The Nation Newspaper

Category: UnderTow

  • Embattled Oshiomhole speaks uncharacteristically on devolution

    NIGERIANS know that the All Progressives Congress (APC) is Janus-faced on the subject of devolution of power, and are astounded by how brazenly the party flaunts that vice. Even though the ruling party included it as one of their objectives should they attain office in 2015, it was unusually easy for them to renege on that promise barely a few months after their president, Muhammadu Buhari, was sworn in. First the party was silent on it, then after much prodding, they hemmed and hawed. But finally, after the public had assailed them with unprintable epithets, they damned the consequences and declared that the grouching public had first to define what they meant by restructuring, a term often used interchangeably with devolution.

    Afraid that the controversial issue of restructuring might condemn them to defeat in the 2019 elections, the party pusillanimously accented to the need to do something peripheral to restructuring and devolution. They therefore set up a panel headed by their Kaduna stormy petrel, Governor Nasir el-Rufai, who flamboyantly concocted a devolution pastiche worthy of the best of Fabians, a pastiche designed not to be implemented knowing full well where their party panjandrums stand on the many controversial provisions of the 1999 Constitution. Yes, the panel recommended some form of devolution, but beyond that, every other thing was imprecise, muffled and dispensable. Neither the party nor the presidency has said a word on the recommendations of the devolution committee work. The fault, of course, is not that of the committee; the problem is that the presidency simply does not want to hear anything about changing the present obese and unworkable structure, for, in their vaunted opinion, it would be next door to secession or balkanisation.

    So, the country has up till now neither heard of the much tamer devolution, should that be the less offensive of the people’s political fancies, nor caught a glimpse anywhere of the highly hated restructuring, the veritable bugaboo that gives the Buhari presidency sleepless nights. Imagine the surprise, therefore, when on Channels, according to this newspaper’s account, the APC chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, on Monday propounded a thesis, as it were, on devolution, describing the federal government as ungainly large, the powers and influence it wields as unprepossessingly obese, and the other levels of government as stifled and famished. He advocated some measure of devolution to free funds and resources for the states, and for the federal government to shed some weight.

    According to him: “We must restructure our revenue allocation, the Concurrent and the Exclusive lists. The power at the centre is too huge to the extent that it is easier to clampdown on governors than the President. No President of our country has been interrogated for corruption. Are we saying they were all saints?…Those who shout restructuring have no suggestions on the table to let us understand their idea of restructuring. We need to be more constructive in tackling our challenges. They are coming up with all sorts of artificial devices. The future generation should be the ones discussing restructuring because they are going to live with the outcome in the future…Ethnic champions approached everything with ethnic colouration. We have lost our dignified ways of doing things. We can do a lot more to revisit our core values. We should avoid introducing politics into crime-fighting.”

    Mr Oshiomhole knows in his heart of hearts that the federal government cannot continue to operate the way it is structured now to the detriment of the states, nor can it even be called to question over their perennial misappropriation of the huge funds the constitution put at their disposal. The APC chairman knows the truth, but he is not above the dissembling that has hobbled the party he leads. By throwing barbs at advocates of restructuring, he may simply be throwing a sop to the devil, metaphorically speaking. But no one is fooled. His party has disgracefully abjured restructuring, one of the central and ennobling goals many Nigerians naively read into their manifestos and indeed their existence as a political party. They voted for them in 2015 believing they were capable of making a difference not only in the lives of the people but also in the way things should run. In 2019, thoroughly flummoxed, they again voted for the party seemingly assured that the party would stumble into the inspired role of transforming the country. On both counts, the country has been sorely disappointed.

    Mr Oshiomhole may not have a thorough grounding of the issues pertaining to nationhood, but he has at least gone farthest than most APC leaders, including their highly conservative president, in challenging the orthodoxies by which Nigeria is governed. It is clear he sees the problem of states in terms only of the resources available to them vis-a-vis the excessively large funds needlessly deposited on the undeserving laps of the federal government, nay the presidency. He was also right in puzzling over the national obsession with corruption at the states level instead of the huger and richer federal government which, he insinuates, is kept unfairly and conspiratorially above censure. His friends in government and those in the presidency who have shielded him from the ravenous wolves intent on deposing him may get angry at his pointed barbs, but it is hard to fault his simple logic regarding where to place the bigger blame in a country inundated with blame games.

    However, as sensible as his ideas about devolution might be, even though a little restrained and convoluted, they are nevertheless fairly nugatory. In addition, his thesis on how to reorganise and run this country efficiently is still offensively pedestrian. He has admittedly gone further than anyone in the APC to enunciate the structural crisis and dilemma Nigeria faces, but like his party in their misguided pontification of nationhood, he has gone off on a tangent and is therefore of little use in addressing the main issues constraining growth, development and stability. Like his party, he also needs to reassess his theses and find the right coordinates if he and his party are not to shipwreck.

    Has Mr Oshiomhole asked himself why competition for the presidency and state government houses are so fierce, disruptive and counterproductive? Every election is war, and lives are inescapably lost. As intense as the anti-graft war is, corruption at the federal, state and local government levels have also not abated. It is time Mr Oshiomhole and his party began to interrogate the real factors responsible for the constant administrative stasis and paroxysm of electoral rage retarding the country’s progress. The problem is not a misbegotten revenue allocation formula, as palpable as this is; the problem is the abnormal federal structure operated by Nigeria and bequeathed by past military governments, a structure that fails to emphasise independent and competitive revenue mobilisation. States, or regions, as some have advocated, must generate their own funds and deploy them as they deem fit within the ambits of the law and the structures and cultures that best suit and serve them.

    His party is dishonest about many things, including its expectations and self-identification, but Mr Oshiomhole must be honest  enough to let his party know, perhaps in private, that like its predecessors did, the APC is running the country into a cul-de-sac. They should forget the nonsense about the fractal politics of revenue allocation that has diseased the country’s amorphous federal structure, and must find ways of shedding the terrible and unbearable weight that has made its movement into the 21st century ponderous and nightmarish. Running a diseased federal structure has alarmingly predisposed the country to unhealthy ethnic and religious rivalry, and rendered it vulnerable. If Mr Oshiomhole’s admission forms the first tentative step in helping the ruling party and sceptical Nigerians to see the light, then his views, despite their inchoateness, are worth it.

    There is, however, nothing to suggest that the APC chairman’s views are not spontaneous and the product of a desultory philosophy anchored on propaganda and flimsy expositions. This is a great pity. Nigeria needs brave men and women of ideas; so far, neither the APC nor its great rival, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has produced such people. The only hope is that President Buhari should represent the last of the conservative and militaristic titans who have kept the country ideologically stagnant. Perhaps the politics of 2023 will produce a tectonic shit in ideas and brave politicians who would dare to think and act for Nigeria. Perhaps.

  • Persistent corruption and Boss Mustapha’s wrong diagnosis

    By UnderTow

    On Tuesday, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, enthused over the Muhammadu Buhari administration’s anti-corruption war, insisting that it had recorded feats. But in the same breath he acknowledged that the war was far from over.

    As he put it cagily, “Nonetheless, we should not rest on our oars with the illusion that the war has been won despite the level of the successes…enumerated.” He then added that “While the fight has been very successful in tackling monumental corruption, less grandiose cases are perceived and even reported.” To some extent, despite his exaggerations, Mr Mustapha is right in suggesting that the Buhari administration has recorded some achievements. But he is even more right in admitting that the war has not been won.

