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Category: Biodun Jeyifo

Palladium versus the AGF: must ‘theory’ pit respect for the rule of law against justice for a looted and deeply wronged nation and its peoples? (2)

I concluded the discussion in last week’s column on the universal demand in our country that looters must not go unpunished; that the loot must be recovered and used to alleviate the hardship and suffering of the masses of our peoples throughout the country; and that in the name of all that is worthy of contributing to the collective moral progress of our society, the looting must stop. I make this composite demand central to this concluding piece to the series that began last week because it completely got lost in the fog of the overwhelming formalism of Akinlotan’s ‘theory’ that places its own intellectual center of gravity in the abstract principle of respect for the rule of law. Moreover, I am especially mindful of the fact that Akinlotan deploys this principle of respect for the rule of law in a manner pits it against the demand for justice. For this reason, I now wish to show in this concluding piece that I am not against respect for the rule of law; as a matter of fact, it is my contention that outside the self-enclosed theoretical universe of Akinlotan’s formalism, the rule of law, when it works at its best, works with and in furtherance of justice. Permit me to explain what I mean by this assertion.

Formally and ideationally, bothterms, the rule of law and justice, are abstract concepts and it is only in the context of the struggles that take place in the real world that any hope of bringing them concretely andproductively together can succeed. At the present time, the demand for justice by the masses of Nigerians in their tens of millions is the most powerful force that we have for making this coming together of respect for the rule of law and justice possible – but only as long as we don’t frustrate or negate the demand for justice with deliberate, ill-motivated appeals to the abstract principle of respect for the rule of law. In other words, nothing is more damaging to respect for the rule of law than consistent frustration of the demand for justice. Let us not mince words here: Nigerians in their tens of millions have come to a collective state of mind in which they see invocations of respect for the rule of law as nothing but a legalistic fraudulence that allows looters and their lawyers to get away with their predatoriness. In other words, while it would be taking their frustration too far to say that they are against the rule of law, all the same the Nigerian public has become dangerously hostile to abstract invocations of respect for the rule of law. This is why for the most part, they are overwhelmingly in support of Buhari’s disregard of the court rulings that granted bail to Dasuki and the other co-accused. This arises from the simple fact that for more than two decades now, Nigerians have seen looters go scot-free and their lawyers grow immensely wealthy on their share of the loot, a hellish harvest of loot that runs into billions of dollars and trillions of naira.

The supreme task before Buhari and the judicial order in our country at the present time is how to productively bring respect for the rule of law and justice back together. This, by the way, is not peculiar to Nigeria; it is a perennial challenge to all the national and international judicial orders in the world. If there is a Nigerian exceptionalism in this universal principle, it is the chasm that has opened up and widened immeasurably in the last two decades in our country between, on the one hand, respect for the rule of law and,on the other hand, justice. Let me specify concretely what this means and how it operates: merely and simply on the basis of respect for the rule of law in our country,the trial of accused looterstypically lasts for years and years and years in a more or less permanent deferment of consideration of the actual substance of the accusation; indeed, in the majority of cases, the substance of the alleged crime is never considered. This absurdity is possible at all because Nigeria is the only country on the planet in which interlocutory injunctions and stay of proceedings are applied to criminal cases; in all the other countries of the world, they are applied only and exclusively to civil cases.

Akinlotan’s ‘theory’ completely ignores this Nigerian judicial exceptionalism in its lopsided, formalistic but passionate advocacy for respect for the rule of law. This is what I address in this concluding piece, but before I come to it,I deem it necessary to briefly explain why I insist on using the terms “looters” and “looting”, terms that Akinlotan never uses, terms that I suspect he would perhaps dismiss as being objectionable as rabble-rousing calls to jungle justice.

In Nigerian status quo legalese, the preferred term for looters is “politically sensitive Nigerians accused of…”. In other words, the terms, looters and looting, are studiously avoided, perhaps so as not to seem to be prejudging the accused guilty before they have been tried. Well, fortunately, we are not all lawyers, at least not yet!For this reason, we don’t all have to use the morally sanitized language of “politically sensitive Nigerians accused of”. More seriously, I draw the attention of the reader to the extraordinary fact that rarely has anyone accused of looting our public coffers ever actually mounted his or her defense on the basis of a denial of the occurrence of the alleged crime. The universal defense tactic is simply and consistently to permanently postpone consideration of the substance of the alleged crime. And in the few instances when the substance of the crime is considered, the trial magistrates or judges have nearly always found the accused guilty – and then gone on to impose fines that are an insult to rationality and fairness with regard to the infinitesimally small relationship that they bear to the vastness of the amount looted. In sum then, looting and looters in our country operate with an aggressiveness, an impunity that is without equal in any other part of the world. For this reason, the very least we can do is return the compliment and call them by the vey appellation that they flaunt in our faces through their defense strategy and tactics – looters!

It is time to come to the heart of my observations and reflections in this piece. I repeat: the supreme challenge now in the ongoing war against corruption in our law courts is to obtain justice and restitution for a looted and deeply wronged nation and its peoples, both of which have for so long been denied in our criminal justice system, a feat for which we have a notoriety that is global. As I have repeated so many times in this column, looting that is so filled with impunity, that is so systemic is nothing but looting that is a mode of social cannibalism. If it did nothing else, Dasukigate brought this cannibalistic face of the looting frenzy of a segment of the political elites of our country to the foreground of public, national and international awareness. On account of this horrendous fact, only in Nigeria could any judge have granted Sambo Dasuki bail for this crime.

I repeat: it is a great challenge to Buhari and the judicial order in our country at the present time to bring respect for the rule of law into a fruitful and transformative relationship with justice. Akinlotan seems to set one against the other, i.e. the rule of law on one side and justice on the other side and never shall the two ever meet. As this reading does not tally with the Akinlotan whose columnis one of the few sites among the multiple locations of our country’s elite commentariat I regularly visit with intellectual pleasure, I would like to think that there is a slippage here that is not characteristic of his best and most insightful writing. Indeed, there is a slight indication in Akinlotan’s piece in his column of Sunday, January 31, that lends credence to this intuition of mine. This is in the section of that piece wherein Akinlotan gives advice on how Buhari and his AGF might take the high ground of sublimity toward the reform of our judicial system by not coopting the statutory responsibilities on the National Judicial Council (NJC) but working patriotically with that body. This is all well and good, but the question that arises from it is this: where has the NJC been all these years and decades when the looters more or less seized near absolute control of the Nigerian criminal justice system?

Beyond Akinlotan’s formalism and philosophical idealism, we must look to those aspects of the judicial orderin the real world of the Nigerian predatory republic wherein we can find strong and incontrovertible evidence of a predisposition, an orientation toward reform. In my own estimation, there are two principal locations of such residual reform-minded forces that could really make a difference. The first is the amalgam of persons and platforms within the Nigerian Bar and Bench who are profoundly opposed to the prevailing status quo that overwhelmingly works in the interest of looters in our criminal justice system. It was this group that worked tirelessly in the Jonathan National Conference of 2014 to produce the unanimous recommendation of the Judicial Reform Committee of that National Conference for setting up a special anti-corruption tribunal to try all cases of looting in our country. The second is the very group that Akinlotan completely leaves out of account – the Nigerian masses. Throughout the history of modern movements for the reform of judicial systems to make them work, not only or even primarily for the rich and the powerful but for everybody, when the important cases are being decided in the law courts of the land, the people in their hundreds of thousands are always massed outside the law courts to show their justices and the whole world that they have a stake in what is being decided in the high and low reaches of the Bench. Colonial Nigeria and Kenya; apartheid South Africa; segregated, Jim Crow America: we have seen it many, many times before. Why not now, I ask, in Buhari and the APC’s Nigeria in this epic war against corruption in our law courts?

Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

February 7, 2016
Palladium versus the AGF: must ‘theory’ pit respect for the rule of law against justice for a looted and deeply wronged nation and its peoples?
What both the president and Mr. Malami are doing to the judiciary is even more damaging than the corruption they conclude has hobbled justice delivery.
•Idowu Akinlotan, The Nation, Sunday, January 24, 2016.

It is only a person who does not read his column, “Palladium”, regularly that will accuse Idowu Akinlotan of willfully and perversely placing respect for the rule of law above justice for Nigeria and Nigerians in the current war that the Buhari administration is waging in our law courts against corruption. But having made this cautionary observation, I must add that anyone who has been reading Akinlotan’s column in the last three weeks without a prior familiarity with his formidable and impeccable credentials as a patriot and a radical democrat can be forgiven if he or she comes to the conclusion that it matters far more to Akinlotan that the formal principles and protocols of the rule of law be observed than that those who have been accused of looting the nation be brought to justice and restitution be made to the looted and the wronged nation and its citizens. Definitely, I have been utterly taken aback by thestrident tone of Akinlotan’s tirades against what he has called jungle justice and lynch mobs in his column in the last three weeks, week after week.

This perturbing trend rose to a climax, indeed a crescendo in last week’s “Palladium” column that was revealingly titled “Abubakar Malami’s inquisitorial tendency”. Dear reader, please consider the postulate that Akinlotan makes in the sentence that serves as the epigraph to this piece, this being a quotation from last week’s “Palladium” essay: “What both the president and Mr. Malami are doing to the judiciary is even more damaging to the judiciary than the corruption they conclude has hobbled justice delivery”. By what logic, by what demonstrably civic-minded and good-intentioned reasoning can such a claim be made? I suggest that Akinlotan in fact gives us something that does look like a rationale, a ‘theory’ in the light of which his allegation that Buhari and the AGF are doing worse damage to the Nigerian judiciary than the monumental impunity of corruption in the judiciary itself can be accepted. However, the problem is that this ‘theory’ is itself highly tendentious in the manner in which it pits respect for the rule of law far above the universal demand for justice in our country at the present time.

