Category: Idowu Akinlotan

By Idowu Akinlotan

Years of strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and repeated but broken agreements by the Nigerian government have done virtually nothing to reverse the worsening condition of Nigeria’s public universities. Forgive the pessimism, but conditions will continue to worsen in the universities until a government which knows what to do, and is willing to put its money where its mouth is, takes office. This government, like its predecessors, simply does not know how to set priorities. Education in Nigeria as a whole requires the declaration of an emergency. Instead, the government has peevishly and indifferently offered palliatives, citing arguments about declining national revenue. Nonsense. It’s a question of priorities.

The recent ASUU strike was ignited by the insistence of the federal government to pay university lecturers through a payroll system described as Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS). University teachers, already chafing under other disputes with the government relating to arrears in revitalisation funds to public universities and other germane issues, are adamant that the payroll system is inadequate and distortionary. The lecturers have suggested an alternative, the University Accountability and Transparency Solution (UTAS). But most commentators have sentimentally sided with the government, insisting that employees could not dictate how they are to be paid.

But of all the problem afflicting public universities, which still cater to most university students in Nigeria, is payroll system the biggest or most urgent? And for a responsible government, one which has repeatedly breached agreements with ASUU, should they not be wary of additional provocations? The public may be impatient with the lecturers, preferring that their children graduate from the universities no matter what, and at the earliest time, but there can be no ignoring the altruism of ASUU which has done a far better job than the government in recognising the decay in tertiary education and proffering more sensible solutions. ASUU may not always be right or even fair in the methods they choose to fight their cause, but they are seldom mistaken.

Rather than the nonsense about a new payroll system, the government should be engaged in finding the right formula and paradigm for public education, particularly tertiary education. The government still overregulates the public universities; it should think of giving them wings and allowing them to soar. It has funded the political system, bureaucracy and security system far more than the education sector; it must responsibly reorder its priorities to make Nigerian universities better funded, qualitative and more competitive. And after years of irresponsibly managing its disagreement with the universities, it is now time for the government to make new laws concerning the education of children of public officials in the three arms of government.

It is time for the executive branch to sponsor a bill that makes it mandatory for members of the three arms of government to educate their children not just in Nigeria but in public schools. Public officials have made silly remarks about education and health sectors in Nigeria because they always have the opportunity of overseas alternatives. It is time to completely bar them in order to find out whether they would remain as unperturbed about the issues constantly made disputatious by their casualness and rhetorical effrontery.

Millions of public university students, not to say millions more who are in the process of being admitted into the universities, may lose a session if the dispute between the government and ASUU persists. The government dishonestly puts the blame on ASUU, and most Nigerians unwisely acquiesce. The Buhari presidency has been described as the most divisive Nigeria has ever seen. It is hard to fault that conclusion. But the government is also seen as more adroitly sowing the seeds of future explosions than any government before it. The EndSARS protest may in fact just be a foretaste of future explosions if the government does not quickly resolve the needless crisis it has ignorantly birthed.

By Idowu Akinlotan

The lack of definable leadership for last month’s EndSARS protest did not just make it difficult for the authorities to bribe or intimidate the inspirers of the protest, as some of the youths claimed on social media, it also made it possible for most of the youths to evade responsibility for the shortcomings of the protest. One of those shortcomings was not knowing when to call off the protests, a failing that led to the violent subversion of the protests by sundry criminal elements and shadowy political figures with a grudge. In the end, according to police sources, some 73 people lost their lives, including 22 policemen, and scores of police stations burnt. The cost to business is in excess of trillions of naira, with Lagos alone losing about a trillion. All this because the youths lacked the leadership and judgement to bring an otherwise excellent protest to a timely end. It would be strange to repeat that error when next they take to the streets.

But there is an error, perhaps even two, in the making already. The youths may lack the humility to apologise for letting their protests be hijacked  and they bear direct and indirect responsibility whether they like it or not  but they cannot claim that hindsight has not taught them a lesson or two about how to start a war and finish it. As they cross the uneven and uncertain divide between youth and the elderly, a line obfuscated by culture and arbitrariness, they must now persuade themselves to see virtue in moderation and find ways of developing the uncanny ability to judge complex and interconnected issues. They must remind themselves about the peril of victory, especially a quick one delivered only a few days after kick-starting their protests, and the triumph of defeat, one alien to their campaigns. By now they must have sensed that victory and great triumphs do not mean noisy celebration but impose a far greater degree of responsibility.

The youths still proceed and speak as if no lessons have been learnt, or that the catastrophic consequences of their failings do not compel them to engage the future more cautiously and tentatively. They isolate the concessions won from the government as if those concessions have no implications for the concessions not won. They have said and done nothing about the deployment of twisted social media narratives that told lies without compulsion, projected horrifying tales of abuse that were either unreal or exaggerations, and fanned stories clearly designed to achieve political goals and slander tribes and individuals. How would future protests be safeguarded from these manipulations? The same social media had been of tremendous help in exposing the horrors perpetrated by anti-robbery squads and regular policemen, sometimes even under the noses of their divisional police superiors. But by fighting an unregulated war, decentralising protest leadership, and elongating and diffusing their demands, they unfortunately allowed a great campaign to be hijacked and bastardised, nearly to the point of watering down and diluting the achievements of the protest. Now, nothing is certain anymore beyond the threat of repeating the protest sometime in the future. But whether they will get converts like they attracted during the October protests, seeing that many children of the revolution also lost humongous sums to looters, is hard to say.

