The Nation Newspaper

Category: Friday

  • At INEC’s Workshop

    At INEC’s Workshop

    Innovation is man’s intuitive invention which may be positive or negative depending on the intention and objective of the innovator. In recent times, three great Nigerians have come up with three different beneficial innovations to the great relief and comfort of Nigerian citizens. The first of them is Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi whose financial ‘Midas Touch’ through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has saved Nigerian economy from total collapse. The second is Mallam Muhammad Abubakar, the Inspector General of Nigeria Police, whose ingenuous policy of ‘QUIT THE ROAD BLOCKS’ order given to the Police Force has brought tremendous succour to millions of Nigerians who had been technically conditioned to extortion siege just as it has drastically reduced the rate of accidental deaths caused by ‘accidental bullet discharges’. And the third is Professor Attahiru M. Jega, the Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) whose new innovation in respect of electoral awareness in Nigeria has lifted the veil of ignorance from the faces of the electorate. Incidentally, the trio are from the same geographical (Northwest) zone. This further confirms that the late General Murtala Muhammed’s unprecedented performance as Nigeria’s Head of State in the mid 1970s was not a mere accident after all. It should be recalled that Gen. Murtala Muhammed was also from the Northwest zone.

    In his usual research work, Professor Jega discovered that the campaign for electoral awareness in the country had skipped a substantial chunk of the national population and this might take a toll on the success of future elections. That chunk is the Madaris (Arabic and Islamic schools) in Nigeria. Madaris is the plural of Madrasah. Jega saw such a skip as a major error which required immediate rectification. He therefore embarked on an effective campaign by organising workshops and seminars for that sector of the population. One of such workshops was held in Sokoto for the North last year November while another was held in Akure, Ondo State for the South, last Thursday of December 2012.

    The Northern session of the workshop was well attended by participants from all the 19 states of the North just as the Southern one was equally well attended by participants from all the 17 states of the South. The Southern session was organised on behalf of the INEC Chairman by Professor Lai Olurode, the INEC National Commissioner in charge of the Southwest and Chairman of INEC Institute. The workshop was coordinated by Ustadh Daud Adegbenro Badru who is the General Secretary of the Federation of Arabic School Proprietors and Principals of Nigeria. Yours sincerely was invited to the Southern session as a guest speaker. The theme of the paper I presented was: ‘THE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE ELECTORATE IN NIGERIA’. Below is the text of the paper. Please read on:

    “It is a matter of delight that for the first time in contemporary Nigeria, a programme of this type is being extended to Madaris. This is an indication that things are beginning to take a better shape in our country. Hitherto, this sector of the society was not considered for an entitlement to any right, including enlightenment, simply because it did not akin enough to Western education which is a colonial heritage. The thought within the ruling elite was that whoever did not understand English could not be taught anything hence the official nonchalance to this sector of the society. Thus, bringing this programme to Madaris at this time is not only a realistic correction of an unjust policy of the past but also a right step in a right direction. At least the formulators of democratic policies in Nigeria would expect this formidable chunk of the society to bear certain responsibilities as a matter of patriotic duty. And wherever responsibilities are expected rights must not be denied. In every civilised society, citizens’ responsibilities to the nation go hand in hand with the rights to which those citizens are naturally entitled. No responsibility should be imposed on citizens to the exclusion of their rights.

    What most Nigerians, including those in government, do not seem to know is that constant communication between the government and the populace through indiscriminate tutorials or workshops of this type is a foremost means of ascertaining peace and harmony in a pluralistic society. Ostracising a major sector like the Madaris, therefore, particularly in areas of sensitive national projects like election, is an evidence of exclusiveness in governance. And that can never augur well for democracy.

    In Nigeria today, the population of those who are engaged in Madaris either as students or as teachers or as Qur’anic reciters or even as book printers and sellers is not less than 30 million people. Officially, the Almajirai (Pupils of Madaris) alone are said to be about 10 million. Any government that ostracises such a chunk in policy formulation or implementation is only promoting ignorance and possible discord in the society. I therefore salute and commend the thoughtful initiators of this laudable idea and those who planned it to this successful stage. Their initiative is an innovation that can broaden the horizon of the populace and ventilate the atmosphere for concord and harmony. I wish them God’s bountiful blessings.

    My assignment in this workshop is to give a pep talk on the rights and responsibilities of the electorate in Nigeria. The word electorate here presupposes that elections are held and people are expected to vote. But can there be elections without democracy? And can there be democracy without constitution? This is the premise from which my pep talk will commence. Constitution is the foundation of democracy. Every democratic process is or should be based on an existing constitution or democratic convention. There can be no democracy in the absence of a constitution or a relevant convention.

    The very first constitution in the world as mentioned in this column last Friday was that of Madinah initiated and championed by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who facilitated its draft and ensured its writing and promulgation. That constitution variously called the ‘Madinah Constitution’ and the ‘Charter of Madinah’ was written shortly after the Prophet’s emigration from Makkah to Yathrib in 622 CE. It was that historic emigration that changed the name of the city from Yathrib to Madinah. The constitution which had 63 Articles was very detailed and all-encompassing as it introduced to the world, for the first time ever, what later came to be known as ‘Human Rights’.

    The Medina Constitution upon which the establishment of the first democratic state in the world was based is truly a remarkable political/constitutional document for the primordial and the contemporary times. Contrary to the Western claim that Aristotle wrote a constitution for Athens, which preceded that of Madinah, the document called constitution and attributed to Aristotle which was written on a papyrus and discovered by an American missionary in Egypt in 1890 and published in 1891, was found not to be a constitution after all but an historical account of the governing system in the City-State of Athens. Some other legal documents on the governing conduct of the ancient societies have since been found, but none has proved to contain the letters and norms of a constitution.

    The Madinah Constitution, therefore, is the first and oldest constitution in the world and no individual or corporate intellectual body has disputed this with any significant proof. It was from that constitution that the English feudal bill of rights written in 1215 C. E and called Magna Carta was adapted. That is why Magna Carter also contains 63 Articles like Madinah Constitution. Incidentally, just as 55 people sat down together to draft Madinah constitution so did 55 people sat together to draft Magna Carta. And the fact that Magna Carta was followed by Habeas Corpus in 1679 as a means of rescuing the judiciary from the claw of the Crown in England is also an evidence that Magna Carta closely followed the example of Madinah Constitution. It should be remembered that a few years after the promulgation of Madinah Constitution there was a review that brought into it some addendum. It was that addendum that increased the number of Articles in that constitution from 47 to 63.

    Although, when American constitution came into existence in 1787 as an offshoot of Magna Carta, some Western historians took it for a landmark document which they classified as the oldest written national constitution in operation while the fact of its Magna Carta origin was deliberately overlooked. This was to avoid linking its origin to Madinah Constitution from which the idea of Magna Carta was derived. Nevertheless, no matter how it is viewed, the Madinah constitution remains the mother of all constitutions in the world as it preceded Magna Carta by 593 years and American Constitution by 1165 years without itself having been preceded by any. If there is any innovation in the American Constitution which distinguishes it a little from Magna Carta and Madinah Constitution, it is the reduction of that Constitution to Seven Articles which had to be divided into many sections and clauses.

    The Madinah Constitution is both historically and realistically significant not only for being the world’s first written constitution, but also for being ultramodern in the sense of its promulgation for a pluralistic society in which equal rights were guaranteed for all citizens, including women and children as well as tribes and religious blocks. That Constitution also spelt out the responsibilities of individuals and communities to the state. It should be recalled that Madinah at that time was inhabited by Muslims, Jews, Christians and Pagans all of whom jointly endorsed it as a charter of co-existence for the federating units. And that was why the City State of Madinah founded on the basis of that constitution was not initially called an Islamic State by Prophet Muhammad (SAW). It only became an Islamic State after the Muslims overwhelmingly outnumbered all others put together and the rule of majority was applied.

    Madinah Constitution was the first to provide a federal structure of government with a centralised authority in which various tribes and districts constituted federating units and enjoyed autonomy in certain matters of social, cultural and religious characters. In the constitution, the provision for district autonomy (under which came tribal and religious entities) was repeated severally in Clauses 3 to 11 and 26 to 35. In fact, many matters were left in the hands of the autonomous units except state security and national defence the provision for which could be found in Clauses 17, 36 (a) and 47 while the real provisions for centralised matters were made in Clauses 13, 15, 17 and 44. It was only in cases of disputes at the units’ level which could not be resolved at that level that was allowed to recourse to the central body. This confirms Madinah Constitution as truly the first democratic Constitution with federal disposition in human history.

    Democracy, on the other hand, is the political system in which the people of a country are ruled through any form of government of their choice. In modern democracies, supreme authority is exercised on behalf of the populace through the representatives elected by popular suffrage (this is called Shura in Islam). Such election may come in form of secret balloting as currently obtained in Nigeria or open physical indication as adopted in Nigeria’s 1993 elections. Popular suffrage is not about voting to choose the president or the governors or the representatives alone. It is also about accepting or rejecting a notion that may affect governance in one way or another through voting. Such voting may take the form of referendum or that of plebiscite. Here in Nigeria, suffrage has been limited to the choice of rulers alone through voting. As a matter of fact, Nigeria has never involved referendum or plebiscite on any national issue since independence in 1960. The only time a referendum was ever used in this country as a means of resolving a national issue by popular votes was 1961 when the status of a major area of the then Eastern Nigeria was to be re-determined as to whether to remain a part of Nigeria or to join Cameroon as a region. It was through that referendum that what is called Southern Cameroon today became an integral part of Cameroon.

    The problem with Nigeria, however, in adopting a foreign policy or innovation, be it social, cultural, economic or political, is the refusal by those in authority to give it a local flavour by adapting it to our national cultural mannerism. And this has consistently constituted the bane of democracy in our country. Given the fact that Nigeria, like many other countries of the world had been accustomed to monarchy for many centuries before colonisation, one would have expected a thorough study of who we are, what we want and how we hope to progress before adopting any system of government. But this did not happen. Rather, we chose to continue the management of our common life as we inherited it either from the British colonialists or from imperial America. The result is that we continue to drift aimlessly today on the high sea of life without being equipped with a guiding compass.

