The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Ayobolu

  • Back to regionalism?

    Back to regionalism?

    For their valiant and unparalleled efforts to forge stronger economic integration and cooperation as well as socio-cultural cohesion within the states that constitute their territorial jurisdiction, the present South-West governors deserve the commendation of all. The South West governors have surely taken concrete actions that demonstrate that, for them, the issue of South West economic integration goes beyond mere rhetoric. Not only have they met fairly regularly to brainstorm on how to collaborate across diverse spheres for the collective benefit of their people, they have decided that henceforth, the group will be known as Western Nigeria Governors’ Forum. In doing so, the governors are putting the interest of the region above partisan proclivities, ideological differences and individual idiosyncrasies.

    The governors showed their seriousness in this regard when they readily accepted, endorsed and facilitated the establishment of the Development Agenda of Nigeria (DAWN) as the institutional Think Tank to drive the idea of Western Regional Integration on the intellectual plane. It is a testimony to the efficacy of DAWN within its short life span that the governors have adopted its proposed 25-year master plan for the continuous integration and development of the region’s economy in different areas including agriculture, industrialization, commerce and security among others.

    Beyond this, the governors have helped in no small measure to facilitate the ongoing resurgence of the O’odua Group of companies, owned by the six states in the zone, as the Special Purpose Vehicle to spearhead the rejuvenation of the region’s economy. This they have done by not only allowing the emergence of a competent Group Managing Director of the company, Mr. Adewale Raji, through a rigorous and thorough process but also ensuring that the conglomerate no longer experiences the kind of partisan interference in its management that had been its bane in the past. Beyond this, Lagos State has been absorbed into the O’odua Group with her phenomenal resource base as well as tremendous expertise. This is a giant stride forward.

    However, at their last quarterly meeting which took place in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, the governors made some assertions, which are quite thought provoking, provocative and even not a little incurious. Their central contention was that the splitting of the old Western Region into six states had hampered the development of the South West and created dysfunctional divisions among a people once bonded in unity. The host governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, set the tone of the meeting when in his opening address he lamented that the West is no more recording the kind of feats that dazzled the world when the region was one entity under the leadership of the great sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

    According to the governor: “However, the creation of States from the old Western Region in 1976, which should have been an impetus for further socio economic development has been allowed to create artificial boundaries between our people. And to further worsen the situation, some of our people are also making themselves available as instruments of division because of their selfish political gains. The consequence is that our people begin to see themselves as a people of one state or the other rather than as a sub-unit of the entity of the Yoruba people.”

    Reinforcing this view, Osun State Governor, Ogbeni Raufu Aregbesola, was no less unambiguous when he said that “We must be mindful of the fact that as a singular state then, we achieved more than now when we are divided into six states. We must identify our strengths, unify those strengths and explore the strengths for the benefit of our people. We must use the development to galvanize our people”.  It was, of course, bold, courageous and selfless of the governors to have made this point. However, the logical conclusion of their postulation would have been to suggest a regression to the four-regional -structure of the First Republic.

    Yet, the governors know that this is not an idea that will fly with their people. It has become empirically and logically impossible to go back to the politically monolithic regions of the past. The states have taken on a life and identity of their own. No state will be willing to exchange the perceived suzerainty of an all powerful federal government for that of a no less dominant regional behemoth. It would amount to what the noted Political Scientist, Mahmud Mamdani, described as ‘decentralized despotism.’

    In any case, the four-regional structure was broken down into 12 states in 1967 largely due to pressure from the minorities who wanted to be free from the perceived dominion of the ethnic majorities within each region. It is certainly not fortuitous that the first state creation exercise took place when the then Colonel Yakubu Gowon from a minority ethnic group was Head of State. Ironically, the 2014 National Conference convened by the Dr. Goodluck Jonathan administration, rather than recommend a reversion to four or six zonal- structure wanted the number of states increased to 54! In spite of whatever anyone may think of him, there are still many Ekiti indigenes that remain grateful to the brutal dictator, General Sani Abacha, for creating for them a state they ardently desired. Right now, the sentiments are still very strong for the creation of Ijebu, Ibadan and Oke-Ogun states, for instance, in the South West.

    In any case, Awo himself wanted the regions broken down by advocating the creation of states along ethno-linguistic lines although unviable but contiguous merged. Even then, going by Awo’s formula, the major ethnic groups would still have remained intact within their states while the minority ethnic groups would have been atomized into a multiplicity of states. That would still have skewed the overall structure of the polity in favour of the ethnic majority groups.

    It is true that the military abused the state creation process by allegedly creating states sometimes in favour of wives, concubines or cronies. Overall, however, I think the stated reasons for state creation, which is to bring government closer to the people, have largely, even if insufficiently, been met. Many parts of the country that today have been opened to some basic artifacts of modernity would not have had that opportunity but for state creation. The problem has been an over centralized structure where everybody has become addicted to and dependent on oil and the states have been constitutionally constrained from utilizing the resources within their jurisdiction for the benefit of their people and ultimately boosting the fiscal health of the country as a whole.

    Now, could the attainments of the Awolowo-led regional government in the first republic be attributed solely to the fact that the region was one entity? I think not. In the first place, the Yoruba have never in this country’s political history followed a one way traffic in terms of partisan political affiliation or even ideological orientation. However, a not insignificant part of the population has oftentimes expressed preference for progressive parties with federalist and welfarist bent. But we must not forget that it was the bitter, irresolvable fight to the finish among factions of the Yoruba political class, some in alliance with outside forces that led to the turmoil in the Western Region that eventually engulfed the entire country, brought down the First Republic and eventually led to the tragic civil war. This was long before the creation of states.

    Beyond the existence of the Western Region as a single entity, I believe that the remarkable success of the region’s government particularly between 1952 and 1959, could be attributed to Awo’s own capacity and vision as a leader, the Action Group’s discipline, sense of purpose and ideological clarity as a party, Awo’s predilection for picking and working with highly capable aides who had the freedom to debate the leader on policy issues with everybody in the end bowing to and implementing the demonstrably superior idea and the caliber of first rate intellectuals that constituted the Action Group’s Think Tank. This is why when he was Minister of Finance and Vice Chairman of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) during the war, Awo was able to demonstrate once more in unmistakable terms his wizardry in financial management and his overall leadership capability.

    To their credit many of the current South West governments are delivering commendably on quality infrastructure, environmental renewal and social services. They are following creditably in the footsteps of their forbears including Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Chief Olusegun Osoba, late Chief Adefarati, late Alhaji Lam Adesina, Chief Bisi Akande, Otunba Niyi Adebayo and later Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SASN), Dr Kayode Fayemi to name a few. There is a smattering of governors across the country that is also reported to be taking commendable developmental strides in their respective jurisdictions.

    In the Second Republic, the performances of Governors like Alhaji Lateef Jakande in Lagos, Chief Bola Ige in Oyo, Chief Adekunle Ajasin in Ondo, Chief Bisi Onabanjo in Ogun, Professor Ambrose Alli in Bendel, Mallam Abubakar Rimi in Kano, Alhaji Balarabe Musa in Kaduna or Mr Sam Mbakwe in Imo showed clearly that whether you have states or regions, a visionary leader with discipline and a sense of purpose will make an impact for the greatest good of the greatest number of the people.

    The South West governors would do well not to waste valuable time in nostalgia over a past that cannot be recalled. Given the current constellation of forces in the country, too much energy and time must not be dissipated on the endless debate on restructuring. The governors have adopted an ambitious and audacious  regionalroad map in Abeokuta. That must be the object of their undivided focus and energy.

  • A father’s passage

    FOR the almost three weeks that he spent in hospital before he finally passed on to eternity, my siblings and I took turns to watch over and care for our ailing father, Benjamin, Bamidele Ayobolu. Our mother, Mary Ebun Ayobolu, his wife of over 50 years, was a constant feature by his bedside hardly sleeping, only eating sparingly and never ceasing to minister to his needs even as she alternated between weeping and praying fervently for his recovery. A near permanent fixture by my dad’s bedside in his last days was the Medical Director of Liberty-Life hospital, Dr. Benjamin Olowojebutu, a consummate professional for whom medical practice is not just a profession but a missionary-type calling. Dr Ben and his staff went beyond human limits to keep Daddy alive but the best of medical attention could not stay the hand of the grim reaper, death, when the time was up.

    As my father slipped, time to time, from unconsciousness to momentary consciousness, he would recite various psalms he had committed to memory, sing hymns and his favourite praise songs and pray intermittently. It was obvious to me the times I sat by his bedside that my father was discomfited less by any physical pain he was experiencing than his inability to perform for himself natural functions he had done for himself all his life. Daddy had always been fiercely independent and catered for practically all his needs even at his advanced age. To now have to be almost totally dependent on others was a harrowing experience for him. But he bore the inevitable and unavoidable with characteristic fortitude.

    One night, keeping vigil by his bedside late at night my mind went back almost three decades ago, specifically 1984, when I pined away and life slowly ebbed away from my enfeebled body for the six months that I was on admission at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan. Daddy would sit for several hours a day by my bed watching, caring, praying. My miraculous recovery and survival is not a tale for today. But that experience taught me that I could not even contemplate the thought of facing death and meeting my creator without faith in Christ as my sinless and righteous mediator. This may be a function of my Christian background and upbringing.

