The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Ethnic hate bill

    THERE appears to be some misconception on the implications of the National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speech Bill which passed its first reading at the senate last week. That perhaps explains why, much of the concerns have been on the effects of the bill on the rights of citizens to freedom of speech and expression.

    Even as these fears are not out of order, it does appear the real intentions and mortal dangers inherent in the bill are yet to be placed within their proper contexts. For, most of the issues the bill intends to address relate to ethnic hate speeches rather than individual to individual infractions. Though the bill categorized as an offender any person who, uses, publishes, presents, produces, plays and distributes any material written or oral capable of causing threat or involves abusive words or behaviour, its main concerns are with ethnic strife.

    But, attention on the proposed piece of legislation has been on its effects on the rights of citizens to freedom of expression. This has led to conclusions that it targets to muzzle freedom of speech which has had unfettered ventilation through the new media. This view is further fuelled by the coincidence of the bill with the avowal of the federal authorities to press on with the regulation of social media practice in the country.

    A careful perusal on details of the said bill shows it is heavily skewed to checkmate ethnic hatred, ostensibly to forge a common sense of national belonging. It has serious sanctions against any infringement capable of eliciting ethnic hatred and rivalry within and among the estimated 250 nationalities in the country.

    It is in this wise that an individual is deemed to have committed an offence if he intended to stir up ethnic hatred, or having regard to all circumstances; ethnic hatred is likely to be stirred up against any person or persons from such an ethnic group in Nigeria. “Any person who commits an offence under this section shall be liable to life imprisonment and where the act causes any loss of life, the person shall be punished with death by hanging”.

    The proposed law also further stipulates that “Any person who knowingly utters words to incite feelings of contempt, hatred, hostility, violence or discrimination against any person, group or community on the basis of ethnicity or race commits an offence and shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment to a term not less than five years, or a fine of not less than N10million or both.

    The overall target of the bill for which the setting up of a commission is being proposed is to whittle down ethnic strife, facilitate and promote peaceful co-existence among all ethnic groups indigenous to Nigeria. Through the instrumentality of draconian punishments including death penalty by hanging; the bill seeks to secure citizens’ compliance to national re-orientation and nation building.

    But that is where everything went wrong. The senator who proposed the bill, Sabi Abdullahi must have been moved by the reality that hate speech is a major problem in Nigeria adversely affecting co-habitation and things got so bad with the advent of the social media. He was also right in his recognition that Nigerians are torn along ethnic and religious lines more than ever before in its history with ethnic hatred at an all-time high. The need for some form of intervention to steer consciousness away from these destabilizing tendencies may have been the raison d’être for the bill.

    He however, veered off tangent in his recommendations as to the appropriate therapies to remedy the identified societal ills. Yes, we have been contending with ethnic hatred and hostilities in this country. Our leaders have not fared any better as some are clear purveyors of these divisive tendencies. Their inability to rise above these predilections is clear from the rising competition between the central authority and primordial cleavages for citizens’ loyalty.

    The concerns of the bill on nation building can be understood. It is however, a different ball game whether inculcating a sense of national consciousness and identity can be procured through the harsh penalties contained in the proposed bill. National re-orientation and re-awakening being psychological constructs cannot be procured by force. Neither does compliance depend on draconian and vey unrealistic laws. What is required to get the right responses is moral suasion and real commitment from the government to the overall wellbeing of citizens irrespective of ethnicity and creed.

    A leadership imbued with national purpose and commitment; one that places the collective interests of the citizens above primordial considerations is vital to securing the loyalty of the distinct ethnic nationalities in the country. That has been the missing link. The proposed bill is defective and incompetent given that it sets out to address the manifestations of ethnic strife and rivalry rather than the conditions that nurture and sustain them.

    Not surprisingly, these conditions can be located in the defective federal structure we operate, an arrangement that places disproportionate powers and resources at the centre. It is in the competition for the control of these powers and resources that ethnicity springs up together with its destabilizing manifestations. It is difficult to fathom how these systemic dysfunctions can be addressed through the hate speech bill. The solution lies in whittling down the awesome powers of the federal arm through devolution, fiscal federalism or restructuring.

    The real task is to make Nigerians out of the various nationalities that inhabit this political space such that they begin to see themselves first, as Nigerians rather than members of their inclusive units. The success of this will depend on how the government of the day is perceived in terms of its commitment to building bridges of unity and understanding among the disparate peoples. That is the key issue.

    Against all pretences, our politics is still ethnically directed. Ethnicity has remained the major language of political discourse and action even as recruitment within the nation’s highest political offices including the security agencies has miserably followed the same trend. It remains to be conjectured the fate of the proposed legislation in an ethnically fragmented and divided country; a country where citizens see themselves from the narrow prism of their ethnic nationalities with a leadership that is yet to rise above these predilections.

    It would seem the proposed bill is dead on arrival given that it is entangled in an intricate web of contradictions. Given that the bill seeks to procure citizens’ loyalty compliance through the wrong channels, it will definitely produce counterproductive outcomes even if it finally scales through. While our laws have copious provisions on some of the issues the legislation is targeted at, there are others that are not susceptible to ease of handle or clear interpretation.

    The imprecise nature of the infractions the bill is supposed to address may lend it a tool in the hands of the government to intimidate and harass political opponents. Even then, there is real worry as to the propriety of a bill on ethnic hatred or hate speech for a democratic government inundated by a surfeit of more pressing national challenges.

    Insinuations are high that the intention is to muzzle public opinion in preparation for some dubious agenda. We do not require another commission to promote and facilitate harmony and peaceful co-existence. Neither is the enactment of draconian laws all that is required to exorcise the ghost of hate speeches and ethnic hatred from the language of political discourse on these shores.

    But the government can still make the difference in the way it carries along the disparate groups by giving them a sense of belonging. A government that cares for the overall welfare of it citizens; adheres to inclusiveness in all its policies and actions sets the right tone for all the ethnic groups to fall behind it. Such a government will have no reason to seek the procurement of citizens’ loyalty through harsh and draconian legislations.

