The Nation Newspaper

Category: Biodun Jeyifo

  • Stratospheric sexism and racism at the top of the food chain – the tennis US Open of 2018

    What struck me – with her and with many other female American friends – is how invested they are in being “liked”. How they have been raised to believe that their being likeable is very important and that this “likeable” trait is a specific thing. And that specific thing does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly.
    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

    I readily confess it: at first, I was myself rather turned off by Serena William’s badgering complaints against the coach umpire, Carlos Ramos of Portugal. This was after the umpire gave the first of the three violations against Serena that effectively left a ruinous damper on the US Open 2018 women’s singles final. That first violation determined by Ramos was for an alleged illegal off-court coaching by Serena’s coach, Patrick Mouratoglou. Serena was so incensed by the call that she kept berating the chair umpire for quite a while, over the course of two breaks in play, as a matter of fact. As I watched this, I said silently to myself, “leave it alone, Serena; you’ve said enough, it’s time to concentrate on the game before it slips away from you irretrievably”. But from this feeing that Serena was giving in too much to her anger and frustration, with the second and third violations called by Ramos, I knew, felt instinctively that something strange and very perverse was going on. And then my own anger and outrage almost knew no bounds, my mind working feverishly over the sexual and racial implications of what was unfolding before my eyes.

    Here, I must share some “trade secrets” about tennis with readers of this piece who are not keen followers of competitive tennis, with the proviso that these “secrets” are indeed not so secret. Let me list them one by one. First, because all the three violations called against Serena in that controversial match with Naomi Osaka are rule-bound, any chair umpire who calls them against any player is only obeying the rules of the sport. Secondly, however, there is absolutely no consistency, none at all, in when violations of these rules are called and when they are not called. For that reason, there is considerable, some would say intolerable arbitrariness in when the violations are called and when they are not called. Thirdly, it is a very well-documented fact that penalties for these violations are imposed far more often against women players than against their male colleagues. Fourthly and most important of all, it is very rare, so rare indeed that nobody remembers the last time that it happened, for all three violations to be called against a player in the same match.

    And even more rare it is for the penalty of a whole game to be imposed on a player. On Saturday, August 8, 2018 when Carlos Ramos called the third of the violations against Serena and imposed that rare game penalty, Chris Evert, one of the commentators and herself one of the all-time greats of tennis history with 18 grand slam titles to her credit said, almost as if she was speaking out thoughts that were swirling around in her mind, “I have never seen this happen even though I have been in this sport for more than forty years”.

    Where am I taking this line of argument? Well, so far, those who have responded in support of Serena against Carlos Ramos have all, more or less, concentrated on the sexism inherent in the double standard of imposing penalties against female players for the same violation which they overlook or tolerate in male players. James Blake, a retired American tennis player who was at one time the No 1 American male player, has stated that he has said far more angry and insulting things to chair umpires without getting penalized. Against Carlos Ramos himself, although everyone seems to agree that he is a very experienced and highly respected umpire, many people have come forward to insist on the difference between how he treated Serena at the US Open 2018 and how he had treated some male players in similar situations, these being at other grand slam competitions.

    Allegedly, at the 2016 French Open, Nick Kyrgios, the Australian wunderkind of tennis, went totally ballistic against Ramos, accusing him of “unbelievable bias” and hurling all kinds of insults and profanities against Ramos – without getting penalized for it. The same thing can be said about the 2012 Australian Open pertaining to an overheated spat between Aleksander Dolgopolov of Ukraine and Ramos. Dolgopolov felt that Ramos had been unfair to him in a call and he proceeded to unload his fury and his contempt on the Portuguese chair umpire. And again, no violation and no penalty from Ramos to Dolgopolov: after all, it’s all a guy thing.

    For all these reasons, it is perfectly understandable that discussions of that controversial women’s singles match in the US tennis Open of 2018 have focused almost exclusively on sexism, with nary a word on race and racism. Indeed, one of the loudest voices in support of Serena and all female tennis players has come from the powerful Women’s Tennis Association, generally known by its acronym, the WTA. The organization has declared that it will no longer accept patently unfair actions of chair umpires against female players on the excuse or justification of only following the rules of the sport when it has been demonstrated again and again that the rules are enforced far more against women than against men. Moreover, the WTA has backed this stand on the basis of long held sexist idea that anger and loud, aggressive words, actions and behavior are “natural” and tolerable in men but are “unnatural”, unbecoming and therefore unacceptable in women. On this point, the WTA speaks for women at all levels and in all spheres of life, this being a critique and rejection of the repression and containment of anger and self-assertion in all girls and women as a precondition for their femaleness and humanness.

    But what of the fact that this same punitively sexist repression and containment of all women is applied far more regularly to Black women than White women? What of the fact that Serena in particular has been far more subjected to it than her sister, Venus? Here, I admit that I am treading on very delicate material. There are significant differences and expressions of subjectivity and personality between Venus and Serena. On the whole, Venus is more self-effacing, in a gracious and dignified manner, than Serena. Ironically, the name Serena is derived from the Latin word, “serenus”, which means tranquil, clear or serene, none of which applies to Serena, at least as we have come to know her as one of most driven, fiercest and combustible players ever to have played tennis. Indeed, one particular on-court trait of Venus is perhaps the best indicator that we have of the depth of personality and subjectivity difference between the two sisters. What is it? Well, all players are allowed three challenges per set to calls made against them in the course of a set. More than any other player currently in the sport, Venus almost never uses her allowed challenges, even in times or moments when, to all viewers, a challenge might reverse a wrong call made against her. In other words, Venus’ self-composure is so complete, so replete that she cannot be bothered at all by a wrong or even injurious call made against her. That is not the case with Serena, not in the least! On at least two occasions, I have watched in great wonder as Serena challenged calls made against her in matches against Venus, her undoubtedly beloved and cherished sister! At any rate, the point I am making here is that Serena corresponds more to the negative stereotype of the aggressive, Amazonian Black woman and that is why, in general, White lovers of tennis for the most part have a preference for Venus over Serena.

    We will perhaps never know whether Serena’s “aggressiveness” is an ingrained trait or a defensive complex developed in the course of a long and meritorious career in which she has faced more combined racist and sexist animosities than any other player in the Open Era. Take the case of the controversy of the 2018 Open singles final. Three violations and two penalties in one set: in the fifty years of the Open Era, nothing close to it has been imposed against any other player, especially the game penalty. I have looked far and wide in the archives of Tennis history and I have not seen one instance when this has happened to any other player, male or female. And this happened, is happening to the GOAT – the greatest player of all time – a player who is one of the richest in the sport and is located at the topmost rung of the food chain of professional tennis. It is impossible to dissociate race from gender in the predicaments that Serena has faced and now faces as she moves to concretely cement that GOAT status with a 24th grand slam victory.

    Throughout their careers, Serena and Venus have faced extraordinary hostilities and animosities based on their gender and race. In one case, their experience was so bad, so dispiriting that they embarked on a boycott lasting more than a decade, this being the Indian Wells 1000 Masters in California. At one stage in their career when they were both in their late teens and early twenties and played against each other in several grand slams, the air was filled with allegations that their matches were rigged within the Williams family and therefore constituted ignoble violations of the spirit of the sport. Please note that though Venus and Serena were not the first sisters to play against each other in tennis, they were the first and only sisters to be falsely and egregiously accused of match-fixing of games between them. Perhaps above all other factors is the fact that no current player on tour is tested for doping more than Serena. This year alone, she has been tested TEN times, far more than any other player, male or female. And yet, there is absolutely nothing in her life, her career and her values to suggest that her great achievements were or are based on doping. Ah, specters of the Amazonian Black Woman haunting the supervisors of the sport!

    It would be wrong not to admit that the tennis world in particular and, more generally, sports lovers everywhere, have in the main come to embrace, cherish and celebrate Serena and her unique and uncommon achievements. And they have done so largely on Serena’s own terms, especially with regard to race and gender, to which Serena herself has now added the mantle of working moms in sports and all fields of endeavor. But there are still some holdovers from the past when Serena and Venus were not yet the larger-than-life icons they are now and faced hostilities produced by intricate links between their gender and their race. Put in rather blunt terms, there are many who still shrink from the idea and reality of a Black woman becoming the GOAT of tennis history. If you go to the gutter and dunghill hideouts of mindless racists and sexists on the Internet, you will find many of such people, completely unabashed in the things they say about Serena being or becoming the GOAT. Such people are forgettable. But what of those in the officiating and supervening command posts of tennis? What of those who can enact and get away with what I am calling in the title of this piece stratospheric racism and sexism at the topmost level of the food chain of the sport of tennis?

  • Serena, the girl from “Ajegunle”, already a serenade for all times!

    Of course, I am referring to Serena Williams. And of course, she’s not from our Ajegunle; she’s from one of the countless “Ajegunles” of America, the town of Compton in California. After official, legal and all-determining racial segregation ended in the United States and the number of middle class professional African Americans grew exponentially, something of historic significance happened to Black neighborhoods to create ghetto communities like Compton. What was this event or phenomenon?

    Well, most of the members of the newly created Black middle class left their communities and moved into either all-Black or integrated suburbs. Those who remained, those who could not leave either because they were poor or had little education, found themselves in communities now deprived of the services and amenities associated with the presence and interests of middle and upper classes. From that moment, something crucial entered the politics of race in America. That something was the reality and awareness of class. In other words, class division within African Americans became a very important factor in African American affairs, expressed in terms of who lived where and what privileges and amenities attached to one’s community of domicile. This happened all over the country, but most especially in a state like California, the most affluent state in America. Affluence always goes with its opposite, poverty, and that’s the significance of a place like Compton, the American “Ajegunle” from which Serena and her sister, Venus Williams, came. But what does all this have to do with the subject of this essay?

    I am writing this piece on Friday, September 7, 2018. By the time that it is published on Sunday, September 9, 2018, Serena would probably have won her 24th Grand Slam singles victory in the US Open of 2018. Last night, Thursday, September 6, 2018, Serena won a crushing victory of Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia in the semi-finals. Serena has played and won more Grand Slam singles semi-finals in the so-called Open Era than any other tennis player, male or female. Far more importantly, she has won more singles finals than any other player in this same “Open Era” that started fifty yeas ago in 1968. On the basis of that achievement, I am arguing that even before the finals tomorrow when she may win her 24th singles Grand Slam victory, Serena has already earned the right to the greatest acronym in tennis history, this being GOAT.

