The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • 20 years after June 12: Noise without deliberation

    20 years after June 12: Noise without deliberation

    Twenty years after annulment of the presidential election of June 12, 1993 and the struggle for democratization that raged for four years against the dictatorship of Sani Abacha, the country has not made substantial progress in terms of responding to demands for democracy of and for nationalities in the country. But in terms of electoral democracy, the country has made some strides in the direction of de-militarization of the polity. Beyond conducting elections at intervals and electing officers to conduct the business of government at the federal and state levels, one crucial element of the struggle against military rule has been left unattended: the demand for restructuring of the polity.

    Since the coming of civil rule in 1999, there have been media and political debates on the topic of re-structuring without sincere efforts to really address the problem with the hope of solving it. In the fashion of the proverbial Nigeria factor, debates on the issue of re-federalizing the country have been so cacophonous and suggestive of efforts to debate in order to prevent proper debate and deliberation. The process started with General Olusegun Obasanjo. During his first term, he referred to those asking for sovereign national conference as individuals that wanted the country to break. In his second term, he organized what he called Political Reform Conference. At the end of the conference, nothing substantial was achieved. This again induced fresh calls for people’s constitution.

    President Umaru Yar’Adua did not have time to worry about addressing calls for restructuring, if he at all paid attention to them. But he succeeded in setting up a police reforms committee. The committee recommended that the central police system should be funded from the federation account, without giving any space of authority to the states which along with the central government own the federation account. As one area considered by federalists to be crucial to restructuring, those calling for a people’s constitution came back to the podium to drum up their demands.

    Then President Goodluck Jonathan emerged. He too was quick to pontificate that Nigeria’s current constitution has no serious problem and that the structure of the polity is in order. Shortly after saying that, he formed a special committee to look at the 1999 Constitution and make recommendations on how to improve the country’s union charter. Knowing that the recommendations of the Belgore Committee did not address the issues raised by committed federalists about the current constitution, citizens continued to make the same demands that include calls for a people’s constitution to be determined at a sovereign national conference or a constitutional conference.

    On its own part, the National Assembly expressed readiness to amend the constitution. Over sanguine federalists took this to mean that federal lawmakers would make recommendations to make the current constitution more federal. The process has been on for almost two years without any promise about when it will end. But from information released by lawmakers, the constitution, after amendment, is more likely to look more unitary, as we observed in this column last week. The purpose of the short historical journey since 1999 is to inform our readers about the failure of the country’s post-military political class to embark on de-militarizing and re-federalizing the polity. All efforts to make civilian rulers realize that continuing to govern the country with a constitution and a governance architecture that have no input from citizens is dangerous have not led to proper deliberation, even though they have generated a lot of noise.

    Efforts by federal legislators to amend the constitution notwithstanding, two types of discourse have emerged and have been raging for the past one year: Unity discourse and Diversity discourse. Those who control the unity discourse insist that the current constitution is perfect. To them, what is wrong with the constitution is the quality of those who use or supervise the use of the charter. The core of the unity discourse is that if Nigeria is able to get good leaders, all its problems regarding managing its diversity optimally would be over. This school of thought also affirms that devolving more powers to the states is capable of causing disintegration of the country and that recognizing the county’s nationalities in the constitution as Ethiopia has done successfully is capable of breaking Nigeria. Centralists are quick to affirm that should Nigerians insist on electing a man or woman of higher quality than we have had since independence, constitutional problems that militate against peace and progress will disappear. In other words, the problem is lack of benevolent leadership.

    But Diversity discourse focuses on the role of cultural plurality in the politics and economy of a multiethnic state. They ask for constitutional intervention in the management of the country’s diversity. Leaders calling for recognition of diversity insist that culture has a significant role in political and economic development and that cultural differences in the country are not likely to disappear and are also not injurious to the country’s unity, if well managed. Federalists insist that Nigeria may have bad luck that prevents it from having good and benevolent leaders, especially at the federal level. But they affirm that lack of benevolent leadership is not as impactful as lack of benevolent governance structure and institutions. They argue that many countries that have similar multiethnic character have created peace for the purpose of progress by adopting federal arrangements: Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, Ethiopia, Spain, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America, to name a few. Some federalists are even saying that the problems of Boko Haram partially result from failure to address the national question in the design of the country’s governance structure. In short, federalists believe that the problem of the country is not one of benevolent leadership versus benevolent structure; rather it is a combination of both. They also think that a humanist approach to governance suggests that it is easier to work at benevolent structure than to create benevolent leadership. Political systems are not about creating personalities that can create political miracles; they are about creating institutions that are conducive to enriching the performance of average political leaders in office.

    The challenge as we begin the third decade after June 12 must continue to include wishing the heroes who died while struggling for democracy in the country: MKO Abiola, Alfred Rewane, Kudirat Abiola, and many others to rest in perfect peace. It must also include finding ways to elevate the discourse of federalism that is almost being drowned by the thinking that says an imposed constitution is not as much of a problem as finding supermen to rule Nigeria.

  • Public and private universities graduates

    For some time now, there have been concerns about the quality of graduates of higher institutions in the country. Employers have lamented that many of them are not employable as they most times lack necessary knowledge to perform tasks expected of them.

    Simply put, many cannot defend their certificates and employers have had to resort to all kinds of tests to shift the grain from the chaff among the crowd of unemployed graduates who usually bombard them with applications for employment.

    The low quality of graduates is not unconnected with the poor standard of education offered by the higher institutions. Lack of necessary resources and commitment by lecturers has made it impossible for the institutions to produce top grade graduates as in the good old days.

    Instead of admitting that the problem cuts across federal, states and private institutions, I am disturbed by some claims that graduates of government universities are better than those of private universities.

    Chairman of Energy Group, Jimoh Ibrahim, was recently quoted as saying that the standard of graduates from private universities is very weak and that they are almost unemployable. He claimed that the poor standard of graduates of the private universities is the reason why, according to him, it is not easy for any alumnus of the institutions to make significant impact.

    Last Wednesday, Comrade Frank Kokori at a lecture in Lagos also derided the quality of graduates of private institutions particularly because of the high number of first class graduates in comparison with old public universities where he said it was not easy to make such grades.

    Based on my personal experience and interaction with graduates of public and private universities, I find it difficult to accept the claims by Mr. Ibrahim, Comrade Kokori and any other person who shares their position on this issue.

    Many federal universities are simply living on past glories and cannot claim to offer better education than some of the top private universities in the country. Most of the state universities are worse and do not offer their students much for them to compete with graduates of even the average private universities.

    With the poor state of many public universities in the country as confirmed by a recent finding by a visitation panel, many Nigerian parents, just like they do for secondary education, now prefer sending their children to private universities in the country or abroad.

    Despite having more qualified lecturers, students of public universities do not have the advantage of being taught better as some of the lecturers hardly come for lectures. There are cases where lecturers in public universities barely take five lectures in a semester. What is the use of having some lecturers who don’t teach or teach outdated topics from outdated books?

    Interestingly, some of the lecturers in the private universities also lecture in public universities. Unfortunately, while they take their lectures in private universities seriously due to the close monitoring by the authorities of the institutions, they can be very casual with lectures in public universities, when they attend.

    Whether in public or private universities, there is an urgent need to ensure an improvement in the standard of education the students are getting. The students must be ready to learn, the teacher should be ready to teach and the government and proprietors must provide necessary and enabling academic environment.

  • Uncommon fraternity

    Uncommon fraternity

    My message in this column on April 7 titled ‘The Faleye metaphor’ was like all media messages; it was addressed ‘to whom it may concern’. In the piece, I highlighted the plight of a young Nigerian who was compelled by circumstances to travel to China to further his studies in electronics and telecommunications engineering, after graduating from the Nigeria College of Aviation Technology, Zaria, with a diploma. A few months to the end of his studies, he ran into financial storm as plans did not go the way his aged parents had thought. A little over one million naira stood between him and his dream of a first degree.

