The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • When voting can’t be mandatory

    When voting can’t be mandatory

    A bill for mandatory voting for all eligible Nigerians passed the second reading at the House of Representatives penultimate week. Jointly sponsored by the Speaker, Tajudeen Abbas, and a lawmaker from Plateau State, Daniel Asama, the bill seeks to amend the Electoral Act 2022 to make voting compulsory for all Nigerians of voting age in national and state elections.

    The proposed piece of legislation prescribes a fine of N100,000 or six months imprisonment or both for eligible voters who fail to exercise that civic duty without valid justification. When he led the debate on the floor of the house, Asama sought to justify the bill on the grounds that democracy thrives better when the people are actively involved in choosing their leaders and shaping governance.

    Hear him: “Voting is not only a right but a civic responsibility and in many democracies across the world, it is treated as such. This bill proposes to introduce mandatory voting for all Nigerians of voting age in general elections, both at the national and state levels. It seeks to amend the relevant provisions of the Electoral Act 2022, to reflect this obligation while also allowing for limited and justified exemptions where necessary”

    He cited low voter turnout and the imperative to reverse the trend as justification for the bill, drawing parallels with the 2023 general elections which he said recorded less than 30 per cent voter participation. The trend, he argued, undermines the legitimacy of elected governments and weakens democratic institutions.

    Asama further cited Australia, Belgium and Brazil among democracies that have adopted compulsory voting with positive outcomes in political participation and public accountability. Though the bill generated divided opinions among members, it nevertheless scaled the second reading.

    The issues canvassed by Asama, especially as they relate to deepening democracy and good governance through popular participation in elections, constitute the pristine ideals which representative democracy seeks to promote. Democracy, in the form it manifested in the medieval Greek City States, entailed physical participation of the people in the election of their leaders. But the sheer size of modern states has precluded direct democracy of the ancient times.

     Representative democracy evolved to respond to population dynamics of modern states. Since it is no longer possible for the electorate to gather in one square to elect their leaders, an arrangement through which they will still exercise that obligation without assembling in one particular place was evolved – representative democracy. By this, the people exercise the power to rule through their elected representatives.

    This, ipso facto, recognises the inalienable rights of the people to elect their leaders through the ballot process. Through this process, it is also assumed those who emerge as leaders during elections do so through popular sovereignty. Thus, the strength of representative democracy lies in its capacity to reflect the collective will of the people through popular participation in elections.

    So, all the issues raised by the sponsors of the bill on active participation of the electorate in enhancing effective governance and overall legitimacy are commonplace arguments. They constitute the lynchpin on which the wheels of the democratic process revolve. There are no issues with such precepts but examples.

    What this country stands to gain through popular participation of eligible voters during elections in terms of enhancement of governance legitimacy and effective leadership is not in doubt. Unfortunately, the bill targets the wrong problem. The therapy the bill seeks to administer to low voter turnout is an obviously inefficacious one. It will achieve practically nothing without addressing the systemic challenges that promote and reinforce low voter turnout.

    The issue is the credibility and integrity of elections. How credible are elections usually marred by all manner of infractions promoted by the high and low? A few years back, ballot box snatching, writing of election results in the comfort of the homes of prominent politicians and hotel rooms, were the order of the day. Results announced bore no semblance to votes cast at the ballot box. And those announced as winners were mainly not the people the electorate cast their votes for at the voting centres.

    These electoral infractions did a lot to weaken the confidence of the electorate in the ballot process, with low voter turnout as its logical outcome. It took strong agitations, protests and some reforms in the Electoral Act to restore some modicum of confidence in our elections. But as soon as these reforms guaranteeing the sanctity and integrity of the electoral process were introduced, crooked politicians went back to the drawing board to invent new techniques to subvert the new law.

    That is why the introduction of technology in election management has not been allowed to function properly. In the 2023 general elections, the hopes of the electorate for credible elections, one that satisfies integrity tests, were abruptly dashed by what the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) called ‘glitches.’ Vote buying has also reared its monstrous head in forms never seen in Nigeria’s electoral history.

    These negative responses to the advent of technology in election management are, in the main, fuelled by the morbid fear of rogue politicians that they will lose out were elections to be free, fair and credible. That is not all. Acts of violence and do-or-die politics are regular features of our elections that scare even the most patriotic.

    Thugs of all descriptions are hired by politicians to harass, main and even kill those opposed to their sponsors. There was a fair dose of these negative tendencies during the last general election, especially at the governorship polls.

    Threats were issued in some states against non-indigenes, while in some others people could not vote on account of the insecurity that has held this country down for a couple of years now. These are the real issues that incubate and promote low voter turnout. Yet, our lawmakers cannot find their voices on them even as fears of rancorous elections in 2027 hover around the political space. How the bill intends to address the systemic dysfunctions that scare people from venturing out to cast their votes holds more value for the integrity of elections than compulsory voting in hostile and life-threatening circumstances.

    The proponents of the bill cited Australia, Belgium and Brazil among democracies that practice mandatory voting with good outcomes. That could be so. But what value is there in comparing countries with dissimilar political cultures and levels of development? Yes, Australia and Belgium practice mandatory voting as well as some other developed countries around the world with varying modifications. Australia imposes a fine of $20 for defaulters while that of Belgium hovers between 40 and 80 euros depending on the number of times of default.

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    Compulsory voting has been in practice in Australia since 1924, and that country is credited with one of the highest voter turnouts in the world. Voters are given a number of avenues to cast their votes during elections. These include postal voting, pre-poll voting, absent voting at Australian missions overseas as well as voting at mobile teams at hospitals, nursing homes, remote localities and ordinary voting at polling centres.

    So there exists some sophistication in the Australian electoral process garnered from years of practice of mandatory voting. Can postal voting take place in this country? Through what means, if one may wish to ask? And if at all it is possible, will the votes not be hijacked along the line by those in control of the instruments of power and coercion?

    The array of voting avenues provided by the Australian electoral system have no place in Nigeria currently. And will be difficult to implement in the foreseeable future. It is therefore not just enough to copy practices and seek to enforce them in climes that are ill-prepared for them. One aspect of the bill that seeks to empower INEC to develop a system to track vote compliance and manage exemption requests strikes as a tall order.