    But, by and large, whichever type of democracy is adopted, the essence is for the government in place to let the majority of the people enjoy maximum social and economic benefit as well as adequate security. Part of the security is for the citizens to know their rights and guard them as much as they identify their responsibilities and bear them. These can hardly be achieved without adequate awareness and information about electoral process.

    Going by the rules and regulations of elections in Nigeria as contained in our national constitution, there are responsibilities for us to bear as citizens in order to sustain our country and there are rights for us to guard in order to resist any economic or political oppression. Some of those responsibilities are spelt out in the various documents published by INEC for free distribution to the electorates. These can be obtained from any INEC office in the country.

  • Responsibility of citizenship: The youth in focus (3)

    Responsibility of citizenship: The youth in focus (3)

    Today, I offer the third and final installment of the lecture delivered under the auspices of a group of progressive indigenes of Oyo State on December 18 at the Ibadan Civic Center.

    I now return to the role of the youth in recapturing the essence and consequence of thinking including cooperation to solve challenges. Let us not lose sight of the fact that the indigenous administration that took over the reins of government in the Western region in 1953 made investment in human resources its priority because it believed that human beings are the most important agents of development. As that administration struggled along with other nationalists for independence, it persuaded itself that it needed to invest in educating the youth. Human resource development was its mantra. If we failed to credit that administration with anything, it would be grossly unfair if we failed to recognise its success in the education of the cadre of human power that laid the foundation for the pace-setting achievements. And as the saying goes, if you were promised a gift of clothing and dresses, it is wise to first check out the appearance of the promiser. The members of the Awolowo administration were well-educated. Here then is the first challenge for the ThinkOyo group. Education is the key to all aspects of development.

    The independence era was one of will to excellence. Competition was productive for the regions. Other regions sent delegations to study the success of Universal Primary Education in the West. And building on the fame of its deviant rejection of federal funds in order to have the freedom to use its internal funds for development as it saw fit, the West simply matched on with one achievement after another. This was the case in the pre-independence and early independence periods. When you think Oyo, you must think of what positive achievements could be made with a truly federal structure.

    Your challenge as a group is to engage in collaboration and cooperative endeavors to rebuild the walls of Oyo State. This is a challenge that must be met. I have no doubt that you can do it. Of course, there are obstacles and challenges. But there are also resources to meet those challenges.

    The foremost challenge is the provision of quality education for the masses of children and young adults that are drifting in the ocean of hopelessness so that they are well-placed to make substantial contributions to development. Education is the most effective leveler and an effective education policy that levels the playing field is desperately needed in order to realise an era of ajumose.

    The matter is simple to my mind. I was informed that ThinkOyo is an organisation of successful upwardly mobile young men and women. I would like then to call your attention to an old proverb of our ancestors: Ajooje ko dun beni kan ko ni (it’s impossible to motivate cooperation between haves and have-nots). But just as it is in consumption, so it is in the matter of production: Ajoose ko dun benikan ko ri se. You cannot expect the cooperation of a person of your age who has not been as privileged as you are in educational achievements and employment opportunities. Public education is still the greatest leveler and the greatest contributor to the closing of the inequality gap in a number of countries and you must pay your due to sustain it.

    Second, there is the challenge of youth alienation and despair. The youth are now more than ever especially at risk of drifting in the ocean of individualism where there are only a few islands of community and social responsibility. As a member of the ThinkOyo organisation, you must avoid the temptation of drifting in that ocean. You must join forces in the membership of an inclusive community of responsibility. That community is one that places more emphasis on what can be done for the community and less on what the community can do for it.

    No member of ThinkOyo must consider him or herself as successful just because the Governor knows him or her. Surely, the governor appreciates your loyalty as individuals. However, you must believe that your success as a member of ThinkOyo is because of the success of your mobilisation of others to the cause of helping the Governor to build a new Oyo State where everyone recognises and participates in the work of reconstruction.

    Third is the challenge of inequality. Ajumose entails a shared sacrifice. But glaring inequality militates against “ajumose.” Because it simply means that some are sacrificing much more against their will. Therefore an effective reduction in the gap of inequality is a prerequisite to the implementation of ajumose.

    We should remind ourselves that the original idea and practice of ajumose was in the form of traditional cooperative and collaborative efforts in rural agricultural communities that we all hailed from. In those communities there was no rampant inequality. Communal ownership of land, the principal means of production was a sure guarantee that people needed one another to survive and thrive. Therefore self-reliance was advanced in part by inter-personal assistance between friends and families. The realisation of the idea of the goodness of communal cooperation was not independent of the reality of equality of means and commonality of poverty and need.

    That the youth have a duty to rally to the cause of Oyo in particular and the nation in general is no news. Indeed, it is a duty that grows out of the duty of self preservation and self promotion. For the youth of today, the future of Nigeria as a nation has never been more uncertain. With unemployment skyrocketing and education nose-diving, the youth have good reason to panic about the future that may be their inheritance. And this is why they must see themselves as having a huge stake in the matter. Even if they have little or no memory of history; even if they are not aware of the labours of our heroes past, they can at least relate to their personal needs and appreciate the task that must be done to realise those needs. It is my hope that they are ready to show themselves worthy of the call of their generation to rebuild the walls of Oyo State, Yorubaland, and the nation at large. It’s all in the hands of the youth.

    I am here reminded of a story that must have been told a million times and for which there have been many versions. I first had my version from a Baptist preacher and later from a former university president. I have myself told it many times with different nuances. It is the story of an old sage and a bunch of youthful rascals. The sage was fond of admonishing the youth, always citing historical episodes laced with words of wisdom. The youthful rascals on their part were more like contemporary area boys.

    On the day that the story in question unfolded, the rascals had been out doing one mischief after another. Then they got tired but not until they got hold of a small bird. They argued about what to do with the bird. Some suggested torturing the bird for the fun of it. Others suggested frying it alive for good taste. Then the leader came up with the idea of testing the intelligence and wit of the old sage. They would ask him a simple question: is the bird alive or dead? If the sage replied that the bird was alive, the one assigned to hold the bird will suffocate it and proclaim the stupidity of the sage. If on the other hand he answered that the bird was dead, they would release the bird to freedom in triumph. Either way, they would claim victory and silence the old sage forever.

    The old man was not a sage for nothing, As soon as the rascals encountered him with their question, he knew it was a set up, and he answered them in kind: Whether it is a dead bird or a live bird, it is in your hand. In like manner, I say to ThinkOyo, what Oyo State is and would be is in your hand. Happy New Year!

  • The begging questions

    Whoever deviates from my instruction will live a hanging life and be resurrected a blind person in the hereafter” Q. 20:124

    Every aspect of human life is a question. Some are answered positively, some, negatively and some, not answered at all. But there is no unanswerable question in Islam. It is a different matter altogether if one is not pleased with the provided answer. That all-time phenomenal FAITH is known for providing answers even before questions are raised. And that is what distinguishes it from all other religions.

    If Islam had just been a dogmatic religion and not a complete way of life, it would have become like other creeds in the world today. Panel beaters would have worked on it. Painters would have re-sprayed it to their tastes. Fine artists would have added drawings of beauty to it for marketability. And, then, it would have become an all-comers’ trade fetching money day and night for merchants of fortune.

    But this divine religion is like a mighty ocean flowing ceaselessly towards all directions and watering all plants into life through the deltas of adjoining rivers. It will be a suicide bid, therefore, for anybody, government or nation, no matter how technologically advanced, to want to change its course.

    Looking at the emergence, the spread and the triumph of Islam in the midst of vicious empires and at a time when might and nothing but might alone mattered, any right-thinking person will surely be amazed by the surviving strategy of this divine religion. How did an unlettered desert man of little means come up with an ideology that captured the world slaves and kings? How did Prophet Muhammad (SAW) become a law giver without any training in a law school? How did he become a General without enrolling in any army? How did he become a scientist without attending any school? How did he become a doctor without undergoing any medical training? How did he become a ruler without receiving any tutelage in politics? And what can be more amazing, historically or contemporarily, than to have all these roles and more combined in a single human being who rose from such a crude background? These are not questions to be answered with crude abuses or parochial denigration.

    The great revolution which the great Prophet of Islam brought into the world cannot but beat the imagination of any sensible mortal being. There were hundreds of Prophets before him. Adam, Nuh, Ibrahim, Shuayb, Lut, Musa, Isa and a host of others had all come as prophets preaching peace and harmony to mankind. But none was either a General or a scientist or a ruler. Prophets Daud and Sulayman who were kings could though be called Generals in their own right, nevertheless, they were neither scientists nor doctors. Yet, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who combined all these rare qualities never claimed any miracle by magic wand.

    What makes Islam a unique way of life is the uniqueness of Prophet Muhammad’s personality which derived from the uniqueness of the Qur’an as a revealed ‘BOOK’ of Allah. If the Orientalists who were accusing Prophet Muhammad (SAW) of being a war monger were not ignorant or hypocritical, they would have known that no empire or civilisation has ever emerged or survived in history without fighting wars.

    How did such old empires as Mesopotamian, Greek, Assyrian, Macedonian, Persian and Roman emerge? How did the French and the Russian revolutions succeed in the early 19th and 20th centuries respectively? How did European countries become colonialist? And, even in contemporary time, how did America emerge as the world’s strongest power? Was it just by preaching human rights and democracy? The reality of today as presented by the history of the past has exposed the hypocrisy of yesteryears. Islam has transcended a stage in life when it could be intimidated or blackmailed into surrendering its legitimacy and identity to any spiritual or political charlatan.

    When the West talks of democracy today, the impression it gives is that democracy is a Western invention. This is very far from the truth. Despite the lengthy and speculative Platonic theories on democracy and despite the surreptitious claim that Aristotle wrote a constitution for the City State of Athens, the West did not come in contact with democracy practically until it had a political encounter with the Muslims in Spain in the 8th century C. E. And even with that encounter, Europe remained a mere spectator in the field of democracy until expediency brought about what was called ‘Magna Carter’ (Great Charter) in England in 1215 C. E.

