The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

Any hope for marriages?

THE breakdown of songstress Tiwa Savage and her manager Tunji Balogun’s marriage kept the media engrossed for the better part of two weeks. It was, however, just one more failure in a long and widening line of celebrities’ broken marriages. Distressed marriage, or its more final variant, divorce, is of course not a staple of celebrities alone. You don’t have to be famous, live in poor countries, or reside in a developing or underdeveloped democracy to divorce. Virtually the same reasons that predispose the rich and famous and the bond and free to divorce apply among the poor and dispossessed as well as among those living in democracies and under dictatorships. Indeed, divorce is fast becoming the leitmotif of humanity.

Nigeria, for which this column can speak a little authoritatively, has found coping mechanisms for distress in marriage. From culture that frowns more at a divorced but sometimes innocent and decent woman and rhapsodises a coarse and brutish philanderer, to the law itself which is loth at every stage to weigh in with expert ideas and sensible interventions, and on to the admissibility of harems either through religion or native law and custom, it is all but guaranteed that there may never be a reliable statistics of broken marriages in Nigeria. But for many other countries outside Africa, statistics show that the marriage institution is under grave threats. More than half or two-thirds of marriages end in divorce in many developed countries, with Russia topping the list by some estimates.

So, whether Nigerians are shocked by the reasons Ms Savage gave for the collapse of her less than two years old marriage or not, or whether they frown at the seeming irresponsibility and childish tantrums of Mr Balogun or not, there is nothing extraordinary about their inability to sustain their marriage beyond a few beggarly years. They have laundered their dirty linens too openly for the relationship to heal. As most newspapers yesterday showed through copious reporting of celebrities’ failed marriages, that special group of entertainers has a difficult task keeping their marriages going. Not only do they wed in public glare, they are literally performing marital duties, down to its salacious contents, in pure and censorious daylight. And when the crash comes, thanks to an undifferentiating and lascivious social media feasting on their stories and lusting for blood and tragedy, the fall is often mighty and irredeemable.

This column has no interest in examining why Ms Savage and Mr Balogun’s marriage collapsed. It is a needless exercise. The damage is already done, and no celebrity, let alone an anonymous commoner, will learn any lesson. Were that possible, every celebrity would learn to pick and choose well after examining the grief a colleague came to. Indeed, how do you counsel someone who is by nature not reflective to reflect on a prospective partner? How do you advise someone whose testosterone is racing, and who is determined to give free rein to that untethered, high-pitched momentum till his 70s, to avoid a prudish lady of high breeding who has mastered her own desires? How do you prod an irreligious man whose every instinct and pore exudes polygamous fantasies to sustain a sedentary lifestyle revolving around one great and perhaps deep and professorial woman? The world is a fantastic pastiche of multiplicity and florid display of personalities. Success will always mix with failure, and evil with good, until utopia comes.

The marriage institution is today being redefined. In times past it could not exist except between a man and a woman. Now it has multiple and even legal and constitutional meanings. It is not yet known how far and wide the frontiers of marriage would be expanded; but perhaps in this generation, newer and more troubling definitions would become legally and constitutionally admissible. For the purpose of this piece, a traditional definition of marriage will be assumed. Furthermore, it will be assumed that a distinction between a peaceful or good marriage and a warring and unstable marriage exists. The unstable marriage may not always end in divorce if a spouse exhibits the forbearance needed to accommodate an unreasonable partner. But it is far better for a prospective couple to study each other beyond the surface to discover common grounds, common worldviews, and internal constitutions transcending the meretricious.

It is strange that the world seems oblivious of the danger constituted to the health of the community by dysfunctional marriages, whether in permanent instability, as seems the norm, or in regression to divorce. Whether the world likes it or not, the larger picture of politics or business is a reflection and projection of the smaller emblematic picture of marriage. The more dysfunctional families become, of which marriage is the cornerstone, the more the society becomes susceptible to vices and tyrannies of every kind. Scarred marriages leave lasting impact on nuclear and extended families, no matter how valiantly they attempt to transcend its troubling elements and consequences. Napoleon Bonaparte’s unrequited love for the hugely distracted Josephine was a factor in his rule, leading in the opinion of this columnist to an attenuation of his policy brilliance and genius, and serving as a trigger for his frequent eruptions and tenuous family attachments. Joseph Stalin’s lack of family mooring bordering on disdain for his wife, Nadezheda Alliluyeva, whom he drove to distraction, given his impatience with her bipolar disorder, might explain a part of his misanthropy in the name of industrialisation, economic growth and empire building.

In contrast, the quietude enjoyed by Charles de Gaulle on the home front buoyed by the couple’s compatibility might also explain a significant part of the success he achieved as a leader and the composure with which he took principled stand at key junctures of his life and politics, including his characteristic brinkmanship. Winston Churchill’s achievements, largeness and lofty principles are difficult to comprehend outside his stable and effervescent marriage to a woman, Clementine, whom he described as complex and formidable, especially given both his general disposition to gamble his future on the throw of a dice and the depression that sometimes wracked him. The marriage angle to successful leadership and politics may require more study, but this column has always been intrigued by a noticeable correspondence between some degree of stability and complementarity on the home front and the successful enunciation of great and visionary ideas and implementation of great and impactful societal programmes. The point is that there is of course no direct correlation between a good marriage and great leadership, but a potentially great leadership may be derailed or undermined by unstable marriage.

But far more importantly, every prospective spouse has a responsibility to choose a partner well, whether he is into music, entertainment, politics or leadership. Peace of mind is irreplaceable. Complementarity is great and profound. And to choose well is to find a soul mate in the idealistic sense who is dead or indifferent to materialism, who is unfazed by a spouse’s achievements, who sees sex not in the unrealistic and hyperbolic sense the world now sees it but as an expression of closeness, warmth, friendship and bonding. Today, every medium — from radio to television as well as newspapers to Internet — promotes sex in the lurid, prurient and detached and casual sense, sustained by a cornucopia of pharmaceutical concoctions, pornography and heights of pleasure that are either difficult to achieve or sustain without resorting to monstrosities and other forms of addictions. The celebration and glamorisation of sex have created disturbing diversions from its original and more sensible and restrained purposes, to explorations in uncharted and demonstrably unsustainable terrains. These in turn have led to either the redefinition, if not complete expunction, of the term ‘infidelity’, or its subsumption to indulgent, age-old cultural signposts. It has also led to men killing and priming themselves to please their spouses in the jackal sense, and women exhibiting themselves in the limiting and humiliating sense as objects of pleasure.

As Ms Savage and Mr Balogun are demonstrating by their very public and tragic falling-out, the consequences of a broken marriage go far beyond the obvious. In their flawed relationship, they mirror so many things about the indiscriminate morphing of Nigerian culture, the distressing and lascivious spirit of the age, the shifting understanding and redefinition of values in their relentless state of atrophy, and the overwhelming movement towards a global mean of marital fundamentals that conform lesser and lesser to the human species. For the marriage institution, global scepticism is giving way to global cynicism. And as bad choices mix with bad character and misshapen values, the world will gradually drift from anchor farther into a formless sea of moral turpitude exposing a yawning gap that cannot be bridged till the end of days.

May 8, 2016
Herdsmen as indicators of leadership woes

IF herdsmen-farmers clashes have suddenly assumed national security concerns, it is simply because past governments treated the crisis irresponsibly and amateurishly as a law and order problem — of nomadic cattle rearers versus angry farm owners. It is, however, far beyond that. Though the government sometimes recognised the clashes as a cultural and tangentially climatological issue, they have done precious little to anticipate the mushrooming crisis, not to talk of proffering farsighted and realistic solutions. Indeed, the crisis is one of the most powerful emblems of leadership failure in Nigeria, far surpassing any other problem in politics, including disputed and bloody elections and crooked democracy, and far exceeding the disaster in the economy, regardless of how vicious the meltdown is.

