The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • National Conference debate: Between Jonathan, Tinubu

    National Conference debate: Between Jonathan, Tinubu

    Two days ago President Goodluck Jonathan used the occasion of his goodwill Eid el-Kabir message to Muslims in the country to respond to those who have dismissed his decision to hold a national conference as diversionary and self-seeking. “Those who continue to say that our initiative is diversionary or aimed at promoting certain political agenda,” he said, “are in error.”

    Of all the critics of the President’s new found conversion to holding a national conference – until his announcement of the initiative during his October 1 Independence Day speech, the man had been decidedly cool, if not completely hostile, to the idea – the presidency seemed to consider Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State, putative leader of the South-West and leading chieftain of the new opposition party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the most intolerable.

    On arrival in Lagos two weeks ago, fresh from his extended medical trip abroad, he had dismissed the President’s initiative as impractical and insincere. “Where,” the Asiwaju had asked, obviously rhetorically, “is the capability, where is the sincerity?” The President’s initiative, he said, was a “Greek gift.”

    That the President probably had the Asiwaju foremost in his mind of all his critics became apparent when his bellicose spokesman, Dr. Doyin Okupe, singled out the Asiwaju for his now characteristic diatribe within hours of the President’s Sallah message.

    “The APC leader,” he said at a press conference he addressed on the issue, “as usual, is completely off target. Desperate politicians and self-seeking political leaders tend to believe that their quest for power or insatiable appetite for wealth accumulation through politics is superior to the genuine desires and innate aspirations of ordinary Nigerians.”

    The “Bola Tinubus of this world,” he said, are concerned only with the 2015 elections whereas “most patriotic ordinary Nigerians” were more concerned with how to build a united Nigeria “based on equity and justice to all its component parts…” This, presumably, was the President’s motive for agreeing at last to holding a national conference.

    So instead of criticising the President, Okupe said, the man should be praised not just for acceding to what most Nigerians, he claimed, have always demanded. His principal should be praised because for the first time in the country’s history a leader has said he will hold a national conference “without the obnoxious ‘no-go areas.’”

    As usual, Okupe’s defence of his oga was pure wind. First, every Nigerian, except the big man himself and his handlers like Okupe, knows that the man had long ago made up his mind to contest and win the 2015 presidential elections whatever it takes. The evidence stares us in the face daily from the cloak and dagger games that have been going on over the control of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) between him and the internal opposition.

    However, the dead giveaway was his denial in his September 29 Presidential Media Chat that he signed any paper or said he would not contest the elections. “I did not,” he said, “say that I will not contest in 2015. In Addis Ababa, that was when I advocated single term of seven years…I said if Nigerians agree to that I may not be involved. I did not say I will contest or not. Those who said I have signed an agreement should show the agreement.”

    Because of the double-speak obvious from these words – you cannot say you may not be involved in a thing and at the same time insist you have not made up your mind on the thing one way or the other – and again because Nigerians have rejected his condition of a seven-year single term presidency for keeping out of the elections, it is not unfair to conclude that he has since felt obliged to contest and will do so.

    Second, the President’s timing – less than 18 months to the 2015 elections – raises questions about his motive. Never mind the insecurity situation in the land, or the incredible oil theft going on, in spite of – some would say indeed because of – the multi-million-dollar contract he gave to a favoured clique of former Niger Delta militant leaders, or the on-going ASUU strike, etc, the President has enough work before him organising credible, free, fair and peaceful elections in 2015.

    To add a national conference to all this against the historical background of a general lack of sincerity by our leaders in summoning similar conferences since 1967 cannot but raise questions about the President’s own sincerity.

    Going back to February 1966, Major-General J. T. Aguiyi-Ironsi set up the equivalent of the President’s panel on how to organise the conference under Chief FRA Williams but before the late legal giant could sit down to work, the head of state, apparently at the prompting of his narrow-minded clique of advisers, went ahead to enact the ill-motivated Unification Decree.

    After him General Yakubu Gowon had his own ad-hoc constitutional conference which eventually ended in a fiasco in Aburi, Ghana. After the civil war which followed ended in 1970, he promised to go in 1976. In 1974, however, he said 1976 was unrealistic and tried to elongate his stay in office. He was overthrown in July of 1975.

    The next regime under General Murtala Mohammed promised to leave in 1979 and kept its word even though the man was assassinated in an abortive coup in February 1976. The Constitution Drafting Committee he had set up under Chief Williams suggested a change from the Parliamentary democracy of the Second Republic to an American type Presidential system.

    The mostly elected Constituent Assembly accepted the change but its sitting ended in a near fiasco. Then General Olusegun Obasanjo who succeeded General Mohammed made 17 amendments to the CA draft before he enacted it into the supreme law of the land in 1979.

    The Second Republic, which started in October 1979 under President Shehu Shagari, was overthrown in December 1983. Between then and the beginning of the current dispensation in 1999, we’ve had four military heads of state – Generals Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar. Except for Buhari, all of them summoned a constitutional conference whose outcome received mixed reactions mainly because of widespread suspicions that the leaders were interested in succeeding themselves, in the case of Babangida and Abacha, or in imposing another general on the country, in the case of Abdulsalami.

    The Third Term Agenda of General Obasanjo who took over from Abdulsalami is too fresh in our memories to waste space dwelling over.

    Clearly, President Jonathan is merely treading the familiar paths of past leaders who tried to remain in power by the subterfuge of a manipulated constitutional conference. Virtually all of them failed. However, the lesson seems clearly lost on President Jonathan as he tries to use the same strategy.

    Still on the issue of sincerity, it is evident to all but Okupe who says his boss should be praised for summoning a national conference without “no-go areas” for the first time in the country’s history that this is fiction. The fact is that what the President is summoning is anything but sovereign. Not only did the President not use the word sovereign anywhere in his speech, everything he said took the unity of the country for granted. His conference, he said, among other things, is to provide a platform that will “reinforce the ties that bind the country’s many ethnic nationalities and ensure that Nigeria’s immense diversity continues to be a source of strength and greatness.”

    There may be many people who doubt his commitment to the country’s unity, unless he remains its president beyond 2015 but anyone who thinks the man is ready to surrender his sovereignty to any conference would surely be in for a big surprise.

    Thirdly, as Tinubu has said, apart from the question of sincerity, there is also that of the capacity of the Jonathan presidency to hold a national conference when so far he has failed to demonstrate the capacity to resolve the nation’s myriad of problems.

    Fourth and lastly, but most importantly, flawed as our Constitution is, it is the least of the country’s problems. The fact is that there is sufficient good in it to make our country great if only our leaders will keep good faith with its provisions and with the good but suffering people of this country.

    This lack of good faith explains why we have had about 12 constitutions since the first one in 1922 and we are still blaming them for our problems. As the English would say, it is bad workmen who always quarrel with their tools.

    Compare the American constitution, which is 226 years old and which we have copied, with ours and it’s easy to see that that the difference between the two countries is the good faith the Americans have, by and large, kept with the provisions of theirs.