    I am amazed when the most brilliant of human beings who take life with utmost seriousness yet treat in such a cavalier manner the most serious issue of their fate in eternity. Some say that there is no life after death and this life is all there is. They give no scientific, empirical or truly rational validation for this amazingly audacious view. If this world exists, how then can we be so cocksure that other worlds do not also exist in realms beyond the terrestrial? How can we be so casually and sometimes arrogantly cocksure about a matter as vast, as immense, and with possibly irreversible consequences as eternity? Perhaps I think this way because of my own acquaintance with my own all too many failings and weaknesses and my inability to confront a righteous creator without the mediation of a savior.

    Daddy’s favourite song on his sick bed was ‘mo je lope, mo je baba lope o, igba ti mo ro ise iyanu baba laiye mi, mo ri wipe mo je Jesu mi lope repete’. (I owe my father, God, a depth of gratitude especially when I consider his miraculous deeds in my life; I owe Jesus nothing but bounteous gratitude). Benjamin Bamidele Ayobolu had every cause to sing this song. He was born on May 1, 1936, into unimaginable poverty. But for the grace of God, he would have lived and died an unknown quantity. Through determination, hard work, perseverance, resilience and a never die spirit, he tore the mask of poverty as the inimitable Awo put it in his autobiography and savoured the sweet taste of a reasonable measure of success.

    After a miscellany of menial jobs to make ends meet, Daddy gained entrance into Gindiri Teachers College in Plateau State, to train as a teacher. When he left Gindiri, he taught as a primary school teacher in Jebba, Kwara State, for a number of years. During this time, apart from earning extra money by offering private lessons to pupils after school hours, he improved his education through correspondence courses that eventually enabled him to gain admission as one of the pioneer students of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria where he studied public administration. On graduation from ABU, my father’s academic performance was so impressive that he was offered scholarhip to pursue his post graduate studies abroad up to PhD level.

    He, however, opted to begin work immediately rather than further his studies. This was because of the level of poverty in the family and the need for him to begin to work on time not only to support the family but to also pay for the education of his younger ones. My father’s late very close friend, Professor Aaron Gana, the eminent political scientist, often told me that Daddy’s refusal to obtain a doctorate degree was a great sacrifice on his part for his family and an immeasurable loss to the academic world. Daddy began his working career at the Nigerian Sugar Company, Bacita, Kwara State, as the Personnel Manager. The company sponsored him on a one year post-graduate diploma in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations at the London School of Economic and Political Science.  When the pioneering expatriates that set up the thriving sugar industry began to handover the management of the company to Nigerians, standards unfortunately began to plummets and unable to cope with the growing nepotism, sectionalism and mediocrity, Daddy resigned from Bacita in frustration.

    Although he was offered a job as a top manager in John Holt in Lagos, Daddy opted to take up the offer of General Manager of the Kwara State government owned Midland Supplies Ltd. in Ilorin, a company patterned after the Kingsway and UTC stores. He feared that life in Lagos would be too hectic and fast-paced for him to be able to devote time to his family. Again, he was forced to quit the job during the second republic when the politicians tried to meddle in the running of the company seeking favours that undermined its profitability. Fed up with paid employment, my father obtained a bank facility and set up a hotel, which was one of the best in Ilorin in the early to late eighties. However, his real desire was to go into manufacturing and be an industrialist. He invested much of the savings from the hotel business in an industrial manufacturing enterprise that, despite his most valiant efforts, proved to be unviable because of the unstable monetary and fiscal policies particularly the ever increasing interest and exchange rates associated with the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).

    Daddy was a progressive in politics right from his ABU days. He was a fervent Awoist although he was critical of some of the management of the finances of the Western Region as revealed during the Coker Commission of Enquiry. Although Daddy was proud of his Yoruba heritage, he was always wary of the Yoruba of the old western region often telling me in Yoruba: ‘Awon ara West ti laju ju’ meaning the people of the Western Region are too worldly wise. There are subtle distinctions and differences in outlook and worldview among the Yoruba that romantic ethnic nationalists too easily gloss over. When Chief Cornelius Adebayo became Governor of Kwara State in 1983 on the platform of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), he appointed my father Chairman of the Board of the Kwara Investment Corporation (KIC) although the regime was short lived as a result of the military coup that terminated the Second Republic.

    My junior brother, Jide, was to tell me later that in his last moments, Daddy called him on two occasions saying:s ‘ Why are you stopping me from going? I am going to be with Jesus. I want to join Him at the right hand of God’. The philosopher, mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate and brilliant atheist, Bertrand Russell had no such faith. As Russell wrote: “That man is the product of causes which have no prevision of the end they are achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms…that all the labour of ages, all the devotions, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievements must inevitably be buried beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand”. This terrible atheistic philosophy is one of despair, hopelessness, purposelessness and meaninglessness. It was not the philosophy of Benjamin Bamidele Ayobolu who hopefully embraced death confident of rising on the other side to meet and live with his creator and savior for eternity. It is the philosophy which I hope will guide me beyond this earthly realm when my time inevitably comes to bid this world adieu. May Daddy’s soul rest in peace.

  • Saraki as enigma

    Saraki as enigma

    It promised to be the flagship and major demonstration case of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s exuberantly advertised war against corruption. I refer to the arraignment on Thursday, February 23, 2016, of Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCB) on an 18-count charge of forgery and money laundering. Many observers believed the wily Saraki had been snared in a trap from which there was nary an escape route. The unseemly sight of the head of the country’s National Assembly appearing regularly in the dock to defend himself against grievous corruption charges was the ultimate humiliation and media crucifixion from which it seemed impossible for Saraki to resurrect. But the adroit politician remained seemingly unperturbed and unruffled. His legal team seemed bent on both endlessly delaying and preventing commencement of trial than proving their client’s innocence and thus permanently silencing his traducers.

    But throughout his legal travails, Saraki maintained a remarkable talismanic spell over his colleagues. They flocked in and out of court with their leader. For most of them, he was only being unjustly persecuted for what was perceived in some quarters as the intra-party intrigue and betrayal-laden route that led to his emergence as the country’s number three citizen. In any case, was he the only former public officer guilty, if true, of questionable assets declaration? It did not matter apparently that an alleged transgressor against the law cannot claim immunity from legal culpability because other alleged trespassers of the rules are walking free.

    Not even the eruption of other scandals whirling around the Senate President could diminish Saraki morally or politically before his colleagues. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) linked Bukola Saraki’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Gbenga Makanjuola, Kathleen Erhimu, reportedly the Senate President’s account relationship officer at Access Bank as well as Robert Mbonu of Melrose General Services Ltd, an associate of Saraki from the defunct Societe Generale Bank to an alleged sum of N3.5 billion laundered through the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) from the Paris Club loan refund to states. Saraki’s other principal aides allegedly involved in the deal include Obiora Amobi, Kolawole Shittu and Oladapo Idowu. All payments received by Melrose General Services Ltd. were allegedly diverted by the Senate President’s aides either directly by cash or indirectly through transfers. It did not matter. The Senators could care no less. Their sensibilities remained deadened either to the ravages of negative public perception or the ever increasing fragility of their collective institutional integrity.

    A luxury exotic vehicle, reportedly imported on behalf of the Senate President with forged papers thereby denying the Federal Government of legally stipulated revenue was impounded by the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS). Rather than allow a thorough investigation of the affair by the relevant anti-corruption agencies, the Senate decided to be the judge in the case against its beloved leader and naturally cleared him of any legal infractions. At the same time the Comptroller General of the NCS, Col. Hameed Ali, was subjected to a high degree of intimidation and harassment by Senators over the petty matter of his appearing before them in official uniform. It was only a court injunction that offered the embattled but no less stubborn Comptroller General some respite.

    Many analysts averred that Bukola Saraki would lose his iron grip on majority of Senators across party lines once the case against him before the CCT was proven and he was adjudged guilty as widely expected. The CCT’s final verdict was the legal and political equivalent of a resurrection from the dead for Saraki. The duo of the CCT Chairman, Danladi Umar, and his colleague, Hon. A. Agwadza, was emphatic in upholding the no-case submission made by Saraki’s legal team. The mercurial Senate President was discharged and acquitted. The Tribunal ruled that the testimonies of the prosecution witnesses were so thoroughly discredited under cross examination that they could constitute no credible basis for conviction by any reasonable court. Of course, the Federal Government has filed an appeal against the decision of the CCT. But for now it is Saraki and his supporters that are chanting hymns of triumph. No one in my view can claim to believe in the rule of law and yet credibly condemn the decision of the CCT or impugn the motives of its members without concrete evidence. Until and unless the CCT’s judgement is overturned by a superior court, Saraki remains guiltless before the law.

