The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Invasion of judiciary: The dialectics

    Invasion of judiciary: The dialectics

    The judiciary in Nigeria is enmeshed in serious dialectics. This is sequel to the invasion, by masked officials of the Department of Security Services DSS, of the homes of some judges across the country, arresting and detaining seven of them on allegations of corruption.

    Nigerian Bar Association NBA, civil society groups and other concerned individuals have condemned the commando-style of the abduction in utter disregard of extant regulations on the disciplining of judges- a statutory duty of the National Judicial Council NJC.

    There is palpable fear that a dangerous precedent with frightening prospects for compromising the independence of the judiciary and separation of powers was about to set in. But officials of the government including the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) have voiced support for the arrests arguing that the action was not an attack on the judiciary but against corruption within the system. They bandied such arguments as: the arrested judges have no immunity against arrests and prosecution; they are not above the law and that the procedure for the arrests was in order since it was backed by warrants of arrest.

    No doubt, there is huge corruption within the judiciary. And for that arm of the government to live up to its statutory duties, an urgent purge of the bad eggs within is inevitable. Those who have volunteered opinion on the arrests are not so much worried about judges with allegations of corruption being brought to book. Their worry is that established procedure for carrying out that assignment is being observed in its breach.

    Equally in contention is the correctness of the action of the DSS in dabbling into the arrest and detention of judges in flagrant disregard of the rules for such a sensitive assignment. Moreover, the action has all the trappings of impunity; a usurpation of the powers of the NJC and an avoidable intrusion in the affairs of the judiciary by the executive.

    It could be another subterfuge by the executive to harass, intimidate and cow the judiciary to do its bidding. This prospect is further reinforced when it is realized that the DSS is an organ of the executive domiciled in the presidency. Being an agency of the executive, its neutrality and impartiality in the matter is suspect.

    Moreover, the laws creating the DSS charged it with the responsibility for the prevention and detection within Nigeria of “any crime against internal security of Nigeria”. It remains to be seen how allegations of corruption within the judiciary could be reasonably construed as a ‘crime against internal security of Nigeria’ warranting that kind of assault, unless the term is interpreted in a very loose sense.

    So, it is not just a matter of whether the DSS has a search warrant as government officials are wont to argue. Neither is it the issue of whether there has been a history of the arrest of a judge in this country. It also has nothing to do with whether judges have immunity against arrests and prosecution or not. These are not the reasons for the trepidation, suspicion and fury that have trailed that onslaught.

    The point is that by arresting and detaining serving judges outside of the recommendations of the NJC, the DSS merely embarked on a voyage smacking of nothing but impunity. Not only did it dabble into an unfamiliar turf, it has by that action seemingly presumed the judges guilty of the alleged offence even when they are still to face trials. That was the position the agency must have found itself that it had to release the judges on bail without delay.

    A judge so publicly exposed and disgraced cannot in all fairness go back to his job and command respect even when the court discharges him of the alleged breach. Or are we to assume as has been speculated in sections of the media that a return of some of them to their former positions has already been foreclosed? If this is so, then they have already been convicted before their arrests. And we ask by which institution: those that arrested them, their accusers or the courts?  That is the uncanny dilemma brought to the fore by the manner of the arrests. And the government will find it hard to resolve no matter how had it tries.

    The executive should have sufficiently interfaced with the leadership of the NJC, on a seamless way of contending with allegations of corruption within the nation’s judiciary where such exist. But from the accounts of that judicial body, all allegations of corruption and professional misconduct directed to it have been duly treated. So one is amazed at the claims that the DSS acted in the way it did for lack of cooperation from that body.

    In its reaction at the weekend, the NJC did not only put a lie to the claims by the DSS and government apologists but described the arrests and detention as an attempt to humiliate, intimidate, denigrate and cow the judiciary. This is very ominous and we cannot agree any less. For, nothing prevents a government that nurses some grouse with some judge hiding under the same subterfuge to decapitate the judiciary. And when this happens, democracy will be greatly imperiled.

    The NJC said contrary to claims, all petitions sent to it have been attended to and challenged the DSS to make public the names of judicial officials with petitions against them for which no action has been taken. It therefore views the action of the DSS as an assault on the entire judiciary. It is easy to discern between the DSS and the NJC who is telling the truth. Sadly, the harm has already been done and the nation exposed to ridicule in the eyes of the world.

    The case of Ghana where 20 judges were sacked not long ago has been cited to justify the action of the DSS. But those who raise this misled the public when they deliberately refused to highlight the sequence of events leading to the sacking of those judges. The judges were first suspended by Ghana’s National Judicial Council and a panel set up to investigate alleged infractions against them. Those sacked were found guilty by that country’s judicial council.

    That is precisely the direction that should have been fully explored here. It was seamless as it complied with extant rules and Ghanaians took them in good faith. The subversion of that process by the DSS and the contradictions it has thrown up are the issues we are contending with.

    It would appear the current face-off is a product of impatience with the system of government we operate.  We need to pause for a while, take a decision as to the governmental framework we actually run. We need to satisfy ourselves that what we are running is democracy with extant rules of engagement. If we come to terms with the reality that this is a democracy and not benevolent dictatorship, then we must be patient with its nuances, some of which may appear winding and slow in action.

    That appears to be the missing link. Impatience with established ways of conduct; shortcuts and quick-fixes account in the main, for the inability of democracy to take root and flourish on these shores. The issue is not as much with the system adopted as the dispositions and attitude of those who operate it. The difference lies in the patience of Ghanaian authorities with extant rules in contradistinction with the impatience and impunity of the DSS. The difference is in the people. That is the uncanny dialectics.

    For now, there appears a standoff between the NJC and the DSS. It would also seem the DSS has stirred the hornets’ nest and it remains to be seen how it can proceed with the matter in the days ahead. But the NJC must be bold, firm and resolute insisting on strict adherence to due process in handling petitions. Else, we create a monster that will turn around and consume us in the guise of fighting corruption. In saner climes, someone will suffer for this monumental national embarrassment and act of indiscretion. But not here!

     

     

  • Topography of evil

    Topography of evil

    We sometimes are so immersed in our national woes that global events fall into the backdrop. It occurred to me with frightening potency when I visited Auschwitz, Poland, a week ago. It was a concentration camp during Hitler’s tyrannous hour, especially between 1941 and 1945. Over 1.7 million tourists go there annually as pilgrims to a place of death, where human cunning dyed itself in evil.

    After three and a half hours on foot through that cavern of human savagery, it occurred to me that the conditions that gave birth to those years of butchery have returned to us now. As a student of history, the question of the rise of tyranny and how it works its way into proprietary legitimacy has never failed to amaze me. Each time it comes, the people seem to welcome it as a new elixir of freedom. A sort of messianic glow beams out of the protagonist. He assumes a mythic status, a god in human flesh. He turns hate into an anthem of visceral joy. I felt it first-hand a few weeks ago in the United States among Donald Trump’s diehards.

    It was Hitler once. Today, we can see his reincarnates. We have seen millions embrace the brutal bonhomie of Donald Trump. In the Philippines, Duterte is making insult not only the province of diplomacy; he has bloodied the streets of Manilla with his own brand of moral cleansing. In North Korea, a rotund maniac is snorting with nuclear braggadocio. In Syria, a ramrod villain in Assad is propagating a straitjacketed bigotry that shows no mercies for women and children in a rage of bombings. In Turkey, Recep Erdogan has woven popular following from the paradox of a coup in the guise of democracy. At the top of it all is the glassy-eyed, starry-eyed man of the Kremlin who is increasingly frustrated that the West has not yet given him the war he wants.

