The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Ayobolu

  • After Abba (A.A)

    After Abba (A.A)

     Segun Ayobolu

     

    So powerful, influential and pervasive was the clout that the late Mallam Abba Kyari brought to bear on his office as Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari that future historians are not unlikely to divide the presidency between 2015 and 2023 into two epochs- Before and After Abba.

    For some, he was hugely effective and impactful in the discharge of his duties. To others, his contributions to governance and especially the image of the Buhari presidency were largely negative.

    Since Kyari succumbed to the might of the coronavirus, his friends and long time associates have regaled the public with accounts of his towering intellect, pan-Nigerian outlook, humane disposition and kindness, sense of humour, patriotism, passionate commitment to Nigeria’s development and immense capacity for hard work among other positive attributes.

    Those who knew him either by reputation or their assessment of his role in public office have a more unflattering perception of the Abba Kyari persona. They portray him as arrogant, clannish, grasping, overbearing and vindictive. It is appointed unto men once to die and after that there is judgment declares the Christian scripture.

    But then, the judgment referred to here, belongs to God. Yet, man is all too quick to declare a moral verdict on the lives of others while hardly ever engaging in brutally honest self-introspection.

    Can flawed man qualify to sit in moral judgment over others? Yes, most of us may affect an attitude of ethical superiority over others because we do not overtly violate stipulated societal laws. If we do, we probably have not been found out and thus still enjoy our liberties.

    Does that then make us intrinsically better than those who find themselves as inmates of correctional centres for sundry infractions of the law? Not necessarily. ‘There but for the grace of God go I’, a famous evangelist once declared on seeing a drunken man staggering along the highway.

    We remember the biblical story of the Pharisees who, in self-righteous indignation, brought a woman ‘caught in the very act of adultery’ before Jesus eager to stone her to death in accordance with the Law of Moses.

    ‘Let he who has no sin cast the first stone’ the teacher solemnly declared. One by one her accusers dropped their condemnatory stones and left the sinning woman alone. “I do not condemn you” Jesus told the astounded woman, “Go and sin no more”.

    Are any of us perfect enough to pass moral judgments against others? Do we have sufficient information to justifiably cast the first stone against the perceived misdeeds of others? I don’t think so. There is no man too flawed that does not have some redeeming virtue.

    There is no mortal so perfect that does not have some shortcomings no matter how well disguised. In the final analysis, we may not know enough about the root causes and circumstances that compel some of even the most detestable behaviors and attitudes of people.

    That is why man is not qualified to judge. God is the only one with all the information and the moral perfection to sit in judgment over man – his creation. It has been said that our Supreme Court is final not because it is infallible.

    Rather, it is infallible because it is final. Let no man therefore sit in moral judgment over Abba Kyari or any other.  Some even celebrated his death on social media. They acted in ignorance. For, the bell soon tolls inevitably for all mortals.

    I cannot agree more with my colleague, Sam Omatseye, who in his column on Monday succinctly and surgically noted that “Many have written tributes to Kyari, and it seems our people don’t understand that when a big man dies, our jobs are not to praise or vilify, but to look clinically at legacy”.

    The point then is not to sit in judgment over Kyari. It is to interrogate his tenure particularly as Chief of Staff in order to learn pertinent lessons both from his perceived strengths and failings.

    For me, it is not his personal attributes as a friend, family man and benefactor to some that should preoccupy us now. Yes, those who enjoyed the showers of his benevolence and personal comradeship have a right, even duty, to sing his praises from the rooftops.

    The public analyst can enjoy no such luxury. As a very influential Chief of Staff in Nigeria’s all powerful Presidency, Abba Kyari’s performance in that office had consequences for millions of his country men and women.

    How can his successor build on his strengths, avoid his weaknesses and failings and thus have a more positive impact on governance for the remaining part of Buhari’s presidency?

    President Buhari in his tribute described Kyari as his friend and long time associate who was ‘the best among us’. Mallam Mamman Daura rated him as surpassing current Ministers and Special Advisers in intellect.

    That is high praise indeed. But the great Chinua Achebe once said that a man, if asked his favourite among his children, should wisely simply identify the special qualities of each and keep it at that. Truth is there are several men and women of outstanding character and intellect in the Buhari presidency.

    Did Abba Kyari raise the bar of effectiveness and performance in the Office of Chief of Staff to a level that his successor cannot and should not aspire to exceed? We should, for the sake of Nigeria, hope that this is not so.

    This is indeed an opportunity for the Buhari presidency to reappraise the role of this office in helping to achieve its objectives as a government as well as the policy platform of the political party it represents.

    Read Also: Abba Kyari: The passage of a good man

     

    Were the powers and roles of the office of Chief of Staff under Abba Kyari unduly inflated leading to a consequent devaluation of the functions and operations of other members of the Federal Executive Council? If true, that is an anomaly that the presidency would do well to correct.

    Let us not forget that the office of Chief of Staff is not recognized by the constitution. In the course of his duties, Kyari had cause to cross swords with a number of high ranking members of the administration who perceived him as interfering unduly in their spheres of responsibility.

    Surely, the constitution does not envisage an imperial presidential aide. It is ultimately not in the interest of the President to encourage one.

    The office of Chief of Staff should be a facilitator of the efficient and effective running of the presidency. It should not itself become a bureaucratic impediment to harmonious, cooperative, collaborative and smooth governance.

    No matter how hard working and loyal an occupant of the office may be, he has too much on his plate managing the president’s office to also play a supervisory role over other Ministries and Agencies, while at the same time serving on the board of a critical agency like the NNPC or allegedly presiding over meetings of Service Chiefs in a period of protracted insurgency.

    Abba Kyari no doubt brought high academic attainment to the office. His successor should also be a man of proven scholastic ability. But in addition to book learning, the next Chief of Staff should apply wisdom in the utilization of the powers of the office.

    Wisdom would enable the subtle rather than overt, overbearing deployment of power and influence. Wisdom would dictate that the next occupant of the office be more self effacing and should by no means encourage the unhelpful perception that the buck stops on his table rather than with his boss.

    The late Chief of Staff was undoubtedly fiercely loyal to President Buhari. This should be another indispensable attribute of the next occupant of the office.

    He should not be a person who will utilize the office to cultivate a personal cult loyalty of his own or to feather his own unbridled political ambition. But loyalty to the President should also mean a concern with the image of his boss as a leader as well as the legacy of his administration.

    Abba Kyari’s friends describe him as non materialistic and incorruptible. If true, this certainly endeared him to his boss whose austere outlook and antipathy to material accumulation are legendary.

    The anti-corruption war remains a commendable high point of the Buhari administration. Allegations of improper conduct against Kyari with regard to the penalty that MTN ought to have paid for legal infractions remain unproven speculation.

    Although he was fingered in the embarrassing attempt to smuggle the indicted former Pensions’ Chief, Abdulrasheed Maina, back into the public service; that is neither here nor there. Maina is currently having his day in court.

    Unlike Kyari, the next Chief of Staff cannot afford to be insensitive and indifferent to public opinion. He must be a key public relations and image minder of the president and the administration.

    This of course does not mean that he must not be firm, decisive and even ruthless in managing the president’s time and protecting his turf.

    But he must have sufficient wisdom and tact to tell people to go to hell when he has to but in such a way that they think they are on a highway to heaven.

  • Keynes, neoliberalism and coronavirus

    Keynes, neoliberalism and coronavirus

    Segun Ayobolu

    As the global economy shrunk into the throes of a catastrophic recession over a decade ago, there was a resurgence of interest in the hitherto seemingly abandoned ideas of such unconventional economists as John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), whose policy suggestions had played a crucial role in enabling the advanced economic countries successfully emerge from the great economic depression of the 1930s. The illustrated cartoon sketch book, ‘Keynes: A Graphic Guide’ by Peter Pugh and Chris Garratt published in 2009, helped in no small measure to make the great economist’s thoughts at least relatively accessible to readers without deep academic training in economics.

    The blurb at the back of the book cryptically captured the virtual resurrection of Keynesianism in the corridors of state economic policymaking and compelled me to buy a copy at the time. It read, “John Maynard Keynes was arguably the twentieth century’s greatest economist. As a new recession bites, it is Keynesian ideas that are being called into action by governments across the globe. In the wake of the Great Depression, Keynes advocated that governments spend vast amounts in order to create jobs and prosperity. His ideas which formed the bedrock of Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1930s America revolutionized government and helped create an economic consensus that was shattered only by the monetarism of Reagan and Thatcher’s 1980s”.