  • Writers in a mess

    Femi Macaulay

     

    IT is ironic that the 38th Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) International Convention, held at the Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Enugu, from October 31 to November 3, ended in a fiasco. Writers are expected to be civilized, but the problem at the conference was civilizational. The theme of the convention was Literature, Nationalism and the Poetics of Integration. In the end, the event showed politics of disintegration. Indeed, the ANA may well be on its way out.

    A new ANA National President was supposed to be elected at the convention. There were four contenders: Camilus Uka, Ahmed Maiwada, Ofonime Inyang and Chike Ofili.

    A disturbing report by Evelyn Osagie of The Nation captured the development that showed the ANA’s underdevelopment: “Saturday, November 2, was characterised by political feuds and theatrics that culminated in the cancellation of the election allegedly on the grounds of “faulty” electoral process. The tension was heightened when the outgoing executive, led by Mallam Denja Abdullahi, was said to have allegedly brought in “soldier boys” and other security operatives to the venue, perhaps to monitor elections, amid counter allegations of money changing hands, among other malpractices.”

    “Aggrieved delegates not only raised the alarm over the move, they also faulted the electoral process. As a result, a new electoral panel was constituted with Prof. Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo as chairman. Mr. Ofeimun, a former ANA president, Prof. Remi Raji, Diego Okenyodo and chairman of Lagos ANA branch Yemi Adebiyi as members.”

    “All hell broke loose when displeased delegates, especially from Akwa Ibom branch, were further aggravated by discrepancies in the list of delegates qualified to vote. This led to a swarm of writers protesting, calling for the cancellation of the election.”

    “Fearing that violence might arise, the leadership of IMT, venue of the meeting, ordered that they vacate the hall.”

    “And since decisions could not be reached on how to conduct the election, after a long deliberation that ran into the night between Adimora-Ezeigbo-led panel and the 25 ANA branch chairmen, Raji addressed delegates in line with the association’s constitution, saying: “After deliberation between the five-man panel led by Prof Adimora-Ezeigbo and the 25 ANA branch chairmen, it was agreed that election is postponed, and would hold within the next 180 days as enshrined in the ANA constitution. The place or state where it would be held would be communicated to us through the chairmen of the state branches.”

    As things stand, the ANA is without a substantive leader for the first time in its history. It is ironic that the fiasco happened in the same city where the association had held the maiden edition of its yearly convention 38 years ago, when the association was established by literary luminary Chinua Achebe, and others.

    The outgoing ANA National President Denja Abdullahi was quoted as saying:  “ANA is an association of intellectuals. Anyone vying for any leadership position must do so with a mind to serve. Leadership is not a do-or-die affair. We know of those who paid for people’s accommodation and were sharing money. Why? What for? It is indeed unfortunate.”

    It looks like writers have become politicians, and politicians have become writers. Abdullahi’s allegations would have sounded normal if they were about Nigeria’s politicians and political environment. But he was talking about writers, who are supposed to reflect high-mindedness.

    According to the report, “Many, however, observed that the battle was not about who led the association but a war over ANA land at Mpape, Abuja.”  The late Gen Mamman Vatsa gave 60.9 hectares to the association in 1985. Abdullahi said in an October 2018 interview: “The government that gave the land in the first place which was at 60.9 hectares cut it into about 57 hectares and when the present developer took possession in 2012 and went to the Abuja land authorities to verify documents and papers discovered that the size of the land has been further reduced to 36.9 hectares.”

    He added: “On the land presently we have burgeoning structures that will later translate into a conference centre, library, shopping malls, offices, auditorium, writers’ residency chalets, 50- one bedroom en-suite apartments for rent and all other structures. The national secretariat of the Association has been moved since March this year from the National Theatre in Lagos to a completed red-brick structure on the land that now houses it.”

    One of those who want to lead the association, Ahmed Maiwada, a lawyer, poet and novelist, however, said in an interview this month:  “We must know who got the missing portions of land and how the land got out in the first place.” He also said: “I want to correct the impression that the 36.9 hectares of the ANA was salvaged by ANA legal team; it is a lie. I achieved that feat alone. If any other lawyer was there when I won the case in 2012, let him come out and say so. I was the Legal Adviser for ANA and I was the ANA lawyer for the case, too, and I was the only one going to court.”

    According to Maiwada, “When I finished that case, I recovered 36.9 hectares. The value of that 36.9 hectares, as at 2012 when I recovered it, was 1.2 billion naira, according to KNVR, the new developer. After seeing that, I made a token request of 15 million naira only as my payment (it was supposed to be 10 percent on the value of the recovered land), because I was also a member of ANA, and didn’t want to charge more than that. Unknown to me, the ANA authorities then had requested for 20 million naira from the developer to pay me, and got it, yet I did not get a kobo. They should have kept, at least, 5 million naira and pay me my 15 million naira; but they didn’t. The developer was not supposed to give them a kobo, for that was not part of the agreement we signed with the developer. But he still gave them. These people blew the money.”

    “The current ANA president would tell you the association paid me 5 million naira. How did I get that 5 million naira? There was a second case I was doing for ANA -I did about four cases for the association in all -and I declared a strike on the condition that the initial 15 million naira must be paid. That was when I heard the money had been paid. The developer had already sunk in money, and my success or failure in that case would affect him, so he promised to pay me. He, then, gave 5 million naira to ANA. That was how I got that 5 million naira. I told them that 5 million naira was only meant for the second case. Up till now, ANA hasn’t paid me the 15 million naira.”

    The ANA’s mess is a bad story. It is a continuing story that is likely to get messier.

     

  • Atiku’s requiem

    By Sam Omatseye

    The Supreme Court verdict was, to me, not about legalistic niceties, or the casuistry imposed on the law by those who feel rigged out of the presidency. Not the remorse or bloodlust in their rhetoric. Not even who lost or won, or the mechanistic frustration of those who would have wanted to appeal the verdict. They hope, in their fantasy, that they could court the heavens and so God is made flesh, wrestles like Jacob and upturns the ruling. Not even the assertion that the Supreme Court is infallible because it is final is any consolation.

