The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Ayobolu

  • PBAT and economic crisis as opportunity (2)

    PBAT and economic crisis as opportunity (2)

    Citing the historian, Arnold Toynbee, in the first part of this piece, we contended that crises can be utilized as an opportunity to respond to a challenge that can help propel a human community further along the path of progress and development. In this regard, for instance, colonialism in Africa was a challenge of oppression and exploitation that elicited a response in nationalist struggles that resulted in the liberation of former colonized and dehumanized territories. Again, the unjust annulment by the military of the June 12, 1993, presidential election in Nigeria won by the late Chief MKO Abiola was a challenge that engendered the response of resistance by elements of civil society to continued military

    Last week, the President demonstrated his sensitivity to the deleterious existential conditions in which the vast majority of Nigerians live since the removal of the fuel subsidy and parallel exchange rate mergers, when he personally attended the National Council of States (NCS) meeting as a special guest and mobilized all governors to collaborate with the federal government in a joint effort to tackle the current food crisis in the country.

    The choice that stares the nation squarely in the face is either to complain and lament ceaselessly about the current astronomical cost of staple food items in the country such as garri, yams, rice, beans, beef, poultry, eggs, vegetables, tomatoes, pepper, etc or take urgent steps to begin to tap the abandoned potentials of our agricultural sector to produce abundant food to feed ourselves and also serve as a basis for agro-allied industrialization. Of course, it is the leaders who can take the initiative to achieve this objective as the President and many governors are already doing. However, it will require more than mere resolutions or good intentions to achieve a revolution in agricultural productivity in Nigeria.

    Rather, those in the position to do so must have well-conceptualized and efficiently implemented policies to actualize this objective. The federal government has made humongous amounts available to state governments to procure grains and make other palliatives available to cushion the severe hunger in the land. However, the efficiency, transparency and sense of urgency, and mission with which governors have utilized these resources to attain the desired ends differ with huge variations from state to state.

    The widespread perception is that a substantial chunk of these palliative funds in many states end up being misappropriated by unscrupulous officials and that when foodstuffs are made available to members of the public at all, they are channeled to political partisans or those with connections to high state officials. Government policy at all levels must most certainly begin to move from the provision of palliatives to substantially boosting domestic food productivity to bring down food prices.

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    It is important at this point for the National Council on Agriculture comprising the Minister and Minister of State of Agriculture, State Commissioners of agriculture, national and state parastatals as well as other stakeholders in the agriculture value chain sectors to hold an emergency meeting to chart an urgent path to agricultural self-sufficiency in the country. This will necessarily entail decisively addressing the security challenges that have kept large numbers of farmers away from their farms in substantial agricultural swathes of the country. If the complications arising from the ongoing exceedingly slow effort to actualize state police will prove too complex to address in the short run, the PBAT administration should fast-track its plan enunciated during the campaigns to establish well-armed and equipped forest rangers to safeguard our vast forests and expansive farmlands.

    One paradox of the food availability crisis in Nigeria is that, despite the fragile security situation, substantial amounts of food produced on farms in parts of the country get spoilt due to difficulties in transporting them to urban markets. This is not a new problem. Decades ago, in one of his publications, Chief Obafemi Awolowo noted that “enormous waste and artificial scarcity of food products occur, from time to time, simply because we have no modern storage, processing, transport, and marketing facilities to deal with them in and out of season. This ill must be corrected”. It is inexcusable that this scenario still obtains over six decades after independence. Our state governments, particularly those that are potentially viable but dormant agricultural zones, should prioritize rural-urban roads, rural water and electrification, and rural as well as urban agricultural storage facilities over urban flyovers and other essentially vanity projects.

    However, allocating humongous amounts to agricultural revitalization cannot achieve the desired objectives if the sector remains largely unorganized and pre-modern for the highest number of our farmers. Here again, Awolowo, whose administration in the Western Region in the first republic ran a vibrant and prosperous agricultural sector has wise words of admonition which are still relevant to our situation today. According to him, “The state governments should take immediate steps to mobilize and organize our farmers into Cooperative Societies throughout the country. A Cooperative Unit of between 100 and 200 practicing farmers, depending on the type of crops to be cultivated, should be the optimum. In this regard, it must be constantly borne in mind that the individual farmer, except a rich landowner, is not a viable proposition. Secondly, each state government should provide the cooperating farmers with areas of farmland that are adequate for the fulfillment of their aims and objects. Thirdly, revenue should be allocated to the states in such a manner as to enable each of them to give massive financial and technical assistance to cooperating farmers who must, of course, register their organizations as limited liability corporations under the Cooperative Law of the state”.

    If we utilize the present food crisis as an opportunity to respond to the challenge of hunger and achieve not only food availability and affordability, we can also emerge as a major food exporter thus earning external revenue and reducing pressure on our national currency. Apart from the agricultural sector, President Tinubu’s recent Executive Order suspending import duties and Value-Added Tax on crucial medical imports has also been praised by stakeholders in the sector as being capable of helping to boost local production of drugs and other healthcare products thus bringing down current high medical costs. This is clearly another example of turning a crisis into an opportunity to respond appropriately to a challenge and recording progress in a sector critical to the general well-being of the citizenry.

    In a report on Thursday, this newspaper’s Associate Editor, Adekunle Yusuf, quoted the Director-General of the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA), Mr. Adewale-Smatt Ayorinde as commending the initiative of introducing zero tariffs, excise duties, and VAT on specific pharmaceutical raw materials and specialized machinery”. According to the NECA DG, “This sector can now breathe…The Executive Order comes at a time when local pharmaceutical companies are grappling with an acute shortage of productive raw materials, high production costs, and low output due to the high cost of importing productive machinery and other input materials”.

    Still on the issue of economic crisis as challenge, response, and opportunity for progress, the Director-General of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Mr Segun Ajayi-Kadir, was quoted by a national newspaper on Monday as stating that the recent exit of some multinational companies from Nigeria offers a golden opportunity for homegrown manufacturers to thrive in the country with proper government empowerment.

    According to the report in the Vanguard, “Ajayi-Kadir noted in a media chat that the apparent setbacks suffered due to the exit of the multinationals could be turned into an opportunity by placing the spotlight on homegrown manufacturers by the government empowering the domestic manufacturing sector. He stated: “I think there is a strong lesson to be learned here. The big ones leaving are the multinationals, which should send a clear signal to the government. We need to be strategic in what we promote. He is unlikely to go anywhere if you have a challenged local manufacturer. That is why we say foreign direct investment is excellent but it should come secondary to empowering the local investor, the existing manufacturers, because that is what is enduring”.

    Over three decades ago, as one of the guest speakers at the First Obafemi Awolowo Foundation Dialogue, the renowned economist, the late Professor Pius Okigbo, citing the experience of Biafra during the civil war, stressed the capacity of crisis to create the requisite opportunity for Nigeria to achieve the technological breakthrough imperative for national economic transformation and development.

    In his words on that occasion, “Why do I seem so confident that Nigeria is capable of producing the technological change required to propel the country into the next century? I am heartened by the fact that it has been done before. The Nigerian civil war proved beyond doubt that with determination and a conducive environment, the Nigerian can be induced to recreate a technological civilization. The “Biafran” scientific community was able to develop entirely out of pure local materials, weaponry that included anti-aircraft rockets, mortar bombs, land mines, tanks and armoured troop carriers, food substitutes involving the use of hitherto unused plants and crops”.

    Continuing, Professor Okigbo said that Biafran scientists “succeeded in building out of entirely locally fabricated materials a giant petroleum refining facility and thereby made the technology so diffuse and more universally understood and applied than anywhere else in the world. They installed an air traffic control on wheels for use in an airport utilized only in the hours of darkness. Yet, save the airport of Johannesburg, that airport was able to handle more flights in those few dark hours per night than any other airport in Africa operating twenty-four hours of the day. These are solid technological achievements started and learned in less than three years of wartime…The conclusion is inescapable that for our innovative genius to flourish, it is, perhaps, necessary to recreate a synthetic crisis or emergency atmosphere”.

    Due to no fault of its own but largely to inherited challenges, Nigeria confronts today, under the PBAT administration, a situation that is the economic equivalent of warfare. That crisis can propel us to rise to the occasion and break the chain, particularly of technological dependency but, among other imperative factors, the Tinubu administration must create the requisite conditions for the scientific, intellectual, and technological communities to be appropriately remunerated, motivated and respected to lead the charge.

  • Azu Ishiekwene as skilled media mechanic

    Azu Ishiekwene as skilled media mechanic

    In an interview he granted during the tenure of Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) as governor of Lagos State, famous writer and Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, described the former governor as a skilled mechanic demonstrating remarkable dexterity in minding the machinery of statecraft in the country’s economic and commercial nerve center. That phrase, ‘skilled mechanic’ came to my mind as I recently got and read through aspects of the new book, ‘Writing for Media and Monetizing It’, written by renowned columnist, editor, media executive and entrepreneur, Azu Ishiekwene.

    There are certainly few people as qualified to write this kind of book in Nigeria today and the high quality of his offering testifies to this. It is no wonder that some of the best minds in journalism and media practice as well as studies today – Dapo Olorunyomi, Sonala Olumhense, Professor Olayinka Esan, Professor Abimbola Adelakun or Professor Abiodun Adeniyi among others – do not hesitate to enthusiastically recommend this book to those who desire not only to master the art of writing for the media but to also reap reasonable financial bounties from such preoccupation.

    Like a skilled media mechanic and technician, Azu takes his reader through the nuts and bolts, the intricacies and dynamics of writing for the media and making it a profitable enterprise. One thing that comes across in this book is the writer’s generosity of spirit, an infectious enthusiasm to share the secrets of a craft he has labored to master over three and a half decades with both newcomers and older practitioners on the terrain.