    What the West calls democracy today was what Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had called ‘interactive government’ which he practiced as far back as the 7th century. At the time when he established an Islamic State based on Madinah Constitution, the first of its kind in the world, there was no single empire or nation in the entire world without a monarch. If he had not been sincerely focused on the genuineness of his mission, he would have joined the pack by crowning himself a king. But he became the first Head of State and government in the world not called a king because he did not govern like a monarch.

    The idea of democracy, which the West came to adopt as its heritage, therefore, is purely Islamic in origin.

    As Head of State, the Prophet never imposed any policy on the people without impute from the same people directly or indirectly except such a policy came in form of divine revelation. In other words, he was neither a monarch nor a despot. And, as a Head of State, he never saw himself as more important than any other citizen or resident in the State. That was why he was so indigent even as Head of State that his household could carry on for months without cooking any food under their roof.

    In Islam, democracy is not about voting and governance alone. Rather, it is fundamentally about justice in all its ramifications according to the rule of law. It is about tending the lives of the citizens for the overall good of the nation. It is about providing the needs of the people according to the available resources in the nation. It is about protecting the interest of the weak against the oppression of the strong. It is about managing the wealth of the nation with diligent sense of accountability and utilising such wealth according to conscience. It is about securing the lives of the citizenry in terms of jobs, feeding, shelter, health and education. It is about boosting the horizon of the youths and sharpening their hope against the future. It is about guaranteeing individuals’ adequate income per capital and ensuring a standard life expectancy. Any government that claims democracy without caring about the aforementioned can only at best be oppressive and hypocritical. That was Nigeria’s lot between 1999 and 2012, the continuity of which we had fervently prayed Allah to forbid. But how far has that prayer been accepted is a matter of self examination.

    And, today, more than 12 years into the so-called unbroken democracy in Nigeria, are we celebrating or mourning? It seems only the megaphones of the government can answer that question. They are the ones who put Nigeria on a rigmarole pushing it left and right, as it suited them, without a definite destination. They had once told us that what this country needed was ‘REBRANDING’ which they claimed was the panacea to Nigeria’s chronic disease. And by ‘REBRANDING’ they meant talking well of Nigeria abroad and covering at home the criminal corruption committed by those in government. The campaign for this new found orientation went wild thereby paving way for a junketing jamboree in the name of ‘REBRANDING’. But after funnelling billions of naira to God knows where they changed the tide. Today, the cliché called ‘REBRANDING’ has become history just as the monster called corruption grows bigger and waxes stronger. It is not enough to tell school pupils to do correction in his homework. At least a good teacher must be able to point out the error in his pupils’ work before calling for correction. Governance, like culture, has variety of colours, flavours and tastes. What is called democracy in a state may amount to despotism in another State.

    In Europe today, some of the countries championing democracy around the world are basically monarchical. For instance, countries like Greece, Netherlands (Holland), Belgium, Spain, Sweden and even Britain are all monarchical. Yet these are the same countries that descended with armed forces on Iraq and Afghanistan pretending to want to ensure the entrenchment of democracy in those poor countries. If absence of democracy was the problem in Iraq and Afghanistan, what problem in the defunct Soviet Union and Yugoslavia led to their breakup? Or were they not said to be democratic? Unlike France, Germany and Italy (which are monolingual), the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia collapsed because of the heterogeneity of their tongues and cultures. This confirms the fact that Western type of democracy can only thrive on common cultural identity.

    From experience, it has become evident that governance, whether democratic or monarchical, is fundamentally a function of culture. And that is why the British constitution is said to be partly written and partly conventional.

    Borrowing a foreign culture to practice democracy, as done in Nigeria, is like borrowing another man’s mouth to eat. Into whose stomach will the food go? By the way, has anybody ever tried to find out why the Arab countries are far ahead of the black African countries in growth and development despite the recent political crises in those (Arab) countries?

    The answer to this question is simple: Those Arab countries are monolingual and mono-cultural irrespective of individuals’ religious or ideological differences. Their constitutions are based on the language understandable to the majority of their citizenry and those constitutions are weaved around their common culture. Above all, those constitutions are readily available even to school children who study them in the classrooms as part of the school curriculum.

    For instance, based on the law by which those countries are governed, an average Arab policeman will politely warn a citizen not to commit an offence. It is only if the person goes ahead to commit the offence, despite the warning, that he will be arrested and still be warned, but not punished, if he is a first offender. The exception to that however, is when the committed offence is criminal.

    In Nigeria, an average policeman of Taraba origin posted to Ogun State will rather hide somewhere and watch you commit an offence that you never knew of its existence only to pounce on you thereafter, arrest you and get you punished severely unless you have the means of greasing his palms. So will a policeman of Osun State origin do if he is posted to Kano or Cross River State. The slogan in our own country is that “the claim of ignorance is no excuse before the law”.

    Now, the questions are: which law are we talking about? The laws contained in the constitution proclaimed by an unauthorised cabal in the name of the populace but not made available to the same populace? Who does not know that Nigerian constitution is a mere public luxury which constitutes an instrument of oppression in the hands of the ruling cabal? To an ordinary Nigerian, that constitution is the real political manacle with which the citizens are fettered to the stake of indefinite servitude.

    It might be true that while alive and in power, the late President Yar’Adua proclaimed the rule of law as one of his ‘seven point agenda’ but where was the law which rule was being proclaimed? And who are the people to uphold such law in Nigeria today? Can our legislators and police be trusted with the law which is not available to the public when it took the same legislators several years to pass the ’Freedom of bill into law which sought to entrench democracy?

    There are 53 countries in Africa today. Only seven of them are Arab countries. The rest are what the Europeans call ‘black countries’. Of these, only about 10 have not experienced military intervention or civil war within the last half of a century. The colonial devils and their agents have succeeded in creating what the linguists call ‘isogloss’ in various geo-political zones in Africa. (An isogloss is an area in which people of diverse, and not mutually understandable languages, settle down for co-existence). Semantically, such areas only connote cultural confusion. And that is what Europeans thrive on by using their African agents to enslave the black populace perpetually.

    There is no single Arab country in Africa not colonised by the Europeans. Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania were French colonies. Libya was an Italian colony. Sudan was a British colony. And Egypt, which was once an empire and a cradle of civilisation was colonized by both France and Britain at different times. But despite their colonisation and the recent political agitations in those countries, how do they maintain political sanity? Even among black African countries, how do Senegal, Kenya and Tanzania maintain their democracy for about half a century without military intervention where Nigeria became a haven for military coups?

    Today, Arab countries in Africa are nations (not mere countries) and they enjoy the benefits of being nations. What is more interesting is that not all these Arab countries are Republics. Morocco, for instance, is a monarchy but she thrives effectively in her own version of monarchical democracy. Citizens of Arab countries are highly patriotic and can die fighting for the good name of their nations. They are not as agitated for self-aggrandisement as citizens of the black African countries because most of their social needs are met by their governments. And when there is any disagreement on policy or ideology they resort to their culture for solution.

    If such a disagreement should occur in Nigeria, to which culture will our government resort; the British colonial culture or the American constitutional culture? This shows why the black Africans always resort to the use of guns in settling their internal differences to the delight of their colonial masters? With a situation like this, how can Nigeria ever dream of becoming a nation when even ordinary National Identity Cards took years of massive embezzlement to produce for citizens? Yet our rulers are calling for patriotism through ‘RE-BRANDING’ by chanting slogans and by distributing T-shirts and logos as if those are what the citizens need for survival. The Amnesty International keeps crying over an average of 350 Nigerians dying of hunger daily. And our government keeps asking us to chant ‘RE-BRANDING’ slogan and wear its logo to create the impression abroad that things are normal with us at home. Who is deceiving who? What a country? What a government? By citing the example of the Arabs here, I am not advocating for Arab democracy. It is not compatible with our own culture. But having surrendered to a common destiny, we can sit down together as a people and forge a common language as a first step towards a common culture. That was how Urdu and Swahili languages emerged.

    When people of different tribes and tongues are forcefully fused together without thinking of a common identity, the tendency is for multi-dimensional crises to remain with them perpetually. The only panacea however is genuine federalism which ought to have been fully adopted to enable every tribe or region conduct its own affairs according to its cultural pace. Prophet Muhammad had long warned against misplacement of trust by saying: “When trust is misplaced fundamentally, expect the end of time”. Is this not manifest in the current unprecedented corruption wrapped in deceptive campaign in Nigeria? How else can a government pursue shadow while leaving substance behind? To continue to pretend that nothing is fundamentally wrong with Nigeria democratically is like hiding behind one finger after stripping oneself naked. Hundreds of thousands of able bodied young men and women are jobless. Thousands of retired aged citizens who are qualified to pray effectively for the country are being corruptly deprived of their legitimate entitlements and our government is spending trillions of naira to sustain the ruling class in power. For how long can this continue?

    “Allah does not change a people’s lot unless they refrain from their iniquities. If He (Allah) decides to afflict them with tribulation, no one can ward it off. Besides Him, there is no protector them”. Q. 13:11. If 12 years cannot stabilize democracy, what magic can push Nigeria into the group of 20 best economies in eight years time as now being projected? Food for thought you may call this. Yes! Food for thought it is indeed.

    Note:

    More about ‘Madinah Constitution’ vis a vis Magna Carter, Habeas Corpus and American constitution may be published in this column next Friday, God willing.

  • Responsibility of citizenship: The youth in focus (2)

    Responsibility of citizenship: The youth in focus (2)

    Today, I offer the second installment of the lecture delivered under the auspices of a group of progressive indigenes of Oyo State on December 18 at the Ibadan Civic Center. The first installment was published last week on this page. Next week, I conclude with the role of youths in recapturing the essence and consequences of thinking including cooperation to meet the challenges of responsible citizenship.

    It is instructive to understand and appropriate the political wisdom that established and sustained the Oyo kingdom. Here was an ancient story of nation building that competed effectively with the best practices of the time. Indeed a foreign scholar once argued that the norms of governance established by the Oyo kingdom were comparable to any of the classical political philosophies. Recall that Aristotle, the Master of those who know, never really privileged democracy as the best form of government because for him the demos may have ulterior motives since they had little to no property at stake.