Now, it is of course true that many columnists and pundits beside Akinlotan have declared,publicly and extensively, that both Buhari and his Attorney General, Mr. Malami, have come pretty close to arrogant disregard for the rule of law in the willful manner in which they have deliberately disobeyed court orders granting bail to some of the accused in the ongoing trials concerning the alleged stealing of funds intended forprocurement of arms in the fight against the Boko Haram insurgents. Indeed, many prominent members of the Bar who are known to be uncompromising in their dedication to the cause of justice for the nation and its citizens in the ongoing legal battles against corruption have called on Buhari to obey the law courts in the matter of the bails granted to Dasuki and his cohort of co-accused litigants. But this is not the location of Akinlotan’s savage quarrel with Buhari and his AGF. Beyond this obvious terrain of arrant disregard of the rulings of the law courts, Akinlotan thinks that the president and the AGF not only do not have an adequate grasp of the full ramifications of the political economy of corruption in our country, they also quite dangerously regard the judiciary as an extension of the executive to be ordered or kicked around in the war against corruption. Against this profile – which, I hasten to add, can hardly be faulted – Akinlotan makes some ringing, clamant declarations: that the judiciary is not an extension of the executive; that in a properly functioning democracy the independence of the judiciary must only be respected but must be adequately funded and institutionally protected; and that none of the three arms of government – executive, legislative and judicial – has a claim to moral probity that entitles it to act as the tribune, the arbiter of values to the other arms of government. For this particular reason, Akinlotan argues passionately that a disproportionate burden of responsibility is being placed on the judiciary for the vast scale and impunity of corruption in Nigeria. And most significantly of all, in a manner rather reminiscent of the Spanish philosopher, Ortega y Gasset’s haughty liberal anti-populism in his celebrated book, The Revolt of the Masses,Akinlotan thinks that not only is the Nigerian public starkly ignorant of these subtler dimensions of the phenomenon of corruption in our country, Buhari and his AGF are deliberately exploiting this ignorance of the masses in the manner in which they are waging the war against corruption in the law courts.

These are unpalatable facts and it is hard not to agree with some of the inferences, if not the conclusions, that Akinlotan draws from them. For instance, it is incontestable that Buhari and his AGF were so unprepared for the granting of bails to Dasuki and the other accused persons that so far they have seen no other way out of the problem than to simply disobey the courts. As I have pointed out in a previous essay in this column, the Buhari administration had strategic and tactical options other than the prevailing status quo in the administration of criminal justice in Nigeria in the legal battle against corruption but they chose to stick with the status quo which notoriously andexorbitantly favours looters and their lawyers.This situation is so astounding that one is left with no other conclusion than tactics and strategy being so absent in the administration’s war on corruption in the law courts, no ‘theory’, no overarching set of values drives Buhari’s war on corruption. In other words, the prosecution of the war is completely subsumed by its declaration; anything that stands in the way of the prosecution amounts to opposition to the declaration. The intellectual bankruptcy of this aspect of the president’s battle against corruption in our law courts is incalculable.

Unfortunately, Akinlotan is also right on aspects of the Nigerian public’s perception of the war on corruption. Buhari has risen immensely in stature just on account of the dizzying number and scope of disclosures of looting and looters, even as other aspects of his “change” slogan and program have either come unstuck or are extremely slow in their execution. Indeed, many of the president’s supporters have declared, against the evidence, that the war on corruption is on course, Lai Mohammed, the Federal Minister of Information, being the most vociferous of such people. Quite possibly, the president is intuitively placing high value on the cathartic impact of the disclosures: even before and beyond actual recovery of stolen loot in billions of dollars and trillions of naira, the parade of looters, some of them in handcuffs, digs deep into powerful emotions of symbolic revenge that shaming rituals evoke in the collective mind.Speaking only for myself, I remain completely unimpressed by the disclosures since the looters were always hiding in plain sight and all it took to get at them was a change of ruling party at the center. I shall applaud if and only when the new ruling party wages the war on corruption in a manner that shows clearly that we have arrived at a stage in the moral progress of this country in which it will be next to impossible for corruption in high places to go unpunished.

The preceding point leads directly to the heart of my quarrel with Akinlotan’s ‘theory’ whose principal error or defect lies in the fact that it is completely blind to its own interpretive or analytical limitations.The most startling of these limitations – and the only one that I will engage in this article – is Akinlotan’s extreme formalism. In pure formal or ideational terms, Akinlotan is quite right to insist that all the three arms of government are deeply tainted by corruption and none of them can presume to act as guide or arbiter to the others. But this entirely misses the fact that in the real world of corruption in Nigeria, more than the other arms of government, the judiciary has perfected the art of hiding its corruption behind the shield of the abstract principle of the rule of law. In plain language, a judge who has received hefty bribes which makes him grant bail to a looter can impose heavy fines and strictures against a political officeholder that disobeys his ruling, this purely on the basis of the abstract, formal principle of respect for the rule of law. It so happens that everyone knows that this happens routinely and persistently in the Nigerian judicial system, yet no one has stopped invoking the rule of law as the determinant of justice in the last instance, even if, as everyone knows, justice happens very, very rarely in the Nigerian judiciary.

What I find most disturbing of all in Akinlotan’s ‘theory’ is the utter indifference to the revolutionary possibilities of the popular demand for justice by Nigerians in their tens of millions in their support of Buhari’s declared war against corruption. All Akinlotan can see is, apparently, the unawareness of the masses, their ‘ignorance’ if you wish, of the subtler aspects of the political economy of corruption in our country. But what of their demand that the looting should stop and that the recovered loot be used to finance programs that alleviate the hardship and suffering of the masses? What of consideration of how this popular demand can in fact be used to initiate deeper structural redistribution of wealth in our country? Must this demand wait until much needed reforms in the Nigerian judicial order have been undertaken? And can such reforms come only from above, without the active support of the masses? These and similar questions will serve as our point of resumption of the discussion in next week’s concluding essay in this series.
- Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
January 31, 2016
Celebration as personal and collective rededication: self-reflexive meditations on “BJ@70”

Esu sleeps in the courtyard; the courtyard is too small for him. Esu sleeps in the bedroom; the bedroom is still too small for him. Esu sleeps inside the kernel of a palm nut; now he has room large enough in which to sleep.

First of all, I must acknowledge my profoundly humbling and pleasing delight, for nothing prepared me for the scale and the depth of the outpouring of good wishes and tributes. Though I normally never celebrate my birthdays, the only one I’d ever celebrated – my 60th – had not prepared me at all for this second one, my 70th. I suppose that this was why it took me quite some time to absorb the meanings behind my surprise and my delight. But once I did so, I allowed myself to carefully register and store in my consciousness and memory these meanings for I know only too well that by this time next week, all the wishes and tributes will be over and life for me will resume its normal course…

I don’t know if all celebrations qualify for this particular “meaning”, but I know now that birthday anniversaries constitute a personal and collective rededication to the small and great values that sustain life and at least for a while keep the worst of its fears, anxieties and terrors at bay. This is true as much for he or she that is honoured as for those bestowing the honour.For in sum, this is what both the celebration itself and those that organize and participate in it are saying: for as long as the celebration lasts, we will concentrate only on the achievements, the good qualities, the things considered admirable or memorable in the life and person of the honoured one. In other words, this is what the community of friends, family, acquaintances and sundry well wishers are saying to the one honoured:we are not only happy that you are (still) alive, we hope that henceforth it is all the things we consider wonderful and special about you that we will experience from you; and for our part, we shall rededicate ourselves to reciprocating all the pleasing and wonderful things that we have experienced from you in the course of your life.

I think that this mutual pact is the ritual side of birthday celebrations. The essence of social and cultural rituals is the fact that it is an emotional or psychic passage through which all those who participate in it come out renewed and made stronger in the bonds that both connect them and make life potentially richer for them. If that is the case, what I and those who have participated one way or another in this thing that was dubbed “BJ@70” is a ritual process in the most profound meanings of the phenomenon. At Ibadan on January 5 in my beloved alma mater, the University of Ibadan, this ritual process reached its climactic, numinous moment when Kongi presented me with some gifts whose meanings were at the same time deeply symbolic and transcendently generous; at Ife-Ife on January 21, at the equally beloved institution where I became the kind of teacher and person I had always tried to become – the Obafemi Awolowo University – the ritual climax came with the entrancing performance of dance, singing and oral poetry by the schoolchildren of the Sunshine Nursery and Primary and Primary School, Ile-Ife…

I acknowledge and accept the implications and demands of this mutual pact of rededication. After all, these past few weeks I have been the chief celebrant and communicant at this ritual process of “BJ@70” events. In this present context of these first or initial reflections after the events, I cannot, indeed should not name all those who made this possible because as the list is very long, I am sure to leave out some names. Moreover, there will be time enough to express my thanks and appreciations all around.Nonetheless, at the very least I can say to them – I thank you; I hear you; I cherish your affection and I am deeply humbled by the honour you have bestowed on me. I shall try to live up to your expectations and prayers – to the extent that some of your wishes lie in my power and willingness to meet, while some could be said to be subject to happenstance and ayanmoare subject to the benevolence of forces beyond my control…

This talk of ayanmo or fate will no doubt surprise many reading this piece, definitely many among my readers who know of my intellectual adherence to the historical materialist view of human life and the history of our species. For this reason, I admit that I have invoked the principle of ayanmo in these reflections quite deliberately. I do not know what my ultimate fate or ayanmo is and quite frankly and sincerely, I neither worry nor think much about it. This is not only because ayanmo seems to have such fascination, such grip on people because its power lies in the fact that it rather unfairly has the last word on human life after a person has died and has no say in the matter anymore, but also because ayanmo is very often extended to aspects of personal and collective human life for which it has nothing of value to add and from which, in my opinion, it should be rigorously excluded. For instance, it is not our collective fate or ayanmo as a people, as a nation, to be so badly and heartlessly governed that in a land blessed with vast human and natural resources, seven out of every ten Nigerians live below the poverty line, with specters of bleak and insecure futures staring at the vast majority of our young people, the largest and fastest growing demographic group in our society…

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The deepest intimations of celebration as collective rededication to sustaining human life in and with justice, peace and dignity that I have had at the “BJ@70” events have all come from this radical anti-ayanmo dimension of my philosophical beliefs and – I hope – of my work as a teacher and activist. Against the discursive backdrop of this assertion, let me now admit that nothing has pleased and deeply inspired me more at the events in Ibadan and Ife marking my 70th birthday celebrations than the acknowledgement of this dimension of my life, my work, my person. Let me restate this carefully: for all of my adult intellectual, professional and activist life, I have been motivated by this belief that there is absolutely nothing in our destiny, in our ayanmo that condemns us to being ruled by drove after drove of looters, with their entrenched ramparts of legal and juridical self-protection from justice and the anger of the people. I knew that many who read this column know and appreciate this aspect of my work but it has been enormously pleasing and humbling for me for this fact to be acknowledged and publicly expressed by my teachers, colleagues, friends, family and students.