    This acronym, by the way, has nothing to do with the well-known mammalian quadruped of that name; rather it means, Greatest of All Time. Now, it is true that a few influential commentators and pundits of tennis history have already begun to declare Serena as the GOAT of the sport. But they are a very small minority. For most of the pundits, commentators, aficionados and historians of tennis, Serena will become GOAT only when and if she wins her 24th Grand Slam victory. Why? Because Margaret Court, the Australian turned American, has 24 Grand Slam singles victories to her credit. And on that basis, as of this historic moment, Court has the highest number of Grand Slams victories: she has 24 while Serena has 23. Ergo, Serena must reach 24 not only to equal Court but to achieve the uniqueness of having won all her victories in the Open Era while Margaret court won most of her victories prior to the emergence of the Open Era. This issue is at the heart of my observations and reflections in this essay.

    These days, when commentators and pundits write about the difference between the Open Era and the long, long period before it, they make light of the tectonic difference between the two periods. All they say is that before the Open Era, only amateurs were allowed to play in the four Grand Slams, the Australian, the French, the US, and the French; professional players were disqualified from participation in them. This meant that in order to continue to be qualified to play in any of these Grand Slams, you had to remain a non-professional amateur for all your playing life. In fairness to most of those who underestimate the significance of the difference between the Pre-Open Era (POE) and the Open Era (OE), it must be noted that they do admit that in the POE, the field of contestants was vastly restricted. But beyond that, they barely ever talk of the racial, class and ethnic dimensions of that restriction. For the truth of the matter is that for much of the more than a century of the history of the Grand Slams, only Whites – and of a mostly affluent background – could afford to regard competitive tennis as a matter only and exclusively for non-professional amateurs precisely because they had money and didn’t have to depend or live on the prize monies of the Grand Slams. In plain language, competitive tennis in the POE was overwhelmingly an all-White, country club affair that shut out all other racial and class demographics from the competition. In other words, let us say that we are talking here of periods in tennis history that were segregationist and post-segregationist, even if that term was never directly used.

    Back to the issue of who is the GOAT of tennis history now, before the finals of US Open 2018. Is it Margaret Court or Serena Williams? Let us consider the following facts. Of her 24 Grand Slam singles victories, Court won 13 of them in the POE, winning only 11 in the OE. Similarly, of all her singles titles of 192 in all competitions,100 of them were won in the POE when the competition was highly restricted. Meanwhile it is noteworthy to state that 11 of Margaret Court’s total singles Grand Slams victories of 24 were won at one of the four Grand Slams, this being the Australian Open. This is is not only her “native” Grand Slam, in the Pre-Open Era, it attracted the lowest number of competitors in the period because it was considered so far away that only few people could afford the expenses entailed in competing in it. To all these facts and figures, let us consider Serena Williams’ achievement, all in the Open Era when all restrictions to competition had gone forever.

    Serena’s longevity and staying power in competitive tennis is unsurpassed by anybody, male or female. She is the only player in tennis history, male or female, to win all the four grand slams over the course of two decades – and still counting. She is also the oldest player to hold all the slams in one year (2014-2015). She is the only player in history, male or female, to win three of the four slams 6 times. Second only to Martina Navratilova, Serena is one of two players to have won two of the four slams over the course of three decades. With 2018 close to the end of the current decade, she may very well become the only player in history to win slams over the course of four decades, a feat that simply boggles the mind. In combination with her sister Venus, she has outpaced every other pair of sisters that ever played the game of tennis in all categories – singles, doubles and mixed doubles. And between them, Serena and Venus have won more Olympics Gold and Silver Medals, again in both singles and doubles. And let us remember that this is all in the Open Era while the majority of Margaret Court’s also extremely impressive achievements were before the Open Era.

    At this point in the discussion, it is important to allude to the fact that before the possibility of Serena catching up and perhaps even surpassing the record of Margaret Court became real and imminent, the achievements and records of the Open Era used to be kept separate and distinct from those of the Pre-Open Era – as they very well should be! In concrete terms, commentators and pundits, by an overwhelming majority, used to refer to Margret Court and Steffi Graff quite separately: Graff’s 22 singles victories were kept distinct from Court’s 23 victories. In other words, as Serena went over number 20 in her singles victories, everyone said that catching up with and surpassing Graff was what she needed to become the GOAT of tennis history. But no sooner had she achieved that goal was the goalpost moved to – Margaret Court. The differences between the two eras were obliterated and Margaret Court was nominally elevated to a title and a nomenclature which nobody had hitherto ever applied to her. She became the GOAT – a player who had won most of her victories when the field of competition was severely restricted and, moreover, had won the lion’s share of those victories at the Australian Open, her home or “native” slam!

    Like football (soccer), competitive tennis had its origins in Europe. And like the dominance of European football in the world, to a large extent European tennis is dominant in competitive world tennis. But then, think of this: with the single exception of Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, which commentator or pundit of soccer would look to Europe for the world’s greatest player of all time? How many, if any, would think to give the achievements of European master footballers the same weight as the achievements of Pele or Maradona as arguably the greatest footballer of all time? The same logic, the same consideration applies to world or global tennis competition: when it moved out of its narrow racial and regional enclave, it entered a different history. Therefore, it no longer makes sense to compare the achievements and records of one age to those of the other more globally inclusive and less restricted and restrictive history. In plain language, Margaret Court and Serena Williams belong to ages or eras of tennis history and it is unproductive in the extreme to compare their achievements.

    This is the point at which our opening allusion to Ajegunle needs a further elaboration, no matter how brief. Like our own Ajegunle, Serena’s Compton used to be thought of as a trap, a dead zone of possibilities for its residents, especially the young. But as we all know, many of our best footballers and other team sports have come from the Ajegunles of the country. The obvious point or moral of this profile is, of course this: in our age, our epoch, we have seen extraordinary manifestations of creativity, skill and talent sprouting from the most deprived and marginalized of our ghettos. That is Serena’s background. But there is far more to the matter than this. Serena and her sister, Venus, not only brought a different style and presence to their sport, they transformed some its most conservative and ethnocentric values and practices. They encountered all kinds of racial, gender and ethnocentric biases and prejudices in their sport and they fought fearlessly and wisely against them, Venus especially but also Serena, in her own more nuanced ways.

    Tomorrow, Saturday, September 8, 2018, Serena will probably reach that figure of 24. Her chances are quite good against the much younger Naomi Osaka. But in the end, it does not really matter. Serena is already the GOAT. Osaka, by her own admission, owes her entry to competitive tennis to Serena and her sister, Venus. Osaka is half Haitian and half Japanese. She is thus a link in the long chain of expansion and diversity that entered tennis history with the transition from the Pre-Open Era to the Open Era, a link that owes it existence and global reach to the Williams sisters. It all began at Compton.

  • To refusal of court orders and refusal to prosecute protected criminals, please add discontinuance

    I confess that I had not expected the flood of calls and emails that I got on the essay on the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, that appeared in this column last week. Please recall that the essay was based on what I alleged to be a grave misfit between Abubakar Malami as AGF and the extraordinarily idealistic and humanistic provisions of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act of 2015 (ACJA). In the essay, I argued that against the general despair and disillusionment prevailing in the country on nearly all counts but more specifically on the reversals and losses in the war against corruption declared by the Buhari administration when it came to power in 2015, ACJA ought to give all Nigerians hope – as far as we can make the AGF obey the responsibilities and obligations of his office spelt out in ACJA. The general idea behind this cautious optimism is the belief that if we have a wonderful document like ACJA as the law of the land on the administration of criminal justice in our country, half of the battle is won and what we have to do is win the remaining half of the battle by making, indeed forcing our rulers and public officials to obey the legal instruments of their posts. It is perhaps useful to briefly go over the finer points of the things that I said in the column last week.

    In my central argument, I had proposed that ACJA’s stipulations about the administration of criminal justice in Nigeria are so clearly stated, so heavily weighted in favour of efficiency, fairness, and equity for all – and especially for the powerless and the downtrodden – that only a very inept and lackluster AGF like Malami could persistently screw things up by the innumerable acts of refusal of court orders and refusal to prosecute protected criminals that have ineradicably defined his tenure to date as President Buhari’s AGF. And please remember that in that article in this column last week, I had sought to de-link Malami as AGF from Buhari as President in my supporting argument that based on ACJA, the primary responsibility for the refusal either to obey court orders or to prosecute suspects or criminals lies with the AGF, not the President. All the respondents to last week’s piece agreed with this separation of the President and the AGF but they went much farther than me in carpeting Malami. How did these respondents frame or express their devastating focus on Malami?

    Well, in the first place, they alleged that I was both wrong and naïve about AGF Malami; they said that what is wrong about Malami’s work as AGF is worse than incompetence and ineptitude; and they concluded, with a unanimity that both startled and ultimately convinced me, that Abubakar Malami is a very conscious and determined opponent of the smooth, efficient and equitable operationalization of the provisions of ACJA. Central to their contention is what, for want of a more appropriate term, I would call the wuruwuru and barawo use of discontinuance by Malami and other high officials of his office. Yes, there is the refusal to obey court orders by Malami and there is the refusal to prosecute protected criminals and these are bad enough, these respondents to my article declared. But beyond these two refusals, they also insisted, look to discontinuance and you will get a more chilling but more accurate profile of who Abubakar Malami is as our AGF, heavens help us!

    In our predators’ republic of a country, you learn new and unspeakably depressing facts every day. So it is with this phenomenon of “discontinuance”, compatriots, especially as elaborated and allegedly put into operation by Malami and his minions in the Federal Justice Ministry in the last three years. Ordinarily, discontinuance is ethically and legally a neutral term that carries no inherently positive or negative connotations. Yes, it may seem rather odd if and when a plaintiff who initiates a court case that he or she feels or knows is unassailable comes to the realization that his or her case is either without merit or would fail and therefore asks for discontinuance of the case. Friends and relatives of such a litigant may shake their heads in surprise but they would give him or her the benefit of the doubt. But in all the law courts of all the nations of the world, it is rare, very rare, to hear of discontinuance in cases where the guilt of the accused or defendant is absolutely irrefutable or undeniable. Well, not under Abubakar Malami as AGF!

    It was in great astonishment that I went through reports and accounts of the many cases of discontinuance that Malami has either himself personally executed or made his subordinates execute on his behalf and by his orders, reports and accounts forwarded to me by respondents to last week’s column. Some reports stand out in in the sheer scale of the fecklessness and cynicism of the AGF and his “partners in discontinuance”. Here’s one: Godsday Orubebe, Minster for Delta Affairs under Goodluck Jonathan, brought to the courts by the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) on charges involving the theft of N2.1 billion naira intended for construction of Trunk A roads in some parts of the Niger Delta; case withdrawn on the orders of Malami, to the utter surprise of both the prosecuting agency (ICPC) and the presiding judge. Here’s another case: Ahmed Saleh, Registrar of the Supreme Court (RSC), charged by the EFCC for theft and money laundering to the tune of N2 billion naira, a watertight case; also withdrawn on the orders of Malami on the patently dishonest and illegal grounds that at some future date not specified, Saleh would act as state witness in the prosecution of judges of the high courts and justices of the Supreme Court about whom the accused RSC had over the years gathered damaging information about their corrupt practices. Where is the N2 billion Saleh was alleged to have gotten through his nefarious practices? Please ask Malami if recovery of the money was part of his deal with Saleh!