The clashes have been nurtured for decades, indeed cuddled as a totem of unimaginative leadership. If the current leadership appreciates their apocalyptic potential, they have neither shown it nor acted to forestall it. From minor eruptions in the past months, the crisis has grown to become major eruptions capable of threatening national security. Since there was no deliberate and imaginative effort to tackle the crisis, it has festered quietly but dangerously. Indeed, it is remarkable that President Muhammadu Buhari has not directly commented on the problem, at least in recent times, as troubling and portentous as it is. He has spoken through both his spokesmen, Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu, and he has also spoken through Lai Mohammed, the Information minister to order a crackdown. For reasons only he can explain, he has refrained from commenting directly on the crisis. He probably still will.

But if the president has so far failed to comment on the matter, he has even more curiously not visited any of the areas that have experienced devastating attacks and clashes. The problem is deep and complex, and the bloodletting consequent upon the clashes endless and profuse, not to talk of the grave national security implications. The problem deserves urgent attention, and it is time the president formulated a solution and visited the blighted areas to placate grieving victims, whether they are host farming communities or nomadic Fulani. The lack of action, or seeming inattention, has baffled many Nigerians, triggering speculations that the president was in a quandary what to do on account of his Fulani background, and unsure how to act one way or the other, and afraid whichever way he acted that his actions could be misconstrued.

Overt optimism and shallow reflection

The president is the only one who can dispel those unflattering speculations, if he wants to. He really should, for the issues surrounding the problem, and the implications of continuous dithering, could prove not only damaging to his presidency but even more so to national security. Sooner or later, the president will have to speak directly on the matter in order for the country to know what he thinks of the grave matter that has lathered and troubled the country in the past few months. The president must trust his instinct to say and do what is right on the subject. After a few missteps in the past, he must by now have had enough time to reflect on the matter, and more time to come up with what he thinks is the solution worth the trouble of pushing through the legislative process and the mill of national discourse. This may be overly optimistic, for there is always the chance that his reflections on the subject might be either shallow or altogether inappropriate. This column will help him to equip himself to deal with this problem and other problems in the following paragraphs.

Before then, it is important to point out that the failure of leadership evident in the herdsmen-farmers clash is not limited to the presidency; it is also clearly noticeable in the security agencies. The Department of State Service (DSS) and the police are the principal security organs that should tackle the problem: one to anticipate the crisis, and the other to nip it in the bud in case of eruption. Both failed. In the case of the murderous attack on Ukpabi-Nimbo in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State last Monday, the indigenes reportedly passed on intelligence about an impending attack to the security agencies. The police were still caught flat-footed, if not criminally negligent. But whether the Ukpabi-Nimbo attack was foiled or not, it still would not have absolved the security agencies of lack of professionalism. In virtually all the previous herdsmen attacks, the security agencies had turned a blind eye to the arming of nomads in defiance of the law. In addition, as the police leadership showed in the case of the Agatu, Benue State killings, they are busy second-guessing the presidency on whether or how to tackle the continuing breakdown of law and order in many parts of the country, especially involving farmers and herdsmen skirmishes.

In the Benue State killings, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) was exasperated that the media was blowing casualty figures out of proportion because the Agatu and their political representatives, such as former Senate President David Mark, had indicated that about 500 people, including women and children, were slaughtered. Some police officers even suggested without proof that the herdsmen were non-Nigerians. But when Fulani leaders addressed the press on the Agatu killings, they indicated they were retaliating the murder of a few respected Fulani leaders, even supplying graphic details of the aforesaid provocations. Yet, the police have neither invited the avengers for questioning nor even embarked on investigations into the vendetta. Self-help, the police seem to be saying, is not out of place. But more accurately, the police are simply second-guessing the president, perhaps on account of what they presume to be his loyalties.

And in the case of the Ukpabi-Nimbo killings, where more than 40 people lost their lives in gruesome circumstances with the potential to provoke ethnic backlash of stupendous proportions, the police even suggested at first that the attack was the handiwork of ordinary hoodlums rather than herdsmen. This was despite the intelligence report the locals got and passed on to the security agencies, which report the police handled with lack of professionalism; and this was also irrespective of the fact that the local Hausa/Fulani leaders confirmed the impending attack and promised to help avert it. It is one thing for the police to complain of being outgunned and outnumbered; it is another thing to be negligent in their responsibilities on account of the delicate or untouchable background of the lawbreakers. Well, the implication of the lethargy of the presidency and the security agencies is that the country is now soaked in tension, while inter-ethnic relationship is needlessly and badly frayed. Nigerians must hope that the damage has not scarified the polity nor pushed the country closer to the tipping point.

Multitasking profundity

Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan did not address the herdsmen-farmers age-long conflict on a scale beyond simple law and order approach. The roots of the problem were left severely alone, pristinely untouched. His predecessors were similarly negligent and unimaginative because they all suffered from one major defect or the other in their leadership expertise. But they are all out of office now, and Nigerians can only make passing references to what they did or did not do. The man in office today is President Buhari, and he must be made to discharge his responsibilities in conformity with his oath of office. So far, he has not often acted with the impulse and character of the president of a country made up of more than 250 ethnic groups. Nor has he often acted with the dispatch and multitasking profundity of an elected leader. It is time he remedied these weaknesses and began to address his failings. He has some failings, which he must acknowledge in order to begin the onerous task of governing a potentially great but complex country of differing and sometimes antagonistic cultures and civilisations.

Once President Buhari reaches this eureka moment, he can truly begin to birth changes beyond sloganeering. He is deficient in two things, and he must tackle them headlong. First, he must acquire a deep and immeasurable sense of justice that transcends, and if possible obliterates, his ethnic, religious, social and political backgrounds. Until he does this, his actions and policies will continue to be coloured and undermined by those limiting cultures of his boyhood and adolescence. There is simply no way to build a presidential legacy, let alone the mystique he appears to desire so badly, without passing through this refining furnace of shedding the conflicting and variegated habits ingrained in his persona and worldview. President Buhari really needs to sit down and ask himself what his presidency should look like and what he hopes to be remembered for. Few Nigerians think he has transcended his background. He now has an opportunity to prove sceptics wrong.

Transforming and liberating virtue

President Buhari is a disciplinarian, but he has sometimes acted as if that is an end in itself, and not a means to the nirvana which the transforming and liberating power of that virtue can bring about. Nigeria is deeply divided, a division exacerbated by the Jonathan presidency, a division that corrugates the polity, economy and society revealing many fault lines, a division which many closet religious fanatics masquerading as leaders and finding themselves in position of leadership have aggravated. President Buhari needs to begin the work of healing the country. Given his penchant for discipline, he has begun the work of cleansing the land of corruption, a war he is fighting courageously, albeit sometimes misguidedly. Even though his political opponents accuse him of persecution, and thus deny the achievements he has recorded in the anti-graft war so far, he has improved measurably in observing the rule of law. He has no choice, nor would the country let him have a choice when it comes to that subject. However, he must not give the impression that all his capacity for discipline is useful only to fight corruption when the equally salient issue of ethnic discord is crying for his tough and disciplinarian attention.

Apart from acquiring a deep and implacable sense of justice to help him navigate the treacherous rapids of his presidency, the president must more importantly saddle himself with a great and sublime assignment for the country, an assignment that surpasses the routine task of putting food on the table of Nigerians, building roads and hospitals, and fighting robbers and insurgents. These assignments are doubtless great and indispensable; but they are incapable of defining his presidency and marking him forever as a legend and erecting a memorial in the minds of his people for generations to come. This column does not get the impression that President Buhari sees his assignment beyond the prism of anti-corruption war and reviving the economy, or that he possesses an acute sense of history. Indeed, as a former French leader once said, there is no indication yet that he thinks of moulding Nigeria for the newspapers of the day after tomorrow. And if his ambition and vision for Nigeria are hardly sufficient for today, let alone for the day after tomorrow, how can he develop the ambition and vision to master Africa, as indeed seems the destiny of the largest black nation on earth? Had President Buhari acquired this solid, sublime and encompassing vision, it would have been impossible for him to treat the herdsmen-farmers clash in the ephemeral and insouciant way he has done, or fight corruption unmindful of the damage to the other ennobling virtues vouchsafed by the constitution, or assemble his aides and cabinet without the breathtaking expansiveness that the world’s greatest leaders are capable of by the force of their character.

