Category: Segun Ayobolu

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness but the darkness can neither comprehend nor extinguish it”. Anyone familiar with the Christian scriptures will easily recognize these startling and amazing words of St John’s gospel. The great evangelist and Bible teacher, Dr E.W Kenyon, who died in 1948, but whose teachings and spiritual insights are as pertinent and relevant as ever, points out that in the book of Genesis, God brought about creation through words so that what is seen was made out of what is not seen. God spoke ‘Let there be’ and galaxies were flung out into the limitless reaches of space, oceans, mountains, vegetation, the animal world and ultimately man himself was created. Was God then not the first, even if divine, journalist? For, the primary tool of the journalist is the spoken or written word. With words the journalist can create but with words he can also destroy. With words the journalist can nurture love and with words he can also instigate the worst and most pernicious forms of fanaticism and hatred. With words the journalist can make heroes out of villains and vice versa. But the Word of God is different. Inviolable integrity is its foundation. Somewhere in the psalms, it says that God has elevated His Word above His throne.

With the revolutionary innovations of our contemporary world, the profession of journalism has undoubtedly undergone a sea change. No longer is the terrain left to the domination of conventional media outlets such as newspapers, magazines, radio or television. Now these traditional mediums have to contend and fiercely too with the internet, online platforms, blogs,  Face book, twitter, text messages, You Tube and other modern means of communication. Many see this as a positive development. The ordinary citizen has been liberated, they contend, from the authoritarian tendencies of the traditional media which determine what is news or not; what material to publish, broadcast or censor. Indeed, this development is the focus of the slim but powerful book by ace Journalist and now Executive Commissioner at the National Communications Commission (NCC), Mr. Sunday Dare, titled ‘We are all journalists now’. Millions of ordinary citizens no longer have to wait on the conventional media to be served the news. Rather, through their hand phones, they can record images instantly and post online; they can send text messages, they can disseminate instant news on twitter. This is what Dare calls ‘Citizen Journalism’.

While the ‘democratization’ of the media space may be a salutary development, it has also come at a great cost. For the professional checks and balances that inhibit and constrain the traditional media is absent in the ferocious jungle that the social media can be. In the traditional media, facts are sacred even if comments are free. Again, the traditional media tend to be mindful of litigations for defamation or libel while the social media operatives, except in a few respectable instances function under a cloak of anonymity. But then, does it not take more than access to face book, twitter, mobile phone cameras or text messages to be a journalist? Does it not require adherence to a strict code of ethics, a commitment to a certain degree of professional integrity?

Let us take the recent experience of Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, as an example. Speaking to a private group of students, Soyinka had said that he would discard his green card if Donald Trump won the last US presidential election. Eventually, Trump did win and the social media militants descended on the Nobel Laureate with ferocious glee urging him to immediately dispense with his green card. This was clearly a most egregious intrusion on an individual’s privacy. But then, you can trust our own W.S. He gave it back to his critics in more than full measure falling back on his inexhaustible reserves of mental resources.

Another case has just been brought to my attention involving the respected political economist, Professor John Moyibi Amoda , former Military Administrator of Lagos State, Brigadier-General Buba Marwa and  one Dr Taiyemiwo Ogunade. It is a vivid example of how social media outlets can be manipulated to tarnish and annihilate reputations, not necessarily out of deliberate mischief but due to non-adherence to the rigorous professional standards the practice of journalism requires. As the narrative goes, on Tuesday, June 9, 2009, Dr Taiyemiwo Ogunade granted an interview to a respected social media platform making grave allegations against both Professor Amoda and General Marwa. Claiming to be a staff of the City University of New York (CUNY), where Professor Amoda was Chairperson of the Department of Black Studies at the time, Ogunade alleged that Marwa when he was Nigeria’s Military Attache to the United Nations (UN), entered into a deal with CUNY for the establishment of a postgraduate degree in Peace and Conflict Resolution for which he gave the institution $30 million. It is curious that the same 2009 interview has been repeated verbatim in 2016 despite earlier vigorous and vehement debunking of Ogunade’s claims by both Amoda and Marwa.

Ogunade claims that Professor Amoda was desperate for the college to take the money but because of his staunch opposition to the deal, CUNY was forced to return the money to Marwa and that the money was never returned to the Nigerian treasury but was rather shared between Marwa and Abacha. Ogunade alleged that the CUNY sacked him from its staff because of his principled and unbending stance on the matter. Professor Amoda insists, however, that Ogunade was never a bona fide member of the university’s faculty and so could not have been sacked by CUNY. Moreover, he avers that CUNY never received any funds from Marwa and these facts could easily have been cross checked from the university before the publication of Ogunade’s interview. Beyond these, Professor Amoda affirms that he never met Marwa either at CUNY or anywhere else. It is instructive that Professor Amoda retired from CUNY as Emeritus Professor of Political Science.