The youths are about to make another capital error. They seem prepared to veer into partisan politics instead of limiting themselves to activism connected with issues that transcend partisanship, tribe and religion. There is talk of setting up a political party, or organising youths to pressure political parties. Apart from the sentimental drivel about entrenching a dichotomy between youths and elders, an unwise and impracticable thing to do, including describing the elders as disgustingly acquiescent, the youths must become aware that they could never form a consensus against any party or coalesce to the last man around an ideology or platform. If the elders could not unite around a common platform, with some of the platforms distinctly ethnic or religious, why do youths think they could suddenly reach a consensus on platforms, candidates, and tangential issues like restructuring, rotation, presidentialism versus parliamentarianism, regionalism, etc.?

France’s Emmanuel Macron was not the product of a youth-led innovation in French politics. Nor was his movement, En Marche!, targeted against elders. It was both an ideological movement and a tantalising offer of newness away from the staidness of French politics. Besides, Mr Macron was a protégé of one of the dinosaurs of French politics, Jacques Chirac, and was a former minister who had been carefully groomed for leadership, including attending France’s highest policy institution, École nationale d’administration (National School of Public Administration) or Énarque. Mr Macron, a former member of the Socialist Party, was not a product of happenstance. Nor was his centrist movement, La République En Marche! (LREM), an arbitrary construct from a variegated French political milieu. Nigeria is unlikely to embrace any party simply because it is youth-led or designed to promote certain issues or even ideologies that resonate with youths. Instead, any youth bright enough to appreciate issues salient to Nigerian politics and society can enunciate his ideas and galvanise both young and old to create an unstoppable movement. Mr Macron did his own in about a year. It is not impossible to do it in two years in Nigeria, provided such a youth has the intellect and experience.

Promoters of the EndSARS protest will be unable to turn their activism into a movement, considering the baggage they have unhealthily allowed to bifurcate their action and pollute the protest’s essence and goals. They will need to look elsewhere. A better option is to eschew their nonsensical romance with promoting a party for the sole aim of taking power anytime soon. Surely they can’t be so impressionable and incurably romantic to think they could unite and take on the elders. Indeed, they give the impression that they are not properly grounded intellectually and emotionally to think that in a few months they could do what their phlegmatic elders could not do in more than 60 years. Instead of stumbling into politics which they are not prepared for, Nigerian youths, particularly in the EndSARS ‘movement’ should see the battle they started in 2017 and particularly on October 8, 2020 as an unfinished war. There are too many unresolved issues with police and law enforcement reform that need special attention and concentration. EndSARS should be turned into a pressure group to monitor the reform and ensure it does not miscarry.

Already, given the backlash over the killing of some 22 policemen, and especially because there was no massacre at the Lekki tollgate, there are indications that the country’s reactionary law enforcement and security system appears minded to frustrate changes needed to foster better security and stability for the country. There is doubt that given the country’s present structure, a better law enforcement and security system can be engendered. That doubt is justified. It will be hard to forge a workable police organisation and security system out of an unworkable political, social and economic patchwork. It won’t happen. So even before the youths began to be distracted, their original goal was endangered by the stultifying arrangement that has kept the country leprous and bedridden for decades. And without doing anything about Nigeria’s exploding population, the pressures of desertification, an extremely gross economic dependency system, and an overweight and futile system of government, the country as well as EndSARS activists will be fooling themselves.

In the midst of all this, it would be stupefying for the youths to think their modest and badly mismanaged EndSARS protest success can be quickly transformed into something enduring and remarkable. The rot goes far deeper, and is innately systemic and implacable. It is a monstrosity that requires years of single-minded focus, brilliance and occasional protests to undo. But it is also a campaign that cannot be successfully prosecuted by a leaderless pressure group probably already enticed by the allure of political power, probably insensitive to the demand of the times, and wary of taking responsibility.

By Idowu Akinlotan

Instead of giving a statesmanlike insight into the EndSARS protest and violence that convulsed Nigeria early and middle of last month, former Ondo State governor and self-confessed Lagos opinion moulder, Bode George, chose in his October 26 statement on the crisis to fan the embers of the revolt that has cost the nation over 70 lives and trillions of naira in destruction of property. Chief George was never known for moderation and diplomacy. He, therefore, predictably chose to indulge the socialite part of his nature, completely avoiding a sensible and rational discussion of the causes and course of the EndSARS revolt. He also indicated why, like anything else, he has found it difficult to provide leadership in Lagos State and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) where he has sown so much acrimony as a party chieftain. At 74, Chief George is set in his ways. Little can be done to sway his manners, not to talk of assuage his resentment and bitterness.

The kernel of his EndSARS statement is that the protesters were reacting to one man’s provocation, and that man is his rival for the leadership and control of Lagos, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a former governor and national party leader of the All Progressives Congress. That Chief George nurses a long-standing grudge against the APC leader is understandable. He is at liberty to nurse the resentment, a right that cannot be denied him. He is even free to cast his own motives for Lagos as altruistic and irreproachable, and to cast other people’s motives as base and impure. He is free to say anything and play his politics the way he deems fit. In fact, regardless of what anyone thinks, he will probably nurse his now famous and explicit grudge against his main detractor till his dying day. But to reduce an obviously multifaceted protest to just one cause, especially when the protesters themselves were clear about their cause, is to be guilty of excessive simplicity. In his view, Lagos personified the protest because the state is not working, and the APC leader is the reason the state is not working. Complete with this syllogism, Chief George brazenly imbued the protest with his own meanings.