It is of course not enough to be radically anti-ayanmo in our thoughts, feelings and actions as citizens, activists, progressives, patriots; we must tirelessly organize and strategize to find the best means available to us for wresting control of our lives and our natural resources from the looters and their minions. In this regard, I must here make a special declaration. Here it is: I never personally mark my birthdays because I am quite frankly not sentimental about the matter at all. In the two times when my birthday anniversary has been celebrated – my 60th ten years ago and now my 70th – it has been others who have taken up the initiative and the burden of making them happen. During that earlier 60th birthday celebration ten years ago, my anti-ayanmo and Talakawa liberation philosophy and activism did not go unrecognized, but neither were they made central and defining to the celebrations as in the more recent “BJ@70” events. I am not only deeply gratified by this, I in fact take it as a portent: the forces of progress, justice, peace, unity and dignity for the vast majority of the peoples of our country, our continent and the world are massing in their hundreds of millions, their billions to take their destiny in their own hands. This is the dimension of rededication that has been most present in my mind and my projections beyond the aftermath of the recent celebrations. With all the eloquence I can muster, I wish to state here that the celebration of one life, or of one’s life can only and truly be an act of rededication if the one becomes the many, if beyond the person, beyond individual merit or achievement, there is cause for collective liberation from the forces that degrade and impoverish human life in our society and in our world…

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In the epigraph to this piece, these reflections, Esu, the trickster god finds capacious space in which to sleep not in the vastness of a courtyard or a bedroom but in the more infinitesimally small space of the kernel of a palm. This riddle, this enigma is easily explained: in the kernel in which Esu sleeps, his being will be sown in new spaces in which they will bear fruit and multiply. All who are fortunate enough to have their one single, individual life celebrated communally must hope that their beings, their life’s work will find the kernel in which to bear new fruit across diverse times and spaces.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

January 24, 2016
One particular record of underachievement APC must avoid: Okonjo-Iweala’s 4% reduction of corruption, waste and squandermania

First of all, it is useful to revealthe thought, the motivation that inspired the reflections in this piece. This is none other than the profoundly disturbing fear that our new ruling party, the APC, might in the end match the former ruling party, the PDP, in its abysmal record of underachievement. Since it is still very early in the reign of the new ruling party, I admit that this thought, this worry is perhaps unfair and may in the end be unjustified. Moreover, though I am neither a member nor a supporter of the APC as such, I very much want the new ruling party to succeed, if by success we mean a new economic and political order, a new dispensation in which the wealth of the nation is used, not for the few rich and powerful of the land, but to create security, peace, unity, employment opportunities and better and more dignified lives for the vast majority of Nigerians throughout the length and breadth of the country. Any ruling party, any administration that succeeds in achieving these defining aspirations of our peoples in their tens of millions will have my support, even if both its declared and undeclared but practical and effective ideological inclinations are unacceptable to me – as those of the new ruling party, APC, are. How do these musings relate to the topic of this piece?

Those who are regular readers of this column would, I hope, have immediately recognized the allusion to Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s 4% reduction of corruption, waste and squandermania in the title of this piece since I have referred to it many times in this column. For readers who may be encountering it for the first time, here’s the relevant fact: in its publication of May 3, 2012, the British bible of global capitalist news reporting and analysis, The Economist, quoted Okonjo-Iweala in a declaration that though corruption and waste were killing Nigeria, they were so monumental in scope that she would be quite happy if by the time she left office in 2015 she would have managed to achieve as little as 4% reduction. I have not stopped being amazed and angered by the scale of the cynicism inherent in this declaration. But in the wake of the declared and still unfolding revelations of Dasukigate, I now have a slightly revised view of the former Finance Minister’s cynicism: as the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Okonjo-Iweala personally authorized many of the vast, mind-boggling withdrawals from the Central Bank that fueled the Dasukigate bonanza – doesn’t this show that her 4% super-underachievement in corruption and waste reduction was an insider’s knowledge of and acceptance of underachievement as systemic, inevitable and, Heavens help us, enduring?And if that is the case, wouldn’t these systemic and enduring aspects of underachievement of the PDP era persist to haunt and perhaps even trap the new ruling party and the Buhari administration?

I do not have any definitive answers to these questions, at least not yet; all I can discern for the moment are signs and they are very perturbing signs. For instance, I am almost certain that many of those reading these words do not remember the work of the Ahmed Joda Transition Committee that President-Elect Muhammadu Buhari himself set up to ease his transition from election into incumbency. But dear reader, please take note and remember that the President rejected one of the most crucial recommendations of the Joda Transition Committee and he did so without a single word of explanation. This was the recommendation that since Nigeria under the PDP had one of the largest, most wasteful and most inefficient ministerial cabinets in the whole world, the President should substantially reduce the number of ministers in his cabinet. In making that recommendation, the Joda Committee supplied comparative data and statistics to demonstrate how completely out of step Nigeria under the PDP was in the size and inefficiency of its ministerial cabinet. As a columnist, I was personally very gratified by this particular recommendation of the Joda Committee since I had written a lot about the matter in this column. But the President rejected the recommendation and he did so without any explanations of why he did so.

There is a plausible reason for the President’s rejection of the recommendation. Moreover, it is worthwhile for us to reflect on the implications of this “explanation” in our reflections in this piece on specters of underachievement that stalk the rule of the APC and the Buhari administration. Here’s the “explanation”: there is a binding clause in the 1999 Constitution that makes it mandatory for the federal ministerial cabinet to have a minister from each of the 36 states of the federation. This in effect means that the President’s “executive” hands were tied; he had no choice but to have at least 36 members of the cabinet. But this is a specious argument and it betrays facile, rigid reasoning. The Joda Committee was very much aware of this constitutional provision, just as I have been aware of it in my innumerable calls for a major downsizing of our ministerial cabinet, but neither the Joda Committee nor I was swayed by this presumed binding force of the constitutional provision. For the truth of the matter is that our Constitution was made for us; we were not “made” for, and we do not live or die by our Constitution. Indeed, throughout the world and in all periods of modern history, constitutions have been constantly revised in the light of changing times and exigencies. Thus, the President’s rejection of that Joda Committee recommendation is nothing but a demonstration of a lack of political will and vision. In the context of the present discussion, it also shows a predisposition for underachievement due to systemic and enduring features of the rule of the PDP. Let me explain.

As quiet as it is kept, the single greatest cause of waste, squandermania, inefficiency and underachievement in our political order is not corruption; it is the extremely bloated size and cost of governance in our country. The standard, anodyne way in which this is expressed is the statement we all too often read or hear that recurrent expenditure is far greater than capital expenditure in the budgets of all levels of government in our country, federal, state and local. In reality and in plain language this is nothing other than the fact that we simply cannot afford to have 36 states; we simply cannot afford all the federal and state chief executives, together with their typically very large ministerial cabinets, advisers and assistants. In other words, we hide under the abstract discourse of excess of recurrent expenditure over capital expenditure instead of saying, quite simply and directly, that many of our states should be merged; many of our governors should be let go; and the large armies of administrative and technical support staff in all our state capitals and local government headquarters should be laid off and – redeployed into truly productive employment.

It is to be hoped that readersof these reflections appreciate the fact that I am not writing these words in a vacuum. Right now, at this very historical and political moment, many states of the federation are on the brink of bankruptcy and many workers have not been paid for months on end. The “convenient” explanation – which is not untrue – is that the departing PDP administrations left the country in a state of undeclared bankruptcy. However, this is only half of the truth. The other half of the story, so far at least, concerns the indications we are receiving every day that the new ruling party does not seem inclined to fundamentally change course from the wasteful, underachieving paths of the PDP. The new legislators are insisting on getting the same jumbo salaries and allowances as the previous set; the Presidency is buying a new fleet of very expensive cars for top officials; the President’s budget for overseas trips has actually been increased, this in a period when shortfalls in revenue expectations have increased sharply; and new mansions are being built for the Vice President and the Senate President, among other top public officeholders, even though there are mansions in Abuja that were built for the previous Vice President and Senate President. At the very least, one would have expected that in a period when hundreds of thousands of workers are unpaid for months and millions of unemployed Nigerians face very bleak prospects, the new ruling party would have gone out of its way to establish a clear difference between itself and the previous ruling party in perpetuating this tradition of extremely indecent and immoral binging by our rulers on our collective wealth.

