Category: Segun Gbadegesin

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

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

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

“Of course, I am here.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barka de Sallah!

December 7, 1941 was a day that will live forever in infamy. That was the verdict that President Franklin D. Roosevelt pronounced on the day that the Japanese decided to launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the heart of the United States bled for its innocent citizens.

It was an act of war and the country and its leaders treated it as such. It was the beginning of the end of the 2nd World War. While the fortune of that war changed, the world didn’t. And at the end of the war, normalcy returned; and Japan and the United States have remained allies and trading partners for most of the last century to date.

September 11, 2001 (9/11) was a different class in the calendar of days. It was the most appropriate for the title of a Day of Infamy. Fourteen years ago today the world really changed and normalcy has been a mirage ever since.  Witness security operations at local and international airports. Though radical Islamists had been a nuisance to the sensibilities of the civilised world for most of the last 40 years or so, 9/11 carried its raging insanity too far, striking the soul of the capital of the industrial world with its mindless fury. And the world appeared to have had more than enough. Or has it, really?

If in fact the world had it on 9/11, the question that cries for an answer is “why hasn’t the world really come together to excise the cancerous mass from its body?” And why has it allowed the malignancy to spread so aggressively?

Further still, from the way in which terrorists have unleashed their murderous venom on innocent human beings in all corners of the world, shall we infer that the rest of the civilised world, from Africa to Asia and Europe to the Americas, cannot combine their forces to defeat and root them out from the face of the earth?

Terrorism is about the use of violence and terror to achieve political change. This is true of religious terrorists as it is of freedom fighters. The purpose is political. ISIS, Al Qaeda and Boko Haram all want to have a Caliphate that they control. Boko Haram once insisted that no non-Moslems will be allowed to rule their fold. But they also discriminate between their version of Islam and those they reject. No members of other Moslem sects are also to be trusted to rule over them.

What they want they cannot have by persuasion because they don’t trust their own power to persuade others to their point of view. Rather they will force their creed into the mind, (sorry, make that the flesh), of others. If you cannot persuade by reasoning, you cannot reach the mind of anyone. If you then choose to impose your creed by force, you are capturing the body, the flesh, and not the mind. How deep does that go? That is why Oxford English Dictionary defines a terrorist as anyone who attempts to further his or her views by a system of coercive intimidation.

One is tempted to blame it all on the civilised world itself. Not just because they have proved themselves utterly ineffective in stopping the spread of terror in at least the last 15 years; but also because, as some will argue, they started it all in the first place.

Tracing the history of terrorism in a seminal book, Inside Terrorism, Bruce Hoffman observes that the French Revolutionists designed the “reign of terror” to consolidate the power of the new government they established by intimidating the counter-revolutionaries and subversives who they regarded as enemies of the people.

Robespierre, the Revolutionary leader, defined terror as nothing but justice, prompt, severe and inflexible. He regards it therefore as an emanation of virtue itself. How perverse this must appear to us now if Shekau were to offer himself as the embodiment of virtue. Indeed, hasn’t he taunted and mocked the rest of us as kaffirs, which is another term for vice, the opposite of virtue.

What state terrorists, such as Robespierre started, anti-state and pro-anarchist terrorists took over and ran with in the aftermath of the industrial revolution and the widespread alienation it caused. And of course, the state that never quite abandoned its absolute control over the use of force also found terror handy as an instrument of the totalitarian state. On their part, the oppressed and dispossessed in colonial enclaves, rejecting the title of terrorists, self-identified as freedom fighters. The tactic and outcomes, however, remain identical.

But can there ever be a moral justification for terrorism, which unlike conventional war, makes no distinction against morally justifiable and unjustifiable targets of violent actions? When Shekau and his terror gang send innocent girls and young boys on suicide bombing missions, we cannot assume that those young people know or fully understand what they are being asked to do. Then they die and they kill others who have nothing to do with whatever the grievances of the gang might be.

Or when Chibok girls were herded away in trucks to an unknown destination and forcefully kept against their wish while some were converted to Islam against their wish as the President recently observed, does Shekau consider this act as good-in-itself or as a means to some end that he wants to achieve? If he thinks it is good in itself to abuse and brutalise innocent girls he must be the most perverse and devilish human being. Isn’t it a most bizarre and cruel irony that he would suggest that he is doing whatever he does in the name of God and in obedience to his will?

So we know that it is bizarre. We understand that it is devilish. And we agree that it is evil. What is it that prevents us from not just verbally condemning these mindless violence and others, such as the beheading of innocent men and women by ISIS, but more importantly, combining the forces of the entire world community, which are certainly greater than those of the terrorists to defeat them?