The reality, Professor Amoda explains, is that between 1996 and 1997, the City University of New York decided on the creation of new and pioneering programmes at the university level and called for proposals that could be funded and developed as University wide programmes. Professor Amoda’s proposal on Peace Building and Peace Making was adjudged as one of the eight best and thus approved by the institution. According to CUNY’s Office of University Relations, “At City College, Professor John Moyibi Amoda, and colleagues won funding for their proposed interdisciplinary BA/MA Honours Programme in UN-related Peace Building and Peace Making statecraft. CUNY faculty and United Nations Secretariat Personnel will work to develop courses in such areas as conflict anticipation, conflict prevention, risk assessment and mitigation and post-conflict peace keeping”.

Amoda was also involved in developing Nigeria’s International Training Institute for Peace (ITIP), an affiliate of the UN and the then Organization of African Unity. Towards actualizing this objective, he worked closely with the National War College which had Major General Chris Abutu as its Executive Head. To facilitate his functioning diplomatically as the inaugural Director General of ITIP, he was appointed Ambassador-In –Residence attached to the National War College, an appointment for which he reportedly received no emoluments either from the War College or any other agency of government.

Dr Ogunade’s interview was the basis for another sensational story on one of WhatsApp chat lines with the headline “30 years after, the long awaited confirmation about Dele Giwa’s death”. Without the slightest scintilla of evidence, Ogunade sought to link Marwa with the parcel bombing of Dele Giwa. Surely, serious and rigorous background checks ought to have been carried out before the publication of such a story. As Sunday Dare notes in his book on citizen journalism “While citizen journalism can challenge the mainstream media to be more transparent, innovative and investigative, the former can learn from the traditional media’s better gate keeping, factual checking and more matured news presentation”.

Let us conclude with a quote by Hunter S. Thompson, which underscores the critical importance of journalism and why it is not a profession that can be treated with levity; why credible journalism matters. In his words: “if we cannot produce a generation of journalists –or even a good handful – who care enough about our world and our future to make journalism the great literature it can be, then “professionally oriented programmes” are a waste of time. Without at least a hard core of articulate men, convinced that journalism today is  perhaps the best means of interpreting and thereby preserving what little progress we have made toward freedom and self-respect over the years, without that tough-minded elite in our press, dedicated to concepts that are sensed and quietly understood, rather than learned in schools – without these men, we might as well toss in the towel and admit that ours is a society too interested in comic strips and TV to consider revolution until it bangs on our front door in the dead of some quiet night when our guard is finally down and we no longer kid ourselves about being bearers of a great and decent dream”.

It is certainly not for nothing that the 1999 constitution in Section 22 of chapter two explicitly states that the obligation of the mass media is to “uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this Chapter and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people”. This onerous responsibility calls for the highest standards of credibility and integrity on the part of both the mainstream and emergent social media.

In one of his expansive and inspired moments, the late Afro beat legend, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, replied to a question thus: “Why must it always be aluta continua, aluta continua? When will the struggle ever stop? From now on it must be aluta stopay! The struggle must stop”. Of course, Fela was only being his iconoclastic and witty self. For him, the struggle never stopped, not even after his death. His radical music will continue to be relevant to the human condition in Nigeria and Africa for as long as underdevelopment and all its dehumanizing features endure. For the legendary, almost mythical figure, Fidel Castro, founder of the 1959 Cuban revolution, the struggle never stopped – not after he formally relinquished power to his brother, Raul, in 2008, and surely not after his demise on Friday, November 25. The struggle was his life.

The title of this piece is not original. It belongs to a collection of essays by one of Castro’s revolutionary soul mates, the Bolivian writer, the late Eduardo Galeano, who also wrote the classic ‘Open Veins of Latin America’ – a devastating critique and expose of the deleterious impact of imperialism on the continent of his birth. Castro’s entire life was one of consistently, courageously and unrepentantly saying no to injustice, inequality, oppression, poverty and man’s inhumanity to man both in his country and across the world. I will not dwell here on his epic revolutionary exploits and seemingly superhuman feats. My concern here is his developmental legacy and its relevance for Africa’s quest for transformation.

The dominant model of development today is that of neoliberal capitalism. It is a model that places premium on profit over people. It is a vision that subordinates a society to the supposedly immortal deity of market forces. ‘Accumulate! Accumulate! That is the law and the prophets’! – to paraphrase Karl Marx’s sarcastic phraseology. Yes, that system permitted the west to develop at a time when they could enslave other peoples, wipe out whole indigenous populations as in North America, colonize other lands and criminally exploit and appropriate their mineral and natural resources through a process of primitive accumulation. This was the basis for the industrialization of the west.