    As a tour guide took me through Auschwitz, I saw this age of right-wing populism in that time of rabble-rousers who mesmerised whole people, earned their trusts and permitted them into mass bloodlust. The territory was a whole town. Auschwitz with its adjoining town Birkenau received in its spiky arms millions of Jews, Gypsies, political opponents, Jehovah’s Witnesses and small-time criminals for years. Over 90 per cent of them were Jews. We moved from hostel to hostel, saw the urn containing recovered remains of cremated victims, heaps of hair shaved from them to make beds and other textile absurdities, the gas chambers, the cremation area, the rail tracks where they arrived, where they worked, the bleak wall where they were executed, the starvation room, the roll call spot, the electrified fortresses of fences, the room where “errants” were forced to stand to death, grisly travesty of toilets and bathrooms, etc. They worked all day, ate rarely but the same ration, only the lucky survived six months, they were permitted to ease themselves only in the morning or night when they returned from “work,” were flogged routinely. Doctors, especially the infamous Josef Megele, used them for savage experiments, they were skinny and fragile, some fellow Jews became even crueller than the masters because they were given authority, etc.

    It was eerie to imagine that, sometime in the past, where we walked was a dungeon of dread and death, where the worst of human nature bloomed. And those who did it gloated and rejoiced. They killed and butchered women and children. Yet they had wives and children. It reminded me of what Charles de Gaulle described as “patriarchs of families who are warriors.” I saw the posh mansion of the camp commandant, Rudolf Hoss, just a few metres away from the chambers of death. When poet William Wordsworth wrote that, “it grieved my heart to think what man has made of man,” he did not contemplate this magnitude of bestial descent. Wordsworth still thought of man as a certainty. But one of the survivors, the lucid Primo Levi, wondered in his recall “if this is a man,” which incidentally is the title of his book.

    That is why we should worry about today’s world. We are retreating to the 1930’s where the foul seed of Auschwitz began to grow. Many have traced it to the failure of a good deal in the Versailles Treaty of 1919. But nothing is inevitable in history. Because the world went to sleep and believed no one would bring it again into the bloodbath of the First World War, a wave of what my History teacher at Ife, Professor Tunji Oloruntimehin, described as “the rise of illiberal regimes,” seized the optics of the day.

    Brexit has consumed Britain today. It is a testament of hate. Yet England was a fighter against similar sentiment in the 1930’s when Hitler launched his cunning. He conned Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister, who signed a meaningless pact with Hitler and waved it mawkishly, saying: “I have brought peace in our lifetime.” Meanwhile, Hitler boasted that “our enemies are tiny little worms.” Churchill was ignored when he warned of a mad man in Europe. Hitler’s shadow was not a lone omen. Franco of Spain, Mussolini, the sawdust Caesar, were cohorts in the murderous grins of hyenas.

    Today, Angela Merkel of Germany’s party is under threat from the same kind of parties that descend from Hitler, who hate outsiders. Last week I witnessed outside Berlin’s biggest shopping centre, The Mall of Berlin, a picture of Hitler projected on the wall overlooking one of its major sections, Potsdamer Platz, Hitler is speaking, and smiling, and silhouettes of Nazis marching in furious triumph is shown. Complaints have gone unheeded. Hitler died not far from that spot. Last week, not far from the Mall of Berlin, I visited a museum called the Topography of Terror. It documents how Hitler rose to power and held his people in his charm and the world in its madness. I spent two hours in a chill of enlightenment.  In Italy, France, and even Britain, right-wing bigots are riding a wave of popular support.

    It is in this context that we must look at the actions of the Russian dictator. Unhappy at the fall of the Soviet Union, he wants back the pride of the Cold War era. He has moved into Ukraine and Crimea, and he is aligning with Assad and bombing Aleppo in Syria. He has positioned nuclear warheads close to Poland. The Aleppo bombing is like the bombing of Guernica, a Basques territory, by the Nazi.

    Obama knows what Putin wants. So do Britain, France and Germany. But Putin is restless. He wants to ratchet up tensions and foist on the world an inevitable global showdown. Food ration scenarios are being enacted in parts of Moscow. Russia’s economy is weak, but Putin is piling up arms. Like his fellow despots, he is also popular at home.

    Britain is on the alert for a Russian nuclear warship expected to pass through its sovereign waters within two weeks on its way to Syria. French President forced him to put off a visit to France. A few weeks ago, I watched a U.S. television programme, 60 Minutes, do a story on U.S. – Russian tension, and show how America is responding with ominous flights of its nuclear-propped warplanes that can unleash a warhead right into the heart of Russia.

    I hope this trend can be contained without a global conflagration. It is so-called innocuous moments like this that can birth tragedies, such as Auschwitz. When I left the place I was haunted by the words of one of its survivors, Esra Pollack: “Man has created horrors but cannot find the words to describe them.”

  • Why blame the biographer?

    When a biographer gets a biography wrong, it may ultimately require an autobiography to correct what is incorrect.  The complication is that the biography in question, which is being questioned, has been described as an “authorised biography,” which suggests that it should have the essence of an autobiography. In other words, it may well be described as autobiographical because, by definition, “An authorised biography is written with the permission, cooperation, and at times, participation of a subject or a subject’s heirs.”

    The greatest casualty of an embellished biography, of course, is History. What is presented as actuality is simply reverse reality.  But where was the man at the centre of the narrative when the biographer was led astray and coloured it with an inventive interpolation of significant magnitude?

    Not surprisingly, a critical inaccuracy in a new book on President Muhammadu Buhari has drawn criticisms from critical observers, and the biography’s fictional flavour makes the biographer look like a fabulist. By extension, since it is an authorised biography, this makes the biographical subject appear as tainted as the biographer.

    The book, entitled Muhammadu Buhari – The Challenges of Leadership in Nigeria, was presented with ceremonial elaborateness at the International Conference Centre in Abuja on October 3, but it has turned out that an important aspect of the biography is nothing more than an elaborate concoction. Interestingly, the biographer, Prof. John Paden, said of his effort: “This book seeks to answer the questions: who’s President Buhari and how he’s grappling with the many challenges of Nigeria. My initial motivation was to introduce President Buhari to the international audience on the assumptions that Nigerians already knew their president. But increasingly, I came to feel that, perhaps, Nigerians might find it useful to review. I also wanted to address the issue of leadership.”

    He added: “In the past, one such period was the civil war; another was the time of influx of petroleum dollars. The book follows Buhari through his challenges in and out of the office, his military training in the UK and elsewhere, his roles in military regime, including his time as military head of state for 20 months, his detention, his reemergence as a civil society leader and his eventual engagement in politics in the Fourth Republic since 1999.”