    Some Nigerians were moved by the story; and one of the early persons to respond was Prof Adeleke Ojo of Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State, who donated N100,000 after he had got in touch with Seun Faleye, the student, in China, and confirmed the authenticity of the story. After that, one Mr Isimi chipped in N1,000 and another person, Mr Adetunbi Omoniyi gave N2,000; their widow’s mite, you would say. These donations were commendable but they were like a drop in the ocean, considering the over one million naira target. All remained quiet for more than two weeks and it was when one would have thought hope was lost that a miracle occurred: I got an email from DHL Corporate Social Responsibility Committee on April 23 inviting me for a chat with the father of the student, Pastor Samson Faleye.

    I could not make the appointment due to official engagement. But Pastor Faleye was there and it was then I knew the power of columns. He told me that after interviewing him on how things went awry with his son’s school fees, and they were convinced that the case merited intervention, they promised to help. The panel that conducted the interview comprising representatives of the company’s Employees Corporate Social Responsibility Committee told him they developed interest in the matter just because it came out in my column. The interesting thing is that these are people I do not know from Adam; but they said they have been following my write-ups and were fascinated by them.

    One has to go this far for some reasons. One, this case was brought to a happy denouement courtesy of members of staff of DHL, and not by the company as I initially thought. Perhaps it would not have attracted this much attention if the initiative had come from the company as an entity because it would have passed off as one of those corporate social responsibility initiatives that responsible companies do. But there is only a thin line between DHL doing it and the members of staff who have done it. As I was told, the ‘Employees Corporate Social Responsibility Committee’ which eventually approved the more than one million naira required by Faleye to complete his studies in China represents all members of staff of the company, from the least to the managing director, from whose salaries one percent is being deducted monthly to fund the initiative to help the needy.

    This might not be novel because I do not have any fact to support that assertion; but it is still something that is uncommon in our part of the world. Many people come together here in most cases to do evil. Yes, we are familiar with companies giving back to the society part of what they made from it (they call that corporate social responsibility), but not workers pulling resources together from their own salary, to help those in need, when they have their own needs to meet too. But that precisely is what the DHL staff have done. And it is marvelous in my eyes, just as I am sure it is in the eyes of Faleye and his parents whose investments, monetarily and otherwise, could have gone down the drain if help had not come when it did. In a country where many people, including public functionaries care only about ‘me, me’, and where very big people make pledges without fulfilling them, this is something to celebrate.

    The point though is that God is key in this matter because He it was who laid it in my heart to use this little space, not knowing that was what would ultimately settle the matter. My original plan was to get the story published in a bigger space as a feature story. I had thought the bigger the space, the bigger the attention. I now know things don’t always work out that way. A friend has always said, though jocularly, that teeth do not have to be many or big; that even if they are only two and they can crush stockfish, that is enough. I now believe him.

    Again, from what I was told, Faleye is the first individual to draw from this well of generosity. The fund from where he was assisted was initially set up to assist with UNICEF projects before it was changed when the contributors decided to take charge of affairs themselves and be able to monitor directly what the money is spent on. If the original idea had been kept, there is no way it would have been possible for Faleye to benefit from it.

    I do not know how many other companies would want to take a cue from the DHL staff after this story would have been published. But I know of at least one multinational that may be interested in the paradigm, following discussion with one of their senior members of staff that would want to read the story to have a good grasp of what the scheme entails.

    I have been maintaining columns in the last two decades plus. All this while, I thought it was only about influencing government and policy makers. I now know it is much more. But gratitude goes to God Almighty for using this column as a means to wipe the tears off the eyes of Faleye and all those who had been looking forward with excitement to the time he would be graduating in China. One could not have been happier being used as a vessel for this purpose. Personally, it is gratifying that what started as mere exchange of emails between me and the DHL committee on April 23 culminated in the remitting of N1.01million naira (excluding N171, 376.00 earmarked by the committee for Faleye’s flight ticket upon completion of his studies) to him on May 16. I have had to cut short my presence at a funeral involving a friend’s spouse to make the trip to the DHL office on the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway in Lagos on May 10, where I faced the committee’s team to clear some grey areas on the matter. The outcome is soul-lifting.

    Again, my gratitude goes to the DHL staff for this uncommon generosity, the same way they thanked me for bringing ‘…this to limelight’. But what if I brought it to limelight and they did nothing about it? I thank them for their abiding faith in this column. What they have done can only make me do one thing: keep up the good work. The DHL staff and those who gave their widow’s mite have set a good example; definitely, this country will be a better place for us all if we can be our brother’s keeper; if we can make our shoulders available for people in need to lean on. I mean we will all be better for it if we can have more of such assistance signed, sealed and delivered.

  • Leaving the black race behind: No manufacturing, no prosperity

    Leaving the black race behind: No manufacturing, no prosperity

    He who doesn’t recognize he is in a race is bound to lose it.

    Last week, this column warned of impending danger to the global food supply due to the benighted tandem of perverse technology and that stubborn perennial: greed. Global financial and agricultural combines now acquire vast tracts of land around the world, including Africa, displacing traditional farmers in their wake. Global companies claim this process will increase productivity and yields. It might increase corporate profit yields; the guaranty is bogus that overall food prices will diminish. For these companies to profit, the opposition effect on prices is more likely. Much of the world needs more food. However, slanted economics will reallocate that food and other agricultural outputs to countries already in surplus and away from the places and people most in need. The world bids fretful welcome to the 21st century face of that age-old scourge: starvation.

    Ironically, haughty British PM David Cameron announced this week’s G-8 summit will devote a significant portion of its agenda to remedying world hunger. Taken in isolation, the announcement appears benign. Placed in full context, it looms as an act of aggression against weak, vulnerable people living in weak, vulnerable nations. Those of you who thought the high-brow Tory PM had located his heart might as well toss that fanciful notion into an abyss. The place where his heart should reside remains occupied by a lump of cold iron. The man is as estranged as ever from compassion.

    His call to feed the foreign poor conflicts with his policy of snatching food from the poor at home. It is illogical to support the former yet seek the latter; thus Cameron’s foreign largesse is a contrivance. For him, charity should not exist at home and thus should not begin anywhere. His concern for feeding the alien masses is a front, the legerdemain of an insensitive manipulator skilled at doing the opposite of what he states. Instead of standing as the leading statesman of one of the world’s most influential nations, he acts as the pitch man for large business interests. In the hands of this man, the once-revered office of PM has been become the hired megaphone for business interests that slink about in the dark corners so as to avoid public glare yet control the backrooms where the important decisions are made in the today’s western democracies.

    Cameron has no more interest in feeding the struggling African than he does in walking alone down the streets of Brixton. The key to Cameron’s ruse is his espousal of a “private sector” approach to the problem of hunger. What he means by private sector is not small- and medium-sized farms. A stampede of mammoth global firms is what he has in mind. At the G-8, Cameron will push for intensified foreign agro-business penetration of Africa. For him, this is a good thing. For the African, it is not good fare.

    The large companies will control expanses of African land to sate the economic demands of western nations, all to the neglect of the needs of the people from whom the lands have been purloined.

    Some African nations already cooperate in their own pillaging by implementing policies allowing the rapacious companies to seize vast portions of fertile land. Even more ominously, huge agro-businesses now do their best to nip inchoate African democracy and commercial agriculture in the bud just much the same as these large firms have atrophied democracy in western nations. They spend inordinate sums lobbying and enticing governments to enact laws inimical to the people they govern. At least one African nation, Mozambique, now considers a rather ominous twist of legislation giving preferred status to seeds produced by these large companies. This law will also prohibit the seeds most farmers traditionally have sown. If the issue were just seeds, it would be bad enough. The practical effect of the legislation far transcends the question of seeds. It mortgages the future of the small farmer.

    Seeds produced by the large companies are not of the hardy variety that needs minimal care; they are not the stock on which small-scale farmers customarily rely because such seeds lower overhead costs and guarantee minimal yields. The seeds produced by these global firms demand payment of hidden costs because they usually require the use of relatively expensive inputs such as specialized fertilizers. In other words, the legislation will force low-end farmers to increase overhead expenses to purchase the fertilizers and other items required to bring these seeds to harvest.