    Compared to ours, it is concise and brief; the copy I have is all of 34 pages with an average of 27 lines each and eight words per line. A simple arithmetic gives you less than 7,500 words, including all the 27 amendments to the constitution the last of which was ratified in 1971.

    Ours is 235 pages with an average of 29 lines per page, each line having an average of nine words. This comes to over 61,000 words! Yet we still think we have not captured enough in it to serve as a guide to good governance.

    From all this, it should be clear that our Constitution with all its flaws is the least of our problems. The sooner our politicians accept the fact they and not our Constitution are the main problem with our country, the sooner we will begin to solve those problems.

     

  • Libya’s boiling cauldron

    Too many cooks, they say, spoil the broth. This proverbial saying fits perfectly well into what is currently playing out in the North African country of Libya. Since the brutal end of the autocratic dictatorship of the late Libyan strongman, Muammar Gaddafi, in October, 2011, the fate of the country has been hanging precariously on the brink. The revolution, as the Libyan uprising that saw the end of the Gaddafi’s era was dubbed, appears to have produced more problems for the country than it has solved.

    In the absence of an active military or police force, the state has had to rely on militias who now act as security forces. The militias are paid by the Defence or Interior ministries although the ministries are largely unable to control their activities. As a result of this, there are tens of thousands of fake revolutionaries who now use the rebel name for personal gains whereas they are just gangsters prowling the streets of Libya and wreaking havoc at will.

    In the last two years, the country has witnessed a lot of upheavals precipitated by these marauding militias in various parts of the country. The climax of these internecine crises in the country was the September 2012 attacks in Benghazi, the home of the Libyan uprising, in which Christopher Stevens, the United States Ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans were killed. Since then, it has been one form of threat or another from the roving militants who now bestrode the street of Libya with impunity.

    If it is apparent that the average Libyan resident may have got used to the tension in the country, but not with the latest dimension the whole thing seems to have assumed. Last Thursday, Corinthia Hotel, an imposing tower near the coast in downtown Tripoli, played host to some unusual visitors in the wee hours of that fateful day. The unusual visitors were scores of gunmen who invaded the hotel where Ali Zidan, the country’s Prime Minister, and other top government officials reside. After a brief scuffle with hotel security guards, the prime minister quickly instructed his personal bodyguards to stand down against the ‘invaders’ and surrendered himself. He was promptly taken away.

    Hours after the incident, a group called the Operations Room of Libya’s Revolutionaries claimed responsibility. The militias later released a photo of Zidan looking morose and ensconced between two militants. Initially, the militias claimed to have an arrest warrant against the prime minister on accusations of harming state security and corruption. This claim was immediately debunked by the public prosecutor’s office which said that such a warrant never existed.

    As the day progressed and public outrage mounted, the militants changed their storyline. The group said their action was in response to the comments made by John Kerry, the U.S Secretary of State that the Libyan government was aware of the U.S Delta Force’ raid that captured Nazil Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, a wanted terrorist suspect, in Tripoli on Saturday, October 5, and spirited out of the country. The U.S raid had sparked protests and complaints from Libyan officials and politicians who claimed that the Americans had violated Libya’s national sovereignty.

    Shortly after the militias’ reference to Kerry’s comment on the arrest of the wanted terror suspect, Marie Harf, spokeswoman for Kerry, said the American Secretary of State never said that the Libyans were informed in advance of the planned operation, as the group suggested. According to him, what Kerry said at a press conference in Indonesia was: “We consult regularly with the Libyan government on a range of security and counter-terrorism issues but we don’t get into the specifics of our communications with a foreign government or in any kind of operation of this kind”. Speaking further on the incident, American officials argued against concluding that the prime minister’s kidnapping was a backlash against the U.S raid. A senior U.S. official said: “Any time you take action like that, you want to understand the impacts to the host government, especially one that we want to continue to work with”.

    However, the prime minister’s ordeal ended barely six hours after his abduction, when “he was set free” ostensibly out of frenetic pressure from other senior government officials and militia commanders. A day after his release, Zidan said his brief abduction by gunmen was an “attempted coup” by his Islamist political rivals, using militias which he warned are trying to “terrorize” the government and turn the North African nation into another Afghanistan or Somalia.

    With this nationally televised address, the embattled prime minister appeared to be trying to leverage public shock over his abduction into a momentum against his political opponents and the multiple armed groups stirring chaos in the country since 2011. The militias, including Islamic extremists, carry out daily violence nationwide and have defied attempts by the weak central authorities to rein them in. Doing so has been an uphill task for the government who is daily confronted with the tremor associated with the militias’ activities all over the country.

    Since Gaddafi’s ouster and death, the groups have grown and multiplied. Many tout themselves as defending the “revolution’s goals”, but often act to protect fiefdoms they have carved out for themselves, while blackmailing or intimidating citizens. Others have Islamic extremist ideologies and are suspected of links to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups across North Africa and in Egypt.

    Just last month, militiamen abducted the son of the defence minister in a move seen as an attempt to prevent any action against the groups. Several weeks ago, the militia of al-Tajouri, which rescued Zidan, seized the daughter of the Gaddafi-era intelligence chief and held her briefly. Earlier this year, militiamen besieged government buildings for days to exert pressure on lawmakers to adopt a law banning Gaddafi-era politicians from holding any posts.

    Similarly, last July, 33-year-old Ibrahim al-Jathran, a former rebel with a 17,000-strong militia in eastern Libya, ordered his fighters to shut down two of the country’s main oil export terminals. Jathran is seeking more autonomy for the eastern part of Libya.

    These unrests have dented hopes for a rebound of the energy sector in Libya, which holds Africa’s largest oil reserves. In actual fact, International oil companies, as well as, international diplomatic missions, started retrenching their Western staffing levels after the September 2012 attacks in Benghazi that killed the U.S. Ambassador and three others.

    The apparent backlash against the government over the al-Libi raid could make Tripoli even more wary of allowing Washington to go after other wanted terrorists on Libyan soil. In particular, the U.S. has sought the arrest of terrorists behind the September. 11, 2012 attack on its consulate in Benghazi. Though, some of the suspects live openly in the eastern city, but the state is powerless to pursue them.

    Zidan has been struggling with political opponents and militias since he was named by parliament to lead the country about a year ago. The prime minister is one of the few senior people on the Libyan political scene today who never had his own militia or front line experience in the revolution. He was working in Geneva as a human rights lawyer when the uprising against Gaddafi erupted. His diplomacy with European nations, especially France, was key to gaining international support for the rebel movement. As prime minister, Zidan has struggled to cobble Libya’s fractured militia groups into a national security force loyal to the central government instead of provincial commanders or strongmen.