The protesters themselves never suggested in any way that Lagos was not working, nor did they say anything about the state’s leaders, past or present. They were clear about the main reason for their action, to wit, the brutality of the police special anti-robbery squad, aka SARS. Both in the first set of demands and the second, the protesters anchored their campaign on law enforcement anomalies and paradoxes. It was, therefore, not difficult for the country to embrace the protest. It is true that for inexplicable reasons the protesters expanded their action to include good governance and other related issues, but they were neither explicit about which party exemplified bad governance nor did they speak directly or even obliquely about Lagos. They were young, but they were not irrational. They were smart enough to avoid the pitfall of becoming the noisy gong of any political party or vested interest.

But regardless of the caution exercised by the protesting youths, Chief George, without any proof, was sure that the youths meant to speak about, and draw attention, to Lagos. And it speaks to a secondary and contrived cause that at the end, with the protest hijacked, the violence and rhetoric were directed at individuals and institutions in Lagos State. It should not be too difficult for investigators to get to the bottom of the contrivances that drove the secondary cause into a major conflagration, especially given the trillions of naira lost to an inferno obviously triggered and orchestrated by vested interests. In his tortuous and unsuccessful effort to redirect the protest, Chief George also inspired many palpable untruths.

Three examples will suffice from Chief George’s tendentious statement: (a) “Our system is not working. Our ethos and norms have broken down. The structures of power are hindering merit and excellence. It is this very anomaly which is much pronounced in Lagos state than any other part of our nation that galvanized the EndSARS protests.” (b) “At the Admiralty Circle tollgate specifically where bullets rained on that black Tuesday 20- 10-2020, a monument should be erected as a permanent memorial to honour the young men and women who stood up in peaceful protests against the ills in our society.” And (c) “Questions: who ordered that the lights be switched off before the killer squads came? Who ordered the removal of all the cameras from the tollgate?”

It is not only a lie that Lagos typifies the anomaly of bad governance which Chief George spoke about, for Lagos has more than any other state emblematised development and innovation, it is also shocking that he mouths the patent untruth of tollgate massacre, and reiterates the falsehood of tollgate camera removal. It is even more sickening that anyone, let alone someone who confesses to be an original Lagosian, would justify the massive and deliberate destruction of Lagos landmarks. Clearly, the protest was not just hijacked by hoodlums, as is commonly said, but by an army of destroyers directed to both vandalise Lagos and instigate a revolt against certain individuals and the ruling party. Chief George has never been able to unite and galvanise his party, the PDP. Unable to achieve that aim using legitimate political means, and having provided appalling leadership to his incensed and obdurate party members, he has embraced the nihilistic option of using the EndSARS protest to foist a violent change. But the cost to Lagos is astronomical, a cost the PDP chieftain has seemed to gloss over, exult in and, sadly and alarmingly, justify.

The PDP has the free space and level playing field to challenge the All Progressives Congress (APC) dominance of Lagos politics. That the opposition has been unable to give teeth to that challenge is more a testament to the rancour within the opposition party and the incompetence, insularity and venality of Chief George. Rather than describe a different spirit and trajectory for Lagos, rather than take issue with those who set fire to Lagos, and rather than inspire his party to anchor and personify that legitimate and noble ambition of improving Lagos, Chief George has been maniacally and destructively obsessed with his rivals. He will not stop now or ever. Age has clearly not brought him the fine temper, reflection and moderation of a diplomat and sage; it has instead deepened his resentment, worsened his mendacity, and amplified his truculent rage. Lagos must count itself fortunate that the PDP under the bitter influence of Chief George has not had the opportunity to desecrate and truncate the state’s developmental strides. Until opposition leaders get rid of the bitter old politician, their electoral hopes will remain a mirage.

By Idowu Akinlotan

It is unlikely that EndSARS protesters or the government ever envisaged the intensity and tenacity of the protests convulsing many states in Nigeria over poor and repressive policing methods calcified by decades of misrule. In the past few years, as the repression worsened and policing decayed, and insecurity became unmanageable, the government had enough time to anticipate a crisis of confidence between the government and the people, a crisis capable of truncating democracy, instigating chaos, and even fracturing the country. But there was no anticipation. Worse, when the protests began, perhaps inauspiciously and inchoately, the government thought that a few timely concessions would mitigate the discontent against the police. Bucking the trend, however, and surprising themselves even, the mainly youth-led protests have displayed maturity and organisation fired by modern gadgets, and lasting much longer than anyone ever guessed practicable. Nigerian youths have seemed to come of age.

For more than two weeks, the protests have demonstrated staying power and won significant concessions, including the dissolution of the hated anti-robbery unit, Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). Though the protesters, whose age group is expanding as their demands have become elastic, have surprised themselves and the world, and are gradually widening the focus of their action, the government has contrastingly exhibited confusion, panic and, even in the flurry of their concessions, incompetence. It became clear that as the protests lingered something tragic about governance in Nigeria was unearthed. Four times or so, SARS had been tinkered with on account of the squad’s blatant excesses and the people’s very audible groans. But four times and more, the squad had become even more flagrantly repressive, cocky about extrajudicial killings, and acted clearly above the law and the constitution. That the government and law enforcement were unresponsive to the anguished cries of the people is a reflection on their incompetence even more than their irresponsibility.

Now, the country has come to a sorry pass. And questions are being asked about just how the Nigerian government and the presidency are structured. The Muhammadu Buhari presidency has seemed to respond very quickly and uncharacteristically to the protesters’ demands, regardless of the continuing expansion of the list of grievances, but there has been neither convincing understanding of the dynamics of the revolt nor coherence of action and policies. Last week, this column addressed the beginnings of the EndSARS protests and concluded that changes would be artificial until the deeper structural problems afflicting the country were resolved. That conclusion still stands. For amid the welter of concessions, especially given the nature of Nigerian democracy and the cultural and political underpinnings of the country, change and reform would probably never be far-reaching enough.