    It is intriguing that what is considered as the book’s major historical howler escaped the reviewers at the event. How did that happen?  Even the figure perhaps most injured by the fabrication failed to highlight it and hit it in his review of the book. The All Progressives Congress (APC) National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who was on the receiving end of the damaging falsehood, said at the book launch:   “The formation of the All Progressives Congress, APC, is an important event that the book addresses. The merger was the result of teamwork, belief in the democratic will of the people and a commitment to national purpose…So many people made contributions that made the historic merger possible. It would be impossible to give each person the accolades they deserve in a concise work such as this one. However, it is an account that we must begin to chronicle fully, and with care, for it is the story of when reform came to the land.”

    This story of reform was reformed by the biographer whose claim that Tinubu was sidelined by Buhari in the search for a running mate ahead of the country’s 2015 presidential election has been rubbished by those who were in the picture. It is worth noting that Tinubu’s version in his review contradicted the biographical account but he curiously failed to counter the biographer.

    Tinubu said: “After the successful merger and the birth of APC, it was time to pick a flag bearer. At the Lagos convention, President Buhari emerged as the new party’s choice in a transparently-honest process. His speech to the convention was greeted with ovation, even by those who had opposed him. This set the tone for the campaign to come. But first, there was the sticky issue of selecting a running mate. After careful study and discussion, it was agreed that we should field a religiously-balanced ticket given the sensitivities of the moment.” He continued: “Based on this conclusion, the name of Yemi Osinbajo, renowned law professor and former Lagos State Attorney-General during my tenure as governor, was proposed as an excellent running mate. Osinbajo was also a pastor in the largest church in the entire country, and this would answer those who wrongfully tried to paint Buhari as intolerant.”

    The big question is: Why did the biographer misrepresent the facts?  The bigger question is: Why did the subject of the biography allow the misrepresentation? A report quoted a source as saying: “The president gave him unfettered access and has had long interviews. He really encouraged him by giving him audience.” So, why blame the biographer when the subject of the biography has not blamed him?

    For obvious reasons, an authorised biography is less likely to be critical of its subject, but this cannot be an excuse for uncritical historiography. The American biographer, a Professor of International Studies, has succeeded in encouraging the view that, apart from the Tinubu twist,  there may well be other aspects of the book that are no more than distortions. The permanence of the printed word means that this discredited biography will continue to be credited with information that is actually misinformation.

    It is noteworthy that a few days before the biography was released, on September 29 another new book on Buhari which was launched at the Presidential Villa made the headlines. It was a pictorial book entitled Buhari: A New Beginning, by his personal photographer, Bayo Omoboriowo.  The book presentation also had its own share of negatives. Presidential Villa watcher Olalekan Adetayo reported: “The reviewer became very blunt at a point. In listing the sources of some of the photographs in the book that were not taken by Omoboriowo himself, he had said the author got some of the pictures from a former photographer in the Ministry of Information who he called Baba Shettima. He then alleged that the man left government service with the negatives of all national photographs he took from a particular period till the nation’s capital was relocated from Lagos to Abuja. This, he said, forced the author to buy some of the photographs from Shettima.  “Baba Shettima should be made to return the negatives of all those photographs,” he said apparently to Buhari who he knows hates such behaviour.”

    Well, so much for Buhari and his new books.

  • Buhari and rainy day savings

    Buhari and rainy day savings

    Keen observers of President Buhari’s speeches would have been taken aback by his constant recourse to apportioning blames for the current economic straits into which the nation is seemingly irretrievably entangled.

    At some point, it was convenient to blame the immediate past regime of Jonathan for squandering the nation’s resources due to its inability to save for the proverbial rainy day.  At another, he collectively held accountable the PDP governments spanning through the regimes of Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan for this pass.

    The President’s mood was succinctly captured in one of his speeches thus “when we came in by some unfortunate coincidence, I screamed to high heavens because I had promised a lot while seeking votes. I asked where are the savings. There were no savings. There was no infrastructure, power, rails, roads, there was none. I then asked, what did we spend our money on? I was told they spent it in buying food and petrol”. So, the blame game goes.

    Apparently fighting back criticisms on his constant resource to buck-passing to exculpate his regime from the chain of events that presaged the current economic recession, he very recently said he will not stop blaming his predecessors for the economic woes. For him, buck-passing is sometimes absolutely necessary to remind people who take things for granted.

    The above thinking gained marginal support from Obasanjo when he accused former governors during his regime of frustrating his efforts to save for the rainy day when the price of oil was higher. “I remember when I was in government and I told particularly, the governors please let us save for the rainy days: they said no!”

    Before now, former minister of finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had maintained that the inability of the Jonathan administration to save was as a result of the insistence by the governors that proceeds from the Excess Crude Account be shared outright.

    If we pair the above positions, we are likely to fall into the temptation of concluding that the 16 years of PDP rule or mismanagement was largely responsible for the current recession due largely, to the inability of that government to save.

    But the issue is not as simplistic as it has been presented. Bolaji Akinyemi, former Minister of External Affairs has a more explanatory perspective on why it is not possible to make the type of savings envisaged by Buhari. Incidentally, Obasanjo and Okonjo-Iweala scratched the surface of the matter when they accused governors of frustrating efforts to save. And one would ask how and why?

    Akinyemi seems to have much of the answer. He said the failure of the country to save is rooted in Section 162 of the 1999 constitution which made it mandatory for the largest chunk of the revenue generated by the country to be deposited into a central account to be distributed between the federal, state and local governments.

    He said, serious efforts were made by both the Obasanjo and Jonathan regimes to put in place savings through the backdoor in the form of Excess Crude Account and Commonwealth Savings Funds but they were frustrated by the governors. The irony of it all is that some of the governors very prominent in frustrating that attempt are now calling the shots in Buhari’s cabinet and at the senate.

    A number of issues have been thrown up by Akinyemi’s intervention. The first is that it is a constitutional requirement that such monies be shared among the three tiers of the governments’ of the federation. Thus, any attempt by any regime including the present one to tamper with that revenue sharing order in the name of saving for the rainy day, would amount to a breach of the constitution.

    Secondly, there was strident opposition from the governors against such savings. Even if past leaders were favorably disposed to such savings, the resistance of the governors greatly diminished such prospects. These were the two salient points made by Akinyemi.

    Even now, Buhari is unlikely to accumulate the type of savings he envisages, if he intends to generate same from the federal share of the Federation Account. The way things stand; he is more likely to face stiffer opposition should he attempt to save through the backdoor as was the case during previous regimes. So also any attempt to alter the constitution to give more financial powers to the centre.

    If the sole aim is to conserve monies entering into the Federation Account, then we have got it all wrong because it runs contrary to extant regulations on revenue sharing.

    But the issue to consider is why state governors oppose such savings. Its answer is rooted in the revenue sharing formula and the different responsibilities which the constitution assigns different tiers of government. States need money to take care of their constituents. Some of them get higher accruals on account of the sharing formula. There is also distrust and suspicion regarding the capacity of the central authority to deploy such resources to ends that will serve the overall interests of the constituents.

    Allowing the federal government the custody of such monies would, apart from denying the states the necessary funds to develop their areas, further accord disproportionate financial advantage to the centre. Before now, the enormous financial muscle and powers at the disposal of the central authority has been an issue. Resurging agitations for fiscal federalism and restructuring are inexorably linked to this.

    There is also the suspicion that goes with the type of dangerous politics we play in this country- the type Buhari made reference to when he asserted that he should not be expected to treat on equal terms, sections that massively voted him and areas that did not. In such a circumstance, it is left to be seen how states that did not vote massively for him, would allow such a leader appropriate funds meant for them only to deploy same against their interests. That is part of the issue.

