Category: Barometer

Barometer

The Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (ABU) was in the eye of the storm recently when it denied a high-performing female candidate from Niger State, Goodnews Thomas, admission to read medicine. When the social media broke the story and turned it into a sectarian controversy, it was expected that the Zaria-based institution would react immediately and effectively. But when it did, the reaction was both muddled and ineffective.

Miss Thomas, it was reported, scored an inspiring 302 in UTME and a tidy 274 in the ABU post-UTME screening to bring her weighted score to 288. By any standard, such a score was great enough for admission. That she was not admitted to read medicine but was offered anatomy was distressing, said her sympathisers who went on to speculate without foundation that it must have to do with her religion, Christianity.

But after JAMB waded into the controversy, it discovered that ABU had indefensibly pegged admission to study medicine to two candidates per state, and that someone probably spoke to Miss Thomas on phone to change her course of study, which she did. JAMB further discovered that in ranking she was by her aggregate scores third in her state after two other candidates Isa Mujahid and Hassan Rukayat Nda-Isah who scored 299 and 292 respectively to place first and second. JAMB has now directed her to be admitted to study medicine, but acknowledged that as a result of the controversy that has poisoned the atmosphere she would probably decline.

The Goodnews Thomas case is a pointer to the confusion and pollution poorly investigated stories often cause. The social media took the matter up, and the traditional media soaked it in without examining the many contours of the story. And the ABU itself made a hash of the response. It is important for the media to get their stories right, not to talk of exercising caution in ascribing motives to actions and policies. JAMB has done well to help shed light on the matter, and has gone further to even make progressive recommendations.

Miss Thomas was misled to take hasty steps; for as JAMB said, she would have been number 36 out of 88 on the merit list had she not changed her course of study. It was overall a regrettably managed case. It is so sad that this bright student will now probably have to study medicine elsewhere if she cannot overcome the emotions of having inadvertently spurred a needless controversy.

Barometer

The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen Gabriel Olonisakin, has asked Nigerians not to use the misconduct of a few bad eggs in the military to generalise the behaviour and effectiveness of the Nigerian military. He gave this caution through the Chief of Defence Civil/Military Corporation, Rear Admiral Obed Ngalabak, while trying to partner with the Ned Nwoko Foundation to reverse the negative public perceptions suffered by the Nigerian military. He is of course right to worry about the implications of lumping the military in one disreputable basket, but whether the image problem the Nigerian military faces is just that of a few bad eggs bringing shame upon the military is another thing entirely.

Presenting the message of the CDS to Mr Nwoko, Rear Admiral Ngalabak said: “The Chief of Defence Staff has asked that we meet you because the civil-military relations is bad, it needs to be brought together and a person like you will go a long way to support this project. There was a certain article on some soldiers recently misbehaving in Lagos; but I want to say that in every family, there are black sheep, and this is just an example of that. Sometimes, it is because of the challenges they themselves are having: they are frustrated, and they have no way of letting it out, and so sometimes they behave like that; but that is not saying that is who we are, it is not everybody. We are trying to use this opportunity to correct some of these impressions and make people understand that the military is Nigerians, they are fighting for Nigeria and what we are doing is for Nigerians.”

There is no military that does not have a few black sheep, but there are provisions to deal with them. Perhaps it is time the Nigerian military reassessed their training and doctrine manual, for the image problem they are contending with is feared to be more than what a few black sheep could cause. It is suspected that the problem has become systemic, and it is eating away at the heart of the military.

The CDS talked about an article referencing a few soldiers misbehaving in Lagos; but almost on a daily basis, and as the military continues to be sucked into police duties, misbehaving soldiers have become omnipresent. From misbehaving at checkpoints to stopping traffic and taking selfies on major highways, and on to many other acts of brutality, Nigerian soldiers have acquired a reputation for unpredictability, homicidal rage, contempt for the rule of law, and other dangerous malfeasances. These problems are not just the end result of a few misbehaving soldiers; they are the product of a military alienated from discipline and national vision of who they are and what their roles in a democracy should be.

But it is good the military leadership has at least recognised that it is confronting a big problem, one that requires an urgent solution. But that solution will not come from mere reorientation and propaganda campaigns. They must come from the military embarking on a comprehensive and top to bottom restructuring of their training and doctrine manual to inculcate zero tolerance for misbehaviour. The Nigerian military was not always like this. But admittedly the challenges they are being called upon to handle today have also substantially changed, thereby exposing them to far more intensive, continuous, corrupting and corrosive interactions with the civil populace, a culture that is alien to, if not subversive of, their training.

The problem is deeper and wider than the military can manage. It is good for them to recognise that they are a part of the problem, and must need to take firm steps to restructure their training and operations. But as some of the statements of their top officers sometimes indicate, including when they set up panels to probe the misbehaviour of some of their men, such as the killing of policemen in Taraba months ago, they have often pulled their punches, appear protective of their men and reputation, and often see themselves as superior to the constitution and members of the public. Their mindset, which has been terribly distorted over the past few decades, must also be comprehensively addressed if the image deficit is to be bridged. And as the 2015 Zaria killings of Shiite members also show, too much has gone wrong for any desultory publicity blitz and propaganda to address.

The federal government has the biggest responsibility to mould a military Nigerians can be proud of. They must know that Nigerians are dismayed by domestic and international reports of the misbehaviour of a few Nigerian soldiers. The government has deployed the military too pervasively and too casually to engender and retain service discipline.

They guide pipelines, carry out strictly police duties, escort top politicians, are sometimes recruited unofficially as debt collectors, and generally conduct themselves above the law. The misbehaving soldiers may be few, as the CDS has pointed out, but they have managed by their indiscriminate unruliness to give the impression that their misbehaviour is pervasive in the military. Much more than the military, it is the government that is best placed to effectively tackle the problem; and the solution must be radical and substantial to be effective.

Barometer

There was hardly any Nigerian, including President Buhari’s most fanatical supporter, who was not astounded by Senate President Ahmed Lawan’s brutally frank insistence that the president’s $29.9bn loan request would be approved.

This was before the loan request was debated. Why then does he resist the conclusion that the 9th National Assembly is a rubber stamp parliament? Speaking to editors on the parliament’s six months of legislative work, he had said: “The question of whether we will pass the loan request of the executive arm of government, yes, we will pass it. If we don’t have money and you have projects to build them, how will you provide infrastructure that you need? But one thing is that, we are going to be critical, that every cent that is borrowed is tied to a project. These are projects that will have spillover effects on the economy and we will undertake our oversight seriously to ensure that such funds are properly, prudently, economically and transparently applied on those projects.”

And if anyone wondered why the loan request, first presented in 2016, was not approved, here is why, according to Sen Lawan: “In 2016, the Senate did not pass the loan request of the Executive at that time and the reason was because there were no sufficient details. I want to inform this gathering and indeed Nigerians that the letter conveying the loan request of the Executive came with every possible detail and in fact we will ensure that we are getting the right information from the Executive arm of Government. So, the situation is not the same. In 2016, there was no submission of details. This time, I think the executive has learnt its lesson and the letter came with sufficient details.”

Has Sen Lawan forgotten that the president scurrilously dismissed the 8th NASS for rejecting the loan because of bad, confrontational politics? So, now, it was really all because of insufficient details? It is clear from the illogic of Sen Lawan and the do-nothing 9th NASS that Nigerians are in for a hard time, since bills will henceforth be approved without discrimination, critical reasoning, and debate. The country will need a miracle to escape being bankrupted before the next polls.

Barometer

Months of snapping at one another’s heels, in a bitter and brutal struggle for the administrative soul of the All Progressives Congress (APC), may soon give way to open, fierce and bloody war for the heart and body of the deeply fractious ruling party. Adams Oshiomhole is today at the heart of that bitter struggle; but it is hardly about him, notwithstanding his matchless knack for courting controversy and discord. Years before him, the former APC chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, emblematised all that was controversial and problematic about the party. Until he was overthrown in a spectacular ‘coup’ during the party’s 2018 national convention, which some National Executive Committee (NEC) members had strived to defer, Mr Odigie-Oyegun barely managed to leave office with any heels. Only the party’s first chairman, who occupied the office in interim capacity, the avuncular former Osun State governor Bisi Akande, escaped the bruising politics that threatens to undo the party.

