positive influence on the achievement of the children not only in school but throughout life because it enables them not only to do well in examinations and earn good grades, but also to develop better social skills.

Initiating and nurturing family involvement in the education of children is a double-lane approach by parents and schools because there is a lot at stake for both, but certainly more for the parents. A school where accountability is taken seriously and where there are consequences for failure would leave no stone unturned in getting all hands on deck for successful students’ outcomes.

On the other hand, parents know that the future of their kids, and their own happiness and peace of mind are at stake. They therefore have a lot more reason to get involved. Careers are important, but as the elders remind us, the probability is very high that a child that is inadvertently left untrained and unskilled may end up destroying whatever legacy an illustrious career has succeeded in building. This is just as true of children that are spoilt on account of parental negligence.

Surely, not all parents have the patience, skills, or self-confidence that are essential to an effective involvement on all fronts. A parent may not be able to offer direct help for a child’s home work. This is where the entire family structure has to be deployed.

We take pride in our communal orientation. We create the phenomenon of aso-ebi. And it has also been our tradition for community organisations to get involved in the education of their members. I recall with utmost gratitude the motivation and inspiration that I received from the Okeho Literary Progressive Union, which organised after-school tutorials, as my friends and I prepared for the Primary School Leaving Certificate examination in 1957.

The spirit of community engagement must be revived in all our villages, towns and cities. It is doable. What it requires is a new orientation that privileges the very idea of community which our urban-centred individualism has jettisoned. Then what one lacks, others can supply and together we can build a new coalition of committed family and community for the education of our children.

After 26 years, I believe that Olanrewaju has rested in perfect peace. His children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, nephews, nieces and cousins are always appreciative of a life well lived.

Barka de Sallah!