    You may hate him or love him. He may attract or repulse you. What you cannot deny is the political astuteness of Bukola Saraki. He certainly learnt invaluable lessons at the feet of his father, Oloye Olusola Saraki, the grand master for decades of Kwara politics. You cannot accuse Bukola Saraki of lack of leadership ability and even some degree of charisma. As chairman of the Nigeria Governor’s Forum (NGF), for instance, Saraki reorganized and revitalized the body significantly enhancing its influence and efficacy in national politics. The main grouse of some of his critics against him is that Saraki’s no mean leadership skills are more directed towards personal pecuniary and political gains than the collective good in the utilitarian sense of pursuing the greatest good of the greatest number of the citizenry. He achieved some tangible gains as Kwara State governor in agriculture through the Zimbabwe Farmers scheme, the establishment of the Kwara State University and some degree of infrastructure uplift in Ilorin. But he surely had the unfortunately largely unrelieved capacity to have done much more.

    In the same vein, Bukola Saraki has done a remarkable job in wielding the Senate into a cohesive group despite the controversial and divisive nature of his emergence as Senate President. He has offered the National Assembly the kind of strong leadership that Buhari, perhaps because of ill health as well as his political taciturnity and cultural insularity, has been unable to offer the executive arm of government. For some time, I thought that Saraki’s vibrant leadership of the National Assembly, his unrelenting effort to protect the autonomy and authority of the legislature against the excesses of the dangerous cabal in effective control of the executive under the Buhari presidency, was a blessing in disguise no matter his personal failings.

    I have, however, authoritatively learnt that Saraki is actually working very closely with the dominant faction of the badly fractured Buhari presidency’s kitchen cabinet. There is not a pin, I am reliably told, not a visitor to the inner recesses of Aso Rock that Saraki is not aware of almost instantaneously. It is certainly not coincidental that in the Senate’s battle against Ibrahim Magu’s confirmation as EFCC Chairman, which Saraki has led with great tenacity coupled with subtlety, he has enjoyed the unalloyed support and cooperation of the Department of State Services (DSS). That speaks volumes of the man’s wide ranging network, pervasive influence and instinctual understanding of the workings of the system. Yet, Magu’s crime is clearly not incompetence or proven lack of moral integrity but the EFCC’s unyielding probe under his leadership of a number of Senators with Saraki also within its investigative radar.

    One can understand the Senate’s new found boldness and audacity in threatening to wield its power of impeachment against what it perceives as slights by the executive particularly the continued retention of Magu as Acting Chairman of the EFCC despite its refusal to confirm him in substantive capacity. I advise the Senate to immediately seek the Supreme Court’s binding decision on this contentious issue. It is not impossible that Saraki and his Senate foot soldiers mistake Acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo’s unassuming and introspective mien as a sign of weakness or timidity. They are badly mistaken.

    Behind Osinbajo’s serene exterior lies the boldness and courage that only untainted character and integrity can confer. Besides, his singular lack of political ambition and unstinted loyalty and fidelity to an unfortunately incapacitated boss has endeared Osinbajo to millions of Nigerians across partisan and sectional divides. The Senate must be careful not to provoke a popular uprising against its excesses especially when it is seen as hounding and harassing a patriotic intellectual and cleric in government pursuing the public good on behalf of his temporarily absent boss without seeking to profit personally or politically.

    However, the Saraki enigma shows again some of the things fundamentally wrong with the Buhari government’s anti-corruption war. Thousands of Saraki partisans in Kwara State reportedly erupted in wild jubilation at the news of their idol’s discharge and acquittal by the CCT. It was the same way parts of Delta State went into joyous ecstasy on former Governor James Ibori’s release from a London prison where he served term on corruption charges and his return to Nigeria. Millions of Nigerians are psychologically and psychically disconnected from the anti-corruption war. It means absolutely nothing to them.

    The outcome of many of the anti-corruption cases that government has lost in recent times also shows the utter inefficacy of an Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), who really ought to be on top of and indeed personally leading the prosecution of some of the high profile anti-corruption cases. In any case, in the intrigue-laden Buhari presidency, what is the guarantee that the AG, does not belong to a caucus of the kitchen cabinet favourably disposed towards Saraki? Things may get even more curiouser and curiouser.

  • Beyond the Fuoye crisis

    Beyond the Fuoye crisis

    The story seemed to have been conjured out of thin air and yet received prominent treatment in some major news media. A report that 38 universities in the country had astronomically hiked their fees as a result of poor funding by the federal and state governments was attributed to Dr. Deji Omole, chairman of the University of Ibadan Chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Dr. Omole was alleged to have issued a statement to that effect in Abuja. The understandably furious Unibadan ASUU boss vehemently denied either being in Abuja or issuing any press statement to that effect in the Federal Capital Territory or elsewhere. According to Dr. Omole, “Therefore, I do not know the sources of the figures quoted in the report. ASUU is a well-coordinated union, which will carry out incontrovertible research and present this to the public”.

    Under the inspiration and leadership of very courageous and brilliant intellectuals such as Professor Dipo Fashina, Professor Biodun Jeyifo, the late Professor Festus Iyayi, the late Professor Eskor Toyo, Professor Assisi Assobie, the late Professor Abubakar Mommoh, Professor Attahiru Jega to name a few, ASUU embarked on prolonged strikes particularly under the period of visionless military rule to wrestle for better funding of higher education. Although successive military dictatorships tried to portray ASUU as fighting for the selfish pecuniary interests of its members, the truth was that the organization’s struggle was largely informed by the larger vision of a qualitatively transformed national public university system. Beyond this, ASUU achieved the feat of linking up with the trade union movement and civil society groups to contribute immensely to the struggle that resulted in the retreat of the military from the public space and the birth of the current democratic dispensation.

    Although it achieved undeniable gains in terms of incrementally better funding of public universities, ASUU’s frequent strikes also created problems of its own for the public tertiary institutions. In most cases, students knew when they would be admitted but could not determine when they would graduate. It was not unusual for students to spend close to a decade for a four or five year course. Those parents with the means withdrew their children either to local private universities that charged exorbitant fees or to even more costly institutions abroad. Children of the poor had no choice but bear their fate with equanimity looking philosophically to the face of God.

    To worsen matters, successive governments often observed their protracted agreements with ASUU in the breach necessitating a vicious spiral of never-ending strikes. Beyond this, it became obvious that the challenges confronting the universities had become so intricate and complex that simply throwing more money at them would hardly make the desired impact. As a cerebral organization of thinkers, I believe that ASUU is currently re-evaluating its strategies with a view to seeing how the public universities can be liberated from their current state of utter decay to become truly transformational institutions beyond the instrumentality of strikes.

    Under the current All Progressives Congress (APC) dispensation and largely because of President Muhammadu Buhari’s personal antipathy to corruption, the sheer venality and insane greed of the country’s ruling class has been exposed as never before. Not just the universities but the entire educational system, the military, the media, the private sector, federal and state government workers, critical public infrastructure and basic social services have been negatively affected by the largely corruption-induced current economic crisis. The country squandered the oil fortune it made for about five years under the Jonathan administration and is now practically broke with the drastic drop in international oil prices.

    Happily, however, the heavy fiscal haemorrhage due to industrial scale looting of the treasury hitherto witnessed under the previous administration has been substantially stanched. Concrete efforts are being made to diversify the economy from overdependence on oil to agriculture and solid minerals while infrastructure is being frenetically upgraded to enhance economic capacity. But there can be no easy route to Eldorado. As efforts are being made to remedy the damage of the past, strikes cannot be a viable option for workers to resolve their grievances either in the public or private sectors and this does not exclude the universities.

    It appears to me that the ASUU leadership is very much aware of this stark reality. Unfortunately, the non-academic unions of the universities seem blissfully oblivious of this fact. At the University of Ibadan, the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) and National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT) have just ended a three day strike to force the university authorities to pay arrears of their ‘earned allowances’. The situation is worse at the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), now renamed after the late General Adeyinka Adebayo. There, the three non-academic unions have been on a protracted strike over sundry issues including alleged victimization, intimidation and non-payment of their hazard allowances; grievances over promotion issues and alleged refusal to release workers’ cooperative funds causing the latter untold hardship. These are, of course, legitimate issues on which workers are right to express their displeasure within constitutional bounds.

    However, it would appear the non-academic unions at the university went beyond the limits of industrial relations in pursuing their perceived rights. In an attempt to shut down the institution and achieve a total strike, some union leaders reportedly beat up and injured some lecturers on campus who were ready to teach. They reportedly disrupted a meeting of the governing council of the university, which was forced to hold at a location off the premises. The governing council directed that the union leaders be issued queries. Rather than defend themselves, the unions demanded the immediate withdrawal of the queries and the dissolution of panels allegedly set up to investigate the workers. The university management took the next logical step of suspending the affected union leaders. Anyone who knows the antecedents of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Kayode Soremekun, would know he is a veritable radical himself. But then, the exercise of industrial relations rights must not be allowed to completely erode authority and result in a descent to anarchy. The excesses of the non-academic unions at the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, must in my view be immediately brought to an end. Matters are certainly not helped by the alleged partisan interference of the Ekiti State government in the affair.

    In the wake of the FUOYE crisis, the VC, Professor Soremekun had said that his greatest concern is how to develop the university and expand its capacity. A major step in this direction was incidentally taken this week when a three day conference held at the university with the objective of equipping young scholars with the capacity to write proposals that attract research grants from the best universities across the world. This project, the product of a visit by Professor Soremekun to the African Peacebuilding Network (APN) program of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), New York, in May this year is the beginning of a collaborative relationship between the two institutions.

    Professor Soremekun believes that this kind of initiative will enhance high quality research and academic excellence at FUOYE that will have a positive impact on the university’s global intellectual appeal and financial viability to the benefit of all stakeholders including the non-academic unions. The conference was preceded by a seminal, thought provoking lecture titled ‘The Challenge of Peace and Security in Times of Recession’, delivered by Professor Emeritus of Political Science, John Ayoade of the University of Ibadan. As a follow up to this programme, Professor Sola Omotola, Head of FUOYE’s Department of Political Science, says that 30 young scholars drawn from across West Africa will soon undergo training at the institution on how to conduct quality research that addresses peace and security threat in Africa as well as suggesting paths to peace building.

    Beyond its present crisis, FUOYE is clearly set for great things ahead.

    It is time to look beyond strikes as the cure all for the myriad travails of the Nigerian university

  • Building leaders

    Building leaders

    The first half of this year has been actionpacked and quite eventful in Lagos. Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, who clocked 54 this Wednesday, is lucky to be the Chief Helmsman of the Centre of Excellence at a time when Lagos is commemorating the 50th year of her creation. It is surely a historic moment to be the man in the arena. We have witnessed memorable events celebrating the undeniable rise to prominence of Lagos as Africa’s emergent model megacity. Yet it is so easy to forget that just 18 years ago, President Olusegun Obasanjo derisively referred to Lagos as no better than a jungle and he was certainly right. It was a city of chaos, groaning under the weight of refuse, paralyzed by traffic gridlock and crater-ridden roads, often submerged by destructive floods, crippled by crime, barely able to generate sufficient funds to pay its workers and roiling in ethnic bloodbath, religious tension and communal clashes. Men, women and children could be seen all over the city carrying assorted containers in search of water. Scores of children carried their chairs and desks on their heads to and from school daily. School walls routinely collapsed wounding and sometimes killing children.

    But that was another age, a time far faded in memory. Lagos had a visionary pathfinder in Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who revolutionized the finances of the state and laid the foundation for her economic and infrastructural resuscitation between 1999 and 2007. She had a hardworking and astute technician in Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) who accelerated the pace of the state’s transformation between 2007 and 2015. And in the current governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, the quality of governance and pace of performance has been elevated to even greater heights. What is unique about Ambode is that he makes governance appear so easy. His leadership style is impactful without being obtrusive. His information management team does not engage in propaganda. Yet, throughout the length and breadth of the state, the presence and effectiveness of governance is palpable.

    Leadership is Nigeria’s direst need of the hour. It is critical to taming the monster of corruption beyond rhetoric. Broadminded, urbane and cosmopolitan leadership is needed to stem the current dangerous fractiousness and begin to rebuild cohesive nationhood. Nigeria desperately requires a leadership that is intellectually confident enough to attract the country’s best and brightest brains into government without feeling inferior or intimidated. The once self-styled giant of Africa is in need of leaders who possess the audacity of courage to think the unthinkable and steer the country in previously uncharted terrains of innovation, creativity and resourcefulness. Of course, these leaders will not drop from the sky. They will be bred and nurtured right here among us. Indeed, many of them are already in our midst and it is our challenge and responsibility to give them the opportunity to unfurl their potentials for our collective good.

    On Mr. Ambode’s birthday, I decided to reread his 118-page inspirational biography, ‘The Art of Selfless Service’, masterfully penned by the Solicitor and Advocate, Marina Osoba and published in 2014. It is a veritable manual on how to inspire and produce great leaders. Governor Ambode is the product of institutions and innovations that were created locally and once worked effectively but which we sadly allowed to decay and degenerate over time. These are structures that we must resuscitate and improve upon so that they can once again begin to help socialize and mould our youths into ethically conscious, purposeful, self-driven and achievement oriented individuals. For instance, his sojourn at the Federal Government College, Warri, played a tremendous role in shaping Ambode into the kind of man and leader he has become.

    The seven years he spent at the institution obtaining his O’ and A’ Levels certificates in flying colours totally transformed the young Ambode. He was exposed to great teachers such as the legendary Mr. Phillip Howard Davis who immensely influenced his personality and outlook on life. Apart from the rigorous academic calendar, FGC Warri was run in such a way that it fostered the emotional, cultural, spiritual, social and physical development of the students. The school even had a Students Representative Council (SRC) made up of students who represented their colleagues at school administrative meeting. This was to nurture training in leadership responsibility and participatory democracy.

    There was the rich ethno-cultural mix of the student population, which helped to forge a strong pan-Nigerian consciousness among the young men and women. As Marina Osoba writes, “As expected, he made lots of new friends from all over Nigeria at Warri, all of who have remained close friends to date. Warri was a great melting pot; all tribes, religions, social groups, cultures and traditions, all in the sanctity of the hallowed walls of Federal Government College, Warri, under the tutelage of some of the best teachers in the country and most of all, under the able administration of Phillip Howard Davis. This was a match made in heaven”.

    To build great leaders, we must re-invent and radically modernize not just our unity schools but all our public primary and secondary schools across the country. They provide the foundation for leadership development. We must once more nurture great and dedicated teachers who see the profession not just as another job but a calling. Incidentally, even after leaving FGC, Warri, Mr. Ambode retained keen interest in the affairs of the school and continued to contribute to its development. He not only headed the Lagos State chapter of the school’s old boys association for several years, he encouraged the establishment of chapters across the country as well as in foreign countries including The U.K. and U.S.

    Beyond his alma mater, Ambode in January, 2006, inspired the formation and registration of the Unity Schools Old Students Association (USOSA) comprising all alumni of 100 unity Schools in Nigeria with the aim of providing “a national platform through which alumni can focus on rekindling and sustaining the vision of the founders of the Unity School concept as centres of academic excellence, integration, leadership and unity as well as influencing policy changes in the way and manner these schools are administered”.

    Apart from his experience as a student of Accountancy at the cosmopolitan environment of the University of Lagos, Mr. Ambode’s participation in the compulsory National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) in 1984 helped to deepen the national consciousness he had developed at FGC Warri. According to the author, “Sokoto was a blessing in disguise; it afforded Akin the opportunity to reconnect with former friends of his Warri days which made the whole experience invaluable. When orientation camp was over, he found himself posted to serve at the state branch of the Central Bank of Nigeria. This opened up a whole new horizon as he not only learnt about Accountancy, but also discovered the intricacies of working in the Public Service”.

    Today, the NYSC has become a shadow of itself. Most parents are understandably unwilling to allow their children to serve in parts of the country prone to violence and crime. Yet, the NYSC can be a very effective vehicle for building patriotic, broadminded and detribalized leaders. This is another institution that has to be re-imagined, reinvented and radically modernized to continue to play its nation-enhancing role within a vastly changed context.

    A third major factor in Ambode’s development as a leader was his participation in August 1998, in the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Scholarship Programme at Boston University, Massachussets. This programme funded through the United States Department of State seeks to transform the mindset of the participant making him a team player rather than an isolationist, transform the man into an individual impassioned by the drive for excellence and integrity, empower the participant to help transform the workplace from which he came and also equip the participant to contribute towards transforming the society to which he will return. “To accomplish these objectives, programmes are designed to include various combinations of course work, independent projects, internships, consultations with U.S. faculty experts, field trips and special seminars. Under the guidance of a designated faculty advisor or ‘coordinator’, Fellows and scholars plan programmes that best suit their individual career development needs. However to reiterate, selfless service to society, being a major goal is one area that is not ignored”, the author writes.

    Continuing, Marina Osoba notes that “Akin’s Boston experience did all these and more. The period made him resolve to take service to a higher level than before; it re-engineered his entire educational experience, the exposure to the American way of doing things transformed his former ways and expanded the ‘can-do’ attitude he had. It solidified his belief that there was nothing unattainable when one serves selflessly and from the heart”. I am not aware that there is any equivalent of this kind of leadership development programme in Nigeria. Surely, the country has enough public spirited philanthropists who have the capacity to make such an opportunity for conscious, life-transforming leadership training and development available for promising potential leaders.

  • Njc’s dangerous complacency

    Njc’s dangerous complacency

    The date was Sunday, May 21, 2017. The venue was the Methodist Church of Nigeria, Abuja diocese. The occasion was a no doubt well deserved thanksgiving service held for the new Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Onnoghen. The man who now sits at the apex of the county’s judiciary certainly has so much to thank God for not least of all his elevation to his present enviable status. Speaking during the service, the CJN said “I thank Nigerians for attending this event. It is supposed to be a personal thing between and my God but I have no hiding place. I thank God for fulfilling this His promise to me”. I sincerely wish the CJN had stood his ground and offered his gratitude to God for his appointment in a more very private manner.  For the concept of thanksgiving in most cases has been bastardized and pulverized into just another meaningless Nigerian ritual. In any case, the best gratitude that the CJN can offer the God he serves in my view is to preside over the judiciary with integrity and credibility as well as help to mid-wife the birth of a ‘born again’ justice system for the country shorn of the current avoidable debilitating delays, distractions and pecuniary perversions that provide wings for corruption to soar higher and higher beyond the reach of justice.