    Australia and Belgium have not been able to enforce voter compliance over the years. Though lists of absentees are required to be sent to the offices of the Public Prosecutor in Belgium, for instance, the reality is that nothing gets to be done with that list.

    INEC, as presently constituted, can ill-afford to be saddled with the additional burden of compiling lists of defaulting voters and managing exemptions. And as this column argued in a previous article, mandatory voting is a thing whose time is yet to come.

    The bill is another research work that has practically no solution to the multi- faceted electoral infractions that frighten voters from venturing out during elections and diminish their confidence in the integrity of the process. The substantive issues that diminish the confidence of the electorate and scare them from venturing out to vote are the issues to address.

  • Killing power rotation?

    Killing power rotation?

    The House of Representatives, last Tuesday, rejected a bill seeking to rotate the offices of the President and Vice President among the six geo-political zones of the country. It was among seven constitutional amendment bills turned down by the lower chamber that day.

    But that was after members had singled out rotatory presidency and taken turns to interrogate that piece of legislation. Though a majority of those who spoke picked holes in rotation, some of their reasons were laden with serious contradictions.

    This article seeks to examine some of the key issues raised by members against power rotation vis-a-vis the realities of the challenges posed by the federal structure operational in this country. This is not the first time the debate on rotatory presidency is coming up in the national assembly. Neither is the bill anything novel.

    Rotation of political offices at the federal, state and local government levels was in fact, one of the key recommendations of the (not-implemented) National Political Reforms Conference (NPRC) of 2005. The fact that the issue continues to crop up is sufficient sign of a malignant systemic ailment.

    The challenges posed by the inability of our political leaders to effectively manage diversity account for the recurring decimal which rotation has assumed in our national life. Its disruptive dimensions will emerge as the views of House of Representatives’ members on the propriety of rotation are interrogated.

    Deputy minority leader Aliyu Madaki based his reservations on the grounds that existing institutions have already covered the issues the bill is meant to address.

     “The issues the bill intends to cure have already been taken care of by the Federal Character Commission (FCC). The issue of rotation should not be included in the constitution but allowed to remain the way it is,” Madaki said.

    Madaki’s argument that the challenges of power rotation have already been cured by the mere existence of the FCC is not only laughable but detaches him from the realities of the environment in which he currently operates.

    Appointments into key federal offices and commanding heights of the military and other sensitive institutions under the last administration did incredible damage to the letter and spirit of the federal character principle and balance. Allegations of skewed appointments resonated recently, and the presidency had to publish a list of political appointees. It later withdrew that list with an apology due to some errors of omission.

    Even then, the FCC has been found complicit in obeying the laws establishing it in the breach. A few years back and contrary to the rules guiding its operations, former President Muhammadu Buhari shocked the nation when he appointed both the Chairperson and the Secretary of FCC from one geo-political zone.

    It took legal action by one Festus Onifade for the Federal High Court in Abuja to nullify in November, 2023 the appointments of Muheeba Dankaka and Bello Tukur, Chairperson and Secretary respectively. Justice Inyang Ekwo in his ruling held that the former president did not comply with the provisions of the constitution and FCC establishment Act in the appointment of Dankaka and Tukur.

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    Perhaps, the public needs to know from Madaki also, the outcome of the investigations of the ad hoc committee set up by the House of Representatives to probe allegations against the FCC, including the selling of job offers. How an agency that breached the laws setting it up can in all fairness guarantee the kind of balance Madaki believes took care of rotation is left to be imagined.

    The second plank of Madaki’s argument is that rotation should be left for the political parties. That could as well be. But the rancour it generates through reluctance or refusal by political parties and contestants to agree on the modality for its implementation should instruct that constitutional backing is the needed therapy.

    The next contributor, Sada Soli, questioned the practicability of the proposal with a warning that it could compromise leadership quality and promote ethnic and regional rivalry. Rotation is practicable, no doubt. Though political parties have had issues with modalities for its implementation, the situation would have been more chaotic in its absence.

    Ethnic rivalry is primed and promoted by seclusion, which rotation will cure by giving all sections a sense of national belonging. The inability to accommodate and equitably manage our differences in sharing the spoils of public offices is the reason for ethnic rivalry and cries of marginalisation. Agitations for restructuring and power devolution are propelled by the same considerations. Inclusiveness, through rotation, will, in part, address the challenges of power centralisation.

    The claim that rotation could compromise leadership quality is patently tenuous as it assumes that quality leadership for those offices may not be available in some geo-political zones. It is a sweeping statement that seeks to suggest that those who have over the years been elected to lead the country in various capacities are the best the country can produce. If that had been so, Nigeria will not be still trailing in all development indices despite its huge endowments.

    The population of all the geo-political zones in the country is far bigger than that of many countries across the globe, and it confounds how anyone could nurse the feeling that quality leaders cannot be found within them. It is rather a speculative proposition that should not be assigned any value.

    Shina Oyedeji supported rotation principle as it would address longstanding agitations for fairness among ethnic nationalities. But he cautioned that zoning could create new challenges. “If you adopt zoning and it comes to the South West, for example, which state will take the first position. Is it Ogun or Oyo”, he queried?

    Another member raised issues on the possible death of the president while in office and whether he would be required to vacate office to maintain the zoning arrangement. The state that should take the first slot when it comes to their zone should not be a serious issue.

    The fact remains that whichever state takes it first will not take it the second time when it comes around. It could also be similarly asked which states take the slot first as the presidency rotates between the north and south going by the internal arrangements of the political parties.

    What happens when a sitting president dies in office should not be a problem since it can still be taken care of through the same constitutional amendment. The right thing is for the Vice to take over. The constitution can reflect that to avoid the kind of situation that emerged when former president Umaru Yar’Adua died in office.

    Perhaps, the views of Minority Whip Ali Isa and that of Clement Jimbo captured more succinctly, the feelings of Nigerians on rotation. Not only did Isa lend support to all the six geo-political zones deserving a fair chance to occupy the presidency, he would want rotation extended to the state levels with the governorship position rotating among the senatorial districts. That represents the current feeling across the country. Even without constitutional backing, rotation among the three senatorial zones in the various states has been a burning issue.