    Therefore, the recent kidnapping of one of Libyan citizens by special US forces, which has raised serious concerns about double standards concerning international laws, followed by the kidnapping of Zidan himself, is really a cause for concern for all on what has been a disgraceful handling of the Libyan affairs. The problem is that Gaddafi was taken out, like Saddam Hussein of Iraq, with no thought given to what would come next. The truth is that Libya is a country of tribal rivalries held together by Gaddafi while his dictatorship lasted. You can’t just remove him and be surprised when the tribes start jostling amongst one another for supremacy. This whole idea that you give countries an election and they become western liberal democracies overnight is somehow a liberal nonsense!

     

  • The Oba, his libido and the law

    On October 8, an Osun high court discharged and acquitted Oba Adebukola Alli, the Alowa of Ilowa-Ijesa, Osun State, of rape charges. But the same court lampooned the accused for sexual rascality that brought shame to himself, his family and his kingdom.

    The court said the Oba was morally culpable. But by law, he was in the clear: it had insufficient evidence to nail him for rape. If indeed the law is codified morality, then that “dual” judgment leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

    The court lamented the absence, as damning evidence, of stained bed sheets (which the accused would have gleefully surrendered?), torn underpants and medical reports confirming forced penetration – and possible bruises – to prove rape. It then heavily descended on the Police, accused to have bungled the investigation.

    So, after all said and done, much less have been said than done. The alleged rapist is in the clear. The alleged victim is far from justice, rocked by emotional trauma, even after the rigour and humiliation of trial, at a stage during which the accused camp gleefully asked her to expose (if not to the open court, then to the judge in chambers!) her private part, to prove she was bruised! How callous can a judicial system be!

    What next then: is the coast clear for the next royal rapist – or any rapist at all – on the prowl? Or is the Nigerian court system still captive to the Kabiyesi syndrome of the Yoruba feudal era?

    The Kabiyesi, in Yoruba culture, is he who cannot be questioned. Indeed, he is next only to the gods, who themselves are next only to Olodumare, the Almighty.

    But, of course, that is the problem with feudalism! How can frail humans be invested with god-like privileges without something terrible giving?

    Indeed, history is replete with many a royal “unquestionable”, whose inability to question their libido landed them and their peoples in soup.

    In Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, Anthony lost his half of the Roman Empire – and his life – virtually on the laps of Cleopatra, the bewitchingly beautiful queen of Egypt.

    Loose libido was also central to the destruction of ill-fated Troy. A Trojan prince, Paris, had seduced Helen (some sources suggested he actually raped her), wife of Spartan King Menelaus and most beautiful woman in antiquity; and eloped with her to his native Troy, sparking a Greek military expedition that eventually erased Troy.

    The whole of the Yoruba country quaked with Kiriji War (1877-1893) because someone exercised his libido with impunity. Ajele Oyepetun, the sitting Ibadan viceroy at Okemesi, had raped the wife of Fabunmi, an Okemesi son and intrepid warrior, who promptly beheaded the Ajele for the forced cuckoldry and its terrible stains. That baited the Ibadan imperialists to war. Though that war ended in stalemate, it put an end to Ibadan military hegemony in Yorubaland.

    Oba Alli’s alleged rape mess therefore falls squarely within the compass of royal licentiousness. But the difference between then and now is that the law tries to avail every citizen – king or commoner – justice; and avert collective catastrophe from individual recklessness. It is doubtful, however, if the Osun judgment, in this rape case, has served anyone justice.

    Oba Alli was alleged to have raped Helen Okpara, 23, a youth corps member, posted to his Ilowa-Ijesa community on National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) assignment, on 25 March 2011, at the Oba’s Osogbo residence, at Rasco Housing Estate, Osogbo.

    The young woman alleged it was rape, since the Oba had allegedly been making passes at her. Besides, when the Oba started pressuring and threatening her, prelude to alleged rape, she sent panic text messages to her NYSC employers and her pastor, who also alerted the Police. The Police, however, declared the time too late to do anything. By the time the Police jerked themselves awake, the following morning, the poor girl’s goose was cooked. The errant Oba had had his way.

    But the Oba countered it was consensual coitus, since both allegedly consenting adults were lovers. He even claimed the girl enjoyed it while it lasted!

    The court believed the Oba. But even at that, its heart quaked with moral guilt, as it railed at the Oba’s immoral and disgraceful conduct. That was enough stain; for a royal father should protect every member of his community.

    But rape or not, the Oba’s conduct is most reprehensible. Helen was a youth corps member from another part of the country, the South East. Aside from the Federal Government and the NYSC, Oba Alli, as traditional ruler, should have been her closest protector. Yet, his loose libido led him to embrace the infamy of alleged rape. How would the Oba and his community have felt if the reverse had been the case; and an Ilowa-Ijesa daughter, at the receiving end?

    Even if the Oba was sexually wayward, how does one justify his Ilowa-Ijesa community’s callousness during the trial? Newspapers reported a segment of the community mobilising pupils to demonstrate, near the court premises, in Osogbo: demonising the alleged victim, lionising the alleged rapist. How low can a community sink! And to think all that was done to intimidate the court!

    Just as well the Osun government frowned at that gross misconduct, threatening to punish the irresponsible teachers and community dealers (sorry, leaders!) behind that outrage. It should walk its talk; and do just that in full public glare.

    Oba Alli may not have been found guilty of rape. But the court proved and rebuked his sexual irresponsibility, which, to say the least, is a blight on his throne, which like Caesar’s wife, should be beyond reproach. If his community would tolerate such turpitude, then it is the bounden duty of the surrounding communities, nay, other Osun traditional rulers, to ostracise this monarch whose un-royal behaviour gives the Yoruba monarchy a bad name.

    The Osun government, on its own part, should appeal the case to secure justice for all. But even as the process is on, it should formally apologise to, and compensate Miss Okpara, on Oba Alli’s hideous behaviour. This is imperative to distance the state from this un-royal scandal.

    The NYSC authorities, on their own part, should insist on formal apology, from the Ilowa-Ijesa community; and a written commitment that no corps member would ever, in that community, suffer Miss Okpara’s trauma. Until these are done, it should not send new corps members to Ilowa-Ijesa.

    As for the law, it should shape up. A monarch with rampant libido is no roguish but fictional Baroka outwitting Lakunle for village jewel, Sidi, in Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel. He is rather a real danger to himself, his throne, his people and his culture.

    Such putative rapists should be nailed and thrown into the slammer where they belong. It is not enough for the court to morally wring its hands, while a probable rapist escapes the law.

     

  • Be careful with that conference!

    President Goodluck Jonathan’s acceptance of the National Conference/Dialogue on the 53rd Independence Day may be a Greek Gift. He was adamantly against it just a few months ago and so was Senator David Mark. For them both to make such a sudden and complete U-turn, makes the whole thing suspicious. If they plan to use it to cause some confusion toward the 2015 elections, then they better make another U-turn in the best interest of stability, as well as the existence of this country. If that is not the case, and I want to believe it is not, then they should only receive and widely publish the report of the committee just formed, but suspend all other actions on the conference until well after the 2015 elections. In fact, I would want such suggestion to come from the committee themselves. No such a conference or anything about it, besides the ad-hoc committee’s work, should take place before the elections.