    It is about Atiku Abubakar’s love. It is an enduring love, unfeigned but blood-eyed in battle. A love for power. It is sometimes innocent, sometimes Mephistophelian, sometimes naïve, but always distinctively insistent. Innocent in his eyes of a little boy, which is deceptive because he pursues it with the rage of the wounded, and that makes it Mephistophelian. During his campaign and elections, money dropped in huge tranches, his foot soldiers roared and perspired, ballots vaporised and arrived in preferred precincts and numbers, the men in his sanctum sanctorum devised plots to win at all cost like the argument about the phantom server. He was naïve when all seemed clear, but he still insisted he won, even when some pointed to the cunning and rapacity of his lawyers.

    Was it mere naivety or innocence when he unveiled a stylised response to the Supreme Court verdict, soaring into the moorlands of philosophy and history, and tail-gaiting Aristotle. He even made himself look like an Awolowo at the birth of a new tragedy at the electoral gate.

    In fact, three personalities come together, in varying degrees of counterfeit, in the political biography of the Adamawa Chieftain. One is Awo, the second is Muhammadu Buhari and the third Chief M.K.O Abiola. As Awo, he tries to make himself into a sort of political thinker and innovator. As Muhammadu Buhari, he wants to ride a longevity of ambition. He would not want to follow Awo in that part because the Ikenne sage was a bust in his presidential dreams. As Abiola, he borrows from the Egba money bag’s profile by burrowing into his own deep pockets.

    But he does not have the Awo prescience or depth, or even his understanding of history, nascent heroics. Awo wrote books, engaged at a high level of dialectics. He had a mythical status among his people. Nobody saw Atiku in the moon. Atiku does not even have a political slogan that enchants viscerally, like “Awo!!!” He lacks the aplomb, ascetic remove from or even affectionate contempt for the excitement of the crowd. His reference to Aristotle seems cute, contrived. Obviously somebody inserted it into his piece. To be clear, he wanted to present himself as a progressive, a thing that was out of character when he was on the hustings. He certainly had the southwest and the Biafran rabble in mind and, perhaps, Awo when he started calling for restructuring and fiscal federalism. He did that with zest, which I admired, if this essayist didn’t believe him.

    As Buhari, Atiku never had the talakawa appeal. He may be a better speaker than Buhari, and that is not what he will take. He wants the fruitful longevity of ambition, just as the scripture says, “Be thou faithful unto the end and thou shall receive the crown…” He also lacks the ascetic quiet and the protestations of rectitude the Katsina man commands. No one cries for Atiku on the streets like sai baba. No one goes to church or mosque for him. No one kisses the earth or stops the rain for him. When they see him, they see money. He is not a material-mystic hero; his appeal is materialistic.  Even when he whipped up the federalist sentiment, he did not own or ride it. He did not give it his language or presence. He became a mere contributor to a hackneyed ideology. He cried, but no one shed tears. He crooned but no one dance. He raged, but no anger on the public square. He did not have the power to change, like John Adams who said of the American “revolution was in the hearts and minds of the American people.” We cannot say anything approximating this in Atiku’s barnstorming.

    MKO was a moneybag, but also a sort of windbag of the people. He predated Fayose in his visits to bole (roasted plantain) sellers and riding okada. He was rich and poor simultaneously, dropping from the sky and erupting from the earth genuinely. He made a song of his humble beginning. With his stutter, he brought humour, even endearing gaffes, to his profile. He was a giver, a man thought to have too much money and wanted to turn himself into a compulsive donor to all good causes to everyone he met in every part of the country. Atiku cuts the image of an acquirer, lapping from the nation’s super ice cream.

    But what makes Atiku’s story unconvincing was that he is a partisan wayfarer, the Ajala traveller of Nigerian politics. He stumbles from a party to party to make fortune out of opportunity, to use his charms at any chance, all to become Nigeria’s president.

    One reason for this is that Atiku has tasted the forbidden fruit. He was vice president, and acted when Obj trusted him and opened the doors for him. Obj saw his ambition and shut it out. That scent of power haunts him and he wants it in its full glory and majesty. In the language of the young sensational Vietnamese writer, Ocean Vuong, Atiku was “briefly gorgeous” at the top. He was merely a cameo, a comet, a glorious flash.

    Hence the loss at the Supreme Court was so painful. Age may not help next time. Age, for me, is no disqualifier. But has he lost his chance. That is why his reaction invokes the following words of Shakespeare’s play Merchant of Venice: “If you prick us do we not bleed? /If you tickle us, do we not laugh?/ If you poison us, do we not die? If you wrong us, do we not revenge?” It is that sense of loss, as though wronged, that pervades his soul, a sense he has lost it forever. So, even if the absence of a server means justice is served, he will deny it. He does not want his career over. His political career must loathe the scriptural line that says: “You have a reputation that you are alive, but you are dead.”

  • Amaechi’s rail of hope

    By Sam Omatseye

    I followed the minister of transportation on a train journey from Lagos via Abeokuta to Ibadan. It was a revelation of infrastructural potential in this country. We started early, and we first took inspection of the coaches, the VIP, the first class and the general. The project has been a work of amazing disruption.

    The landscape we covered showed how much work has taken place: the clearing of forests, village and community displacements, the building of bridges, tunnels, underpasses and overpasses. We saw mud baked, narrow and big gauges, all of which witness the toil of Chinese workers with some of their Nigerian staff. Stations are under construction, like the one at Kajola on the way to Abeokuta.

    The minister, Rotimi Amaechi, raged that the Chinese had not completed work on the station as they promised. They appealed to the element: rain. Rain seemed a factor in the delay. When we reached Ibadan, work was about three kilometres short of the terminal. Why? The engineers showed the minister the soggy earth. No tracks could plug safely into the ground. The train stopped and we all walked about seven kilometres to and from the terminal, which was also not completed because of the rains.

    The train bears a speed of 150 kilometres per hour but its operational speed is 120. In Lagos it takes off from Iddo, but work is furiously steaming on tracks all the way to Ebutte Metta. Earth, gravels, asphalt yield to machines to form a chaos of progress around the city.

    The appeal to weather shows how climate change affects governance and development. Lagos is waiting for the rains to go. So is Nigerian train. Weather compromises dreams and deadlines. The BOS of Lagos, Governor Sanwo-Olu shares something with our train project: a prayer to the heavens.