    As the world was increasingly shrouded in economic gloom, Keynes was quoted as telling the ordinary people of the UK in a BBC interview in January 1931 that “The best guess I can make is that whenever you save five shillings (12p, but about 12 pounds in today’s money) you put a man out of work for a day. Your saving that five shillings adds to unemployment to the extent of one man for one day and so on in proportion. On the other hand, whenever you buy goods you increase employment- though they must be British, home-produced goods if you are to increase employment in this country…”

    He thus enthusiastically charged the ‘patriotic housewives of Britain’ to “Lay in stock of household linen, sheets and blankets to supply all your needs. And have the added joy that you are increasing employment, adding to the wealth of the country, because you are setting on useful activities, bringing a chance and hope to Lancashire, Yorkshire and Belfast”.

    This account represents the thrust of elementary Keynesianism in a nutshell. Of course, it stands to reason that to engage in consumption spending, a considerable number of buyers must have some income, which implies either employment or access to some financial support. Keynes believed that government spending to stimulate economic activity was critical to either prevent economies slipping into recession and if they do, get back to relative equilibrium.

    In another book on Keynes published also published in 2009, ‘Keynes: The Return of the Master’, the political economist, Robert Skidelsky, elucidates the great economist’s view that “an unmanaged market system is inherently unstable because of irreducible uncertainty; that fiscal and monetary ammunition is needed to counter economic shocks; and that governments need to maintain enough total spending power in the economy to minimize the chance of serious recessions happening”.

    I remember that in one of his always stimulating and provocative contributions to a public debate on economic policy, the late Keynesian economist, Professor Sam Aluko famously declared that rather than lay off workers among other suggested austerity measures, it was better for government to dig a huge pit and employ people to fill it up in order to enable them earn income, buy goods and services and boost investment and growth!

    One of the most lucid presentations of Keynes idea on the indispensable role of government in being at the vanguard of economic stimulus policies is by the South African political scientist, Lwazi Siyabomga Lushba, who points out that “Moving from the premise that markets do not always respond effectively to depressing conditions, Keynes argued that, in stagnant economies afflicted by low levels of aggregate demand, governments can trigger the economy through expansionary economic, particularly fiscal and monetary policies. This they can do by increasing government expenditure, cutting taxes or lowering interest rates, thus leaving consumers with more disposable income and encouraging borrowing for investment”.

    “Thus it is counter-productive in times of depression to apply contractionary and inflation-targeted policies, for this makes the economy more unattractive”, Lushba submitted.

    Retreating from the ascendancy of neo-liberal policies following the emergence of Thatcher and Reagan-type governments in the 1980s across the west, Keynesianism had fallen into disrepute as it was heavily criticized for allegedly fostering wasteful big government and unsustainable social welfare expenditure. However, the severe global economic recession of 2008-2010 provoked massive fiscal interventions by governments in the advanced economies to bail out failed banks and big corporations as well as stimulate spending, growth and job creation, which were ordinarily antithetical to the conventional wisdom of neoliberal, austerity –inclined economic policies.

    Although Keynesian policies had helped the world  to emerge from the 2008 economic recession, neoliberal economic orthodoxy continued to reign supreme in most advanced western capitalist countries and were also imposed on weak and vulnerable African countries through the instrumentality of the International Financial Institutions. As Lwazi Lushaba again argues, “Social spending is often the first sector that suffers when these contractionary measures are imposed, the results being low primary and secondary school enrolment and retention ratios, high levels of infant mortality, dilapidated infrastructure and near non-existent social services that are in turn cited by the very institutions as indicators of African underdevelopment”.

    The horrendous impact of the raging coronavirus pandemic on the health systems of some of the most developed countries in the world, particularly those who like the United States and the United Kingdom, for instance, with governments that adhere in doctrinaire fashion to the principles of neoliberalism and the supremacy of the market, brings into bold relief the shortcomings of this extremist laissez faire ideology.

    Despite their huge resource endowments, the health and other critical welfare and life-sustaining systems of these countries are subordinate to the dictates of market force and priced beyond the reach of large segments of their vulnerable populations. Meanwhile, such largely unproductive sectors like the military-industrial complex continue to be munificently funded.

    Thus, a poor, underdeveloped country like Cuba provides superior healthcare services to the majority of its citizens compared to the capitalist economic powers where the interplay of market forces enable speculative investment in assorted financial derivatives to be hugely profitable. However, the non market-attractive health equipment and facilities to enable effective response to unpredictable pandemics are in critical short supply with fatal consequences for the citizenry.

    It is obvious that in the aftermath of the coronavirus traumatic experience, economic and social policy conceptualization, articulation and implementation will not remain the same across the world. Even ultra conservative Trump has approved trillions dollar injection into the US economy. Keynesianism seems destined for a longer stay on the economic policy menu of most countries irrespective of ideological orientations even after the current emergency.

    In Nigeria, the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and his co-author, Brian Browne, had in their 2012 book, ‘Financialism: Water from an Empty Well’, launched a fierce attack against neoliberal orthodoxy especially its financialist variant of speculative investment and optimal profit maximization for a few divorced from concrete production in the real economy to the detriment of spending that prioritizes infrastructure modernization, job creation and poverty alleviation.

    In their words, “For the sake of Nigeria, the rest of Africa, and the Black race, Nigeria must assume the challenge of industrialization on a grand scale. Nigeria can bring to the African continent the formula for success that once sparked America’s greatness and now ignites china’s. To do so, Nigeria must jettison the financialist model it has adopted. Financialism smothers the vitality of the real economy where jobs and genuine wealth are created. It turns the political economy into a zero-sum mire”.

    These words are even more pertinent in today’s world, which has already been fundamentally transformed by an invisible virus. It is hoped that  Tinubu’s far-reaching and bold Economic Stimulus Policy proposals on responding to the coronavirus; the unabashedly Keynesian thrust of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele’s policy initiatives to strengthen the resilience and capacity of the Nigerian economy to transcend this crisis and the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo’s welfarist and humane disposition and influence as Chairman of the Economic Sustainability Committee can combine with other forces to birth a post Coronavirus economic renaissance in Nigeria.

  • Coronavirus and intergovernmental relations

    Coronavirus and intergovernmental relations

    By Segun Ayobolu

     

    Beyond its effects on public health strategies, economic management policies as well as attitudes towards poverty alleviation and social inequality, the raging coronavirus pandemic will also have profound implications for our perception and management of intergovernmental relations particularly in a federal polity.

    In Nigeria, much of the discourse on federalism and intergovernmental relations especially in the media tends to see both as exclusively matters of constitutionalism, legality and institutional structures.

    Most advocates of what they perceive and describe as ‘true federalism’ in Nigeria, for instance, have a particular ideal construct of federalism in mind, most often the American variant, to which they believe Nigeria must conform.

    The popular notion of ‘true federalism’ in Nigeria appears to be influenced by the famous depiction of federalism by Professor K.C. Wheare as a constitutional arrangement in which you who have at least two levels of government ‘which are equal and coordinate in their respective spheres of influence’.

    According to Wheare, “The terms of agreement which establishes the general and regional governments and distributes powers between them must be (supreme and) binding upon these governments”.

    Thus, from this perspective, the American system in which the states are perceived as largely autonomous of the centre with a wide latitude of discretionary constitutional action as well as control of powers, responsibilities and resources is the ideal to which over-centralized ‘federal structures’ like Nigeria must seek to approximate.

    Nigeria’s federalism, widely perceived as essentially unitary, is heavily criticized as concentrating too much power, resources and responsibilities in the centre and thus constricting the creative capacities and developmental potentials of the sub-national units of government. There is much that is valid in this point of view but it can also be an argument taken too far.

    Serious scholars of federalism have always taken into account the dynamic and ever changing contexts within which federal polities operate and evolve. Thus, in his classic, ‘Federalism in Nigeria’, published over three decades ago, Professor Sam Oyovbaire, conceptualizes federalism in America in dynamic and evolutionary rather than unchanging and inflexible structural terms.

    He identifies as at that time at least five different phases in the unfolding of federal practice in the United States with constantly shifting emphases in the distribution of power, resources and influence between the federating entities.

    In the words of Oyovbaire, which I find even more pertinent today given the implications of handling the coronavirus pandemic for intergovernmental relations in the United States and Nigeria: “The perspective of federalism as a static and rigid pattern characterized by a triple division of legal status, structured institutions and functions between two governmental levels has been transformed into a system which allows the exercise of political discretions by two levels of government in working out joint policies over joint problems”.

    The political scientist continues, “The new federalism is a political expedient and unlike ‘old style federalism’, which presupposes mainly competitive relationship between the two levels, it presupposes both conflict and consensus and a common interest in available resources as embedded in intergovernmental relationship.

    The outcome of this relationship is the power of each government. The prime movers and arbiters of the new federalism are thus politics and their environment, not law and constitutionality per se”.