    While some states have evolved ways to rotate power between the three senatorial districts, some others have not had the luck of finding a permanent answer to it. You may also find some stability in the states that have successfully handled power rotation among the senatorial districts as against those that have not. Political instability and security issues that are more pronounced in some states have, in part, been linked to the inequities of power sharing.

    The uniqueness of Jimbo’s contribution does not just lie in his support for the bill to address historical injustices against minority groups, but in his proposal for a sunset clause to end rotation principle once all zones have had their turn. His position may have been informed by how sections of the country that have had the privilege to occupy that high office have used it largely for the benefits of their ethnic groups and members of their family.

    So, let it go around. When all sections would have used it for the benefit of their ethnic groups and members of their families, then rotation can stop. Then also, we can collectively begin to salvage whatever remains.

    That captures the dialectics in the inability of our political leaders to effectively manage diversity. Inequity, politics of seclusion and marginalisation are variables that accentuate agitations by all sections to have one of their own in that high office. And it will be foolhardy to fault that urge.

    Since we find it hard to address the systemic dysfunctions that propel such agitations, giving constitutional teeth to rotation would appear the needed therapeutic response. It is a more heuristic piece of legislation than the superfluous bill for mandatory voting.

    Those rooting for mandatory voting should first address the credibility and integrity deficits that discourage the electorate from participating in elections.

  • Utomi’s shadow

    Utomi’s shadow

    Pat Utomi is a friend, and I have often regarded him as a friend. Not until recently, I never considered him, with his donnish airs, eyeglasses and abstract eyes, as a man who chases shadows. I should have, on second thought.

    Delusion? Yes, he has been a man of delusions, including when he ran for president, and also, not long ago, when he wanted to be governor of my state, Delta.

    He offered himself the ill-grace of being a candidate for his party, and he was going to lock horns with Great Ogboru. But he showed his signs of chasing shadows when on the day of the primary he asked for the delegates’ list.

    A late-hour exam expo, in Nigerian parlance. It was also like arriving town at 10 am and asking for the venue of the exam that was billed for 10 am. It was the naivety of a don.

    So, Utomi has been a man out of clock because he is out of sorts. Chasing shadows therefore fits him well. It fit him well when he called for the formation of a shadow government.

    We must understand where Utomi is coming from. He is not coming from the intellect. He is not coming from a revolutionary instinct. He is not coming from political theory. He is also not coming from the wellspring of patriotism.

    Nor is conscience the fuel. He is a victim of his own malice.

    He has a beef with the APC. Maybe he should. He said he was in the think tank that fashioned the manifesto and working idea of the party. But once the broth was ready, he was shooed out of the kitchen.

    For a man with an appetite, that must be jarring. I wonder why no one remembered to give him even a shadow of a chicken when Buhari took over the kitchen.

    Someone who did that must take the blame for Utomi’s shadowy condition.

    The Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, would not have corrected him to the effect that presidential systems do not hug shadows.

    He was not educating the professor of political science. He already knows. He knows that it is the Westminster system that installs shadow governments as opposition pedestals.

    The prescient professor must have seen the words of former United States President Theodore Roosevelt’s lines about such sneaky elements in a presidential system, when he wrote, “to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.”

    We borrowed our system from that country. The good prof knows that, too.

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    Utomi is too smart not to know that shadow governments do not rise out of whims.

     In the United Kingdom, Canada and even Australia where shadow governments subsist, the cabinets often are elected persons. They win elections at the local levels. The members of such governments are therefore voices of the people.

    They are not accidental business men or professors of fortune who want to be in government.

    The reason they are elected, though, is because they have to be loyal to the constitution and the legitimacy of the government at the centre.

    Hence, some of those systems name them loyal opposition.

    In shadow governments, the opposition lawmakers have titles without offices. They are dud. They have their say, not their way.

    The ruling governments have offices and titles. They are substantial.

     The Westminster system creates a real government and shadow one because all the actors play in a single chamber in a collegial atmosphere.

     Even when they battle, the smoke expires within the house.

     They all have constituencies to report to because whoever elected them whether as shadow cabinet or real one, are not shadows at the polls.

    But Utomi is not thinking that way. If he were, he would have contemplated the word government rather than the ‘adjective’ shadow.

     The qualifier is nothing without the noun.

    He may be lost in a shadow reality. A government is not so-called out of an impulse. It needs a constitutional legitimacy. We have had it before in this country, in the First Republic. Obafemi Awolowo was the leader of the opposition, and he flourished within the structures of a codified law and convention.

    Our professor also must know, unless his immersion in business has rid him of his theories, that the most valuable tool to a political scientist is history. Maybe he should read more history than theory, since theories can sometimes deprive you of the roots of political philosophy. If you listen to Utomi often, you realise that he touts theories with little appetite for objective facts from the past.

    He will do well to read the masters from Aristotle to Rousseau, even more contemporary ones like Charles Taylor.

    We know that many writers, including columnists these days, are undergoing a divorce from history. That is evident from the recent infatuation with Ibrahim Traore, the upstart from Burkina Faso, and how he has switched one form of slavery for another. And Russian’s foxy-eyed Putin has made him a pawn on a global chessboard.

    When the DSS took him to court, it is not because they wanted to gag. It is because democracy ought to gag. The law ought to gag. What he is doing is subversion.

    You do not form a government outside the law. He is trying to foment political guerillas in the guise of a neat idea.

     It is rebellion by stealth. But it is illegitimacy with a bold face.

     Utomi celebrated the news that some people wanted to gather a cloud of 500 lawyers to support him. I want to ask those lawyers where they were going to find a shadow government in the constitution.

    Jesus lashed out at lawyers who have lost the key of knowledge.

    Our smart professor is just following the script of the 2023 election grievance. He still has not recovered from  a loss, where his party came a distant, if hefty third. Some of his followers failed through the courts after trying to intimidate the justices.

    Some of them then started calling the army to take over.

