The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Ayobolu

  • Adebayo Adedeji and Africa’s development debate (2)

    When he turned 70, another collection of essays was published in Adedeji’s honour titled ‘African Development and Governance Strategies in the 21st Century’ again edited by Professor Bade Onimode. This 256 page book is made up of 16 essays and an epilogue also written by some of the continent’s best and brightest minds. Tracing the impasse of development forty years after independence in this book’s preface, Professor Segun Odunuga, makes the point that “Adedeji’s advocacy of holistic human development is based on the concept that society can only develop with the mobilization of the people; hence his statement that Africa would need to set in motion a process that puts the individual at the very centre of a development effort that is both human and humane…” Is this not a foretaste of the lesson Bill Gates came to teach our leaders here in Nigeria 14 years after this book was written? But the definitive book on this great African is undoubtedly ‘African Development: Adebayo Adedeji’s Strategies’ written by Professor S. K. B. Asante and published in 1991.

    Covering 228 pages, Professor Asante’s book on Adebayo Adedeji’s development strategies and policy alternatives for Africa is broken into nine chapters which look at various aspects of Adedeji’s landmark contributions to the conceptualization and evolution of African development strategy. These include elements of Adedeji’s development strategy, Adedeji’s role in the establishment and development of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), His participation in the search for an indigenous African Development strategy in the 1970s as well as his frontline role as an active intellectual combatant in the struggle for hegemony over African Development Strategy and the concluding chapter, which examines ‘Adedeji and the Future of African Development’ with the year 2000 in mind.

    Many scholars have pointed out the utter inadequacy, indeed sheer harmfulness at times, of received western social science scholarship on Africa’s quest for socio-economic and political liberation as well as development. For instance in his monumental and path breaking but inadequately acknowledged book, ‘The Challenge of Poverty in Africa’, Professor E. J. Nwosu, the eminent development economist notes that “We should now remind African economists and students of economics of the complacency and misdirection in the treatment of development issues which Western pseudo-intellectual propaganda consistently inflicts on them. They are urged, in the name of the ‘scientific’ approach, to treat economic growth and development issues like Mathematics and even like Physics, and hence with such inhuman coldness, ‘clever technical scaffolding’ and recourse to global or aggregated economic magnitudes that push human, especially class interests, needs, aspirations and sensibilities to the sidelines of economic thought and policy action, as mere incidental categories”.

    Throughout his intellectual and professional life, Professor Adedeji was at the forefront of the struggle to liberate African development policies and strategies from the tyranny of received paradigms. Key elements of his development strategies included self-reliance and self-sustainment linked to the concept of regional co-operation and integration. These elements featured prominently in major attempts by African countries to forge alternative development policies and strategies more suited to their autochthonous and rapid development all of which had the intellectual imprimatur of Adedeji at his vantage position at the head of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

    Professor Adedeji was a key initiator and participant in such major efforts to forge an autonomous and original development path for Africa such as the ECA/OAU Lagos Plan of Action (LPA), adopted by OAU Heads of State in Lagos in 1980, OAU’s ‘Africa’s Priority Programme for Economic Recovery 1986-1990 (APPER) and the United Nations Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development 1986-1980 (UN-PAAERD). On the LPA, for instance, Asante writes that “The adoption of the Lagos Plan of Action – an elaboration of the ‘Monrovia Declaration’ – as advocated by Adedeji and the ECA in collaboration with OAU, was an event of historic significance. For the first time in the history of the continent, African leaders were able to commit themselves, in unambiguous terms, to a unified strategy reflecting their own understanding of the causes of their problems and their own prescription for the collective salvation of their continent”. Unfortunately, the slavishness, venality and lack of the requisite political will by African leaders blunted the efficacy of these alternative policy offensives.

    In chapter eight of his book titled ‘The struggle for hegemony over African Development Strategy: Adedeji vs. the World Bank Mandarins’, Professor Asante vividly captures the heroic role played by Adedeji in confronting and containing the IFI’s attempt to sustain the foisting of neo-liberal, extremist free market policies on Africa through his headship of the ECA. In response to the insistence by the IFI’s that the SAPs were indeed working and positively addressing what they perceived as the roots of the African crisis, Adedeji spearheaded the publication of the African Alternative Framework-Structural Adjustment Programmes in Africa (AAF-SAP), which insisted that the crisis was indeed structural in nature and required radically different policy remedies.

    In the words of Professor Asante: “Despite the World Bank’s persistence that adjustment programmes should continue to evolve, the May 1989 Washington meeting, and especially the Bank’s November 1989 report, have gone a long way towards embracing the salient elements of Adedeji’s alternative development strategy: human-centered development, fostering self-reliance and, lately, the need for SAPs to go beyond stabilization to achieve a genuine transformation of production structures. This is indeed a consensus on which Adedeji has undoubtedly left his mark”. There can be no greater tribute to a patriotic African scholar although the political will to actualize his vision of a truly liberated and transformed Africa is still sadly lacking.

  • An enduring legacy

    When he ran for the country’s presidency in the historic presidential election of 1993 on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the late Chief MKO Abiola’s campaign organization was christened ‘Hope ‘93’. What hope was this multi-billionaire and then Africa’s richest man, who had chosen to contest the election on the platform of the ideologically ‘little to the left’ party of military President, General Ibrahim Babangida’s convoluted and ultimately abortive transition program, promising his fellow country men and women? The answer can be found in his campaign manifesto, which incidentally was translated into Hausa and Fulfude by the late Dr. Bala Usman, and titled ‘Farewell to Poverty’.

    By massively voting for Abiola across the country in what has been described as the ‘freest and fairest’ election in the country’s history, majority of the electorate were apparently convinced that a man who pulled himself up by the bootstrap from abject poverty to become one of the wealthiest men on earth could achieve the same feat for his country and help redeem millions of his compatriots from the humiliating grip of penury. After all, in his private life for several years before venturing into politics, Abiola had been easily one of the country’s most generous philanthropists devoting a huge chunk of his wealth to charitable causes.

    Save for those in his inner circle, hardly anyone had the inkling that President Muhammadu Buhari would on Wednesday take the historic step of recognizing June 12, the day the annulled election was held as the authentic ‘democracy day’ in Nigeria. Since 1999, that dubious distinction had been enjoyed by May 29, the arbitrary date that the General Abdulsalam Abubakar regime had chosen to hand over to a democratically elected civilian administration in 1999.  Not only that, Buhari bestowed the country’s highest honour, Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR) on Abiola and that of Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) on Alhaji Babagana Kingibe, who was Abiola’s running mate.  This in effect implies the recognition of Abiola as winner of the 1993 presidential election because the title of GCFR is reserved only for Heads of State.

    Only recently, President Buhari had made a widely criticized statement, which appeared complimentary of the late of Head of State, General Sani Abacha and his Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) initiative. This was the dictator who not only refused to undo the injustice of IBB’s annulment of the election but jailed Abiola for insisting on the validation of his mandate leading ultimately to the President elect’s death under General Abubakar’s watch.  Buhari served as Chairman of the PTF under Abacha and had even at some point expressed doubts that Abacha had massively looted the country’s resources as widely alleged.  Does this detract in any way from the nobility and loftness of his action in recognizing the legal validity of the June 12 election and posthumously restoring Abiola to his rightful place in Nigeria’s history as insinuated by some critics? Not by any means.

    Buhari is human.  It was Abacha who rehabilitated him and restored some of his dignity after the humiliation he suffered being overthrown as Head of State in Babangida’s palace coup.  His soft spot for the former Head of State is understandable. There is something honourable about not denying a friend simply because he has fallen from grace. It is a mark of character.  In any case, even though Abiola won a Pan-Nigerian victory, the struggle to actualize the annulled mandate ultimately degenerated to an almost entirely South-West affair. A President Buhari from the North would thus have been the last person expected to do post humus justice to Abiola. And that is the grand irony as many analysts have pointed out.