    These words read as if they were written yesterday not some 35 years ago. Contrary to the popular perception of the states as largely fiscally autonomous and self-sustaining in the United States, we have seen states crying desperately for federal aid – financial, material and logistical – in combating the COVID-19 disease in their respective jurisdictions. The lesson is that no component part can be an island unto itself in a federal polity.

    Thus, the case for considerably devolving more powers, responsibilities and resources to the sub-national levels of government in Nigeria, though logically and empirically impeccable, must not be to the extent of weakening the federal government to a level of operational and functional inefficacy.

    It is instructive that, though the states are heavily dependent on federal assistance in responding effectively to the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, governors have pushed back strongly against actions by President Donald Trump perceived as eroding the sphere of state authority.

    Thus, when Trump mulled the idea of enforcing quarantine in certain hard hit states such as New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo was of the view that it “would be a federal declaration of war against the states”.

    Read Also: BREAKING: Nigeria records 51 new cases of coronavirus

     

    At the end of the day, Trump allowed each state to follow its own line of action in responding to the pandemic not because he did not have sufficient powers to declare a national lockdown, in my view, but because he is personally disposed to the country coming quickly out of the recessionary restrictions and get the economy working again.

    Critics of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis have condemned what they see as lackluster federal leadership, with a number of states still refraining from restrictive initiatives despite the toll of the pandemic on the citizenry.

    In the same vein, Trump had to back down on his earlier claim to having ‘total authority’ on the processes for opening up the social and economic spaces across the country with the federal government now simply drawing up broad guidelines that states must adhere to in gradually restoring normalcy in their respective jurisdictions.

    At the end of the day, it is not strictly constitutional and legal issues that are at play in the intergovernmental handling of the coronavirus crisis in the United States but a complex interplay of dynamic forces including inter personal relations, institutional capacity, environmental peculiarities, party politics as well as ideology among others.

    The critical point is that intergovernmental cooperation and coordination is indispensable to the efficient and effective functioning of federal systems.

    In Nigeria, constitutional issues were raised in a number of quarters when President Muhamamdu Buhari in his March 29th address to the nation announced a restriction of movement in Lagos and Ogun states as well as the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja for two weeks in the first instance to contain the spread of the virus in these three most vulnerable areas.

    While Buhari later predicated the legality of his action on the Quarantine Act, it is instructive that the Ogun State government had to consult with the federal authorities to ensure that the presidential directive came into effect only four days after it was due to start.

    And both Lagos and Ogun states have introduced measures peculiar to their respective environments in implementing the presidential directive in their jurisdictions.

    The arrest by the Rivers State governor, Mr Nyesom Wike, of the pilots, crew and passengers of the Caverton Helicopter that flew into the state despite the lockdown imposed by the state government is an example of adversarial intergovernmental relations in responding to the crisis.

    Although the Minister of Aviation, Alhaji Hadi Sirika, contended that Aviation matters is on the exclusive list and that the Federal Government acted within its competence and in the national interest by approving the aircraft’s flight to Port Harcourt, it is noteworthy that the federal government did not resort to federal might to address the situation.

    Rather, the Rivers State government charged the affected persons to court and they were ultimately released on bail through due judicial process. Proper communication and coordination between the federal and Rivers State authorities would surely have averted the avoidable and distracting crisis.

    Overall, intergovernmental relations in responding to the coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria have been harmonious, effective and productive. This has been so particularly between the Federal and the Lagos State governments.

    There is no doubt that the federal government itself will benefit from a deepening of Nigeria’s federal practice such that the centre becomes leaner, smarter and thus more effective and efficient while the sub-national governments are ceded greater powers, responsibilities and resources to more positively impact the lives of those who reside in their territories.

    However, a cardinal lesson of the coronavirus pandemic is that restructuring must no longer be articulated as intended to weaken the capacity of the federal government as the central authority. A strong centre capable of playing its role effectively is as critical to the health and well being of the federation as fiscally, economically and operationally viable sub-national governments.

    For, as the prophetic and far sighted Chief Obafemi Awolowo declared in a speech to the Conference of Finance Commissioners in Kano on 23rd Februaray 1970, “…But if perchance, any State fell on an evil day, it should be the duty of the Federal Government, acting as the accredited agent of all the other states, to come to the aid of such a needy State without delay.

    To this end, the Federal Government should be provided with enough funds. It will not be easy in the beginning to estimate how much this will be. But as time goes on, experience will guide us”.

    This view is even more prescient in today’s age of unanticipated and unpredictable national and global emergencies.

  • Coronavirus: Exemplary Lagos

    Coronavirus: Exemplary Lagos

    Segun Ayobolu

    “Whatever we have been doing in Lagos is working. The data we have at the moment shows that we have 145 confirmed cases; we have discharged 32 patients who have completely recovered. We are discharging seven more patients, which will be 39 in total. We have had two deaths in Lagos but not in the state-owned facilities. So far, we have had 100 percent recovery. By next week, we will be scaling up the isolation centres at Landmark Event Centre and Gbagada General Hospital. We have also built more bed spaces for isolation in conjunction with the Federal Government and GTBank”.

    That was the Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Professor Akin Abayomi, giving an update at an inter-ministerial briefing on Thursday on the state’s efforts to contain and overcome the raging Coronavirus pandemic. The very well publicized initiatives and strategies of the state in response to the crisis are too well known to detain us here. The cerebral, industrious and focused health commissioner has been a critical factor in the successes recorded thus far by the state government in its anti-Coronavirus onslaught.

    Of course, Professor Abayomi and other members of the Lagos State Executive Council as well as Heads of extra ministerial agencies, who have all risen admirably to the challenge of the occasion, have taken their cues from the designated Chief-Incident-Commander, the governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who has demonstrated calm, composed, steady, assured and confident leadership in steering the ship of the state through the turbulent waters of the moment.

    I have little to add to ace columnist, Sam Omatseye’s glowing assessment in this newspaper on Monday of the governor’s sterling performance so far in offering competent and inspirational leadership in truly troubling times.

    But then, should we be surprised? Should we have expected anything less from a man who after a rich experience in the private sector spanning over a decade has spent the last decade and a half serving with proven excellence and record of performance in various key ministerial and extra-ministerial portfolios in Lagos starting from the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu through the Messrs Babatunde Raji Fashola and Akinwumi Ambode administrations? Incidentally, Sanwo-Olu and his deputy, Dr Obafemi Hamzat, were key members of the Fashola administration that responded so effectively and competently to the 2014 Ebola virus epidemic, which was effectively contained in Lagos State to widespread acclaim within and outside the country.

    The lessons learnt and experiences gained from the handling of the Ebola epidemic have no doubt served Sanwo-Olu and his team well in their handling of the current pandemic. It is obvious that the infrastructure and expertise emplaced to combat Ebola have been considerably built upon to enable the state’s effective response to the far more deadly and insidious coronavirus pandemic today. Lagos demonstrates that there is virtue in productive leadership and policy continuity.

    The Tinubu administration laid the foundation for the long term development of the state through its 25-year comprehensive master plan. Fashola and Ambode, both key actors in that administration, continued, to varying degrees, the implementation of the master plan. This continuity enabled incumbent administrations to build on the attainments of preceding ones thus enabling the state to achieve incremental and continuing transformation in diverse spheres, particularly the health sector.

    It is in the last 20 years of developmental democracy in Lagos State, for instance, that the foundation was laid, policies fashioned and massive investment made that has transformed and elevated the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) virtually from scratch into one of the best tertiary health institutions in Nigeria and even West Africa.

    Nothing illustrates the beauty of positive policy continuity in Lagos State than the steady, systematic and ongoing transformation of the environment of the megacity, its greatest albatross in the past, into that befitting its new image as an emergent smart city. It is so easy to forget now that back in 1999, the defining feature of Lagos was the mountains of refuse that defaced the state’s landscape from Alakuko to Okokomaiko and from the rustic Ikorodu and Epe to the highbrow Ikeja, Ikoyi and Victoria Island.

    Heaps of refuse was the lowest common denominator of both urban and rural Lagos.   This combined with the chaotic traffic and crater-ridden roads; the corpses that dotted the roads for long periods daily without being evacuated; the sheer number of lunatics that roamed the streets obviously caused Obasanjo as President to dismiss Lagos as an urban jungle while seeing no compelling need to come to the aid of the beleaguered state.

    By 2003, however, the Tinubu administration’s efforts to combat the refuse menace began to bear fruits particularly with the appointment of journalist and lawyer, Mr. Tunji Bello, as Commissioner for the Environment and the consequent stabilization and institutionalization of the Private Sector Participation (PSP) in waste management as well as the revitalization of the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), which was practically grounded at the inception of this political dispensation in 1999.