On the day Osama Bin Laden’s militants brought down the twin towers in New York in 2001, the city’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani, told the media that among the first steps he took was to bury his head in a few books of great leaders to reacquaint himself with how they responded to crisis. No leader can be great if he has not learnt to inspire himself with the actions of great world leaders. Nor can a leader reach greatness if his vision for his society is not futuristic and breathtaking. That vision, in the greatness chain of command, cannot be generated if a leader has not immersed himself in the ideas, policies, behaviour and actions of past leaders. President Buhari is in his first year in office, let him see the challenges confronting him as an invitation to rid himself of the habits and weaknesses of the past decades, and as an opportunity to boldly and imaginatively reach for greatness so that when the curtain falls on his presidency, as former United States President Richard Nixon once observed, the lives of Nigerians will have been transformed forever in ways unimaginable.

May 1, 2016
The futility of zoning

Next month, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will be holding its national convention in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, despite rumours the interim chairman, Ali Modu Sheriff, may be angling for either an extension of that date, and thus his mandate, or the position of national chairman. As part of the intense jostling ahead of the convention, there were indications not too long ago that the party had already zoned plum offices. Party leaders have denied any zoning took place anywhere. The rumour should be disregarded, they said.

What is not in doubt is that a convention will be taking place either on the stated date, or any other date not too distant from the first date. What is also not in doubt is that the dynamics in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have compelled the PDP to announce, without giving the matter much thought, that the presidency had been zoned to the North. The APC’s Muhammadu Buhari is from the North, and given the irrepressible parochialism of Nigerian politics, the PDP believes it would be suicidal to swim against the tide. Should the APC present a northern candidate in the next presidential poll, the PDP would be sailing near the wind not to look north for its own candidate, party leaders concluded.

Nigerian political parties loath taking risks. If they were minded to dare, they would discover that no candidate is unbeatable, for the dynamics that shape Nigerian presidential elections are not what the voters often think they have identified. Moshood Abiola did not win in 1993 simply because he was a Muslim, Yoruba or, as it seemed, a progressive. He won because, among other reasons, he had an extensive network of friends all around the country and had won the admiration and trust of Muslims and Christians alike for his warm, idiosyncratic politics. In addition, his opponent, Bashir Tofa, was staid, detached and unpopular even in his own state. What is more, Chief Abiola and his party outspent the opposition.

It is doubtful whether ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo won in 1999 just because he came from the Yoruba stock, which the power brokers in the country were trying to mollify over the murder in detention of Chief Abiola. Among other things, he won because the power brokers distrusted Chief Obasanjo’s opponent, Olu Falae, whom they thought had not transcended his Yoruba worldview. Chief Obasanjo had deferred to the North considerably in his first tour in 1976-1979, and the brokers thought he would be amenable, indifferent to ethnicity , and remain predictable because of his military background and network. Above all he was not an insufferable purist or an ideologue like Chief Falae.

Two main reasons accounted for President Buhari’s victory in 2015. He was able to strike an alliance with the Southwest; and ex-president Goodluck Jonathan bungled too many things, including the insurgency problem and the irresponsible manner he left the treasury door ajar. Had both these two conditions not been present in 2015, neither the former army general’s military antecedent nor his asceticism would have proved lethal enough. After all, both attributes were noticeable in him when he ran for the top office in 2003, 2007, and 2011. More importantly, as Dr Jonathan’s victory in 2011 showed, the highly intriguing geopolitical dynamics of Nigerian elections indicate that to win, a candidate must take at least three zones out of the six and handsomely share a fourth.

Therefore, zoning the presidency to the North, as the PDP has desperately done, is a reflection of their superficial understanding of the emerging dynamics of Nigerian politics and a safe and easy resort to simplistic electoral permutations. It is safe because they imagine that if they can split the North with President Buhari in 2019 by at least taking a half of one of the three zones, take the very safe South-South and Southeast, and possibly take the Southwest which they seem to believe is disgruntled, they would win. That chance, as far as analysis goes, exists. But the devil is in the detail. Technically, contrary to its calculations, the PDP may in fact be undone by its insistence on picking a candidate from a particular region before the party and country can determine his popularity and national acceptance. In 2015, the APC knew it could not hope to win by picking anyone from the South to slug it out with Dr Jonathan despite his unpopularity. It had to pick someone from the North, not just because he was from the North, but because his appeal to that region as well as his charisma had sufficiently matured to deny the PDP candidate a share of the votes capable of producing a hung election.

Mercifully for the APC, the PDP is engaged in lazy politics. As this column has maintained, the PDP must come to terms with why it lost the 2015 polls, and especially embark on a purge of its leadership in order to present a fresh face to the country. The party still pretends that the corruption it allowed to fester very badly under Dr Jonathan can be glossed over by rhetoric and grandstanding. It pretends that the corruption came about because of extenuating electoral spending, and that the APC is also guilty of that crime anyway. The party of course has its strengths; but it is its weaknesses that the public prefers to focus on, and it is those weaknesses that it must find absolution. It must show penitence for the great moral wrong it did to the country, and show proof that its new men, if it can find them, are so principled that they would forswear such unhealthy and destructive practices in the future. And they must show that contrition convincingly. Merely picking a northern candidate through zoning will not redress the wrong nor assuage the feelings of a country still hurting very badly.

Contrary to what the APC thinks, it is still very vulnerable despite the PDP’s lack of sense and deftness. For a number of reasons, the ruling party can be beaten in the next polls, even if it makes the economy grow at a stupendous seven to 10 percent between now and 2019. Regardless of the fate of the economy, a number of factors are forcefully shaping national discourse and politics, chief among which are (a) the issues of devolution manifesting grimly, for example, in the Biafra polemics and Fulani herdsmen aggravations; (b) human rights problem manifesting in the increasing and untamed brutality of security agents such as was evident in the Army/Shiite clash last year in Zaria; and (c) bitterness over the skewness of national appointments. The party better able to seize upon these subjects and frame them in a manner that resonates with the electorate will likely have the upper hand. So far, the APC is dithering, unable to manage its victory with half as much daring and surefootedness as it summoned at the beginning of the 2015 electoral joust; and the PDP is pussyfooting, unable to come to terms with its 2015 defeat.

Believing that it is wisely starting early in order to stand a chance of success in the 2019 polls, the PDP has zoned its key offices. The APC, also believing that it won office on a groundswell of electoral goodwill that cannot be gainsaid, assumes an enigmatic posture of false indomitability. Though 2019 appears far away, in fact so distant when compared with the over two-year plan that fetched the APC victory in 2015, neither of the two leading parties can be sure of victory or defeat. The country is a little exhausted with all the zonings and ethnic shenanigans of the past few decades, zonings that brought nothing but stagnation and engendered mediocre leadership. Given the grinding poverty and lack of national cohesion and ambition, it may be time for a really charismatic and brilliant nationalist of the first rank to aggregate the yearnings of the people and confidently take Nigeria from the depths of despair to the apex of glory. It is time for someone to break all ethnic, religious and social barriers. It is time to weld a national identity. It is time to rouse all Nigerians for greatness before the fissiparous tendency in the land takes over completely. Whoever can do these deserves all the support.

