In spite of the flurry of violence in the north and even its neighbour, Benue, the Plateau has been relatively quiescent. In the past few weeks, though, we have seen a few spasms of bloodshed. The security forces responded, but damages had been done. Lives were lost, and a sense of unease arose enough for Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau State to invoke security forces and community leaders to wake up from their slumbers. This is a call to pact. The community leaders across the state, including ethnic avatars and religious icons, all signed an agreement to keep the peace. This has accounted for the joy of silence the state has had under Lalong’s watch. But we still see foul rhythms of violence. Hence those who signed must ensure the state does not retreat to the pre-Lalong years. The state still longs for those days when Peter Igho filmed Cockcrow at Dawn on its scenic farms. The pact is a pact for the return of that halcyon time when cock crows at dawn.
Edo State governorship election has come and gone. But, its outcome denotes different things for different people.
President Buhari set the tone for credit appropriation when he commended the outcome of the election restating his “commitment to free and fair elections is firm, because without free and fair elections, the foundation of our political and moral authority will be weak.”
Toeing the same line, chairman of the Caretaker/ Extraordinary National Convention Planning Committee of the APC, Mai Mala Buni in his congratulatory message to the winner said the outcome represented victory for Nigeria’s democracy. He aligned the party with Buhari in affirming their commitment to free and fair elections in order to strengthen the foundations for political and moral authority.
But even as Obaseki considers his victory as the triumph of the peoples will as expressed at the ballot box, the significance of the election for him, rests squarely on the fact that it signalled the defeat and dismantling of godfatherism in the state’s body politic. In his own words, the verdict of the election has tamed and caged the lions, the tigers and behemoths of Edo politics.
So the trio somewhat scramble for some credit on the outcome of the election, ether from the prism of its largely free and fair outcome or the doggedness and determination of the voters to take their destiny in their hands. In some sense, all claimants are right. Victory they say has many friends both the real and the fake.
Buhari and the APC are at liberty to take credit for the successful outcome of the election. The language of political discourse prior to that contest overheated the political space such that genuine fears were nursed as to the prospects of extreme violence.
If the election had been marred by serious violence or failed integrity test in truly representing the expressed will of the people, the blame would have been heaped at the shoulders of the president and the ruling party. Now that all seemed to have gone well, it will be uncharitable to deny them the credit of savouring the success of that election irrespective of what their preferences would have been.
This is more so given that two days before that election, the president had in a statement by his media aide while restating commitment to free and fair polls said: “I want this commitment to be one of the legacies I will leave behind when I leave office”. Though he raised the hope of seeing higher democratic standards raised at every level, he added a caveat that these cannot be achieved when politicians resort to do-or-die tactics to gain power.
Ordinarily, these should come as heart-warming statements given the rancorous politics that has stunted development in all spheres of our national life. Yet, they must be taken with serious caution. Even as one is delighted by the president’s admission that the foundation of their moral and political authority is weakened by compromised elections, that rhetoric on its own may amount to little. To many, it is a worn out cliché full of sounds and sentiments but practically of little weight when the chips are down.
What should be of interest to Nigerians at this moment is the practical institutional steps and safeguards the president is taking to stave off the proclivity by rogue politicians to compromise the outcome of elections at each point. We recall that before the 2019 elections, the Eighth National Assembly unanimously passed the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2018 and sent same for presidential assent. That bill contained provisions that would ensure the credibility of elections.
It provided for the swift prosecution of election violence and vote-buying through the setting up of special courts for that purpose. It also made it mandatory for the use of card readers, on-the-spot live transmission of results and above all the imprisonment of any INEC staff that contravenes the Act. In sum, the bill had all that was needed to check sundry electoral infractions that had overtime compromised the electoral process on these shores. It contained all provisions to institute that legacy of credible elections which Buhari claims he wants to bequeath the nation before he leaves office.
Sadly, thrice the bill was sent to him for assent and thrice he refused to assent to it. The last time it was sent for his endorsement, it suffered serious delay only for him to come out belatedly citing time constraints and proximity to the 2019 elections as part of his reasons for refusing to assent to it.
Off course, the subsequent general elections were marred by serious infractions such that shook the confidence of the people in the continued relevance of elections in approximating the collective will of the electorate as expressed at the ballot box. In some states, it was a war situation as all manner of weapons were deployed by politicians and compromised security agencies to thwart the will of the people. It is not surprising that the 2019 election marked an embarrassing reversal of some of the gains previously recorded in the country’s electoral process.
It is a measure of loss of confidence in our electoral process that the United States of America, US imposed visa ban on some officials of this country for their ignoble roles during recent elections. The United Kingdom UK has even threatened to seize assets and prosecute such offenders under international law. And we are here still parroting the sanctity of free and fair elections as if it is a national anthem. There may not be much in visa restrictions. At any rate, must these officials travel out? But it is a verdict that all is not well with our electoral process and it must align to serious democratic standards or give way to other forms of governance framework.
It is now a year and four months Buhari was sworn into power. Nothing has yet been heard of that bill. And we are being treated to expressions of hope and precept rather than concrete examples. One would have expected Buhari to have gone beyond trite statements and take concrete and concerted steps in liaison with the National Assembly to rectify whatever defects there are in that bill and assent to it quam celerrime.
That will make better meaning. You cannot leave a legacy of free and fair elections without the necessary institutional framework to approximate it. As at now, there is nothing on ground except the deployment of security agencies in numbers that could even frighten and intimidate the voters. INEC officials and politicians are still their former selves. And the judiciary too! These are the things to contend with.
Buhari should go beyond what he hopes to bequeath the electoral process and initiate concrete action for us to see it happen. The electoral process is still largely porous with serous loopholes for manipulation. It is high time such gaps are plugged. The plethora of litigations after each election is a huge statement on the process. Ironically, this has come with some dangers as even those who clearly lost elections see the courts as another avenue to achieve through unwholesome means, what they failed to get through the ballot process.
