The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • A court for blood

    A court for blood

    The law is one thing, but justice is quite another. What makes the law just depends on the judge because between the law and justice is judgement. Once the judge errs in judgment, it implies a chink in the imagination. Therefore, justice is denied. For all its sweet ambiguity and protestations of grand ideals, justice depends on human beings.

    Once the humans have a distorted sense of the law, the people cannot get justice. This prompted the first seer of civil disobedience, Henry David Thoreau to say, “The law never made anyone a whit more just.”

    When the Supreme Court gave its reasons for giving Nyesom Wike victory at the court, the Governor had already disabused the minds of fair-thinking Nigerians. In a church thanks-giving service, he uttered what psychologists call a Freudian slip. Perhaps too inebriated with joy, he told his holy audience the following: “Let me thank our former governor, Dr. Peter Odili. He will call me midnight to tell me what to do….he will say ‘go so so place.’ I took all his advice, and here we are today.”

    Wike defiled two temples. The temple of God and the temple of temporal justice. He spoke of influence in a church where it is forbidden. He implied that forbidden act influenced the temple of justice.

    The odd thing is that neither he nor his votaries denied this. They merely said his gubernatorial rival, Dakuku Peterside, was out to cause confusion for unveiling the facts.

    A few days after, Wike appeared before the Body of Benchers. These two developments only suggest that justice on Rivers State was not about justice, it was about imagination run foul, about viewpoints of the judges, a febrile, tendentious sense of reality, a decision that upsets the equipoise of a civilised society.

    First, why would Wike need advice from former Governor Odili when the matter lay only in the hands of the Supreme Court? Was Odili doing anything to make the result for which the thanksgiving happened? He said, “I took his advice, and here we are today.” It is obvious that between Odili and the Supreme Court verdict, an abracadabra of justice took place.

    For the purpose of transparency, what were those pieces of advice? If Odili asked him where to go, he needs to let us know where he went, to whom, and how it led us to the decision of the Supreme Court. Odili also needs to be clear to Nigerians about his midnight counsel.

    The point has been made that Odili’s wife sits on the Supreme Court. So, some people have asked, what has his wife got to do with his advice? Maybe nothing. But transparency is important. Nigerians need to know, or else we are left to believe that some vermin and worms of action, beneath the eyes of the normal Nigerians, took place in the catacombs of the Nigerian judiciary that dispensed justice to Wike.

    With this background, we can see why the court where Mahmud Mohammed presides has raised legitimate questions about not only its competence but its rectitude. By hiding under the veil of technicality, it has canonised blood and death. It says the tribunal was not properly constituted. It says card readers do not count enough. It says the issues of violence and irregularities were not sufficiently proven. Therefore, Wike becomes governor. Next to the Treasonable Felony verdict against Awolowo in the 1960’s, this is the most perverse verdict from the top of the Nigerian bench. It is an intellectual corruption of justice.

    Card readers did not amount to a rejection of voter’s register. It was meant to validate it. Society, including the judges, knew that technology saved the election from the militancy of the riggers, from bloodthirsty hoodlums who privatised the polls. They wrote the elections. They decided who voted and who did not. Those who fought against the card readers warmed with nostalgia for the old ceremony of violence.

    The justices, in the name of technicality, manifested a wistful longing for the atavistic past of blood and death. Go ye into any election. Plunder if you can, kill if you will, write your results. Any criminal can win because the saner person cannot prove it. Mohammed and his men also hid under technicalities when they said the Tribunal was not properly constituted. What has that got to do with substantial justice? It reminds one of the famous case in the State of Alamaba when a thief of animal skin was let go because the prosecution did not say whether it was cowhide, or that of a goat, sheep, etc. The thief is a thief, and a skin is a skin.

    Before the Rivers verdict, Chief Justice Mohammed had lamented that the lower courts dabbled in inconsistent verdicts. His observation was mistaken. I thought he was referring to irreconcilable judgments on the same matter that gave off the impression of a chaotic bench. What he meant, with hindsight, is that he wanted them to be consistent in puerile verdicts.

    On Wike, was it not the same governor who wanted to pay Justice Mohammed a visit, and he declined to see the governor? Was that not sufficient ground for him to recuse himself from seating on the case since it was widely speculated that Wike wanted to see him over the impending judgement?

    It is clear that the days of majestic judges are not here. As Professor Itse Sagay noted, we do not have the Eshos and Karibi-Whites. We have shadows of justice, dark, distorted, haunting. They have no reverence for lustitia, the Roman goddess of justice, who is called lady justice. She is presented in some courts blindfold and holding a sword in one hand and scales in the other. The blindfold meant the judge did not show bias where the scales tilted. Unlike blind love that does not see foibles, judicial blindness does not see favour. This Rivers State verdict does not favour the people. It has anointed bloodshed. The verdict also implies that Goodluck Jonathan could have won in court and probably won the opportunity for a rerun without card readers. It would be back to 2011 where he swept phony votes all over the country. That is the implication of the court of Mohammed. His court shows us the other side of blindness.

    Philosopher and critic Paul de Man had written a ground breaking book, Insight and Blindness, and showed how in the analysis of texts we see a side and not see another, and yet come off with a triumphal conclusion. Before he died, he was hailed for the integrity of his vision. After he died, we learned he was a Nazi collaborator in Belgium. While he was showing us how to see, we were blind to his other side. In his novel, Blindness, Nobel laureate Jose Saramago shows that whether blind or seeing, we see what we want to see. The Supreme Court saw a society handcuffed to electoral violence. It is a grim and pharisaic court.

  • A road and the rule of law

    It is clear that the complications connected with the rehabilitation of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway are crying for clarification. Ultimately, clearing up the issues that make the project unclear cannot be divorced from the rule of law.  A violation of the rule of law facilitated failure in the first place; and attention to the rule of law is critical to the success of the rehabilitation project.

    Arbitrariness was responsible for the initial complication. It all began with the Goodluck Jonathan administration’s 2012 termination of a concession agreement with Bi-Courtney Highways Services Limited (BCHSL), which was supposed to reconstruct and manage the toll road. The past government alleged that the company failed to make progress on actualising the objective of the concession four years after the agreement signed with a preceding administration.

    It is over two years since the Jonathan administration in July 2013 rearranged the reconstruction, following a N167 billion contract, awarded to Julius Berger Nigeria Plc and Reynolds Construction Company Limited. Under the new arrangement, two sections of the expressway will be reconstructed: Section I (Lagos to Sagamu Interchange) and Section II (Sagamu Interchange to Ibadan).

    According to Bi-Courtney, “We are in court because the alleged cancellation of the concession did not follow due process. Apart from that, the so-called contract involving the two new companies handling the project was awarded arbitrarily without a bidding process.”  The company said:  “BCHSL won the concession to reconstruct and manage the toll road for 25 years. It’s a Design, Build, Operate and Transfer (DBOT) arrangement. According to the concession agreement, the road will be expanded to 10 lanes from Lagos to Sagamu and six lanes from Sagamu to Ibadan. Because of this expansion, structures that fall within 60.35 metres from the median on both sides of the road will be demolished, and government will compensate owners of the affected properties.”

    Like a winding way, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway presents twists and turns. Another development further complicated the reconstruction of the expressway and reinforced the complications.