    Abiola’s own kinsman, OBJ, the greatest beneficiary of MKO’s heroic struggle and ultimate martyrdom, was the imperial tenant of the Presidential Villa for eight years. Consumed by his own disproportionate sense of self righteousness, he never saw it fit to do justice by MKO. Even when the great sage, Awo, was alive, OBJ had the temerity to write in his book, ‘Not my Will’ that Nigeria’s presidency that Awolowo sought all his life, he got on a platter of gold at a young age. What utter emptiness! Yet, here is an OBJ who, beside Awo, is a moral, spiritual and intellectual Lilliputian unfit to clean the great man’s shoes. By this strategic move, PMB has dealt a well deserved death blow to OBJ’s vacuous political posturing. Perhaps the old soldier, whose obscene and grotesque hilltop mansion in Abeokuta rivals that of IBB in Minna and yet dares to question the moral credentials of a PMB who stands on an infinitely higher ethical pedestal than the duo, will now let us have some peace. The less said of him the better.

    It is noteworthy that President Buhari also awarded the late legal icon, human rights and pro-democracy activist, Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON). I recall an interview granted by Fawehinmi at the height of the struggle to actualize June 12 in which the legal titan declared that there was something mystical about June 12 and that no force on earth could kill the spirit of the annulled election until justice was done. He has been proven right by the literal resurrection of the spirit of June 12 two and a half decades after it was supposedly buried by Babangida’s unjust annulment.

    Martin Luther King Jr. had expressed this same truth over six decades ago at Boston University when he wrote “All I’m trying to say is, our world hinges on moral foundations. God has made it so! God has made the universe to be based on a moral law…There is something in this universe that justifies Carlyle in saying, “No lie can live forever”. There is something in this universe that justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying, “Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again”. Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, inscribed the same truth in the immortal words, “Justice is the first condition of humanity”.

    But then there is a great lesson in the justice done to Abiola’s memory by an improbable Buhari of all persons for those top members of this administration who exploit the huge popularity Buhari enjoys as a result of his integrity, asceticism and discipline to violate due process, assault the rule of law, undermine state institutions and perpetrate all kinds of impunity. The blood of hundreds of Shiite Muslims killed in cold blood in Kaduna and buried in a mass grave due to the use of disproportionate force cries out against them. They detain people for indefinite periods despite court rulings to the contrary. They shirk their responsibilities and look the other way when lawless herdsmen reap a harvest of innocent deaths on a daily basis. They abuse their offices and substitute loyalty to partisan and personal interests for loyalty to the constitution and the state. Let them listen to the words of Martin Luther King again: “There is something in this universe that justifies the biblical writer in saying, “You shall reap what you sow”.

    But then, what are the recognition accorded June 12 and the honour done Abiola about? Is it about winning the next elections as some insinuate? That would be hardly illegitimate. But it would be the height of pathetic and regrettable banality. Let me resort to Martin Luther King Jr. again: “The thing that we need in the world today is a group of men and women who will stand up for right and be opposed to wrong, wherever it is”. Buhari has stood up to be counted among such men and women in Nigeria through his commitment to fighting corruption. His decision on June 12, MKO Abiola and Gani Fawehinmi is a mark of great courage. When the majority of APC elected party and state officers wanted illegal tenure elongation for party officials Buhari courageously said no and insisted on due process and the rule of law. He could have thrown the weight of his office behind the continuity in office of an incompetent party leadership at the next convention of the party as many wanted. He said no.

    Buhari certainly has what it takes to look those in his administration tainted by corruption boldly in the eye and not only say ‘enough’ but make them face the law. They are making a mockery of his anti-corruption war. He has what it takes to show incompetent hands out of his administration. He has what it takes to cast out the demons of alleged nepotism that erodes his immense goodwill while compelling his security chiefs to decisively reign in armed killer gangs now on the rampage wherever they come from or quit their offices for more competent hands.

    When he begins to do that, his gesture on June 12, Abiola and Fawheinmi will not be simply about the next election, which is essentially transient and ephemeral. It will be about bequeathing to posterity an enduring legacy. Believe me, given his unbelievable absolute indifference to the crass materialism that is the bane of Nigeria’s political elite, there are few people better placed than Buhari to help lay the foundation for a new Nigeria.

  • Sequence of elections

    By placing the National Assembly elections first in its now apparently botched and ill advised attempt to reorder the sequence of next year’s election, the legislators opened themselves to legitimate charges of making an essentially self-serving law to promote personal rather than the national interest. Of course, the sequence of elections is less important than and has little bearing on the integrity and credibility of the polls, which are the most critical things for the country’s democratic development.

    The increasing and systematic improvement in the conduct of elections at various levels since the inception of this dispensation in 1999 culminating in the landmark 2015 election, which saw a party in control of the centre losing to the opposition for the first time in the country’s history, is one indication of the steady deepening of Nigeria’s democracy. Apart from increasing the number of elections from two to three without considering the economic implications, the decision to seek to ensure the holding of the National Assembly elections first was arbitrary and devoid of logic. The legislators thus created the impression that the law was targeted at President Buhari whose election would have been held last had the President not vetoed the bill as argued by supporters of the President in the Senate.

    Ordinarily a good case could be made for reordering the sequence of the elections and regulating this by law rather than leaving it to the discretion of an Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) completely beholden to the executive. It is not always that we will be lucky to have a Chairman of INEC with the integrity, competence and strength of character of a Professor Attahiru Jega. Indeed, President Buhari unaccountably departed from the commendable and desirable precedent of an incumbent President not choosing a Chairman of INEC from his own part of the country. In this regard, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan deserves plaudits for not only choosing a northerner as Chairman of INEC but one with the radical pedigree and antecedents of Professor Jega. That is why not only strengthening the independence of the electoral body but also removing its discretion to order the sequence of elections are necessary conditions for strengthening the country’s electoral processes and, by implication, her democracy.  The frequent changes in the sequence of elections since 1999 are unhealthy and follow neither rhyme nor reason.

    Of course, it can be argued that too much ado is being made about the sequence of elections. After all, in spite of the presidential and National Assembly elections holding first in 2015, the incumbent President still lost. However, the tussle between the executive and the legislature as regards the sequence of the elections shows that both arms of government believe that there is some advantage to be reaped from the order in which elections are held. Unfortunately, the National Assembly spoilt what would have been a good and valid case for reordering the elections by law because of the evident and undisguised self-interest that underlined its motive. If it had held a stakeholders forum with a view to generating public debate and input on the matter, it may well have made it impossible for the President to veto the amended Electoral Act.

    The truth of the matter is that the so called bandwagon effect that is the underlying cause behind the politics of reordering the sequence of elections is a real factor in the country’s elections and can even detract from the efficacy of the country’s democracy. There is no doubt, for instance, that the All Progressives Congress (APC) reaped bountifully from President Buhari’s victory in the subsequent elections. It can, of course, be argued that the bandwagon effect can cut both ways no matter the sequence of elections. However, given the immense power and influence of Nigeria’s presidency, the bandwagon effect will most likely be more potent and work in favour of a party that wins the presidency in the first election. There is thus the likelihood that a not insubstantial number of voters will be swayed not necessarily by the merit of candidates in subsequent elections but by the fear of voting for candidates or parties in opposition to the all powerful presidency. Holding the presidential election first would thus further strengthen the presidency with negative implications for the country’s democracy.