    I never heard the good prof say anything about those subversives.

    Nor did he say a word about clerics whose prophecies bowed to reality.

    Utomi knows too that no system is locked up. It can be tweaked. But he also knows that it goes through a process. If he thinks a presidential system should have a shadow government, he is welcome to advance a theory.

    He will then have to deploy history, and show to us that it can work. He will also have to push elected officers to propound it and shepherd it until it becomes a legislation.

    If he does not want to? Then, he is working for a subversion. That fits into how people have looked at shadow as a metaphor for ominous, an insubstantial idea to heist the state.

     Or it will be a wraith of an impulse that Shakespeare, in his play Macbeth, describes as “a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more.

    It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” Or it may signify the illusion of the subvert Macbeth, who was afraid of a shadow after he murdered sleep.

  • IMF loan and my Cambridge vindication 

    IMF loan and my Cambridge vindication 

    The news that Nigeria under this administration has paid off all its IMF loan reminds me of questions thrown at me last year at The Cambridge University in the United Kingdom when I was interrogated on my book on the 2023 elections, Beating All Odds: How Bola Tinubu became President.

    Some had tackled me when I asserted the following words:

    “Some critics in the country who are on the left have said President Tinubu is beholden to the West and IMF policies. This is an interesting point.

     His policy of stanching the bleeding like floating the currency or letting fuel sell at the market rate seem to suggest this. But he has no choice. He is, to me, not implementing the policy under their behest. I see it as a coincidence of policy. This so-called Washington consensus has been touted as the solution to the problems of many developing countries with mixed results. Yet, if your currency is bleeding, do you borrow to save it without a productive base? No. If the price of fuel is killing your ability to build roads or hospitals or fund education, do you continue? I think not.

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    “So, if it is IMF policy, it is not Tinubu obedience but a coincidence of necessity. When one of the candidates, Peter Obi was asked if he had an alternative to Tinubu’s policies, he said he would go and look for money to save the situation. In order words, he would hark back to the same era of extravagance and indulgence.”

     A PHD student was particular about the IMF taking over the economy. Even then, the government did not take any new loan from IMF.

    Today, it is clear that my point was vindicated. Professor Anthony Kila, who moderated the Cambridge event, as an intellectual understood the rigour of my argument, but he, too will be glad that he let me play the economic exponent. Some of those who argued that Tinubu was servile to IMF were economists without facts.

    Hence the late Henry Kissinger said during the 1982 recession in the U.S., “that the economy was too important to be left in the hands of economists.” President Tinubu demonstrated you do not need to be a slave to be right.

  • New Pope talks to Nigerian churches

    New Pope talks to Nigerian churches

    Pope Leo XIV, whose name is Robert Prevost, Stepped onto the perch of the Catholic Church last week in a breathtaking moment. Stepped onto the perch

     His choice as the first American tells me he was a counterfoil to Trump, and American cleric as “provost” of peace and unity, to help save the world from an American perdition.

     It overstates it to think the Pope can do it alone, but it shows how the church can do good by its appeal to the righteous regions of our souls.

    This new Pope visited Nigeria as part of his evangelical work as an Augustinian.

     The Augustinian hails from the theological philosophy of Saint Augustine, that loved to dissect the word and pay homage to the poor and help the sinner.

     The new Pope follows Leo XIII because he united the people and helped the poor. Which is what is lacking in the Nigerian church today when pastors, especially of the Pentecostal type, who elevate material splendor over the life of the spirit.

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    It reminds me of a cleric who said it is better to die a rich man than a poor man. Another, one pastor Ibiyeomie, said Jesus hates the poor, and he hated them so much in his earthly ministry that he did not visit the poor at home. Well, the real poor don’t have homes.

     He himself said, the birds have a home, but the son of man had no place to rest his head. If he hated the poor why did he live in poverty when he was on earth, so much so he cursed a tree for lacking a fruit.

    He did not visit the poor in the house? Do you have to visit the poor in their home to empathise? Did he not dine with the publicans, who were regarded as poor?

     When the Bible says he was poor so we might be rich, he was speaking of being rich in spirit according to James 2:5. To be rich is good. But to be poor is no sin.

     Some of these pastors encourage terrorism, kidnapping and fraud in this society by talking down the poor in church. it turns meek worshippers into conniving villains.

     Jesus himself was with poor people when he changed a few loaves of bread and fishes to feed a multitude. Were they rich? Jesus warned how hard it is for rich men to enter his kingdom. E.T Okere muses on this in his book, Church, Money and Power.

    By materialising scripture, they have defrocked the word of its power and glory, and made it a secular gambit.

     After all God said in the book of Samuel that He made the rich and poor, and in proverbs that the rich and poor should meet together because God made them all. (Proverbs 22:2).

     Is the parable of the Rich man not to condemn insentivity to the poor. It is not enough to live with the poor, but to care.

    That was the kernel of Pope XIV’s message, and our overabundant clerics will do well to learn.

  • NYSC challenge

    NYSC challenge

    Given mounting criticisms on the continued relevance of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme, the inauguration of a committee to comprehensively review its operations is a welcome development. This is especially so as the objective is to make the scheme stronger, more useful to national development and better suited to the needs of our youths.

    Minister of Youth Development Ayodele Olawande touched the crux of the matter when he said at the inauguration ceremony that issues of corps members’ safety, infrastructural challenges and the broader question of the scheme’s relevance in an increasingly dynamic socio-economic environment are among the key concerns. But he was quick to add that these also present opportunities that demand urgent, visionary and determined efforts.

    Part of the mandate of the committee is to look into how the NYSC works, and suggest ways of making it safer, more creative and more impactful. The committee will also review current NYSC policies, talk to people and suggest changes to laws, policies and the operational modalities of the scheme.

    “The outcome of this review must align with broader national development objectives, positioning the NYSC as a strategic tool for youth empowerment and nation building,” the minister further charged the committee. These are, no doubt, high-minded goals that if realistically addressed will position the scheme to meet the challenges of the times.