    The organisation of the Oyo kingdom did something unique with the checks and balances that it put in place vis-à-vis the power of the king and the authority of the Oyomesi. What else do the Greeks practiced that surpassed our heritage of governance? And what has prevented us hitherto from pushing the limits of innovation in this area that we helped create?

    I now go to the heart of what I consider to be the core of our culture and pace setting engagements. It is what I refer to as civic responsibility. It comes in various forms. I was only ten years old in the fourth grade when the Awolowo administration introduced the Universal Free Primary Education system in Western Region. The campaign for the system should normally engage everyone as one of the most impactful welfare schemes. All right thinking adults were integral parts of the campaign, putting themselves forward as community activists who were not officials of government.

    Surely, the folks who participated in the grass-root efforts must think of the benefits to themselves and their children. But I want to believe that my old man and his friends who were deeply involved had a good sense of the possible benefits to the community. They mobilised and rallied support for the measure. In the end, the community at large benefited. Of course, as we know, the other side scared citizens by focusing on the insubstantial and unsubstantiated negatives including the alleged loss of children to farm help.

    Civic responsibility is crucial to the success of any government. If citizens are not fully engaged, government work is one-sided and definitely impossible. I am sure that our governor would be the first to concede the enormity of the significance of civic engagement. It also occurs to me that this is what ThinkOyo as an organisation would like to emphasise with its focus on “ajumose.” To this important issue, I will eventually turn. First, let me think history and its various thinking deficits.

    I have made copious references to the pre-independence era of our various communities. I hope that I have not over-romanticised our past because it had its own challenges which included the shame of inter-tribal wars and enslavement of fellow community members. Yet such negative episodes must be understood as by-products of something positive, namely the civic engagement of community members in what they understood as the good of their communities. Whether it was Balogun Ibikunle of Ibadan, Ogedengbe of Ilesha, or Kurunmi Are Ona Kakanfo, or Lisabi of Egba fame, they and their cohorts were fully committed to their communities. That was our heritage. Of course, we can be Monday morning quarterbacks, to use an American idiom, and pontificate on the selfishness of those commitments. It cannot be dined, however, that these were commitments that the entire communities believed in.

    Moreover, and more relevant to our theme, these were cooperative efforts on their part. Yet, there is no denying the fact that those wars set us back at least a century. If the one hundred years war wasn’t fought, we would not be exposed to the European invasions that depleted our human resources through enslavement in the Americas. If those wars didn’t occur, who knows if we would devote our energies to innovations in education in competition with the Europeans? We could go on.

    After enslavement, we were colonised. And it was supposed to be for our good. Considered unripe for civilization, we were to be brought to the level of tolerance, where and when other fortunate nations can tutor us in the art of government. Never mind that we were going to be forerunners in the art of governance if we were not distracted from the insights that defined the Oyo Kingdom experiment. But we don’t really need to sweat to debunk the ideology of the burden of the West to spread civilization. The architect of the colonial idea was too honest to be misconstrued. Lord Lugard was clear about the Dual Mandate—to expedite the industrial revolution of Britain while helping the “uncivilised” people of Africa.

    The extent to which colonialism helped Africa should not detain us. What is important is the deficit of thinking that enabled a number of African folks to internalise its norms, especially in the matter of the alleged superiority of the coloniser’s culture. Whereas, Europeans deliberately waged war against the culture of Africans, in other parts of their colonising efforts, they refrained from a wholesale sacking of the people’s ways of life. What is sadder, however, is that even after independence, despite the campaign promises of some of the nationalists in the forefront of the struggle against colonialism; the colonial infrastructure was kept intact resulting in what Kwame Nkrumah referred to as Neo-colonialism.

    Our post-independence era was, therefore, effectively rigged for crisis and it didn’t disappoint. Primed to privilege our different pre-colonial nationalities above the new nation, we ended with a fratricide that still defines us till today and is not likely to go away any soon because we still lack the type of committed leadership that is capable of inspiring and mobilizing a new dialogue of hope and restoration.

    What I would like us to understand, however, is that the whole era of colonialism and the post-independence episode of fratricide are distractions. Assume that nothing happened to the pace of the old Yoruba nation in general and Oyo state in particular, you may indulge your imagination about where we would be by now. Indeed, assume that the pace we set for ourselves between 1955 and 1962 were not disrupted, you could imagine where we would be now. The question then is this: why has this not been our attitude? Why have we been manipulated into thinking that we couldn’t do much outside of the mainstream infrastructure that the center was supposed to provide? Why has the imaginative thought that developed the federal system been usurped by the unsophisticated resignation to the status quo ante that the accident of military rule suggested?

    And the structure that the military bequeathed to us must be regarded as a suggestion. After all the military is only one of the institutions of the nation and one that was shamed out of relevance to internal democratic governance. It cannot therefore aspire into reckoning in the national political dialogue without paying adequate attention to the longings of the people. When you ThinkOyo, you must contemplate these things. For, in thinking, as in other matters, ajise bi Oyo laa ri. Oyo kii se bi enikan.

  • The exemplary duo

    Human history is invariably built on the biographies of certain outstanding personalities. Perhaps without such personalities, what we call history would not have come into existence. That is why history and man are seen as Siamese twins. The synergy between them is such that history makes man just as man makes history. It may be difficult or even impossible for instance to write the history of Macedonia without Alexander the Great or that of India without Gautama Buddha or even that of France without Napoleon Bonaparte. Those were men who formed the axis around which the history of their countries is built. Writing the history of Islam without any mention of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is unimaginable. There couldn’t have been anything called Islam without that greatest man that ever lived.

    Man becomes history after vacating the stage upon which he had been a performer. Any actor who wants to leave a footprint on the sands of time must transform into a pleasant reading for those who may wish to learn from his chronicled experiences. A confirmation of this assertion came to bear in Lagos last Sunday when a galaxy of Nigerian Muslim crème de la crème swarmed the Lagos Airport Hotel to say kudos to certain rare exemplary duo. The unique gathering was at the instance of the Federation of Muslim Graduates’ Association in Nigeria (FEMGAN).

    Two outstanding members of that association were deemed fit for honour and the city was painted red for them. The duo of Prof Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede who was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin until a few weeks ago and Barrister Bashir Olayinka Balogun, the Edo State Commissioner of Police until a couple of months ago remain vertical in the midst of horizontal men having completed their tenures of office without blemish. Both men had traversed the length and breadth of their respective professions walking tall with their heads raised high where others trembled like Lilliputians.

    Here are men of rare postures who had allowed their consciences to serve as the vehicle conveying them through their peregrinations on earth from adolescence to manhood. They bear the light with which to illuminate the dark tunnel of life for others to pass through without encountering any huddle. These men are as much a pride to Islam as they are to themselves and their families. Judging by today’s murky water of greed and unprecedented corruption in Nigeria both of which have become an obnoxious vogue and knowing how Oloyede and Balogun maintained dignity in their respective offices despite the overwhelming perversion in the land, no right-thinking person will doubt the fact that these exemplary men truly deserve honour. Both men are being appreciated and celebrated here not for rising to the respective posts they attained in public service but retaining their heads where other were losing theirs.

    This is not a biography in which the story of birth and upbringing is often told. Neither is it one in which the schools attended and the teachers encountered is chronicled. The concern here is the slippery pyramid of life which these icons had to mount from bottom to apex before the observing world could think of them as men of honour. How was that pyramid mounted? At what stage did recognition begin to beckon to each of the revered duo?

    Professor Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede had become a household name in the academia before now, not only in Nigeria or Africa but in the entire world just like the University he was privileged to head as Vice-Chancellor. What qualified him for such a vertical position is an interesting question for which most inquisitive minds may earnestly seek an answer. And the answer is not far-fetched.

    Unlike most Nigerian men of letters in the Ivory Tower, Professor Oloyede wears a binocular with which he sees life from two opposing world the West and the East. And this became evident not just in his management of the University of Ilorin in a tenure of five years but also in the humility, selflessness and patriotism with which he demonstrated civility and exhibition of knowledge in that office. The difference between a man of letters and that of knowledge is quite clear. While the one sees life through the common eye, the other sees it with an uncommon vision.

    In the days of Socrates, Aristotle and Herodotus, when education was an adorned virtue used as a yardstick for measuring civility and value, no one cared about the material gains accruing from it. Bastardisation of education only set in when certificate became a means of valuing its material worth. Thus, with certificate, mere literacy began to be misconceived as education. And today, Nigerian Universities have been reduced to centres of advanced literacy rather than those of education. Whereas literacy is just an added value to education the modern day man has ignorantly but arrogantly interpolated the one for the other. This is what Professor Oloyede resented in his academic odyssey when he chose to combine eastern education with that of the West with a determination to take advantage of both in fertilising the academic soil of Nigeria’s future. For those who didn’t know, that was why he specialised in Islamic Studies even at the professorial level.

    Professor Oloyede’s philosophy of life seems to tally ascetically with that of Daniel Webster who in a memorable poem stated as follows: ‘’If we work marble it will perish; if we work upon brass time will efface it; if we rear temples they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and instill in them just principles; we are then engraving that upon tablets which no time can efface but will brighten to all eternity’’.

    This is the philosophy that propelled him to adopt contentment as a principle right from the early age. Why relating his reason for contesting for the office of the Vice-Chancellor, he once told some medical students of his University who went to congratulate him on assumption of office as Vice-Chancellor that he never intended to contest for that office. But when an academic charlatan with an ulterior motive in the same University threatened to expose him if he dared contest for the post, he (Oloyede) saw it as a challenge to put his privacy on a public table. His intention was actually not to contest but to see what would be exposed in his privacy. And, contrary to the expectations of skeptics, he emerged as the Vice-Chancellor without an iota of blemish.

    Before contesting for that post he had served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor twice. First, he was the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic and later Deputy Vice Chancellor Administration in the same University of Ilorin where he had spent his entire academic life as a student, as an alumnus lecturer, as a Director in several areas and as a Professor. Thus, he had seen that University inside-out and that was enough to propel an ambition in him to target the highest office in the Citadel for which he was eminently qualified but it did not. Professor Oloyede relayed to his students the story of his unintended contest for the highest office not as mere bravado but as an encouragement towards service to humanity with humility and patriotism.