    Rather than the National Assembly’s bid to have three sets of elections or, most ridiculously, having the legislators’ election first, however, it could more logically have proposed holding the governorship and state House of Assembly elections first and the Presidential and National Assembly elections second. That way the elections would hold from the grassroots to the centre and not from the top to the bottom as INEC has decided for the 2019 elections. This would at least partially help to address the problem of the over centralization of our polity and deepen the country’s federal practice. It is certainly not too late for a more thorough and rigorous debate to be held on the sequence of elections with a view to correcting the demerits of the current arbitrary situation where the electoral body fixes the order of elections according to its whims and fancies.

     

    Integrity factor and national development

    In his path breaking tome on development economics titled: ‘The Challenge of Poverty in Africa’ and published in 2000, Professor Emmanuel J. Nwosu, identifies what he calls the ‘integrity factor’ as a distinctive factor of production which “is the next highly critical and the next highly indispensable factor in production and in the economic growth and development processes after labour (human resource) itself”. He depicts  this as the ‘moral/immoral or ethical/unethical dimension’ that are critical to development. In his words: “We have found that the integrity factor determines the direction the application of labour ultimately takes, i.e. whether labour-power is used positively to overall advantage, interest and good of the collective, or whether it is used negatively to ruin the collective interests, hopes and aspirations. Before now, and to our knowledge, sufficient explanation has not formally been made in development economics to distinguish between these two divergent directions of the application of labour power.”

    All too often the narrative on Nigeria’s development travails and challenges has focused on the negative particularly the phenomenon of grand corruption as well as inept and visionless leadership. This past week has, however, witnessed the landmark birthdays of icons of integrity – Mr. Femi Falana (SAN), distinguished human rights lawyer, Mr. Kunle Ajibade, outstanding man of letters and ideas, Professor Ayo Olukotun, distinguished political scientist and columnist as well as Professor Kayode Soremekun, expert on the politics of oil, international relations scholar and Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Oye Ekiti (FUOYE). All of these men are characterized by the highest standards of integrity, character and commitment to the best interest of Nigeria. They are the salt of the Nigerian earth. There is certainly hope for our country.

  • Legislators on the cross

    You may revile them. You may deplore them. You may despise them. You may abhor them. And there is indeed just cause for a substantial number of Nigerians to be utterly disgusted with members of the 8th National Assembly.  The humongous illegitimate allowances of N13.5 million monthly in addition to the legitimate earnings of N700,000 received by each legislator is simply outrageous. And the pecuniary racket that the constituency projects have allegedly become is condemnable. No less irritating to many Nigerians is the seeming sleight of hand that characterized the emergence of the current National Assembly’s leadership.

    No matter the revulsion that the gross ethical deficits of the National Assembly evokes, however, it is still important that the sanctity and institutional integrity of the legislature as an arm of government is respected and preserved. Attempts to demonize, demean, devalue and irredeemably discredit this critical arm of government for its shortcomings are shortsighted and ill advised. I find it alarming when highly respected opinion moulders and public analysts give the impression that they would not mind if the National Assembly is disbanded altogether presumably for the puritanical executive to govern unencumbered. Nothing could be more dangerous.

    For all its weaknesses and failings, the National Assembly has served as an important check on the excesses of the executive in this dispensation. In some ways, the National Assembly has been the saving grace of our democracy particularly under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. Let me explain. Buhari is restrained, mature, cautious and hesitant in the use of power as well as abstemious and ascetic in his disposition to material acquisition. Not so many members of his trusted inner circle.

    Many of them have exhibited traits of incurable avariciousness. This is why we have had such embarrassing and avoidable incidents as Mainagate, the Babachir Lawal grass cutting contract scam, the mysterious and still unexplained discovery of humongous amounts of money that led to the removal of the former DG of the NIA, Ambassador Ayo Oke and the controversial reinstatement of the Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Professor Yusuf Usman, in inexplicable circumstances to name a few. None of these grievous matters with serious ethical implications have been brought to closure.

    And even worse, some members of the President’s inner circle have shown a capacity for ruthless deployment of power and total disregard for due process and the rule of law. In this context, it would have been a great tragedy indeed if the relationship between the legislature and the executive at the national level had been one of servility and supineness as is the case in most states of the federation.

    In any case, in their justified umbrage and obsessive preoccupation with the perceived excesses of the current National Assembly, many analysts are distracted from discerning the more fundamental dimensions of the problem of primitive accumulation confronting the polity.  The difference in reality between the 8th National Assembly and the preceding ones since 1999 has been one of degree and not of kind. The present crop of legislators is not necessarily any more corrupt than previous sets; it is only that the magnitude of largesse at their disposal has grown more humongous. This is less a function of a supposed virulent strain of greed peculiar to the legislators than it is a manifestation of the deepening problem of corruption in the society, President Buhari’s best efforts notwithstanding in this season of presumed change.

    Indeed, if we go further back in time, we will discover that complaints as regards the excessive consumptive propensities of the National Assembly were no less vehement in the Second Republic. In their book, ‘The Rise and Fall of Nigeria’s Second Republic’, for instance, Professors Toyin Falola and Julius Ihonvbere note that “In 9 months in 1980, the members of the National Assembly (545 in all) obtained as salaries and allowances an astronomical sum of N44,309,300. This amount increased the year after”. (Page 109). It would be the height of superficiality in analysis to portray members of the 8th Assembly as some peculiarly morally defective specie irredeemably infected with the virus of venality while the rest of us are saints. In reality, how many of those who are most vocal today in condemning the outrageous allowances of the federal legislators would decline to collect their own share if they found themselves in the legislators’ ‘lucky’ shoes?

    Yes, there has been more restraint and discipline in the husbandry and utilization of public funds under Buhari. In many ways, the fear of Buhari is still the beginning of fiscal discretion and wisdom despite his own inevitable human foibles. As a result of greater transparency and accountability in the management of public funds under the All Progressives Congress (APC) federal government, many federal agencies have been remitting more funds to the Federation Account. Huge amounts of stolen funds in local and foreign currencies including myriad physical assets have been retrieved from looters of our commonwealth. Yet, it would appear that public office holders have only devised cleverer, more subtle ways of looting public funds ‘in accordance with due process and the rule of law’ (apologies to Sam Omatseye).

    Nothing proves this more than the indescribable acrimony, chaos and violence that have characterized the APC congresses across the country. Parallel congresses have been held in at least 26 of the 36 states. The struggle for the control of party structures has been vicious unrestrained and unstructured. Of course, this is because those who have the party structures in their grip will have easy access to become party candidates for state power either in the legislature or executive. All of this confirms the great political economist, Professor Claude Ake’s characterization of Nigerian politics over two decades ago as one “in which power is sought without restraint and used without restraint and the struggle for power is so intense that political competition escalates to a form of warfare”.

    But why do we have this kind of overvaluation of political power? Ake explains: “Lacking economic base, the Nigerian ruling class is thrown back on what it has, namely, political leverage. It has used political power particularly the control of state power, to amass wealth in an attempt to consolidate its material base to the extent that political power is now the established way to wealth”.  The intense and desperate struggle for control of party structures as a stepping stone to state power within the APC can certainly not be as a result of so much love for the Nigerian people. It is because access to state power still remains the easiest route to material accumulation.

    Thus, beyond flaunting Buhari’s undeniable personal integrity, retrieving stolen funds and assets from plunderer’s of the public till, undertaking the tedious prosecution of indicted persons on a tortuous judicial terrain and the episodic publishing of the list of alleged looters of Nigeria’s resources,  the APC has shown little evidence of deeply studying the problem of corruption in all its multifarious dimensions – economic, sociological, cultural, psychological, political, bureaucratic etc – with a view to meaningfully working to achieve enduring and fundamental value re-orientation and sustainable social change.

    My perceptive and cerebral colleague, Olakunle Abimbola, has been waging a valiant and relentless campaign for the electorate to vote out errant and thieving legislators at the next elections. That endeavour is certainly most patriotic and welcome. But until that is achieved, the current crop of legislators remains our legitimate representatives and the legislature as an institution should not be destroyed on account of their foibles.