    In essence therefore, the point is missed when we talk of savings as if it is an end unto itself rather than a means to an end. A more meaningful approach would have been to look at the indices of development during those regimes but definitely not in the very dismissive sense of no infrastructure, no power, roads, rails etc as Buhari would make us believe.

    Such blanket dismissal of efforts of past regimes bears the imprimatur of all we were treated to during the cycle of military coups and counter coups that heralded the years of the locust. Ironically, Buhari had an outing during that period and like his colleagues, shares culpability for whatever that has befallen this country. After all, the oil boom predated the present democratic order.

    It could also be asked how much of the accruals from oil boom was saved by military interlopers? Claims make more sense when backed by verifiable evidence rather than the sweeping and non factual averments we were sadly treated to in the president’s independence speech: “investors from all over the world are falling over themselves to come and do business in Nigeria”

    Definitely, investors’ confidence is the least to expect in a country deep into recession. Not with the relocation of foreign airlines to other African countries and drop in foreign investment portfolio.  So, one is surprised that such claims were bandied and the president accepted them hook, line and sinker. Something must be wrong with the way the president’s speeches are processed and approved especially against the background of the plagiarism contained in his address during the launch of the Change Begins with me campaign.

  • Thirty years on

    Thirty years on

    Not a few know, or remember, that it is 30 years this month. A year earlier, the media had fluttered with anxiety and expected it to drop like a harvest of rare plums. But a French man shone with the accolade. Our spirits fell. In boisterous Kano of the post-groundnut pyramid, I was a corps member and I kept hope alive.

    When it happened, a year later in 1986, I was in search of the nectar of life, a job. I was too embroiled in my daily dates with Molue as a job seeker to know the news storm in town. The morning after, though, lit with knowledge in the headline of The Guardian. Written with heart and rapturous flair, Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi unveiled the news of the epochal day on page one. Wole Soyinka (W.S.) had won the Nobel Prize in literature.

    It was not a time of mobile phones and instant communications. So, when I shared the joy with friends, it had already cloyed. Their joys were smouldering while my tongue sparked. Today we take it for granted and it seems the man has been a laureate all his life.

    When I visited the Nobel Museum on the week of the Nobel Prizes this year, I mused on that time when Soyinka soared with the accolade. I had better appreciation of what happened 30 years ago. Tuesday is the day of grace at the Nobel Museum. I had arrived at 4:50 p.m., and the receptionist advised me to wait till 5p.m. A 10-minute wait implied I would not pay. It was free entry day.

    The museum is located in the Old Town section of Stockholm, Sweden. It is a grand area of town with narrow streets, historic and quaint architecture, rising topography and many shops of memorabilia. The Nobel Museum shares that august neighbourhood with the parliament, the Nobel Academy, the city hall, where the Nobel luncheon takes place. The museum looks into a circular plaza that buzzes often with tourists.

    Swaddled in my winter jacket and muffler, I strolled away to soak my eyes in some memorabilia. But my impatience to return to the museum was only worsened by the dry, nippy air that fastened to my skin and my feet zipped fast in a futile effort to attract heat.

    The time did not come early enough. An ebullient old couple rescued me from my struggles to pose for a picture at the entrance steps. After taking the snapshot, he identified himself as a tourist from Luxembourg. He was impressed that I am a writer and journalist.

    The interior is the size of a modest auditorium. The hall is barely lit, and my eyes leapt up to the roof where, instead of a chandelier, sheaves of pictures of past laureates overhang in circles and semi-circles. Behind the reception is a stand with the grandeur of an unraised secular pulpit. Stands with square screens form an arc, each indicating a prize category. At the time I visited, the prizes for medicine and physics had been announced. But the picture of the medicine winner alone bloomed on the medicine stand. On the floor were also screens like arrows that point to the stands of each prize. The stands of the six prizes are spaced from the other.

    I was interested to find information on W.S. I went straight to the book store located on the right. It had books of past laureates, whether in medicine, economic science, physics, peace or literature. I was interested in the literature and economics categories. Not all laureates’ books adorned the shelves. I hoped I would not be disappointed. I did not look far to see Isara, one of Soyinka’s memoirs. A translation of You Must Set Forth At Dawn in Swedish, as well as some biographies of him graced the stands. Soyinka’s area was next to Earnest Hemingway, a writer of a different sort.

    I thought I would see his plays, but no luck. I mused on the irony. He won the prize on his plays, especially such works as Death and the King’s Horse men and, his best work, A Dance of the Forest. Even his best literary ambassador, Ake: Years of Childhood, was not there. Across from the books was a picture shelf. W.S. bloomed among others. I picked one after clutching Isara.

    In the main hall are stands with touch-sensitive screens. Each stand represents a decade. In the 1980s stand, I fingered the literature icon, and W.S popped up for literature in 1986. It gives brief bios of the past laureates. Soyinka’s was signposted with the citation, “Who, in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence.” Two other clips tell his career and life stories.

    The hall was packed with tourists as well as students. Tour guides helped with additional facts. One guide explained a glass window exhibition of such items as a belt, a scarf, a frock, etc. It is what the laureates donated as emblems of their careers and lives. Malala donated a scarf. Another glass window displays dishes and plates that adorn the Nobel luncheon, and they are colour-coded. Literature is orange.

    A guide drew our attention to a hall that featured a continuous video of 30 selected winners who spoke for about two minutes. I hoped W.S. would be among the many winners since 1901 when it was inaugurated. I knew I had to wait for long. I had just sat down, and, after a physics laureate, viola! Our W.S. He was spry, a sap of youth, with his beard the colour of pristine tar. It was not the Soyinka of the Abrahamic visage, buried in white, hoary foliage. Its Edenic tar harks back to another era, of bouncy activism, of poking a literary finger at establishment, etc. In this video, he sported a short-sleeved shirt buttoned half-way. As he spoke, he planted himself in tall grasses while the Idanre Hill loomed mystically in the backdrop.

    He spoke about his works, of rebirth and antimony, and about the power of the Yoruba culture to regenerate itself, and of Ogun’s warrior profile in not only destroying the enemies but turning “on his own people.” He said it is in such ambience that myth develops. A footage also shows a funeral dance in Yorubaland, with men firing away at talking drums, and others dancing, in a mournful glee, even though an old person has just passed on.

    The Luxemburg fellow sat beside him, and I told him, “that’s my country man.” He smiled and said, “I noticed.”

    On the walls, tributes serenaded great minds who never won. One of them was a quote from philosopher Karl Popper, to wit: “What really makes science grow is new ideas, including false ideas.” Also Thomas Edison, the man of sundry inventions. “Genius is one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.” It’s his popular quote.

    The Prize was instituted by Alfred Nobel, and two categories were missing: Economics science and mathematics. A tour guide refuted the rumour that Nobel did not endow a mathematics prize to preclude a prominent Swedish mathematician, who had an affair with his wife, from winning it. In fact, Nobel, a loner, never married. The economics prize was begun in 1969.