    At the expiration of Tinubu’s tenure in 2007, the ugly sight of heaps of refuse on the highways and public spaces across Lagos had been eliminated. Refuse that had been a liability to the state was turned through creative and thoughtful governance into an asset – a source of job creation and wealth generation. The Fashola administration strengthened the PSP structure while also pursuing the aggressive beautification and greening of open spaces throughout the state. It was under Fashola that the urban chaos that was Oshodi was radically upgraded and transformed.

    While Ambode invested impressively in improving the state’s road infrastructure as well as enhancing her emergency response capacity, his administration’s attempt to re-engineer the established waste management system miscarried badly and refuse returned with a vengeance to the communities, streets and highways of Lagos. It is to the credit of the Sanwo-Olu administration that within a very short time frame, under the tested hands of Tunji Bello as Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, the environmental degeneration has been arrested. The destabilized PSP structure has been restored to operational efficacy and the backlog of accumulated refuse eliminated across the state.

    No less noteworthy in this regard has been the speedy resuscitation and rejuvenation of LAWMA, which was virtually comatose at the inception of the Sanwo-Olu administration. Under the leadership of its new Managing Director, Dr. Muyiwa Gbadegesin, fresh vigour has been infused into the agency and it is playing a critical role in helping to maintain a high standard of public hygiene in the state. This week, Dr Gbadegesin paid one of the agency’s street sweepers, Raimat Fasasi, a surprise visit at her duty post and presented her a cash gift in appreciation of her commitment, industry and dedication to duty.

    Gadegesin was responding to a video posted by the former President, Dolphin Estate, in Ikoyi, Mr. Adebisi Awoniyi, which had gone viral on social media. The video showed Raimat, who had finished her work for the day, going the extra mile to clear a blocked drainage on Osborne Road to facilitate smooth passage of water. One can, therefore, understand the passion with which many of the street sweepers can be seen carrying out their difficult assignment in these challenging times.

    But for the diligent, persistent and dedicated efforts to rid Lagos of Waste and elevate the standard of public hygiene in the state over the last two decades, can we imagine how much more greater danger ferocious viruses and infectious diseases like Ebola, Lassa fever and now Coronavirus would have posed to lives in Lagos and consequently Nigeria?

    One area of the Sanwo-Olu Admimnistration’s Coronavirus response that has attracted widespread criticism, particularly on social media, is the handling of the food palliatives meant for 200, 000 most vulnerable families in the first tranche. While some have complained that the food packs did not reach majority of the people, others have lampooned the content of the packs, which they describe as insufficient to feed a family of six for two weeks.

    It appears to me that these criticisms underestimate the huge logistical challenges of reaching 200, 000 vulnerable families in an emergency situation where the Coronavirus did not give anyone advanced notice that it was coming. Again, there seems to have been the mistaken notion that the food packs were meant for all 20 million residents of Lagos. There is no way government can surely achieve that. Even thinking of reaching 200,000 families was an audacious idea in itself deserving of commendation.

    Again, many people may not be impressed with the contents of the pack – 5kg of rice, 5kg of gari, 4kg of beans and loafs of bread. However, they will certainly mean much to the target audience of vulnerable and poor residents. However, going forward the Commissioner for Agriculture, Prince Gbolahan Lawal, must take steps to check possible sabotage of the programme such as the alleged diversion of the food items by political and community leaders as well as pilfering of the contents by the middle men involved in the distribution.

    Despite the accolades heaped on the Sanwo-Olu administration for its efforts so far in containing the coronavirus spread, it is heartwarming that the government is not resting on its oars as it is set to commence a house-to-house case identification exercise to detect possible cases of the infection in communities. This is as it should be. There is no room for complacency. It is certainly not yet Uhuru as far as this pandemic is concerned.

  • Coronavirus: Crisis and response

    Coronavirus: Crisis and response

     Segun Ayobolu

    It is in my view the most assured and accomplished speech he has given since assumption of office particularly in terms of composure and delivery. I refer to President Muhammadu Buhari’s address to the nation last Sunday, March 29, on the ravaging coronavirus pandemic. True, the administration has received hard knocks from several quarters on the perceived needless delay by the President in speaking to Nigerians especially given the severity of the global crisis and the grave implications it has for the lives of Nigerians and the national economy. Yet, the President’s address shows that there had really been minimal vacuum in the response to the crisis and that the requisite officials at various levels had indeed been up and doing.

    The President’s speech calmly stipulated all that had been done by the administration to contain the crisis while also reeling out new economic and social policies to strengthen the country’s response to what has become a herculean challenge to humanity. It was important that the speech did not hit the panic button, deepen public anxiety and create the impression that the nation is being overwhelmed by a crisis it has little or no capacity to contain.

    Before the President’s address, the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 headed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Boss Mustapha, has briefed the nation daily on the latest statistics as regards new cases, deaths and recoveries as well as new policy measures designed to meet the challenge. The Minister of health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, has been particularly impressive, effective and authoritative in demonstrating that he is on top of his job.

    The same goes for the Director of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ikweazu, although there continue to be complaints that staff of the agency are not responding as promptly as desired to enquiries being made by members of the public on the dedicated lines provided. This is a weakness that must be urgently addressed.

    On the economic front, the Ministry of Finance and particularly the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) with the proactive, interventionist measures of its leadership, has announced various policies to cushion the shock on key sectors of the economy as well as enable critical sectors like the pharmaceutical industry, for instance, rise to the challenge of the moment.

    In his address, President Buhari announced measures to sustain and intensify such social intervention programmes as   TraderMoni, MarketMoni and FarmerMoni; immediately pay to the most vulnerable members of society due conditional cash transfers for the next two months; provide two months of food rations to Internally Displaced Persons as well as keep the school feeding programme going even as schools across the country have been forced to close.

    While these steps will bring succor to a sizable number of the vulnerable, many Nigerians hope that the Economic Sustainability Committee headed by the Vice-President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), will come up with even more measures to reach a larger number of Nigerians particularly in the areas most affected by the pandemic. The Buhari administration has been criticized for what is perceived in some quarters as its slow response to the crisis. It appears that the administration was hesitant to adopt more severe response strategies such as total lockdown of whole segments of the population earlier on because it realizes the peculiar character of the country’s economy.

    Unlike the advanced industrialized countries, the greater number of Nigeria’s citizens operate in the informal sector of the economy. Consequently they live on what they earn on a daily basis and the consequences of a total lockdown could be devastating for millions of households. Moreover, even before the intrusion of the coronavirus, the economy had already taken a bad hit as a result of the sharp fall in the international price of oil attendant on the trade rivalry between Russia and Saudi Arabia with deleterious consequences for the 2020 budget.

    It is instructive that even far more advanced countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, France and Italy, for instance, also underestimated the potential dangers of the virus spreading and are perceived to have adopted stringent containment measures late in the day with grave consequences. We can only thank God that the extent and impact of the viral spread in Nigeria, at least so far, has been comparatively milder than these other less lucky countries. The challenge is to keep it so especially given the fragility of our healthcare system.

    Given the huge disproportion in resource availability, quality of healthcare infrastructure and services as well as economic capacity between Nigeria and these hard hit advanced countries, the country’s response to this crisis, comparatively, has been laudable even though we must now learn from past lapses and immediately begin to build a qualitative, efficient and effective healthcare system for the future.

    Even autonomous of actions taken at the centre by the Federal Government, it is noteworthy that many state governors have decisively and commendably responded to the coronavirus pandemic taking steps not only to contain the spread but also to succor the poor and vulnerable within the limits of their respective financial capacities.

    The most outstanding in this regard is obviously the Lagos State governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, whose inspiring example as the Chief-Incident-Commander, as well as that of his cerebral, hardworking and unassuming health commissioner, Professor Akinola Abayomi, have inspired other commissioners and heads of agencies in the state to give of their best in tackling the invisible enemy. We shall in due course look in more detail at the lessons to be learnt from the Lagos example.

    It is ironical that most of those who protest most vehemently against Nigeria’s undoubtedly over-centralized federal structure and advocate a radical restructuring as the be all and end all cure to Nigeria’s crises of economy, politics and governance, are quiet about the laudable responses of many sub-national units of government, acting relatively independent of the centre, to the coronavirus crisis.

    On the other hand, in the United States, which is frequently held up as practicing the federal ideal to which we must aspire, most state governors have been desperately crying out for federal government financial and logistical support to enable them navigate the turbulent waters of the pandemic. So Nigeria is not the only much derided ‘feeding bottle’ federalism? True, there is the urgent need to deepen the practice of federalism in Nigeria but no less imperative is the necessity to moderate some of our rather romantic assumptions about federalism and restructuring.

    Many Nigerians have expressed justifiable anger at the venality, crass irresponsibility and sheer hardheartedness of our leadership and socio-economic elite over the years. Their pervasive massive corruption has denied the country of the requisite modern and well equipped health facilities that could easily have been provided given Nigeria’s abundant resource endowment. Our elite are widely derided by the majority of Nigerians for habitually hopping out of the country to receive medical attention in the best health facilities abroad and leaving their helpless country men and women to make do with the ramshackle health facilities and poorly motivated personnel at home.