    The NYSC programme was established by the Gowon administration in 1973, three years after the civil war. In view of the exigencies of that war, the programme was part of the efforts to rebuild and reconstruct Nigeria, imbuing participants with a new sense of national belonging and identity. NYSC was envisioned to promote national unity and integration, inculcate discipline, patriotism in our youths, obliterate extant prejudices thereby promoting national development.

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    By mandatorily requiring corps members to serve in cultural areas other than their own, the scheme’s target was to foster better understanding and harmony among participants as leaders of the future. In the early years of its establishment, the scheme was very popular among the youths and commanded considerable respect as fresh graduates were deployed to rural communities for their primary assignments.

    The local communities were equally appreciative of the contributions of the corps members, offering them any assistance that could enhance their stay. That uniform commanded respect and was the pride of participants. Then also, the number of participants was quite limited and made for easy and effective management.

    When the first batch of members were deployed, there were about five universities in the country. It is estimated that the first batch of participants were about 700 participants. The number has since continued to grow. And with the exponential increase in the number of universities (federal, state and private), prospective participants have grown in geometric progression. These have also brought in their wake peculiar challenges.

    Instead of the single batch, we now have about three batches and many streams due to the astronomical increase in the number of participants and attendant management constraints. The national environment has since changed with information technology, increasing civil strife and cascading insecurity across the country. Issues are not made any easier by the reluctance of employers to accept corps members in their establishments.

    Even then, the federal government has been finding it difficult to fund the scheme. It took several months for it to implement the N70,000 minimum wage approved last year for corps members. The number of universities in the country is still growing with the recent licences given to more private universities by the federal government. This will further bloat the number of participants. All these are bound to adversely affect the effective functioning of the scheme unless far- reaching measures are taken to align it to the dynamics of the times.

    That is where the recent inauguration of the review committee comes in handy. Before now, there have been calls for either a radical review of the scheme to align it with the demands of the times or have the programme scrapped outright. Attahiru Jega, former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), had at a lecture marking NYSC’s 50th anniversary called for drastic pruning of the number of participants or have the scheme operate on a voluntary basis.

    Jega’s position stems from rising concerns about the increasing inability of the scheme to manage the high number of graduates churned out by our universities. He seems to admit the continued relevance of the scheme but wants the number of participants pruned or make it voluntary for willing participants. That is not the only grouse against the scheme. Many have questioned the continued relevance of the programme vis-a-vis the goals it was set up to achieve, especially in view of evolving national dynamics.

    There are changes and fundamental alterations in our national life that

    interrogate the objectives for which the NYSC exists to serve. Issues of national unity, integration and the inculcation of a common sense of national identity have suffered incredible reverses in recent times. Nigerians have become more divided along the fault lines of our national order due largely to the inability of political leaders to manage our diversities.

    Not only is the country confronted by an assortment of insurgency groups, non-state actors have been having a free reign. The lure of primordialism, ethnic ascendancy and self- determination is on such a high scale that the NYSC scheme can do little to ameliorate.

    Nigeria is more divided now than ever before and the signs are palpable. So, there is a disconnect between the objectives the NYSC exists to serve and contemporary developments in our national life.

    These can be seen from the constant recourse by sections of the country to the issuance of quit orders to non-indigenes in their zones. And such quit notices, over flimsy and sometimes contrived excuses, have been coming quite regularly. They reinforce our differences and forewarn corps members serving in such areas that they are at risk because they do not belong.

    The damage such quit orders does to the psyche of corps members counters any lesson on unity and patriotism which the scheme is meant to instill in them. That is the reality of the environment in which the NYSC scheme is expected to foster national unity and integration.

    The grim reality of the danger corps members face was brought close by events following the 2011 presidential elections when more than 800 persons were killed in the northern states. Corps members were among those selectively targeted and killed because they were non- indigenes.

    Kidnapping of NYSC members for ransom while travelling to their places of posting has also been on the rise. In August 2023, eight corps members from Uyo in Akwa Ibom State travelling to Sokoto were kidnapped in Zamfara State. Some of them languished in captivity for between five and 11 months before they were released after paying millions of naira as ransom.

    Managers of the scheme have been compelled by insecurity to deny some local governments in the country the services of corps members. In some other instances like Benue State, they were withdrawn as their safety could no longer be guaranteed. All these should instruct that NYSC cannot continue in its present form.

    The programme has a serious place in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society where primordial proclivities are in ascendancy. It is still relevant to our needs but the number of participants have to be drastically pruned to align with the developmental objectives of the country. Even as the committee was charged to address the issue of funding, the fact remains that the federal government is hard put to fund the programme in view of extant economic realities.

    Pruning the number of participants should be followed up with making the exercise voluntary. It makes little sense carrying a huge programme the government cannot fund. When the Peace Corps started in the United States of America, it was a voluntary scheme. But due to changing realities and funding cuts, it pruned its membership from a peak of 15,556 in 1966 to 8,500 in 2011. According to data from its website, it currently deploys between 3,500 and 4,00 annually.

    That is the way to go for the NYSC scheme. At the current trajectory of the country, national unity, nation building and the inculcation of a common sense of belonging among our youths should be addressed from the top. Effective management of the country’s diversities, inclusion, equity and fairness to the constituents hold the aces.

    It is doubtful whether the bottom-top approach to nation building which the NYSC scheme represents can still serve that need in the face of the polarisation of the country. The leadership should show the direction through their actions.

  • Corruption and failed refineries

    Corruption and failed refineries

    News of the corruption-related investigation of three recently sacked managing directors of Nigeria’s government-owned oil refineries gave an insight into why the facilities remain problematic.  The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was reported to have arrested the former managing directors and some senior officials of the Port Harcourt Refining Company, Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company, and Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company. They allegedly mismanaged funds for the rehabilitation of the facilities, amounting to almost three billion US dollars.

    The EFCC was reported to be probing the disbursement of $1,559,239,084.36 to the Port Harcourt refinery, $740,669,600 to the Kaduna refinery, and $656,963,938 to the Warri refinery. The commission said it was “a case of abuse of office and misappropriation of funds.”