Poor Africa, there are no more indigenous people for us to kill off and expropriate their land and resources for our own developmental leap. We thus resort to killing each other perhaps out of savage necessity. There are no more areas of the world for us to enslave and colonize for the primitive accumulation critical to a break through to modernization. Our indigenous business, capital and political elite thus accumulate capital by stealing their country blind. The west then turns around to accuse us of being ‘fantastically corrupt’. Heads we lose, tails we lose. What a fate! Yet, our intellectual and policy elite continue to embrace policies of sheer economic sorcery that only results in the deepening of our underdevelopment. We are told, for instance, to embrace free trade, in a chronically unfree world. We are admonished to deregulate our economies in a global context heavily regulated in favour of the west. We are urged to maniacally pursue growth forgetting that not only are growth and development not necessarily congruent but as someone observed ‘anyone who believes in the possibility of infinite growth in a finite world must be a ‘madman or an economist!’

Interestingly, in researching this piece, I checked up the ‘Cuban model of development’ and what I found was quite interesting. According to Wikipedia, “Prior to the Cuban Revolution, Cuba was one of the most advanced and successful countries in Latin America. The country compared favourably with Spain and Portugal on socioeconomic measures. By the 1950s Cuba was as rich per capita as Italy was and richer than Japan. Its income per capita in 1929 was reportedly 41% of the US thus higher than Mississippi and South Carolina…Its proximity to the US made it familiar holiday destination for wealthy Americans. Their visits for gambling, horse racing and golfing made tourism an important economic sector”.

We can thus see the absolutely sterile, superficial, perverse and immoral notions of ‘development’, ‘advancement’ and ‘success’ peddled by the mainstream western media and intelligentsia and lapped up by our indigenous elite. But further down the article, the following truth about pre revolutionary Cuba emerges. According to Wikipedia, “In the 1950s most Cuban children were not in school. 87 percent of urban homes had electricity but 10 percent of rural homes did. Only 15 percent of rural homes had running water. Nearly half of the rural population was illiterate as was about 25 percent of the total population. Poverty and unemployment in rural areas triggered migration to Havana despite high levels of crime and prostitution. More than 40 percent of the Cuban work force in 1958 was either underemployed or unemployed”.

In an article in The Guardian a couple of years ago, Jonathan Glennie made the point that “Along with South Korea, Cuba probably has one of the most impressive distinctive stories to tell in the annals of modern development. Apart from achieving near 100% literacy many years ago, its health statistics are the envy of many far richer countries…In Cuba, the extremes of opulence and misery are banished in favour of a generalized level of wealth, best described as “enough to get by”. And in another piece in the journal ‘Policy & Practice’, Stephen McCloskey writes: “Cuba also has an astonishingly record in its contributions to international solidarity and aid around the world by dispatching doctors and nurses to the most acute point of humanitarian need no matter how treacherous the environment or high the cost…As a result of its healthcare policies, Cuba can boast of a ‘developed world’ life expectancy rate of 79 years which is just behind that of the US (79.6), Britain (79.8) and Ireland (80.3)…Cuba itself has now as many doctors serving its 11 million citizens as there are in Britain meeting the needs of 60 million people”.

In the course of his campaign as presidential candidate in 2008, Barak Obama told the Cuban American National Foundation that “Throughout my entire life, there has been injustice in Cuba. Never, in my lifetime, have the people of Cuba known freedom. Never, in the lives of two generations of Cubans, have the people of Cuba known democracy. This is the terrible and tragic status quo that we have known for half a century…I won’t stand for this injustice…I will maintain the embargo”.

Castro’s response was gracious but scathing: “I am not questioning Obama’s great intelligence, his debating skills or his work ethic. He is a talented orator and is ahead of his rivals in the electoral race…Before judging our country, you should know that Cuba, with its education, health, sports, culture and sciences programmes, implemented not only in its own territory but also in other poor countries around the world, and the blood that has been shed in acts of solidarity with other peoples, in spite of the economic and financial foundation of your powerful country, is proof that much can be done with very little…The only form of cooperation the United States can offer other nations consists in sending military professionals to those countries. It cannot offer anything else, for it lacks a sufficient number of people willing to sacrifice themselves for others and offer substantial aid to a country in need…” it is quite fitting that it was under Obama’s presidency that diplomatic ties were resumed by both countries after 50 years – History had finally absolved Castro!

Has it been a bed of roses for Cuba under Castro? Certainly no. The challenges of drastically minimizing inequality and containing external aggression necessitated an unfortunate degree of authoritarianism. Younger people who are unaware of how life was before the revolution are eager for greater opportunities to travel and innovate. The economic system has become rigid and inefficient needing greater opening up to the private sector. The kind of violent revolution he led in 1959 is out of fashion. Even then, struggle will never go out of fashion as long as human beings exist. Only the conditions and dynamics of struggle will adapt to changing circumstances. Fidel’s brother, Raul, has bravely but cautiously commenced reforms in that direction. The greatest lesson from the Castro legacy in Cuba is that development is first and foremost about people rather than the acquisition of sophisticated artifacts that only a minority can access and enjoy to the detriment of many.