It is against this background of a creeping and unsettling sense of business as usual that I locate the line of departure indicated in the title of this piece. By the end of its sixteen-year reign, the previous ruling party had completely given up on any pretense to the pursuit of the common good; it had in fact embraced impunity and underachievement as the barge of its total flight from reality, especially the reality of its clear and looming defeat and consignment to the dustbin of history. Okonjo-Iweala’s 4% abyss of underachievement is the ultimate marker of that flight from reality of the Jonathan administration and the PDP. No matter how much APC is trying – and succeeding – in looking and acting very much like PDP, this Okonjo-Iweala abyss is something that APC should at least avoid reaching or being plunged into. Nowhere is this more palpable than in the declared legal battle against corruption. I have been more restrained in my previous comments on how this is being handled by the administration. I think it is time for me now to state unequivocally that the level of preparation for this battle by the administration is so lackluster, so mediocre that one can be pardoned if one is beginning to see the specter of underachievement on the scale of the Okonjo-Iweala 4% corruption reduction katakata. The looters are winning; or, they seem far much better prepared for the battle than the Buhari administration. More specifically, the Attorney General of the Federation seems to lack the stomach, the heart and the requisite experience for this battle. In this case, we must prepare ourselves for a long and very ineptly fought battle, even as the administration gives assurance every day that things are going well. I hope I am wrong in this. How I wish I could say that I know that I am wrong in this.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

January 17, 2016
Buhari’s needless dilemma about Dasuki’s bail; or the cost of choosing the worst of the three options in the legal battle against corruption

As I write these words on Friday, January 8, 2016, the Buhari administration is, technically and legalistically speaking, in contempt of court for re-arresting Sambo Dasuki after the former National Security Adviser had been granted bail by an Abuja high court judge.

Thus, the democratic and legal credentials of the administration in its prosecution of this case seem deeply compromised by the fact that the judge that granted bail to Dasuki explicitly ordered that he should not be re-arrested. Indeed, as revealed in a media chat that the President had in Abuja two weeks ago, Buhari seemed very much aware of the precarious situation of his administration on this matter of bail for Dasuki. Asked repeatedly at the media chat why Dasuki was re-arrested after the courts had not only granted him bail but had explicitly ordered that he should not be re-arrested, Buhari had no coherent answer to the questions posed to him. To the President, it is enough that it seems abundantly clear that Dasuki’s alleged crimes are not in the least “bail-able”.For this reason, the President was genuinely puzzled that anyone could expect his administration to stand by the decision to grant bail to Dasuki and his co-accused.

I think it is safe to assume that overwhelmingly, most Nigerians are with the President in keeping Dasuki in the custody of the EFCC in defiance of the bail granted him in the courts. However, the President and his supporters in this matter are in an extremely uneasy and perhaps indefensible position in the matter. For hovering over the matter is Buhari’s past as a military dictator who famously had maximum disdain for any legal, technical and factual obstacles to the achievement of his goals as a ruler. Indeed, to some commentators, the aura of the Buhari who promulgated the infamous Decree Numbers 2 and 4 of 1983 already fills the air. Decree Number 2 retroactively made crimes committed before its promulgation punishable, thereby rubbishing the universal legal principle that if an act was not a crime at the time it was committed, it cannot become a crime by any law that comes into being after the act took place. On its own part, Decree Number 4 of 1983 made any act or utterance that served to cause embarrassment to Buhari and any member of his military junta punishable, regardless of whether or not the act or utterance was true. It is with such decrees in mind that some commentators are beginning to wonder aloud that the Buhari who completely ignores and sets aside the bail granted to Dasuki by the courts seems ominously similar to the Buhari of Decrees Number 2 and 4 of 1983.

This is a very unhelpful development in the legal battles against corruption, the battles that are already in the courts and those that are looming on the horizon. At the very least, this development puts Buhari and his administration on the defensive: the looters, the barawos together with their lawyers, are now hypocritically parading themselves as the defenders of democracy and the rule of law while Buhari and his administration are being insidiously represented as purveyors of jungle justice and the logic of lynch mobs. Moreover, the courts whose decisions granting bail to the looters are being set aside are the same courts that normatively act in favour of looters, the same criminal justice system that, beyond the issue of the granting or withholding of bails, will decide the substantive cases against Dasuki and his co-defendants. Thus, it was and still is a grave error of strategy and tactics for Buhari and his administration to have played into the hands of this same criminal justice system which, alone on the planet, applies interlocutory injunctions and stays of proceedings to criminal cases precisely to make the trial of looters so interminably long as to effectively make their successful prosecution a rarity in the Nigerian judicial order. In other words, with a different choice of strategy and tactics by Buhari and his administration in the current legal battles, the question of the granting or withholding of bail for alleged looters – a relatively minor issue – would not have arisen at all. As a matter of fact and to get to the heart of this piece, the grave error of the President in this matter is that, wittingly or unwittingly, he and his staff chose the very worst of the three strategic options available to them in the legal front of the war against corruption. What are these options? And does Buhari know that these options exist? These are the trillion-naira questions the answers to which will prove fateful for a successful, transformative outcome for the current and future legal battles against corruption in our country.

Let us call the first option the revolutionary option. In the National Conference of 2014 set up by the Jonathan administration, there was a committee with the rather longish and clunky title of “Committee on Law, Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Reforms” whose Chairman was a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice George Oguntade. This committee had some of the brightest and most progressive legal minds in the Bar and Bench in Nigeria among its members. For this reason, it was quite significant that by a unanimous decision, the Committee recommended the setting up of a Special Anti-Corruption Court or Tribunal intended specifically for trying all cases of the looting of the Nigerian state and peoples. A key aspect of the structure and purpose of this recommended revolutionary tribunal was the removal of all the technicalities and niceties that notoriously and interminably prolong the prosecution of looters in Nigeria. The report of the Justice Oguntade-chaired Committee of the National Conference of 2014 is not in a secret vault in the National Archives at Abuja. It is a published and disseminated document in the public domain and is thus ready for actualization. All that this would require is a bill in the National Assembly that the ruling party with its sizeable majority could easily pass into law; and once it is signed by President Buhari, it would become the law of the land with regard to the prosecution of looters. In my layman’s estimation, the whole process could take less than one month.

The second option, though not as revolutionary as the tribunal recommended by the National Conference Committee on Legal Reforms, has the distinct advantage of actually being the law of the land in the matter of the prosecution of looters in our country. This law is none other than the so-called Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) of 2015 that was signed into law by former President Goodluck Jonathan in May 2015. Since I have written much on ACJA in this column I shall be brief and succinct in what I say about it in the present discussion. Thus, the crucial thing to bear in mind is the fact that two particular clauses in ACJA – 306 and 396 –have removed all the things that prolong and frustrate the prosecution of looters in Nigeria. Indeed, ACJA, though by no means the ultimate or final solution to all the problems endemic to the administration of criminal justice in Nigeria, it covers some of the most basic and notorious elements of miscarriage of justice against poor people in our country. At any rate, it is nothing short of a mystery why the Buhari administration has, so far at least challenged the refusal of our law courts to operationalize the principles and provisions of ACJA.

The third and final option is best called the status quo option. This is because it has been in force in at least the last sixteen years in this country. Again since I have written much about this option in this column, I shall be brief in my remarks about it. In essence, it was designed to make the successful prosecution of looters in our country next to impossible, so much so that in the last one decade and half, every single unambiguously successful prosecution of Nigerian looters has taken place not in our country but outside in other national judicial systems. Moreover, the very structure of wealth accumulation and success in rising to the top of the legal profession in our country rest fundamentally in the prolongation of the life of this status quo in the administration of criminal (in)justice in Nigeria. In plain language, lawyers become very, very wealthy, they achieve the much coveted status of “Senior Advocate of Nigeria” (SAN) by the continuation, indeed the perpetuation of this status quo.

For me, there is a clear indication of the probability that the Buhari administration will not be revolutionary at all in its “change” agenda in the incredible fact that the administration seems clearly unwilling or unable to adopt and implement the recommendation for a special anti-corruption tribunal by the Committee on Legal Reforms of the National Conference of 2014. In other words, if there was fire in the belly of the President in his declared war against corruption, the first thing he and his party would have done is take up that recommendation and institute a special anti-corruption tribunal. Well, leaving talk of “revolution” aside, what of reform, what of ACJA? Why has the administration been silent on and rather indifferent to the non-enforcement of the provisions of ACJA by the law courts of the country all the way to the Supreme Court?

It is an incompetent or ill-prepared General that goes into a battle with a lack of knowledge or understanding of the kind of enemy that he faces. The matter of granting or withholding of bail is, relatively speaking, a very small matter in the range of items of “enemy action” that the President will face in the law courts as the legal battles against the looters unfold. I predict with near certitude that the President and his administration will face far more brazen and outrageous enemy action than the granting of bail from judges in the months and years ahead. Thus, the President has no other choice than to change his strategy and tactics. The minimum he can and should do in this respect is to give his attention and energies to the implementation of ACJA, although what the times call for, what the nation and the world would like to see is the setting up of that revolutionary tribunal that was recommended by the Justice Oguntade-chaired Committee on Legal Reforms of the National Conference of 2014.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

January 10, 2016
Buhari’s “mission accomplished” embarrassment: some hard, bitter lessons ahead?

Nothing important happened today. Diary entry by King George 111 of England, July 4, 1776

The “mission accomplished” phrase in the title of this piece comes from perhaps the single most embarrassing statement not only of the presidency of George W. Bush, but of any modern United States presidency. On May 1, 2003, in an extraordinarily dramatic and triumphalist action, Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in a fighter jet flown by the president himself.Alighting with maximum swagger and bravado from the cockpit of the fighter jet, Bush proceeded to announce to scores of journalists gathered on the battleship that the United States had dealt a crushing defeat to Iraq and the war between that country and America was over. He then uttered the portentous phrase that would haunt him for the rest of his presidency and beyond: “mission accomplished”!