So far, Mr Oshiomhole has survived two attempts at his chairmanship: one was premature and lacking in fire, and the other half-hearted, a little more determined, but still uncoordinated. His enemies may be dispirited, even scattered; but they are not vanquished. They will go at him hammer and tongs, will not relent, and may have even taken an oath to do him in no matter the cost. The first attempt at his leadership, indeed the foundation of the opposition to his reign, was triggered by his principled but perhaps undiplomatic opposition to the undemocratic suzerainty established by a few governors in their states, some of whom engaged in complex manipulations of both state party structures and party primaries.

Mr Oshiomhole may have successfully checkmated the manoeuvres of the said governors before the last general election, but it has made them his compulsive enemies. They are unlikely to relent. For even before the elections, the president was himself undecided who to support — the governors, some of whom were quite close to him, or the party, in line with party supremacy principles and the justness of the party leadership’s campaigns. Rather than abate, however, the opposition to the chairman has continued to mount, with the aggrieved president’s friends increasing in visibility and power under the presidency, and Mr Oshiomhole correspondingly reducing in influence in many ways. In the past two weeks, evidence of the growth of influence of Mr Oshiomhole’s enemies have been widespread. As they grow in power, they have become more emboldened to take on their chairman, determined to vaporise him.

At the moment, the struggle has been stalemated. Those in his corner, mainly states party chairmen, some governors, some party leaders, and a majority of the rank and file are determined to stick by him. But due probably to the politics of the 2023 general election, Mr Oshiomhole’s opponents have openly declared war, abandoned neutrality, and are bent on sinking or swimming with their cause. It has become almost an oath. The chairman should feel worried that open warfare has broken out rather quickly, more than three years before the next polls, giving enough time for his enemies to restock their armoury, completely win over the vacillating president, create a groundswell of opposition against him, chip away at the defences of and support for the party’s leadership, and possibly drive a wedge between the chairman and the president. It will be a miracle if they do not wear him down completely.

Mr Oshiomhole unfortunately is caught up in the Edo poll web. If he fails to win the state for his party next year, support for him within the party hierarchy, somewhat tenuous at the moment, will wear very thin. Meanwhile, he has boxed himself into a corner with his inability to overlook some of the undemocratic proclivities of his successor to the Edo stool, Godwin Obaseki. Having prompted Osagie Ize-Iyamu, PDP’s candidate in the last governorship poll, to defect to the APC just as Mr Obaseki is gearing up to contest the party’s nomination, Mr Oshiomhole may have nailed his colours to the mast and crossed the Rubicon at the same time. Seeing this, Mr Obaseki has increased the amperage of his opposition to the chairman and indicated that he would be willing to fight to the death. Neither combatant can now back down without losing face. Mr Obaseki is the underdog; if he loses, he will take it gamely. Mr Oshiomhole has more to lose. Should he lose, his demystification may snowball into something more than he can handle.

Indeed, the Edo governor is now comforted by the support of Mr Oshiomhole’s many influential enemies, men close to the presidency and eager to get their pound of flesh from a chairman who they deemed had cost them dearly. But there is no question in all this that the party chairman occupies the moral high ground in his effort to restore discipline and administrative order to the party. If the justness of a cause is enough to give victory, Mr Oshiomhole should run away with victory. But all he can hope for now, given the flightiness of the presidency and the way his enemies are encircling him, is that God will stir up the matter in his favour. That hope, as history attests, and as a battle weary man like him suspects, is often not forlorn. After all, so far, and despite the stalemate, he still has a slim edge over his enemies.

Adekunle Ade-Adeleye

For the duration of the Muhammdu Buhari presidency, there will, sadly, be no end to the verbal putdowns the president flings at his countrymen. At different times, he had acquiesced to their being described as fantastically corrupt, or gushed about Nigerian youths being lazy.

Now, he has remorselessly described them as deeply rooted in dishonesty to explain the border closure punishment he has inflicted on the country as a state policy. Speaking in Daura, Katsina State, on December 2, 2019 when a delegation of Katsina State Elders Forum visited him, the president explained the border closure policy this ingenious way: “Farmers must be protected. Dishonesty is deep-rooted in the country.