As one analyst puts it, “Cuba has certainly forfeited any chance of becoming an economic power house because of the egalitarian policies it adopted, but that possibility was a long shot anyway. Holding for some kind of big economy for most countries may be a fool’s game for most countries – and that might be one of the most important lessons for countries that want to log the kind of development indices Cuba has achieved”. With all the artifacts of the good life we have in Nigeria, the latest exotic cars, designer watches, elaborate estates, imported wine, imported textiles of the most exquisite fabrics, skyscrapers etc, is the average Nigerian necessarily better off than his Cuban counterpart who does not enjoy such luxuries but can afford the basic needs of life?

 Why our obsession, for instance, with becoming one of the largest 20 economies in the world by 2020? What does that mean in reality? What impact will achieving that goal have on inequality, poverty or unemployment? If Cuba could achieve all she has despite a stifling economic and financial blockade by her imposing superpower neighbour for five decades, why should a shortfall in foreign exchange as a result of dropping world crude oil prices be such a hindrance to our developmental possibilities? Perhaps leadership is the key factor in development after all.

The day was the 10th of October. The year was 2012. The arena was the political terrain of Ondo State in South West Nigeria. The plum prize in contention was the governorship of the ‘Sunshine State’; a state still waiting eagerly even now to bask maximally in the resplendent and prosperous splendor of its munificent resource endowment. In keen competition for political glory were the incumbent, Dr Olusegun Mimiko, then of the Labour Party (LP) seeking a second term, Mr Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN) of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and Mr Olusola Oke of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). No battle could have been more fiercely and ferociously fought.

It was indeed a memorably pregnant and hopeful moment in the political evolution of the South West particularly for those of the progressive fold. Alas, it was a high expectancy that resulted in the frustrating birth of an ideologically stultifying political hermaphrodite. That was the continuation in office of Mimiko; an adept pragmatist in walking the tight rope of power and adapting as opportunity demands to sharply contrasting ideological vogues of the moment – conservative or progressive, reactionary or radical- with uncanny equanimity and composure. But we move ahead of our tale.

The year 2012 was a long time away from 2003 when a veritable political Tsunami swept through the South West, effectively capturing the region, with the exception of Lagos where the intrepid Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu remained the sole political survivor as governor of Lagos State on the platform of the then Alliance for Democracy (AD). At the time of the 2012 Ondo governorship polls, however, a surge of optimistic progressivism was billowing across the South West. Through protracted tactical and strategic battles – political, electoral and judicial – the progressive forces had clawed back all the south West states including Edo in the geographical South-South from the grip of the forces of reaction and Ondo remained the only Yoruba state not under the canopy of the ACN.

It was thus understandable that ACN approached the 2012 Ondo polls with a great deal of self-assurance, if not overconfidence. The party leaders believed that the gale of progressive change blowing across the region was unstoppable and strong enough to sweep away any ‘Iroko’ tree. Ondo State, the argument went, could not afford to be politically and ideologically isolated in a South West region that had rediscovered its socio-cultural essence within the context of Awoist progressive philosophy of governance.

This was particularly thought to be so because, taking a cue from Tinubu’s path-breaking and foundation laying governance in Lagos from 1999 to 2007, the ACN governors of Lagos, Ogun, Ekiti, Oyo and Osun had unleashed an infrastructure renewal and modernization programme of revolutionary proportions on the region. This was in addition to populist, poverty alleviating and job generating initiatives across the states. Surely, Ondo State would want to be part of the ACN ‘development express’ it was assumed.

But the politically beguiling and crafty ‘Mimiko’ effectively portrayed ACN’s advocacy of regional integration as nothing but an attempt to extend Tinubu’s alleged hegemony throughout the South West. It did not matter that all those who enjoyed Tinubu’s support in ascending to power in the South-West – Babatunde Fashola, Ibikunle Amosun, Abiola Ajimobi, Rauf Aregbesola, Kayode Fayemi etc – were without exception distinguished, competent and successful professionals. These were not certainly the kinds of strong and independent personalities to be sponsored to power by anyone seeking to control or manipulate them for selfish ends. And surely, anyone who wanted to colonize and illegally ‘privatize’ the resources of Ondo State would not enthusiastically support the candidacy of Akeredolu as Tinubu did in 2012.

In his slim but powerful classic, ‘The Trouble with Nigeria’, Chinua Achebe noted that Awolowo had a tendency to surround himself with subordinates of unsurpassed intellect and ability. This, the great writer insinuated, was unlike the monumentally gifted Zik who, however, seemed more at home with mental and moral Lilliputians. The ever present possibility of betrayal and disappointment is a price any leader must pay who places premium on merit over loyalty in nurturing successors. For the reality of human personality is that intellect and character are not mutually co-existent or reinforcing variables in the moral infrastructure of man.