    This to me is not a productive or useful conversation to engage in right now. The important thing is that the current global coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down global travel, demonstrates that ultimately we are all – elite and masses – in the same boat.

    While we hope that the country’s leadership will wake up to the need to provide the people with modern, well equipped health facilities as well as properly compensated and motivated healthcare personnel even in their own self-interest, it is no less important that Nigerians begin to refuse to sell their votes during elections or to prioritize ethnic, regional or religious considerations over character and competence in casting their votes.

    The consequences of voting motivated by ‘stomach infrastructure’, leading to the emergence of corrupt and inept leaders, can be more devastating than the coronavirus.

     

     

    Between Garba Shehu and Wole Soyinka

    What really did one of President Buhari’s media aides, Mallam Garba Shehu, think he was doing by responding in such an arrogant and insulting manner to Professor Wole Soyinka’s views on the President’s lockdown order on Lagos and Ogun states to stem the spread of the coronavirus? The Nobel Laureate had questioned the legality of the President’s directive and insisted that even in emergencies political power must be exercised in accordance with stipulated constitutional provisions. Surely, he has a right to his view, which incidentally was also the opinion of some eminent legal minds.

    By mocking Soyinka as a writer of fiction who should not be taken seriously, Shehu Garba essentially mocks himself and demonstrates shallow understanding of the intimate affinity between fiction and life. For across time and space, fiction has played a critical role in positively affecting and improving human reality. So a functionary so high up in the presidency does not appreciate the significance of literature? This does little credit to the image of the administration.

  • Coronavirus: Crisis and response

    Coronavirus: Crisis and response

     Segun Ayobolu

     

    It is in my view the most assured and accomplished speech he has given since assumption of office particularly in terms of composure and delivery. I refer to President Muhammadu Buhari’s address to the nation last Sunday, March 29, on the ravaging coronavirus pandemic.

    True, the administration has received hard knocks from several quarters on the perceived needless delay by the President in speaking to Nigerians especially given the severity of the global crisis and the grave implications it has for the lives of Nigerians and the national economy.

    Yet, the President’s address shows that there had really been minimal vacuum in the response to the crisis and that the requisite officials at various levels had indeed been up and doing.

    The President’s speech calmly stipulated all that had been done by the administration to contain the crisis while also reeling out new economic and social policies to strengthen the country’s response to what has become a herculean challenge to humanity. It was important that the speech did not hit the panic button, deepen public anxiety and create the impression that the nation is being overwhelmed by a crisis it has little or no capacity to contain.

    Before the President’s address, the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 headed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Boss Mustapha, has briefed the nation daily on the latest statistics as regards new cases, deaths and recoveries as well as new policy measures designed to meet the challenge. The Minister of health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, has been particularly impressive, effective and authoritative in demonstrating that he is on top of his job.

    The same goes for the Director of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ikweazu, although there continue to be complaints that staff of the agency are not responding as promptly as desired to enquiries being made by members of the public on the dedicated lines provided. This is a weakness that must be urgently addressed.

    On the economic front, the Ministry of Finance and particularly the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) with the proactive, interventionist measures of its leadership, has announced various policies to cushion the shock on key sectors of the economy as well as enable critical sectors like the pharmaceutical industry, for instance, rise to the challenge of the moment.

    In his address, President Buhari announced measures to sustain and intensify such social intervention programmes as   TraderMoni, MarketMoni and FarmerMoni; immediately pay to the most vulnerable members of society due conditional cash transfers for the next two months; provide two months of food rations to Internally Displaced Persons as well as keep the school feeding programme going even as schools across the country have been forced to close.

    While these steps will bring succor to a sizable number of the vulnerable, many Nigerians hope that the Economic Sustainability Committee headed by the Vice-President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), will come up with even more measures to reach a larger number of Nigerians particularly in the areas most affected by the pandemic.

    The Buhari administration has been criticized for what is perceived in some quarters as its slow response to the crisis. It appears that the administration was hesitant to adopt more severe response strategies such as total lockdown of whole segments of the population earlier on because it realizes the peculiar character of the country’s economy.

    Unlike the advanced industrialized countries, the greater number of Nigeria’s citizens operate in the informal sector of the economy. Consequently they live on what they earn on a daily basis and the consequences of a total lockdown could be devastating for millions of households.

    Moreover, even before the intrusion of the coronavirus, the economy had already taken a bad hit as a result of the sharp fall in the international price of oil attendant on the trade rivalry between Russia and Saudi Arabia with deleterious consequences for the 2020 budget.

    It is instructive that even far more advanced countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, France and Italy, for instance, also underestimated the potential dangers of the virus spreading and are perceived to have adopted stringent containment measures late in the day with grave consequences.

    We can only thank God that the extent and impact of the viral spread in Nigeria, at least so far, has been comparatively milder than these other less lucky countries. The challenge is to keep it so especially given the fragility of our healthcare system.

    Given the huge disproportion in resource availability, quality of healthcare infrastructure and services as well as economic capacity between Nigeria and these hard hit advanced countries, the country’s response to this crisis, comparatively, has been laudable even though we must now learn from past lapses and immediately begin to build a qualitative, efficient and effective healthcare system for the future.

    Even autonomous of actions taken at the centre by the Federal Government, it is noteworthy that many state governors have decisively and commendably responded to the coronavirus pandemic taking steps not only to contain the spread but also to succor the poor and vulnerable within the limits of their respective financial capacities.

    The most outstanding in this regard is obviously the Lagos State governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, whose inspiring example as the Chief-Incident-Commander, as well as that of his cerebral, hardworking and unassuming health commissioner, Professor Akinola Abayomi, have inspired other commissioners and heads of agencies in the state to give of their best in tackling the invisible enemy. We shall in due course look in more detail at the lessons to be learnt from the Lagos example.

    It is ironical that most of those who protest most vehemently against Nigeria’s undoubtedly over-centralized federal structure and advocate a radical restructuring as the be all and end all cure to Nigeria’s crises of economy, politics and governance, are quiet about the laudable responses of many sub-national units of government, acting relatively independent of the centre, to the coronavirus crisis.

    On the other hand, in the United States, which is frequently held up as practicing the federal ideal to which we must aspire, most state governors have been desperately crying out for federal government financial and logistical support to enable them navigate the turbulent waters of the pandemic.

    So Nigeria is not the only much derided ‘feeding bottle’ federalism? True, there is the urgent need to deepen the practice of federalism in Nigeria but no less imperative is the necessity to moderate some of our rather romantic assumptions about federalism and restructuring.

    Many Nigerians have expressed justifiable anger at the venality, crass irresponsibility and sheer hardheartedness of our leadership and socio-economic elite over the years. Their pervasive massive corruption has denied the country of the requisite modern and well equipped health facilities that could easily have been provided given Nigeria’s abundant resource endowment.

    Our elite are widely derided by the majority of Nigerians for habitually hopping out of the country to receive medical attention in the best health facilities abroad and leaving their helpless country men and women to make do with the ramshackle health facilities and poorly motivated personnel at home.

    This to me is not a productive or useful conversation to engage in right now. The important thing is that the current global coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down global travel, demonstrates that ultimately we are all – elite and masses – in the same boat.

    While we hope that the country’s leadership will wake up to the need to provide the people with modern, well equipped health facilities as well as properly compensated and motivated healthcare personnel even in their own self-interest, it is no less important that Nigerians begin to refuse to sell their votes during elections or to prioritize ethnic, regional or religious considerations over character and competence in casting their votes.

    The consequences of voting motivated by ‘stomach infrastructure’, leading to the emergence of corrupt and inept leaders, can be more devastating than the coronavirus.

     

    Between Garba Shehu and Wole Soyinka

     

    What really did one of President Buhari’s media aides, Mallam Garba Shehu, think he was doing by responding in such an arrogant and insulting manner to Professor Wole Soyinka’s views on the President’s lockdown order on Lagos and Ogun states to stem the spread of the coronavirus?

    The Nobel Laureate had questioned the legality of the President’s directive and insisted that even in emergencies political power must be exercised in accordance with stipulated constitutional provisions. Surely, he has a right to his view, which incidentally was also the opinion of some eminent legal minds.

    By mocking Soyinka as a writer of fiction who should not be taken seriously, Shehu Garba essentially mocks himself and demonstrates shallow understanding of the intimate affinity between fiction and life.

    For across time and space, fiction has played a critical role in positively affecting and improving human reality. So a functionary so high up in the presidency does not appreciate the significance of literature? This does little credit to the image of the administration.