    What I find rather disturbing, however, is that the CJN utilized the opportunity of the thanksgiving service to mount a stout defence of the judiciary rather than send a strong message to both judicial officers and members of the public who try to procure favourable judgements from courts that it will not be business as usual under him. He lamented that the judiciary is under threat because some members of the sacred temple of justice were being investigated and accused of corrupt practices by agents of the Federal Government without giving them an opportunity to be heard. It is my take that the judiciary is the sole cause of any obloquy it may have attracted to itself even though I agree with the CJN that some of these agencies have been highhanded, insensitive, unprofessional and overzealous in the way they have sought to combat what they consider to be corruption in the judicial arm of government.

    The 82nd National Judicial Council (NJC)  meeting held on May 31st and June 1st, the NJC under Onnoghe’s Chairmanship recalled five judges who had earlier been suspended when  the Directorate of State Services )(DSS) invaded their residences alleging various acts of infractions of the law against them. The NJC is of the view that no case had been made against the judges. Out of the eight of the judicial officers tainted by the DSS raid, and who were suspended from office at the request of the Attorney General of the federation, Mallam Shehu Malami (SAN) pending the conclusion of investigations, the NJC avers and rightly too that only three had been charged to court – Justice N.S. Ngwuta of the Supreme Court, Justice A.F. Ademola of the Federal High Court and Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia also of the Federal High Court. Justice Adeniyi Ademola’s case has since been discharged and he has been acquitted of all charges against him.

    The NJC may rightly claim that it cannot wait indefinitely for the anti-graft agencies to get their acts right and charge all the judges to court in accordance with the legal process. This is particularly because the NJC claims that there has been a backlog of cases that have been lying unattended to in the affected judges’ courts for the last eight months. The NJC has a point there. An already cumbersomely slow judicial process can ill afford to be further bogged down by unheard cases accumulating in courts of judges who have been indicted by the security and anti-graft agencies but are yet to be convicted in any court of law. It is not impossible that the caution and meticulousness of the anti-graft agencies in pursuing the matter of the judges is due to their perception that it will be easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a judicial officer to be convicted in the context of the extant judicial system.

    Interestingly, the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mallam A.B. Mahmud (SAN), which had also firmly called for the suspension of the affected judges, is now singing a different tune. According to Mahmud, “This situation is completely unsatisfactory and unacceptable. The NBA calls on the government to terminate the investigations against those judges and to enable them resume work as judicial officers”. I think the CJN, the NJC, which he leads and the NBA are all looking at this issue as a purely legal and technical one. It is not. The issue of the suspended but now recalled judges is more fundamentally a moral one.  On the psychological plane, it is difficult to understand how an accused person will stand in court with confidence in the integrity of a judge he considers morally leprous to preside over his or her case.

    At the time of the shocking DSS raid on the residences of some judges after midnight on October 8, 2016, this column was one of those which railed vehemently against what I perceived a gross violation of law and due process as well as a bid by the executive to intimidate and emasculate the judiciary. However, the discovery of humongous funds in diverse currencies in the residences of the judges, amounting to about N271.7 million was a great shock. It is surprising that in the Justice Adeniyi Ademola case, for instance, the court was only interested in establishing if there was any link between the huge amounts of cash found in his residence and any cases before him. The judge was simply not interested in how the judge acquired the money and why it was kept in a private residence out of formal monetary channels. After all, a judge’s house is neither a bank nor a bureau de change.

    Because of the skewed nature of its own key appointments leading to the widespread perception of the Buhari administration as essentially pro-north, the administration could not but confirm Justice Onnoghe as CJN being the most senior Judge at the apex court. That course of action no matter how well meaning   would have raised an unprecedented uproar particularly in the South-South. It is not too late, however, for the CJN to rise up to the onerous challenge history has thrust on him. That is to take more urgent and effective steps to stamp corruption out of the judiciary. If he does not lead the process of self-cleansing from within the judiciary, overzealous security and anti-graft agencies will be there to do it for them without grace, mercy or pity; security outfits that would not mind bringing the entire judicial edifice down on everybody’s head. More importantly, perceived judicial complacency and complicity in shielding its members from facing the law for pecuniary malfeasance may arouse a public uprising and catalyze a chain of events whose end no one can predict.(Apologies to the late Chief Anthony Enahoro).

     

    Odu’a : Why corporate governance matters

    The present governors of the South-West states deserve commendation for the new lease of life given to the Odu’a Group of companies since the emergence of Mr Adewale Raji as the company’s Group Managing Director since in 2014. In the first pace, the new GMD emerged through a highly competitive and rigorous process. Secondly, the governors have given the Raji-led Executive management committee the autonomy to operate as a business without undue partisan interference thus engendering higher corporate governance standards.

    The result has been improved profitability. Under Raji, the Group’s audited accounts showed that its Profit Before Tax increased from N378 million to N597 million in 2015 which made it possible for shareholders to be paid dividends of N167 million and N194 million respectively as dividends for the 2014 and 2015 financial years. It is believed that the synergy between the new Chairman of the Odu’a Board, Chief Segun Ojo, representing Ondo State, will help accelerate the process of fully rejuvenating and invigourating the company to play its role as the Special Purpose Vehicle to drive the objective of achieving greater South West economic integration as decided by owner state governors. The years 2009 and 2013 before the assumption of office of the current GMD, witnessed a near stagnant revenue performance of 3% decline and decline of 36% in Profit Before Tax making it impossible for the company to declare any dividends for the period. Chief Segun Ojo holds degrees in Economics and statistics, retired meritoriously from the Ondo State public service and had previously served on the Boards of Nigerite and Lagos Airport Hotel.

  • Biafra at 50

    Biafra at 50

    Can we talk in any true, accurate or meaningful sense of Biafra at 50? Didn’t the short-lived Republic collapse and its bones interred with the military capitulation of the Igbo on 12th January 1970? Haven’t we been going on ever since then, no matter how precariously and tremulously, with one Nigeria to borrow from the slogan of the federal side during the war? We may, however, have sung the Nunc Dimittis for Biafra too soon. Fifty years after Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu proclaimed what turned out to be its ephemeral and transient existence as a sovereign entity, the spirit of Biafra is obviously alive, well and vigorous. This is most evident in the near instantaneous catapulting of a hitherto obscure Nnmadi Kanu of the emergent Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) fame to folk hero status in the South-East on the wings of demagogic Biafran rhetoric.

    Of course the whole notion of indigenous people of Biafra is utterly fictional and mythical. No such thing exists. The birth of Biafra was not a function of some deeply held primordial sentiment of shared nationhood by the Igbo. Biafra was a product of fortuitous circumstances arising from the unanticipated and unintended consequences of the January 15, 1966, coup of the five majors that resulted in the collapse of the first republic. The details are too well known to detain us here. Widely perceived particularly in the North as an Igbo coup, the Kaduna Nzeogwu-led putsch precipitated the counter coup of July 1966 that not only targeted top Igbo leaders but also ignited the gruesome pogrom against the Igbo in the north.

    The massacre of Igbo in the North was clearly unjustifiable even as the pattern of killings with northern political and military leaders as the major victims in the January coup was equally inexcusable. True, the rather enthusiastic celebration of the assassination of the Premier of the North, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, particularly by Igbo traders in northern urban centres as documented by the late Professor Billy Dudley in his classic, ‘Instability and Political Order’, was provocative. But it did not legitimise the retaliatory killings against innocent Igbo citizens. In the heat of the moment, the fury of the young Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu was understandable. There are those who argue that Ojukwu had no choice but to play the role history had bestowed on him as the defender and protector of his beleaguered people.

    But another school of thought contends that Ojukwu was motivated as much by his own ambition as the passion to protect his people. His undoubted erudition, they argue, could have been tempered by a higher degree of wisdom. Had Ojukwu’s youthful martial brashness been restrained by a more acute sense of strategic long term thinking, perhaps about two million Biafran lives could have been spared in an avoidable war. Maybe this is only being wise after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. But just as Biafra was born in spontaneous and unplanned reaction to the perceived injustices suffered by the Igbo in the first republic, its spirit is being sustained today more by reflexive emotive response to the perceived injustices of contemporary Nigeria than rational contemplation and action.

    There is no deep pan-Igbo bond that can necessarily sustain the cohesiveness of an independent Biafra. This much was demonstrated by the internal schisms within Biafra that led to the persecution, even execution ordered by Ojukwu in many cases, of so-called internal saboteurs against the Biafra cause. It is the lesson of Southern Sudan, where contending forces in the new nation turned against each other with brutal ferocity once the goal of independence had been achieved.