    In the immediately preceding paragraph, I used the term or phrase, “Malami and his partners in discontinuance”. I do not use the phrase with levity, I use it with utter seriousness. This is because shortly after he became AGF, Malami set up a body that he called the National Prosecution Coordination Committee (NPCC). Ostensibly, this body, NPCC, was intended to coordinate the prosecution of what Malami called high profile cases of corruption by which he meant those cases that involved humungous sums of looted money and looters with very prominent and exposed posts and positions in the country, either in government or in business. The overall aim of this body was stated to be a desire to give Buhari’s declared anti-corruption war an enabling institutional framework. If even at its “birth” Malami’s NPCC was vigorously queried about its relevance and usefulness, today it is nothing more than a joke, a bad joke. It has not improved the prosecution of looters and money launderers one bit; rather, it has become much better known for discontinuance than for successful, fair and expeditious prosecution of the mega-looters. Perhaps most astonishing of all, Malami’s NPCC has also extended its discontinuance activities to relatively low-level criminal cases, raising questions for its critics as to whether or not this NPCC is actually a protection racket organized and operated by the AGF and his “partners in discontinuance”. I mean, what is the purpose of the Office of the AGF asking prosecutors in the Nigerian Police Force to transfer cases involving scamming operations of small scale enterprises to the NPCC only to have such cases put into discontinuance?

    There is a particular twist to this phenomenon of discontinuance that is worthy of special mention in this discussion if only because though technically it does not involve the discontinuation of a case already in the law courts, it nevertheless is nothing if not discontinuance in another form. This is the notorious case of Abdulrasheed Maina, probably the single most embarrassing case for the validity and legitimacy of Buhari’s declared war on corruption. As is well-known, Maina, as Head of the Pension Reform Task Force, made away with over N2 billion naira. With the aid of highly placed officials, he absconded from Nigeria and was then placed on Interpol’s International Wanted List. And then, worst of all, he reappeared in Nigeria and was installed in the Interior Ministry as Acting Director of one of the Ministry’s agencies. When this was revealed, Maina again vanished into thin air, no doubt aided by the same highly placed officials. Well, we do not know which officials helped Maina to abscond from justice twice; but we do not know who was behind his reinstatement into the Federal Civil Service and with promotion. Who was it? It was AGF Abubakar Malami.

    Maina’s notorious case involves “discontinuance” at its most brazen, cynical and arrogantly contemptuous of the due processes of the rule of law. How else should we see the reinstatement, in broad daylight and hidden in plain sight, of a fugitive from the law, Nigerian law and international law? If this is the case, for me or anyone to say that the AGF was responsible for his reinstatement, without having ever had his name cleared of the charges against him, is to make very grievous allegations about the AGF. But what if it is the AF himself who made such an allegation against himself? This is what Malami did at Senate hearings on the Maina case when he admitted, first, that he had met with Maina in Dubai when the fugitive from justice was still on the run and, secondly, that he, Malami, had written four letters to the Federal Civil Service Commission on Maina’s behalf. Four letters on Maina’s behalf over the course of many months until he was finally reinstated into the civil service, without having been tried. Is this not discontinuance even before the case could be tried? Is it not a discontinuance that was itself discontinued only by the outcry of the Nigerian public?

    Where are those who drafted ACJA 2015 and saw it to legislation as the law of the land? Yes, this is a rhetorical question, but I ask it for one reason. What is this reason? Well, it is this: I count myself as a fairly well-informed Nigerian. But as I have said earlier in this piece, until I got the flood, the barrage of reports and accounts of Malami’s saga of discontinuance galore this past week, I simply did not know enough about both the scale of our AGF’s war against the war on corruption or the Buhari’s administration’s free pass to Malami and his discontinuance partners to do as they please. And now that I know these things, is it enough for me to simply say all I can in this column and move on to another topic next week? What else can we do? Will progressive and patriotic lawyers and jurists in our midst please step forward and tell us what is to be done and what they, can and will do?

     

    • Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Refusal of court orders and refusal to prosecute ‘protected’ criminals: the buck stops with the AGF and the President, but only in the last instance!

    It was Olusegun Obasanjo that first drew my attention to perhaps the single most troubling wart or disfiguration on the body of the rule of law in the post-military period that began in 1999. I am talking of course of the open and notorious defiance of court orders by the federal government of the federation. If I remember correctly, the casus belli was a serious disagreement over control of the local governments of the country, either by the government at the centre or the state governments, with particular reference to Lagos State, the prime disputant or litigant in the case. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of Bola Tinubu and Lagos State, but Obasanjo completely refused to obey the ruling of the highest court in the land, a bad omen for a nation that was just returning to civilian, democratic rule after the long reign of the military dictators.

    I look back to that faceoff between OBJ and the Supreme Court and I must admit to a naivety on my part because I had thought then that Obasanjo could not get away with it. I confess now that I didn’t exactly know who was going to stop Obasanjo and how they were going to achieve that necessary task. All that was on my mind was the expectation, the hope that since we were no longer under military rule, since this was a president in mufti and not in battle fatigues, Obasanjo would be forced to obey the ruling of the highest court in the land. He wasn’t; and moreover, he got away with it, just as if we were still in the age of the all-powerful military autocrats.

    Well, following last week’s column on the Buhari administration’s steadfast refusal of court orders granting Sambo Dasuki bail while being prosecuted for what is perhaps the worst case of mega-looting supervened by one man in our country, my mind went back to this whole issue of defiance of court orders by the federal government in what is supposed to be a post-military, democratic epoch. In my great unease about this matter, I spoke with and exchanged emails with many compatriots. It was in the process of these “conversations” that it occurred to me that there is actually a flip side, an underbelly to the impunity and notoriety of refusal of court orders and this is the unwillingness and ultimately refusal to prosecute protected criminals. This recognition came to me after someone reminded me of the cases of Babachir David Lawal, Abdulrasheed Maina and Ayo Oke all of whom, in spite of the enormity of their crimes, have never been prosecuted by the Buhari administration.

    Dear readers, which is worse – refusal of court orders or an unwillingness amounting to refusal to prosecute protected criminals? Is it even productive to compare and weigh the scale of justice aborted and denied involved in each of them when in fact the two refusals are perpetrated by the same institutional agents? And speaking specifically of the refusal to prosecute, isn’t it probably the case that what we know, what we see is only the tip of an iceberg? For one politically exposed case like that of Babachir Lawal or Abdulrasheed Maina, how many hundreds – perhaps thousands – of unknown miscreants go unheralded and unknown? This is for me the bottom line: the refusal to prosecute proven criminals is the enabling foundation, the condition of possibility for the refusal of court orders that is much better known and more widely condemned simply because it ostensibly carries a much greater political punch against the Buhari administration.

    If all I have so far been saying or arguing in this piece seems rather despondent, let me hasten to say that actually, despondency is not the emotion, the sentiment that I feel. And what is the basis of my optimism, you might ask? Well, simply this: following the “conversations” that ensued after the publication last week of my column on Sambo Dasuki, I went and downloaded a PDF copy of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act of 2015 and reread all the 48 Parts and 495 Sections of it, hoping to find something in it that could provide a way out of the dilemma. It was in the process of this probe into the provisions and intricacies of this exceptionally humanistic and idealistic law that is ACJA that I made a discovery that startled and enthused me. What is this discovery? This is it: whoever is the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) has enormous powers to make the rule of law work in our country, the rule of law in its own right but also with regard to justice, fairness and equity to the downtrodden and the underprivileged in our country.

    To give a sense of the philosophical and ethical bases of ACJA, I quote from the so-called “Explanatory Memorandum” that serves as a sort of preamble to the document:

    This Act provides for the administration of criminal justice system which promotes efficient management of criminal justice institutions, speedy dispensation of justice, protection of society from crimes and protection of the rights and interest of the suspect, the defendant and the victims in Nigeria.

    It is with this “preamble” in mind that one can appreciate the weight that the Parts and Sections dealing with the powers and responsibilities of the Attorney General of the Federation exert on us with their comprehensiveness, their thoroughness and their acuity. Relating this observation to the subject of this discussion, I propose the following reading of the text of ACJA that goes to the heart of the grave dereliction of duty behind the crime of refusal to prosecute protected criminals: it is the AGF not the President, it is Abubakar Malami and not Muhammadu Buhari that is responsible for prosecuting all known cases of criminals in Nigeria. As simple as that? Yes, as simple as that!

    Dear readers and compatriots, many, many times we read or hear of complaints that Buhari it is who does not permit the prosecution of politically exposed criminals like Babachir Lawal and Lawal Daura.  We read of powerful, heartrending protests about thousands of murder suspects in many areas of the country, some of them arrested, that are never prosecuted, with the protests directed at Buhari and not at the AGF. But please, go to the text of ACJA and you will find that the document is very clear, very specific as to where the responsibility lies – with the AGF and not the President. As a matter of fact, there is not a single mention of the post of the President in the text of ACJA!

    Of course, there will be readers who will assert that I am merely quibbling here, that since the AGF is the appointee of the President, non-performance of crucial duties and obligations pertaining to life and death, crime and punishment by the AGF should, in the final analysis, be laid at the feet of the President. I am not quibbling here and neither am I being disingenuous. If ACJA so deliberately and extensively specifies on whose shoulder lies responsibility for justice, fairness and equity for all in the administration of the criminal justice system in Nigeria, why shouldn’t we make that high public and legal officer – the AGF – the primary object of our complaints and protests when justice is aborted and denied? To put this in very concrete terms, what indications do we have that AGF Malami has ever tried at all to have Babachir Lawal prosecuted and was only prevented from doing so by Buhari? None, no indications at all!

    Right now, newspaper headlines and banners are rife with hints that Buhari is about to decide the fate of Lawal Daura. Well, let’s be clear about one thing, at least as far as the law is concerned: it is the AGF and not the President that should take the action necessary to prosecute Lawal Daura for the siege on the National Assembly. Yes, behind the scenes Buhari may direct his AGF not to have Daura prosecuted but in the first instance, calls for Daura’s prosecution should go to the AGF, not the President.

    For those who may still be inclined to think that there really is no serious and consequential distinction to be made between Buhari and Malami on responsibility for the grave dereliction of duty that is behind the refusal to prosecute protected criminals, there is this unassailable aspect of ACJA: it actually stipulates, very extensively, that whoever is the AGF must be a person of great uprightness, conscience and compassion, especially in the interest of the oppressed and the downtrodden of our society. Please, compatriots, do not forget that ACJA came into being on the heels of the great injustice, unfairness and inefficiency that pervade the administration of criminal justice in our country.

