The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Nigeria’s economy and other matters

    Nigeria’s economy and other matters

    First Annual Conference of The Point Newspaper

    Penultimate Friday, I broke a vow not to attend any forum where the problem with Nigeria’s economy is the issue for discussion. And my reason for the vow is simple: everybody knows the problem with the Nigerian economy but we all pretend not to know until one seminar or workshop is organised to dissect it. I do not think there is any other country where they have conducted as many forums on their economy as the Nigerian economy; yet I do not know if there is any other country that has failed abysmally in harnessing its economic potential as Nigeria.

    The main problem with our economy is our failure to diversify our economic base and this is a thing many of us learnt in our ‘Ordinary Level’ Economics. Many of those who have led us and are still in positions of authority read some of those Economic books which alerted us to the dangers of our monocultural economy. Yet, all they had done mostly was pay lip service to diversification. Perhaps the Muhammadu Buhari administration would have followed the same old path to where we are if crude prices had remained steady at the international market, when it assumed office. Perhaps not. But that is in the realm of conjecture. The reality is that Buhari took over the country’s leadership at a time oil prices had plummeted and Nigeria was caught unawares once again due to lack of planning.

    The situation was worsened by the rapacious stealing by successive government officials, which got to a head during the Goodluck Jonathan administration. So, we all know what the problem is; but we keep dancing round it and pretending that we cannot know until some egg-heads are assembled to tell us where we got it all wrong.

    It was against this background that the invitation I received to attend the Public Presentation and First Annual Conference of The Point newspaper held at the Eko Hotel and Suites on Victoria Island, to mark the paper’s first anniversary penultimate Friday, would have been declined.  Of course, there is also my mortal fear for going to Lagos Island. One, I almost always miss my way on the Third Mainland Bridge whenever I go there, so, whenever I do, I take my old reliable Eko Bridge. This was the same Island I was used to in the good old days when I worked briefly at the Children’s Wear Merchandise Department of Kingsway Stores on Marina Street. (Now that I am better informed, I don’t know whether to say Kingsway Stores’ gentle soul should rest in peace).

     That the event was fixed for a Friday exacerbated my ‘punishment’. Perhaps the most convenient excuse for me not to go was the fact that I had to see my column for the next Sunday as well as the newspaper’s editorial to bed that same day.

    But somehow, I found my way to Lagos because of the respect I have for Mrs Yemi Kolapo, the managing director/editor-in-chief of The Point. And I might have made it to the event to time but for one truck pusher who used his ‘excess luggage’ to ‘pluck’ the side mirror on the passenger side of my car, which somewhat slowed down my speed on the way. I wasted no time arguing with him because I saw him as much a victim of what we were going to discuss at the event that I was rushing to, as myself. The difference is probably in the degree of victimhood. Indeed, I pitied him because he had to overload his truck to make more money since he is not a legislator and therefore does not have any source of bogus pay.

    I met Kolapo for the first time (I guess) in November 2014 at a seminar organised by the then Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment under Mr Olusegun Aganga. She was Senior Special Assistant (Corporate Communications) to the minister then. We had cause to interact a few occasions after that until the Jonathan government was voted out of power. I have had cause to comment on her articles in The Point (online) on a few occasions.

    So, when I received her invitation to the event, and especially when this was followed by a reminder and yet another reminder, I knew my going to Lagos was inevitable. So, I went. And I must confess I did not regret it even if speaker after speaker regaled us with what we already knew.

    Eminent Nigerians, including Governors Kashim Shettima (Borno), Rauf Aregbesola (Osun)  and Ibikunle Amosun (Ogun) were lead presenters while Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State was chief host. But Aregbesola was the only governor present as the three other governors were ably represented. Other dignitaries at the occasion were Oba Michael Aremu Gbadebo, the Alake of Egbaland who was royal father of the day; the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi Lamido II, the special guest of honour. Pastor Tunde Bakare chaired the occasion attended also by the Minister of Niger Delta, Uguru Usani, chairman, Punch Nigeria Ltd, Mr Wale Aboderin, Mr Debo Adesina, Editor-in-Chief, The Guardian as well as many directors and directors-general in federal parastatals. Most of the speakers had between three to five minutes and they did justice to the issues raised, even if, as I said earlier, there was nothing new under the sun.

    Then came Governor Aregbesola’s turn. The governor kicked immediately the moderator said he had five minutes. Really, it is impossible to blame him on this score because it is not easy to come down to Lagos all the way from Osogbo only to speak for five minutes. As a matter of fact, his protest and preamble took more than the five minutes. He ended up speaking for about 40 minutes. Without doubt, you could hardly fault his prognosis of the Nigerian economy as well as his submissions to turn things around. Two areas of his submissions caught my attention. One, he calculated that we would be producing about 28 million tyres locally every three years, given that an average car has four wheels. I immediately remembered Dunlop and Michelin that we carelessly allowed to close shop and relocate elsewhere.

    Aregbesola also brought the point vividly home about the harm we do to ourselves by  failing to add value to our exports. According to him, we sell cocoa at about a fifth of the price we import chocolate (which is made from cocoa!) There were some other things said at the occasion, but, as I mentioned earlier, most of it we already know. What we have not done is walk the talk. And that is what we should do.

    However, much as the governor also advocated that we patronise made-in-Nigeria products to save our scarce foreign exchange, I looked at His Excellency’s shoes (he does not like that title though) and discovered they did not look like the ones made by our brothers in Aba. We would need to conduct ‘forensic audit’ on the shoes if the governor insists these are not imported products!

    However, that is just by the way. If Governor Aregbesola had concerned himself with the theme of the conference, which is: “What is the economics of change”, he would have been spot on. Unfortunately, he launched into an area he apparently does not have a full grasp of when he attributed the dwindling newspaper sales to dwindling professionalism, poor grammar, etc. The way he spoke, you would think he had a particular paper or some newspapers in mind. Without doubt, these have their negative impact on newspaper sales; but regrettable as they are, they do not sufficiently explain the drop in circulation. The fact is, in the days of Daily Times of yore that the governor spoke nostalgically about (when the paper sold one million copies daily, again, according to the governor as it is doubtful if Daily Times sold beyond 500,000 copies daily), things were by far better and different in the country than today – the economy, professionalism, and all.

    But I will use at least three examples to correct Governor Aregbesola’s assertion. The point is; newspaper sales are falling due largely to the country’s declining economic fortunes as well as some other factors. If the governor’s position on the matter was right, a newspaper that built its ultra-modern edifice as well as commissioned an ultra-modern press at a cost of over three billion Naira without a kobo loan from any bank would not have achieved that feat only about six years ago. Second, this very newspaper (The Nation) too made profit even in its very first year of operation about 10 years ago. That it is still doing fairly well in spite of our topsy-turvy economy, is proof of its acceptability by readers.

    Again, Governor Aregbesola may have to drive round Osogbo, the state capital, and see the huge number of free readers milling around newspaper vendors. They are hungry for news but lack effective demand, which is the demand backed up with the ability to pay, due to the failure of leadership we have had at all levels in the country. When workers nationwide begin to receive their salaries regularly again, Governor Aregbesola would better understand the point I am making.

    At any rate, how can we get professionalism as in the past in a situation where governments join the long list of debtors owing newspapers huge revenue? Again, going by the governor’s logic, is lack of professionalism the cause of dwindling sales of community newspapers too, because in those days, some of those papers did well for themselves?

    Perhaps the most devastating of the factors responsible for dwindling newspaper sales is the ubiquitous social media. It would interest the governor to note that even in the United States and United Kingdom where the newspapers publish impeccable Queens English, newspaper sales are also going down due to the effects of the social media, which in spite of their imperfections are working towards elbowing out the traditional newspapers that must wait till the next day to report events.

    All said, I seize this opportunity to congratulate the management of The Point on its first anniversary. I also apologise to Alhaji Nojeem Jimoh, a director of the company and former editor of The Punch (which I proudly refer to as ‘my source’ having started my journalism career there, rising to edit the daily title) for my inability to play the role he told me I was assigned at the occasion because I was only aware of that role on my way out of the venue. To dub the occasion a Punch affair would not be far from it as Mr Azubuike Ishiekwene, a former executive director (Publications) of The Punch was also there. Mrs Kolapo herself was once Business Editor of The Punch before joining the trade and industry ministry. Without doubt, The Point debuted at a time things are tough, not only for the media but for the economy at large. Yet, my advice to its management is that the sky is wide enough to accommodate all birds. If not, I would have said so. Indeed, the more, the merrier. The paper’s team should be guided by the aphorism that “when the going gets tough, only the tough get going”.

    Congratulations and welcome on board.

  • An evening in Ibadan

    An evening in Ibadan

    There is always something fascinating about Ibadan. It is the city built around a hundred hilltops. The distant din of what you thought was civil commotion and fistic exchange tells its own story. Ibadan is a city of warriors. It is not for the weak or fainthearted. Here, the meek will kiss the canvas very early. They will not inherit the earth. Neither will they partake of its sweet bounties.

    Lest we forget, snooper was in Ibadan to address the 1966 class of Government College as part of its golden jubilee. In the nation, golden jubilees are as rare as gold itself.But even here in the intellectual boxing ring nothing was given or assured. You arrived in the lush and tropically verdant Iyaganku sector of the city post-haste, having been expelled by British Airways two days earlier without your luggage.

    But even at that, nothing is given. The narrative keeps changing. Just as you are about to send your account of events to the press something more fascinating crops up. It is an account of events by a member of the set; a tour de force of political and cultural psych-op. It is better to hear from the horse’s mouth, as they say. In Yoruba culture, you cannot be invited to a wedding only to turn out more fancifully attired than the bridegroom.

    So, dear readers, this morning snooper yields pride of space to a member of the Government College Ibadan class of 1966, Femi Olugbile, a distinguished psychiatrist, prize-winning writer and notable administrator. But because the issues raised are so critical and crucial to the health of the country and its wellbeing, we will pick the baton next week from where Olugbile drops off. Happy reading.

  • ‘Cows without milk’: the urgency of Knowledge over Cultural economy (1)

    ‘Cows without milk’: the urgency of Knowledge over Cultural economy (1)

    Having herdsmen in the 21st century should be discouraged; potential herdsmen should be in school like the children of the cattle they are hired to herd.

    Nigeria is a country faced with desertification problem with 15 states accounting for about 68.38% of the country’s total land area, challenged with varying degrees of desertification. Impacts of drought and desertification are felt in all aspects of the environment and human livelihood. Remedies to these problems involve awareness, protection of marginal lands, planting of indigenous tree and shrub species, sustainable agricultural practices and use of alternative energy source. There is need to bridge the gap between the formation of policy and strategies of combating drought and desertification so that government efforts to combating desertification can be productive—Temidayo Olagunju, Journal of Ecology & the Natural Environment

    Today’s title is borrowed partly from the current minister of agriculture who said last week that most of the cows in the country cannot produce milk because they do not have enough water to drink, thus becoming as malnourished as their male counterparts. This observation by Chief Audu Ogbeh captures the contradictions in the country’s agricultural system, just as it does for every aspect of the country’s way of doing things. Now that the wind of change is about to blow is an appropriate time to juxtapose development on the steam of tradition with development on the battery of innovation.

    When people try to have milk without the cow, goat, or sheep, such people attempt to achieve the impossible. But when people have cows but cannot get milk, then the problem is one of relying on wrong ways of doing things. Nigeria could as well have been the epicenter of dairy production in West Africa, in addition to producing enough beef for its huge population. But the country has increasingly been constrained by the fast pace of desertification that has robbed cattle, goats and sheep access to adequate feed and water. This challenge is not unchangeable if the political will is there. But the kind of will needed does not include being beholden to outmoded methods. It requires a sincere commitment to modernisation and belief in new technology and techniques as a way of overcoming constraints imposed by tradition and nature.

    The material in italics overleaf is to show how desertification is a remote cause of the problem between herdsmen and farmers in states below the Sahel belt in the North Sahel and in many states in the South. Of course, desertification is not peculiar to Nigeria. About 900 million people in the five continents live in zones that are threatened by desertification.  But there are new techniques to arrest desertification in other parts of the world, and Nigeria must find ways to acquire such knowledge to save itself from many problems that make the country expend energy in creating easy solutions to old problems and in the process creating new, and perhaps, bigger problems. Indiscriminate animal grazing has not always been a problem in the country. Those who were born before independence would know that up to the 1970s when the Sahel had not moved down as radically as it has in the last twenty years, it was unheard of that herdsmen harassed farmers in the South, a point made recently by General Obasanjo when he said “cattle grazing was a rare sight except when a big person died in the community.”In those years, cows were brought to the south to sell, not to graze. But with raging desertification in the picture, all states are becoming cattle producing or feeding stations.The problem of desertification is not going to go away by itself; it requires sincere intervention that includes borrowing ideas and techniques of reducing desertification from other countries. In other words, policymakers need to think less about traditional ways of cattle farming and more about new knowledge that could allow cattle farmers to do so with relative ease than having to walk cattle through cities and villages.

    By cultural economy, I am referring to the role played by various forms of material and non-material cultural practice in the organisation of the economy or to cultural dimensions of economic activity—the design or marketing of any product or service. The fact that herdsmen in the past had moved from one area of the north to another before the spread of the Sahel to over 10 most northern states does not mean that herdsmen should continue to be encouraged to keep moving all over the country in search of pasture and water for their cattle. When some people argued that many of the herdsmen that caused trouble in many parts of the country came from outside Nigeria, many pundits dismissed this idea. It is conceivable that some of the herdsmen could have been foreigners from countries north of Nigeria with worse experience of desertification. Regardless of the nationality of herdsmen, it is the menace they cause to farming communities that need to be addressed rationally.

    At the rate herdsmen are searching for food and water for their flock, the tendency is high that most cattle farmers may end up moving to the south, should the Sahel continue to inch further south and no serious intervention comes from those holding levers of power to respond to a serious environmental problem. Anti-grazing statements may not have been put in a politically correct manner in some areas, but grazing is a serious economic problem that must not be allowed to transform into a political one. Solution to the problem of grazing must not be borrowed from the model of creating NECO when policymakers thought that WAEC was not working well for Nigerian students. Transferring problems created by desertification to other states is not a solution. The challenge for the ministries of agriculture and the environment is how to fight desertification frontally and how to adopt new ways to do animal production.

    To put this differently, moving away from the limitation imposed by traditional animal farming at a time that over 10 states in the north are experiencing shortage of water requires embracing what is referred to as Knowledge Economy in this piece. By knowledge economy, I do not mean just the digitisation of experience made possible by artificial intelligence in what is considered by sociologists as the third Industrial Revolution. Knowledge economy in the series under this title refers to the culture of relying on advances in science, technology, new ideas and techniques for increasing production, improving quality of products and services, and reducing the use of human or animal muscles to create value or add value.

    With respect to call for a new look at the way of raising cattle, it is the view of this writer that the time has come to find out how other countries that once used the model of moving cows and goats to wherever they can find food and water shifted to a new way of animal farming that takes whatever the animals need to them in ranches. If herdsmen were children of upper or middle-class men and women in our country, they would have cried foul for being hired to nurse cattle for the rich at great risk to their being. If the country had created an educational system akinto what exists in Kaduna today—free and compulsory basic education for all—it would have been impossible for current owners of cattle to find herdsmen to follow cattle to the length and breadth of the country.  Such difficulty must come to cattle owners if part of the goals of national development and integration include ensuring equality and equity. Having herdsmen in the 21st century should be discouraged; potential herdsmen should be in school like the children of the cattle they are hired to herd.

    The most reliable way to stop reproducing herdsmen is for the governments to commit to replacing imperatives of tradition with principles of knowledge economy in planning, designing, and organising animal and other forms of farming. It must be part of the remit of a government of change to prepare all citizens for competitiveness in a global village that is already experiencing third industrial revolution.

    – To be continued

  • Having again run their states aground, APC governors resort to blackmail

    Having again run their states aground, APC governors resort to blackmail

    Before eagerly supporting the suggestion that government sells off critical national assets have they sold off the many bullet proof cars they bought for selves, wives and kids? 

    The “last hope of the common man”
    Has become the last bastion of the criminally rich
    A terrible plague bestrides the land
    Besieged by rapacious judges and venal lawyers
    Behind the antiquated wig
    And the slavish glove
    The penguin gown and the obfuscating jargon
    Is a rot and riot whose stench is choking the land.”
    – Niyi Osundare in My Lord, where shall I keep your bribe?”

    Wonders, they say, will never end. Nigerians woke up this past week to hear totally unserious APC governors attempt to re-write recent history. Having, again, run their respective states aground, owing a minimum of six to eight months in workers’ salaries, needing another bailout but knowing not how to present their begging bowls before the president a third time, they had, in spite of all we now know of the sleaze of the Jonathan years, and in a classical case of blaming the victim, claimed that the APC government of President Mohammadu Buhari should be held responsible for our current mega suffering as a people. Were they not so kind, they would have attributed the recession to his government, conveniently forgetting that a nation’s economy does not suddenly go kaput. The reason for this attempted obfuscation, and volte face, is so simple nobody would have believed that a body of governors would be as sissy as to ever suggest it. It is as simple as, having again come a cropper, and desirous of a fresh infusion of huge sums of money into their haemorrhaging states, they decided it is time to have a fall guy. Unfortunately, having not judiciously, or transparently, utilised the earlier bailout funds,  they considered it smart to present the president to the agonising citizenry as the cause of their pains; that man, who wants to force his ascetism down the throat of ordinary Nigerians hoping that he would panic and be the one to offer them money on a platter. This thought process is so jejune it speaks directly to our manner of leadership recruitment in Nigeria.

    What exactly do they take Nigerians for and when did they come to the realisation that they had been wrong all these days holding the profligate and thieving ancien regime responsible for Nigeria’s parlous economic condition? Do they believe, even for a moment, that they can successively erase from our memory what we now know of the depravity of that government? If they were serious, would they ever attempt to hold responsible for our suffering, a President Buhari who had spent what must have been agonising days in office trying to rein in profligacy in all its ramifications? Knowing what they claim to now know, have they stopped raking in the hundreds of billions they collectively take monthly as security vote even as  Nigerians now suffer their  worst ever insecurity in kidnapping and armed robbery which have spiked beyond control with some states daily experiencing these heinous, life threatening/taking incidents? Do they now feed from the salaries they draw from the common purse like ordinary Nigerians? Before eagerly supporting the suggestion that government sells off critical national assets have they sold off the many bullet proof cars they brought for selves, wives and kids? Have they told their senate counterparts to stop, forthwith, their N29 million monthly salary and the billions they make from oversight functions which they have converted to an avenue for illegal enrichment? And didn’t it occur to these latter day confessors that they were making nonsense of the government’s anti corruption war when they so cavalierly exculpated the completely ruinous Jonathan government? Or why would ex-President Jonathan not gloat in far away Oxford, making nonsense of the government’s attempt to bring looters to book?

    In case they have forgotten, maybe we should jolt their memories and bring them back to reality.

    In the 16 years of PDP’s stranglehold on the country, did it ever occur to the respective governments to diversify the economy and thereby stop the over reliance on a mono product, located in an area of the country where government has literally had to buy peace? Did those PDP governments sincerely believe that Nigeria should, forever, have to pay huge amounts of money, monthly, to elements who had maimed and killed in the past and could, as we have seen, easily revert back to those evil days of destroying the nation’s economic infrastructure? If the price of that commodity, oil, crashed from over 100 dollars per barrel to below 40, how was the Buhari government expected to make up for the shortfall in the short run given that there were no other sources of  significant income to the nation’s coffers? One would have imagined that, in making their totally unreflecting statement, they would, at least, factor into their calculations the fact that a hugely expensive war is going on in the Northeastern corner of the country; a war whose expenses ballooned because of the theft and misapplication of the huge funds appropriated towards the war effort by the last administration.

    But even these represent only the tip of the iceberg of the incriminating larceny of the Jonathan era and if APC governors have forgotten, we can help them by itemising a few. One of the earliest whistle blowers regarding the sleaze going on in that government was the then CBN governor who raised alarm over a missing 49 billion dollars oil money which he claimed was never paid into the federation account. President Jonathan’s response to that huge charge was that the United States of America would have known if that happened as if the U.S President was more relevant to our government financial situation than the sitting Central Bank governor. Of course, the same man would later inform his bemused countrymen that stealing is not corruption. The government would later commission a voodoo forensic auditing in which half the relevant books were not made available to the auditors. But long before then, thanks to the current senate President, Nigerians had become aware of the huge oil subsidy scam going on under the supervision of a former PDP chairman during whose time as chairman of the governing board of the relevant agency, the number of oil importers had more than quintupled. Nor did it surprise Nigerians when it emerged that sons of two former Chairmen of the lecherous party were among those who got paid billions in oil subsidy even where they did not bring a litre of petrol into the country. That scam claimed hundreds of billions of naira. So also was the pension scam which accounted for hundreds of billions with the hilarious aside that when the police authorities were claiming they could not find the suspect to arrest so he could honour a senate invitation, tens of their own men were giving him  a 24-hour security cover and he was reported to have been present at the Abuja Airport, in a welcome party for the then president. But nothing would compare with the hordes of very important politicians of that era, as well as top military chiefs,  that the EFCC have hauled, or is  in the process of hauling before the courts for stealing amounts of money that must have  now run into trillions. The names are today so common place that we do not need to repeat them.

    It is amazing, therefore, that APC governors, well aware of these facts, and more, could still attempt to insult our intelligence by claiming that a government of just  two years, is responsible for the consequences of 16 years of utter depravity. I am not, by any means, saying that the Buhari government could not have creatively remedied the situation because it could, way back two years ago, have started putting in place many of the things it started barely three months ago after the country effectively declared it was in recession. Given the abysmal nature of the economic circumstances he inherited, President Buhari should have treated the economy the same way he treated Boko Haram because in their respective spheres, the consequences of one was as deleterious to the country as the other as security is  as key to the nation’s survival as the economy is. Therefore, whilst not totally exculpating the Buhari government from being partly responsible, it will be absolutely disingenuous, and unkind, to heap the entire responsibility for our current situation on the Buhari government of barely two years.

  • The cautious and incautious victory lap before the finish line: again, Nigerian echoes in the 2016 American elections

    Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the other forms.   Winston S. Churchill

    The elements of a true liberal democratic society and state are as few as they are well known: full adult suffrage that gives the right to vote and be voted for to every citizen above 18 without any limitations based on race, gender, class, ethnicity, religion and physical disability; an electorate that is well informed and actively participates in the democratic process; a free and vibrant press that is not beholden to special interests and forces with the wealth, power and influence to interfere and manipulate the process of democracy to their advantage; checks and balances between the three arms of government; and the peaceful transfer of power from one administration or political party to another. Of these elements, none is considered more important, more fundamental than the last: the peaceful transfer of power.

    This brings to my mind that ironic but luminous declaration of Jesus, one of the earliest and most exemplary incarnations of revolutionary, popular democracy in history: “So the last will be the first and the first will be the last” (Matthew, 19:30). As we all know, in Nigeria, peaceful transfer of power as the bedrock of liberal democracy is the least and the “last” in observance and implementation; it is as rare as snow in the Sahara Desert. In the United States, for the first time in the country’s political history, in the current presidential contest and with regard to this last and first principle of democracy, it is not only as if we are in Nigeria but have always been there without knowing it. Trump and his campaign team are giving every indication that peaceful transfer of power will be once again observed at the end of the current electoral cycle only if their candidate wins. What is going on? Why has the American electoral process suddenly become so similar to the Nigerian one in this most cardinal of the principles and foundations of liberal democracy?

    I suppose that I owe a duty to readers of this column to now let them know that for the two weeks remaining to election day in the American presidential elections on Tuesday, November 8, I will focus exclusively on aspects of the unfolding saga of the contest that seem to me remarkably or even uncannily similar to the presidential elections of 2015 in Nigeria. Last week, in a piece that was pointedly titled “I will accept the results of the elections only if I win”, I discussed the resonance of that statement from Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s candidate, with the extremely volatile and obdurate positions that some of Jonathan’s most sanguine supporters took in our elections, people like Doyin Okupe and Elder Peter Godsday Orubebe. This week, through the metaphor of the victory lap that winning athletes who reach the finish line before other contestants in a race typically take, I will be looking at the interesting fact that both candidates in the American elections, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are taking symbolic victory laps several weeks before the conclusion of the race, just as Jonathan Goodluck and Muhammadu Buhari and their supporters did last year in the Nigerian elections. In athletics, a victory lap before the finish line is so rare as to be factually non-existent; in electoral politics, it not only exists but is typically deployed as an element of strategy and tactics in the final stages of an electoral cycle. All, the same, in most instances, at least in true liberal democracies, it is always cautiously expressed or executed.

    At this point in the discussion, it is perhaps helpful to note in passing that while in the American case the”victory lap” is being executed cautiously (Clinton) and incautiously (Trump), last year in Nigeria, Goodluck and Buhari were both militantly incautious in their confident and aggressive expressions of victory as we approached the finish line. If we decode what “cautious” and “incautious” mean in both the American and Nigerian contexts, we realize that we are dealing with the fact that while the “cautious” contestant is willing to accept the result of the race even if she or he does not win, the “incautious” contestant will accept the result of the race only if he or she wins. Let me put this in much stronger terms: the incautious contestant is quite willing and apparently able to use all means available to him or her – including violence – if he or she loses. If that is the symbolism in our use of these codes or metaphors of “cautious” and “incautious” victory laps before the finish line, what can we make of the fact that three out of four contestants in these two races (Trump, Jonathan and Buhari) were/are incautious? That is the subject of this week’s column.

    It is perhaps useful to draw the reader’s attention to concrete acts and words at this stage of the discussion in this piece.Definitely, I hope that I speak for every Nigerian who has been observing the campaigns of the American elections on television that it has been eerily uncanny for me to see visual images and verbal chants and rhetoric that are extraordinarily similar to what we saw and heard last year in the Nigerian elections. For instance, at Trump campaign rallies, scores of supporters, men and women, are now openly saying that “revolution” will follow in the wake of the elections if Trump does not win. Some have even openly called for Clinton to be “shot”, now or after the end of the elections, if she wins. And Trump himself has repeatedly stated that one of the first things he will do as president is have Clinton sent to jail. Remember, dear reader, that this is America not Zimbabwe, not South Sudan, not Nigeria. But just as we saw in the last days of the Nigerian presidential elections last year, members of the press have been both verbally and physically attacked at Trump rallies on the accusation of being partial to the Clinton campaign. Indeed, on many occasions as I have watched this particular phenomenon of vitriolic attacks on pressmen and women in the American elections, my mind has reached back concretely to images of Doyin Okupe, at his last media conference at Aso Rock, shouting himself hoarse with defiant cries of “Buhari never! Buhari never!” as many members of the press corps present responded with deafening shouts of “APC! APC! APC!”.

    This last point about what we might regard as a replay in the American context of Doyin Okupe’s last stand atAso Rock brings us centrally to the question of why liberal democracy seems so fraught, so endangered in Americathat it seems to be on the same level of evolution as in Nigeria where it has never taken deep roots in the political culture and indeed, actually seems to have undergone retrogression in the last few decades. This is precisely the point at which to explore Clinton’s “cautious” victory lap and the truth behind its claim of being consistent with the fundamental principles of democracy. For it turns out, too, that Clintonian politics seems also very “Nigerian” in its unrestrained and rampant use of political office and connections for self-enrichment on a grandiose scale. The money-grubbing and opportunism are staggering. Speaking fees calibrated in hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech for Bill and Hilary Clinton for lectures delivered to the technocratic and plutocratic elites of corporations and foundations that dominate the economies of the United States and planet earth. The Clinton Foundation, even with the unquestionable benevolence of the charitable works it does in Africa and around other parts of the developing world, openly and extensively tied, as a constant beneficiary, to some of the most corrupt and repressive governments in the world. And a congenital inability to separate the affairs of government or the state from their private, aggressively pursued selfish interests. In the Clintons, Bill and Hillary, it seems that the excuse, the justification for the great moral and ideological problems of liberal democracy as expressed by Winston Churchill in the epigraph to this essay has found its greatest incarnation: “Democracy is the worst from of government – except for all the other forms”.

    In fairness to the Clintons and perhaps also to liberal democracy and the validity of its self-imposed moral and ideological limits, the great majority of those who are voting for Hillary know who and what they are getting in the candidate. And there is also this fact: whatever anyone may validly say in criticism of Hillary Clinton, in ability and preparation for the demands of the office, she is probably as qualified as any man who has ever run for the American presidency on the ticket of one of the two major political parties in the last one hundred years. Of any woman who has done the same thing, she is of course the best since she happens to be the only person who fits the category. These are the reasons why Clinton has been “cautious” in taking her symbolic victory lap before crossing the finish lineas most polls confidently predict she will on November 8. If she loses the election, she will undoubtedly be endlessly crushed by the loss of the great opportunity to smash the glass ceiling against her gender in the highest political office in the land, but she will walk away without bringing the whole edifice of liberal democracy down with her defeat. After all, she went into politics a long time ago virtually penniless though well-educated and enormously talented and now she is one of the politicians of her generation who have benefitted enormously from the spoils of office. In this respect, she is a little like Goodluck Jonathan who, to the disappointment of most of his supporters calling for bloodshed, walked away from it all perhaps because, as everyone knows and like Hillary Clinton, he had done a lot for himself financially through politics.

    Trump, Jonathan and Buhari, the incautious executors of the victory lap before the finish line, are the real symptoms of the extreme fragility at the heart of liberal democracy in countries in which, in the face of untold wealth, vast and expanding segments of the population feel increasingly forgotten, increasingly left behind and finding no satisfaction in elections and abstract principles like the peaceful transfer of power between administrations and political parties, are more than ready to, if necessary tear down the whole edifice. On the basis of this reading of the unfolding drama of the American presidential elections of 2016, the expected victory of Clinton will not change much. This is a dire prognosis that offers no hope beyond the inevitable necessity of continued struggle by the forgotten and their allies, well beyond electoral politics and its formal conclusion. The Americans will find out, as the Nigerians found after the victory of Muhammadu Buhari last year, that it is still a, long, long way from deliverance and restitution.

    Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                                bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • My school, my friend, and a celebration

    —the story of a Government College Ibadan Class, 50 years after by Femi Olugbile

    It is the turn of your class this year, this weekend, to play host to the annual celebration and old boys’ reunion of Government College, Ibadan. It is fifty years since you entered the school, and eighty seven years since the school came into being.

    You had approached the date with mixed emotions. You are not exactly given to the ritual and chumminess of old boys celebrations, which, for some people, was a whole way of life. As a rule you find the backslapping camaraderie of people you remember not at all, or only vaguely, a mite irksome.

    But this is a special event, even for you.

    Fifty years!

    It comes home to you, with a fleeting wash of emotion, as you watch your friend standing with the microphone in the middle of the hall, meandering his way with the sure hand of a seasoned driver taking a landrover across the crags and crevices of rough terrain, through the history of Government College, Ibadan. His story is waxing stronger as he progresses. The audience, a dinner crowd made up of the 1966 set, their wives – they call them ‘young girls’, their guests, and leaders and other members of the main Old Boys’ body here to celebrate with them, are sensing that something important is afoot – a unique experience everyone would remember for some time. There is a pin-drop silence.

    The 1966 set, who are celebration today, may be called the set that enrolled the year Nigeria lost its innocence. You came into this College on 20th January, 1966. Five days after the first coup. Before the end of the year there would be another coup. Very soon a Civil War would start, dislocating the lives of many of your classmates…

    Your school has produced many illustrious sons, the speaker is saying. Do you remember AdegokeAdelabu?

    Everybody remembers AdelabuPenkelemess the colourful Ibadan politician who became something of a romantic hero among the populace, but sadly came to an early death in a road traffic accident.

    He was in GCI, says the speaker.  Spent only three years.Was always getting double promotion.

    This is new information for you. You never knew Adelabu, scourge of the Action Group, gadfly to the adulatory supporters of the great ObafemiAwolowo, was your senior in school.

    He was so brilliant nobody knew what to do with him.

    Yes, you think. A candle that burned at both ends.

    Your friend’s assignment at this event is to say a few words about Government College, Ibadan as a friend of the house, and to assay a cursory review of the 200 page book written by the class of 1966 to mark its golden anniversary.

    The speaker confesses that preparation for his assignment has been done on the fly, literally. His review and comments are written on the back of a British Airways cabin menu, picked up and scribbled on midair as he returned hotfoot from an important trip to Chicago to join the celebration.

    He tells other human angle rags to riches GCI stories that he witnessed. He had himself grown up in the old West, and many of the people he speaks about were his friends, or known to him personally. He had not himself attended Secondary School – his Scholarship had been rescinded as part of the persecution of his family for supporting the opponents of the Awoists. Unfazed, he had gone on to ‘Modern school’, become a cub reporter, cut his milk teeth on the job, including a spell of prison detention – like every reporter worth his salt, and gone on to become an internationally acclaimed Professor and scholar lecturing in ivy league institutions in Europe and America. Today he is a front-line thinker for the Awo tradition – a veritable 360 degree turn that once brought his poor father – the redoubtable JB Ekun of Gbongan fame, to tears. But that is another story – his own story, and today is not about his story but the GCI story.

    AdegokeAdelabu was his father’s close friend and political associate.

    There are other stories, such as the young man who finished Primary Six in Gbongan and passed his examinations with flying colours. Feeling at the end of his educational life, as his parents had no means to take him further, he started to hawk bread on the streets. One day, an oyinbo man, driving by, saw him in conversation with others and stopped.

    What are you doing selling bread when you can speak such English?

    The boy explained his situation.

    The white man – he was DJ Bullock, the iconic Principal of Government College Ibadan, gave him some money and invited him to come to Apataganga for the entrance examination of the college the following Saturday. He would pass with ease, and go on to become a prominent Professor, lecturing at Howard University.

    And what about the brilliant GCI student who did not come back from holiday because his father could no longer afford the money? It came to the attention of DJ, who kept a studious eye on his brood. He would have none of that. He personally went to his father’s farm to drag him back to school. Fast forward a few years. Another internationally acclaimed scholar.

    The school, avers the reviewer, speaking off his British Airways menu, was like a beacon to all the youths who grew up in the South, and even farther afield.

    The British – the colonial masters, clearly had in mind, in setting up such a school, to create a factory that would churn out proper, well rounded ‘squires’ of the English model, who would populate the middle class and provide leadership in the new nation. It was a system totally built on merit, and in the dormitory, as in the classroom, you could see the son of a carpenter from Ago Taylor – down the road, sitting – or sleeping next to the son of a millionaire businessman from Port Harcourt. It was the Nigerian Dream, put in a crucible, and set afire.

    But there is a caveat. The school culture has helped to bring out the best among children who were already selected for being the best and the brightest. They have gone on to excel in The Arts, in Medicine, in Engineering, and other fields besides. Not to put too fine a point on it, no other secondary school in Nigeria has produced a Nobel laureate.

    But, yes, there is a caveat. The school culture and training has been rigorously a-political. There are sports ranging from Cricket to Hockey and to Soccer and Athletics. There are clubs for Literature and Debate, as there are for Music. There is Drama – the GCI of old was reputed throughout the nation as having the finest tradition in Drama. But there is no club for Politics, no discussion of it before or among the young charges of the teachers. No lessons. No Association.

    The upshot, concludes the speaker, confronting the crowd with an accusatory jutting forward of his chin, is that you have become famous doctors, lawyers, and engineers –  technocrats, ruled over and dictated to by children who did not, or could not, pass your school’s entrance examination. Yes.

    But the situation is even more dire than that, he goes on. The Government College Ibadan that is being celebrated is not the current physical reality, but a memory that resides only in the imagination of its Old Boys. From 1979, a sea-change swept away the old GCI, as the Bola Ige government of Oyo State embarked on a mission to ‘take down’ the ‘elite’ school. Additional ‘schools’ were built in its compound. Part of its land was parcelled out for other use.  The boarding house system was effectively abolished, and the buildings went into disuse and decrepitude. From being the school for the best and the brightest from far and wide, it became a local, essentially day school for children in the Apata Ganga suburb of Ibadan. The admixture and cross-fertilisation of yore is gone. There is now no possibility of tear-jerking stories such as the story of the bread-seller from Gbongan who went on to become a Professor because DJB heard him speaking English with great proficiency.

    This deliberate policy of ‘levelling down’ the elite schools was also implemented in Lagos State under the Jakande administration. New schools were built on the playing fields of old schools, and for a time, the best schools – the Igbobi Colleges and Maryland Comprehensives, became noisy factories without culture, and without  soul. True – the progressive agenda in operation in the South West required that enrollment be cranked up so that every child got a shot at education and no one was left behind. But what about quality? What about culture? Why take out the playgrounds? Why kill old schools, instead of simply building new ones on fallow land? In sum, why ‘level down’, instead of ‘levelling up’? For people who got so much right, they got this one wrong!

    Would Awo have approved? A training ground to turn out thinkers and technocrats to innovate and lead the drive for his bold vision for social development should be as much a part of his legacy as Free Primary Education, surely!

    Every thinking society has a duty to determine what is best about itself, and groom its children towards these ideals. In that drive, a leadership based on innate merit has to be facilitated, irrespective of the ideology of the nation. Most of the political leadership of UK and USA come ultimately from a few institutions. It is said, for instance, that William Haig – who became head of the Conservative Party and almost made it to 10 Downing Street, was first identified as a talent while addressing a school Conservatives meeting at the age of eighteen. The best guarantee of egalitarianism is when children have places to aspire to, based on merit and hard work.

    The speaker is winding up. You scrutinize his face closely through the powerful zoom lens of your Sony camera, which sees better than the naked eye. The dimples and contours give his face a look that is at once soft and hard. With him you always get the sense that under the placid exterior, there is a roiling volcano. Beneath the soft speech and cultured mannerism, there is a derring-do capable of putting everything in the world on the spin of a coin and damning the consequence.

    But there is still hope, he says. Or perhaps he doesn’t say, and you are filling in for him. There is the emerging prospect of a public-private partnership between the old students of GCI and the government, with the ‘private’ component, supplied by the old students, providing the management and finance required to take the institution back to the old days of glory and give the future children a hope. Similar discussions are ongoing concerning other schools, including King’s College, Lagos.

    He gets a standing ovation, does your friend, as he returns to his seat, clutching his British Airways menu. He is still jet-lagged from his travels, and has had precious little sleep in several days. On top of that his mission in Chicago had not been met with great success – his quarry, a big politician with whom he wanted a discussion for the advancement of The Cause, had eluded him. But all of that is in a day’s work, and there would be another day, another meeting. Earlier, over lunch, you had commiserated with him and given him a mild beer, ‘not enough to harm a fly’, for the stated purpose of ensuring his perspective is not skewed as he delivers his address. You had also, off-handedly, promised another beer for later.

    The evening winds down on a high note. The food is good, the conversation is loud. The music is full of golden oldies.

    It is close to midnight as you make to depart the venue, after endless rounds of photographs.

    Your friend is waiting  in ambush for you by the steps. His chin is jutting forward in a gesture that is at once benign and determined.

    ‘Where is the beer you promised me?’

    It is not a question but a statement. You look helplessly beside you at the wife. She smiles in that way that she has, which says at once ‘It’s alright’ and ‘You’re on your own’.

    You see her down the corridor and return to face your assignment, heading to the bar.

    This time you order strong brew for him, hoping a combination of the unresolved jet lag and the ethanol will abbreviate the engagement.

    With a clarity of sight that you can only get at a bar, you examine the reasons for the fact that colonial ‘missionary’ educationists such as DJ Bullock and Miss Groves of St Annes came in to teach generations of Nigerians for leadership with a script that included everything except a grooming in Political Thinking. Your friend’s theory is that they themselves, being of lower middle class origins, had not gone to Eton or Oxbridge, and could not give what they did not have. Your own theory is of a more sinister conspiratorial hue. Perhaps the colonial founders of Nigerian who midwifed the ‘marriage’ of the ‘poor husband’ North to the ‘rich wife’ South took pains to read the riot act to all colonial educators coming to these parts that while it was okay to breed professors of Medicine and Engineering, they should not stir the hornet’s nest by giving the children in these parts the idea that they could one day rule the land.

    The conversation shifts to Aisha Buhari and her ‘cry for help’ – and the desperation that could lead a woman to share her ‘pillow talk’ with hundreds of millions of others. You agree it is a last-ditch move to save the ‘handshake across the Niger’. The public comment that ensued back and forth has missed the point by failing to see that the ploy worked, and the principal, within a few hours, was organizing a strategic meeting to try to get a grip back on the handshake.

    Too little too late?

    Your friend is worried.

    So much hope had been kindled for the Nigeria project on this handshake.

    Way past midnight, you see your friend begin to nod. The strong brew has worked.

    You say your good nights.

    It has really been a great celebration.

  • Tribute: A father like no other

    With my years of being a journalist, I have always believed that writing about anything can’t be difficult for me. So I thought until recently when I had to write the final tribute to my late father, Chief Adebisi Japheth Otufodunrin, who was buried on October 14 in our village, Imagbon, Ogun State.

    It was my task to collate the tributes by my siblings, family members and other well wishers. I got virtually everyone to write theirs, but each time I tried to write mine, I could not easily come up with the right words to capture what our father meant to me and my siblings.

    I was not worried about overstating his accomplishments, but I was concerned about understating his legacies, virtues and all he did in his own little way to leave an imprint on the sand of times.

    Perhaps the writer’s block I was experiencing in writing the tribute was due to the fact that my father meant so much to me that I was finding it difficult to accept that he is indeed no more.

    With the deadline for submitting the content for the burial programme staring me in the face, I finally managed to write what I considered just a passage tribute.

    “Our consolation has been the sacrificial life you lived not only for us, your family, relatives and friends, but virtually everyone you had the opportunity of being with,” I stated.

    Talk of a man of the people who was accommodating to all he could provide for in any way he could. Not only did he take adequate care of his nuclear and extended family, beneficiaries of his benevolence are too numerous to recount.

    Like one of my uncles recounted at the wake keep, my father’s generosity was not due to any wealth that could be ascribed to him, but his willingness to help as many people as possible.

    “He doesn’t have more than one house, but he has helped many who have built mansions. That is the kind of person my brother is,” Pastor Yomi Odubote said.

    I also noted in my tribute that my siblings and I are what we are today by the grace of God and the crucial role my father played at every stage of our development. “We are grateful and proud of you being a father like no other. Your commitment particularly to our education remains a legacy we will always cherish,” I added.

    Though my father did not make it to a higher institution, he insisted that all his children must have university education, and eleven out of twelve of us did.

    But for him, I and some of my siblings would have opted for lesser education, but he would have none of that.

    He said he wanted a Dr Otufodunrin and he got one of us to become a medical doctor. As he would always say, the greatest legacy a father can leave for his children is get them educated to the highest level they can. We are all taking after our father, producing another generation of well-educated, creative and innovative Otufodunrin linage.

    I concluded my tribute with the following two paragraphs:

    “The peace, unity and love that prevail in our immediate and extended families are a tribute to the exemplary leadership, support and fatherly care you provided in your lifetime.

    “We will miss you in too many ways we can express. We will miss your calls, advice, suggestions, encouragement and many more. I will miss being asked why I didn’t write my weekly column whenever I failed to do so.

    “We love you but God loves you more. Sleep well our dear father, sleep well Iba Lekan.”

    My sincere appreciation for all the best wishes, prayers and support for our father’s burial. We will all live to survive our aged ones.

    This piece is being repeated because of technical hitch in the same piece last week

  • Anarchy rules … when pupils begin to burn classrooms

    For instance, how many parents cried out against the automatic promotion of their ill-motivated children?

    Anarchy rules already, ok, when thugs are now holding guns and earning the right to drill educated people on simple arithmetic in midnight attacks. ‘What is mx/yx?’ And the professor must give the correct answer or risk having his fingers chopped off. We know anarchy rules when ruling bodies are made up of the society’s dregs who throw out social decorum in favour of exhibiting and exporting anarchic behaviour. It’s called monkeying around, like the original man who knew no better.

    Let me tell you about the original man. He lived in the world’s first jungle more than three thousand years ago. He was known to give rein to his passions, no matter how base. When he felt like taking over a group and becoming the lord of the jungle, he poked everyone else out of the way with his horns until he had his sway. Did you say it is even happening today in our society? May be you’re right.

    The original man also surrounded himself with all the animals that could only sing his praises and say yes to him. I don’t know if I have told you this story but I will tell it again. Once, it was said that the lion went around asking every animal he came across this question: ‘Who is the king of the jungle?’ Each animal always went ‘You are, O Lion!’ In return, the animal was then allowed to do obeisance to him the lion. This went on until all the animals had bowed down, remaining the elephant. When the lion got to the elephant, he asked the normal question, ‘Who is the king of the jungle?’ In reply, the elephant picked the lion with his trunk and flung him across the terrain. The lion was said to have picked himself up painfully and muttered, ‘You don’t have to get violent just because you don’t know the answer.’ I’m sure you’d have noticed that the story has changed each time I have told it. I get better with age.

    Anyway, it appears some of our pupils in this country have now taken to violence just because they don’t know the answer to their promotion examination questions. From the story, the Oyo State Government or Schools’ Board took one look at its past national examinations’ results and laid its finger on the offending article: automatic promotions. Too many pupils are getting promoted that should be kept back to remedy their weak areas. So, the government or Schools’ Board has abolished or is in the process of abolishing automatic promotion in its secondary schools.

    According to the new law, pupils must pass English and Mathematics in order to qualify to go to the next class. Unfortunately, many students failed these two subjects and so have not qualified for their next classes. Instead of taking remedial measures, the pupils took the law into their hands and decided that if they cannot move, then their schools should not stand. In Oyo town, some of the pupils are said to have burnt their classroom blocks. This is boldness indeed.

    It is momentous, remarkable even, that we have now reached the stage in our development or descent where our secondary school pupils (generally aged between twelve and sixteen) are burning down their own school blocks out of pique. Where on earth did these children get the idea that violence pays? Oh yes, I think I know: they learnt this deviant behaviour from their parents and their parents’ generation.

    Sadly, many parents today have endorsed violence as a way of life. No, I am not talking about the sociopaths and psychopaths among us who flog their wards and wives and husbands to within an in inch of their lives. Those are in the category we call sick and require no less than Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung’s intervention.

    I am rather talking about those among us who see violence as a means to an end, like the original man three thousand years ago. We want a Rep or Senatorial seat? Maim our opponent. We want the governorship position? Kill our opponent. We want to get ahead in the Senate or House of Representatives? Seize whatever you can seize. We want to register the children in a school? Threaten the principal. Our entitlements are not ready on time? Destroy the CEO’s office. The children are misbehaving? Beat them to a coma. The dinner is late? Burn down the kitchen. What cannot be got by reasoning must be got by violence.

    These are the ones among us who teach the young ones that it is all right to burn down the school when you fail. I suppose that it is natural too that when the children see all these traits of behaviour in their parents and their parents’ generation, they think that it is the only way to get the world to listen to them and respect them. Violence equals Strength.

    In the first place, how did automatic promotion creep into the educational system? Oh, I think I know that one. It started when we all agreed that our classrooms should become over populated. It started when a public school classroom started to hold between sixty and eighty pupils to be managed by one underpaid, salary-owed teacher. Worse, the teacher was expected to turn all his/her charges into geniuses, even the slow or unmotivated ones among them, because their parents were too busy making money to help. Moving every child along the school’s classes automatically prevented a clogging up of the system. I believe this is still happening in all the states in this country.

     Like everything else, whatever goes around must eventually come around. The system of pushing every child along has brought its own results: mass failure that has every parent, school’s authority, government and even pupil crying foul. But who has the right to be peeved here?

    It is not the government. This problem was started by the government. Too many times, the government has opted for less expensive ad-hoc solutions to problems rather than doing the proper thing which takes time and is expensive. It was more convenient for the government to adopt this automatic promotion rather than build more schools, maintain existing ones, employ more teachers and rigorously supervise the teaching process. In truth, many of the teachers are not up to par in the profession. Automatic promotion should never be introduced in any school unless that school is sure of the dependability of its teaching system.

    It is certainly not the parents. Many parents are criminals where the education of their children is concerned. They have very little input, even to take-home assignments, do not care what goes on in school, and/or are super indulgent of their children and wards’ needs. Yet, they are the first to cry wolf when something is not pleasing to them. For instance, how many parents cried out against the automatic promotion of their ill-motivated children?

         It is also not the children. Many of them are not interested in learning. Like their parents, many school children are now more interested in materialism and its advantages, their social profiles and the internet resources. These preoccupy them better than what goes on in the classroom. Unfortunately, WAEC does not test on these things.

          The government must step up to solve this problem. Don’t get me wrong. I do not condone these children’s anarchic behaviour. Clearly, they have to be taught the crucial lesson that destroying a school property is not a legitimate way of expressing a grievance. They must pay for what they destroyed.

         Yet, the classroom and its activities are regulated by the government. It must therefore find a way to unclog the system, educate the parents and put them to work and also get these children back on their seats. It can be done.

  • CJN, NBA president and embattled jurists

    CJN, NBA president and embattled jurists

    NO scandal has so thoroughly shocked and bewildered Nigeria in recent years as the case of the seven judges against whom the secret service has launched extensive probes and a ‘sting’ operation. The interrogations of the jurists, sometimes downgraded to interactions, have continued. So, too, have the embarrassments. With each passing day, more revelations are emerging of poor judgements (not of court judgements, as may be imagined) by Supreme Court justices who ought to personify and exude juristic expertise and integrity, of overzealousness by state agents whose macabre delight in people’s misfortune often propel them to excesses and the creation of gaping loopholes, and a presidency quite unable to appreciate the enormity of the tragedy inflicted on the polity and the opportunities the scandal presents for deft and nuanced handling of national affairs.

    The ‘sting’ operation is a tragedy for the Supreme Court in particular, and a depressing affair for the National Judicial Council (NJC). The Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Mahmud Mohammed, has tried to keep a regal detachment, and has struggled to walk a tightrope between the pressure to cleanse the judiciary, which he says he believes in, and the almost certain invasion and erosion of the independence of the judiciary which the executive arm appears to be fomenting. Last week’s NJC statement indicates that the secret service did not avail anyone but itself of the details of the investigations undertaken against the judges. The statement stopped short of insinuating that the government seemed inspired by perverse, ulterior motives. But eventually, the CJN will have to recognise that he had been outfoxed and must assent to the recusal of the accused judges, as the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) president Abubakar Mahmud, suggested on Thursday. Mr Mahmud had at first been unadvisedly combative until he realised that the lower rungs of the NBA were up in arms against the status quo dominated by those they describe as irresponsible seniors who had embraced and profited from judicial corruption.

    If President Muhammadu Buhari understood the implications of the judicial tragedy his country faced, the depth of systemic corruption in Nigeria and the ramifications of the whole saga, and had he also been capable of the altruism he often immodestly appropriated for himself and displayed a grasp for the tempered and foresighted bureaucratic expertise a complex democracy needs, he would have handled the problem differently and perhaps with more aplomb. But the president lives in a dualistic world of right and wrong, with nothing in-between, and of law and order interpreted simplistically and offensively. With the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Department of State Service (DSS) training their guns on the judiciary, it is a question of time before they erode the independence of the third arm.

    The NJC has tried to fight back, but its punches have been ineffectual primarily because of lack of public support. In published statements and advertorials, they have presented their own side of the story, and have done it admirably well and somewhat persuasively. As a matter of fact it is evident they came to their conclusions on the affected judges based on the facts before them. But there seems to be a chasm between what the public and the DSS guess or know and what the NJC acknowledges. The CJN has groaned under the pressures, and appears minded to dig in the more. He should resist the temptation to remain inflexible, as galling as the events and campaigns of the past few days might be. The judges themselves, particularly Justices John Inyang Okoro and Sylvester Ngwuta, have given their own sides of the story, sides that have tried to drag in as many people as possible into the scandal, and revealed unpalatable truths about the precipitous decline in the dignity, integrity and competence of the Supreme Court.

    The story is still developing and it must, therefore, not be suggested that the ‘sting’ operation was unimpeachable, or that the justices are guilty of corruption. The public must wait for the DSS to reveal all it has, including tracing the sources of the money recovered from the judges. It must be established whether the money is proceeds from corrupted judgements, and if so, which: Rivers or Kogi, or elsewhere? The two justices have blamed politicians and other people for their woes, including making serious allegations against serving ministers. Their accounts have so far not been corroborated. In fact, the words they penned do not seem the logic and erudition of senior judges, and have remained unpersuasive and rather desperate and impolitic. The jurists should have maintained a dignified silence. But by revealing how they met with politicians and how politicians visited them, even if true, showed how low the Supreme Court has sunk. It is unimaginable that such cavalier, deliberate meetings could have taken place a few decades ago when the Supreme Court seemed to be at its apogee.

    The terrible mess is still being unearthed. It will get messier, and more people will be implicated. The full unpalatable truths about the perversion of justice in Nigeria, the appallingly low calibre of some of the judges, and the excesses of a government inebriated by its unchallengeable power, may yet come to light as the standoff continues. The genie is, however, already out of the bottle, and the country must brace itself up for more sordid details. Meanwhile, the CJN should put a lid on the scandal by ordering the loquacious justices to keep quiet. They have not inspired anyone by their drivelling. As the NBA president also suggested, the judges should recuse themselves and submit to the legal process. That recusal cannot be at the instance of the judicial organ, as the NJC sensibly pointed out a few days ago citing relevant provisions of the constitution and its own rules; it should be at the instance of the embattled justices, as the NBA president has suggested. An impasse will not help anyone, let alone the NJC and the CJN who have been unfairly perceived as tolerant of judicial corruption. As long as the stalemate continues, the secret service will intensify its media trial, the jurists will blunder the more, and the public will happily but uncarefully align with the DSS, EFCC and the government.

    But what should be uppermost in the mind of every patriot is how to remould a country that has broken down in virtually all areas. The task cannot be accomplished overnight, nor easily, and certainly not by the Buhari presidency whose strange and often dogmatic way of presiding over the affairs of the country continues to rile the judicious. That task, indeed, will be accomplished by a leader who has a brilliant and comprehensive grasp of the dynamics and complex interplay of forces destabilising the country — a leader who has an overarching view of where and how the country missed it, and how lost grounds can be reclaimed, a leader who, despite his private misgivings and loathing and prejudices, can see far into the future: a future of strong institutions unfettered by the control of strongmen, populists and propagandists.

  • Still on corruption in the Nigerian Judiciary

    Still on corruption in the Nigerian Judiciary

    Now, it is only if you want to be kind to these judges, that you would question only their competences; their training and experience but, without a doubt, much more is involved.

    As in all sectors of the Nigerian society, corruption predominates the judiciary. It has become endemic and it did not start today. It has elicited this amount of hoopla simply because one had expected that these priests in the temple of justice should, at least, be the exception. And there are, of course, those members of the judiciary who over dramatise their unjustified angst against the method of arresting the judges even where extant laws are not breached. The following anecdotal story, the veracity of which I cannot guarantee, will confirm the above assertion even where the consideration was certainly not money, but friendship.

    According to the story, the government of Western Region had just acquired a piece of land at Idi-Ose for the use of IITA in Ibadan. Some of the land-owners,  not happy with the amount of compensation paid, threatened to go to court, which development Chief Ladoke Akintola reported to Awo and advised that the matter be resolved without  litigation. Awo, the story goes, disagreed, confident that the government had a solid legal team in FRA Williams, Fani-Kayode and Bode Thomas. SLA replied in Yoruba, suffused with panegyrics: “My Leader, e fura o. Looto ‘Timi mo Procedure. Oba ni Fani ninu Constitution, beeni Thomas o kere ninu Evidence. Sugbon TOS Benson ni lawyer awon ti a n so yi. E si mo pe TOS mo Ademola o”- meaning yes, these are terrific lawyers, but TOS Benson and Justice Ademola, handling the case, are friends o.”

    Awo got the message and opted for settlement.

    Lesson of this: while the brilliant lawyer knows the Law, the successful one knows the Judge.

    The above story should confirm that the article below, published on these pages on Sunday, 16 June 2013, but slightly edited for space, is/was not ethnically motivated but simply a narration of the evidence of our very eyes in an era when some demonic senior Yoruba members of the bar and the bench, serving and retired, wrote or vetted, decisions of Election Tribunals in Yoruba land, whose membership was composed, wholly of, or had, at least two members from the north.

    NORTHERN JUDGES AS WEAKEST LINK IN A CORRUPT NIGERIAN JUDICIARY

    Justice being so sacred and divine, I never thought a day would come when I would have to write about the Nigerian judiciary in this deprecating manner. Never. But what we have in Nigeria today is a mere caricature – a judiciary brought low by its own shenanigans; so nauseating you simply have no apologies. It is for this that Justice Hardy, in sentencing Ibori’s crime couriers in a London court, could not restrain himself from describing the Nigerian judiciary as one usurped by men of power: Obas, Obis, Emirs, former Heads of State and sundry men of money and power, including state governors. In spite of the federal character nature of the menace, in which no section of the country can claim innocence, one can, with considerable justification, claim that judges of northern extraction have proved to be extremely weak and pliable, proving without a shadow of doubt, that they constitute the weakest link in a weak and corrupt judiciary.

    There are too many instances to cite from in support of this heavy charge against northern Judges  but nothing will compare with the  in-your-face sacrilege committed by the three northern judges who concocted the decision in the Aregbesola vs. Olagunsoye Oyinlola case at the Osun Election Petitions Tribunal nor would any judicial summersault ever thump what they did in their findings on the crucial issue of one Alhaji  S.O Nofiu who signed Forms EC8B in nine out of eleven wards in Ife Central Local Government Area of the state. Curiously, but understandably, the tribunal would later request that the defence lawyers return the Certified True Copy of the judgment which they had proactively obtained immediately after the court’s pronouncement. We have an NGO, the JUSTICE NOW FOUNDATION, to thank for bringing this ringing judicial odium to the open. In an advertorial in THE NATION of  Monday, 7 June 2010, the NGO wrote as follows:

    “…on that page, the tribunal judges made two contradictory findings as regards the evidence of signing of forms EC8B in nine out of eleven wards in Ife Central Local Government Area by one Alhaji N.O Nofiu. In the upper paragraph, the tribunal wrote: ‘In respect of Ife Central LG, evidence was led in the open court and our attention was drawn to Form EC8B in 9 wards out of 11 in the LG, and after perusing we confirmed that the said Alhaji N.O Nofiu signed the forms EC8B and no reason was advanced by the Respondents to explain why that happened. We are therefore of the view that this is a clear case of irregularity.” Curiously, in the second paragraph which now subsisted, the tribunal made a somersault and shamelessly wrote: ‘In respect of the allegation that Alhaji N.O Nofiu signed 9 form EC8B in the Ife Central LG, the Petitioner referred us to the evidence of RW29 and RW42 who stated under cross examination that he is the PDP Secretary, and we have gone through that evidence, but we could not find where they were confronted with forms EC8B’s in relation to the said wards of the local government. There must be an oral evidence to link the documentary evidence which is lacking here.’

    You can be sure one of those Yoruba legal evil geniuses has intervened.

    The NGO then asks: ‘Is this the way judicial minds work, finding irregularity in one breath and having a quick rethink and holding that there is no evidence in another, thus approbating and reprobating at the same time? Why did Alli Garba and the other Judges later shut their eyes, on the same page of the judgment ,to the glaring irregularity that they had earlier found in the signing of the forms by  one  person whom the Respondent’s witnesses confirmed was the Secretary of the PDP in Ife Central LG?’

    In Agagu Vs Mimiko, the Court of Appeal held that the court has the power to take judicial notice of  geographical divisions of the  ward and in that case, the tribunal rightly took judicial notice of the boundary lines of wards and the distance between the collation centre and others and found that one of the polling agents of the appellant’s political party who signed Form EC8B for three electoral wards that are several kilometres apart could  not have signed the forms at the ward collation centres because collation of the results of  all electoral units into Form EC8B was supposed to be done at the same time at all the collation centres. The Court of Appeal therefore held that the Tribunal rightly nullified the results of the three wards. Concluded the Foundation: ‘Clearly, Alli Garba and his colleague Judges from the north, had to abandon their earlier finding which would have led automatically to the nullification of 53,882 votes from  Oyinlola’s votes as against 3,883 from Aregbesola’s in that LG area alone”.

    Now, it is only if you want to be kind to these judges, that you would question only their competences; their training and experience but, without a doubt, much more is involved. It is, therefore, suspected in serious quarters, that for purposes of gratification, initial decisions of judges from the north are most probably submitted to a cabal of their evilly minded senior colleagues from the south, where the latter had not, in fact, written it in the first instance, and merely submitted to their lordships for pronouncement. But they were not yet done as Justice Alli Garba and co had equally turned blind eyes to blank Forms EC8B, as well as unsigned and unstamped forms EC8A in Odo Otin LG, tendered as Exhibit R18 because that, again, would have led them to nullify another batch of  43, 606 unlawful and unmerited votes posted for Oyinlola in his native Odo-Otin LG. When you add the antics, and judgment, of Justice Bwala in the first Ekiti Tribunal which was unceremoniously thumped by the Court of Appeal sitting in Ilorin, and the shenanigans of Justice Naron and the Hammar wayo in Ekiti, about which I have written copiously, you will be too generous, if not foolish, to ascribe these judgments to anything other than corruption.

    Why is this article relevant today?

    Simple. It is the fact that northern judges form a preponderance of those currently under investigation and that speaks to their mode of appointment to the higher bench which sees them barely reaching the mandatory ten-year post-graduation before appointment. They then quickly transfer to the federal judiciary where they, again, enjoy rapid promotion, a situation which has resulted in the north dominating that arm of government for like ages. Unfortunately, due to the hold of traditional institutions on northern appointees, punishing them has become very herculean. In order to correct all these, decisive efforts must be made to standardise appointments into the higher reaches of the Nigerian judiciary.