    Following the removal of fuel subsidy by President Bola Tinubu when he assumed office in May 2023, making the inoperative government-owned local refineries operational was expected to lower the cost of fuel.  The high cost of fuel resulting from the removal of fuel subsidy is among the major factors responsible for the cost-of-living crisis in the country. Economic analysts blame the grim situation mainly on naira depreciation, higher food and energy prices and logistical costs, among others.

    The alleged mismanagement of funds meant for the rehabilitation of the state-owned refineries has grave implications for the amelioration of the cost-of-living crisis. If the cost of fuel does not reduce significantly, there is unlikely to be a significant softening of the crisis.

    There was understandable excitement, especially in Nigerian government circles, following the announced revival of the Port Harcourt and Warri oil refineries, which had been inoperative for years.

    In November 2024, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) declared that it had revived the 60,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Port Harcourt refinery in the Niger Delta. In December 2024, the company said it had resumed some operations at its 125,000 bpd Warri refinery, also located in the Niger Delta, which was shut down in 2015.

    The country’s oil problems had been partly blamed on the four inactive state-owned refineries with a combined capacity of 445,000 bpd, including the 110,000 bpd Kaduna plant in the north and another one in Port Harcourt with a capacity of 150,000 bpd.

    However, the revived refineries failed to deliver the expected result. The Port Harcourt refinery has been operating below 40 percent of its capacity since its applauded refurbishment while the Warri refinery was shut down less than a month after it resumed operations due to safety issues. 

    For instance, regarding the non-production of petrol at the Warri refinery, months after the announced completion of its repair, the Delta State Chairman of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Harry Okenini, was reported saying, “Since the inauguration of the rehabilitated Warri refinery on January 5, 2025, there has been no green light for IPMAN to lift petroleum products from the facility.

    “For the past months, there has been no product for marketers here, and we cannot just stay idle, so we decided to source products from the private depots.

    “These private depot owners, today they will increase the price; tomorrow they will increase it again. So, the whole thing has caused problems for the business.”

    Evidently, the failure of the revived refineries is counter-productive: The oil marketers are faced with high-cost issues as a result of being forced to patronise private depots; and the public bears the brunt of the situation.

     Notably, in January, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) put a dampener on the euphoria over the revived refineries, demanding that the then Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of NNPCL, Mele Kyari, should “account for and explain the whereabouts of the alleged missing N825bn and $2.5bn meant for ‘refinery rehabilitation’ and other oil revenues, as documented in the 2021 annual report by the Auditor-General of the Federation.”

    “The Auditor-General fears that the money may be missing,” the group stated. SERAP said the report was published on November 27, 2024. It is unclear why the 2021 annual report was published in 2024. 

    In a letter to Kyari, dated January 4, 2025, SERAP had raised these issues and urged him “to identify those suspected to be responsible for the disappeared oil money and hand them over to the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).”

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    According to the group, the NNPCL “reportedly failed to account for over N82bn meant for ‘refinery rehabilitation and repairs.’ The ‘money was deducted from the sale of Crude Oil and Gas between 2020 and 2021.’

    Founded in Nigeria in 2004, SERAP is a non-governmental and non-profit organisation that “aims to use human rights law to encourage the government and others to address developmental and human rights challenges such as corruption, poverty, inequality and discrimination.” The group observed that mismanagement of public funds “has undermined Nigeria’s economic development, trapped the majority of Nigerians in poverty, and deprived them of opportunities.” So, it was not only a case of public funds allegedly mismanaged by the NNPCL’s management; it was also about the consequences.

    Kyari was the company’s boss in the period covered by the 2021 annual report by the Auditor-General of the Federation. So, he was expected to provide answers to the questions raised. He was appointed Group Managing Director of the former Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in July 2019. Two years later, in 2021 the NNPC was restructured into a limited liability company. He was the first GCEO of NNPCL.

    It remains to be seen if the ongoing probe of former top officials of the company will clarify the state of the government-owned refineries. The Federal Government has been accused of staging the revival of the refineries to deceive the public. Indeed, some observers argue that it was a waste of money trying to rehabilitate the refineries in the first place. The authorities need to address these negative views.

    The ongoing corruption-related investigation should be comprehensive and thorough, leaving no room for untouchable suspects.

    In April, President Tinubu reconstituted the NNPCL board and appointed Bashir Ojulari as its new GCEO. The reorganisation is expected to be the beginning of a new chapter at the company. The new leadership must ensure that the refineries work. This is critical to easing the country’s unrelenting cost-of-living crisis. 

  • Phony Traore

    Phony Traore

    They are part of a new trend of anti-western sentiment, seeking to indigenise heroism.

    This new leader projects youth and vigour in his red beret, pullover and camo trousers.

     Above all, he exudes an African nationalism, as though he were a rebirth of the negritude movement with quite a few French thinkers, from Senghor to Diop, in its wake.

    Looking at once like an athlete and a soldier, he wants to claim a hero from a past. Thomas Sankara, that is.

    An untested Burkinabe leader, Sankara has grabbed myth out of martyrdom.

    Even then, he was a martyr of hope. That is, people dress him up as a martyr because of what many expected of him. He did not live long enough to be a hero or villain, or neither.

    In Sankara’s days, the boys of Karl Marx incarnated his profile. The idealist’s song grew dark when his fellow traveler and traitor swept him aside in a stab-in-the-back coup that squelched not only him but also his dream.

    Even his executioner, known as Blaise Compaore, also has eventually vanished in a blaze of populist revenge.

    Enter Traore. The man was nearly removed in a coup, and that set him into a fever. He has made himself a hero by default.

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     When he and his French colleagues in Mali, Niger and Guinea fomented coups to power, they stirred up two contradictory emotions.

    They fed an anti-French imperialism. But a worldwide democratic impulse was up in arms against a military return to power.

    These two are resolving themselves in his favour for two reasons. One, the coup that failed to oust him but lionised him as a hero. Two, a charm offensive from Russia.

    Traore is taking advantage of a fear of the West. The French have looked down on their black West African for generations.

     They were their colonial subjects. During that era, they imposed a system known as assimilation.

    It was a racist ideology that meant the French did not govern but assimilated them into French culture and way of life. It was a delusion of equality, a throwback from the failed French Revolution.