    And do not forget, compatriots, that, even now as we are debating these issues, ACJA 2015, in its full dimensions, is yet to be implemented by our law courts, which in effect means that ours is still one of the most unjust legal orders in the world. Think, compatriots, of the thousands killed and or maimed in the herdsmen’s attacks on farmers and their communities, in comparison with the paucity of those arrested for these murderous onslaughts, together with the even more rare instances of their prosecution. Think also, dear readers, of the other thousands murdered through political, militia and inter-communal rampages. These are the things people have in mind when they state that for most of its peoples, Nigeria is not only one of the toughest places on the planet in which to live, it is also one the most regrettable lands in the world in which to die. Also, these are the things that prompted those who drafted ACJA and saw it through from draft to legislation to make the AGF the one on whose shoulder lies its actualization.

    Please do not get me wrong. In the final analysis, the buck stops with both the AGF and the President, with both Malami and Buhari. But only at the very last instance. In the first, second and third instances and up to even the thirty-seventh instance, the buck stops with the AGF and all the Attorney Generals of the 36 states of the federation. In ACJA, the AGF has the responsibility to coordinate the activities of all these other chief law officers of the country. This means that in reality, Abubakar Malami or whoever is the current incumbent of the post at any point in time is the one on whom lies the responsibility.

    In conclusion compatriots, I have one very simple “solution” for this dilemma: push hard, very hard on Malami; insist that so far in his tenure, he has been a great misfit, an unconscionable obstacle to the execution of the obligations and responsibilities of his office; if Buhari stands by him – as I expect that he will – know only then, compatriots, that the buck has moved from the AGF to the President. Only then will we at last come to see that the refusal to obey court orders is nothing if not the other side of the refusal to prosecute protected criminals.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

     

  • Sambo Dasuki and the rule of law in its extreme commodified form in Nigeria

    You tief one kobo/Dey put you for prison/You tief one million/Na patriotism! Wole Soyinka, “Etika Revolution!”

    The case of Sambo Dasuki is in the news again, thanks to breaking news about Lawal Daura’s recent siege on the National Assembly. Daura was sacked, arrested and is currently under detention in a spectacular fall from grace as one of the most powerful unelected men in Buhari’s Nigeria. Meanwhile, as a consequence of this development, the floodgates have opened on the gory details of the gross abuse of power by Daura as Director General of the most dreaded of Nigeria’s security agencies, the State Security Services. It turns out that Dasuki’s case is one of the most sensational items in the saga of Lawal Daura’s abuse of power in his glory days in the Buhari administration. In other words, the public now knows that the official who has been implementing the administration’s unyielding refusal of court orders for the release of Dasuki on bail while being prosecuted is Lawal Daura. Now that Daura is presumably gone from the controlling levers of power, will Dasuki be released? That is the question that is being vigorously raised by many members of the lawyerly profession as well as some very prominent columnists and pundits. Thus, for good or ill, Dasuki’s case has become a test case, a benchmark for nothing less than the strength or weakness of the rule of law in Nigeria. This is the issue that I address in this piece. So, first of all, a word about the Dasuki case itself.

    As we all know, in December 2015, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (rtd), a former National Security Adviser (NSA), was arrested on charges of misappropriating the sum of $2.1 billion dollars intended for the purchase of hardware for the military campaign against the Boko Haram and diverting that humungous sum of money to evidently illegal uses related to funding for the eventually unsuccessful Goodluck Jonathan campaign for election in 2015. Since then, Dasuki has been on trial before the law courts. In December, it will be three years since his arrest and the beginning of his prosecution. Under the famous and much heralded Administration of Criminal Justice Act of 2015 (ACJA) that was signed into law by Goodluck Jonathan, Dasuki’s case, from the lower courts all the way to the Supreme Court, ought to have been concluded by now – one way or another. But again, as we all know, the case is still in the law courts; and it is far from the highest court in the land, with no end in sight. If there have been outcries that this case ought by now have been concluded, I have not heard of such outcries. Dear reader, if you have heard of, or seen the performance of such outcries for justice for Dasuki’s alleged crime, please direct me to the places where I can read, hear or see such outcries. Meanwhile, on my part, I wish to draw your attention to the fact that today, Sambo Dasuki has become a “poster child” for the condemnation and rejection of all the real and imagined threats to the rule of law in our country. How did this arise?

    Simply this: as many times as the courts have granted Dasuki bail, the administration of Mohammadu Buhari has refused to obey that order from the courts and has kept Dasuki in jail. Reportedly, this judicial seesaw has been repeated six times: the courts grant Dasuki bail; the government refuses to release Dasuki. I cannot be sure of this, but as far as I am aware, no other person in the country’s legal history has been simultaneously granted and refused bail as many times as has Sambo Dasuki. Moreover, the ECOWAS Court of Justice for the West Africa subregion has waded in and unequivocally declared Dasuki’s continued detention in jail illegal and negatively portentous about prospects for the rule of law in Nigeria. Perhaps most noteworthy of all is the fact that the Nigerian Bar Association, together with some of the most senior, distinguished and influential advocates in Nigeria – of all ideological hues and political affiliations, from the left to the right – have also added their voices to the demand for the release of Dasuki as a necessary line to be drawn in the sand against the Buhari administration’s alleged creeping march towards fascism and autocratic disregard for the rule of law in our fledgling democracy.

    It is of course a deliberate tactic by those calling for his release to tie the refusal of bail to Dasuki to one man, Lawal Daura, and more so to link Dasuki’s personal case with the cases of the hundreds of Nigerians, mostly poor and powerless, that are known to have been illegally kept in jail while awaiting trial by Daura. This is because the Buhari administration has done everything it can to highlight the Dasuki case as exceptional, as a case unlike the case of any other Nigerian being kept in jail against court orders. As recently as last month, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) Abubakar Malami, declared that it is in the public interest of the Nigerian nation and people to deny bail to a man who, by diverting funds meant for procurement of military hardware in the campaign against Boko Haram, is responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Nigerians.

    Yes, 100,000, that is exactly the figure adduced by the AGF as the quantum of souls or “blood” on the conscience of the nation in the Dasuki case. As far as I know, nobody has taken a poll on this matter, but the consensus among commentators is that this stand of the government is very popular among the generality of Nigerians. At any rate, this makes it abundantly clear that the Dasuki case is not to be tied exclusively or even specifically to the dismissed and disgraced Lawal Daura’s notoriety while in office as the DG of the SSS? And please take note, dear reader, behind the government’s stand is the suspicion, the impotent feeling that like many other extremely wealthy and powerful Nigerians who have gotten away with looting of the wealth and the assets of the nation, Dasuki may very well get away with the disappearance of $2.1 billion dollars, thanks to the depth of corruption in the administration of justice in our country.

    Much clarity would have been gained in the discussion of the Dasuki case if it is realized that the division between those who support and those who oppose the government’s denial of bail to Dasuki is real and has deep roots in the political economy of predation and dispossession in our country. Ideally, the defense of obedience to court orders as an absolute, especially by the government of actual or aspiring liberal democracies is an abstraction, a necessary abstraction but all the same an abstraction. In other words, those who are on the receiving end of social injustice, political marginalization and economic insecurity are not wont to see and appreciate the need for the abstractions on which the rule of law is based. Those who would scoff or bristle at this observation would do well to remember that the masses of “ordinary” Nigerians know that justice is a commodity for sale in our country. God help us the day they get to know that justice is also for sale in all the capitalist countries and polities of the world. Furthermore, God really, really help us the day they get to know that the commodification of justice, of the abstractions on which the rule of law is based is worse in Nigeria than in any other country on the planet. Paradoxically, the Dasuki case provides us with one of the most graphic and glaring instantiations of this mutant Nigerian form of the commodification of justice and the rule of law. In my concluding section in this essay, I will reflect briefly on this particular issue.

    In the annals of mega-looting in Nigeria, the Dasuki case is without equal in obscene decadence, except perhaps the case of the oil subsidy scam of 2011 that involved N2.53 trillion naira. In the Dasuki case of 2015 involving $2.1 dollars, there is absolutely no dispute that the money was taken from allocations for procurement of military hardware – then shared among diverse chieftains of the PDP and claimants belonging to other political parties and civic and professional organizations. As a matter of fact, very prominent political personalities have publicly admitted that they shared in the widespread, spectral bonanza. For instance, Olu Falae admitted that he received N100 million naira; Iyorchia Ayu got over N300 million; Femi Fani Kayode got N840 million; and so on and so forth, sharers and sharing unlimited.

    Of all of these glad happy “sharers”, only Dasuki has been arrested and is being prosecuted for the diversion of that huge sum of $2.1 billion dollars from our national coffers. For his team of defense lawyers, he retained some of the best and most expensive attorneys in the land. There is nothing unusual in this; indeed, it is one of the operating rubrics of the rule of law that give assurance that the scale of any alleged crime is not only not a barrier to getting justice but is indeed an added bonus! In Nigeria as in all the capitalist countries of the world, the greatest thefts and lootings attract the best and most expensive defense attorneys. Except that there is an added bonus in Nigeria which you don’t get in any other country in the world: you get, normatively, a prolongation of your prosecution to such an extent that it amounts to a more or less permanent deferment of judgment. In plain language, in our country, you buy justice at the Bar and at the Bench and everybody knows that this is the deal. Commodity trading is visible and is done in plain sight at the Bar; at the Bench, it is necessarily behind closed doors, but everyone knows where the doors are located. The Administration of Criminal Justice Act of 2015 was intended to do away with this Nigerian exceptionalism in the buying and selling of justice, but it is too slow, too harried in its attempts to grapple with the sheer scale of the challenges that it faces.

    In conclusion, I would strongly argue that being for and/or against bail for Dasuki is completely false as the ultimate test case, the ultimate benchmark for prospects for the rule of law in our country. In other words, I am stating that it is not beyond the capacity of the government to obey court orders for Dasuki’s release and at the same time mobilize powerfully and effectively against the permanent deferment of judgment in the case. ACJA 2015 is the law of the land and it is on the side of the government’s wish for the case to be expeditiously tried.

    There remain some other issues about which both the Buhari administration and those opposed to it on this Dasuki case are not being honest and truthful to the Nigerian nation and people. On Buhari’s part, it is known that it was Sambo Dasuki who effected the arrest of Buhari when he was deposed as military dictator in 1985. Is this a factor in the refusal of bail for Dasuki? And on the part of the supporters of bail for Dasuki, how sincere, how genuine are they in the effort to make ACJA 2015 work to make a dent in the commodity trading that goes in the Nigerian Bench in cases pertaining to the trial of mega-looters like Dasuki and his wide circle of “sharers”?

