The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Don’t marry that girl

    Don’t marry that girl

    Former Zamfara State Governor Sani Yerima has become a metaphor for the wrong thing. Some politicians pray and strive to be statesmen. Others want to go down in history for planting the green, bright light of hope on the wilderness of despair. Some want to tackle education, healthcare, infrastructure, the rule of law, peace and stability. Alhaji Shehu Shagari was a naïve, irreparable bumbler as president, but he, at least, posted himself as the president of peace and stability. He never had violence to tackle although he did violence to the word by misusing it. However, he had to celebrate something, if it amounted to glorious vanity.

    But Yerima wants a company all his own. He wants to be a poster child for tackling children for romance. Not the girl child for education, or the sanctity of fidelity, or the nourishment of the mother for maternity. His struggle, lofty in his eyes, is that any man worth his macho pride, with his hubris in high gear, can marry any girl once, according to him, she starts menstruating.

    That is the education of Yerima. As our comedy turned farce of a political society has it, the matter came up for debate in the Senate, and the scores are out: Yerima one, Nigeria zero.

    They deployed the law, while deliberating over citizenship and marriage and how anyone can renounce their citizenship of Nigeria. The lawmakers enjoyed temporary sanity when they expunged from the law a clause that said, “any woman who married shall be deemed to be of full age.” That was Section 29 (4) (b) of the constitution of Nigeria. Ordinarily the existence of that phrase would have made no sense and caused no stir because of the specification in earlier clauses in the constitution that pegs the minimum age of marriage at 18. But Section 29 (4) (b) had already inspired a special interpretation by minds with tendency to pedophilia. So, as the men take away the innocence of the small girls, they also take away the innocence of the phrase. The only way to sanity lay in deleting that line. How did the lawmakers lose their assured brilliance of expunging it? How did they yield, like the little girl, to the hectoring logic of the pedophile?

    Senate President David Mark’s circumlocutions to a group of indignant women that included Maryam Uwais, Chidi Odinkalu and Oby Ezekwesili, reflect two things: one, we live in a man’s world that does not understand that the muscular cave man’s will does not enshrine wisdom and manliness. Two, that our lawmakers are still out of touch with the preliminary responsibility of the legislature.

    We also cannot forget, if we would, the comedy from Ondo. Senator Ayo Akinyelure prostrated and waxed apologetic for appending his lawmaker’s imprint in that inglorious hour. He knew, unlike Yerima, that dire consequences awaited his legislative foolishness.

    But that is the point. In spite of the hoopla in the media, especially in the South, the North has advanced a conspiratorial silence. Hardly a role model from the North has lifted a finger, or encouraged institutional umbrage against the pedophilia of one of their own. He, like many of his types in the North, do not understand that marrying a 13-year-old, is rape. To them, it is a brilliant catch, the downing of a sweet nubile bird from the virgin tree of life. They think God gave men the female folk for plaything, to scavenge, to toy with, to torpedo. It is all right to cut off the hand of thief; it is also right to defile a girl of nine.

    What people like Yerima want the world to understand is that it is in accordance the law of Islam. There is no evidence in the Islamic law that encourages pedophilia. Islam calls for the dignity of women. What he and others like him are doing belong to a culture rooted in African male chauvinism. This practice existed in other parts of Nigeria in the past. But we all know that the law has criminalised any betrothal to a female below the age of 18.

    We still see in all parts of Nigeria the abuse of childhood. We still see underage peddling wares in the Southwest, and East, and in the rural areas, gifted young girls are clobbered to death as witches. In Akwa Ibom State, Governor Godswill Akpabio is still waging war against the retrograde virus in our southern soul.

    Yerima married a 13-year-old. He even had patience. Many have married girls below that age, even taking to wife girls of about nine years of age. A medical condition has resulted from this, and that is what scientists call VVF (Vesico Virginal Fistula), now rampant in the North. It destroys the pelvis and reproductive region of the girl. But the girl has nowhere to go, and so she must live with the inanity of her biological tragedy.

    We must admit that, like the almajiri system now caviled at, the girl child problem in the North has festered for long. So it will take deep structural change to save her. The Boko Haram scourge is beginning to force the Northern elite to rethink the almajiri problem. It will take a generation to fix that. But it has to start now.

    As for the girl child, the tradition has grown for long. The girl child who marries at the age of 12 knows that her daughter will marry at about that age. The men expect that their wives ought to be that young. It is not only enshrined in the culture. It is a psychological reality with the male.

    But we know that the leaders can change this. We know they know how awful the system endangers the girl. The elite no longer give away their daughters to any man who wants to rock the cradle. They rather send them to school. Some of them attend the best high schools and universities around the world. In 2009, Aisha Dalhatu received the United States’ Award for Educational Excellence for her stellar performance in school. President Barack Obama handed her the prize. She hails from Kano, and she could have been any of those girls subjected to the deviant erotica of clueless old men. Many of the girls suffer this and their dreams suffer, too.

    In my year as a youth corps member in Kano, I saw this daily. The apprenticeship into such marital servitude begins when the girls, in as early seven years old, parade the streets hawking trays of wares. They are subjected to the leery eyes and persuading libidos of men who invite them away from the streets.

    The only remedy to this will be by law and support of the elite, not with people like Yerima and Goje. A law should make it punishable to the parents or guardians of any girl that does not complete at least a secondary level education. That will deter anyone to marry any girl and subject her to the lurid imagination of men with uncircumcised minds.

    We have this sort of men everywhere in the world. In the U.S. and Europe, such uncouth men travel to Asia to patronise the market for underage girls. They cannot marry them, but they use them as sex slaves.

    I call this the Lolita Syndrome based on the novel Lolita written by prose spirit Vladimir Nabokov. It has become the story of pedophilia, of an old man debauching a girl and running away with her. Some critics have seen it as metaphor for abuse of power. In a Nigeria of impunity, a Yerima can defend himself in the same way that our political class has thrived on impunity. Marrying a girl before the age of consent is impunity and a metaphor of our disdain for law and decency.

  • Antics of five governors

    Apparently piqued by the worsening political temperament of the country, five governors from the north, last week embarked on consultations with some elder statesmen with a view to stemming the slide. The governors- Aliyu Babangida (Niger) Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), Sule Lamido (Jigawa) Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano) and Aliu Wammako (Sokoto) held discussions with Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalam Abubakar, all former military rulers of this country. Feelers from some of those who attended the meetings indicated that top on their agenda were the festering crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the feud in the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) and the political crisis in Rivers State. Also on the table was the marginalization of some PDP governors by both the party and the presidency as well as the hurling of pebbles on the convoy of these governors when they visited their colleague of Rivers State.