April 24, 2016
Still missing the point in Zaria judicial panel

Despite Shiite misgivings about the Justice Mohammed Garba-led judicial panel probing the Zaria, Kaduna State, clash between the Army and members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, it will be inappropriate to dismiss the exercise as barren. Some good may still come out of the probe irrespective of the circumstances of its conception or the malevolence of many witnesses. Two weeks ago, after two Kaduna State officials testified about mass graves, this column cautioned the panel to explore other areas of inquiry rather than come to hasty conclusions. Hopefully, the panel will enrich its report by looking at the missing links in all the testimonies it has so far received.

Based on last week’s additional testimonies by a few very public but non-state officials, it may again be necessary to admonish the panel to pay close attention to the evidence being put before it by witnesses who appeared determined to redirect the panel into arcane and philosophical realms. Two main strands of testimonies were evident last week. One involved those who, rather than testify about what transpired on the days of the clash, came out to justify the actions of the troops. According to these traditional and religious authorities in Zaria, the Shiites were not only bad and aggressive neighbours, they had virtually constituted themselves into a state within a state. The second strand of evidence came from the Sharia Council whose soothsaying secretary-general, Nafiu Baba-Ahmed, testified that Shiites had a potential to be deadlier than Boko Haram. The clash with soldiers in which the Shiites took a mauling, he concluded, was divine retribution.

It is important for the panel to sift through these testimonies in order to reach a fair conclusion and come nearest to satisfying its terms of reference. The terms of reference enjoin the panel to inquire into the remote causes of the probe. The history, structure and general disposition of the Shiites all form a part of that remote background. But it must not be overlooked that the real reason for the judicial panel were the killings and destruction that accompanied the clash. The panel must, therefore, ask whether any of those remote reasons justify the level of violence inflicted on the Shiites by soldiers, and whether Nigerian laws permit the disposal of the bodies in a mass grave under such conditions. The panel will also determine whether any suggestion of the future trajectory of the Shiites, such as was argued by the Shari council, has probative value.

Once again, this column will remind the panel to dig deep and determine whether Nigerian laws do not prescribe a course of action the government should normally take to meet such exigencies as Shiite activities and provocations presented in Zaria before and during last December’s clash, and whether the same laws do not prescribe punishment for those infractions, if any. On their own, many witnesses have established a cause and effect between Shiite intransigence and the killings. If the panel will come to that kind of far-fetched conclusion, it should set out the principles and justifications for it. Those principles and justifications will, however, be debated comprehensively in the months and years to come, for the killing and burial of so many people, including, emotively, women and children, will reverberate for much longer than anyone imagines.

Witnesses and stakeholders testifying before the Justice Garba panel may not appreciate the gravity of the Zaria killings, more interested as many of them are in the behaviour of the Shiites and their foreign sponsors; but the panel will look at the wider legal and moral issues surrounding the clash. The panel members are sensible enough to know that the consequences of the killings will not be limited to Nigeria, considering that the matter has already been internationalised. It will be helpful if the panel and the government should take charge of the matter, and dispense justice with firmness and sensibleness. If they do not take the right and firm steps, sadly, the world will take over, as indeed they are itching to do, being more relentless and patient, but infinitely unsparing.

April 24, 2016
Kachikwu’s ultimatums

Last Wednesday, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, told State House correspondents in Abuja that by this week fuel scarcity would have abated considerably. According to him, “As at today (Last Wednesday), we are delivering about 1,200 trucks; by weekend we should be delivering same number of trucks, it will take a bit of days to even-out, but you can see improvement already. I hope by the end of next week, with the refineries helping us to stay on course, every part of the country will get fuel.” His optimism may turn out not to be misplaced. But what if it is misplaced?

More than three times in the past six weeks or more, Dr Kachikwu had issued ultimatums to end the fuel scarcity. Yet, every time he issued one, the malaise took on more virulence. But putting his nose out of joint repeatedly has not discouraged him from issuing fresh ultimatums to himself and the oil industry he sits atop. His latest ultimatum is a little more guarded, perhaps a representation of his ardent wishes than a summation of the complex and defiant processes that unnerve the Nigerian economy. But the timeline is nonetheless clear.

In case this timeline fails again, it should not lead anyone to doubt the minister’s bona fides, nor his passion and commitment to end the terrible and agonising disruptions to fuel supply. Instead, it should encourage him to avoid timelines that have proved spectacularly unresponsive to all his anodynes. It should lead him, in fact, to the use of more cautious language civil servants are conversant with, such as ‘soon’ or ‘before long’ or ‘in next to no time’.

April 24, 2016
AGF and Kogi conundrum

On the surface, the National Assembly does not appear to have any hidden interest in the Kogi House of Assembly stalemate, nor in Kogi as a state, irrespective of the turmoil in that burdened and distressed state. But after waiting for some weeks for Kogi lawmakers to resolve the impasse they created in February when five members led by Hon. Umar Imam purportedly impeached the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Hon. Momohjimoh Lawal, both chambers of the National Assembly, one after the other, resolved to take over the state’s legislative functions. The state legislature had been divided into two factions, one labelled as G-15, and the other, G-5. There are no clear indications the G-15 has been depleted in rank; but last week when the G-5 sat to suspend 10 of their colleagues using a crazy political calculus, their rank had swollen to about nine. The House of Assembly is made up of 25 members: 13 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), 10 All Progressives Congress (APC), and two inconclusive state constituencies elections.

But shortly after the Senate concurred with the House of Representatives to take over the state’s legislative responsibilities, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, wrote the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Solomon Arase, who had presumably asked for advice on the Kogi conundrum, to disregard the National Assembly’s order to seal the House of Assembly premises. Incensed federal lawmakers have asked both the AGF and IGP to appear before them to explain their actions. This will be the second time the AGF will be offering legal advice on the conundrums in Kogi. In last year’s governorship election, the AGF waded in after the APC candidate in the election, Abubakar Audu, died after the election, advising the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to allow for the substitution of candidates in the APC regardless of the completion of the poll. The electoral umpire, anchoring its decision on the incompletion of the announcement of election results, promptly declared the election inconclusive, and Yahaya Bello, without a running mate, was drafted in to ‘complete’ the poll.

The AGF’s intervention in Kogi raises eyebrows in many quarters. Five lawmakers backed by state executive and coercive machineries have overwhelmed their colleagues and are pretending to make laws for the state. The coercive minority has colonised the Assembly complex. It apparently suits the governor well that the Group of Five is in charge of the lawmaking affairs of the state. When the National Assembly took over the legislative function of the state, the budget had not been passed, and no case was filed in court. It was shortly after the federal lawmakers had waded into the fray that the AGF rose up to interpret the intendment of the constitution, suggesting that in any case, the stalemate in the Assembly could still be resolved administratively or legally. It was not immediately clear which scenario ought to have worried the AGF more: the arithmetic madness in the Assembly, or the federal lawmakers’ adherence to the letter (not the spirit) of the constitution.

There is no doubt that the intervention of the AGF is superfluous. By suggesting that the status quo be maintained in the Assembly and recourse be made to legal or administrative instruments to resolve the stalemate, the AGF was in no way attenuating the conflict in the legislature. He should be worried that his advice seemed to have indirectly legitimised the actions of a virulent minority, a scenario the constitution never envisaged, whether in letter or in spirit. Aggrieved members have now gone to court, a depressing and irritating admission of the impotence and weakness of the majority. The minority is sitting pretty in the House, and has even gone further, with the help of four defectors, to pass the budget. Had the National Assembly taken over effectively, the usurping minority would have been uprooted, court processes would not be barred in any form, and the disgraceful arithmetic farce reigning in the state would have been avoided.