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Why in the world has Lawal Daura not been arrested?

    Please, dear reader, take note: I am not asking why Lawal Daura was not arrested; I am asking why he has not been arrested, why he remains a free man. This is because if I ask why he was not arrested, that would imply that the necessity of arresting and prosecuting him came at the moment when it was revealed that his deployment of heavily armed security operatives of the State Security Services (SSS) to lay a siege on the National Assembly was both unauthorized and illegal; once that moment passed, the necessity of arresting him was gone forever. That is of course completely false. And so again, why has he not been arrested? But first of all, who is Lawal Daura and what exactly is the nature of his act of great illegality?

    Lawal Daura is of course the recently sacked Director General of the State Security Services, otherwise known by its dreaded acronym, SSS. On his orders, this past Tuesday, August 7, 2018, a combined team of armed policemen and SSS operatives stormed the National Assembly and for several hours completely sealed off the premises, prohibiting anybody, including our legislators, from gaining access into the chambers of the legislative body. Later, the siege was partially lifted, and legislators were allowed entrance into the chambers, but not members of the press and the general public. Probably because this assault on the legislature was swiftly, roundly and universally condemned, the siege was lifted by the end of the day; but the treasonous crime had been perpetrated.

    It is worth pointing out that among the loudest and most influential voices of condemnation were those from representatives of the European Union, the British High Commission in Nigeria, and the ruling party, the APC. Also worthy of note is the fact that, first, the Acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, immediately sacked Daura from his post. Secondly, the statements coming from both the administration and the APC laid great emphasis on the fact that Daura had acted alone and absolutely without authorization from the President, the Acting President or any relevant authority within the administration and the ruling party. This leads us back to our opening question: an appointee of the federal administration, acting completely alone and without authorization, violently and treasonously shuts down the National Assembly and all he gets is dismissal from his post? Why has he not been arrested? And most important of all, why have there been no demands for his arrest and prosecution?

    I believe that the main reason why Lawal Daura has – at least so far – gotten away with his act of great illegality against one of the most important institutions of the state is to be found in the fact that there have been no demands, no demonstrations for his arrest and prosecution. But this fact is not, in itself, an explanation; rather, it has itself to be explained. For this reason, before coming to it, I will deal first with a couple of other reasons that I consider secondary. One of these secondary reasons that we can briefly consider is the fact that Lawal Daura has in the past gotten away with many other illegalities, high crimes and misdemeanors against the rule of law and even the smooth and productive operation of the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari. Permit me to give only a few instances of these acts.

    Famously or rather infamously, Daura has disobeyed court orders restraining him from persistent misuse of his power and authority as Director General of the dreaded SSS; and he has been accused many times of worsening the reputation of the SSS as the most contemptuous among all our security agencies of the human and civil rights of Nigerians that are unlucky to fall into its grasp. Perhaps most inexplicable of all Daura’s acts of illegality and unconscionable power drunkenness is the one pertaining to his opposition to the nomination of Ibrahim Magu for the post of Chairman of the EFFC. What happened in this incredible imbroglio in which Daura’s opposition was to the presidency itself?

    Well, in a move intended to regularize his acting status, the presidency had forwarded the name of Magu to the Senate for confirmation as substantive Chairman of the EFCC. But with a countermanding correspondence to the same Senate, Lawal Daura demanded the rejection of Magu for the post. Please note that this is the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari, not of Goodluck Jonathan. Two completely antithetical instructions, one from the presidency itself and one from Lawal Daura and the SSS: which instruction to the Senate won out over the other? Daura’s of course, what do you think! This charade, this misbegotten self-cancellation of presidential power and protocol happened not once but two or three times. Each time the presidency would send Magu’s name to the Senate; Daura would send word to the senators not to give Magu the post; and Daura would hold sway over the presidency.

    At this point in the discussion, I should perhaps explain that what I am emphasizing here is not the incontestable fact that Lawal Daura has gotten away with so many illegalities in the past that his latest outrage of a siege on nothing less than the National Assembly is merely an addition to the long list of his criminalities against the rule of law and responsible and accountable governance. Rather, what I wish to emphasize is the following more subtle point: no official can get away with so many illegalities and misdemeanors without that official being an embodiment, a replica of the power that he or she serves. It so happens that Lawal Daura is known to be very, very close to Mamman Daura, a cousin of Muhammadu Buhari and universally regarded as the most powerful of the three or four members of the cabal that rules Nigeria at the pleasure of Buhari, the elected president. If this is the case, how in the world can Lawal Daura do all the mercurial and illegal things he has done as DG of the SSS without counting on and drawing sustenance from his location at the heart of the kind of power and authority that Buhari represents?

    To get a sense of what this power is in its essence, please consider this aspect of Lawal Daura’s standoff with the presidency over Ibrahim Magu’s nomination as substantive Chairman of the EFCC: both the presidency and Daura’s post as DG of the SSS are part of the same administration and yet they presented totally antithetical faces and instructions to the Senate. Interestingly, it is the same Senate that Daura’s men stormed this past Tuesday. The denunciation and sacking of Daura was thus a manifestation of this contradictory and schizophrenic nature of power in the presidential incumbency of Mohammadu Buhari. I think that those who were surprised – and relived – by the denunciation and sacking of Daura have not (yet) come to terms with this fundamentally schizoid nature of presidential power under Buhari. And following this, I think it is in the wake of this relief that we seem to be satisfied with the dismissal of Daura and are apparently not insisting that he should be arrested and prosecuted. In my closing reflections in this piece, I now turn to an exploration of this phenomenon in which we are so relived that the administration had no hand in Daura’s siege of the National Assembly that we are saying nothing about bringing Daura to justice for this treasonous illegality.

    I must admit it: the thing that led me to this issue is the demand, from both the APC and the PDP as well as many other “stakeholders”, that Daura’s siege on the National Assembly should be probed. A probe? Why a probe when it is an established fact that the siege took place and Daura gave the order for it? Yes, you could probe the probability that some higher official gave the order for the siege and Daura is being made a scapegoat to hide the identity of that person. But as for the act itself, there is nothing to probe as it did happen and Daura has not denied responsibility for it. In other words, a probe is not a substitute for corrective and punitive action against Daura’s criminal siege on the legislature; indeed, there is nothing in the world from stopping the authorities from doing both together at the same time. That is of course if the authorities – and we, the people – see a siege on the legislature as one of the most serious and indictable crimes that must not go unpunished because it strikes at the very foundations of our fledgling democracy. Indeed, I see this as the fundamental problem that the siege of the legislature this week lays bare for us: as a people, we do not place a high value on our freedoms and we are thankful if our rulers spare us the worst of the misuses and abuses of the corruption of power that is so flagrant, so filled with impunity in our present political order.

    Please think, compatriots, of the uncountable number of times in which an official is sacked and that is the end of the story – no coughing up of the stolen loot, no reparations for those damaged by the act, no criminal prosecution, none. Indeed, look at how relived everyone has been that, according to them, neither the APC nor the administration of Buhari had a hand in Daura’s violent invasion of the National Assembly. Yes, Daura was sacked, but what lesson does that have for other power drunk officials who in the future night be tempted to carry out similar acts of criminal felony against the state?

    As a matter of fact, this problem not only indicates a foreboding for the future, it harks back to the past with its uncountable felonious acts against the Nigerian peoples and the state through the use of the police and other security forces that have gone unpunished. Indeed, nothing irked me more this week than the sight of Bukola Saraki at the National Assembly chairing a meeting of 49 political parties’ meeting to craft an opposition to Daura’s siege on the legislature. Saraki as a beacon of hope for the rule of law and democratic democracy in Nigeria? This would be a huge joke if it was not such an alarming and confounding thought. But that is what happens when a people become so complacent about their freedoms that they let charlatans and opportunists in all the ruling class political parties seize the reins of democratic renewal for their own interests.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • “You never left PDP and PDP never left you!” – Saraki’s oedipal shenanigans in our endlessly predatory system

    Shenanigans: secret or dishonest activity or maneuverings Dictionary.com (Online)
    When we left the PDP to join the then nascent coalition of All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2014, we left in a quest for justice, equity and inclusion; the fundamental principles on which the PDP was originally built but which it had deviated from. We were attracted to the APC by its promise of change. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, August 1, 2018.

    On July 15, 2013, The Economist of London published a report that showed that Nigerian legislators were, by a wide margin, the highest paid legislators in the world. Moreover, in the same report was this particular detail: each Nigerian legislator was receiving 116 times the per capita GDP. In layman’s language, this means that what each legislator was being paid from our national coffers was 116 times what the ordinary woman or man was receiving – if she or he was receiving any pay at all. Please note that about 6 to 7 out of every 10 Nigerians live below the poverty line. Please note also, first, that in our country, more than 60% of the population is below the age of 25 and, second, that the majority of those of working age in this demographic group have no jobs now and have no prospects for jobs in the future. That is the scale of the social-cannibalistic greed of Nigerian legislators in particular and political elites of all our ruling class political parties in general.

    In 2013, when The Economist gave that report that documented the staggering greed and injustice underlying what our legislators were being paid, Abubakar Bukola Saraki was not yet the Senate President, a position he assumed after the general elections of 2015. As Senate President, Saraki is also the Chairman of the National Assembly, as he very often declares so that nobody, least of all the common man and woman, will forget or ignore his lofty standing in the Nigerian political firmament. In the statement that he issued earlier this week indicating his departure from the APC back to the PDP, Saraki declared: “We were attracted to the APC by its promise of change”. Well, has the greed, the rapacity of our legislators decreased since Saraki became Senate President and National Assembly Chairman?

    No, no, no, nothing has change! Indeed, under Saraki’s leadership, the National Assembly has waged a relentless war with the executive arm of government under President Buhari over many things, most especially over the national budget. The most notable or notorious of such battles – more appropriately, skirmishes – is the one described in our newspapers as the practice of “budget padding”. In this practice, on top of figures and sums indicated by the executive in budgets submitted to the national assembly, the legislators add more outlandish sums, the bulk of which will go to themselves. And time and time again under Saraki’s leadership, major capital and infrastructural projects in many parts of the country have been halted, if not completely stopped, so that the “constituency projects” of our legislators can be funded by allocations in the national budget. These are aspects of the extremely predatory system over which Saraki has presided since he became Senate President in 2015.