One reason the world has not come together is the perceived dissimilarity of vested interests among the leaders of the civilised world. One props up a regime that gasses its citizens. Another turns a blind eye towards atrocities committed by a friendly regime. A third is inward looking and doesn’t care as long as it is not a target. Yet for another it is the economy that matters and she will enter into trade relations with the devil if it pays. And so with disparate national interests, worldwide terror, even with its limited strength, gets a break that it doesn’t deserve.

With a purposefully united international community AWOL, terrorists are having a field day, and evil is let loose!

African nations cannot afford the devastation, dislocations and the psychological trauma that terrorism is inflicting worldwide. This is why it is important for them to combine their forces to defeat it and erase it from the face of the continent. This is supposed to be Africa’s century. It is its take-off time. It cannot afford to be pulled down by the weight of terror.

President Muhammadu Buhari is on the right path with his shuttle diplomacy to neighbouring states, mobilising his fellow leaders to the theatre of the war against terror. With their arms wide open appealing for support, the West must be ready to lift them up with the resources they need to execute the war to its logical conclusion.

Change was the magic word that attracted Nigerians to the All Progressives Congress (APC) train and to its presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari. They wanted change from the direction the country had been pushed in the last 16 years. They trusted the man from Daura because they saw him, not as a typical politician, but as a man of an uncommon disciplined approach to life and an unusual integrity. They rallied round him because they believed it was time to rescue the nation and this was the man who could make it happen.

Buhari himself noted with trepidation the burden of high expectations that he had to shoulder. He tried to play down his capability to deliver and do so especially in such a short run as the people apparently desired and expected. He didn’t find it amusing that all eyes will be on him within three months of his inauguration.

To be sure, there is still a lot of goodwill for President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) and there are numerous Nigerians willing to extend his period of honeymoon. The majority of these patient citizens are Buharists to the core. For them, PMB is still the answer and he can do no harm.

On the other side, however, there is a vocal minority, many of who have never hidden their disdain for the man and have been critical of his moves from the day he won the presidential election. “We told you so” has been the refrain from this circle. For them either Buhari has a northern agenda or he is on a jihadist mission.

Between the two groups, there is a third, the non-aligned, independent and neutral-minded willing to give the President the benefit of the doubt. Their first reaction to any “shocking” news from the second group is to find out the truth, then the rationale, before making a judgment. They refuse to jump to conclusions about motivation. So they ask questions and refrain from pronouncing any verdict until they are sure.

More importantly, the neutral independent-minded group is interested in how the President pursues the substance of change. But what do they understand by the substance of change and what does it matter? They certainly want concrete and material change as opposed the façade, periphery, or margin. For them, the change mantra can be more of the same, business as usual masquerading as change.

What this group craves cannot be achieved in a jiffy, and they know it. Therefore they are not among the crowd demanding the head of PMB because nothing has happened in 100 days out of at least 1,460 days that the President has to effect substantial change in the polity.

Take the case of appointments. The neutral group grants that Buhari cannot wait for four years before he finalises the appointment of the men and women who will help him achieve the substance of change that they desire. He will have to do this pretty soon; otherwise precious time is wasted. But they also grant him the benefit of the doubt. They are sympathetic with his cautious approach to get it right so he doesn’t simultaneously hire and fire.

Secondly, they are also willing to concede to him the prerogative of hiring those he knows and trusts into strategic positions that he requires to deliver on substantial change. Therefore they don’t grumble about the appointment of the Chief of Staff (CoS) or Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF).

The concern of some in the first group mentioned above with respect to the latest appointments is twofold. First, if the appointments are a reflection of the mind of PMB with respect to trust, then it follows that he trusts members of his ethnic nationality more than other groups. Second, they contend that the appointments come with enormous power, which has multiplier effects for the constituencies of the appointees.

To the first observation, members of the independent and neutral group are not impressed by the criticism. They know that the new President can jeopardise the goals and objectives of his promise of substantial change and thus alienate the electorate with a do-gooder approach to filling the most sensitive positions. They know that there is an enormous danger for the President and for the nation in a strategy that canvasses political correctness in matters of grave importance.

Surely, there is also a grave danger in the appearance of failing to respect the traditional approach of satisfying all constituencies in a democratic setting. After all, he or at least his party will have to come back to these same constituencies for their votes in short 48 months. The anti-Buharists are gleefully entertaining these prospects of a Buhari or an APC coming back cap in hand for votes and being shunned or worse by voters.