    Better still, this government should hands off this matter, and leave it to people to organize their conference. I say this, not only because of the negative subterranean influence the government will certainly exert, but also because of the billions of naira that will be stolen in the name of the conference. President Jonathan should please pay more attention to the educational, health and infrastructural etc problems that bedevil the nation presently.

    The way this conference is being conceived by its initiators, as a negotiation forum between the various nationalities (that is, the tribes) of this country, will be a very difficult, if not impossible, conference to organize. First, they have to define who these nationalities are, and how they would elect or nominate their representatives. They also have to define the role of the civil society in all this, who they represent and how they should be nominated. I am sure also, that state and the federal governments, youth and women organizations would need to participate, and we cannot be sure whether the criteria they will use in nominating their delegates would be the same or on equal basis. God knows who else would demand to be represented!

    And, if you deny any of these groups and go for nomination of participants by some other means using other criteria, then the conference will not be properly representative, and will be dead on arrival. And, if you gather all those people listed above by whatever means, the confusion will be endless, and may even precipitate the unthinkable.

    And how do you protect the conference from a terrorist attacks?

    Or, may be the other alternative is to elect a new Constituent Assembly to debate the constitution and make the necessary amendments in the vital areas that concern most Nigerians. But then, some will say, “That is what the National Assembly is doing right now”. Or, they will say, “The National Assembly should convert itself into a Constituent Assembly, and do the job. Some nominated members from the civil society groups may be added to it to bridge some of the gaps of representation, and to allow some advocates to participate. And, they will add that, whatever they produce should then be put to a national referendum; and the new constitution will then be a truly peoples constitution. Even these suggestions, I am sure will be objectionable to the agitators of the Sovereign National Conference, whose real agendas are unknown.

    Many people have in the past said the question to be asked is, “do we want to remain as one country? If so, under what conditions?” What if this question when asked, the resounding answer is, “No?”

    Whether this type of risky questions will be asked and negative answers be given, it has to be warned that separating this country is not going to be an easy task. Any such attempt may land us into another war, in which the country will end up completely destroyed and millions killed.

    So, the best thing to do, is for the National Assembly, and any other groups to continue debating on what is really wrong with us? How do we make the necessary adjustments, structurally and politically, that will ensure we remain one in whatever form?

    We all know of a few matters that truly disturb and distort the minds of Nigerians, about the country and it’s remaining united.

    Many people feel completely dominated in their own states, by people from “other” places. We do not like to say this, but it is now important to say it. It is natural for people to feel this and resent it, and even become violent because of it. Even in Europe, we’ve just been hearing David Cameron of UK and Angela Merkel of Germany saying openly that multi-culturalism is not working; that it is dead. This is mostly because “foreigners” are beginning to dominate them and take away their jobs and their livelihoods. In the UK, for example, the Asians, Middle Easterners and East Europeans are the new middle-class. Almost all of the corner shops -dry cleaning, news agencies, green groceries, restaurants, food halls, even the traditional fish and chip shops are being taken by foreigners. Building works, house refurbishing, repairs and decorating by East Europeans. Even the pimps and their commodities are foreigners!

    In Italy, in Russia, in Burma, even in Britain and Australia, nationalist parties are springing up to challenge immigration and beat up or even kill immigrants! The world is becoming smaller, population growing at an incredibly fast rate, and resources getting meaner! The same thing is happening to us in Nigeria, because we still regard ourselves as foreigners to one another in our own country. We senselessly say bad things against each other, without thinking of the consequences to our national unity. For example, “northerners are useless, they are parasites etc. Or, the Igbos have dominated us. Or, the Yorubas alone don’t own Lagos, we built it. Or, it is our oil, or, it is our land, get out of it and so on. Everybody is on every other body’s nerves. Every body believes that his/her problems are caused by some one else, especially if that some one else is doing much better.

    It was not this bad before, even though there were signs of worry. Poverty is a very dangerous catalyst for violence and even war, because peaceful revolutions are rare. And, one of the most obvious cause of all these is the reckless corruption, the carelessness and the impunity in our country. People who should be condemned to the gallows are applauded. It is this poverty and frustration that are the enemies, not anything else.

    The choices for us are really few and difficult, may be even unnecessary if we can do the right thing. But, one choice that is a dangerous choice to make is to divide the country. But, even if that can be done, the same problems will persist in each of the new countries created. However, let us look at the to her choices open to us.

    First, revert to our four regions structure: The North, West, East and the Mid-West, and either remain Federal or choose to be Confederal. The latter is the beginning of dissolution. And who would say that there will be no demand to further break up the regions. Wasn’t that the reason the states were created, and there are still demands for more states?

    Second, abolish the states and revert to the old provincial structure and establish a parliamentary system of government. The parliamentarians of the majority party will tear themselves apart in choosing the leader to be the Prime Minister.

    Three, abolish the states and revert to autonomous local governments structure (as in the UK) and establish a parliamentary system of government – even bigger problem in the national parliament.

    Fourth, remain just as we are, but deal head-on with issues of domination, corruption, poverty and the distribution of the wealth of the country in a manner that is acceptable to all. We either agree that whatever belongs to us belongs to us all and share it equitably, or we may just as well choose any of the above. But the issue of domination will still be contentious. So long as we are in the same country, every Nigerian must be free in whatever part of the country he/she chooses to live.

    If we continue to allow any section of this country to wallow in poverty, people will continue to ask what the use of the Union is. I heard many northerners, for example, complaining that one of the reason they are in this dire situation is because some other people from other parts of the country live in their millions in the North, eating up space and resources of the North, while at the same time saying that the North is a parasite, and should not receive equitable share from the nation’s resources! That, whatever little they receive, they share it with other Nigerians living amongst them. They also say, northerners, especially in the South-east and South-south are not as well treated.

    In the same vain, other parts of the country have similar complaints, even if for a different reason. And, that is the reality in our country.

    It is all these treatable, but deliberately ignored complaints that land us in this situation. If only, we would find a way for the right people to lead us; to treat us equally; to ensure equal justice to all; to give every Nigerian a chance and equal opportunity and to feel at home and safe wherever in Nigeria; to share what God has endowed us with in an fair and acceptable way; to make us love one another and stop calling each other nasty names.. If only…

    And for those who advocate the separation of the country, they must remember that if that happens, even peacefully, then every body must go back to his/her country. How we implement that peacefully, is what the secessionists must think about.

     

    • Tofa, is former National Republican Convention presidential candidate in the 1993, presidential election.

     

     

     

     

  • So much to talk about!

    I got a very interesting response to my Independence anniversary piece titled The giant totters at 53 from Uncle Layi Ashadele in what appears to be his discomfiture with my diagnosis of Nigeria’s crisis of governance and by extension, development.