    This places farmers between the knife and claw, the tooth and nail. With their dilemma assured, their demise is preordained. Guided by the forlorn hope of having no other alternative, poor farmers first will borrow at exorbitant interest rates in order to pay for the seeds and related items. Descending into the swell of debt, many farmers will be forced to sell their land at distress prices to cover their financial obligations. If fortunate, they may satisfy the debt. But they will be farmers no more. They shall be landless and unemployed. Some will become indentured sharecroppers on the land they once owned. Others will wander — homeless, penniless, and unprepared — into the cities where they will merge into the rising dregs of the urban underclass. As this morbid process unfolds, farming and agriculture in Africa will be performed less by African farmers and will inure less to the benefit of the African public.

    Africa is being larruped on two fronts. While the quiet, but effective, war against African agriculture walks relentlessly toward its mean objective, Africa’s future also is being compressed because it has not joined the global pursuit of manufacturing to which economically astute nations now adhere.

    Manufacturing is to the city and the modern, dynamic economy what farming is to the countryside and traditional society. As a general rule, nations that manufacture the least are those that suffer the most. The 2008-09 global recession brought this lesson into clear focus. Sadly, Africa remains blind to the immutable fact standing before it.

    A major objective of all G-8 nations has been to revive or expand their manufacturing bases to accommodate domestic consumption and export abroad. This is how they seek to maximize growth. They have relearned what past generations understood: Creating items of economic value is the key to sustained prosperity. The nation that exports finished goods, wins. The fewer finished products a nation exports, the more that nation knows the idleness of poverty and unemployment.

    Thus, mature economies plot like mad schemers to devise ways of igniting their domestic manufacturing prowess. The austerity embarked upon by the EU and UK is not actually incorrect economic policy. It is the application of appropriate policy in pursuit of inappropriate, inhumane objectives. Conservative elites in Europe and UK have always detested the social welfare state. Now, they actively engineer its destruction. It affronts their sense of plutocratic entitlement to think that the struggling and poor should be entitled to a bit of assistance. The push to austerity also has a less visceral, yet equally misanthropic, secondary rationale. The EU was never meant to improve the lives of the bulk of the people. It was expressly fashioned to make the region a competitive trading bloc.

    The elites love austerity because it produces unemployment in addition to cutting the benefits of the unemployed. This turns many into urban serfs so desperate for work or to keep work that they will accept even the lowest wage. Lowering wages is a key objective of the moneyed elites. By suppressing wages, they hope to make the EU the competitive international trade bloc of their dreams. They have made the conscious decision to tilt their region toward this international trade objective instead of making it a region more reliant on internal growth, demand and consumption that benefits all economic classes within the EU. To make the EU more competitive with China, the EU now lowers the living standards of the common people to make their lives more like the harsh lives of Chinese workers.

    Meanwhile, China has embarked on a two-pronged policy aimed at maintaining its competitive edge. Domestically, it suppresses wages. One way it achieves this is through the westward expansion of manufacturing. Heretofore, development has been along the Pacific coast, concentrated in the massive cities in this region. Now, the government pushes economic activity inland where the bulk of the people reside. There are roughly a billion people still relatively untouched by the growth the nation has experienced the past two decades. China is now bringing the people of the hinterland into the mix. Tapping into this vast pool of rural labor, the nation will calibrate labor costs and wages in a manner allowing it to maintain its competitive trade advantage. Additionally, China will consciously keep its currency devalued, making its exports cheaper and thus more attractive to other nations.

    Also, America has embarked on a sustained program of currency devaluation, making its products cheaper and more competitive in the world markets. America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, has engaged in a policy called quantitative easing whereby it purchases bonds and other securities, thus putting greater amounts of currency into economic play. The principle objective of this policy is to boost asset prices in the United States. However, another conscious objective is a dollar devaluation making American manufactured products more competitive in the global marketplace. Also American businesses have been manic in squeezing labor costs and milking every ounce of productivity from the American worker without a commensurate increase in wage benefits. Again, a high unemployment rate is a boon to the elite. Again, the model used is an unbalanced model whereby the gains in manufacturing go to moneyed elite and these gains are achieved by undermining the economic lot of everyone else.

    Africa stands idly watching this dynamic unfold. African nations are not making the timely adjustment to events and policies of these other nations. The EU canvasses African nations seek bilateral agreements that, in reality, will open Africa to European manufactured goods while maintaining Africa’s peonage as a source of cheap raw materials to further fuel western industry. Many nations have signed these agreements. They have consigned themselves to perpetual underdevelopment for a small stack of Euros that will rapidly disappear as the nations pay for the costly imports from Europe.

    The fate of the continent’s economies, particularly its urban denizens, tilts in great jeopardy because of the lack of verve in government policy to establish manufacturing as the fulcrum of urban growth. Already our cities teem with the poor, the unemployed and with the social afflictions these conditions wrought. To understand the bleak future that looms should this dismal course persists, all Africa need do is to look at its brethren in urban America. America is the land of plenty but the black community is in the land but not really of it.

    The black community is a place of higher want, depravation and the strife that such things bring. Fifty years ago, although poor, the black ghetto was not as unregenerate as it now is. Then, numbers of young black men gained employment in the bustling factories of their times. This introduced them into the labor force, taking them off the streets. It also introduced them to the hope of joining middle-class America. Over the intervening decades, through no fault of these people, the factories disappeared. With that, so did the economic hopes of many urban blacks. The ghettoes they inhabit have become super-ghettoes, a more virulently underdeveloped, decaying form of their prior selves. With the major chance of employment fading, cityscapes have transformed into urban tundra of joblessness, poverty and frustrated idleness that beget all forms of human mischief.

    Living in isolated wastelands amidst a sea of plenty, the people of the super-ghettoes lack the requisite political cohesion and social accord to unite to dig them from the pit. Perpetual lack renders them mutually suspicious. It has them clawing against each other for the meager crumbs that fall their way. While a new era of industry and manufacturing may come to America, it will not visit these cities to revitalize them. Unless government launches a radical program of urban economic transformation, these people will become permanently invisible. Many black people will come to live forgotten, broken lives. They will survive in the urban equivalent of the destitute rural backlands known as the Indian reservation.

    This is the plight of urban blacks in the land of plenty. Given the lowly overall state of Africa’s economic development, the fate of most African city dwellers will be even worse. It will be a turbid one of heavy penury unless we change course and do so quickly.

    We must begin to understand the importance of manufacturing. First, it provides the jobs and related business needed to employ a large percentage of the people. This is not just about the creation of jobs. We must come to understand that true wealth lies in the creative process of using human ingenuity to forge a valuable item out of various ingredients so that the end-product is a greater thing than the sum of all its parts, if considered separately. Also, manufacturing creates a positive worldview. It helps people believe the political economy can expand and overcome its limitations. As such, the political economy ceases to be a zero-sum environment where one player always views another person’s gain as his loss. This change will engender greater cooperation, growth and, hopefully, democratic good governance.

    In the end, mainstream talk of Africa experiencing an economic surge is the stuff a mountebank says when he is trying to fleece you. It is not so much that Africa is experiencing a great economic awakening but that foreign exploiters are experiencing a boom in Africa, at the expense of Africa. Agro-business now pinches the African farmer. Global finance and big business want Africa to eschew manufacturing so that it remains a supply depot of raw materials. If this is the best economic revival the world can offer the continent, then Africa should demand a refund for all the labor expended and misery endured at the wrong end of an unjust global political economy. The people deserve better.

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  • Why June 12 still matters

    Why June 12 still matters

    (An almanac of national folly)

    June 12!!!! Spring is in full spring. But it is not yet summer, at least not officially. There is something profoundly mystical about this date. There is something grandly metaphysical about its provenance. It feels very good around this time. But it also feels eerily daunting and tasking. The human fear of the after effects of climatic good fortunes has kicked in. Had General Babangida and his cohorts consulted astrologers, they would have been told to beware of the Ides of June.