    However, it is not Mr Mustapha’s prognostication about the anti-corruption war that has agitated reflective Nigerians. What puts a dampener on his claims are his suggestions on how to reinvigorate and win the war. Those suggestions are not only vitiated by their gross limitations, they are also rendered ineffective by their inappropriateness. “I should like to see the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation come up with innovative policies and measures to empower auditors to halt any payment that is clearly in breach of Public Procurement Act, Financial Regulations, Public Service Rules in particular, and other laws, in general,” he had said. In other words, more administrative and even legal measures would help tackle a cancer that has defied solutions for decades.

    Mr Mustapha may pull his punches regarding the ubiquitousness of corruption, just as he describes the disease as partially treated but responsive to medications; it seems evident, however, that corruption in Nigeria is grossly misunderstood both by the government and the people, making them susceptible to propaganda and disinformation regarding the course and treatment of the disease.

    Starting from the Olsuegun Obasanjo presidency and up to the Buhari presidency, Nigerian governments have misdiagnosed corruption and applied the wrong remedies. This is why it has remained untreatable and is now looking incurable. Nigerians are baffled by the stubbornness of the disease, and have sought harsher legalistic and administrative treatments in the hope that naming and shaming suspects would deter new offenders and concurrently mitigate the disease.

    But just as the diagnosis is misplaced, the solution is also misdirected. Indeed, any solution must begin with the right diagnosis. It is of course not out of order for the government to seek more stringent laws to regulate financial practices both in the public and private sectors, nor is it bad, as Mr Mustapha has sensibly suggested, to isolate and refit weak institutions directly or indirectly concerned with the fight against corruption.

    Auditing controls are indeed not misplaced, and harsher punishments on their own are not out of order, but these will not solve a disease that is fundamentally caused by problems substantially contraindicative of the treatments relied on for decades by the government and the people. It is time to shift paradigms and set Nigerians and their governments free from mistaken beliefs.

    No society is completely free of corruption, and indeed, in many developed societies, corruption is even more insidious and ramifying throughout their systems. Endemic corruption in Nigeria is neither caused nor encouraged by weak laws, but by weak and leprous social, political and economic structures. Nigeria’s unitary political system alienates most of the people, thus severing their ties with the country.

    A defectively centralised economic arrangement produces inefficiency and stifles productivity, thereby encouraging a monocultural economic structure that inspires rent seeking, father a rentier culture, and enables a few oligarchs to perpetually leach on the system. And a weak and unethical social arrangement promotes obscene values that channel the country and even its sanctimonious government in a reprehensible direction.

    The consequence of these bastardised structures is that Nigeria has not built a proper foundation for itself, whether socialist, capitalist, communist, or even welfarist. The Nigerian economic system is sometimes mischaracterised as a mixed economy, a nebulous system that floats in the atmosphere, hung on nothing but invisible and tenuous magnetic forces.

    It is hard to see how harsher laws  and stricter administrative controls can get very far in treating diseases that emanate from this sinewy, variegated system. Perhaps the most crucial question Nigerians must ask is what should be their role in a complex world, following which they must determine how to enter into and embrace that role. Without an understanding of their place in the world, they will continue to grope and roam around aimlessly. Fighting corruption is not just about freeing funds for development, it is also about ambition, about achieving great national goals and aspirations.

    At the centre of that national goal is the question of how ethically the country plays its politics, runs its economy and organises the society. Adequately answering these questions will in turn help the formulation of policies that would place the people far above bare existence in terms of remuneration, respect for individual and collective rights, and, like the old Roman Empire, ensure that certain inalienable rights and privileges must be vouchsafed to the Nigerian.

    A well structured economy conceived and operated under the aegis of lofty national goals inspires fair and living wage, offers house ownership structured around sound and affordable mortgage policies, enables vehicle acquisition that takes advantage of hire purchase and instalment payment plans, provides social benefit system that gives succour to the disadvantaged, and produces health and education policies that do not leave anybody behind. It is impossible to give Nigeria a great push forward or upward without learning from and copying other systems that have made a success of running themselves along modern, civilised and ethical standards.

    Mr Mustapha reasons that tightening and refining auditing laws, among similar administrative and legal responses, may prove advantageous in the anti-corruption war. Perhaps; but it will not be sufficient, not even when a plethora of other administrative rules and legal provisions are added. The corruption cankerworm runs far deeper than what such laws can handle. Merely tackling symptoms of systemic disarticulations and breakdowns will never be enough, nor is that even significant in a crisis fostered by a disease that has taken hold of the very foundations of the society.

    The policemen, and now soldiers, on checkpoint duties will always be susceptible to inducements because of their miserable wages. Ensnaring law enforcement lawbreakers and punishing them, as the police and military periodically do to errant staff, will not make a dent on the problem. Arresting and disgracing public officials, as the EFCC and ICPC also do often with flourish, will not substantially discourage other potential offenders from soiling their hands. As long as millions of Nigerians face unrelenting existential crisis occasioned by unfairness and inequities in the system, the fear of personal catastrophe will always weigh far higher in their minds than the spectre of disgrace and imprisonment.

  • Operation Positive Identification, a window into military (Army) rule

    By UnderTow

    It is a sign of the indifference of the executive branch to democracy and weakness of the legislative arm that the Nigerian Army has proposed a scheme to disrupt life and living in the country, and continue to insist they would go ahead with their plans regardless of the misgivings and criticisms of the civil populace. Not a word has come from the presidency, and little has come from the civil society to justify or deprecate the scheme, not to say reassure Nigerians that the country is not indirectly being subjected to the most virulent and unprecedented form of military rule, the kind never even experienced under the most draconian military regime. The scheme, which would start on November 1, 2019 and tentatively end on December 23, 2019, is, according to the Nigerian Army, designed to fish out fleeing Boko Haram members, bandits and other terrorists who are extending their operations all over the country.

    Operation Positive Identification, the operational name given the scheme by the army, will involve soldiers carrying out raids, searches, and arrests with a view to ascertaining the identities of suspects. For soldiers against whom there are tonnes of complaints and petitions for violation of the rights of individuals, the army insists they would respect their rules of engagement and cooperate with sister agencies to carry out the tasks they have set themselves. But the army has been careful so far not to give the impression that it is a service-wide operation, or that it is a military operation requiring the engagement of the service chiefs, or needing the Ministry of Defence and the Chief of Defence Staff to sell the scheme to the civil populace.

    The army has ignored the general dismay and has gone ahead to conceive and execute their disruptive plan. Until proven otherwise, there is, so far, nothing to indicate that such a sweeping operation was ever brought before the federal executive council. At least, there was no specific briefing to that effect by any minister — Internal Affairs or Information ministries — nominated to explain the operation’s rationale. There was also no indication that it is a general military operation to which the Chief of Defence Staff or the Minister of Defence would speak. Indeed, even the army itself did not attempt to have consultations with the civil populace both to explain the scheme and elicit their cooperation. Indeed, they could not, for there is no mechanism to enable them interact with governors to elicit their approval.