     

  • Jimanze-Ego Alowes, the African scientist and coronavirus

    Jimanze-Ego Alowes, the African scientist and coronavirus

    Segun Ayobolu

    This is the third time that I will refer in this column to the book, ‘The University-Media Complex’ published in 2018 by the polyvalent thinker, Jimanze-Ego Alowes, which signifies how important I consider the book’s subject matter. Unfortunately, the book has not generated the kind of debate, which it deserves perhaps because the author’s style tends to be obscurantist and he has a penchant for making a detour from his principal argument into several spheres of knowledge, which the reader may find ponderous and distracting. Yet, it is a book worth reading even if one disagrees with the reader’s point of view.

    Aspects of Jimanze’s book came to my mind again against the background of the current coronavirus pandemic ravaging the globe with African countries, including Nigeria, being the most vulnerable because of their poor economies and weak healthcare systems despite the low level of deaths recorded on the continent so far relative to other regions. While most African countries are striving, many belatedly, to contain the pandemic and contain its spread through drastic restriction measures, it appears as if African leaders have left the search for a vaccine and eventual cure for the disease to the developed countries although the continent is blessed with limitless plant and herbal resources that many believe, if researched and tapped, could help the world find a solution to this health challenge and several others.

    But then, do we not have a deluge of highly trained scientists, including medical specialists in diverse disciplines, as well as higher institutions of learning and research institutes that ought to be able to rise to occasions such as this?And this is the central thrust of Jimanze’s thesis in this book. He argues that passing examinations in flying colours or acquiring first class honours or doctoratal degrees may be evidence of consumption of received knowledge and ideas rather than a capacity to produce original ideas and knowledge thus enriching humanity in the process.

    The author wonders why Africa’s intellectual class has been largely ineffective in helping to find effective and practical solutions to the continent’s myriad challenges of underdevelopment in their various fields of assumed expertise. While he agrees that in the humanities, arts and music, for instance, Nigeria has produced world class scholars and performers in the mould of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo or Fela Anikulapo Kuti, he sees absolutely no reason why the story cannot be the same in the fields of science, technology and mathematics.

    Jimanze disagrees vehemently with the view that poor funding, inadequate equipment and facilities are responsible for the inability of African scientists to exhibit enough proficiency in their disciplinary specializations to  contribute positively to the scientific and technological development of the continent. He makes his point with characteristic bluntness thus: “…are there also no America and Europe- based Nigerians who are in the faculties of Physics, Chemistry etc? Are these not sciences in which Nobel Prizes – that is, one measure of global distinctions- can be earned?…If Nigerians in Nigeria lack the equipment for cutting-edge research in some cognate sciences, what of the Nigerian scholars in Europe and America? What is stopping them?”

    He continues: “The issue of lack of modern equipment cannot totally exclude Nigerian scientists from Achebe-level global achievements. Why? There are incidences of theoretical physicists winning the Nobel Prize, and you do not need more than a brain, a pencil, and blank papers. Examples like Albert Einstein and Gell-Murray come to mind. Both won Nobel Prizes in Physics and both are notorious or famous for being impractical enough to not know how to screw a nut to save their lives…Therefore, in several areas of sciences, you do not need equipment. Thus, it can be said that nobody is excluded, save the fellow excludes himself on grounds of poor brains”.

    Too harsh? Well, that is Jimanze for you. He is particularly vexed with intellectuals who rather than ‘tackling real life problems’ in their fields are better known for public opinion commentaries or dabbling in politics. In his irreverent, no-holds-barred manner, he uses the late Professor Tam David-West, as an example in Nigeria. To establish his premise, he starts with a possibly imaginary but nevertheless instructive discourse between two pseudonymous characters, American Abroad and John West. Here is an abridgment of their discourse:

    American Abroad: “Mr. Tam David-West, a gifted scientist and uncompromising administrator, has given unstintingly of himself to his country in ages past. A long time ago…he wrote a philosophy column in our daily newspapers which content and breadth were simply outstanding (and unimpeachable) to my juvenile mind. I fondly recall his son, also a professor, gently upbraiding him for “goofing” on his interpretation of an obscure philosophical point. Those were the salad days of public intellectualism in Nigeria”.

    John West: “Now you are beginning to upset me my dear friend. Tam David-West, a gifted scientist and uncompromising administrator? You must be living on a different planet…Yes, Taminosoari David-West, graduate from the Canadian Ivy League University, MacGill, in Montreal, with a doctorate degree in virology and became a Professor in the subject at the University of Ibadan. However, he has never practiced as a virologist, his subject of education and profession. Instead, he has constantly dabbled in politics of all pettiness…”.

    The author wondered why, when the country was faced with such crises as the Ebola Virus attack or Monkey pox virus, for instance, the voices of eminent virologists like Professor Tam David-West were largely silent “leaving the solution to “lesser mortals and the less endowed”. The same question can be asked today on why all we can hear today on the coronavirus are voices of scientists and pharmaceutical companies from the advanced countries researching feverishly for vaccines and cures to save an endangered world.

    Thus, using Professor Tam David-West as symbolic of other virologists and scientists, Jimanze asserts, provocatively, that “Tam David-West, a professor and Harvard type, has no contributive ideas that we know of or which he has demonstrated. All he has done is consume ideas…You cannot possess in science and inquiry, save you innovate. Innovation is the hand with which you possess, not own other peoples’ ideas. To know other peoples’ ideas is to have consumed it as is: not to have your own ideas. It is the moral equivalent of plagiarism to consume other peoples’ ideas and claim you produced and owned them”.

    This column has nothing but the highest regard for the late Professor David-West’s academic brilliance and particularly his high degree of moral integrity in public office as well as patriotic commitment to the emergence of a better, stronger Nigeria. But Jimanze can hardly be faulted that the renowned professor is admired more for his contributions in the sphere of politics, and public discourse than in his explicit field of specialization. However, it may be asked if the author does not underestimate the extent to which poor leadership and the consequent bad governance inhibits the capacity of the Africa’s intellectual elite to actualize their potentials and help uplift their countries out of the morass of poverty and underdevelopment particularly in the areas of Science and Technology.

    Unfortunately, Jimanze, in my view, gives the impression that the African scientist is inherently incapacitated to make original contributions to knowledge and come up with practical solutions to the continent’s problems of underdevelopment. He does not take into account the fact that, in the words of late Professor Bade Onimode, “…perhaps the greatest single tragedy of Africa in the past has been the legacies of slavery and colonialism and the depredations of neo-colonialism, which denied Africa the autonomy and self-confidence to see itself and analyze itself objectively…Africa was thus reduced essentially to passive receivers of foreign ideas”.

    There are those who argue, perhaps with some justification, that after over a half a century of post-colonial governance, Africa has no excuse continuing to blame slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism for the continent’s continued immersion in poverty and underdevelopment. Yet, unless there is a thoroughgoing decolonization of the African mind (apologies to Ngugi Wa Thiongo), including the decolonization of the content of African educational curricula, there will continue to be a wide gap between Africa’s rich resource endowment, including her abandoned indigenous knowledge systems, and her rate of development.

  • State, market, coronavirus

    State, market, coronavirus

    Segun Ayobolu

     

    FROM the end of the Second World War in 1945 up to the end of the 1970s, the advanced, industrialized capitalist countries of the west had put in place extensive state-led, welfare systems that provided for the needs of the vast majority of their populations virtually from the cradle to the grave. This was informed partly by the lessons of the great economic depression that preceded the war, which demonstrated the volatility, unpredictability and unreliability of the capitalist system left to the mythical, invisible hands of the market as well as what was perceived then as a very real and potent communist threat.

    In his scathing book, ‘The Cancer stage of Capitalism’, the Canadian philosopher, Professor John McMurty, captures the gains of this extensive welfare state system thus, “… by a long process of democratic movement, elected governments in the developed world have introduced legislation to limit the hours of the working day and week; to establish safety standards and environmental regulations for factories and businesses; to permit employees to organize in workers’ unions; to provide unemployment insurance and income security for those without jobs; to institute programmes of health care available to all independent of ability to pay; to provide public education for everyone and university education to the qualified at a fraction of the cost; and to construct publicly accessible transit systems, parks and cultural centres free of cost or at below-cost prices”.

    From the early eighties starting with the Thatcherite and Reaganite years in the US and UK up till the present, there has been a fierce and relentless onslaught against the welfare state system in favour of the dominance of market forces and the subordination of the priority of providing for the needs of the majority, particularly the vulnerable, to the right of private corporations and their stockholders to accumulate ever increasing profit. Even the poor, underdeveloped states of Africa were forced to adopt Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) that rolled back the developmental state, eliminated subsidies on essential commodities and services, massively devalued national currencies, privatized public corporations and downsized public services, liberalized trade in an inequitable world economy and thereby deepened these countries immersion in poverty and underdevelopment.