    The inspection that lasted till late in the night was a labour of hope. I mused at the irony that if Buhari pulls this true, his story will be that of a man who derailed in order to build it. He had cancelled Metroline in Lagos under Jakande. Now, he is the man of rail. With Lagos and Ibadan done, they will move all the way to Kano. The villages are thankful. Some are teasing the minister with chieftaincy title. No, thanks, said Amaechi. A touching story of a community in which pupils walk a mile to school because of the project. Amaechi approved an underpass to be constructed.

    Lagos-Ibadan is West Africa’s busiest hub. It reminds me of a line in the Novel Flights by Nobel laureate OlgaTokarczuk: “Barbarians don’t travel.” They abide what is called circular time rather than linear time. We are not barbarians but with the train network, we shall be a people on the move.

  • Sanwo-Olu’s new theory

    By Emeka Omeihe

    Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu delved beyond the ordinary when he interrogated certain features of citizen-government relations he considered impediments to genuine expression of the democratic spirit and the sovereignty of the people.

    In a terse presentation that deviated substantially from the stereotypes we are accustomed to, he fingered the appellation, ‘Your Excellency’ as one of those features that obfuscate the understanding of the real relationship that should exist between governors and the governed in a true democratic setting. He raised issues with the title ‘Your Excellency’ contending that it appears to confer on the office of the governor the toga of an epitome of excellence; a temple of perfection and a throne of purity- attributes he ascribes only to the almighty God.

    Apparently not satisfied with that appellation which he says spreads a demi-god aura across the entire machinery of the executive arm of the government;symbolizing an authoritarian disposition on the governed, he said he would not have anything to do with the title henceforth.

    Sanwo-Olu also adduced religious reasons for his action. For him, since only the almighty God, our creator is the Most Excellent, no man or woman can share that attribute with him. For this reason, he divested himself of Your Excellency title and wants to be simply addressed as Mr. Governor. The new appellation in his view, will constantly remind him that he has been chosen out of so many to serve humanity without losing sight of our imperfections and mortality.

    The issues canvassed by the governor are as weighty as they are thought provoking. It is good a thing he took out sometime to interrogate some of theconcepts and precepts we take for granted; precepts designed to enthrone highermoral values but constantly abused and debased by leaders. Such inquisition iseven more relevant in our clime because of the gulf between precepts and exemplary conduct. We are good at appropriating any and every symbol or perquisites of public office. We are also good at flaunting and celebrating titles and honors without giving a thought to the sacrifice and high moral demands they oftenentail. The governor must have seen through the incongruity between the concept of Your Excellency, the conduct and the activities of those so addressed that he feltsufficiently challenged to put the concept on the scale.

    And what is the sense in adorning a title its bearers constantly devalue through acts of omission and commission? Had our elected leaders been living up to the high moral values envisaged in the conferment of such titles on them, Sanwo-Olu maynot have found himself in the current frustrations that compelled him to strip himself of that title. His action should therefore serve as a challenge to those who parade such titles without giving a thought to the huge responsibilities they bestow on them.

    Yet, there are issues with some of the conclusions of the governor. YourExcellency which is a universally accepted honorific title is given to certain high level officials of a sovereign state, officials of international organizations or members of an aristocracy. There is little literature on how it evolved overtime but it equates with cardinal virtue, distinction, excellence, virtue etc.

    Conceived this way, it is a clarion call for excellence, distinction and higher valueson all those the title is conferred. When a governor is addressed as His Excellency, he is being called upon to show distinction, to strive for excellence in both his private and public conducts. He is being called upon to strive for perfection since only the almighty is perfect and excellent. It is a reminder to the sacrifice such a leader has to make to justify the arduous responsibilities entrusted on him by virtue of his office. There is nothing inherently wrong raising the moral and performancebar expected of occupiers of such offices.

    It is an admission that such officials are not infallible and only by striving for perfection will society take full advantage of their mandate. It is neither intended to confer the toga of a thin-god on them nor authoritarian disposition which at any rate is a negation of democratic ethos. Where you find leaders with anti-democraticor authoritarian dispositions, it is doubtful if its root can be located in that appellation.

    Yes, there is ample evidence of scant regard by public office holders for the high expectations their offices entail. The conduct of some of our governors (past and present) has continued to question the propriety in their continued retention of such titles. We have seen governors arrested and convicted for looting the public treasury. Such misdemeanors are patently inconsistent with the vision embodied in the concept of your Excellency.

    Governors have been caught taking bribe and indulging in such dirty activities that make mockery of their continued retention of such appellations. There is neither anything excellent about the conduct of some of these leaders to deserve the appellation nor do they make conscious efforts to strive for perfection. Sanwo-Olu has good reasons to quarrel with the continued retention of that title by our present tribe of leaders.

    Yet, it is incorrect to posit that the title ipso facto, impedes genuine expression of the democratic spirit and the exercise of the sovereignty of the people. Neither can it be reasonably argued that its disposition negates the sovereignty of the people and equates with authoritarianism. We can argue that that title has become a misnomer given the serial inability of our leaders to live up to the high expectations of their offices. We may as well root for its abrogation given the gap between what it is expected to make of our leaders and what they usually turn out to be.

    But it remains inappropriate to blame the fault-lines of our democratic engagementon the disorientation arising from either the purported celebration of the office of the governor as a paragon of excellence or the demi-god mystique surrounding that office. Issues that impede the genuine expression of the democratic spirit in our society and meaningful exercise of the sovereignty of our people have little to do with the way the office or power of the governor is perceived.

    The social contract account of the theory of state does not also corroborate that linkage. Man in the state of nature got so fed up with the atavism of that order thathe had to give up some of his rights to a sovereign who will in turn protect him. But he also retained some rights to keep the sovereign at check as ultimate sovereignty remains with him.

    This relationship adduced as the origin of modern states involves rights, duties and obligations- citizenship reciprocity. Overtime, this relationship evolved into the democratic order with the powers to effect leadership change devolving on the people through the instrumentality of periodic elections. Through the periodicity of free, fair and credible elections, the people regularly make a choice as to those who will preside over their affairs.