The government had more than a four-year head-start to do something comprehensive about SARS after Amnesty International focused disturbing attention on it in 2016. But unable to draw a line between the unit’s acceptance in many northern states and its egregious and homicidal tendencies in most southern states, the government simply pussyfooted. This inability was a failure of governance and, more accurately, a reflection of the quality and empathy of the leaders. SARS began fairly well in 1992; but it soon morphed into a monstrous apparatus of repression, state murder and extortion. The danger is that as many states in the northern part of the country voice their support for SARS on account of their problems with banditry, thereby faintly painting the protest in ethnic and regional colours, the government may be tempted to embrace strong-arm measures to restore order to the streets. Northern governors have qualifiedly endorsed SARS, asking only for some tinkering with the police unit. Whatever judicial panels they set up will thus find little or nothing against the squad. Southern governors on the other hand, whose indigenes have borne the brunt of the squad’s atrocities, have insisted on radical change in policing even after the SARS proscription. If the protest does not end soon, a deeper polarisation may be exposed that is certain to complicate the effort to forge a great and stable country where justice drives life and politics.

The options available to the government to bring the ballooning protests to an amicable but just end are severely limited. The problem is beguilingly simple, but the solution is not so easy. They could wait it out and hope that the protesters will exhaust themselves as the government begins to implement all the reforms desperately enunciated last week. The country’s economic condition is in a precarious state that it is unlikely to enable a long revolt, especially as schoolchildren return to school this week and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) theoretically reaches an agreement with the government. If nobody does anything stupid to provoke the other, the combatants may soon declare victory and move on. After all, the protest has been largely successful.

But there is also the option of military deployment to disperse the crowd. If the government considers this measure, they will have to throw this dice with the bravado and bluff of a poker player, and gamble that the crowd would melt before the overwhelming force of the military. So far, according to some reports, the government has resisted this option, fearing that unlike the genocidal state violence against Shiites that led to the killing of hundreds of sect members, killing a few protesting youths, many of them students, may potentially become an incendiary that would cause a major conflagration, render the Nigerian government a pariah, and expose military leaders and their families to global sanctions. They would be extremely courageous to embrace this option holistically. If at all, they might embrace the option in a modified form by forcing the roads and highways open and leaving the protesters to go on with their demonstrations, feastings and carnivals. They would, however, require the most exquisite balancing act, which they are not reputed to possess, to pull this option through without any miscarriage.

The bigger onus rests with the Buhari presidency to dig deep and find the magic wand to outlast and outmanoeuvre the protesters, many of them gifted techies even by global standards, most of them having nothing to lose, and nearly all of them surprised by just how effectively they have organised their revolt and achieved phenomenal success in a few dizzying weeks. The presidency has been gobsmacked by the swiftness and suddenness of the revolt, and are unsure whether the protest is spontaneous or sponsored, but it is nevertheless deeply alarmed. It fears that if its response is mismanaged, the protest could spiral out of hand and lead to an overthrow of the ancien regime, a goal seemingly not too far out of reach as the youths expand their demands from five to seven. The protesters have suddenly begun to realize that the old patrician order of governance, upon which the Nigerian government has rested for decades, particularly under military rule, is both untenable and unsustainable.

In particular, the Buhari presidency may already be experiencing an epiphany that opens their eyes to the provocativeness and dysfunctionality of their many insular policies such as the Water Resources Bill, prejudiced grazing routes and rights policies, inappropriately nicknamed RUGA, and skewed security appointments. Indeed, if they are smart, they should also begin to see how fortuitously the protests have nudged them back to the path of governmental rectitude which a federal structure presupposes. The Buhari presidency will probably survive this protest if it does not do anything rash and bloody, not because it is likely to project the kind of wisdom the country pines for, wisdom it had both resented and scorned, but because of the complex and counterbalancing ethnic and political configurations of the country.

On their part, the youths may have grown up almost overnight, but the new power they have just tasted imposes more responsibility on them than they realize or are probably ready to shoulder. It is not clear why they are expanding their demands so capriciously, from a five-point demand to a seven-point demand, especially as they sense the government’s dilatoriness and weakness. But having been on the receiving end of police brutality and governmental impunity for decades, and having been constantly short-changed and wrong-footed for the better part of their lives, it may make sense to them to wring as many concessions as they can from a government they have dismissed as sightless and witless. But they must know that because the revolt is virtually leaderless and depends almost wholly on the unanimity haphazardly wrought from the social media, they stand the risk of overreaching themselves and unable to end a war they started so brilliantly.

Worse, because the EndSARS protest is leaderless, it is not impossible, as is already becoming evident, that some actors may unwisely be sponsoring and insinuating political agenda into the protests. If the protesters are unable to guard the sanctity of what began as a revolt against essentially law enforcement atrocities, the focus of the protest could become distorted and its objectives compromised. They seem sure this scenario is far-fetched. But it is not. Without a leader or group of leaders, they must now walk a tightrope of not making themselves available to be used to fight either the PDP or APC or any cause remotely partisan, whether overtly or covertly. The protesters themselves are spread across political parties. Given the dynamics of the protests and the difficulty involved in divorcing the cause of the protests from politics, it is not entirely assured that if the protests linger for a little longer, their objectives would not be stealthily compromised.

