UnderTow

Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodimma, recently called for the amendment of the constitution to create a new and sixth state in the Southeast of the country. This, he believed, would level the federal playing field for marginalised tribes. He made this call during an address he delivered at the Southeast Zonal public hearing of the House of Representatives on the review of the Nigerian Constitution. He set forth: “Ndigbo will begin to see equity in action when an amended constitution births a sixth state in the Southeast. The Igbo people seek a constitutional guarantee of their inalienable rights as citizens. A sixth state will go a long way in assuaging the acclaimed marginalisation. The Igbo people believe in one Nigeria. I call on all Nigerians to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the public hearing to present what they think is necessary for our constitution to be called the people’s constitution.”

It is not clear by what authority the governor spoke for the Igbo people. For the most part they have been the front row agitators for secession, restructuring and self-determination of resources. A succession of underwhelming governors, who have not succeeded in tapping into the lucrative industry and technological potential of the people, have disillusioned them with the leadership offered by those governors. They were probably the first to lose faith in the colonial project that birthed Nigeria, and it is not uncommon to find that they are continually flung into spiritual and philosophical raptures by the incendiary speeches of the exiled Nnamdi Kanu. So annoyed are Northern groups with Mr Kanu’s ability to oratorically rouse the Igbo people that 75 of them (the Northern groups) accorded and placed a bounty of N100m on his head. No bounty hunter, if there are any these days, will take up the task.

It is of interest, however, to examine the philosophy behind the governor’s call for the creation of a sixth state in the South East – equity. Will the Igbo find equity if they get equal numerical states with the other regions? That is highly unlikely. Restructuring has become imperative, as Abia State Governor Dr Okezie Ikpeazu noted at the same meeting, but that is in part due to the flamboyant cost of governance. With the creation of every new state is the attendant cost of governance accruing to a country that cannot even afford to service the expenses of its bi-cameral legislature anymore. At creation in 1960, Nigeria’s federal republic comprised three regions which, though flawed, were easier and cheaper to govern. The structure was not perfect, but there was more equity then than after Maj. Gen. Yakubu Gowon fiddled with the regionalism system to create 12 states in 1967 just before the commencement of the civil war. At the time, he claimed the reason behind his action was to foster equity and stability.

It did not. In fact, it worsened the situation, for the marginalisation did not go away, but the cost of governance increased. The number of states has increased to thrice the original. Instead of creating new states in the country, an unaffordable venture at any rate, the governor should seek to reduce the number of states in the country. For too long the country’s leaders have conceptualised equity as numerical equality of representation at the federal level. The sheer number of Nigeria’s tribes will mean that the cost of governance will be high. It will also mean that there will be too many voices representing too many diverse interests. The very heterogeneity that should have been the country’s strength will become its weakness. Equity is in the fairness of justice.

Undeniably, Nigeria currently experiences what those learned minds call ‘unjust enrichment’ where resources from one region are exploited to the benefit of another. The answer, however, is not in the creation of more states but in the reformation of laws – some call it restructuring. The Southeast is not the only marginalised tribe in modern Nigeria. Nigeria’s heterogeneity must be subsumed beneath a new national identity. The creation of a new state may not serve that end.

UnderTow

In one of his many, increasingly fatigued editorials, presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, once more fell upon those who have lost faith in the continued existence of Nigeria as one united, indivisible political entity. His most recent outing, titled ‘Nigeria’s unity and all the Iberiberism’, expressed all his unhinged optimism and belief that Nigeria would survive. So liberal with his penmanship was he that after going into the labyrinthine etymology of the word “Iberiberism”, he had time to bite into former president Olusegun Obasanjo for daring to give his usual scorching verdicts about the state of the country. The thing about the former president is that if he chooses not to reply, it is neither because he was caught off-guard nor because he deemed the attack on his person as valid, but because he has no regard for what was said about him. Chief Obasanjo may have many faults, a good percentage of which came to the fore during both his stints in power, but he has for the most part delivered reasonable analyses and appreciation of national issues since he left power leaving people to wonder why that broadmindedness hibernated during his administration.

Mr Adesina premised all his hopes and assurances that the country could weather any storm on two major pillars. The first was that historical precedence had seen Nigeria go through gloomier, ominous times when it appeared the country was certain to go to rack and ruin, but the country muddled through. The second were the lyrics to a hit 80s song by Veno Marioghae, whose whereabouts he wondered. The lyrics, which tickled the presidency’s fancy, posited that come what may the country would survive. Following both premises, and the added declarations by the president Mr Adesina is so sold on that the country’s unity is non-negotiable, the spokesman went ballistic with secessionists and dissenters.