It would appear, however, that in 2012 a sizeable number of the Ondo State electorate found Mimiko’s rhetoric persuasive. And outside partisan circles in the South West, Mimiko enjoyed not inconsiderable sympathy because he was perceived as the underdog in the politics of the region. A recurrent tendency in Yoruba politics is for popular affection and compassion to gravitate in the direction of the perceived underdog. But then let’s fast forward to 2016. Today, the Ondo State electorate goes to the polls this time to determine Mimiko’s successor. Mimiko has since ditched the LP and pitched his tent with the PDP. Members of the original PDP in Ondo State felt betrayed by the hardly clandestine support given by Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency to Mimiko in the 2012 election. However, today’s polls take place against the backdrop of the PDP’s loss of the presidency in last year’s elections.

Furthermore, by his defection to PDP, Mimiko is unable to distance himself and his administration from the utter disaster and desolation that PDP rule represented for Nigeria. Apart from the status of Ondo as the only oil producing state in the South West with considerable derivation revenues from the centre, Mimiko’s affiliation with the PDP controlled Federal Government greatly raised expectations as regards delivery of democracy dividends to the people. Despite his modest achievements in the health and education sectors, for example, not many people will be convinced that Mimiko ought not to have done more for Ondo State particularly in infrastructure provision during his eight years in power.

The astute and dexterous politician that he is, Mimiko has unexpectedly jettisoned the perceived traditional zoning understanding in the state to pick a successor from his own Ondo Central Senatorial District, namely his Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr Eyitayo Jegede (SAN). He, therefore, hopes to count on Jegede’s personal qualities, Ondo Central’s sizeable voting population and the much touted ‘Akure agenda’ for a governor of Akure origin to mitigate the liabilities of his administration and that of the PDP as well as the strong desire of Ondo South and Ondo North Senatorial zones to produce the next governor. Although the protracted legal and intra party hurdles he had to clear up till the last minute may have slowed down his campaign, it is foolhardy to write off Jegede as an important factor in today’s election.

Unlike 2012, the ACN no longer exists as the electorate go to the polls in Ondo today. The party was a major part of the constellation of forces that fused to form the All Progressives Congress (APC) and is today the ruling party at the centre. Mr Rotimi Akeredolu’s emergence as the APC candidate in today’s election disguises the deep cracks that have made it impossible for today’s election to be the easy walk over it should have been for the ruling party. President Muhammadu Buhari had unsuccessfully contested the presidency thrice before his victory in the 2015 election despite recording high votes in the north consistently.

The support of the Tinubu-led hegemonic faction of the APC in the South West for Buhari no doubt played a critical role in the party’s unprecedented presidential victory. President Buhari has himself severally acknowledged this after the elections. Yet, the Tinubu-led tendency in the APC is widely perceived today across the South West as being systematically marginalized and undermined. While Buhari is essentially apolitical and focused on his anti corruption war as well as the quest for the country’s economic recovery, a cabal around him, mostly of far northern extraction but working with willing southern collaborators, are determined to seize total control of the party obviously with 2019 in view.

This was evident in the ruthless and cynical way the Ondo State APC governorship primaries were manipulated to arrive at an outcome predetermined by the Abuja-based cabal. Even worse, was the lackadaisical and arrogant treatment of protests by aggrieved parties after the primaries with the forced exit of a key aspirant like Olusola Oke, now candidate of the AD and major aspirants like Segun Abraham and Senator Ajayi Borrofice not pacified in any meaningful way till date. Consequently, the Tinubu tendency in the APC is widely seen in the South West today as the unjustly treated underdog within the party thus eliciting considerable sympathy for the Jagaban in the region even in many quarters previously vehemently opposed to his politics.

Can the PDP win today’s election in Ondo State especially considering its power of incumbency in the state? This seems highly improbable as the party has been badly damaged structurally, morally and psychologically. This is an election in which the APC ordinarily ought to coast home to victory easily but has rendered itself vulnerable to the consequences of unwarranted arrogance and insensitivity. A victory for the APC today will be a pyrrhic one that may only accelerate the party’s pace towards self-destruction on the alluring but perilous wings of impunity. Perhaps the greatest surprise of this election is the way a previously moribund AD has sprung to life after Olusola Oke’s defection with thousands flocking to the party’s rallies across the nooks and crannies of the state. A critically influential factor in this election will ironically be an uncharacteristically muted one – Tinubu’s studied silence.

It was of course quite fitting that this week’s meeting of Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council (FEC), which held as usual on Wednesday undertook an x-ray of the performance of the body as President Muhammadu Buhari’s Ministers clocked one year in office. Briefing newsmen at the end of the session, the Minister of Solid Minerals and former governor of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi, said: “We will be one year in office in two days so this was an anniversary meeting. And it gave us the opportunity to reflect on the progress we have made as a government. Also on the challenges that we still have to tackle and the commitment we have. The President’s charge is simple. You know he is not a man of many words. His charge to us was ‘get on with it’. Ensure that you earn the trust of Nigerians by doing the best you can to serve the country”.