    Undoubtedly, therefore, Operation Positive Identification is a needless, provocative and disruptive scheme solely conceived and executed by an arm of the military, not the presidency, not the police, not the military as a whole, not the legislature, or any other group constitutionally relevant to the conception, execution and success of such a scheme. Femi Falana, the activist lawyer, and the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) have railed against the scheme and minced no words, describing it as an apartheid scheme that reintroduces the infamous and highly deprecated Pass Laws of White rule in South Africa. Mr Falana goes on to describe the scheme as dictatorial and reprehensible. The presidency has looked the other way, partly because they are also fundamentally military in mind and outlook.

    Read Also: Why operation show your ID must go on, by military

    Shockingly, only the House of Representatives has made a feeble attempt to question the army’s opprobrious plan. They invited the army to explain why the scheme should not be halted, even as they also asked an indifferent Muhammadu Buhari to halt the army’s violation and disruption of civil life. The Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, sent a representative who explained the scheme by adopting scaremongering tactics, arguing that fleeing insurgents from the Northeast and other itinerant terrorists were beginning to spread their tentacles to the rest of the country. The House of Representatives was not fully persuaded; instead they whined. The parliament is the most powerful symbol of democracy, but in this and other matters, it has been pusillanimous. But it is clear that the defence of democracy will henceforth rest with the civil populace, not weak-kneed lawmakers, not a diffident judiciary, and certainly not a conniving and authoritarian executive arm.

    Consider the arguments of the army. According to the representative the Chief of Army Staff deigned to send to the parliament to answer their questions, Maj.-Gen. U.S Mohammed, the scheme is inevitable. Hear him: “What is happening is that the military has been involved in Operation Lafiya Dole in the Northeast. Within the major operation, we have subsidiary operations and one of them is this Operation Positive Identification. It came about as a result of positive information about the activities of Boko Haram in the Northeast the fact that they are making inroads to other parts of the country. From our intelligence, they are spreading from their traditional stronghold. Based on that, this idea came up to embark on our cordon and search operations. We will make some arrest and do some identification. The operation started on the 22nd of September, 2019…We felt that as these exercises are going on, we should carry out the Operation Positive Identification to areas where we are going to carry out these exercises. It is nothing new.”

    The army general said the operation was not new. It is actually new except in the Northeast. He argued that because the insurgents were spreading out from their traditional stronghold, the idea came up to embark on operation cordon and search. With whom did the army meet minds over the idea? Did they discuss it at the defence chiefs level? Did the Defence ministry lead the discussions, let alone find the resolve to sell it to the cabinet and the rest of the country? The general also spoke of the army ‘feeling’ like spreading the exercise to other parts of the country, perhaps because they achieved some unstated successes from executing it in the Northeast. Has the country become so dysfunctional that ideas and schemes that would have national impact would not first be subjected to intensive public, cabinet and legislative debates before they were implemented? Just what kind of democracy is Nigeria running; if indeed it is a democracy?

    But that is not all. Said Gen Mohammed: “Operation Positive Identification is intelligence-led activity. Based on credible information, we go to certain areas, make an arrest and profile those arrested by identifying them and through that, we may be able to identify some Boko Haram members and other criminals. There will be no additional checkpoints because it is all intelligence-led. The fact that we are extending it to other parts of the country does not mean there are changes. It is strictly based on credible information and intelligence. We are going to observe our usual rules of engagement and code of conduct for troops during internal security arrangements. Some of these things are being done in conjunction with other sister security agencies which is assisting us in the operation…”

    Not only is it damnably wrong for them to carry out such operations on their own; if indeed it is an intelligence-led operation they would not need to go public until suspects are intercepted. Democracy is now considerably undermined in the name of internal security. The army obviously independently organises internal security operations at will, bypasses the national legislature, including the Intelligence Committee, and whimsically determines their scope and magnitude. Nigeria is surely not the first country to run a presidential system. Can it not take a cue from other countries whose internal security has also been threatened at one time or the other? Operation Positive Identification is a retrogression that did not begin today. In one small form or the other, engaging soldiers in purely civilian and police affairs began with the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency, and was taken a notch higher by the Goodluck Jonathan government when soldiers erected checkpoints and seized newspapers they deemed hostile. Now the abuse is escalating to the point of actually threatening democracy full-scale.

    As if to sell the unsellable scheme, Gen Mohammed even attempted to patronise the public. Said he: “As I said, we are undertaking three major exercises beginning from 1st of November to 23rd of December. We’re going to conduct raids within those areas. It is essentially aimed at ensuring that some of those security challenges are curtailed to the barest minimum as we approach the yuletide. I want to assure the House and law-abiding Nigerians to go about their lawful duties. It is not going to involve additional troops on the road. Anywhere we get credible information about the gathering of these bad guys, we conduct raids or cordon and search and if in the process, we make an arrest, you will be asked to identify yourself. The major focus is because of the Boko haram and terrorist groups and criminals from the Northeast and Northwest. We have information that they are trickling down to other parts of the country. During the operations, if individuals are arrested, they will be asked to identify themselves and to know who they are. But we are not going to base it on any particular means of identification. We are just trying to ensure that we apprehend some of these criminals who may have escaped from the Northeast.”

    There is nothing the army can say to attenuate the obnoxious impact of a scheme that has neither been reasoned out by its officers — not even the military high command — nor put through the legislative and bureaucratic mills. The scheme is militaristic, wrong, unacceptable, disruptive and it endangers democracy. The army in particular has formed the habit of independently conceiving ideas and schemes for the civil populace and the nation at large, rushing them half-baked into execution, while troops, as international and local rights groups have attested, inflict extrajudicial punishments on civilians. It is up to the civil populace to defend their hard-earned democracy and ensure that the army and the military in general are confined to their constitutional duties. If troops would carry out any operations, it must be sold to the public by the relevant civil authorities. Operation Positive Identification disgraces the country and is an indication that democracy in Nigeria is tottering on the brink of disaster.

  • Correctional Service, Justice system and restructuring

    IT took 11 years in the making before President Muhammadu Buhari finally signed the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS) Bill. Applauded and believed to be overdue, the law is expected to address the problems that bedevilled the defunct Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS), the NCS’s predecessor. It is also expected that the president will walk his talk this time by ensuring that the crises that made the NPS inoperable are resolved quickly and comprehensively. As laudable as the bill is, however, it is not altogether clear how the president hopes to give effect to the changes that birthed the NCS, especially in the face of a defective federal structure.

    Sponsored by a former senator, Victor Ndoma-Egba, and presented in 2008 during the Umaru Yar’Adua presidency, the bill suffered several delays, including President Buhari’s withdrawal of assent when at last the bill first came to his table in April. The president had pointed out that some of the provisions of the bill, particularly its funding sources, were inconsistent with the independence of the judiciary. His objections sounded altruistic; but the devil is in the detail. Re-presented in July, the president finally assented the bill on August 14. Nearly everyone interested in prisons reform has lauded the initiative, from the sponsors of the bill, to the legislature, and to the presidency. But many experts have also expressed reservations that whereas the new NCS law is timely and relevant, there is not nearly as much hope that it would go significantly beyond spreading a veneer of change on the cadaverous NPS.