    Here is what the distinguished thespian wrote: “your piece makes a lot of sense under normalcy and proactive leadership. Under an inept entrepreneur, nothing is achieved in production; no matter the effectiveness of other factors of production. Even in the days of our fathers, only a few of them were in real terms literate but there was a common desire by even the least educated to led his flock well enough to better their lot. As Olatunji Dare pointed out in “Still planning and polling without facts”, the true population of Nigeria was premised on fraud by Britain at 1914 amalgamation; to lure the North into Nigeria’s nationhood and the trend has been consistently maintained to date. The military came to truncate the economy with ruthless stealing…remember IBB’s Gulf War windfall saga? What we need to survive is true federalism we had before independence… growth within capacity per block Shikena!

    Now, the piece to which Mr Ashadele referred did not anticipate President Goodluck Jonathan’s October 1 Greek Gift of a National Conference. It didn’t even pretend to any grand theorem on the Nigerian situation in any structured sense although I hinted in passing on the need to tinker with Nigeria’s dysfunctional architecture if only to ensure that the locked-in energies from Nigeria’s federating entities are released for development. Needless to state that I considered it an inescapable step towards national integration. I did of course raise serious worries about the absence of abiding values across the board not just as an inhibiting factor in the current tepid efforts to crank the knocked-down Nigerian machine to life, but as the bedrock without which any notion of future orderly society stands only a dime of a chance! How could I have imagined that our outsourced presidency was actually preparing a full course menu to re-engineer itself into relevance in the midst of what is probably the most comprehensive meltdown in governance ever witnessed in the annals of the republic!

    Have I taken a position on the National Conference yet? Not at this time; we are not even there yet! I believe that Nigerians will inevitably get to talk. And to be sure, it is now past debate that this iniquitous arrangement as unsustainable as it has become, can only engender needless attrition among component units of the Nigerian federation. And then to imagine that the present course is the ultimate path to mutually assured atrophy (MAD).

    But then, should anyone be carried away by the antics, or the latter-day manoeuvres of those who have suddenly found the need to “review the foundational principles that drive our action” only because the challenges of governance have overwhelmed them?

    Here, one must give it to the hordes of the President’s speech writers. It seems finally that their lines, not the delivery of their principal, are getting better particularly the song about the Pauline conversion to the national conference idea and then, the subsequent treatise on leadership accountability to the electors under representative democracy: “we are in a democracy and in a democracy, elected leaders govern at the behest of the citizenry. As challenges emerge, season after season, leaders must respond with best available strategies to ensure that the ship of state remains undeterred in its voyage.”

    Really? Since when? The trouble is that the President is coming to this awareness several years late. Where in the PDP manifesto is the idea of a national conference? How many of the current parties are sold on the conference idea? Are there consultations going on that Nigerians are not aware? Now, I cannot even recall the President mention the word “conference” while campaigning for our votes. Worse is that the President has not – at least up till this time – bothered to give Nigerians the benefit of the outline of his thoughts on how his administration intends to marry the conference outcome with the existing constitutional order.

    Will the outcome be in the form of recommendations, hence a bill for consideration by the National Assembly? If so, why not simply continue with the current process of reworking the constitution and save everyone the trouble of a rancorous talk that would not achieve anything in the end? And why should anyone trust this administration to treat the outcome of the conference as sacrosanct? And why shouldn’t Nigerians be suspicious particularly coming in the second half of the President’s current term?

    Perhaps, only the fat cats in the Presidency live in the illusion that the President has earned our trust, or that Nigerians believe that the charade is anything but the race towards 2015. As it is, it is not yet a question of half loaf being better than nothing; after all, a poisoned loaf is worth less than nothing.

    Here are few tips that the President may wish to consider if he truly desires to address some of the more manifest distortions in the fiscal arrangement and to galvanise development across the board.

    Let’s start with the sharing of the national revenue. Today, for every N100 that flows into the federation account, his federal behemoth takes a whopping N54 under the iniquitous distributive arrangement. That way, the 36 states and the federal capital territory get to share a meagre N24 – which comes to less than one naira per state for every N100 earned. Let him initiate a bill to the National Assembly aimed at reducing the awesome fiscal powers of the federal behemoth. How about allowing the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission to do its work for once? A good beginning is to move to slice the federal pie to 20 percent; apart from stripping the patronage-spinning Abuja machine of its awesome war-chest, it would surely be one step to reduce corruption and the fiscal brigandage at that level.

    I have not yet dealt with the mater of the incredibly opaque Nigerian National Oil Corporation which not only treats the nation’s daily oil receipts as unknown, but unknowable and the pervasive culture of corruption and indolence that the corporation has spawned in the nation’s life. How about dismantling the corporation block by block to stave the nation of its putrefaction?

    Such practical steps by the President would seem by far more immediate than the journey to the unknown that he seems set to lead us. That journey, if I may say, would still have to come later!

     

  • Re-positioning our universities: A modest proposal

    Re-positioning our universities: A modest proposal

    In the routine of daily life, nothing concentrates the mind like not knowing when the next paycheck is coming.

    That may well explain why the Federal Government has decided, after 100 days of fruitless negotiations, to stop the pay of striking university lecturers. Let them concentrate their minds on how they can transform the shabby system instead of carping about it in and out of season.

    If they needed any other inducement to focus their intellect on an agenda for transforming their campuses, I hope the spectacle of Her Excellency the First Lady of Nigeria (FLON), Dame Patience Fakabelemi Goodluck, decked out and looking stunningly resplendent in the doctoral regalia of South Korea’s Hansei University and soaking in all the high praise, supplied it.

    The Hansei citation described her generally as “the defender of the poor,” and more specifically as “a humanitarian who has dedicated her life to working for the less privileged in Nigeria, especially women and children.”

    It is a reflection on her modesty that she had journeyed to South Korea accompanied only by the wives of the governors of Benue and Ebonyi, the wives of the Chief of Army Staff and the Chief of Naval Staff, among some unnamed dignitaries. A person not given to her kind of modesty would have insisted of taking along the Minister of Education, the entire membership of the National Universities Commission, and the Committee of Vice Chancellors, as well as the Committee of University Registrars, plus the national executive of the National Association of Nigerian Students.

    With her accustomed humility and in the down-home style that becomes her so well, Mrs Jonathan told the convocation that she was “just doing her own thing,” not knowing that in faraway Asia, “everything was being noted.” And deeply appreciated, she should have added, unlike in her native country.

    Little wonder, then, that the doctorate encompassed the fields of Social Welfare as well as Administration – the one in recognition of her dedication to the cause of the poor and the underprivileged, and the other in acknowledgement of her expertise in matters bureaucratic, as evidenced by her appointment as a permanent secretary in the public service of Bayelsa State

    It was of course not the first time that Dame Patience would be honoured in that manner. Before the Hansei conferment, she already had three doctorates under her belt, according to the unofficial biographers; one from the alma mater that she and her husband Dr Goodluck Jonathan have in common, the University of Port Harcourt, and one from the Delta State University, Abraka.

    The third is from a university whose identity I could not establish with confidence at this writing.