Already, many northern states have indicated that while they sympathise with the protests in the south and denounce law enforcement excesses, their priority is not the abrogation of SARS. Their priority is to end insecurity, and they think that regardless of what the south believes, SARS is indispensable to ending that menace. By widening their demands from five (#5for5) to seven, thereby including grievances that involved political and legislative issues, the brains behind the EndSARS protest risk diluting their objectives and opening a chasm between them and their northern compatriots. It is a dangerous opening the government may soon exploit to maximum effect. The socio-political aspects of the protest, which is improperly couched as a campaign for good governance or #7for7, is essentially a long-standing problem intrinsic to the founding of Nigeria. If the founding fathers had a tough time forging a consensus among themselves on these issues, and successive governments and national legislative assemblies similarly failed, it is risky for the EndSARS protesters to imagine a few weeks would be more than enough to birth a great society to deliver on (a) Institutional reforms (security); (b) Cost of governance; (c) constitutional reform; (d) Education reform; (e) Health reform; (f) Youth development reform; (g) Public office reform.

As noble as these objectives are, it is an unwise dilution, of what is otherwise a great and impactful protest, to seek other social and political objectives from the ongoing revolt. The SARS menace was and still remains very real and alarming. The victims of police brutality and impunity are in their thousands. Some were maimed, some were raped, some had their lives either terminated extrajudicially or their livelihoods completely destroyed, and others were victims of horrendous injustice, so barbarous and so heinous that it is shocking a police establishment either indulged in these crimes or connived at them. The protest should be about these crimes against humanity, about exposing the police leadership structure that enabled these atrocities, and about how and why the government turned a deaf ear to the groanings and wailings of victims.

These goals, including tangential law enforcement issues, are achievable and are tantalisingly within reach if the protesters do not wander off into realms that will inevitably pit one part of the country against another, invariably divide the people along existing fault lines, lend the government an excuse to shirk its responsibility and falsely claim to be fighting for national unity, and give the romantic impression that decades of political injustice can be corrected with a few weeks of protests. That the protesters have won significant concessions does not also mean that their methods, particularly of shutting down major highways, have been welcomed or embraced by a majority of Nigerians.

However, Nigerians must be pleasantly surprised that a government that has seemed so sanctimonious and aloof, one that is sometimes lacking in empathy and decisiveness, can be rattled so easily and compelled to listen and make swift concessions. Much more, the country may now be assured that their youths, previously thought to be docile, have an admirable worldview, can call their souls their own, and can indeed be trusted to risk everything in defence of what they believe. But it remains to be seen how, after the protests, Nigeria will produce a much saner and ethical law enforcement organisation when the country itself remains unstructured, chaotic and unethical, and when the military, by presumptuously and needlessly issuing a statement on the protests last week, seems so embarrassingly ignorant of its role and place in a democracy.

It also remains to be seen whether this government or any succeeding government has learnt any lessons from the revolt, particularly in respect of the youths it has failed to educate properly and plan for. To curb the frustrations and alienation many Nigerians feel today, particularly among the youths whose participation in the ongoing protests is a logical progression from their state of helplessness and hopelessness, the quality of Nigerian leaders must be much higher than it is. But ultimately, the responsibility of putting competent leaders in office rests on the protesters and the people themselves, a task they cannot complete in one protest, given the country’s ethnic and religious variegation, but must keep working on if their society is not to disintegrate or fail altogether sometime later.

Idowu Akinlotan

The EndSARS protests have galvanised Nigerian youths in a way nothing has been able to do in many years, being far more vigorous and pertinent than the protests organised by Nigeria’s quibbling labour unions, and not lacking in conviction either. The protests are desirable. More than any age group, Nigerian youths have been at the receiving end of the misdeeds of police officers and security agencies, some of whom presumptuously set themselves up as guardians of youth cultures and mores. EndSARS protests are in many ways a desperate but sensible bid by Nigerian youths to reclaim their lives and the freedoms accorded them by the constitution. The past few days of protests against the criminality and high-handedness of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a federal police unit set up to combat specific violent crimes, is a reminder of the need to urgently deal with a problem that had been allowed to fester.

SARS had so morphed into an oppressive and criminal organ that its reputation for indiscriminateness and fierceness obviously led many Nigerians, particularly youths, to ask for its total disbandment. For years young Nigerians had complained about its misguided methods, the insane overreach of many of its uncontrollable personnel, and the shocking reluctance of senior officers to either fundamentally restructure the unit’s operations or put a lid on infractions by errant personnel. In fact, the protests have been far more orderly and tame than the abhorrent situation demands. Protesters have demonstrated few excesses, despite the foolish murder of a policeman in Delta State, and far fewer disruptions to civic life, unlike the terrible price SARS personnel have exacted from the public, particularly from youths. Senior police officers and the federal government could not claim to be ignorant of SARS excesses. But they tinkered with the unit, treated offenders with kid gloves, held the constitution in contempt, and generally took the people for granted. The protests are, therefore, justified and desirable to draw attention to a cancerous problem.

Gradually, however, the intensity and vibrancy of the protests are leading the government into dilatory and obfuscatory responses. SARS should be scrapped in its entirety, said most protesters. It is impossible for the unit to be disbanded, replied senior police officers, for it could lead robbers and violent criminals to run riot. The neutral, apart from calling for some form of restructuring of the unit, worry that even if the unit was disbanded and a new one set up, or if it was restructured, the leadership and culture of the police as an establishment would still reflect on whatever unit inherits the warped setup of SARS, regardless of whatever name it is called. In all probability, SARS will be somewhat restructured, renamed, retrained and to some extent retooled. But there will be no fundamental change in policing in Nigeria, for the environment in which the police operate, not to say the culture inculcated in them decades ago, remain essentially ossified. The protesters will achieve a measure of success, and be even better informed about their rights and the boundaries of the police and all other law enforcement agencies, but the disused and anarchic overall framework of policing will remain fundamentally unchanged, indeed unaffected by public protests and official responses.