    The believers are right, but the sceptics are even more right. For the believers, some of the provisions in the new law are indeed salutary and should to a large extent address a few of the pressing problems afflicting the prisons. First the law divides the correctional service into two: Custodial Service and Non-custodial Service. This is appropriate, even though these changes could still have been done under the old prisons. Then it empowers officials of the correctional service to decline the admission of more inmates once a correctional centre had been filled to capacity. According to the law, “In the event that the prison has exceeded its maximum capacity, the State Comptroller shall notify the Chief Judge of the State or the State Criminal Justice Committee. Upon receipt of the notification the Chief Judge or the State Criminal Justice Committee shall within a period not exceeding one month take necessary steps to rectify the overcrowding. Without prejudice to Subsection 4, the State Comptroller of Prisons in consultation with the Prison Superintendent shall have the power to reject more intake of prisoners where it is apparent that the prison in question is filled to capacity.”

    The law also provides for other laudable changes, including spelling out custodial and non-custodial measures that would aid the reformation of inmates and their reintegration into society, and lessen or altogether eliminate overcrowding. There is little doubt that if the provisions of the law are scrupulously adhered to, a crucial part of the criminal justice system would be ameliorated. Not only would the cost of sustaining inmates by significantly reduced, it should overall aid the administration of justice, redirecting it away from the needlessly punitive approach to incarceration to the more sensibly rewarding correctional and reformatory approach. Believers who point at these advantages are not exaggerating when they pontificate about the beneficial changes afoot.

    But sceptics fear that in the final analysis, and given Nigeria’s legendry sluggishness in following through laudable ideas and policies, the new development in the prisons may never exceed change of name, as other name changes in the country signify. For the name change to be fundamental and impactful, sceptics point out that the government must do the following: carry out infrastructural and equipment upgrades; adequately fund the correctional service; significantly improve on its data management and monitoring, especially in relation to non-custodial service appertaining to probation, community service and parole, among many others; build more and upgrade existing correctional centres; amend the constitution to put the correctional service under the concurrent legislative list; and review revenue allocation to enable states participate in funding and running correctional centres.

    Quite clearly, to be able to satisfy the sceptics and ensure that the reforms are fundamental and meaningful, the government would need to inspire judicial and police reforms to substantially reduce inefficiency in both sectors. Indeed, the entire criminal justice system would need to be comprehensively revamped for the Correctional Service Law to stand a chance of working. There is nothing yet to suggest that the Buhari presidency is thinking of such reforms. The police are poorly funded, are saddled with humongous responsibilities, are poorly trained and equipped, and operate archaic system of policing. Consequently, their investigative competence has often been compromised or even questioned, while they are sometimes unresponsive to crimes needing urgent investigative attention. There is, therefore, no chance of speeding up trials, leading to terrible backlogs and logjams.

    The judiciary itself, as the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Ibrahim Tanko Mohammad, indicated recently, is poorly funded and short-staffed. They are, therefore, unable to deal with cases before them with dispatch because the courts are analogue and in many instances, particularly in the states, archaic. Even the correctional service, the focus of the new law, is so heavily underfunded that sometimes they are hamstrung to transport suspects to court on adjourned dates, not to talk of feeding them and giving them adequate medical attention when the need arises. There have of course been some improvements, but progress has been very slow and amount to a drop in the ocean. In summary, the criminal justice system is in dire need of a complete makeover. Other than name change and lofty operational precepts, there is nothing in the horizon to indicate a comprehensive reform of the criminal justice system. And because the correctional service does not operate in isolation, it is hard to see how the new law would automatically produce a better and desirable incarceration system.

    Ultimately, none of the changes and reforms Nigeria desperately desires will be made without a comprehensive restructuring of the country’s political foundations. As distasteful as the word may sound, without restructuring, it is impossible for the country to enjoy the changes they seek, either in their correctional system or in any other part of the system in the country. Structural change, if it comes, is fundamental to the new Nigeria the people and, paradoxically, the government crave. It is restructuring that will make it feasible for federating units to raise the required funds needed to organise themselves adequately or profitably. It is restructuring that will afford federating units the chance to run an efficient police system, and pay living wage rather than bicker over minimum wage when they congregate over revenue allocation in Abuja every month for handouts. Federating units generally have different policing, prisons and judicial needs. They must retain the liberty and ingenuity to run at their own pace and organise themselves along their own cultures and scope. In any case, decades of centralising the police and the prisons, when it does not hurt to decentralise them, have proved inefficient, demoralising and retrogressive.

    It has been about two months since the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS) Bill was signed into law. Other than the applause it has generated and the enthusiasm NCS staff have shown, nothing worth remarking has really been done. After 11 years of working that law, surely the reason for it cannot be that the country should ogle it, instead of implementing it. If it is to stand any chance of success, its fundamentals must be challenged and comprehensively reworked.

  • Okada and the overwhelming of Lagos

    UnderTow

     

    One of the biggest headaches Lagos State governor Babajide Sanwoolu will have to grapple with in the years ahead will be what to do with the motorcycle mode of transportation popularly called okada.

    Lagos State is literally drenched in swarms and swarms of okada, nearly all of them undisciplined, uncontrollable, and posturing around the city-state with a sense of entitlement flowing from their perceived numerical and electoral strength.

    Since the state had failed for nearly a decade or more to deal with what has clearly become a menace to the reputation and well-being of the megacity, the problem had ballooned into a veritable nightmare requiring very drastic but less disruptive and intelligent solution.

    The Babatunde Fashola government tried in its own limited way to tackle the menace. It met with qualified success. With every okada impounded by his government, nearly four or five more replaced what was lost. Not only did his method of curbing the proliferation of okada fail to succeed as he desired, even limiting their operations to defined routes also met with about 90 percent failure rate.

    Under the Akinwunmi Ambode government, the menace simply spiralled out of control due to the state’s half-hearted and awkward attempt to curb it. Mr Sanwoolu has, therefore, inherited a nightmare. Instead of building on the successes of his predecessors, he in fact has nothing to build on but failure. He will have to start from the very beginning if he hopes to make a dent on the menace.

    The vexatious legal action brought by some 123 Jigawa indigenes who trucked themselves and dozens of their motorcycles into Lagos late August is indicative of the severity and complexity of the problem, not to say of the urgency needed to tackle it before it becomes even more intractable. The Jigawa indigenes, citing their constitutional right to free movement and the pursuit of their economic choices, sued Lagos for wrongly profiling and humiliating them and inhibiting their free movement as citizens of Nigeria.

    They gave the impression that other than the federal government, the state had no business, at a time of widespread insecurity, suspecting and questioning the movements of groups of people. The consequence of more than a decade of slack enforcement of the laws regulating transportation modes is the avalanche of okada riders recklessly menacing the city-state and complicating and jeopardising its security.

    But it makes no difference where the okada riders come from or what their political and ethnic affiliations are, even though this point seems lost on the Jigawa State-born litigants and others similarly minded. The plain point is that Lagos simply has a very urgent and overriding constitutional responsibility to regulate and control the state’s modes of transportation, including more importantly those who chose to run them as a business.

    For many years, perhaps afraid of the electoral impact of a backlash by okada operators, Lagos had failed to discharge its obligations as both a state and a megacity. The time to make amends has now come, and the state must face the task squarely and without hesitation.

    Lagos must begin the task by focusing less, in the first two years of the Sanwoolu government, on the electoral consequences of resolving to carry out its duty of regulating and controlling the state’s modes of transportation, particularly okada. It must first wield the big stick; and then three years later, think of the electoral impact of its actions.

    However, there is nothing in fact to show that the measures to be deployed by Lagos cannot be a win-win formula. It is possible that the state is already thinking of vigorously tackling the problem. If so, the following points are additional suggestions to help it refine the measures it is contemplating.