    They were equally reported to have said that their main concern is not with where power swings in 2015 but the prospects of the tense political atmosphere derailing that election. For them, the road to the election is strewn with thorns such that the former leaders needed to intervene before things go awry.

    Not much has been heard from those they visited. But Babangida must have been so impressed by the concerns raised by the governors that he did not waste time in describing them as patriots. By that, the impression we get is that they are genuinely concerned and prepared to sacrifice for the peace, unity and progress of this country. That should be good news to all fair-minded people.

    This is not an attempt to diminish Babangida’s assessment of the motive behind the governors’ action.

    This is more so as the issues raised are already in public domain. There is no doubt that recent events in the country, especially the crisis in the ruling PDP, that of the NGF and its manifestation in the show of shame in Rives State have elicited genuine concerns about the fate of democracy. If the five governors were moved by genuine desires to save the country from the slide to the precipice, they may well qualify as patriots as Babangida has labeled them.

    But there are issues that can be raised against their composition and agenda. It is curious why the ‘patriotic’ governors did not include the menace of the Boko Haram insurgency as a very potent destabilizing factor requiring urgent therapeutic response. Boko Haram is even more threatening and devastating to our corporate existence than the items in their agenda. Moreover, most of the issues raised can be encapsulated within the domestic problems of the ruling party. No doubt, they could have wider repercussions for the country but they are the making of the PDP. Boko Haram is of a wider and more destructive dimension. To have left it out of their agenda did considerable harm to the credit which Babangida sought to give them. It is difficult to fathom how their largely skewed agenda can lead to national fame.

    It is not clear how the five governors were selected. But they are all members of the PDP. Incidentally also, they are known to hold views contrary to those of the presidency and the PDP especially on the country’s power equation. They are known sympathizers of Governor Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State who has turned out the anchor point of the opposition to President Jonathan.

    The five governors are entitled to their views. The opinions they currently hold on issues of our national being cannot be circumscribed. In fact, some of them have won the admiration of some people for their principled stance on issues.

    But their inability to attract some of the pro-Jonathan governors in that part of the country to their team lends their motive to suspicion.

    Hard as they try to convince the rest of us that power shift is not at the centre of their self-assigned consultations, it is still hard to believe.

    The problems the governors raised are just symptoms of the innate political sickness afflicting the country. They are all linked to 2015. If Jonathan announces today he will not present himself for the 2015 election, they will fizzle out unilaterally.

    But, that will not be the end of our problems. Sooner or later, they will rear up their ugly heads in other forms as we are yet to tackle the root of them all. And as long as we fail to genuinely address these fundamental distortions, so long will they remain a recurring decimal in our national affairs. Even if power moves back to the north in 2015, it is no guarantee that these systemic frictions will abate. They will not. At best, we would have succeeded in assuaging the feelings of a section of the north albeit temporarily. Within this north and south dichotomy, the fate of the Igbo, one of the tripod on which this country was erected and northern minorities has been relegated to the background. Moving power back to the north has not in any way addressed the grouses of these sections. They will be worse off when this happens given the number of years the north has held that post. With the posturing of the north, it is uncertain the use they intend to put political power when once they get. Key northerners are known to have said that rotation is dead. And when we juxtapose this to recent statements from northern elders and Arewa Consultative Forum that the north has the population to snatch power and retain it as long as it pleases it, then the danger lurking around becomes very manifest.

    It stands to reason that reverting power to the north is not a solution to the centrifugal tendencies that have gained higher momentum in the last couple of years. It will rather reinforce the fears of sections continually shunted out of the commanding heights of key national positions and institutions. These groups will in no distant time, begin to vent their pent up grievances. There is mistrust, suspicion and ill-feelings among the diverse groups on these shores due to inequitable distribution of power and resources. It is on account of these that some people organized themselves to throw stones on the northern governors who were on a legitimate solidarity visit to their colleague in Port Harcourt.

    Some of those who spoke accused Amaechi of wasting their money hosting the northern governors. What money one may wish to ask? Their posters had some unprintable inscriptions that could further fuel embers of discord. That is how bad the mistrust is. But that is their mood. One of the governors succinctly captured this dilemma when he wondered what would have happened in the north had harm come their way.

    It is vital we give deep thought to stemming the recurring frictions that have over the years, stood against national integration. Power shift being a symptom of the larger national disorder cannot effectively address the nagging issues of our federal order. Power is sought desperately in this country because sections want to gain advantage over others. Such a posturing cannot promote fairness, justice, equity and national cohesion. Jonathan may as well vacate office for the north in 2015. But the manner he is being harassed out of the contest may end up swelling a groundswell of public sympathy for him both in the south and the Middle Belt.

     

  • A long farewell from Allah De

    A long farewell from Allah De

    This column this morning mourns the passing of a great mentor, senior friend, ardent fan and journalistic icon, Alhaji Alade Idowu Odunewu. Allah De, as he was famously known, was easily one of the greatest columnists anywhere in the world in the last century. An illustrious scion of an illustrious family, the great journalist was a master of elegant prose and a man of outstanding personal polish.

    To have known Allah De was to know a man of culture, civility, restraint and gentlemanly sensitivity to others. There was about him the urbane self-mastery that go with superior breeding. True eminence does not push its pre-eminence. Self-assured and assured of his place in the ranking order, Allah De was an old Lagosian in the classic sense of that word: a combination of the fabled English gentleman who wears his hat and distinction lightly and the Yoruba Omoluabi who knows that what is left unsaid is also the most profoundly eloquent.

    Anybody who has come across the likes of Chief Folarin Coker who recently turned ninety, Mr Akintola Williams who is in his nineties, Chief Chris Ogunbanjo, the departed Chief Justice Fatai Atanda-Williams, the late I.S Adewale a.k.a “the boy is good”, the legendary Mobolaji Bank-Anthony and many others still living will know what we mean. These inscrutable, wise, unflappable, unfailingly polite and courteous gentlemen represent the seamless meshing of the very best of two global civilizations with a hint of Islamic chivalry.

    But they are a vanishing breed in a vanishing world. Allah De represents the last of the titans and the very last of the Mohicans. With his passing, Nigeria is a poorer place indeed. It is the last snapshot of Edwardian Lagos. For a long time, the old man had been hinting that he felt like an alien in an alien and alienating society.

