The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Ayobolu

  • Beyond the fixation with Trump

    Beyond the fixation with Trump

    A book of 73 pages seemingly implausibly and surreally titled ‘Is Socialist revolution in the U.S. possible?’ largely compromised of contributions by Mary-Alice Walters, a member of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee, editor of New International and president of Pathfinder Press,  to a debate on the subject matter was published in the U.S. in 2009. Such a debate would have been considered outrageously out of place in a country like the US perceived as bastion of conservatism and vanguard of neo-liberal capitalism some two or three decades ago. My first instinct was to completely ignore the publication considering it a product of a fringe, extremist political and ideological group of microscopic consequence to mainstream American politics.

    In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election that produced the eccentric and utterly unpredictable Donald Trump as leader of the most powerful country in the world, however, I have taken the time to peruse sections of the book and ponder Mary-Alice Walters rather unconventional but difficult to dismiss postulations. The unexpected electoral triumph of Trump, a billionaire businessman and unpretentious TV star, who campaigned as a populist Messiah of a largely alienated, frustrated, estranged and angry section of the populace was a function of not just a broken and deeply fractured political system but a capitalist economic system in the throes of profound crisis.

    Of course, Trump did not just emerge magically from wonder land to occupy the apex of political authority in the world’s foremost liberal democracy. The American polity had been waiting for a charismatic demagogue since two and a half decades earlier when no less rabble-rousing aspirants like Ross Perot and Pat Buchannan had made waves on the political scene. They spouted divisive racist rhetoric.  They inveighed against immigrants. They promised to clean up the mess in Washington, ‘drain the bureaucratic swamp’ and return governance to the people.

    They flaunted their capacity to amass immense personal affluence as evidence of their ability to create prosperity for the majority of marginalized Americans and reduce the abysmal degree of inequality in the country. At last Trump, a much more extreme version of Perot and Buchannan has been given the opportunity. If he fails as a radical, unconventional candidate of the right, as he is most certainly likely to, would an even more disoriented and disenchanted American electorate not most likely go for anti-establishment radical candidates of the left? Is Mary-Alice Walters then completely off the mark?

    To discountenance the possibility of radical socialist revolution in the US, even if in the long term, Mary-Alice Walters argues, “You would have to believe that there won’t again be economic, financial, or social crisis on the order of those that marked the first half of the twentieth century. That the ruling families of the imperialist world and their economic wizards have found a way to “manage” capitalism so as to preclude shattering financial crisis that could lead to something akin to the Great Depression; to growing assaults on the social, economic, and political rights of the toilers; spreading imperialist war; to the rise of mass fascist movements in the streets”. The auguries are not encouraging. Even where rabidly right wing nationalist groups disdainful of foreigners and immigrants have not come to power in many parts of Europe, they have risen in political influence largely as a result of a protracted global capitalist economic crisis that has produced not only sustained fall in profits for investors but loss of jobs and increasing impoverishment and inequality for the underprivileged classes.

    Unfortunately, the mainstream media in the US treat Trump as some kind of entertainer who has no idea what he is doing. The famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and social critic, Professor Noam Chomsky, does not think so. In his words, “Trump’s buffoonery, which gets endlessly covered by the media, widely differs from the actual policies he is trying to enact, which receive less attention…It is enough that attention is diverted from what is happening in the background. There, out of the spotlight, the most savage fringe of the Republican Party is carefully advancing policies designed to enrich their true constituency: the constituency of private power and wealth, “the masters of mankind” to borrow Adam Smith’s phrase”. While Trump’s antics distract attention, legislations and executive orders are being enacted that “undermine workers’ rights, cripple consumer protection, severely harm rural communities, devastate health programmes, and remove critical regulatory constraints on the predatory financial system”.

    Nothing illustrates better the crisis of capitalism in the industrialized West than the attempt of their governments and International financial Organizations, as the author, Teresa Hayter put it, “to open markets throughout the world, and especially in the Third World, so that multinational corporations and private banks can profit from taking over public services and industries and exploiting natural resources while at the same time they are imposing ever harsher and more brutal restrictions on the movement of people (unless they are white, or exceptionally rich). And at the same time they are demanding policies which create unemployment and poverty and which are at least partly responsible for the wars and political repression from which people flee”.

    The late Professor Bade Onimode made the same point when he asked in Y2000, “Why should free trade, liberalization and globalization be good for manufactured products, capital and technology (intellectual property rights) and be bad for labour? Is this not simply because of the inequality between the powerful owners of commodities, capital and technology, on the one hand, and the weak atomized owners of labour power on the other?”

    But is it just Trump and the Republicans that are overly fixated with drastically checking and containing immigration? This is certainly not the case. It is a bipartisan agenda in a futile bid to save neoliberal capitalism from its own excesses. According to one report, “With overwhelming bipartisan backing, President Clinton in September 1996 signed into law the Illegal Immigration and Reform Responsibility Act that, among other things, aims to double the number of border police the following five years. The law also authorizes some $12 million to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border south of San Diego; eliminates constitutional protections in order to speed deportations; and imposes other draconian measures against immigrants and those seeking asylum…Under the Clinton legislation, immigrants are now being deported within a few hours of being detained, with no right to an attorney or legal proceedings of any kind”. Thus, Trump is doing nothing new. He is only less hypocritical as regards his fierce anti-immigration stance.

    Indeed, during the campaigns, Trump promised a less militarily aggressive and interventionist foreign policy than Hillary Clinton. For instance, he very sensibly wanted to strengthen cordial relations with Russia. In power he has discovered that massive and largely unjustified military expenditure is critical to sustaining and accelerating economic growth while enabling huge corporations involved in the Pentagon military-industrial complex reap humongous profits. Every American President, Democratic or Republican – must therefore seek to create real or imaginary enemies – Libya, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Nicaragua, Russia, Afghanistan etc – to justify heavy expenditure on what has been described as a form of reflationary ‘military Keynesianism’.

    For instance, Barak Obama looked like a dove compared to the bullish and hawkish Trump. But the online magazine, ‘truthout’, reports that “A very important study in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published in March, 2017, reveals that the Obama nuclear weapons modernization program has increased “the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three – and it creates exactly what one would like to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike”.

    Is Trump’s economic program, particularly his large tax cuts that benefit the rich largely, likely to help salvage and rejuvenate American capitalism despite what may be a short term and transient economic boom? I doubt it. What then are the alternative futures America may have to choose from? The words of Noam Chomsky may prove instructive in this regard: It’s no secret that in recent years, traditional political institutions have been declining in the industrial democracies under the impact of what is called “populism”. That term is used rather loosely to refer to the wave of discontent, anger, and contempt for institutions that has accompanied the neoliberal assault of the past generation, which led to stagnation for the majority alongside a spectacular concentration of wealth in  the hands of a few …The most startling event in the American election was not the election of Trump; it was the success of Bernie Sanders. Sanders came along, no corporate funding, no wealthy funding, dismissed and disregarded by the media, a guy who was almost totally unknown, and he was using scare words like ‘socialist’ and he practically, if it hadn’t been for party shenanigans and mangers, he might have won the election. That’s not only a radical change from American history but also a very promising and hopeful sign for the future”.

     

  • Beyond the $1 billion ECA fund to fight Boko Haram

    Beyond the $1 billion ECA fund to fight Boko Haram

    Ordinarily there ought to be no controversy or eyebrows raised by the recent decision of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) to approve the withdrawal by the Federal Government of the sum of $1 billion from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) to effectively finish off Boko Haram as a potent fighting force. Yes, the Buhari administration has consistently maintained that Boko Haram has been technically defeated. It is an indisputable claim despite the insurgent’s continuing to operate in fits and starts hitting sporadically and haphazardly at soft targets. Yet, as the articulate Borno State Governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, has convincingly argued, it is exactly when a terror group like Boko Haram is taking its last grasp of breath that the country should enhance its defense spending to prevent its resurgence or the emergence of an even more deadly and ferocious force from it ashes. This can be no time for complacency.

    Beyond this, is the very scary alert by the African Union (AU) that over 6,000 Africans who fought for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and have currently been dislodged from both countries could be planning to return to West Africa with the prime goal of joining and strengthening Boko Haram. If true, it is evident that the sum of $1 billion approved by the governors for the Federal Government to strengthen the country’s defenses is even far from sufficient. But then, why has the approval for the release of the fund been received with so much suspicion and skepticism in several quarters? I think the fault lies squarely with the Federal Government.

    Firstly, its public communications with the citizenry on the issue was thoroughly inept. The news of the decision to withdraw such a huge chunk from the ECA with a balance of $2.317 billion as at December 13, 2017, was simply unleashed on the public without any prior attempt to prepare and convince the people on the imperative for the fund. Yet, this is an administration that has been widely commended for exposing the massive fraud perpetrated by its predecessor, which criminally diverted over $2.1 billion meant to procure arms for the prosecution of the anti-insurgency war into private pockets to the detriment of the country’s security. While many Nigerians still have implicit faith in President Muhammadu Buhari’s personal integrity and fiscal rectitude, not many of his close and trusted aides enjoy such trust and confidence. The administration should not simply have assumed that most people would simply exercise blind faith in its sincerity to honestly and transparently utilize the $1 billion ECA fund for the intended purpose.

    Again, the Buhari administration clearly underestimated the serious constitutional issues raised by the Governors’ decision to approve the release of the money, which belongs to all the three tiers of government, to the Federal Government. The Accountant General of the Federation, Mr. Ahmed Idris, was in my view being unacceptably naïve and simplistic when he submitted that “Ordinarily, savings in the ECA should have been distributed to the three tiers of government, who are the owners of the money. So, if the same owners decide that part of the money be utilized to provide security for life and property in the country or make the system work, I don’t think there is any issue in that. The entire federation has decided. There is an instruction and directive to that effect…We, Federal Accounts and Allocation Committee (FAAC) have no option than to go with the directive as given”.

    Surely, the AGF’s opinion is debatable. To the best of my knowledge, the NGF that took the decision to release the fund to the Federal Government is unknown to the constitution. It has no legal recognition. The NGF is at best a voluntary association of governors. State governors are not imperial principalities who can cavalierly authorize the utilization of funds belonging to their states arbitrarily without recourse to their state legislatures. Unfortunately, the Chairman of the NGF and governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Abdulaziz Yari, gives the impression that the state chief executives will obtain retroactive approval from their State Houses of Assembly for their decision suggesting that the latter are mere rubber stamp assemblages. This cannot augur well for the development of a healthy and viable democracy in Nigeria. At the end of the day, the ultimate outcome of the court case instituted against the decision by the Local Government Chairmen in Ekiti State should make the position of the law on the matter clear and unequivocal.

    Even if the Federal Government and members of the National Economic Council (NEC) stand on firm legal grounds on the $1 billion ECA sought to be released, the APC, as a party committed to change, even if largely theoretically, ought also strive to be on solid and unassailable moral footing. There was absolutely nothing stopping the President from writing the two chambers of the National Assembly or even addressing a joint session of the federal legislature to lay the cards on the table and ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page. After all, the need for the fund is easily justifiable and no one can credibly question or impugn the motive behind its requested withdrawal. In the same vein, the Speakers of the State Houses of Assembly should have been taken into confidence and carried along at every stage of the deliberations.

    The avoidable controversy generated by the proposed withdrawal of the $1 billion from the ECA is also partly a function of the failure of the APC to even attempt a limited implementation of its campaign promise of deepening the country’s federal process even if the party is wary of the word ‘restructuring’. Some have pointed out, for instance, that the opportunity cost of the $1 million ECA fund to be expended on fighting Boko Haram, is that the fund would not be available to be spent on infrastructure renewal, agriculture, poverty alleviation, health, education and other sectors that can boost economic prosperity. True, a polity must first of all be secure and safe before it can pursue meaningful and impactful developmental policies. But then, most of the country’s security challenges including insurgency, religious extremism, communal clashes, armed robbery, ritual killings, kidnapping, cattle rustling etc fundamentally have their roots in endemic poverty arising from an exceedingly poor rate of socio-economic development.

    It remains difficult to comprehend why, going to three years in office, the APC has not found the will to review the revenue allocation formula, as provided for by the constitution to make more funds available to the lower levels of government, which will then be in a stronger position to boost economic activity, generate employment, create wealth and indirectly help stem the level of crime and degree of insecurity. The APC in utter defiance of its manifesto maintains an overly centralized unitary form of federalism that makes it substantially indistinguishable from the opposition PDP even though it is considerably more disciplined, restrained and transparent in the management of public funds.

    Even more disturbingly, the APC has done nothing to redesign and redress the country’s highly defective and inefficacious security architecture. The Nigeria Police Force remains overly centralized, ill equipped, poorly funded, weakly motivated and utterly dysfunctional. Consequently, with the police virtually prostrate, the Armed Forces, which should concentrate on protecting and preserving the country’s territorial integrity against external aggression is excessively preoccupied with internal security operations. There are joint military/police operations in all 36 states of the country to contain assorted criminal activities that ought to fall within the province of the police. Apart from this, huge arsenals of military assets and personnel are deployed in no less than a dozen internal security operations across the country consuming humongous sums of money and constituting a serious distraction from the military’s primary responsibility.

    Some of these internal security operations taking up the time, focus, resources and energy of the military include Operation Lafiya Dole to combat insurgency in the North East, Operation Crackdown to mop up remnants of Boko Haram in Sambisa Forest, Operation Gama Aiki in the northern part of Borno State, Operation Safe Corridor to de-radicalize and rehabilitate repentant Boko Haram terrorists, Operation Safe Haven to quell ethno-religious conflicts and other criminal activities in Plateau, Benue, Kogi, Nassarawa and Kwara states, Operation Sara Daji and Operation Harbin Kunama to battle armed bandits, cattle rustlers and robbers in the North – West, Operation Crocodile Smile to contain resurgent militancy in the Niger Delta, Operation Awase to contain illegal oil bunkering, oil theft and pipeline vandalism in Arepo area of the South West, Operation Iron Fence to check armed robbers, hooliganism and kidnappers in the South East and, of course, Operation Python Dance, which quelled the secessionist threat of the now banned Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB).

    There is certainly something fundamentally wrong with a polity which has to maintain at great cost so many internal military security operations to check and contain rampant criminality and pervasive insecurity at great cost to economic development and with only marginal efficacy to show for it. Yes, by all means the Federal Government should urgently be given the $1 billion it needs to permanently eliminate insurgency and fortify the country’s defenses against future unforeseen and unpredictable developments. But beyond this, the Buhari administration should seek to transcend a strait jacket, inflexible ‘law and order’ approach to tackling conflicts while also rediscovering its stated commitment to strengthening federalism in Nigeria since our defective federal structure lies at the root of much of the insecurity that plagues the polity.

  • What future for PDP?

    What future for PDP?

    After the fierce and bitter protracted struggle for the soul of the party that pitted the faction of the pugnacious, tenacious and unyielding Senator Ali Modu Sheriff against that of the restrained but highly astute Senator Ahmed Makarfi, members and leaders of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) must be justifiably relieved at the success of its December 10 National Convention no matter the flaws that attended the exercise.

    The legal triumph of the Makarfi faction, which paved the way for the convention to hold, offered an opportunity for the PDP to pick a leadership that would give it a new face, demonstrate its determination to turn a fresh leaf, undertake a rigorous moral inventory, critically rediscover, interrogate and reinvent its core values and move in an ethically elevated direction diametrically opposite to its badly tainted past. Unfortunately, that opportunity appears to have been squandered by a limited, strategically short sighted and largely unrealistic preoccupation with regaining power at the centre in 2019.

    There is no doubt that the PDP is emboldened in this endeavour by the undeniable disenchantment of a large number of Nigerians with what is widely perceived as the wide gap between the high expectations it aroused among the citizenry during the campaigns and the actual performance of the APC federal government. Can the resultant disappointment and frustration among a not insignificant cross section of the populace help catapult the PDP back to power at the centre in the next election? It is doubtful.

    True, millions of Nigerians continue to groan under the weight of persistent socio-economic hardships. But a good number of them also know that the root cause of the problem lies in the profligacy and prodigality of the preceding PDP administration that failed to utilize the huge oil revenues earned under its watch to lay a solid foundation for sustainable economic growth. Yes, Nigerians do not expect the APC-controlled Federal Government to continually blame its predecessor for problems it was elected to solve. But neither do they realistically expect that the APC will miraculously achieve in two and a half years what the PDP could not in its 16 years in power.

    Of course, it is all too easy to exaggerate the differences between the PDP and the APC, to perceive one as a party of unblemished saints and the other a party of irredeemable sinners. In reality, the ideological, philosophical and even moral boundaries between the two major parties are blurred. Many of those who contributed to the victory of the APC in the 2015 election were decampees from the PDP.

    The ethical infractions associated with the former SGF, Babachir Lawal, ex-DG of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ayodele Oke, or the ongoing monumentally scandalous Abdulrasheed Maina affair even in this APC dispensation of change prove that no party is immune from corrupt behavior. The decisive difference is that, though he may be agonizingly and discomfitingly slow in acting, Buhari makes no distinction between stealing and corruption and those found guilty of malfeasance under him are invariably brought to book.

    Perhaps the major albatross that the PDP has to confront is the unprecedented and colossal corruption perpetrated under the Dr. Goodluck Jonathan administration. Humongous amounts of stolen funds and scores of mind boggling physical assets within and outside Nigeria have been recovered from top functionaries of that government while many are being prosecuted in court. Many Nigerians are unlikely to be persuaded by the argument that the anti-corruption war is one-sided because only members of the opposition are being prosecuted. The fact that other thieves have not been caught does not justify my own stealing if the law catches up with me.

    Against this background, it is my view that the PDP should have been more concerned with electing leaders that could effectively help rebrand, re-position and rebuild the party for the future rather than the preoccupation with zoning of party offices all with 2019 in mind. It should have sought to elect national leaders who symbolize a decisive ethical break with the putrescent past and a desire for a refreshingly different future. That would have jolted an APC that is obviously being lulled into complacency by a lack of viable competition.

    The PDP appears to underestimate the amount of work it has to do to redeem its image, meaningfully change public perception in its favour and become a viable, vibrant and electable brand once again. Although the APC as a whole and the Buhari administration in particular suffer from many self-inflicted wounds and unforced errors, millions of Nigerians still have confidence in the personal integrity of Buhari and Osibanjo. If they emerge as the party’s candidates in 2019, it will be a difficult ticket for the PDP in its present form to beat.

    With the PDP’s loss of presidential power in 2015, the locus of power and influence within the party has unquestionably shifted from the presidency to the party’s governors. This is obviously because the governors control immense resources, which they can readily deploy to achieve their goals within the party as allegedly happened at the PDP convention. But then, the problem of powerful cliques seizing control of a political party and becoming a virtual dictatorship within largely by virtue of money power is not limited to the PDP. It is also a challenge that the APC has to confront.

    Indeed, the overbearing influence of powerful groups, interests and cliques within parties cannot be eliminated. It can only be reduced and continuous attempts made to empower the rank and file of party members to take ownership of their parties. How to reduce the influence and role of money in our political processes including intra-party contests remains an enduring problem.

    The Electoral Act No. 6, 2010 (Amendment Act) Bill 2017 recently passed into law by the Senate takes bold and commendable steps towards ensuring freer and fairer intra-party electoral processes. Among other provisions, the law prevents political parties from imposing arbitrary nomination fees on political aspirants and makes it impossible for parties to impose qualification/disqualification criteria, measures or conditions on aspirants for political offices different from what is stated in the 1999 constitution.

    Even more importantly, the law provides that “all members of political parties are now eligible to elect candidates of parties in indirect primaries”. The aim is obviously to reduce the power of party executives to manipulate primaries. Even though it is well meaning, expanding the base from which delegates to indirect primaries are chosen to include all party members will indirectly work in favour of those who have sufficient funds to bribe the far larger number of people who will now elect delegates. But it is at least another small step in the right direction.

    Surely, the new Prince Uche Secondus-led National Executive Committee of the PDP has its task cut out for it. It remains to be seen if the new Chairman can free himself from the grip of the forces that ensured his emergence to be his own man in the interest of the party. In a polity characterized by unprincipled ideological fluidity and peripatetic political vagrancy among political actors, one cannot but be impressed by Secondus’ ideological consistency over the years. In the Second Republic, he served as the Rivers State Youth Leader of the conservative National Party of Nigeria (NPN) and in the aborted Third Republic he was the Rivers State Publicity Secretary of the National Republican Convention (NRC), another party to the right of the political spectrum.

    A two-term Chairman of the PDP in Rivers State, Secondus has played several critical roles at the national level of the party including South-South Coordinator for the PDP National Campaign Council in 2007, National Organizing Secretary of the party between 2008 and 2012, National Deputy Chairman and also Acting National Chairman of the PDP following the resignation of Alhaji Adamu Muazu in 2015. He no doubt has a rich political pedigree that should serve him well in his new position.

    However, in 2016, Secondus was detained by the EFCC for unlawfully receiving 23 luxury vehicles from embattled businessman, Jide Omokore, on behalf of the PDP. His detention was subsequently declared illegal by a law court, which awarded N10million damages against the EFCC.

    The party’s new National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbodiyan is a professional colleague with a track record of competence, versatility and integrity in media, public relations practice and political consultancy over the years. Ologbondiyan has already hit the ground running and is sure to give the APC a good run for its money. That would sure be good for the polity. I do not know much about the other members of the team but we should be hopeful that they can help lay the foundation for the emergence of a brand new PDP, an organization proud of and faithful to its conservative ideological antecedents in the interest of stable democratic development in Nigeria.

  • Buhari, Tinubu, Osinbajo and 2019

    Buhari, Tinubu, Osinbajo and 2019

    In its lead story of Wednesday, December 13, the Daily Sun newspaper reported that President Muhammadu Buhari may have decided to pick a top leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as his running mate if he decides to contest the 2019 presidential elections. Citing unnamed ‘competent sources’ within the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), the report claimed that the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, has indicated his desire to retire to full time ministry at the church where he has been a pastor for several years. Consequently, according to the newspaper, Buhari plans to pick Tinubu as his running mate in 2019 as the latter is perceived as the only one capable of mobilizing the South West behind the President, which is very crucial in a situation where the South- South and South-East may most likely vote solidly for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    For this kind of very sensitive story to be credible, it ought certainly to have been corroborated by reliable sources within the APC, the camp of Asiwaju Tinubu as well as the offices of President Buhari and Professor Osinbajo. It was not. This column has no business speculating about the motives for the story. Such an enterprise is immaterial and unproductive. But the implications of the report are obvious. It is capable of poisoning relationships within the APC, setting contending tendencies within the party against each other and driving them further apart while making it more difficult for the party to evolve from the 2015 election-winning coalition it was conceived and actualized as into an organizationally cohesive and ideologically coherent political entity.

    Ordinarily, it should be the internal business of party members whether they are able to achieve intra-party harmony or not. But the institutionalization of a stable, viable and resilient party system is a necessary condition for the strengthening and consolidation of the country’s evolving democracy. Political parties are too central and critical to our political process for their affairs to be considered the internal business of party members alone. This is why both the APC and PDP, their current shortcomings notwithstanding, must be assisted to overcome their weaknesses, strengthen their internal structures and processes, overhaul and sanitize their organizational values as well as continuously define and refine their ideological orientation. The effort, energy and resources that went into their formation as potentially viable and durable political structures must not be allowed to go to waste. Yes, several parties will continue to legitimately exist in our multi-party system. But we cannot be eternally creating new party coalitions and alliances if democracy is to be strengthened and stabilized in Nigeria.

    It is a good thing that the Asiwaju Tinubu media office has vigorously and pungently denied the Daily Sun report. The statement issued by the office in response to the report makes it crystal clear that having endorsed and supported Professor Osinbajo’s nomination as Vice-Presidential candidate to Buhari for the 2015 election, there is no looking back for Asiwaju. It is a matter of honour, decency, credibility and integrity. Demonstrating that Tinubu’s backing for Osinbajo stands resolute and constant, his media office succinctly asserted that “Asiwaju Tinubu and the people of the Southwest have absolute confidence and are exceedingly proud of the excellent job Prof. Osinbajo is doing as Vice President of Nigeria”. On what basis, therefore, this implies can anyone logically, morally and justly deny Osinbajo the right to continue in his present role if Buhari is the APC’s choice to fly its flag in 2019?

    Even then, the Daily Sun story raises some pertinent issues, which deserve to be examined. First, it reflects the perception of a so-called frosty relationship between Buhari and Tinubu, which is just thawing. Is there any basis for this? Does Tinubu have cause to entertain any grouse against Buhari as insinuated in some quarters? I don’t think so. Tinubu’s pivotal role both in the formation of the APC and the electoral triumph of the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket is universally acknowledged. This is a historic feat. For one, it has brought the progressives of the South-West to the mainstream of Nigerian politics at the centre for the first time in the country’s history. Even though the process may be slow and protracted, it places the region at a vantage position to exert pressure for its long desired deepening of federalism in Nigeria.

    Again, apart from the Vice presidency, in the APC administration citizens of Yoruba extraction head key Ministries of the federal government including Finance; Works, Power and Housing; Solid Minerals; Information and Culture; Telecommunications and Health. This is in addition to no less than two dozen other persons, Yoruba and non-Yoruba, today playing prominent roles at various levels in various critical agencies and offices in the Buhari administration who were talents spotted by Tinubu as governor of Lagos State, encouraged to go into politics or appointed into public office on merit. This should certainly give Tinubu a deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment as it confirms his genius as a talent hunter and inspirational leader capable of discovering and nurturing leadership potentials.

    Furthermore, the Daily SUN story raises the recurrent specter of the role of religion in the country’s public life. For, it insinuated that the fictional 2019 Buhari/Tinubu ticket was in pursuit of the agenda of foisting a Muslim-Muslim ticket on the country. All too often, opportunistic politicians and other individuals and groups stoke religious fears, suspicions and acrimonies in pursuit of their selfish partisan and pecuniary interests. For instance, the federal government’s recent obtaining of Sukuk bonds worth N100 billion for developmental purposes was ridiculously condemned by some religious groups as an attempt to Islamize Nigeria! We must work assiduously towards transcending this unsavoury situation whereby unscrupulous elements exploit base religious sentiments to divide Nigerians and set them against each other.

    It is instructive that President Buhari, an ascetic and fervent Muslim and Vice President Osinbajo, an ardent Christian and pastor are working so closely and effectively together to lift Nigeria to higher socio-economic, political and moral pedestals. Both men are icons of ethical integrity, which demonstrates that elevated virtues are not the monopoly of any religion. Professor Osinbajo, a Christian, was appointed by Tinubu, a Muslim, as Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice of Lagos State in 1999. For eight years he served as the Chief Law officer of Lagos State and one of the most trusted, respected and influential members of the Tinubu administration. These kinds of example offer hope that religious prejudice, extremism and bigotry can ultimately not triumph in Nigeria. And as for the speculation that Professor Osinbajo plans to go into full time pastoral office rather than continue to offer public service, there can be nothing more nonsensical in my view. He is making much more impact on millions today by being a practical model and example of integrity in leadership.

     

    Ambode transforms Bagauda Kaltho Press Centre 

    Yours truly could not believe his eyes when yesterday, at the Lagos State Secretariat, Alausa, he beheld the brand new, radically modernized and totally transformed Bagauda Kaltho Press Centre from where the press corps that covers activities of the Lagos State government operate. Before the construction of the press centre by the military administration of General Mohammed Buba Marwa, journalists on the Lagos State government had to make use of a small, stuffy room in a block in one of the ministries. When he assumed office in 1999, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu named the edifice the Bagauda Kaltho Press Centre in honour of The News magazine’s journalist who was murdered by the security goons of the vicious Sani Abacha dictatorship. The structure was upgraded, rehabilitated and given a face lift at various times under the administrations of Asiwaju Tinubu and Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN).

    What Governor Ambode has turned the edifice into is, however, something else completely. The conference room is equipped with the latest state of the art furniture, digital communication equipment and other facilities that provide an ideal and dignified environment for journalists to do their work. There is now a full scale, high tech, modern editing suite in the building to replace the one inherited by the administration. And the office of the Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Habib Haruna, would compete favourably with that of the CEO of a private sector multinational! This edifice once again demonstrates the governor, Mr Akinunmi Ambode’s commitment to the highest standards in the ongoing infrastructure revolution in the state of excellence. It also a reflection of the dynamism and efficiency of the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Steve Ayorinde and the Chief Press Secretary with the astute administrative back up of the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and Strategy, Mrs. Kofoworola Awobamise.

    On hand to witness the commissioning of the born again Bagauda Kaltho Press Centre by the representative of the governor, Prince. Rotimi Ogunleye, Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, were former Chief Press Secretaries, senior media executives and editors as well as representatives of the Nigeria Guild of Editors, Nigeria Union of Journalists and the International Press Centre. Once again, Lagos has shown the light for others to find the way.  This is another feather to governor Ambode’s cap.

  • Zimbabwe after Mugabe

    Zimbabwe after Mugabe

    “How do you think he would have been assessed if Robert Mugabe had either died or quit office two decades ago?” a leading comrade and progressive journalist asked me in a telephone conversation on the fate that had befallen Zimbabwe’s maximum ruler for over four decades who had been forced by the country’s army and liberation war veterans to quit office? The answer is, of course, obvious. He would have been celebrated as a worthy African leader, canonized by the West and lionized by the international community.  Unfortunately, Mugabe stayed too long in office, had become increasingly alienated from reality and was unfortunate to have fallen under the spell of his excessively power-thirsty wife, Grace, a veritable Jezbel of our time.  Some commentators have dismissed Mugabe as just another example of the myriad of sit-tight African leaders who only lust for power and do not have the interests of their people at heart. He validates for those who hold this view, the proposition that Africa’s most fundamental problem is that of poor and inept leadership. This is, however, a rather superficial viewpoint that oversimplifies a more complex situation.

    The truth of the matter is that many of the African leaders who like Mugabe started out well but some of whom ended up as villains in office, were leaders and able statesmen of the first rank. These include such first post-independence generation leaders as Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Milton Obote of Uganda, Amilcar Cabral of Guinea Bissau, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Patrice Lumumba of Congo, Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania or Muammar Gaddafi of Libya to name a few. They were well read, cosmopolitan and highly patriotic leaders of their countries. Many of them courageously led the struggle for their countries’ liberation from colonial rule most times at great personal cost. Their sacrificial and pioneering roles in the nationalist struggle for independence unfortunately gave them a sense of entitlement of their right to lead their newly liberated countries; a feeling shared by a not insubstantial number of their fellow country men and women.

    It is so easy with the benefit of hindsight to blame these leaders for the rash of one- man and one-party dictatorships that erupted all over Africa in the immediate post-independence period.  However, the conventional wisdom in the aftermath of independence even in highly distinguished and respected intellectual circles was that liberal democracy was at that time a luxury which the newly independent African countries could hardly afford. A choice had to be made between a liberal democracy that could all too often be distracting, cacophonous, obstructive of swift and decisive decision making as well as divisive and what the ‘modernization theorists’ described as ‘developmental dictatorship’ if I can recall correctly.

    All these turned out with time to be completely wrong headed. For, African leaders could not be exempted from Lord Acton’s enduring and time tested maxim that ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. That was the tragedy of Mugabe as that of several otherwise immensely talented African leaders who met their waterloo in power. For at least his first two decades in power, Mugabe was the toast of the western media and political establishment. He was even given a knighthood by the British Queen. He remained the darling of the West for as long as he left intact the grossly unjust and inequitable economic and social structure bequeathed to Zimbabwe by imperialism. This was particularly the case with the criminally untenable and abysmally unequal distribution of land with a minority of white farmers retaining control of large tracts of fertile land to the detriment of millions of deprived Zimbabwean peasant farmers and families.

    For over two decades after independence, Mugabe was reluctant to do anything about the historic injustice of asymmetrical land distribution in Zimbabwe. His stance was no doubt partly due to the kind of advice he was given by the radical political economist and revolutionary, Abdulrahman Babau, in an open letter to Mugabe in May 1980 shortly after his assumption of office and published in the New African magazine. In the words of Babu to Mugabe, “Experience elsewhere has taught us that the taking over of ongoing viable farms has invariably led to almost total collapse of agricultural production and has forced the countries concerned to incur heavy foreign debt to import food. As foreign borrowing without repayment cannot be sustained for a long time the countries are forced literally to beg for food on an international scale…It is a painful historical fact that in Zimbabwe such large-scale farms are owned by White settlers, some of whom are liberal and others incorrigibly reactionary. To expropriate them will amount to economic disaster, at least in the short run. To allow them to continue as before will amount to perpetuating a national injustice. This is a serious dilemma”.

    The popular perspective and conventional wisdom is that the Mugabe administration undertook the confiscation of White-owned farms and distributing them to its cronies as his dictatorial grip on the country tightened, his intolerance of opposition grew and his popularity at home plummeted. There may be some truth to this view. But the radical South African Political Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, gives us another no less instructive point of view. According to him, the same war veterans largely responsible for Mugabe’s eventual ouster from power, had earlier confronted him in Y2000 when they became fed up with his reluctance to take over the white farms, which as that year were mostly under-utilized.

    Consequently, over the Easter weekend in 2000, over 3000 large white farms were taken over by about 170,000 Zimbabwean families. This was obviously a carefully planned operation. Mugabe, who initially opposed the development, was forced to change his stance and support the takeover given the popularity in Zimbabwe of the occupation of the white farms. In any case, what choice did Mugabe have since Britain reneged on its pledge under the Lancaster House agreement to pay Zimbabwe 10 million pounds to buy back some of the white farms for redistribution to deprived black farmers?

    Zimbabwe’s efforts to move, through the forcible acquisition of unjustly acquired land, from mere flag or nominal independence to genuine economic emancipation instantly drew a furious and punitive reaction from the West. Stiff sanctions were imposed on the country that virtually brought the economy to its knees. Inflation soared. Food scarcity became the norm. The country’s currency became practically worthless. The British monarchy withdrew Mugabe’s knighthood. He became an international pariah and a persona non grata in the West overnight. It will be recalled that key western countries such as the US and Britain vigorously supported the apartheid regime in South Africa as well as white minority rule in the former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). If they had their way, white supremacist rule would be alive and well in those countries today.

    Even though the compulsory acquisition and redistribution to thousands of black farmers of the huge white farms is widely regarded as a disaster with deleterious economic consequences, Professor Bond points out some little publicized gains of the exercise. He notes, for instance, that “The 146,000 smaller farmers with land of six hectares saved and reinvested and became highly productive, creating 800,000 jobs”. This is in addition to the several vibrant market towns which have reportedly grown around the land reform farms. Again, Zimbabwe reportedly produced more maize in 2017 than was ever grown by white farmers who have always been credited for making the country Africa’s food basket. This year, Zimbabwe produced 2.2 million tonnes of Maize, the highest in two decades. Compared to 2011, another good year for Maize production, an increase of about 700,000 tonnes was witnessed this year.

    Apart from favourable weather conditions, the United States Department of Agriculture has cited a special programme for import substitution known as ‘Command Agriculture’ as being responsible for the successes recorded in this respect. The ‘Command Agriculture’ scheme involves land reform farmers signing contracts for a certain number of hectares and agreeing to sell not less than five tonnes of maize per hectare to the Grain Marketing Board. On its part, government provides seedlings, fertilizer, tractors where necessary and fuel for ploughing with the cost deducted from the sale prize of the maize.

    Mugabe’s successor, former Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa has promised more support for the Land Commission set up under Mugabe to “ensure that all land is utilized optimally”. It will be prudent and wise for him to seek better relations between his country and the international community. Even as VP, Mnangagwa had reportedly been moving to curb corruption by using the army to check that agreed number of hectares were ploughed and planted as well as getting some senior figures of the ruling ZANU-PF arrested for selling fertilizer and diesel meant for other farmers. However, the truth is that what has taken place in Zimbabwe is only a palace coup. The discredited status quo remains intact. Mnangagwa and the military high command remain part and parcel of the rot of the Mugabe years. His prime task should be to liberalize the political space, legitimize political opposition, strengthen the integrity of the electoral system and perish any though of sit-tight, life dictatorship if the same fate that befell Mugabe is not to be his portion.

  • Of culture and structure

    Of culture and structure

    In chapter three of his classic, ‘Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria’, which focuses on the failure of Nigeria’s first republic but has enduring lessons for the country’s contemporary politics, Professor Larry Diamond opens with quotes from two of the country’s nationalist leaders that are relevant to current debates on constitutional re-engineering or restructuring of Nigeria. The first is an excerpt from Dr. Nnmadi Azikiwe’s inaugural address as Governor-General of Nigeria in 1960. In Azikwe’s words then “Parliamentary government has been attempted in Nigeria and we have proved more than equal to the task…What remains for us to do now is to dedicate our lives anew to the fascinating task of nation building. The past is gone with all its bitterness and rancor and recriminations. The future is before us and great events await the leadership of the wise and brave”. Dr Azikwe’s statement reflects a confidence in both the parliamentary and possibly the regional structure of the time. But we cannot overlook his emphasis on the leadership of the ‘wise and brave’. That is not a function of structure but culture.

    The second quote by Professor Diamond is by Chief Obafemi Awolowo at a speech delivered to the Seventh Congress of the Action Group on 19th September 1960. In the words of Awo “It is imperative…that the parties in power for the time being should…faithfully adhere to the principles and practice of liberal democracy. If by any unfortunate mischance or deliberate premeditation, democracy and the rule of law were murdered, stifled or repressed, reason and moderation would of necessity cease to rule the hearts of many a well-meaning and devoted Nigerian”.

    This column is still firm in the view that our challenges are larger in our attitudes and values than our political structures and constitutional orientation. Dr Azikwe’s quote above demonstrates a fervent belief in the virtues of parliamentary and liberal democracy. He was right. The structures were excellent. But Awo from the quote above was more focused on the behavioral attitudes of the leadership. At the end of the day it was this negative mindset that spurred the abandonment of  ‘reason and moderation’ that Awolowo warned about.

    In his latest book covering about 320 pages, twelve chapters and five informative appendices, titled ‘Nigerian Law on Socio-Economic rights’ Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) offers in my view insights on how the present constitution can be exploited to advance the cause of the underprivileged and dispossessed in Nigeria. It is not impossible that the distinguished senior advocate may not agree with my reading of his work. But that book, which I intend to take a more detailed look at later in this column, offers revealing perspectives on both the strengths and weaknessesd of the extant constitution. In my view, Mr. Falana’s book should have been more appropriately entitled ‘A Political Economy of the Nigerian Constitution’.Incidentally a section in professors Toyin Falola and Julius Ihonvbere’s book on‘The Rise and Fall of Nigeria’s Second Republic’ focuses on  the political economy of the 1979 constitution. Unfortunately, in dismissing the 1999 constitution, many analysts including some of our most profound legal minds appear to be completely oblivious of its political and legal antecedents.

    What Mr. Falana’s book demonstrates is that socio economic rights can be effectively pursued within the existing constitutional framework. Of course, the renowned human rights lawyer is nobody’s apologist. He should be as opposed to the present constitutional order as anybody. Falana suffered along with Gani Fawehinmi  of blessed memory and others in the military gulag. But his book convinces me more than ever that a lot of good can still be done under the present constitution to promote the public good in the interest of the greatest happiness of the greatest number of the people.

    Let me return to Professor Larry Diamond’s book again on the intricate relations between culture and structure in Nigerian politics. In his difficult to fault words “The repression, violence and fanaticism of political competition in the 1950s signified – despite elite protestations to the contrary – a weak commitment to democratic values in Nigeria”. Can we confidently and honestly say that there is any stronger commitment to democratic values in Nigeria today? If the resort to the presidential system, contrary to expectations, did not change our value orientation as a people, will a regression to the parliamentary system and regionalism do the magic? This cannot be anything but wishful thinking.

    For those fixated on a return to the past, let me quote again a studied and dispassionate scholar on Nigerian Politics, Professor Diamond, “Constitutionally, Nigeria had a federal structure at Independence, but it was a structure fraught with tensions and contradictions. The number, size and boundaries of the Regions gave rise to several interrelated difficulties”.The creation of states may have been abused under military rule particularly under the Babangida and Abacha regimes, but it was still a development that advanced federalism in Nigeria. How many states will be willing today to be collapsed in a regional structure romantically and unrealistically advocated by a few? The viewpoint of this column remains consistent. A change in structure without a transformation of values will yield no positive result.

  • Still on the Ibadan declaration

    Still on the Ibadan declaration

    Was my recent two-part piece, ‘Awo and the Ibadan Declaration’, in which I undertook a critical dissection of the proposals of a cross section of Yoruba leaders and interest groups for the far-reaching structural reconfiguration of Nigeria, an attempt to invoke the name of the great sage to silence those proponents of the Declaration who I reckoned would be hesitant to critique Awo’s ideas as I projected them? That was the suggestion of the highly revered  Yoruba politician , Honorable Olawale Oshun, in his logically  rigorous and philosophically engaging  response to my column on the subject published in this space three weeks ago.

    That was far from my mind. It would indeed have been quite discreditable of me to have attempted that. My preoccupation was not with Awo’s name and reputation as a weapon of psychological intimidation but the utilization of his ideas as stimulation for further reflection on the political and constitutional development of Nigeria.  I learnt much from Honourable Osun’s rejoinder but still remain convinced that Awo would have been most reluctant to abandon wholesale the extant 1999 constitution for a regression to the equally far less than perfect constitution of 1963.

    Now, there is nothing that suggests that Awolowo must be right all the time or that his thought and ideas must be cast in stone and reverenced as unquestionable scripture for eternity. Surely, the sage was no god. To worship rather than critically interrogate his ideas would be totally alien to his spirit of ceaseless intellectual inquiry and curiosity. Yet, such was the clarity of his thought and the depth of his insight that it is difficult to fault some of his key ideas over half a century after he formulated them. As I pointed out, he had punched holes in the parliamentary form of government enshrined by the 1963 constitution and had made a tightly argued case for a shift to the presidential system with an admixture of features of the French model long before the coming into being of the 1979 constitution.

    Yes, Awo wrote his ‘Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution’ and ‘The People’s Republic’, books in which he espoused his political, economic and constitutional ideas in 1966 and 1968 respectively. But he was alive during the second republic and witnessed the birth and collapse of that experience in civilian democratic governance after 13 years of military rule between 1966 and 1979. There is nothing that Awo wrote in his various lectures, speeches and books after the first republic up to his transition in 1987 that, to the best of my knowledge suggested that he ever contemplated a return to a parliamentary form of government as the best option for Nigeria. From what we know of him, it is unlikely that Awo would have offered himself to serve as President of Nigeria in the 1979 and 1983 general elections on the platform of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) without thoroughly studying the 1979 presidential constitution and coming to the conclusion that there was nothing in the constitution that inherently and incurably precluded great, visionary and productive governance.

    Let me note a pertinent point here. Awolowo undertook a thorough critique of the collapse of the first republic while in Calabar prison on the basis of which he made his constitutional proposals for the future peace, progress, prosperity and stability of Nigeria. Yes, he favoured a shift from the parliamentary to presidential form of government and the breakup of the regions into smaller states to protect the interest of minority interest groups. But from my reading of his ‘Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution’ in particular, I am of the view that Awolowo did not envisage what would have amounted to an absolute and revolutionary break with the 1963 constitution at the time he wrote and the complete jettisoning of the lessons and experiences – good and bad – of the first six years of independence for a completely new and novel constitutional experiment as happened in 1979. He argued that the failings of the first republic were as much a function of the behavioural lapses of the political actors of the period as they were of any inherent structural defects of the constitution.

    History has proven Awo right. The change from the 1963 parliamentary constitution of the first republic to the presidential constitution first of 1979 and currently in practice in this dispensation under the extant 1999 constitution has not eliminated the behavioural traits and attitudinal dispositions responsible for persistent constitutional breakdowns in Nigeria’s political history. It is not just a question of faulty constitutional structures but equally that of destructive and disruptive political cultures. Nothing suggests that a reversion to parliamentarianism and regionalism today will eliminate the same negative political behaviours that led to the collapse of the first republic and remain well and alive with us till now.

    There can be no short cut to political maturity and instant democratic development through some illusionary  cure-all constitutional miracle. A quiescent and passive civil society that placidly accepts political brigandage and corruption under a presidential system will be no different in a parliamentary dispensation. A timid populace that lazily succumbs to the political tyranny and brazen constitutional infractions of states and local governments will be even more helpless to tame far stronger and more distant regions in a ‘restructured’ polity.

    Honourable Oshun rightly notes and condemns the abuse of power by “the president, the governors and the Local Government Chairmen who have become tin gods exercising power of life and death over the citizenry” under the presidential system. But is the parliamentary system inured from such abuses? Have we forgotten the factors that resulted in the implosion of the First Republic? Let us refresh our memories with the words of the political scientists, Professors Remi Anifowose and Solomon Akinboye with regard to the breakdown of the 1963 constitution: “All available state apparatus (the army, the police and the judiciary), were employed by the power elites against their opponents. The major political parties in the country were engaged in the struggle not only to win and retain power but also to control the centre which was recognized as having all the dominant resources in spite of its weakness politically. Hence, all available means were employed to ‘grab’ power including the blatant rigging of elections, manipulation of census figures, violence, arson, corruption and acts of brigandage. These continued till the army seized power in January 1966 when it became obvious that the political class had lost control of governmental affairs”.

    There is absolutely no basis for the romantic and idyllic depiction today of the First Republic and its 1963 constitution as some sort of sweet paradise lost. The politics of the era was no less ‘short, nasty brutish and solitary’ in Hobbesian terms than that of the second republic. In some ways, there have even been some positive aspects of political development in the country today than what obtained in the first republic. For instance, the way the Federal Government abused its power to subvert and destabilize the Western Regional Government controlled by the opposition Action Group (AG) leading to the abortion of democracy and the onset of predatory military rule with the 1966 coup is not likely to be easily replicated today. No matter how much the APC controlled centre dislikes the guts of a governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, for instance, or the antics of an Ayo Fayose in Ekiti, the equivalent of a military takeover of an opposition state by the centre as happened in the West in the first republic has become a near impossibility.

    Yes, the present constitution in operation is far from perfect. No constitution will ever be. Yet, its defects are not inherently incurable. If we do not summon the will to fight and check corruption, abuse of office, legislative rascality, over-centralization, executive brigandage and sundry other ills within the present constitutional context, we are unlikely to do so no matter the kind of constitution we adopt.

  • Pa Adebanjo’s verdict on South West, Buhari

    Pa Adebanjo’s verdict on South West, Buhari

    THE is a fearsome, fierce and unsparing political pugilist. The eminent Afenifere chieftain, veteran politician and enduring Awoist, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, is not one gladiator who will pull his punches or take political hostages. The octogenarian and unrepentant Yoruba nationalist still unleashes verbal fusillades against real or perceived foes with ferocious relish unhindered by his advanced years. You may disagree with his politics. You may rigorously interrogate the age and utility of his ideas as well as the efficacy of his political tactics and strategies in a rapidly changing Nigeria. But you cannot but admire his sheer doggedness and tenacity in the pursuit of whatever cause he believes in. Pa Adebanjo like many of those who belong to his ideological persuasion has never hidden his disdain for the politics and persona of President Muhammadu Buhari and, by extension, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) that dislodged the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from power at the centre in the historic 2015 elections.

    While dismissing Buhari as a dictator and regionally biased sectional leader in an interview published in last Sunday’s edition of The Punch, Pa Adebanjo was no less scathing in his criticism of a national leader of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for his preeminent role in helping to actualize Buhari’s presidential aspiration. As far as the chief is concerned, “The problem that Yoruba and Nigerians have today was caused by Tinubu. If Tinubu had not gone into an alliance with Buhari, would we be in this position? Tinubu is the cause of Yoruba’s suffering now. He is the cause of Nigerians’ suffering now. He helped a dictator to come to power in the person of Buhari, knowing that he is a born dictator; an unrepentant conservative and irredeemable religious jingoist”. These are strong words indeed and quite sweeping generalizations too.

    Implied in Pa Adebanjo’s critique is the suggestion that Nigerians in general and Yorubas particularly are worse off today than they were before the advent of the Buhari administration. Indeed, the chief asserts categorically that the people of the South West today regret having voted for Buhari in 2015. It is doubtful if any scientific and credible opinion poll in the South West will confirm such a position. Yes, there is some degree of disenchantment that the performance of the APC at the centre has not matched the high expectations aroused by the party during the campaign. But I do not think that this means in any way that a significant proportion of the populace wish today that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP had continued in office beyond 2015 no matter the shortcomings so far of the Buhari administration. The politically sophisticated and discerning people of the South West are most certainly aware that the harsh economic conditions of the country today would most likely be far worse had the scale of looting of the public till witnessed under Jonathan persisted till now.

    The central challenge confronting the architects of the broad coalition of political forces that made Buhari’s emergence as president possible was to effect a change of regime at the centre. Under Jonathan, the country faced a veritable national emergency. The colossal scale of the PDP administration’s incompetence and incomparable graft had become all too glaring. At stake was the very survival of the country. As the revelations after the forced exit of the PDP federal government confirmed, for instance, the monumental level of corruption of the military high command right under Dr. Jonathan’s nose, manifesting in the corrupt diversion of arms procurement funds, was a key factor in the escalation and sustenance of the Boko Haram insurgency.

    The truth is that restructuring was not an issue of fundamental significance in the 2015 election. Buhari’s key selling points were his asceticism, perceived frugality, personal discipline and anti-corruption credentials. And the three issues canvassed by the APC in the party’s campaigns were enhancing national security, combating corruption and salvaging the economy. APC was formed as an election winning machine to edge the PDP from power at the centre after 16 years. The goal was splendidly and brilliantly achieved. It was a feat that marked a significant step forward in the political development of Nigeria.

    No incumbent party can henceforth ever again afford the luxury of complacency or take the people for granted. Now that it has achieved power, the APC is faced with the task of forging a greater ideological cohesiveness and philosophical coherence within its ranks. This is particularly so as the PDP, following the triumph of the Senator Ahmed Markafi-led faction at the Supreme Court shows signs of gradually rediscovering, reinventing and rejuvenating itself. Of course, that would be good for the country’s relentlessly deepening democratic process.

    The Buhari administration is not perfect. No human government can be. Yet, it has recorded difficult to deny successes in stemming corruption. At least the wild haemorrhage of the treasury that had previously been the norm with negative developmental consequences has been largely stanched. The anti-corruption agencies have regained considerable vigour and vibrancy. Governance is characterized by greater seriousness even though the overall sense of direction and coordination could be more effective. The Boko Haram malignancy has been effectively demobilized and the administration’s economic policies despite early tentativeness and seeming indecisiveness, are gradually taking shape.  I shudder to think that the highly respected Chief Adebanjo would even for a minute countenance the continuation of Jonathan in office as a preferable option to Buhari.

    Pa Adebanjo frowns at Buhari’s dictatorial antecedents. Yet, the once upon a time military dictator over three decades ago did not emerge in power in 2015 through the barrel of the gun. He was voted for by a majority of the electorate in free, fair and credible polls. Unlike a military or civilian dictator, Buhari does not have the latitude to continue in office indefinitely. He must submit himself to the will of the electorate on the platform of his party if wishes to continue in power for another term. Nigeria’s electoral system has developed beyond the kind of sheer banditry masquerading as polls witnessed in 2003 and 2007. With the incremental cleansing over time of the voters register, institutional strengthening of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and electronic automation of voting processes, elections can no more be foregone conclusions to be conducted in accordance with the whims and caprices of incumbents. The issue of Buhari as a dictator simply does not arise in Nigeria’s current political context.

    Does the South West have anything to regret for largely voting for Buhari in 2015 as Pa Adebanjo insinuates? I don’t see why this should be so. I am not aware of anything that the South West was enjoying in preceding PDP administrations that the Buhari administration has deprived the region of. If the grouse with Buhari is his undeniable reticence on the issue of restructuring, he is not worse in this respect than a Dr. Goodluck Jonathan who recklessly lavished humongous amounts of public resources on the 2014 National Conference but consigned the report to some obscure shelves in Aso Rock for about a year before his tenure elapsed. How is Buhari to blame if he is utterly disdainful of the outcome of the conference and allows its recommendations to continue to rest in peace as Jonathan did?

    This column does not see the appointment of public office holders from a region as an achievement that the particular area of the country will necessarily benefit from. Such a widely held view that appointments to public office will attract development to the places where the appointees originate from is utterly illusory. It is fuelled by the perception and utilization of public office as a means of primitive accumulation for the benefit of a microscopic minority purportedly ‘eating’ on behalf of their people. Even then, by the score of critical public offices held, the South West cannot claim to be worse off today under the APC than before Buhari’s emergence.

    In addition to the vice presidency, South West indigenes hold such critical portfolios as Finance, Mines and Steel Development, Telecommunications and the mega Works, Power and Housing ministries. The critical thing certainly is not the ethnic origin of those who occupy those offices but their undeniable competence and accomplishment no matter what their politics may be. It is my respectful view that experienced and distinguished elder statesmen like Pa Adebanjo, whatever their political orientation, should seek to interface productively with these individuals from the South West who are currently playing critical roles in the Buhari administration for the benefit of the region and the country.

  • Awo’s statue: Let a thousand flowers bloom

    Awo’s statue: Let a thousand flowers bloom

    An interesting dialogue between two characters in the Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy’s 19th century classic, ‘Anna Karenina’, recently came to my mind in the wake of the controversy generated by the new statue of the legendary statesman, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, just commissioned by the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akimnwumi Ambode. Under focus in this conversation was a new painting by the artist, Mikhailov:

    “What is the subject of the picture?” asked Anna.

    “Christ before Pilate. Christ is represented as a Jew with all the realism of the new school”. And led on by the question about the subject of the picture to one of his favorite topics, Golenishchev began to expound his views.

    “I don’t understand”, he said, “how they can make so gross an error. Christ already has his definite embodiment in the works of the old masters. If, therefore, they want to depict not God but a revolutionary or a sage, let them take some character from history – Socrates, Franklin, Charlotte Corday – but certainly not Christ. They choose the one person that cannot be chosen as a subject for art, and then…”

    Golenishchev’s quarrel here was with the artist’s departure in his work from what was supposed to be the eternal, unchanging, inflexible notion of Christ as deity and savior of man. The exercise of the artist’s creative imagination and license of expression has thus always been a constant source of vigorous contestation across time and space. It did not begin and will not end with the Nigerian artist, Hamza Atta’s, new statue of Awo.

    The notable English journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge, made the same point in his magnificent narrative portrait of the life of Christ simply titled, ‘Jesus’, which was first published in 1975. According to him, the story of the life of Christ had “been more told, mulled over, analyzed and expounded and illustrated, than any other in human history. So many hands! So many and such diverse versions and interpretations…!” Thus, in statues, paintings, films, literature, music, scholarship and more, there has been the ceaseless “questing for the historical Jesus, the freedom-fighting Jesus, the erotic or phallic Jesus, the proletarian or revolutionary Jesus”.

    As it is with Jesus, so is it destined to be with any great and outstanding historic figure, Awo by no means excluded. The lives of such personages are too dynamic, rich and expansive to be imprisoned within the confines of a static, one-dimensional perspective. This was the point that the columnist and author, Sam Omatseye, made in his recent insightful piece on the issue titled ‘Awo’s Bu(r)st’. The critics of the new statue wonder why the sage is depicted sitting down rather than standing and without his two fingers raised in the immortal victory sign that was his political trade mark. To compound matters, they moan, the statue has Awo uncharacteristically and ‘unnaturally’ wearing laced shoes when dressed in Agbada contrary to Yoruba culture.

    As Governor Akinwumi Ambode’s Special Adviser on Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mrs. Adebimpe Akinsola, has rightly pointed out, however, the statue is a creative and artistic work and not a photographic production. Thus, the artist’s interpretative imagination and creative essence are given free reign. If every new statue of a historic figure must be a replica of already existing ones, then why not simply stifle the individual’s creative juices and be content with the familiar. Surely, our world would be a much poorer place were that to be. The audacity to challenge the conventional and question established paradigms has always been a condition for progress in all spheres of endeavour including the creative arts.

    Does every statue of Awo necessarily have to depict him standing and flashing the victory sign? I don’t think so. If I had the gift of artistic creativity, for instance, I would love to depict Awo neither standing nor politicking but as he knelt in a meditative posture of prayer without his cap on at the Evangelical Church of Yahweh in Ilorin, Kwara State, sometime in 1978. Awo was in Ilorin in the course of his campaign tour across the country for the 1979 election and chose to worship in that church.

    Was it a strategically wise thing for him to do in a predominantly Muslim state like Kwara, particularly in Ilorin, the state capital and a town where the rival NPN’s Dr. Olusola Saraki enjoyed fanatical support? I don’t think so. But the point is that he did.  That picture of the sage with his gracefully graying hair in worshipful repose in Primate Theophilus Olobayo’s church in Ilorin made the front pages of both the Nigerian Tribune and the defunct Nigerian Herald newspapers at the time and remains etched in my memory. What a great work of art it would make in my view. Awo was not just a politician. He was also a devout Christian and profound mystic.

    No less true is the fact that Awo’s many triumphs and victories in public were preceded by his far less visible, yet no less important discipline of first sitting down for long hours of thinking, reading, meditating and planning in pursuit of his visionary developmental agenda for Nigeria. There is certainly nothing out of place in portraying Awo sitting down gracefully as the statue does. But then what do we make of the projection of the sage in laced shoes while in agbada? This seems to be incongruous for a man who was not only proud of his Yoruba heritage and culture but was also reputed to have a very tasteful dress sense without being frivolous.

    Here again, however, I submit that we must respect the artist’s freedom to express himself without inhibiting fetters. Hamza Atta has explained the thought processes that led to the production of the Awo statue. We have the right to agree or disagree with him. But we also have the duty to defend his right to give expression to his artistic perception of Awo particularly because his work, in my view, retains acceptable visual fidelity to the sage’s image. More importantly, like any interesting work of art, Hamza Atta’s interpretation of Awo has provoked me to think further and more deeply about the Awo persona. Are the laced shoes entirely out of place in a figurative depiction of Awo? Not necessarily.

    Yes, Awo was an accomplished professional and a man of outstanding abilities. He was immensely wealthy. Very early in life, he had vowed to “make myself formidable intellectually, morally invulnerable, to make all the money that is possible for a man with my brains and brawn to make in Nigeria”. He achieved his goals and became fabulously affluent. But Awo was a wealthy man with a difference. He never joined the social clubs that it was fashionable for men of his class to belong to. Awo did not delight in the indulgent pastimes of the opulent. He once declared that the time some of his contemporaries frittered away on frivolities, he spent burning the midnight oil and working hard to seek solutions to Nigeria’s problems.

    Unceasing labour and industry defined Awo’s existence. He had the means but refused to yield himself to a life of ignoble ease and unconscionable luxury. And I refer here to not just mental but also arduous physical exertions. When campaigning for the presidency in 1978/79, for instance, the sage visited virtually every Senatorial District in Nigeria – a truly exacting undertaking. Beyond this, Awo, despite his enormous wealth, was a tireless intellectual labourer for the liberation of the downtrodden.

    His articulation and elaboration of the ideology of ‘democratic socialism’ was one of the most rigorous intellectual enterprises aimed at liberating and empowering the poor and disadvantaged in African political thought. Within this context, Hamza Atta’s Awo is spot on. The Agbada depicts the accomplished and successful Awo, the sagely epitome of Yoruba cultural essence. And the laced boot-like shoes symbolizes Awo as the ceaseless labourer throughout his life, uninhibited by his personal triumph over poverty, for the emancipation of the masses from the shackles of misery and deprivation. There is some point of convergence in the seeming contradiction.

    Governor Ambode has not only contributed to further immortalizing Awo through this commissioned statue of the sage, the lively debate generated by the work will surely rekindle interest in the life, times and ideas of the great man. Perhaps it will spur some to seek out and read some of Awo’s immortal speeches and books. One work of art on Awo which I would so much like to see is that of the great man in his prison uniform behind bars during his unjust incarceration in Calabar prison. That was a memorable even though painful event in his passage through life that must be captured and preserved for posterity. Yes, let a thousand flowers of artistic imagination bloom from Awo’s continuing life of ‘Unfinished Greatness’.

  • Re: Awo and the Ibadan declaration

    Re: Awo and the Ibadan declaration

    (Today, Illuminations yields this space to the notable progressive politician, statesman, author, pro-democracy activist, former Chief Whip of the Federal House of Representatives and Chairman of the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), Honourable OLAWALE OSHUN, who reacts to the columnist’s two-part piece on the recent ‘Ibadan Declaration’ by a broad cross-section of Yoruba political leaders and groups. Please read and let the debate continue).

     

    Even if you are not a fan of Segun Ayobolu, you cannot deny him one thing: the soundness of his ideas and the thoroughness of his writings. I get the impression that he deliberately sets out to make the job of a critique hard, what with his strong foray into history and the deep analytical interpretation of his historical excursion.

    My view is reinforced by his recent treatise on the Ibadan Declaration and what could have been Awolowo’s views or position there-on. Great and incisive writers however usually have a problem. The problem is that in attempting to mould the opinions of their readers, they also run the risk of seeking to impose their subjectivity on the unwary amongst them. There is nothing wrong in that, just that when a writer comes up with an impeccable track record, then he owes his readers that duty of laying all the cards on the table. Otherwise their readers and or followers, in this case, I consider myself an avid follower of Ayobolu, might be receiving the short end of the stick..

    Why start with the above conclusion? I am doing so because there is a greater prospect of getting lost in your thoughts when you read columnists like Segun. For, you will need to admit that certain incontrovertible admissions had been made. First, it would be a moot point anyone challenging the mandate of Ibadan conveners considering the mobilisation that preceeded the Conference and the potential for others to champion their own views. Overall, he conceded that an idea is not necessarily bad because of its messenger, or implied motive of the messenger.

    His thoroughness in this submission captures what would have been Awolowo’s standpoint in this great debate on National Restructuring. Awolowo’s thoughts are laid out in some of his writings, particularly, Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution (1966) and the Peoples Republic (1968). All followers of Awolowo would do same, not only because he remains Nigeria’s greatest thinker but because he is also the greatest doer. He was not just one who admonishes he remains, in my mind, the most avid follower of the Biblical injuction that ‘you do unto others what you would want them do onto you’. He did onto others in and out of office, what he would want them do onto him.

    Before I come back to Ayobolu’s treatise on what Awolowo would have advocated in the Restructuring debate, let me state as a member of one of the Yoruba Groups that heralded the Ibadan Declaration, that the Committee set up to organise the event was carefully put together to represent all political hues, and to reach out to Yoruba leaders who could be said to have transcended groups and/or political inclinations. That of course is not to say a few individuals in the committee didn’t grandstand, pretending to have the answers and/or pretending to belong to a dominant Yoruba view point, Such people soon found themselves agreeing with others to present a common platform. That platform enabled and ennobled the situation in which those who hitherto had opposed and rubbished restructuring came out in the open to acknowledge the need for it and also suggested the path towards doing so.

    For once, Yoruba progressives and conservatives, religious, business and traditional leaders came out to acknowledge the need to review and reform urgently Nigeria’s political system. If there is any doubt as to the Ibadan Declaration achieving that, the doubt was cleared effectively with the outcome of the Ibadan Conference of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on the same subject a fortnight after.

    There are two main planks of Ayobolu’s reference to what Chief Awolowo would have advocated in the on-going debate on restructuring. The first is on the call for a return to the parliamentary system of government. The second deals with a call to return to the regional structure of government. Awolowo’s preference, argued Ayobolu, would have been another system of government, since hitherto we had ‘indiscriminately and unscientifically followed the British democratic practice, as if it was the best method’.  Awolowo was quoted to have rated the French presidential system better than the American presidential system which was also adjudged better than the parliamentary system.

    In other words, according to Ayobolu, Awolowo’s argument against the parlimnetary system relied amongst others on the limited ‘Ladder’ theory, in which the Head of State may only be accountable to his constituency, his party and his fellow parliamentarians, and the ‘Technocratic’ theory which would make it possible for the head of government ‘to assemble the best team of ministers which his party or region can offer’. One other plank with which Ayobolu seeks to nail home his Awolowo’s possible restructuring advocacy is in ‘Cost of governance’ with a dual contention that regionalism is bound in the recommended outlay to escalate the cost of governance and also deny the central government the much needed funding which the sage himself admitted would be required to fund its vital duties.

    Would it be uncharitable if I contend that Ayobolu deliberately paid scant attention to what marks a federal system of government from other systems despite his suggestion in the second piece of a power imbalance between the center and the states, hence not foreclosing that the center could be tyrannical in the exercise of such powers; and the second, a deliberate act, which is that he brought in Awolowo’s name apparently  to silence those he believes would think twice to critique the sage?

    At Independence, Nigeria’s founding fathers settled for a federal system of government, opting for the parliamentary system, ensuring that the powers of the center and the federating regions were in parity. If Awolowo had reasons to advocate additional federating regions he had in mind the need to protect the minorities as distinct from the three main nationalities of Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani and Igbo. His focus, were the minorities in the western region, the reason he supported the creation of the Mid West region, the minorities in the East and the minorities in the North. If there had been apparent goodwill and belief in the survival of this country by the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) and the National Council of Nigerian citizens (NCNC), the same speed with which the Mid West was carved out of the west  would have been replicated in the North and the East respectively. Consequently those clamouring for six geographical zones for the present day Nigeria must have realised that the very first tenet of federalism is that the federating governments must never be the weakling, which is now the cross of the 36 states in Nigeria.

    It is unbelievable that Ayobolu’s thesis on the effective competition amongst Nigerian federating governments in the First Republic gave the credit to the quality of leadership without interrogating how the leadership emerged in the first instance. How, may I ask, did credible and hard-working leadership emerge simultaneously in the federating regions of the West, the North and the East? Was it through providence? How about the predisposing influence of the form and structure of government? The competition amongst Nigerian leaders and their respective governments before and after independence was not just happenstances. Yes, the leaders were disciplined but the system also ensured that they remained disciplined and focused.

    But let me return to the invocation of Awolowo’s name and ideas to dismiss the core argument of the current demand for restructuring at least in the Yoruba speaking zone of Nigeria. From 1966 and 1968, when the said longing for the American and French presidential system of government over and above the British Parliamentary system began and now, is half a century, a long time indeed.

    Before I dwell on the time element, notice must be taken of Awolowo’s commitment in spite of his preference, to ‘try to adapt the best in the French and American methods and introduce our own innovations’.. Which by interpretation could mean any variation of British parliamentary system, the American presidential system and/or the French presidential system. If the intent was to cure the tripod allegory of Constituency, party and parliamentary colleagues and replace with a nation-wide constituency, time I suggest would have cured the failing.

    Half a century in time; can that time ‘exist

    independently of the mind’? That is a question Philosophers should contend with; however St.. Augustines Confession posits that ‘knowledge of time depends on the knowledge of movement of things’.

    In fifty years so much has moved, forward and backwards, and so much has changed. Aristotle defined time as ‘the number of changes with respect to before and after, ……’. How dynamic therefore time has been, and could the mind have remained static in that lifetime of fifty years?

    I ask, since by 1967 through to 1970, Nigeria was immersed in a civil war that claimed almost two million lives. That was a war that could have been avoided if leadership had not been embodied in one person, who saw and perceived himself as the nation. You may argue that at crisis times as Nigeria was just before the war, that such leadership could be necessary, but it still wouldn’t justify a leadership that overwhelms institution. We also have observed since the return to civil rule and the introduction of the presidential system of government how in each successive stage, the president, the governor and the Local government chairman have respectively become tin gods, more than despots, holding and exercising power of life and death over the citizenry, and how such office holders perceive and are perceived as the nation themselves.

    Nigeria would in fact have been in a glorious moment had the head of government, at each identified level above, been accountable to his constituency, his party and his parliamentary colleagues. If Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, and Jonathan had been accountable to these institutions, Nigeria would have been a better place. These Presidents, thrown up under the Presidential system, regarded themselves as the sovereign and acted so.

    Regarding the power to appoint ministers outside the realms of politicians, the so called technocrats, we know how un-sure footed these technocrats are in government, and how lily livered they can be in advocating and standing up in the interest of ordinary citizens. Mostly they leave office without leaving a mark, and spend considerable time thereafter complaining how they had been marginalised. Dare say that all political parties have members with adequate skills and knowledge, and any, elected and subsequently appointed into ministerial and commissionership position, is bound to be more versatile in applying his skills and in dealing with the citizens.

    And would Awolowo have longed for the presidential system in this day and time, with the knowledge which he took to the grave, that even under the mild mannered and religious President Shagari, who is still alive along with some knowing ministers, that an arm of the Nigerian security fabricated reports to position him as a security risk and embarrass him?

    I contend therefore that Yoruba people, in approaching the quest for political and Constitutional reforms, do not object to having a unified country, but long for a federation in name and substance. Overall, Yoruba people would not want to be imposed upon, just as it is not ready to impose itself upon anyone. Far reaching consultations revealed that a reversion to the British Parliamentary system is desired by the Yoruba people and that does not stop other federating agents from selecting any other form of government acceptable to their people. Also, in opting for the regional system of government, nothing suggests that the states would not co-exist with the region. The Yoruba are a pragmatic people, they will in the process of crafting their regional constitution decide how to deliver governance at the grass-root level. Nothing concerns the Central government in a federation on how the federating agent decides to run her affairs, including the number of states and how the states are ultimately expected to deliver governance in all its areas.

    On resource management, the Yoruba region would seek to retain up to 65% of all resources generated in its area, and with all other federating governments concede 35% to the central government. That of course resolves Ayobolu’s implied fear relying on the need for a virile funding for the central government. Even the 35% would leave sufficient room for the central government to run its affairs and still by law allot resources to weak federating governments to run their affairs .