Of course, as Bush and the world would later find out, the Iraq war was far, far from over in May 2003. As a matter of fact, both the military and civilian casualties of the war increased exponentially after Bush’s “mission accomplished” declaration. Indeed, this far from May 1, 2003 in January 2016, the Iraq war continues in the guise of the war against ISIS, the arch-jihadist terrorist group that operates not only in Iraq itself but throughout the Middle and Near Eastern regions. Thus, as a highly charged and resonant phrase, “mission accomplished” has come to represent one of the most embarrassing displays of a total lack of judgment and insight at a critical historical moment by a ruler in modern history. In the aftermath of Bush’s “mission accomplished” declaration the world has seen hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Americans killed; hundreds of billions of dollars of American wealth diverted from vital social programs at home and genuine humanitarian causes abroad; and a seemingly endless quagmire of war, millions of displaced persons and permanent instability and insecurity in the Middle and Near East. Thus, underlying the phrase “mission accomplished” is a tragic irony that cautions us to be wary of the terrible price that the masses of ordinary humanity pay for the lack of foresight or insight or second sight of rulers.

Fortunately for our own Muhammadu Buhari, no similar phrase remains to haunt the embarrassment in the failure of the Nigerian president’s ringing prediction three months ago that by the end of December 2015, the Nigerian military would have completely wiped out the Boko Haram jihadists. This is not to deny the reality of embarrassment and loss of face to the presidency now that December 2015 has come and gone and Boko Haram is still very much around and wreaking havoc. Indeed, there is a further embarrassment to Buhari in the fact that at the end of December 2015 not only was Boko Haram still committing deadly mass homicides across the country’s Northeast region, Buhari was telling Nigerians and the world that his administration was willing to negotiate with leaders of the jihadists over the abducted Chibok girls if credible leaders of Boko Haram could be identified and authenticated. All these factors notwithstanding, Buhari can take some comfort in the fact that not too many people in Nigeria and the world at large took the president’s prediction seriously. In other words, while in May 2003 the world believed and took Bush’s “mission accomplished” declaration seriously, in December 2015, nobody is surprised that Buhari’s prediction bummed completely. As a matter of fact, Buhari himself seems wondrously unembarrassed by the failure of his prediction. How else can we explain his declaration earlier this week at the tail end of December that his administration was willing to begin negotiations with the leaders of Boko Haram, the same Boko Haram that was supposed to have been completely wiped out by now?

I suggest that even if very few people expected that Boko Haram and its insurgency would have become a thing of the past by the end of 2015, there are many lessons to learn from Buhari’s apparent lack of embarrassment that his prediction has not only proved wrong but has indeed been rubbished by Boko Haram itself. Unfortunately, these lessons are hard, bitter, and potentially tragic for the masses of ordinary Nigerians.Since I wish to be very clear on this particular point, I crave the reader’s indulgence in taking some time and space to give a profile of the essential point I am making in this piece about political rulers and their capacity to exercise sound judgment and insight in their confrontation with historical crises and the challenges that they pose to the society, the polity and the economy.

Now, Boko Haram happens to be only one among a slew of daunting crises that the Nigerian nation and peoples face at the present time, though of course it is one of the most urgent and horrific of these crises. If we take Buhari’s failed prediction about the end of Boko Haram as sort of symbolic or symptomatic, the possibility arises that the President and his administration might also be wrong or mistaken in their predictions or projections on when Nigerians “will smile”, will experience relief from the economic and social ravages that they face at the present time. For instance, in his war against corruption, Buhari has also famously ‘predicted’ victory long before any concrete and substantial results have been achieved and even as corruption is striking back with all its tentacles in the Nigerian judicial, legislative and administrative orders. Another example can be found in the war to curb the monumental waste and squandermania in governance and administration in Nigeria at all levels, federal, state and local. Again, Buhari has vowed to successfully carry out the badly needed reform and reorganization in this sector of our public finances. But once again, we find here that the projection of victory or success is, to say the least, very premature. One illustration of this is the fact that though the Ahmed Joda Transition Committee that the President himself set up recommended a drastic reduction in the size of the Federal Cabinet, Buhari ignored this recommendation and has put in place a cabinet that is actually larger than Goodluck Jonathan’s cabinet. Please note, dear reader, that in all of these cases a lot of hardship and suffering of the Nigerian peoples is bound to happen if the projections and predictions of the President and his administration fail.

At this point in the discussion, it is necessary to state emphatically that these observations and reflections are cautionary, not predictive; they are speculative, not alarmist. In my considered opinion, President Buhari’s ‘predictions’ and projections – from Boko Haram to the war on corruption and from the reduction of the cost of governance to the reduction of the downstream cost of petroleum products to the Nigerian masses in their tens of millions – suffer from a vastly exaggerated view of what presidential will and pronouncements can achieve. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the present stalemate between the Presidency and the law courts over the granting of bail to Sambo Dasuki and his co-accused in the Dasukigate arms procurement scandal. Understandably, the President is very upset that the courts are granting bail to the former National Security Adviser and his co-accused, in an act that appears to Buhari to be in defiance of his will and pronouncements on the matter. While this columnist is strongly on the side of the President in the matter, it does strike me as very odd, very disappointing that the President did not anticipate and prepare himself and his administration for this unquestionable favoritism of our law courts toward looters.

Ours is a constitutional, democratic and elective presidential system and for this reason, there are considerable constitutional and institutional constraints on the sovereign power and authority of the presidency. But throughout the sixteen years of the rule of the PDP, presidential power in our country was practiced and dispensed as if its sovereignty was as all-pervasive, all-encompassing as that of a feudal monarch. Buhari especially but also his party, the APC, seem intent to continue the perpetuation of this pseudo-imperial presidency. Of course Buhari, at least so far, has given every indication that he intends to use this vast concentration of presidential authority to carry out much needed reforms that will redound to the benefit of the Nigerian peoples. But as we have seen in this piece, the realities that Buhari faces are much too complex for and resistant to the reductive simplicities of Nigerian presidential power and authority.

The sentence that stands as the epigraph for this piece comes from European history at the precise moment when feudal monarchical rule was metamorphosing into the form of the modern bourgeois republican state. Apparently, George 111 could not or did not see this transformation taking place gradually but inevitably. Hence, on July 4, 1776, the very day that the American Declaration of Independence was made, the English king made the famous entry in his personal diary: “Nothing important happened today”.I locate Buhari at a midpoint between this diary entry of the English king and George W. Bush’s “mission accomplished” declaration. This is because Buhari is not as totally detached from historical realities as the 18th century English king, at the same time that he is not as aggrandizingly embroiled in the maelstrom of history as Bush. In other words, King George stood at the center of a power structure whose slow but inevitable decline posed little or no immediate danger to his person and his status; Bush occupied a location of global power in which America was yet to learn and absorb the limits of its global influence; Buhari occupies a conception and a practice of power in which decline at home and abroad considerably undercuts if not nullifies pretensions to sovereign presidentialism. Unfortunately for us, Boko Haram proved that it will take far more than a presidential pronouncement for the group to go out of existence, just as the law courts are proving that they are impervious to Buhari’s presidential will and pronouncements.

I doubt that Buhari will easily and quickly learn to see the limits of presidential power as not the end but the beginning of wisdom. I hope that I am wrong in making this assumption for if I am right, the President will find it hard to gather and deploy the popular energies needed to defeat forces like Boko Haram, the judicial redoubts of looters and the fortresses of waste and squandermania in our country. Are there hard and bitter lessons to learn ahead of us? Yes, but hopefully we will learn well from them.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvad.edu

January 3, 2016
For a politics of reasonable as compared to desperate and perhaps hallucinatory hope: scattered end-of-year reflections

Hope springs forever in the human breast – Alexander Pope

The observations and reflections in this piece come from my strong feeling that in our country and our world at the present time, there is a great, pressing need to distinguish a politics of reasonable and realizable hope from a politics of desperate and perhaps delusionary hope. At the heart of this strong feeling of mine is an intuition that with the coming into power of the Buhari administration, Nigeria recently became one of the best expressions of a politics of desperation, a politics of hope against hope that dominates our collective global or planetary community at the present time. What are the indications, the signs of this convergence or similarity of a politics of desperate hope in Nigeria and the world at large?

Everyone knows that, to put it mildly, all is far from being well in our world. Nonetheless, against powerful negative forebodings, there are enough signs that give us real hope, even if the hope often seems desperate. Thus, although billions still live in dire poverty, for the very first time in world history we actually have the resources and the capacities to end mass poverty forever everywhere on the planet. Additionally, just as we left the Stone Age behind us not because we ran out of stone, there is now a distinct possibility that we can also leave the age of the dominance of fossil fuels behind us, not because we have run out of oil but because we have wisely and effectively moved to the use of clean and renewable sources of energy before succumbing to a looming global catastrophe in which life-destroying emissions and pollutants end life as we know it in our planetary home. Finally, even as deep and crippling divisions continue to divide regional and national communities throughout the world, we are all waking to the fact that the world is really a global village in which our destinies are as indissociably linked as they had never been before at any previous stage of world history.

As in the world at large, all is also far from being well in Nigeria. But unlike many other places in the world, desperation is far more tightly woven around hope in our country. Indeed, until quite recently hope of any secular, non-religious or non-metaphysical kind seemed impossible in Nigeria. The departing PDD/Jonathan administration left not only an empty treasury, it also left an utterly looted and ruined economy and polity. For this reason, the level of the desperation of hope in the post-PDP Nigeria is infinitely much higher than in the world at large. In other words, although the level of euphoria with which the Buhari administration was ushered into office is fast diminishing, I don’t think that we are as yet willing or able to make a distinction between hope that is reasonable and realizable and hope that continues to be desperately euphoric. This is why although deep down the vast majority of Nigerians are not (yet) convinced that the Buhari administration will defeat the Boko Haram insurgency as expeditiously as everyone wishes and as the administration itself has promised, Nigerians continue to hold dearly to the expectation that quite soon we would have heard and seen the last of the Boko Haram jihadists. We are a bit less desperate in our hopes for the success of the war against corruptionbut in my opinion, that’s only because like the Buhari administration itself, most Nigerians, at least so far, place great value on the rhetoric of the war against corruption.