From Dr Fayemi’s account, it seems that the President did not stress strongly enough the urgent need for individual ministers to step up the tempo of their performance. Buhari may be satisfied with the pace and impact of his administration so far. Millions of Nigerians, including a good chunk of those who voted for ‘change’ in the 2015 general elections, are not. They want to urgently begin to see at least the manifestation of visible lower hanging fruits of the change so passionately canvassed and so ardently salivated for by the majority of the electorate at the last polls.

Yes, they can understand that the President took his time in assembling a team that was in his estimation solid, morally upright and competent. They appreciate the enormity of the challenges inherited from the visionless, inexcusably incompetent and mindlessly acquisitive Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administrations of the preceding 16 years. They do not underestimate the severity of the economic recession the administration confronts after the locust years characterized particularly by the President Goodluck Jonathan years.

Yet, many of Buhari’s ministers, particularly those in the most critical Ministries, Departments and Agencies, come with a rich pedigree of experience and track record of performance that Nigerians cannot be blamed for expecting much more from them within the shortest possible time frame. The President must not give them the impression that he is easily satisfied. He must show an impatience for high performance and efficient delivery on set objectives that mirror popular expectations. Yes, slow and steady may win the race and all may turn out well in the long run. But in the long haul, we are all dead to paraphrase the famous axiom of the eminent economist, Lord Maynard Keynes.

The signal failing of the PDP, particularly the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration at the beginning of this dispensation in 1999, was its glaring inability to lay a sound and irreversible foundation for the long term economic recovery and sustainable development of Nigeria. Matters were not helped by a presidency, especially under the imperial OBJ and the impressionable and easily misled GEJ that was completely unmoored from a solid party and philosophical anchor and thus cast adrift in the turbulent weather of untrammeled power. To compound it all, Obasanjo lacked the instinct, temperament and character to selflessly nurture and ensure the emergence of successors with the right mix of physical stamina, mental acuity and moral rectitude to sustain and elevate his programmatic vision to a new pedestal. Hence the Ota farmer for all his self-righteous posturing, and his successors left Nigeria in most sectors much worse than they met her.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the All Progressives Congress (APC) government at the centre is itself able to lay a firm substructure on which a superstructure of unstoppable momentum towards sustainable liberation from underdevelopment can be laid. The APC-controlled centre is even more delinked from its party platform than was the case with the PDP. An anaemic and insipid national APC leadership is unable to forge any meaningful synergy between the executive and legislative arms of its government. The party has no concrete, discernible and coherent organizational ideology or guiding philosophy. It seems slavishly beholden to the same voodoo economic witches and principalities that have held perpetual sway over economic policy for as long as anyone can remember. Various factions and fractions within it are engaged in a visceral and ultimately mutually destructive civil wars with crazy permutations towards 2019 already a huge distraction.

The sad thing is that it is not as if the APC at the centre does not have any example even from its own supposed ideological mold to emulate as a model of transformational development. As this column has repeatedly said, even as Nigeria has for the most part experienced stagnation or even regression since 1999, Lagos has witnessed paradigmatic development strides that are difficult to ignore. Of course, between 1999 and 2007, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu stood on the shoulders of giant predecessors like Lieutenant – Colonel Mobolaji Johnson (1967 -1975) and Alhaji Lateef Jakande (1979-1983) in fashioning out, along with a core of competent progressive visionaries, the socio-economic and fiscal plan that rescued Lagos from insolvency and placed her on the path of financial, environmental and infrastructural renaissance.

Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), who was a member of Tinubu’s team between 2003 and 2007, carried forward with seriousness and proficiency the banner of the state’s development from 2007 till 2015. And today, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode, who joined the Lagos State public service as a grade level 8 officer and rose over three decades to the apex of the service as Permanent Secretary and Accountant General of Lagos State, is unquestionably the best prepared so far in this dispensation for the job.

It is thus no wonder that even as most states gnash their teeth and gripe endlessly in the throes of recession, something new and positive regularly comes out of Ambode’s Lagos. Unlike 27 states, Lagos State is not owing workers’ salaries or allowances. Indeed, the administration brought succor to pensioners by expending over N12 billion in offsetting pensions arrears to retirees of the mainstream Lagos State Public Service as well as retirees of Local Governments and Parastatals since 2010. The administration has confidently announced its plans to raise the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to N30 billion in 2017 and N50 billion in 2018.

Indeed, so robust are the finances of Lagos State that the State House of Assembly has approved for the state to raise a N500 billion bond from the capital market over a three year period for infrastructure to be repaid wholly from the state’s IGR. The governor recently commissioned 114 inner roads with two roads each constructed in the 20 Local Government Areas and 37 Local Council Development Areas at a cost of N15 billion. This is apart from major road constructions in diverse areas Okota, Ikotun-Egbe, Iyana-Ejigbo, Mosholasi-Ayobo-Ipaja road; Ajasa Command Road as well as the ongoing construction of flyovers at the Ajah roundabout in the Central Senatorial District and Abule Egba junction in the West Senatorial District.

Of course, we do not have the space here to detail all that the Ambode administration has achieved in diverse sectors including procurement of mobile ambulances, x-ray machines and generators for hospitals and primary health centres; expenditure of over N2.5 billion on the construction of new classroom blocks and provision of school furniture and other facilities as well as the massive Light up Project of hundreds of streets and roads across the state to enhance security and the revolutionary procurement of assorted sophisticated equipment worth over N4 billion to strengthen the various security outfits in the state to protect lives and property. Another major security initiative of the Ambode administration is the setting up of the Lagos State Neighbourhood Safety Agency to enable the state respond more effectively to security issues at community level. The administration is already working towards employing 5000 neighbourhood watchers who will earn N23, 000 monthly apart from other allowances.

 Equally noteworthy is the setting up of the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF), which will directly invest N25 billion in helping to create jobs through small and medium scale enterprises as well as skill acquisition; signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the construction of the 4th Mainland Bridge to link Ajah with Ikorodu; initiation of the N22.4 billion ($70 million) Oshodi regeneration project that aims at the development of the Oshodi Transport Interchange through the construction of all 13 city and interstate parks in the area into three multi-storey bus parks and terminals situated on four floors and the  establishment of the N500 million Lagos State Disability Trust Fund to help people living with disabilities in the state.

These few examples show that Lagos State is working even at a time of severe national economic recession. Foremost economist, Professor Pat Utomi and the Emir of Kano and former CBN Governor, Alhaji Muhammed Sanusi, were certainly right on target when they recently noted on different occasions that both the Federal Government and other states can learn a lot from Lagos as a model of attracting foreign investment, viable revenue generation and achieving socio-economic diversity. But when Nigeria’s malformed federalism unjustly denies Lagos the revenue that ought to accrue to the state from what is derived for the national coffers from the state’s resources, it is the country more than Lagos that ultimately suffers.

Officers and men of the Department of State Services (DSS) involved in the planning and execution of the recent commando-like raid on the residences of seven judges, an operation misleadingly labeled a ‘sting operation’, and which culminated in the arrest of the jurists before  their eventual release on bail, must be thoroughly satisfied with themselves. Their objectives are certainly being achieved beyond expectations. The entire judicial system had long been morally and psychology prostrate, reeling under a debilitating cloud of suspicion, distrust and total erosion of public confidence. That unsavory situation has been gravelly aggravated by the DSS’ chosen mode of operation. Yes, the DSS did not create the problem. The government’s secret police only had to act decisively to combat the ethical putrescence that mortally taints the judiciary. There is no doubt that the discovery of humongous amounts of raw cash in diverse currencies in the residences of the affected judges, an allegation not yet plausibly debunked by any of them, has worsened popular perception of the judiciary and fuelled public antipathy against the institution.

An incensed public, many of whom are victims of the avarice and venality of the largely unjustifiable affluence of a microscopic minority, will certainly not give a damn if judges accused of sordid corrupt acts are tied to the stakes and summarily shot or guillotined. Due process and adherence to the rule of law in combating graft are vociferously derided as dispensable, time wasting luxuries and ruling class mechanisms cleverly designed to protect, sustain and strengthen corruption. Some of our most cerebral legal minds of undisputed character and integrity openly identify with this intemperate disposition to the rule of law. One of them has emphatically and rightly declared that judicial corruption is tantamount to a crime against humanity. But then, must allegations of judicial corruption not be proven beyond reasonable doubt in courts of competent jurisdiction before a verdict of ‘guilty’ is entered?

Yes, I identify with the rage of these respected, progressive legal minds against corruption in the supposedly sacrosanct house of justice or anywhere else. As President Buhari has repeatedly said, Nigeria must kill corruption before the ethical cancer consumes the country. But then, Buhari we know. His near saintly asceticism we can testify to.  His moral integrity we can vouch for. Can we say the same thing of some of those shadowy elements who today wield tremendous power at the apex of our coercive agencies of state? What do we know of their antecedents or possible hidden motives or agendas to offer them a blanket cheque of discretionary action given the proven tendency of absolute power to corrupt people who may even have the best of good intentions?

Let us take the unorthodox action of the DSS in breaking into the residences of allegedly corrupt judges to apprehend and take them into custody albeit briefly as an example. The DSS claims it had to resort to such extreme measures because the National Judicial Council (NJC) failed to act on petitions it sent to the latter on allegations of corruption against the judges. Yet, the NJC has challenged the DSS to publish any petitions against judicial officers forwarded to it by the agency which was not acted on. The NJC has specifically and emphatically stated that it received no complaints or petitions, for instance, against Justices Sylvester Ngwuta and Inyang Okoro of the Supreme Court or Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court all of whom were subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment by the DSS.

Mr Olanrewaju Suraju of the Civil Society Network against Corruption (CSNAC) has, however, cited several petitions before the NJC, which have been ignored purportedly in a bid to shield corrupt judicial officers. But it would appear that the NJC’s disciplinary powers over judicial officers is not absolute and can only be exercised within stipulated constitutional and regulatory restraints. Thus, the judicial body explains that 45% of the 808 petitions against judicial officers, which it received between April 2000 and October 2016 were disregarded because only the Appeal Court was competent to determine the issues raised in the allegations. But then, what steps did the NJC take to channel these petitions to the Appeal Court to ensure justice was done? The Council was certainly indefensibly derelict in this respect. Even then, in the period under consideration, the judicial body sanctioned 82 judicial officers by reprimand (suspension, caution or warning), recommended 32 to the President or Governors for compulsory retirement another 12 for outright dismissal. It has not been indifferent to judicial misconduct.

The impression that the NJC must necessarily find in favor of petitions against judicial officers is mistaken and unfounded. Such an assumption makes nonsense of the necessity of due process and the rights of accused persons to fair hearing. For instance, on 26th February, 2016, the NJC received a letter from the DSS requesting administrative and judicial measures including prosecution against Justice Muazu Pindiga for stipulated acts of alleged corruption. The NJC, on 19th April, 2016, wrote the DSS requesting a verifying affidavit in support of the allegations against the judge in compliance with the council’s regulations. When the DSS complied with the request in a letter to the NJC dated 6th May, 2016, the latter set up a Fact Finding Committee made up of Members of the NJC to investigate the allegations against Justice Pindiga. The representatives of the DSS and Justice Mu’a zu Pindiga, as well as their witnesses and counsel appeared and testified before the Committee. Since the allegations against the judge could not be substantiated by oral or documentary evidence, the NJC on 15th July, 2016, exonerated Pindiga. Surely, the constitution does not envisage the NJC to be an unthinking rubber stamp of the DSS or any other organ of the executive. But the question is: in cases where the NJC dismisses allegations against a judicial officer, what other avenues of redress are available to an aggrieved and still unsatisfied petitioner?

Nothing I have said thus far excuses the insensitive and complacent reaction of the NJC particularly to huge sums of cash discovered in the residences of the affected judges. Indeed, the CJN, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, should have urgently queried the judges to explain the source of the cash haul discovered in their residences. He should not have waited for the rather puerile, pedestrian and self-implicating letters to him by some of the judges under reasonable suspicion. Again, no matter how flawed it perceives the methods of the DSS, the NJC should have immediately suspended the embattled judges until they had cleared their names in a competent court. Of course, the fears of the NJC are understandable. Could this be a precedent for future harassment and intimidation of possibly innocent judicial officers? It is not unthinkable.

Apparently buoyed by public approbation of the hardly wise even if legally valid action of the DSS, the Federal Government reportedly plans to prosecute the judges through the National Prosecution Council whether or not the NJC suspends them. This can only further strain the relationship between the executive and judicial arms of the government while doing more harm to the already battered image of the latter. At the end of the day, the polity will be the worse for it. There must certainly be a more mature and restrained path to follow. But then, the good thing is that the judiciary has no power to prevent the security agencies from carrying out their constitutional duties even where high judicial officers are involved. But until a coup is successfully executed against the constitution, the security or any other executive agencies cannot also bypass or sidestep the judiciary, which still has the final say in interpreting the law and pronouncing on the guilt or innocence of those accused of infringing it. Entrenched institutional checks and balances should engender mutual respect and cooperation on the part of agencies and arms of government as they perform their functions presumably in pursuit of the common good.

Re – Justice: The Path Not Taken

“Please, the ‘crackdown’ as you wrote, has not at all ‘sanitized’ the judiciary. No judge as at this moment has been ‘dislodged’ from the Bench, and none can be dislodged by the DSS. All of the affected Judges up to yesterday were still presiding in their jurisdictions. But for certain, the action of the DSS cannot be faulted legally or otherwise. If the police or any other Security Agency gets a tip of suspected meeting of criminals at  a Maraba Hotel, plotting robbery operation, they are at total liberty to invade that venue at any hour of the day. They cannot wait for a Court permit to do that. Likewise, Judges or any other person suspected of foul play, including President Muhammadu Buhari or Aisha. The right to intervene, to investigate, can never be denied the security agencies. But the outcome of their investigations does also not amount to established fact for dissemination on the pages of newspapers. That can only be the outcome of prosecution and validation by the Courts. We must avoid the infantile Nuhu Ribadu format of screaming “corruption”, and ending up not prosecuting any cases to conclusion. The DSS owes Nigerians and the civilized world a full prosecution to conclusion (not a petition to NJC), with all the charges exhaustively named, of those affected. Otherwise, their action would be reckoned as a charade of the worst kind. There would arise questions like – how come that in Judgements delivered close to a year ago, all of the judges in different Nigerian cities, and involved in unrelated cases, had the same lifestyle of storing bribe cash in their homes long thereafter, etc…”, Sir Chris Ike, Abuja