    It is the serial sabotage of this cardinal principle of democratic engagement through rigging, falsification of results and sundry unwholesome conducts that impede genuine expression of the democratic spirit and meaningful exercise of the sovereignty of the people. It has nothing to do with the appellation of Your Excellency and the high moral bar it imposes on leaders. At any rate, our leaders striving for excellence and perfection will lead to outcomes that will serve public good. We are better off with higher benchmarks of conduct than lowering the bar just because many are not living up to expectations.

    Even as Sanwo-Olu has divested himself of that title, he should not lose sight of the fact that the new title may not make any difference without serious personal commitment to public good. Democracy is not intended to make saints out of leaders. It admits that leaders are very fallible. That is why it sets standards and provides for periodic elections for incompetent and corrupt leaders to be shown the way out. It is leadership perpetuation against the collective will of the electorate that negates the democratic spirit, democratic engagement and sovereignty of the people.

  • Federal roads’ dilemma

    Emeka OMEIHE

    President Buhari stirred the hornet’s nest when recently he barred state governors from fixing federal roads if they will eventually ask for compensation.

    Minister of works, Babatunde Fashola told House of Representatives’ ad hoc committee on abandoned federal government’s projects (works) 1999 till date that the order became necessary because of the humongous amounts of money claimed by governors after repairing such roads.

    His account of the actual words of the president was: “Tell them not to fix my roads again if they’re going to claim compensation. If you want to fix it and not ask for compensation, send me what you want to do. But if you want compensation, go and mind your business while I mind my business because I have inherited enough debts”.

    If the directive is followed to its letters, states will no longer be allowed to fix federal roads without the approval of the federal government. And even when such approval has been received, whatever monies they spend will not be refunded them. But that is where the problem lies. It is inconceivable that after the necessary approvals have been received for the reconstruction of such roads, state governments will still have to bear the -cost.

    The intervention of the states in the reconstruction of federal roads arose due to the serial neglect and outright abandonment of such roads throughout the length and breadth of the country. Even where contracts have been severally awarded for the construction of the roads, the fact on the ground is that most of the roads have remained in very deplorable states. Notwithstanding that some of those roads were provided for in yearly appropriations, there is little or nothing on ground to justify such allocations.

    In the face of the decrepit conditions of federal roads and excruciating sufferings and complaints from citizens, some states have had to embark on reconstruction and remedial action to ameliorate the plight of their people. Ordinarily, such governors should be given a pat at the back for rising to the needs of their citizens by filling the gaps created by federal inaction and lethargy. But the situation has not been all that tidy given some challenges thrown up by the activities of some of the governors.

    And as evident from the directive of the president, state governors hitherto, jumped into the reconstruction of federal roads without input from the relevant authorities only to submit bills that are considered outlandish. That is the point the federal authorities seem to be making and they are not out of place in this. Even then, there are other challenges bordering on quality and poor job execution that often arise when state governors take up such projects without input from the arm of government with the statutory mandate to superintend over them.

    The fix the federal government found itself was illustrated most poignantly by the case of Imo State under its immediate past governor, Rochas Okorocha.  He had embarked on the dualization of the Owerri-Orlu-Akokwa federal road linking Anambra State ostensibly to uplift the state of that road. He built two bridges along that highway which the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria, (COREN) described as disasters waiting to happen because they were done without engineering designs.

    Today, one of the bridges has completely collapsed while the other will soon give way even as the poorly constructed road went into a state of disrepair barely three months that regime wounded up. It is on good authority that the federal government is not willing to pay anything to the state government because of the shoddy job done.

    If that is the grouse of the federal government for barring state governors from fixing federal roads, they have a point. But it will mount to throwing away the baby with the bathwater if the directive is executed the way it has been presented. The right approach is to find a common ground between the observations of the federal government and the antics of the state governments such that will still enable willing and seriously minded governors to reconstruct the roads and lighten the burden of their people without losing the funds invested in those projects.

    This is especially so because the people stand as ultimate losers when succor neither comes from the federal authorities nor the state governments. That is the uncanny dilemma brought to the fore by the order of the president. The directive is very defective as it will compound the plight of commuters who have been groaning under the yoke of abandoned and dilapidated federal roads that often provide veritable grounds for all manner of criminal activities to thrive.

    President Buhari seemed to have inched towards mutual understanding when he requested governors who wished to fix such roads without compensation to write him on what they intend doing. But the president spoilt the game by insisting that those who wish to write him on what they wanted to do should not seek compensation. That is quite improper. It will only lead to counterproductive outcomes. The right approach is for the states to comprehensively and in keeping with extant regulations for the award of contracts to write the federal authorities specifying the job they intend doing with costs attached.

    It is then left to the authorities to vet whatever documents they submit with a view to ensuring quality, standards and at reasonable cost. Asking governors not to expect compensation even when the federal government is satisfied with what they intended to do makes no sense at all. That will amount to sentencing a lot of Nigerians to early death in view of the excruciating hardship they experience due to the inability of the federal government to maintain those roads.

    But the tepid bureaucracy that left such roads in their current pass is also likely to rear up its ugly head. Letters written to the federal authorities seeking permission for remedial action on such roads may stay months and years without action. When this happens, we will be left with the same situation that led some governors to embark on the reconstruction of the roads without federal approval. So it is really a vicious cycle that only the federal authorities can disentangle through proactive responses and action that will deliver all year round durable roads.

    A recent survey on federal roads in the Southeast by this newspaper came out with the verdict that most of the federal roads in that zone have become death traps. A striking case was the Enugu-Awka-Onitsha road for which a sum of N45 billion allocations had been made from 2005 to 2019, yet no work appears to be going on there now even as it is rated the worst federal road in the country. Southeast is not alone in this as many  others are equally affected adversely, though in varying degrees.

    But more fundamentally, the order by the president has exposed the inherent contradictions in the federal contraption the nation currently operates; a defective system that vested overbearing powers on the central authority. We are contending with the contradictions posed by the reality of the federal government virtually controlling the powers of life and death. That is why it is still in charge of most of the roads in the country even as the conditions of such roads have continued to interrogate their continued retention within the exclusive legislative list.

    That is the issue at the heart of agitations for devolution of powers, true federalism and restructuring. The point in these agitations is that the concentration of huge powers on the central authority does make for effective performance, hence the imperative to dilute the power base of the central government to quicken the delivery of public goods and services. The solution lies in divesting the federal authority of the huge powers that seem to confer the status of unitarism on our governance framework.