    Let us play some zodiac games. In the Gregorian calendar we have 12 months that make up a year. June is in the middle, and the middle of nowhere.  The twelfth day of June is in the middle of June, but not quite in the full middle. In other words, June 12 is in the near middle of the middle of nowhere. The in-between nature generates its own astral tensions. The twelfth night after Christmas is when merriment officially ends and serious business begins. Twelve is double six, and yet they say there is no difference between six and half a dozen.

    The number 12 has played a significant role in the political evolution of modern Nigeria. Just before June in 1967 and on the eve of the civil war, the then Major General Yakubu Gowon restructured the nation into a twelve-state federation. Twelve years later, it was the magical legal formula known as 12 2/3 which prevented the Murtala-Obasanjo Transition from achieving full integrity and fidelity to democratic norms. The military and their civilian accomplices had insinuated the virus that will destroy their own baby.

    General Babangida probably  never gave any thought to the zodiac import of the date when he lighted upon it. It was going to be another day for the permanent shuffling and reshuffling of the cards of transition which this author described then as “transfiction”. But there were enough astral signals to warn even political novices about the danger of toying with the destiny of the greatest conglomeration of Black souls in the world.

      As usual, it was the Americans that first picked the scent of political perfidy. Acutely aware of the political shenanigans going on in Abuja and the reality that IBB was about to abort the election , the Washington authorities caused a certain Mr O’Brien, their USIS chief of Bureau, to issue a stern warning that America would view such a move with great displeasure. For his pains, the USIS Bureau Chief was summarily expelled from Nigeria. The transition had arrived at terminus.

    The actual date itself was full of portents. The elements and the god of nations were warning those who had held Nigerians in military thralldom to let go. For a normally watery eyed month of June, not a single incident of significant rainfall was recorded anywhere in the nation on that day. And for a country with a global reputation for electoral mayhem, there was no record of any significant political disturbance throughout the length and breadth of the nation. Nigerians put up their best behavior to see off their military overlords. Everywhere was eerily calm.

    It is useful to situate this strange calmness on June 12, 1993 within the explosive and combustible background of the country’s political evolution. Twenty three years earlier in January, 1970, the country a three year civil war which was as bitter as it was savage came to a sudden end. The casualties figures were high and alarming . Thereafter, the country lapsed into hard-fisted military rule which many believed was necessary to lay the foundation of a strong, virile and united nation after the ravages and ruination of the Civil War.  Between January 1970 and June 1993, the military had ruled Nigeria continuously with the exception of a brief civilian interlude of four years between 1979 and 1983. Between December 1983 and June 1993, military officers from a particular region ruled the nation continuously as a result of the overwhelming domination of the officer corps by that region.

    But there is time for everything. By 1993, a significant section of Nigerians, particularly the educated elites, were saying no to military rule in any guise or hue. But in spite of all the warnings and ominous portents, history teaches that those who play the game of domination and hegemony never know when and where to stop. In the first instance, if they are weak-willed, they would never have been able to retain their hegemony. But as compulsive political gamblers, they never know when enough is enough. In the process, they tend to lose everything.

    Are there lessons to be learnt from the June 12 fiasco?  Of course there are signal lessons to learn and the tribal henchmen  of the current hegemony must read the following carefully.  Twenty years after June 12, 1993 and 43 years after the end of the civil war, an Ijaw president rules over Nigeria, taking his turn after presidents of Yoruba and Fulani extraction. Pontificating over the length of tenure of each is a foolish political exercise. What is significant is that 20 years ago when a structurally lopsided military was at the zenith of its power, such a development appeared impossible and in fact unthinkable.

    This significant political development would have been impossible without the struggle for the revalidation of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. The symbol of that struggle, M.K.O Abiola, was a most unlikely hero. The late business mogul was not everybody’s cup of tea, even among his fellow Yoruba political elite. There were many  who hold the view that the tragedy of Abiola was the tragedy of a man who forgot his origins. He was a creation of the military that eventually destroyed him.

    Yet in a significant respect, Abiola typifies the saying that it is not how you begin that matters but how you end up. Abiola has ended on the right side of history. Erupting from the ranks of villains, Abiola ended on the side of saints. Martyrdom, especially with the eyes wide-open, is not an easy proposition for people of money and means. Abiola took his own on the chin.  As he gradually passes into legend and folklore, he will be better remembered and much better regarded than most of those who have actually ruled Nigeria.

    It is important to restate this fact particularly in the light of those who will reduce the June 12 struggle to an ethnic affair, or are wont to see the continuing celebration of its memory as the annual ritual of Yoruba political disturbance of the nation.  June 12 is about firm and founding principles without which a nation may never know peace, order and prosperity.  The presidency of a country is not the birthright of an ethnic group. Neither is it the permanent possession of an ethnically derived political and military caste.

    It would have been easier for everybody and the nation if this lesson had not been learnt the hard way. But just as there are obstinate people, there also obtusely obstinate nations that can only learn the hard way. The struggle to establish foundational principles can be very ruinous for a stubborn nation. The casualties are often horrendous. The June 12 struggle cost Abiola his life.

    On June 8, 1998, it also led to the dramatic termination of General Abacha’s life in famously sordid and sorry circumstances. It led to the ruination of the old military establishment and its professional demystification. It led to the humiliation of the Sokoto caliphate and the decimation of its political authority.  It has consigned many formerly powerful people to political irrelevance and a few self-important actors to figures of national scorn and derision.

    But as an avenging talisman for foundational principles, June 12 is not finished with the nation.  As a direct and indirect consequence, 20 years after June 12, 1993, 43 years after the end of the civil war and 47 years after Isaac Adaka Boro’s rebellion was swiftly put down, a president of Ijaw extraction is presiding over the military and political pacification of the old north.  Its hegemony having been exposed as a pious fraud by a radical internal rebellion, the old northern establishment is in a shambles.

    To anybody who had lived in this country prior to June 12 1993, particularly before and after the annulment of the presidential election, the current development would appear strange and inexplicable, the stuff of the fictional subgenre known as magical realism. To a political Rip Van Winkle who has slept for the past 20 years waking up to the vastly altered political landscape of Nigeria, the situation would have been as bewildering as it is disorienting.  In ordinary political perception, it would have taken a major political earthquake to bring the mighty north so to heel.

    The irony is that the real earthquake occurred on June 23, 1993 when the military summarily annulled the freest and fairest election in the history of the nation thus setting the stage for prolonged and protracted national instability. The arbitrary decimation of the sovereign will of the fourteen million Nigerian electorate that performed their civic obligation 11 days earlier set the stage and opened the gate for radical and armed interrogation of the state which has proved very costly to the country’s dominant political structure.

    In retrospect then, perhaps the most significant lesson of June 12 is that those who cling to power in the name of privilege are destined to lose both power and privilege. If the establishment and enshrinement of the first principle of a level playing ground for all ethnic groups proved so costly to the nation, the second, which is the establishment of a level playing ground for all Nigerians irrespective of religion, creed or class, is about to prove even more costly.

    This is the second foundational principle that now has to be established, that all Nigerians irrespective of race, region or religion have a right to aspire to rule and preside over the affairs of Nigeria provided the electorate relinquish their sovereign authority by endorsing the aspiration. It is to be noted that while the first principle involves an inter-elite but intra-class struggle and contestation for power, the second involves an anti-elitist and inter-class struggle for power and hegemony. Nigeria cannot be said to be truly and fully democratic until the second principle has been established and the transition/transfer of power to the citizens has taken place.

    To our ultra-radical compatriots who pooh-poohed  the June 12 struggle as an elite affair, we say that it amounts to infantile radicalism to believe that in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural nation with multifarious modes of political and economic production concurrently playing out, it is possible to crash the historic gear to the second stage without going through the first. If the dominant political elite of a nation can deny other members access to power based on narrow ethnic affiliations, one must shudder at the fate of the ordinary people. Struggle must flow from concrete and material reality and not from idealist constructs in the head.