There is no creative way to argue that the AGF’s interventions in Kogi have advanced the cause of democracy and good governance. In last year’s election, INEC had a legal department that ought to have managed any misgiving or legal conundrum the electoral umpire had. Any dispute would have been resolved in court, as in fact is being done at a cost to the image of the Justice ministry and INEC’s putative independence. In the present case, had the National Assembly taken over Kogi Assembly, it would have served notice that no ambitious group of minority lawmakers or meddling governor would be allowed to plan a coup against the state legislature. It does not appear that the AGF advised himself about the chequered history of democracy in Nigeria, particularly how in many instances the executive arm manipulated the legislature at federal and state levels to undermine democracy, federalism and the rule of law.

Had the AGF done his homework well, he would have recalled how both the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), citing the war against corruption, foolishly meddled in the affairs of Plateau State and engineered the removal of ex-governor Joshua Dariye using five lawmakers in 2006. Every time such meddling took place, the powerful national government always cited a cause that resonated with the undiscriminating public. The AGF will also recall that before then, in 2005, that great exemplar of strong-arm tactics, Chief Obasanjo, engineered the removal of ex-governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha of Bayelsa State purportedly for corruption, when in fact the reason was not unconnected with the former president’s political struggle with ex-vice president Abubakar Atiku.

Surely, the AGF could not also have forgotten the crazy impeachment of ex-governor Rashidi Ladoja of Oyo State in 2006, nor even that of Ayo Fayose in the same 2006. The gale of executive lawlessness orchestrated by the Obasanjo presidency did not promote transparency or democracy, nor conduce to good government. Instead, that culture of insidious executive interference in state affairs has continued in one form or the other to the chagrin of federalists and democrats. It is that shameless anti-democratic culture that is now playing out, under a clever pretext, in Kogi State in the current stalemate. Had the right culture been promoted when the Fourth Republic was founded, it would be unthinkable for five lawmakers to muscle out 15 of their colleagues as Ogun State lawmakers also did in 2009 under the governorship of Gbenga Daniel; nor would a dithering governor have clothed that lawlessness with executive imprimatur; nor would an attorney general have attempted to offer creative explanation to defend the indefensible.

Something is still fundamentally wrong with Nigerian democracy. When they can get away with it, the executive arm and its colluding agencies remorselessly pursue anti-democratic objectives, cloaking them in varying and mesmerising guises. The problem, it seems, is that most Nigerian politicians and leaders saddled with the responsibility of governing Nigeria at different levels are in fact not convinced democrats. They are democrats as an afterthought. They have no deep conviction about democracy, a concept that appears alien to them; and no regard for federalism, which is often to them an inconvenience. Thus, for eight years, Chief Obasanjo exhibited contempt for a concept (democracy) that required discipline and self-sacrifice, two attributes he neither had in abundance nor was he even willing to give the little he had. His successors, particularly Goodluck Jonathan, struggled and wrestled with the twin principles, and only managed in over five years of his presidency to sustain a semblance of the two, admittedly a little better than Chief Obasanjo did.

Whether in Kogi or elsewhere, there are no indications President Buhari’s government has got off to a good start on democracy. He has squirmed and voiced his pains in his many and frequent encounters with democratic principles. And whether directly, such as his tiff with the judiciary, or indirectly through the actions and utterances of the AGF, President Buhari must innovate and work assiduously to leave a lasting democratic legacy. To this end, he must have a full understanding of the concept of democracy and be absolutely persuaded of its value in sustaining peace, justice and stability. His predecessors laid a wobbly foundation for the Fourth Republic. President Buhari needs a new, solid and enduring foundation upon which future leaders can build. The AGF’s Kogi excursions do not give confidence that President Buhari has taken charge of all the deep issues pertaining to democracy and good governance. He desperately needs to go beyond fighting corruption and reining in insurgency to tackling the bigger and more ramifying issues of justice, democracy and federalism.

April 17, 2016
Depressing tales from Zaria judicial panel

Just as the country was grappling with the horrifying stories of mass killings and mass burial following the December 12-14 clash in Zaria, Kaduna State, between soldiers and members of the Shiite sect, the United States Department of State has reportedly released a damning report of what it described as the unchecked brutality of Nigeria’s law enforcement and security agencies. At the same time, Amnesty International (AI) was also yet to let up on pressure to get the Muhammadu Buhari government face up squarely to the 2014 massacre of hundreds of suspected Boko Haram insurgents, some of them believed to be innocent, near Maiduguri by Nigerian soldiers and militia. The Maiduguri incident is yet to receive the kind of official attention the Zaria clash is receiving. Overall, few question the appropriateness of the damning US report.

In the case of the Zaria killings, government and religious officials have testified before the Justice Muhammad Lawal Garba judicial panel that 347 corpses were taken in two batches from the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (156 corpses) and Nigerian Army Depot (191 corpses) and buried in a mass grave in the Mando area of Zaria. According to the officials — Secretary to the State Government, Balarabe Lawal, and Director General of the Kaduna State Interfaith Agency, Namadi Musa — the 347 corpses were given mass burial following a magistrate’s warrant. A surgeon at the hospital described how military men invaded the hospital, drove away staff from the mortuary, and carried out an operation hospital staff could not decipher.

The panel is still sitting, and more stories from all sides to the conflict are expected. Though the Army at first suggested that only seven persons were killed during the clash, at the panel they indicated they had no idea what the casualty figure was. The Shiites are not represented at the inquiry, having withdrawn because of the continued detention of their leader, Sheikh Yaqoob el-Zakzaky, but perhaps enough facts and figures of what transpired on those bloody days may yet be revealed to help the panel reach a fair conclusion in consonance with its terms of reference. But it is noted that shortly after the clash, the federal and state governments appeared unwholesomely to have taken sides. Both President Muhammadu Buhari and Governor Nasir el-Rufai pointed at the unruliness of the Shiites, their defiance of the Chief of Army Staff’s convoy, and the aggravation they had caused in Zaria among their neighbours as justification for the soldiers’ heavy-handed intervention. They said nothing about why it had to take a massacre to curb the Shiites’ obstreperousness.

No one can yet reach a conclusion about what transpired on those two or three bloody December days in Zaria last year. The panel must be encouraged to carry out its investigative task fearlessly and scrupulously. They must remember that the world has become a global village where nothing can be hidden for too long. As a serving judicial officer, Justice Garba has a reputation to uphold. He has no reason to pander to anyone’s whims: not the government, not the army, not the Shiites. Though this column had encouraged the Shiites to appear before the panel, Justice Garba should not let their absence influence his report.

Already, the Shiites have lodged a petition before the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Nigerian Army for crimes against humanity. Amnesty International has also taken interest in the killings. The Shiite excursion to the ICC is led by the non-profit United Kingdom-based Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) group, which is presenting the case of the Nigerian Shiites before the ICC. The civil society organisation, which had no access to official Kaduna State figures, had backed its presentation with facts suggesting that 216 of the Movement’s members were known to have been killed in the invasion, 219 were still in detention, and 480 were missing. Indeed, it now appears they even underestimated the number of people killed, implying that the situation is much worse than they believed.

The testimonies before the Justice Garba panel have begun to go into the specifics of names involved in the Zaria tragedy, especially the mass burial. There can be no cover-up. If the panel wants to do a thorough job, it will be able to establish why a magistrate would give warrant for mass burial in the circumstances it did, which military officers and policemen participated in the mass burial, which officers gave the command to invade the Shiite headquarters, and which soldiers participated in the shootings. No matter how anyone looks at the Zaria killings, it is a thoroughly bad case that promises to cause a lot of upheavals in the nation’s political and security establishments.

Though the panel has not ended sitting, and no one should be tempted to prejudge its conclusions, it must be observed that the failure of the Buhari presidency to quickly institute far-reaching changes in Nigeria’s security paradigm will encourage and reinforce the brutal and anachronistic methods of security and law enforcement in Nigeria, a culture now exposing the country to huge embarrassment everywhere and predisposing it to horrendous security practices and extrajudicial killings far worse than anything ever witnessed. The world is changing around Nigeria; it would be foolish of the country to remain ossified in the past.