  • How Sule became Lalong

    By Sam Omatseye

    Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau State gave us a piece of his childhood, and how he came to bear the name Sule

    That was biography some in the Nigerian culture can identify with, especially when the person who adopts you becomes a benevolent father figure. He bore Sule, as he narrates, when he was handed to his uncle Miskoom Nanbiet, by his biological father. He made this remark at his uncle’s funeral.

    “When my uncle asked my father to release me to him, my father told my uncle that I had become his son. Because of the tradition of love and unity, I bore my uncle’s name, Sule, when he enrolled me in school.” When he was done with primary school, he was told to bear Bako Lalong as the first son of his father.

    He swore affidavit to this. Useni and his PDP would not accept the shellacking at the polls. They lost in substance. They want to win through the back door. They want to undermine the identity of the person who won and by that undermine the authenticity of democratic elections.

  • Bello and his hooters

    By Sam Omatseye

    I had expected that Kogi State Chief Judge was marching into a hall of fame as the man of the year. The story had rippled through the news pages that Nasiru Ajana was going to plant the bench against the tide of the kangaroo APC elite led by Governor Yahaya Bello and his cohorts of the state House of Assembly.

    Barely 24 hours later, he fell to the tide. Ajana lacked the fire-in-the-belly to stand for justice. He became one of a medley crowd of judges who kowtows to a narrative of impunity.  Was he caught between personal survival and country? Did he wince or wean himself from the law? Was it ideological or existential? Was he principled or frightened? Did he cave in to that ideological and existential dilemma that we have seen over the centuries? In the Greek play, Iphigenia at Aulis, Euripides reflects this chasm when Agamemnon opts for country over his daughter who dies in the ambiguity of nationalism. In another work, Sophie’s Choice, novelist William Styron casts a Catholic mother in Nazi concentration camp to surrender one of her children, a son or daughter, to burn to ashes in the thermal terror of the gas chamber.

    Ajana’s choice did not carry such consequential weight, some may say. But he did. Imagine the model persona he could have invoked if he looked  the partisanship in the eye like the great Justice Salami a few years ago? He would have cast a backwater state like Kogi to the grand square of Nigeria’s moral drumbeat. He would have evangelised a version of judicial veracity from which many a dignified jurist has ducked away. It’s like the Abiku syndrome in Soyinka and Clark’s poems in which the child has to choose whether to stay or go, life or death, truth or lies, principle or fright, fear or courage. Ajana did not take the better side of Abiku.

    The choice was not a factor for the members of the Kogi legislature, neither was it for Governor Bello. The governor had failed in many areas, in economy, in infrastructure, in the rule of law. He failed the lawyer by not following the rule of law. He failed the sick with the hospitals on life support. He failed the civil servant who has had to assert life without the lifeblood of workers: the salary. Now, he failed the impossible: himself. By giving a nod to a panel to investigate the deputy governor, he committed a sort of career suicide.

    He saved himself like a phoenix, and he has his foot soldiers to thank. At the head of it was his speaker, Hassan Abdullahi. He had gathered his sheepish lawmakers in a secret chamber and within half an hour, they had declared deputy governor Simon Achuba a yesterday’s man. They must have been quick and voracious readers to gulp down the massive report and deliberated in so short an order. They must have the brains of gods to have exhibited such acuity of understanding and the nobility of deities to have established such depth of consent.

    They did that, though, in travesty like the ones that the Owu chief had bequeathed to us. Do we remember how a former Bayelsa governor was whisked from office? Remember the case of Plateau State when a half a dozen persons became a majority? We have made impunity a legacy of democracy and there is no way we can escape the blood trail in our democracy. Achuba is no one’s hero. As deputy governor, he was not with any powers, so he was unable to do much.

    That exactly accounts for why it was easy for the panel to set him free. He was not a criminal because the governor, in his monarchical impulses, did not empower him to be one. He was, as it were, sainted by the governor’s tight hold on authoritarian power. So, the heroes were not the politicians in this case. It was the panel that Governor Bello failed.

    Led by John Baiyeshea (SAN), the panel released its report to the public domain, and dissected the facts of Achuba’s stewardship. Like the Pontius Pilate, who echoed his wife’s nightmare, the panel said, they saw no basis for crucifying the deputy governor. But like the priests, the state legislators took it upon themselves to undermine substance and process, and impeached the fellow anyway. The speaker and his lawmakers have pitched an apocryphal line of argument that the panel was not expected to give a verdict. That was fuelled by their canine loyalty to Bello, not to conscience or truth, and obviously not to the constitution.

    We had a certain gang-up a few years ago against the cool-headed former governor of Nasarawa State, Tanko Al-Makura, when the panel found him guiltless. The state house of assembly knew it was over, and he rode into the sunshine. But it might be sunset for Achuba; it is the constitution that has the shadows of impunity all over its sanguine pages. The Nasarawa legislators were nobler than the unthinking conscience of the Kogi lawmakers.

    We must also say that by acting in secret they also borrowed a leaf from Edo State Governor’s men of political underworld who formed a quorum by capsising the definition of the law and made a fashion faux pas by appearing in shorts. Governor Godwin Obaseki’s endorsement of his lawmakers was akin to Governor Bello’s nod of Kogi impunity.

    Our democracy can learn from what Jesus told Pilate:”I have spoken openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues, and in the temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret I have said nothing.” This is a paragon of openness and transparency for democracy.

    In the ongoing impeachment hearings on United States President Donald Trump, the Republicans have been stressing process over substance. It shows impeachment is always political. A good man may be a bad man, in the politics of impeachment. The definition of gross misconduct is values based, and it depends on the legislative mind-set and, therefore, partisanship. As John Milton writes in Paradise Lost, “The mind is its own place/ it can make hell of heaven and heaven of hell.” Governor Bello and his canine hooters spelt hell for the deputy governor.

    We cannot say that the chief judge did not know all of these narratives and their moral evocations.  Now Bello is on a political high. He is eminently unpopular, but he now has an intimidating war chest for his re-election bid. Many say with billions flowing in from Abuja he is guaranteed a return. It is a story of money over civic dissent, war chest flourishing over bad governance. But we don’t know yet.

