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Category: Sunday

  • Kogi Polls: how and where the Supreme Court erred

    Kogi Polls: how and where the Supreme Court erred

    The Supreme Court last month decided the Kogi governorship election petition in favour of Governor Yahaya Bello. The apex court may be final, says Bimbo Adewale, LL.M, but it is not infallible, quoting Chukwudifu Oputa, JSC. In the following analysis, the guest writer shows why and where the apex court got it so disastrously wrong.

    The case: Hon. James Abiodun Faleke v. INEC & Anor (SC. 648/2016, unreported), was one of the four cases in which the Supreme Court of Nigeria recently affirmed the election and return of Alhaji Yahaya Bello as the Governor of Kogi State of Nigeria. Factual Setting
    On 21st November 2015, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) organized the Kogi State governorship election. The election was a straight contest between Prince Abubakar Audu and Hon. James Abiodun Faleke, as governorship and deputy governorship candidates respectively for All Progressives Congress (APC) on the one hand and Captain Idris Wada and Architect Abayomi Awoniyi as governorship and deputy-governorship candidates respectively under the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on the other hand. At the end of the polls, the results of all the local government areas of the State were announced. Prince Abubakar Audu of the All Progressive Congress (APC) scored 240,867 votes while Idris Wada of the People’s Democratic Party scored 199,514 votes. Nevertheless, the election was declared inconclusive. Shortly after the announcement of the results on November 22nd 2016, tragedy struck, as Prince Abubakar Audu died.
    Significantly, the reason given by INEC for the inconclusiveness of the November 21 election was that there were 49,000 voters in the registers of some 91 polling units, which figure exceeded the 41,000 votes with which the late Prince Abubakar Audu and Hon. James Abiodun Faleke defeated Capt. Idris Wada and Arch. Yomi Awoniyi.
    The electoral body, thereafter, arranged for the conduct of a supplementary election that held on 5th December, 2015, at the end of which less than 13,000 votes were recorded. It is noteworthy that the name of Alhaji Yahaya Bello did not feature in the main election of November 21. It only came up in the supplementary election upon being substituted with the late Prince Abubakar Audu by APC. At the end of the day, Alhaji Yahaya Bello scored only 6,000 votes. INEC, nevertheless, announced him the winner and returned him elected as governor of Kogi State.
    Being convinced that the election of November 21, 2015 had already been concluded on the basis that the Constitution, particularly Section 179(2) thereof, already deemed Prince Abubakar Audu and himself as duly elected, Hon James Abiodun Faleke, hereinafter referred to as the appellant, filed a petition at the Kogi State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal. Essentially, he challenged the declaration of INEC that the election of 21st November, 2015 was inconclusive. The Tribunal affirmed the declaration of INEC. The appellant felt dissatisfied and appealed to the Court of Appeal which court also affirmed the decision of the trial Tribunal. The case ultimately found its way to the Supreme Court.
    The apex court, on 20th September, 2016 heard and dismissed the appeal ex tempore and rendered its reasons for dismissal on 30th September 2016. Given the time within which the briefs of learned counsel for the parties were concluded and filed, it was apparent that, as at 20th September, 2016 when the case was dismissed, the Honourable Justices would not have had sufficient time to properly read, digest and reflect on the voluminous briefs of learned counsel. This brings into focus, the propriety or otherwise of a court delivering its verdict on a particular day and adjourning its reasons to a later day. The danger in this practice is, once a verdict is delivered, the court must, willy nilly, scout for reasons to justify it, however unjustifiable it may be. This practice introduces rigidity, haphazardness and sloppiness into judgment writing which often lead to injustice. It also removes elements of discretion and flexibility, which are the hallmarks of justice. Reading through the judgment, it is glaring that the court had to stress and strain itself to arrive at a pre-conceived conclusion.
    There is no doubt that the decision of the Supreme Court of Nigeria in affirming Alhaji Yahaya Bello as Governor of Kogi State shocked the legal community in Nigeria and indeed the democratic world. In the midst of the shock and controversies that trailed the decision, there is, undeniably, one point of consensus. It is that the robust public image the Supreme Court enjoyed in the past has diminished, if not vanished. The Supreme Court, in the past was able to earn the respect and confidence of the people as a result of its ability to produce largely acceptable decisions. The court then was perceived as free from direct or indirect political influence, pressure and lobbying. The men that constituted the court then were, indeed, honourable, brilliant, reflective, honest and industrious. They were imbued with deep learning, courage and uprightness. Their decisions were convincing even to the unlearned, and unassailable to the learned; philosophical and predictable, as they were in consonance with good sense and established principles. Above all, their Lordships, in the past, built a concrete and an impregnable wall of integrity around themselves. And, they walked around with dignity and respect.
    The Supreme Court today, regrettably, has lost some of these sterling qualities and attributes. Only last week, the Department of State Services (DSS) exposed a little of the stench that has overwhelmed the Supreme Court of Nigeria in an operation that has left the public image of the court thoroughly battered. The outcome of the operation is disgusting as it is contemptible. The two Justices of the court, whose houses were raided by the men of DSS, Justices Nwali Sylvester Ngwuata and John Inyang Okoro, where huge sums of money in local and foreign currencies were allegedly found, were part of the panel that heard the Kogi polls appeals. As a matter of fact, Justice Nwali Sylvester Ngwuta presided over the panel. The despondency of the Nigerian populace and their new perception about the Supreme Court has been ably captured by Professor Itse Sagay as a place where cash dictates justice. This is sad.
    The Supreme Court & Its Pre-Eminence.
    The Supreme Court of Nigeria is the ultimate court in the land. Its decision is virtually final and can be altered only through legislative intervention or another judgment of the court. The power of finality of the court over cases derives from section 235 of the constitution which provides in part that “… no appeal shall lie to any other body or person from the determination of the Supreme Court” I must hasten to add here, however, that because the decision of the Supreme Court is final does not mean that it is correct. Oputa, JSC., (of blessed memory) puts it more succinctly in Adegoke Motors Ltd v. Adesanya & Anor (1989) where he said:
    “We are not final because we are infallible; rather we are infallible because we are final. Justices of this court are human beings capable of erring. It will be short-sighted arrogance not to accept this obvious truth”
    Observation
    To say the least, the Supreme Court judgment in Faleke’s case is most boring and platitudinous. There are more than enough horrendous pronouncements to fill a book. The first point a scholarly mind will observe in the judgment is the colorlessness of its language. There is nothing inspiring in the language of the court to suggest that it is a judgment of a final court. The reasoning of the court is equally flaccid. The judgment either adopted the submissions of learned counsel for the respondents or the findings of the lower court. Consequently, what we find is a judgment that is inundated with the cliché “I agree with learned counsel for the respondents” or “I agree with the lower court”. In deciding the four issues it formulated, the words “I agree” appear not less than 15 times! Apparently, the court forgot that it was the Supreme Court and the final court for that matter, where authoritative pronouncements, exposition of law and pontifications are required to advance Nigeria’s electoral jurisprudence. Unfortunately, the court subjugated this sacred duty to the reasoning of learned counsel for the respondents and that of the lower court. It is apposite at this point to examine some of the decisions of the apex court and demonstrate how the court jeopardized the cause of democracy and altered some fundamental and well-entrenched principles of our law on the altar of expediency.
    When is a governorship candidate deemed to have been duly elected? (Sections 172 (2) and 181 (1) of the 199 Constitution
    This was the most fundamental question that was put before the Supreme Court for determination. A decision of the Supreme Court on this point would surely have enriched Nigeria’s jurisprudence for its reconditeness. The determination of it necessarily revolves around the interpretation of sections 179(2) and 181(1) of the 1990 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended). The two sections state:
    279 (2). A candidate for an election to the office of Governor of a State shall be deemed to have been duty elected. Where, there being two candidates –
    (a) he has the highest number of votes cast at the election; and
    (b) he has not less than one-quarter of all the votes cast in each of at least two thirds of all the local government areas in the State.
    S. 181(1):
    If the person duly elected as Governor dies before taking and subscribing the Oath of Allegiance and Oath of Office, or is unable for any reason whatsoever to be sworn in, the person elected with him as deputy governor shall be sworn in as governor and he shall nominate a new deputy governor who shall be appointed by the governor with the approval of a simple majority of the House of Assembly of the State”.
    The facts before the courts (from the trial tribunal to the Supreme Court) were that the joint ticket of Audu/Faleke scored the highest number of votes of 240,867 votes and had a minimum of one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in all the local government areas in the State. It was, therefore, the contention of Faleke that the joint/ticket of Audu/Faleke satisfied the constitutional provisions. The trial Tribunal avoided the question like a plague. This was attributed to a misapprehension on its part. The Court of Appeal appreciated the point and virtually determined the question but lacked the courage to make the necessary pronouncement. In a way to demonstrate that the Appeal Court appreciated the case presented before it, the court had adumbrated,:
    “The question which logically rises from section 179(2) is whether as at 21/11/2015, the joint ticket of Prince Audu and the appellant met the requirements of the provision.
    The court then provided the legal basis for the determination of the question when it boldly held:
    “The law is trite that where any candidate to the office of a Governor meets with these requirements , he should be declared winner and returned as the duly elected Governor This much has been held in a plethora of cases such as Ngige v. Obi (2006) 14 NNLR (Pt 999) I. Agagu v. Mimiko (2009) INWLR (Pt 1140; INEC v. Oshimole (2009) 4NWLR (Pt 1132) 611; Fayemi v. Oni (2010) 9 NWLR (Pt 1223) 326; & Aregbesola v. Oyinlola (2011) 9 (Pt. 1253) 458”.
    Rather than proceed to apply the law enunciated to the facts of the case, the Court of Appeal summersaulted and went on another course entirely, looking for the definition of “return,” thereby demonstrating timidity and timorousness.
    The approach adopted by the Supreme Court in treating the most fundamental question in Hon. Faleke’s case is baffling. First and foremost it strangely held that the view expressed by the Court of Appeal, quoted above, was not a finding but review of the contentions arising from the interpretation of section (2) 179(2) and 181(1). Nothing can be further from the truth. The pronouncement of the Court Appeal in the passage was authoritative. The said court even proceeded to buttress its position with five judicial authorities. Clearly, the Supreme Court erred in pronouncing the passage a review.
    Secondly the Supreme Court abandoned the fundamental question put before it and formulated a completely different question. Rather than interpret “deemed to have been duly elected”, the apex court only interpreted “duly elected”. At page 30 of the judgment it stated:
    “The fundamental question is what do the words “duly elected” mean in the context of section 179(2) and 181 of the constitution?”
    Nobody asked the court to interpret the words “duly elected”. The apex court cleverly left out the words ‘deemed to have been duly elected’ contained in section 179 (2), which were in contention, thereby abandoning the complaint of the appellant and the course charted by him. This, of course, dealt a devastating blow to the case of the appellant as it led the Supreme Court to reach the wrong conclusion that there must be a declaration or return before a candidate can be said to have been duly elected.