    In their citations, the University of Port Harcourt and Delta State University also gave due recognition to Mrs Jonathan’s humanitarian and philanthropic exertions. But it all seemed so perfunctory. None of them was perceptive enough to describe her as “the defender of the poor.”

    Some people may see this approach as yet another instance of the prophetess being accorded less honour in her own domain than she deserves. I see it as emblematising the trouble with our universities and as reason for their stunted growth, their failure to register on the international index of great institutions of higher learning.

    That trouble can be summed up in one phrase: a failure of imagination.

    Is it not a crying shame, and a great scandal withal, that after more than three decades of First-ladyism in Nigeria and the vast opportunities it opened up for scholarly study and research, no Nigerian University has seen it fit to revise its curriculum to confer academic recognition on the phenomenon? And yet they complain that they are under-funded when, as I will demonstrate presently, they can with a little imagination fund themselves!

    It is not too late to repair this grievous omission, but the manner of redress must be bold and imaginative. There is no room for tokenism.

    The academic recognition I have in mind is not the kind that can be satisfied by offering one or two courses in firstladyism in a Philosophy Department or Sociology Department, or by staging an annual colloquium on the subject.

    It calls for nothing less than the establishment of an autonomous, self-accounting academic unit operating at the highest level of intellection. Call it the Higher Institute of Advanced Studies in Firstladyism, to distinguish it from those centres that may be offering only primary or secondary studies in that field.

    Initially, the curriculum will emphasise the study of the Nigerian variants of firstladyism, their origin, content, mutations, operational strategies and tactics, and their impact on society. No later than in its second year, the Institute will widen its curriculum to explore the subject in the wider African context, with special emphasis on the African First Ladies Peace Mission, of which Mrs Jonathan is the distinguished chairperson.

    In its third year, the Institute will go global and take on a new name, in recognition of the fact that the world is now truly a global village. It will be called the Higher Institute of Advanced Global Studies in Firstladyism.

    Just consider the resources that will flow to the institution from every direction.

    In keeping with her famed generosity and philanthropy, Mrs Jonathan can be expected to draw on her vast personal resources to ensure that it thrives. Something tells me that her devoted husband will not stand by and watch her bear the burden alone. He will, I am confident, incorporate the Institute as a core element of his iconic Transformative Agenda.

    Mrs Jonathan’s colleagues across the continent can be expected to support the Institute with generous endowments or dragoon their husbands into doing so. And when the Institute goes global it will be assured of the unstinting support of the international community.

    With this kind of support, it will attract the best and the brightest from all over the world, attain recognition as a global centre of excellence and place Nigeria, at long last, in the front ranks of the world’s greatest centres of learning.

    In many a setting, the designated “resource person” is usually an individual who has soaked up the theory and some aspects of the relevant literature. In the Institute, the resource persons will be actual or former first ladies, individuals who have lived the part and can humanise the subject. Aspiring first ladies need not apply. And no fakes, please; only true originals.

    In discussing such recondite subjects as Financing Firstladyism, or Power and Influence in First Ladyism: The Role of Pillow-Talk, or Diplomatic Firstladyism, who but practising or former first ladies can speak with insight, authority, and confidence?

    It goes without saying that the Institute will enjoy electricity and pipe-borne water 24/7. It will be equipped with latest Big Thing in information technology. Student will be housed in the hostels of the future, study in fully computerised libraries, attend lectures in well-appointed rooms, and work in laboratories where nothing is lacking. For faculty and staff, it will be nothing but bliss; life most abundant. Strikes and lockouts and cultism will be things of the past.

    I am the first to admit that not every public university can establish the kind of institution I have sketched here. But even if only one university can seize the concept and develop it, that university has assured its own fortune for all time.

    Besides, I have other ideas that are just as fecund. I have set them down in a special memo that I am sending to the National Universities Commission and the Committee of Vice Chancellors, not forgetting the usual stakeholders.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • The whitlow and quisling

    The whitlow and quisling

    Many lovers of language and metaphors use the word quisling as though an English word in essence and roots. It is, but not like most words. It means traitor, but it was the name of a Norwegian politician. His attitude, so noxious and so aberrant, imposed his name in conversations all over Europe and, later, the rest of the world.

    His full name was Vidkun Quisling, and the Q was written in capital letters. His notoriety arose from the cauldron of the Second World War when the German dictator, Adolf Hitler, rolled his then impregnable military machine from country to country in a bid to lob all of Europe and the world into the fire and fury of a Nazi empire. While resistance flared all over, Vidkun Quisling collaborated with Hitler as a Man Friday to orchestrate Norway’s surrender to the German Reich. He reigned for a while as Hitler’s planting before the Nazi behemoth unravelled and Quisling lost favour and fell into the dunghill of history.

    He became a metaphor for anyone who betrayed his people. Winston Churchill popularised it when he used it in a speech. To quisle, a verb from that name, has fallen out of use. But quisling has remained an irreplaceable word, especially in political dialogue.

    In the Southwest today, quislings abound, but two of them come into sharp focus as conversations stir in Ekiti State as the governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, marks his third year in office. Two persons are bracing themselves to take a battle to him and the people of the state as next year’s election looms.

    The two men are the Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko and a former commissioner in Lagos and member of the House of Representatives, Opeyemi Bamidele. These two men once paraded themselves as progressives, a term that is increasingly losing its pristine beauty because of many comers uninvited.

    What is at play here is not that Governor Fayemi has not done well. They are ambitious and drowsy in search of raw power. If Fayemi is not transforming the infrastructure of the state, if he is not turning the educational system from the rut he met, if he had not revolutionised a sense of belonging in all with his welfare programme, or birthed rule of law in a way that made accountability inevitable, one would have said they wanted to change the government for good.

    When Governor Fayemi was sworn in, I wrote in this column the high road ahead of him, and I wondered how he was going to tackle a state so idealistic yet so forlorn. Within a year and half, I drove through the streets of Ado Ekiti, and I witnessed a transformation at variance with what obtained while I left the city on the day of his swearing-in. The streets narrow, unlit and dust-laden, the houses discloured, the brow of its inhabitants shorn of optimism, Ekiti did not seem, even with its new chaperon’s good intentions, capable of the lift you see in its streets today.

    So why is it that some persons want a change? If it is because a person belongs to another party or group, say the PDP, one would not sense any moral disappointment. Once political cycles come, opponents will fight through creative ways to wrest power from the incumbent, even if the incumbent has performed miracle. Fayemi has not performed miracle. But his miracle is on the make. Even then no one should ask the PDP not to fight. It has the right and the obligation to test its waters.

    But when politics is seen only in Machiavellian terms because one nurses an ambition fuelled by a grudge, the whole principle of leadership is abused. That is what I see in the upstart Bamidele and his ambition to run.

    He is running with confidence given to him by his fellow quisling, Governor Mimiko. When I wrote a column last year, Brother today, gone tomorrow, I witnessed an eruption of choreographed rage from his publicists. None of them pointed out any major achievements except markets that local governments’ funds could build without whimper. They also pointed out a token clinic for mother and child. He should go to Lagos and Delta States where a whole lot has been done in that regard. He is still building a model school up till today.