Whichever unit will absorb the devolved responsibilities of SARS, be they the regular policemen, will inescapably operate within the reigning police culture. That culture had been sculpted by decades of poor wages, poor equipment, misdirected training, low funding, and untenable unified national structure and control. Neither the police as a whole nor a reconstituted SARS can or will perform any miracle. Some policemen will still function professionally, but a whole lot more will function unprofessionally. The forces at play are larger than they are, and are largely out of their control. Even if the Inspector General of Police (IGP) were to be a brilliant and innovative leader passionate about and committed to change in policing, he would still run smack into the national obstacles and cultural and conventional gridlocks produced by years of decay and inattention to operational matters. President Muhammadu Buhari summoned the IGP on Friday and mandated him to heed the calls of the people and impose more discipline on his officers. It goes beyond that, assuming the police brass needed to be nudged. The president should have his own vision of what kind of police he believes Nigeria merits. So far, neither he nor the IGP has produced any vision or attempted any fundamental change. Nor can they, even if they want to, given the stultifying structure of the country.

The EndSARS protests are a bold initiative inspired by youths. The country must applaud their tenacity and courage, especially in the face of many timid governors some of whom, in so-called progressive states, made curious efforts to undermine any kind of protests. However, the problem of policing Nigeria is so deep and fundamental that it is inextricably woven into the distorted and unworkable structure of the country. The bare truth is that the federal government simply does not have the administrative depth, funds, sensitivity, and flexibility to manage a unified police structure. Indeed, without state financial help, most, if not all, police commands would have collapsed. This dysfunctional unitary structure does not hamstring only the law enforcement agencies; it also affects every other thing. It is time to bow to reality, restructure the country, enable the law enforcement agencies regain their professional pride and carry out their functions as envisaged, and pacify a country convulsed by insecurity.

It is not only the Buhari presidency that has stubbornly stuck to a worn-out structure. Past administrations also had a notorious and romantic notion of the value of a unified police structure, one grandly controlled from Abuja but with inadequate funding and tools, one in which every self-important rascal feels entitled to a police orderly while staffing of the Force is dangerously rendered lean and policemen are compromised. A unified police establishment massages the ego of the president; but it is impractical and damaging to the health and sustenance of the polity. Insecurity is multiplying, and has become ubiquitous. And there are no clearly enunciated and coherent initiatives to curb the descent to chaos. The country must discontinue years of tinkering with the police; it is time to embrace fundamental restructuring in order to tackle the problems from the roots. After all, the problem transcends malfeasant officers, as the president erroneously imagines. The problem also touches gravely on the structure of the police as well as the structure of the country.

If the presidency is not already alarmed about the organisation and execution of the EndSARS protests, then it is quite incapable of reading the signals of the times, and poorer still at drawing the right lessons at a time the country is teetering on the brink of chaos. The protests reflect not only desperation by youths to regain control of their lives, they also indicate their readiness to sacrifice their lives after being disgraced, humiliated, oppressed and despised for so long. They recognise how for years the state had unconstitutionally denied them their rights to protest and had murdered some of them who defy the unconstitutional strictures erected by autocratic governments. Now, they have seized their constitutional rights and will indulge it from time to time, sometimes measurably and sometimes inappropriately. More than anything else, they are signalling the end of Nigeria’s presidential monarchy, and together with the global shift in the tone and tenor of protests, are determined to take their destinies in their hands. If they sustain this newfound culture for a little longer, and do not succumb to the terror, seductions and blandishments of the elite and the government, they may be able to channel their intense anger and frustrations to more productive electoral enterprises.

The protests also open other vistas and possibilities for a discerning and highly enlightened government to explore and exploit. They indicate that it is time for a really democratic government to help nurture, structure, and inspire a new culture of protests that would circumscribe violence and unleash the zeal and knowledge needed to birth great ideas and movements. Protests left completely untrammelled by ethical boundaries can also be a double-edged sword, cutting both ways, retaining the ability to produce and demolish, and creating good as well as inspiring bad. Now, more than ever, the nation needs leaders who can gaze into the future and tell the country what they see, leaders who have been to the mountaintop and have seen the promised land, leaders who, regardless of their religion and ethnic affiliation, have the courage of their convictions to seize the moment and burnish Nigeria to reveal its true lustre.

Idowu Akinlotan

This column endorsed Osagie Ize-Iyamu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), for the September 19 Edo governorship election. Though it was not clear he could win the race, given his party’s unresponsiveness to the campaign mantra of his opponent, Godwin Obaseki of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the column still had no hesitation in endorsing his candidacy. He would be democratic, balanced, run a more inclusive government, conduct himself as a robust party member, and have a better sense of perspective. Mr Obaseki, this column argued then, and still believes, was on the contrary aloof, insular, autocratic, and despite his so-called technocratic background, generally unreflective, judgemental and incapable of the solemnity and gravitas the governorship of Edo demands and deserves. He will not change, especially not now that he exults in the controversial triumphalism that had seen him ride roughshod over his vanquished opponents, most of them his betters.

The omens were never really too good for Mr Ize-Iyamu, leading to this column’s refusal to hazard an educated guess on who would win the poll. It was desirable to have the APC candidate win, the column thought, but Mr Obaseki always looked like he would clinch it. In the end, the incumbent, who defected to the PDP shortly before the poll, won by a handsome and incontrovertible margin. Litigating the poll directly will be wasteful. Edo North senatorial district was in recent times always an APC stronghold. The party won by a wafer thin ratio of 5:4. Edo Central was always a PDP stronghold. The PDP won by a healthy of 2:1. Edo South, where both candidates come from, and was expected to be shared evenly at worse, was also won handsomely by Obaseki by a ratio of 2:1. More specifically, in Orhionmwon local government where Mr Ize-Iyamu hails from, Mr Obaseki won by a ratio of 13:10. And in Mr Obaseki’s local government of Oredo, the APC candidate lost by a ratio of 3:7.