    The error of the Supreme Court knocks out the foundational basis of the appellant’s case and rendered the case awkward. If this was deliberate, it is unjust, wrongful and unrighteous. If it was done out of ignorance, then it is calamitous and lamentable for this country. The consideration and determination of ‘when a candidate is deemed to have been duly elected’ formed the main thrust and crux of the entire complaint of the appellant. The failure of the Supreme Court to pronounce on the crucial point smacks of gross injustice as it has led to a miscarriage of justice. More disturbing and regrettable is the treatment of the authoritative pronouncement of the Court of Appeal on section on 179 (2) upon which no cross-appeal was lodged by the respondents. The Court of Appeal clearly stated the correct position of the law as regards the interpretation of section 179 (2). By that construction, the late Alhaji Abubakar Audu, having scored the majority of votes and secured the requisite percentage of votes in all the local government areas, by the operation of section 179 (2) ought to have been declared duly elected and returned before his demise. Consequently, upon his demise, the appellant would also have taken the benefit of section 181 (1).
    The meaning ascribed to the words: ‘duly elected’ by the Supreme Court is shocking. It is found on pages 31 and 32 of the judgment. The position of the Supreme Court is that once a returning officer makes a declaration, the requirements stipulated in section 179 (2) are fulfilled. The apex court held:
    “… the Returning Officer makes a declaration on behalf of the Electoral body of the final outcome of the election it conducted, which is in effect a confirmation that the legal requirements for that particular election have been met” (Pp 31-32).
    Is that so? This is serious!!! How did the court come to this conclusion? It was this line of reasoning that led the apex court to finally hold that the election of 21/11/2015 was inconclusive.
    There is clear evidence that the Supreme Court, for reasons best known to it, was scared in interpreting or giving effect to section 179 (2) of the Constitution. In the times of old, whenever the apex court found any difficulty in interpreting a section of the constitution, it had a practice of inviting eminent scholars and legal luminaries, as amicus curiae, (friends of the court) to shed light on the meaning of such a section. Of course, that was when the apex court was interested in dispensing justice. Surely, barring old age, that has come upon them, prominently scholars and legal practitioners such as Professor Ben Nwabueze, SAN; Chief Richard Akinjinde, SAN and Chief AfeBabalola, SAN, would readily have made their services available as friends of the court to advance the cause of justice.
    Where comes the words “Return” or “Declaration” in sections 179 (2) and 181(2) of the constitution?
    Still on the interpretation of sections 179 (2) and 181 (1) of the Constitution, it is alarming to see how the Supreme Court transposed the position of learned counsel for the respondents to that of the court. Learned counsel for the respondents had submitted that before a candidate is deemed to have been duly elected under section 179 (2) a declaration and return by INEC must have been made. The apex court, without any further exposition or enunciation of the law adopted, hook, line and sinker, the submissions of learned senior counsel for the respondents. The court held:
    “I agree with learned senior counsel for the two respondents that there must be a declaration or a return made by INEC before a candidate could be deemed to have been duly elected under section 179 (2) and 181 of the constitution.(pp. 31-32).
    This position, taken by the Supreme Court, led it to proceed to hold, albeit wrongly, that the election of 21/12/2016 was ‘inchoate.’ (p.38). The court concluded:
    “It follows therefore, that as the appellant and Prince Audu were not returned as duly elected, there was no basis for the application of Section 181 (1) of the Constitution, which allows a Deputy Governor elected with a duly elected Governor to step into the Governor’s shoes in the event of death or any other factor leading to his inability to subscribe to the Oath of Allegiance and Oath of Office.
    With due respect, the conclusion of the Supreme Court on this point can be faulted in two ways. First, the reading of the words “declaration” and “return” into sections 179 (2) and 181 (1) clearly subverts the age-long principle of construction of constitutional provisions and statutes, that neither the court nor learned counsel is entitled to read into a provision what it does not contain. In Action Congress & Anor v. INEC (200) the same Supreme Court held that the basic duty of a judge “is to interpret the clear and unambiguous words according to their ordinary, natural and grammatical meanings and must not add or remove any words therefrom; no onerous weight or burden must be foisted on an otherwise clear and unambiguous provision.” . It is, therefore, a grave error on the part of the Supreme Court to have read and added words into the provisions of Sections 179 (2) and 181 (1) that are not contained therein. Second, from the clear and unambiguous provisions of sections 179 (2) and 181 (2), what the Constitution emphasizes are the votes of the electorate: i.e., majority of the votes cast and one-quarter of the votes scored in two-thirds of the local government areas, not declaration or return made by INEC. In any event, declaration or return made by an electoral body has never been held by the court to be sacrosanct as same had been successfully challenged in the past and continued to be challenged till date. Governors can be removed and elections can be nullified.
    INEC GUIDELINES V. 1999 CONSTITUTION.
    The contention of the appellant on this point was that the case of the appellant fell squarely within the purview of section 179 of the Constitution which ought to have been applied. It was further argued that unfortunately, instead of giving effect to the said provision, INEC resorted to Election Guidelines instead of the Constitution in declaring the election of 21/11/2015 inconclusive. Appellant’s counsel buttressed this argument with Supreme Court authorities, particularly INEC vs Musa (2003) where the Supreme Court held:
    “…where the constitution sets the condition for doing a thing, no legislation of the National Assembly or of a State House of Assembly can alter those conditions in any way directly or indirectly, unless, of course the constitution itself as an attribute of its supremacy expressly so allowed… Howsoever it is described, when the Constitution has covered the field as to the law governing any conduct, the provision of the constitution is the authoritative statement of the law on the subject…”
    In resolving this issue, Supreme Court simply approved INEC Manual for use where it is found relevant. The court held:
    “I agree with the finding of the lower court at page 1608 of the record that the above provisions give statutory backing to the manual as a subsidiary and that where it is found to be relevant, its provisions must be invoked, applied and enforced”. (P. 34).
    The court cited CPC v. INEC (2011) but made no reference to INEC v. Musa (2003) let alone distinguishing it from the case before it.
    The Choice between Faleke and Bello
    In the course of the judgment, the Supreme Court asked a pertinent question:
    “The bone of contention therefore is, who, as between the appellant and the 2nd respondent was entitled to step into those shoes?”
    The “shoes” here refers to Prince Audu’s shoes. The first reason why the apex court preferred the 2nd respondent to the appellant is predicated on the right of a political party to nominate a candidate of its own choice to contest an election to conclusion. The court held:
    “I agree with the concurrent findings of the lower courts that by virtue of section 221 of the Constitution and section 137 (1) of the Electoral Act, the APC being the party which would be declared the winner in the event of their success at the polls as per Amaechi v. INEC (supra), the said APC had a legal interest in the votes cast on 21/11/2015 and was entitled to substitute a candidate of its own choice to contest the election to conclusion”. (P. 40-41).
    The right of a political party to choose a candidate to contest election is not in doubt. There is a plethora of authorities that have settled this exclusive right of parties in this regard. See PDP & Anor v. Sylva (2012) Onuoha v. Okafor (1983) Dalhatu v. Turaki (2003). The point must be made here, however, that there is a caveat. Political parties in exercising their rights must operate within the parameter of the law. The question that arises here is, is it just anybody that a political party can present?
    One of the points established against the 2nd respondent on record is that he is not a registered voter in Kogi State. In other words, he does not belong to the electoral community of Kogi State. In Yusuf v. Obasanjo (2005) it was held that for a person to be nominated to contest election such a candidate must be a registered elector within the constituency. The Supreme Court did not look into this point. It is indeed a travesty of democracy that a person who does not belong to the electoral community of a constituency would be made to win an election in the same constituency.
    The second reason why the Supreme Court preferred the 2nd respondent relates to the fact that the 2nd respondent contested the primary election and took a second position. The apex court held:
    “The evidence before us was that the 2nd respondent participated in the primary election conducted by the APC and came second behind Audu”
    In respect of the appellant, the Supreme Court stated that “his status remained that of a Deputy Governorship candidate to a deceased Governorship candidate, particularly as he did not participate in the party primaries, which is a pre-condition for anyone seeking elective office”. There is no doubt that these reasons, with due respect, are most untenable as they fly in the face of the law and well-entrenched principles of our law which the Supreme Court failed to consider.
    It is true that the 2nd respondent (Alhaji Yahaya Bell) contested the APC primaries but he lost to Prince Audu. A primary election is not valid for all purposes and at all times. It is circumscribed in scope in purpose. The same Supreme Court was categorical on this point when it held in CPC v. Ombugadu that “the sole purpose of a party’s primary is the emergence of a one of the contestants as the party’s candidate at the election”. It follows therefore, that once the primary election of a political party has produced a candidate, its purpose is served. There is no law which permits a political party, under any guise or circumstance (death of a candidate inclusive), to revert back to the result of a primary election that had produced a candidate. And, the Supreme Court never referred to the existence of any such law or authority. The decision of the Supreme Court in validating the nomination of the 2nd respondent on the score that he took second position as the primary election of his political party is contrary to the earlier pronouncement of the court in CPC v. Ombugadu (supra).
    As regards the fact of the appellant not participating in the party primaries, he ought not to have been made to suffer any detriment for that reason as the constitution does not require a Deputy Governorship candidate to participate in primaries. Prince Abuabkar Audu, it was, who, in compliance with the provisions of Section 187(1) of the Constitution, nominated the appellant as his running mate. The names of the duo were presented to their political party (APC) that subsequently presented same to INEC for the governorship election of 21/11/2015. It is, therefore, not clear how the Supreme Court came about the principle of independent candidacy that it tried to clothe the appellant with. One question arises from the foregoing: Does it mean whenever a party candidate dies his running mate becomes an independent candidate? If the decision of the Supreme Court is taken to its logical conclusion, it may be difficult for a Deputy-Governor or a Vice-President who did not participate in the primary election of his party to succeed the Governor or the President.
    NON-JOINDER OF APC.
    One of the reasons why the action of the appellant failed, according to the Supreme Court, was his failure to join APC. The appellant had argued that he sought no relief against his party and therefore did not consider his party a necessary party. The Supreme Court agreed but added that there “are certain matters in which the interest of party is involved…”. The Supreme Court by this decision has introduced another dimension into Nigeria’s electoral jurisprudence as it said:
    “The fact that a political party is not named as a statutory respondent in Section 137(2) of the Electoral Act cannot be a bar to joining a political party as a respondent where its interest is involved and where it would be bound by the result of the action”. (P. 56).
    I hasten to interject here, with due respect, that there is no election petition that is filed in which the interest of a political party that sponsored the candidate whose return is being challenged will not be involved. There is also no election petition that is prosecuted that a political would not be bound by the result of the action. These are not novel facts or facts peculiar to the appellant’s case. The law has remained the same, that a political party is not a necessary party in an election petition.
    In Buhari v. Yusuf (2003), the Supreme Court held thus:
    “Section 131(2) of the Act requires that the person elected or returned be joined as a party. Section 133 which I earlier reproduced provides in subsection (1) for persons who may present a petition. It is either one or both of (a) a candidate at an election; (b) a political party which participated at the election. No other person may do so. In the same vein, those who shall be joined to defend the petition in accordance with subsection (2) are the person whose election (or return) is complained of, referred to as the respondent and any of the INEC officials mentioned in the subsection or any other person who took part in the conduct of the election, and in either case the petition complains of their conduct of the election. All such persons are regarded as the statutory respondents, and who only, in my view, qualify as the necessary parties. (Underlining mine for emphasis). This remained the position of the law until the decision in this case.
    Conclusion
    There is so much to lament about in the judgment under discussion but time and space will not permit. It is sufficient to conclude that the primary duty of any court at any level is to do justice, without fear or favour. Judgments given by a court in a case must often be in the overall interest of the society. It is pertinent to bear in mind that a judicial system thrives when by its judgment it instils confidence in the larger society. Such judgments must be fair, impartial and corruption-free. It may be a strong point to make, but it is a truism that a judiciary that is unjust, corrupt and unreflective of the people’s aspirations becomes irrelevant to the people and is doomed to collapse with time.
    It is also important to bear in mind that the world we live in today has become global palm. We live in a world of Internet and advanced modern technology in which the judgments given in a national court are in question of minutes being disseminated all over the world. A fair and sound judgment which is free from corruptive influence edifies a country and its global standing. On the other hand, a weak and unsound judgment reflects the state of the judicial process in a country.
    For all the majority of Kogites and all democrats of this world care, Alhaji Yahaya Bello may have won all the cases, but he did not win the election.

  • We are not in a short recession, Mr. President; we are in a serial recession that is close to a depression (2)

    We are not in a short recession, Mr. President; we are in a serial recession that is close to a depression (2)

    If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand. Milton Friedman

    Last week, I ended the discussion with the following observation. In his Independence Day speech, President Buhari would have been both closer to the truth and doing himself and his administration a lot of good if he had told Nigerians and the world that since the recession did not start with him, it would take quite a while before his efforts could be expected to turn things around for most Nigerians and the national economy itself. Needless to say, some questions arise from this rather strange decision of the President not take this path in his speech to the nation on October 1. Did Buhari and his advisers think that if he had told Nigerians this truth that the so-called recession did not start with him, most Nigerians – and his enemies in particular – would have accused him of passing the blame to previous administrations? Was the President afraid of being called a weak, confused or irresolute leader unable to rise to the occasion to stop the massive hemorrhaging of the national economy? Or did the President and his advisers simply and truly believe that we are really in a short recession that would, like most recessions, not last for a long time, especially if the right policies and actions are applied?

    I leave the probable answer(s) to each of these questions to the reader. However, I for one would like to offer the view that the answer to all the questions without exception is a resounding YES. In other words, just as Buhari apparently does not want to give his enemies the “ammunition” in the view that more than a year in office he is still passing the blame for our economic woes to previous administrations, so also does he not want to be considered a weak, confused and indecisive leader. Above all else, I also think that Buhari and his advisers do really believe that we are in a short recession that can be “cured” with careful use of the vastly reduced revenues that are still flowing into our national coffers even with the fall in the world price of crude petroleum. And this is what worries me the most, this sinking suspicion that not only Buhari and his administration but virtually the entirety of our economic and social elites believe that we are indeed in a short recession that can be managed and curtailed by a “reflation” made possible by the combination of our oil revenues and loans from both internal and external markets.

    This is the very simplistic and dangerous belief that I wish to explore in this concluding essay to the series that began last week. A man, a woman, a government can believe anything that he, she or it wants, as long as it does no harm to anybody, especially if it does not go from mere belief to action and deeds in the real world. I can find no better analogy to explain what I have in mind here about beliefs and the consequences they can have in the real world than the tragic devastation that Hurricane Matthew recently had on some communities in the Americas and the Caribbean. As the hurricane began to grow from a tropical storm off the African coast to a full-blown hurricane as it approached the Atlantic coast of the Americas, the warnings went out from authorities for people to evacuate their homes because “Matthew” was expected to be a Category 4 monster. However, some folks believed that as they had done many times in the past, they could also ride out the fury of “Matthew” and so they did not evacuate. As a result of this erroneous belief, many lives were tragically and needlessly lost.

    I am using the analogy of tropical storms and category four hurricanes quite deliberately in this discussion. Extending this analogy to the domain of economic activities and the wealth and poverty of nations,one could say that a recession is like tropical storms that, generally speaking, tend not to last too long or cause catastrophic damages on peoples and communities. By contrast, a serial recession is like a typhoon or a hurricane because like an economic depression, it lasts for quite a while and causes colossal havoc that usually takes a long time to recover from. In the light of this analogy, I put it to President Buhari and his economic advisers that whatever category one chooses to examine, our national economy has for a long time now been relentlessly battered by a hurricane, not a mere tropical storm: waves after waves of high school leavers and university graduates unable to find employment; industrial production operating well below 30% of installed capacities; absolute poverty rate of six to seven out of every ten Nigerians; the borrowing frenzy of our federal, state and even local governments, even when oil prices on the world market were relatively high; and ever rising levels of hardship, insecurity and restiveness among large segments of the population, especially the youths that constitute the biggest demographic community in our society. It is a great error, Mr. President, to call a hurricane a mere tropical storm that will soon end.

    At the level of formal discourse in the professional field of economics, concepts like recessions and depressions are meaningful and useful only in the true capitalist nations and economies of the world; they do not explain much inthe kind of pseudo-capitalist economy that has been in operation in our country for a long time now. There are many reasons for this. Perhaps the most important reason in the context of the present discussion is the enormously significant fact that, unlike Nigeria, in true capitalist economies wealth – or capital in its abstract form – is not and indeed cannot be constantly and relentlessly looted and taken out of productive, value-added economic activities. A second reason that is of equal importance is the fact that in contrast with what obtains in Nigeria, in true capitalist economies, recessions are not measured by a sudden and very sharp, very severe drop in the capacity to pay for imports in an economy that is overwhelmingly dependent on the importation of nearly everything needed to keep the economy running or working.This particular feature of the pseudo-capitalism in force in Nigeria is what I had in mind when I chose to quote from Milton Freidman, the arch-monetarist, free-market founder of the Chicago School of Economics for the epigraph for this piece. In a hundred years, I never would have chosen to quote from Friedman, except perhaps my intention was to critique or debunk his ideas and their influence among economists. But in this particular context, I am quoting Freidman with qualified approval: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years, there would be a shortage of sand”.

    Of course, Friedman did not have the Nigerian federal government in mind in this famous quote; he had the federal government of his own country, the United States in mind. Like the true supply-side monetarist that he was, Friedman’s message in this quote was simply this: as the business of government is not business, government should stay out of business, otherwise what you would have is shortages galore, even of sand in a place with an abundance of sand as the Sahara Desert. In applying this quote to the Nigerian pseudo-capitalist context, for sand let us substitute capital itself: whether the world price of crude petroleum is high or low, it makes no difference to Nigerian governments of the past and the present; there is a perpetual and artificial shortage of capital in the areas that really matter, there is an unceasing and relentless diversion of the wealth of the nation away from productive economic activities that go beyond the capacity to pay for foreign imports.

    Despite all I have been saying inthis piece, I will makethe following concession to Buhari and his economic advisers in their diagnosis of a short recession and the “cures” for it, as contained in the President’s Independence Day speech: professional, salaried, upper middle class Nigerians, together with importers and exporters that dominate wholesale and retail trade in the country are facing “recession” of the kind that professional economists in the true capitalist countries of the world have in mind when they use the concept. This is because the groups and individuals that belong to these categories of privileged Nigerians have been the only real beneficiaries of our over-dependence on foreign imports as the lynchpin of the national economy. Do I need to say why this is the case? Well, as everyone knows, the bulk of whatever is unlooted in our national wealth goes to paying for foreign imports so as to keep this form of national economy alive. Isn’t that the case, compatriot?

    I do not wish to seem cavalier and insensitive to human suffering in making this observation: the ability to meet obligations and necessities crucial for livelihoods and life itself is under severe, traumatic strain for hundreds of thousands of Nigerians across the whole country. And because these categories of Nigerians often bear responsibility for thousands of relatives and dependents that are less fortunate, the “recession” that Buhari has in mind extends far beyond the circle of the fortunate and the “blessed”. It is not unlikely that if for one reason or another world oil prices were to suddenly and unexpectedly spike upwards, relief would come to our import-dependent national economy and itsbeneficiaries. If this happens, at least for a short while the “recession” would be over.

    All the same, compatriots, let us not forget that the vast majority of Nigerians in their millions have been in a serial recession, a sort of depression, for a long time now. Buhari’s program for overcoming the “recession” as outlined in his speech on October 1, does not even begin to approach this overwhelming reality of severe hardship and suffering for most Nigerians in the hurricane of a serial recession or depression that they have endured for a long time now. Short of full employment under a vastly reformed capitalism that actually keeps the bulk of capital in both oil revenues and non-oil, value-added surplus accumulation in the country, nothing that the President and his economic advisers do can change the course from the present location of the national economy in the eye of the hurricane of serial, repeated recessions. Mr. President, will our country move away from wasteful and cannibalistic kalo-kalo, barawo capitalism under your administration and the rule of your party, the APC?

     

    • Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
  • Bob Dylan is on song

    Bob Dylan is on song

    Seldom has the Nobel Committee on Literature acted with superior wisdom and an acute awareness of the supreme ironies of history. But then the whole Alfred Nobel project is anchored on a supreme irony. Seldom has money made from ignoble venture been put to more noble use and for the upliftment of humanity. Alfred Nobel might have made his money from manufacturing explosives, but he has put his vast resources to the timeless project of identifying the best and brightest that humanity has produced in various fields of human endeavour and rewarding them accordingly.

    At a time when an American politician named Donald Trump is hell bent on poisoning the communal well of universal goodwill with his dark, disturbing diatribe against all that is noble and inspiring about the human story, the Nobel Committee has chosen another American who has brought joy and rapture to the entire world with the haunting beauty and lyrical brilliance of his musical poetry. Bob Dylan is the laureate of lyrical lushness and luminosity.

    It has been a long time since the Nobel Prize for Literature has resonated with such global approval and rapturous applause. We may have to reach back to those periods when it went to non-literary superstars like the multi-talented former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and the iconic philosopher, Bertrand Russell.

    For most time, the prize had been dominated by austere and dreary literati, remote geniusesviewing the rest of the world with ascetic forbearance and whose nominations are often greeted with glum approval and stoic admiration by the world.  This one is a prize for the boys, and for a man whose demotic singing and sense of the organic connectedness of all human communities have turned him into a universal folk hero and his music a global brand.

    Having famously described himself as a trapeze artist and not a poet, it helps that Mr Dylan fancies himself all along as a musician rather than a poet. Music is lighter and travels faster than literature. It also comes with less cultural baggage. But because of its coyness, attention is often deflected away from the great and inspiring qualities of poetic music. The great advantage of not being taken too seriously is that it tends to protect musical poetry from unhelpful disputations and envy until it is ready to assume its rightful place in the global pecking order.

    Bob Dylan is already a model of the gentleman-musician. Like all true geniuses and without appearing to unduly exert himself, his brand has helped to abolish the distinction between high and low art; between poetry as music and music as poetry and between informal versifying and formal verse-making. The singing bird is also a bard in its own right.

    While politicians preach hate and racial bigotry from Arlington to Sarajevo, there are men and women who are working round the clock in several corners of the world to mitigate the cultural angst that separates human communities and to collapse the formal distinctions which separate the genres and prevents cross-fertilization among human modes of expression. In this brave new world, all that is generically solid melts into thin air and it may be difficult to separate poetry from journalismand formal prose from informal creole.

    The future of humanity belongs to these men and women at the new frontiers of human expression and artistic exertion. They are the true liberators of the human spirit. Through his great music, Bob Dylan has already taught us how it can be done. Last Thursday the Nobel Committee in Stockholm affirmed and put the matter beyond controversy. It is a ringing affirmation of our collective humanity. Bob Dylan is truly on song.

     

  • We are not in a short recession, Mr. President; we are in a serial recession that is close to a depression (2)

    We are not in a short recession, Mr. President; we are in a serial recession that is close to a depression (2)

    If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand. Milton Friedman

    Last week, I ended the discussion with the following observation. In his Independence Day speech, President Buhari would have been both closer to the truth and doing himself and his administration a lot of good if he had told Nigerians and the world that since the recession did not start with him, it would take quite a while before his efforts could be expected to turn things around for most Nigerians and the national economy itself. Needless to say, some questions arise from this rather strange decision of the President not take this path in his speech to the nation on October 1. Did Buhari and his advisers think that if he had told Nigerians this truth that the so-called recession did not start with him, most Nigerians – and his enemies in particular – would have accused him of passing the blame to previous administrations? Was the President afraid of being called a weak, confused or irresolute leader unable to rise to the occasion to stop the massive hemorrhaging of the national economy? Or did the President and his advisers simply and truly believe that we are really in a short recession that would, like most recessions, not last for a long time, especially if the right policies and actions are applied?

    I leave the probable answer(s) to each of these questions to the reader. However, I for one would like to offer the view that the answer to all the questions without exception is a resounding YES. In other words, just as Buhari apparently does not want to give his enemies the “ammunition” in the view that more than a year in office he is still passing the blame for our economic woes to previous administrations, so also does he not want to be considered a weak, confused and indecisive leader. Above all else, I also think that Buhari and his advisers do really believe that we are in a short recession that can be “cured” with careful use of the vastly reduced revenues that are still flowing into our national coffers even with the fall in the world price of crude petroleum. And this is what worries me the most, this sinking suspicion that not only Buhari and his administration but virtually the entirety of our economic and social elites believe that we are indeed in a short recession that can be managed and curtailed by a “reflation” made possible by the combination of our oil revenues and loans from both internal and external markets.

    This is the very simplistic and dangerous belief that I wish to explore in this concluding essay to the series that began last week. A man, a woman, a government can believe anything that he, she or it wants, as long as it does no harm to anybody, especially if it does not go from mere belief to action and deeds in the real world. I can find no better analogy to explain what I have in mind here about beliefs and the consequences they can have in the real world than the tragic devastation that Hurricane Matthew recently had on some communities in the Americas and the Caribbean. As the hurricane began to grow from a tropical storm off the African coast to a full-blown hurricane as it approached the Atlantic coast of the Americas, the warnings went out from authorities for people to evacuate their homes because “Matthew” was expected to be a Category 4 monster. However, some folks believed that as they had done many times in the past, they could also ride out the fury of “Matthew” and so they did not evacuate. As a result of this erroneous belief, many lives were tragically and needlessly lost.

    I am using the analogy of tropical storms and category four hurricanes quite deliberately in this discussion. Extending this analogy to the domain of economic activities and the wealth and poverty of nations,one could say that a recession is like tropical storms that, generally speaking, tend not to last too long or cause catastrophic damages on peoples and communities. By contrast, a serial recession is like a typhoon or a hurricane because like an economic depression, it lasts for quite a while and causes colossal havoc that usually takes a long time to recover from. In the light of this analogy, I put it to President Buhari and his economic advisers that whatever category one chooses to examine, our national economy has for a long time now been relentlessly battered by a hurricane, not a mere tropical storm: waves after waves of high school leavers and university graduates unable to find employment; industrial production operating well below 30% of installed capacities; absolute poverty rate of six to seven out of every ten Nigerians; the borrowing frenzy of our federal, state and even local governments, even when oil prices on the world market were relatively high; and ever rising levels of hardship, insecurity and restiveness among large segments of the population, especially the youths that constitute the biggest demographic community in our society. It is a great error, Mr. President, to call a hurricane a mere tropical storm that will soon end.

    At the level of formal discourse in the professional field of economics, concepts like recessions and depressions are meaningful and useful only in the true capitalist nations and economies of the world; they do not explain much inthe kind of pseudo-capitalist economy that has been in operation in our country for a long time now. There are many reasons for this. Perhaps the most important reason in the context of the present discussion is the enormously significant fact that, unlike Nigeria, in true capitalist economies wealth – or capital in its abstract form – is not and indeed cannot be constantly and relentlessly looted and taken out of productive, value-added economic activities. A second reason that is of equal importance is the fact that in contrast with what obtains in Nigeria, in true capitalist economies, recessions are not measured by a sudden and very sharp, very severe drop in the capacity to pay for imports in an economy that is overwhelmingly dependent on the importation of nearly everything needed to keep the economy running or working.This particular feature of the pseudo-capitalism in force in Nigeria is what I had in mind when I chose to quote from Milton Freidman, the arch-monetarist, free-market founder of the Chicago School of Economics for the epigraph for this piece. In a hundred years, I never would have chosen to quote from Friedman, except perhaps my intention was to critique or debunk his ideas and their influence among economists. But in this particular context, I am quoting Freidman with qualified approval: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years, there would be a shortage of sand”.

    Of course, Friedman did not have the Nigerian federal government in mind in this famous quote; he had the federal government of his own country, the United States in mind. Like the true supply-side monetarist that he was, Friedman’s message in this quote was simply this: as the business of government is not business, government should stay out of business, otherwise what you would have is shortages galore, even of sand in a place with an abundance of sand as the Sahara Desert. In applying this quote to the Nigerian pseudo-capitalist context, for sand let us substitute capital itself: whether the world price of crude petroleum is high or low, it makes no difference to Nigerian governments of the past and the present; there is a perpetual and artificial shortage of capital in the areas that really matter, there is an unceasing and relentless diversion of the wealth of the nation away from productive economic activities that go beyond the capacity to pay for foreign imports.

    Despite all I have been saying inthis piece, I will makethe following concession to Buhari and his economic advisers in their diagnosis of a short recession and the “cures” for it, as contained in the President’s Independence Day speech: professional, salaried, upper middle class Nigerians, together with importers and exporters that dominate wholesale and retail trade in the country are facing “recession” of the kind that professional economists in the true capitalist countries of the world have in mind when they use the concept. This is because the groups and individuals that belong to these categories of privileged Nigerians have been the only real beneficiaries of our over-dependence on foreign imports as the lynchpin of the national economy. Do I need to say why this is the case? Well, as everyone knows, the bulk of whatever is unlooted in our national wealth goes to paying for foreign imports so as to keep this form of national economy alive. Isn’t that the case, compatriot?

    I do not wish to seem cavalier and insensitive to human suffering in making this observation: the ability to meet obligations and necessities crucial for livelihoods and life itself is under severe, traumatic strain for hundreds of thousands of Nigerians across the whole country. And because these categories of Nigerians often bear responsibility for thousands of relatives and dependents that are less fortunate, the “recession” that Buhari has in mind extends far beyond the circle of the fortunate and the “blessed”. It is not unlikely that if for one reason or another world oil prices were to suddenly and unexpectedly spike upwards, relief would come to our import-dependent national economy and itsbeneficiaries. If this happens, at least for a short while the “recession” would be over.

    All the same, compatriots, let us not forget that the vast majority of Nigerians in their millions have been in a serial recession, a sort of depression, for a long time now. Buhari’s program for overcoming the “recession” as outlined in his speech on October 1, does not even begin to approach this overwhelming reality of severe hardship and suffering for most Nigerians in the hurricane of a serial recession or depression that they have endured for a long time now. Short of full employment under a vastly reformed capitalism that actually keeps the bulk of capital in both oil revenues and non-oil, value-added surplus accumulation in the country, nothing that the President and his economic advisers do can change the course from the present location of the national economy in the eye of the hurricane of serial, repeated recessions. Mr. President, will our country move away from wasteful and cannibalistic kalo-kalo, barawo capitalism under your administration and the rule of your party, the APC?

    • Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

     

  • Sting operation against Judges: Onslaught, what onslaught?

    With all the privileges extended to Nigerian judges, should they still be found pilfering the books, not to talk of merchandising justice?

    In what could no longer have come as a surprise to Nigerians. NJC, in its 744-word reaction to the DSS arrest of the judges, did not, for once, mention anything about the cache of money, in millions, and in currencies which included even the Indian rupee, seized from their homes. 

    If the privileged class of the Nigerian judiciary – the senior bar and the bench, will not be contrite, subdued, for once, by the malodorous smell oozing from within its ranks, if the leading lights of a once respected judiciary as embematised by the greats – the Rotimi Williams of the bar, and giants of the bench, the likes of J.I.C. Taylor, Louis Mbanefo, Joseph Adefarasin, Adetokunbo Ademola, Akinola Aguda, Anthony Aniagolu, Kayode Eso, Mohammed Bello, Chukwuweike Idigbe, Andrews Otutu Obaseki, Augustine Nnamani, Adolphos Karibi-Whyte and Chukwudifu Oputa –  a judiciary now overtaken by what the late Tunji Braithwaite, a distinguished member of the senior bar, would have described as nothing more than rodents, and if they will be too self-centred to dwell only on  process while leaving out the heinous act of corruption in the temple of justice,  by judges who have turned justice to a commodity to be haggled about by litigants; analogous to what happens at Jankara in Lagos, then decent Nigerians, totally nonplussed at what a once decent judiciary  has become, would have no option than to leave them all behind, suffused in their make-belief world of un-touchability. If they are yet to know it, decent Nigerians, not given to a life of calling black white, are today,  totally crestfallen at how crimson red the judiciary – one from which sister African countries once came to recruit the very heads of their own, has become.

    It is  unbelievable that any member of the Nigerian judiciary, at whatever level, could be counted amongst those who are  belly aching over mode  of arrest but refuse to express disgust at the unbelievable act of turning the temple of justice to a market place, haggling over the price of court judgments, completely living in a world of reverse reality. When a horde of members of the senior bar queued up, behind a colleague hauled before the courts on corruption charges, Nigerians thought they had seen the worst. That they now see them line behind judges in whose homes, tonnes of money – proceeds of crime –  are found, like they live in a bureau de change, is nothing but a confirmation of the putrefaction that has overtaken the Nigerian judiciary. Come to think of it, how are judges in whose home millions are found, different from the Escobars of this world, Colombian drug tsars after whom battalions of soldiers are deployed for arrest in whatever circumstances? Are motives of one illicit act significantly different from another? Aren’t they all intended for personal enrichment or are rational persons ever opposed to having drug barons arrested? With all the privileges extended to Nigerian judges, should they still be found pilfering the books, not to talk of merchandising justice? What exactly can facilitate insecurity more than denying poor citizens justice simply because they cannot afford a judge’s financial demands? Does it  ever occur to these judges, and their backers, that such persons could  resort to self help which, in some cases,  can very well include the use of fire arms,  on a large scale,  especially where  the litigants are two communities fighting over a piece of land as we see regularly in many parts of the country? What can be more incendiary and can’t our protesting legal luminaries, calling President Buhari all manner names get this? Where in their training in universities is money mentioned as a factor in adjudication of cases and what do they think they are teaching the younger ones in the profession- I almost wrote business?

    Despite President Buhari’s clear enough statement that the move was against  abberant  judges, and certainly not directed at the judiciary, Mike Ozekhome SAN,  who has a knack for running to television networks or writing letters to the editor whenever any controversial issue erupts as he did on both the Channels television and in his letter to the editor of The Nation on Tuesday, 11 October, 2016, sounding thoroughly alarmist until another lawyer,  Jiti Ogunye, took the wind out of his sails by drawing his attention to the provisions of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act in regard to the arrest of suspects. That was after he had berated the president, calling him a dictator and a tyrant, rolled into one. Not for these people would the shame of judges turning their homes to commodity centres be enough to mitigate their efforts at inverse populism. Nor would they be aghast at the inherent merchandising of justice in the hands of these otherwise respected priests in the temple of justice. In his over dramatised angst, Ozekhome had in his letter to the editor, referenced above, claimed beyond the limits of exaggeration that, and here I quote him, “Governor Nyesom Wike, a sitting governor, was almost shot dead by fully armed gun totting DSS and Police …” For a respected silk to make this bewildering claim, you would think he was giving an eye witness account. I was, therefore, glad to see him red faced when Ogunye educated him even though he tried, laboriously, to wriggle out. Without a doubt, some highly regarded members of the higher bar, as conscientious objectors to the manner they believed the judges were treated, among them the likes of Olisa Agbakoba SAN, Wole Olanipekun SAN, Dele Adesina SAN, may feel truly aggrieved but they can be forgiven for having been found, severally, on the side of the people though that would hardly justify their classical demonstration of what the Yoruba would describe as leaving leprosy to fight craw craw. One would, ordinarily, have expected that these silks, who achieved their high status by dint of hard work occasioning long hours of study, busy researching their cases, should be at the forefront of railing against corrupt judges. It will not be farfetched, to believe that one or more of them must have, one time or the other, be a victim of judicial merchandising in these courts. Or isn’t it curious, as recently observed by Palladium of this paper, that in spite of the weighty jurisprudential issues thrown up by the Kogi governorship election, there wasn’t a single minority judgment at any of our three levels of courts. Were Nigerians being told the case was that straight forward or routine? Or was this the outcome of some form of corruption – financial inducement or governmental meddling? As I indicated earlier, when justice has to be purchased, wouldn’t the poor, without the means of buying justice, resort to self help? A significant portion of the complaint of lawyers, civil society groups and public analysts has had to do with claims that this whole issue is within the purview of the NJC. With all due respect, can anybody claim that the NJC has justified, not only its existence but the high regard Nigerians accord it? Hasn’t it been shielding judges caught red handed in corruption? For instance, in recommending the retirement of a particular judge which it claimed was punished for visiting a litigant demanding bribe, hasn’t it been alleged  by the DSS that the judge actually collected the bribe and that NJC  directed that he should pay back instalmentally? What honour is in this red-faced lying in protection of an indicted judge? Could the dark goggled general, not to talk of an incorruptible President Buhari, have considered a body like that a partner in an anti-corruption war?

    It is, however, fascinating that in all these thoroughly nauseating circumstances, the senior bar can still be proud of the Itse Sagays, the Akin Oyebodes and the Femi Falanas of the profession. These are distinguished members of the bar who do not believe that they are, in any way, obligated to sink or swim with disreputable acts of members of the judiciary, however otherwise respected. I think it is only fair that others, so understandably obliged, possibly because of the posts they had previously held, or currently hold in the profession, will from this time on begin to make the critical distinction between issues and go ahead to call a spade by no other name. That way Nigerians will continue to accord them the respect they have duly earned.

  • Judges’ arrest; so what?

    Judges’ arrest; so what?

    That is inevitable when reform fails to come from within. If gold rusts, what would iron do?

    Barely one year after the President Muhammadu Buhari administration was inaugurated, a friend asked me in the course of a discussion on the anti-corruption war: “how many persons has Buhari jailed?” This was supposed to be a rhetorical question in that it is not the business of Buhari to jail. It is the duty of the police and other prosecutorial agencies to press corruption charges against people suspected to be corrupt while the courts decide their fate. I did not fail to remind him that Buhari had probably learnt his lesson from the criticism of his dictatorial regime when he was head of state in the 1980s; hence his unusual patience on the matter now.

    My friend’s question was a cynical dismissal of the anti-corruption war. Yet, it is obvious that Buhari is not necessarily the problem with the anti-corruption war. Our courts are. So, the question should have been directed at the judiciary, instead of Buhari. We all know, sincerely speaking, that we cannot make any headway with the way many of our courts have been handling corruption cases. Of major concern are cases involving politically exposed persons with very deep pockets.

    We have been inundated with stories of judges hawking injunctions and judgments; depending on how fat the pay is. One former governor has been on perpetual injunction from arrest for years! Justice Kayode Esho (of blessed memory) had warned, before his death in 2012, that we had ‘billionaire judges’ in the country, especially among those who delivered judgments and rulings in election matters. Only God knows how many people have suffered from the resulting miscarriage of justice. Yet, no country can develop where there is so much unpredictability in the justice system.

    It is against this backdrop that we must see the October 7 midnight arrest of seven judges in the country suspected of corrupt practices.  Those arrested included two justices of the Supreme Court, Sylvester Ngwuta and John Okoro, as well as five other judges, including the suspended Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeal, Ilorin Division, Justice Mohammed Ladan Tsamiya; Justice Kabiru Auta of Kano State High Court, Justice Muazu Pindinga, I.A. Umezulike and Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court, Abuja. The eighth judge who could have been arrested was the Rivers State Federal High Court judge, Justice Mohammed Liman, who allegedly secured the help of the state governor, Nyesom Wike, to prevent his arrest. Barely 24 hours after threatening to arrest more judges, the DSS picked up Justices Bashir Sukola and Ladan Manir of the Kaduna State High Court on Wednesday.

    Naturally, some concerns have been raised, especially about the way and manner the security operatives carried out the arrests. Some have said the DSS has no right to invade the judges’ residence at midnight; some say they do not have the right to break into their homes; some ask: why the weekend arrests? Some even gave the impression that judges cannot be arrested simply because they are judges. In all of these, what is important is whether the arresting authority has a search warrant. The answer in this case would appear to be in the affirmative. The question of whether or not the security operatives have a right to break into the home of a judge is neither here nor there. If there is resistance by the person to be arrested, do the security agents merely fold their arms? At any rate, what happens if they leave the suspect only for him/her to have ample time to destroy or move evidence from his apartment?

    It is astonishing that despite the ‘shock finds’ allegedly found in the homes of three of the judges (about N93.5million, $530,087 as well as 25,970 pound sterling and 5,680 Euros) by the DSS, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) could not even wait to think through the issue before condemning the arrests. Why would a judge have so much money, and at home? It is heartwarming though that many Nigerians have condemned the association. An NBA that has remained comatose all these years when the irregularities have been going on in the judiciary suddenly rose from the ‘dead’ to condemn the arrests even as it also claims it believes in the anti-corruption war. For God’s sake, where was the association when Governor Ayodele Fayose tore a judge’s dress in court? There are a thousand and one things that could have made the NBA to declare emergency. The DSS’ arrest of judges is certainly not one of them. In many other countries, judges had been arrested and tried over all sorts of crimes. Nigerian judges cannot be different. They certainly cannot be above the law.

    And the National Judicial Council (NJC) saddled with the responsibility of self-cleansing in the judiciary?  The council has become more of a cult, dispensing justice sometimes in a manner that reminds one of the famous “Kootu Asipa”, (a popular Yoruba drama series) some decades back! The point is; there is no country where there are no thieves. The beauty in many other places is that when caught, the thieves, no matter how highly placed, know they will get their comeuppance in court. But not here. Our big thieves know they can get away with the most heinous crimes once the price is right. To worsen matters, some of the colluding judges rub it on our faces when they pronounce such thieves innocent or discharge them on technical grounds; or when they give them a slap on the wrist and ask them to go but sin no more.

    Some of them and their senior lawyer ‘clients’ have taken us for fools for far too long by behaving as if the law itself is written in Greek or Latin, that people who are not lawyers cannot understand. Law is predictable; many of our judges have made it not to be by the contradictory rulings and injunctions that they give, even on similar matters. Many of the lawyers, including very senior ones, no longer bother about the law. Why do you need to bother about the law if you can arrange money for judges handling your case? I hear that is what some of them specialise in now.

    The lawyers involved in these shady deals know themselves and one should not be surprised if they are the ones in the vanguard of the criticism of the DSS’ action. The arrest of the judges is the beginning of the anti-corruption war. And the reason is simple: judges are the people who dispense justice; they hold the power to convict and to discharge and acquit. So, they must be upright to give teeth to the anti-corruption war.

    One has taken judicial notice of the NJC’s reaction to the unfortunate incident. But we do not have to be experts in law to know that all is not well with our judiciary. What has happened to the Halliburton scandal trial? To date, our big people involved are still walking the streets free whereas their foreign counterparts have since been convicted outside of the country. We are also familiar with the case of former Governor of Delta State, James Ibori, who is about completing his jail term in the United Kingdom for corruption whereas our own court wasted so much time on his case determining whether James Ibori and James Onanefe Ibori are one and the same person. One can continue to cite many other examples.

    The unfortunate thing is that such technicalities are deployed to the advantage of the rich. In this same country, former Governor of Edo State, Lucky Igbinedion, was sentenced to six months in jail with the option of a N3.5 million fine by a Federal High Court in Enugu for plundering the state treasury. He was also directed to return N500 million and three of the houses he acquired with stolen public funds to the Federal Government. Why is it that it is only our rich who have the benefit of such refund? Why can’t our courts also allow people forced to steal because of the activities of our big thieves, to refund goats or cows that they stole in order to eat?

    The sad aspect of it all is that where the rich are involved, you find so many senior lawyers scrambling to be part of the defence team. With due respect to Chief Justice Mahmud Mohammed, our judiciary stinks. There is no doubt about that. Nigerians’ reactions to the judges’ arrest are enough to let those deceiving them with Rule of Law know that they (Nigerians) are wiser. They are tired of people who pool wool over their faces in the name of Rule of Law (which applies only to the rich), and who would backslap themselves in the comfort of their cocktail circuits after using undue technicalities and subterfuge to ‘win’ cases and thereafter clink glasses to our collective foolishness and peril.

    All we are saying is: reform the judiciary. If there are no more lawyers to find the law for the poor, as the Late Chief Gani Fawehinmi used to do, at least they should not shortchange them for the rich. The way the judiciary is today can only lead to anarchy. It is no longer the last hope of the common man. Indeed, it is the haven for the corrupt rich. It is not enough for the NJC to say it is responsible for disciplining judicial officers, it should be seen to be doing that without fear or favour. The DSS’ arrest of judges cannot in any way cow a sane judiciary.

    Judges, like Caesar’s wife, must be above board.

  • One giant mental institution, that’s our Nigeria, no?!

    Reader, pause awhile and say a prayer for Nigeria for we have, by our behaviour, converted it into one giant mental institution

    Did you hear the one about a mentally unstable man who was released from an institution for good behaviour? Well, his doctors felt he was sufficiently healed to be let into the society so he got out and went on the streets. Two hours later, he was back at the institution. What was the problem? He said that while he stood by the road side, he saw a man wearing thick glasses riding a commercial motorcycle and carrying a pregnant woman who had a child on her back, and another one who carried three passengers on his motor cycle. He also saw a taxi driver who had carried seven passengers in his four-seat vehicle and a policeman who only laughed and collected some money from him. Then he thought, ‘the people out there in the world are all madder than me, and I am the one committed!’ So, to avoid being contaminated, he went back.

    This last week, I listened in on a radio programme celebrating World Mental Health day. And I thought, ah, mental health! That is the inability of the mind to distinguish between what is socially acceptable and what is not. For example, since most husbands have not been able to distinguish between what is domestically acceptable (such as leaving all their month’s pay in the pockets of their pants for their wives to find) from what is not (such as leaving those pants on the kitchen table), we can assume that their mental health is challenged. There’s someone else whose mental health is challenged: my dog. For reasons best known to him, he thinks barking is beneath him. Do what you like, he just won’t bark. To harass visitors therefore, he simply, err, licks their feet. Grrr! That dog is so in need of a specialist.

    Obviously, then, anyone whose mental health is challenged needs help. I can count the people who need help. All taxi drivers, all Lagos bus drivers, all Okada riders need help. From what we have been reading awhile, many justices, many police officers also need help. Most of all, all husbands need help. How else can you classify a husband who sells his wife for a sum of money if not someone in need of help? No, that happened in literature. But I know one who nearly sold his wife because she was costing him too much to feed. Really, what constitutes mental health is a matter of perspective. After all, I once drove the car into one of the walls of the house. No, no one pushed me; I just thought the road extended there. Of course, need you ask? Those around me went, ‘But, were you mad?!’

    So, like everyone else, I interpreted the mental health day to mean the day we pause in our respective tasks, think for a moment about any mad person we know, say a little prayer for them, and then move on to choose what we are going to have for dinner. Not so, explained the resource person, it means the day we examine our mind and clear it of debris such as excessive love of money, excessive hatred of our noisy neighbour and too many death wishes such as driving the car at one hundred and forty kilometres an hour on Nigeria’s rough roads. Or, we can just use the day to think about those who appear well on the surface but are really sick beneath, like judges and kidnappers.

    Reader, pause awhile and say a prayer for Nigeria for we have, by our behaviour, converted it into one giant mental institution. Seriously. The poor thing thinks it is well but it is really, really sick. Just think about the antics of her citizens. Where else in the world can you find a people so cheerfully bizarre, yet uncompromisingly devilish? Where else can you find a people so nice and yet so wicked to each other all at once? I say, where else can you find a people so artful at biting each other and so equally artful at blowing palliative air to soothe the pain? Where else but in this your good ol’ country can you find people perpetually screaming at each other ‘You hit my car, are you mad?! You beat my son, are you mad?! You stole my prayer, are you mad?! You stole my future, are you mad?! You stole all the meat in the pot, you this stupid child, are you mad?!!!

    When we think of the fact that what peoples the walls of this country is a veritable mix of schizophrenics, psychosomatics, psychopaths, sociopaths, sociogoths and psychogoths (if you know what those are, please tell me because I don’t), repressed and depressed joy killers, quarter-mad, half-mad and fully-mad individuals, and all in need of specialists, then we know we need to tread a little. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the Lagos traffic and transport system. That is pure madness. Whoever contrived that system should be hung up for the world to behold as the example of a mad man. Or, you might look at Abuja driving. For exercise, drive to and from Abuja and you will see what I mean. Clearly, every driver along that route needs a specialist. The ones inside the city itself appear to be beyond redemption, so the government appears to have left them alone to finish each other off. When they finish getting rid of each other, to the last one of them, then we can claim the city back from madness. Right now, it is on the brink.

    When we think of the mad things we have done to this country, then we would agree that it is all but hanging on a thread, or just hanging. And it all began when we stood the country on its head, much like when you stand logic on its head. Again, pause a while and let us go over the facts together. Is it not in this country that people who have been convicted or are under suspicion are also ‘elected’ into political office? Is it not in this country that people who say they are trying to salvage the country’s economy ask to be paid in foreign currencies? Don’t these things boggle your mind? They turn my hair white and make me nearly go mental.

    Sadly, it is also in this country that people go out to kill in the name of God and still preach that that God, in whose name they have killed others, stands for love. Hmm. Strange love. Anyway, this is also the country that houses the highest number of people who steal from the government so that they and their children will never be poor again. Yet another kind of strange love. So, with so much strange love going around, are you surprised that there is so much madness in the land, and we are all ensconced in this giant mental institution?