    He earned in this column the glory of the title, the whitlow of the west. In the five fingers that represent the five states in the Southwest, Mimiko is the quisling. Immediately he won the election, he ran to master Jonathan in Aso Rock for a photo op. We all saw the quisling in full colour during the governor’s forum crisis when he pitched his tent against the progressives and voted for his master’s candidate. None of his loud supporters came out of the vestry of ignominy to defend his role.

    Jonathan with the PDP now see him as a bridgehead to capture the Southwest for the president. It does not matter that it creates a crisis for the PDP mainstays. But for Jonathan, the best PDP chieftain in the Southwest is the impostor, the one who goes about as a Labour Party wheel horse. He would not formally join the PDP because he would be accused of overt betrayal. He also knows how effective the subterranean work can be in politics. He is shooting from the shadows.

    That is why he is backing Bamidele, now overfed from the other side, who now feels the hubris of all those who cannot resist the overweening impulse of ambition. Having served as commissioner for close to three terms in another state, he wanted to be governor of his state. And that was fine. But he acted as though he was fighting for Fayemi while the latter battled in court with the man with the phony Awo cap. But Bamidele already had started building a political infrastructure for himself in the hope that the courts would fail Fayemi and that would default into an opportunity for him to arise and shine.

    Faeyemi won, and a disappointed Bamidele failed again in a Senate bid. Too impatient, he moved over to the other party that he so publicly disdained in words and deeds. Now, it is not about opportunity but opportunism, a pragmatic desperation. So he bivouacs with a quisling and a whitlow, who has the nod of master jonathan. He becomes the lackey of a lackey. He, a lackey of Mimiko, the whitlow, who is Jonathan’s lackey. Bamidele is now servile to the slave of the presidency. It is like what the Argentine writer, Luis Borges, describes as “a mere discipline usurping the place of clear thinking..” The black American author, Edward Jones in his novel, The Known World, recreates the story of black slaves who owned slaves in the age of servitude, a servility within servility.

    One would expect that people want to move to freedom from slavery like Mandela, but Bamidele and his slave-master are doing the opposite. A new movie, titled 12 Years a Slave starring Nigeria’s own Chiwetel Ejiofor, recreates the true story of a man who moved from freedom to slavery. That story is as true then as it is today.

  • The Akotileta syndrome in Edo State

    The Akotileta syndrome in Edo State

    The PDP in Edo State has lost the voice to attack Adams Oshiomhole because of his good deeds. Now, they seem to have found some counterfeit melody accusing the governor of trying to sell the Edo House in Lagos to himself. The courts are now adjudicating the matter because a tenant, who would not pay his rent for close to eight years, had turned it into a profiteering pot. Part of the real estate is now used as hotel facility for slipshod morality called short time. The over N2 billion property costs the state millions yearly and it cannot take possession of what belongs to it. And Lagos State now wants the Edo State government to pay about N50 million a year for land use charge. Yet, the state does not get any rent.

    Now that it is for sale, the convenient thing is to say the governor wants to possess it. Let them present evidence or remain quiet. The man renting the property is not from the state. Now the governor is calling the state citizens to buy, the PDP men are complaining. Would they prefer outsiders to hold on to their treasure? This is the Akotileta syndrome in Yoruba land, where the prodigal son sells family treasures to an outsider and fritters away the money.

  • Fear of the sovereign

    The word sovereign or sovereignty has become the fulcrum of debate on the desirability or otherwise of the envisaged conference of Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities. Most of the agitators for the conference have canvassed the convocation of its sovereign variant even as sceptics centre their reservations largely on this nomenclature. President Jonathan reacted to this dissonance when in his independence speech he referred to it as national conference/ dialogue. He further gave teeth to this seeming conceptual ambivalence when he inaugurated the committee and charged it to come out with the most appropriate name for this “national conversation”.

    Before then and since after, issues have also been raised on the propriety of a sovereign national conference with all democratic institutions in place. It has been variously canvassed that it is anomalous to talk of sovereign national conference when that sovereign power has been vested in elected structures at all levels of government especially the National Assembly.

    The thesis of this argument is that with the National Assembly in place, you cannot have two sovereigns at the same time. Once you constitute such a conference, you have inadvertently thrown to question the authority conferred on these institutions via democratic elections, it is further argued.

    Those who drive this school seem to be drawing strength from the postulations of social contract philosophers such as John Locke, Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes on the origin of modern states.

    These philosophers had characterized life in the state of nature as nasty, short and brutish. Due to the atavism of the state of nature, medieval man had to enter into a contract with a sovereign to whom he surrendered some of his powers and was in return, guaranteed protection. The abstraction recognizes two things at the same time: power belongs to the people; those who exercise power do it on their behalf. This is the philosophical root of the concept- sovereignty. It is an analytic construct to account for the residue of political power in modern governments. Its purpose is to domesticate the locus of political power.

    The idea has found further expression in modern governments through representative democracy. Because modern states can no longer permit of direct democracy as was practiced in ancient Greek City States, the people now exercise this sovereign power through elected representatives. Having elected their representatives, they confer sovereign powers on them to make laws for the good of them all.

    Conceived this way, it is presumed that those elected have now been armed to reflect the wishes and aspirations of their constituents. That is the point antagonists of sovereign national conference seem to be making. And there is some sense in it. But that is not all.

    There are also conditions under which the concept is supposed to operate in its pure form. For this symbiotic relationship to function optimally, these conditions have to be strictly observed and followed.

    The first is that the structures that throw up candidates for elective offices must be democratic enough to truly reflect the will of the people. Here, internal democracy within the political parties comes to mind. The other, closely related to the first is the issue of free and fair elections. Both form the necessary and sufficient conditions for the sovereignty of the people to have full expression. To what extent do those who purport to represent their people satisfy these basic conditions? And if they do not, how much of credibility do we ascribe to the sovereign powers they now purport to exercise on behalf of us all? These are the issues to ponder in the debate over where sovereign power really resides in our peculiar circumstance.

    It would appear that those who fault the convocation of a sovereign national conference on the ground that there is already sovereign power in the national assembly are not saying it all. They seem to have completely lost sight of the fact that what we have here is representative democracy in its most aberrant form. Not only is internal democracy observed in the breach, elections are yet to reflect the will of the people as amply expressed at the ballot box. When we canvass sovereign powers which elected structures or persons purport to possess, we should also call to mind the limitations in stretching this argument too far.

    Besides, it is also possible for those elected to supplant the wishes of their constituents with their personal goals. When we have a situation of goal displacement, our laws provide remedies for the people. That is why we have provisions for the recall process and impeachment. The same elite now parroting the sanctity of sovereign powers conferred on them through elections, are quick to erect obstacle against being impeached or recalled when they have fallen out of favour with their people. Thus, this new found love for the observance of extant regulations cannot stem from altruistic considerations. There must be more to it than the way it has been presented.