    The confusion was compounded by comments credited to the Managing Director of the Infrastructure Bank Plc, Mr. Adekunle Oyinloye, in a newspaper report. Oyinloye was quoted as saying:  ”Motorways Assets Limited (MAL) has been given consideration for the project. The Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) has to give the concession certificate, while the lenders and investors have to ensure that all the details are properly worked out. We have now got all the relevant approvals.”

    Bi-Courtney’s response correctly raised questions related to the rule of law. In a statement, the company posed a fundamental question: “Were regulatory procedures complied with by Infrastructure Bank?” The company continued: “They were not. The most fundamental steps in the granting of a concession under the law are as follows – Advertise the concession in national newspapers; there must be competitive bid/tender process as prescribed by the Public Procurement Act (2007); the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) ‘shall take custody of every Concession Agreement under this Act and monitor the compliance with the terms and conditions of such Agreement’; obtain the approval of the Federal Executive Council.”

    Conclusively, Bi-Courtney said: “Infrastructure Bank Plc did not comply with any of these steps.” It further said that ICRC officially “denied the existence of such a Concession.” The company added: “If the institution responsible for taking custody of the Concession Agreement and monitoring its compliance with the laws of Nigeria is not aware of the Concession, where then was the Concession created under the Law?”

    It is worth mentioning that in its response to the allegation of non-performance, Bi-Courtney blamed work delay on the Jonathan administration. It argued that in the period of three years and six months that the company had the concession, it was slowed down for two years and 10 months. According to the company, the design process which was expected to be completed within four months took 18 months as a result of bureaucratic bottlenecks at the Ministry of Works. Interestingly, the ICRC corroborated Bi-Courtney’s position.

    It would appear that the announced cancellation of the concession by the Ministry of Works on November 19, 2012, was the culmination of a chain of unprogressive behind-the-scenes manoeuvres by powerful people in the government of the day.

    Evidently, the Jonathan government’s arbitrary move was in conflict with the rule of law, and there is evidence to show that Bi-Courtney demonstrated more respect for the law. According to a recent report, Bi-Courtney, in January 2013, proposed arbitration to the then Minister of Works, Mr. Mike Onolememen.

    The company said in a letter to the minister:  ”… the ministry’s purported notice of the non-compliance with the Agreement is premature and invalid.” Also, it emphasised “the need for the Grantor to comply with the Agreement before it alleges non-compliance by another party”. Bi-Courtney declared: “We believe that a dispute has arisen which should have been resolved in accordance with the dispute resolution mechanism under Article 21 of the Agreement prior to the invocation of any termination clause. In the circumstance, we demand that the Dispute Resolution Board (“the board”) be set up, to determine the propriety or otherwise of your action under the Agreement.” Bi-Courtney listed its nominees to the Board.

    The company added: “Kindly appoint your nominees to the Board within 14 daysof your receipt of this letter. As you are aware, this should have been done earlier in the transaction.

    For the avoidance of doubt, we reiterate that your purported termination of the Concession is, according to law, invalid and should be discountenanced by relevant parties.” The report said: “But three years after, the Federal Government is yet to take action on the matter.”

    At the heart of the matter is the pivotal phrase “according to law”, which highlights the centrality of the rule of law. The simple point is that there can’t be rule of law without respect for the law; and there can’t be respect for the law without the rule of law.

    It is reassuring that the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), recently expressed the Federal Government’s concern concerning  the lingering litigation on the  Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Fashola was quoted as saying: “The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is a story of what investors don’t like. The FGN granted a concession to a private company (Company A) and later withdrew and cancelled it. The FGN then entered into a construction and financing agreement with another company (Company B). Company A went to court and got an order to cancel the financing agreement with Company B.”

    ”As things stand,” he continued, “work has been stopped on the construction of the road…Regrettably, while not going into the merits and demerits of the FGN’s cancellation of Company A’s “concession”, it sends a not-welcoming message to foreign investors if the decision was without basis or influenced by politics…”

    When all is said and done, the rule of law is the problem and the rule of law is the solution.

  • Mbaka’s transfer fuss

    Recent transfer of controversial priest of the Catholic Church, Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka to another parish should ordinarily have passed as a routine exercise. Bishops, from whom Catholic priests take orders, do regular posting of priests depending on the needs of their respective dioceses.

    Sometimes, priests are changed at quick intervals depending on the discretion of their superiors. Instances abound where priests have been deployed to new parishes or sent for further studies even before they have hardly settled down in their new places of work. That has been the pattern.

    But the posting of Fr. Mbaka from Christ the King parish, Enugu where he had established a flourishing ministry for over 15 years to nearby Our Lady’s parish, Emene seemed to have turned to something else. Not only have motives been imputed into the posting, the authority of the Catholic Church has been questioned by quarters that should ordinarily, not have any business with how it runs its domestic affairs.

    Mbaka did not help matters by the way he reacted to his posting. Not only was he overtly emotional, he gave the impression that he was being punished for whatever reasons. And that largely accounted for the controversy that enveloped his transfer. For the fiery priest who is not new to controversy, the transfer was ‘a calculated move to make him suffer’.

    He said, “I know I will suffer within now and a few months to come. I am going to suffer and suffer. I know that I am going to suffer because I have no place to put my head. I am going to suffer because I have no place to keep the Adoration Ministry’s assets”. These lamentations, signposting helplessness, have tended to convey the impression that there was something punitive in the transfer and that transfer of priests is not a routine thing within the Catholic Church.

    Apparently taking a cue from Mbaka’s emotional outburst, the South-east spokesman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Osita Okechukwu faulted the transfer, attributing it as punishment for his prophesy during the last elections that Buhari was going to win, which has come true. Not only did he attribute the transfer to external influences that brought pressure to bear on the bishop, he questioned the authority of the Catholic Church in the transfer which he curiously claimed will put Mbaka’s life and that of his flock at risk.

    “We do not wholly accept a situation where the church allows external forces to influence transfers as the Mbaka’s case suggests. We frown at anything which will put Fr. Mbaka in harm’s way or deny his flock healing”, Okechukwu said adding that his party was in solidarity with him.

    On account of these allegations, the Catholic Secretariat came out and clarified the transfer as a “normal church procedure”. Secretary General of the Secretariat, Rev. Fr. Ralph Madu said such ‘frivolities’ (accusations) have nothing to do with the posting. He said his posting should have been a privilege, and not a punishment and that the bishop has the right to post a priest wherever he feels his services will be more useful to the church.  And that says it all.

    The issue of punishment, security of the lives of Mbaka and his flock which Okechukwu sought to dramatize should not have arisen at all. Not from a quarter that has nothing to do with how priests and other worshippers live their lives. Beyond that, Okechukwu obviously crossed the line of his duty to have questioned the authority of the bishop to transfer a priest under him to where he feels his services will be most needed. Here, we are talking of other peoples religion; their faith. These are very sensitive and emotional issues that should not be mixed with politics.

    It would seem to me given the sensitivity of the matter, that the opinion expressed by Okechukwu should rather be seen as his personal views. Associating his party with such very sensitive and controversial statements that question the authority of the bishop is bound to offend the sensibilities of the Catholic faithful. Nobody needs to be told how volatile and fragile our society can be when it comes to the personal faith of some people.