He said: “Why do some people always dwell on the negative? They have been seeing nothing but negative for decades, but Nigeria remains sturdy and steady. Yes, countries do fail, collapse, crumble, but Nigeria will survive. Let them change from malediction to benediction. It will be well with this country. Some fathers of the land will not fold their hands and see Nigeria go down. Fortunately, we have one of them as President now. The young Muhammadu Buhari spent 30 months in the frontlines as a young army officer, fighting the war of unity. And he has said it: we will not be around and watch Nigeria go down. Never. We will rather speak to insurrectionists in the language they understand. And what of Olusegun Obasanjo, a civil war hero. Despite all that he has contributed to the current upheavals by his actions and inactions, words and bile, he says it is idiotic to wish Nigeria disintegration now. Good. But let us put our money where our mouth is. Let Baba mind his thoughts, and his language.”

It is not clear if the special adviser has, in his moments of private reflection, balanced the empirical weight of Nigeria’s fractured social, economic, political and heterogeneous reality against his ideological, optimistic and almost simplistic belief that the country will weather the avoidable storm currently pitted against the country. When the civil war of 1967 ended in victory for Nigeria against those that agitated for the Republic of Biafra, there were those who believed that one of the factors that contributed to the outcome of the war was the fact that the government of Major General Yakubu Gowon was a military government and many of the things that happened during that war were easily swept under the radar.

The current administration got into power through democratic means, but the forebodingly militaristic undertones that accompanied the president’s threat to speak a particular language to a particular people with reference to civil unrest and war, and the special adviser’s gleeful echoing of that controversial statement does not augur well with the concept of inclusive governance. Does Mr Adesina honestly believe that the presidency is so absolved from the unrest going on and that the solution to the conflict is to continually pit the administration against the people? Is that good public relations? Despite the presidency’s revelation that it had uncovered as many as 476 websites set up to fight the president, many of those that have spoken in apocalyptic tones concerning the fate of the country and of the current administration spoke warningly, not cynically.

Is it not hubristic to speak so self-assuredly, daring people to do their worst? Why push people to the brink to find out whether they have it in them to bring the country down to its knees? Any smart government would have learnt from the EndSARS protests that power is indeed vested in the people and they submit it of their own freewill to the government. Mr Adesina loves proverbs with local imagery, and he repeated one about the ram’s whatchamacallit and the thingumajig of a woman. He must therefore be aware of the proverb that goes something like the dog that would get lost would first ignore its master’s whistle. If the presidency continues to laugh in the face of a people who feel oppressed, then may the victims of the foreseeable tragedy not be the innocent bystanders.

UnderTow

In a now-forgotten move to cement his credentials as a democratic leader, President Muhammadu Buhari, on June 7, 2018, moved the annual celebration of democracy day in Nigeria from May 29 to June 12. The former date had signified the return of Nigeria to a democratic dispensation through the election of the outspoken Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, while the latter date marked the annulment of the freest and fairest election in Nigeria. That election, which should have ushered in M.K.O Abiola, was nullified by Gen Ibrahim Babangida – the one known severally as the ‘Political Maradona’ and ‘The Evil Genius’, and who had a hand in just about every military coup that the country suffered since the 1970s. Indeed, he was a principal conspirator in the coup that planted a much younger Major General Buhari, for which he earned himself the position of Chief of Army Staff under the grateful head of state. He would later on scorch the young military head of state and mastermind what has probably been the most business-like coup the country ever saw. Anything less would have been a disappointment, really, for the man was a veteran of coups.

The effect of the overthrow of Gen Buhari, as he then was, was to make him untrusting of anyone he does not know, especially of the rank of service chiefs. He surrounds his presidency with old friends he feels comfortable with or recommendations by those old friends. No one blames him, after all, when The Evil Genius was through with a fellow, the victim would want to regard the world with cold suspicion thereafter. It was with great reluctance that President Buhari did away with the last crop of service chiefs – men he trusted and one of whom publicly and insensitively swore fealty to the president instead of the constitution. For their fidelity, they were rewarded with ambassadorial positions after their tenure at the head of a demoralised armed forces.

Little mention will be made of the damning allegation that money was disbursed for the procurement of arms which allegedly never materialised, a crime for which the president made things hot for former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col Sambo Dasuki (retd.). The president defied several court orders granting the former NSA bail and kept him in detention for four years. Many thought the president was simply repaying the retired Colonel for the role he played in the coup which ousted him in 1985. Every time the political Maradona tried to contest the presidential elections, he had stirred such strong public animosity that those close to him advised him to restrain himself to his hilltop residence in Minna. Daunted, he now makes few and far between public interventions on national issues, especially those that concern his old foe, President Buhari, but they hold no water.