     

    Who is afraid of Kayode Fayemi?

    It certainly cannot get more comical.  I refer to the attempt by some amorphous group to get the Ekiti State APC governorship candidate, Dr Kayode Fayemi’s right to contest the July 14 election judicially truncated on the basis of the report of some farcical judicial panel of inquiry set up by an obviously inquisitorial and adversarial Ayodele Fayose PDP administration deliberately bent on discrediting its predecessor in office.  If any court entertains this kind of frivolity, it would have opened the flood gates for vengeful incumbents to prevent their predecessors from ever seeking public office again.  A good example is the Nyesom Wike/Rotimi Amaechi saga in Rivers.

    Kayode Fayemi
    Fayemi

    I recall that in the second republic, Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s political foes attempted to get him disqualified from contesting for office on the basis of the spurious Coker Commission of Inquiry, which was utterly lacking in credibility. In the same vein, an attempt was made to get Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe disqualified on the ground that he did not fulfill the requisite tax obligations. Of course, such devious and manipulative legal subterfuges could not fly.  It is unwise and unlikely that the judiciary will allow itself to descend into the partisan arena in this case. The consequences could be deleterious. Let all legitimate party candidates test their popularity at the polls.  Or is somebody afraid of Kayode Fayemi?

  • Adebayo Adedeji and Africa’s development debate (1)

    It was a dramatic encounter. The forum was one of those Organization of African Unity (OAU) Heads of State summits during the regime of Nigeria’s military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, in the 1980s.  Exactly which one it was I cannot recollect now. That was a time when the hegemonic International Financial Institutions (IFIs) were imposing stringent Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) as a cure all for all ailing African economies as a precondition for foreign aid and loans. In attendance, as a member of the Nigerian government delegation was the eminent journalist, media administrator and lawyer, Chief Tony Momoh, who was Nigeria’s Minister of Information. Also a frontline participant at the event was the respected development economist, public administrator, international civil servant, academic and researcher, Professor Adebayo Adedeji, in his capacity as Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

    The Babangida regime had enthusiastically embraced the Structural Adjustment policies, which included massive currency devaluation, deregulation of the economy, reduction of the public sector workforce, comprehensive privatization of public enterprises, and removal of subsidies on critical social services among others. The regime’s officials, particularly the brilliant rationalist and Secretary to the Federal Government, Chief Olu Falae, articulately advocated the IMF and World Bank positions that there was no alternative to SAP as the only path out of Africa’s protracted crisis of underdevelopment. Professor Adedeji had at several fora vigorously canvassed an opposing view to the obvious discomfiture of his home government. He was of the firm belief that not only was most of the policy components of SAP inappropriate, but there were indeed viable alternatives to them. Chief Tony Momoh, spokesman of a pro-SAP government unconventionally put on his toga as a journalist at that event, got a tape recorder and sought an interview with the Professor, which the latter readily gave. The interesting exchange between the two men was later published in the Daily Times if my memory serves me right.

    It would appear to me as a layman that the defining essence of the life of Professor Adebayo Adedeji who passed on to eternity on 25th April, 2018, was the intellectual struggle to extricate African Development Strategy and Policy from the hegemonic stranglehold of external forces, particularly IFIs that may not necessarily mean well for the continent. For those of us who do not have the requisite grounding and expertise in economic as well as development theory and analysis to appreciate and apprehend his technical disquisitions, there are luckily a number of easily accessible publications on the life, times and works of Professor Adedeji. One of these, for instance, is a collection of essays in his honour when he clocked 65 titled ‘Issues in African Development’ and edited by Bade Onimode and Richard Synge. Published by Heinemann Educational Books (Nigeria) Plc in association with the African Centre for Development and Strategic Studies in 1995, the book is divided into four sections comprising 16 chapters and runs into 323 pages.

    The book’s contributors are some of the most illustrious scholars from diverse disciplines including economics, history, politics, public administration, development as well as experts in diverse spheres of international development administration. In the preface to the book by Stephen Lewis, we have a glimpse of what Professor Adedeji meant to those who worked with him at the ECA. In his words, “Collaborating with Adebayo Adedeji was an extraordinary experience. His whole persona comes alive when he speaks, feelingly, of Africa; it stimulates everyone around him; conviction and animation are unleashed in equal measure, and just when you feel the tensions perilously rising, his voluble laugh bursts forth in a catharsis of reconciliation. Adedeji’s great strength lies in his unswerving determination to resolve the African crisis. Nothing distracts him. As a result, his contribution to Africa gives meaning to internationalism”.

    The same impression is conveyed in a statement by the former Secretary General of the United Nations, Perez de Cuellar, to the 27th Assembly of the Heads of Government of the OAU, held in Abuja on 3rd June, 1991 in a fulsome tribute to Adedeji thus: “Professor Adedeji has been at the helm of ECA for more than half of its existence and has left an indelible mark on the work and objectives of the Commission. He has made significant contributions to successive initiatives to address and to improve Africa’s economic and social situation. I am pleased to have this opportunity to congratulate him, in his native land, for a job well done, and to wish him success in his future undertakings”.

    My favourite chapter in this book is titled ‘Africa’s Development Crisis in Historical Perspective’ by the late Professor J.F Ade-Ajayi; a chapter in which a scholar I had assumed to be essentially of a conservative cast traces the developmental travails of the continent to the legacy of foreign conquests such as the Arab and Atlantic slave trade, colonialism and neocolonialism. That chapter reminds one of the immortal Walter Rodney in his ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’. Writing about the legacy of colonialism, for instance, Ajayi perspicaciously observes that “The interest of the European powers in Africa was to disrupt existing lines of intra-African trade, and channel all effort into the production of primary crops required for export, and encourage importation of European goods even if it meant destroying local manufactures, crafts and industries.

    • Continued online www.staging.thenationonlineng.net

  • Stamp duty impunity

    Almost three years into the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, Nigeria continues to walk a fiscal tight rope. The punitive wages of economic recession from which the nation has only just fragilely emerged was partly the result of the horrific corruption of the preceding PDP years of the locust, which was compounded by the initial political inertia and policy lethargy of the emergent All Progressives Congress (APC) administration at the centre. Despite the Buhari administration’s substantial stanching of the massive haemorrhaging of public resources through its anti-corruption strategies as well as its herculean efforts to diversify the economy and enhance self-reliance, millions of Nigerians still remain in the stranglehold of mass immiseration.

    As the Federal Government has no choice but to intensify its quest for foreign loans in the face of its largely inherited fiscal crisis, the World Bank this week raised an alarm over the country’s rising external indebtedness along with other African countries. A majority of state governments owe several months of workers’ salaries, allowances and pensions and are unable to meet other obligations to the general public. The virtual paralysis of federal health institutions nationwide as a result of the ongoing strike action by aggrieved health workers over unmet demands illustrates the near state of emergency into which governance has been thrown in Nigeria due to severe financial denudation.

    Against this background, is it not utterly scandalous that about N20 trillion, being revenues from Stamp Duties which ought to have been long paid into the Federation Account for onward disbursement to the federal and state governments, continue to be illegally withheld by the requisite financial institutions and authorities that ought to know better? It is significant that the creative professional and financial engineering ingenuity that led to the generation of this fund is that of Nigerians and not any foreign experts. Specifically, the credit goes to the School of Banking Honours (SBH), an Innovative Enterprise Institution (IEI) and monotechnic registered under Nigerian law to research into banking operations and collaborate with banks and government on banking matters.