    He has now paid salary backlogs, and he has amassed support from and knitted together a divided APC elite. The scent of money is making Bello a saint, suddenly. But the people have a chance to show whether democracy will this time canonise bad governance. History has shown that a genius in the politics of governance does not guarantee victory in elections. The polls require a different kind of politics. If Bello wins, it will, again, show how our people are a victim of the most cynical type of politics. But who to blame but the people themselves!

    Time, however, shall tell.

  • A minister’s gaffe

    By Emeka OMEIHE

    What point was the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sabo Nanono really driving at when he averred there is no hunger in Nigeria? That has been the question agitating the minds of discerning people since the minister bandied the claim at a press briefing to mark the 2019 World Food Day in Abuja.

    Tagged: “Our Actions are our Future, Healthy Diets for a #Zero Hunger World”, this year’s event called for action across sectors to make healthy and sustainable diets affordable and accessible to everyone. The essence is to promote worldwide effective action to end hunger, malnutrition and poverty and ensure that people at all times and places have physical and economic access to nutritional food.

    Given the ambitious and visionary goals of this year’s World Food Day celebrations, we had expected the minister to furnish the nation with efforts of the government to comply with the aims and objectives of the event. But we never heard any of such measures or assurances from the government on interventions to end hunger, malnutrition and poverty and make healthy diet accessible and affordable to all Nigerians.

    Rather and curiously too, the message we got from the minister was sweeping statements to the effect that “I think we are producing enough to feed ourselves. I think there is no hunger in Nigeria, there could be inconveniences. When people talk about hunger in this country, I just laugh. In this country it is fairly cheap to buy food”. He also claimed that food is very cheap in Nigeria compared to other countries.

    Those conversant with recent statistics on the poverty index of this country would shudder at the minister’s claims. This is more so given the link between the level of poverty prevalent in a country and the ability of citizens to access basic food needs. Just last week, the World Poverty Clock put the number of Nigerians who live below extreme poverty line at no fewer than 94,470, 535. This represented an increase of about three million people in the extreme poverty index from the figure captured in April this year.

    Within the same week, President Buhari came out to inform the nation that the wealth of the country is concentrated in the hands of a few people living in four or five states including the Federal Capital Territory FCT while about 150 million others are languishing in poverty in the remaining 31 states.

    In view of these chilling statistics on the extreme poverty level into which a huge majority of our people have been enmeshed, it is very confounding that a minister could come public with scandalous claims that there is no hunger in this country. The purport of his claims is that Nigerians are well fed and have easy access to their food needs both in terms of quantity and quality. If this assumption holds water, how come we have a humongous proportion of Nigerians in the extreme poverty line? And can a nation said to be the poverty capital of the world when it has achieved food security for its citizens?

    These questions are germane given that the ability of a country to provide the basic human needs of shelter, food and clothing to its citizens is a critical ingredient in the measurement of the poverty index. And these bear positive correlation with income per capita, unemployment rate and other human development indicators that determine the standing of a country within the development matrix. It is only within the realm of absurdity that a country with about half of its population in the extreme poverty line can be said to have wiped out hunger within its fold. Things cannot add up that way.

    What do we find here? The scenario is that of: Low per capita income, spiraling unemployment and underemployment, high inflationary trend and debilitating poverty that have earned Nigeria the tag of the poverty capital of the world. It is difficult to figure out how a country battling with multifarious developmental challenges could be laying claims to having wiped out hunger within. That is the inevitable contradiction elevated to the front burner by Nanono’s unguarded claims.

    But we can excuse Nanono on the grounds that the claims are mere figments of his imagination that bear no semblance with extant realities. At best, his conclusion can be consigned to the realm of educated guess. But we all know that educated guess is of questionable empirical value. He said he thinks Nigerians are producing enough food to feed themselves; he thinks there is no hunger in Nigeria and he laughs when he hears people say that Nigerians are hungry.

    These represent what the minister thinks. Unfortunately, his thoughts are personal to him and totally out of sync with the reality on the ground. He is free to think the way it pleases him. He is also free to make conjectures the way it suits his whims and caprices. But a minister whose thoughts are at utter variance with extant facts and realities on a given subject matter or one that gives scant heed to facts, figures and details on critical issues of governance, has lost the basis for his continued stay in that office.

    That is the reality of the outlandish and amateurish claims that are being forced down our throats by the minister. The impression we get is that either the minister made those false claims with the intent of impressing his employers, scoring cheap political points or he did not do his homework before addressing the press on that momentous occasion. None of these possibilities is a credit to him since he ended up embarrassing the office he holds and his employer who only last week reeled out chilling figures on Nigeria’s current poverty standing.

    More seriously, Nanono’s outing exposes the cavalier approach to serious policies issues that has been the bane of our policy planning and implementation processes. With the false mindset that there is no hunger in the land and that Nigerians are producing enough food to feed themselves, it remains to be conjectured what impact he will make in confronting the reality that Nigerians are really hungry and that we are not producing enough food to fed ourselves. He is also seriously encumbered and can hardly make meaningful impact in the urgent need to better the living standards of very poor Nigerians if he is fixed to the idea that prices of food items are cheaper in Nigeria than other countries.

    Facts on the ground are at variance with these claims. Moreover, in computing such figures; relevant social indices as income per capita; the number of citizens gainfully employed, social intervention measures for vulnerable groups and underemployment are factored in. Nigeria is not known to have fared well in the rungs of the ladder of these indicators.

    The minister ought to have gone further with details of food output in a country that hardly has accurate knowledge of its population. And with the prevalence of subsistence agriculture, computing such information would amount to a tall order. He also needed to address the nation on why smuggling of food items has refused to abate despite the shutting down of our borders and its effect on the prices of those food items that are prone to smuggling. Of relevance also is the imperative to provide additional information on the components of the food produced and consumed by a majority of our citizens and how they conform to the objectives of this year’s World Food Day of making healthy diets accessible and affordable by everybody.