    When he noticed that the position of the Executive Secretary of the Association of African Universities was more meaningful and more beneficial to Nigeria than that of the President which he then held, Professor Oloyede encouraged some of his Nigerian colleagues to apply for that post promising that he would resign his Presidential position in that Association to enable a fellow Nigerian occupy the office. Incidentally, most of his colleagues did not believe him. But when the time came and one of them indicated interest, Oloyede surprisingly resigned as President of African Vice-Chancellors just after two years in an office where he had opportunity to spend two terms of renewable four years each.

    However, the Professor who benefited from Oloyede’s large-heartedness by assuming the office of the Executive Secretary of African Universities eventually ventured into Nigerian local politics and relinquished the covetous post in favour of that of the Secretary to a State Government (SSG) thereby depriving Nigeria the benefit for which Oloyede had resigned as President.

    Only a few Nigerians in the academic arena can surpass Oloyede’s record when it comes to the ‘nitty gritty’ of academic administration. Yet, you can hardly notice it in his demeanour. He is not only the first alumnus of the Faculty of Arts in the University of Ilorin to graduate with a ‘First Class’ he is also the first alumnus of that University to obtain a PhD from the same University. Not only that, Professor Oloyede scored many other ‘FIRSTS’ in that University to the admiration of the upcoming students and encouragement for those with same aspiration among them. He was the ‘FIRST’ Director of Academic Planning and first alumni President to be a member of the Governing Council of the University. Professor Oloyede is also the first Unilorin alumnus to become a Deputy Vice-Chancellor and subsequently the first alumnus to become the Vice-Chancellor of the University.

    And at the national level, he was the first Vice-Chancellor in Nigeria to introduce Computer-Based Testing (CBT) method of screening applicants in the country just as he was the first Vice-Chancellor to lead a second generation University to the number one position in Nigeria based on external ranking. He also became the first Nigerian Vice-Chancellor to emerge as President of the Association of African Universities (AAU) and at the same time the Chairman of Association of Nigerian Universities (AVCNU). Still not done, he is the first Nigerian Vice-Chancellor to combine the Board membership of International Association of Universities (IAU) with those of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and Association of African Universities (AAU).

    With the above listed ‘FIRSTS’ he was (as Vice-Chancellor) able to make Unilorin the first Federal University in Nigeria to run a decade of uninterrupted academic calendar and prompted that University to be internationally ranked as one of the very best 20 Universities in Africa. Also, through his astute academic administration, the University of Ilorin was able to maintain the first position in national ranking for three consecutive years (2009, 2010 and 2011). Another major plus in this man’s life but which most people hardly focus is arbitrating factor. He does not just resent conflicts in whatever form he also regards arbitration as a duty. Thus, he immediately initiates arbitration and reconciliation wherever he notices any conflict be it interpersonal, intertribal or interreligious and ensures resolution without minding the cost. And his impartiality in doing this is generally acknowledged and revered across all borders.

    In Professor Oloyede is a great example for those who aspire to be great in a world where greatness is a slippery land. His life has become a guide for the younger professionals and artisans, especially among Muslims who need guidance either as a warning on the vanity of human wishes or as encouragement or both.

    Unfortunately however, this same Professor Oloyede who is also the Executive Secretary/Coordinator of Nigeria Interreligious Council (NIREC) was the one somebody in Ilorin recently wanted to paint black by linking him to a crime of arson in a Church. Can that be of any surprise? Nigerians are notorious for three things: avarice, corruption and mudslinging. But can the sun be affected in any way if a group of blind men claim not to be aware of its existence? Or how does it bother a brook which water the herds decide to boycott?

    From what we know of Professor Oloyede, it is only left for the present days to raise up their voices in chorusing ‘GOD BLESS YOU’ to him so that the future days can chorus back ‘AMEN’ in response.

    Barrister Bashir Olayinka Babatunde Balogun is a devout, practical Muslim in conduct and mannerism with phenomenal abhorrence for corruption and indecency. His forage into the Nigeria Police Force in 1980 might not be unconnected with that natural tendency in him. Yinka Balogun, as he is popularly known among Muslim brothers, is a quiet, cool-headed and forthright gentleman who pitches his tent with destiny. He sees hustling as a form of corruption and refrains completely from it. He believes that man can only attain that which Allah has ordained for him and that no man can give what Allah does not give. Yet, he is quite pragmatic in his approach to life while taking his conscience for the scale with which he weighs his deeds from time to time.

    Throughout his sojourn in the Nigeria Police Force, Yinka Balogun always found himself as an odd man out at any post because he refused to concur with any abnormal norm of the moment. And he was regularly treated by most of his colleagues as a lone ranger. Here is a man who, having studied and understood the social terrain of Nigeria, resolved never to initiate or engage in any struggle he could not handle all alone. As a political scientist, he understands the theory of collective responsibility and the possible implications of its entailed betrayal. Thus, his permanent companion in all his actions is his conscience with which he has never parted for a moment. While most of his colleagues and even his juniors in the Police Force jostled for promotion by other means and sometimes got it, Yinka held on tenaciously to the will of Allah through destiny believing that with Allah there is a scheduled time for everything.

    Not only that, Yinka also believes that knowledge is the basis of every success in human life. To him an orphan is not a person who is bereaved of his or her parents but one who is bereaved of knowledge and discipline, hence his continuous pursuit of further knowledge despite heavy personal and official responsibilities. While still in the Police Force, he knew that a thorough police officer ought to be well familiar with the law of the land and thus enrolled for a degree in law after obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. He also knew that obtaining degrees in Political Science and Law could form a solid background for any modern man in cotemporary time but the combination of both degrees was not enough to make one a crack professional police officer that he eventually became. He therefore embarked on a series of professional courses in addition to the original police training he received initially. Some professional courses he attended include: Criminal Justice Administration Course at the University of West Virginia, USA, Command Course/ASCON, Seminar Management Course on Police Administration and Strategy in Cape Town, South Africa and Master Degree in Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Ibadan. He also attended the Senior Executive Intelligence Management Course at the Institute of Security Studies, Abuja as well as African/Middle East Chapter Retrainers Course for FBI National Academy Association (FBINNA) organised by the United States Department of Justice at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Botswana.

    Equipped with this chain of trainings, which he combined with a formidable educational background, Yinka was able to walk the ladder of Nigeria Police Force to the top except where politics became a barrier. He served as Divisional Crime Officer, Divisional Police Officer, Assistant Force Public Relations Officer II, Acting Zonal Police Public Relations Officer, Officer-in-Charge of Motoring Unit, Officer-in-Charge of Special Enquiry Bureau (SEB), Prosecution/Legal Officer (CID), Divisional Police Officer (DPO) AND Officer-in-Charge of Anti-Fraud Division in various places and at various times.

    He also served as Team Leader (General Investigation) FCID, Assistant Commissioner of Police (General Investigation), Principal Staff Officer to Inspector General of Police, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Patrol and Guard, Operations as well as SCID, Officer-in-Charge, Special Fraud Unit(Ikoyi and Abuja) and finally, he became a Commissioner of Police in Ekiti and Edo States respectively before his retirement on October 30.

    In all these, what really matters is the indelible mark of dignity Barrister Yinka Balogun has left behind as a legacy. If transparency with dignity is not celebrated in these exemplary duo what else should be celebrated? God bless the duo! God bless the Muslim Ummah!

  • Stella Oduah: Truly transformational

    Stella Oduah: Truly transformational

    The President Goodluck Jonathan administration has been so dismal and yet receding still that the very thought of it invests one with overwhelming gloom. Especially when you consider what might have been, the enormous potentials and giant leaps Nigeria might have made under steadier hands and a more perspicacious mind. Embroiled in Jonathan’s unremitting inertia, one becomes quick to dismiss him and his pack as a bunch of no-gooders. But that is indeed what it is save for the work of Prof. Bath Nnaji, Power Minister (now chucked out), Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar and Aviation Minister, Princess Stella Oduah, the surprise candidate.

    Truth be told, we never gave her a chance. Not yours truly, not many Nigerians. It must be something about her beauty – she is too beautiful to be capable of any serious work; many thought. She built a sizeable oil firm, the skeptics are reminded, but they would be quick to dismiss that with something like: this is Nigeria and any beauty with half brain would build Disneyland if she desired; after all isn’t the richest woman in the whole wide world a Nigerian fashion designer? Thus Princess Oduah had her bewitching beauty arrayed against her ab initio.

    Then there was the Neighbour 2 Neighbour (N2N) suv; a seeming cash machine that steam-rolled President Jonathan to power in spite of deadly odds. She was at the helm of this monstrous vehicle which churned out cash faster than any teller machine. The operation – which was what Jonathan’s primary and subsequent election campaign turned out to be – was driven with such palpable tenacity and a tinge of ruthlessness that the result could not have been anything else but what it turned out to be – landslide victory. Princess Oduah is of course remembered as the dowager wearing the steel gloves in those high-wire moments.

    When she was rewarded with the Aviation Ministry top job, there was instantaneous uproar especially from the experts and workers in the industry. We the media joined the lynch mob deploying the rather risqué cliché in classifying her as a square peg in a round hole! Of course job for the boys, sorry, for the girls, was the refrain that rented the air. Perhaps, having lived with the Nigerian culture of appointment as settlement in the past few decades we have grown to expect nothing from our government appointees. Not the least a beautiful and moneyed Princess. She was written off from the first day by many. Including this column, sorry to say.

    But the Princess has turned out to be the soothing revelation of the Jonathan administration. In 18 months she has put up such a sterling performance that had long become extinct in this part of the world. Much used to government propaganda, all the talk about master plan, aviation framework and 8-point road map were just the usual ‘story’ to yours truly as the lady harped upon them early last year. When she embarked on what they called international road show, I was ‘definitely’ sure it was one of those jamborees. What sold me was returning to Owerri Airport after about one year not to find the seedy shed that was the Sam Mbakwe International Cargo Airport (SMICA) totally rebuilt. The SMICA terminal was a miserable structure built over 30 years ago by late Governor Sam Mbakwe through the effort of the people. Today it has taken a major makeover; a heart-lifting and indeed a miraculous transformation.