     They assumed the French had a superior civilization and they planted it after using their colonial force known as the Senegalese Sharp shooters to mow down resistance from valiant kingdoms in the region.

    Their assimilation system guaranteed them free access to the wealth of the region. But it implied that the people were not capable of deciding anything for themselves.

    They treated them like children. Paris dictated every part of their life.

    Algeria resisted this in the days of De Gaulle. Guinean leader Sekou Toure, in the Loi cadre episode, also asserted Guinean independence.

    The average French has resented this post-colonial slavery but had done nothing about it. A set of soldiers, with no idea how to govern but how to hold on to power, saw their chance.

     They plotted a coup, and have used French tyranny as an alibi. It is a cynical view of power. It is them versus us.

    But they are heroes without spine. Rather than stand as African nationalist, they are switching one master for another.

    The Russians have seen their opportunity. They have swathed the social media with pictures, videos and narratives that brandish Traore as a hero. For them, the man lives in a humble home, whereas it is fiction. He turned down IMF loans, whereas it is false.

    That he turned down American offer of visit, another lie. Traore is making his myth on the go.

    They have turned the opportunist into who he is not. The Russians, on the other hand, have been doing deals and posting their outfit known as Wagner Group to provide army, materiel, and propaganda. The Russians are building schools, hospitals, etc as tokens of empathy. More like tokens of contempt. Immediately, after the failed coup, Traore signed a sweetheart deal for gold mining.

    This is the making of an exploiter, in the mould of cynics we saw during the Cold War when the Soviet Union and the United States carved spheres of influence in Africa. History has also told us that leaders tend to look to the past as a refuge.

     They hide in the shadows of men of quality. In Nigeria we have had small men who wanted to be like the big men. For instance we have had little Awolowos, little Ojukwus.

     In the United States, Ronald Reagan birthed Lilliputians known as Reagan Republicans. Reagan Democrats, the most unlikely, emerged as well.

    Napoleon lit up young passions all over Europe that Ralph Waldo Emerson described as Little Napoleons. Napoleon III arose and saw himself as Napoleon reborn. The novelist Victor Hugo wrote a pamphlet that put him in trouble.

    He mocked the fellow in the piece Napoleon, The Little.

    It was a writing that turned into a mathematical formula in showing how a people can be sold any lie. Hugo asserted that in trying to distort the truth about the stature of Napoleon The Little, two plus two equals five.

     It was an idea that other writers took up to poohpooh how leaders turn realities upside down, including Dostoyevsky, Samuel Johnson, and of course George Orwell in his famous Nineteen Eighty Four. In his short novel of ideas, Notes From The Underground by Dostoyevsky, “Two plus two is no longer life but the beginning of death.”

    It is indeed a battle to the death from a man like Traore, who must secure his position by subterfuge, by living in the disguise of a hero. What they are exploiting is, as Ebenezer Obadare demonstrates in a recent piece for The Council of Foreign Relations, a cult of personality.

    They are exploiting the hunger for a hero who would transform their lives. That yearning for a hero makes them easy preys to adventurers in power.

    They are not only exploiting Russia. They are turning their fellow African leaders who run democracies as foes of their good fortune.

    Yet, for us, the danger signal is that the radicals among us who bow to his phony profile are not different from those who had a vigil at the Defence Headquarters over a year ago asking for military rule.

     They are not different from the underage kids in the North who never witnessed an army rule but asked soldiers to return. It is the bastardisation of the heroic concept.

    Hence in his play Galileo, Bertolt Brecht said: “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.” Need is the operative one. It implies mass surrender to fate. Such surrenders yield phonies with combat pullovers, red berets and sweetheart deals with Putin.

  • Juju Eyes for the downfall of many

    Juju Eyes for the downfall of many

    Title: Juju Eyes

    Author: Sam Omatseye

    Reviewer: Edozie Udeze

    This tale, Juju Eyes, is in all facets and facts the typical story of a runs girl, a high-class professional whore. But it is also the story of Nigeria, more so a young lady, beautiful to the hilts who set out to wallow and prowl in the euphoric impulse of a society. It is a society peopled by fraudsters and Oluseyi Ekanem now code-named Shay cleverly keyed into it to spill and strut a life of lies and tricks and all sorts of dubious mannerisms and nuances. The author actually uses the tale about Shay to explore and describe and indeed mirror into the society that is riddled with all manner of characters, who come ready to swindle, squabble and hoodwink the world. Shay is only a vessel through which this tale is told and embellished. And it is told in a way that there is hardly any aspect of this frosty and fake society that is not included in the story.

    Shay is an embodiment of the perilous times where the beautiful live as a prey and a predator, where lies have taken over the place of decency. What else can one say when Sam Omatseye, this ubiquitous author of this encyclopedic tale impugns the person of Shay as, “She did not come from this land, which, for lack of proper translation, meant Shay did not belong to this earth as we knew it. On some afternoons she looked so fair skinned, she became spectral, an “albino”. Sometimes, she was set to devour-a sleek, charming canine. At other times she looks so meek, all the children wanted to be like her, just like Jesus wanted little children to come unto me. At such moments her beauty contrasted with what Mista Naija would later call Juju Eyes. At times she was thin, spindly.

    On some nights like a gala event on a month ago, the same legs shone like the flame of an ethereal polish…at other times too she was a clipped goddess…” (pg. 48). The truth of this fantastic tale by one of Nigeria’s greatest and most prolific story tellers is that Shay is expertly used to explore the larger Nigerian society. A goddess of beauty in the real sense of the word, Shay comes fully prepared to expose and exploit the many inanities of the kingdom of evil and the not so evil, in Nigeria. The author does not spare the big and the small-dubious leaders, people in high places who are indeed the primary attention of this tale.

    Using Shay who is born Oluseyi Ekanem to an Efik father and Yoruba mother the author delves into more complicated and profound ways the society is run and run dubiously by criminals in human clothing. It is run by those whose intentions have not been too luxuriant or hopeful for the common goals of the people. So, chancing in on this, Shay surreptitiously decides to be a whore, a whore that is bigger than all whores. She preys on them, both rich and old. She is like a hawk who knows how to catch her preys. She operates with no draw backs or regrets. Her conscience is often deadpanned and she reaches out to those ready to do her biddings. She also often has her libido handy for the highest bidder. Often enough her libido is determined and controlled by her immediate need for it.