    He could no longer make sense of the terrible fate that has overtaken his beloved profession and even more so his country. Despite his quiet visionary rallying of the remaining faithful, the old ethos had come irreversibly unstuck in a brave new Nigeria. Journalists have become business men and business men have become journalists. Consequently, the Fourth Estate of the Realm has become the Fourth Realm of the Estate.

    The whole world has gone out of joints. This was not the country they fought for with their pen and moral authority. Pirates, predators and other social piranhas have taken over the country. Like a bewildered but wise statesman, Allah De took solace in stoic, studied silence and solitary meditation, quietly waiting for the green light of terminal exit. It came at 2pm on Thursday afternoon.

    Snooper had been trapped in an impossible traffic snafu on the Gbagada loop when the news came. The tangled web of belching trailers, smoking and hissing petrol tankers and assorted automotive psychotics reminded one of the Abagana Civil War inferno. But this was a most uncivil war. Darkness had suddenly descended. Chief Adeniyi, retired FRCN director and loyal junior friend of Allah De, had been trying to get in touch with the dismal network not availing. He finally sent a text. The great masquerade had departed.

    It took quite a while for the news to sink in. Alhaji Odunewu was by no stretch of the imagination a young man. He had lived to ripe old age and had fulfilled his mission in life. Rather than mourning, it should be a celebration of a great life of glittering achievements and personal fulfillment. But death is death and the horror of terminal exit often leads to a temporary disorientation and the loss of customary rotes and routines.

    As yours sincerely was trying to come to terms with death in the tormenting tortoise of traffic, the phone rang and it was Lanre Idowu, one of the remaining stars and exemplars of the old school of journalism. “Lanre, don’t try to break any bad news to me”, snooper admonished him. Ignoring snooper’s disquiet, the notable journalist had gone ahead to confirm the news of Allah De’s passing.

    It was after this that Chief Adeniyi finally came through. He informed that the old man left in his usual quiet, peaceful and dignified manner, without any self-important fuss or fancy. He had tidied his earthly affairs and had scrupulously made arrangements for his own burial. It would take place the following day in keeping with the simple rites of Islam somewhere off Gambari Street in the very bowels of old Lagos. And that was that.

    Our paths had first crossed in disarming circumstances in late 1982. It was a most fortuitous encounter. A man of amazing grace and courtesy, the old man had journeyed all the way from Lagos to the great citadel of learning and culture to show his gratitude to a friend and colleague of snooper who had been of great help to his daughter in his tutorial classes. But the old Lagosian had lost his way in the jungle of pristine beauty and had showed up at snooper’s door. Snooper instantly recognised the great journalist and volunteered to take him to his destination. It was the beginning of a long relationship marked by strategic distance, discretion and mutual admiration.

    Famously dubbed the Dean of satirical journalism in Nigeria by the great Zik in the course of their epic duel over diarchy in 1973, Allah De was as sharp as he was witty. His limpid, free flowing, uncluttered prose was an orgiastic delight and vintage Fleet Street. On top of his form, Allah De recalls Baron William Rees-Mogg, the aristocratic British journalist, politician, editor and statesman, who plied his trade as a reporter-columnist into his eighties until he succumbed to cancer last December.

    Forty years on, snooper recalls the historic journalistic affray between Zik and Allah De, particularly with the wily Fabian lion and magnificent former prize fighter baiting the journalistic tiger out of his corner with the offer of some preliminary skirmishes before the main tournament. It was Fabius Cuntactor, the great Roman general and owner of the brand, who had famously noted that preliminary skirmishes must not be fought with major artillery. Allah De rallied heroically and the result was a memorable intellectual slugfest that reverberates till date.

    Great statesman versus great journalist, they do not make them like that any more in Nigeria. Forty years after, as Nigeria lurches between violent and autocratic military rule and equally violent and despotic civilian rule the debate about diarchy continues to resonate. About a fortnight ago, the whole concept was dredged up once again by a forthright columnist on The Nation.

    It would appear that Nigeria’s origins and inauguration in colonial conquest and armed subjugation have continued to haunt it. A century after forcible amalgamation and almost half a century after the conclusion of the Civil War, arms and their bearers continue to assume a tragic centrality in the framing and possible unfurling of the nation. At the last count, the military are involved in internal security operations in twenty eight out of thirty six states. It doesn’t get more dire.

    While the northernmost fringes of the country have become a no-go area due to a combination of political and spiritual insurgency, significant swaths of the south are under the siege of economic and social insurgency occasioned by armed robbery, violent kidnapping, ritual killing, sea piracy and other deviancies.

    Meanwhile to complete the armed entrapment of the entire country, the federal government, under the strategically misguided notion that it is important to secure the presidential backyard, is seriously and furiously looking for trouble by adding the explosive Rivers state to its shopping list of self-inflicted political disasters. Even the original owners of the game of programmed anarchy are shouting that this is going to be a bridge too far, but the government is saying not to worry, that it is a little local difficulty.

    What would Allah De, a staunch opponent of diarchy, say about this unfolding political nonsense? In 1983 while the NPN rigging machine was in furious progress in Oyo state, a much puzzled and bewildered Allah De noted in his column that the NPN scoundrels were not just content with ousting Bola Ige, they were also bent on loading the Oyo State Assembly with a “Balarabe-type” majority. A few weeks later, the bubble burst and the landslide turned into a gun slide as General Danjuma would famously put it.

    Thirty years down the line Allah De would even have been more puzzled by recent developments in the country. When shall we learn? It is just as well that Allah De has chosen this time to make his grand exit. Let the dead bury the dead. It has been a long farewell from one of Nigeria’s greatest sons ever. May the noble soul of Alade Odunewu rest in peace.. .

  • And a short farewell from snooper

    While we are still on the subject of death and departure, and of coming and going, it is meet to announce that this column is proceeding on leave. It is time for the masquerade behind the mask to take a well-deserved rest and to take stock of the future. For six and a half years beginning from January, 2007, dear readers, this column has appeared every Sunday. It has been a rich and rewarding experience. The more you know, the more aware you are of your ignorance. In the age of the dispersal of knowledge, the columnist as an omnipotent oracle is no longer feasible. A web of epistemic vulnerabilities binds all of us together.

    To our young readers who often marvel at its unstinting punctuality, let us say that the column is a triumph of the can do spirit which is typically Nigerian. This column is a testimony to the capacity of the human mind to push the body to the outer limits of punitive exertion and exhaustion. Before this column, the writer has never done a weekly column, preferring the fortnightly and monthly column which is more suitable to leisurely meditation and languid reflection. But certain political developments in the west in particular and in Nigeria in general changed all that.. Conceived as a light-hearted social diary, the column took on a life of its own and broke free of its handler.

    Snooper will miss our numerous readers and devotees of the column from far and wide, the parliament of pen-pushers , the web of warriors and the intensive care and caress of all those internees of the internet. Till we meet again, you can afford to sleepwalk with your eyes wide opened. Okon will be on long lease and a short leash.

  • Okon votes for child marriage

    It is not all over for All Over. While the distinguished senator from Idanre, Dr Ayo Akinyelure, a.k.a All Over, was weeping and crying like a baby as irate female members of his constituency pilloried him for rubbing them the wrong away over the child Marriage palaver, it was not only Senator Yerimah, the Oniyeri of Zamfara, that was having the last laugh.

    Okon had barged into snooper’s room with a strong message of support for the embattled senator from the rugged hills.

    “Oga, why dem Yoruba women dey shout about dem child marriage? Sebi dem dey do am too? “Okon demanded.

    “What do you mean?” snooper snapped.

    “Ah you see oga no vex.” The crazy boy began with a leer. “ When Okon first come Lagos as small pikin, he get one fat Yoruba woman for Mafoluku who dey greet me every morning and him dey say, oko mi o, oko mi o. I come ask dem wetin oko mi dey mean sef and they come tell me say na my husband. Naim I come pick race. I never even sabi piss proper not to talk of dem wire wire business, .so as dem mala dey do dem yanrinyan dem Yoruba women dey do dem yaro. Child marriage na child marriage. Equation don balance be dat, abi no be so:?”.

    “Okon, you are just a big fool. Get lost” snooper hissed at the rogue.

    “Oga I no be big fool. I be small fool for dem time. If to say na now now, dem fat Yoruba woman go smell pepper.” On that note, snooper kicked out the rogue cook.

  • The gathering storm

    The gathering storm

    At no time since the civil war was Nigeria in more perilous times than now. A new report entitled ‘Nigerian Unity in the Balance’, authored for the United States Army War College has, again, warned Nigerian leaders to beware of another civil war or an outright break-up following what it called ongoing divisive trends in the country. The report, released by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S War College, was written by two former American servicemen, Gerald McLaughlin and Clarence J. Bouchat. The foreword written by the Director, Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College, Professor Douglas Lovelace, observed that secessionist tendencies are endemic in Nigeria. Under such stresses, it emphasised, Nigerian unity may fail. Should Nigerian leaders mismanage the political economy and reinforce centrifugal forces in the country, Nigeria could break up along its previously identified fault lines, the report concluded. Unfortunately, in Nigeria where we are content with living in denial, presidential spokespersons will readily lecture you as to how ‘political wrangling among competing interests has no consequences on the nation’s political stability whatsoever’.

    Conversely, unlike us Nigerians, Americans scholars don’t just talk; rather they talk, based on observable and verifiable facts which are then subjected to serious interrogation at the end of which the most likely probabilities are drawn.

    In tandem with these American views, a Nigerian Oxford scholar, Dr Antony Akinola, recently observed as follows on our current circumstances: “At the national level, we are getting more and more divided on sectional, ethnic and religious bases during Jonathan’s regime than at any other time in our national history. The Nigeria Governors’ Forum is fractured; further bringing out the divisive tendencies in the polity. The governing party itself is fissured, wobbling towards collapse. The president has had to assume emergency powers, the most extreme of presidential powers, to provide security, failing even the most basic ingredient of governance, that of passing national budget,” even in the third quarter of the financial year.

    Neither Papa Edwin Clark nor Asari Dokubo is helping matters with their bellicose tantrums. The north is not sitting idle. But while the north is yet at the visualising stage, the presidency has moved, deliberately stoking the fires of avoidable conflagration all over the place. And to them it matters not if that move is the most banal or the most illogical, as long as they can show us they are in power. Therefore at the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, the president is backing those who stand logic and common sense on the head, claiming, tenaciously, that 16 is greater than 19 and, funny enough, a whole state governor permits himself to be so paraded. From there their agents have gone to the Rivers State House of Assembly, desecrated it under the watchful eyes of a federal agent, doubling as a police commissioner. Also, in Rivers State, in what has become the norm, the presidency is earnestly backing those who claim that 5 is greater than 27 and Mr President is believed to have since received in the Villa that great joke – one Evans Bipi – who claims he is Speaker and mouthing the profanity that Mrs Jonathan, the President’s wife, is his Jesus, albeit with a small j. And you can bet that if push comes to shove, the state police commissioner will be backing him all the way in that ludicrous claim. But that wasn’t the first time either.

    Before inviting Gov Jang to the Villa Mr. President had first recognised him as his own NGF chairman at the PDP Family Dinner at which Baba Anenih pretended to be the seminal author of the automatic nomination idea even when he was nothing more than a puppet. A perspicacious scholar has recently asked if there would be a President Jonathan today if Chief Clark had succeeded in his ‘Gowon forever’ campaign of the ’60’s or Anenih in both his Abacha forever campaign as well as his support for Obasanjo’s ill-fated Third Term Project.

    Now, while the north is restive and both the east and the south south appear to be working in tandem, mum is the word in the southwest and since nature abhors a vacuum, the presidency is assiduously working on how to use the zone as its launching pad for 2015. Today, all manner of discredited politicians attend Afenifere meetings just as some otherwise respected elders, who had, without a doubt, rendered sterling services in the cause of the Yoruba, are being had on the cheap for no other reason than to weaken the region ahead of the 2015 agenda. How, for instance, were some of the elders going to fund the spurious ‘political parties’ they are exhuming or claim to champion if not through some underhand means like the so-called oil security contract, since hopefully successfully shot down, and, what electoral purpose are they supposed to serve other than act as agent provocateurs and spoilers of the majority wish of our people in the region? Today, no thanks to them, there is not a single Yoruba leader who can successfully call a meeting of Yorubas across the political divide except in a dire emergency which we do not pray for.

    But it would still have been tolerable if the presidency was content to stop at that. Rather, they have much more dangerous designs on the southwest beginning from the 2014 governorship elections in both Ekiti and Osun states during which they intend to test run their 2015 do-or-die but extremely risky electoral shenanigans, using none other than some Yoruba politicians, in the typical ‘use a monkey to catch a monkey’ scenario.

    As at the moment, the story in town in Ekiti is that the President is rooting for his one-time benefactor, and now Minister of Police Affairs, Navy Capt Caleb Olubolade, which we learn is why one of their candidates, former governor Ayo Fayose, who believes he stands the best chance to square up to the sitting governor in the election, is dead set against a consensus candidate. He has just now been suspended. But also going the rounds, is the whispering information that the President is keen on supporting Olubolade so that once the minister resigns, he would be gifted the opportunity to name a ‘do or die’ member of the colony of Ekiti PDP gubernatorial wannabes as the new minister whose primary duty, he would be instructed, is to ‘win’ Ekiti for the PDP, no matter how.

    This should not come as a surprise because Obasanjo had set that precedent. Determined to win Ekiti for PDP in 2007, he manufactured the inchoate impeachment of Governor Ayo Fayose so he could put his kinsman, the Emergency Administrator, in place to ensure that. The events of the night of the election, 14 April, 2007, when results dramatically changed when Ekitis were already dancing on the streets for Dr Fayemi’s victory, more than confirmed that. And Nigerians know all that followed.

    Today, things are worse for the PDP in the southwest and in Ekiti, in particular. Apart from PDP’s utter confusion as a party, Ekitis have come to see and know the meaning of multi-sectoral development and the finer differences between PDP and AC N. Thanks to the administration of Dr John Kayode Fayemi. It is therefore in the best interests of professional riggers, and do and die politicians, no matter how seemingly powerful, not to think of any ‘Fehingbepon’, meaning, there would be no room here in the southwest for any act of impunity.

    Two egregious errors

    Last Sunday, on the Law makers’ salaries the following explanatory words: “figures represent proportion of persons per GPD’, was mistakenly cut off.

    Also, I wrote that Professor Oritshajolomi Thomas was sacked on 17 November, 1973. No, it should have read 17, November, 1975.

    Both errors are duly regretted.

    Arthur Medeiros, adieu

    We lost a wonderful friend this past week. We are here referring to the likes of Chief Bayo Famotibe, Engr Dave Oni, the Oniwinde twin brothers, Taiwo and Kehinde (Junior), and, of course, Akin Medeiros, his own brother and Mrs Bimbo Johnson, his niece. Arthur, a dashingly handsome and absolutely gregarious young man in our Apapa road days, when COOL CATS INN was our watering hole, passed on as a result of complications arising from a stroke which he suffered some years back. We will sure miss him.

    We commiserate with the family he left behind: the wife, the children, Kemi and Femi, the grandchildren and his siblings.

    May the good Lord rest him.

  • Freedom of Information Act and Dictatorship of Corruption and Mediocrity (3)

    Freedom of Information Act and Dictatorship of Corruption and Mediocrity (3)

    It is time in this lecture to address the equation between corruption and mediocrity that is a central aspect of the undeclared ‘dictatorship’ that I am engaging in the lecture. Corruption and mediocrity in our country at the present time are symbiotic, they feed off each other. Extremely poor performance or even no performance at all is no barrier to becoming very wealthy and holding very high public office in our country – including the highest office in the land. According to the House of Representative Ad-Hoc Committee Report on the oil subsidy mega-scam we see “a gross lack of record keeping”, “decadence” “rot” and “entrenched inefficiency” in the work of the public officials that supervised the payment of those vast sums to the oil marketers.

    These epithets of abysmally low standards of performance and probity were addressed to the specific case of the oil subsidy scam but they might as well have been addressed to the generation and distribution of electricity; construction of physical infrastructures like roads, bridges, hospitals and schools; public sanitation and waste disposal; social services for children, youths, the elderly and the disabled. Federal and state governments don’t have to perform well or perform at all to generate the budgets on which they depend; it comes to them like manna from heaven even though we know that the source is the rents from the oilfields of the Niger Delta.

    At the centre of things in the government of the federation and the ruling party, the standards of performance in virtually all areas of governance are so low that almost any other party or phalanx of politicians can credibly claim that they can do better than the current incumbents, even though there is little to choose between all the ruling class parties in terms of their ideologies and their value orientations. Almost everywhere that you find corruption in our country, mediocrity is never too far behind.

    At this point and drawing from my professional academic interest in linguistic, literary and cultural studies, I would like to offer some thoughts on the separate and yet connected relations between the cognate terms corrupt, corruptive and corrupted. My intension in doing this is both to further clarify and broaden the ramifications of this link that I am urging between corruption and mediocrity in our country. Thus, when we say that a person, an act, or a process is corrupt we are alluding adjectivally to a quality, a disposition or an effect. The term corruptive adds a dimension that implies an active transformation that turns that which is not initially corrupt to that which becomes tainted with corruption. The term “corrupted” lends an even more dynamic, more perfected or completed dimension to the term “corruptive”. At this level, the term corruption that we so often use to describe our politicians and their habitual practices takes on the quality of a specter, a malaise, a generalized social pathology that reeks of rot, decay, putrefaction. On this basis, I would argue that in our Nigerian context, “corruption” is to politicians and political parties as “corrupted” is to virtually all our institutions, both religious and secular, both private and public, both local and nation-wide.

    Pushing further on this observation, I would argue that we tend to associate corruption primarily with our electoral process and our politicians and political parties, but who among us is unaware of the cheap, superstitious and facile religiosity that underlies the nairamania, the amassing of great wealth in our mega-churches and among our most prominent, jetsetter religious leaders? Who is unaware of the scale of examination malpractices in our primary and secondary schools? Yes, the corruption has its roots, its foundations in the political order and among our rulers, but almost every institution in our country has become corrupted.

    Since I am an academic, I am particularly interested in the decay, the unspeakable fall in standards that has befallen our educational institutions. Here, I will give only a few particularly shocking examples of this terribly corrupted state of things in our secondary and tertiary institutions. The failure rates in our secondary school leaving examinations are some of the worst in the world. In the last one decade, I don’t think we have recorded anything higher than 35% of passes in these exams. In one particular year, in the NECO exams, only 1.8% of those who sat for the exam passed, leaving a staggering failure rate of 98.2%. Our universities are poorly ranked in the world; not a single one of them is among the 2000 most highly rated institutions. Far more alarming is the fact that our universities are also poorly ranked among African universities. In the most recently released rankings, only eight of our universities were listed among the first 100 universities in Africa and only one Nigerian institution is among the first 20. Within the country itself in the business sector of the economy, potential employers of our university graduates are forever complaining that the instruction our university students receive are so appallingly poor that a lot of the graduates are simply “unemployable”. The list goes on and on with a depressing regularity that has a grim foreboding for the future of our country.

    I do not wish to empty out the contents of the special focus of this lecture – the Freedom of Information Act of 2011 in relation to the dictatorship of corruption – into an endless jeremiad about the things that are prematurely but utterly corrupted in virtually all the institutions of our society. The Greeks have a saying that is very pertinent here that I wish to invoke to underscore this point: When a fish begins to rot, the process starts from the head and it is from there that the decay pervades the entire body of the fish. From this, I wish to state with as much emphasis as I can muster that it is our rulers, our politicians and political parties that we must hold accountable if we wish to arrest the rot, the decay that acts like a dictatorship in our present political order.

    One aspect of a comparative, transnational view of corruption that we would do well to keep in mind in this respect is the fact that corruption is not always or even necessarily linked with mediocrity as we find it with our rulers. As a matter of fact, as big as corruption is in Nigeria, it is nothing in size compared with the corruption that has been documented and much discussed with regard to some of the biggest transnational business conglomerates of Western and East Asian countries. Without in the least bit offering an apologia for the scope of corruption among our rulers, I would insist that it ought to be pointed out that Transparency International is able to regularly rank corruption higher in African and other developing regions of the world than what obtains in the West only because its figures pertain to the countries and regions of the world, leaving out the big business empires of the planet who, between them, account for by far the greatest share of corruption in the world, together with the effects that corruption has on the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable peoples of the planet. I repeat: corruption is not always and necessarily linked with mediocrity, with abysmally low or poor standards. The high incidence of corruption in the ranks of some of the smartest and most innovative corporations in the world is clear proof of this assertion. The movements and forces around the world that have taken on the corruption of these corporations have counted on rationality, legal and ideological, as weapons with which to wage their struggles.

    This is where, in my opinion, we must locate the potential of the Freedom of Information Act to make a difference in the struggle against corruption and the indifference to due process and accountability that reigns supreme in the highest corridors of power in our country. Like all other national versions of the Freedom of Information Act, ours also presupposes legal and moral rationality, especially as enshrined in the presupposition that the state, the liberal-democratic state, is founded on the rule of law, on the assumption that a country’s rulers, a country’s public officeholders and a country’s business enterprises must comply with the laws of the land, otherwise what you have is not a true democracy but a dictatorship hiding behind the outer forms and shells of democracy. Invoking the theoretical jargon of radical political economy here, I would argue that our Freedom of Information Act of 2011 presupposes that our country is on the verge of transforming primitive accumulation of the most vicious kind into a modern, market-driven economy in which, in conjunction with cutthroat competition, you have the supremacy of the law.

    It is doubtful that our press, our media houses have thought much of these ramifications of the Freedom of Information Act. This is because as much as they fought long and hard for the passing of this Act, they have been remarkably reticent in using it to compel our rulers, our public institutions and private business companies to comply with the provisions of the Act. Let me move to the conclusion of this talk by briefly engaging one of the few instances when the provisions of the Act was invoked – and met stiff, unyielding resistance from the powers that be in our country.

    This much is known about the scale of remuneration of the members of our National Assembly: Both in relative and absolute terms, they are the highest paid legislators in the world. Each member of our National Assembly collects far more in salaries, allowances and bonuses than the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world.

    In the face of the universal outcry in the country against the whopping scale of our legislators’ remuneration package, they have been extremely secretive about the precise figures. Indeed the lengths to which they are apparently willingly to go to keep the exact figures hidden from public awareness and scrutiny seems to have no bounds. Thus, when a former member of the House, Honourable Dino Melaye, began to go public with these figures, he was swiftly and severely dealt with by the leadership of the House. Indeed, the manner in which he was silenced was so effective that no other member of the National Assembly has since then ever dared to follow his example.

    Far more cynical and indifferent to its claims to democratic norms is how the National Assembly responded when a civil society organization, The Legal Assistance and Aid Project, LEPAD, invoked the Freedom of Information Act of 2011 to compel our legislators to reveal to the Nigerian people exactly how much they are paid. They refused absolutely. Consequent on this refusal, LEPAD dragged the National Assembly to the courts. In a suit argued by the frontline activist lawyer, Femi Falana, SAN, a high court ordered the National Assembly to act in accordance with a law that it had itself passed by promptly releasing full details of the salaries and emoluments paid to members of the Assembly. They still refused and then took the matter to a federal appeal court. The case is still pending in the courts.

    I should mention that without being a lone figure crying in the wilderness, Femi Falana has done much to put the usefulness, the value of the Freedom of Information Act to test again and again since 2011 when the Act was enacted. He has invoked the Act in relation to a range of issues of public good that pertain to a whole group of governmental functionaries, parastatals, private commercial interests including but not limited to Minister of Justice and the Attorney General of the Federation; the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Commission; the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA); and the GSM/Internet Providers. I do not think that Falana harbors any illusions at all that by itself, the Freedom of Information Act will radically and positively transform the present endlessly corrupt and mediocre Nigerian political order. But he is taking this prevailing deeply unjust, wasteful and corrupted order to the very limits of its claim to being a democracy founded on the rule of law, not a failing state perpetually on the brink of becoming a failed state. Let Falana’s example be a wakeup call to our media houses and our journalists that they must rediscover the reasons why they fought long and hard for this Act to be passed. Quite possibly, the Freedom of Information Act is the only remaining legal and moral instrument that we have for making the revolution that is coming a peaceful one. But this line of reasoning requires another lecture, another set of reflections.

    Concluded

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • The strange case of Charity Uzoechina

    The strange case of Charity Uzoechina

    For mischief makers religion is always a useful tool. That point was hammered home again in the Nigerian Senate last week when in the course of retouching a section of the constitution dealing with citizenship lawmakers veered off course.

    Today, senators find themselves battling the backlash from outraged Nigerians who say their action opened a loophole for people to legally take child brides.

    Although they insist they didn’t lower the age of consent or amend the Child Rights Act, Senate President David Mark has admitted many of his Muslim colleagues were blackmailed into voting a certain way once former Zamfara State Governor Ahmed Sani Yerima introduced religious sentiments.

    That a group of people at that level could blithely ignore the serious ramifications, and endorse a clause that is open to all sorts of interpretations, underlines the power of religion.

    It is not only in the Senate that badly-managed religion is playing havoc with people’s lives. This Thursday, August 1, a Sharia Court in Bida, Niger State, will rule whether one Charity Uzoechina, a 24-year old student of the Federal Polytechnic in the town, will be allowed to return home to her parents.

    The case has been rumbling for months, and revolves around Uzoechina’s alleged renunciation of Christianity and embrace of Islam.

    Her father, Raymond Uzoechina, a pastor with The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Abuja, denies his daughter converted to Islam, alleging she was hypnotised and kidnapped, and is being held captive in the palace of the Etsu Nupe, Alhaji Yahaya Abubakar.

    For his part, the traditional ruler claims Charity, or ‘Aisha’ as she’s now called, was not being held against her will. He has presented legal documents where Charity claims to have converted to Islam and says her father could kill her for the move. That threat ostensibly prodded her to seek protection from the Palace and the Sharia Court.

    The court duly obliged, ordering “that the custody of the plaintiff be entrusted in the hand of Etsu Nupe for the time being and the Etsu Nupe should employ a qualified Islamic scholar who will be teaching her and showing her what the Islamic customs is all about and the plaintiff can even be watching and selecting a man of her choice whom she will want to marry as her partner.”

    While the Sharia Court is already making marriage plans for her, Charity has dropped out of school and remains holed up in the Etsu Nupe’s palace.

    Pastor Uzoechina vehemently denies the version of events as retailed by the palace and the court. On the day when that ruling was given he was not present. He rejects talk that the Emir tried to broker peace between him and his daughter – insisting that the last time he saw Charity she had an emotional breakdown.

    “My daughter was crying when we saw her. They never allowed us speak with her. It is not true that the royal father invited me and the girl for talks, with the hope of reconciling us. On March 2, I came to the palace and was taken before the Etsu Nupe. The Etsu Nupe never asked the girl to go back home with me as claimed,” he said in The Nation this week.

    In the four months over which this controversy has raged, virtually everyone has had their say. Charity’s father, as is to be expected, has been vocal in expressing his outrage. President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, to whom he ran for help, has been relentless in demanding answers.

    His intervention provoked a response from the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA). Both the Sharia Court and the Etsu Nupe have also tried to defend themselves. The only missing voice in the hubbub is the most critical – Charity’s.

    Third parties have been regaling us with what she said or didn’t say. But this needless controversy can be cleared up in a minute if the lady at the center of the storm would be allowed by those in whose custody she presently is, to speak for herself.

    Every side claims to be telling the truth and yet we know there can only be one version of the truth. The only person who can clear things up is not being allowed to speak. All those interested in the unvarnished truth ought to ask why?

    Section 38 (1) of the 1999 constitution provides for freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including freedom to change one’s religion or belief. It also allows us to propagate our religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

    However, in canvassing one’s beliefs there’s no room for coercion. Uzoechina’s claim that his daughter was abducted is very grave. Kidnapping is a criminal offence. The fact that neither the parents nor the Etsu Nupe can agree on the circumstances that caused Charity to wind up in the palace ought to attract more than cursory interest from the police. That is assuming they can export the same zeal with which they are ‘enforcing the rule of law’ in Rivers State to probing a matter involving a high profile traditional ruler in Niger State.

    The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) ought also to be very interested for we might just have on our hands an egregious case of violation of a citizen’s rights.

    There are issues about the legal process that judicial authorities need to look into. For example, what notion of justice makes it acceptable to drag a Christian before a Sharia Court?

    Does any court under our constitution have the power to circumscribe a person’s liberty just to propagate a religious belief? Does any court have the power to assume custody of an adult who has not committed any crime? Under which law can a court commit an adult into the care of a traditional ruler?

    We need to understand whether justice is being served in this case or whether this is another manifestation of impunity for which present day Nigeria is becoming notorious.

    Uzoechina alleges that he has not received fair hearing. He claims not to have been served notice of hearing and that the same day – March 4, the complaint was presented before court, judgment was given and executed. Those who exercise oversight over the courts ought to investigate this.

    We must acknowledge that the individual involved in not a minor but 24 years old. Even then she was living with her parents and was still responsible to them. She may be old enough to take her own decisions – assuming she did indeed convert – but her father and mother were entitled to an explanation. The absence of such a discussion will make any parent suspicious. This is especially so given that reports of forced conversions are rife in the north.

    Despite the Etsu Nupe’s protestations there are just too many unanswered questions and posers. As the girl’s father has pointed out, even if Charity wants to practice Islam, it doesn’t have to be under the Emir’s roof. His home is not a government remand center.

    This whole business is not positive for the traditional ruler. The Etsu Nupe stool is one of the most respected in the country. He doesn’t need this messy controversy to drag on. He can control the damage being done to his image by setting Charity free.

  • Thoughts for teens

    It is that time of the year when valedictory services are held for final year students of secondary and primary schools. Last Wednesday I was guest speaker at the Convocation Day of Ebenezer Comprehensive High School, Agbado, Lagos.

    I spoke on Youth Empowerment and Job Prospects in Contemporary World. I found the topic very apt considering the poor state of our economy, which makes it imperative for youths to wake up to challenges that lie ahead of them.

    For crying out loud, as the youths like to say, they need all the support they can get, but they must know that their destinies are in their own hands. Excerpts;

    Youth Empowerment

    Youth Empowerment simply put is empowering the youths. It’s not about physical power but knowledge acquisition which is greater than physical strength.

    As youths your knowledge is limited. Because of the exposure some of you have, you think you know so much, but the truth is that there is still a lot you have to learn from your parents, teachers and the society at large.

    You need to be willing to learn for you to be empowered. There are so many life lessons you need to learn so that you don’t make the same mistake many of us made. You need to know that life is a long race, hence get the necessary strength for the journey ahead.

    Those who have the task of empowering the youths must not fail in this crucial task. The Bible says teach your children the way to go, when they grow, they will not depart from it.

    Career Opportunities

    Career opportunities are the various opportunities that abound. You need to know them before making up your mind on what you want to be. As youths many usually aspire for some careers because of what they see around them. Some of you want to be like your parents or people you know. There is nothing wrong with that, but you need enough information to know not only what you want to be but what you need to do to accomplish your career dreams.

    Every career has its requirements in terms of subjects you have to pass at SSCE levels and personal attributes you must have to succeed in your chosen career.

    You need to know all the subject combinations and pass them excellently because of the stiff competition to get admission into higher institutions.

    Let me make it clear that there is no alternative to education if you want to succeed in whatever career you want to choose. Even to be a Pastor, you need more than the Holy Spirit to succeed. Footballers and Musicians who are not educated don’t usually end well as they have nothing to fall back to when they are no longer as popular as they used to be.