    The neoliberal war against what was derisively dismissed as inefficient and unaffordable ‘Big Government’ was given fillip by the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe as well as the near miraculous economic ascendancy of the Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs), the Asian Tigers. Yet, as Professor McMurty so perceptively and incisively notes, once again, the war against ‘big government’ or the state has been entirely ill defined and misguided. In his words, “Big Government was not what one might think. It was not the gargantually wasteful and destructive military-industrial complex which was to spend almost a billion dollars a day during the Reagan administration, attacking or threatening with massive force any alternative economic order on the horizon. Nor was it ever more police and prisons for non-white and impoverished US citizens”.

    Rather, he continues, “Big Government meant assistance to the poor, the sick and the old, and protection of the workers and the environment against corporate toxins and pollutants. It meant ‘binge spending on social programmes’ like pensions and medicare, ‘suffocating regulations’ on industrial effluents and harzardous working conditions, and the ‘culture of dependency’ of destitute families and children on ‘government handouts’”.

    Subordinating the life and welfare needs of the people of the world to the profit interests of corporations and the dictates of market forces has greatly multiplied the wealth of rich nations and individuals while also enormously accelerating the rate of poverty and inequality both within and between nations. The pressure of increased global poverty and inequality under the regime of neoliberalism has motivated the attempted mass migrations from the disadvantaged to the more prosperous regions of the world with frequently tragic consequences. This in turn has led to the rise of the rash of illiberal, extremist parties and governments in the West that are severely undermining the institutions and values of liberal democracy in those countries.

    Yet, despite all efforts to render the state redundant and assert the superiority and supremacy of market forces, countries across the globe, irrespective of ideological orientations or political inclinations, have to fall back again and again on the state for salvation in times of grave national and global crises. Thus, in the wake of the global economic depression of 2008, advanced economies had to rely on massive state fiscal interventions and direct bailouts to failed sectors and companies to stimulate their economies and respond to the glaring inadequacies of the reign of unregulated market forces.

    In the current climate of mindless quest for profit by private corporations even at the expense of the common good, various treaties under the aegis of the World Trade organization (WTO) or the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), for instance, private entities have been given the right to ravage the human environment for commercial purposes with scant regard for the safety of present or future generations. The consequences have been the widely reported damages to the ozone layer, climate warming, ocean surges and increased menace of flooding as well as rising incidences of uncontrollable wildfires in vulnerable countries.

    Again, combating these problems and containing their damages are not profitable ventures and thus cannot attract the attention of private corporations except in cases of superficial and minimally impactful gestures of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The market can never substitute for the state in human affairs. People and societies can only be subordinated to the irrational profit motive at grave risk to the very survival, ultimately, of the human species.

    Nothing illustrates better, once again, the utter unwisdom of neoliberalism’s disdain for and marginalization of the state than the danger that the rampaging coronavirus pandemic poses to humanity. Market forces cannot in this instance come to the needed immediate rescue of man from the ravages of an invisible virus that temporarily mocks human genius although the giant pharmaceutical companies will ultimately invest in and profit enormously from vaccines and cures for the disease, which will most certainly be found.

    It is instructive that the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedas Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was reported, at the outbreak of the disease, to have lauded China for taking unprecedented measures to control the deadly virus saying “I have never seen for myself this kind of mobilization” and that “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response”. Some of the measures taken by China include placing some 100 million citizens on lockdown, shutting down a public holiday, building sizable quarantine hospitals in days’ time and ramping up 24-hour manufacturing of medical equipment. This could certainly not have been possible without a strong, efficient and resilient state system.

    As a result of the neoliberal policies prevalent in the US on the other hand since the Reagan era, irrespective of whether Republicans or Democrats are in power, the state’s capacity to respond effectively to the coronavirus pandemic has been significantly enfeebled. In 2018, for instance, President Trump reportedly “fired the Federal Government’s pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure” partly to cut costs. According to a report, “Local Public Health agencies have lost almost a quarter of their overall workforce since 2008 – a cut of almost 60,000 workers, according to national associations of health officials. The agencies’ main source for federal funding – the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s emergency preparedness budget – has been cut by 30 percent since 2003. And the Trump administration has proposed cutting even deeper”.

    To show how bad the situation is, another report states that “In its 2020 budget the Trump administration proposed a further 10% cut in Centers for Disease Control funding equivalent to $750 million. It zeroed out funding for epidemiology and laboratory capacity at state and local levels. Funding will also dry up this year for a tiered epidemic response within the US…After this year’s cuts, 10 advanced treatment facilities will still receive funding, but not the 60 other treatment centres one tier below”. Despite man’s remarkable state of scientific and technological advancement, the coronoavirus once again demonstrates his vulnerability to incessant ravages of the unforeseen.

    Strong, efficient, effective and responsive state structures are, therefore, indispensable to human survival. This is particularly so in African countries, which have fragile post-colonial state structures when a sturdy, developmental state is so critical to overcoming the continent’s debilitating underdevelopment. It is time for African leaders to demand that external forces of domination and marginalization like the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) stop teaching them nonsense (apologies to Fela) and scale up their efforts to build viable, formidable, efficacious state structures, which must necessarily be democratic, accountable, responsible and transparent.

     

  • Odia Ofeimun’s house of 70 mansions

    Odia Ofeimun’s house of 70 mansions

    Segun Ayobolu

     

    WHEN exactly did the name, Odia Ofeimun, come into my consciousness? I guess it was as a young secondary school student at Ilorin, Kwara State, shortly after Nigeria hosted the Second World and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in 1977. On the literary terrain, at least, that surely was another country. The public library located at the Sabo Oke area of Ilorin was well stocked and efficiently run. Virtually all the titles published under the rubric of the famous African Writers Series (AWS) was available in the library. Of course, there were other books of diverse genres and subjects available to the reading the public in the modest two-storey building. Not only could we read, we were allowed to borrow books for periods of up to two weeks at a time if I recall correctly. To the best of my knowledge, hardly were the books ever defaced or stolen.

    It was at the library that I came across an anthology of writings from the FESTAC event comprising short stories, poems, drama and essays. I borrowed the book for extended periods and avidly read through the literary offerings. I remember in particular being fascinated by one or two short stories by Cyprian Ekwensi as well as poems by one Odia Ofeimun in the book. One of Odia’s poems I read over and over then was titled ‘Emotan’ although I cannot remember now what so struck me about the poem or even details of what it was about. But Odia Ofeimun’s poems were amongst those that stimulated my interest in poetry and even my attempts to try my hands at poetry.

    Years later as an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan, I actually joined ‘The Poetry Club’ established by the late Harry Garuba and even though I religiously attended meetings of the group at the Faculty of Arts, I always felt too timid to recite my poetry scribblings as they did not appear to me meet the standards of poetry set by Ofeimun and other poets I read. I was thus amazed when Professor Femi Osofisan actually published a number of the poems I had only half heartedly sent him in his literary journal, ‘Opon Ifa’. Even then, I was not encouraged enough to continue my adventures in poetry.

    At the commencement of the politics of the Second Republic with the formation of political parties in 1978, I found the welfarist policy platform of Chief Obafemi Awolowo compelling and was naturally attracted to his newly formed Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN). Even as a 15 year old teenager, I was a UPN polling agent in Ilorin in the series of elections that ushered in the Second Republic much to the discomfiture of my father. Although an ardent Awoist himself, my father was naturally concerned that I was too young to thrust myself into the ‘ebullition’ of Nigeria’s all too frequently violent politics. But I was passionate enough about Awo’s progressive policies to take the risk.

    Again, on the political terrain, I came across the name, Odia Ofeimun. He had been appointed as private secretary to Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Given Awo’s legendary self discipline, capacity for hard work, attention to detail, uncompromising commitment to punctuality, integrity and diligence, it was obvious that not just anybody could qualify to be employed as his personal staff. Even though Ofeimun was to leave the job in controversial circumstances and his personal integrity unjustly and wrongly impugned, the truth was later uncovered and his innocence established even though the great man reportedly never personally apologized for the error as Odia eminently deserved.

    Yet, it is a tribute to Odia’s moral integrity and ideological fidelity that, even though he parted ways with Awo on a personal note as his staff, he remained committed and faithful to the sage’s politics, ideas and programmatic agenda for Nigeria. As a student at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan, in the early to mid 1980s, the name Odia Ofeimun was again thrust into my consciousness. The poet and polyvalent intellectual had graduated with a Bachelors degree in political science from the Department years earlier.

    For my undergraduate research essay, I had chosen to write on ‘The Political Thought of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’. My supervisor and professor told me that Odia Ofeimun was at the time working on a doctoral thesis on the politics and ideas of Awolowo and that he was coming up with a very fascinating and original perspective. Even if he does not complete it as a doctoral thesis, I think Odia stills owe the world a definitive work on Awlolowo’s role in the political and socio-economic development of Nigeria. One of the essays in Odia’s book, ‘A House of many Mansions’ is titled ‘Obafemi Awolowo: Nigeria’s Man of the Century’.