At this point in the discussion, it is necessary to emphasize that perhaps the most crucial observation that I wish to make in these reflections is our need for a politics of realistic and realizable hope, together with the recognition that such a politics does exist and has been practiced in many nations and regions of the world. This observation leads directly to the most serious or portentous claim that I wish to make in these same reflections, this being the assertionthat, wittingly or unwittingly, the new Buhari administration is stoking the same fires of the politics of desperate, delusionary hopes that brought it into power. To get to the essential distinction that I am urging here between a politics of realistic and realizable hope and a politics of desperate and hallucinatory hope, it is perhaps helpful to first of all make a prior distinction between a politics and a theology of hope.

Fortunately for us, Nigeria being one of the most endlessly God-obsessed countries in the world, this is a distinction that we can indicate with a maximum of concreteness and precision in our particular national context. Thus think, compatriots, of the fact that churches and mosques constitute the fastest growing institutions and enterprises in our country because it seems so easy, so effortless for any self-proclaimed and oftentimes self-ordained priest or cleric to give hopes of deliverance to uncountable flocks of followers. Here, one must, it seems, bow to the inscrutable and the ineffable: I do not know how it works, but I do know that the theology of hope works extremely successfully in Nigeria, perhaps more than any other country in the world.

I have said that I do not know how the theology of hope works so successfully in Nigeria; I must now state that I do have some ideas as to why it worked so well, particularly during the reign of the previous ruling party, the PDP. One factor is so obvious that its very obviousness might serve to hide it from us. This is nothing other than the fact that every one of the three PDP administrations during the party’s sixteen-year reign considerably encouraged Nigerians to pray, to fast, to look to religion for the answers to both national and individual problems and crises. At the risk of being too blunt, let me state this point more forcefully: all the three PDP administrations massively used the theology of hope as a tool for diverting mass or public pressure away from politics and politicians for the satisfaction of both the material and non-material needs and aspirations of the people.And there is the additional factor of the unwillingness of any administration that was/is as corrupt, mediocre and aimless as any of the PDP administrations to base its policies and actions on the politics of realistic and realizable hope. In that predatory looters’ republic, it would have amounted to political suicide for any of the three PDP administrations to have attached itself to goals and objectives on which the Nigerian people could have tied the party’s grip on power.

If a reliance on the theology of hope has not yet clearly and indisputably emerged as a decisive aspect of the governance style and the policies of the new ruling party, the APC, that is probably because the party is yet to settle down into governing in its own name and right and not merely by default as the aftermath of the PDP era. Meanwhile, everything hinges on the charisma, the mystique, the larger-than-life expectations that have coalesced if not calcified around the personality of Muhammadu Buhari. He is like the Chosen One, the Leader, the Avatar. Not since Murtala Ramat Mohammed has the country had a leader on whom so much of both the realistic and apocalyptic hopes and aspirations of the Nigerian masses been pinned so exclusively on one man and one man alone. Wittingly or unwittingly, Buhari has been satisfied to play to these expectations, to talk the talk if he is yet to walk the walk. Listen to his famous first words after his electoral victory: “I belong to everybody; I belong to nobody!”More spectacularly, he has publicly given the Nigerian military a deadline of this very month, December 2015, for a decisive crushing of the Boko Haram insurgency. He is making pronouncements on what the war on corruption will achieve, even as the country’s criminal justice system is showing clear and unambiguous signs that it is still stoutly on the side of looters.Buhari’s hands are still tied to constitutional and institutional principles and forces that make it near impossible for him to significantly cut down on the colossal cost of governance in Nigeria, but not to worry, Sai Buhari will take care of things. And he seems particularly fond of foreign travels, together with a penchant for making policy or action statements abroad that it would make far more sense for him to make at home. The list goes on and on, seemingly interminably: the politics of hope, yes, but it is desperate, hallucinatory hope.

If in these observations and reflections I have seemed to be disparaging of both the theology of hope in itself and the politics of desperate, passionate and even delusional hope, I now hasten to say that this is in fact not the case. Hope, all manner of hope, will always be lodged deep in the human heart and imagination. And there is a place for even the most “irrational”, the most phantasmal kind of hope, especially against forces that deploy mystification and unjust social arrangements to prey on human weaknesses and frailties. Nigeria is home to the world’s most extensive and outlandish expressions of the theology of hope precisely because it is also home to so much of the world’s assemblage of looted lives. My emphasis in these reflections on a politics of realistic and realizable hope is an attempt to redress the imbalance between the two kind of politics around hope as a powerful vector of human life, individual and collective. Above all else, my concern is with the tendency of the politics of desperate hope to place agency exclusively in the lap, the subjectivity of the Leader, the Chosen One, the Avatar. Beside Him, there are the technocrats and bureaucrats. This seems to be the APC formula for success. Well, the politics of realistic and realizable hope adds a crucial third element: the Nigerian peoples, acting for and on behalf of their own interests and aspirations, not watching idly and passively from the sidelines of history and politics.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

December 27, 2015
Dasukigate: beyond the outrage and apart from the legal battle, what is to be done?

When Colonel Sambo Dasuki assumed duty in June 2012, he approached me for assistance, based on my background as a social scientist, and my previous involvement in government. It is also public knowledge that I have considerable knowledge of Nigerian politics and skills about competitive political organization. This is why in 1999, General Olusegun Obasanjo appointed me as Director-General of his campaign. Similarly, in 2007, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar turned to me to assist him in the same capacity. Not surprisingly, I was approached in 2014 if I could coordinate former President Jonathan’s 2015 campaign. I politely declined by offering advisory services.

Dr. Iyorchia Ayu (former Federal Minister of Education and PDP Chieftain)

This past week, several newspapers finally called it “Dasukigate”. This was the series of incidents in which vast sums of money in local and foreign currencies that Colonel Sambo Dasuki, the former National Security Adviser (NSA) to the former President Goodluck Jonathan had taken out of our national coffers had been diverted to the accounts of himself and diverse political and business associates of his. As nearly everyone knows, as a term “Dasukigate”owes its etymological origins to the infamous Watergate political scandal that forced the American president, Richard Nixon, to resign from office in 1974 in order to avoid the politically worse fate of impeachment. Since “Watergate”, in America itself and other parts of the world, there have been other “Gates”. On our own shores, the most recent one before “Dasukigate” was “Ekitigate” that erupted into our shocked national consciousness during the Ekiti State governorship elections of June 2014. In that particular incarnation of the scandalous “Gate” tradition, Ayodele Fayose and other chieftains of the PDP were secretly audio-taped in conversation with an Army General and other security agents as they plotted to use the machinery of the state to forcibly ensure Fayose’s victory at the polls. Thus, “Dasukigate” draws its meaning from a globally and locally well-known tradition that entails the perpetration of high crimes and misdemeanors that are so severe that they pose grave threats to the constitutional, political and moral order.

In conformity with the tradition from which it draws its name, “Dasukigate” has not disappointed at all in the scale of outrage it has inspired as Nigerians and the whole world have been treated to unbelievable tales of impunity in rapine, cynicism and brigandage. Moneys were taken out of the Central Bank as if it was a mere ATM machine. In one operation, 34 million U.S. dollars were carted to Col. Dasuki in eleven “Ghana-Must-Go” bags, never mind the fact that only narco-terrorist drug barons carry such humungous sums of money around in cash. And as Dasuki and his associates shared the moneys amongst themselves, all regulations and protocols around the withdrawal and use of funds by agencies of the Federal Administration were routinely flouted. Apparently, no receipts were issued for moneys paid out by Dasuki and his administrative support staff, leading to allegations and counter-allegations of how much each beneficiary received and for what purported services. The statement credited to Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, former Federal Minister of Education and a PDP chieftain, is one example of an attempt by one of Dasuki’s beneficiaries to set the records straight, Ayu vigorously claiming that contrary to the former NSA boss, he was paid for something other than procurement of arms. More on Ayu and his protestations later in this piece.

Perhaps the most unbelievable and unconscionable of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” of Dasukigate was the diversion of moneys intended for purchase of arms and armaments for the army in its counter-insurgency war with Boko Haram to things like paying for Dasuki’s purchase of real estate property in Dubai and paying a friend’s private hospital complex for “offering prayers” for the success of President Jonathan’s re-election bid.

My central concern in this piece is a desperate hope that as much as outrage is a logical and natural response to Dasukigate, we will to get beyond it to ask what next, what is to be done. In this, I do not wish at all to diminish the emotional validity and the moral and psychological value of outrage. An individual, a people that has lost the capacity to feel and express justifiable outrage is a lost individual, a hopelessly lost people. In the particular case of Dasukigate, outrage is perhaps even not strong enough to express the scale and the consequences of the criminality in the act of a National Security Adviser who diverts monies intended for procurement of arms for counter-insurgency military operations against Boko Haram to the private coffers of himself and his cronies. Beyond feeling and expressing outrage for such an act, the English language has a word and it is –restitution.