Three years after his change of Nigeria’s democracy day, how has the president himself fared as a democratic leader? The jury is out on that question, but the handwriting is on the wall for the president’s legacy. To counterbalance his disdain for judicial merry-go-rounds, perhaps, was Executive Order 10, an isolated step in favour of democratic consolidation. Despite the president’s high-handed politicking, the executive order does grant financial autonomy to the judiciary and legislature – a progressive and democratic step. Nigerians will, however, remember in no fond measure his initial hectoring of the judiciary as evidenced by his unconstitutional removal of former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Walter Onnoghen, and the swift appointment of Justice Tanko Muhammad whose understanding of technicalities in law had to do with a laborious rhetoric on rules of statutory interpretation, professional specialisation, and methods of achieving goals. Will he ever live it down? The problem many people had with the president’s removal of the former CJN was not whether the jurist was innocent or not; it was with the forceful and impatient procedure of removal which flew in the face of the 1999 Constitution.

Nigerians must come to the reality that the president they thought they voted for, who was the stern and heavily flawed alternative to the uninhibited Goodluck Jonathan, may have been nothing more than an idyll. The reformed democrat may lie beneath the stern façade, but it is difficult to coax him to respect a concept he had publicly confessed his abhorrence for. On the occasion of his 77th birthday in 2019, these were his words: “Well, like I said, I have learned in the hard way. When I came in uniform, I got those who were leading, took them to Kirikiri (Maximum Prisons) and told them they were guilty until they could prove themselves innocent. I put, based on almost all the geopolitical zones, committees to investigate them. Those that were found to have lived beyond their means, the balance was taken and was given to the states. But, I myself was arrested, detained… So, under this system (democracy), which is supposed to be more accountable, it is too slow for my liking, but I have to follow it.”

The implication of his statement was that between his stint as a military president and his democratic return to the executive seat of power, he managed to disguise, even to himself, his deep-seated and almost puritanical distaste for democracy. This disguise probably accounted for why the country believed that he was a reformed democrat; apparently he also did. Whatever transforma tions he forced himself to go through, they may have made him amenable, perhaps against his wish and better judgement, to the malevolent hankerings of a miniscule cabal. Even the First Lady, his wife, noted in an interview that her husband’s administration had been hijacked by a cabal. Otherwise, how can the country explain to any rational mind that a man fared better, even though he fared badly, as a military head of state than as a civilian president? Surely it would not be flattering to aver that the difference was his second in command at the time, Gen. Tunde Idiagbon.

If the president must retain his distrust for democracy, he must do so as an informed choice. He must be aware that the ancient wisdom of force, which served mankind for a considerable period of its history and which pleased him to deploy during his military regime, has now run its course. It is now the antithesis of the democratic requirements of the modern age. Although the country requires a firm, disciplined and principled president, they do not require the “kind bully” of which the president’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adeshina, is so enamoured. This sternness would be of better use were it directed at the entrenchment of a sound democratic ideal, progressive policies, and profitable political philosophies. Until he understands and practices that, the following words of former president Goodluck Jonathan should serve as a memento mori – an object to remember one by in case of a demise – of democracy to Nigerians: “I am the most abused and insulted president in the world, but when I leave office you will all remember me for the total freedom you enjoyed under my government.” How truly and lamentably evocative.

Gowon worried about his legacy?

Speaking virtually at the unveiling of nine books and a short film to celebrate the 48-year existence and contributions of the NYSC to Nigeria’s development and unity, former military Head of State Yakubu Gowon expressed his conviction that the scheme was making significant impact on the development of Nigeria. He said: “It is gratifying and heartwarming that the NYSC scheme, which was established in 1973, despite the resistance that greeted it by some sections of the populace at the time, has now grown and matured to become a national household name and organisation. There is no doubt that the NYSC has contributed more than any organisation to nation building. In view of what has been said about the NYSC scheme, greater efforts should be made by the government to strengthen it by ensuring greater funding of the scheme.”

He does not want the scheme to be scrapped, partly because it is one of the most enduring legacies by any Nigerian president since independence. After overseeing the country’s civil war, he established the scheme to foster national unity, peace and progress. At the time, the scheme was relevant due to the prevailing reality in the country. No one is sure if it is still of as much relevance as he makes it seem, or even if it were, whether greater funding of the scheme would help much.

The current administration, for instance, has not given the impression that it can holistically appreciate the ethnic, tribal and political issues assailing the country. If anything, it has through a series of indelicate statements and hardened decisions played a less-than-dignified role in the tribal conflicts erupting all over the country. When Gen Gowon established the scheme in 1973, the presidency had witnessed the civil war and was about to embark on reconciliation, reconstruction and rehabilitation. The current administration is headed by a war veteran who witnessed the war, but who has substituted reconciliatory dialogues with the threat of force. The success of the scheme relies on the federal administration believing in the peaceful and voluntary unity of the country.

If unity is not voluntary, then the posting of young graduates to various parts of the country is hardly more than a death sentence. One of the reasons for the increased calls for the scrapping of the scheme is not the funding of the scheme but the fact that corps members are being picked off like flies. Insecurity has obliterated what respect the populace should have for corps members. They go through harrowing conditions to get to parts of the country plagued by unrest and which territorial integrity has been breached by insurgents.

Although corps members are already being utilised as cheap, specialised labour, the Director General of the scheme compounded their woes by suggesting that they could be deployed as reserves in the army in the event of a war. Naturally, they were miffed. A monthly compensation of just N3000 more than the minimum wage does not sound like reason enough to risk their lives. But, already the scheme makes them do that. Ethnic and tribal conflict in the country will always lead to calls for the scrapping of the NYSC. The former head of state must learn to integrate the unrest in the country and the welfare of those who are being offered up to areas of unrest with his private worries about the scheme, the product of his administration. His legacy may have been useful at a point, but is it, in any good conscience, still?

Sentry 

After President Muhammadu Buhari’s spirited reading of the riot act against those who “want the destruction of the system” and his vow to shock them by speaking to them “in the language they understand”, mixed reactions quickly polarised Nigerians. The president had been referring to the unrest enveloping the Southeast and he was not shy of poking the old sore of the Biafran war – a vexing topic for them. He was even disdainful of it. In truth, there can be no justification for the destruction of public property and the anarchical desires of arsonists in the state. Naturally, there were those who were shocked to find that the president had it in him to be severe and stern with perpetrators of insecurity. They suggest that he was more lenient and accommodating towards killer herdsmen and was even willing to take reformative, rather than decisive, action against Boko Haram members. What does the presidency make of this?

Going by Minister of State for Labour and Employment Festus Keyamo’s scathing rebuke of detractors to the presidency’s polarising and selective show of force, the presidency may see them as nothing but meddlesome busybodies too blinded by their private agenda to be reasonable. Taking to twitter, he raged: “I hope some elites who couldn’t find their voices to rein in their wards when their region burnt, will not suddenly find their voices against Mr. President! Those who screamed that it’s Mr. President’s duty to maintain law & order should NOT try to teach him how to do his job now… The anger some are displaying against the President’s resolve to be decisive in dealing with these scoundrels is an indication of their support for the destruction of public infrastructure because they want to cripple Govt. A pure case of cutting your nose to spite your face!”

Not quite done, he continued: “A very unfortunate reasoning you read is that because insurgency is still prevalent in some other parts of the country, the President should just allow some villains destroy another region. It’s like a competition to bring the insecurity in one region at par with other regions! The President has vowed to deal with the scoundrels destroying public infrastructure & killing people to instigate insurrection & some dimwits really interpret this to mean he is threatening INNOCENT citizens! This reasoning is so ABSURD that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

That the ethnic ties which should have bound Nigeria in unity, peace and progress have become a Gordian knot setting the country ablaze should have been enough worry to more prudent public officials. It should have been a reminder of the importance of discretion in speech and engendered reconciliatory speech; but that did not trouble the legal mind of the minister. To the contrary he gloated that the presidency had displayed all that steel and firmness of purpose, and in that gloating he betrayed what may well be the general temperament of the presidency concerning the tempestuous and often incendiary Southeast in particular.

For context, the president’s comments were found offensive and in violation of Twitter’s policy and guidelines. They have since deleted them, prompting the Minister for Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, to state that Twitter’s mission in Nigeria is very suspect. He constructed his arguments on the information that Twitter funded the EndSARS protests. So rankled was he by the deletion of the presidency’s tweets that he drew a parallel with the deletion of former United States president, Donald Trump’s, tweets in the events leading up to his defeat at the polls. The minister went on to conclude that the presidency had a country to “rule” and nothing would distract them from that assignment. The real worry is the presidency’s immediate perception of criticism or negative media engagement as an attempt to seize power, hence its announcement on Friday that it would suspend all Twitter activity. The paranoia is as unseemly as it is amusing.

The conflict resolution tactics of the presidency have left much to be desired. In speech, body language and policy, the current administration has stoked the fire threatening to match secessionist agenda with force and by so doing throwing the rest of the country into unrest. Public officials like Mr Keyamo and other presidential appointees should speak the speech, as the nation prays them, trippingly on the tongue. But if they mouth it, as they have been wont to, then Nigeria would gladly have more deserving people speak to them.

Senate legalistic on new constitution

In what many have termed palliative and distracting moves by the Federal Government, the Nigerian Senate called for a constitution review of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to oversee the amendment of 16 structural issues in the country. The general opinion of Nigerians and indeed the wider world is that the constitution is a failed document unable to drive the country forward on a progressive course. Academicians of the law argue that the constitution derives its legal validity from an illegal source, that source being Decree 24 (Promulgation of the Constitution) of 1999. Whether the failure of the country can be traced to the constitution itself or a self-immolating political culture or undisciplined public officials, or even to extravagant and mismanaged institutions of government, public analysts want the constitution done away with. They argue that it is too silent on many issues regarding the diversity of the country and too unitary in form for a federal political entity.

The constitution review having taken off, the calls for a new constitution reached a deafening din with even certain legal personalities calling for the adoption of the 1963 Constitution, often fondly called the Republican Constitution. Among the proposals that the legislators have received for the amendment of the constitution is that of the renaming of the country. No one is sure what to make of that, but Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, Chairman of the Senate committee on the review of the 1999 constitution, knows what to make of the calls for a new constitution.

Said he: “Now, some of our compatriots have urged that rather than amending the Constitution, we should make a new Constitution altogether. We respect this opinion, and we believe it is a most desirable proposition. However, we are conducting this exercise in accordance with the extant legal order, which is the 1999 Constitution. Specifically, Section 9 of the Constitution empowers the National Assembly to alter the provisions of the Constitution and prescribes the manner in which it is to be done. Unfortunately, it does not make similar provision or provide mechanism for replacing or re-writing an entirely new Constitution. To embark on any process without prior alteration of Section 9 of the Constitution to provide the mode through which an entirely new Constitution could be made, would amount to gross violation of our oath of allegiance to the Constitution.”

Many analysts think it is an absolutist interpretation of the current constitution to suggest that the constitution’s silence on the procedure for entrenching a new constitution does not rule out the possibility of creating a new one. If the country feels that the current constitution has failed and that they are no longer interested in avowing it as a statute that they made or enacted, then the senate is duty bound to honour such wishes, they think. But, the senator is right. Trying to create a new constitution outside the provisions of extant laws will expose such a constitution to the same criticisms of the 1999 constitution. Legality must stem from more legality. But what happens when the extant laws cannot satisfy the democratic demands of the people?

Nigerians are sure that the senate will neither assent to any bill to totally alter the nature of the senate to a part-time occupation as optimistically suggested by Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State, nor will it honour the calls for an amendment to Section 9 of the constitution because they do not know what the proposed new constitution will bring to the table. One thing, however, is sure: between the senate’s legalistic stance on the propositions for a new constitution, the southern governors’ calls for restructuring, and the people’s exasperated cries for a new Nigeria, something must give way.

NYSC now government’s reserve army?

Although Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, is worried about the rate at which Nigerian youths renounce their citizenship in search of greener pasture, others in the government are more interested in the utility of the youths as mercenary in the event of a war. Talking up the validity and relevance of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), the Director General (DG) of the scheme, Brig. Gen Shuaibu Ibrahim, mentioned among other things that: “Corps members are on reserve. They are part of the national defence policy of this country. So, where there is serious war, our corps members are educated, they are knowledgeable and they can be trained. You see the drill and so on. You can imagine within the short three weeks in the orientation camps, the corps members are moulded. They are like soldiers. You see female corps members blowing the army horn, playing with the military band. So, if not for the knowledge, where are you going to mobilise such young Nigerians to train them quickly to put in their best for the country? So, corps members are on reserve. They are also part of the national defence policy.”

That will not encourage already disgruntled youths to stay. No. The threat of conscription in a war for a country they do not believe in will make them put more vim into the task of escaping Nigeria. The DG may in fact have misunderstood the policy objectives of the NYSC Act, which is to foster unity in the country. Although the NYSC is often regarded as a paramilitary body, such affiliation with the ministry is only suppositious. He could not point to any part of the NYSC Act that allows the army to conscript youths in the case of an emergency.

Should the government desire a reserve army, then they must look to the Israeli Defence Force which has a similar but structurally different regular service. Every Israeli citizen, with few exceptions, is mandated to participate in the regular service, with males serving up to three years and females serving two years. The nature of their training is also different, and their youths are not drafted after three arduous months into a harassed labour force and sent off to teach in remote parts of the country with insignificant remunerations. The DG may want to reacquaint himself with policy aims and objectives of the NYSC before he makes any more public statements on the scheme.