    It is also curious he even embarked on the hazardous voyage of pontificating on the safety of the priest, that of his followers and the seeming hardship they are bound to face in seeking spiritual healing and assistance at Mbaka’s new place of posting. And if one may ask, on whose authority is Okechukwu dabbling into issues he knows little or nothing about; issues that fall within the purview of the church leadership?

    Before now, the distinction has been made between the ecclesiastical and corporeal realms. That was the major concern of early philosophers and their opinions have come to shape the relationship between modern states and the church. That relationship characterized by separation of the affairs of the church from that of the state was aptly captured by St Augustine in his famous allegory of the two cities- the city of God and earthly city.

    This pristine philosophical perspective came under assault in the hands of Okechukwu when he questioned the powers of the church to transfer one of its priests; to promote or demote priests.  At any rate, who is in a better position to assess the performances of a priest- his supervisor or some other interloper intent to score cheap political point?  Even at that, he has not helped the case of the fiery priest by associating his transfer with partisan politics.

    Beyond all this, Mbaka should take responsibility for the controversy that has trailed his transfer. It was indeed curious hearing a Catholic priest, a missionary for that matter, lamenting that he was going to suffer as he will not have a place to lay his head. It was strange to hear him talk about the problems he will encounter in preserving the property of his ministry which the Catholic Secretariat has described as his private affair.

    If one may ask, what remains of a Catholic priest or any priest for that matter if he is afraid of suffering? What is hardship, suffering or self-mortification to priests who have laid down their lives for the sake of the gospel? Did Our Lord Jesus Christ who they intercede on his behalf not pay the supreme sacrifice for the sake of humanity? For priests that take many vows including obedience, poverty and chastity; priests that abandon their parents, relations and all earthly things, what is there again in suffering that they should be afraid of? A priest that left all the things of the world to serve God better has no need to talk about or entertain any iota of fear about suffering. And what suffering is there in moving to another parish to re-enact that which endeared him to worshippers in his former place of assignment? These are some of the puzzles thrown up by Mbaka’s reaction to the posting.

    There are missionaries all over the world facing untold hardship including threat to their lives for the sake of spreading the word of God. And we talk of suffering in a routine transfer within the vicinity of the same Enugu metropolis. He should take his posting in good faith even if he does not feel good about it. The people of Emene would be very eager to receive and take care of his needs and he may find the place better than what he had imagined.

    But he must come to terms with the line that should exist between the Church and the State. He must begin to sieve the revelations and prophesies that come his way. It is obvious that his recent widely publicized prophesy that many people are planning to kill Buhari so that corruption and embezzlement will continue, is loaded with the frightening prospects of creating more problems for this country than it is intended to solve. He needs to apply more caution on how he conveys such sensitive revelations or prophesies in the future.

  • The marathon

    The marathon

    The race is not for the swift.” That proverbial wisdom of the great King Solomon came into play in the Lagos Marathon where young men and women had to sacrifice speed for distance. While Governor Akinwunmi Ambode set the athletic figures in motion last weekend, hardly did he know he confronted the nation with a figure of speech.

    Long distance, by its nature, calls for endurance, managing the borderline between athletic and lethargic. The opposite – the 100 metres race – inspires the fleet-footed, the blood afire, the eyes alert, the heart beating like the petulant wall clock. The first is an eagle, the latter a meteor. When Ambode was sworn in, he entered the position with the temperament of the long-distance runner. But he got badgered. The traffic. The crime. The chaos.  His accent. Anything.

    But patience outlasts. Now like a torch light through a fog, the path ahead is clear to many. The cacophony has subsided. Not out of a rush, but out of a methodical working of government. So we see that while one man spent N4.6 billion to placate priests under Jonathan, about the same sum gave Lagosians helicopters, cars, boats, motorcycles and automated gadgets. Result? Crime rate cascades, traffic sanitises, etc. Now Oshodi prefigures a modern 21st century park-and-ride. Road transport workers now bow to a republican ethos, rather than the old, manipulative barbarity. Roads are looking up; some dark alleys are lit up at night. The narrative continues.

    But the marathon that Lagos birthed beckons the national stage to a more intricate matter. Some are saying that law should give way to impunity. They are not saying it in that language but when some commentators are caviling at the courts for releasing Dasuki, they are ignoring the power of law in a democracy. Law is a slow grinder but, to paraphrase poet Longfellow, it grinds small.

    The debate is one of the few where you cannot question the nobility of both sides. Those who call for law want justice. Those who are impatient with the law want to punish the thieves of our patrimony. The war on corruption has revved up the rage in the streets. But it is still a muffled indignation. The Naira figures were stunning, but as billions top billions, we are losing our capacity for shock.

    For many Nigerians, there is no need to try these men. Just jail them. Former Chief of General Staff under Babangida made a public comedy when a business titan was being tried. “We are going to jail him,” he announced in a press conference. His media adviser, Nduka Irabor, crouched towards his ears and noted that he needed to be tried first. In an apparent deference to the advice, Augustus Aikhomu bellowed, “Yes, we shall try him and jail him.” Under the military, it was a laugh act. Impunity bustled in their veins. Even then, we realised the folly.

    It seems this is what some are calling for. I have wondered over DasukiGate. Have we heard from Dasuki? What if Dasuki merely acted on instruction, and what are the details of instructions? Do we convict without being convinced? The worry of many is the corruption of the courts and our lordships. But there is a double standard here among many Nigerians. The courts have not been innocent for a long time. Some are calling of mass action in place of the law. They have stopped short of saying it, reflecting the impotence or lack of rigour of their ideas. They seem to say “we want the law, but the law cannot work.” Is that not a recourse to impunity?

    This brings to mind the new sorry tales coming out of Ekiti polls. New revelations from Tope Aluko have not only reflected the failings of our electoral system, but also the shortcomings of our judiciary. More importantly, they show that many are in office who should have been in jail. The courts fail us. But the mob cannot replace the courts. Neither should official impunity. The Buhari administration was the product of law. It cannot overthrow that same process without enthroning hypocrisy. In a democracy, the quality of the law prospers on equality before the law. In an earlier article on this subject, I noted that only a movement against corruption can make the anti-corruption drive work. It is still a Buhari move, not a mass sentiment. If it is a mass sentiment, it is a muted and callow one at best. The people support Buhari, but they are not sure how to help him other than to encourage him to break the law. He said the judiciary is his headache. It has been the headache of this democracy for a long time.

    Those Marxists and civil society mavens who are angry with the law, should focus not on Buhari but the bench. They should encourage open disgrace of judges. We should also encourage mass protests against unpunished electoral criminals. The Ekiti elections that ousted Dr. Kayode Fayemi as governor ignited lines of prescience from then Lagos Governor and now three-in-one minister Babatunde Fashola, SAN. In his takeaways, he showed how imbecility is accepted as official result. He endured many flaks then. We all know better now that Fayose’s victory has been disgraced in public.

    That is the sort of society that emerges out of impunity. No society has prospered or even prospered for long on impunity. Even in the age of the divine rights of kings, the English under Oliver Cromwell led a revolt that led to a chain of events that brought England back to the full virtue of political liberties, especially after the Glorious Revolution. After the phony glory of Lenin’s coup, Russia grabbed Gorbachev’s coattail out of the impunity of almost a century. Putin is still harking back with agony. Chinese writer Mo Yan recounts the consequences of the Cultural Revolution in his excellent novel, The Garlic Ballads. Its economy groans today because it is at pains to open the country to the virtue of law instead of law and order.