    On September 11, last year, this newspaper published an exhaustive investigative story by the Group Business Editor, Simeon Ebulu, detailing how the government and people of Nigeria had for several years been denied the opportunity of benefiting from the humongous funds reaped through stamp duties from the banking public but shrouded in suspicious bureaucratic secrecy. In the report, the SBH’s Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Tola Adekoya, disclosed how, in pursuit of its mandate, the institution’s Job Creation and Research Department discovered that the country was losing gargantuan amounts of revenue, which ought to accrue to the Federation Account, as a result of the non-enforcement of relevant provisions of extant Stamp Duty laws as well as the Federal Government Financial Regulations (2009).

    To plug this loophole and correct the anomaly, the SBH approached the Nigerian Postal Services (NIPOST) on 20th April, 2012, and intimated the latter of an unexploited opportunity in the Stamp Duties Act, 2004, to increase its internally generated revenue by affixing adhesive stamp on banking receipts as provided for in the law. On the basis of this initiative, the SBH entered into a Masters Services Agreement with NIPOST on September 14, 2012, to help facilitate the collection of Stamp Duties on banking receipts in compliance with the Stamp Duty Act, 2004. Armed with the Masters Services Agreement with NIPOST, the SBH approached the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for authorization to engage Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) and other qualified institutions as collecting agents in the stamping and remittance of legally stipulated stamp duties. The CBN gave the required approval on December 3, 2012. And on October 15, 2015, the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) issued the SBH a Copyright Certificate (No. LW1023) affirming its copyright ownership of the initiative on stamp duty collection.

    Before the initiative of the SBH, stamp duty on all Cheques with a value above N500,000 had been paid to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) since 1993 with the revenue allegedly not remitted to the Federation Account over the years as required by law. With the intervention of the SBH, however, the scope of the Stamp Duty was vastly expanded to encompass N50 per banking transaction covering manual and e-transfers from N1000 and above. The mandatory stamp duty payment was also extended to cover Local e-transfers, international transfers, internet-banking, ATMs, Point of Sale and e-mobile all covered under the CBN Act, 1991, but inexplicably overlooked until the lapse was pointed out by the SBH.

    Apparently exhausting its patience after waiting for three years with no stamp duty revenue reportedly remitted to the Federation Account and its legal entitlement on the project not met, the SBH issued a Demand Notice to the NIBSS dated 10th March, 2015, entitled ‘Stamp Duty on Electronic Receipts (2013-2014)’ alleging that the sum of N7.719 trillion accruing from stamp duty on electronic cashless transfer between 2013 and 2014 had been illegally kept with the NIBSS rather being transferred to the Federation Account for the benefit of the federal and state governments. According to the SBH, the over N7 trillion in question represents an average of N160 billion realized daily from the specified banking transactions in only five states in 2013 and 2014.

    The institution estimates that when account is taken of the amount that has inevitably accrued on stamp duty over an additional three-year period (2014-2017), the unremitted revenue to the Federation Account stands at about N20 trillion. This implies that the 36 states will be entitled to no less than N200 billion each from the first tranche of the inexplicably withheld revenue.

    In an editorial on the issue published in its 18th September, 2017, edition, this newspaper wrote: “For a country just getting out of the throes of recession and needing every kobo it can get to accelerate the rate of economic recovery and further growth, the SBH’s allegations are too serious to ignore. The appropriate authorities must urgently look into the issue with a view to unearthing the truth and recovering any due amount into the Federation Account if the SBH’s claims are found to be credible”. And true to his anti-corruption credentials, President Buhari reportedly authorized that the issues in contention be investigated and the verified facts made available to him expeditiously.

    It was certainly on this basis that the presidency on 12th October, 2017, approved the retention of the SBH in partnership with Messrs. International Investment Law & Arbitration LLC as the legal Stamp Duties recovery Agent/Consultant with a mandate to “recover over N20 trillion from Nigerian Inter Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) to the Federation Account in line with your patent right now in force”. While the Presidency assured the SBH that “the Federal Government will provide you and your partner (International Investment Law & Arbitration LLC) with adequate security during the assignment”, it however stated that “your consultancy fee is 7.5% of the total amount recovered as against 20% earlier agreed in the Master Services Agreement with the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST)”.

    And obviously to underscore its seriousness on the matter, the Presidency followed up with a written directive to the Central Bank Governor on 19th October, 2017, stating the official role of SBH and International Investment Law & Arbitration LLC in the recovery of “the sum of N20.0 trillion Stamp Duty through the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc. (NIBSS)” and stressing that “The Consultants will introduce a sustainable template to meet the CBN directive of 3rd December, 2012, for Messrs. School of Banking Honours to sweep Stamp Duty accruing from banks and other financial institutions into Government coffers, as patented under the Law”. The apex bank was further mandated to “direct the Management of NIBSS, Banks and other Financial Institutions to cooperate with the Consultants to access all records relevant to the success of the assignment”.

    Despite the unequivocal presidential directive, the SBH claims it has met a brick wall in its efforts to commence work on its mandate particularly from the NIBSS. While the SBH met with legal representatives of the CBN on February 1st, 2018, its meeting with the NIBSS scheduled for 5th February, 2018, was reportedly aborted with the latter claiming to be still awaiting a directive from the CBN on the issue. As millions of Nigerians continue to wallow in ever deepening poverty, it is unconscionable to allow N20 trillion that ought to be paid into the Federation Account to ameliorate the plight of the people to continue to lie idle for no apparent just cause.

    If the NIBSS has alternative facts to render the claims of the SBH nugatory, it should make them available for the consideration of the presidency. To continue to stonewall as the NIBSS seems to be doing in the face of the SBH’s legal claims and the clear position of the presidency is an act of intolerable impunity.

  • Albert Einstein, science and religioin

    There are so many enriching, stimulating ennobling and enlightening thoughts on diverse aspects of life – human rights, education, friendship, freedom, morality, politics, science etc. – in Albert Einstein’s collection of essays simply titled ‘Ideas and Opinions’. We have, however, chosen to focus today on the great scientist’s views as regards religion, morality, God and the relationship of these phenomena to the scientific vocation and imagination. Einstein’s essays which will inform the reflections in this piece are: ‘Religion and Science’; ‘The religious Spirit of Science’ and ‘Religion and Science Irreconcilable?’

    Some of the keenest intellects and most outstanding personalities of our time – scientific and non-scientific – have dismissed religion as utterly pre-scientific and mythical. In the same vein, they have derided the idea of God as a veritable illusion. Here in Nigeria, for instance, the late engineering genius, Professor AyodeleAwojobi, was a professed agnostic. He said he had no evidence to prove the existence or otherwise of God. The late Dr. Tai Solarin and BekoRansomeKuti were also lifelong atheists who denied belief in the existence of the supernatural. Yet, the trio were veritable moral exemplars and fighters for truth and justice whose lives showed that there is no necessarily ineluctable nexus between religious belief and a moral outlook on life.

    The British mathematician, philosopher and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1950, Professor Bertrand Russell was also a professed atheist throughout his long life. I remember poring for hours over his treatise titled ‘One hundred reasons why I am not a Christian’ at the central library of the University of Ibadan as a student. A contemporary scientist who is a passionate advocate of atheism is Professor Richard Dawkins, is the English ethnologist and evolutionary biologist, whose explosive book, ‘The God Delusion’, published in 2006 has sold millions of copies around the world. He contends in the highly controversial and polemical book that the whole idea of God’s existence is a delusion and that religious belief is difficult to distinguish from some form of insanity. On a personal note, I find it difficult to believe that such a complex, intricate and well-ordered world like ours could have come into existence simply by chance or that creation can exist without a creator. Would it not be ridiculous if somebody claimed that Professor Dawkin’s book simply sprang to life by chance without an author that conceived, designed and wrote it? But then, mine is no scientific mind and my seeming ignorance may thus be permitted.