April 17, 2016
El-Rufai needs politics, not activism

Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State has deliberately and complacently, if not self-righteously, marched briskly into another controversy. The politician and technocrat seems built for controversy than for anything else. This time he has got himself embroiled in a religious dispute over whether the state can legislate religious practice, particularly by licensing preaching. He has therefore forwarded an executive bill to the state legislature setting out among other guidelines how preachers may be licensed and the conditions under which they can preach. The bill is expected to replace a military edict on the same subject promulgated in 1984. But confronted by a horde of anti-regulation sceptics, the governor has simply shrugged his shoulders and soldiered on. The bill is not new anyway, he says, because it had existed under a different guise under a past military government.

The motive for generating the bill is sound. Kaduna State has a reputation for religious volatility, a disturbing reputation forged more than three decades ago and sustained by episodic bloodletting on a scale rivalled only by the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency. If the state ever witnessed ethnic disturbances, it was only because it had first manifested as religious schisms perpetrated through Nigeria’s ethnic fault lines. And if there is some peace and quietude at the moment, it is simply to the extent that the volcano has not reached its eruption temperature. Indigenes of Kaduna have learnt to live with the fear of indiscriminate flare-ups, even as they have gradually and quietly resigned themselves to segregated living. So, it is not out of place for the crusading Mallam el-Rufai to attempt what he sees through his often utopian prism as a permanent solution.

The bill, now more widely referred to as Gov. el-Rufai’s preaching bill, pitches constitutionalists against peaceniks, with the latter, because of their distaste for armed conflict, seeing nothing wrong in enforcing controls on religious groups in the state. No one can accurately determine at the moment which group is gaining the upper hand, the peaceniks or constitutionalists. And it is not clear whether even among the state’s or country’s religions the bill is popular. On the surface, however, some argue, the bill appears to target extremist Muslim preachers. But underneath, warn some Christian leaders, the bill targets and stymies the evangelical underpinnings of Jesus Christ’s mandate to his followers. For many constitutionalists, the bill is so fraught with problems that it is virtually dead on arrival. According to them, the bill stands on very shaky constitutional grounds, though no one can guess how the state’s lawmakers view the bill: whether with wary eyes, or with indifference, or with approving glances. To say the bill is controversial is, therefore, an understatement.

What is certain is that while Gov. el-Rufai has modified the 1984 military-inspired edict on the same subject, he has not appeared to examine why it failed and was abandoned. Mechanically speaking, both Christianity and Islam have been accommodated in the preaching bill in terms of ensuring representation, not necessarily fairness, in licensing preachers. However, no matter how well they are structured and sensibly constituted, the registration panels, which shut out other religions but the largest two, may find some difficulties in capturing, acknowledging and sanctioning the various doctrinal differences acceptable to the state. Indeed, left to the Christian panel , for instance, it is hard to see them in the 15th or 16th century approving Martin Luther’s radical and reformist ministry had he applied for a licence. More, had Jesus Christ lived in Mallam el-Rufai’s Kaduna, not only would he spurn the licensing requirement, his application would most certainly be turned down if he sought one.

There are incontestable moral grounds for the bill. As many other countries battling terrorism have shown, it may indeed be reckless to pretend that some regulations are not necessary to put a lid on extremism. They are. The problem is how it should be done, and whether they should even come as laws which stand the risk of conflicting with the constitution. The many bitter religious cum ethnic battles Kaduna State has fought — perhaps more than any other state — may offer sound pretext for regulation. For a state that appears eternally poised on the edge of religious conflagration, the governor may indeed be right and sensible to look and think proactively in anticipating religious conflicts and proffering solutions to either pre-empt or respond to them firmly.

However, it is doubtful whether the solution lies in more regulation or lawmaking. The 1984 edict fell into abeyance for reasons the governor should not find too difficult to fathom. Chief among the reasons is that anywhere in the world, it is extremely difficult to regulate religion outside the laws and the constitution, especially in a democracy with a liberal constitution. Even in authoritarian climes, the regulation of religions eventually collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. Should the Kaduna State House of Assembly pass the preaching bill, there is little doubt that enforcement, insensitively and unwisely conferred on Sharia and Customary courts, would be so controversial and problematic that it would be challenged successfully in higher courts. There is also little doubt that once enforcement appears skewed, that itself would raise an avalanche of complaints and allegations of bias against the governor, his team and the enforcers. The preaching bill, notwithstanding the laudable task it hopes to undertake, is really a needless piece of legislation whose drawbacks cannot be mitigated by the governor’s boldness or altruism.

What is even worse is that the governor himself lacks the tact to sell the bill. Whether during his service at the federal level as Minister of the Federal Capital City (FCT) or as governor, Mallam el-Rufai has not been able to transcend his messianic disposition. He speaks combatively with a disturbing cocksureness that grates on the nerves of those who disagree with him. Very often his cost-benefit analyses are skewed in favour of the benefit side, and his manner of implementation peremptory and unfeeling. He regards himself a technocrat, and the country agrees with him. But he is now a politician who must manage his technocratic ways with the suavity of a principled politician. Mallam el-Rufai has not been able to do this. In fact, for a governor who adjudged the Shiites guilty of crime even before investigations had been carried out into the December 2015 Zaria clash between the Nigerian Army and some members of the Islamic Movement, it is difficult to imagine he can be trusted to show strict as opposed to benevolent neutrality when religions clash, or when those who oppose his rules and regulations test the might of the state.

So far, whether on the matter of this preaching bill or the bulldozing of properties, or that of relating with his critics such as Senator Shehu Sani, Mallam el-Rufai has neither spoken nor acted as a politician or a democrat. Reacting to those who opposed the preaching bill, he had said: “But what I found out is that the elite have one weapon, and that is religion, and it is sad. But, unfortunately for them, they have not studied me. If anyone had studied my career at FCT, he would have known that playing religious card would fail all the time, because the moment you play that card, I know you are an adversary that needs to be put down and I will not look back until I am done with you.” Yet, he rode on the wings of the change momentum during the 2015 elections and won, partly because of the popular disenchantment with the Goodluck Jonathan government. He will be sailing near the wind to think he has secured the right to talk down to the people and force laws on them before he has been able to persuade them.

Some of his bills, including the preaching bill, may be sensible in a few parts, and the motives pure, but he needs the wisdom of a sage and the patience of a true liberal and tested politician to govern a complex and eternally agitated state like Kaduna. He should go on to cap these attributes, should he prove capable of acquiring them, with the verbal forbearance of many of his northern role models. Given his general proclivity and the abrasive manner he ran the FCT with the connivance of ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, he will need extraordinary and herculean effort to reclaim himself from his former set ways. That prospect is sadly a little far-fetched.

Rather than initiate bills seeking to regulate contentious religious matters, the governor should explore other means of managing religious disagreements and containing extremism in the state. The 1984 edict did not work under the military; there is no reason to think an improved law based on that edict will work now or in the near future. Mallam el-Rufai has done little to persuade the state of the necessity for and relevance of the preaching bill; his reputation as a gadfly and his impetuousness stand in the way of sound and modernising politicking. He needs to change first before changing Kaduna. His task, as he acknowledges, is made doubly difficult by the prevailing economic crisis. He should, therefore, find no difficulty in understanding that the mood of the moment does not favour his flighty lawmaking adventures, nor does the edginess of the people condone the imperiousness of his messianic predilection. Since he has begun to recognise that managing FCT was a cakewalk compared with governing a state, he should be optimistic that that epiphany may yet help transform him into a more robust politician than the militician he had schooled himself to become since the Obasanjo presidency.