There is the prospect of a different outcome, however. Buhari’s trusted hands perform beyond anyone’s expectation. They succeed in stamping out corruption. They revive the comatose economy. They surprise us all with a thoughtful and effective agenda for restructuring the nation for optimal performance. And they bring back sanity and probity to governance. In this scenario, Buhari would have achieved the change that he promised, not marginally but substantially. Who in his or her right senses will then deny him or his party a second term on the parochial excuse that his uncle was not appointed SGF?

I am not even interested here in the certainly legitimate argument of the third neutral group that for 16 years PDP presidents religiously adhered to the mantra of spreading the goodies. They invited every ethnic nationality to the dinner table. But those invited only filled their pot bellies without even allowing crumbs to fall off the dinner table for their kith and kin to snatch. An eight-lane dual carriage Lagos-Ibadan Expressway would have benefitted everyone from every nationality. Didn’t we have Ministers of Works and Transport from the South? Is Benin-Ore Road the better for that?

There are two more considerations. First, some in the first group made reference to other climes, including the United States from where we copied our presidential system. But in those climes, no one cares where the president’s appointees come from as long as they are competent, accountable and trustworthy. If they don’t deliver, they are fired without any scruple, though the man who made the mistake of hiring them in the first place will have to eat the humble pie. He cannot blame anyone for his error of judgment.

Our system is not different. What is different is that when it is convenient we preach the gospel of one nation. However, when we look ourselves in the mirror, we see many nations. But our constitution already provides for this paradox of one and the many. Ministers must come from all states of the federation and in the matter of board appointments, it is also expected that the federal character of the nation is respected. Can we then just allow Caesar to take what is his, and God to have what belongs to Him?

Finally, while the first anti-Buhari group mocks the leaders of the ruling party, especially those from the South as if they have been used and dumped, the neutral group and, naturally the unrepentant Buharists, can only sympathise with the ignorance so unashamedly displayed. Does it really make sense that Buhari doesn’t confide in the leadership of his party before announcing his appointees? And does it make sense that party leaders would not scrutinise the record of those prospective appointees as well as his reasons for choosing them?

Take the case of the new SGF. His bio shows a man of great intellect and accomplishment. He is an achiever in his discipline. But he is also a strong and loyal party man. Combine these qualities with the fact that he is a Christian from a northern minority nationality. Why don’t Buhari’s critics see this appointment as a plus for him—for recognising and trusting a Christian for the position of SGF and acknowledging and correcting the marginalisation of a northern minority? Blowing in the wind—the answer is.

“ARE you following the turn of events?” Opalaba asked via a text message.

“What events?” I responded.

“How can you fail to understand what I mean? The Senate versus EFCC, of course,” he responded.

“I am sorry but I have been busy with my other priorities,” I replied.

If you are a regular follower of my adventures with my friend, you can by now guess what follows next.

My phone rang and it was Opalaba screaming on top of his voice.

“Other priorities?” Is that what you just mentioned in your response? he asked.

“Yes!” I also replied indignantly. “You don’t expect that I am always on to every damned inanity that you all decide to engage in, do you? Of course, I have many other useful items on my to-do list.”

Noticing that I wasn’t going to back off, my friend mellowed.

“Sure, you’re right. And I guess those of us who have no choice are victims of our circumstance. We cannot turn on the television sets without being subjected to mental torture watching fools display the arrogance of power and the stupidity that comes with it on our screens. What’s our choice in the matter?”

“Turn off your damned television screens”, I screamed back.

Now it was apparent to both of us that we were becoming psychological wrecks on account of the irony of the phenomenon of unchangeable “agents” of change; the self-proclaimed change agents who resist change.

“So what’s the latest?” I asked my friend. And in his characteristic attention to details, he volunteered to guide me through the labyrinth of what he referred to as the latest “drama of the unchangeable.”

“First, the EFCC received a petition against the wife of the Senate President and decided to investigate her. She appeared before the agency and was reportedly grilled over two days. Among the entourage that escorted her to the agency were senators and political associates of her husband. The investigation is still ongoing and there are reports that it has been extended to London.”

“Second, a senator representing Delta North Senatorial District received a petition against Ibrahim Lamorde, the EFCC chairman, alleging that he diverted over N1 trillion of funds recovered from officials convicted of corrupt enrichment between 2003 and 2007. At the time, Lamorde was EFCC director of Operations. The petition was submitted by George Uboh to Senator Peter Nwaoboshi. The senator, as a member of the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions reportedly shared the petition with the Senate President. As the Senate was on recess, the Senate President reportedly gave the green light to the committee to investigate the matter.”