    Here is a lady who was first deflowered by her uncle, Uncle ID. From then onwards the monstrous urge and the penchant to have men, to deploy her beauty and charm and infectious aura with the juju eyes in tow, she enwraps and destroys men and their destinies. Here again Shay symbolizes all the runs girls and their wayward life and all their activities in highbrow areas like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja and so on. At Lekki in Lagos, her type abounds. They live exclusively on their bodies and the bodies and pockets of men they reach out to.

    Shay is not your everyday type of lover girl. She pretends to love but it is short lived. Y0u can’t make her your pet either. Her aim is to seek, find and devour men along with their wealth and powers and connections. In making the story carry on with the weight of a tale that is all engrossing, Omatseye subtitles the chapters. The purpose is to be deliberate in which it provides enough rooms to involve all the numerous escapades of a ravenous young woman given to an insatiable gusto of all sorts. From the moment when she was born, Shay even as young as four years old had chosen to be an absurdity. She was meant to be a priestess of a goddess. But her powers overwhelmed that of the goddess and this made her a bigger disaster. That disastrous outing immediately helped to set her on a part of societal perdition.

    Shay is therefore both a witchcraft and a priestess who destroys all the powers of witches. She is indeed on a mission to implore her juju eyes at random. Her juju eyes are wired by the goddess and other evil forces of her kingdom essentially to achieve her aims on earth. And so, she lived a stupendous life, lugubriously so that the well to do in the society are attracted to her easily. In this case it is both wealthy men and sometimes the well to do women in the society. Her pride remains in her propensity to be rapacious, self-centered and tricky in all her dealings with both genders. She only goes where her bread is buttered and her road is paved.

    With her crown as the most beautiful girl at the University of Calabar and later at the NYSC orientation camp, Shay chooses on time to parasite on politicians and their allies and co-travelers. Her story progresses with measured acumen and accuracy, Omatseye is painstaking. He is deliberate. He creates a bigger room for other interesting characters, some good, some innocuous to join her in her obnoxious world of fantasy and deceit. The story rigmaroles, often summersaulting, touching on the fabrics of the society. It meanders. It goes on and on rippling through the lives of Governors, Senators, political hoodlums, political bandits and thugs. It touches on fake men of God, fake miracles, fake and dubious society women and their lifestyles, fake friends and so many others. Shay is comfortable when she tries all these, but yet comes out of it all. When she is depressed or have some regrets or under the spell of the goddess she seeks for deliverance. Meanwhile this is short-lived as she goes back immediately to her vomit. She belongs to life of cosmetic friendship.

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    Her life revolves around the whims and caprices of a typical ogbanje. So, from one man to the next she pitches her tent, mesmerizing at her own pace and dictate. She catches a man, leads him on until the man loses his guard, then in a flash Shay disentangles and begins once more to look back to her first love, Ese, on campus. Ese her first love is her idol but she lost the opportunity.

    It indeed shows that those evil forces which she refuses to honour will never let her be. One moment she goes for deliverance, the other time she is back to continue where she stopped. Yet they all turn into a façade. Shay is one of the reasons why some men fail to bolster their star. Politicians squander money, public money in hard currency to satiate her. This story has to be read by those who love faction – a story of facts turned into fiction, the story of the real runs girls of this generation. They have no qualms about their immoral exploits. They owe no one the decency or otherwise of their groins. For them life is meant to be lived anyhow it comes. Money is the master and it counts in all situations. They are not accountable to anybody, not even to their folks or men of God they run to when too much confusion beclouds their sense of rationalization.

    Then after the several rollicking scenes, Shay suddenly runs into Negel, a white man who turns himself to Mista Naija. It is there like it is said in smattering English, wayo jam wayo. And so, the tale goes on and on and on as Shay makes Mista Naija the center of her life. And in return Negel, the rich and regal Mista Naija hits the nail on the head. He tells Shay “You have juju eyes”. And Shay truly uses those bewitching eyes for destructive tendencies and to achieve her aim and get what she wants.

    In all, it is an overview of the story of a rotten society in all facets where everything goes and no one cares. Decorum and decency have taken a flight in this clime and Omatseye has not hesitated to lay them bare.

    As an audacious novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, journalist and public commentator, Omatseye is critical in matters of literary offerings. He is daring, sincere and profound. His works elucidate. They explore and teach and are sometimes exclusively different and penetrating. So JuJu Eyes shows Shay as a gifted sorcerer who is able to hold the entire society in the jogular ,almost choking all to death with her incessant evil deeds and demands. What a story. What a society. What a narrative.

  • Julia and her sons

    Julia and her sons

     In his story in The Nation on Sunday, Olatunji Ololade writes a story about Hurti, one of the villages that saw plunder and death from their neighbours who are not Nigerians.

    And I was drawn by the story of Julia.

    A mother of two, she could not take his children with her when she ran to safety. She might have chosen her life instead of her own offspring.

    From the bush, she looked at her home while the goons slaughtered both children.

    “There lay her sons, still and scorched, flies buzzing over their carcasses…” writes Ololade of Julia taking inventory of the butchery of her family.

    This is the sort of choice that a parent should never make.

    That is what these marauders have wrought in Plateau.

    No one can justify this. Shall we blame the mother for staying alive?

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    Now, what kind of maternal conscience will be left of her?

    Should she have died with her kids? Shouldn’t she have died with her kids?

    This is what is called Sophie’s Choice, based on William Styron’s novel of that title.

     It’s a story of a mother who must decide which of her kids she must surrender to the Nazis and which one she should keep. If there was no holocaust, the choice would not come. In the novel, the question is asked, where was God?

    And response is, where was man? Styron poses this question, but it was first propounded in Harper Lee’s novel, To kill A Mocking Bird.

    The implication is that if God is in man, why is man – all of us – failing God and ourselves?