    In the essay, he illustrates his uncanny ability to link personalities and issues that appear superficially distant when he reflects on the impacts of Lord Lugard and Obafemi Awolowo on Nigerian politics. In his words, “While Lugard, his ideas and legacy, dominated the first half of the century, Awolowo was, pre-eminently, the personage whose ideas and political struggles most positively defined the second half”. He continued, “Of course, the paradox needs to be emphasized that, antithetical as their different legacies appear, both Awolowo and Lugard put their stamp on time and events through a lusty commitment to intellectual labour, personal discipline, the pursuit of organizational rigour and administrative proficiency. What the historian M.I. Okonjo writes of Lugard in his ‘British Administration: A Nigerian view”, is also true of Awolowo: of having ‘more than unusual preoccupation with the business of documenting and justifying…a passion for detailed definition of principles and rules…’ and ‘an obsessional zeal’ induced in ‘activist loyal disciples’.

    The essays in ‘A House of Many Mansions’ illustrate the encyclopedic knowledge and catholic interests of Ofeimun, a man of character and intellect, a devotee of the life of the mind, a patriot who takes Nigeria seriously and has committed his life to contributing to her rapid development and socio-economic transformation. As his admirers celebrate the ‘House of 70 mansions’ that Odia Ofeimun’s life is at  70, this column wishes this great man a very happy birthday and even more fruitful and fulfilling years ahead.

  • Beyond distracting Oshiomhole

    Beyond distracting Oshiomhole

    By Segun Ayobolu

    For many of those, particularly state governors, who have adopted a scorched earth policy to ensure the removal from office of the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, at all costs and by all means, they do not seem to have pondered the incalculable harm  they are inflicting on a party that remains fragile despite its superlative showing in the 2015 elections that saw the dislodgement from power at the centre of a party, The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), that had exercised suzerainty over the polity for over a decade and half since 1999.

    Seeming to drink from the same stupefying brew that had misled some chieftains of the erstwhile ruling party to dream and loudly proclaim its capability to wield power continuously at the centre for an unbroken period of six decades, the fractious, endlessly quarrelsome and bickering APC leadership appear to suffer from an inexplicable and ultimately self-destructive hubris. In striving with murderous intensity and perpetual surreptitious treachery and back-biting to undo and back-stab one another, arrow heads of these ruling party factions and fractions apparently do not realize that they are nibbling, chipping away slowly but surely at the clay feet of a giant statute with which they seek to achieve their higher future political ambitions.

    In their wild and unbridled calculations and maneuvering towards 2023, these APC party top shots act as if the country runs a one-party or one party-dominant system and that victory in the next general elections is theirs for the picking on a platter of gold. Nothing could be more self-deceptive. The outcome of the vote in 2015 was as much a vote for the change espoused by the emergent APC as it was a vote of no confidence in the venality and industrial-scale non-performance of the bumbling Dr Goodluck Jonathan administration. Many of those who enthusiastically supported the APC’s assumption of office in 2015 had become thoroughly disenchanted and lukewarm in their affection for the party just four years after.

    This is why, despite the grave moral baggage carried by the PDP as a result of the revelation of the relentless corruption of its top shots by an unsparing ruling party, the vicious psychological blows inflicted on the party by an often self-righteous APC and the ferocious damage done to the party’ image, the PDP still had every reason to be happy with its performance in the 2019 polls. Anyone who thinks the PDP is dead and buried is living in a fool’s paradise. Given the requisite visionary leadership and strategic re-branding, the PDP still has what it takes to bounce back meaningfully in Nigeria’s unpredictable political terrain.

    It is thus important for the ambitious APC chieftains not to exaggerate either their moral superiority or more proficient performance ability compared to their colleagues in the PDP. A more sober self-assessment would certainly engender a more cautious disposition on the part of APC leaders in handling the various intra-party crises in which they are embroiled including the ongoing desperate attempts by factions within the party to do its National Chairman in before the next general elections all for selfish, partisan and pecuniary considerations.

    Those who are today seemingly firmly united in their onslaught against Oshiomhole will be grossly mistaken to assume that the driving personal ambitions that motivate their actions today will not still further tear them further apart even if they succeed in their schemes and machinations to remove the National Chairman. They are lucky that they have a common foe in Oshiomhole today, which gives them the semblance of unity as a cohesive and impregnable front. Remove that common target and the same raw and naked passion driving their actions now with scant regard for the party or the overall polity will get further inflamed and uncontrollable.  They will be horribly scorched by the flames of unbridled ambition and their party also severely damaged in the process.

    It is all too easy for the party membership and leadership opposed to Oshiomhole to forget what the state of the APC was before the former labour leader’s emergence as National Chairman. The somnolent, indolent and indulgent leadership of the party under the watch of the Chief Odigie-John Oyegun-led National Working Committee (NWC), was about to profit from its own incompetence and lethargy. Contending that the 2015 elections were too close at hand for intra-party primaries to be held for party and elective offices, the Oyegun leadership was pursuing the path of all incumbent party and elective office holders to continue in office without what it perceived as being incommoded by distracting and largely self-defeating intra-party elections.

    This position no doubt suited the whims and caprices of many governors seeking automatic tickets for a second term or those who had completed their two terms but sought to impose their surrogates to succeed them in office. It goes without saying that the Oyegun-led NWC had virtually surrendered control of the party to the all powerful and financially munificent state governors. Luckily, President Muhammadu Buhari would not be persuaded by such self-serving logic and insisted that intra-party elections must hold for all positions – party or elective. Each chapter of the party was given the option of adopting open direct primaries involving all duly elected registered members voting, emergence of candidates through delegates’ election or the adoption of candidates through consensus arrangement involving all party stakeholder at all levels. PMB himself chose to go through the direct primaries system, which is the most democratic and least prone to financial manipulations, through which he emerged as the presidential candidate of the APC for the 2019 elections.

    Given the new wave of judicial activism by the courts in pronouncing on election petitions, the APC would have suffered most likely more of the kind of reverses it experienced in Rivers, Zamfara and Bayelsa states had the president not agreed with Oshiomhole and stood steadfastly for transparent and credible intra-party primaries in accordance with the party’s constitutional stipulations. There is no doubt that Oshiomhole had stepped on the toes of formerly all powerful party potentates particularly the governors. Even those governors perceived to have close personal relationships with PMB could not get Oshiomhole to accede to their machinations to impose their surrogates as successors. He was perceived in these circles as stubborn, petulant, intransigent and lacking in capacity for pragmatic leadership. What, however, emerged was a ruling party with greater organizational verve, institutional discipline and focus than hitherto obtained before Oshiomhole’s emergence as its chief helmsman.

    Unfortunately, the frequent diversions and disruptive distractions by rebellious elements within the APC have made it impossible for Oshiomhole to proceed in any tangible way with the requisite ideological rebranding, philosophical reorientation and organizational re-tooling of the APC to transform it into a real and viable political party in every sense of the word. Matters have not been helped by the fact that right in his own home state, he faces the most vicious and vehement opposition from a governor, Godwin Obaseki that he did everything to install in office as his successor after two terms in office. But it appears to me that the major issue in Edo now is not the so-called ingratitude of the incumbent to his supposed political benefactor; it is the virtual legislative coup carried out by the governor through which he rules the state with a minority of House of Assembly members with 14 legislators forcefully emasculated and their constituencies disenfranchised. Surely, no governor who is a thoroughbred democrat, committed to the rule of law and due process would so enthusiastically preside over such brazen impunity.

    I have heard it argued in some quarters that Oshiomhole has brought the temperament and supposedly intolerant disposition of a trade union leader to the performance of his functions as National Chairman of the APC. That, it is said, is responsible for his alleged inflexibility, stubbornness and lack of diplomacy or tact in handling problems within a political party. Those who reason this way betray a terrible ignorance of the nature and character of trade unions and particularly of the labour movement in Nigeria with its rich tradition of democratic, organizational practice except during some of the aberrant years of military rule.

    The truth is that nothing prepares anybody better to lead a democratic, mass based organization like a political party than training in trade union leadership and management. Nigeria’s labour unions are better and more democratically organized than many of our political parties. Their organs are alive and functioning and no one can sit at the apex of the organization and take solitary decisions without following due process. It can only be hoped that the APC would not have cast aside the pearl it has in Oshiomhole before appreciating its true value. This is, of course, not to suggest that the APC National Chairman does not have to work hard on refining his modus operandi and alleged character flaws where such is warranted in the interest of the party and the polity. But then will a flawless National Chairman of the ruling party emerge from outer space?