“Third, the Senate committee fast-tracked the investigation and invited Lamorde for questioning on the subject of the petition.”

“Fourth, the EFCC issued a statement rebutting the petition and raising questions about the motive of the petitioner and the Senate committee.”

“Fifth, two groups in the Senate including the Minority Leader and the APC Unity Forum dissociated themselves from the investigation and advised the committee against engaging in a fruitless effort.”

“Sixth, Senate President Saraki denied that the Senate investigation of Lamorde has anything to do with EFCC’s investigation of his (Saraki) wife.”

Having laid out the details of the new sleazy deposit in the gutters of national politics, I asked my friend what he saw as the issues of interest. Never afraid of jumping into stormy water, Opalaba offered his insight on the matter as follows.

“Oh, where does one start, really? It’s sleazy and sordid. It’s beyond the pale of decency, to say the least. But let us accept two important facts. One, the Senate has a constitutional oversight responsibility with respect to any institution of governance. No one denies this reality. Two, the Senate performs its oversight functions through committees that have the right to investigate matters referred to it by the Senate. These are the non-controversial facts.”

“What then are the controversial issues in this matter?” I asked Opalaba.

“There is quite a bunch”, he replied.

“First, there is no smoke without fire. The fires here, if the Senate leadership can be honest with itself and with the Nigerian people, are two. One, at its inception, Senate President invited the anti-corruption agencies to a meeting. EFCC chose not to attend, thus humiliating the leadership of the Red Chamber. Second, shortly after, EFCC chose to investigate the wife of the Senate President, adding insult to injury. It’s payback time. It’s just as simple as that.”

“Isn’t that cheap blackmail?” I questioned my friend. “What you’re suggesting is that to avoid spurious charges of retaliation, the Senate must fold its arms and not perform its duties.”

“I have not finished and you’re jumping the gun”, Opalaba shouted me down.

“Second, the responsibility for referring petitions to oversight committees belongs to the Senate as a body. The committee web page is clear about this. But let us grant that the Senate President can reasonably be expected to act on behalf of the body in case Senate is on recess. However, since he must be assumed to have a spousal interest in a matter pending before EFCC, good ethical thinking suggests that he should refer this petition to the Senate body to determine the issue of referral. This is what recusal means in decent climes. In other words, the Senate President shouldn’t have been the one ordering investigation by the Committee on Ethics.”

‘Third, the subject matter of the petition is not political; it is criminal. The Senate Committee on Ethics, Code of Conduct and Public Petitions is, among others, tasked with the responsibility of considering “the subject matter of all petitions referred to it by the Senate and shall report from time to time to the Senate, its opinion of the action to be taken thereon together with such other observations on petition and the signatures attached thereof, as the committee may think fit.”’ (my emphasis)

“The above is quoted verbatim from the web page of the committee. The question is “what can this committee accomplish with respect to the subject matter of a petition that alleges criminal action against the EFCC chair?” It will only render an opinion on what action to take. So why didn’t Senate just refer the petition to the Police or ICPC both of which are also anti-corruption agencies with power to investigate and prosecute?

“Fourth, there are more disgusting details. The mainstream and social media are buzzing with slimy background stories of the originator of the petition and his Senate representative. At the least, the stories raise a number of questions which should interest the Senate. Indeed, what one would expect is for the Senate Committee on Ethics to first assure itself of the credibility and integrity of a petitioner prior to committing the prestige of Senate to an investigation that may turn out more dirt about him than about the accused.”

“For instance, is media report true that George Uboh was once convicted of credit card fraud?” If so, does he have a credibility challenge in bringing this allegation against the EFCC?”

“Is it also true that Senator Nwaoboshi boasted about his relationship with convicted James Ibori, referring to the latter as his boss and friend without a display of moral outrage over what Ibori was convicted of? If true, is this senator himself fit to be a member of the Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions?” Opalaba intoned.

“Finally, there is a deeply worrisome nature of our politics even in the cyber age when members of the Millennial Generation who ought to be in the vanguard of probity and cosmopolitan etiquette are instead defenders of primordial, local and partisan interests. Certainly intelligent and morally conscious people may see matters differently. My hope is that in this and other matters of high moral stakes, it is our moral convictions and not our ethnic, local or partisan interests that inform our various positions. God bless Nigeria.”

If not on any other matter, I agree whole-heartedly with my friend’s sermon from Mount Opalaba in the last paragraph. This phase too shall pass.