    Nobel was an inventor of dynamite and incredibly wealthy. His family wanted the prize restricted to Swedes but he was cosmopolitan and international, so he wanted it to cover the globe. Literature was dear to his heart. He started writing poetry and plays early but he never succeeded. The prize was his deference to literary talent. His play, Nemesis, about a father’s sexual obsession with his daughter, was published after he died. His family recoiled from letting the world see it because it tainted his sublime image. It has been published in the Swedish and Esperanto.

    After over an hour, it was over. My trip to Stockholm had been worth the Nobel, and it was time to move.

  • Catholic priests and herdsmen

    It is increasingly becoming difficult to dismiss recurring attacks on Catholic priests by Fulani herdsmen as part of the evils associated with such criminal activities in parts of the country. Not with the heinous manner a 26-year old senior Seminarian, Lazarus Nwafor was murdered in his room a few weeks back at Attakwu, Enugu State.

    His assailants slaughtered him a day after he returned to his station after scaling through the roof as they could not break the metal door to his apartment. He had no issues with the herdsmen. In that encounter, other people including a pregnant woman who had her stomach ripped open fell to the dastardly onslaught of the heartless herdsmen.

    Not unexpectedly, the fate of the seminarian ruffled sensibilities as to why his killers would make that daring effort to snuff life out of him when his profession has nothing to do with their cattle rearing business. Insinuations were for good measure, rife as to whether his offence had to do with the wearing of his soutane in that village environment? Otherwise, how else could an innocent and harmless seminarian have attracted the ire of herdsmen such they had to scale through the roof to eliminate him in a place he was almost serving out his apostolic work?

    Or, was his killing part of the larger strategy by terrorists to inflict harm on critical institutions or persons so as to create maximum impact and cause disaffection as we have seen in the case of the Boko Haram insurgency and similar terrorist onslaughts? This poser is germane given that before now; we have been told by no less a person than the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar that the criminal herdsmen are foreign terrorists. The Sultan is not alone in this position which had earlier been shared by a former Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase.

    But he seemed to have upped the ante when he asserted that “all these so-called Fulani herdsmen moving with guns and causing violence; fighting with farmers are not Nigerians. These are foreigners coming into Nigeria to cause a breach of the peace of the nation. They are therefore terrorists and should be treated as such by the Nigerian security agencies”.

    Ironically however, we have also been told before now by various leaders of the herdsmen of the reasons they attack communities chiefly among them being cattle rustling and clashes with local farmers over gazing lands. Given the above, it is difficult to believe as the Sultan and the police would want us, that the herding business is controlled almost entirely by foreigners. The facts on the ground do not bear that conclusion out.

    And if the story as told by the Sultan and the police were to be correct, why have our law enforcement agencies found it difficult to confront the supposedly foreign terrorists in the same fashion they amassed an armada against the Boko Haram insurgents and the Niger Delta militants? Or is that a measure of the weight the government assigns to the recurring wanton destruction of lives and property by the insurgent herdsmen?

     Whatever the case, the insurgency of the herdsmen has become a serious threat to peace, unity and stability in this country. It is increasingly assuming religious, ethnic and political undertones that urgent steps must be taken by the Buhari administration to stem the dangerous tide.

    If the case of the murdered seminarian is not enough to establish an emerging trend in attacking catholic priests and other clergymen , the fate that befell three catholic priests last week along the Nkpologwu/Nimbo road in Enugu State further leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

    In a media briefing, the Catholic Archdiocese of Nnewi told the nation that suspected Fulani herdsmen armed with dangerous weapons, attacked and kidnapped the Rector of Tansi Major Seminary Onitsha, Rev Fr. Emmanuel Dim while two of his colleagues travelling in the same car, Rev. Frs. Jude Chukwuneke and Jude Ezeokana escaped with gunshot wounds. The herdsmen have since demanded a N2.5 million ransom before they can set their captive priest free.

    The diocese noted that at a separate place on the same day, Sept 26, another Catholic Vincentian priest and his brother were kidnapped along the Abuja/ Lokoja expressway. They further recalled that Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Ugwu was also kidnapped in August along Ugwuogo-Nike-Opi road among others. They therefore wondered whether these were mere happenstances or “Catholic priests have become endangered species?

    The Director of communications of the Diocese Rev. Fr. Hyginus Aghaulor was visibly piqued that in spite of these senseless attacks on their priests and those serving elsewhere, governments especially those in the South-east have been tepid in their handling of the looming danger.

    Lamenting that since the existence of this country nobody has seen the level of killing spree that is perpetrated by the Fulani herdsmen, they noted while  “innocent people are left unprotected we have seen barrage of military wares and personnel protecting the pipelines in the Niger Delta as if oil is more important than peoples’ life”.

    The lamentations of Nnewi diocese of the Catholic Church mirror very vividly the agony of the Catholic Church and indeed all Christians since the insurgency of the herdsmen assumed its current dangerous form. Before now, and given the modus operandi of the herdsmen, suspicions have been rife as to whether there are other motives to their militancy. In this wise, expansionism both territorially and religious-wise were frequently fingered. These were the basis for the strident criticisms and opposition that trailed the curious suggestion for the mapping out of grazing areas in all the states for the herdsmen.

    It is feared with justification that if the herdsmen could operate and attack their host communities in the dastardly manner they do without being apprehended, creating such reserves or routes for them in other peoples’ ancestral home will amount to an open license to conquer, despoil and uproot their hosts. That is why such ideas as grazing reserves and grazing routes must give way to the more civilized methods of animal husbandry – establishment of ranches.

    It may be convenient to ascribe the kidnap of the Rector to one of those escapades of criminal herdsmen. It could also be argued that the objective is to extract ransom since they have demanded same. But by now, they would have discovered that their captive is a man of God who lives on charity. They would have discovered that the religion and faith of millions of Nigerians are at issue. These alone would have been enough for them to set him free unconditionally. But to continue holding him, asking for ransom depicts crass insensitivity to the religious sensibilities of the people of the area. This definitely goes with dire repercussion on peoples’ perception of the herdsmen and their business.

    Given the sensitivity of religion on these shores and the proclivity of some faiths to jealously guard theirs including passing sentences and taking the lives of those suspected of one infraction or the other, it would amount to playing with fire to allow the wanton attacks on catholic clergy by the herdsmen to continue this way. Enough of that nonsense!

    But the Enugu State government cannot fold its arms and allow the herdsmen levy a verity of the Hobbesian state of nature within its domain. It must immediately come out with stringent laws to regulate the devious activities of the herdsmen, especially given the position of the state as the main gateway for them to access the south-east and south-south.

    Governor Ugwuanyi must move quam celerrime to save the people of Enugu State from imminent annihilation by the herdsmen since an end to the orgy of violence is nowhere in sight. It will amount to an abdication of responsibility waiting for federal action given the ambivalence of that level of government to the degenerating situation. After all, what is left of a government that cannot protect lives and property?

  • A fever of faith

    It began in the mind as a stinking thought before its outward manifestation as a stinking action. The happening mirrored a dangerous and disturbing religious intolerance which did not start today but which should not be allowed to taint tomorrow.

    This is how the Ogun State Police Public Relations Officer, Abimbola Oyeyemi, presented the event that made the headlines on September 25: “The Command got the report at its Division in Ayetoro that one Evangelist Wale Fagbire went to Ketu to destroy traditional worshippers’ shrines. After the destruction, the man became unconscious, motionless and could not talk. When the policemen visited the place, the traditionalists claimed that the subject cannot be taken away until some spiritual exercise was performed.”

    Oyeyemi continued: “The Alaye of Ayetoro, Oba AbdulAzeez Adelakun, waded into the matter which led to the release of the man. The victim has been revived and handed over to his family. The Police’s next step would be determined by the traditionalists. If they complain to the Police about the destruction of their shrine, the victim would be charged for sacrilege and malicious damage. Everybody has a right to worship anything he so desires.”

    On September 30, five days after the report that quoted the police spokesman, the story changed. A fresh report said Fagbire of Christ Apostolic Church, Ona-Iye, Ayetoro in Yewa North Local Government Area of Ogun State, told reporters: “About what happened at Ayetoro, it was from God and direction from the Holy Spirit for the deliverance of Ayetoro from darkness. God told me I should go to the shrine to bring out those things for the liberation of Ayetoro. When I started what God told me, he told me to do three things in the shrine. That is, I should evacuate the items, step aside and watch the film. I should not say anything when people come out to see me. So, I did as instructed by God on September 20.”

    Fagbire added: “When I was taken to the palace, I told them all my actions were directed by God. Although they beat me with charms, none was effective on me. I am healthy and sound. When we got to the palace, I expressed my mind about it; nobody treated me.” The pastor at the centre of the story served his own version at a briefing organised by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Ogun State chapter, in Abeokuta.

    The reconstructed narrative was reinforced by the Regional Coordinator of Yewa/Awori, Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), Apostle Lola Dada, who said: “He was handed over to the police and the police charged the case to court. The idol worshippers withdrew the case from the court, saying they cannot take the son of their late Oba to court and the case was withdrawn the same day.”

    Dada also said: “The idol worshippers went to Jesus Triumphant Army Church at Ayetoro, which is headed by Pastor Wale Olojede. The church, which had hosted Prince Fagbire, is close to the shrine. The worshippers said it was the church that encouraged him to do what he did. So, the idol worshippers’ transferred their aggression to the church. They went there and barricaded the church with sacrifice and palm fronds, but the Christian youths removed them. They demanded for things they want to use for sacrifice and asked the pastor’s family to pay N300,000, while CAN should bring N200,000, making it N500,000, for the sacrifice to appease their gods. But no money was given to them and peace has returned to the town.”

    This is, of course, a simplistic definition of peace. By his action, Fagbire has fed a monster that may become uncontrollable. He was quoted as saying that his father, the late Alaye of Ayetoro, Oba Taiwo Fagbire, who died in 1981, used to take him to the shrine. Having found his way to Christianity shouldn’t give him a feeling of spiritual superiority over those who continue to stick to their indigenous religion which works for them. To refer pejoratively to traditionalists as “idol worshippers,” as members of his camp do, is a reflection of unhelpful narrow-mindedness.

    My mind goes back to July 2013 when I experienced the 10th Orisa World Congress that was held at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Osun State. It was an eye-opener on the place of Yoruba religion, also known as the Orisa tradition, in a global village of multiple faiths. It was an appropriate setting for a focus on the challenges facing the Orisa way of life, especially in the context of contending faiths, some of which have the advantage of apparent numerical dominance. The variegated gathering, which included participants from the U.S., Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela and Mexico, demonstrated the appeal of the religion beyond its local provenance and brought instructive international perspectives.

    There is no doubt about the international status of Yoruba religion, which is reinforced by the reality that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2005 added the Ifa Divination system to its list of the “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.” A multitude of gods or orisa makes up the Yoruba pantheon, with Ifa as the oracular mouthpiece of Olodumare, the Almighty in Yoruba religion.

    Who would have thought the Orisa tradition could be seen as a redemptive factor in the Boston Marathon bombings in the U.S. on April 15, 2013, when two pressure cooker bombs exploded, killing three people and injuring 264 others? A 47-year-old woman who lived in Boston, Clemencia Lee, an American of Columbian origin initiated into the religion 10 years earlier, said that being a devotee of Yoruba gods saved her and members of her family from the bombings. She said to me: “It was definitely the Orisa that watched over us to not be there and right where the bomb was.” She attended the congress with her husband, Tony Van Der Meer, an American academic of Suriname-Dutch origin and Orisa devotee, and their second daughter who was also an initiate with a Yoruba name, Adetutu. This illustrates the complexity of faith.

    The Ketu incident highlights the inferiority of those who credit themselves with a superior knowledge of divinity. This thought-provoking episode exemplifies what could happen when there is a lack of enlightenment about the reality that the human quest for spiritual truth is essentially personal.

    In the final analysis, the attack against the shrine in Ketu community was unprovoked and provocative. It was an anti-social violation of the right of others to choose their spiritual path, and only succeeded in giving Christianity a bad name.

  • Bird’s eye and the mermaid

    Bird’s eye and the mermaid

    As the economy sings a dark song, it is time to wear a garb of cheer. Not to dwell on our duels, but to look at ways out of our well of troubles. They are mounting, and it is time to close ranks, to think of new paradigms for prosperity.

    The price of oil, for all its new promises, cannot give us the loose change of the past, even as the change mantra loses its birth aura. We are talking up a diversified economy. The Buhari administration has dangled the virtue of the farmer. We should become, again, earthbound creatures, tilling the ground, growing the crops, storing them and minting money from them as manufactured goods. We also have minerals: gold, lead, bauxite, kaolin, coal, etc.

    Some countries disgraced oil in public as a platform of wealth. Japan with technology and its continental shelf. Switzerland as a model of innovation as a chocolate giant without a cocoa farmer. Jordan as a rotund and oil-less island in a Middle East awash in black gold.

    It shows that wealth does not rely on resources but on the sources of the imagination. We have seen a few such silver linings in Lagos, where fiscal genius has turned a city state of a few millions not only into a national experiment and an oasis of fortune, but also as an economy all its own in Africa.

    The emphasis on the earthbound farm is important. We sometimes forget the fisherman and all that water offers. But when we do, we think in Shakespeare’s words, “fishes live in the seas, as men do at land; the great ones eat up the little ones.”  We get the fish, and we are all done with the water.

    But there’s more.  We have also seen the Customs unit as a veritable revenue earner, a fruit of anti-corruption war. Yet the sea and waterways offer more to us, and we need to look at how we can turn them into goldmines. And that refers to the work of the Nigerian Maritime and Safety Agency (NIMASA).

    It is a sure source of revenue in an age of diversity. It has suffered in the recent past from the surge of corruption and ignominy, and its value today comes into reckoning with the emphasis on a new source revenue. For too long, the relationship between the NIMASA and the sea has been like Hemingway’s immortal novel, Old Man and the Sea, in which the old man works the sea, earns a big catch and gets to shore alive without its big prize. The shark hacked away at the big fish with only its stark skeletons for the old man. We want a sea of flesh, not bones of misery.

    Over the years, NIMASA’s revenue has dropped by 51 per cent owing to the ravages of the oil industry and the diminished vessel traffic on our high seas. Of course, the background to this bad news has been a wave of corruption.

    It’s time to realise this great prize, and the wealth of the seas. But it has first to achieve two things. One, it has to enjoy an improved air of safety. Two, it has to operate in line with the rule of law.

    Just as we need safe land to do business. The sea, which is the platform of maritime prosperity, must be secure. We have, for land prosperity, revved our guns at the militants on land, in the Northeast and parts of the Niger Delta. It is only in the contest against the crimes of the seas that we can make cabotage laws rule. Cabotage refers to the dynamics of sea trade from port to port, both nationally and internationally, but more of the latter in our case.

    We have experienced many obstacles in the past decade. Sea robberies, round-tripping, pipeline vandals, unregistered vessels sailing unchecked, piracy, etc. while it is the job of the Navy to enforce and defend, it is the work of NIMASA to administer, to, as it states in its mission, “achieve safe, secure shipping, cleaner oceans and enhanced maritime capacity in line with the best global practices…”

    This is a source of major foreign exchange, also in an age of diminishing Naira against world currencies. For the Naira to rise, we must ensure a free fall of sea gangsterism.

    Under its new helmsman, Dakuku Peterside, a new energy has turned on the agency, and it should be watched. It is what I can call the bird’s eye of the mermaid. It has unleashed two things. First is the intelligence capacity. The point is to track all vessels, whether oil vessels or the small river-craft, to ensure that Nigeria knows all who sail on our waters. This way we cannot only reduce maritime crime, we can also document what businesses are going on illegally and fleecing our money. It has also installed radars in Lagos, Bonny and Forcados. It has stepped up engagements with the Navy, Marine Police and Immigration.

    The revenue decline also means that a lot of money is being lost to debtors. Just like at the national level, we need to draw our debts. Some of them were done in murky circumstances. With a new string of consultants, Peterside hopes to restore such lost revenue while opening the way to new ones.

    But to achieve this, it has also kept tabs on the vessels to ensure compliance with the Cabotage Act, update its register and pursue the goal of 100 per cent local content in ship building, but our aluminium and steel industries lag lamentably. With the rule of law, sabotage will yield to Cabotage.

    The billions of dollars in potential revenue means the Buhari administration has to turn its eye to the work of seas even as we focus on the farmer. We love the farm; but we shall not live by the farm alone. Some good work is going on in that direction as the alpha governor, Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State, has stepped up its tie-up with Kebbi State.

    Peterside is staking out NIMASA in his moves so far to make his agency a high-octane revenue source. He is to be watched, and just as the NPA and Customs, are part of the ways to use the sea, we ought to abide by Shakespeare’s words to “take arms against a sea of troubles.”

    To succeed, NIMASA will work as a mermaid with a bird’s eye. Mermaids do not work in shallow waters. But a mermaid with a bird’s eye sees the deep and shallow water, and can show the strength to make NIMASA and Nigeria glory in the “full sea,” as the Bard of Avon puts it. This is the task before Peterside, and the former lawmaker and works commissioner has staked out a claim of a doer.

    Odigie, oh Oyegun!

    The APC chairman, Odigie-Oyegun, has earned the title of an interloper. He dipped his dirty hands in Ondo politics as a fraud. Then he said he was focusing on Edo governorship election. In a free and fair contest, he stumbled and fell in his own polling unit. That’s a basic disaster, or home trouble. The physician could not heal himself, his own people, and he wanted to heal a whole national party. What a way to be demystified. Politics, they say, is local. He wants to be a giant who has nowhere to stand. He failed at home, how can he win confidence outside except by fraud.

    He, a political orphan, should stop sharing in Edo success. The credit goes to Governor Adams Oshiomhole and governor-elect Godwin Obaseki, who worked like a Trojan with a dedicated team.  Odigie, silence please! You do not know dedication. Also, the following stone-age men should retreat to their clay huts: Tony Anenih, Tom Ikimi, Igbinedion, et al, especially the men with “T” first names, the tees of failure. They, as well as the Igbinedions, are Neanderthals of Edo politics. Their political beards have withered to pale and their hairs have disappeared with their elderly wisdom. The Edo people voted against a past that did not work.

  • One feat; two claimants

    Who takes credit for the success of Ekiti State pupils at the recently released results of the 2016 National Examination Council (NECO)? That is the puzzle the Ekiti State government and its state wing of the All Progressives Congress (APC) are currently contending with.

    In the results released by the examination body, Ekiti State came first among 36 states with 96.48 per cent followed by Edo with 96.31 per cent while Abia and Kogi states came third. Apparently being the first time in a very long while Ekiti is posting such an impressive result and coupled with the volatility of its politics, contending interests have sought to take advantage of the feat to massage their egos.

    This has seen the PDP-led state government and the state chapter of the APC laying claims to the groundwork that produced the impressive result. Both have canvassed positions, ostensibly to persuade the public to their respective claims.

    Expectedly, the state government under whose administration the success was achieved did not waste time to beat its chest, ascribing the success to its immense efforts and innovations in the education sector. Its commissioner for education, Jide Egunjobi attributed the achievement to the cancellation of free WAEC and NECO registration fees for students and the introduction of moderate tuition fees for students.

    To justify this claim, he said an emergency education summit immediately after Governor Fayose took over, revealed that payment of examination fees by previous regimes was responsible for past failures as it made students unserious and noncommittal since neither they, nor their parents stood to lose anything if they failed.

    Other measures which in the calculations of the state government facilitated this successful outing, included the fortification of school with the right text books, instructional materials, strengthening of the inspectorate division and priority attention accorded to teachers’ welfare. The government has therefore promised to celebrate this feat “in grand style”

    But the APC in the state cried wolf, insisting that the deed was as a result of the sound education policy of former Governor Kayode Fayemi which provided incentives for good learning environment and educational items that enhanced learning among students. The party claimed “the foundation laid by the administration created environment for learning as never before, resulting in the latest incredible performance”.

    According to the party, the current success did not happen overnight but the result of long planning by Fayemi between 2011 and 2014. In addition, that regime also gave each child a laptop which exposed them to online learning; renovated and accorded incentives to schools.

    With these claims and counter claims, the public is being persuaded to judge, between the two administrations which takes the credit for this singular success of the state in the 2016 NECO examination results.

    It is difficult to uphold any of these contending claims to the exclusion of the other. This is because the issues that have been copiously traded cannot easily lend themselves to empirical validation. Ekiti State government attributes the feat partly to the cancellation of free WAEC and NECO examination fees and the introduction of moderate school fees. It is difficult to construct a positive correlation between both variables and the role they play in facilitating good performance among students.

    But the major plank of their arguments is that they laid sound foundation for the success that has just emerged. Ekiti APC says the changes that have taken place did not occur overnight. They are right. The government of Fayose also attributes the feat to the number of policies it has implemented in that sector since it took over. It cannot also be faulted. So the issue should really be what percentage of the credit should we ascribe to the disputants?

    Before this can be done, it is perhaps apposite to veer into some statistics on the performance of that state in both WAEC and NECO in the past few years. This approach is equally dictated by the difficulty in using a single performance indicator to arrive at statements that can be ascribed some degree of empirical validity. In effect, before the two parties can reasonably lay claims to this feat, it is important to establish whether this record is just an isolated one that will fizzle out with time or that which has come to endure.

    In the 2016 WAEC examinations, Ekiti state took 11th position with 8,954 of its 21,333 candidates getting five credits and above including English and mathematics. In that same examination, Abia, Anambra and Edo states came first, second and third in that order. The three states have also shared the first three positions in similar exams in previous examinations.

    In the NECO result under contention, Ekiti came first, Edo second while Abia and Kogi came third. In the 2015 WAEC, Ekiti came 17th and 35th in 2014. Though the 2016 result was an improvement on previous ones, none of the contenders made issues with it apparently because it was not very impressive. And that belies the hullaballoo over the recent NECO performance of that state.

    It would seem those seeking to appropriate credit for the 2016 NECO performance by Ekiti State are going about it with indecent haste. One singular performance is inherently defective for the purposes of empirical generalization. This is more so when the state’s performance in the WAEC examination results a few months back is at variance with the latest outing.

    Before the state government and the APC begin to celebrate that success, they must pause a while and ask who takes the credit in Abia, Anambra and Edo states which have been regularly posting sterling performances in those examinations for some time now. And why is it that some other states equally known to have invested heavily at that level of education have not been able to harvest handsomely in performance in comparison to their high level of investments in that sector?

    These issues have been brought to the fore to underscore the futility in the indecent haste with which both parties seek to appropriate the success of the last NECO performance- a feat that may soon after turn-out pyrrhic. And what would they tell the public if by the next outing, the state fails to maintain this record or performs below expectation? Maybe both parties will begin to invent novel reasons. Then, the incumbent regime will not be able to find escape route since it will be out of place to blame the past government. But that should equally instruct that the current regime takes much of the credit even if hastily for the recent success.

    The furore has brought to the fore the problem with governments and reasons for policy failures on these shores. It also highlights the reasons for policy discontinuities across regimes. In a bid to take credit for projects, many otherwise well-intentioned ones by previous regimes are either abandoned or discredited and in their place, new ones that may suffer the same fate are initiated. Governance is not conceived as a continuum where one leader comes in inherits and completes good projects initiated by his predecessor.

    Had it been so, the current disputation between the Ekiti State government and the APC over who takes credit for the success at the NECO examination would have been unnecessary. That has been the greatest undoing of governments and reasons for our retarded pace of development.

    Perhaps, the controversy in Ekiti would not have arisen had the contenders taken cognizance of Charles E. Lindblom’s perceptive of incrementalism in public policy. They would have realized to their dismay, there is actually no new policy since each policy is a little addition to a previous one. So we can go on and on; to catalogue the contributions of all those who have governed Ekiti at one time or the other, to what its’ education is today.

  • Pot of gold

    Pot of gold

    It is not the best of times that we hear of great economists. Things must go sour, money must fall, hunger must reel on the streets, companies must spin out of investment options, the very nation must gasp for breath.

    Many believe we are grasping for solution, as the Naira cascades faster than we can keep up and inflation suffocates us out of our options to buy some even more basic things as food. It is a time like this that we have economists, fair or foul, who try to fetch us out of foul times.

    The suggestions are legendary. Raise the value of the naira. Reduce the worth of the currency. Leave it, let it float. Shut down the borders. Import rice. Ban rice imports. No, how can we survive without rice? So open the borders. Pump money into the economy. Be careful about that, or inflation will drown us? Have you heard of the American experience with stagflation? Be careful about being too careful.

    Hail TSA. Woe on TSA. Sell our refineries. Depend on Dangote model with his work in Lekki. No, it is a sacred trust. We cannot cope with private buccaneers playing vampires on our oil. Regulate the banks. If you do that, you will smother them and we shall have nowhere to keep and even hide money. Pare interest rates, others yell. Where is the political will? Only idealists think that way.

    Invest in infrastructure; invest in power, free the central bank so it can guide the economy. So, where will the politicians be if we have an independent central bank? Remember the case of Jonathan who ordered men to go straight there and dip their filthy hands in our pot of gold.

    Free the BDCs. Jail the BDCs. Some are saying what of all the money we have saved? Shall we not spend them? How much? Others are following the niggardly ways of the play, Pot of Gold, by the Greek writer Plautus, about a miser who guards his pot of gold but it is stolen. Shall we continue to play the miser? Others say it is not that we are tight-fisted but that the purse is tight. No much money to spend.

    This sort of chaos of ideas or fertility of intention is not new. During the last recession, Obama was drowned in perspectives. FDR confronted many in the throes of the Great Depression. Japan in the late 1990’s was almost asphyxiated when some even asked the eastern titan to abandon culture for full-throated laissez-faire. The economists boomed without any boon to the society. “Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists,” quipped John Kenneth Galbraith, a world-renowned economist himself and the author of The Affluent Society. He knew economics is not an exact science, although the economists act as though the world lies in their hands.

    “If all the economists were laid end to end,” wrote playwright George Bernard Shaw, “they’d never reach a solution.” We cannot leave economics to economists alone, as Henry Kissinger noted in an essay during the 1980’s recession.

    So, there. The only area where theory and practice seem to concentrate now, is the CBN, and in the tongues and hands of Godwin Emefiele. He is the one experimenting, rolling the dice, playing the monetary and fiscal, the man in our economic arena. As we try to stop the bleeding from the Jonathan years, he has been there. In trying to steer the Naira in good stead, he is there. In stimulating, what economists call foreign direct investment, his hand is writ large.

    He is the optimistic face of the economy today, a sort of vicar of our pot of gold. He is the one who must guard it. He has spoken and exercised a role in working a formula for inter-bank rates. He has intervened in the matter of fuel price. He has also weighed in on the issue of quantitative easing, and pumping the economy with fresh funds.

    He has also been a moralist, saying we ought to concentrate on what is Nigerian, and focus of local production.

    But that’s as far as he can go. The central bank is an important institution, central to the pulling of the economy from its stronghold. But the central bank is an alarm signal as well as a guide. After that, the responsibility is in the hands of the other institutions.

    The CBN governor is not the minister of defence, or the Immigration or Customs chief, so he may weave a policy of self- reliance. But he cannot implement border control. While the smuggled rice and unhealthy chicken zip through the border, he can only look with frustration. He can soar over the need to give loans to SMEs but he is not GTB or Zenith or UBA, and if the banks play coy, the economy suffers. All the banks today pay lip-service to helping the economy and the small guy. But we know only the same circle of vampires suck up our economy’s blood. He makes foreign exchange available to firms, but he does not pick their staff-members nor decide where and how to invest and motivate personnel.

    When the list of the big debtors was released not too long ago, the culprits were familiar. He might be the familiar vicar of the economy, but he is no priest. We don’t look to the CBN for counselling on good behaviour and integrity with the funds of everybody.

    He is not Lai Mohammed who will want to roar with Change Begins With Me. He cannot be everything. He does not construct roads, nor build the hospitals nor monitor the schools. “Most of the policies that support robust economic growth in the long run are outside the province of the central bank,” noted Ben Bernanke, former chairman of the United States Federal Reserve.

    It all depends on the spirit of productivity. We need to whip up a sense of balance between theory and practice. We have seen some good spots. The FIIRS has started to generate more money, some road works have begun, the Customs man is generating more money. But a lot more has to be done. The decision to pump more money into the economy to the tune of N350 billion can help galvanise the economy.

    But it is the way we turn policy into productivity that will make the difference between the pain of today and the gain of tomorrow. Or we shall be like Plautus’ play where no scholar knows for sure whether the pot of gold survives or not, everything is in the realm of speculation. There is too much at stake today. Jonathan and his dame have done the damage. Now is no time for despair. We should not only repair but redeem ourselves. But we have no time.