    It is this second transition that must now take place under Jonathan’s watch. We can no longer rail about a feudal oligarchy. But the atmosphere is so fouled up that even normally liberal-minded Yoruba elite view the seeming chummy relationship between the dominant political tendency in their region and the old north with wary unease, wondering whether they are about to be sold to the “aulde enemy” all over again by a bewitched political leadership .

     If gold can thus rust, one can imagine the fate of iron.  The ironic reality of the nation today is that the ethnic injury and abiding trauma of the transition from military despotism to civil rule has made the next potentially more costly and ruinous. But this transition must now take place. Fortunately for Goodluck Jonathan, he has two more years to convince Nigerians that true democracy has finally berthed on their shores. Unfortunately for him, the ethnic sabre rattlers surrounding him are urging him to resort to anti-democratic self-help on the grounds that having suffered the yoke of oppression for so long, the Ijaws must also hold on to power for as long as possible.

    Evil is permanent but truth is also constant. There are some prominent Nigerians who have become permanent fixtures of evil, having fought against the restoration of Abiola’s mandate, even as they are currently urging  Jonathan on.  But there are also many patriots who fought against the annulment of Abiola’s mandate who are also involved in the current struggle to deepen democracy in Nigeria.  If Jonathan succumbs to the first mindset, he will most likely leave Aso Rock as a tragic failure, a principal beneficiary of a process who also became one of its principal casualties.

    We can now see why June 12 mattered and still matters. Perhaps the most significant lesson is that like human beings, nations also make history and progress but not under the circumstances of their choice. Societal evolution progresses by detours, diversions and digressions. It is often circuitous and mind-bending, but most of the time it is not without its own peculiar logic. May the noble soul of Moshood Abiola rest in peace.

  • June 12, sociopaths, and the many plagues of Nigeria

    June 12, sociopaths, and the many plagues of Nigeria

    The annulled June 12, 1993 election stands for many things to many people. To some people, the date is all about M.K.O. Abiola’s unrealised mandate. To others, the date is a reminder of loved ones lost and gone: the ones who died when news of Abiola’s win was being relayed, the ones who died when the tanks were rolled out on the streets in the protests that followed the annulment, and the ones who died when the resulting upheaval necessitated some travelling to ‘go home’. To the surviving relatives of all these departed ones, that date will continually bring sad memories. To many of us ‘others’, it stands as a continual beckon of ever receding hope, still there, still being chased but getting ever fainter and fainter. That fading light is no other than that Nigerians can manage to agree on something when they put their minds to it. That something could of course be an election candidate (like Abiola), a pet peeve (politicians), a favourite colour (food), or a ‘national’ dish (pounded yam I think).

    The trouble is that we have failed to move from the point at which June 12 met us. At that point, we were wondering who we were as a people, either just odious or plain ogres. Then, we killed and maimed each other recklessly in the name of God, and we starved ourselves of needed development for ethnic reasons. Life after that point has been no better; we are still wandering around our national sub consciousness as the Israelites of yore wandered over Palestine, only now without their shame and repentance. We are still killing and maiming each other, and still starving ourselves of much needed developments; the only reason for that now is that we have collectively adopted the psychology of sociopaths.

    A sociopath, says my dictionary, is a person with an antisocial personality disorder, exhibiting antisocial behaviour that usually is the result of social and environmental factors in the person’s early life. The only common factor I see in the early life of us Nigerians is this high level of ignorance mixed with a little bit of poverty. However, I don’t think poverty has much to do with the monumental waste by people in positions of authority that we are witnessing in Nigeria today; I think it’s all that very, very toxic ignorance that got mixed into our corn cereal when we were young. It has made us all sociopathic.

    That’s right; the nation has been seized by many sociopathic plagues, as it did Pharaoh’s Egypt. Shall I name them, or have you been reading the handwriting on the wall too? For exercise, oh do let me; I promise to make it more fun. Our first plague is the government that perpetually oscillates between somnambulism and somniloquism. It jerks its knees only when you hit it with a patella of criticism. Seriously, I know my medical subject, thank you very much.

    The problem is that everything revolves around good governance, and it is not coming from our government. Good governance interrupts evil instincts and directs us all to what is good for the sake of everyone. It insists that everyone tempers his/her sociopathic tendencies with something closely resembling good sense. Rather than slap my neighbour with a law suit for leaving his tree branches to shed leaves into my compound, therefore, I learn to grin, bear it and plant my own tree near the wall. When I find that the driver of the car in front of me has stopped to hold a meeting with his long lost friend coming in the opposite direction, I don’t ‘accidentally’ run into the said car from behind. If I do, I’m only giving way to my sociopathic tendencies. Instead, the government should help me to be able to point him to a law that says I deserve to get home early too after a hard day’s work without anyone stopping in front of me to talk about their village. So, please help us government to help ourselves because sociopathic tendencies have got us something terrible.

    The second plague is that this country is peopled with monkeys with fish brains who have absolutely no inkling of what it means to be real human beings. That includes me of course. Just the other day, I heard the story of how an Okada man hit a taxi and, rather than apologise, hid his fault behind the support of his fellow Okada riders who one by one stopped by to lend a hand in the quarrel. The union support was so much that another Okada rider was said to have pulled up on the opposite side of the road, jumped across and slapped the taxi driver before asking what happened. We have become that lawless.

    Can you also tell me why else someone would take a look at his parent’s house and set fire to it because his parents refused to give him a certain amount of money? Or, how can one explain why an individual would spend his section’s entire subvention on a car for a girlfriend? Yesterday, I heard a new one. A man, someone said, would even go so far as to buy an air-conditioned car for his girlfriend while he and his family would use a non-air-conditioned one. Now, I have heard the common saying that people give out only what they have but surely this is loving one’s neighbour more than oneself.

    My third plague? Take a look at the Nigeria Police Force. Why would our Nigeria Police perpetually confront unarmed protesting civilians with heavy artillery that are usually not available when armed robbers strike? Even though the University of Uyo incident is still not clear (no one seems to be able to tell with any certainty whether Mr. Kingsley was killed within or without the campus), it has happened too many times. It is certain though that there have been too many other loose-trigger incidents involving the police. Why, the Kwara State affair, in which a police bullet said to have been meant for a taxi driver who did not leave the way in time for a bullion van, found a Polytechnic student instead. I say that affair is still fresh in every one’s memory, and so is the young man’s wound for that matter. Now tell me, how much more sociopathic can we get?

    Shall I go on with the plagues? Try the (un)civil service… the (a)public service… teachers… students… politicians… Niger Delta… boko haram… and… Oh, what’s the use; it will just be one plague after another and we will be no wiser at the end of the day, like Pharaoh. We are in dire straits then, caught between the absence of good governance, and those plaguing plagues. A shucks to them things!

    Many of us have carried on as if this fourth republic democracy is built on the blood and sweat of June 12, and so it is. Actually, to claim otherwise would be hypocritical, and we get enough of that from our pastors and Imams and other religious pundits, thank you. Let us wise up. One would have thought such monumental losses of human resources as happened around the June 12 matter would sort of knock some sense into us and bring us, at least, to the edge of self-realisation instead of down this labyrinthine path of self-interest and self-gratification. Self-realisation as a people is the only way we can define who we are as a nation, a people and a kind. Hopefully, it would also assist us to determine our goals, purposes and place amidst this troubled brood of vipers and generations currently peopling this world.

  • O’odua children’s day celebration: Aregbesola dazzles them again

    The world should expect more monumental innovations from ACN governors

    It is settled amongst progressive academics and intellectuals, of not just Southwestern Nigeria extraction alone , but the world at large, that the fundaments of Yoruba politics remain: A liberal, democratic state governed by competent, cerebral leaders, founded on social justice, equity, equality, enlightenment and freedom. Look around today, even in the non-conformist Ondo State, and you will see that deep down, this is an undeniable truism though some basic differences remain, especially in the latter’s obvious readiness to play the spoiler to mainstream Yoruba sociopolitical aspirations.

    That though, is for another day.