    To begin to get to the heart of the issues that I wish to discuss in this piece, let me draw the attention of readers to the fact that this organized system of predation was not started by the current ruling party, the APC; it was started and perfected by the previous ruling party, the PDP. That is why most Nigerians who are neither members nor supporters of the PDP fervently hoped that when it effectively took over from the PDP in 2015, the APC would break decisively with and from this cynically unjust system. We know all too well that this has not happened and probably will never happen because, as I tried to show in last week’s column, the APC is, morphologically and practically, indistinguishable from the PDP. Why? Because the two political parties come from the same roots, the same poisoned well of unceasing misery and insecurity for the Nigerian masses at the expense of the unlimited, obscene greed of the political elites. This is where Saraki comes into the discussion in an almost unique fashion precisely because, more than any other politician in Nigeria, the PDP/APC distinction means nothing at all to him. He never left PDP and PDP never left him.

    If I do not have to remind any well-informed reader of this essay how Saraki became Senate President in 2015, I think that I have an obligation to remind all readers that Muhammadu Buhari condoned and accepted Saraki’s use of the PDP members of the Senate to capture the post – against the wishes of the APC. Remember Buhari’s famous declaration of capitulation to Saraki’s PDP-led “coup”? “The executive will work with any leader chosen for itself by the national assembly!” Parenthetically, let me observe here that the ostensible reason for Buhari’s capitulation was the fact that to him at that moment in time, he cared very little for party supremacy over all its members; indeed, believing that he owed his election as president to his personal popularity, he was very contemptuous towards the leadership of the party. It is only now, in the runup to the forthcoming elections of 2019, that he has turned his attention back to the party. At any rate, here’s the essential point that I am emphasizing here: Saraki not only used the PDP against the APC on his way to becoming Senate President, he continued to use the PDP in the three years that he has held that post to wage running skirmishes against Buhari and the executive arm of government. This is the major reason for why I insist that just as he never left PDP, PDP never left him. And this is precisely the point at which the oedipal dimension of this saga comes into the story. What do I mean by this?

    Normatively, the oedipal complex in myth, psychology and literature involves an unwitting and unwilling slaying of the father by the son so that the slayer can succeed the father in power, influence or authority. In other words, the oedipal complex is never consciously and cynically embraced; those who have it or sense it in themselves do everything they can to avoid it, to run away from it. In this respect, Abubakar Bukola Saraki is an interesting mutation of the oedipal complex: he not only does not run away from it, he fully and cynically embraces it as the potential means of achieving the ultimate goal of his all-consuming political ambition – the Nigerian presidency. As is very well known and documented, in the year 2012, on his way to leaving the office of Kwara State Governor and becoming a Senator of the Federal Republic, Saraki openly, humiliatingly and brutally crushed his father, the late Senator Abubakar Olusola Saraki, in a political struggle that involved both overlordship of the PDP in Kwara State and consolidation of that overlordship as a base for eventual capture of the Nigerian presidency. Let me report here that though the father famously forgave the son for that self-serving act of hubris, Senator Olusola Saraki, the father, died not too long after this struggle. To this day in Kwara State, many still say openly that it was Bukola Saraki’s betrayal of his father that indirectly finished the old man.

    Well, that was his father; Muhammadu Buhari is not Bukola Saraki’s father. But this is to ignore the fact that the oedipal complex is not directed only or even primarily against literal, biological fathers; more properly and symbolically, as one of the mechanisms through which one generation replaces another, it is directed against all surrogate father figures – in the workplace, in schools and educational institutions, in sports and entertainment, in scientific inquiry and high-level research, and most of all in the domain of politics. And remember, dear reader, that in the APC, although he is only 75 years old, Muhammadu Buhari is universally called “Baba”. Moreover, he himself deliberately and rather fastidiously cultivates the image of a strict but benign “Baba”, partly for explaining away his fundamental slowness and laziness. At any rate, the oedipal animus of Saraki against Buhari is unmistakable: he is looking toward 2019 to provide him another slaying of the father as did the year 2012. The irony in this is the fact that, like a father, Buhari helped Saraki to use PDP against APC in 2015 to become Senate President.

    Our conclusion will be brief. Between APC and PDP, there are no important differences. PDP probably has more cynical and desperate operators, but APC has more hypocrites. There were and there are virtually no reformers in PDP; there is a sprinkling of reformers and progressives, countable in single digits, in APC. In the complete absence of any issues of significance marking one from the other, we are left with the naked ambition of the leaders as the driving engine of politics. Watch Bukola Saraki: in the pursuit of his ambition, he is utterly cynical and duplicitous. He will use, indeed has started using any arguments available to have his way – inclusion, restructuring, the interest of his people, the peace, the unity in diversity of our country. All na lie! Watch him! Watch am well well, brothers and sisters. He is cunning, he is ruthless, he is duplicitous. Listen to what our national poet laureate, Niyi Osundare, had to say about him in this poem written and published in 2016:

     

  • For the records: APC, R-APC, PDP, N-PDP and the macabre parable of the worm

    [I take no satisfaction in the fact that the article below that was first published in this column on August 14, 2016, seems to have foreseen the unfolding implosion and unravelling of the APC. The article is being republished for the light it may shed and the fortitude it may give Nigerians bewildered, angry, and confused about what is going on as our ruling class political parties break apart and come together again in new groupings, all the while consuming and wasting our national assets and resources. This is what I try to convey in the parable of the worm that is at the heart of essay. Think of the worm, compatriots: it reproduces itself endlessly and consumes everything organic, including its own kind]

    The falling naira, the falling ruling party and the parable of the worm: a postscript

    As I stated repeatedly last week in this column, there is no necessary and logical connection between the effective devaluation and deepening fall in the exchange rate of our national currency, the naira, and the apparent decreasing profile in the standing and credibility of our new ruling party, the APC, as a progressive force for change. If for one reason or the other, the world price of crude petroleum was to suddenly begin to go up and up and up, the value of the naira would begin to appreciate significantly. But this would not necessarily mean that the standing of the ruling party as a force for progress and genuine development would automatically also begin to improve. As a matter of fact, we have seen this happen before during the reign of the former ruling party, the PDP. During the sixteen-year period of its rule, we went through one or two cycles of fall and rise in the world price of oil and concomitant cycles of fall and rise, rise and fall in the value of the naira. But this had absolutely no effect on the standing of the PDP which, from day one to the end, absolutely never stopped in its fall from grace and, eventually, power. Can and will the new ruling party learn from this fate of the PDP? More importantly, what can we, the Nigerian people and nation, learn from this and what must we do with the lesson? In this postscript on last week’s piece in this column, I am invoking the following parable of the worm as a speculative and imaginative answer to these questions.

    The worm provides us with one of nature’s most fascinating profiles of consumption and self-reproduction. Because its digestive tract extends through the entire length of its body, the worm consumes endlessly and indiscriminately; the only things which it does not consume are inorganic materials like discarded plastics and tin cans. But as far as all organic materials are concerned, whether they are living or dead, warm or cold, moist or dry, worms will consume them endlessly. Perhaps the most gruesome thing about this omnivorous pattern of the consumption habits of worms is the fact that sometimes, they take up residence inside a living organism which they feed on until it dies, after which the consumption enters into another round on the dead carcass of the deceased host. If this profile is beginning to give the reader intimations of a parable about the PDP when it was in office for sixteen years, please note that this is indeed my intention.

    True enough, Nigeria as a whole did not exactly “die” and provide the putrefying body of the nation for the “worms” in the PDP leadership and rank-and-file foot-soldiers to feed on, but we came close to that macabre fate. Indeed, if you talk to the families of Nigerian soldiers killed in the campaigns against the Boko Haram, I am sure that they will tell you that to them, all those involved in Dasuki-gate that shared the monies meant to procure weapons are human “worms” feeding on the corpses of their loved ones. Thus, in the context of this week’s postscript on last week’s piece, the question that arises is whether or not the symbolic and metaphoric implications of this parable can be extended to our new ruling party, the APC. To answer this particular question, we must now move to perhaps the most fascinating thing of all about worms as a metaphor for limitless predatory consumption in nature and society, this being the myths and facts regarding the innate capacities for self-production and self-regeneration of different species of worms.

    For centuries, it was widely believed that if you cut a worm into two, each of the two halves would regenerate and become a new organism giving rise to two new worms. But this was and is not exactly true of all species of worms. For instance, take the case of the common earthworm whose scientific name is lumbricus terrestis. If you slice it too close to the head (yes, worms have heads!) which is very near the swollen part of the worm known as the clitellum, it will not regenerate and both halves will die. In other words, the self-regeneration of the earthworm is limited by the fact that only on the condition that you leave its head completely intact can it reproduce when it is sliced into bits. The species of worms that will reproduce and regenerate regardless of where you slice it and into how many parts you cut is the so-called planarian flatworm, planaria torva. This particular species in the family of worms is the ultimate in its capacity for endless self-regeneration. For instance, if you slice off just one-three hundredth (1/300) of its body part, that infinitely small part will grow into a new flatworm that will retain all the memory of the worm from which it was sliced! Let me state this clearly: the new flatworm regenerated from just one-three hundredth of the old worm, will have the full memory, not of all flatworms in general, but of the particular flatworm from which it was sliced! In other words, and to link this to consumption, the new flatworm will start consuming with all the memory of what its “parent” flatworm was consuming!

    I leave it to the reader to decide for herself or himself whether the APC is a lumbricus terrestis reproduction of the PDP or a planaria torva transmogrification of the former ruling party. There can be no question at all that it is either one or the other, for as we all know, close to a half to two-thirds of the leadership of the APC at one time or another in the past belonged to the PDP. Above all else is the fact that the extremely predatory consumption habits of the former ruling party have resurfaced widely and deeply in the leadership ranks of the new ruling party. What is still in doubt, what is still open to debate is whether or not the APC will do what the PDP never managed to do in its sixteen years in power and that is listen, actually listen, to the universal cry at home and abroad against the unrestrained, free for all, social-cannibalistic consumption that is without equal in the whole world. Permit me to dwell very briefly on this point before returning to the matter of whether the APC is an earthworm or a flatworm resurrection of the PDP.