Otherwise the border closure would not have been warranted.” In addition, according to a statement released by one of his spokesmen, Garba Shehu, the president was quoted to have said that “the country’s domestic fuel consumption had dropped by more than 30 per cent, following closure of land borders.”

Insisting that no date had been set for the reopening of the shut land borders, contrary to the Customs boss, Hameed Ali, who probably under pressure had set a late January deadline, the president seems obsessed with only the benefits of the closure to the total detriment and exclusion of the costs. Well, it is his government.

He can inflict as many deadly policies on the people as they will permit. For now, the people seem to permit it, and are even enthusiastic. But to say Nigerians suffer from deep-rooted dishonesty to justify his simplistic and ruinous border policy, when the same benefits can be secured through efficient and modern policing of the country’s land borders, is both offensive and indefensible.

No matter what anyone says, however, the president’s condescending treatment of his countrymen will continue. There is no stopping him. And as for his poor opinion of Nigerians, well, they deserve it. After all, they put him in office over and over again, and indulge his style.

Adekunle Ade-Adeleye

If anybody says the divisions and poor leadership evident in Nigeria are caused by a dearth of good counsel, he is mistaken. Good counsel abounds, as Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s recent admonition to the government of which he is a part demonstrates.

In late November, at the opening ceremony of the General Assembly of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Abuja, Prof Osinbajo lauded constitutional provisions designed to obviate religious and ethnic crises in Nigeria, but bemoaned elite unwillingness to adhere to them. Without a disciplined approach to leadership, he feared, Nigeria would not find it easy living together in peace and harmony.

The vice president was uncharacteristically scathing, in fact a little distant from his usual diplomatese. “Constitutional declarations mean nothing,” he wailed, “unless there are men and women ready to make the personal sacrifices to bridge the gap between rhetoric and constitutional ideals. Such men and women are not usually very many. But they do not have to be many to make a difference.” He is right.

Convinced that the First Republic leaders were less obsessed with religion and ethnicity than current leaders, he commended them for placing the right priorities on basic human needs such as food, health, and education. He, however, warned that leaders must recognise the burden placed on their shoulders to make religion or faith give impetus to national development. “This is the challenge I pose to you today,” he deadpanned.

However, more ominously, he accused some political leaders of disrespecting the constitution. According to him, “…There are states where governors refuse to grant certificates of occupancy for the building of churches or places of religious gathering in outright violation of the constitution they swore to uphold.” Indeed, from reports, some states have elevated such discriminatory practices to the level of state policy, convinced that there would be no repercussions. After all, there are some positions, particularly in the judiciary in such states, where religious minorities are wilfully but unofficially barred. The vice president may not list the offending states, but he knows them, and the religious leaders who attended the Abuja conference know very well the perpetrators of discrimination and intolerance.

Having made commendable arguments in favour of tolerance, particularly offering the public a precise definition of what it means, it is surprising that the vice president then lapsed into a sentimental and wholly inadequate example of religious and ethnic tolerance. Using President Muhammadu Buhari as an example, he elucidated the point about a leader who knew where to draw the line. “Every Sunday, my family and over 100 Christians attend service in the Chapel at the Villa,” the vice president enthused.

“The Chapel is located in the premises of the President and his family. It is located a few seconds away from the First Lady’s kitchen. Sometimes when I see the President on a Sunday morning, he asks me whether the service is over already or I am escaping from the service! That is the sort of tolerance that we need in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society and it is the duty of leaders to show that sort of example.”

If the president were as secular as the vice president suggests, he would have advocated the relocation of the chapel and State House mosque outside Aso Villa. The chapel was located near the president’s residence by former president Olusegun Obasanjo probably to counterbalance the proximity of the State House mosque to the president’s office. It is such mechanical balancing that disgraces Nigeria and suffuse national politics with needless contrivances. Given the bent of many of President Buhari’s policies, it seems likely he would have relocated the chapel away from the residence had he got the chance, as indeed reports suggested his aides tried to do in the early months of his presidency. The vice president cannot pretend not to know.

But overall, Prof Osinbajo is right to argue that “It is the courage of leaders to live up to the ideals of their faith and their sworn commitments that invariably build nations”, adding that “Leaders must live up to the commitments to which they swear, especially political leaders.” And with poignancy and candour, he concludes: “Nations are built by the sacrifices (and) hard work of leaders who do not care even if they are condemned by persons of their own religion or ethnicity, so long as they are confident that they act in obedience to the oaths they swore and to the Almighty God. Such men and women are few, but the profundity of their actions invariably transforms communities and nations as they bend the arc of history in the direction of unity, peace and progress.”