    The same thing one has witnessed at the General Aviation Terminal (GAT) in Lagos and the domestic terminal at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja. One hears the same massive overhaul is taking place simultaneously in eight other airports across the country and 11 more are in various stages of work. If the Princess’ feat were just the erection of glitzy structures, one would argue that anyone who had funding could do same. But the change is seems to be deeper and multifaceted which include safety and security issues plus long-term plan of hub status and an aerotropolis initiative. There is also the ‘soft’ project of getting foreign airlines to behave better and give Nigeria her due in bilateral agreements.

    What one finds most remarkable is not the monumental work initiated and executed in such a short period of time but her unhidden passion for her job and the pathos of a great patriot in the face of despoliation and decadence. One would not be ashamed to say that in one’s 25 years of practice, one has not noticed this kind of dedication to duty and zeal to repair and deliver the goods to the people from an appointee.

    Princess Oduah is by far, the most outstanding minister today in the Jonathan team. One would dare wager that if she were the Petroleum Minister, she would have built us refineries and saved Nigeria the shame of importing kerosene from Niger Republic and Ghana; if she were Works Minister, she would have fixed the Benin-Ore highway without feeding us with a whole asphalt of excuses; if she were the Health Minister, she would have almost completed for Nigeria, a world class health tourism complex that would make Nigerians shun Indian and UK hospitals; if she were Education Minister, she would have driven the nine new federal universities to great heights and perhaps started about a dozen Unity Schools; if…

    While most of Stella’s colleague still can’t find their way around their ministry’s complex not to mention drawing up a master plan and road map, she has shown that in spite of a doodling leadership, all it takes is passion, patriotism and drive to turn Nigeria around. If she can turn around a turbulent aviation industry which had been in decay for the past three decades, there is no responsibility she cannot handle, it seems. We hope she would keep up this tempo and don’t get carried away by this initial success.

    YAKOWA AND AZAZI: Now here, now no more: the painful exit of Governor Patrick Yakowa of Kaduna State and former National Security Adviser, Andrew Azazi, reiterates for us the living, two quick lessons. One is that it awakens the realization in us that this minute you are a governor or an NSA and in the next couple of minutes you could become mere ashes. The second point is that if only we realize the unforgiving futility of life we would be more sober, pausing every moment to pay obeisance to life, to the living and to our Maker. May god grant their souls eternal repose. Amen.

    NOTE: this is wishing all our readers a great Christmas and a happy New Year. EXPRESSO goes on vacation till late January.

  • The responsibility of citizenship: The youth in focus (1)

    The responsibility of citizenship: The youth in focus (1)

    On Tuesday, December 18, 2012, an historic event occurred in Ibadan, the political capital of the southwest. A dynamic group of young, upwardly mobile men and women, determined to contribute to the transformation of Oyo State launched a project with the inspiring name, ThinkOyo. I felt humbled and considered it an honour to be invited to deliver the maiden edition of the organisation’s Distinguished Lecture Series. The following is the first installment of the lecture that will appear on this page in the next two to three weeks. I appreciate the organising wizardry of the Steering Committee including Funlola Adesina, Wale Olajide, Biodun Makinde, and Femi Popoola, the incomparable broadcaster who brought back memories.

    I am particularly impressed with the choice of name for the organisation, ThinkOYO. Thinking is one activity that we as a people have not been serious about in this country. But the downside of that neglect of thinking is that we are denying what is our fundamental nature. We are thinking animals. That is what separates us from other animals. It is the ability to think that enables us to appreciate who we are, what we are, and why we are here? Opo ojo lo ti ro ti ile ti fi mu. What makes any of us so special that we were not in the list of those that have been called to the other side of the river? Are we better than those that were called?

    Moreover, it is the deficit of thinking that makes people engage in disreputable activities. Consider the case of a leader who got carried away by the allures of office and misappropriates public funds. He or she might give little thought to the probability, even possibility, of being caught. That is the kind of shallow thinking that gets people into serious trouble. So the name of the organisation that sponsored this event is itself food for thought. And for me, it does the job half way.

    My question then is this: When you think Oyo, what do you think? What ideas run through your mind? What images are presented to your mind’s eyes?

    I hope that what comes to your mind is the enviable tradition of pace-setting in every aspect of social and political life, in adventurism, in culture, in work ethics and pride in the dignity of labour, in entrepreneurship, in political consciousness, and in civic responsibility.

    Oyo indigenes in particular and Yoruba nationals in general have a great heritage to be proud of provided. Consider the origin of the nation. Oranmiyan was the most adventurous of the children of Oduduwa. It was his adventurism that motivated the founding of Oyo and the consolidation of the kingdom of Oyo, making it one of the first empires of note in Africa. That spirit of adventure inspired many of the “first in Africa” achievements that the Western Nigeria was able to claim credit for in the fifties and early sixties.

    That Oyo has always been a pace setter in culture should come as no surprise to anyone. Whether it is material culture production or artistic creativity, our people have led the pack. And when I once privately watched a video of Iku Baba Yeye Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III making a presentation on Yoruba history and culture I found myself literally leaping out of the seat filled with pride and joy in my cultural heritage. Of course the video was promptly circulated among my colleagues who were always eager for good news from the home front.

    Needless to remind ourselves that culture is an identifier. It is what makes us who we are. The major elements of culture include language and religion. Let us grant that the latter is a controversial issue which can take us further afield from our focus here today. It cannot be denied, however, that for various reasons and due to various causes, traditional religion has lost its place as an important aspect of our cultural identification. But not only do we no longer want to identify with traditional religion, we also shy away from names that are otherwise meaningful but have dispensable connection with our past religious identification as Africans or Yoruba.

    What is more disturbing, however, is the place of our mother tongue in our contemporary quest for new identities. The Yoruba language has been an enabler in several respects. First, like other mother tongues, it provides the most effective medium for the education of our children in their formative years as the research has been an unambiguous about the benefits of mother tongue education. Secondly, the richness of Yoruba language is attested to by scholars and the diaspora community has been fascinated by this undeniable property of the language.

    Institutions of higher learning across Yorubaland and the Americas have developed centres for the study of Yoruba. The multiplication of such centres means that there are going to be openings for specialists in Yoruba language and culture in those countries for the foreseeable future. We are going to take advantage of such opportunities for our young ones only if we provide the foundations for the teaching and learning of the language right from the elementary school.

    But it is a damning aspect of our present condition that we have relegated Yoruba language to the back burner of the media for civilised discourse such that middle and upwardly mobile Yoruba are literally banning the speaking of the language in their homes!

    Our work ethics and enterprising spirit is legendary. Our ancestors understood the importance of hard work. They detested laziness and explicitly expressed their disdain for a life of drudgery or thievery. Tal’o fole lomo? We have poems in praise of hard work: Ise loogun ise. Mura sise ore mi. Ise lafi ndeni giga. Ba o ba reni feyinti, bi olee lari. Baa ba reni gbekele a tera mose eni. The emphasis on hard work is not just so you can do well in life if you had no wealthy relatives. They also advise against relying on the prosperity of relatives. Baba re lee lowo lowo, Iya re lee lesin leekan, Boo ba gboju le won, o te tan ni mo so fun o. Iya mbe fomo to ko gbon. Ekun mbe fomo to nsa kiri. Ma fowuro sise ore mi. Mura si se ojo nlo.

    That was the sentiment that underscored our identity and it is what must naturally come to mind when you think Oyo. For when we now reflect on the pace setting achievements, we must bear in mind that everything associated with that era was the result of the highly charged productivity of the populace and the determination of leadership to make a mark, itself born out of the internalisation of the cultural norms that got them inspired in the first place.

    With regard to political consciousness, colonialism cannot claim sole credit for its inception. In any case, politics is the heart and soul of societies. Whether it is the politics of ascension to or abdication from the throne, it’s all politics, if you abstract from the pretentions to spiritual intervention.

     

  • NYSC: Service or servitude?

    NYSC: Service or servitude?

    My service to my people is part of the discipline to which I subject myself in order to free my soul from the bonds of the flesh…For me the path of salvation leads through the unceasing tribulation in the service of my fellow countrymen and humanity”-Mahatma Ghandi

    The above quote by the late Indian Statesman epitomises patriotism in all its ramifications. However, it requires life, hope and sincerity of purpose to be so dedicatedly determined. Perhaps, if Ghandi had been a Nigerian he would have made such a statement with reservation and that is if circumstances of life would ever permit him to make it at all. This indicates that an Indian of Ghandi’s status and intent might be an aberration in Nigerian environment. Detailed analysis on this may be left for another day.

    In about six month’s time (precisely May 22, 2013), the compulsory National service scheme in Nigeria generally known as National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) will be 40 years old. When the time comes, the Federal Government will characteristically roll out drums to celebrate the occasion with pump and pageantry. And the cost will, as usual, run into billions of naira. Thereafter, stories of scam will start flying around and a commission of inquiry into the scam will be set up to investigate the matter for three months or more during which some hundreds of millions of naira will also be spent either as the cost of the investigation and documentation or that of another commission to investigate the first commission which might have been engrossed in corruption. That is Nigeria for you. Yet, we are fighting corruption tooth and nail.

    Forty years is universally acknowledged as the age of maturity. It is the age of mature reasoning when man is expected to handle matters with little supervision. It is the age at which the mistakes of the adolescent years are corrected. Incidentally it is the age at which every Prophet of Allah except Isa (Jesus) was commissioned to deliver Allah’s message to the people. Any man at that age who can still not think before acting is called ‘a fool at 40’. Ditto a government or a nation.

    The establishment of the NYSC scheme by the military government under the leadership of General Yakubu Gowon was not fortuitous. With the promulgation of Decree 24 of 1973, the scheme was established on May 22 of the same year not only as a demonstration of the government’s genuine intention to fulfil the regime’s post civil war policy of ‘Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation’ (otherwise called three ‘R’) but also to accelerate the country’s socio-economic development as well as to foster national unity and integration.