    (1) It appears that while there are graduates among the okada riders, most of the riders possess questionable education qualification and have become unresponsive to state laws and safety regulations. The state needs to first revoke and rework the licensing of okada and their operators to make success in satisfying state laws a precondition for registration.

    This task must not be left to FRSC alone. The VIO, as the law currently provides, must certify the okada and its operator educationally and mentally fit to operate within the ambits of the law. The number plate assigned a rider must also reflect only the areas where the state permits the operation of okada. Both the state and FRSC must reach an agreement to create a template in consonance with the needs of the state.

    (2) The details of the okada operator must be duly and fully captured in the state’s VIO data bank for security regulation and tax purposes. Such details, including the rider’s forwarding address, must be verified before licence is issued. A flat monthly tax rate should be imposed on the operator to widen the tax net, and non-payment should lead to flagging of his licence and interdiction.

    In addition, the state must also independently licence, for a fee, the okada operator just as it licenses commercial drivers to operate in the state. A certification must be issued and produced on demand by state regulatory and enforcement officials. If these rigorous regulatory procedures had been in place, the Jigawa 123 or any other group of riders from any part of the country would have thought twice before bringing a frivolous lawsuit. At the moment, all it takes is for an aspiring operator to procure an okada and almost immediately he could commence operation.

    (3) Okada operators must paint their machines in a distinct state colour, procure certified jackets from the relevant state agency, apply for certification through an okada cooperative society specified for defined routes, and be fully insured together with his potential clients.

    The days of easy entry into the okada market must end, and Lagos must begin to act scrupulously and firmly to preserve its integrity and restore sanity. The situation today is maddening.

    (4) It is known that okada riders most inclined to undermining the law regulating their operation are either military personnel or policemen moonlighting in their spare time to augment their poor pay. Despite the peculiarities of Nigeria’s hangover from military rule, a hangover complicated by a recalcitrant and still militarised federal government itself, this category of operators must be compelled to be registered according to the laws of the state, and in case of default, their details should be published for necessary legal action. Lagos must begin to think and act ambitiously like London and New York. Commuters themselves must be made aware of their liability when they patronise a rider who is not licensed to operate an okada.

    (5) Lagos must develop a comprehensive and futuristic transportation plan that gradually phases out okada. Okada mode of commercial transportation is a disgrace that has been left to blight the reputation of Lagos, notwithstanding the blackmail by unemployed people swarming into Lagos and threatening a life of crime if okada should be phased out. Apart from restricting the operations of okada to defined routes, that mode of transportation should be phased out in the next few years.

    The state plan must indicate a timeline for that exercise. It won’t be easy, especially given the lack of foresight from the federal government and the leprous implementation of federalism. But the alternative has become simply unbearable.

  • APC tremors not entirely irredeemable

    The battle between the All Progressives Congress (APC) state chairmen and their national secretariat may get nastier if both the party’s national chairman and the presidency do not find a coordinated way to resolve the misunderstanding tearing them apart.

    Unfortunately, despite putting a brave face on the budding crisis, the ruling party’s national secretariat and the presidency have maintained a stiff and awkward relationship that does not bode well for the party’s ambitious scheme of national political dominance.

    On September 23, the state chairmen had written the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) led by Adams Oshiomhole to urgently address the concerns raised about vacant leadership positions in the party and disaffected members complaining about their unrewarded campaign contributions.

    The state chairmen gave the national leadership a two-week ultimatum to find a resolution. That date expired without nothing more than a whimper from the national secretariat.

    To underscore the seriousness of the complaints and disaffection in the party, APC governors have lent their collective voice to the disquiet and embryonic conflict building up among party faithful, warning that except those complaints were addressed, the party could fracture irreparably or punch below its weight in future elections.

    No state chairman put the disaffection better than the party’s Enugu State chairman, Ben Nwoye, a youthful, charismatic and articulate leader thought to be one of the party’s rising stars. Said Dr Nwoye: “The situation is getting critical and our members are becoming disenchanted and losing faith in us for something that is not our fault. We don’t know what to tell them again because it is getting to a stage they can no longer understand the direction of the party. There is no response yet, but when it is time you will hear from us. You will hear from the party faithful; those who believe they worked hard for the party and have been left behind and out of the system while those who worked against the government and the party have been rewarded. You will hear from those who participated in putting the government in place in various states and have been abandoned.”

    Though he acknowledged that discussions were going on, he nonetheless sounded a note of warning:  “We are planning and we are organising ourselves,” he said cryptically. “Whatever that will be done will be a collective decision of all of us and it will be made public; it won’t be in isolation.

    The chairmen are speaking the minds of the people, those who sacrificed, worked hard and promoted the cause of the party but have been left behind. We are speaking the minds of the contestants who have promoted the image of the party and have been neglected; the minds of the people who nurtured the party in the non-APC states but have been left behind while the PDP people are rewarded.”

    But the party seems preternaturally sanguine about the troubles coursing through its ranks, notwithstanding the severity of its crisis. Some party officials, while not dismissing members’ complaints, suggested that conflicts were a natural consequence of any party organisation, and are meant to be always eventually resolved.

    Indeed, the APC National Vice Chairman( South-South), Hilliard Eta, volunteered that party members’ complaints were already being addressed. Neither the party chairman nor its spokesman has said anything to substantially address the problems. It is, however, not impossible that the party leadership view the problems with the seriousness they deserve.

    The APC is lucky that the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is also at sixes and sevens, and at odds with not only its members, some of whom are even more deeply and intransigently disaffected than APC members, but also with its soul and ideology.

    The PDP defines itself as somewhat conservative, but it has been unable to really match that ideology, when it is able to accurately define it, with its actions in and out of office. Such a party, which has so far been unable to chart a vigorous direction for the future or summon the resolve and confidence needed to give battle to the ruling party, may be hard put to navigate its way out of the quagmire which electoral defeat had confined it. In short, the PDP can only present itself a better alternative to the APC after it has smothered its own demons.

    Except it is living in denial, the APC must acknowledge that its members’ complaints are genuine, and their demands moderate. The APC won the last elections despite their escalating unpopularity, in fact more probably because of the disarray to which the PDP had fallen after it unprecedentedly lost the 2015 elections by a very appalling margin.

    That the APC won in 2019 by the skin of their teeth — though they deny this because of the margin of their victory — should lead them to recognise the yeoman efforts made by their rank and file. That recognition has been sadly tame. This flickering recognition has in turn led party leaders to take their members for granted, starting with the presidency which has not managed in more than four years to form the character of rewarding party faithful with appointments. In addition, as party members indicated with sound logic, the last ministerial appointments were made largely regardless of party loyalty and contributions. They cite the example of Ogun State where the former governor who worked against the party in the state successfully nominated ministers.

    The complaints registered by APC members in the states, and underscored by the party’s governors, indicate that the party may be heading for trouble. The complaints are genuine and weighty. If they are not addressed, they will severely hurt the party once the PDP gets its act together. The ministerial list is expended and cannot be revived; but there are still enough attractions left in the bowels of Nigeria’s vast and labyrinthine government to satisfy the hunger of party faithful, enough to encourage them to develop a sense of belonging.

    Party loyalists cannot but agitate vigorously, as they have begun to do to impress it on the minds of party leaders in the presidency that a change of attitude is needed to service the party and keep its organs lubricated. That change of attitude will be difficult to engineer, given the exigencies of the moment; but in the coming years, the kind of change that recognises and rewards the contributions of members must manifest if the APC is to survive and flourish.