    For close to about the last ten years of its sixteen years in office, the PDP was relentlessly barraged by denunciations of the excessive greed in the payment of salaries, emoluments and allowances to our public officeholders, federal, state and local, with particular reference to the legislators and state governors and deputy governors. Columnists wrote endlessly on the matter, including this particular columnist. Professional associations and civil society organizations protested unceasingly. At one stage, some NGOs banded together and took the matter to the courts, suing the National Assembly to reveal to the nation and the world the “secrets” of just how much the legislators were being paid. Significantly, the suit was filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) that the National Assembly itself had passed into law. The case was won and the National Assembly was ordered to comply with its own lawfully passed legislation. But it refused to comply and more or less arrested the suit in endless court hearings based on appeals and counter-motions. When one of the legislators, Dino Melaye, broke ranks with his fellow legislators and tried to reveal the actual figures, he was severely dealt with. At one point in this saga of the total refusal of the PDP to listen to the cries for accountability, prudence and frugality in the use of our national wealth, the former Governor of the Central Bank, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (now Emir of Kano) waded into the fray and revealed the staggering sums the legislators were paying themselves. For his “audacity” he was ordered to appear before the lawmakers on pain of being charged with contempt of the “august” legislative chambers. Sanusi duly obeyed the summons but held his ground and spilled more beans on the iniquity, the shamelessness of the greed of the legislators. Indeed, the matter made a spectacular appearance internationally when, on July 15, 2013, The Economist published a report which showed that Nigerian legislators were not only the highest paid legislators in the whole world but that each Nigerian legislator was receiving 116 times the GDP per person of the country. No other country in the world came remotely close to this staggering figure.

    The leadership of the APC, like that of the PDP before it, is giving every indication that it either cannot hear or will not listen to the cries that this must stop, especially now that the naira is in a freefall and there is crippling economic stagnation and great suffering and hardship in the land. This brings us back to the parable of the worm. Is the APC a lumbricus terrestis reincarnation of the PDP or a planaria torva regeneration of the old ruling party? I admit that this parable is a satirical and mildly playful imaginative rendering of a matter that is of life and death urgency to the majority of Nigerians. My justification for this is that satire and irony have their uses in times of great stress and hardship in the experience of individuals and entire societies and nations. Please think of the following grim fact, dear reader: there is no great personal consequence for most of the leaders of the PDP that the party is no longer in power and has perhaps gone into permanent historical oblivion since most of them have their loot, their billions of naira and millions of dollars. As we can see from what is going on in the courts in the trials of the accused mega-looters, most of them seem confident that with the help of an endlessly corrupted criminal justice system, they are going to get away with their loot. This raises this crucial question: are the bosses, the leaders of the APC not thinking along these lines and are therefore not really bothered whether or not they last in power beyond 2019? I mean, if you can make as much as you can now, before 2019, what does it really matter whether your party is back in power after the 2019 elections?

    Ultimately, the riddle of whether the leadership of the APC is metaphorically speaking a resurgent lumbricus terrestis or a planaria torva of the PDP is for the Nigerian people to figure out and take appropriate action. For, is there really a choice between the worm which has limited regeneration capacities and the one whose strategies and forms of self-regeneration after a dismembering are endless? No, there isn’t; one is just a more odious, more challenging version of the other. The real challenge is to shake off all species of worms from our national body politic.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                                      bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

     

  • The second coming of Kayode Fayemi and the challenge of “stomach infrastructure” in its many manifestations, open and not so open

    Of the many fascinating jokes, tales and fables in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, my favorite pertains to – stomach infrastructure. Here it is. We are at the feast marking the last act in the funeral ceremonies for a departed elder, a man of great substance when he was alive. Since the death of such a personage is considered, not a sorrowful event but a matter for joyous celebration, there is much to eat and drink at this ceremony that takes place early in the plot of the novel. Never one to miss an opportunity for feasting and merriment, Okonkwo’s (the protagonist of the novel) father, Unoka, is visibly, merrily and jocosely present at this social wake.

    It is in this context, in this mood that he gives the sardonic joke which I regard as a vintage expression of stomach infrastructure. Speaking to another elder, Unoka remarks casually that at funerals, the only part of the dead man or woman that interests him, the only part of the body that he looks at very closely, is the mouth. As expected, this comment startles the elder to whom it is addressed. To the question why he finds the mouth of the departed the main point of his interest, Unoka declares that the mouth is only useful when one is alive, that once one has died, it is no longer possible to eat, to consume. For this reason, Unoka concludes his grotesque narrative by declaring that in looking closely at the mouth of a deceased person, he is reminding himself, Unoka, to eat as much as he can while still alive because on one fateful day, death will end the possibility of eating forever.

    One could easily and justifiably say that this sardonic philosophy of eating as much as one can while one is alive is nothing but the tongue-in-cheek self-justification of a hedonist. In other words, although Unoka is a poor and unsuccessful man – in sharp contrast to his son, Okonkwo – what he says of the mouth and eating could as well have been said by a very rich man who loves food and drinks and all the god things of life. But, pointedly, Unoka is not a rich man; he is not a successful man; he is a man that is not only perpetually indebted to many creditors, he is famous for using his considerable gift of eloquence and wit to frustrate the attempts of his creditors to make him pay off his debts. For this reason, what he says about eating as much as one can eat while still alive is the “philosophy”, the worldview of a person on whom life circumstances have imposed this grotesque edification of eating as the be-all and end-all of life. What is this if not stomach infrastructure at its most unvarnished and elemental?

    But, please note that in his society and time, Unoka is one man among many other men. Indeed, Achebe makes much of this fact: Unoka is almost like no other man in his society, a society that places great value in hard work, self-reliance and what one achieves by oneself as distinguished from what one inherits from one’s parents and forbears. In other words, in the society, time and place depicted in Things Fall Apart, Unoka’s “stomach infrastructure” is considered an aberration, not the norm. Yes, Achebe makes Unoka a very sympathetic character: he is a gifted flutist, a brilliant raconteur and a spinner of delightful yarns. When they take him to the “evil bush” to die completely alone and sequestered from all other men and women after he is stricken by the “swollen disease”, he asks that he be allowed to take his flute with him, meaning that even alone and deathly sick in the wilderness, he will still try to find some joy, some poetry in what remains of his life. But all the same, with regards to his chosen pact with “stomach infrastructure”, he is alone, partly by choice but mostly due to the political economy of his society in which gifted flutists that cannot also be hardworking and successful farmers, hunters and/or warriors have little to validate both their social existence and their individual identities. After all, the society depicted in Things Fall Apart is a pre-capitalist society; markets, traders and even incipient commercialists have emerged, but surplus accumulation is still so minimal that class differentiation, as distinct from social status, is as yet nowhere in sight.

    The point in this long introduction to this essay via our comments on Things Fall Apart is that “stomach infrastructure” takes many forms and has existed for a long time, going back to a time, a political economy in which it was not recognized as a social phenomenon. In that novel, it is “recognized” in only one man who is atypical in the social division of labour in his society. In our time of a full-blown if endlessly wasteful and unregenerate capitalism, those driven to “stomach infrastructure”, by choice and by socio-economic compulsion, are numbered in their millions, in their tens of millions. And although thanks to Ayodele Fayose, Ekiti has come to be known as the “stomach infrastructure state”, the phenomenon exists and is rampant in all the thirty-six states of the federation. For instance, in the governorship elections of Ondo State in November 2016, “stomach infrastructure” through vote-buying by the two main contending political parties, the APC and the PDP, was so rampant that the electorate gave the practice, the phenomenon one of its most cynical but also inventive appellations: “dibo, koo se’be”! A completely literal translation of this expression is, “vote so you can cook your stew”. Expansively, it of course means, “sell your vote and the next meal for you (and your family) is assured”!

    Of course, we know that “stomach infrastructure” is not limited to vote-buying during elections. It extends into post-election governance as a mode of making the electorate, the ruled complicitous in their exploitation and immiseration. Stomach infrastructure even takes place between elections and for this reason, it has penetrated deep into the political culture of our country and many other countries on our continent and other parts of the developing world. As a matter of fact, long before Fayose systematized the phenomenon as an important policy initiative of his rule as governor, “stomach infrastructure” was known and very widely identified in Africanist academic circles as the “politics of the belly”. Indeed, there is a book of that title that has become a classic of postcolonial African political science.

    For me, one of the most intriguing manifestations of “stomach infrastructure” in our country in the last three to four years can be found in the fact that Kayode Fayemi, the man against whom Fayose invoked and entrenched the phenomenon as a policy initiative, this same man, our own Left-leaning Kayode Fayemi, has on some occasions found it expedient to engage in his own observance and practice of “stomach infrastructure”, either through the APC or directly, through the John Kayode Fayemi Leadership Centre in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital. For instance, in mid-2016, the JKF Leadership Centre, under its Director, Mr. Abiodun Omoleye, began distributing a long list of food items like rice, salt, sugar, milk, spaghetti, wheat, semolina and gari to many segments of the Ekiti state citizenry. These included civil servants, artisans, nursing mothers, disabled women and men, Okada riders, students and unemployed people, this on a periodic basis. I do not know how long it lasted; however, I do know that Fayemi, through the Director of the Centre that he founded and named for himself, gave an eloquent justification of the practice that deliberately tried to distinguish and distance it from Fayose’s “stomach infrastructure”. Speaking foe Fayemi, Omoleye described what the Centre was doing as a sort of humanitarian relief for the poor and the hungry in a time when the “wind of poverty” was blowing like a storm across Ekiti State. He asserted that it was a moral and spiritual obligation for the wealthy, the more fortunate citizens, to express solidarity with those in society that are less fortunate, especially given the fact that they are in the solid majority of the population. And he explicitly stated that he hoped other fortunate Nigerians would join him to carry out the same sort of humanitarian relief to the poor and the needy. All well and good; but we cannot ignore the fact that by 2016, two years after Fayose defeated him in the 2014 elections, everyone knew that Fayemi was going to contest the elections in 2018. Cynical “stomach infrastructure” refined and retooled as humanitarian solidarity? I leave this to the judgment of the reader!

    On that point, we come to perhaps the most important aspect of this discussion. For this reason, I will go over what is entailed in the issue very carefully. First, I suggest that it is a sort of backhanded homage to Kayode Fayemi that of all the 36 states of the federation, it was in Ekiti State and as a dialectical reaction to his rule that “stomach infrastructure”, a practice of cynical manipulation of the oppressed and the exploited, was first systematized and made a significant addition to the lexicon of political action and analysis in our country. Fayose, the man who carried out this feat, operated on the basis of linking two completely different and separate words and ideas – stomach and infrastructure – together. He did this because among all the executive governors in Nigeria, Fayemi it was who had tried as much as possible to place an emphasis on infrastructures, more specifically, infrastructural development. Definitely, it is debatable how much actual, measurable infrastructural development took place in his first term as Governor, together with how much the cost was. But it is totally undebatable that it was Fayemi, more than any other governor, who tirelessly stated that any state in Nigeria or the developing world cannot, or must not, always spend the lion’s share on recurrent expenditure at the expense of infrastructures and capital projects. He was so insistent on this point that the word “infrastructure” became rather tiresome to the people of Ekiti state, especially as unemployment, poverty and despair did not decrease at all. And it was at that point that the native genius of Fayose linked that tiresome word, “infrastructure” with “stomach”, the word that everyone, the poor especially, was shouting to anyone who could and would listen to them.