    In sum, the minister should not be taken serious in the statements credited to him as they bear no semblance with realities of the excruciating living conditions of our people as hewers of wood and fetchers of water. Such sweeping conclusions failed to factor in the embarrassing high number of the down trodden loitering around the streets, waiting to savor from remnants of foods served in kiosks and sundry eateries. They not only glossed over the high number of able bodied people and destitutes on the streets begging for a living, but failed to bring into account the reasons for the mass exodus of our people through risky routes to other countries where they are made to suffer all manner of humiliation.

    These cannot stand for a profile of a country where there is no hunger; a country that produces enough food to feed its population and a country with the least cost of food items. Nanono’s claims should be discountenanced in their entirety for lacking in credibility.

  • Of rains and roads

    Sam Omatseye

     

    WHAT we might have today in Lagos is a return to the singsong of childhood. The first of course is “Rain, rain go away/ come again another day…”

    But this is no child’s play. The roads in Lagos, in dips, pockmarks, potholes, gullies and sometimes craters, call for a way out of the ditch.  What many, especially the chief executive of the state, must cry for now is for the rains to come again another season. The country’s iconic city has crawled for close to two years with roads turning commuters into snails.

    Gradually, they scraped, then they dipped, then they potholed. Ordinarily, the government should have turned into a palliative mood, sending the works department into frenzy. But we had a city in which flyovers, bridges and big-project infrastructure took precedence over the basic work of governance like the old, boring road maintenance.

    So, Lagos was like a maiden or a dowager dressed in gorgeous satin, or Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ classic, The Great Expectations. The dress is benumbing, but the wearer is sad. So, we had the big project on the dowager but sores are all over the body, especially the limbs. Beautiful covering, but ulcerous legs. What a ghastly beauty. Ornament on a leper. Road sores; sour mood. Father plans for a big party, so the kids must starve for us to afford it.

    That was how the BOS of Lagos, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, met the city as governor. It turned out it was a rainy season. We had to see if the rains could let up. They didn’t. When it seemed they would, respite was a trap. Especially in August. The rains ran back, in torrents. It felt like flood by instalments.

    So, Lagos became sog capital. Vehicular traffic, the marker of infrastructure woes, thickened. One-hour journeys became three-hour odysseys. In spite of that, some work has been going on gingerly, but it had to be without doing major damage to an already capsized order. Even as this essayist put finger on keyboard, the window panes bear witness to a cloudburst.

    The clamour, though sometimes muted, has been for the governor to put the men to work, immediately. The pains are deep, man hours evaporated, profits washed away. Indeed, I said to a group of people, the palliatives are necessary, but how do you do that on a gully without making matters even worse? If you filled the bad roads on a major intersection, at I pm, and the heavens poured at 5 pm, we shall have to come again another day because the man hours, money, time expended would have been wasted away.

    It is like applying Panadol twice for one headache. The governor explained the point in his recent outing at The Platform, not TVC show, but the October 1 programme by the Covenant Christian Centre. But it is not the nature of the people to listen to such explanations. Governance is not about future to many. It is the fierce urgency of now, to quote Obama. The issue brings to mind the popular Yoruba song, “Ojo Maa ro/ Ojo maar o/ Itura loje,” (Rain keep falling/ Rain Keep falling/ You are a blessing.”

    No one burst into such rhapsody to the clouds in Lagos these past months. To demonstrate the flexibility and cunning of the Yoruba Language, those same words, can mean the opposite with a tonal twist. Ojo maa ro could now mean, Rain don’t fall.

    Such verbal craftiness reflects the ambiguity of the moment. So to approach the rains is like Shakespeare‘s words in The Hamlet, “To be or not to be.” This is the rain that gives us sustenance, water to drink, food to eat, even gravels and sands need water to nourish them, for roads and housing. In the Bible, rains symbolise blessing, but it also wiped out the first world.

    The governor has set out, as he has said, with an emergency on Lagos Roads. But emergency can create its own emergency, and that is why Governor Sanwo-Olu is making haste slowly. Emergency also means taking the most crucial intersections and arteries first, and this may lead at times to duplication if not handled with delicate wisdom. The Governor has made this clear if not in so many words.

    Patience is what it calls for. He is about to take over a sort of war zone. The roads were devastated as though Lagos was at war by his predecessor. So, to restore is looking like rebuilding. In some cases this is what it will look like. That means when it is , a furious speed will ensue. But for now we can follow what Chaucer wrote when he said, “patience is a conquering virtue.”

    In spite of all this, Lagos entry points still buzz. Many people are rushing into Lagos, not to visit, but to nest and thrive, to find job, brides, renew their and fine-tune ambitions. It is perhaps the first in the rankings in that that department in the world. It is testament to failed governance in the country. From east, west, south and north, Lagos is the big, bright Babylon, their city on the hill. It absorbs all, and that means more traffic, more pressure on the road, more potholes even when the rains do their own.

    Housing is becoming a big issue. The city cannot expand beyond itself, its boundaries. Rents are rising as the poor are rent. The master plans of the city, after being disrupted for four years, beckons for renewal.

    The budget the governor has sought is a mere N250 billion, which cannot handle the humongous appetite of the city for development. That is why Lagos still needs a special status. It is carrying the burden of governance in other states. Its journey to great status on roads requires rail and waterways transportation to soothe the burden of roads.

    The governor has vowed to do this, and we just have to take him at his words. No one should blame you for what you inherit, so long as your inheritors don’t blame you when you are done. That is the burden of legacy and the BOS of Lagos is up to the task.

     

    Who judges the Judges?

     

    ATIKU and company have brought a new dimension to the law. They have now become judges of judges. They rolled out a list of judges they want to adjudicate their appeal of the verdict at the Supreme Court. Lawyers say, in their Latinised fancy, that you cannot be a judge in your own cause. Atiku and his men want to upend the cause of justice by calling for who must sit on the bench. So, they want to determine the cause by determining the justices.  It is the judicial equivalent of double jeopardy. This is a first for a desperate coterie of politicians who should be scheming for the next cycle of the vote rather than labour over a vegetable case.

    If they have money to pay lawyers and a tribe of hangers-on advisers who would lap up cash for meaningless advice, Atiku is entitled to his own profligacy. But he should not turn our judiciary into a selection committee by a failing petitioner.