    In addition to the needed attitudinal change, the party has more than three years left to react to the resurgence of the PDP, probably enough time to prevail on the Muhammadu Buhari presidency to bequeath a sound party structure and philosophy to the APC going forward. The APC, despite the best efforts of Mr Oshiomhole, is still not run professionally, nor is it imbued with the uplifting ideas capable of rallying its troops and vanquishing its enemies.

    There is little hope that the president himself will become converted to the universal principles of organising political party; but regardless of whether the president transforms himself and/or his politics, the party must still go ahead to build itself up and imbibe the requisite ideas and strategies. Hopefully, they can summon the unity and strength needed to deliver these changes.

    But underlying the complaints state chairmen have made, and which are corroborated and even given impetus by the governors, is the fear that rather than unite against the enemy in the coming years, the APC might instead exacerbate their fault lines, renew the battles that sundered them during the primaries, and fatefully ignore their reinvigorated enemy as they fight to the death among themselves.

    The choice before the APC is frighteningly stark. While there is nothing to indicate that they will make the right call, they must be keenly aware that should they make the wrong choice, as they seem poised to do, they will be brutally massacred in a manner that makes any hope of revival impossible.

  • Jonathan rouses sleeping giant again

    Former president Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign for a single tenure of six years for the president and governors is less likely to draw flak today as it did some eight years ago when he advocated a constitutional amendment to solve the disruptions and unbearable cost enveloping re-election politics in Nigeria. Speaking in Niamey, Niger Republic at an October 2, 2019 summit on constitutional terms limit, the former president reiterated his belief that re-election politics has been both excessively costly and disruptive, costs African countries cannot afford. Unlike in July 2011 when he half-heartedly owned the suggestion, pretending to be still engaged in consultations over the idea, this time, in Niamey, he embraced the suggestion wholeheartedly, arguing that rather than risk the danger of extended or even unlimited tenure, some as bad as more than two decades, it was better to legislate one term of six years duration.

    Dr Jonathan’s argument this time, strangely, does not sound as offensive as it did eight years ago. The simple reason is that in 2011, the timing was wrong, having just won reelection at a time the fear that he could still pursue a second four-year term in 2015 on top of his completion of the Umaru Yar’Adua first term had not yet been dispelled. His arguments about a single term tenure have still not changed substantially. Here is how he put it early this week: “When Professor Wade (Senegal) was in his last tenure, he changed the constitution and extended the term limits from five to seven years. He thought he would win the election. But Macky Sall reduced it to five years. We must commend dynamic leaders like that. There is no need for one person to sit for 14 years, doing what? The country is not your personal estate. Countries are free to amend their laws. Just like the President of Niger Republic said, different nations have different ways of doing things, so it is better they have their own way of doing things…”

    Continuing, Dr Jonathan argued: “Four years is quite a short period for a country that is developing for a person who wants to change the country to do much. In Nigeria, we just finished the (2019) election and some people are already talking about 2023 election. It is distracting. That is why some people come up with the idea of a single tenure; so a president can sit down and plan all his programmes for the good of the country.”

    From his presentation in Niamey, the former president obviously anchors his argument for a single term on two planks: one is the costliness and disruptiveness of reelection politics; and two is the shortness of one term of four years for any elected executive — president or governor — to make appreciable impact. Dr Jonathan is right about the costliness of Nigerian elections, whether it involves the campaigns by politicians or the logistics required to organise elections. Poorly regulated, the campaigns have become increasingly more expensive and labyrinthine, with candidates desperate to subvert the system, cheat their way into office, and dare a timid, burdened and poorly remunerated judiciary to adjudicate. And unable to extricate themselves from the shadowy influence and intimidation of the presidency on electoral commission workers, the electoral umpires have been hard put to measure up administratively in organising elections as well as sometimes, if not often, reading the lips of the executive in order to determine how to stack the cards against the opposition. The former president is, therefore, right that organising an election every four years in these parts can be acutely disruptive and financially debilitating.

    But the other aspect of his Niamey thesis, where he argues that a single term was inadequate for a leader to make any significant impact, is deeply controversial. His conclusion is tenuous and not borne out by experience or history. It is partly true that a new president’s task may be complicated by an incompetent predecessor, but if he has a plan to remake the country and does not lack the skills or the will to implement it, he is unlikely to fail to make an impact in four years. He may of course not complete his plan, and there is nowhere in the world where a leader executes all he sets out to do thereby rendering his successor idle, but he will have made such a significant impact that the electorate might be willing to reward him with a second term. If a leader cannot make a huge impression on his country in four years, it would be pointless rewarding him with another term. He might of course stubbornly desire the reward, which partly corroborates the electoral disruptiveness Dr Jonathan warns against, but it would be clear that he had been a failure in his first term.

    In 2011, when Dr Jonathan first mooted the idea of a single six-year term, the condemnation was furious and near unanimous. It was suggested that he was scheming for a third term, so soon after winning a full first term of his own and completing the one year left in the presidency of his predecessor, Mallam Yar’Adua who died in office. Some critics were in fact sickened by the fact that Dr Jonathan had mooted the single term idea barely two months after his presidency was inaugurated in 2011. Indeed, some even declared him a budding tyrant with a poor judgement, and a repudiator of agreements reached by his party on zoning. His critics were scathing, prompting him to declare that though he mentioned the idea to a few people he had taken no administrative or constitutional step to bring it to effect. He was still consulting, he snorted.

    Among those who excoriated him at the time were chiefly the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP), an informal coalition of political parties in Nigeria, former chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Victor Umeh, and former military head of state Ibrahim Babangida who spoke through his spokesman, Kassim Afegbua. Said Mr Afegbua in mid-August, of course reporting Gen Babangida’s opinion: ”Former President IBB is of the considered view that President Goodluck Jonathan, should concentrate energy and attention on providing meaningful solutions to the socio-economic and political problems confronting us as a nation; namely; insecurity, poor economic development, declining GDP, depleting foreign reserve, the gargantuan domestic debts that have crippled investment, and adding to unemployment, and the growing restiveness in the land…The proposal therefore is wicked, outlandish, self-serving, deliberate distraction, and an outright contempt for the people.”

    Mr Umeh was a little more conciliatory. He had said: “The President may have good intention for proposing this Bill but a critical analysis of the implications of passing this Bill into law is that people will now be elected for six year single tenure. So it is very dangerous that from the blast of the whistle, they will decide to abandon the electorate that elected them and there is nothing that you can do to them. With Section 308 Immunity Clause of our constitution; it means that it will be very difficult to remove them when they are going wrong. Six years will be a long time to allow a governor or a president who from the blast of the whistle decides to short-change the people.”

    Mr Umeh’s argument is as valid today as it was explicit and irresistible eight years ago. In none of Dr Jonathan’s public admonitions on the single term subject has he attempted to answer the conundrum: what do you do with a hopelessly incompetent or cruel president or governor who has six years to go in office? The allure of the existing two-term renewable system is that if the elected leader is good, he gets rewarded, regardless of the cost of electing and re-electing him; and if he is bad, as indeed many of them are clearly irredeemably bad, the point is that the electorate could console themselves with the chance to kick him out early. With a six-year tenure, the pain to be endured by the electorate suffocating under a bad leader would be excruciating.