April 10, 2016
Saraki swimming against an impossible tide

Just as his trial for contravening some provisions of the Code of Conduct for public officers truly got underway at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) last week after months of legal obfuscation, Senate President Bukola Saraki ran full tilt into another storm whose ferocious eye was located in faraway Panama. Here in Nigeria, he is facing a 13-count charge for, among other things, false declaration of asset and anticipatory declaration of asset. In Panama, a data leak of over 11 million documents from the Panamanian law firm of Mossack Fonseca, the world’s fourth largest provider of offshore services, has entangled many world leaders in financial scandals ranging from the operation of offshore ‘shell’ companies and tax havens. Senator Saraki is alleged to have squirreled away a fortune into offshore accounts of his family members through Mossack Fonseca. Just as he pleaded in the Code of Conduct trial, Dr Saraki says he is not guilty of any wrongdoing.

Many countries around the world are opening investigations into the Mossack Fonseca leaks to determine the culpability of their implicated countrymen. The Panamanian law firm is believed to have opened over 240,000 offshore companies for its clients, some of them illegal. In addition, it is estimated that about eight percent of the world’s wealth (or $7.6trn) is hidden in tax havens. Once Nigeria begins its own investigations, Senator Saraki may be hauled in for questioning. He is in effect running the gauntlet of anti-corruption probes and trials, the end of which neither he nor his most avid supporters can foresee. These then are not the best of times for Dr. Saraki. He is, however, optimistic he will be vindicated at the end of his ordeal. He argues that he has not violated any of the provisions in the Code of Conduct for public officers, and that his family members, especially his wife, are of independent means sufficient for them to engage in business deals unrelated to him, including through shell companies.

Based on his CCT ordeal alone, many of his colleagues in the Senate were already anxious that his trial was becoming a needless distraction. Despite the show of support he has received from many senators, not to talk of the manner he has endeared himself to them, the Senate was beginning to look beyond him, and wondering who should step into his shoes. Now, with the complication from the MossacK Fonseca leaks, the noise against his stay in office may rise to a crescendo. It is unlikely to be a question of whether he would be replaced; it will more likely be a question of when.

Dr. Saraki has suggested his ordeal is a fallout of crazy political intrigues. Even if it were so, he will find it difficult to argue that the 13-count charge he is facing at the CCT, which allege bad business dealings against him, is also political. Nor can he reasonably suggest that the Mossack Fonseca leaks were a consequence of political intrigues when many powerful world leaders have been mentioned in the same global tax havens scandal. Dr. Saraki has received fair hearing in the courts. And despite prolonging his trial, even unreasonably, the courts and the law enforcement agencies have accommodated him well beyond measure and treated him very fairly. He may be anxious about the implications of stepping aside because of fear it would make him very vulnerable. Notwithstanding this fear, his continued stay in the office of the Senate President may be doing more harm to that great office than he or his heedless supporters imagine.

But whether he desperately clutches to his high office or not, he will remain vulnerable. That vulnerability was not caused by political intrigues, as he suggests, but by his own failings, bad choices and convoluted business dealings. In normal circumstances, Dr. Saraki would make a great Senate President. He is after all a great dealmaker, urbane and polished in many respects, and appears of good breeding, not to talk of his phenomenal memory in name recognition, especially of his colleagues. Unfortunately, the times are not normal, and his qualities, which are undoubtedly admirable, have been weakened by a long history of questionable business calls and a vicious and remorseless habit of destroying everything in his path, including familial icons, to advance his career. His failings have now caught up with him and overshadowed his fine attributes. There is nothing more he can do now or say later to remedy the tragic consequence of many years of desperate machinations. It is time to go. He must meet his ineluctable fate with the same plucky daring he summoned to reach the top.

April 10, 2016
Jeyifo’s Martian and Marxist overtones

It is clear that on the matter of the rule of law and Nigerian Judiciary, there is unlikely to be a meeting point between Palladium and Biodun Jeyifo, a columnist with this newspaper and professor of comparative literature. For one, this column engages the Muhammadu Buhari presidency in a number of juridical sparring sessions, especially its many transgressions against the rule of law; but Prof. Jeyifo, having apparently made his peace with a substantial part of how the Buhari presidency is dealing with those alleged to have looted the treasury, prefers to joust with Palladium. The eminent professor speaks disapprovingly of Palladium’s ‘tirades’ against the Buhari presidency, but deploys tirades, even imputations, against this columnist with aplomb. More critically, Palladium argues that there can be no understanding or application of justice without or outside the rule of law. The professor, on the other hand, grudgingly concedes the relevance of the rule of law, but puts greater premium on end-product ‘justice’, even seeing “revolutionary possibilities of the popular demand for justice by Nigerians in their tens of millions” in the presidency’s modus operandi.

Last Sunday, Prof. Jeyifo took on Palladium again, describing him as being even more strident in his criticism of the president and other anti-graft officials, and transporting him by means of his engaging metaphors to Mars. So, from lack of realism and eager embrace of idealism, legalism and formalism, Palladium has become, in the hands of Prof. Jeyifo, a habitue of Mars and a somnambulist who sleepwalks through analyses. Given what seems this column’s cocksureness in opposing the presidency’s methods of prosecuting alleged treasury thieves, and Prof. Jeyifo’s equally strident denunciation of Palladium, one of them would have challenged the other to a duel had they lived in the 16th, 17th or 18th century. The legalism ascribed to Palladium is, however, nothing but a reflection of this columnist’s view of the concepts of the rule of law and justice as coterminous and even indistinguishable, without the Marxist fervour that either courses through Prof. Jeyifo’s rejoinders or serve as clear overtones in his support for President Buhari’s anti-graft war.

Prof. Jeyifo’s second rejoinder was prompted by Palladium’s laudatory piece on Justice Yusuf Haliru’s excoriation of both the Nigerian Army and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in their unconstitutional approach to fighting corruption. While the eminent justice’s order for the release of Col. Nicholas Ashinze has finally been obeyed, implying that both the courts and analysts like Palladium fought a good fight, Prof. Jeyifo avoided the central thesis of the article and proceeded to savage the piece with very unflattering words. No public commentator can fail to notice that President Buhari himself, obviously responding to criticisms, has improved in his appreciation of both the rule of law and justice. He no longer speaks disparagingly of his headache with the judiciary, and the anti-graft agencies themselves now seem reluctant to brusquely and dismissively characterise suspects in or outside their custody. It is indubitable that there is slight improvement in the attitude of the government to the judiciary, an improvement that would have been impossible had the government listened to only those who rhapsodised their methods and cavalier statements.

It is a puzzle that a debate is really raging when the facts of the case, stripped of emotions and bad-temperedness , are fairly clear and incontestable. It is not true as Prof. Jeyifo said that the Nigerian judiciary is the laughing stock of the civilized world. The developed democracies are in fact appalled by the government’s almost criminal lack of investment in the judiciary and the cause of justice. When they cavil against Africa’s strongmen, they speak subliminally to the role and indispensability of strong institutions. They are not so undiscriminating as not to know that African leaders actually undermine institutions and processes for various reasons, including that of seeing themselves as, and acting, above the law. Rather than single out the judiciary and laugh at it, they carefully deconstruct it and recognise why it has not functioned as optimally as it should, which facts and figures Prof. Jeyifo has appeared to gloss over.

When President Buhari complains of the West’s slow judicial process, had his hosts been minded to interrogate him, they would have asked whether he had taken the pains to investigate why the process was slow in Nigeria, and what reforms he had instituted to quicken the pace of justice delivery. And if corruption is so endemic, has the government done a holistic study of the problem and presented the country with a plan of action to curb the malaise other than flirting with the knee-jerk response of herding alleged looters in one cauldron and shooting them to satisfy the public’s impatience and sanguinary doctrine of justice? Nigeria’s criminal justice system does not work as flawlessly and seamlessly as it should. Nigerians and their leaders have a responsibility to identify the problem areas, shorn of hysteria, and re-engineer the system to work well. Sweeping generalisations, stereotypes and wrongful assertions are unhelpful. If Prof. Jeyifo has the statistics to disprove Palladium’s assertion that only a few judges and lawyers are corrupting the justice system, let him present it. And let him also prove, beyond sneering at Palladium’s earthly citizenship, the loss of faith in the judiciary that he seems to think is “widespread and profound”.