    The post-civil war Igbo generation that did not witness the fratricidal blood- letting, but is championing the cause of Biafra today invest the idea with an emotional energy that has no deep and enduring roots. Professor Billy Dudley makes this point brilliantly in his book, ‘An Introduction to Nigerian Government and Politics”. Dudley’s colleague, Professor James O’Connell, had visited the East shortly before the war in a bid to persuade Igbo academics who had fled Nigeria particularly from the University of Ibadan to return as part of efforts to assuage the tension between both sides and ultimately help to avert violent conflict. O’Connell during the visit came across an Igbo Professor of Medicine who was utterly disgusted with what he considered the lack of seriousness of his people. At a village meeting, which he attended, the Professor of Medicine was shocked to discover that elders were more interested to talk about raising funds for a new village hall than the serious crisis of Biafra. As Dudley tells the story, “On remonstrating with the elders about what he took to be their frivolousness, he was calmly told ‘Young man sit down! Biafra may come and go but Nimmo (the name of the village) will be here forever’. The dismay of the Professor was to find that, for most people, ‘Biafra’ was too much of an abstraction to be comprehensible…”

    The lesson of this narrative is that Biafra is no less artificial a construct than Nigeria is. When faced with a perceived common enemy, there may be a semblance of internal cohesion just as the Nigerian nationalists affected during the struggle against British colonialism. But once the common adversary is out of the way, hidden fissures come to the fore with dysfunctional consequences. Just like Nigeria, Biafra is an alien coinage. I do not think there is any Igbo word for the concept of Biafra. Yes, the Igbo are bound by a common language and culture. But this does not offset the stronger influence of their fierce sense of individual autonomy. As Professor Green Onyekaba Nwankwo put it, “The individualism gone berserk is both a cause and a product of yet another main trait- his extreme republicanism manifest in Igbo Enwe Eze – the Igbo has no King – no restraining influence like the Oba of the Yoruba or the Emirs of the North”.

    Ironically, the expansiveness of Nigeria provides the Igbo ample space and opportunity for the unbundling of immense Igbo energy and resourcefulness across the country. The Igbo have heavily invested in property, commerce and sundry businesses all over Nigeria including Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano, Kaduna etc. Surprisingly, the Igbo homeland has itself not been a beneficiary of the developmental capabilities of the Igbo to the extent it can be. Again, as Professor Nwankwo put it, “As long as the Igboman continues to sink money to reclaim swamps, and clear forests, construct shopping malls, skyscrapers and posh houses in his resident states while gullies and erosion continue to sap and wash away roads and destroy the environment in his home states, so long will he continue to be marginalized as life chances elude him in his home state”.

    Since the restoration of civil rule in 1999, the dynamics of democratic governance has had some positive impact on the quality of governance and the pace of development in the Igbo states just as in other parts of the country. But the energy being expended in the misguided struggle for Biafra can be more profitably invested in the quest for a truly federal Nigeria in which all component parts enjoy autonomy of resource control and policy initiative to actualize their potential for the collective benefit of all. In the final analysis, replacing a structurally suffocating Nigeria with a no less asphyxiating enforced homogeneity of Biafra cannot be a viable option for the Igbo.

     

    Herbert Macaulay’s day of resurrection

    The embers of knowledge glowed. The rays of enlightenment glittered like a million stars. The radiance of wisdom and insight shone with luminous intensity. The light-bearing angel of history descended, removed the stone of obscurity and ignorance that had hitherto blocked the entrance to the tomb of Herbert Macaulay and the great Wizard of Kirsten Hall, who died in Lagos on May 7, 1946, literally rose from the dead. The day was Thursday, May 25. The venue was the Lagos Country Club Ikeja. Mr. Femi Macaulay, scion of the legendary family and member of The Nation newspaper’s Editorial Board, summoned the audacity of courage, spoke the word and the annual  Herbert Heelas Macaulay Gold Lecture Series was born.

    Accomplished diplomat, historian, author, polemicist, academic, witty conversationalist, fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and dignified denizen of the elitist Metropolitan Club among others, Ambassador Dapo Fafowora, delivered the inaugural lecture. The Wizard of Kirsten Hall was brought to life, iron clad moustache, stentorian look, bow tie and all by the Ambassador’s capacious memory, meticulous research and amazing synthesizing and analytical skills. The lecture was an intellectual tour de force – a fitting launch pad for the Gold Lecture series. The chairman of the occasion, accomplished editor and journalist and now Rector of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ), Mr. Gbemiga Ogunleye and the MC, author, poet, historian and columnist, our own Sam Omatseye all contributed to making the event a memorable one. And of course one cannot forget the graceful and gracious Mrs. Macaulay, Femi’s better half, whose alluringly sonorous rendering of the national anthem and the immortal ‘Baby jowo ko mai lo o’ among other soulful tunes to the delight of the audience is firmly etched in the memory. It was an unforgettable three hours.

  • Buratai’s patriotism

    When a stentorian military baritone voice broke the foreboding monotony of unusual martial music on national radio to announce the coup that signaled the end of the unlamented Second Republic on New Year eve, December 31st, 1983, yours truly was one of the thousands of impressionable young undergraduates that thronged the streets of major cities across Nigeria in wild celebration. The four years of civilian rule between 1979 and 1983 had witnessed the most obscene and stupendous forms of elite pillage of the public treasury particularly by the predatory politicians of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) at the centre; a morbid spectre of rampant corruption that made the much condemned pecuniary malfeasance that contributed to undermining the First Republic a veritable child’s play.

    Yet, the venality of the corrupt NPN politicians at the centre was not mitigated by at least a redeeming modicum of performance resulting in deepening poverty for a vastly increased number of Nigerians amidst the criminal opulence of a privileged few. The hope of millions of Nigerians that the 1983 general elections would provide an opportunity for peaceful change at the polls was recklessly thwarted by the massive electoral fraud that saw the NPN retaining power with a much more resounding margin of victory than it had secured in the 1979 elections irrespective of the will of the people.

    Could we then be blamed for dancing in ecstasy to the tunes of the martial music that sent the politicians packing in 1983? Could we not be excused for the youthful innocence and exuberance that made us perceive the military as the country’s messiah? Alas, we were poor students of history. For, it was the same way that the bloody mutiny of the young majors that truncated the First Republic was initially enthusiastically received in many parts of the country. It was a sweet good bye to the corrupt politicians and their nepotism as well as divisive ethnicity. And it was welcome to a brand new Nigeria remade in the shining image of the revolutionary and modernizing military many idealists thought. Unfortunately, the military was not only to plunge the country into a tragic three-year civil war, by the time the soldiers returned power in 1979 to the same set of politicians they had overthrown 13 years earlier, the problems of corruption, disunity and underdevelopment had worsened even though the country had hit crude oil as a bottomless gold mine.

    A little over a year and a half after the truncation of the Second Republic, the crusading anti-corruption but unrepentantly dictatorial Buhari/Idiagbon regime was displaced in a palace coup by the gap-toothed Maradona of Minna, whose military regime had its no less draconian fist hidden beneath the deceptive gloves of beguiling smiles and ‘subversive generosity’. By the time the military retreated once more to the barracks in near disarray in 1999 after God’s coup had toppled the dark goggled dictator of vice, the country had been brought to the very brink of disintegration. The freest and fairest election in the country’s history had been unjustly annulled in 1993 and its winner ultimately martyred. Corruption had reached stratospheric heights. Nigeria plunged the depths of underdevelopment. Not just Nigerians but most of the world heaved a sigh of relief on the country’s behalf to see the military take leave of the political terrain with the democratic restoration of 1999.

    Against this background, it was nothing but a bombshell when the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt-Gen. Tukur Buratai, made the shocking disclosure this week that some individuals had been making overtures to soldiers in recent times for reasons that are yet undisclosed. The statement issued by the Director, Army Public Relations, Brig.Gen. Sani Usman, on behalf of the COAS was direct and unambiguous. According to the Army spokesman, the COAS “has received information that some individuals have been approaching some officers and soldiers for undisclosed political reasons. On the basis of this, he has warned such persons to desist from these acts. He also reminded them that the Nigerian Army is a thorough, professional, disciplined, loyal and political institution that has clear Constitutional roles and responsibilities. Therefore, he seriously warned and advised all officers and soldiers interested in politics, to resign their commission or apply for voluntary discharge forthwith. Any officer or soldier of the Nigerian Army found to be hobnobbing with such elements or engaged in unprofessional conducts such as politicking would have himself or herself to blame”.

    It is unlikely that the COAS would have caused such a serious statement to be issued on his behalf without justification. He certainly felt sufficiently disturbed to put both the military and the public on the alert. It has been speculated in some quarters that some disgruntled sections of the political class are trying to instigate the military to violate the constitution and possibly truncate the democratic order as a result of uncertainties concerning President Muhammadu Buhari’s health. If there is any truth in this, such atavistic political elements have clearly lost touch with the country’s political realities. They are vegetating in a dead past that can no longer be exhumed.

    The country is into its 18th year of unbroken democratic rule since 1999. It has not been a period without its many moments of pains, tensions and severe stress. Elections have been violently contested, unfairly manipulated and hotly disputed. Communal conflagrations have flared. Religious conflicts have been recurrent. Ethno-regional embers have been stoked. A murderous insurgency had practically laid the North-East prostrate until very recently. A particularly dangerous moment was when a severely physically incapacitated President Umaru Yar’Adua had to seek medical succour abroad without being able to properly transmit power to his deputy. A power vacuum loomed ominously. The country teetered on the brink of constitutional crisis. Yet, the political actors found a creative and pragmatic way out. Our democracy not only survived, it was strengthened.