    The case Nigerians should make, instead of unnecessarily debating the tenure system, is that the country should be restructured in such a way as to significantly reduce the cost of democracy and governance in order to eliminate duplication, aggravation and financial shenanigans in the electoral system. Or to jettison the presidential system entirely. As long as no answers can be found to solve the dilemma of what to do in six years with a bad and probably irredeemable leader, it may make little sense to push the proposed tenure system Dr Jonathan has seemed to fawn over.

  • Kogi PDP settles for Yusuf after Melaye, Idris snub

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) appears to have finally got over the challenge of who would lead the party’s campaign for the governorship election scheduled for November 16.

    The party appears to have finally settled for the House of Representatives member representing Kabba/Bunu/Ijumu federal constituency after Senator Dino Melaye and the state’s former governor, Ibrahim Idris, had both rejected the party’s offer that they should become the director-general of the PDP Kogi State Governorship Campaign Council.

    But the stealthy manner Yusuf emerged as the director-general of Engr. Musa Wada’s campaign organization has left many tongues wagging.

    The party was said to have appointed Yusuf for the position without making a public show of it because of its previous experiences with Melaye and Idris.

    A party source in the state told Sentry that the party decided to make Yusuf’s appointment a quiet affair to avoid a situation to avoid another embarrassing situation.

  • Trump, Johnson: Nigeria not alone in poor leadership

    Nigeria will be 59 in a few days. For more than five decades, the industrialised West had called her names, some of them unprintable, and denounced her leaders — whether military or civilian, elected or imposed — as incompetent, sociopathic and megalomaniacal.

    For a long time, Nigerians and the rest of the world saw the insults as justified and even fitting. Starting out approximately from the same economic and social pedestals with many Asian countries like China, Malaysia, Singapore and the two Koreas, Nigeria had held out hope that, like its competitors, she would amount to something spectacular in the world, not only because of her inestimable human resource endowment but also for her abundant, almost incomparable economic resource base. Nearly six decades down the line, that potential has remained almost completely unrealised. Worse, it had seemed as if Nigeria was nearly alone in propping up and projecting bad leaders.

    It has, however, taken less than a decade — indeed, well within five years — of the emergence of many right-wing leaders in the so-called First World countries of Europe and America to put the lie to the isolation and incomparability of Nigeria’s laggardness. It turns out that bad leaders are not the exclusive preserve of Nigeria and countries like her in Africa and Central America. In Donald Trump, who was freely elected some three years ago by a supposedly educated and highly enlightened electorate, the United States has produced, tolerated and projected a match to Nigeria’s very worst, someone who appears to combine all the elements of the most disgraceful kind of leadership without the redeeming grace of good, humane and sensible leadership attribute. He was a rank outsider in the US Republican Party and a repudiator of the moderate conservatism of the party, but he bluffed, blustered and jousted his way into winning the party’s candidacy and national diadem, preying on the fears and apprehensions of Americans over immigration and dilution of white control and supremacy.

    Europe has always portrayed itself as multicultural, liberal and ethical. But with the rise of right-wing governments in Austria, Italy and Hungary, and the relentless march of populist parties in Germany, Estonia, Denmark, Bulgaria and Finland, among many others, the condition in which the mind of Europe has long been ensconced is festering and mutating radically. Indeed, everywhere there is a major cultural or economic challenge in Europe, politicians and parties have veered very badly to the right, exploiting populism to fetch easy votes, erect huge ramparts against outsiders, and demonise their perspectives.

    Indeed, there was a brief moment during the last elections in France when the right-wing seemed poised to cause a huge upset. Establishment parties had frayed and the electorate seemed bullishly and instantly regicidal. How France escaped the populist onslaught has not been fully explained. If France was lucky, Britain has not been quite as lucky. There is of course no stretch by which the Conservative Party in Britain could be described as right-wing, but the politics of Prime Minister Boris Johnson is definitely populist, if not next door to right-wing, and Brexit a frightening ogre whose ultimate implications still defy punditry.

    Merely describing a government as right-wing does not, however, justify the policies and politics of Messrs Trump and Johnson, both of whom are appalling, incompetent, vituperative, unconscionable and megalomaniacal. Nor do they excuse the damning trajectory of Hungary’s Mr Viktor Orban and the insufferable and sanguinary excesses of Philippines’ Mr Rodrigo Duterte. Mr Trump runs a divisive and chaotic administration, one which is unashamedly racist, loud, and unfeeling. With countless senior officials of government throwing in the towel not too many months after assuming office, the Trump White House has come to symbolise and embody everything contrary to the most respected of American ideals, ideals tested by years of political and ideological refinement, and the leadership and guidance of the most studious, nationalistic and far-sighted founding fathers any country could have.

    Mr Trump’s most recent blunder in which he instigates a foreign government against a highly placed American political rival, former vice president Joe Biden, is not only a case in point, it is also an indication of how sadly American politics has accommodated and indulged the president’s reckless and provocative brand of politics. Having yielded remorselessly to his unethical governance style, winked at his lack of private scruples, and indulged his braggadocio, it is no surprise that Mr Trump has stretched the frontiers of bad governance to its elasticity limit.

    If care is not taken, he could once again very well get away with murder, an indulgence he has become accustomed to and, given the solidity of his base and their unquestioning loyalty to him,  even feels has become either indispensable to his presidency or integral to American politics. The US is great today more because it had for centuries identified great and noble ideals, embraced them, and made their promotion a lifelong assignment. America is not great because of sheer military muscle, for if that were so, surely they know it is a question of time before the Barbarians march on this hypothetical Rome.

    Whether it is mischievous mimicry or not, Britain’s Mr Johnson has postured inelegantly like Mr Trump, talked carelessly and recklessly like him, undermined the rule of law flagrantly, attempted to strangulate the parliament by proroguing it, and has ridden roughshod over both his inferiors and betters, with equal passion, indiscreet statements  and matchless ferocity. He has not been able to deliver Brexit on terms that either align with his self-induced scepticism or not mock his inflexibility and disdain for parliament. There is in fact nothing to indicate that he will be able to deliver it, despite a law forbidden him to exit the European Union without a deal, let alone empathise with and placate the fears of Europhiles. Self-willed, slightly arrogant and impatient, Mr Johnson has not given any indication that he recognises and therefore needs to protect centuries of British democracy and parliamentarianism.

    Few ever thought the US and Britain could ever sink so low as to enthrone leaders whose fundamental outlook and logic war so violently against the ideals that have stood Europe and America well for centuries. But for their indomitable institutions that continue, with perfect equanimity, to bear the excesses of right-wing European countries and the US, both Mr Trump and Mr Johnson would have unreflectively engineered the destruction of their countries which are still entranced by their sorceries and talismanic zealotry.

    In contrast, and this is where Nigeria has fared very badly, there are no strong institutions to serve as a bulwark for Nigeria. With a succession of bad leaders, most of them so incompetent that they should be completely banned from ever participating in public affairs, Nigeria has groaned under the weight of incompetent leadership and undisciplined governance. The country, it is now known, is not alone in this classic display of underachievement. It may have produced a slew of incompetent rulers and despoiled its land, it must, however, take consolation in the fact that it is definitely not alone. This is a horrifying consolation to take, but better clutch at straw than drown in a shallow pool of its own disgraceful fouling and making.