Beyond outrage then and in pursuit of restitution, I argue that what is to be done is to take the path of the pursuit of restitution. Let me be absolutely clear on this point, this contention: we, the Nigerian people, must massively but critically assist the Buhari administration in this and other battles in the overall war against corruption in Nigeria. I am moved to make this assertion because, at least to my knowledge and information, there has been no single act of public protest or demonstration in support of the administration’s war against corruption. The impression one gets is that we, the Nigerian people, are leaving it all to Buhari and his administration to wage the war on our behalf and wage it well. This is especially troubling given the fact that the main theatre of the war is the law courts, the same law courts, the same criminal justice system that so far at least, has been overwhelmingly on the side of looters against the interests of the Nigerian governments and peoples. Even more pertinent here is the fact that Dasukigate is actually far more common an occurrence in Nigeria in its present mode of the organization of political governance than we care to admit. For if in essence the criminality of Dasukigate involves stacking the odds against the Nigerian army, state and people in the counter-insurgency war against Boko Haram, hasn’t countless other acts of looters stacked the odds against our health care delivery system, our educational system including the primary, secondary and tertiary levels, and our system of roads, highways and public transportation? What sphere of life for the country and our peoples have not been hopelessly compromised by the looters?

Dasukigate is, I argue, more properly grasped and understood as only one more expression of “Naijagate”: a political order bequeathed to the new administration of Muhammadu Buhari by the former ruling party, the PDP, a considerable segment of whose top political bigwigs is now in the new ruling party, the APC. I crave the reader’s indulgence to dwell a little on this assertion that far bigger than Dasukigate and thus containing it within the vastness of its moral and political bankruptcy is “Naijagate” itself. Permit me to use the case of Dr. Iyorchia Ayu and his declaration of professional expertise, probity and honor in the epigraph to this piece to explain this term, “Naijagate”. Please bear in mind, dear reader, that this “Naijagate” is what I have in mind in asserting that we, the Nigerian people, must not leave the everything in the hands of the Buhari administration in the war against corruption but must become active in our own interests and especially the interests of the most oppressed masses of the Nigerian people.

The Iyorchia Ayu part in Dasukigate is easily exposed as the very height of the reflexive and cynical justification of extremely corrupt practices that has become commonplace among members of our political class. In this pattern, things that happen only in Nigeria and even then only among political elites and their cronies are boastfully touted as “universal” facts. Says Ayu: I was not paid 435 million naira for procurement of weapons; I was given the money for the consultancy work that I did for security and the PDP 2015 presidential campaign. And I got the money because I am, by professional reputation, a damned good social scientist”. Now, social scientists who are far better qualified and far more highly respected than Ayu cannot expect, even in the best of circumstances, to make 435 million naira in the entire course of their careers. But here is Ayu unself-consciously declaring that this is something he “deserved” as a social scientist! Meanwhile, in all probability, the “consultancy” work that Ayu did for Sambo Dasuki led to the former NSA’s most notorious act during the crises of the presidential elections of 2015 – the postponement of the elections for six weeks and its near cancellation as Dasuki took the matter to the United Kingdom and the world at large to argue that the elections be postponed indefinitely and an interim government of national unity be formed.

Unfortunately, the case of Ayu is the norm; it is not an exception, not an aberration in the political order bequeathed by the PDP to the APC. At the heart of this political order is a predatory savagery that is characteristic of capitalism in its worst form, a capitalism in which, typically, the wealth of the nation is transmogrified to the poverty of the nation. By itself alone without the active and vigorous support of the masses of the Nigerian peoples, the Buhari administration will never vanquish this predatory, ‘barawo’ capitalist order. In practical terms, if the people are not out in their hundreds of thousands, in their tens of millions demonstrating and marching in support of this all-out war on the ramparts and bastions of corruption in our country; if the war is fought only at the law courts; if it is left only to the fitful, slow and so far indecisive political will of the Buhari administration: outrage will continue to be the only harvest of the war against this new phase of the perpetual war on corruption in our country. Please remember, compatriots, beyond outrage there is or ought to be restitution.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

December 20, 2015
A revolutionary condemned to live through anti-revolutionary times: for Eskor Toyo (1929-2015)

The fact that people endure a situation does not mean that they like or accept it. A revolution is an extremely difficult and risky affair. It is for this reason that pre-capitalist slavery lasted for many centuries and so did feudalism. In history, oppressive regimes are very seldom overthrown by the underlings. The continuation of electo-plutocracy is far from being an evidence of its validity.
Eskor Toyo, “The Question of Democracy in a Development Economy”

Nigerians have been traumatised to no end, listening to the unbelievable revelations emanating from the $2.1billion Armsgate. No thanks to an outrageously weak President Goodluck Jonathan who, believing that his re-election superseded everything else, failed miserably to exhibit the expected level of responsibility over his six-year rule even though nobody has said he profited a penny. The former president certainly sinned against God, and humanity when, knowing how he had allowed a complete misapplication of funds meant for properly kitting the soldiers, he still permitted the trial, and sentencing to death, of 54 soldiers who, without requisite arms, were sent to recapture Delwa, Bulabulin and Damboa from Boko Haram. Without a doubt, their commander, Lt.-Col. Opurum, would most probably have led them to a certain death; a death they finally escaped because the redoubtable Femi Falana SAN, agreed to represent them at the General Court Martial to which they were hounded even when the military high command knew that PDP bigwigs had shared the money meant for arms and ammunition. It is equally unforgivable that, for exposing this evil, then President Goodluck Jonathan masterminded the impeachment of Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State and caused that unfortunate state untold political upheavals which, however, happily saw to the unmasking of the true progressive credentials of a once highly regarded Nuhu Ribadu.

Many of those named in this murderous Armsgate have since been hauled before the courts but missing from the charges is their core crime: that of mass murder of Nigerian soldiers and others, young and old. The onus to prove otherwise must now be placed squarely in their hands. From the depth of their deprivations, Nigerians are beginning to talk on this and a cocktail of other issues, particularly via the social media; the same medium which rankles our senators so much they would rather banish or criminalise it.

Here are samples of what Nigerians are talking about.

CORRUPTION

“Like I did say, you don’t need rocket science to fight corruption. What we need is political will. There is a saying that a tree does not make a forest. But if you remove some trees from the forest, the forest will feel it. I have said it times without number that we don’t need to treat the issue of corruption with kid gloves. Nigerian elite are very funny. Nigerian elite love their freedom. When you accuse him of corruption, if he is actually corrupt, he will play one of two cards. He will play ethnic or religious card: ‘O! I’m being persecuted because I’m this. Oh! I’m being persecuted because of my religion. Oh! I’m being persecuted because I don’t belong to the ruling party.’ But there is one thing Nigerian elite fear, they don’t want to die. If you get two or three public officers punished by tying them to the stake before shooting, I can assure you that corruption will stop. We have had that experience in this country. When two or three people were shot for drug pushing, throughout the 18-month period of General Buhari, no single case of drug pushing was reported in Nigeria again. People who are stealing us blind are not up to one per cent of the population. We can afford to do away with them. We can afford to lose them. What you need is a state of honest people”-Niyi Akintola SAN.

“It is only the very naive that holds the opinion of corruption hanging its hands by the sides when its existence is being threatened. To the corrupt, nothing matters, not human lives or anything whatever besides money and power. It is not important how many millions of Nigerians are lost to Boko Haram. Nor do the tens of hundreds that are lost due to bad roads. Agents of corruption do not care about the shameful high maternal mortality and childhood mortality rates in Nigeria. The decline in our Health Care Delivery System is of no concern to them. After all, at tax payers’ expense, they and their families have access to high quality health care anywhere in the world.

“Our education is in shambles. It continues its downward slide year after year. Agents of corruption are not interested in the least. Their children and wards have high quality education, paid for with proceeds of corruption. The war on corruption is a war that must be won. No one should be above the law. Anyone who acquires wealth through dubious means or by abusing people’s trust must be made to pay back and be punished. It is irrelevant how powerful they think they are. Nigeria is greater than all of us. It is a shame that these rogue politicians and their collaborators are allowed to continue to exploit our docility” -Mama (Dr) Adebimpe Okunade -Retired university teacher.

We have to thank God for little mercies. But for his love for Nigeria that made a regime change possible, despite all the road blocks, these revelations would not have seen the light of day and we would have been no wiser. While innocent civilians together with hundreds of our hapless soldiers in the North East were ‘sharing blood’ (apologies Madam P.) under imminent strangulation by Boko Haram, the PDP people were busy SHARING the bounty: money meant to defend them. Honestly, l struggle to take in some of these things -wondering how people appointed to serve could, together with their crooked allies, descend to this level of debauchery! Someone should by DEED POLL change PDP name to Peoples Sharing Party of Nigeria.

Rawlings on my mind! – Dr Biodun Adu, Consultant, O& G.

ON THE KOGI ELECTION CONUNDRUM

“The conclusion which I have reached is not that I have, by any stretch of the construction of any of the provisions of the laws cited by counsel, affirm the correctness of the decision of the first defendant (INEC) to declare the election as inconclusive and, or affirm the validity of the supplementary election scheduled for 5 December, 2015” – Mr Justice Gabriel Kolawole.

ON THE ANTI PEOPLE SOCIAL MEDIA BILL

“Because ISIS is recruiting massively through the internet, Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, two of the aspirants in the forthcoming U.S Presidential election, want some parts of the internet shut down for security reasons. Our senators here in Nigeria, for outlandishly selfish reasons, are clamouring for the same thing just so they can prevent the disclosure of their wayward ways, among them their incredibly huge quarterly allowances. Even with oil prices now below $40. However, despite the security-related reasons driving the suggestion in the U.S, it is still a non starter. Conversely, our senators, with a once-upon a one-time activist, Dino Melaye, as its chief motivator, even if as a bag man, are insisting on passing a law to criminalise the Social Media in Nigeria. We pray they go ahead (for) it will turn out to be their very nemesis.