    Today, the country is nowhere near a crisis situation. President Buhari is ailing. He has made no secret of the fact. Each time he has travelled on medical vacation just as he is now, he has kept the National Assembly abreast and ensured there is no lacuna. Quite apart from honourably abiding by the constitutional requirement that he transfers the powers of his office to his deputy in acting capacity in his absence, an emotional synergy has obviously developed between both men on a personal level. Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo admitted as much when he publicly declared in Katsina State during the week that the President treats him like a son. There could be no greater testament to mutual love and confidence. Osinbajo’s demonstrated restrained conduct and fidelity to a boss who has taken ill like any mortal can, has won him the admiration of millions of Nigerians. A deputy who seeks to capitalize on the physical discomfiture of his boss to aggrandize himself in power would lose the respect of Nigerians.

    Those politicians trying to exploit President Buhari’s ill-health to goad the military into political misadventure are severely on their own. They do not love Buhari, the military or the country. But Lt-Gen. Buratai deserves plaudits for his professionalism and patriotism. The coups that overthrew the first and second republics were instigated by disgruntled civilians who succeeded in infiltrating and inciting ambitious elements within the military to spurn civilian control. Having received the sensitive information of civilians making dangerous overtures to his men, Buratai could have opted for silence. After all, if the democratic order were overturned, he could be a likely beneficiary from the resultant praetorian order. That is how a soldier-politician would think. It is not unlikely that some top military men who have been susceptible to the carrots being dangled by tempting politicians are already thinking that way. Thank God, Buratai has removed the carpet from under their feet. He is a true professional soldier.

    Any officer who thinks that the military has anything to gain as an institution by assuming the reins of political power once again in the country is certainly not worthy of his commission. The military’s institutional coherence, organizational integrity and professional competence have between the greatest casualties of its intervention in politics. That was why a former highly respected Chief of Army Staff during the Babangida years in power once famously lamented that under military rule, the Nigerian Army became one of anything goes. We must never return to those days.

    The task of rebuilding the military as a truly professional institution is a necessary condition not only for creating a potent modern fighting force capable of safeguarding the country’s territorial integrity but also for maintaining a sustainable democratic order. Buratai has done his bit. He has shouted from the rooftops and put us all on alert. It is now time for the requisite security agencies to get down to work with a view to identifying, arresting and bringing some treasonable culprits before the law.

  • Politics of Buhari’s health

    Politics of Buhari’s health

    The politics of President Muhammadu Buhari’s health has in recent times become the main issue on Nigeria’s ever slippery and treacherous political terrain.  Discourse on policy in many circles has been relegated to second place. There is hardly any meaningful and sustained dialogue on the dynamics and vagaries of the development process. All the focus now is on the president’s health status sapping substantial energy from more productive and useful preoccupations. This situation is by no means the fault of the President. It is more a function largely of the dynamics and character of our politics, which beyond the surface trappings and superficial manifestations of liberal democracy, has really not changed fundamentally from the locust years of military rule. It was the late Claude Ake who in the in the mid eighties presciently captured the obsessive premium placed on power by the African political class saying “They accumulated power by all means, did everything to secure it and to prevent other from getting it…Indeed politics became the only game in town, it was a game played with deadly seriousness for the winners won everything and the losers lost everything”.

    True, Ake uttered these words when praetorian rule was still the norm on the continent. But the Nigerian experience since 1999 shows that the more things appear to change, the more they remain the same. The 1999 election was a rear guard action in which the departing military deliberately arranged a desired outcome to protect its back. In the 2003 polls, we saw the PDP blitzkrieg waltzing across large swathes of the country and ruthlessly converting a fairly balanced multi-party system into a one-party dominant one with the ruling party as the beneficiary. Even the winner of the 2007 presidential election in a rare display of nobility admitted that the polls that brought him to power were grossly flawed. And the aftermath of the 2011 election saw the loss of lives on a large scale particularly in large parts of a disenchanted north. The 2015 election witnessed the obscene expenditure of foreign currency to procure votes especially by the then ruling party, the open brandishing of sophisticated weapons by assorted militia groups to intimidate voters and was difficult to distinguish from warfare in states like Rivers and Akwa Ibom.

    In any case, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which held on to power at the centre for 16 years between 1999 and 2015 was fashioned organizationally and philosophically in the unitary image of the military. Not too long ago, former military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, revealed how a coterie of Generals planned surreptitiously to ensure not only that one of them, General Olusegun Obasanjo, became president in 1999 but also planned that the ‘military party’ would be in power for at least 60 years. However, President Muhammadu Buhari stands in a unique position to both the stupendously rich military elite particularly of the north and their wealthy civilian counterparts. He was not like those of the military and civilian political elite who benefited from their positions or links with the military to become veritable billionaires and were thus easily able to contest and win elections in the emergent civilian dispensation after 1999.

    Yet, Buhari retained a cult following among the teeming masses of the North and by 2015 he had also won support among key influential elites of the South, particularly the South West, to forge a viable national coalition that gave the All Progressives Congress its unprecedented victory over a clearly overconfident and complacent PDP. Since his election, Buhari has steadfastly implemented his electoral promise of fighting corruption to a standstill. The socio-economic and political environment has become considerably sanitized. Humongous amounts of stolen funds have been found and recovered into state coffers. It is not uncommon to hear public officers declare that the fear of Buhari is the beginning of wisdom and there are no more free funds to criminally privatize.

    There is no doubt that those who have been the targets of the anti-corruption war will be highly elated to see some form of misfortune befall the President. However, the President’s inner circle of advisers need to quickly make amends on some of their policy advice to him so that he continues to enjoy the broad, popular support that brought him to power. For instance, the base of recruitment into public office by the administration should transcend Buhari’s narrow ethno-regional origins and become more inclusive of the diversity of ethnic, cultural and religious groups in the country. Again, they can be of considerable assistance to the President by helping to ensure that top members of his administration accused of the slightest pecuniary infractions are promptly and thoroughly investigated and decisively sanctioned if found culpable. That would deepen the support for the president personally, his party and the administration generally.

    Part of the complications of the politics of Buhari’s health challenge revolves around the very conceptualization, structure and functioning of the Nigerian presidency. Since the President has the whole country as his constituency being elected by a plurality of votes across the country, he is seen as an institutional symbol of national integration and unity. The 1999 constitution thus following on the 1979 constitution, gave enormous powers, responsibilities and control of resources to the office of the President. But these expansive powers of the office of President had the perhaps unintended, dysfunctional effect of enhancing its attractiveness across the ethno-cultural and religious cleavages of the country as a source of considerable patronage and diverse forms of rewards. Thus, the contest for the office became mostly vicious and unstructured. To surmount this problem of an overly attractive presidency and the fierce struggles to control it by different components of the country, Nigerian politicians came up with the creative ‘consociational’ device of a zoning formula, which would see the office rotating periodically among the constitutive zones of the country according to informally prescribed agreements.

    Thus, like the late President Umaru Yar’Adua before him, Buhari is seen first and foremost as representing his primary constituency, the North, rather than the country. Buhari is therefore perceived as utilizing the tenure of the north – a tenure which is the right of the region at least for two terms. Unfortunately, after Yar ‘A dua’s demise, two years into his first term, Dr Goodluck Jonathan not only completed his term but went on to contest the 2011 elections, which he won in utter violation of the PDP’s unwritten zoning formula. Matters were not helped by the seeming overbearing behavior of the Ijaw cabal in Jonathan’s inner circle after the 2011 election, which gradually began to crystallize considerable northern political support around Buhari – a development given fillip by the emergence of the APC as a pan-Nigerian party that he could use to actualize his ambition for the first time.

    Obasanjo’s case in 1999 was unique. He won the transition election that birthed this dispensation with a broad coalition made up of influential groups from other parts of the country, particularly the North, without the support of the Yoruba vote in the South West, which went to Chief Olu Falae of the then Alliance for Democracy (AD). Obasanjo’s inner circle during his tenure could certainly not be described as a Yoruba cabal. Rather, it was more inclusive in terms of ethno-cultural and regional coloration, age and gender.

    There have been calls from various quarters for Buhari to declare his health status. Some of these are definitely high minded and well meaning. However, they may be idealistic and unrealistic. As I have tried to demonstrate in this piece, any Nigerian President is not his own. Once he gets to power, he tends to be captured largely by self-seeking vested interests. Thus, from Obasanjo, through Yar’Adua to Jonathan and now Buhari, there are always tiny but powerful groups who want to keep a physically fit President in office through dubious constitutional manipulations and pecuniary inducement to achieve tenure elongation or outright rigging of elections or to keep an incapacitated president in power through subterfuge.

    However, there are also those who are calling for the disclosure of Buhari’s health status out of mischief, a desire to destabilize the administration or with a view to obtaining ammunition to intensify their scorn and hate offensive in some sections of the media. For now, this column sees no serious harm in the non-disclosure of the president’s health details. That is surely the prerogative of Buhari himself or his family. Right now, each time the President has travelled out for medical reasons, he has not concealed this fact from the public. He has always complied with the constitutional arrangement of transmitting notice of his movement to the National Assembly thus enabling the Vice President to act in his stead. Can a shadowy cabal capitalize on this opportunity to seize and exercise power surreptitiously? I think the possibility is remote. The forthright and firm stance of the Senate on the wordings of Buhari’s last transmission as regards Osinbajo’s role as Acting President shows this clearly.

    Obasanjo’s attempt to perpetuate his rule through the nefarious Third Term Agenda collapsed abysmally. Jonathan’s desire to literally procure re-election for a second term through the mindless squandering of foreign currency on assorted individuals and groups failed woefully. The attempt by a shadowy clique to benefit from Umoru Yar’A dua’s ill health and exercise power illegally proved a nullity. We must not underestimate the increasing capacity and resilience of our institutional structures and processes to help protect and strengthen the country’s growing democracy and ensure strict adherence to constitutionalism.

  • For mummy Bene Madunagu at 70 (1)

    Subtitled ‘Tributes to revolutionary commitment, struggle and service’, the book, ‘Bene Maunagu at 70’ edited by her husband, Dr. Edwin Madunagu, mathematician, academic, radical thinker, Marxist, revolutionary strategist, celebrated newspaper columnist, archivist and much more, is a remarkable portrait of and testimony to the life and times of a unique woman who has been of inestimable value to the struggle for social justice,  human dignity, gender equity and people-oriented development in Nigeria. Not many outside her immediate circle of influence, whose lives she has touched in diverse ways, knew that Professor (Mrs) Bene Madunagu clocked 70 on March 21, this year. As this 153-page publication, deliberately designed to be accessible and reader friendly shows, Professor (Mrs) Madunagu is not just a loving and devoted wife and mother, she is in her own right a first class scholar, revolutionary organizer, accomplished administrator, human and women rights activist as well as labour leader in addition to being a relentless fighter for progressive social change.

    This book is an enthralling, abridged account of aspects of the protracted struggle for a just social order in post-colonial Nigeria and the immense sacrifices which many radical activists and revolutionaries, including Comrades Bene and Edwin Madunagu, have made towards the achievement of this objective. Yet, it is not a narrative that indulges in self glorification or seeks to paint a self-serving picture of personal heroics. Rather, what comes across in virtually every page is a deliberate attempt to understate and subsume the activities and undertakings of the individual under the collective banner of the groups within which they operate. Although this is not explicitly stated in the book, I have the feeling that a fundamental belief that informs the ideological orientation and philosophical disposition of the Madunagus is that no man or woman is an island and that the life of the individual cannot be truly meaningful when taken out of the context of the collective good of the society within which he or she is embedded. For such an altruistic and other-regarding worldview, a narcissistic attitude to life cannot be an option.

    Even though this book is a collection of tributes to Professor Bene Madunagu by those who know her most intimately and have worked and/or collaborated with her in different spheres over the years, the life, beliefs, values and motivations of the editor, Dr. Edwin Madunagu, shines brightly through the pages. This is certainly inevitable as the story of this exemplary couple is that of two individuals becoming indistinguishable from one indivisible soul united in friendship, love, comradeship, political commitment, class struggle and revolutionary consciousness.

    Comrade Edwin describes “the three integral attributes of the relationship between Bene and myself” as “compatibility, complementarity and love”. Interestingly, though the Madunagus would most probably categorize themselves as humanists, Comrade Edwin, in elaborating on the love component of their relationship refers his readers, “revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries, Christians and non-Christians- to what Saint Paul said in his first letter to the people of Corinth; that is, the Holy Bible: First Corinthians, Chapter 13”.

    In a society characterized by mindless accumulation of wealth by all means and at all costs with deleterious consequences for the vast majority of a badly traumatized people who sink ever deeper into poverty while some tiny minority luxuriate in criminal loot, the Christ-like selflessness of the Madunagus is truly amazing. Writing about the defining essence of their relationship, Comrade Edwin reveals that “All major decisions in our organizational, political, professional, occupational, financial, and family lives since 1975 have been taken together and executed together – sometimes with one person above ground and the other underground. Beyond this, everything that can be called property (which, excluding literary acquisition is very limited) is collectively owned in a revolutionary sense- with the formal and legal ownership residing with Bene”.

    It certainly takes more than common courage, determination, commitment, resilience and discipline for a woman to be the kind of uncompromising radical and revolutionary that Professor Bene Madunagu has been in a kind of society like ours. Yet, ever since she got acquainted with her future husband when they were still graduate students at the Faculty of Science, University of Lagos in 1973, Comrade Bene has led a life of unwavering purpose and focus not just on the welfare and wellbeing of her family but also the struggle for the liberation of millions of our people from the humiliating grip of poverty. The most incredible thing is that the sacrificial path, she has chosen in life is entirely voluntary. For, this is a woman who has all the intellect, talent and ability to make as much money as she could have wanted to accumulate and live a life of opulence in the midst of mass poverty like so many other less gifted but more unscrupulous men and women have opted for.

    Professor (Mrs.) Bene Madunagu obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Botany from the University of Lagos in 1972; a Master of Science degree also in Botany specializing in Mycology in 1975 from the University of Lagos and a Doctorate degree in Phytopathology (Botany) within a record period of 18 months from the University of Ibadan in 1986. As Comrade Edwin tells the touching story of this great Nigerian patriot and hero, “After her Master’s degree, Bene was employed as an Assistant Lecturer in the University of Lagos. She moved over to the University of Calabar, on July 1, 1976, as Lecturer II. For their actual and purported roles in the April 1978 national student action, “Ali Must Go”, Bene and her husband, Edwin, who had joined the University in August 1977, as well as 10 other University teachers and administrators across the country were summarily dismissed in September 1978…Bene was instantly recalled from the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, where she had just begun a Ph.D. programme on a fellowship. The fellowship was withdrawn, her salary stopped and her official quarters in the University sealed up. She was left stranded in London and had to be repatriated back to Calabar by the Nigerian Embassy”.

    After 32 months out of job, Professor Bene Madunagu was reinstated in April 1981 after she won a case in court challenging her dismissal. She rose from the position of Lecturer 1 in 1986 to become Senior Lecturer in 1990, Associate Professor in 1995 and full Professor in 2000. A prolific scholar, she has published over 40 scientific papers in learned local and foreign journals, authored several academic books for use at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in addition to examining not less than 25 Master’s degree theses and 18 PhD dissertations in various universities in Nigeria. In a tribute to Professor Bene by Dr. E.J. Umana, Associate Professor of Phytopathology, Dr. S.E. Udo, Associate Professor of Ethnobotany and Field Biology and Dr. A.A. Markson, Associate Professor of Phytopathology and Applied Mycology, all academics she had nurtured and groomed, she was described as “…a Professor of Professors, an activist, a philanthropist and a heroin of our time. She is a woman of substance, a dependable pillar of hope and succor to, not only the women folk whose cause she champions, but to all who have the privilege to come by”. On attaining the age of 65, Professor Bene Madunagu retired officially from the University of Calabar on March 21, 2012, and delivered her Inaugral Lecture on April 18, 2012.

    The various organizations and groups which Mrs. Madunagu helped to form, participated actively in or led between 1973 and the present reveal the intensity of her passion, her abundant energy and the diversity of her interests. These as itemized in chapter two of the book include Nigerian Youth Action Committee (1973); Society for Progress (1974); Anti-Poverty Movement of Nigeria (APMON,1974); Revolutionary Movement for the Liberation of Nigeria (1976); Calabar Group of Socialists (1977); Democratic Action Committee (1980); Women in Nigeria (WIN,1980); Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU, since 1980); Movement of Peoples of Democracy (1977); Directorate for Literacy (1986); Socialist Revolutionary Vanguard (1989); Girls’ Power Initiative (GPI, 1993); Centre for Research, Information and Documentation (CENTRID, 1992); Conscientising Nigerian Male Adolescents (CMA,1995); Calabar International Institute for Research Information (CIINSTRID, 2000) and Congress of Popular Democracy (CPD,1998).

    Describing her mother as her inspiration and role model, Professor Bene’s daughter, Unoma Madunagu-Agrinya writes, “I grew up different from other girls in my community who felt they were not as smart as boys and could not take on roles traditionally assigned to boys…Because I am proud of who I am, I will do the same for my children especially my daughter. She will grow up knowing that she is a human being and has equal rights with her brother. Her sex does not limit her, only her mind does”. And her son, Ikenna Edwin Madunagu, depicts her qualities as a mother who was compassionate yet a strong disciplinarian; a wife who stood faithfully by her husband both when he was in detention and when sick and a feminist and activist as well as a mentor and a woman. In his words, “You have shown that as a woman, you do not need to sell your dignity to survive in this ruthless world of male dominance. You have also shown most men that they can be supportive of the girl child, their wives and women generally, and that violence against women is not the answer”.