    Mr Trump has no clue whatsoever about the ennobling and ethical role the United States plays in mediating conflicts in unstable countries and regions, and in policing and projecting liberal values all over the world. Since the US has now seemed to abjure such noble virtues, and there is no other country strong enough or sufficiently gingered to protect human rights and all other rights, countries like Nigeria have been encouraged to clamp down on their peoples regardless of the provisions of their constitutions. Nigeria was for decades eternally poised on the edge of political and economic disaster, without US prodding, it now has free rein to commit excesses that are certain, on a hypothetical tomorrow, to entrap its promoters.

  • Bauchi governor, NLTP and imperfect identity

    Before it is over, the controversy over whether to execute a Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) programme for herdsmen or serve it in the somewhat more inoculated version of National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) will have cost jobs, denuded political influence and prestige, and stoked pain, anger and suspicion all over the country.

    RUGA, which is hated in some parts of the country for its provocative and culturally flagrant acronym, was to be anchored by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in ways that stupefied many. NLTP on the other hand, though still viewed with extreme suspicion, emanated from the National Economic Council (NEC). Who first conceived it? It is not clearly stated. For now, flowing from the acrimonious debate over the relevance and security implications of RUGA, the more inclusive NLTP appears to be on the ascendancy, with a hefty budget of about N179bn proposed for its execution over a 10-year period.

     

    Neither NLTP nor RUGA is devoid of controversy, and may not even be the best scientific approach to solving the so-called herdsmen-farmers clashes. Both programmes came out of many decades of slovenly approach to tackling climate problems and desertification, which pushed herdsmen contentiously farther afield in search of grazing lands, and the increasing conurbation and population explosion that have constricted grazing lands. Unable to find the antidote to a fast-growing and menacing problem, the federal government simply watched, sometimes with futile gestures, as herdsmen and farmers locked horns. Now the problem has reached epidemic levels, and is demanding for a solution whether the government likes it or not.

    But rather than look at the problem carefully and cautiously and weigh every suggested solution against the backdrop of the country’s cultural sensitivities and political complexities, the government has made a fairly conventional assessment of the causes of the problem, stunted the need to seek more modern and efficacious solutions, and is now attempting to impose a solution whose future ramifications are unpredictable. RUGA was the more insensitive of the two solutions, but there is also no proof that even the NLTP has met with anything more than cautious and reluctant acceptance from so-called willing states. Indeed, there is no proof that governors, who are members of the NEC, have all confidently signed on to the sanitised variant of the two programmes, especially with the ongoing subterranean and contentious attempt to settle Fulani herdsmen in some unwilling parts of the country.

    To further muddy the waters, the declaration by the Bauchi State governor Bala Mohammed that the Fulani of West Africa have a transcendental identity, and must willy-nilly partake of the NLTP, has stoked controversy and imbued the programme with a suspicious hegemonic quality. The NEC is proposing an initial N100bn budget, fully funded by Nigerian taxpayers. According to Mr Mohammed, however, it would be pointless to attempt to exclude Fulani herdsmen from neighbouring West African countries, because you couldn’t tell the difference: they are all one and the same. They migrate seamlessly and share the same nationality. The governor was, in other words, declaring that the Fulani everywhere see themselves as Fulani first and foremost rather than through the lens of the countries of their birth. This is hugely controversial, ignorant and provocative.

    According the governor: “I think there is a lot of mistrust and misconception as regards the Fulani man. The Fulani man is a global or African person. He moves from the Gambia to Senegal and his nationality is Fulani. As a person I may have my relations in Cameroon but they are also Fulani. I am a Fulani man from my maternal side. We will just have to take this as our own heritage, something that is African. So, we cannot just close our borders and say the Fulani man is just a Nigerian. In most cases, the crisis is precipitated by those outside Nigeria. When there is a reprisal, it is not the Fulani man within Nigeria that causes it. It is that culture of getting revenge which is embedded in the traditional Fulani man that attracts reprisal…We are already accommodating them. Do you delineate and really know who is not a Nigerian Fulani man? They are all Nigerians because their identity, their citizenship is Nigerian even though they have relatives from all over the world. So, presumably they are Nigerians because they move all over and have relations all over. That is why our population in Nigeria is fluid.”

    If Governor Mohammed is right, nationals of Arab countries, for instance, can move without any restraints across borders in the Middle East once they share the same economic identities. They would neither need passports nor visas and are at liberty to enjoy the resources of any country they choose to migrate to whether they were born there or not and whether they pay taxes there or not. It is a hard theory to swallow. The governor made this explosive argument on a Channels Television programme on September 16, 2019. He was obviously persuaded about the reality and logic of his arguments, and managed no doubt to pass on that argument most persuasively to his listeners and other Nigerians who read the report. The National Economic Council meeting days after the Channels programme, however, attempted to douse the controversy triggered by that outlandish argument that suggested that Nigerian resources could be put at the disposal of non-Nigerians, and that in any case borders are needless and fruitless. According to the NEC, the NLTP is to be implemented in seven pilot states of Adamawa, Benue, Kaduna, Plateau, Nasarawa, Taraba and Zamfara — not the 13 originally proposed, nor of the RUGA 11 — and it would not involve putting the resources of the country at the disposal of foreign herdsmen.

    But overall, Governor Mohammed has been the more believable. He insists that no one can tell the difference between local and foreign Fulani herdsmen, and that it even makes no sense to attempt to tell them apart or to isolate one from another. While the implementation of the programme is some way off, and funds are still merely proposed, it remains to be seen how the pilot states will implement the programme. Will it be at their say-so, or will it be a federal programme that is implemented in their states? With the federal government providing 80 percent of the funds, it remains to be seen how they could cede control to the states or to the private sector participants envisaged by the plan. Furthermore, it is at the point of implementation that Nigerians will know whether the Nigerian government is willing and able to draw the line of differentiation.

    It is also not clear yet why states which have shown the keenest interest were not included in the pilot programme, while initially sceptical states such as Benue and Taraba where extreme hostilities have sometimes been recorded between natives and pastoralists, have been included in the short list of seven states. Nor has the federal government, which has embarked on interminable schemes to placate herdsmen much more than any other economic group, fully explained why it has not simply encouraged the formation of herdsmen cooperatives and restricted itself to backing them with access to low-interest loans. Many critics have suggested that the government’s lethargic approach to mediating herdsmen-farmers conflict is indicative of a collusion with violent herdsmen or at best connivance at the violent seizure of lands.

    If NLTP finally takes off, it is unlikely to bear out the reassurances given by the federal government. As the Bauchi State governor has said, few states implementing NLTP will bother drawing lines between Fulani herdsmen, local or foreign. Indeed, nothing says the NLTP will not eventually transform into RUGA, the original intention of the herdsmen scheme’s creators. From all indications too, with so many questions left unanswered, the government may be unwisely laying the seeds of future conflicts whose repercussions and trajectories may be extremely difficult to manage. It is also predicted that judging from the manner the government has been handling the issue, they may never be able to accurately define or gauge the problem or conceptualise an acceptable national identity for Nigerians capable of sustaining economic planning and promoting internal security. Too many issues are left in flux, and too many alien identities are unfortunately superimposed on the imperfect Nigerian identity.

    Quote

    Unable to find the antidote to a fast-growing and menacing problem, the federal government simply watched, sometimes with futile gestures, as herdsmen and farmers locked horns.