    One clear advantage you all have is that careers have become more diversified unlike before when it was only prestigious to be a Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer, Accountant and a few other well known professions.

    My appeal, especially to parents is that we should not force our children to study courses they don’t have the capacity or passion for. They don’t have to study what we only think is good for them, but what they are excited about and can cope with. Of course we must guide them, give them the necessary information and prayerfully help them to choose careers of their choice.

    Contemporary world

    In our contemporary world, there are lots of challenges which the youths have to learn to cope with and overcome. This is why you have to be empowered not to be overwhelmed with the new world we live in.

    You simply must be the best to accomplish your goals.

    My advice is that at this stage of your life your academic pursuit should be your priority. Without education you cannot go far in the long run. Now is the time to acquire academic knowledge and other relevant skills that will help you. There is time for everything.

  • Renunciation of citizenship: matters arising

    Renunciation of citizenship: matters arising

    A central constitution should reflect core values common to all the parts of the whole

    There are minor and major matters arising from the Senate’s recent attempt to cleanse the 1999 Constitution of gender bias or discrimination with respect to constitutional provisions on eligibility of citizens to renounce Nigerian citizenship. Some of the matters address surface issues while others make visible some aspects of the constitution that stand federalism on its head.

    With respect to surface issues, one matter that has arisen is the attempt by Ondo Central Senatorial District voters to invoke the sovereignty located in the citizenry. They had rightly called their senator to order and to find out why he voted for an issue that attempts to subvert their long-standing values. On his part, the Senator has rightly opened up by acknowledging that he voted in error. As there is no human being that is above mistake, it is expected that the enlightened voters in Ondo Central would have no difficulty accepting their senator’s open acceptance of acting in error. What is reassuring about the Akure town hall meeting with their senator is that voters and their senator came to an agreement on whose views should determine representative’s voting pattern in a democracy.

    Unlike the focused discussion between the senator and stakeholders in his constituency, another matter pertains to the claim by senate spokesmen that the section of the constitution at issue is an innocuous one that has nothing to do with underage marriage, which is deemed to have been overtaken by the Child Act of 2003 which states inter alia: “No person under the age of 18 years is capable of contracting a valid marriage and accordingly, any marriage so contracted is null and void and of no effect whatsoever.” Section 29 (4) may not be as innocuous as senators who argue that the matter they considered had nothing to do with child marriage imagine. Is the section at issue not inconsistent with the spirit of the Child Act of 2003 or vice versa? If the act being invoked is superior, then the provision that a married woman shall be deemed to be an adult and thus eligible to renounce her citizenship should not have arisen, on the account that if the person wishing to renounce her citizenship is an underage woman who happens to be married, such marriage should in tune with the spirit of the Child Act of 2003 be null and void and of no effect whatsoever.

    If anything, the principle of constitutional supremacy well captured under the General Provisions section: “If any other law is inconsistent with the provision of this Constitution, this Constitution shall prevail, and that other law shall to the extent of the inconsistency be void. It is conceivable for constitutional strict constructionists to argue that the Child Act of 2003 that says any marriage by any woman under 18 is null and void and the section of the Constitution that says that a woman regardless of her age who is married shall enjoy the privileges of an adult: renunciation of Nigerian citizenship, are inconsistent. Should this happen, Section 29 (4b) might be deemed to be superior to the Child Act of 2003.It is, therefore, right for the senate to opt to remove the section 28(4b), to obviate any ambiguity and to also make the provision gender-neutral.

    Another matter that has arisen most recently is the acceptance by the President of the Senate that the senators were blackmailed into re-inserting the provision that women who are married regardless of their age should be deemed as adults, even when they are not up to 18 years of age. More reassuring is the Senate President’s promise that the senate would look for opportunities to reverse itself on the decision to retain the provision at issue in the constitution, after having failed to do so as a result of blackmail.

    One matter arising that appears to have escaped the attention of the media and media pundits is the confusion inherent in the 1999 Constitution itself, especially its unwillingness to reflect the federal character of the country. It is not surprising that this aspect is overlooked by commentators who do not want to be seen as raising issues about the country’s diversity and the possibility of such interrogation’s capacity to heat the polity. But the voting patterns have unearthed the issue of the failure of the current constitution to reflect the country’s cultural diversity. But the fact that only two senators from the South (one from Edo and the other from Ondo) out of the 73 senators voted to retain section 29(4b) indicates visible ideological or value differences between the North and South of the country, a natural illustration of cultural diversity.

    If the provision of this section pertains to religious sensibilities, many of the senators from the South are Moslems and should have voted for retention of section 20(4b). It must be cultural: one section of the country appears to believe that women should have the same rights as their male counterparts, including the opportunity to acquire education that can enrich their citizenship and humanity. The other section appears to favour a constitution that gives men the opportunity to marry women who have not attained the age of majority while also wishing that female victims of underage marriage should keep some of the privileges that accrue only to citizens above 18 years of age. It is important for a federal constitution to allow parts of the whole to keep values that are dear to them without giving the impression that such values apply to other sections of the federation. For example, in the United States, California does not accept capital punishment while Texas does. Conflict is prevented by allowing each state to have its own constitution.

    A central constitution should reflect core values common to all the parts of the whole. Embedding culture-specific practices of a section in a national constitution shows bias. The section that allows women who are married to have the privilege of renouncing their citizenship while other women or men of their age in other cultures do not have that privilege is clearly partial to the cultures of Northern Nigeria. Given the history of the current constitution as a document that was imposed on the nation by military autocrats, it is not unexpected that such provisions exist in a constitution authored by military dictators. What should not be expected in the second decade after the exit of military dictatorship is for elected lawmakers to assign a sacred status to a constitution imposed on the nation, even if this had happened through blackmail,to cite the Senate President’s assessment.

    The fundamental issue calling for attention is the rightness in having a federal constitution that reflects only the values of a section of the country. Whatever might have been the motivation for Senator Yerima’s objection to removal of section 29(4b), the result of the votes to uphold Yerima’s objection or blackmail suggests that Yerima must have spoken for about half of the nation, the section of the country that produced 71of the 73 votes cast to sustain Yerima’s position. If anything, what happened in the senate in respect of section 29(4b) indicates that the current structure of governance cannot be made any more federal by the lawmakers elected under the 1999 Constitution. It may be better for political leaders to stop playing the Ostrich on the issue of the demand for a properly negotiated constitution, first for the country as a whole and, second, for each of its constituent parts.