    The Scheme was charged with the responsibility of mobilising, deploying and administering youths who are graduates of tertiary institutions for one year compulsory national service during which they are to be groomed for leadership. The objectives of the Scheme which compel the youth graduates to serve in states other than those of their origin are as follows:

    •To inculcate discipline in Nigeria youths by instilling in them a tradition of industry at work and of patriotic service to Nigeria in any situation they may find themselves

    •To raise the moral value of Nigerian youths by providing them with the opportunity to learn about higher ideals of national achievements as well as social and cultural improvement

    •To develop in the Nigeria youths the attitudes of mind, acquired through shared experience and suitable trading which will make them amenable to mobilisation in the national interest

    •To enable Nigeria youths acquire the spirit of self reliance by encouraging them to develop skills for self employment

    •To contribute to the accelerated growth of the national economy

    •To develop common ties (among Nigeria youths) geared towards the promotion of National unity and integration

    •To remove prejudice, eliminate ignorance and confirm, at first hand, the many similarities among Nigerians of all ethnic groups and

    •To develop a sense of corporate existence and common destiny of Nigerian people

    There were four cardinal points upon which the scheme is based. These are Mobilisation, Orientation/ Induction Course, Primary Assignment/Community Development Services (CDS) and Winding Up/Passing Out. Through these cardinal points the scheme mobilises Nigerians below the age of 30 years who are graduates of universities/polytechnics for a one year national service in any part of the country. Such qualified Nigerians are given an instrument of mobilisation otherwise known as call-up letter which shows the state of service and other particulars relating to the prospective Corps members.

    Also, a three weeks training programme primarily designed to prepare corps members for the one year national service is provided and the training takes place in venues called Orientation Camps located in all the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The orientation course provides a platform for interaction among youths of diverse backgrounds and inclinations. Then, at the end of the orientation exercise, corps members are posted to serve in both the public and private sectors. During this period, they provide skilful assistance in meeting the much needed man-power in the rural and urban communities. The corps members are distributed to all the communities which make up the 774 local government areas in the 36 states of the federation plus the Federal Capital Territory.

    In addition, a Community Development Scheme was designed to be carried out by the Corps members along with their primary assignments. The CDS was planned to bring development to the host communities through the activities of the Corps members for whom a day was set aside in a week to carry out Community Development initiative based on community need and to provide a platform for sustainable development in active cooperation of host communities.

    Finally, a winding up/passing out programme was designed to draw the curtain over the service year and bring the corps members together once again to enable them share their experiences during the service year and deliberate on their individual future agenda. This is an opportunity for most corps members to exchange contact addresses and thereby establish permanent relationships. And from such relationships, inter-tribal marriages and business partnerships emerged. The scheme remains one of the greatest achievements of General Yakubu Gowon as Nigeria’s military Head of State.

    At the time of formulating the NYSC policy, Nigeria was still a country plagued by a myriad of problems generally known with underdeveloped countries such as poverty, mass illiteracy, acute shortage of high skilled manpower (coupled with most uneven distribution of the skilled people that are available), inadequate socio-economic infrastructural facilities, terrible housing shortage, lack of water and sewage facilities, road, healthcare services, and effective communication system.

    Faced by these almost intractable problems, which were further compounded by the burden of reconstruction after the civil war, the government and people of Nigeria set for the country, fresh goals, and objectives aimed at establishing a new Nigeria from the debris of the old. The aim was to build a united, strong and self-reliant nation; a dynamic economy; as well as full open opportunities for all citizens in a free and democratic society.

    It must be remembered that only five Universities existed in Nigeria by the time. These were the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; University of Ibadan, Ibadan; Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; University of Ife, Ile Ife and University of Benin, Benin City. All these universities, except University of Ibadan, (which was left behind by the colonialist as a national heritage) were forcefully acquired by the federal military government from their regional owners. And the inadequacy of needed manpower supplied by these universities warranted the inclusion graduates of Higher National Diploma (HND) from polytechnics and later, the holders of National Certificate of Education (NCE). (The latter was however excluded with time when more universities and polytechnics emerged).

    These universities and other institutions of higher learning are normally expected to serve as training grounds for future leaders, besides being committed to the advancement of learning and knowledge as well as training of people for good citizenship. Perhaps the experienced deviation from this expectation led to the accusation levied by members of the public against the products of those institutions of being too elitist in their outlook and of not identifying with the plight of common man by appreciating the predicament of the vast majority of the citizenry who live in the rural areas.

    Besides the reasonable policy of emulating graduates’ national service from some civilised countries, the year 1973 symbolised the foundation of many great thoughts that would have made Nigeria a great African nation. That was the year in which Nigeria could be said to have gained economic independence by changing the national currency from pounds and Shillings inherited from the colonial masters to Naira and Kobo. It was also the year in which Nigeria’s oil boom began. Corps members were paid a monthly stipend of N180 which was about the new salary of a fresh university graduate at that time. That stipend was not to be increased until the 1980s when inflation began to force the corps members to agitate for more. And for most of the 1980s the stipend paid to corps members was not more than N200 per month. It was only in the 1990s that the stipend attracted some major reviews.

    Apart from preparing corps members for formal post graduation jobs and managerial administration, NYSC also served as a major employer of labour by opening door for many job seekers to be employed across different cadres. As a matter of fact, 1973 in the history of Nigeria can be called the turnaround year. But how much of that turnaround was utilised for the benefit of the country is a different question.

    During the celebration of 20th anniversary of NYSC scheme the need to reassess and upgrade it arose. Thus, Decree 51 was promulgated on June 16, 1993 to replace Decree 24 of 1973 with which the scheme was originally established. The aim of the new Decree was to look beyond the immediate present and think of the future leadership of the country for which the corps members were being groomed. This was done with a view to giving them the proper guidance and orientation relevant to the needs of the country.

    Deep down in the hearts of the formulators of the NYSC policy the scheme was primarily to inculcate in Nigerian youths the spirit of selfless service to the community, and to emphasise the spirit of oneness and brotherhood of all Nigerians, irrespective of cultural or social backgrounds. The history of our country since independence has clearly indicated the need for unity amongst all our people, and indicated the fact that no cultural or geographical entity could exist in independent of others. And, looking at the scheme retrospectively, it is evident that the real effect of the scheme is vivid not only in the understanding of the cultural settings of certain tribes by corps members from other tribes but also in the settlements of some of those corps members in some parts of the country which, hitherto, could never have been in their dreams.

    Now, almost 40 years after the commencement of this visionary scheme how much of the country’s objectives have been achieved? Does the scheme truly remain a national service that it was designed to be or a servitude to a political clique called leaders? In its early days, NYSC was the pride not only of the serving corps members and prospective graduates looking impatiently towards their turn to serve but also that of the nation. Does that still obtain today? Has corruption not derailed the original purpose of that laudable scheme? Are the genuine graduates of universities and polytechnics not being replaced by ghost graduate as characteristic of Nigerian system? Are graduates qualified for the service not being delayed for a year or two to enable corruption thrive by bringing in hoodlums and political thugs at the expense of the nation? Have factors like nepotism and tribalism not crept into the scheme today? Have stories of embezzlement and other financial scams not disorientated potential corps members and devastated the zeal in them to serve their nation? And what becomes of hundreds of thousands who have served in the past 15 years or thereabouts?

    Is Nigeria really reaping the fruits of the NYSC scheme today? Should compulsory service to the nation be an end or a means to an end? And now that corps members are incessantly becoming sacrificial lambs either at the slaughter slabs of some barbaric elements in the North or in the dragnets of some brutal kidnapper in the East shouldn’t there be a review of the law guarding that scheme if only to safeguard humanity and civility? Should parents continue to lose their children at that level to barbarism and unwarranted brutality in the name of non-existing national unity? Some people sat down to plan the establishment of this scheme. Besides planning to embezzle money through its celebration what plan does the current government have for sustaining it and safeguarding the lives of the youths being compelled to serve the nation?

    These and many other questions are begging for urgent answers from the current government while some elements in the government are preparing to become richer by squandering billions of naira on the celebration of the scheme’s 40th anniversary even as most Nigerians remain in penury and squalor. If the pleasant past produced the agonising present to the benefit of a clique of misfits let no one assume that the agonising present will, in the like manner, produce a hopeless future. The days of life are never the same in other countries. They cannot be the same in Nigeria.

    “Allah never changes the situation of a people (or a nation) until those people have sincerely repented and refrained from their iniquities”.

    Q. 13:11

     

  • POT POURRI: Sanusi, Okonjo-Iweala’s DoD budgets and our fiscal autocracy

    Nigeria continues to spin like a yo-yo, like a place where there is no government. I wakeup everyday feeling like I am in a God-forsaking place. A place like Somalia or the outer fringes of Afghanistan; it is like madness assailing one as one watches our government officials in action. I want to wager that the number of mentally deranged people must have increased in the last three years of this administration. There are so many incongruities that one can only attempt to brew a potpourri…

    Dj Sanusi One is now convinced that the central bank governor, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi must be suffering from some form of verbal disease. And the antidote to it, I wish to recommend, is that he should never be allowed to go near a microphone as long as he remains a government official. The mic has a certain visceral effect on people; especially when you have it in one hand and you are faced with a ‘good’ crowd. Some don’t know how to start, being shy and tongue-tied; some don’t know how to stop, being so much in love with the sound of their voice. Many act like disc jockeys (DJs) – with the mic half into the mouth as if relishing an ice cream cone, they merely perform to titillate the crowd.

    Methinks our governor of the CBN falls into this last category. Only night club DJs have such audacity or temerity if you like, to say whatever they would and whichever way they desire it to their sweating and oft inebriated mass of revelers. But certainly not a CBN governor; the equivalent of Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and U.S’s Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, they are to be seen bearing their unflappably stark disposition. An unrestrained sneeze in the public could start an economic flu, it could simply suggest that the economy ails.

    This is why we think it is crazy when a soul of such eminence like our CBN chief suggests openly that 50 per cent of the country’s civil servant should be suddenly rounded up and put on a journey of no return. Addressing the annual conference of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) recently, Sanusi had expressed concern that 70 per cent of government’s revenue was being spent on the government. Quite correct; but what is his solution? Get rid of half of all the civil servants. Haba Malam!

    There are so many things wrong with his logic apart from the odium of its issuing from the CBN helm. One, Sanusi is in a position to know the percentage of the budget consumed by the civil servants and to know that it must be insignificant compared to what the National Assembly carts home and what the political appointees squander. Second, why not figure out and pursue a radical restructure that will eliminate such baggage like the ghost workers, the Senate, the number of ministries, departments and agencies for instance? But most troubling is that Sanusi is a member of the inner circle of this government as well as member of the economic committee. Making his kind of loose public statements suggest two things: either there is deep trouble in the cabinet or he is not suitable to hold that exalted position. He and his colleagues are supposed to be driving change, even the most difficult of changes, not raising alarm from the podium all the time.

    Okonjo-Iweala’s DoD budget One is stunned to near stupefaction that Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the author the 2013 federal budget that is daily torn to shreds by the National Assembly Committees. This budget is DoD – dead on delivery! It is the same manner the current one (2012) is mired in controversy, inertia and benumbing revelations. Following from Sanusi’s out-cry about a fatuous government, how could we propose over N1.3 billion for Aso Rock meals and refreshments and especially so if we remember the uproar that trailed similar budget head last year? Again, why does the Presidency keep such large fleet of aircraft requiring N9 billion to be voted for their upkeep? There is additional N9 billion for the completion of the vice president’s official residence (to make a total of N16 billion for that singular project); over N2billion for another banquet hall in the presidency and N6.2 billion for publicity of a petroleum bill… These curious examples are legion.

    With the budget replete with these sort of crazy expense heads, one asks, what is the job of the budget office? What input does the minister of finance make in the preparation of the budget and why is there no element of rigour in the entire appropriation document? The 2012 and 2013 budgets are studies in fiscal indiscipline and recklessness. Why is there so much frivolity and wantonness in the budget of a country that lacks power supply, good roads, schools and hospitals? A nation’s budget is its soul; the most important driver of the system and the economy. Does it explain why the economy is in such a topsy-turvy state?

    And the reign of fiscal autocracy It used to be said that Nigeria was dying slowly but now, any citizen who has a modicum of love for dear country knows that the country is on a rollercoaster to her doom. There seems to be no mitigating factor, no one to apply the brakes. In short, no one seems to be thinking on behalf of our country, Nigeria. There seems to be emerging a deadly twist in the march to Nigeria’s perdition. It is what may be called ‘fiscal autocracy’ – a few people in ‘strategic positions’ simply hijack the revenue allocated to their MDAs or State.

    We are particularly worried about by the States here. In the last three years, the looting of States has become more brazen with most governors simply pocketing their State’s allocation. Budgets are mere charades; institutions and systems have become sepulchral and forlorn. In most States of the federation today, it is one- man show turned to high art – the governor is the legislator, the commissioner, the council chairman and the councillor. The sun practically shines from his eyes and returns there at dusk. He is absolutely not accountable to anyone; he runs riot over the state.

    In most States of the federation, especially in the (Southeast, Southsouth and most of the North) there is a total disconnect between the government and the people. Apart from a few fancy projects in the towns, most States have been made arid and desolate. Most local councils and communities across Nigeria are as grave as an abandoned graveyard. Absolutely nothing happening; our governments are on holidays. The EFCC said recently that N15 billion in raw cash were intercepted at our airports in the last 10 months. These are funds meant for the development our communities that are being shipped out in a frenzy; in preparation for the next election perhaps. Nature abhors a vacuum; the youths in these abandoned communities simply help themselves through kidnapping, armed robbery, cultism and thuggery. The real pain is that there is hardly any example to cite that illustrates a State government functioning right. It is a scary scenario; an autocracy donning the babanriga of democracy. Let us pray…

    LAST MUG: Professor Okonjo and the kidnappers: What possibly could be the offence of 82-year-old Professor Kamene Okonjo mother of the finance minister? Her very name, Kamene seems to raise that rhetoric question. She just happens to be alive in a clime that has no worthy leaders. This most damaging scourge has been with us for over a decade now; did the government ever attempt to find a holistic solution to it? The same manner they have treated potholes on our roads, power failure, failed schools, etc, it is the same attitude they have shown towards kidnapping. While we pray for mama Okonjo’s safety, our problems will not go away. We have to solve them!

  • The challenge of citizenship

    The challenge of citizenship

    Let us agree on a few maxims about citizenship, starting with what citizens are not. First, citizens are not subjects. That is to say that they are not members of a kingdom where the king is the state. When Louis XIV of France declared himself as the state, he did not consider those he ruled over as citizens; they were his subjects owing their allegiance to him. But a citizen does not owe allegiance to an individual, no matter how highly placed.

    Second, citizens are not robots. That is to say that they are not brainless and mindless machines programmed to respond in particular ways. Fela’s lyrics concerning the zombies of this world are inapplicable to citizens.

    Third, citizens are neither Saints nor Satan. That is to say, citizens are neither perfect beings nor irredeemable devils. Since no human being is perfect, and since citizens are human beings, it follows that they are not perfect. It is not a mystery that saints are not declared as such until well into their having departed the world of sin!

    A satanic being is incapable of doing any good. But no matter how bad a citizen is, there is always some redeeming value. This is what institutions are expected to do and why Jean-Jacques Rousseau pleaded with the Government of Poland to create institutions that are capable of making citizens out of human beings because “it is national institutions which shape the genius, the character, the tastes and the manners of a people; which give it an individuality of its own; which inspire it with that ardent love of country..”

    Now to what citizens are. First, citizens are self-determining beings. They are responsible for the laws that they are made to follow. That makes them lawmakers as well as law-keepers. They are lawmakers in the sense that their elected representatives, who represent their interests, are responsible for the making of laws. As such keeping the laws is not an imposition; it is a case of the maker also being the keeper. And it does not matter that my preferred representative is not the choice of my fellow citizens.

    Second, citizens are rational and deliberative beings. Reason is the master driver of the affairs of citizens. They deliberate on the most effective and efficient means for their desired ends. They have self-regarding as well as other-regarding interests which they want to promote. The latter include interests of a parent for a good education for her son or daughter, or the interest of a philanthropist for the welfare of motherless babies. Citizens with such interests deliberate and reflect on how they can have their interests realised and will throw their support for candidates who share their interests and concerns. Once those candidates get elected, our citizens will mount pressure on them to support legislations for the realization of their common interests.

    Third, citizens are morally conscious. This does not contradict my previous point that citizens are not saints. What this means is that citizens are aware of the distinction between right and wrong. They know what conduct is wrong, and if they do not suffer from a weakness of the will, they would refrain from such conduct.

    More importantly, citizens are aware of their responsibilities to fellow-citizens and to the state of which they are citizens. They are conscious of the moral wrongness of breaking the law; evading taxes; aiding and abetting corruption; and violently thwarting the will of the people in elections. A citizen will also put the good of his country above everything else because he or she identifies that good as his or her own good as well. After all, the peace of the tree is the peace of the bird that perches on it.

    It is readily apparent that the picture of the citizen that emerges from the foregoing is not the reality that many of us are familiar with. Rather, we have citizens in name only, and never in deed. When the jurist suggested that there is only one Nigerian nationality with its citizens, he took the form for the substance.

    Of course, the state confers citizenship, but to what end is that? Do the citizens have the inspiration to conduct themselves as such? Can citizens be deliberative and rational when they are confronted daily with irrationalities as the order? Can they espouse morality in an immoral society led by evil impostors? Can a citizen see herself as self-determining when she knows that her vote counts for nothing and the lawmaker representing her is an election robber?

    Our present predicament goes back to the sandy foundation on which the national edifice was laid. We went into independence fractured and divided. While the nationalists were seemingly united in their quest for independence, there was no united focus on building lasting national institutions or creating a common patriotic citizenry. There was no national hero, nor a national leader that the entire country can look up to. There was no inspirational leadership that cut across the divisions of cultural nations that predated the Nigeria we came to acknowledge as nation. In the circumstance, what could have helped to create a sense of belonging was the development of strong national institutions. Instead, the selfishness of those who got themselves into national offices prevented them from seeing beyond the immediate interests of holding on to power.

    A just electoral system is a sine qua non for a strong democracy. Yet the election that ushered in independence was nothing close to just. And since then, it has gone from bad to more than worst. But ideal citizenship is a product of a strong democracy. It cannot come out of nowhere. Therefore it is in vain that we wish for the emergence of good citizens without selfless leaders who are willing to sacrifice their self-interests for the good of the nation.

    There are many lines of division that make the dream of a united country so elusive. This was recognised earlier in our years as a toddler nation. We even got it written into the first national anthem. But while we declared our brotherhood despite the difference in “tribe and tongue”, those who had responsibility for following through to make our brotherhood a reality were guilty of deepening the differences. Later developments, some deliberately pursued as state policy, put to rest the insincerity of the declaration. And when for once, citizens in action rather than words, issued their own declaration of unity in diversity, raising the hope of a brighter future based in strong democracy, they were rebuffed by their self-imposed leaders. It was not only another missed opportunity, that selfish and thoughtless act on behalf of a clique, drew the country back at least another thirty years.

    Six years later, the public struggle of the few courageous ones and the private support of the silent majority appeared to pay off when the coward dictators that relied on the power of the gun instead of the content of their ideas were shamed out. But appearance is not reality and for more than twelve years we have simply either matched in place or backward in every sphere of national life. Security is presently where we never experienced it since the various inter-tribal wars of the 18th and 19th centuries. The quality of education at all levels was much higher in the days before independence. And the health status of citizens has never been more precarious.

    What is needed, then, is a citizenry that takes seriously the responsibility of citizenship to serve as the gadfly perched on the back of lethargic and uninspiring leadership. We must resolve to confront a jaded leadership that threatens our citizenship status; come together state by state, local government by local government in demand of good governance.