    Now, there are important points of convergence as well as fundamental divergences between Richard Dawkins and Albert Einstein’s conceptions of God, religion and morality. Like Dawkins, Einstein does not believe in what the former describes as an “interventionist, miracle-working, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible”. Both men denounce the idea that there is a supernatural and personal God who interferes with the affairs of men and the universe. Another point on which both men are agreed in my view is their belief that there is no logically necessary relationship between religion and morality; that man does not need religion in order to be good. As Einstein puts it “A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social ties and needs, no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death”. This observation reminds us of the Sufi Muslim poet who wrote: “O Lord, if I worship thee in fear of hell, burn me in hell; If I worship thee in hope of heaven, deny me of heaven; But if I worship thee for thy own sake, withhold not thy beauty everlasting”.

    However, unlike Dawkins who mercilessly deprecates religion and launches a most vicious and virulent attack on the notion of God, Einstein demonstrates a greater respect and understanding of the role of religion in promoting the good and welfare of humanity. According to him, “For the moral attitudes of a people that are supported by religion need always aim at preserving and promoting the sanity and vitality of the community and its individuals, since otherwise this community is bound to perish. A people that were to honour falsehood, defamation, fraud, and murder would be unable, indeed, to subsist for very long”. Yet, he also laments the wide gulf between the lofty claims and ideals of religion and the actual lived experience of humanity. In his words “For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one’s fellow men”.

    Einstein traces the evolution of religion from beliefs based on fear of the supernatural that characterized primitive human society to the social and moral conception of religion and a God who, protects rewards and punishes a human species that he loves and cherishes. This he says is found in Judeo-Christian religion as well as the religions of the peoples of the Orient. For him, however, the highest conception of religion is what he describes as the Cosmic Religious feeling – which he obviously favours personally. This Cosmic religion, he claims, is borne of “the sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought”. Continuing, he avers that “In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views”. In other words, despite his lack of belief in a personal God who intervenes in human affairs, Einstein cannot believe that such a well ordered world as ours could exist without a designer.

    For Einstein, then, science is not necessarily a substitute for religion. He believes that both phenomena serve qualitatively different ends. Science provides man with the knowledge of what is; how various parts of an observable physical universe relate to each other but it cannot dictate “what should be the goal of human aspirations”. He argues that our fundamental ends, aspirations and purposes as human beings cannot be determined by scientific demonstrations, “but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly”.

  • Stamp duty impunity

    Almost three years into the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, Nigeria continues to walk a fiscal tight rope. The punitive wages of economic recession from which the nation has only just fragilely emerged was partly the result of the horrific corruption of the preceding PDP years of the locust, which was compounded by the initial political inertia and policy lethargy of the emergent All Progressives Congress (APC) administration at the centre. Despite the Buhari administration’s substantial stanching of the massive haemorrhaging of public resources through its anti-corruption strategies as well as its herculean efforts to diversify the economy and enhance self-reliance, millions of Nigerians still remain in the stranglehold of mass immiseration.

    As the Federal Government has no choice but to intensify its quest for foreign loans in the face of its largely inherited fiscal crisis, the World Bank this week raised an alarm over the country’s rising external indebtedness along with other African countries. A majority of state governments owe several months of workers’ salaries, allowances and pensions and are unable to meet other obligations to the general public. The virtual paralysis of federal health institutions nationwide as a result of the ongoing strike action by aggrieved health workers over unmet demands illustrates the near state of emergency into which governance has been thrown in Nigeria due to severe financial denudation.

    Against this background, is it not utterly scandalous that about N20 trillion, being revenues from Stamp Duties which ought to have been long paid into the Federation Account for onward disbursement to the federal and state governments, continue to be illegally withheld by the requisite financial institutions and authorities that ought to know better? It is significant that the creative professional and financial engineering ingenuity that led to the generation of this fund is that of Nigerians and not any foreign experts. Specifically, the credit goes to the School of Banking Honours (SBH), an Innovative Enterprise Institution (IEI) and monotechnic registered under Nigerian law to research into banking operations and collaborate with banks and government on banking matters.

    On September 11, last year, this newspaper published an exhaustive investigative story by the Group Business Editor, Simeon Ebulu, detailing how the government and people of Nigeria had for several years been denied the opportunity of benefiting from the humongous funds reaped through stamp duties from the banking public but shrouded in suspicious bureaucratic secrecy. In the report, the SBH’s Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Tola Adekoya, disclosed how, in pursuit of its mandate, the institution’s Job Creation and Research Department discovered that the country was losing gargantuan amounts of revenue, which ought to accrue to the Federation Account, as a result of the non-enforcement of relevant provisions of extant Stamp Duty laws as well as the Federal Government Financial Regulations (2009).

    To plug this loophole and correct the anomaly, the SBH approached the Nigerian Postal Services (NIPOST) on 20th April, 2012, and intimated the latter of an unexploited opportunity in the Stamp Duties Act, 2004, to increase its internally generated revenue by affixing adhesive stamp on banking receipts as provided for in the law. On the basis of this initiative, the SBH entered into a Masters Services Agreement with NIPOST on September 14, 2012, to help facilitate the collection of Stamp Duties on banking receipts in compliance with the Stamp Duty Act, 2004. Armed with the Masters Services Agreement with NIPOST, the SBH approached the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for authorization to engage Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) and other qualified institutions as collecting agents in the stamping and remittance of legally stipulated stamp duties. The CBN gave the required approval on December 3, 2012. And on October 15, 2015, the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) issued the SBH a Copyright Certificate (No. LW1023) affirming its copyright ownership of the initiative on stamp duty collection.

    Before the initiative of the SBH, stamp duty on all Cheques with a value above N500,000 had been paid to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) since 1993 with the revenue allegedly not remitted to the Federation Account over the years as required by law. With the intervention of the SBH, however, the scope of the Stamp Duty was vastly expanded to encompass N50 per banking transaction covering manual and e-transfers from N1000 and above. The mandatory stamp duty payment was also extended to cover Local e-transfers, international transfers, internet-banking, ATMs, Point of Sale and e-mobile all covered under the CBN Act, 1991, but inexplicably overlooked until the lapse was pointed out by the SBH.

    Apparently exhausting its patience after waiting for three years with no stamp duty revenue reportedly remitted to the Federation Account and its legal entitlement on the project not met, the SBH issued a Demand Notice to the NIBSS dated 10th March, 2015, entitled ‘Stamp Duty on Electronic Receipts (2013-2014)’ alleging that the sum of N7.719 trillion accruing from stamp duty on electronic cashless transfer between 2013 and 2014 had been illegally kept with the NIBSS rather being transferred to the Federation Account for the benefit of the federal and state governments. According to the SBH, the over N7 trillion in question represents an average of N160 billion realized daily from the specified banking transactions in only five states in 2013 and 2014.

    The institution estimates that when account is taken of the amount that has inevitably accrued on stamp duty over an additional three-year period (2014-2017), the unremitted revenue to the Federation Account stands at about N20 trillion. This implies that the 36 states will be entitled to no less than N200 billion each from the first tranche of the inexplicably withheld revenue.

    In an editorial on the issue published in its 18th September, 2017, edition, this newspaper wrote: “For a country just getting out of the throes of recession and needing every kobo it can get to accelerate the rate of economic recovery and further growth, the SBH’s allegations are too serious to ignore. The appropriate authorities must urgently look into the issue with a view to unearthing the truth and recovering any due amount into the Federation Account if the SBH’s claims are found to be credible”. And true to his anti-corruption credentials, President Buhari reportedly authorized that the issues in contention be investigated and the verified facts made available to him expeditiously.