    In the modern era, the First World War ended with the streets exploding with calls to punish the Germans till their “kids squeak.” The Versailles Treaty handled justice cavalierly. It led to the Second World War. The Nuremberg Trials redressed the mistake in the open with fair prosecution even though the world was witness to Nazi butchery. Apartheid ended in South Africa not by subjectivity but by subjection to the law. De Klerk was South Africa’s clerk of change by law.

    The answer is to organise mass movements against the judges and line up scapegoats. It should be carried out as an urgent matter for justice. All the civil rights gains in the United States were sown on the streets and media and reaped in the courts. The U.S. justices also resisted the change. But once the streets screamed, the courts yielded. That is the way of democracy. Buhari is coming round to this virtue even ahead of the irascibility of the ideologues. Witness the new draft laws he sent to the National Assembly.

    The looting of our treasury was massive, but justice must come with imagination. It is, like the work of Allan Sillitoe, the “loneliness of a long distance runner.” We need first to make the law work by holding the bench to account. I won’t ape Shakespeare who said: “The first thing we do. Let’s kill the lawyers.” We cannot do it in a hurry, however angry we are. A Yoruba proverb says, words are the key to unlocking mysteries. Governor Ambode gave us the figure of speech to recover all the outlandish figures and punish human figures who wronged us – the endurance of a marathon. As an African proverb says: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go fast, go together.” That’s how Americans succeeded in the Progressive Era in the turn of the 20th century. We also can. But the law alone, the bench alone, the president alone, the EFCC alone, cannot do it.

  • Flee enterprise

    Flee enterprise

    We all want freedom, but sometimes when the price is high, we justify servitude. A few western clerics in the slave trade era found portions of the Holy Bible to anoint an economic system that put whites and blacks apart, except when the blacks groaned under the whites.

    “When everyone is free, no one is free,” wrote Nicolo Machiavelli, who had no patience for liberty. The notion of freedom has come to play in our economy today. It was easier to define in the Goodluck Jonathan administration because our foreign reserve was robust with the price of oil cresting at $114 for a barrel. Nigerians were free to import as much as we wanted, from Ferrari to toothpicks. We could afford them. Oil dividends glittered in our pockets and lifestyle, although it was mainly the lifestyles of the rich, the footloose political class and their conniving business elite. Day after day, they are making headlines for the billions of Naira they stole in the Babylon the Great of the Jonathan era that has now fallen.

    Now the story is different. Nigerians cannot shop on the streets of London or Manhattan with the swagger of a few years back. Their ATM cards may not be honoured. Even their children schooling in the tony colleges and universities abroad are not attending classes because their parents cannot transfer funds. But that is not the only story. Investors are fuming. They cannot buy or sell, and they cannot import even materials they usually ferried into the country like clockwork.

    Now here is the grim story. Between June and December 2015, we spent over $180 million on BTA and PTA. The airlines gulped $584 million and school fees lapped up over $284 million. In 2014, the foreign reserves stood at $38.3 billion, while today it is about $28 billion.

    What this means is that our unending quest for toothpicks, flowers, shoes, textiles and even imported cowhide known as pomo, has placed extraordinary pressure on our currency and reserves. It is such that we demand about $4.6 billion monthly for foreign exchange, while we only cart in about $1 billion. If we continue this trend, we shall see our reserves dwindle until they crumble. When the price of oil soared, we had no such quandary about whether to import certain items or open our liberal doors.

    Now, the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Buhari administration decided to take a few measures. It was to place restrictions on foreign exchange. Many groaned and caviled, and proponents countered with the logic that it was time to rein in our appetite. The alternative: Look inwards.

    It has challenged our economists, especially as we see the value of the naira cascade so steeply that at the last check, the naira exchanged at the parallel market for over N300 to a dollar. Only a year ago, we wept when it exchanged for about NI65 to a dollar. In spite of this, the call for devaluation has hit the rafters. But the Buhari administration says no. Devaluation has its costs.

    Devaluation will make foreign purchases less attractive because they will be expensive. But it will fire up local inflation and create a social crisis of its own. Many will lose jobs, and those who cannot pay house rents might look glumly into the streets. The scenario appalls the conscience. Devaluation does not also guarantee that we shall rake in enough foreign exchange to shore the present deficit. Countries that work its monetary policies with such confidence do so with the backing of a buoyant economy. But here we rely predominantly on oil for foreign reserves and the price of oil hovers around $30 a barrel.

    What this means is that the market is not free even for the rich anymore. If it has not been for the poor, it is even worse now. If we have to buoy our foreign reserves, we have to run a productive economy. We have not been doing. We had oil to thank for that.

    The CBN reversed its measures under pressures and allowed the old regime of allowing our companies and individuals buy forex and send them abroad. But it still has its problems. We cannot sell when there is no dollar backing, and we cannot buy for the same reason. As Isaiah says in the Bible, “as it is with the seller, so it is with the buyer, as with the lender, so with the borrower.”

    The danger is that we shall have to look inwards. For starters, the refineries ought to be revived locally. In the aftermath of the fuel subsidy riots in 2012, the Jonathan government promised what it called ‘greenfield refineries.” A nifty phrase.

    But we had neither green fields nor refineries. Now, importation of refined fuel consumes 40 per cent of our foreign exchange earnings. If we want to free our economy, it is not from foreigners or the west; it is from our greed and lack of planning.

    The only way to boost the economy is to focus on what is termed comparative advantage. Already reports have it that the locals have stepped up the output of eggs, rice and other poultry products basically because imports of some items have been discontinued because they endanger our health. Before they arrive here, some of the imported rice is stored in Asian warehouse for years and the poultry products are preserved with the same chemicals used to keep corpses from disintegrating.

    The CBN has to keep our foreign reserves from falling, and its quandary between allowing the foreign market to reign or rein in our excesses can only grow.

    The world economy is not showing any promise. The U.S. economy stopped bleeding, but its recovery has not led to individual prosperity, and it is the same in Europe. China’s inability to match internal consumption with a sunny endogenous profile has led to negative growth with its reverberations around the world, including Nigeria. We need a Nigerian economy, and that comes when we rely more inwards for what we need than outside.

    The irony of globalisation, according to political scientists, is that it has made nationalism more potent. A globalised economy works when a nation prospers within the rubric of laissez- faire. We have to make internal productivity work for us by stressing our areas of strength. The Buhari government’s talks up agriculture but we are still waiting for its blueprint or vision. America and Europe developed theirs. They even over-produce. The U.S. pays farmers not to produce. In our agriculture belt around Benue State, we record phenomenal losses in yams, plantains, tomatoes, onions, etc, because what the farmers produce, they never sell. Yet we import them. Recently, newspapers reported that we import tomato paste worth billions of Naira yearly. Shall we say we have free enterprise? No, we have chaos. By our conduct, we are saying, “flee enterprise.”

    It is not free enterprise for the local egg farmer when “killer” eggs are imported to overwhelm nutritious local alternative. When between 2005 and 2015, the nation’s import rose from N148 billion to N917 billion, it is not free enterprise for the locals. It is greed. That is why our forex policy is problematic.

    Seventy cheers to Uncle Joe

    There are many unsung Nigerians who have over the course of their lifetime done good to their nation. One of such men is Joseph Agbro who turns 70 Tuesday. He has served as an entrepreneur and worked even in the entrails of Nigerian politics and in the swaggering world of public relations. He has lived in the North, West and Niger Delta, and his cosmopolitan virtues compel emulation.