Every profession has its traitors. There are doctors who pervert the profession of medicine; journalists who commercialise news and opinions; lecturers who give marks in exchange for money or sex; pastors and clerics who take the name of God in vain, etc. Yet it would be inconsiderate and even insensitive to generalise the behaviour of the majority from the malfeasance of the minority. Corruption is a systemic thing; it does not begin and end as a symptom. A structured approach to tackling it rather than the churlish and infantile approach hitherto embraced by the government and its agents must be found. It is somewhat reassuring that so far, the government and its anti-graft agencies seem to be responding to criticisms, and are reshaping their mode of operation. They should go further to present a workable plan to curb the menace of corruption and deliver an ethical and efficient judiciary. No mob hysteria; no general and undiscriminating calumniation of judges and lawyers; and no subversion of the rule of law. It is time the government realised that homilies will not quicken the pace of justice delivery. It must work for it, and pay the price. There are no shortcuts.

Palladium, however, needs to respond directly to at least three arguments Prof. Jeyifo made in his last piece, for they have the potential of misleading many readers. In fact they are the principal reasons for this rejoinder, the very last this column will write in response to the professor’s accusatory rejoinders. The three are: his inexpert linkage of extraneous matters to the granting of bail; the subject of interlocutory injunctions which needs expatiation; and his misdirected anger on the stalling of cases in courts, which he attributes to deliberate wickedness. First, the bail matter.

Bail is basically a constitutional right in which the Nigerian criminal justice system allows an accused to be released and the court is assured of his or her appearance during all court dates. It is, therefore, not to be denied merely for the purpose of punishment. The right of an accused to bail is associated with the constitutional presumption of his innocence until proven guilty. In corruption cases, it is not the humongous nature of the amount involved, as Prof. Jeyifo insinuates, that determines whether or not bail should be granted. Until the law is amended to make corruption a capital offence, Nigerians may have to contend with the exercise of discretionary powers of courts to grant bail as provided for under the law and  Constitution. Once that discretion has been exercised one way or the other, it behoves the authorities concerned to give effect to it. Where they feel aggrieved, the civilized option is to take up the matter in higher courts.

To refuse to release an accused who has been granted bail by a duly constituted court of law, without an appeal against such a decision, borders on the encroachment of the Executive on the judicial powers granted to the courts by the Constitution. It is an affront to the rule of law and indulgence in exercise of self-help. Such an action has no other interpretation than a show of intention to intimidate and preempt the decision of the court. It is also a subversion of proper administration of justice. Where the law rules, recourse to self-help or subtle acts of intimidation of courts by individuals and government ought to be abandoned.

Second is the matter of interlocutory injunctions in criminal cases. Admittedly, there is no way an interlocutory injunction against the trial of an accused in a criminal case can be justified under any guise. But then, it is well known that the National Judicial Council, the supervising body of judges, has been unsparing in condemning and sanctioning erring judges. Perhaps it is time to focus on lawyers who bring such applications to court. Without an application, there can be no injunction. The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) is the appropriate authority in this regard to put in place measures to check the unwholesome practice. However, it appears Prof. Jeyifo had the former governor of Rivers State, Peter Odili, in mind when he made the point. There is no doubt the case stands out because unlike others, the former governor was never arraigned.

In March 2007, Dr. Odili obtained a curious Federal High Court injunction restraining the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) from investigating his tenure. Soon after he left office, he secured a “perpetual injunction” that permanently restrained the EFCC from “arresting, detaining and arraigning Odili on the basis of his tenure as governor.” Justice Ibrahim Buba of the Federal High Court, who made the order, added that the EFCC had no power to “in any manner, howsoever, investigate the account or financial affairs of a state government”. But what is perhaps very baffling, and Prof. Jeyifo should have known, is why the EFCC has not contested the ruling till date. It was learnt that an EFCC official claimed that through some unexplained error, the commission was never even aware that the 2008 injunction had been issued until the time to appeal it had expired. However, as a commentator said, “These professions of total ignorance are hard to fathom, considering that this was one of the EFCC’s most important cases.”

The third and final argument is what Prof. Jeyifo describes as stalling of court cases. It is unfair to put the blame of “stalling” of cases in courts solely at the doorsteps of judges. The criminal justice system is an organized but complex assemblage of institutions that work together as a whole. To understand why cases are “stalled” in courts, it is necessary to grasp the problems, working relationships and functions  of all the agencies involved in the criminal justice system: the police that detect and investigate crimes; the prosecuting authorities that produce witnesses; the court system that tries the offenders; and the prison system that takes custody of the offender during (where there is no bail) and after (where conviction is secured) trial. The James Ibori case, for example, is said to have illustrated a systemic failure of the criminal justice system.

The problems of the Judiciary go far beyond  the picture painted by Prof. Jeyifo. There are more fundamental issues to be addressed if the Nigerian Judiciary is to meet up with the standards of other judiciaries in civilized nations. Successive governments have been clamouring for reforms of the judicial sector. Regrettably, none has taken the bull by the horns to do the needful. The Nigerian Judiciary is probably the only one in the world where Chief Judges go cap-in-hand to the governors of their states to beg for funds to run the affairs of the Judiciary. Nigeria is probably the only place where the Executive arm of government determines what fund goes to the Judiciary due to lack of fiscal autonomy. Indeed, the eminent professor cannot claim to be unaware of the consistent reduction in budgetary allocations to the Judiciary over the years. For instance, for Fiscal 2016, the judiciary asked for over N140bn, but got about N70bn, a little over one percent of the over N6trn budget. The allocation to the judiciary has been consistently declining for the past six years, falling from N95bn in 2010 to the current level.

Nigerians are doubtless hurting from the effects of corruption, but the problem is so deep and so wide that neither the people nor their government has reason to compound it with emotive and often totally misdirected discourses. It is tempting to yearn for the methods and drastic remedies of totalitarian regimes, such as many Marxist countries implemented decades ago. In this day and age, and for a democratic country like Nigeria, those methods are counterproductive and only satisfy the lust for blood. Palladium is encouraged, but not impressed, by the Buhari presidency’s reassessment of its anti-graft measures and methods. The president should not be distracted from pursuing the right course of allowing the rule of law to prevail. As the 1894-1896 (Alfred) Dreyfus affair in France showed, and as Emile Zola, Prof. Jeyifo’s literary compatriot illustrated at the time, it is imperative for justice not to be miscarried simply because the people are in a murderous mood, looking for scapegoats to sacrifice for their miseries, and eager to accept a suspect’s guilt simply because the government has either said so or published that condemnation.

Prof. Jeyifo, who sometimes writes on the rule of law in Nigeria as if he has the judiciary of another, probably Marxist, country in mind, is wrong to look for shortcuts in the anti-graft war, just as the president is embarrassingly wrong to decry the slow pace of justice delivery in Nigeria when he has done absolutely nothing to reform, restructure and fund the judiciary to quicken the pace of justice delivery. On this subject, Prof. Jeyifo was wrong yesterday, he is wrong today, and he will be wrong tomorrow, and Palladium will not be deterred from saying so even if, in the words of the German Protestant leader, Martin Luther, “there were as many devils at Worms as tiles on its roofs.” The rule of law is inviolate and inseparable from justice. Justice will be a cruel, arbitrary and abstract concept without the restraining moderation and organisational ethos of the rule of law. Indeed, it is political and spiritual indiscipline to subvert the rule of law, flout the constitution, and pick and choose according to the whims of the leader, the temper of the public, and the political and ‘revolutionary’ exigencies of the moment. This bare fact is incontestable anywhere, Mars or Earth, notwithstanding the distance between the two planets.

April 3, 2016