    Even then, it is clear that Nigerians desire to engage themselves on issues concerning their common destiny. Signals that things are going awry are very palpable throughout the length and breadth of this country. There are genuine fears that if urgent steps are not taken to stem this tide, the ensuing systemic stress may lead us to more disastrous consequences. Yet, some people are holding on to the issue of sovereignty as if it is an end unto itself rather that a means to an end-public good.

    It may be a mark of the failure of the sovereign powers of elected structures and persons that the country has drifted to the edge even after the various nationalities have co-habited for nearly 100 years. If a marriage can no longer hold after 100, is it not suggestive we have danger in our hands? If bending some of the rules can take us out of the impending doom, does it make any sense to be enslaved to stereotypes that portend dire consequences?

    In effect, the argument that we cannot have a sovereign national conference is neither here nor there. There is nothing so sacrosanct about the elections that produced these structures that they should pose an impediment to genuine efforts to get the architecture of this unity in diversity right. For, the same people vested with inalienable rights to confer sovereign powers on elected representatives can call such powers back when their representatives have become a liability.

    Just recently, something of that nature happened in Egypt when the same people who overwhelmingly voted in Morsi got utterly disenchanted with him after about a year in office. The revolution that saw him out without waiting for his tenure to expire is a classic demonstration of the sovereign will power of the people. This dialectics must not be ignored by those opposing a sovereign national conference.

    The authority of government is created and sustained by the consent of the people who remain the source of all political power. Benjamin Franklin summed up this when he wrote “In all free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns”. If a sovereign national conference is all that is required to pull back the country from the brink, those who oppose it do not believe in the continued existence of the country.

  • Education and democracy: training the future generation 5

    Education and democracy: training the future generation 5

    the more industrialized a country becomes, the more emphasis it needs to put on nature, scope, and quality of vocational and technical training 

    Vocational and technical education is an area that requires more attention than it normally gets in our pre-industrial or pro-industrial society. On the average, federal and state governments have done fairly well with establishment of polytechnics. With over a total of 40 public polytechnics (without counting a few private ones), the area that requires more emphasis is philosophy, policy, and implementation with respect to vocational and technical training. Emphasis will be on how to re-conceptualize vocational and technical education in relation to the current level of growth in our country, as well as in relation to our aspiration for future growth, more so when there is regular supply of electricity across the country and the need for technical work increases through cottage-style manufacturing.

    It is an axiom that the more industrialized a country becomes, the more emphasis it needs to put on nature, scope, and quality of vocational and technical training it needs to make available to citizens and employers of labour. Once there is regular supply of electricity, our demand for persons with vocational and technical training will increase phenomenally, as several companies and individuals will be in a better position to take new and more risks than now in initiating projects that require artisans, craftsmen and women, technicians, and other persons with training to respond to technical needs of producers and manufacturers.

    The acceptance that persons with Higher National Diploma can transfer their credits to universities to enroll for graduate programmes without having to obtain undergraduate degrees is a liberal or progressive attitude to take, in order to transcend the traditional dichotomy between university education and the training offered by polytechnics or colleges of technology. But there are other important issues that need new thinking on the relationship between academic and technical or vocational training. Presupposing that vocational training is inferior in any way to academic training is dangerous for any society that is aspiring to become industrialized or stay as an industrialized country. We cannot on one hand accept lower scores in J.A.M.B. or W.A.E.C. examinations and on the other hand continue to say that technical education is not inferior to academic training.

    We need to insist on equal entry qualifications for candidates wishing to enter the university or the polytechnic, more so if we are going to allow products of polytechnics to enroll for master’s degree courses after obtaining H.N.D. from polytechnics or colleges of technology. Similarly, our system should ensure that those who enroll in colleges of education and later hope to use their N.C.E. certificate to enroll for undergraduate training in the university have the same entry qualification to enter college of education as their counterparts wishing to enter the university.This is one effective and credible way to integrate polytechnic and university education. In other words, this would lead to having an educational system that accepts equality between H.N.D. and B.A./B.Sc. with the former leaning more towards practical or procedural knowledge while the latter leans towards theoretical or conceptual knowledge while both lead to some form of knowledge needed for increasing productivity.

    It is in respect of technical training, offered formally by technical schools across the country and informally by practicing technical workers who take on apprentices, that our country requires new thinking urgently. Apart from having too few technical colleges for a country aspiring to become an industrial one, the relationship between training in technical colleges, undergoing semi-formal apprenticeship or training under companies, and informal apprenticeship needs more thinking.While on the average about 52% of persons under the age of 22 train as technical workers in Germany, less than 5% of the same age group have any formal technical training in Nigeria. It is not an exaggeration that about 50% of citizens under the age of 22 in Nigeria are self-trained Okada drivers. Largely, Nigerians wishing to become mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, etc. in Nigeria acquire their training through informal apprenticeship that is virtually unregulated by government or agency in terms of standards or quality assurance.

    Moreover, most of such apprentices in Nigeria do not have secondary education to give them some conceptual background that can enrich their learning and skills. The result of lack of literacy on the part of technical workers in the country is that many middle-class Nigerians in urban areas prefer to give jobs requiring technical skills to other West Africans, preferably those from Francophone countries close to Nigeria: Benin, Togo. Technicians from such countries are not only more efficient than their Nigerian counterparts, they are also more capable of explaining the cause of problems they have been hired to solve to their employers.

    The consequence of low levels of skills on the part of technicians in our country is that people in this category are very poorly paid by those who hire them, as most of those people see the average technician astrial-and-errorworkers. In addition, many of such workers prefer to drive Okada, which they believe to be more profitable than practicing their skills as mechanics or plumbers. In terms of income, only persons with academic degrees or vocational training from polytechnics have the opportunity of a middle-class income, when they are able to get jobs.

    One way to increase the skill level of Nigerians in technical and vocational fields is to make education free and compulsory for the first twelve years of schooling, after which citizens can choose academic or vocational/technical career paths. This policy option will make academic and vocational education part of tertiary education, thus removing the stigma that it is only citizens who are not eligible to enter universities or polytechnics that become technicians and who do not deserve to be paid as much as those with university education. This will encourage citizens to follow their passion in choosing career paths without feeling inferior for choosing to become a plumber and not a philosopher. Our country needs good plumbers as much as it needs good philosophers, if it is to create a modern economy in a democratic setting.

    Democracy emboldens citizens to participate in their governance, to ask questions of, and offer suggestions to those who govern them. But citizens without proper training—academic or vocational— are not likely to get or keep the jobs that can make them feel independent and capable enough to assert their citizenship rights. The old system of education that puts people with university degrees on top of the social ladder is a relic of colonial model of education. We now need a modern postcolonial model of classifying skills and knowledge in relation to determination of remuneration and other benefits. Encouraging every citizen to choose whatever career he or she can excel in without stigmatizing him or her for not going to academic institutions is the way to go in our new world that requires an agile workforce.