    It was certainly on this basis that the presidency on 12th October, 2017, approved the retention of the SBH in partnership with Messrs. International Investment Law & Arbitration LLC as the legal Stamp Duties recovery Agent/Consultant with a mandate to “recover over N20 trillion from Nigerian Inter Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) to the Federation Account in line with your patent right now in force”. While the Presidency assured the SBH that “the Federal Government will provide you and your partner (International Investment Law & Arbitration LLC) with adequate security during the assignment”, it however stated that “your consultancy fee is 7.5% of the total amount recovered as against 20% earlier agreed in the Master Services Agreement with the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST)”.

    And obviously to underscore its seriousness on the matter, the Presidency followed up with a written directive to the Central Bank Governor on 19th October, 2017, stating the official role of SBH and International Investment Law & Arbitration LLC in the recovery of “the sum of N20.0 trillion Stamp Duty through the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc. (NIBSS)” and stressing that “The Consultants will introduce a sustainable template to meet the CBN directive of 3rd December, 2012, for Messrs. School of Banking Honours to sweep Stamp Duty accruing from banks and other financial institutions into Government coffers, as patented under the Law”. The apex bank was further mandated to “direct the Management of NIBSS, Banks and other Financial Institutions to cooperate with the Consultants to access all records relevant to the success of the assignment”.

    Despite the unequivocal presidential directive, the SBH claims it has met a brick wall in its efforts to commence work on its mandate particularly from the NIBSS. While the SBH met with legal representatives of the CBN on February 1st, 2018, its meeting with the NIBSS scheduled for 5th February, 2018, was reportedly aborted with the latter claiming to be still awaiting a directive from the CBN on the issue. As millions of Nigerians continue to wallow in ever deepening poverty, it is unconscionable to allow N20 trillion that ought to be paid into the Federation Account to ameliorate the plight of the people to continue to lie idle for no apparent just cause.

    If the NIBSS has alternative facts to render the claims of the SBH nugatory, it should make them available for the consideration of the presidency. To continue to stonewall as the NIBSS seems to be doing in the face of the SBH’s legal claims and the clear position of the presidency is an act of intolerable impunity.

  • APC’s thwarted coup attempt

    Let’s make no mistake about it. The decision by a preponderant majority of members of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at its February 27th, 2018, meeting to extend the tenure of the party’s Chief John Odigie-Oyegun-led National Working Committee (NWC) by one year was a subtly designed and swiftly executed attempted coup d’état.  It is a grand irony that it took a retired General who is himself not a stranger to military coups in Nigeria’s political history, President Muhammadu Buhari, whose political aloofness and taciturnity is legendary, to draw the array of experienced politicians, seasoned senior lawyers, other assorted professionals and astute administrators who make up the APC’s NEC to the path of legality and elevated morality and away from a potentially self-destructive lane strewn with legal landmines. This was at the March 27th meeting of the party’s NEC where the President had to diplomatically overrule the NEC on the matter.

    Whatever, may have been the altruistic love of party garb in which the tenure elongation ambit may have been adorned, its purpose was all too obvious. It was to gift members of the NWC an elongated tenure beyond their legal term limits without their having to face any challenges from party members who ordinarily have the constitutional right to seek to actualize their legitimate aspirations in intra-party polls. This was in essence a forceful and abrasive abridgement of the rights of the latter. Was this because the brains behind this move loved the Oyegun-led NWC so much that they wouldn’t mind their continuing in office for as long as possible? Not on your life. The NWC beneficiaries of this gesture, it can be logically argued, would be naturally expected to demonstrate due gratitude to their benefactors when the latter, particularly aspirants to executive and legislative seats in forthcoming elections, were either contesting party primaries or sponsoring others to do so. Surely, one good turn deserves another?

    And also naturally excited at the prospects of also benefitting from the tenure elongation bonus granted the NWC members, party officials at state and local government levels enthusiastically clambered aboard the one year extension life line. Was it not a character in one of the inimitable Chinua Achebe’s works who wondered if a man who was lucky enough to have a juicy morsel thrust in his mouth was expected to spew it out most foolishly? In all this self-seeking permutations and calculations, unfortunately, little thought was given to the ethical standing of the APC, a self-professed progressive party, in the estimation of at least a critical segment of the public.

    With the Machiavellian ruthlessness and unflappable cynicism that leading lights of the APC have exhibited in the entire tenure elongation gambit, it is obvious that the so-called moral distinction that some seek to draw between the APC and PDP is entirely illusory. The APC’s tenure elongation misadventure is a form of political corruption no less opprobrious than the humongous fiscal malfeasance it has stridently criticized the PDP for.

    Even more damagingly, it does not seem to occur to the APC and its tenure elongation constitutional witches, wizards, sorcerers and conjurers that if it cannot be seen to exercise fidelity to its own rules and processes in managing its own affairs, particularly intra-party contests, it cannot convince anyone that it possesses the integrity and faith in democracy to conduct free, fair, credible and generally acceptable elections for the country. In a bid to ensure his continuity in office through illegal tenure elongation rather than seeking the popular mandate of party members in intra-party polls, Chief Oyegun has suddenly been exhibiting a commendable burst of energy, dynamism, creative bureaucratic filibustering and deft political fox trotting. Pray, where were all these qualities in the last four years as the party tottered, fractured, decayed and degenerated under his distracted, inattentive and somnolent watch? The suspended chairman of the Ondo State chapter of the APC, Mr. Isaac Kekemeke, made the point vividly: “My problem is that there is no single place that the current National Chairman has been able to resolve crisis within the party; he is part of the crisis…For him, once you don’t have power or you don’t have money, you will be suppressed forever. That is why we have crisis everywhere…and he (Oyegun) has not been able to resolve any of them”.

    As the model Officer/Gentleman that he is, President Buhari has been gingerly trying to carry every tendency in the party along without compromising his principled commitment to legality and fairness. Thus, addressing the party’s last NEC meeting before he travelled to the UK, Buhari stressed the need to grant members of NEC seeking re-election necessary constitutionally guaranteed waivers in order to enable them contest to realize their ambitions. Adumbrating on the President’s viewpoint, the Plateau State Governor and the APC Technical Committee on Tenure Elongation, Mr. Simon Lalong, also laid emphasis on the need to grant NWC members waivers to contest for party positions if they so desire without having to resign their positions 30 days before the date of nomination or the party primary as required by Article 31 1 (iii) of the APC constitution.

    Citing Article 31 1 (iii) of the party constitution and the 21 days notice that must be served the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) before the party congresses and convention, Lalong said: “If we are going to comply with this, the constitution requires that certain waivers be granted to those who are crying they will be disenfranchised…we are not saints, we are not angels. It is assumed that in the course of doing things, there may be unforeseen circumstances that will stop you or you reach a brick wall and therefore fail to conclude the exercise. That was the option that was made by the party, in creating an opportunity for you when you get to that brick-wall”.

    The governor seems to be engaged here in the linguistic equivalent of political glossolalia (speaking in tongues). It is difficult to decipher what he means. There are no unforeseen circumstances. There is no brick wall whatsoever. There can be no justifiable excuses for not concluding any party congresses and conventions within set time frames. All we have had is the inexcusable lethargy, complacency, indolence, and utter indifference and arrogance of the Oyegun-led NWC, the party leadership as a whole and the rank and file of party members in ensuring that the party is alive to its responsibilities.

    In a memo to the APC NEC at its Monday meeting, published by this newspaper on Wednesday and which has not been denied, Oyegun quotes the Lalong committee’s report as concluding that the NEC’s tenure elongation decision of February 27th is constitutionally valid after citing relevant statutes and authorities. According to the Chairman, “In essence, APC is competent through its relevant organs, to constitute caretaker committees to run the affairs of the party upon the expiration of the tenure of its elected party officials, where, for some reasons, it is impracticable to hold elections before the requisite effluxion of time”. Rather than this sophistry, Oyegun should be apologizing profusely and remorsefully for leading the party to this sorry pass through sheer leadership ineptness.