The rout was effective and complete. But beneath the surface, a number of unsettling facts and truths vitiate the completeness and sanctity of the votes, chief among which was the problematic and damning issue of voter turnout. Some 2.2 million people registered to vote in Edo. In the September 19 governorship election, only 13.93 percent actually voted. Computed against the population of Edo State estimated to be about some 5 million people, the percentage of actual voters was a miserable 6.16. Whichever way it is considered, and regardless of the inviolability of that balloting exercise, Mr Obaseki’s electoral legitimacy, just as it would have been for his rival had the APC man won, is insignificant and questionable. This damning paltriness probably reflects many underlying issues of concern such as the lack of enthusiasm for the candidates, especially the incumbent, their controversial, uninspiring and crisis-ridden political parties, and the general dissatisfaction with the country’s economic, social and political circumstances.

Many analysts have struggled to make accurate sense of the Edo vote. It is significant that of the many analyses of the vote, few actually credit Mr Obaseki for his victory. They know that not only was the number of votes that fetched him victory inconsiderable, it was also more a reflection of the antipathy many Edo voters felt for his opponent and the enthusiasts that gave him succour. Consequently, analysts have tended to explain why Mr Ize-Iyamu and the APC lost than rationalise why Mr Obaseki and the PDP won. First, they know for sure that there is no settling the precedence between the PDP and the APC, for both parties are two sides of a counterfeit coin. Then they also understand that Mr Obaseki himself is ordinary, uncharismatic, full of bombast and, despite early promise, quite incapable of governing anything, let alone a state, on a scale that matches his dull rhetoric. So, why did the APC lose the poll, and why was Mr Ize-Iyamu unable to lift himself and his political party, not to say forge a consensus that would persuade an otherwise angry and distrusting electorate?

Many reasons have been adduced. First was the godfather complex that stoked the resentment and suspicion of the Edo electorate. Closely leashed with this are the roles played by Adams Oshiomhole, former national chairman of the party, and Bola Tinubu, the party’s putative national leader. Months before the fateful poll, an election widely expected to define the political future of Mr Oshiomhole and other APC leaders, Mr Obaseki had themed his ambition as one dedicated to fighting the state’s godfathers, which he claimed the former party chairman personified. Sensing how powerfully the theme resonated, the governor and the PDP extended that campaign to Asiwaju Tinubu, and then wove the extraordinary campaign corollary of Edo no be Lagos (Edo is not an extension of Lagos). The corollary grabbed more attention when the APC national leader broadcast a video message admonishing Edo voters to repudiate Mr Obaseki for his anti-democratic activities. The video message has been widely condemned both for its timing and content. This is an exaggeration. The content was succinct and apposite, hinging on the governor’s unrestrained autocratic predilection, and suggesting to Edo that re-electing Mr Obaseki would subvert the state’s drive for a civic culture. The video’s problem was not its content; that content would sell any day, anytime, but perhaps elsewhere. For Edo, and given the perniciousness of the campaign afoot, the video suffered from inappropriate timing.

This column can only hazard a few guesses as to why the video message was broadcast. An illiberal atmosphere has taken over Nigeria, and the gains of democracy are being rolled back, relentlessly and remorselessly, first and most injuriously at the federal level where something akin to fascism is taking root, and second at the state level, in Kogi, Kaduna, Ekiti, Imo, Kano, Zamfara, and elsewhere where atrocious laws and edicts are being enacted to circumscribe the rights of the people and flagrantly subvert the constitution. Edo under Mr Obaseki has teetered dangerously under draconian and fascist state-inspired actions for more than a year. Asiwaju Tinubu has sometimes, and probably even often, seen himself as the party’s sentinel and philosopher to safeguard and implement constitutional order. His methods may reek of the godfather complex, but as his records show, he has been far more reflective and tolerant. Unfortunately, by failing to stoop to conquer in Edo, he has been cited as a factor in the loss of Edo to the PDP.

But with or without the Tinubu video message, the APC would still have lost Edo, not just because of Mr Oshiomhole’s sometimes execrable, impatient and obtruding style, but because many other negative factors were triggered at the highest level of the party to doom its chances. Months before the Edo poll was the wrongest time to overthrow their party chairman. But the APC, deploying the deplorable and unlawful tactics used so effectively to remove unwanted top public officials, inspired a number of legal and political chicaneries to disarm Mr Oshiomhole, before President Muhammadu Buhari delivered the coup de grace. The APC campaign needed the unity of the party and the involvement of the highest echelons of the federal government in the campaign. But they were instead echeloned in the wrong direction, stood disdainfully aloof, did not mobilise the resources needed by the party, refused to rein in obstreperous and divisive APC governors deliberately working against the party in Edo, and left the nuisance for Messrs Oshiomhole and Ize-Iyamu to pick up. The party’s top hats were not just willing to lose Edo, having denoted victory in that poll as a plus for the hated Mr Oshiomhole and Asiwaju Tinubu, they were also even eager to smother it should Mr Obaseki prove unequal to the task.