    We must move to the concluding section of this piece. Theoretically and practically, one of the worst effects of the advent of “stomach infrastructure” into both the lexicon and the practice of governance in our country is that it has transformed long-term and long-range infrastructural development into the polar opposite of the satisfaction of vital and immediate needs of life. Yes, everybody treats “stomach infrastructure” as a joke, a cynical joke. But it is practiced widely, both openly and covertly and in every state, every region, every locality in the nation. As we have remarked earlier in this essay, Ekiti happens to be its locus of final domestication, thanks to the completely unashamed cynicism and opportunism of Ayodele Fayose who went as far as to appoint a Special Adviser for Special Duties and Stomach Infrastructures! Here, we come to perhaps the single most important issue in this piece. I will bring the essay to its conclusion by giving a brief elaboration of this point.

    The “genius” displayed, the interest generated by the term “stomach infrastructure” seems to be based on a play on words and terms: infrastructure is taken out of where we normally find it and linked with – stomach. But the source of its impact is not merely and only linguistic; more properly, it is socio-economic. In other words, it was because under Kayode Fayemi, the people of Ekiti State were feeling a great, burdensome tension, a contradiction perhaps, between infrastructural development and the demands of keeping body and soul alive and well, it was because of this that Fayose found a niche into which to insert his opportunism, his street-smart politics of the belly. That tension, that contradiction has not disappeared in the four years that Fayose took over from Fayemi. And now that he is coming back, Fayemi will be tested again, I dare say, almost to a breaking point. I am assuming that he has not given up, that he will not give up on finding a sustaining balance between “infrastructure” and “stomach”, between building production capacities for the long haul and satisfying consumption of food, goods and services in the immediate present.

    Ekiti is one of the poorest states in the nation, at least in terms of revenue from the Federation Account; it is first to the last three among the 36 states, Cross River State and Osun State being the only two states behind it. In addition to this, Ekiti is also one of the most highly indebted states in the nation. But in terms of human and natural endowments and resources, it is potentially one of the richest states in the country. If he has learnt the right lessons from the Fayose interregnum, these are factors and forces of production that Fayemi can count on. But he is in the wrong party to bring this about. But that is another story entirely.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

     

  • How are the mighty fallen – peeling the onion of Fayose’s tears, conscientiously

    The meaning of the phrase in the English language is clear and straightforward: “peeling the onion” idiomatically means achieving understanding of a person, an event or a dilemma by peeling the layer upon layer of matter or suggestion that covers her, him or it. Applied to the endlessly controversial, malefic and maverick Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti state, the phrase takes on an additional complication, as if the inherent challenge of the phrase was not enough. A case in point is the recent bizarre incident of Fayose’s weeping, openly and helplessly, consequent on an alleged severe beating that he had received from elements of the Nigerian Police. That the YouTube video and audio that captured the incident has gone widely viral has not helped one bit. But regardless of this fact, I suggest that as much as possible, we must try to get as full and as helpful an understanding of the incident as possible. As we shall see, this is easier said than done.

    First of all, a quick summary of the incident would be helpful for our discussion of it, especially for readers that have neither heard of it nor seen its graphic YouTube presentation on the Internet. In one clip, we see Fayose falling to the ground at a political rally, with the helping hands of scores of his supporters preventing him from hitting the ground and also propping up his almost limp body. A barely audible sound track of somebody weeping is superimposed on the visual image; this is presumably Fayose himself in his hour of humiliation – how are the mighty fallen!

    In another clip, the most dramatic of all the clips, Fayose has a brace holding up his head from the chin up to the crown of his head, as if without the brace, his broken, violated neck would collapse with the weight of his head on it. And it is this same clip in which Fayose looses it completely and breaks into tears, all the time whimpering that that he had been beaten by some policemen, that he no longer could hold up his head on his shoulders; that if he died, the Inspector General of the Nigerian Police Force should be held responsible and accountable for his death. The clip ends with Fayose turning his back to the cameras, the peals of weeping welling up as he is led away by his seemingly shell-shocked supporters. How, indeed, are the mighty fallen!

    I admit that I have been deliberate in providing as detailed and as graphic a profile of this incident as possible. I even admit that the barely suppressed tone of sneering voyeurism in the profile is there because I wanted it to be there. I have my reason for these and that reason is the fact that the phenomenon of extremely brutal assaults by members of the security forces on both politicians and members of the electorate in general is, sadly, a very commonplace experience in our country. Some commentators, mostly composed of supporters of the APC, have stated that either Fayose was not beaten at all or, if he was beaten, it couldn’t have been as bad as he and his supporters have alleged it to be. I differ completely from such commentators. As a Yoruba saying puts it, there is no shortage of dead souls in the world of the hereafter: there is no scarcity of the phenomenon revealed by and in these recent Fayose’s day of physical bruising and humiliation at the hands of policemen and other members of our state security forces and agencies. This is one layer of the onion of this event: it is so common, so banal a phenomenon in our country, especially during electioneering campaigns, that it has become, sadly and even tragically, almost completely unremarkable.

    But then, thereafter arises the fact that Ayodele Fayose has himself been the notorious, merciless and cynical perpetrator of this same phenomenon of the gross misuse and abuse of the personnel and instruments of coercion and violence of the state against political opponents. Those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword? Yes and no! Yes – because the party in power at the center, the politicians who achieve or wrest control of the federal government from their opponents gain the upper hand in this neo-feudal conception and practice of power and governance in our country. And to date, they have never, never been restrained or principled in their use of the “federal might” against their opponents. This is why they are completely correct, the commentators that have drawn our attention to the fact that when Fayose’s party, the PDP, controlled this “federal might”, no leader or chieftain of the party used it as openly and as wantonly as Ayodele Fayose. In this respect, who does not remember the mega-scandal of Ekitigate of 2014 that was indeed captured and preserved for posterity by the same technology of social that is currently showing the same Fayose weeping and complaining bitterly? To the shock created by that Ekitigate clips on YouTube, Fayose delivered an additional shock by admitting that it was he, Ayodele Fayose, the son of his father and mother, that was seen and heard in the clips!

    But no, nobody, least of all the society and the nation at large, can afford to accept the moral and even practical implications of “live by the sword, die by the sword”. This particular layer of the onion that we are peeling in this essay may seem the most elusive or unrealistic, but only on the surface. Not far below the surface, there is the fact that when the security forces and personnel of any nation can be used – indeed are routinely and illegally used – against absolutely anyone that is deemed to be an “enemy” of the politicians in power, a cycle of illegal, gratuitous and neo-feudal destructiveness enters into the bloodstream of the nation. I am striving to put this idea into language and words that are lucid and uncomplicated. And I think of Ayodele Fayose in the year 2014, during the Ekitigate mega-scandal: he apparently believed then that his party’s control of the “federal might” would last for a long, long time, so long, in fact, that one day, he, Fayose, would be at the helm of the affairs of the nation. But the wheel, the cycle has turned full circle in the year 2018 – and Fayose gets a dose of the “medicine” that he had given to his opponents. But the wheels will keep turning and if it is not Fayose himself personally, who can say with absolute certainty that those who are giving the “medicine’ now will not themselves one day in the future be forced to drink the poison?

    One more layer of the onion whose layers we are peeling in our discussion and we can bring this piece to a close. What does this layer reveal? Well, it reveals that the coercive, security forces and personnel of any nation, when they are turned into mere “militias” of those in power become so unprofessional, so compromised that they are of little or no effectiveness to the legal, legitimate and constructive uses of the state apparatus of power. Permit me to carefully outline this layer of our onion.

    Speaking only for myself, I have little doubt that the beating and humiliation of Fayose this past week had a lot to do with Fayose’s widely known and much discussed attacks on Buhari and members of his party and administration for their total ineffectiveness in stopping or even curbing the mass killings of farmers and their communities by rampaging bands of herdsmen. Fayose has been completely unrestrained in these attacks, mixing genuine observations with unprintable insults and execrations directed personally at Buhari himself. And he has gone even further than verbal attacks to organizing and parading his own “security apparatus” in Ekiti State for dealing with the real and threatened menace of the killer herdsmen, this being the guild of traditional hunters with their “shakabula” (Dane guns), machetes and bows and arrows, together with charms and amulets. “Shakabula” against the AK-47 and AK-49 of the herdsmen? Charms and amulets against 21st century munitions? Yes, replied Fayose, just watch me! Well, I think Buhari, or someone acting for him, has now given his response to Fayose and his “security apparatus” of the valiant but hopelessly outgunned traditional hunters: let us see them protect you from us, Mr. Governor, protect you from our police, from the security and coercive forces of the nation under our control.

    What gives me this idea, this feeling that Buhari and his administration deliberately wanted to physically and psychologically rubbish, humiliate and demoralize Fayose for his endless biting verbal attacks on the president is the probability that Fayose may have completely fallen for it! A man who had talked tough, a “Jagunlabi” who had proclaimed to Buhari and the killer herdsmen to come and try him at Ekiti if their fathers and their mothers were their true parents! It seems unbelievable that such a man could be reduced to the weeping and whimpering dotard that one can see in those YouTube clips that have gone viral on the Internet.

    Some of Fayose’s supporters and apologists have suggested that the weeping, the whimpering and the gnashing of teeth of their hero are really a composite ploy to garner the sympathy of the Ekiti electorate just days to the governorship elections. This Fayose bandwagon is suggesting that the tears are crocodile tears and the crying a calculated charade. I disagree completely with this view, this proposition. Or, if it is correct, it is only partially correct, corresponding to that aspect of Fayose’s personality and public persona that is filled with bravura self-theatricalization. More to the point, in my view, is the probability that Fayose was completely unprepared for the public beating that was meted to him, was unprepared for the humiliation that Buhari’s Aso Rock badly wanted to mete out to him as an object lesson for him and others like him. By the time that this piece is published on Sunday, July 15, 2018, the results of the elections would have been proclaimed and we would have known, one way or another, whether in spite of his humiliation, Fayose’s bandwagon still has control of Ekiti State. Highly unlikely, but who knows, it may happen – though I hope not. In 2014, I wanted Dr. Fayemi to win. This time around, I say a pox on both of their houses, the APC and the PDP!

    Our last words must go to Buhari and the APC. So what if you have given Fayose a payback for Ekitigate 2014?  So what if you have let Fayose and the whole country know that “shakabula” and charms do not constitute a match for the arms and ammunition available to policemen, soldiers and security personnel controlled by you as the incumbent ruling power at the center?  Where does that leave the security of life, limb and possessions of Nigerians in their tens of millions? Does the “object lesson” you have so soundly meted to Fayose absolve you, Mr. President, of the creeping fear and the corrosive demoralization that most Nigerians feel today about the incapacity of yourself and your administration to deal with spiraling cycles of killings in many parts of the country?

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu