The federal government has reiterated its commitment to enforcing a December 1, 2021 deadline for civil servants to take their Covid-19 jabs or risk being shut out of public buildings and secretariats. The government does not of course have enough vaccinations to go round, not even for 10 percent of the population, but alarmed that existing supplies were not being accessed as rapidly as expected, and believing that if civil servants wished to get vaccinated they could easily do so without delay or any encumbrances, it has decided to enforce a deadline. Clever by half, however, the federal government has left a small window, smaller than the eye of a needle, for civil servants to exploit. Public servants unwilling to be vaccinated but determined to gain access to their offices could present a Covid-19 PCR test done not earlier than 72 hours, said the government. How many tests would they take in a month?
For vaccine refuseniks, being ordered to get vaccinated or present a negative PCR test is like sailing between Scylla and Charybdis. They clearly remember that the vaccine is not foolproof in terms of its side-effects, with a few of the effects so debilitating as to lead to death, nor foolproof in terms of victims being infected or hospitalized. The religious fears of spooked vaccines may have receded, but there are still apprehensions about the unknown and unintended consequences of the vaccines. Too many people remain skeptical about the whole vaccine issue, indeed angry, in the face of the general indemnity to prosecution or liability claimed by vaccine manufacturers and governments which are nevertheless forcing the populace to be vaccinated. Many governments claim that vaccination is necessary to create herd immunity and save the larger population from infection and millions of deaths. A few vaccine skeptics, growled the government, should not be allowed to stand in the way of the larger good.
In some countries in Europe and the Americas, infection rates have begun to spike again, and their governments attribute the rising incidence to vaccine refuseniks, against whom they have begun a panoply of measures to compel adherence to Covid-19 rules and regulations, including forced vaccinations and lockdowns. Most of these countries have vaccination rates higher than 50 percent, yet infection rates have started to spike as winter looms. Responding to new restrictions, protests have broken out in countries such as Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Northern Ireland, Switzerland, Croatia, and North Macedonia, among others. These were countries whose initial management of Covid-19 restrictions was far better, and their citizens enjoyed significant palliatives. Yet, equating the restrictions to imprisonments, citizens of those countries have pushed back in protests against their governments’ new restrictions.
On the other hand, the vaccination rate in Africa, particularly black African countries like Nigeria, is a measly six percent or less. This low rate of vaccination is accompanied by equally inexplicably low rate of infection and mortality. The hospitalisation and deaths the world expected from Africa have failed to materialise. Stunned, Eurocentric scientists have continued to shift their baleful and apocalyptic projections of Covid-19 impact in Africa, assured that the continent’s poor healthcare facilities would soon buckle under the pressure of new strains and mutations of the virus. Yet, with each wave, fewer deaths and hospitalisations have been witnessed in black Africa. Indeed, what is inexplicable is the stridency and panic with which Nigeria’s Covid-19 response team has met the low incidence of the virus. Few now bother to use masks, and social distancing has all but been relegated to the background. Worship houses have opened up to the hilt, and events centres and wedding and funeral ceremonies have been celebrated with little adherence to guidelines. Yet, infection has remained abysmally low, and hospitalisation has all but disappeared.
Why the Nigerian response team continues to issue dire warnings about the anticipated fourth wave is hard to fathom, though they have not taken proactive steps about the new strain detected in South Africa. They poll-parrot Europe and the Americas, and are even more determined to enforce vaccination and restrictions than those countries. Scarce national resources are being shoveled down the barns of Covid-19 than are deployed to fight other scarier communicable diseases and some old epidemiological staples such as malaria and Lassa fever. Indeed, there are now fears that the Nigerian Covid-19 response has become the usual racket that splurges the country’s scarce financial resources on wasteful projects. As a matter of fact, last week, the World Bank warned that Nigerian households were yet to recover from Covid-19 impact. Food security was becoming a grave issue, and this in turn has triggered all sorts of criminalities which the country has been unable to grapple with. Yet, the government has kept adamantly to spending huge resources on a virus that has proved spectacularly tame against black Africans. In fact, the government is now determined to impose more restrictions and rules that impinge on the economic freedoms and productivity of the people. This is illogical and worrisome.
After refusing to engage its scientists in researching the course and trajectory of the virus in black Africa, and finding no reason to explain the low incidence of infection, the Nigerian government and its Covid-19 response team have abandoned the field and narrative to Western scientists and bureaucrats who alarm everyone and impose their response templates, including vaccines, on the rest of the world. If it is not too late, could the country importune their unimaginative government and Covid-19 response team to look inwards, find a homegrown solution to the virus, and design response mechanisms that do not drain and impoverish their people? Surely, this can’t be too much to ask for.
FG plays ducks and drakes with El-Zakzaky
Despite their victory in the courts, Shiite leader, Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, and his wife, Zeenat, may have started to wonder just what else a person needs in his moral and political armament to checkmate or truly defeat the federal government. If they are not wondering what else to do, then perhaps they will be digging deep into their academic bags to redefine the rule of law in a country where the government routinely sets itself above the law, defies court orders, declines to pay damages and compensations, and sometimes even ignore the courts altogether.
Sheikh El-Zakzaky was back in court to compel the release of his and his wife’s travelling documents so that they could seek medical care abroad. In the suit, he joined the Department of State Service (DSS), which he accused of causing the flagging of the passports, the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) Abubakar Malami, whom he accused of either authorising the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) to seize the passports or place a ban on the documents, and the NIS, which he said placed a red flag on the documents at the instance of the first two respondents. The passports themselves, the Sheikh acknowledges, were last seen in the possession of the Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA).
None of the four persons or agencies acknowledges possession of the passport. That makes it doubly difficult for the Sheikh and his wife, and of course, their lawyers, to know who specifically to hold responsible. They are all tossing him around like a yo-yo. The Nigerian government is adept at masterminding such evasive games, and playing ducks and drakes with the feelings and passions of victims of government oppression. The Sheikh, like hundreds of activists before him, shows how hard it is to fight the government. The government was and still is wrong on the Shiite issue, but it manages to always break its victims, if not outrightly, then perhaps leaving them for dead. The lesson is that when an activist chooses to fight the government, he should burn his bridges. If he does not manage to win, or retrace his steps and compromise, he would be lucky to escape with his life either in the short run or long run.
When the Executive Director/CEO of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), Mrs Motunrayo Alaka, made the statement in the headline of this article at a recent media programme, she was speaking about how it is no longer enough for journalists to write stories, investigative reports and expect the change they desire.
As she noted, more than ever before, journalists should be interested in knowing what other things to do to draw attention to their reports and make authorities and individuals concerned to take necessary action.
“No, we can no longer be contented with writing our stories and moving on to the next one and not be bothered or just feeling frustrated,” she stated.
What else should or can journalists do?
According to Alaka and other contributors to the discussion, journalists must, among others be engaged in some minimal advocacy to be able to hold the government and others accountable for whatever they are supposed to do, but are not doing.
Those who abuse their positions should not be allowed to pretend as if they are not guilty or aware of allegations against them through continuous demand for necessary sanctions to be applied.
Journalists and media organisations must ensure maximum engagements for their reports on various platforms for maximum reach and impact.
It would be necessary, one in a while, for collaboration among media organizations to jointly investigate, publish or broadcast some major report for such content to be taken seriously and for those accused of any wrongdoings to feel compelled to respond or suffer the consequence of their actions beyond where they are protected.
Working with civil society and advocacy groups will also ensure that investigative reports are not ignored as they can use them as the basis to demand for some reforms to be implemented or decisions taken.
While journalists should not be emotional about issues they report to be objective and fair to all, taking steps to ensure that they do not continue to report about the same issues repeatedly without any change should be understandable given the lack of necessary impact over the years.
Journalists may not need to carry placards to make any demand, except where their rights are violated or directly affected by a policy or issue, but they should support advocates long enough to keep crucial issues in focus.
In cases where journalists report about needy and vulnerable people, it may no longer be enough to interview them and not think of how to support and meet their needs in whatever way possible.
Many of such sources are tired of being repeatedly interviewed and not seeing any change in their plight, which buttresses the need to adopt the policy of Reporting Until Something Happens (RUSH) through necessary follow-ups and collaboration with advocates.
Individual journalists and media organizations should be willing, for example, to help raise funds for displaced persons like Kunle Adebajo of HumAngle recently did for Internally Displaced Persons ( IDPs) in Zamfara State.
Some other journalists and media organisations have gone out of their way to financially support and get justice for people they report, but more can still be done.
Media organizations like any commercial entity, which many are, should have Corporate Social Responsibility (CRS) projects that can benefit some of the people they report to earn revenue.
That there were at least 706,189 illegal students in virtually all the tertiary institutions in Nigeria as at November 22 may sound incredible, but it is true. We may not have illegitimate children, but we have illegitimate admissions into our tertiary institutions. Indeed, it is not only true but confirmed by no less personalities than the heads of the various institutions. Under normal circumstances these students should not graduate because they did not meet the criteria for admission as at the time the various institutions admitted them.
The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof Ishaq Oloyede, made this revelation on Tuesday at the Consultative Sensitisation Meeting held at Sheraton Abuja Hotel. It is indeed another meeting in “another November to remember”, as Oloyede put it. It is an unforgettable experience because of the weighty nature of one of the four major issues that the gathering of eminent scholars, senior journalists and other stakeholders exchanged views on. Yes, regularisation was only one of the issues, but it was no doubt the most shameful of them all.
Other items on the agenda included large-scale infractions in the conduct of the Joint Universities Preliminary Examinations Board (JUPEB) and the Interim Joint Matriculation Board Examination (IJMBE), introduction/inclusion of Physical and Health Education and Computer Studies as Unified Tertiary Matriculation (UTME) subjects as well as consolidation of the registration charges collected by registration centres into the UTME/DEe-PINS registration fee.
This is how the irregular admissions work in those institutions: the school authorities admit some students who do not meet the requisite criteria. For example, as at the time of admission, some of the prospective students may not have Mathematics or English Language that are compulsory for all courses in the universities. Yet, they would be given admission, in expectation that they would reseat those subjects and be able to pass before graduation.
This is wrong.
And the authorities of those institutions are not oblivious of the fact that this has become illegitimate since 2017 when JAMB, under Prof Oloyede introduced the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS), as one of the major concepts to check the growing trend of malpractices which characterised the UTME before he came on board. CAPS is to ensure quality control, transparency and credibility in the admission processes. It completely eliminates human interference which was one of the factors responsible for abuses in the past. As Oloyede noted, “Any process outside this scheme is illegitimate and it renders the admission process null, void and ultra vires… It is rather disappointing that some institutions continue to defy this decision of the National Policy Meeting, ably chaired by the Honourable Minister of Education…”
Unfortunately, the damage does not end with the admission processes alone; it also has implications for national data, national planning and the country’s image. Since JAMB was not aware of the admission of the students outside CAPS, the board tenders the figure in its own system to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) when it requests for such, and this is taken as the gospel truth, since that is the right avenue to get such data. The same applies to other agencies outside the country that might want to know the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) for tertiary institutions in the country. JAMB can only give figures it is aware of to the Federal Ministry of Education which would in turn avail those agencies of the figures supplied by JAMB, whereas about 706,000 were not captured because they were offered admission without JAMB’s approval. They came in through the back door, as it were.
It is bad that the tertiary institutions, particularly the universities, could engage in such underhand practices. They are not only supposed to be academic exemplars, but moral exemplars as well. Their certificates are supposed to be awarded to people that have been found worthy not only in learning, but also in character.
If only the managers of the institutions understand their critical role in the country, they would not have gone so deep into the iniquity of admitting students without the consent of the approving authority, only to be looking for approvals after the fact. It is sad that the vogue in town has also become the gown on our campuses. When gold rusts, what would iron do?
Now that the institutions have sinned and fallen short of the requisite requirements, what next? The logical thing is punishment. But who is supposed to be punished — the institutions or the students? Again, the logical thing is to punish both, since it takes two to tango. But, if there are no institutions ready and willing to bend the rule for whatever reason, there won’t be students seeking such services. That is why the institutions should pay a higher price for their imprudence. But how do you punish the institutions’ authorities, especially when some of those who admitted the students illegitimately have since completed their terms and or had left the scene before the day of reckoning? Even for those of them who are still around, what punishment would be as severe as failing to recognise the products of their illegitimate admission, after graduation? That is, they can neither graduate nor do national service. Also, JAMB would never give them necessary letters for scholarships, post-graduate endeavours like housemanship, etc.
This is a dilemma for JAMB, especially considering all the efforts of the affected parents and those of the students themselves before they got to the point of graduation. Hence, the board’s passionate appeal to the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, for a last chance for such erring institutions and students. This process of regularisation or condonement is not new, though. It was the practice before the introduction of CAPS in 2017. But it became outlawed after CAPS took effect. According to Oloyede, the minister reluctantly agreed to this, but then, the violators must first declare the number of candidates they admitted illegitimately between 2017 and 2020. After which they must write letters of apology, so to say, promising that they would not let such repeat itself. These conditions have been complied with by the violators, including culprit vice-chancellors. It should be noted that the pardon/regularisation covers only the students that now have the minimum five credits in relevant subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.
Naturally, some of the stakeholders did not agree with this idea initially but had to toe the minister’s line by reluctantly agreeing because the other route to take would seem callous. The basis of the initial rejection of the position is that in Nigeria, no one can ever guarantee that a bad thing will not recur. As we all know, corruption is sweet and only a few people would spit out anything sweet or give it up willingly. We eat corruption as if we are eating food.
Indeed, this ‘last opportunity’ reminds me of a character in Kofi Awoonor’s This Earth, My Brother. No matter the time you accost the character, he would always tell you the stick of cigarette he was smoking was the last one! The incumbent minister has control only over his tenure. His successor too may have to succumb to threats and or cheap blackmail and be forced to issue his own ‘last warning’. So, when actually is ‘last warning’? As a matter of fact, one of the stakeholders asked if we were at the quarter or semi-final stage of the ‘last warning’!
Again, as another stakeholder pointed out, we have to decide whether it is quantity or quality we want in our tertiary institutions. This is quite instructive, especially against the background of mushrooming of tertiary institutions in several parts of the country. An example was given of a particular tertiary institution that has approval for less than 2,000 students but has over 30,000. Obviously, the key consideration is economic. How does the school sustain itself, especially since there are no grants or adequate subvention from the government that created it?
The fact of the matter is that many of the institutions, particularly those owned by state governments, are not adequately funded. In local pidgin parlance, they are simply ‘born throway’. The state governments do not have the financial capacity to run them. Yet, some of them have more than one tertiary institution in a situation where even one is too many. Thus, the vice chancellors, rectors and or provosts of the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, respectively, are left to their own devices to source for funds to run the institutions. What we then have is an admission explosion whose main consideration is economic survival. Qualification occupies the back seat.
True, mushrooming of schools and quality are not mutually exclusive, but we know from experience that our country is an exception. In other words, both are mutually exclusive here.
It is depressing that the malpractice in question cuts across all the six geopolitical regions. None exempts. None, including some of the revered ivory towers. The difference is the magnitude. Helmsmen of the institutions involved should hang their heads in shame.
Regrettably, illegitimate admission is not the only ill in our tertiary institutions. Of course it should be expected that other abnormalities would co-exist with it, since the very fundamentals have been largely compromised. The problem of sex-for-marks has always been there. We are also told that there are situations where a single student gets four degrees simultaneously from four different tertiary institutions! The rot in some of these ivory towers is such that some prospective students are told to pay as much as N9million to cover the duration of the periods they should be in school for the respective programmes and are promptly awarded degrees after paying the money! Then the frequent strike by both the academic and non-academic members of the staff of universities which sometimes lasts for almost a session. All of these have had negative effects on academic calendars and the integrity of certificates given by many of these institutions. The result is that Nigerians who can afford it now prefer to send their children abroad for further studies. This is something to ponder by both the governments and teachers in universities which a few decades back had many foreign students studying here.
All said, now that we seem to have agreed that the illegitimate admissions be condoned or regularised ‘for the last time’, there is need for a massive media campaign drawing attention to the dangers inherent in it. This much the minister has told JAMB and the campaign has started. The campaign should run in the major newspapers and electronic media as well as the social media, in the major languages. Pardoning the students that have now made up for their deficiencies is the height of compassion and magnanimity on the part of JAMB and the Minister of Education.
One can only hope that this, indeed, would be the ‘last time’ we would ever hear of the matter. Any tertiary institution administrator who indulges in the act henceforth deserves severe censure and punishment. If our tertiary institutions that should be beacons of hope and integrity cannot be trusted with a little thing as getting their admission processes right, then, whither Nigeria!
Last week, we promised to round up this enquiry into the political economy of public disaffection by focusing attention on a paper delivered by the Director General of the National Intelligence Agency, Ambassador Ahmed Rufai Abubakar, at the recently concluded 2021 conference of the National Council on Finance and Economic Development (NACOFED).
Titled, National Security and Sustainable Development in Nigeria: Prospects and Challenges, it was a thoughtful and detailed presentation chronicling the various security challenges facing the nation in the era of the new normal or post-Covid-19 regimen and offering a pathway out of the global conundrum.
The Director General was absent due to unexpected developments. But he was ably represented by a Deputy Director in the organization. Expectedly, the paper also dwelled at length on the emerging security challenges facing the West African behemoth, particularly from international and national non-state and anti-state actors with the military capacity to beard the lion in its den.
Had the Director General’s stand-in proxy read his paper to the state actors present, he would have been preaching to the converted and the whole thing would have amounted to nothing but sheer intellectual and ideological masturbation. Given its self-reproducing nature and its capacity to generate ruling ideas which are the ideas of the ruling group, the discursive formation of the state is always set in marble. This is why there is always the need for countervailing ideas to deepen and enrich national discourses of this nature, particularly at a very critical point in the nation’s history.
It is instructive to note that while the ambassador relied on the authority of conventional political scientists, philosophers and sociologists to delineate his concept of state security, yours sincerely relied only on semantic authority. To secure is to make safe. In the military, when they ask you to secure an objective, you are being ordered to make it safe beyond any physical contention.
This is what a Nigerian military ruler famously referred to as dominating your environment beyond any doubt or dispute. The said military philosopher, relying heavily on his intellectual chaperons, also noted that it was not enough to be in government, you must also be in power. In other words, it is futile and forlorn to say you are in government when real power resides somewhere else, particularly with non-state or anti-state actors.
National security means to make the nation safe and beyond any contention. But it is not enough for the state to guarantee the territorial integrity of the nation under its suzerainty. It must also secure the political, economic and spiritual integrity of the nation.
A multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation wracked by an endemic crisis of identity and which is led by divisive, polarizing leaders without any organic vision of the multi-national commonwealth is bound to become hostage to food insecurity which is the mother of all insecurities. The image of humans foraging for food is an apocalyptic glimpse of hell on earth.
Security of life and property, in addition to security from hunger, want and unbearable poverty are the fundamental reasons for the existence of the state both modern and ancient. When our ancestors at the dawn of humanity surrendered their civil and political rights to a band of marauders and warriors, they sought for protection from external strife and internal adversities. It is a question of supporting your local bandits against foreign aggressors who would enslave you to the bargain.
Any state that has lost its capacity to provide security for its denizens has lost its fundamental raison d’etre and is no longer fit for purpose. The use of the word denizen above is deliberate. Citizenship is not automatically conferred by membership of any nation. It is the product of struggles against the excesses of the state either as foreign conquerors or internal aggressors against their own people. People who find themselves in nations where the rulers behave like conquerors or ancient emperors cannot be considered as full citizens. They are rather evolving subjects.
It is the finely honed contention between the forces of change and emancipation and the ramparts of state security and suppression that defines how a nation progresses towards greater civilization and self-actualization. Sometimes a foolish move for greater freedom could jeopardize and force a roll back of gains already made in earlier struggles. Sometimes an obtuse refusal by the powers that be to face obvious reality could lead to a swift collapse of the old order.
Yet it must be said that there are nations and there are nations. Nigerians must count themselves lucky that they have been spared the worst of climatological adversities threatening human habitats on earth and in the process forcibly reconfiguring its demographics. It has been predicted that the Pacific Island-nation of Kiribati would have completely disappeared in a matter of decades due to relentless ocean surges.
Recently, the authorities on the group of islands bought a huge parcel from the Fiji nation for eventual relocation. Whether the relocating will need visas to access their new abodes or whether they will be known as Fijians or Kiribatese remains to be seen. It is a brave new world indeed.
But to whom much is ceded and conceded by nature, much is also expected. From the perspective of eco-diversity, Nigeria is one of the most prodigiously endowed countries in the history of the nation-state, boasting of every conceivable climatological condition: From the scalding aridity of its extreme north, the temperate lushness of the middle belt to the equatorial profuseness of its southern slide towards the Atlantic Ocean.
It is therefore inconceivable that such a richly bequeathed country capable of growing anything under the sun can be battling with food sufficiency when a desert nation like Israel which is not even up to one third the size of Nigeria has already achieved food sufficiency. Yet Nigeria is currently facing a very serious crisis of food shortage which is both a national and an international scandal.
This was the reason why yours sincerely decided to play the devil’s advocate with the presentation of the NIA Director General by reversing the conceptual order of the problematic. In recent times, the Nigerian public space has been completely taken over by the phrase “security architecture” and how to go about rejigging or revamping this. This is taken to mean a serious reengineering of the security organogram of the nation.
The problem with those who bandy this phrase about is that they deliberately ignore or studiously avoid its conceptual obverse. For surely if there is an organogram of security, there must be an organogram or architecture of insecurity which is it as the root of the problem. An empirical problem is better solved when it is conceptually captured with rigour and superior analysis.
At the root or foundation of contemporary insecurity in Nigeria is food insecurity which is worsening by the day. It is from this foundational crisis that the spiral of insecurity builds up turning into skyscrapers of monumental insecurity. What a rogue politician famously described as lack of stomach infrastructure has returned to haunt the nation.
We must always have it at the back of the mind that at least three of the seminal revolutions that have rocked humankind in the last five hundred years had something to do with either food or beverage: the Boston Tea party, Marie Antoine’s famous outburst as bread, the staple food of the poor, disappeared from Parisian shops and the images famished humanity foraging for food like some misbegotten animals at the onset of the Chinese Revolution.
There is however a nexus between national food sufficiency and the emergence of an organic nationalist elite in all its multi-dimensional implications. A Yoruba proverb argues that once hunger is removed from poverty, then poverty is vastly diminished.
Within the context of a more organic pre-colonial feudal and semi-feudal elite in Africa, hunger was often treated like a national emergency with rituals of appeasement to the deity of rainfall and other propitiating measures taken to forestall mass hunger. That was the state of human enlightenment at that particular point.
At the dawn of independence when Indian nationals were starving and dying of hunger on the streets, Pandit Nehru decreed that if Indians could not feed themselves, it was within their rights to die of hunger. No one disputed this wake-up call. There were no attempts to cast an ethnic or religious slur on this impassioned exhortation. Everybody simply rolled up their sleeves and the rest is history as they say.
A nationalist elite is always crucial and critical to mass mobilization for any purpose including the drive for national food sufficiency. A recently departed Chinese scientist was mourned as a hero throughout the length and breadth of the vast nation. He was the first person to produce a strain of rice whose astronomical yield allowed China to achieve food sufficiency for the first time in its modern history.
Compare and contrast this with the hype and hoopla surrounding the much-ballyhooed production of cassava bread during the administration of Goodluck Jonathan. Suffice it to add that it turned out to be a gigantic hoax designed to hoodwink an unsuspecting populace. Both cassava and master baker disappeared from the public purview. In any nation where such national deceits have consequences, nobody would have dared entertain the thought of saddling the culprit with higher responsibility.
The inability to achieve food security which is consequent upon the absence of an organic nationalist elite has a twin virus which often combine with devastating consequences for the health and subsequent destiny of the nation. If a nation is unable to feed itself, it should at least be able to control and curtail unplanned and unproductive population expansion. But the irony is that a nation without an organic nationalist elite cannot pronounce on population expansion without setting the nation on fire.
The issue of population control in Nigeria has such serious religious, cultural and regional undertones that they cannot be addressed by a fractious and polarized political elite without serious consequences. Yet without evolving such an organic pan-Nigerian elite group either through revolution or accelerated evolution, the fundamental problematic thrown up by the current security nightmare facing the nation cannot even be broached.
The architecture of insecurity in Nigeria can now be summarized in one sentence and it is a troubling paradox which evokes the greater Nigerian paradox. The Nigerian political elites are the greatest security threat to the nation and its continued existence. This is due to their inability to evolve core values which will guide the nation and serve as impersonal arbiters in the arduous task of getting an organic entity to coalesce from disparate and mutually contending nationalities.
Hence the mismanagement of ethnic diversities that we are witnessing, the proliferation of ungoverned and ungovernable spaces, the rise of the gainfully unemployed and the constant but futile attempts of regional hegemonic groups to impose their dominion on the rest of the country for a length of time.
In some European countries riven by ethnic rivalries and residual animosities arising from history, the political elites often gather to hammer out a power-sharing deal which allows for peace and equity to reign. This is what is known as elite pacting or consociational politics in Holland and Belgium. In others, the fears of an oppressive centre have led to a radical decentralization and massive devolution of power to the constituting units which allow each to work out the internal contradiction without becoming a menace to the whole nation. Switzerland is a classic example.
The political elite in Nigeria have done neither, yet they are expecting the cloud of insecurity to disperse as if by magic. It will not happen. What the nation is likely to witness is an intensification of conflicts within its borders and a security nightmare the like of which has not been seen anywhere on the continent. The following recommendations are based on the fierce urgency of the moment and the need to allay fears masquerading as facts and ethnic grievances parading as the truth.
Recommendations
1 The deployment of soft power rather than aggressive militarism to negotiate ethnic grievances.
2 Active intra-elite dialogue and continuous interaction to promote mutual understanding.
3 The immediate constitution of a traditional council of elders or what is known as Lorga Jiga in Afghanistan to mediate crisis using traditional means of conciliation and consensus-building.
4 The establishment of a National Commission for Vertical and Horizontal Integration which will address the urgent need for ethnic and religious harmony as well as greater economic inclusiveness among all Nigerians.
5 The urgent convocation of a National Conference to determine whether the current federal system is working and is suitable to the needs of the nation in the current political conjuncture.
This is by no means an exclusive and exhaustive list. But it can serve to exercise and organize the mind. I must thank the organizers for bringing everybody together in this important forum.
Initially, I did not want to jump into the matter because, for some time, it looked to me like an improbable fiction. I know that crimes and corruption generally have refused to leave Nigeria because the worst of them are perpetrated by the rich. They are the ones that cut corners in building projects, despite the risks; they are the ones that steal so unconscionably as if stealing is going out of fashion; they are the ones that trample on the law and institutions with impunity; etc. Yet, they hardly pay for their crimes and when they do at all, the biggest punishment they get is usually a slap on the wrist.
I know all of these. Yet, I found it hard to believe that a man like Prince Rahmon Adedoyin could ever be involved in such a mess that has been in the media space in the past week or so. I have never met him in person, but I have had cause to pass through his university, Oduduwa University, Ipetumodu, Osun State, when travelling because it is at a major intersection of the ever-busy Ife- Ilesa-Akure Expressway. Never could I have imagined during those journeys that a day would come when the founder of the university would be mentioned in a case like this. How could a prince from ‘the source’ ever be involved in money rituals? A prince as well as a man with the heart to establish tertiary institutions must be someone of impeccable character. That is the minimum demanded of him in both capacities.
The story is that one Master’s degree student of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Osun State, Mr. Timothy Adegoke, had lodged in Hilton Hotels and Resorts at Ile-Ife, upon his arrival from Abuja on November 5, to enable him arrive early for his examination at the OAU Distance Learning Centre, Moro, Osun State, on November 6 and November 7. The hotel is owned by Prince Adedoyin.
Somehow, that was the last that was heard of him alive. His wife that he had told on November 5 that he had arrived his hotel tried reaching him the next day on phone but there was no response, as the phone only kept ringing all day. She contacted the relations who also got in touch with the OAU authorities that told them that Adegoke did not take the Master of Business Administration (MBA) examination that he came for.
The police were then invited, and, in the course of investigations, it was discovered that Adegoke paid N37,000 (his hotel bill for two nights) into the account of one Adedeji Tobiloba Adesola, a female member of the staff of the hotel. Despite the fact that the hotel had been his choice hotel, as he had stayed there for his examinations previously (i.e. from October 22 to 24; and October 29 to October 31), the hotel management and founder allegedly denied that Adegoke lodged at the hotel for the November 6 examination.
However, Adesola was eventually apprehended and she confessed to have allocated Room 305 of the hotel to Adegoke on November 5. Her confession reportedly led to the arrest of six other suspects, including an Alfa, and Prince Adedoyin himself. The story is obviously longer. Indeed, it is as intriguing as it is incredible.
Suffice it to add that Adegoke was killed and his corpse buried. Where was he killed? Who killed him? And from where was his corpse exhumed? Even if they could not answer the first two questions, the police should have told us where the corpse was exhumed. Rather, it was the victim’s relations that witnessed the exhumation who gave us graphic details of it. They said he was buried near the hotel and wrapped with one of the hotel’s clothes. They added that his throat was slit and something taken away from the body.
Even with this summary of what we were told, my readers should be able to understand why it was difficult for me to believe the story until Osun State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Olawale Olokode, confirmed the arrest of Prince Adedoyin in connection with the incident.
I commend the OAU authorities for the concern shown when they learnt that one of their students was missing. Also worthy of commendation is the management of Oduduwa University, for the maturity displayed in their press release on the matter. Having participated in such damage control missions in the past, I know a lot of rigour must have gone into the eventual outcome. It’s been a long time since I saw such a mature statement from an institution in troubled time like this, coming out to articulate its position in such a mature and detached manner, devoid of the usual sycophancy and preposterous vituperations.
We must understand why the university had to speak up on the matter. There is no way it would not be affected by the incident, irrespective of whether their founder is eventually exonerated or found culpable. As a matter of fact, it should consider itself lucky that admission for the present session had been concluded before the story broke. Otherwise, it would have affected the university’s intakes. Nobody wants to lose a child that has been trained to that level in avoidable circumstances. The way things are, even the hotel would not get out of this unscathed, and this, again, is without prejudice to the outcome of investigations on the matter.
The truth of the matter is that, even if Prince Adedoyin is exonerated in the end, many people would not believe the process was free and fair. Many would believe it was the outcome of the rich protecting one of their own. So, many people would henceforth want to avoid the place like the plague, since no one wants to get to heaven before knowing the truth. As one of my half-brothers used to say when we were young, then, ‘it might be too late to cry when the head is off’.
Prince Adedoyin’s other businesses are likely to suffer the same fate as people would need all the angels in heaven swearing to convince them that the source of the money used in establishing them is clean.
Universities are citadels of learning. They offer different academic programmes aimed at making their students complete individuals that can benefit the society. They are supposed to mould character. As a matter of fact, they should, normally, award certificates only to people who have been found worthy in character and learning. So, it takes more than mere interest or profit for someone to establish a university when there are other less stressful businesses in the country. We know the businesses many of our rich men engage in; businesses with ordinary ‘portfolios’ as their offices and yet they smile to the bank daily. What then would make a man who is so well established go into the business of money rituals?
This is the jigsaw puzzle. And it would remain that until we get to the root of the matter.
Meanwhile, we must pick one or two lessons from this developing story, whether it is true or false. The first is that we don’t just walk or drive into anywhere simply because they say it is a hotel. But then, what are the criteria for determining which hotel is safe and which is not? One would ordinarily think that money rituals can only be found in downtown (cheap) hotels. That Adegoke paid N37,000 for two nights suggests that hotel is not cheap, even by Lagos standards. There are still some fairly good hotels in Lagos that would offer N20,000 per night. So, to have paid that much for only two nights in a hotel in Ile-Ife tells us that Hilton Hotels and Resorts is not for the poor. Indeed, Adegoke was able to afford such a place because of his status. Many of those who came to Ile-Ife for the same examination he came for before he was killed would have slept in far cheaper hotels or even squatted somewhere, from where they would have gone to write the examination.
The second lesson is that we must keep our loved ones, particularly our next-of-kin abreast of our movements. Even while in the hotel, we should be singing to the ears of the members of the staff there such that they would know that our people are aware that we are lodging there. If the victim had not given such information to his wife, there would have been no clue about his whereabouts or what eventually happened. Many of the so-called missing persons got missing through such carelessness of not disclosing their movements to those who should know; hence, people end up clueless about their sudden disappearance.
My appeal in this matter is that no one should try to pervert justice. This is about a hardworking man who believed in education and expanding the frontiers of his knowledge. He was already a chartered accountant at 37, and, in fact, a director of finance at the multinational firm where he worked in Abuja. This was enough to make him rest but he apparently hungered for an MBA, either to satisfy his curiosity or to enhance his credentials. This cannot be a crime. He should not be killed for whatever reason and by anybody, in the pursuit of this ambition.
I’m afraid, we have started seeing what could be attempts to pervert the course of justice in this case, with one Olusegun Jeje who claimed to be speaking for some Maye-in-Council, making a case of the alleged innocence of Prince Adedoyin. That is one of the problems we have with cases of this nature in this country. The group referred to Prince Adedoyin as “an innocent person” simply on account of his having “five universities and polytechnics” and, to boot, “a Muslim to the core (who) cannot kill a fly.” Pray, what has flying religious kite got to do with this? These are the usual dimensions in this kind of case. And this is just the beginning. More will surface over time because of the personality involved. But those who intend to act as judge over this matter should take a cue from Oduduwa University’s management. God will not forgive whoever stands in the way of justice in this case, no matter how highly placed. The least this country owes Adegoke and others like him who had been wasted in the manner Adegoke was is for justice to take its course. It is the least we owe Prince Adedoyin too.
Was the young man actually killed in the hotel? If so, why? Had others been similarly killed there? Was Prince Adedoyin involved? Has Oduduwa University been experiencing inexplicable incidents like the one in question? These are riddles that the police, and may be ultimately the courts, have to resolve. But, meanwhile, the police must do their job professionally. I know that this might be difficult, especially when some big-wigs begin to press buttons, despite the commissioner of police’s assurance that justice would be served. But the Osun State Police Command would have made manipulations difficult by not only telling us that the victim’s corpse had been exhumed intact, (contrary to the victim’s brother’s claim), but also telling us where. I do not know how making that public could have jeopardised investigations.
I must confess though that the mainstream media have not done much to publicise this matter. We need to do more.
I pray that God would give Adegoke’s wife, children, his aged parents and indeed the entire family the fortitude to bear the loss.
THE programmed leakage of an unsigned and insufficiently edited version of the Justice Doris Okuwobi-led EndSARS panel report should worry every patriot. The leakage occurred, presumably through a panel member, on the very same day the panel submitted its report last Monday. Some reports claimed the leakage was prompted by trust issues. This is balderdash. It had nothing to do with mistrust of the state government. The leakage was specifically and deliberately designed to foul the well of public trust, sway unsuspecting Nigerians into a preconceived and hardened position, and panic the government and the four-member White Paper review panel into abandoning or softening the critical examination of the true panel’s report promised by the government, especially in light of the many sweeping generalisations and errors that riddle the report.
It is of course not certain that the leaked report bears close resemblance to the original one submitted to the Lagos government, as indeed a member of the panel reluctantly conceded. It is, therefore, a perilous task commenting on what is clearly not the true copy, as many media organisations, public commentators, and international bodies have done. This piece will try to anticipate that trap. But in receiving the real report, the Lagos State government, cognisant of the keen and massive public interest in the subject, has given itself a breakneck two-week deadline to examine the report and produce a White Paper. The panel’s sittings lasted for more than a year; the state could afford to take more than two weeks to produce a paper it can defend for thoroughness and objectivity.
Many newspaper columnists and television anchors, judging from their write-ups and interviews, including their curious preconceived positions, have taken sides and given the unwholesome impression that any other ‘truth’ would be unacceptable or amount to brutal doctoring. It is not clear what percentage of youths thinks this way, but quite a large number of youths are adamant about what transpired at Lekki Tollgate on October 20, 2020. They brush aside, as indeed the leaked report panel also managed to do, logical worries about what constitutes a massacre, and insist there was a massacre. The leaked report gives them what they want, but in very curious ways, describing the still unsubstantiated death toll at the Lekki Tollgate as violence which in “the manner of assault and killing could in context be described as a massacre.” Sophistry can sometime be elegant.
It is unlikely that the leaked report is the same report submitted to the state government. The substantiations were slim, skinny and far-fetched, the language worrisome, judgemental and activist, and the style and presentation riddled with errors and offensive presumptions. In the leaked report, the Lekki Tollgate protesters were sitting on the ‘floor’ rather than the ground, and colourful, emotive, and superfluous adjectives were deployed calculatingly to whip up emotions, stoke anger and lead everyone to a predetermined and hysteric end. The panel was supposed to find and expose unvarnished facts of what transpired on that bilious, controversial night; instead it discountenanced hours and tons of evidence which many viewers, including this writer, watched on television during hearings, and came willy-nilly to very dire, apocalyptic and unsubstantiated conclusions, not to say unmerited awards. Surely the leaked report can’t be the original. It is too damaged to be, and it does a huge disservice to every member of the putative panel that produced it.
The leaked report was also calculated to whip up international disapproval of Nigeria’s behaviour even before the true report and the White Paper were officially released. The question many commentators railing against the army and the government, and particularly against the excitable Information minister Lai Mohammed, are not asking themselves is why the leaked report should be believed and treated as the authentic report when hours after the leakage doubts about its authenticity were raised. It has become distressingly common for Nigerians, particularly disaffected youths exasperated by the planlessness and profligacy at the pinnacle of state and federal administrations, to repose confidence in foreign opinions and commentaries about Nigeria. That weakness will not abate anytime soon. A disproportionate number of Nigerians have invested Europe and the United States with the status of the policemen of the world, imbued with superior ethics and unassailable political and financial systems. Despite their torrid records of open and horrifying racism, not to say histories of genocide that have not been requited, unquestioning and mesmerised Nigerians, mostly youths, swear by what the ‘world policemen’ say and judge. It will take decades to exorcise these infatuations from Nigerians, perhaps not even in this generation.
Already, though the world policemen know the rules of inquiries and due process, and though they were aware that the panel’s report was leaked with all the associated risks of forgery and inaccuracies, they have been sounding off and giving besotted Nigerians meat to consume. They have warned that there must be no attempt by the Nigerian government to muzzle the report or fail to fully implement the recommendations. Nigerian media emblazoned those foreign comments on their front pages and broadcasts. Lawyers and broadcast journalists have also warned that no other truth would be admissible other than the ones they have gleaned from the leaked report. Due process is rubbished simply because of preconceived positions. Even Mr Mohammed, the Information minister, has been shocked into peculiar reticence, and the presidency in its characteristic buck-passing has said it would defer to the states before taking action. They said the same thing over the 2015 Zaria massacre – 347 were recorded killed – but ended up declining to obey court orders.
Lagos has a responsibility to carefully examine the panel’s report, the original, that is. They must be bold and courageous. They should not allow themselves to be stampeded. That leaked report is a horrendous example of how not to conduct a judicial investigation. But if it bears significant resemblance to the true report, as a member of the panel has said, then Nigeria is in trouble. It would indicate that truth has been redefined, and the country is seething with plots to cause crises and disaffection, of course not in the vein of the president’s wild goose chase about youths trying to unseat him. It would mean that those behind the Lekki Tollgate protests have other sinister objectives other than ending SARS and getting the police reformed and the government made accountable. It would also mean that the Lekki protesters have extenuated the sheer incompetence of their protests, which received initial and thunderous support, and have perfected the art of procuring power without responsibility. They did not own up to their poor judgement; and now through the leaked report, they hope to procure victory and canonisation.
More importantly too, Lagos has the additional responsibility of exposing the leaker of the unsigned and unedited report. The leaker should be investigated to find out what motives were behind the spontaneous and extraordinary step of attempting a second time to stoke crisis in the state. It was bad enough last year that after some groups put Lagos to the torch, federal and state governments let the matter rest. This is appallingly wrong. Hundreds of buses were burnt, courts were set on fire, and scores of businesses and at least a palace were either burnt or ransacked. Not to talk of individuals and policemen who lost their lives, with much of those losses glossed over in the activist report leaked to the press simply because the leaker does not trust the government. Assuming the state badly redacted the report and came out with a jaundiced White Paper, could the ‘right’ report not be leaked thereafter to justifiable applause? It was wrong not to expose the criminals who put Lagos to fire last year; it would be wronger now not to expose the leaker of a disputed document that reads more like a justification of EndSARS youths and a condemnation of the government and security institutions.
Lagosians and Nigerians are stakeholders in their nation, as defective and presumptuous as Nigeria’s founding document might be. They have equal responsibility to rebuild and run a country that is just and fair. But the campaigns to deliver those goals must themselves be anchored on truth, fairness and justice. There is no indication that last week’s prejudicially and preemptively leaked report adhered to due process and objectivity. The Zaria massacre of 2015 was rightly and properly established as a massacre, and neither the military nor the Kaduna State government disputed the facts. What they railed against was the motive for the killings, and whether the military acted justly. Lagos State has a responsibility to ensure that the Lagos judicial panel did the right thing, worked within its terms of reference, and established the truth rather than conjure indefensible and unsubstantiated facts which some vested interests now want to ram down the throats of Nigerians, after taking care to rouse global sentiments and animosities. The US has appeared to take the front seat in commenting on the report. It should not get its fingers burnt. It should read the report first and study the White Paper.
Decades ago, Asian countries weaned themselves off the breast milk of Western powers, and have since run their economies and devised, adapted or designed independent and self-sustaining political systems. Their youths, as the politically conscious Chinese exemplify, have learnt to denounce and rebuff foreign interferences in their countries’ domestic affairs. Nigerian youths, not to say their political elders whose political consciousness is below average, use the West as their political benchmark, social yardstick, and embarrassingly, their policemen to whip their degenerate leaders into shape. It is shameful the route some vested interests are taking to achieve their aims of mediating a fair, egalitarian and just society. But it is impossible to build truth and progress on falsehood. The leaked report is damaged in many parts. It is true that Nigerian leaders have been remiss since 1960, if not before, in running a just society, and have enthroned and cuddled oppressive policies and rogue institutions, including subverting the justice system. Before the campaign was botched, EndSARS protests drew attention to the rot and cruelty that have made Nigeria nearly unworkable, particularly its law enforcement. But despite these anomalies, it is time to stop pampering those who seek to undermine the country, open it up to foreign interlopers responsible in the first instance for the obnoxious foundations Nigeria is still grappling with today.
Hopefully, the real report, when it is finally released, will prove to be substantially different in language, in respect for facts and evidence, temper of arguments and conclusions, and coherence and consistency. The leaked report is full of contradictions, not one, not two; many in fact. It had no pretext to be called a report, let alone a judicial panel report. It is a disservice to members of the panel. The true report should be markedly different, despite the unsolicited statement by one of the panelists that other than typographical errors, the leaked report bore close resemblance to what the panel produced. It is impossible. In any case, should the leaked report bear close resemblance to the true report, the state government must have the courage to repair the immense damage both have caused to the integrity of our political and judicial systems.
Lagos will be under intense pressure; it must not buckle and produce a diluted and compromised White Paper. The presidency has passed the buck to the state, insisting that Abuja would act only when the state had done its part. Commentators, some of whom have jumped the gun by heading to the International Criminal Court (ICC) with tens of thousands of signatures of those who have not read the report, are threatening fire and brimstone, alleging without proof that a cover-up was afoot. A few of those threats have disappointingly come from members of the panel, a reflection of how divided Nigeria has become, and how discouragingly problematic and obfuscatory discourse has become in these parts. Commentators and activists have become extremists who insist on their point of view or nothing else, extremists who stigmatise opponents as either lapdogs of the government or deniers of the truth. Sadly, many journalists find themselves in this increasingly irrational group that is no longer open to reason or discussions or logic. Lagos should boldly strike out and avoid being sandwiched between a dithering federal government and raucous and prejudiced activists. Get the truth out, and stand by it, even if it disappoints those who have made up their minds to believe nothing else but their preconceived positions and opinions. This will be hard, but it is not impossible, for even going by the leaked report, within its jumbled hysteria and deliberate non sequiturs are the unassailable facts of what transpired on that controversial October night at Lekki.
Negotiating Kanu’s ‘unconditional’ release
Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho
LAST Friday’s visit to Aso Villa by a group of eminent Igbo leaders led by First Republic Aviation minister, Mbazulike Amaechi, to ask for the unconditional release of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, triggered a number of dilemmas for the Igbo and Mr Kanu himself. The oxygen that fuels the IPOB leader’s politics and campaign, not to say give him his raison d’être, are his histrionics. There is yet no indication that the eminent leaders sought his counsel before visiting President Muhammadu Buhari or campaigning for his release. But Chief Amaechi confidently importuned the president to release Mr Kanu to him personally, guaranteeing that he could control the IPOB leader and get him not to ‘say the things he’d been saying’.
Chief Amaechi is 92, and appears confident that he can rein in the much younger and obstreperous Mr Kanu. It is possible he can, but it is not clear how he hopes to pull that trick off. The IPOB leader is hysterical, unmanageable and egocentric. To shut him up and shut his windpipe down will doubtless take some doing. But to, in addition, restrict him to the anonymity he had joyfully abandoned years ago will be the equivalent of stopping the earth from rotating on its axis. However, shutting Mr Kanu up and subjecting him to the control of Chief Amaechi are as dire as any conditions the government could have set.
Mr Kanu’s lawyers are till defiant. They are externalising his ordeal, and are also rightly litigating his extraordinary rendition from Kenya. It is not yet obvious that they have assented to the effort being made by the eminent Igbo leaders. Or perhaps they are aware but are only hedging their bets in case the president balks. On his own, the president has draped the Igbo leaders’ request with some gravitas. “The demand you made is heavy; I will consider it,” said the truculent president uncharacteristically. The IPOB campaign stayed on the fringes until the president, by his impatience and gung-ho approach, brought it centre stage.
Hopefully, the Southwest will abstain from copying that stylebook to campaign for the release of Sunday Igboho who is engaged in a similar self-determination advocacy but is now trapped in Benin Republic, unable to reach Germany where he tried to flee to, or return to Nigeria where state agents are determined to haul him. Both Messrs Igboho and Kanu were spectacularly incompetent in prosecuting great causes; but should their campaigns peter out into the fatuity threatening their goals, it would give fillip to the president’s strong-arm and Machiavellian methods, and set worthy self-determination and restructuring causes back by many years.
The sickly stupidity
Of the two-legged apes
Who boast so loud they are powerful humans
Oh how vain to be so proud and dumb!
They die every day
From my viral scourge
The young, the old, the rich, the poor
And the millions in between
Yet swear so loud and long I do not exist
Crowded morgues, depleted households
Wounds that neither time nor tribute can heal
Wails in the night, tears at noon
Some hide behind party flags
“Pro-life”, they claim, but also pro-COVID
The Science which I dread and long to kill
Is mindless myth in the hands of the Deans of Denial
From their senseless Superstition
I derive my logic of being
Increasing and multiplying, changing and changing
More liberal, more lethal, my viral venom
Alas, the disease of the body
Attracts a quicker cure
Hardly ever so with the virus of the mind
Vital lessons from the Book of COVID
To the plush, well-appointed ambience of Lagos Marriot Hotel, Ikeja for the better part of this past week for the Annual Conference of the National Council on Finance and Economic Development (NACOFED). This is where tested technocrats and economic gurus at the national and sub-national levels rub minds on the economic state of the nation and proffer solutions on the way forward.
With the theme, Public Sector Finance Management In the New Normal (Post Covid -19), the annual gathering was brimful of promise and expectations. It did not disappoint, at least in the conventional sense of the word. Readers of this column would be within their remit if they begin to wonder what an aging contrarian like yours sincerely could be doing among this establishment lot.
When the invitation first popped up, yours sincerely put it down to a hoax or an elaborate security sting. It was summarily dismissed. But a subsequent telephone call from Abuja and a formal letter of invitation dispelled the initial suspicion.
Still, a lingering apprehension remained. As one was later to tell his audience to prolonged laughter, yours sincerely had actually arrived at the venue armed with his own flask of tea, just in case that storied beverage became the preferred mode of onward translation.
In the event, the conference turned out to be an avenue for useful interactions and frank exchanges of ideas. In the post-covid-19 era of the new normal and worsening climate change, a nation that has its back economically to the wall, like many other nations, can do with unusual ideas and thinking out of the box. In retrospect, it can be argued that President Buhari’s government has robbed itself of useful countervailing ideas by shutting its doors to contrary ideas from which it could have benefitted immensely in the formulation of policies.
After the ritual of state introductions, a welcome address by the Permanent Secretary, Finance, Alh. Ahmed Aliyu, opening remarks by the Honourable Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning Dr (Mrs) Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed, goodwill messages from the Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Solomon Adeola and the Chairman, Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Engr Elias Mbam, the conference opened with a thoughtful, well-judged Keynote Address by the Special Guest of Honour, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the Governor of Lagos State.
This was followed by the opening paper of the formal session presented by Ibrahim H. Dankwanbo, former Governor of Gombe State and former Accountant General of the Federation. Titled, Delivery of Good Governance at National and Sub-National Levels, it was a very well-researched and impressively referenced disquisition on what constitutes good governance and some of the frictions and contradictions that inhere between governance at national and sub-national spheres of operation.
The former governor really took his time to lecture and educate his audience on the tricky and intractable nuances of the subject matter. With a recently bagged doctorate degree on the subject, Dr Ibrahim Dankwanbo appeared very much at home and on top of his material. A hardened cynic sitting next to yours sincerely wondered aloud if matters would have been handled differently had the lecturer gained access to the wealth of data and information he was reeling off when he was the chief executive of his state. It was a question of honourable conjecture.
The sparks and fireworks really started flying on the second day of deliberations. The tone and tenor of intellectual controversies were set by the intervention of Dr Adedoyin Salami, Senior Fellow/ Associate Professor, Lagos Business School and Chairman, Presidential Economic Advisory Council of the nation. His paper was titled, Current State of the Economy: Challenges and Strategies for Improving Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
Displaying the humble mien and imperturbable equanimity of the quintessential scholar-technocrat, Salami reeled off impressive data and statistics to convince his audience that although Nigeria was not out of the wood yet, things were actually looking up. Matters could actually have been worse if they had been left to the freewheeling spending and fiscal indiscipline of the old order. The monetary prudence of the Buhari administration would actually pay off in the long run.
According to him, the economic recovery regimen of the current government has been hobbled and seriously impaired by global pressures and an unstable international scene brought about by the twin-devil of Nigeria’s mono-cultural reliance on oil revenues to the exclusion of many other viable internally generated revenues and the catastrophic global economic downturn brought about by the covid-19 pandemic. But for internal resilience and Nigeria’s vast understated economic potentials, it would have been impossible to exit two major recessions within a spate of six years.
Throughout his clinically detached presentation, only once did Salami show signs of losing his Olympian cool. As if succumbing to the intellectual aggravations of many who charge his Economic Advisory Council with doleful lethargy and a generally underwhelming performance, Salami vehemently uttered the word “crap” about four times to dismiss the insinuations of those who believe that the nation could ever return to the buoyant exchange rates of the seventies and eighties before the Babangida administration delivered the massive shock therapy.
As he rightly insisted, to start with the population of the nation has quadrupled since then. Second, the massive oil revenues which sustained elite opulent and luxury living have since disappeared with no passable infrastructure and the fit for purpose educational advancement to show for the gargantuan riches accruing to the nation from oil revenues. What the Nigerian elite are demanding for is the luxury of a sybaritic life-style and western-type affluence without the luxury of hard work and patriotic reliance on locally generated pleasures. It is an unsustainable proposition.
All this is sound logic and economic common sense except in Africa. But in all this, Salami seems to have averted his gaze from the fundamental Political Question from which all other questions flow. Perhaps politics is beyond the remit and purview of the economist. But it shows why the economy of an underdeveloped and under-developing nation in a post-colonial society is too important to be left in the hands of economists.
A political elite is only as good as the political leadership it has thrown up to manage the affairs of the nation. This is a startling case of ideological occlusion which would have made pressing reality very uncomfortable. In the absence of pan-Nigerian core values which constantly holds the feet of the ruling class to fire, it is a legitimate right of the people to demand a piece of the action before the entire country goes under in a cataclysmic ethical meltdown. You cannot be asking other people to tighten their belt when your own belt is completely slackened.
This is the bane of the current administration. It is a great national tragedy that despite all its promise and promises, the Buhari government has also failed to rein in the awful looting and massive plundering of the national resources and patrimony.
Not only that, and except in a few insignificant cases, what promised to be a restitutive and restorative administration has failed to bring to book all those responsible for the economic adversity of the nation. Many of them have actually been co-opted in a shabby display of political expediency. Great infrastructural drive can never offset the need for justice and political equity.
This is what has occasioned the rise of negative consciousness in the country, leading to a dramatic upsurge in banditry, hostage-taking, public larceny on an apocalyptic scale and an ethical implosion the like of which has not been witnessed on the continent. This is why ASUU is threatening to go on strike for the umpteenth time and the security nightmare threatening to overwhelm the entire nation.
Picking his cue from the underlying mood, the youthful and zestful Lagos State Commissioner for Finance, Dr Rabiu Olowo, also joined issues with Dr Salami. While agreeing with the sunny and upbeat prognostication that the economy is on the mend and the fact that the nation might well be on the way to restorative healing, he cautioned that data-crunching and reeling off statistics must not replace a happy, well-fed and contented populace.
By this time, things were taking an exciting and exhilarative turn at the conference with hearty exchanges and zestful interactive sessions among the confreres. All that is solid often melts into thin air. What began as a cagey and cautious engagement was turning out a constructive interaction and an opportunity to probe binary antimonies based on contrasting cultures and countervailing world-views.
My host and guide, a pleasant gentleman, self-effacing technocrat and World Bank consultant of Funtua extraction was plying me with enough kola-nut to make the head go kaput. He had already hinted that both his father and grandfather were kola-nut merchants. But it was all in vain, or so it appeared.
My own generation having disappeared from the bureaucratic radar either due to age or other non-biological adversities, it was quite an intriguing revelation meeting the new generation of technocratic powerbrokers who control the economic destiny of the nation. Of the conclave of State Commissioners of Finance present, one was a former student from the old University of Ife while another was the son of a friend, a retired and notable professor of Constitutional Law.
This was the background that set the tone for one’s intervention at the conference. I had been billed as the sole discussant of a paper to be delivered by the Director-General, National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Amb. Ahmed Rufai Abubakar. The paper was titled, National Security and Sustainable Economic Development in Nigeria—Prospects and Challenges.
It was in a manner of speaking, a play of signifiers across frozen and binary divisions, of a rogue falcon calling out the wary falconer. The paper turned out a weighty and engrossing tome full of valuable insights into the security challenges facing the nation. The D.G was ably represented by a Deputy Director in the organization. The session was chaired by Senator Ali who represented the chairman, Prof Babagana Umara Zulum, the Executive Governor of Borno State.
Matters took a decidedly Absurdist hue towards the end of proceeding. The representative of the D.G, NIA having hurriedly departed to catch a flight to Abuja, yours sincerely was saddled with the task of fielding questions on behalf of the National Intelligence Agency. One is often cautioned when one avers in this column that no imaginative exemplar can beat the Nigerian reality as currently constituted. Not even Eugene Ionesco could have trumped that. But one must learn to take these things in their stride.
In view of the importance attached to the security challenges facing the nation and dire implications for its economic and political prospects, our intervention at the conference and the recommendations proffered cannot be compressed into a few paragraphs. This will form the basis of our discourse next week. Meanwhile, Kudos to the organizers and in particular the host governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, for bringing this off.
Despite the fact that the federal authorities appear to have eaten the humble pie and have taken back their word on the ownership of the diamond-studded braziers, the public and an increasingly vocal bar were in no mood to let the matter pass just like that .It was a case of “trouble dey sleep and yanga go wake am” as the illustrious Abami Eda himself would put things.
A new organization with headquarters in the highbrow suburb of Victoria Island calling itself the International Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Politically Exposed Women (ISOPCPEW} has vowed to drag the Nigerian authorities before the International Court at The Hague for serial abuse of woman rights.
If you ask snooper, it was a case of shooting one’ self in the foot. It was badly cued and terribly misjudged. The public had long grown tired of outlandish tales of corruption and sleaze when it is obvious that the authorities themselves are not standing on ethically superior ground. Just get on with it and leave us alone. Besides, there is a local saying that if you are trying to remove a fallen log of wood and another falls on it, you must first remove the log on top.
As usual, Baba Lekki has been honing his legal skills to perfection in a series of mock trials held to uproarious legal adulation by the teeming hoi polloi of the land at Jankara and Sand grouse markets. His contention is logical and simple. To establish ownership of the bra, government must first produce in court the said Diezani for measurement and chest examination to determine the veracity of the claims.
To buttress his claim, the old contrarian and lapsed disciple of Harold Laski, has called for the files of the celebrated Iron Butterfly of Manilla, Imelda Marcos, and the secret tapes on an ancient Chinese dowager who was known to own about a thousand colourful girdles. There were also unconfirmed reports that the old man had made away with secret cuttings of Queen Victoria wearing a bra studded with sapphires from the Indian expedition.
This morning, Baba Lekki had arrived at the Ilabere Police Station with a half-drunk Okon in tow. Okon had been reluctant to follow the old crook on what could be a suicide mission. “Baba, I no fit. Dem say dat Ondo woman DPO na crazy asinwin. She no dey carry last. She dey shoot people and dem say she dey whack dem”, the mad fellow cautioned. But the old man was having none of that.
The lady in question was a tough, no-nonsense, thick-set woman who looked like a moving mahogany tree. She was justly famous for her rough and ready reliance on brutal interrogation technique and for hurling colourful expletives in her native tongue at just about anybody who crossed her path. Her breath was reeking of Absinthe and illicit liquor.
“Baba, what can I do for you sir? It is too early in the morning to start causing trouble.” But the old man was not interested in police politeness and customary niceness.
“Madam, are these yours?” the old man opened in classic Nelson Mandela gambit as he hurled out some ragged pairs of bras from the tattered polythene bag he was carrying.
“ Kai, kai, mba baba, mba. How can I wear this yeye nonsense from Tejuoso? Wetin my eyes no go see for dis yeye job?” the poor woman shouted.
“Iya, dem dey ask wether na you get dem bra?” Okon intoned with a sly wink.
“Soponna la beri baba re! (May the God of smallpox behead your father) the woman screamed at the mad boy. By this time, the din was attracting the usual crowd of ruffians and ragamuffin.
“Kai, kai, dis one na Komu gbigbona( hot bra) one detainee injected.
“Baba, is this the oracle of the living jurisprudence?” one scholarly sounding crook injected.
“No, no it is the jurisprudence of dead oracles”, Baba sneered.
“Come ooooo. Dis woman look like dem lady I been dey see before before for Lawanson”, Okon croaked.
“ Eiye Ogbigbo la yoju yeye re!” (May the big bird gouge your mother’s eyes) the distraught woman screamed at Okon. “Armed robbers!!” she cried. Three shots rang out in rapid succession and everybody fled in different directions.