    Today, we are celebrating a key member of that class where the Lagos state governor, Babatunde Fashola, SAN, is captain. Go to Edo, find your way to Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, Ogun and Lagos and you will not but be euphoric at the multi-sectoral building blocks being laid by the clear-headed and focused leaders the good Lord has gifted Yoruba land with, especially at a time the country, under a dissembling PDP, is itself weighed down by totally avoidable crises, and visibly tottering. I speak here of none other than the Ogbeni governor, Engr Rauf Aregbesola, the restless, prodigious and ever thinking governor of The State of Osun, who seems daily to come up with something new.

    In his article of June, 9, 2013: ‘Is Osun Truly At The Onset Of A Revolution?, my friend, Tunde Fagbenle, the withering journalist and farmer rolled into one, wrote: ‘There’s been a flurry of activity in the State of Osun in the last few weeks to invite the attention of Nigerians everywhere and raise the curiosity of many a serious thinker – what is all these about? Is there much substance to it or is it more of noise and make-belief?’. Tunde is from Osun State but because I have a bragging rights here, I can tell him without equivocation that he is seeing the real thing. Here, without a scintilla of doubt is a revolution, albeit in the making, because you dare not take a bet on what next is coming from that prodigious mind. Ogbeni is simply unfathomable, and here I do nothing of making him a god.

    My bragging rights? Okay, I know Engr Aregbesola a long way back and even as the marauders held tight to the mandate the good people of Osun had long given him, he never stopped engaging me with his plans, not only for the state of Osun but the entire Yoruba land. You see him at his most enthusiastic and gregarious, telling you what a million things leadership can do in this clime to banish poverty from our midst and make us count among the civilized world where he contends the Yoruba nation rightly belongs.

    These discussions therefore led me, way back, 12 January, 2011 to put my views of Aregbesola on paper in this very column in an article I titled: AREGBESOLA: Osun State Has Turned The Bend. I shall quote moderately from that article because today’s focus is the totally unprecedented, culture ennobling O’Odua Children’s Day the State of Osun celebrated on Monday, 27 May, 2013 with children and royalties from as far afield as Osun, Ekiti, Ondo, Ogun, Oyo, Lagos, Kwara, Kogi, Edo and Delta States of Nigeria; West African countries of Benin, Togo, Ghana and Sierra Leone; South American countries of Brazil, Argentina and Colombia; Cuba; Caribbean; and the United States.

    It will be interesting now to know which of these countries Osun PDP clowns would say Aregbesola wants to overrun Nigeria with. Last year it was Cuba..

    That article began as follows: ‘

    ‘Given the breath of fresh air in Osun state today, all its citizens, young and old, must thank God that He made nonsense of the counsel of Ahitophel on the state of the living spring. They must not even begin to imagine what the state would be like today had the PDP succeeded itself in the 2011 general elections. Just cast your mind back to the era of Senator Iyiola Omisore as Deputy Governor in the state; recall the many horrendous consequences of a young man’s unrestrained political ambition and begin to imagine him as state governor.’ We cannot thank God enough.

    The article goes further: ‘Go to Oshogbo today and you will not believe this was the ‘gangster’ state where a poor 16- year old girl was serially gang-raped by political roughnecks, with neither the First lady nor the Deputy Governor, mothers for that matter, saying a single word in condemnation. Nor will you believe that mere queuing up at the gas station to buy fuel had once become fatal in the state, courtesy the same PDP political thugs’.The article then went into a discussion of the governor’s plans for agriculture; how he had built up a synergy between the state and the Nigerian railways which will evacuate farm products as well as bring to the state manufactured goods that would sell at Lagos prices. He was not only keen but eager to get the state to supply a huge chunk of the billions worth food items consumed in Lagos daily. On another occasion, as a member of the Afenifere Renewal Group delegation to present the Dawn Document to him -we could not see him in his office until about 11pm – he dropped snippets of the Opon Imo – the revolutionary, standalone learning tablet that provides the senior secondary school students with the contents required to prepare for the school leaving examinations and providing 3 major content categories in text books, tutorials and past questions. A total of 150,000 students will benefit in the first instance and would thus have access to learning regardless of means, location or status. Like Chief Awolowo’s free primary education programme, the Opon Imo will be talked about for generations. But I am probably the very first columnist to ever write about it because it is so unique I could not hold on to the newsbreak and promptly wrote about it in the article under reference, even at a time Ogbeni was still holding it to his chest.

    I wrote as follows on Opon Imo:

    ‘As the governor told a recent delegation of the Afenifere Renewal Group on which I was present, his government will soon unveil what it calls OPON IMO (Tablet of Knowledge). This is a computer system, in the mold of an IPAD which will contain the curriculum of about 39 subjects offered at the School Certificate level complete with past questions and answers and divided into subject areas with students accessing relevant course areas. Apart from exposing these young minds to basic computer literacy, the Opon will enable students study anywhere without the burden of having to carry text books around.

    To this year’s children’s day celebration then.

    The purpose of this year’s O’odua Children’s Day celebrations according to Ogbeni’s are multifarious:

    The State of Osun, has decided to give their children the solid educational and moral foundation that will enable them to be well-rounded adults in the future.

    **They are of the conviction that the realisation of the sociocultural and economic integration of the Yoruba race can be greatly enhanced by imparting that vision into the children. Indeed, such a cultural renaissance agenda, they believe, cannot succeed without including the children, for they are a key factor in its success. The Yoruba cultural integration can only be meaningful if the children, who would carry on the culture are properly socialised into it, along with the inculcation of value underpinning it.

    ** They also want to deliberately re-awaken the cultural and value consciousness of Yoruba people to make them realise the beauty of Yoruba virtues and to give them a sense of pride in their culture. It is such consciousness and re-awakening that can generate the willingness to reach out across the barriers of space and borders to others with the same culture and thereby foster integration among the Yoruba peoples, home and abroad. Children are therefore given their pride of place in the agenda.

    Like his other colleague ACN governors, sans those of Lagos and Edo, Aregbesola is only in his first term. From these men, like the stratospheric Fasola and awesome Oshiomhole, the world can only expect much more monumental innovations as they do not believe in the ‘share the money credo’.

    For any of them, there is going to be no dull moment.

  • Between Labaran Maku and the Brf administration

    Between Labaran Maku and the Brf administration

    Until his recent utterly inexplicable outburst against the government of Mr.BabatundeRaji Fashola (SAN) of Lagos State, the Minister of Information, Mr.LabaranMaku, had largely distanced himself from the maddening crowd at Aso Villa who portrayed themselves as feral, carnivorous beasts bent on devouring every real or imagined ‘enemies’ of their principal. But then, the stakes seem to be getting higher.

    All ministerial aides and appointees must prove his or her loyalty by the degree of ferocity, venality and vehemence with which they denounce critics of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. For them, criticism of government is now a crime synonymous with high treason. It does not occur to these overzealous attack dragons of President Jonathan that criticism is a vital, indispensable ingredient for democracy and good governance.

    Furthermore, the PDP is equally as vehement and virulent in its criticisms of incumbent governments in states where the party is in opposition. Thus, you find a highly cerebral and cultured Dr. Reuben Abati, for instance, responding to critics of his boss in language that is clearly alien to his naturally urbane, temperate and liberal character. It is unfortunate that Labaran Maku can no more maintain a dignified stance above the fray while informing the public about the activities and achievements of the administration in a professional, objective and credible manner.

    During his last 2013 ministerial press platform, designed to enable Ministers showcase their achievements to the public, Labaran Maku decided, without provocation or any just cause to launch a vitriolic attack on the BabatundeRaji Fashola administration in Lagos State. Contending that there is nothing significant that Fashola is doing in the ‘Centre of Excellence’, the Minister argued, without the slightest shred of credible empirical substantiation, that most of the revenue generating projects in Lagos State are federal projects. According to the Minister “Most of the projects in Lagos State where taxes are being collected are federal projects. Lagos State does no significant thing other than environmental sanitation”. He added that the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) runs on federal roads.If such statements had not emanated from a Minister of the Federal Republic, I would have accused Maku of hawking gross falsehood and exhibiting pathetic illogic. But then Maku is an honourable gentleman and gentlemen do not lie- they are only at liberty to indulge in terminological inexactitudes.