    He has been a fan and critique of In Touch, often holding a point of view that contradicts my more frontal style. We have squared a number of time, and I have benefited from his more quiet suggestions of restraint. His restraint sometimes passes as passivity for me, but it is always heartfelt, and that does not stop him. He is on the right, I am on the left, and I defer always to his wisdom, even when my more assertive impulse resists. Many more years on earth, Uncle Joe.

  • A minister’s tirade on media

    Two top officials of the Buhari regime had cause last week to appraise the role of the media in the current war against corruption. The leadership of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, which visited Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir David Lawal, was told of the major role of the media in ensuring the success of the war against corruption even as he urged them not to be used as a tool to discredit the campaign.

    At a different forum, Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed who had been holding interactive sessions with a broad spectrum of the media to solicit support for the graft war, must have shocked his audience when he said corruption was fighting back through the media. Hear him: “Well I can tell you that corruption is already fighting back and it is fighting dirty. Sponsored articles have started to appear in the newspapers and in the social media. ‘Talking Heads’ have started making the rounds in the electronic media, all deriding the fight against corruption and the government”

    The minister further underscored the seriousness of the allegation when he vowed that no amount of media or other attacks by pseudo-analysts or hack writers will stop the train of the anti-corruption fight.

    Mohammed is entitled to his views on the motive and driving objective of the articles and comments which he considers inimical to the corruption crusade. It is not out of place for the accused, some other vested interests and all those scared that the war could still get at their doorsteps to take measures including the most ignoble to weaken the momentum of the fight. It is also within the run of events that those accused will have their own perspectives of the matter which they are entitled to push forth through any means available to them including the media.

    No doubt, a campaign against corruption of the magnitude that has been embarked upon by the government is bound to stir up controversy. It cannot be expected to do any less. Opinions and perceptions are also bound to differ depending on how the public sees the prosecution of the war. All these are irreducible decimals in a democracy that guarantees the fundamental rights of the citizens.

    It is therefore vital that in the fight against corruption, the inalienable rights of the citizens to freedom of expression are neither trampled upon nor abridged under the guise of specious allegations. Those who harbour contrary views on the direction of the campaign must not be blackmailed into abandoning them by a government that just rode to power through opposition. One only hopes this is not another attempt to muzzle dissent. But, it is one thing to allege that vested interests are fighting back to scuttle the overall success of the war and a different kettle of fish to find in the media, a willing tool for such unpatriotic undertaking.

    There are fundamental flaws in such a mindset. The first is the assumption that the media can easily be corrupted to scuttle the war against graft. Its corollary is that any or every article or opinion which in the views of the minister is critical of the war, is sponsored and therefore an evidence of corruption fighting back. If this point is stretched further, it could be misconstrued that all those who express reservations on the direction of the current war are motivated by pecuniary considerations.

    That would amount to a sweeping and uncharitable allegation; a big insult on the credibility of writers. For, it conveys the annoying impression that commentators and writers are that cheap; not propelled by their conscience when they express opinions on some of the deficits of the corruption campaign.

    There is also the inherently faulty assumption that the media is the only institution that can be so compromised and deployed by corruption to fight back. This is not borne out by extant realities. In verity, there is a surfeit of other institutional mechanisms that could be deployed to compromise the war. It is not the media that are responsible for the long delays in prosecuting offenders (some of them former governors) for about eight years now. Neither are they liable for the corruption that is still going on now in high and low places nor responsible for the fight corruption staged during the last governorship election in Bayelsa State.  So why single them out for selective attack even when they are being cajoled by the same government for support in the fight? One finds in this, a contradiction of sorts. Or is the allegation meant to intimidate the media to do the bidding of the government in convicting the accused outside the laws of the land or cover up allegations of bias?

     The other assumption is that any and every article that does not tally with what the government considers favourable to the corruption war is an evidence of corruption fighting back. If it is that easy to corner the media to do the bidding of the highest payer, the minister would have been in a better position to achieve that after his series of interactions with a broad spectrum of key media men and women. After all, the government’s financial chest is much larger than that of all those who are being prosecuted for one infraction or the other put together.

    If after such interactions we still find a residue of opinions on what needed to be fine tuned for the war to command wider acceptability, the inevitable conclusion is that there are more to such opinions than corruption seeking to fight back. That is the reality the minister has to face and very squarely too. We now face the danger of reducing the media to a victim in the chessboard of the war against corruption more so, given the deleterious consequences such banal profiling will impose in the performance of their duties of keeping the government in check. We may inadvertently be clearing the way for anarchy or the dictatorship the minister alluded to.

    There is the more grave risk of such labelling blackmailing writers to the point of inability to comment freely. If you argue that it is wrong to fight the corruption war outside the laws of the country, you stand accused of aiding corruption to fight back. Corruption is fighting back when the inherent dangers of convicting the accused in the court of public opinion or issues of double standards are raised.

    It is also corruption at war when you question why some of the accused were allowed to go home after refunding some money while others who were granted bail by the courts are being denied freedom. And the government comes out boldly to endorse such. I guess it was corruption spoiling for skirmish when the minister had the effrontery to ask “What are we even talking about. Is the human rights of the 55 persons more important than the human rights of 170 million Nigerians”, in answer to reporter’s question on the alleged looting of N1.34 trillion between 2006-2013. Yet, it is a legal principle that it is better to set free 100 accused persons than convict one innocent person.

    One would have been recruited to scuttle the corruption war if you pointed out that the current war as desirable as it is, is limited in scope and therefore its overall success ratio is bound to be circumscribed. It is constrained by the fact that it targets the symptoms and not the roots of corruption. It fights corruption after the offence has been committed to the neglect of the systemic dysfunctions that propel, sustain and reinforce the malfeasance. We may succeed in jailing some corrupt people, recover some funds and send fear to future offenders. But all this would still fall below what is required to holistically and permanently wrestle the endemic cankerworm to the ground.

    Fighting the manifestations of corruption rather than its root causes will have no answer to the moral dissonance between the civic public and the primordial realm. It will prove inherently deficient in explaining why those who leave public offices poor are derided by members of their primordial attachment while the smart ones who helped themselves are hailed. It will neither account for, nor sufficiently address the do- or-die politics that has become part of our political culture. Nor will it provide permanent remedy to that which activates bitter competition among the dominant groups to control the resources at the centre. These are the real issues. The appropriate therapeutic response to corruption will be one that is multi-dimensional; targeting attitudinal and value change through a total overhaul of this country structurally.

  • A question of image

    IRONICALLY, the more evidence that the power of PR will not always work for power, the more the powerful seem to depend on it to work wonders. Interestingly, the testimony of a publicity specialist on January 28 during the trial of the beleaguered spokesman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh, at the Federal High Court, Abuja, gave further insight into how PR can be made powerless.

    Metuh has questions to answer in court on alleged fraud concerning  N400 million that he received from the Office of the National Security Adviser in November 2014; and on alleged money laundering involving $2 million.

    The Managing Director of a Lagos-based public relations company – CMC Connect – Mr. Yomi Badejo-Okusanya, who was a prosecution witness, said he got a publicity job from Metuh. Badejo-Okusanya told the court that his firm was engaged to develop and execute a media campaign to promote ex-President Goodluck Jonathan who was at the time pursuing a second-term dream. The witness said he was paid N77.5 million through Metuh’s firm, Destra Investments Limited, in December 2014, and that he began work towards the end of the month.

     ”The first part of the work was to get Nigerians to appreciate the roles of the military in the fight against Boko Haram, in general, insurgency,” Badejo-Okusanya said. He continued: “This was leading up to the Armed Forces Remembrance Day and we had insertions in newspapers, such as This Day, The Guardian, Punch, Vanguard, Daily Trust, Leadership and Sun…Thereafter, this was leading up to the Christmas season, so we had a campaign on TV stations wishing Nigerians Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We had it on Channels, AIT, Silverbird and NTA.”

    In addition, he said: “We also wrote materials, which we titled: ‘FACTS Speak’. The essence of this was to draw attention to some achievements of the PDP. We also did a series of other materials which ran into January, 2015.”

    At the time these promotional activities were being carried out, many Nigerians wondered about the wonders they were supposed to achieve for an administration that was a wonderful failure.

     How did Badejo-Okunsanya get this job? He attributed it to his expertise in “image positioning management” and his relationship with the PDP. He said: “The President asked me a couple of questions and I remember telling him that there was a disconnect between his government and the people. He seemed to take everything in good faith…” The question is: Did the communication consultant honestly think he could communicate success, and successfully contradict the demonstrable reality of failure?

    When there is a cosmic disconnect between the people and the government of the day, how much success can PR achieve in connecting the disconnected? Of course, this is not necessarily the same thing as reconnection, especially when there was never any connection.

    There is no doubt that the Jonathan presidency was out of touch with the public pulse and paid for it. The administration learned the hard way that image laundering is not the same thing as image management.

    Badejo-Okusanya’s account in a way replayed the 2014 controversy about the Jonathan administration’s contract with an American communications firm to cosmeticise its performance. At the time, Levick Strategic Communications was hired to employ its public relations expertise to make the Jonathan government smell like roses.  For the initial one-year deal, Levick was to be paid $100,000 monthly (almost N16 million at the time) as professional fees.

    On the scale of absurdity, the public relations goal of earning public respect for the Jonathan administration was extremely ridiculous.    For the avoidance of doubt, truth-based PR cannot deny actualities, or erase them; and the actuality of Jonathan’s governmental failure was undeniable and unerasable.

     There is an elementary lesson provided by bestselling authors and PR strategists Al and Laura Ries in their insightful 2002 book, The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, which is instructive in appreciating the fundamental flaw in Jonathan’s media campaigns. Central to successful PR, the experts argue, is the idea that “publicity possibilities” should be fully exploited. In Jonathan’s case, where were the “publicity possibilities” that the administration could effectively take advantage of?

    Relevant to Jonathan’s image are two celebratory international awards given to him recently, when the recipient is not considered award-worthy at home.  He was decorated as 2015 International Person of the Year by African Sun Times. After receiving the award, Jonathan said: “In 2015, despite challenges, we held violence-free elections that transferred power from one political party to another and from an incumbent to the opposition, without rancour, bitterness or strife.”  Correction: But there was so much rancour, bitterness and strife; it was a huge relief to many that the country didn’t explode.

    Jonathan continued: “In the process, we proved that nobody’s political ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian or any national of any country for that matter. That, to me, is a most worthy testimonial of the character of the Nigeria nation and the resilience of our people, which is why I dedicate the honour to them.” The majority of Nigerians would most probably dissociate themselves from Jonathan’s so-called honour simply because it is dishonourable.

    Then Jonathan was adorned with the President’s Award by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an African-American civil rights organisation based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Interestingly, Jonathan was recognised for his leadership in human rights, social justice and the universal fight for freedom.

    Jonathan’s response: “I thank Dr. Charles Steele Jr, President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, and the executive of the SCLC for honouring me…It was also a pleasure to meet Naomi King, the sister of the late American Civil Rights leader and founder of the SCLC, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, who was kind enough to attend the event and identify with the goals and aspirations of the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation. By this award, I am further inspired to continue to work for the advancement of democracy, peace and progress in Nigeria and Africa.”

      Jonathan’s track record as president contradicts the suggestion that he worked for the advancement of democracy, peace and progress. It takes more than self-preservation projected as self-sacrifice to be worthy of such credit.  So he cannot talk about continuance.

    If considering Jonathan worthy of awards and giving him awards can be interpreted as a continuation of the image laundering project, the public should perhaps expect more of such stunts.

    Now that the public has witnessed how poorly PR can work for a change-resistant government that didn’t work, President Muhammadu Buhari’s change-based administration will need to show how well PR can work when the government is working.

  • Corruption of conscience

    How much of it was extravagant exaggeration when Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Acting Chairman Ibrahim Mustafa Magu spoke against corruption in the boardroom of The Nation on January 20?

    “The impunity is too much,” he declared. Then he painted a picture of personal pain. He said:”Sometimes I shed tears in the morning before I go to the office. It is just unbelievable; the rot is terrible.”

    When the arrowhead of the anti-corruption agency is overwhelmed to the point of tears by the sheer scale of confirmable corruption, it is a telling statement about the place of conscience in the anti-corruption war. The fight against corruption is ultimately a fight for conscience.

    It is a corroboration of the conscience dimension of the anti-corruption battle that Magu said: ‘We need to let people know that corruption is bad because some people don’t seem to know.” He continued: “What I am saying is that people who know they have stolen our commonwealth should bring it back…They have taken our money and are bold enough to say they are not going to return it. The money belongs to the people; they should return the money quietly; let there be voluntary compliance. Let them voluntarily come out to say ‘this is what I have stolen’ and the government will take it. I think that is the best thing to do.”

    There are concrete consequences when conscience is corrupted by corruption. The established mind-boggling official corruption in politically powerful places during the Goodluck Jonathan presidential era prompts a reflection on the possible connection between corruption status and conscience status.

    At the core of the corruption complication is a failure of conscience. But what is conscience?  The simple idea of a sense of right and wrong can be complicated by the complexities of perception and perspective. But conscience is more than a concept; it is a confirmation of humanity. More corruption suggests less conscience; and more conscience should suggest less corruption.

    It is very likely that the corrupt politicians and their ilk who are responsible for the country’s present plight are ethically challenged, which is a way of saying they probably have a deficient conscience. Pauperisation of the people cannot be an act of conscience.

    Political governance should be concerned with the operation of “the Greatest Happiness Principle.” There is no doubt that the ethical principle of working for “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”,   promoted by Jeremy Bentham in his 1776 book, A Fragment on Government, is eternally relevant in the context of politics in particular. It is lamentable that individuals in the structures of power robbed the country blind, and demonstrably trivialised this pivotal principle.

    It is noteworthy that the EFFC chief described corruption as “deliberate and calculated wickedness” against the country’s existence, meaning against the people. To appreciate the comprehensiveness of this wickedness, it is useful to consider the definition of poverty by the United Nations and its deep political dimension: “Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity.”

    For a picture of the political element, the World Bank’s definition is clarifying: “Poverty is an income level below some minimum level necessary to meet basic needs. This minimum level is usually called the “poverty line”. What is necessary to satisfy basic needs varies across time and societies. Therefore, poverty lines vary in time and place, and each country uses lines which are appropriate to its level of development, societal norms and values. But the content of the needs is more or less the same everywhere.”

    The institution continued: “Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom.”

    This clarity should clear any doubt about governmental responsibility when the issue is the correction of poverty. Clearly, the poor deserve opportunities that would raise them above penury, and the provision of an enabling environment should be a major purpose of political power.

    Corruption is not corrective and cannot correct poverty and underdevelopment. Evidence that corruption is “a denial of choices and opportunities” resulting in underdevelopment was highlighted by Prof. Yemi Osinbajo before his election as Vice President last year. He showed the country’s pathetic level of development in a lecture he delivered in Lagos to mark the 73rd birthday of the General Overseer, Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye.

    In his talk titled “Harmonising virtues to gain heaven and earthly prosperity,” Osinbajo said: “Our challenges are poverty – 112 million extremely poor despite being the largest economy in Africa. We are one of 33 of the poorest countries in the world; infant mortality – 3.9 million children have died between 2009 and 2014; maternal mortality – 55, 000 women die every year; diarrheal diseases – 110,000 yearly deaths; literacy – 10.4 million children out of school; 80 per cent graduates jobless; corruption; missing funds – N2.6 trillion NNPC petroleum subsidy scam; $7 billion kerosene subsidy scam; $1 billion missing excess crude fund; 400,000 barrels of oil stolen everyday…”

    Of relevance is the observation by the World Bank President Jim Yong Kim that Nigeria is among the top five countries with the largest number of the poor. Scandalously, the country ranks third on this unflattering list behind India (with 33 percent of the world’s poor) and China (13 percent). With 7 percent of the “wretched of the earth”, the country is ahead of Bangladesh (6 percent) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (5 percent). Together these countries are home to nearly 760 million impoverished people. It is easy to see the role of corruption in Nigeria’s tragically disappointing poverty ranking, which is ironic and inexcusable for an oil-rich country.

    In the country, corruption-related news here and there not only illustrates the fashion of corruption but also the failure of containment. When official corruption becomes fashionable, it is a corruption of fashion that should be made unfashionable. In the final analysis, the question is: How did conscience become inconsequential to the corrupt?

     

  • Corruption war: Legal vs. moral issues

    The nexus between law and morality was a major concern of medieval philosophers. Natural law theorists held that there is an essential connection between law and morality. St Thomas Aquinas called laws (without moral content) a “perversion of law”, thus, the maxim that an unjust law is not a true law.

    But the positivists emphasized separation between the two. For them, law is man-made or posited by the legislature and until duly enacted laws are changed, they remain law and should be obeyed. Hans Kelsen captured the main thesis of this school succinctly when he posited that there is no necessary connection between law and morals, and that law does not require moral validation to be legitimate.

    There are other variants of these arguments. But suffice it to say that every piece of legislation is based on society’s idea of what is good or bad. Because law springs from a system of beliefs, mores and values, every law is an instance of legislating morality.

    This distinction is relevant in handling some of the complications thrown up by the current fight against corruption in the country. This is more so, given some of the issues raised by the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed regarding public response to the war. In his attempt to further drum up public support for the war, the minister had revealed a shocking figure of N1.34 trillion allegedly stolen by 55 Nigerians within a period of just eight years (2006-2013).

    A cursory breakdown of this figure showed some former governors made away with N146.84 billion while 12 former public servants (state and federal) siphoned N14 billion. But a huge chunk of this sum, N524 billion was allegedly carted away by eight people in the banking sector even as 11 businessmen made away with N653 billion. Mohammed, in an effort to stir up and garner public sympathy, went further to show how much progress (development wise) the nation would have recorded were these monies deployed for public good.

    He was however disappointed that instead of the “national outrage” which such looting spree should have attracted, “all we hear are these nonsensical statements that the government is fighting only the opposition or that the government is engaging in vendetta”. He wants Nigerians to “own” the war because if they fail to cooperate with Buhari in the fight, corruption will kill the country.

    Apart from the huge amount alleged to have been looted, one other significant fact from the data breakdown is that a huge percentage of the looted fund was in the private sector. Eleven businessmen and eight people in the banking sector allegedly cornered N653 billion and N524 billion respectively. Its logical corollary is the pervasiveness of corruption in our national life. And this is fundamental to the overall success or lack of it in the fight against the malfeasance.

    Mohammed is within his rights to seek the support and cooperation of Nigerians in the fight against corruption. No doubt, one of the greatest problems standing against the development of this country has been the unbridled looting of our collective patrimony by sundry buccaneers disguised as leaders. The rancorous and deadly politics we have seen on these shores bears positive correlation with this.

    The damage corruption has wrought on the national economy has long been recognized. That the social malaise must be stamped out before this country can record any meaningful progress has also not been in doubt. What has been lacking has been the matching political will on the part of the leadership to wrestle the cankerworm to the ground. In effect, it is the governments that have overtime, failed to show the lead in this delicate but very crucial war.

    Given the foregoing, any government that is seen to be on the right path to tackling this social malaise, should ordinarily, take the support of ordinary citizens for granted. This is because the burden of the looting spree to service the gluttonous predilections of a few is largely borne by the poor. So the minister was within his rights to sensitize the public to the monumental corruption that goes on in our public life. That much can be conceded him.

    But the way he spoke, gave him out as someone in panic. He could not hide his frustrations on the waning public support for the war which the current regime has declared against corruption. That he felt so disappointed and had to lampoon the public for not rising up in utter outrage against the mindboggling looting revelations of the past are indicative of one or two things.

    It is either the public is not enthused by the direction of the war; not sure it will achieve the desired objective or nurses the feeling that its underlining goals are less than ennobling. Whichever the case, it is certain there is public skepticism and ambivalence to the overall objective of the war. That may account for why Mohammed is not witnessing the kind of public outrage which in his calculations, the bandied figures would have elicited.

    In its stead, public temperament weighs in the direction that the war is largely targeted against political foes and therefore aimed at settling scores. They want it to cut across party lines because they know our leaders are corrupt despite whatever political party banner they now fly. That is the real issue which only those prosecuting the war can redress.

    If that is the feedback the government gets from the war, the right approach is to take corrective measures to shore up public confidence in its course of action. The war must be seen to be targeted at all those who put their hands in the public till. And they cut across party lines, ethnicity and religion. The crusade must also be in keeping with extant laws of this country. Under the nation’s criminal justice system, an accused is presumed innocent until proven otherwise.

    It is this cardinal principle of criminal justice that is bound to suffer irretrievably if the public buys into the unrestrained outrage Mohammed is soliciting even when the accused persons are yet to be tried and convicted. Public interest or morals have already been captured by the framers of our criminal laws when they presumed the accused innocent until proven guilty. Simulating public outrage or asking the public to own the war is nothing but an invitation to mob justice and mass hysteria which consequences nobody can guarantee. It would amount to an invitation to self help or going outside the ambit of the law all in the name of fighting corruption. These are not permissible in a democratic setting replete with extant rules on the matter. It is important that this regime succeeds in the fight against corruption. But that success cannot be procured at the expense of the laws of the nation irrespective of the frustrations of the likes of Mohammed. It is an invitation to anarchy for the government or its agencies to embark on the hazardous trip of demonizing or convicting those in their custody in the bar of public opinion as the minister would want the public to do.

    The laws of the land under which the government and its agencies derive their powers to prosecute alleged offenders, also confer some protection on the accused and this must be respected. Those who blame the public for not rising in utter outrage against the accused or query why lawyers should stand in their defence are being hypocritical and should not be taken seriously.

    Beyond these however, the frustrations of the government are self inflicted. The overall success of the war hinges on their actions and inactions. If they have noticed waning public confidence in the fight, it is left to them to drive the battle in such a manner as to shore up public support for it. This can hardly be achieved when different rules are set for the accused persons. It cannot be helped by the festering impression that only in the cupboards of the opposition, there are skeletons of corruption.

  • ‘Karl Marx, He dead’

    ‘Karl Marx, He dead’

    I take the title of this essay from a passage in one of 20th century’s most controversial, if seminal, novels. Chinua Achebe called the author of Heart of Darkness “a thorough-going racist.” He might be right about Joseph Conrad. But Achebe ironically owes his inspiration from the Polish-born English novelist for his popular work, Things Fall Apart. Heart of Darkness paints Africa as the “night of first ages” famished for the civilising light of Europe. But the novel’s darkest creature is a white man, who milks and tyrannises over the Africans to enrich Europe with all its smug morality. His name is Kurtz, and he eventually dies of his own barbarous entrapment.

    One of his African victims gloatingly announces his passing in the memorable phrase: “Mistah Kurtz: He dead.” That phrase, with its many-layered meanings, haunted the American literary imagination about a century later. Critic Richard Gilman borrowed it when he panned the decline in the prowess of the playwright Tennessee Williams who could no longer match the sublimity of his earlier plays like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, Glass Menagerie, etc. Gilman titled his literary obituary of one of the best playwrights of the 20th century thus: “Mistuh Williams, He dead.” If Conrad’s Kurtz was real in fiction, Gilman’s Williams was unreal in non-fiction.

    Last weekend at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, I thought I inhaled a decomposing Karl Marx. It was during a fete for Professor Biodun Jeyifo at his 70th birthday. It was a two-day affair of intellectual fare, bonhomie, introspection and trips back into the past. It was a crowd of Marx disciples, from Governor Rauf Aregbesola, to Playwright Femi Osofisan, Arigbede, Femi Falana, Edwin Madunagu, Odia Ofeimun, Dipo Fashina. Of course, Professor Jeyifo, fondly called BJ, stands out as one of the most articulate of that tribe ever born. A few attendees like yours truly and Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi have been inoculated against Marx.

    But the BJ fete only revealed the unflagging zeal of the faithful. In one of the sessions, I titled my contribution, “BJ: A Marxist in a post Marxist world.” Of course, some of the panelists, including Ofeimun, objected, arguing that Marx was alive and well. But mine was still a tribute to BJ’s staying power. As a public intellectual he has tried to pursue his creed without cant or doctrinaire obsession. His column, first in The Guardian and now in The Nation, has continued to pursue his belief.

    But the crucial revelation of the weekend was the talk by Edwin Madunagu. He kept the audience spell-bound when he took his listeners back to the mid-1970s. It was a time when young Marxists formed a commune in a Southwest community. They made it a collective. Their goal was to ignite a revolution in Nigeria. They cast their lots together and formed common cause with the Agbekoya folks. These young men sacrificed their vital years brainstorming, plotting and living on spare resources. They had to surrender their earnings to the common pool, like the Christians in the Acts of the Apostles. Madunagu tells the story of how he was singled out as a mole, and he had to be held as prisoner to BJ as he was being investigated. He noted that so grave was the air that they had the means “in the next room” to end their lives. Madunagu, who turns 70 in May, still betrays that “babyish” innocence not only in his relationships but also in telling the tale of those boisterous years.

    His exculpation lay with his wife of about four months who was to answer questions confidentially in a form and it had to be sealed in an envelope. The wife, who was present at the telling last weekend, viewed with awe. She was learning of the import of what she wrote for the first time, according to Madunagu. The mathematician, who became a well-known columnist in the feisty days of The Guardian, said the collective eventually freed him of all charges.

    BJ who had been taciturn on this subject also confirmed Madunagu’s story and described himself as his warder. BJ narrated how the commune experience endangered their family lives. Tension bustled in his home with his African American wife who was puzzled at the comings and goings of BJ’s comrades. Once BJ told her that it was better she did not know much about them. One of the members, BJ noted, once asked the commune to dispose of his wife and children in order to free him for the revolutionary work. The commune cautioned him. Another member slept off in any of their brainstorming sessions unless the topic was how to overthrow the Nigerian state with arms struggle, beginning with the American ambassador.

    I told myself that this was one other reason why we should study our history in schools. Too many puzzles and mysteries. This story bears comparison with the pre-Menshevik, pre-Bolshevik Russia. The custodians of these vital narratives are in their hoary years, and no one has put down the ins and outs of this tale to enrich our self-knowledge as a people.  For the great things said about BJ, his prowess as a thinker, his ideological subtlety, his plebeian lifestyle, his passion and empathy as a teacher, the best authority on Soyinka, etc, what struck me most was his audacity as a man. Lean, tall, urbane and without airs, BJ’s revolutionary story was unknown to me other than his duels in ASUU, his leadership role in the left to enthrone an egalitarian society. But those were halcyon times in comparison with the risk they took. They might have been rounded up by the military and executed for treason.

    BJ himself said, with irony, that they did not expect to outlive 40. We need to know what stories inspired them. Did they also take something from the fervour of the American founding fathers? When the commune life came to an end, Madunagu told the villagers who asked for his forwarding address. He gave them his full name. It was then they asked, what Ijesha name was Madunagu? He had blended so irretrievably with the community. He spoke Yoruba like locals, ate their food, dressed like them. He was a perfect example of the death of alienation. The locals shed tears as he left town.

    As I told Kunle Ajibade, who paid a glowing tribute to BJ as a teacher, the risk of BJ and company recalled Soyinka’s third force exercise in the tempestuous hours before the civil war. I also thought their commune died just like Christian communalism in Aiyetoro, a sad narrative revisited recently by The Nation’s writer Seun Akioye. They, however, did not eat up their own flesh in the mould of William Golding’s chilling novel, The Lord of The Flies. But how did the commune end? What was their day-to-day life? Why did they have weapons with them? What pacts did they sign, if any? Etc. We need to know. Only a tome of a narrative can document this for history.

    So, for such a revolutionary as BJ, he must have watched with denial as communism fell. The 2008 economic crash brought Marx from the dead. Some young American Marxists found solace in a novel, Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel. For BJ though, he is no more the romantic of mass movement and the cliché the dictatorship of the proletariat. He is Marx the physician but not Marx the priest; Marx becomes a good tool for diagnosis. But the solution? No. Not because he does not believe it, but it is becoming less likely with the Trojan called capital. That is what I mean by denial. Playwright Eugene Ionesco once accused Jean Paul Sartre of silence over the Gulag in Russia. Raymond Aron, Sartre’s friend, and nemesis of Marxists, also said the famous Marxist philosopher and playwright acted as though Soviet invasion of Hungary did not happen. BJ’s is not denial as self-deceit or conceit, but as a realist. If you specialise in Soyinka and Achebe, you absorb something of their nuanced essences.

    At 70, still energetic, BJ is one of the great lights of his generation anywhere in the world. We still need him around.