The link below provides an insight into the US proposal.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/technology/shut-down-internet-donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html?emc=edit_ct_20151210

&nl=personaltech&nlid=55524476&referer=

We are getting to year end, and, just so I don’t burden my readers with all these truly depressing post- Goodluck Jonathan revelations and thereby spoil their weekend, please come with me as I serve you this wisecrack from the distinguished Professor Michael Omolewa: scholar, diplomat and education historian who served, between September 2003 and October 2005, as the 32nd President of the General Conference of the UNESCO, Paris.

Mike -as friends call him – regaled me with it at a marriage engagement at which we were both guests at the weekend.

A monkey, he said, observing people dancing and spraying money at a party offered to give one of the merry makers N50, 000. She refused everybody until it was the turn of a Nigerian university professor. There was a caveat though. The would-be beneficiary would have to answer two questions and ask the monkey one.

Dialogue:

Monkey: What is your name?

Professor: XYZ (omitting to mention Professor)

Monkey, all smiles, agrees to give him the N50, 000.

Everybody claps, congratulating the Professor.

Second Round of Questions

Monkey: What do you do?

Professor: I am a Nigerian university Professor

Monkey starts to weep

Third Round of Questions and the Professor’s turn

Professor: Would you join us in the university?

Monkey: Weeping bucketfuls now, monkey, holding tight to her money, fled back into the bush.

I am still laughing.

December 13, 2015
Between social-cannibalistic injustice and foundational justice: open letters to the President of the NBA and the AGF

First Letter: Augustine Alegeh, SAN, President, Nigerian Bar Association

Dear Senior and Learned Barrister Alegeh:

This open letter to you will be very brief, even though the issues that I will discuss in the letter would normally take nothing less than a whole book, perhaps plus a three-day conference of patriotic lawyers and non-lawyers to adequately explore in all their ramifications. In The Punch of Thursday, November 26, 2015, you were reported as having tendered an apology on behalf of the Nigerian Bar Association to the Justices of the Supreme Court for criticisms that some members of the NBA had made of their Justices’ ruling in favour of Bukola Saraki’s lawyers’ suit for a stay of proceedings in the Code of Conduct Tribunal hearing of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN) V. Bukola Saraki case. Even though I don’t need to remind you of the following fact I will do so, if only for rhetorical reasons: the whole country and perhaps large segments of the international community are closely following this FRN V. Bukola Saraki case.

Undoubtedly, this national and international interest has to do with the fact that the accused person in the case is none other than the President of the Nigerian Senate. However, of far greater significance is the fact that many within and outside Nigeria see this FRN V. Bukola Saraki case as a test case which will give clear intimations of whether or not in the Buhari era and after the signing into law of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act of 2015 (ACJA), criminal cases involving accusation of colossal looting of public funds by highly placed politicians and public officeholders in our country can be expeditiously and successfully tried in Nigerian law courts. Again, even though I don’t have to remind you of this fact, I will do so: in the last sixteen or so years, expeditious and successful trials of Nigerian looters have for the most part taken place outside the country, hardly ever in Nigeria itself.

I have said that I will be brief in this letter and I shall keep to my word. And so for this reason, out of the many issues that arise from the Supreme Court’s ruling in favour of Saraki in the case and your apology on behalf of the NBA for criticisms of their Justices’ ruling, I shall limit myself to only TWO issues. The first issue is the very idea, the very act of apologizing for criticism of a ruling – any ruling – of the Supreme Court by members of the NBA. The second issue is this: the very strong implication in your apology that despite the signing into law of the Administration of ACJA 2015, the NBA is of the opinion that the status quo remains and interlocutory appeals and stays of proceedings will continue to hold sway as operative principles of criminal justice in Nigeria. Let me now address each of these two issues with the brevity that the space of this newspaper column allows me.

Dear Learned Barrister Alegeh, on your reported apology to the Supreme Court Justices, if you don’t know it, perhaps you need to be told in the full glare of public opinion that your apology has been generally and accurately interpreted as a neo-fascist declaration that any criticism of Supreme Court rulings amounts to justiciable contempt for the Justices of the highest Court in the land. As a matter of fact, prior to the tendering of your apology, Mr. J.B. Daudu, the leading counsel in Saraki’s defence, had publicly threatened to have anybody, lawyer or no lawyer, who criticizes the ruling of the Supreme Court in the case prosecuted for contempt!

To say the least, this is very, very strange coming in a period that has presumably moved beyond rule by autocratic decrees, by the unquestionable judicial fiat of military dictators. At any rate, it is heartening that many senior and highly respected members of the NBA have condemned your apology and have stated clearly that you do not speak for them. And as a lay person in legal matters but an implacably fierce opponent of all manifestations of fascism in our evolving experiment in truly democratic and just political governance, I can tell you that to thousands of us outside the legal profession, your apology means absolutely nothing except an attempt to prevent discussion of the deeper implications of the Supreme Court ruling for the fate of ACJA in the Buhari era. This leads directly to the second of the two issues that I wish to raise in this open letter to you, Learned Barrister Alegeh.

ACJA 2015: to be or not to be, that is the question. Your ‘apology’ and J.B. Daudu’s contempt threats are clear in their suggestion that ACJA or no ACJA, interlocutory appeals and stays of proceedings have come to stay in criminal cases in Nigeria. And it is on record that many members of the right-wing, opportunistic flank of “SAN” hegemons within the NBA have come out forcefully and gleefully in praise of the Supreme Court ruling and therefore in support of continuation of the status quo. However, it seems that a deep division exists within the NBA on this matter since most of those who have criticized the Justices of the Supreme Court are also highly respected members of the “SAN” hegemony. Furthermore – and this is absolutely crucial – even before the passing into law of ACJA, there had been innumerable indications that many highly placed members and institutions within the legal profession in Nigeria were deeply dissatisfied with the embarrassingly long and protracted delays in the trial of looters in the country. On this particular matter, I give only one example out of the more than a dozen that I could give if space permitted me. Here it is: At the 2014 National Conference, by a unanimous decision, the Committee on Law, Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Reforms headed by Justice George Oguntade (rtd) recommended that a special anti-corruption court be set up that would do away with all the technicalities and niceties of conventional courts that delay and prolong the trial of looters in Nigeria.

To conclude, Learned Barrister Aleghe, you do not preside over an NBA that is united in its opposition to the implementation of ACJA 2015! Thus, the question is: on which side are you? Here is another question, perhaps even more pertinent: under your presidency of the NBA, will Nigeria continue to be the ONLY country in the world in which interlocutory appeals and stays of proceedings to more or less permanently delay trial are admitted in criminal cases, especially where, without exception, all of the cases involve looters and money launderers?

Second letter: Mallam Abubakar Malami, SAN, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF)

Dear Mallam Malami:

Not out of disrespect but due to the fact that the open letter above that I address primarily to the NBA President was also intended for your due consideration, my letter to you will be even shorter and more to the point than the letter to the NBA President. Before going into this letter, with its conditioned and inevitable brevity, permit me to congratulate you and wish you well in your duties as the Attorney General of the Federation in an administration that many in our country and the world expect to be defined, almost above every other achievement, by its successful prosecution of the war against corruption. As the cabinet minister that will organize and prosecute the legal front in this war, you perhaps need to be reminded that the corruption you will face is the mother and the father of all corruption whose larger-than-life scale lies precisely in the fact that for far too long, it has found an almost impregnable breeding ground in the law! Thus, it is nothing short of a social-cannibalistic corruption that consumes not only a large part of our national wealth and assets, but the very lives of the vast majority of our peoples who, through this seemingly invincible corruption, are forced into lives of easily avoidable poverty and insecurity, not only for themselves, but for their children and children’s children. That is if, Heavens forbid, you/we lose the war!

Dear AGF, in the year 2001, the Hon Justice J. Fabiyi made a declaration that I wish to bring to your attention. By the way, this is the same Justice Fabiyi that acted as the presiding justice in the Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago that granted a stay of proceedings in Bukola Saraki’s favour in the FRN V. Bukola Saraki case. Here is the extraordinary declaration that the learned justice made in the case Ekwenugo V. FRN (2001):

“Nigerian judges do not operate in utopia. We operate in Nigeria. And no Nigerian judge can claim that he has not heard that Transparency International rates our nation-state as the most corrupt in the whole universe in the year 2000”.

Echoing these words of Justice Fabiyi from the year 2000, I assert that no Nigerian judge, no Nigerian lawyer today can claim that he or she has not heard that Nigeria is the only nation-state in the whole universe where interlocutory injunctions and stays of proceedings are applied in criminal cases – and only in criminal cases pertaining to looters and money launderers. Dear Mallam Malami, under your tenure as the AGF, will this anomalous distinction, this national badge of judicial aberration continue to apply to our country exclusively among all the countries in the world?

As I said, this will be a very brief note to you. For this reason, let me end on the following reflections around the currently raging controversy within the NBA concerning the implementation or conversely, non-implementation of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act of 2015 (ACJA). There is a deep division within the NBA on this question. Many radical and highly influential senior advocates have spoken out for the implementation of ACJA. Needless to say, I am on their side, as are indeed the vast majority of thinking, literate and patriotic Nigerians. But as indicated in the letter above to the NBA President, quite a number of senior advocates in the professional legal community have applauded the ruling of the Supreme Court that seemed to have killed or invalidated key provisions of ACJA. I am of course not a member of the NBA, but my guess is that for the most part, those who are struggling for the non-implementation of ACJA are those among the “SAN” elite of the legal profession who for a long time have been beneficiaries of the status quo that saw Nigeria emerge as the only country in the world where interlocutory appeals apply in criminal cases, the only country in the world where looters are far more successfully prosecuted abroad than in Nigeria itself for the same crimes. As the saying goes, charity begins at home. As the new AGF, you have no choice but to throw your weight behind the implementation of ACJA – if the Buhari administration hopes to convince the outside world that the legal battles against looters will be won, not only abroad but also at home.

May you find the wisdom, the astuteness and the courage to deal with this challenge!

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

December 6, 2015