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    As he puts it in the preface, “The book title clearly suggests a media bias – media here meaning traditional and social media. This is deliberate. Audiences in these areas are my primary focus. Whether you are in school, just starting out on a writing career path or are, in fact, in the middle level of your career, you would find this book useful. It draws not only on my personal experience – struggles and triumphs- but also from professional colleagues across age brackets who generously shared their experience with me”.

    Azu is able to dilate authoritatively on writing for diverse variants of media, traditional and social, as a viable route to prosperity because he is walking his talk. He writes for scores of outlets both within and outside the country many of which pay for his services and expertise. The author also advises on how to leverage even on outlets that do not necessarily pay for contributions to broaden the writer’s reach, enhance visibility and increase stature and prominence.

    Much of this book that runs into 259 pages divided into 15 chapters deal with specific nuts, bolts and mechanics of the writing trade including finding your voice in chapter one, choosing your subject in chapter two, creating your style in chapter three, connecting with your audience in chapter four and finding and using literary resources in chapter five. In his slim volume, ‘We are all journalists now’, respected journalist and former Minister of Sports and Youth Development, Sunday Dare, interrogated the phenomenon of ‘citizen journalism’ and the conflicts and contradictions arising from this ‘democratization’ of media practice in relation to the ‘professional’ traditional media.

    Azu also interrogates in greater depth the interrelationships between the traditional and social media and how the former has in particular creatively adapted to the demands of the latter to expand reach and benefit from innovations arising from new technologies. For those who have criticized many of the denizens of social media for operating with scant regard to legal restraints and respect for the privacy of citizens, Azu’s chapter on minding the law will prove invaluable to sanitizing the terrain at least as regards those who are teachable, willing to learn and disposed towards attaining a reasonable level of professionalism in what is otherwise an all comers arena.

    Having put in over three and a half decades of journalism myself, much of which included news analyses, features articles, editorials and column writing, why did I eagerly seek out and read Azu’s new book? First, is the author’s reputation as one of the most informed, witty and impactful columnists in contemporary Nigerian journalism. His incisive mind, cutting intelligence, pithiness of expression and inimitable sense of humor make the book pleasurable reading for its own sake. Beyond this, in the face of Nigeria’s protracted crises of poverty and underdevelopment, even experienced hands in the trade can benefit from learning new tricks of monetizing their talents and skills.

    A graduate of Mass Communication in his first degree and with a Masters degree in Public Administration and International Affairs from the University of Lagos, Azu came into journalism with an eye to honing his writing skills and perfecting his craft after the fashion of his teacher, renowned journalism scholar and inimitable columnist and satirist, Professor Olatunji Dare, and other mentors including the late Dele Giwa, Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese and Yakubu Mohammed. He stresses all through the importance of being mentored in developing one’s craft to the level that it adds value enough to be reasonably profitable.

    The late atheist, social critic, humanist and columnist, Dr Tai Solarin, once wrote an article in which he admonished aspiring young writers to read as widely and deeply as possible in the great literatures of the world. Learning to write masterfully, he advised, was very much like learning to play soccer. Rather than grabbing a book on the rules of soccer and studying such to become a star footballer, you must just get on the field and play as often as possible. Thus, practice would make perfect. Like soccer, like writing, Solarin advised the budding writer. Thus, in giving an instance of his own development as a writer, Azu notes that “I expanded my reading list by adding some of my favourite and evergreen writers like Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. I also returned to some leading African writers, especially Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye”.

    Apart from those intent on writing for the media, this book is also an invaluable resource to those who are desirous of writing and publishing books that sell. This is one area in which I have personally found it quite useful and valuable. At the end of each chapter, the author not only provides review exercises, he itemizes critical take aways and suggests books and online resources for further reading.

    Other enlightening and invaluable chapters in this book focus on managing feedback and trolls, writing for global audiences, branding your content, using artificial intelligence without losing one’s originality and, of course, making money! Just like Andrew Carnegie’s immortal’How to Win Friends and Influence People’, this book is surely set to be a classic as it meets very specific needs that are relevant and necessary across time and space.

    In the writer’s words, “For me, writing this was like walking back through the years of my career, beginning from when there was even no career but just a dream to become a writer someday, to my schools when I was formally introduced to the craft, through many changes along the way, a good number of which I didn’t see coming. You don’t have to wear my shoes or tread my path. But this book is a good guide for common obstacles that many literary content providers face in the new world, as they try to make their own way”. I wish I had a book like this as a pathfinder at the commencement of my journalistic Odyssey nearly four decades ago.

  • PBAT and economic crisis as opportunity (1)

    PBAT and economic crisis as opportunity (1)

    This column has referred a number of times in the past to the conceptualization by the 19th-century British historian, Arnold Toynbee, of the response by societies to the challenges of crises as the basis for human progress across space and time. Today, Nigeria confronts another of those debilitating economic crises that have been a recurrent feature of our post-independence experience. Astronomical spirals in food, transportation, healthcare and electricity costs among others have worsened existential conditions and deepened poverty levels.

    In a recent exchange on an online platform, a contributor compared prices of basic food items such as garri, yams, rice, beans, eggs, poultry, beef, fish, pepper, tomatoes and vegetables among others before the present administration and now and concluded that Nigerians are worse off today than they were before May 29, 2023. Those who are of this school of thought lay the blame for the current existential hardships solely on the shoulders of the Tinubu administration which has just clocked a little over one year in office. But is there a viable alternative to the removal of the fuel subsidy as well as the merger of the parallel exchange rate markets that constitute the twin pillars of the administration’s economic reformist agenda?

    Did all the major Presidential candidates in the campaigns towards the last general elections not promise to immediately remove the fuel subsidy which had become clearly unsustainable? The truth is that practically all observers grossly underrated the negative implications of the fuel subsidy removal on living costs for the majority of citizens and any other administration would still have been confronted with the dilemma faced by the PBAT administration in implementing the inevitable policy.

    Even if it is true as some opposition elements contend that there is still some degree of subsidy being paid on fuel imports as the country awaits the resuscitation of the Port Harcourt refinery as well as the full take-off of the Dangote refinery next month, humongous amounts from the largely dubious scheme are currently being saved. This is evident in the near tripling of the amount accruing to the Federation Account and shared by all levels of government monthly since the subsidy removal. The enhanced revenue levels available especially to the sub-national levels of government have in turn increased the tempo and magnitude of palliative programmes being implemented by various states albeit at different levels of efficiency, efficacy, and transparency.

    Again, the merger of the dual exchange rate markets has substantially blocked the opportunity for a few favoured and well-connected persons to buy Forex at cheap rates at the official window and sell the same for a fortune at the parallel market without an iota of contribution to national productivity. Most experts agreed that had the hemorrhaging and distortions associated with both the fuel subsidy regime and the criminal exchange rate syndicate continued, the economy would for all practical purposes have collapsed by now.

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    The restoration of sanity to the operations of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) under the leadership of the current governor, Mr. Olayemi Cardoso, and the resumption of responsibility for fiscal policy within the purview of the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun, are gradually but steadily helping to recalibrate, redirect and reinvigorate the economy even though magical solutions cannot be conjured in the short run.

    For the better part of this writer’s adult life, the country has always been faced with one form of economic crisis and high living costs or the other. Perhaps one exception was during the oil boom of the immediate post-civil war era in the early to mid-1970s when the General Yakubu Gowon regime claimed that Nigeria’s problem was not the availability of money but how to spend it. There was also the short-lived boom squandered by President Shehu Shagari administration in the Second Republic between 1979 and 1983. Indeed, by 1981, that administration had to introduce drastic austerity measures as the economy had run into crisis due to its ineptness and venality.

    Under the military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, the country again reaped humongous revenues from oil proceeds as a result of high prices due to the Gulf War, earnings which were again largely squandered. In the latter years of  President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration running on into the Dr Goodluck Jonathan administration on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the country again earned substantial revenues from high international oil prices which were neither invested to effectively bridge the infrastructure deficit nor meaningfully alleviate poverty.

    Many have been led to perceive the 1960s as the golden years of Nigerian development when the country was a virtual Eldorado in terms of living conditions. But even then the country at the time experienced a high living costs crisis. That was when the highlife maestro, the late Victor Olaiya, sang his hit song in Yoruba: “Ilu le o, kosowo lode. Obirin kigbe, Okurin kigbe, won kigbe nitori Owo”. (This translates to “The country is hard, there is no money in town. Both men and women are crying because money is scarce). In our history, we can also recall the chronic scarcity of essential commodities and harsh austerity measures including the mass retrenchment of workers that characterized the Buhari/Idiagbon military regime of 1984-85 or the various students, workers and civil society uprisings against the hardships associated with the Babangida regime’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) between 1986 and 1993.

    Rather than utilize the unanticipated oil boom earnings to consolidate on the agricultural productivity gains of the immediate post-independence era and pursue agro-allied industrialization, the country became grossly import-dependent for all manner of necessities and luxuries including indulging in massive food importation.

    With the massive devaluation of the Naira attendant on the introduction of the IBB regime’s SAP, the scores of manufacturing industries in textiles, tyres, vehicle assembly, paper mills, pharmaceuticals, and other goods established on the import-substitution-industrialization model folded up as the country suffered massive deindustrialization and the attendant large scale youth unemployment. These industries were largely dependent on the importation of raw materials in many cases as well as spare parts and critical technology, activities negatively affected by the currency devaluation.

    Quoting the late Professor Claude Ake at a lecture he delivered in Abuja on Thursday, Professor Mike Ozekhome (SAN), referred to the continued ‘disarticulation’ of the Nigerian economy referring to a situation in which we produce what we do not consume and consume what we do not produce. This has been at the root of Nigeria’s protracted economic development malaise that far predated the Tinubu administration. As Professor Okwudiba Nnoli succinctly makes the point, there is “A divorce between our local resources and those (essentially foreign) that go into the production of the artifacts usually associated with development. As a result we are alienated from our bio-physical environment and unable to creatively transform it for our own benefit and progress”.

    The recurrent economic crises we have experienced since independence had not been utilized by successive administrations as an opportunity to respond to the challenge of dependency and underdevelopment thus laying a foundation for autochthonous development. Our fixation with foreign exchange in our development policy matrix is a function of the substantially dependent nature of our economy which has made the almighty dollar king in our economic transactions and processes.

    Even as President Tinubu’s economic managers continue to draw on their professional and technocratic ingenuity to devise strategies to continuously boost the value of the Naira, the President can utilize the opportunity of the economic crisis to massively mobilize Nigerians to rediscover their self-confidence, become significantly self-reliant, cultivate consumption habits predicated on local resources as well as nurture productive practices based on local technology and expertise to a significant extent.

    The President gave an indication that he is inclined to move his administration in this direction when on Thursday, as a special guest at the 142nd meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC) in Abuja, he personally rallied state governors to engage in massive food production to enhance food availability and significantly scale down food costs. But the success of this bid will depend not on the individual heroics of the governors but their ability to vigorously mobilize their citizens, especially energetic and enterprising youth to engage in agriculture and other productive activities.

    The challenge to actualize this kind of mass mobilization of popular energies to achieve self-reliant development will not fall within the purview of the president’s orthodox economic managers whether at the Ministry of Finance or the CBN or other such agencies. Rather, it will be a core mandate of a critical agency like the National Orientation Agency (NOA) to conceptualize and implement mass mobilization strategies to inculcate in a critically significant mass of Nigerians consumption habits, fashionable tastes, productive inclinations and dispositions as well as psychological orientations conducive to accelerated national transformation.

    Again, the ruling party, the APC, and ruling parties at sub national levels will have to be transformed into vibrant, virile and vigorous organizations that are organically alive and can serve as a transmission belt of developmental values from the leadership to the led.

    A key philosophy underpinning this unorthodox approach to development must be the understanding that no people can ever develop another people or confer or transfer development on others. We can ride Chinese constricted trains but will never be masters and owners of this aspect of development until we internalize train manufacturing technology for ourselves. It is only a people through self awareness engendered by transcendental leadership that can develop themselves.

    The second key point is that there will be no easy shortcut to development. To paraphrase the great Awo who once put it with characteristic pungency “Nigeria’s national objectives and aspirations can be stated in simple and succinct terms. But this should not be taken as suggesting that our national goals can be achieved with any kind of ease or simplicity”. How then can President Tinubu mobilize Nigerians to utilize the current economic crisis as an opportunity to fundamentally change the country’s developmental narrative and trajectory in the fastest possible time frame bearing in mind Pandit Nehru’s rallying cry at India’s independence that what the country did not produce she would not consume and if India could not clothe herself she should go naked? Today, India is a global economic power.

  • Professor Tunji Olaopa and there form struggle in Nigeria (3)

    Professor Tunji Olaopa and there form struggle in Nigeria (3)

    Even though he is evidently of a very serious cast of mind, Professor Tunji Olaopa is a captivating and arresting story teller who delicately and intricately weaves his personal narratives of his childhood experiences, educational career and intensive, continual quest for spiritual insight and philosophical self-discovery with his evolution as an eminent reform thinker, scholar and bureaucrat. His narrative throughout the book is gripping even when he is applying his mind to seemingly arcane subjects or writing at a relatively high level of abstraction.

    Born into a polygamous home, the author dilates incisively as regards his perceptions of the strengths and Weaknesses as well as challenges of polygamy. The author writes of his personal experience of the Yoruba adage that “only the parents give birth to a baby, but it takes the entire community to raise a child”. He states that “Indeed, the more my father married new wives, the more the family grew into a small community of its own in a larger community, especially at Aawe”. Even though he admires his father’s adroitness in managing his large polygamous family, Professor Olaopa notes the suspicion, thinly disguised hostility and emotional unpredictability that are often negative experiences of polygamy.

    Thus, he writes of his deep commitment to monogamy in his family life and narrates the story of a loving home predicated on firm shared commitment with his wife and children and informed by strongly held Christian values. His reflections on ‘Christianity and the Spiritual’ as well as ‘Further Philosophical Reflection on my Spiritual Journey So Far’ in chapters six and seven are further portrayals of the author’s practical adherence to the Socratic admonition that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. His meditations on the essence of existence and the meaning or meaninglessness of life would cause many a reader to ponder and evaluate the philosophies and values on which their lives are predicated.

    If all that exists is matter which decomposes and disintegrates at death, after which there is purportedly no after life or spiritual reality, does it then matter how we live or what we do? Do we then have any right to ask moral questions or give value judgements on the lives of others?

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    Of course, Professor Olaopa’s life has naturally had its own fair share of adversities, vicissitudes and challenges. At about the age of five or six, for instance, he encountered political thugs of the bloody operation wetie era in the Southwest in Ibadan who gruffly pushed him aside and proceeded to douse a vehicle in petrol and set it ablaze with its unfortunate passengers trapped inside. This traumatic imagery remained in the mind of the young boy and it was years later as a student of political science at the University of Ibadan that he was able to come to grips analytically with the dynamics of bitter political competition, and the crisis of violence and instability in post-colonial Nigeria.

    In another narration, the author relates his near-death experience with a protracted brain ailment of indeterminate provenance which lasted for ten years well into his undergraduate years in the university. This, in addition to his foray into distracting students union politics at the University of Ibadan affected his grades during his first degree where, to his utter discomfiture, he graduated with a second class lower division degree in political science. The unrelenting fighter that he is, Olaopa was to make up for what he perceived was a lapse in his first degree that he made up for by performing brilliantly at the postgraduate level and going on to become one of Nigeria’s most accomplished bureaucrats and public administration scholars.

    According to the author, “the master’s programne was a most intense period for me. As I had earlier narrated, I was motivated by my initial undergraduate failing to overreach myself. And I did. One of the remarkable recognitions of my frenetic intellectual restlessness was the call I got from one of my highly-Rev-erred teachers, Professor Femi Otubanjo, as regards an interview for a position as research assistant. It was later I got the scintillating news that it was the sage himself, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was looking for a replacement for his personal political Secretary, the inimitable Odia Ofeimun”. Although he eventually got the job, Olaopa was unable to resume following the passage of Awolowo on May 9, 1987.

    A seminar paper titled “Potentials for Revolutionary Change in Nigeria” which he wrote and presented during the late Professor Peter Ekeh’s ‘Marxism’ class at the masters level at UI sought to interrogate Ekeh’s theory of the two publics and Ali Mazrui’s thesis on Africa’s triple spiritual heritage “to explore possibilities that could hinder coalition-building for revolutionary change in Nigeria”. Fascinated by the theoretical weight of his submissions and insights, Ekeh encouraged Olaopa to build on this study with an in-depth examination of the issue of people-centered and grassroots social mobilization for development. One wonders at this point, why Olaopa was more attracted and influenced by scholars of a rather conservative orientation like Plato and not scholars of a more radical persuasion like Marx, Lenin, Nkrumah, Franz Fanon, Walter Rodney or Claude Ake.

    Ake in a piece on Marx’s continued appeal to African intelligentsia had reasoned that Marx’s political theory had the liberation from oppression at its core and was concerned with the imperative of social change in sharp contrast to bourgeois social scientists who are more preoccupied with preserving and ensuring the stability of an oppressive and repressive status quo. Ake also opined, however, that Marxist theory was grounded in the context of the unfolding capitalist system at the centre when he wrote; was fixated with the challenges of capitalism and its inherent cyclical crises in Europe and hardly addressed his mind to the challenges of largely underdeveloped and still essentially feudal societies in confronting their desperate existential conditions.

    Particularly intriguing is Professor Olaopa’s discourse on his encounter with various dimensions of spirituality in his characteristic exhaustive and rigorous search for a religious belief system that offered a coherent and credible system for making sense of reality and ordering one’s existence in an often bewildering human universe. He thus reports in graphic detail his intellectual adventures with Lobsang Rampa’s writings and the mysticism of the Far East, the spiritual meditations of the gnostics, the phenomenal intellect of the fathers of the Catholic Church, the mysteries of the Ifa corpus and his experimentation with the Rosicrucian mystic sect in his student days.

    In his words, “The Ifa corpus also instigated the same interest in me. It encompassed the cumulative philosophy by which the Yoruba have lived for centuries. How then could it be pagan or anti-God? It did not take long for me to realize, first, that a knowledge of the inner workings of Rosicrucianism or Awo (Yoruba cults and their guided knowledge) requires a deeper immersion in certain spiritual frameworks than my intellectual fascination could achieve. There is an extent to which I could excavate the depth of these mystical practices without being a member. And membership was what my intellectual temperament and religious background cautioned against…while my fascination with Ifa cosmology, mysticism and Rosicrucianism satisfied the curiosity of my ever questioning mind, I was always cut short at the point of making a final commitment to the spiritualities”.

    Although he is a Christian of a more moderate Pentecostal persuasion, he abhors what he describes as “the simplistic fixation with the miracle mentality as well as prosperity theology and all its obscene manifestations”. The first part of the book deals with the author’s growing up experiences and the factors such as education, religion and deep immersion in Yoruba cultural and moral ethos that shaped his life values and nourished his underlying passion for personal and institutional reforms in Nigeria.

    From his first job at the Oyo State chapter of the defunct Directorate for Mass Mobilization, Social Justice and Self-Reliance (MAMSER) where his frequent articles on the national condition caught the attention of top functionaries of the military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, Olaopa, before long resumed work at the Speech and Policy Analysis Unit in the Office of the President. In meticulous detail, he writes on his steady rise within the public service hierarchy, the triumphs and failings of his insistent attempts at institutional reforms at his diverse postings, his rise to the apex of the Service as a Permanent Secretary and his unexpected and premature retirement when he still had so much to offer. This book can also be called ‘The Reformist Manifesto’. In chapters thirteen, fourteen and fifteen in particular he enunciates in knowledgeable detail his agenda and reformist philosophy for the emergence of a result-oriented and productive public service in Nigeria as a necessary condition for the country’s liberation.

  • Towards a viable local government system (2)

    Towards a viable local government system (2)

    Constitutional arrangements such as federalism or unitary states or forms of government such as parliamentary or presidential systems or hybrid governmental systems are made for man and not vice versa. Thus, parliamentarian, presidential, unitary or federalist principles of governance are not abstract ideals that all nations must strictly abide by but rather evolve in most societies as outcomes of their peculiar evolutionary experiences. Nigerian federalism and by extension her local government structure bear inevitably the imprint of her experience under military rule.

    It could be true that the ruling military elite in the nearly three decades since they were at the helm of affairs in Nigeria were inclined towards emphasizing centralizing trends in Nigerian federalism as a result of the military organization’s centralist hierarchical ethos. But it is no less true that other critical stakeholders like elements of the political class, some intellectuals who were involved in governance in military dictatorships, and the top hierarchy of the civil service all supported the weakening of the rigid regional system of the first republic, increased states creation as well as the shift to the presidential form of government because of the perceived role of the political structures of the first republic in orienting the country towards disintegrating centrifugal tendencies inimical to national unity and cohesion.

    It is all too common to blame the military for the shift in the dominant political thought that shaped the political institutions of the first republic. But this perception of the country’s problems and how to resolve them through the constitutional provisions of the 1979 Constitution, a document drawn up by 49 ‘wise men’ comprising some of the country’s best and brightest judicial minds, exemplary intellectuals, and statesmen and which forms the core of the extant 1999 Constitution (as amended) were considered by the conventional wisdom of the period to be the right way to go in correcting the ills that brought an end to the first republic and drove the nation inexorably into civil war.

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    Indeed, although he refused to serve as a member of the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) headed by Chief Rotimi Williams (SAN), that avatar of Nigerian federalism, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, publicly admitted that most of the proposals of the CDC reflected his views and suggestions in his book ‘Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution’.

    Thus, even though it may depart from the experience of other federal systems with particular reference to the local government as the third tier of government which is designed by the architects of the constitution to exercise a reasonable degree of autonomy to perform with minimal encumbrances from other levels of government, this is in no way an intrinsic inhibition against the local councils being able to perform optimally and achieving concrete developmental goals at the grassroots. As we noted last week, for instance, Brazil is one federal system that has the local government councils as their third tier of government apparently with beneficial impacts on governance.

    The federal purists contend that seeking to make the local governments an autonomous third tier as the 1999 Constitution (as amended) does, amounts to an absurdity. But they proffer no argument as to why it is logically necessary for states, which are part and parcel of the federation territorially, to enjoy a reasonable degree of administrative and constitutional autonomy while the local governments which are inextricable parts of the states where they are located cannot. It is not enough to assert that local government councils must mandatorily be subordinated to states as an inevitable logic of the federalist ethos perhaps as handed over to us by some constitutional deity whose word is law and must be obeyed. The same argument that makes this case for states’ autonomy can also be made for local governments and may even be considered to be a deepening of the federalist logic.

    In any case, critics of the constitution as regards its provisions for the establishment, management, and funding of this tier of government are utterly unfair in my view. In Section 7 (1) the Constitution provides in unequivocal terms that “the system of local government by democratically elected local government councils is guaranteed under this Constitution”. It further states that “Accordingly, the Government of every State shall…ensure their existence under a Law which provides for the establishment, structure, composition, finance and functions of such councils”.

    Some scholars such as the late Professor Adeoye AKinsanya, see a contradiction in this position of the Constitution as regards the existence and functioning of local government councils. In his words, “To be sure, the system of local government by democratically elected LGCs guaranteed by the framers of the Constitution is negated by the same provision of empowering a State Government, using its legislative arm, to enact a Law providing for the “establishment, structure, composition, finance and functions of such council”, meaning that a state had the power of life and death over every local government council”.

    It is difficult to agree with the submission of the Professor. The only constitutionally recognized local government councils are those democratically elected as clearly stipulated by the Constitution. Once a free, fair, and credible poll has been held and the council’s officers have been elected, their powers and existence flow from the votes of the people and these entities can no longer be legitimately dissolved by governors as currently happens arbitrarily and replaced by caretaker committees.

    The Constitution provides for no lacuna to give governors any leeway to such recourses as the dissolution of elected local government councils, an action that is tantamount to annulling the will of the people and to derogate from the inalienable right of voters in this regard. But the pending decision of the Supreme Court which is being awaited in the case between the federal and state governments should put this matter to rest.

    In also giving the state powers, through the legislature to enact laws for the establishment, structure, composition, funding, and functions of the local councils, the framers of the Constitution pay obeisance to the perceived federalist fetishism. But this provision stands on the leg that the councils must be democratically elected. Some have advocated that amounts of money due to the local councils should simply be paid to state government accounts with the governors determining not only the number of local councils but also how much to allocate to the councils.

    This essentially is what obtains at the moment. The funds paid from the State, Local Government Joint Account as stipulated by the Constitution are managed and distributed according to the whims of the governors. Thus, most local governments lack sufficient funds to effectively undertake their functions even minimally. Again, since the governors reportedly appropriate much of the funds due to the local government councils, the latter officials simply have no compunction, in turn, to divert much of whatever is released to them for private acquisitive purposes rather than to address local developmental challenges.

    Another problem is that of ensuring the integrity of local government elections which is a responsibility conferred on State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs). The latter have been a disaster with every party in power in the states winning 100 percent of Chairmanship and Councilorship positions competed for. Invariably, with their elections guaranteed by partisan SIECs, the local government officials have no sense of responsibility and accountability to the people with negative consequences for grassroots transformation. It is either the SIECs are strengthened constitutionally and administratively to guarantee their independence and autonomy from the autocratic suzerainty of state governors, or their functions transferred to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

    It is difficult to understand why anyone should be scared of having credible polls that truly reflect the will of the people at the grassroots all in the name of adherence to some received theoretical doctrine of federalism. If we are striving ceaselessly to improve democratic structures and processes at the centre and in the states, why should the local governments be immune from imbibing the emergent democratic ethos?

    It is no exaggeration that state governors are the greatest albatrosses on the country’s evolution in the direction of an ever-increasingly perfect democratic union, which is an ongoing process even in the most advanced democracies. State governors are widely known to have the state legislatures under their thumbs, and maintain a stranglehold on state judiciaries in addition to their lordship over the state public services. Indeed, so ruthlessly have some governors exercised the powers of their offices that many are beginning to be scared of the impending moves toward the establishment of state police outfits.

    True, it is inevitable that states must necessarily have some degree of control over local government councils as they have the responsibility of planning for the socio-economic development of all local governments that constitute their geographical territorial demarcation. But this is just the same way that states have their budgets and economic planning efforts carried on within the framework of macroeconomic and monetary policies articulated and adumbrated by the national government.

    Of course, no one should be under the illusion that paying funds of local governments directly to them from the Federation Account will automatically translate into manifestations of robust development at the grassroots. There is also the question of the availability of administrative and managerial capacity at that level of governance. It is certainly not out of place to encourage retired citizens with years of experience and accomplishments in both the public and private sectors to seek election as local government chairmen and councilors. Contrary to popular perception, local governments require the highest levels of experienced, capable, and experienced hands because achieving most of our national developmental goals will be a function of the vibrancy and vitality of those elected to run the councils.

    Apart from taking deliberate steps to improve the quality of those elected to run local governments, no effort should be spared by ministries of local government in the states to intensify training and retraining of the officials of the local government bureaucracies to enhance their capacity and effectiveness on the job.

    Perhaps one initiative that could be useful in our quest for a more viable local government system is to experiment with holding local government elections on no party basis or at least inoculating the local government system from the vitriol and prejudices of national or state-level electioneering and elections. Professor Alex Gboyega notes in this respect that “In fact, one could go as far as to say that only local parties show interest in local elections. For example, according to Bowman “Australian local councils are generally proud to describe themselves as non-political, that is, they do not divide on party lines, and most councilors are not endorsed by a political party. Formally, at least, most local authorities are set apart from the partisan politics of state and federal government “.

    Gboyega continues, “In Canada, the principal characteristic of the local political scene…is that the established political parties existing at the federal and provincial levels do not play a direct role in municipal politics. Municipal council members are elected either on a nonpartisan basis or as representatives of purely municipal or civic parties. In the USA too, the party system is so fragmented that national or statewide political parties play no role in local government “. Perhaps this is one area we can look at in reshaping and reorganizing our local government system in Nigeria.

  • Professor Tunji Olaopa and the reform struggle in Nigeria (2)

    Professor Tunji Olaopa and the reform struggle in Nigeria (2)

    Like some of our country’s most profound and accomplished literary and intellectual minds such as Professors  Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark, Chinua Achebe, Femi Osofisan or Niyi Osundare to name a few, who were deeply grounded in the language, culture and traditions of their communal, ethnic origins, Professor Tunji Olaopa’s intellectual memoir reveals his firm rootedness in and immense gratitude for an early penetrating immersion in the values of the Okeho and Aawe Yoruba communities of South-West Nigeria where he was born and had his childhood and youthful acculturation and maturation. He writes fondly of the moral values, life-affirming communal ethos and virtues as well as disciplinary ethic that molded his growing up in these communities. Olaopa’s profound love of and limitless affection for western education and its rich intellectual heritage did not alienate or delink him from his traditional cultural moorings but rather the traditional and the modern had a mutually reinforcing symbiosis in his mental and psychological makeup as exhibited by his expansive, accommodationist and syncretic worldview.

    Olaopa demonstrates a deep knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the historical origins, cultural matrix and psychic predisposition of his native Aawe. He is the urbane, global intellectual and citizen who is yet acutely embedded in the local soil that sprang him. Indeed, his unquenchable thirst and hunger for western education and knowledge responsible for his no mean accomplishments in life so far have their roots in his Aawe socio-cultural environment. As he put it, “The re-education I got on my return to Aawe went beyond Mama Muniratu’s good doses of lessons in physical hard work and industriousness. I was also regaled with stories of the diligence that went into the founding of the town and the vision that bred so many illustrious sons and daughters who became beacons of possibilities for younger generations like mine. It became obvious early in Aawe that the only way to make up for what Awe lacked in historical significance, like the imperial glory of Oyo, was to take education seriously”. It was from this early period that the example of the great Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, the renowned economist from Aawe, was to be of profound inspirational significance for Oloapa in his evolving educational odyssey and future intellectual as well as bureaucratic career.

    He writes that “The first fifteen years of my life was spent in cultural and educational journeys from Okeho to Akure, and then Sango-Ota, back to Okeho, then to Iseyin and, finally, Aawe”. The political scientist in him draws critical parallels or divergences between the political organization and cultures in these communities of his early local peregrinations in the South-West and the larger Nigerian polity of his later adulthood. For instance, writing of Okeho, he notes that “Indeed, Okeho is many things that Nigeria is not. Aside its original confederate communities, Okeho grew to incorporate many other peoples and different faiths in relative peaceful coexistence. I remember we had Hausa-Fulani neighbours who were Muslims as others who were adherents of traditional religions. The Hausa-Fulani had stayed so long as to have integrated themselves into the Yoruba cultural environment without being forced in any way to jettison their cultural identity…But Okeho of those years signaled for me the very possibility of plural coexistence that Nigeria is striving for”.

    No less fascinating is Oloapa’s narrative of the impact of mutually accommodating and harmonious coexistence of the various religions of Christianity, Islam and traditional African spirituality characteristic of Yoruba communities in the evolution of his religious belief and practice. His description of his quest for spiritual illumination and religious fulfillment reminds one of similar narratives in Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s autobiography of his spiritual adventures during his studies in the United Kingdom which took him from theism through agnosticism until the sage finally birthed at a firm orthodox Christian faith even though he was also deeply immersed in esoteric, mystical spirituality. Professor Olaopa’s strong spiritual convictions as a practicing Christian of a restrained, non-materialistic Pentecostal orientation is obvious. There is no doubt that his Christian moral convictions partly nourish and fuel his obsessive lifelong preoccupation with ceaseless and never -ending reform at the personal and institutional levels. There is as Bishop Hassan Kukah notes in his foreword a subtle, unobtrusive spiritual sense of mission in the passion and fervor with which the author has dedicated his life to the actualization of his vision of reform. The author points out that “Okeho and Aawe were my first introduction to the deep and experiential understanding of what Ali Mazrui calls Africa’s triple heritage of the confluence of western Christianity, Islam and traditional African religion” noting that “The force of modernity that colonization accelerated became a disruptive influence on how Africans perceive themselves and others. And in its place is a new template of three different cultural values struggling to find coherence. In a place like Nigeria, the coherence of Christianity, Islam and Traditional religions has failed to materialize still”.

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    We follow Olaopa’s educational trajectory from his humble beginnings at Christ Baptist School, Aawe, through Ebenezer Anglican Primary School, Akure, Iseyin District Grammar School and Aawe High School where he completed his secondary school education in 1977. His attendance at the famous Olivet Baptist Heights School, Oyo, where he obtained the Higher School Certificate (HSC) was a major milestone in this regard. In his words, “From Aawe High School to Olivet Heights, I learnt precious lessons that added to my stock of life capacities and values required to advance in life and be a better person, first, to oneself and then to others”. Recte Sapere fons (For knowledge and Sound Wisdom), the motto of the University of Ibadan, where he obtained his B.Sc and M.Sc degrees in Political Science, was a powerful motivating factor in the molding of Olaopa, the man, bureaucrat  and scholar. The academic, social and personal fulfillment he experienced at the prestigious institution as narrated in chapter four of the book is evident and infectious.

    According to him, “In retrospect, it would seem that all my journeys towards intellectual “beingness” climaxed at the University of Ibadan. At the time I was still undecided about the choice to make between law and political science, the University of Ibadan had already cast a long shadow over the other universities; it was simply the place to be. It was already a symbol of academic excellence and, I believe, it is still unbeaten today – it is the first and best”. Particularly enthralling is his narration of his foray into student union politics when he made an ultimately futile but no less personally edifying bid for the presidency of the students’ union. Oloapa writes fondly of his various teachers at different stages of his educational career and particularly at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. So important were the writings of Plato to his intellectual development that he devotes a chapter to ‘Plato and the Intellectual Mentors’. Although he had read widely in literature, politics, philosophy and biographies of eminent personalities, Plato’s ‘The Republic’ in particular made a marked impression on Olaopa and possibly laid the foundation for his lifelong preoccupation with public sector reform in Nigeria.

    In his words, “However, when I started rummaging through the book, I got more than just the dramatic contents. On the contrary, I was opened up to a large expanse of intellectual frameworks that speak to what it means to reform a polity that had gone terribly bad and had sabotaged its original objectives. In retrospect, I suspected the seed of inquiry into social harmony and institutional reform was sown at that time”.

    To be concluded

  • Towards a viable local government system (1)

    Towards a viable local government system (1)

    There is obviously a substantial consensus in public discourse that the country’s protracted crisis of underdevelopment since independence is partly a function of the inefficacy, ineffectiveness and scant functionality of the local government system. As the system of government closest to the people, local governments are best placed to mobilize citizens for accelerated participatory development but this potential lies stunted and unrealized. There is no way, for instance, that the immense but dormant energies of the rural populace can be channeled for transformational purposes without vigorous and visionary grassroots gaovernance. Critics of the extant local government system blame the situation on its non-adherence to what they perceive as the ideals of federalism as well as a stultifying uniformity which is a legacy of the country’s almost three decades of military dictatorship.

    One of the most prolific and insightful scholars of Nigeria’s local government structure and processes, the late Professor Alex Gboyega, vividly describes the system from what can be described as a purist federalist perspective. In his words, “For a federal system, Nigeria has a remarkably simple pattern and number of local governments. All of Nigeria’s Local Government Areas have a common structure of local government administration regardless of the level of socio-economic development, traditional political system and culture. The uniformity of local government structure in Nigeria contrasts sharply with the situation in other federal systems”. He notes that in the federal structure of the United States, there are over 83,000 units of local government comprising a multiplicity of counties, townships, municipalities, school districts and special districts. The fact that each state has a different constitution implies that local governments are constituted differently across states with a variety of authorities sharing powers of local governance within a given geographical jurisdiction.

    Similarly, in Canada there is no common municipal government system across the country while in Australia, each of the six states have distinctive and separate local government systems. But is there an ideal form of federalism which every state claiming that form of constitutional arrangement must necessarily adhere to? I don’t think so. The evolution and structure of local government in a given country will understandably reflect the historical administrative trajectory of such an entity and an embodiment of its traditional political and cultural experiences.

    For instance, Brazil is described as having one of the most decentralized federations in the world. According to an online resource, “Its federal system has three tiers of autonomous governing bodies – the central government (the Union), the state governments and the local governments (municipios)…Brazil’s 5,513 municipios are governed by elected mayors, vice mayors and local councils of from 9 to 21 representatives”. A country which fashions its federal system to suit its peculiar circumstances commits no sin in my view especially as in most cases, the form of federalism that prevails is less a function of conscious political engineering than it is of the unfolding flow of events some of which are unforeseen and beyond human control.

    In any case, even the territorial demarcation of authority between parties to a federal compact, the centre and the states, is never cast in stone. The weight of power and influence between the federating units is always shifting depending on the unfolding political, economic and historical circumstances. Thus, some scholars note, for instance, that following the great global depression of 1929, the balance of power in America shifted in favour of the federal government which enabled President Franklin Roosevelt to implement his ambitious New Deal programme through which the central government executed huge public works and infrastructure projects to combat the economic crisis between 1933 and 1938.

    In a similar vein, the unanticipated coronavirus pandemic which erupted in 2019 compelled the centre in many federal states not excluding the United States to come to the aid of largely helpless states. One of the central thrusts in Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s theory of federalism was that the centre must always be sufficiently provisioned to make it capable of rescuing component parts of the federation when the latter runs into stormy economic weather or in case of destructive, large scale natural disasters.

    It is true that the centralized and uniform nature of our local government system is largely a function of the hierarchical structure and unitary orientation of military rule during which the system took shape for a period of nearly three decades. But then, military rule is a fact of our political history which we cannot run away from or wish away from our experience. The fact that not insubstantial numbers of the populace came on the streets to herald the entry of the military onto the political stage at some point in our political evolution in the first and second republics suggests that the pre-military era was not exactly the Eldorado that many commentators seem to suggest today that it was.

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    Rather, the same massive corruption, rabid ethnic sectionalism, electoral malfeasance, separatist regional fissures and gross economic mismanagement that we complain about today and blame on the current constitution were the very same evils that resulted in the collapse of the first and second republics and raised false hopes among the populace as regards the developmental potentials of an emergent military messianism mentality within the latter institution.

    Yes, the bubble of the military as a redemptive political institution has been shattered not only in Nigeria but across Africa making the seeming fascination of some misguided youths with jackboot military dictatorship in some West African countries where the coup culture has reemerged is sad and unfortunate.

    The military has proven to be even more corrupt, venal, unpatriotic and incompetent than the civilian regimes they overthrow and the lesson we have learnt from history is that the cure for the inevitable ills of democracy is to stay the course of democracy as Nigeria has done for the last 25 years – not military rule. But the notion that there was a golden political era disrupted by the military, in the first and second republics, to which we must now seek to return must be vigorously contested and debunked. Contrary to the view canvassed sometimes by very accomplished Nigerians and even elder statesmen that a return to regionalism or the parliamentary system or some envisaged new magical constitution will provide the solutions to our political and socio-economic problems is illusory and naively romantic.

    As I noted earlier, there is no challenge which we confront today, no evil among both the political elites and the masses which hobbles our polity today, that were not in abundant manifestation in the pre-1966 era. Let us take the issue of the local government system which is our focus today as an example. Is it that we had genuinely democratic, effective, efficient and incorruptible local government systems in the first republic which the military now dismantled and bastardized when they seized the reins of political power. That is untrue.

    In the piece by Professor Alex Gboyega that I quoted earlier, the political scientist reviewed in detail the undoubtedly impressive local government reforms undertaken in the Eastern, Western and Northern regions in the early to late 1950s. These reforms were undertaken with widespread local consultations that involved grassroots stakeholders and sought, as much as possible, to reflect the divergent traditional administrative cultures and histories of the respective communities. The structure of the local councils were not uniform across the country but reflected the divergent peculiarities of the cultural components of each region. Unlike the experience under military rule, the local government reforms of the first republic were not imposed from the top by a supervening dictatorial authority. But that was only half of the story.

    How did the reforms actually work out in practice in terms of day to day local government administration in the regions? As Gboyega aptly and tersely put it, “Unfortunately, exigences of intense political party competition and the desire of the ruling parties to cling to power at all costs ensured that the essence of these reforms was not realized”. Illustrating with the example of the Western Region, the professor wrote “In the Western Region, where party competition was most keen because of the split in the Action Group’s leadership after 1962, local government councils became highly prized allies and instruments for coercing political support. With their police and customary courts, local government councils controlled by the region’s ruling political party were used to harass and intimidate political opponents. Those that were not so controlled were dissolved and the councilors replaced by management committees appointed by the regional government. Nor was the situation much better elsewhere. In the Northern Region too, the native authorities were the main instruments through which the Regional Government compelled voters to toe its line”.

    Among the measures taken by the military at the time to address abuses of the local government powers in the first republic was the abrogation of the power of the councils to control and run their own police forces. In a similar vein, they were stripped of their powers to maintain local prisons while the alkali and customary courts previously under their control was brought under the purview of the state judicial system under the control of the Chief Judge of the State. And the management committees appointed by the politicians that had replaced elected local councils were replaced by the military with the appointment of senior civil servants as sole administrators of the local government councils.

    The measures taken by the military rulers to address the abuses in the system unfortunately but perhaps inevitably resulted in the inexorable centralization of the country’s federal system even though Gboyega admits that these measures “appeared appropriate at the time”. Indeed, painting a picture of the extent of the pervasive abuse of the local government system in that dispensation, Professor Gboyega observes that “However, so bad was the image of these management committees and so extreme was the emotional revulsion they provoked that the Governor of the Western Region, Lt Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi stated emphatically “if anyone thinks there will be local councils again, that person is living in a fool’s paradise”. Let us thus be careful about romanticizing the local government system of the past as some kind of paradise lost which we should strive to retrieve.

    Is there anything which inherently incapacitates the local councils as they currently exist from being effective developmental agents if the requisite constitutional provisions that set them up and under which they are run are scrupulously adhered to? I don’t think so. The Constitution requires that the councils must be run by democratically elected officials. This implies that the elections through which they are constituted are free, fair, credible and reflect the will of the people. The extant laws also provide for the mechanism for funding this tier of government so that it can discharge its constitutionally stipulated responsibilities to the people.

    If the current case at the Supreme Court in which the President Bola Tinubu administration is seeking that state governments adhere to their constitutional responsibilities with regard to the establishment, administration and funding of local governments succeeds in freeing the councils from current encumbrances, they will most certainly begin to make the requisite developmental impact. But then, there is certainly much more that needs to be done beyond this for the emergence of a viable local government system. 

  • Alake, solid mineral sand national development

    Alake, solid mineral sand national development

     Shortly after his appointment as Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Dele Alake, in articulating his 7-point agenda stressed that the strengthening of security around mining deposits across the country and decisively combatting widespread illegal mining would be a cardinal objective of the ministry under his leadership. This was understandable as, from all indications, most of the rich mineral deposit sites in several states were no better than unmanned geographical spaces with lawless non-state actors rampaging and criminally exploiting, extracting, and exporting these precious minerals at will to the detriment of the national economy as well as endangering the lives and property of innocent citizens unfortunate to reside and make a living near these sites. Indeed, there had evolved an intricate and mutually reinforcing relationship between criminal, unregulated mining activities in these areas and such crimes as banditry, extortion of innocent citizens, and kidnapping by ruthless cartels.

    On March 22, this year, the Minister formally unveiled a new security architecture for greater security around mining sites nationwide anchored on a new 2,200-strong Mines Marshall Corp drawn from officers and men of the National Security and Civil Defense Corp (NSDC). The objective of the mines’ security outfit is to smoke out, thwart, and apprehend illegal miners and other violators of the country’s mining laws so that they can be brought to Justice.

    While it is operational in all mining sites across diverse states, the Mines Marshal Corp has its command and control centre located in the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development. It has an initial 60 operatives deployed to each of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory but, as the minister has explained severally, will eventually incorporate operatives from the Nigerian police, the army, and other security agencies while its operations will largely be technologically driven.

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    In his speech during the formal unveiling of the Mines Marshal Corp, the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Solid Minerals, Hon. Jonathan Gbefwi, was understandably enthused as he declared that “When the minister reeled out his 7-point agenda during his inauguration address, which included the Mines Police, not a few people were skeptical about it. But today, he has matched his words with action. On behalf of the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I doff my hat for him and say “Well done”. You can be rest assured of the continued support of the House of Representatives and, by extension, the National Assembly”.

    There is no doubt that the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development under Dr Alake will require all the support it can muster from the national legislature. This is because a key component of the 7-point agenda he articulated on resumption of office is the establishment of the Nigerian Solid Minerals Corporation to play a supervisory and galvanizing role in regulating and giving a sense of direction to solid minerals mining activities in the country. According to the Minister, the processes for enacting the requisite legislation for the take-off of the Corporation is already in progress through the House Committee on Solid Minerals Development.

    Shedding light on the structure and mode of operation of the envisaged Corporation, Alake said, “We are working with consultants to ensure the smooth emergence of the Corporation which will be private sector driven. We are looking at a Corporation with a structure that has 50% equity for the private sector; 25% for members of the public; 25% for the federal government. Our vision is to erect private sector-led enduring structures for the Corporation that will foster efficiency, outlive the present administration, and consequently wean it from future government interference”.

    Like all other ministers in the President Bola Tinubu administration, Dr. Alake joined in the rendering of their account of service in the run-up to the first anniversary of the administration on May 29. It is not surprising that ministers approached this undertaking with greater seriousness and sobriety than witnessed under successive administrations since 1999. This is because the current set of ministers signed a performance bond after their appointment which detailed their set goals and objectives against which their performance would be tracked and assessed. Furthermore, a software domiciled in the office of the Special Adviser to the President on Policy Coordination, Hadizza Bala-Usman, enables members of the public to make their contributions to assessing the performance of the ministers through an appropriate feedback mechanism.

    Of course, some ministries such as Works, the Federal Capital Territory, or the Ministry of Interior have the advantage of being constantly in the news and thus at the forefront of public consciousness due to the everyday nature of their activities that touch on the ordinary citizen. Against this backdrop, Alake is widely perceived to have performed impressively given the nature of his assignment in a ministry of Solid Minerals Development that he is virtually resuscitating from a largely comatose state and imbuing with a new sense of direction and purpose. Indeed, the deployment of the accomplished journalist, media strategist, and public policy communicator to the Solid Minerals Ministry was one of the surprises of the composition of President Tinubu cabinet. Not a few had wagered that Alake would be deployed to the Information and National Orientation Ministry given his eloquence and his sterling performance in that role in the Tinubu administration as governor of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007.

    Yet, those who reasoned this way grossly underestimated the sheer versatility and dynamism of the man as well as the role of the journalism profession in broadening his horizon and enabling him to take on diverse roles with calmness, confidence, and competence. In Lagos, he was Commissioner for Information and Strategy in the Tinubu administration. The strategy component of his portfolio meant that he had to be abreast of developments in virtually every other ministry so as to effectively help in designing and implementing strategies for result-oriented strategic policy communication with the public. In that regard, his preparedness and capacity to function competently in any assignment not excluding his current one is beyond dispute.

    In his inaugural lecture delivered at the Leed City University, Ibadan, on November 7, 2013, Professor Chibuzor Nwoke, who has studied and written extensively on the role of mineral resources in the contemporary global political economy, dilated on the topic, “Rich Land; Poor People: The Political Economy of Mineral Resources in a Peripheral Capitalist State”. In my review of the lecture at that time, I had written in this space that “While exhaustively documenting Nigeria’s huge mineral endowments in diverse sectors, Professor Nwoke also argues that there is absolutely no reason why, with visionary, competent and patriotic leadership, these resources could not be utilized to achieve self-reliant industrialization for the country as well as uplift the quality of life of the Nigerian people…His detailed catalogue of the variety and spread of untapped mineral resources throughout the length and breadth of the country proves that there is no excuse of Nigeria’s sustained dependence on oil, which is responsible for over 90% of the country’s resources. Most of the states, which are dependent on oil revenues from the centre, are shown to have untapped mineral deposits that could have enriched the country’s resource base and facilitated their socio-economic development”.

    It is instructive that under Alake, the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development has entered into partnership arrangements with a number of state governments towards the development of solid minerals within the jurisdiction of such states. Just as the ongoing decentralization of operations and control in the electricity sector from the centre, the Tinubu administration is not averse to allowing the states the requisite autonomy to exploit mineral resources located within their jurisdiction and that is the way to go.

    Dr Alake is serving as Minister of Solid Minerals at a critical transitional phase in the evolution of the Nigerian economy. Not only has the price of crude oil plummeted calamitously in the international market, many countries are moving away from dependence on fossil fuels for cheaper and safer sources of energy. Many experts assert that the golden age of oil is over and that current reserves of the commodity have a limited lifespan. Alake thus has his work cut out for him. His challenge is to help to lay the foundation for solid minerals, with which the country is munificently blessed, to become the future major revenue earner for Nigeria.

    Experts estimate that the country’s solid minerals sector has the capacity to generate an annual average revenue of no less than $700 billion. It is contended in some quarters that this is an overly conservative estimate as virtually all states in Nigeria have solid minerals deposits within their geographical terrain. In a focused approach to his assignment, Alake has identified eight priority minerals for immediate action and attention. These are gold, baryte, iron-ore, lead/zinc, coal, limestone, bitumen and lithium. His energies are thus centered on undertaking regulatory reforms to restore investor confidence and renewed global interest in these priority solid mineral resources without necessarily eschewing interest and investment in scores of other minerals with which the country is blessed.

    To generate critical data on the eight priority minerals and their deposits, the ministry signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with a German firm, Geo Scan Gmbn which will deploy sophisticated technology capable of exploring mineral resources up to 10000 meters underground. Another key initiative of the Ministry in the last one year is the revision of guidelines for Community Development Agreements with the aim of deriving maximum benefits from operations of mining companies while securing requisite derived royalties accruable to government for investment in economic development. Important to note in this regard is the ongoing strengthening of the ministry’s mines inspectorate division to enhance its capacity to assess the sanctity of mining agreements with a role being designed for traditional rulers in the signing of these agreements for the benefit of host communities.

    During the timeframe under review, the ministry entered into MOUs with reputable firms in the United Kingdom and Australia among others for training of Nigerian mining professionals on modern mining technology and practices. These agreements cover training, study trips, and exchanges of mining professionals with the ultimate aim of attracting foreign direct investment to enhance the country’s global competitiveness in the sector.

    On one of his investment pursuit trips, Alake told his audience at the Mines and Mining Conference in London that “The country’s geographical bounty encompasses over 44 distinct mineral types, found in exploitable quantities across more than 500 locations. Recently, recognizing the evolving global landscape and in response to emerging trends, Lithium has been included as a crucial strategic mineral of global consequence”. As a fall out of these efforts, there are ongoing negotiations with British investors interested in the Lithium value chain towards the production of Lithium-powered energy buses for Nigeria’s domestic market.

    With the support of the World Bank, the Ministry has conducted aeromagnetic surveys across the country which have yielded a preliminary analysis of mineral spread and deposits while a more detailed exploration is being worked on to enable investors make more informed investment decisions. The regulatory reforms which included improving transparency and reducing bureaucratic hurdles has enhanced the revenue buoyancy of the ministry. For instance, shortly after resumption of office, the Minister announced the revocation of 1,633 mining licenses due to default in the payment of their stipulated annual service fees. The affected entities had exceeded their deadlines to offset their debts as demanded by the Mining Cadastral Office. They retrieved their licenses only after defraying their debts.

    It is thus not surprising that the Ministry was able to report that it contributed N16,395,640,771.58 to the federal government coffers between May 2023 and April 2024. These earnings through the Mining Cadastral Office was N6.7 billion over the revenue target of N10.5 billion set for the agency. With the minister’s determination to institutionalize processes for adding value to solid minerals before export, there is every indication that the Ministry will report even more impressive revenue performance in the near future.

    It is no doubt due to his dynamism and versatility that Alake was elected as Chairman of the African Minerals Strategy Group (AMSG), a forum of African Ministers of Solid Minerals/Mineral Resources. In his address at a recent mining conference organized by the Nigerian Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Alake had averred that “My objective as the Minister is to work to ensure that Nigeria becomes a global mining destination for the first time in history and we are working to make this happen by alleviating bottlenecks and addressing salient challenges that have plagued the sector for decades”. It is indisputable that Alake is walking his talk.

  • Professor Tunji Olaopa and there form struggle in Nigeria (1)

    Professor Tunji Olaopa and there form struggle in Nigeria (1)

    Just as Nelson Mandela in his autobiography, ‘No Easy Walk to Freedom’, described the struggle for the emancipation of his country from the clutches of racist colonialism as his life, Professor Tunji Olaopa, eminent political scientist, accomplished public administrator, engaging public intellectual, bibliophile and life-long student of philosophy, has adopted his obsessive quest for public sector transformational reform in post-colonial Nigeria as his life. It is hardly contestable that a truly modernizing, efficient, effective, result-oriented, purpose-driven and ethically conscious public service is a necessary condition for the realization of Nigeria’s trapped potentials and the fulfillment of her manifest destiny as a developmental lodestar for the black man.

    In his characteristically inimitable self-portraiture to commemorate his 60th birthday in 2019 but published last year by Pan-African University Press and titled, ‘The Unending Quest for Reform: An Intellectual Memoir’, Professor Olaopa documents both the paths of his personal life trajectory so far and also his diverse roles over the last three and a half decades in the intellectual and practical endeavours to deliver on far-reaching and sustainable public- sector reforms in Nigeria. It is not surprising that two of Nigeria’s best and brightest intellectuals, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah of the Sokoto Diocese of the Catholic Church and Professor Eghosa Osaghae, renowned political scientist and Director General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), write the two insightful forewords to the book which runs into 258 pages and is subdivided into eighteen chapters.

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    Dr Kukah, who highlights some of the Kukah Foundation’s collaborative efforts with the author towards achieving desired reforms in Nigeria submits that “The uniqueness of ‘Unending Quest for Reform’ is that it brings together the career trajectory of someone who is both a scholar and a bureaucrat; someone who brought the uniqueness of theory and scholarship to the peculiar profession of the public service. This great work closes the gap between the two”. And Professor Osaghae, who incidentally was Olaopa’s teacher at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan, in the second foreword asserts tersely and unequivocally that “Intellectual autobiographies come as absorbing and engaging as other profound academic works tend to be. Professor Tunji Olaopa’s intellectual memoir is not different and certainly ranks as one of the more profound intellectual autobiographies to come out of Nigeria”.

    Apart from the author’s earlier authorized biography of the eminent economist, Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, titled ‘A Prophet is with Honour: The Life and Times of Ojetunji Aboyade’, published in 1997, which meticulously documents the intellectual influences on the great scholar, I am yet to come across a life narrative in Nigeria that so intricately blends the theoretical and the praxial, the philosophical and the pragmatic, the idealist and the realist as Olaopa’s enthralling memoir. It is instructive that, as Olaopa states in his preface, the choice of his title for the book was influenced by that of the Austian- British philosopher, Karl Popper, whose revelatory self-narrative was titled: “Unending Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography”. That the author had read and was profoundly influenced by Popper is not surprising. The deep, it is said, call to the deep. I am eagerly on the lookout for Popper’s work which I have not read.

    One of the things that emerge poignantly in this book is Olaopa’s intense love affair with books and the enduring impact they have made in shaping the course of his life and the defining cause of his existence. In a way, this book has been prefaced by Olaopa’s slim but pungent and delightful volume titled ‘The Joy of Learning’ published in 2010. In my review of that work at the time, I had averred that “Indeed, Awolowo’s insight helps us to appreciate better Olaopa’s articulation of the imperative of consciously and deliberately encouraging learning as a lifelong process that includes formal training in a specialized discipline but also encompasses what he describes as the sustained cultivation of ethical consciousness, broadness of perspectives and horizon, tolerance, compassion and a high sense of individual and moral responsibility”.

    But then, why write the story of a life that, as at 2019, was still unfolding at 60 when, all things being equal, Olaopa’s personal and career accomplishments in a relatively brief time-span, indicated even more daunting height he was more than capable of attaining in the road ahead of him? His justification is persuasive. According to him, “In convincing myself to publish my life’s story, I have argued that an autobiography is not essentially meant to be written at a life’s end. It could essentially be a summation of what one considers to be significant in one’s unfolding trajectory. In my case, like Aboyade’s, I have lived and I am still living the life of an institutional reformer within the context of the Nigerian state which journey towards nationhood is still evolving”.

    When he penned those words around 2019, Olaopa was unaware that he would be appointed Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration in May 2023 after a bitterly fought presidential election. With over 15 full length academic books on public administration and public sector reforms in Nigeria, scores of journal articles, an eventful public service career that saw him rise to the apex of the Service as a federal Permanent Secretary and his post-retirement creative institutional endeavor, the Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP), there is hardly any person better placed than the author to occupy that office in an administration that has no choice but to commit to fundamental public sector reforms if it is to break the logjam of what Professor Okwudiba Nnoli describe as the ‘dead-end to Nigerian development’. This book charts the course of how and why Professor Olaopa has become what he is today – an icon in the intellection and practice of public administration in contemporary Nigeria.

    In the first chapter titled ‘Books and Becoming’, he narrates the phenomenal role of books in developing his intellect and outlook, nurturing his character as well as nursing and guiding his ambitions and life projections. But then, there are good and bad books which may exert positive or negative moral influences on the burgeoning mind of youth. The choice of books that nudged the urge to add value to humanity must in itself be a function of the presence of some directing, inner virtue. In Olaopa’s words, “I was practically raised on books. I mean to say that, apart from my paternal grandmother’s notion of physical work as the definition of excellence in life, all others – from my father to my elder brother and the schools I attended – saw the significance of books and were insistent on redefining excellence in terms of how many books I could read”. As he pithily puts it, “I was the one Bertolt Brecht was talking to when he said, “Hungry man, reach for the book. It is a weapon”. The book was a weapon for my coming of age and the compass of my journey through life”.  

  • Nigeria and the drug war challenge

    Nigeria and the drug war challenge

    On Sunday, May 26, Femi Babafemi, Director of Media and Advocacy of the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), issued a press statement giving details of the arrest of drug peddlers and traffickers and the busting of criminal drug syndicates and operations in different parts of the country in the month of May alone. One of the cases that enjoyed prominent reportage in the media was the arrest by operatives of the agency, on Tuesday ,May 21, of a 48-year-old self-proclaimed businessman, Emmanuel Okechukwu Orjinze, who was bound for Paris, France, from the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja. He was nabbed for ingesting 111 wraps of cocaine, which was found to weigh 1.603 kilograms, after he had excreted the substances over six days in the custody of the agency.

    Again, this time at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, officers of the NDLEA uncovered and incapacitated another drug trafficking syndicate at the facility. This followed the arrest of four members of the network and the seizure of a total of 8kg of methamphetaine and 7.6kg of Loud, said to be a synthetic strain of cannabis with its origin in South Africa. According to the release by Babafemi, “The lid was blown off the syndicate when an official within the airport system was intercepted with a backpack and a bag at the departure hall of Terminal 1 of the airport by NDLEA officers with the support of Aviation security officers on Tuesday, 21st May, 2024. A search of the bags led to the discovery of the illicit substances”.

    He continued, “A swift follow-up operation at Ajao—Estate area of Lagos led to the arrest of two other members of the syndicate: Chris Nwadozie and Chinedu Nwosu. Further investigation led to the arrest of another member of the cartel working within the airport system on Saturday, 25th May”. The press statement gave details of the apprehension in the month of May of an assortment of criminals in the drug trafficking ring in various parts of the country including Ajao-Estate and Igbo Elerin in Lagos, Ukpada Utugwan village in Cross River State, Jabiri Funtua in Katsina State, Karu abattoir, Jukwali and Tora Bora hill areas of the FCT, Abuja, as well as Auchi town in Edo State.

    This is an indication of the pervasiveness and widespread nature of the illicit drug business in the country but also the significantly enhanced operational efficiency and capacity of the NDLEA to discharge its statutory responsibilities. But that had not always been the story of this all important agency saddled with the challenge of protecting society from the menace both of international trafficking in drugs but also local patronage and consumption of these substances which have been proven to be corrosive of the very fabric of communities. Before the assumption of the leadership of the NDLEA in January 2021 by General Mohammed Buba Marwa, the agency had been hobbled by bureaucratic inertia, debilitating staff demotivation, ingrained institutional corruption and vacuity of vision.

    In the last 38 months, however, the NDLEA has regained its organizational vigor and vibrancy and has fast become a model of how committed, focused and competent leadership can be an invigorating impetus for the resuscitation of hitherto largely moribund organizations. Upon his appointment a little over three years ago, there was widespread optimism that Marwa had the capacity to perform given his antecedent track record in public office but there were also those who felt that the treacherous terrain of combatting a menace as financially rewarding as drug trafficking could be tricky and Herculean even for the most determined leader.

    Thankfully and to the benefit of the country, Marwa has not disappointed. Of course, in his various interactions with the media, Marwa has been quick to credit the country’s leadership for the support and enablement that has facilitated the successes achieved under him so far at the NDLEA. The backing the agency received during the tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari has reportedly been sustained and intensified under the President Bola Tinubu dispensation.

    Thus, the feats recorded by the agency in May this year alone as pointed out in the introduction to this piece, which is a reflection of the sustained and continuously improving performance of the NDLEA under Marwa’s leadership. It has taken the reinvigoration and significantly improved organizational capacity of the NDLEA to expose how deeply immersed Nigeria had become in the illicit drug business both as a major transit route as well as the alarming growth in illicit drug use within the country. Reports by the NDLEA and international drug control agencies indicate that that about 14.4% of Nigerians, which is about 14.3 million people between the ages of 15 and 64 years abuse drugs.

    Statistics from the NDLEA reveal that between January 2021 and March 2024, the agency arrested 52,901 drug traffickers. What is particularly interesting is that this includes 49 barons indicating that the agency does not focus solely on the petty traffickers who are only doing the bidding of their powerful and well-connected paymasters. For the latter too, the fear of the new NDLEA is the beginning of wisdom. During this period, the agency seized over 7,561 tonnes or 7.651 million kilograms of assorted illicit drugs. The value of the seized substances including confiscated cash is estimated at over N958 billion. The dangers to the stability of the state of these kinds of humongous funds in the hands of criminal cartels is a major reason why the work that an agency like the NDLEA is doing is of such critical significance.

    Cannabis, Indian hemp, has been identified as perhaps the most common illegal drug used in Nigeria. It is thus not surprising that the NDLEA has paid particular attention to fighting its cultivation and sale in the country. In the period under focus, the agency destroyed 1,057.33348 hectares of cannabis farms and recorded convictions of 9,034 offenders in this regard. Of course, there is the ongoing debate on whether or not cannabis has beneficial uses and even some possible positive economic fallouts.

    But the agency has stressed its commitment to enforcing the law as currently stands which makes the substance illegal. It’s unceasing onslaught against the trafficking of heroin, cocaine, amphetamine and other no less dangerous drugs as earlier depicted shows that the agency is no less committed to combating the scourge that these noxious substances constitute. There have been suggestions that the death penalty should be introduced for convicted drug traffickers to reduce the incidence of the menace in the country. But this lies within the purview of the National Assembly which is currently reviewing extant laws on the matter.

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    There is no doubt that the new verve, zeal and efficacy of NDLEA operatives is a function of better motivation and the introduction of performance-enhancing reforms and incentives. A number of occasions on which I have encountered the agency’s operatives at work here in Lagos, I have noticed their smart and neat outfits, dignified carriage and professional disposition reminding one of the heydays of the Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC) under the pioneering leadership of Professor Wole Soyinka.

    During the period in review, the NDLEA introduced cash-backed awards such as Best Performing Commands Awards and merit-based commendations to motivate deserving officers and men. It has institutionalized annual promotion of staff as and when due to tackle the problem of career stagnation that had hitherto negatively affected morale. In addition to putting in place premium life and injury insurance cover for its officers and men, the NDLEA management under Marwa has also embarked on the provision of modern barracks for its personnel with the active support of the government. It is astonishing that this far reaching initiative is coming three and a half decades after the establishment of the agency given the sensitivity and dangers of the operations of its personnel in the context of the ubiquity of deadly and desperate drug cartels.

    Despite its impressive strides in discharging its mandate in the last three years, however, there is still a lot of ground for the NDLEA to cover in dealing with the increasing pervasiveness of drug use in our urban and even rural communities. In a series of exhaustively researched and meticulously crafted feature articles, one of this newspaper’s Associate Editors and columnists, Olatunji Ololade, has written extensively on the growing menace of drug use amongst youths in diverse communities. He reports that such dangerous concoctions as ‘omi gutter’, ‘gutter juice’, ‘Colorado’ and ‘pamilerin’ are widely used by children and teenagers across the country and especially in the Southwest.

    These concoctions, Ololade reports, are produced through a mixture of diverse ingredients including black currant juice, tramadol, codeine, cocaine, rohypncl, cannabis and he notes that “The result- a purple liquid with pungent smell – mimics the effect of injecting high-end cocaine at a fraction of the cost”. Furthermore, youths now reportedly increasingly abuse such household commodities as methylated spirit, glue, paint thinner, nail polish and fermented urine. Increasing drug addiction in communities is not only impairing the physical and mental health of victims but also contributing to the surge of crimes including rape, armed robbery, ritual killings, cultism and gang violence among others.

    In one of his reports, Ololade writes that “A Gutter Juice dealer with branches at Powerline in Agege, stated that some NDLEA officers come around to collect ‘settlement’ (bribe) from her and other dealers. “They come around every Monday morning” she said. This indicates that no matter the efforts of the leadership, every agency will always have its bad eggs who must be continually tracked, apprehended and flushed out.

    At the Lagos State Stakeholders Dialogue on Substance Abuse held at the Ikeja Youth Centre last week, the Lagos State Commissioner for Youth and Social Development, Mobolaji Ogunlende, urged the NDLEA to expand its mandate “to include a health-Centered approach to enhance the effectiveness of drug demand reduction”. It would appear that the agency is already sensitive to its responsibility in this regard. Thus, in its drug demand reduction effort, it counseled and rehabilitated 32,402 addicts between 2021 and 2024, reached out to students and teachers of 2,459 schools in its sensitization efforts as well as reaching out to out of school children in 931 markets and motor parks and to other groups in 2,784 communities, workplaces and worship centers.

    But so gargantuan is the task that the NDLEA must comprehensively intensify its efforts in this regard while working closely with other stakeholders to achieve optimum results in the war against drugs in our society. Above all, the alarming dimension that the drug scourge is taking in contemporary Nigeria reinforces the urgent imperative to effectively tackle the pervasive poverty that provides a fertile ground for the menace to fester and thrive.