Apart from orphaning the Edo APC during the campaigns, with the state chapter already positioned to be prised loose from the grips of the Oshiomhole forces, a second factor, the politics of 2023, has been adduced for the APC loss. Some APC governors, including former governors, openly hoped for the PDP victory and worked for it, not minding that it would be counterproductive in the future. They were the same men who helped unhorse Mr Oshiomhole on account of 2023, and regarded Mr Ize-Iyamu as illegitimate. In the months ahead, they are prepared to fight to regain control of the party in the extraordinary convention later this year or early next year. They reason that no outsider could win the presidential primary without controlling the party’s leadership. They cite a number of precedents, locally and internationally. Judging from the detached disposition of the president to the campaign, his feigned neutrality, and his spontaneous offer of congratulations to Mr Obaseki, he seemed to have either been won over to the rebel column or was himself naturally inclined to fostering a succession agenda inimical to the one allegedly represented by  Mr Oshiomhole. At least, since the dethronement of the former APC chairman, the president has seemed to have a different, cynical and covert game plan.

More and more, the president is gradually showing his hands regarding the subject of succession. There are fears he might extend his reign. He will not, almost because he cannot. But he will be interested in who succeeds him, an interest that is now carefully and conspiratorially unfurling before the country. His minders, aka cabal, are incontrovertibly interested. It is increasingly likely that they want someone they can trust, someone who will dance to their tune, and being conservatives themselves in the garb of progressives, someone who will not create a new and radical template for the country’s body politic. Perish legacy. These interests influenced their scathing attitude to Mr Oshiomhole and all he stood for. Nearly all former Nigerian rulers who showed interest in their successors backed uncontroversial, incompetent and hesitant candidates, with the clear resolve to foist them on the country. That template is unlikely to change with President Buhari. But it is a diseased template certain to reinforce Nigeria’s retrogression or, worse, inspire and entrench fascism.

History’s lessons are lost on Nigerian rulers. Careless and unintelligent handling of succession has doomed many world empires, despite the fact that dynasties and monarchies, more than democracies, tend to be more effective in producing effective and competent successors. Indeed as many advanced and supposedly settled democracies are showing, democracy does not always or even guarantee peace, stability and constitutional rule, including in countries with strong institutions. Despite the solid foundation laid for their empires, Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire and Suleiman the Magnificent’s Ottoman Empire eventually collapsed because of ineffective successors. Nigeria has not had a solid foundation, and President Buhari, like ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, has neither acquired the philosophical grasp needed for the founding of great nations and empires nor demonstrated the discipline, vision and depth needed to produce competent and visionary successors. In making sickly Augustus his legatee, Julius Caesar showed unusual, almost spiritual and intuitive grasp of the fundamentals of empire building and statesmanship. President Buhari has not shown that grasp, and he seems fated to repeat the abominable mistakes his predecessors made. No matter the gloss put on the Edo governorship poll, it is a premonition of the coming presidential bout, assuming the party can even forestall the possibility of fracturing before or during its coming conventions and primaries.

Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State mentions a third factor responsible for the Obaseki/PDP victory. The threatened visa ban on election riggers by the United States was, to him, a restraining influence on the APC, as if historically the party had a monopoly on rigging polls. In the face of INEC’s improvements, particularly the quick and decentralised transmission of results by electronic means, the governor unreflectively discountenanced INEC and exaggerated the paternalistic and meddlesome threats of countries which are themselves battling with their own developing existential and democratic threats. To accord relevance and weight to the visa ban threat, as Mr Wike and a number of analysts have done, is a manifestation of the inferiority complex that still colours and constrains the worldview of Nigerians. It was thought that the US had long advanced to a civic culture and had settled its national question. The presidency of Donald Trump has shown clearly that no nation is above unravelling; nor should Nigeria supinely succumb to dictation, meddlesomeness and threats.

Mr Oshiomhole may have approached the Obaseki affair with characteristic impatience, but his commitment to the party since he assumed office as chairman, not to say his perceptible ideological effort to position the APC as an organised and disciplined party must be acknowledged and lauded. That he appears to be the biggest loser must not discourage him from retaining interest in the party and in politics. He will bounce back long after APC governors who worked against the party’s ticket have fizzled out. Asiwaju Tinubu has been excoriated on social media over the Edo loss, much of the criticisms inspired by fratricidal and regicidal Southwest leaders and people. But he was right to show interest in the Edo poll, considering how the APC had virtually orphaned the Ize-Iyamu ticket and isolated Mr Oshiomhole for humiliation. Had President Buhari shown leadership, disciplined the errant governors who worked against the APC in Edo, marshalled resources and led the fight against the PDP on September 19, the outcome would have been vastly different. The president refused to see the poll as a plebiscite on his presidency, and chose instead to emasculate the Edo APC ticket in the furtherance of the ill-advised putsch he embraced against Mr Oshiomhole, thus prompting Asiwaju Tinubu to take on the almost suicidal role of championing the cause of Mr Ize-Iyamu and the APC in Edo.

The APC national leader’s video broadcast may be wrongly timed, but it took courage for him to do what he did considering that the election was already lost anyway. Edo may not be Lagos, but it takes mischief to attempt to ridicule the achievements of a state that has become evidently the country’s pacesetter in development and democracy, and dismiss it as the preserve of a godfather despite the existence of many unrestrained political parties in the state. As Singapore has shown, there are many political arrangements and structures that facilitate development: Western-type democracy, which is now upended by Mr Trump, or patrician and closely regulated democracy that, like China, limits rights but delivers on development and high standard of living. Lagos has nothing to apologise for. If Edo wrongly and sentimentally viewed Mr Oshiomhole’s passion for good governance and democracy in the state as the meddlesomeness of a godfather, and Lagos as the wrong example to follow, the problem is neither the former APC chairman nor Asiwaju Tinubu, nor yet the incomparable Lagos which serves as a magnet for wealth dreamers, but the short-sightedness afflicting the autocratic Mr Obaseki, the hysterical Mr Wike, and the bewildered six percent who dreamily re-elected their governor and shot themselves in the feet.