Curiously, the judiciary has found itself entrapped in the same complex web that accentuates loss of confidence in the integrity of the electoral process. Some of its recent verdicts clearly failed the standard test of impartiality. We are witnesses to a candidate who trailed fourth in a governorship poll being declared winner by the Supreme Court even when the results used did not tally with INEC’s accredited voters for that election among other serious shortcomings.
That is a clear instance of the weakening of political and moral authority which Buhari talked about. It is a serious legitimacy challenge in which the judiciary should not be found complicit. The role of the judiciary has become a serious threat to democracy. Something urgent and serious must be done to extricate it from the ambush of desperate and influential persons seeking to thwart the will of the electorate.
Two recent convictions and sentences for blasphemy in Nigeria attracted public attention and public outrage. They illustrate the clash between Islamic law, also known as Sharia, and secular law; and show why the supremacy of the country’s secular constitution should be sacrosanct.
An Upper Sharia Court in Kano State, on August 10, found Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, 22, guilty of “insulting religious creed” based on a song he circulated via WhatsApp in March. The Islamic musician’s song was said to have elevated Senegalese Sheikh Ibrahim Niass of the Tijaniyyah Muslim sect above Prophet Muhammad.
The singer had gone into hiding, and protesters had burnt down his family house. The corps commander-general of the state Hisbah board, which is charged with the responsibility of enforcing Sharia, Dr Sani Ibn-Sina, said the organisation had stopped protesters that gathered at its headquarters from taking the law into their own hands.
Judge Khadi Aliyu Muhammad Kani, who sentenced the singer to death by hanging, said he could appeal against the verdict, which was based on Section 382 (6) of Kano State Sharia Penal Code Law 2000.
On the same day, in the same court, the same judge also sentenced 13-year-old Omar Farouq to 10 years in prison with hard labour for blasphemy. The boy was accused of making derogatory statements about Allah in a public argument. He was tried as an adult because he had attained puberty and had full responsibility under Islamic law. His mother was said to have fled from their home following a mob attack after his arrest.
After his conviction, Sharif-Aminu had 30 days to appeal against the death sentence but Sharia court officials were reported to have unjustifiably denied him access to his lawyers, and also unreasonably delayed in providing copies of the judgement needed to file an appeal.
Indeed, it was only on September 3, six days before September 9 when the period allowed for appeal would lapse, that media reports said he had been able to file a notice of appeal through his lawyer.
Importantly, Sharif-Aminu stated that his trial, conviction, and sentencing “were unconstitutional, null, void having grossly violated and conflicted with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999) as amended and having violated the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, respectively.”
Similarly, Farouq’s appeal was filed very close to the end of the period allowed for appeal, on September 7. The Foundation for Religious Freedom, which filed the appeal on his behalf, observed that the state government “failed, neglected and refused to provide him legal representation despite the existing framework for legal aid in Kano State.”
His appeal also raised the issue of constitutional conflict and rights violation highlighted in the singer’s appeal. UNICEF representative in Nigeria Peter Hawkins said the boy’s case “negates all core underlying principles of child rights and child justice that Nigeria – and by implication, Kano State – has signed on to.”
In both cases, though the convicts were allowed to appeal, they were not encouraged to do so. This means that they were expected to accept their convictions as flawless based on Islamic law. However, the convictions are flawed because they were based on Islamic law in a secular context. In other words, the Sharia-based convictions are questionable because they are inconsistent with Nigeria’s secularism.
It is disturbing that Kano State Governor Abdullahi Ganduje is enthusiastic about signing Sharif-Aminu’s death warrant, unconcerned about whether the convicted singer got a fair trial. Unmoved by the opposition to the controversial verdict in some quarters, and dismissive of the criticism that execution is an extreme penalty in the circumstances, Ganduje was quoted as saying, “What the court did is absolutely right.”
During a meeting with clerics at the government house in Kano, the governor declared self-righteously: “I will not waste time in signing the warrant for the execution of the man who blasphemed our holy prophet of Islam.”
The governor’s faith-based standpoint is out of place. His position demands more than robotic conformity. He is the governor of a secular state in a secular country. His enthusiasm about signing the Sharia-based death warrant calls into question his understanding of his position as a secular governor.
Ganduje, though a Muslim, is nevertheless expected to rise above religion in this matter, considering the country’s overriding secularism and constitutional provisions protecting rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion and expression.
This death sentence yet again raises fundamental issues about the operation of Sharia in a multi-religious but secular country such as Nigeria where the Islamic system of justice operates in 12 Muslim-majority states in the northern part of the country alongside a secular justice system.
Sharia has been controversial since its introduction in 1999. In 2002, for instance, Amina Lawal was sentenced to death by stoning under Sharia in Katsina State for conceiving a child out of wedlock. The conviction, condemned worldwide, was overturned by the Sharia Court of Appeal in 2004.
Also, one Abdulazeez Inyass, sentenced to death in Kano, in 2016, for blaspheming against Islam, is still on death row because executing a death penalty in Nigeria requires the approval of the state governor. It is curious that Governor Ganduje is eager to approve Sharif-Aminu’s execution but has not approved the death sentence in another case of blasphemy. In both cases, the death penalty is unacceptable.
It is noteworthy that the first execution under Sharia happened in Katsina State in 2002 when a man was hanged after pleading guilty to murdering a woman and her two children. It is significant that this was a murder case in which the accused accepted guilt.
Blasphemy is another matter entirely. Death sentence is an extreme penalty in such a case. Amnesty International observed that the death penalty for blasphemy under Sharia “violates Nigeria’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which restricts the use of the death penalty to the ‘most serious crimes’; which according to international law are crimes that involve intentional killing.”
The Kano authorities should not give the impression that Sharif-Aminu’s death sentence cannot be reviewed, or that it is irreversible. The same reasoning applies to Farouq. Imprisoning a 13-year-old boy for a decade with hard labour for blasphemy is an extreme punishment. Their convictions should not only be reviewed; their sentences should be reversed.
The Sharia question is unavoidable, and must be addressed. There should be no question about the country’s adherence to the principle of separation of the state from religious institutions, and the elevation of sectarianism above secularism should be discouraged.
Although federalism accommodates the distribution of power between a central authority and the constituent units, such an arrangement in Nigeria must not be at the expense of the country’s pivotal secularism.
Applying Sharia in a secular country demands that those responsible for applying it should be conscious of, and be guided by, the country’s overriding secularism.
It is a common aphorism in medical practice that the diagnosis of an ailment is half way to its cure. That should also hold sway for other ailments either of economic, political or social dimensions.
Curiously, this time cherished maxim has been of little help in addressing the challenges buffeting this unity in diversity called Nigeria. Even with considerable national consensus on the road to extricate the country from continuing drift, our leaders act as though they want these problems to linger.
We are sadly regaled with attempts by the authorities either to live in denial of subsisting realities or deliberately obfuscate them for some inexplicable considerations. This disposition has tended to convey the unmistakable impression that it is either they are far removed from the lot of those they rule or we are contending with the displacement of public goal with others of parochial and clannish hue. This curious tendency may account for why these problems have festered to the point of constituting potent threats to the collective wellbeing of the citizenry.
Nothing bears out this ruinous culture of denial or political rhetoric more eloquently than the reaction of federal functionaries to recent observations by Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo on the state of the country. Obasanjo had said Nigeria was fast drifting to a failed and badly divided state, and that economically our country is becoming a basket case and poverty capital of the world and socially firming up as an unwholesome and insecure country.
He further observed that “these manifestations are products of recent mismanagement of diversity and socio-economic development of the country, old fault lines that were disappearing have opened up in greater fissures and with drums of hatred, disintegration and separation”.
But the presidency in keeping to the tradition of defending the indefensible launched a vitriolic attack on him. They accused him of attempting to divide the country even as they claimed ‘Buhari continues to promote nation building and the unity of Nigeria’.
Did I hear that Buhari promotes nation building and Nigerian unity?
Is there anything in the statements of Obasanjo as reproduced above that amounts to an attempt to divide the country? Or put more succinctly, is there really anything in those statements that are not already in public domain? The answer to the latter is that Obasanjo said nothing new. All he said have been said before not only from within our shores but through the ratings of some international bodies.
He may have reinforced what is already within the public space because of his weight and influence. But they are nothing new. It is therefore uncharitable to label his intervention as an attempt to divide the country instead of a patriotic call to save it from the precipice into which it is inevitably headed. For, it is said that evil thrives where men of good conscience keep quite. Obasanjo may not qualify as that good man to some but he is undoubtedly, a man of conscience.
Whether one likes it or not, Obasanjo is fast assuming the place of the conscience of this country. He did it during the regime of Jonathan even going to the extreme of alleging that Jonathan was training snipers to eliminate opponents. Then, not many understood his intentions. It is increasingly dawning on us that he knew things that were to follow if things went a particular way. He was desperate to avert that foreboding outcome. Jonathan never read the signals correctly otherwise he would have done one or two things to avert that potent danger. He is at it again and his views should not be dismissed offhandedly.
What are the issues? He said Nigeria is fast drifting to a failed and badly divided state. Wikipedia defined a failed state as a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer functions properly. It went further to say that a state can also fail if the government loses its legitimacy even if it is performing its functions properly.
The question is whether Nigeria in her current circumstance properly fits into the above categorization? Before that question is answered, it will be helpful to take other views on the subject matter. In its 2019 Fragile States Index, a yearly report of the Washington DC-based think tank Fund for Peace, Nigeria ranked 14th most fragile state of the world and ninth in Africa out of the 178 countries surveyed.
These countries were assessed across 12 indicators of risks and vulnerability: security, group grievances, economic decline, brain drain, legitimacy/human rights, rule of law, demographic pressures, internally displaced persons and refugees. Challenges of insecurity, group grievances, economic decline and demographic pressures featured very prominently in Obasanjo’s observations. So also are issues of legitimacy and division.
Even then, the verdict on debilitating poverty had long been captured by the World Poverty Clock. It reported that Nigeria had overtaken India to become the country with the world’s highest number of people 87-million living in extreme poverty in comparison with India’s 73 million people. These indices had long been in the public space before Obasanjo spoke.
Of the other issues hinging on polarization along the fissures of the fault lines of the country’s federation, the evidence is overwhelmingly starring us on the face. The competition between the primordial realm and the civil public for the loyalty of the citizens has not only been reinforced but gained further momentum since the current administration. It is not only palpable from the upsurge in separatist agitations but has been given fillip by the criminal disregard to the key balancing processes without which a federation will lose relevance.
This is evident from extant appointments to the commanding heights of the military and paramilitary institutions that now seem an exclusive preserve of people from a section of the country. What can be more brazen than the assault on the federal character principle given the reality that both the chairman and the secretary are from the north contrary to extant tradition? If such a balancing institution can be subverted in such a manner, what else is left of its constitutional objective?
And someone was talking of Buhari promoting nation building and national unity. What nation and unity are we really talking about? Nigeria is yet to evolve as a nation as the process of nation building and the unity it forges, has been put on reverse gear through the actions and inactions of the current leadership. What we have is a country of a multiplicity of nations- about 380 of them. Sadly that constitutional provision for forging a common sense of national consciousness and identity among the disparate nations has been largely observed in its breach. Little wonder citizens still see themselves more from the prism of their ethnic identities than as Nigerians.
So when apologists of the government talk glibly of nation building, the feeling one gets is that either they are ignorant of the real context of the subject matter or they are merely expressing a hope that is at variance with facts on the ground. It was the expectation that with amalgamation of the country and independence, those who preside over its affairs would commence the process of nation building. That has failed to happen with Nigerians more divided today than ever before.
The fact that we are yet to perfect such a rudimentary thing as a fool-proof national identity card, says it all. Rather than nation building, fissiparous tendencies and loyalty to the composing nations have been the order of the day. This is clearly manifest from the current allure of regional security outfits. It is a reinforcement of confidence and trust in regional protection as opposed to that provided by the federal authority. It is a serious legitimacy issue.
Instead of living in denial of subsisting realities, the presidency must come to terms with the issues raised by Obasanjo. The challenges of insecurity, debilitating poverty, a convoluted and disjointed federal order and leadership actions constantly assailing the confidence of the constituents and reinforcing separatism are signposts of a failing state.
It takes a sense of honour to decide to leave a high public position simply because it is the honourable thing to do. Dr Wale Babalakin (SAN) demonstrated a sense of principle and a sense of honour by resigning as Pro-Chancellor of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) following his objection to the operation of the seven-member special visitation panel set up by the Federal Government to review the actions of the governing council under him.
The governing council had announced the removal of the vice chancellor, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, “based on investigation of serious acts of wrongdoing, gross misconduct, financial recklessness and abuse of office, ” and named Prof. Theophilus Omololu Soyombo as acting vice chancellor.
These actions were undone by the Federal Government in a statement on August 21 directing Babalakin and Ogundipe to “recuse themselves from official duties” pending the outcome of the panel’s probe.
The panel was to review the report of the council sub-committee on review of expenditure of the university since May 2017 and make appropriate recommendations after affording all those indicted an opportunity to defend themselves; examine the steps taken by the council leading to the removal of Ogundipe, and ascertain whether due process was followed as stipulated in the Universities (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) Act, 2003, and the principle of fair hearing adhered to; and determine whether the process (if any) leading to the appointment of Soyombo was consistent with the provisions of the enabling Act.
Also, it was to make appropriate recommendations including sanctions for all those found culpable by the special visitation team on the allegations contained in the report as well as other subsequent actions arising therefrom; and make any other recommendations that will assist the government to take decisions that will ensure peaceful, stable and effective administration of the university.
Babalakin’s letter of resignation to the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, dated September 15, was made public shortly after the visitation panel submitted its report to the minister on September 17. Adamu had said that the visitor of the university, President Muhammadu Buhari, “after due consideration of the report will take a decision on the matter as appropriate in order to restore peace and conducive learning atmosphere in the University of Lagos and the university system as a whole.”
It is food for thought that Babalakin did not wait for the visitor’s decision on the matter, saying in his resignation letter that he considered the panel “inappropriate for the assignment,” and had appeared before it “in protest” and only out of respect for the minister. According to him, the terms of reference of the visitation panel “clearly indicated to any discerning person” that it was “empanelled to exonerate the Vice-Chancellor and implicate the Pro-Chancellor.”
Importantly, Babalakin faulted the directive that he should recuse himself, and argued that asking Ogundipe also to recuse himself implied that he was still in office despite his removal by the governing council.
He listed the major reasons for Ogundipe’s removal: Corruption and financial recklessness; Forgery; Complicity in the collapse of the university library and planned cover up; Deliberate policy of wrongfully concealing information; Depriving the Faculties in the university of funds; Concealing and distorting finances of the Internally Generating Units of the university; Undermining the academic process and seeking to appoint a professor by fiat; Siphoning of the university’s funds through dubious contract awards; Undermining the office of the Registrar; Failure to follow due process in organising the university’s convocation ceremony; and Sponsoring or acquiescing in the unconstitutional actions of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Lagos chapter.
Apart from resigning as pro-chancellor of the university, a position he had occupied since May 2017, Babalakin also resigned as Chairman of the Federal Government Negotiation Team on the Agreement reached with university unions in 2009, a position he had occupied since January 2017.
Considering that his position as head of the negotiating team, which preceded his role as pro-chancellor, was not threatened, it is a reflection of his sense of honour that he chose to leave that position as well.
It is a testimony to his reputation for performance that he was considered suitable for these positions connected with the university system in Nigeria: Pro-Chancellor, University of Maiduguri (2009 – 2013); Chairman, Council of Pro-Chancellors of all Federal Universities (2009 – 2013); Chairman, Federal Government Implementation Team of the 2009 Agreement (2009 – 2013); Chairman, Federal Government Negotiation Team of the 2009 Agreement (from 2017); Pro-Chancellor, University of Lagos (from 2017).
Before the visitor’s intervention, and the investigation by the visitation panel, Babalakin had argued that, under the relevant Universities Act, the visitor had no role in the removal of vice chancellors, which he said was within the powers of the governing council.
Indeed, this is the crux of the matter. Ogundipe’s removal and Soyombo’s appointment, which the panel was set up to probe, “deal with the interpretation of the laws of the land,” Babalakin said in his resignation letter. “The appropriate forum to determine the laws of the land is a court of law or a judicial tribunal. It cannot be determined by academics of a different discipline no matter how distinguished. These terms of reference are ultra-vires the visitation panel as constituted,” he added.
This means that the panel’s report concerning the removal and appointment should not be expected to provide an authoritative guide on the interpretation of the relevant Act because it cannot do so. It also means that there is a need for an authoritative interpretation.
Initially, Ogundipe had gone to court to challenge his removal by the governing council, but later withdrew the case. A judicial interpretation may well be necessary to clarify the relevant Act.
It is thought-provoking that there is a disagreement on the interpretation of the Act on which the governing council under Babalakin based its removal of Ogundipe. Since there is such a fundamental disagreement, it is not enough to leave the interpretation of the Act to the visitation panel as constituted. Babalakin’s resignation highlighted the need for judicial clarification.
The point is that if there is no clarity regarding the powers of the governing council, the kind of crisis that necessitated this special visitation panel at UNILAG could recur in other federal universities.
The authorities should give serious consideration to Babalakin’s argument for a judicial tribunal to authoritatively interpret the Act and clarify the powers of the governing council. It is noteworthy that the Chancellor of the university, Alhaji Abubakar Ibn Umar Garbai Al Amin El-Kanemi, was quoted as saying in a letter addressed to the minister, that there were “too many vested interests in this matter, who are not approaching the issues objectively.”
Babalakin has chosen to “stand by principle” and “bow out in honour.” Should he have waited for President Buhari’s decision on the matter based on the visitation panel’s report? From the time the panel was set up, he has consistently maintained that it could not determine the questions of law and interpretation central to the matter. His resignation reflects his consistency, which should prompt a different approach to resolving the crisis.
SOMETIMES laws make us cavemen. Rather than civilise us, they make us barbarians. Even in suits and fancy couture, we act like men with painted faces and bleeding machetes. It is the surgery of the cavern that Governor Nasir El-Rufai has promulgated into policy by signing a law to castrate rapists. Castration casts us back to the Dark Age.
But he is not the first. Its John the Baptist is Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, who signed it into law much earlier. When it happened in Ekiti, I saw it as an activist aberration, and I believed it would not go far. Even that law gave an option of life imprisonment, which seemed to me like a sort of sublime cop-out.
In Kaduna State, the campaign started with the wife of the governor. She called for men’s algae to be cut off. The idea is deterrence. No man or boy over 14 years with lust for a woman’s sovereign pride should have a second chance at pleasure.
For a few years now, rape has stalked us as a nation like a savage beast in the dark. Boy against girl, pastor against adherent, father against daughter, teacher on pupil, brother at sister, Imam against follower. Incest, political impunity, familial bestiality, school perversion, adulterous ferocity, underage forays, murder in the cathedral. It has been as though the news of the day will not end without an offering of sexual predators.
On that score, this paper made the rape victim the person of the year. The nation is one sprawling land of erotic failures. Bedrooms swoon for the wrong reasons; so also classrooms, pulpits, uncompleted buildings, hospitals. Bare floors in offices. Markets on the quiet. The leafy security of roadside bushes.
These are animals on the rampage. Couched as men with libido on the run, they are wild men who think the nation is a tapestry of the wild. In school, a teacher pins down a child in a bathroom. A father enslaves a daughter and fertilises a grandchild in her womb. A politician strikes a young woman and even his governor is reluctant to unveil official rage. A university teacher blackmails a student to pay with her thrill. He forbids her cash in exchange for passion. A pastor eases from pray into play into prey. A hoodlum sullies a hijab.
Then there are the silences. The daughter who loves the father too much to squeal. The student too afraid to fail. The faithful who adores the pastor. The one who thinks herself guilty, who convicts herself as the seducer. The niece who thinks her mother will not believe her against her brother. We also have the patriarchal impulse of the age. Men make the laws. Men convict, and men acquit men. A phallic self-righteousness. A moral thunderclap.
The consequences are palpable. A girl’s supreme pride is punctured for life. No self-esteem. Pregnancy without fathers. Weddings cancelled for life, a life of scandal. A culture of impunity enshrined.
So, why not castrate them? Make them incapable! It seems an easy answer. The point is that it seems too easy an answer. It is a barbaric act to rape, to force a woman to give up her pride. If she does not consent to a man’s advances, he rapes her. When I was a student at the University of Toronto, female students habitually wore the label “No means no.” It was a line against men out of line. That was in a so-called civilised city.
But while the case in Ekiti State is bad enough for calling for a butcher’s knife, Kaduna smacks of hypocrisy. The law defines rape as sexual coercion, and that means whoever is involved in the union must consent. How do you make a girl of eight years or 10 or 13 a bride, and not call it rape? There are many men in El-Rufai’s Kaduna State who should appear, strip down and lie face up in the surgical room. They are men who married minors, who are sleeping with them as I write, who have imposed a biological distortion on the helpless nubile, who have burned them with VVF, and rendered them sexually meaningless for life. They cannot mate, or mother. They are maimed for life.
Those the law covers usually commit the offence once or twice. The child brides are kept in sexual servitude for life. The man says he loves them when the girl is not prepared both in flesh and heart to comprehend love as a concept or even marriage as an institution. The Nobel Prize-winning novel Lolita explores how a young girl can be debauched even in an western milieu. So with the Kaduna law, we condemn criminal rape, but celebrate institutional rape. We are birthing taxpayers and voters from rooms of perversion.
So, I call for the making of institutional eunuchs. Make all the men who have child brides to be knifed out of action. We shall have husband eunuchs. That is a more effective way of making respect for the female folk run deep in the culture. When in his play Twelfth Night, he says “Be you his eunuch, and your mute I will be,” he might be talking about what women might do quietly in marital beds.
No religion endorses sexual coercion. Consent is usual. When Salman Rushdie wrote Satanic Verses he hardly expected the backlash against a scene in which a eunuch stirs a brothel portrayed a parody of the prophet’s harems. The bible shows how the harem is a place only for eunuchs.
We cannot respect the woman until we respect the girl. That is at the bottom of the story. The threat to the chaste is not only the rake, but the law. If the law is savage, it cannot be above the society. Laws have for centuries canonised barbarism. Laws have loved caning even in modern times. We know that the guillotine did not end with the French. I raised a little hubbub in Colorado years ago when I wrote against the death penalty. I had spoken to the victim minutes before he expired.
To enact a barbaric law is to endorse a barbaric society. We cannot show that we are higher than the person we convict. That is the crux. When the law comes into effect, the butcher will not work only on cows and goats, but human abattoirs will now be built. We shall have genital dumpsites. Maybe ritualists will make deals with the surgeons. A new economy is born.
This is all dark comedy. It recalls a scene when a thieving governor who loved to cut the hands of thieves walked into President Obasanjo’s office. In a gallows’ grin, he said: “So, your hands have not been cut off?” It is the same hypocrisy that gave us the castration law. I want them to go to jail for life with hard labour. Castration is not good for our moral tone.
33 YEARS ON
I REMEMBER when Akwa Ibom was born 33 years ago, my editor at Newswatch Dan Agbese described the sound and after-sound of the name (not his words) as the splash of a stone on a pond. He described Kogi’s sound as tin drum. Many things have happened in that state, and the state has undergone many a manifestation over the decades.
Governors both military and civilians have taken charge. But the one who chaperons it today is a man who loves the chapel. When he is not having vigils in meetings to make roads or hospitals or keep the peace or keep Covid-19 at bay, he is in the vigil of his God, singing praises and praying. So, Governor Udom Emmanuel sees what he does as governor as a sort of sacrament of worship. For those who walk, he has done state-of-the-art dual-carriage ways linking the state and out of state. For those who are in the dark, he has set up a place to make meters and whole areas including the university to have light unbroken. For the hungry, he says they should have farms support and factories like the coconut and interest-free loans to poor farmers. To those on earth, Ibom Air takes them to the skies. To the sick, a first-class syringe factory in the African sub-region.
Akwa Ibom is no longer the baby it was when Agbese serenaded its birth. The people love the state; so do outsiders. If the voice of the people is the voice of God, their governor makes worship a way to please Akwa-Ibomites.
The Edo poll is igniting again why this essayist has never failed to campaign for the study of history. A pivotal year, or morning, in Benin history has snapped our attention like the crack of palm kernel in a homestead fire.
History is haunting the vote in Edo. The 1897 barbarism of the Englishman has come back in 2020. It was the Englishman who razed the palace, stole its precious art, and uprooted its sovereign to Calabar. It took the recent peace meeting of its debonair king, Oba Ewuare II, for the old wound to emit a septic stench.
But it is not 1897 alone that is walking the night like a ghost in Benin. It is also the 13th century, or as recently as 2016. So, two epochs of royal peacocks conjoin to rake up a republican rage. In 1897 was the raid on Benin, when a certain Captain James Phillips wanted the Oba of Benin Ovonramwen to yield the royal pride. He would not. A certain Agho Obaseki, who was supposed to be a loyal, betrayed his king and gave him away to the British, who chained him and took him away as exile. Obaseki, who already had wedded the deposed king’s daughter, wanted to be king. It took the civic uproar of the Bini people to thwart the coup of a man who was already made Iyase of Benin, an influential position. But Obaseki was like what the Igbos knew as warrant chiefs, except that in Igboland there were no kings. For close to two decades he ruled without reigning because he had sold his soul to the white colonialists.
In the end, he lost out and Eweka became king. But that has not stopped the animosity between the descendants of Agho Obaseki and the royal family. Godwin Obaseki, the present governor is the grandson of the subversive in-law of Ovonramwen.
The other story belongs to another prominent family in Bini known as the Ogiamien. They had in 2016 mounted a rebellion against the throne before the present Oba prevailed and became king. This is traced to a treaty signed with the forbears of the present king in a battle royale involving the humiliation of the Ogiemien. The ogiemien family, or some of them, feel a romantic longing for their past glory, and wanted to paint the lineage of the present king as tainted by the Oranmiyan blood.
The Ogiemein family recently endorsed Governor Obaseki, and this is seen in the palace as a defiance of the throne. More potently, it shows that Obaseki is finding common cause with the opponents of the Benin monarch.
In the past week, a certain article went viral attacking Oba Ewuare II for coming down on Philip Shuaibu over the deputy governor’s celebration of violence ahead of the polls. The article written in a pseudonym, Osaro Omoruyi, a generic Edo name, undermined the king and insinuated that the Governor had the power under the constitution to overthrow the oba and replace him. The writer invoked the recent fall of the emir of Kano and how the governor could not stop the tragedy. It was a royal threat and some Binis see it as impunity against the man on the throne.
This led to many in Edo State to ask who wrote the article. Since the piece shed its sympathy for the Edo State Governor, the APC campaign has charged the governor and his men as having masterminded the subversive and incendiary piece. The writer, conveniently writing from Canada, has not popped up with a face at the time of writing. He was a writer on the side of the governor without the courage to own up to his work. The Edo Governor’s men have said they have nothing to do with that poisonous pen. But it is now difficult for Governor Obaseki to dissociate himself from the piece, or even the sentiment expressed in it because of his association with another key enemy of the throne, the Ogiemien family, who have shown an open distaste for the present king.
Such an alliance of history betokens a sense of revenge. That is the fear of some watchers of the election trend. The speculation is that if Governor Obaseki wins on Sept 19, he will go into alliance with the Ogiemein and bring maelstrom to the Edo throne. The reference to his grandfather in the public discourse has unsettled Governor Obaseki. His grandfather is called “the traitor” by Benin historians. The Omoruyi glamorises him as a patriot. Agho Obaseki was also brushed as a quisling by playwrights and other chroniclers of the period. They are tying that trait to the Obaseki clan, including one of his uncles who reportedly undermined the stool. What Agho did to the throne, Godwin Obaseki is now doing to the governor’s seat. His opponents are echoing the Biblical refrain that providence is visiting the iniquity of the father upon the children. In this case, they say the malediction did not wait for the third and fourth generations. Whether republican or monarchical, they see the Obaseki soul as a Judas.
He became governor and has looked the other way from the man who helped him get there. That is the psychology portrait of the man and his grandfather, according to chroniclers of the Edo narrative. What he is doing to democracy, the story goes, Obaseki’s grandfather had done to monarchy.
How this will play in the election is not exactly clear. But many factors play into an election, and they mix. Political theorists have identified the three C’s of election: Candidate, culture and condition. Culture is at play here. At what percentage? But it shows how history can blindside an era. When the British invaded over a century ago, they made away with thousands of the people’s treasures now blooming in Museums in Britain, Germany, France and the United States. They stole them. There are campaigns to repatriate them. In Oxford University it generated a crisis. Some British citizens say they should loan them to Edo. What insult? You want to lend what you stole? And Governor Obaseki is quoted as working with them on that. He even accepts the idea of not returning them, asserting that they are ambassadors. It is what I call cultural surrender and neo-colonial servitude.
The issue of the Benin bronze and the play of atavistic malice recalls Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return, that the past will always come back.
In his treatise on politics, French philosopher Montesquieu noted the qualities associated with monarchy and republic. He said the main driver of the monarchy is honour. For the republic, it is virtue. But in a society like Edo where monarchy and republic cohabit, the republican should act with virtue to the monarch in order to earn honour. That is the burden on Governor Obaseki as he faces Edo people on Saturday.
He speaks for the country, and he spoke peace. In between Ghana and Nigeria, neighbours who duel and dwell together, war is never an option. Alienation will bear no fruit. So when both countries were at each other’s rhetorical throats, it seemed we were in an impasse. Foreign ministry jibed at foreign ministry. Spokesman threw barbs at spokesman. Both executives spat anger. The Ghanaian trader wanted peace to trade. The Nigerian merchant wanted a way to profit. Where was the way out?
Enter the Nigerian Speaker, Hon Femi Gbajabiamilla. He became not lawmaker, but peacemaker. He became ambassador, spokesman, negotiator, mollifier, shuttle diplomat, statesman, bridge maker. He became what prophet Isaiah called “the restorer of the breach.” He echoed Jesus Christ, who said “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.”
He has leveraged what he did recently by pulling the speakers of parliament across the continent as a platform to resolve conflicts and promote progress. He has certainly done well so far. He belongs to the legislative branch. The real work still belongs to the executive. Speaker Gbajabiamilla had President Buhari’s nod to pursue the peace.
He has started well but the foreign ministry and others in government will have to work with the speaker who has broken the ice for peace.
It takes a revolution to reverse a revolution. When then Governor Rauf Aregbesola revolutionised the education system in Osun State by introducing a 4-5-3-4 education policy not in line with the national education policy based on a 6-3-3-4 structure, it was a revolutionary move by a governor who wanted to project the image of an exceptional progressive.
Aregbesola introduced single school uniform, reclassified public schools, and abolished single-sex schools in 2013 following an educational summit organised by his administration in 2011. Under his administration, the primary, junior secondary and senior secondary categorisation was changed to elementary, middle school and high school.
It was a controversial restructuring. Less than two years after Aregbesola left office in November 2018, after two four-year terms, his successor, Governor Adegboyega Oyetola, set up a panel to review the education policies of the previous administration. Oyetola said that the clamour for change by educationists, school administrators, missionaries and school owners necessitated the review.
The result of the review showed that Aregbesola had carried out an unpopular revolution. In March, the Governor Oyetola administration adopted the report of the review committee and reversed Aregbesola’s revolution.
The reversal affected school mergers, single uniform, name change and the mixture of male and female in single-sex schools. Schools whose names were changed should revert to their old names, and single-sex schools changed to mixed-sex schools should revert to their original status, the government agreed with the committee.
The government cancelled the policy of “merging primary 5 and 6 with a junior secondary school to form middle schools,” saying “it is not in conformity with the national policy on education,” and reverted to the 6-3-3-4 structure as against the 4-5-3-4 arrangement.
It also cancelled the policy of “common uniform for all schools in Osun contrary to the practice of each school having its own unique identity of separate uniforms as we used to have it.”
The Oyetola administration has taken steps towards implementing these changes when schools resume in the state this month after COVID-19-related closure.
It is interesting that the Aregbesola administration was controlled by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Oyetola administration is controlled by the same party. The divergence on education policies reflects a divergence in their approach to governance, and possibly a divergence in their understanding of progressivism.
There was a revolt against Aregbesola’s revolution, but he was unmoved. He could have reviewed the revolution but he didn’t. If it was a popular revolution, the reversal would probably not have happened. Indeed, the reversal calls into question the educational summit that led to the revolution.
It is commendable that the Oyetola administration initiated the review based on popular revolt. It demonstrates the importance of a government that listens.
It is noteworthy that the review committee recommended, and the government accepted, that Opon Imo ”should be reintroduced after improving on its lapses.” There is “a need to have teachers copy,” and involve parents and other stakeholders “to make sure it is not only available but effective,” the government said.
Opon Imo (Tablet of Knowledge) is a revolutionary project, which says a lot about Aregbesola’s revolutionary exertions. Designed in the form of a mini iPad, it is an e-learning device, the first of its kind in Nigeria, introduced by the Aregbesola administration to be distributed free to Senior Secondary School students. It comes with pre-loaded applications for WAEC and JAMB approved textbooks.
By retaining Opon Imo, which received a UN-World Summit Award for innovation and was endorsed by UNESCO and the West African Examinations Council, the Oyetola administration demonstrated that its review of Aregbesola’s education policies was done with a sense of responsibility.
However, there is another matter that the Oyetola administration should look at. Aregbesola’s revolutionary exertions also introduced a construction that has been rubbished by two law courts within three years. ”State of Osun,” an Aregbesola creation, does not mean Osun State, according to the courts, and the constructions should not be used interchangeably.
On June 3, Justice Mathias Agboola of the Osun State High Court, Osogbo, declared that, legally and constitutionally, “State of Osun” did not exist. He also declared that, under the Nigerian constitution, only Osun State could be said to exist.
Justice Agboola, in his judgement in a case brought before the court by a lawyer, Mr Kanmi Ajibola, against the state government over a personal tax of N5.3m that the state Internal Revenue Service had asked him to pay, said it amounted to “artistic colouration” when Osun State is referred to as “State of Osun.”
Ajibola had asked the court to declare the law upon which the tax was based as illegal since it was a law made by “The House of Assembly of State of Osun,” a body unknown to the constitution. “The issue of Osun State and the ‘State of Osun’ is a loud one,” the judge had observed.
Before this, in December 2017, Justice Yinka Afolabi of the Osun State High Court, Ilesha, had taken the same position on the issue. Justice Afolabi’s words: “The executive governor of the state changed the name in 2011. The renaming of a state goes further and deeper for anyone to single-handedly do. To re-order the name of Osun State as ‘State of Osun’ is hereby declared as illegal, null and void.”
The same Ajibola had instituted a case challenging the legality of the “State of Osun Land Use Charge Law.’’ He asked the court to declare that the “State of Osun Land Use Charge Law 2016,” having been enacted by a legislative body that is not known to the constitution and the state not known to the 1999 constitution, was illegal and unconstitutional.
The judge had ruled in his favour. After the verdict, Ajibola had said jubilantly: “The judgement has pronounced ‘State of Osun’ dead and so be it. For now, the judgement subsists except there is any other contrary opinion by the higher court.”
Importantly, the judgement invalidating the construction has not been overturned by a higher court. But officials of the state, according to reports, are still using “State of Osun” in their official engagements and communications. This amounts to disregarding the law. The Oyetola administration should address this matter with seriousness as it addressed Aregbesola’s unpopular education policies.
Is it a case of the monsters we created turning around to haunt us? Or are we contending with the verity of a tribe that speaks from both sides of the mouth?
These posers come in handy in the current debate on the propriety of the removal of subsidies on fuel and electricity by the Buhari administration. The negative emotions they engender are further given added impetus by the manner officials of the current regime strive to justify the astronomical hike in the prices of these commodities.
This doublespeak has been so much so that one begins to wonder if something has gone awry. Those who were known to have cast aspersions on the subsidy regime dismissing it as a monumental fraud are all of a sudden, singing different songs. They would want us all to see the measure as the best thing that ever happened to Nigerians. Ironically, these later day apostles of subsidy removal have turned out the greatest undoing of attempts by officials to persuade Nigerians buy into the touted altruism of that policy.
If one labels such disposition as unnecessary politicization of the subsidy regime, you are right. If it is seen as bitter and rancorous politics at play, one would also not be far from reality. It also bears the trademark of dubious attempts to obfuscate reality so as to get even with political opponents. That has been the ugly face of the fuel subsidy removal all this through. But in this attempt to politicize an ordinarily economic decision, Nigerians have turned out the loser. That is the uncanny irony.
All of a sudden, revisionism has resonated and the seemingly bitter pill is being sugar-coated so that it can be easily swallowed. Or how do we rationalize the statement from a presidential aide that history will be kind to Buhari for “eliminating the evils of corruption embedded in subsidies” What of the other claim that “these are reforms that are necessary and overdue. Blueprint upon blueprint, timeline upon timeline had come and gone but the courage to take bold decision was not there”.
If one may ask, was it cowardice that prompted the Jonathan regime in 2012 to announce the removal of fuel subsidy by increasing the pump price? And what happened thereafter? Did the opposition not go into the trenches with its Occupy Nigeria protests? Was Jonathan not forced through organized protests to rescind that decision? Why was the verdict of history not allowed then to run its full course?
Maybe what Jonathan did not do then was to muzzle his way through by repressing the protesters. Or he did not have the control of those with the devious technology to organize mass protests. Perhaps, for not allowing that price regime considered by many as suffocating to subsist, Jonathan lost the necessary courage required of a leader. That is the courage Buhari is said to have summoned for which history will judge him fairly. But the views credited to him then, did not indicate he had the necessary understanding of the matter or he had but for reasons best known to him, opted for the line he took.
And what was Buhari’s position then? He was credited to have said that anybody who claimed that he was subsidizing Nigerian oil is a fraud, asking ‘who is subsidizing who’? When his government was later taken up by Jonathan for increasing the pump price of fuel even with the sharp drop in international oil price, Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed had said “those who accuse this administration of propaganda and lies in the fuel supply sector, did not tell you that whereas they paid between N800 billion and N1.3 trillion as subsidy yearly without making the product available, this administration is not paying any subsidy, yet all products are currently available at competitive prices and fuel queues are now history”.
That was far before it became public knowledge that that government was discretely into underhand subsidy deals. It took two years of secret subsidy deals before it was exposed. Today, the same government is saying that fuel queues will re-emerge if subsidy is not removed. Who is now fooling who? Today also we are being made to believe that the country stands grave risks of survival if we revert to a regulated fuel price regime. Why that view was not heard from those now at the corridors of power when another regime was canvassing the same message, is at the heart of the difficulty in convincing Nigerians that total removal of subsidy at this point is at the best interest of the toiling masses already buffeted by all manner of taxes. Far from it! Rather, it will further reinforce the poverty index of the country which the World Poverty Clock rated as hosting the highest number of people in the world living in extreme poverty.
How the hike would serve public good with rising unemployment, debilitating inflation, general rise in prices of goods and services patronized by the poor in face of the COVID-19 pandemic is left to be conjectured? In effect, the greatest challenge government apologists’ face in marketing the total deregulation of the oil sector is how to swallow the vitriolic attacks they mounted before now, to de-market subsidy removal. It is yet to be seen the progress made either in fixing the refineries or the fight against corruption to repose a modicum of confidence that monies realized would not be frittered away as usual.
Before he came into his current office, the president believed subsidy was a monumental fraud. Apparently haunted by his previous position, his government had made concerted efforts to conceal the reality that they were paying subsidy before the bubble burst. Now, we are being made to believe that subsidy removal is the only thing that can guarantee the survival of the country. That could as well be. How come this reality only dawned on him after he had mounted the horse such that they now cajole us to view the matter from a developmental perspective rather than partisan predilection?
Why did patriotism and national interest not count when another regime came up with the same idea? Or are we contending with a verity of Frankenstein monster? Perhaps, if positive disposition had dominated reactions to earlier attempts at deregulation, Nigerians would have by now got adjusted to its reality. And whatever benefit there is in it would have been harnessed more bountifully this past years.
But that did not happen due to contrived and negative opposition. Elite consensus which was vital in selling the idea to the masses was in short supply because politicians wanted to get even with their opponents. Having made strident attempts to discredit the idea of subsidy removal, it stands a tall order trying to convince Nigerians on why they should accept it now.
Comparative statistics on the pump price of fuel or electricity tariff in the sub-region are of little consequence in changing the minds of the people that subsidy is of any benefit to them. Even then, price differentials as shown by Mohammed are of little empirical value in assessing the complex indices that impact on the lives of a people.
He needed to proceed further with data on comparative income regime, the number of citizens gainfully employed, inflation rate and the positions of those countries in the world’s oil production chart. Even then, some of the countries listed depend on Nigeria for their fuel and electricity needs. Why will the cost of these items not be high there?
The issue is not just about the price of these commodities being among the least in the sub region. Neither is it all about putting more monies in the coffers of the government. We are contending with a conflict between the quest for increased government revenue earnings and the survival of our citizens. It is a clash between increased revenue earnings that may be stolen by rapacious and rogue officials and the lives of a vast majority of our people who remain hewers of wood and fetchers of water in a nation bountifully endowed.
Policies fired by economic or political exigency must find common ground with the existential realities of the people. That is the missing link. But next time, constructive opposition is the way to obviate the shame in having to re-market a policy that was once discredited just to get even with opponents. Maybe, some lessons have been learnt but at a huge cost to the country.