    Of course, the Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr.Lateef Ibirogba, has issued a pungent, cogent and incisive response to Maku’s diatribe. Without being abusive or insulting, Ibirogba gave specific and verifiable instances of the scores of projects being undertaken across the state by the Fashola administration. My colleague, Mr.Mobolaji Sanusi, has also taken Maku to the cleaners demonstrating the shallow and pedestrian colouration of the Minister’s non-thoughts in his column of last Friday. Let us take the Minister’s argument on the revolutionary BRT project for instance. Why didn’t the Federal Government think of such an initiative before it was conceived, planned and actualized by the Lagos State government? Why hasn’t the federal government undertaken such projects in other federal roads across the country including the Federal Capital Territory Abuja? Can Maku deny that most federal government facilities in Lagos, including major highways have been neglected and left to decay?

    It is not impossible as some have argued that Maku is smarting from the refusal of the Lagos State government to fund or accommodate his Good Governance Tour jamboree in the state. One is at a complete loss as to the benefits of this utterly misbegotten, money guzzling project at a time when the country is in dire need of scarce resources to bridge its huge infrastructure and social service delivery deficits. Lagosians do not need Maku’s bogus, self-serving tour to know that Fashola is effectively utilizing their mandate to pursue the greatest good of the greatest number of the people. In any case, does Maku realise that in a Federal system, the relationship between the Central and State Governments is not that of headmaster and pupil? What business, then, does a federal minister have in touring and assessing state government projects? It is completely indefensible. If Maku follows the news as avidly as he should as Information Minister, he would know that Fashola himself only recently completed an inspection tour of on-going projects in all 57 Local Government and Local Council Development Areas across the state. The Governor’s tour revealed that there is not a single local government in which at least one project- roads, drainage channels, bridges, markets, health facilities, schools, skills acquisition centres etc – are not ongoing.

    If I were in Maku’s shoes, I would strive to know what Lagos State has been doing right that the Federal Government has got completely wrong over the last 14 years. For instance, in Lagos there has been continuity in policy conceptualization and implementation since 1999. As Chief of Staff and Commissioner in the Tinubu administration, Fashola was part and parcel of drawing up the Ten-point Agenda that has been the focus of governance in Lagos State in this political dispensation. Components of this Ten-point Agenda include roads construction/rehabilitation, public transportation, qualitative and affordable health care, qualitative and affordable education, housing, environmental renewal/physical planning, job creation, food security, administration of justice and safety of lives and property. The Fashola administration has been building frenetically and superlatively on the foundation laid by its predecessor in this regard. But what have we had at the federal level?

    First, we had the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), which became history with the exit of the Obasanjo administration. At some point we were deafened by the Vision 20: 20/20, which aimed at making Nigeria one of the leading 20 largest economies in the world by Y2020. That day dream has been stylishly and sensibly set aside. President Yar ‘Adua’s 7-point Agenda appears to have been buried with its originator. Now we have the swansong of a nebulous and ill-defined Transformation Agenda, purportedly being pursued by the Jonathan administration. There is no guarantee that this magical agenda that has recorded so much progress in theoretical statistical figures rather than in the material, existential realities of millions of our people will not go the way of its preceding, ill-conceived agendas.

    Right now, the presidency and the National Assembly are still bickering over details of the 2013 budget six months into the fiscal year! Again, from all indications we will witness another year of dismal budget performance at the federal level to the detriment of the welfare and wellbeing of the vast majority of our people. It is noteworthy that the Federal Government has hardly recorded more than 40% budgetary performance since 1999. Beyond this, the Federal Government budget is still substantially skewed in favour of recurrent expenditure as against capital expenditure necessary to renew, expand and modernize infrastructure for rapid economic growth and development. In 1999, the ratio of capital to recurrent expenditure in Lagos State was 33: 57% in favour of recurrent expenditure. By 2009, the balance had been shifted decisively with 61% going to capital expenditure and 39% to recurrent expenditure. As at 2012, capital expenditure accounted for 53% of the budget and recurrent expenditure 47%.

    In Y2012, Governor Fashola signed the N492 billion budget into law on the first working day of the year and a budgetary performance of 89% was recorded for the year. The Y2013 budget of N499.6 billion was signed into law by Governor Fashola on the 31st of December 2012 and as at the first quarter of this year a budgetary performance of 61% has been achieved. Rather than throwing infantile tantrums and striving to deny reality by painting the Fashola administration as non-performing, the Federal Government must get its act right, strengthen its budgetary process and settle down to the kind of serious business being undertaken in Lagos under Fashola. Maku would be well advised to remove the log from the federal government’s eyes before trying to remove the speck in the eyes of other levels of government.

  • Cosmetics of June 12

    Great nations learn from their mistakes,

    their scandals and their tragedies. Nigeria, if it wants to be great, should learn from the horrors and aftermath of June 12, 1993 presidential election.

    Time was in Britain when a juvenile aged between seven and 14 faced the death penalty if there was a “strong evidence of malice” in him or her. Also, a Briton was to die for being in the company of Gypsies for a period of one month. If a criminal was found to have blackened his face or used any form of disguise while committing a crime, the law provided that he be killed.

    In colonised America, the ruling authorities were so powerful that they determined what people should or should not say, especially against the state and religion.

    Those were messy and unwholesome eras. Common sense prevailed, eventually. The British people saw the error, the scandal, the crime in their system. Crucially, they began to realise the folly of conferring on the state such overreaching powers as to terminate life for laughable reasons. In time, capital punishment was abolished.

    In the United States, the battle for freedom was fought and won early as the colony freed itself from its British overlords, the liberated people judging that the greatest thing in life was freedom. Today, many centuries after, freedom remains the only thing that typifies and defines the Americans, the only thing they hold dear. They learned from a bad past.

    We should learn also from our horrible history but I would even prefer that we learn from our present misdeeds. It is now two decades since the presidential election so clearly won by Chief MKO Abiola. The world knows all about the bizarre events that attended that election. First, it was annulled in the most hideous and scandalous circumstances by the Babangida administration. Rather than claim his trophy, the winner of the election was thrown into detention. And instead of regaining freedom, at the least, Abiola died in detention, again, in the most bizarre and scandalous circumstances. Amidst all this, the country burned.

    That was clearly one of Nigeria’s darkest moments. But the tragedy was not just the fact that an election was cancelled and the winner denied, but also because that election was adjudged to be the freest and fairest the country ever knew. And to that extent, it was primed to lift the country up the ladder of democratic progress, a huge leap in the expression of the common will. It was looking to lay the foundation for national growth in many imaginable ways.

    That was not to be. Two decades after, what have we learnt from that tragedy? Pretty little. For the most part, the leadership of the nation lives in denial. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who would benefit from June 12, has since written off Chief Abiola. Alhaji Bashir Tofa who lost the election of that year would rather no one talked about June 12 anymore. The federal government does not reckon with it, so anytime the presidency says or does something about it, its utterances and actions are at best shallow. When President Jonathan announced the renaming of University of Lagos after the June 12 hero, it provoked profound controversy, some seeing it as sectionalising or tribalising Chief Abiola, even though the institution is federal government-owned. This week, at the anniversary of June 12, Jonathan acknowledged the profound significance of the election but did not sound like his administration would make June 12 a national holiday anytime soon. He seemed to be content with the fact that some states have on their own declared the date a public holiday.

    It is not about the faults of the federal government. Certain individuals once identified as June 12 activists have been accused of either selling out or putting their activism to self-serving ends or even sectionalising a national hero.

    What do core June Twelvers want? It seems to me they want more national prominence for Abiola and the election he won. They want the federal government to come forward and give the late Abiola some recognition and respect. They will like a national holiday in his honour.

    All that is good, even desirable. But if Abiola and June 12 were remembered with cenotaphs, holidays and the like alone, they would have been reduced to mere superficialities. There should be more to the man and the election he won than cosmetics.