The eminent professor’s conclusions are unimpeachable. But they are counsels meant more for the presidency of which he is an alienated part, and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), which has become both increasingly disconnected from reality and quite similar to its predecessor, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). But perhaps, knowing just how much he has fallen into disfavour with a presidency he had offended virtually everyone to please, he probably intends to live out his remaining months or years in office to finally please his conscience. That conscience had been stifled for many years; it is now just beginning mercifully to stir and to breathe.

Barometer

Without any ambiguity, Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court, Abuja dismissed the suit brought  by the Police Service Commission (PSC) challenging the power of the Inspector General of Police (IGP) and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) to superintend the recruitment of 10,000 constables into the law enforcement agency.

President Muhammadu Buhari had in 2015 announced his readiness to back the recruitment of tens of thousands of constables to complement the existing over 350,000 policemen nationwide. It nevertheless took about four years before the government and the police got round to kick-starting the process. While the exercise lasted, however, the police and the PSC bickered over who had the final say in the recruitment of the constables. There is unlikely to be an appeal, although the system would have benefited from a constitutional consideration to settle what has appeared to be a long-standing judicial controversy over the powers and functions of both the PSC and the police.

For now, the recruitment exercise will very likely be speedily consummated while the government finds a way to sort out the disagreement between the PSC and the police. Hopefully there will be no further misconception of the words recruitment and appointment, the interpretation of which had prompted the suit. As far as the court was concerned, the police had the power to recruit the constables, while the PSC could only appoint the constables after their recruitment.

It is not clear how that line would be drawn, given the second stanza of the controversy that has just broken out between the PSC and the police. A few weeks ago, the PSC had fired a memo to the IGP drawing his attention to the lopsidedness in the appointment of police commissioners to state police commands. The appointments, warned the PSC, did not reflect federal character, with some states having four slots and others having none. No redress has been forthcoming, and the police have audaciously ignored the PSC’s misgivings.

Indeed the suspicion of lopsidedness was at the bottom of the disagreement between the PSC and the police, leading to the legal action that was dismissed a few days ago. The PSC had requested for a state-by-state breakdown of the recruitment of the 10,000 constables in order to ascertain that the exercise met specified guidelines. That breakdown was defiantly not forthcoming.

More, the IGP went ahead, despite pending court action, to conclude the recruitment process, perhaps encouraged by the Justice minister’s view that the IGP flouted no law. But regardless of the outcome of the recruitment exercise and the determination of the suit filed by the PSC, it is still important for the police to provide the controversial breakdown. This will enable the public to determine just how the exercise proceeded and whether it was after all fair and representative, especially at a time when many Nigerians had begun to read sectionalism into some of the Buhari presidency’s actions and policies.

Much worse is the most recent complaint of the PSC that suggests that the police authorities, again encroaching into the powers and functions of the PSC, had appointed police commissioners to the states in flagrant disobedience to the federal character principle. Media reports suggest, for instance, that some states, for example, Katsina, the president’s home state, occupied three or four slots to the detriment of many states, particularly in the Southeast, which had none.

So far, the police have not responded, at least publicly, to the observations of the PSC. It is not in the interest of the government or the police to ignore the observations. For, gradually, many Nigerians will begin to make up their minds about the character of the Buhari presidency, moving from viewing it with suspicion to confirming its supremacist agenda.

The PSC may have lost the suit regarding which organ had control over the recruitment of police constables, but it has so far occupied the moral high ground, shifting the burden of proof on who is defying or obeying the spirit and the letter of the constitution to the police. As this column observed weeks ago, the federal government should have sought an interpretation of the powers of the PSC and the police in matters of recruitment of policemen, especially given the long-standing dispute over who had the final responsibility.

Leaving the combatants to slug it out in the courts gave the impression of a divided and quarrelsome government. Whether the government likes to believe it or not, all is still not well with the relationship between the PSC and the police. Could Nigerians trust this government to help iron out the differences between the two organs and restore some order?