    Even then, the tenure of party executives expires on June 13. Between now and then are at least 60 days. This is sufficient time to meet the 21 days notice to be given INEC and the 30 days requirement for NWC members seeking re-election to resign. To ask NWC members who want to contest the primaries and return to their positions not to resign and thus be, indirectly, organizers and judges in a contest in which they are participants will be absolutely farcical. It will mean tenure elongation through the backdoor and the success of a coup that never ought to have been contemplated in the first place.

     

    And why is pmb seeking re-election?

    Whatever may have been the shortcomings and failings of his last three years in power, President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has made some difficult to ignore strides in its three core areas of focus –  enhancing security, fighting corruption and resuscitating the economy. The ascetic General certainly did not unsuccessfully seek re-election thrice – 2003, 2007 and 2011 – before the 2015 electoral triumph only for him to tamely give up after a single term and go back to Daura. A desire to improve upon and consolidate his first term performance should be sufficient reason for PMB to seek a second term without recourse to the so-called clamour by Nigerians for him to seek re-election. Otherwise, he could also easily have hearkened to the no less vocal voices asking him not to run. It is difficult to prove if one group is more or less selfish or selfless than the other. Since 1999, those who have always threatened to commit suicide if incumbents do not seek a second term largely include an assortment of ethnic entrepreneurs, political gamblers, spiritual speculators and religious investors, opportunistic emergency contractors, yet to be apprehended lunatics on the loose,  palace sycophants, bootlickers and comedians as well as scavengers in the corridors of power. No rational decision can be predicated on advice from such company.

  • Not exactly about Oyegun

    He was bold, decisive and forthright. Yet, President Muhammadu Buhari was at the same time conciliatory, consensual and diplomatic. The occasion was Tuesday’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), where the President overruled the earlier extension of tenure by one year granted the Chief John Odigie-Oyegun-led National Working Committee (NWC) of the party by the NEC. President Buhari admitted that the decision of the NEC at its February 27, 2018, meeting to extend the tenure of members of the NWC by one year “was duly carried by a majority of members present…even though some of our party members have since spoken up very vehemently against it. Others have even taken the matter to court”. But apparently weighing in with his critical and difficult to ignore voice as leader of the party, Buhari told his audience that legal advice at his disposal was to the effect that the extension contravened both the Constitution of the APC and the Constitution of the country.

    In the President’s words: “While the APC Constitution, in Article 17(1) and 13.2(B), limits the tenure of elected officers to four years, renewable once by another election, the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria (as amended), in section 223, also prescribes periodic elections for party executives at regular intervals, which must not exceed four years”. Warning that the party should avoid the potentially very risky implications of legal challenges to its decisions if they violated constitutional provisions either of the APC or the country, the President stressed the need to immediately begin processes for going on with already scheduled party congresses and conventions to pick new party officers at all levels. In his characteristic manner, Buhari nevertheless threw his position open for discussion by NEC members apparently seeking to hear alternative views and superior arguments.

    Some distinguished senior lawyers and members of the party NEC who spoke in opposition to the President’s stance reportedly expressed the view that NEC’s decision was valid and within the law, that internal decisions of the party could not be challenged in court and that, in any case, the decision on tenure elongation was sanctioned by a majority of members of party members. The subtle insinuation here was that the President’s was a minority view on the matter and should not override the majority if the democratic principle were to be adhered to.  However, the intervention by the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), reinforced the President’s position when he cited judicial decisions in Kano State specifically which had gone against the party because the party executives in place were appointed and not elected as mandated by the party constitution. He said the judicial decisions obligated the political parties to abide by their constitutions.

    But then, is there any need for the ruling party going into this tenure elongation controversy? Why should incumbent party executives at all levels seek to continue in office automatically without being subjected to the test of internal party democratic processes? If a key strength of the APC against the ruling PDP in 2014 was its open and transparent intra-party contests in contradistinction to the farcical exercises of the latter, why should the APC be eager to dispense with internal elections for tenure elongation at a time when the PDP, though still badly battered, is gradually getting its act together? Of course, let me quickly say here that it is entirely up to the APC if it opts to contest the next critical election from a legally fragile and morally diminished position. But as this column said when commenting on the last PDP convention, political parties are so critical to our political process that their internal affairs cannot be left to the whims and fancies of party members alone. Those who are non card carrying members of political parties also have a responsibility to encourage these critical structures to respect stipulated constitutional procedures in managing their affairs in the interest of the stability and well being of the larger political system.

    There are those who contend that the APC is so crisis ridden that holding party congresses to elect new party executives shortly before the 2019 polls will leave the party even more divided and thus ill prepared to compete effectively in the election. It is my view that the picture of a badly fragmented party in no position to abide by its own constitution al requirement to elect new party executives every four years is greatly exaggerated. The truth of the matter is that for an alliance hurriedly cobbled together to fight the 2015 election, the APC has held its own quite reasonably in the circumstances.  In any case, why should the APC seek to project a public image of a party so divided that it has become practically dysfunctional?  Is this not ultimately self-defeating? For, if it cannot manage its internal affairs as a political party, why should Nigerians entrust the party further with the responsibility of running the affairs of the country?

    Again, if the party has not made remarkable progress towards becoming a more cohesive organizational entity since the 2015 election, a huge chunk of the blame surely lies on the party executives seemingly so desperate for tenure elongation. It is difficult to understand, for instance, why the relationship between the National Assembly and the Presidency was allowed to degenerate so badly without the party leadership doing anything meaningful about it for so long. The consequence is that the Buhari administration has been considerably slowed down in the implementation of its policies to the detriment not only of the party’s image but the progress of the country. In the same vein, the party leadership inexplicably folded its arms and simply looked on as the APC degenerated into crises in several states. Surely, with a proactive, dynamic and purposeful party leadership in place, these crises could have been long tackled without the need of the President setting up a crisis resolution committee.

    Another argument of the tenure elongation proponents is that the period between now and next year’s election is too short for the party to organize and stage successful congresses and conventions.  This should certainly not be so if the party puts its mind to it. After all, it performed an even more herculean feat by holding at least three conventions between its formation and the last general election. It will only task the astuteness and acumen of the party leadership to the utmost. Again, however, the party leadership’s inexcusable lack of proactive initiative must be blamed if the APC finds itself in a tight corner as regards holding constitutionally stipulated congresses and conventions before next year’s elections. Since the party executive was aware of the time table for the elections as well as the legal expiry of its own tenure, preparations for these exercises should have been well under way by now. Should the current party leadership be rewarded with tenure elongation in these circumstances for what is clearly a dereliction of duty on their part?

    It is my view that the APC  will be in worse shape if it does not hold elective congresses and conventions to elect new executives at state and national levels as and at when due than if it does. For one, scores of party members who seek to contest party offices at all levels will feel short-changed as well as disaffected and alienated. Beyond this, hundreds of aspirants seeking to contest for the governorship or presidential tickets of the party will be justified in feeling that the incumbent occupants of the positions have a vested interest in desiring the continuation in office of the present party executives beyond their legal four-year terms.  The credibility of the governorship and presidential primaries will be significantly enhanced if they are conducted by party executives that emerge through the will of the party members in free, open and transparent intra-party contests.

    Contrary to the impression in many quarters, the issue of tenure elongation does not necessarily center on the person of the APC National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun. It is rather a matter of fidelity to the party and the country’s constitutions. In any case, Oyegun like other members of the current NWC are not proscribed from seeking reelection into their current positions if they so desire. Those who believe they have performed well enough to continue in office will surely have the opportunity to vote for them while those opposed to the incumbents will also test their electoral strength among duly elected delegates. It is the principle of adherence to constitutional and democratic principles that matter and not personalities. In the final analysis, however, President Buhari deserves commendation for taking the lead in setting APC on the right course of constitutional adherence.