    Cenotaphs and holidays will do neither the man nor Nigerians who voted for him any good if the nation does not recognise that crimes were committed 20 years ago and that the criminals ought to be punished. Since the crime of that electoral abortion, no one has been reprimanded. It is difficult to see how a nation can move forward without coming to terms with its past and correcting its errors. It has been pointed out that those who killed June 12 are still calling the shots in the country. That in itself is a tragedy.

    Moreover, election riggers are alive and well in the country. There is nothing to suggest that they have turned a new leaf. Misguided and brazen political ambition is still rife and there is little to inspire the people. Our electoral processes are still dodgy. Among the governors, election has lost its meaning.

    What Abiola and June 12 deserve is electoral justice, healthy ballot processes and the supremacy of the people’s will, not the cosmetics of statues and holidays.

  • June 12, political  parties and survival

    I  write with  the spirit  of the aborted election   of June 12 of 1993  won by  the late MKO Abiola  at the back of my mind, spurring me on. It  is not as if the memory brings a positive impulse  to write  or do something   about it.  It is just that the remembrance of what could have been, but never was and did not happen, provides a watershed to  reminisce on a  unique political tragedy in Nigeria’s rich political history  and development – and  perchance  draw  conclusions and lessons  from a missed opportunity and lost chance to make democracy function according to the wishes  of the people  at the ballot box  20  years  ago. In addition June 12 2013 provided another opportunity to look at the functions and prospects of    some  big global political parties, their conduct after winning elections and the use and misuse they make of their mandates. Also  we shall look  at  how an old political party   in Africa  long accustomed to being underground and repressed  by successive dictators,  battle a   great threat to the food security of its people .

    Let  me first start  by attempting a definition   of what I  have tagged the spirit of June 12   which really is the Nigerian June 12 –  as distinct from the Iranian June 12  2009  election which too was a landmark in terms of elections in that  globally maligned   Islamic  theocracy.   Let me state  again that the details of  June 12 are  immaterial here as they are part of our political culture  and   history already. The  spirit of  June 12  therefore  hangs around the notion that free and fair elections are possible in Nigeria and that Nigerians are capable of organizing and conducting such elections. Secondly the spirit of June 12  rests  on the belief that mandates are sacred and not purchasable by the  highest  bidder  in any horse trade to subvert democratic mandates for which elections are conducted .Thirdly, with the benefit of hind sight Nigerians now know that elections are their only hope to change  or endorse any political party in or out of power. These  then   are the   tripods or legs on which   my spirit  of June 12 rests and it is on them that  I  now proceed on the journey of today.

    In  Nigeria,  the PDP  is the largest political party and it has  been in power since   May 29  1999 when it won the presidential elections of that year  and  its candidate,  retired General Olusegun Obasanjo  became the first  Nigerian to govern  both  as a military ruler  and politician. Obasanjo ruled for the constitutional   two terms  and we shall examine here very briefly how the PDP  has fared since,  in   terms of the spirit of June 12 .Secondly,  we shall  examine in   the same light  the news from London last week that  a court in Britain has agreed that compensation be paid to aged Mau Mau Kenyans who fought British  colonialism for Independence. That  comes  on the heels of the request for the start of the trial  for the 2007  post   election   violence  at  the Hague  of the  son, of the  leader of    Mau Mau,   Uhuru  Kenyatta  who has just been elected the president of Kenya.  We  top  this up with the  problem posed for the newly  elected  government in Egypt by the decision of Ethiopia to  dam the Blue Nile when as everyone knows   and says   –  without the Nile there will be no Egypt.

    Starting   with Nigeria, the  PDP  has won every presidential election in Nigeria since  1999  such that one would think that Nigeria is a one party state –  which it definitely is not. The PDP’s electoral feat or success had prompted a former Chairman of the party  to once boast that the party will rule Nigeria for 50  years. Such  boasts have however not cut any ice with some key Nigerian  leaders  notably  Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu,  the former Governor of Lagos State and leader of the ACN whose party now controls the South west of the nation. But the might and electoral  wizardry of the PDP is such that Asiwaju and leaders  of the other big parties know that they cannot face the PDP alone and   they   have decided   to  pool their  political and leadership resources and take on the PDP monster  by forming a political party  called  APC  to confront the ruling party.

    But  what has the PDP achieved in the spirit of June 12? The first thing is that it tried to annihilate the spirit by creating a rival date as democracy day when most Nigerians regard June 12 as the ultimate  democracy day in their political agenda. Secondly the PDP has  rigged successfully the elections it has won since 1999 including that one too. This has shaken the  belief  of Nigerians  in the spirit of June 12 that free and fair elections  are possible, but it has not dashed their hopes that the best is yet to come in the organization and conduct of free and fair elections   in Nigeria. Indeed    the current president who is reported to be attempting a reorganization of the PDP in the face of looming implosion and balkanization of the party, was a beneficiary of the unrelenting hope of Nigerians that a free and fair election is a possible and ultimate goal for the Nigerian political system . Unfortunately there is  a broad  concensus that this administration has not delivered on its mandate. Yet  Nigerians are gearing up in the  spirit of June 12 that 2015 provides another grand opportunity to get even with the failure of governance and rupture of the mandate so generously given from the south in 2011.  Any   contrived   digression or talk of a one 6- year term or the continuation of the two 4 –year terms is  contingent on the holding of elections in 2015  and in the spirit of June 12  Nigerians,   are  hopeful,  waiting and watching   to exercise  their voting and democratic  rights again.

    In  Kenya,   the spirit  of June 12  has been violated  several times and with impunity too   both in the 2007  elections claimed to have been won by  the Ruholah  Odinga  and  after which there  was post election violence and the one this year   in March,   won by  Uhuru  Kenyatta . In  2007  Raila  Odinga traded his mandate in for a  concoct ted   extra constitutional  position of PM from which he contested the presidential elections in 2013  and lost. Obviously Kenyans are not enamored with politicians who sell their mandates for a mess of pottage. Also Kenyans believe in their democracy and have hope in it. That is why they have voted for a man who is charged with killing people in the post election violence of 2007   as president in March this year, spite  of the charge of murder against him by the International Criminal Court at the Hague .But  the Kenyan nation, people and president should  be careful with the Greek gift that  the Mau Mau   compensation package represents to me. This is because  if the British  can now suddenly respect the law over an issue that happened several years ago,  over   colonial policy, why  should  the Kenyan nation not   be expected   to respect  a modern law that catches up with Uhuru  Kenyatta  the son of Jomo Kenyatta leader of Mau Mau whose  members are being compensated by a British  government that was not in place during colonial times? Surely the Mau Mau Compensation and the trial of Kenya’s new president at the Hague are bound to rock Kenya’s politics for some time, either for good or bad .

    Lastly,  the  plans by Ethiopia to dam the Blue Nile   and build the Grand Renaissance Dam  costing $ 3 bn is a  dagger aimed at Egypt’s  heart and jugular. Already Egypt has threatened war on the basis of its food security as the Nile fuels its huge agriculture and irrigation system. But the dam is expected to double Ethiopia’s electricity. This is not the first time that Egypt’s vulnerability on the Nile has been threatened. Before North and South Sudan broke up, the South threatened to redirect the Nile which rises from its territory because Egypt was supporting the Arab north in the Sudan Crisis. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones is the lesson for Egypt here. Ethiopia too must look after the interests of its people and it doesn’t have to look over its shoulders at Cairo before doing this as it has not violated Egypt’s territory. Egypt’s new democracy should quickly find out where it has stepped on Ethiopia’s toes. The Blue Nile has served the two nations which are ancient civilizations for ages. If  what  threatens Egypt’s existence  now suddenly crops up,  then the Egyptians  had better think twice before threatening  war. According to Ethiopia’s PM   Hailemariam  Desanegh,  Egypt  should not consider the  war  option. ‘All  options including a war  he asked   of Egypt. ‘I don’t  think they will take that option unless    they  go mad.  Surely    a word is enough for the wise on this new threat  to Egypt’s   food security.