    The World Mental Health day came and went without too many people noticing it. Perhaps, those who did were the only sane ones among us. I dare say the rest of us were too busy displaying our mental instability to notice. Only a mad man will keep hundreds of millions of money in an air-conditioned soak-away, or take hundreds of millions in bribe.

    So it comes down to this. The mental health of this country is in your hands. Stop screaming at others; stop driving recklessly; stop embezzling recklessly; stop taking bribes; stop killing in the name of God, and begin now to take care of yourself and others in this mental institution. Who knows, if we begin to behave ourselves we might be let off, and be allowed to

  • In the court of public opinion: Anti corruption versus rule of law?

     In some cases, some media pundits are even asking President Buhari to refrain from fighting corruption, if doing so might jeopardise the non-negotiability of the rule of law

    The following piece first appeared on this page shortly after the emergence of Dasukigate, when legal and media pundits cried foul at the manner of entering Dasuki’s home to arrest himand his subsequent detention.The deafening argument then, like now, when attention is on arrested judges, is that Buhari’s government threatened the principle of separation of powers by opting for the most extreme of options prescribed by law for arresting persons suspected of serious crime.
    One of the most insidious of mythological civic narratives is that our leaders are selfless public servants serving a higher call and order. In a lesser quoted part of Lord Acton’s power/corruption axiom, he offers the chilling statement: “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” Generally, people employed in the public sector are not selfless public servants. They are simple people whose job it is to serve the public. They work for the public, but does that really ennoble them? By the evidence of corruption and venality arrayed about us, the answer must be emphatically, “No.” Yet we still fall prey to the mythology— Joseph Ferguson in a foreword to Transparent Government: What it means and how you can make it happen by Donald Gordon.

    One word that is ubiquitous today in print, broadcast, and social media, more than ever before, is Rule of Law. Not since the death of UmaruYar’Adua, a president who included running a government in compliance with the rule of law in his presidential mission has the lofty phrase been so popular. When a word is repeated as frequently as rule of law has been since the new government’s efforts to fight corruption by investigating and prosecuting individuals who are suspected to have abused the country’s financial management principles and values, ordinary citizens who are not members of the bar or the bench should be wary. Like some of those who requested me to comment on ‘media-hyping’ of this phrase, I am tempted to look at George Orwell’s 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language.”

    In Orwell’s essay, he raised many issues about the relationship between words and the meanings they are intended to convey. He said among other things: “Our civilisation is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse…. Political language — and with this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Orwell’s assertion that political speech is more often used to conceal than to inform and often used to justify the unjustifiable may apply to today’s obsession by pundits in both traditional and social media with the rule of law as if it is an ideology-free concept.

    Are these two words: anti-corruption and the rule of law mutually exclusive or should they be bandied about as if each refers to something that is oppositional to the other? Partisan politicians are enthusiastic in emphasising the importance of rule of law at the expense of fighting corruption. In some cases, some media pundits are even asking President Buhari to refrain from fighting corruption, if doing so might jeopardise the non-negotiability of the rule of law. Understandably, ordinary citizens seem to be confused by calls for privileging of rule of law principle over rejection of corruption, even though the two camps are presumably shooting for the same thing, good governance.

    One of two issues that have been raised by those who see themselves as whistleblowers against acts that show lack of respect for the rule of law since the beginning of the ongoing fight against corruption is the method of arresting suspects. The other is keeping suspects in detention after judges have recommended them for release. Undoubtedly, it is not encouraging for any government to do anything to suggest that it does not respect the independence of the judiciary. But one area that is often ignored is that the judiciary, like other sectors of the polity and society, also has its own bad eggs as it is in all professions and occupations in the land.

    Borrowing Joseph Ferguson’s concept of mythological civic narrative and Lord Acton’s assertion: “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it,” it is logical to say that many of the politicians and media pundits who make efforts to privilege the principle of rule of law over the imperative of identifying, investigating, and prosecuting individuals caught with corrupt acts assume that the judiciary is right all the time. If time is taken to do forthright judicial criticism, it will be demonstrated that many judges use the space of discretion at their disposal to favour those accused of criminal behaviour capable of sabotaging the state. For example, if it was not for the Administration of Criminal Act 2015, cases that have been put in the cooler in the name of rule of law since 2006 would not have seen the light of day, as they are now doing at the instance of the EFCC. The rule of law promotes first and foremost equality of all citizens before the law, regardless of status, age, race, and religion.

    It is citizens at the bottom or civil groups on their behalf those who have not enjoyed the principle of equality before the law that are now interrogating or protesting pundits that are pooh-poohing the manner of arrest of persons suspected of crime. The masses seem to be wondering if the word rule of law is to conceal rather than to reveal, whether the repetition of the phrase is not an attempt to take attention away from efforts to fight corruption. Citizens who are enraged by the absurdity of appropriation of funds meant for improvement of the life of all or to fight Boko Haram’s war against the nation are worried that the elite are doing what they have always done best: create confusion or distraction in order to prevent any meaningful intervention by those committed to deter corruption through a crime and punishment initiative. President Buhari may not have provided a grand narrative of how he plans to govern the country, he has, undoubtedly, clearly stated that no change can come to the economy until looters of the economy and the polity in the past are made to return their loot.

    Historically, the ritualistic conceptualisation of rule of law had been challenged in the past in many societies. Thomas Paine once said in “Common Sense” that unjust laws threaten the religiosity of the rule of law, just as Henry David Thoreau said in “Civil Disobedience”: “Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness.” At a time that corruption has almost brought the country to bankruptcy and international receivership, it is necessary for pundits to be guided by Lord Acton’s axiom that the office may not sanctify the holder.

    Undoubtedly, members of the Bar and the Bench, like beneficiaries from verdicts by arrested judges, should be worried about what looks like deconstructing the long-held civic myth that the judiciary represents the peak of public morality in our country. After the recent allegation of criminal acts of senior lawyers by the EFCC, to now arrest judges like hardened criminals must be worrisome to those sustained by pro-elite ideology and privileges. It must be scary to note that the change in respect of corruption that Buhari’s presidency can bring can remind principal stakeholders in post-colonial political system about the saying: “You must break egg before you can make omelette.” It must be unsettling to many that DSS’s recent arrest of judges underlines a common folk knowledge in the country that in all the branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial, the office does not necessarily sanctify the holders.

  • Beyond speeches and plagiarism

    Beyond speeches and plagiarism

    WHILE giving his keynote address at the launch of the “Change Begins With Me” reorientation campaign in mid-September, President Muhammadu Buhari lifted a passage from U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2008 election victory speech without acknowledging the source. Readers immediately noticed the ethical contradictions inherent in a speech that seemed to talk down so sanctimoniously on Nigerians, excoriating them for dishonest behaviour, but which itself embraced dishonest intellectual practice. The presidency immediately accepted responsibility and announced that the speechwriter who borrowed the offending paragraph would be sanctioned. In the past few months, the U.S. election campaigns had been convulsed by accusations of plagiarism prompting many commentators to wonder how the offending speechwriters hoped to get away with the act in the age of Internet. It was, therefore, not expected that any speechwriter would fall victim again so quickly.
    Plagiarism is not a new thing; it will continue with humanity till the end of history. While it must be condemned and exposed, the public should be interested in something much more fundamental about speeches, especially speeches by political leaders, something that gives readers a window into the hearts and minds of those who own the speeches. This column is for instance more concerned about what the Buhari speech says about the president — his perspective, his temperament, his ideology, his character — than what he borrowed here and there without acknowledgement. It is important for him to acknowledge his borrowings, whether of ideas or phrases; but it is much more important for him to come across to his national and international audiences as possessing a genuine, progressive and coherent worldview. The Buhari “Change Begins With Me” speech, like all his speeches so far, comes across as scripted by others superimposing their worldview on the president’s limited and inchoate worldview. Now and then there are droppings of the president’s fond mantras, but substantially, there is nothing transcendental, nothing deep, and nothing expansive.
    President Buhari is not alone in this department of projecting unconvincing ideas and paradigms about society, economy and politics. Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan never made any impassioned and resonating speech in his more than five years in office. Perhaps the late Umaru Yar’Adua would have managed a few or so given his auspicious beginnings when he made a speech that honestly admitted the weaknesses of Nigeria’s electoral process which had just gifted him the presidency. His urbanity, not to talk of his intellectualism and open-mindedness, would probably have afforded him the chance of deeply affecting his people and society. Mercifully, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo never attempted to make a grand speech, for he was not capable of it, seeing how unconvincing he is about everything, and how distorted and narrow his worldview has remained.
    This column is concerned about the speeches of world leaders, past and present, including those of Nigerian leaders. The British and Americans tend to pay attention to their speeches, and see them as opportunities to propound new ideas and ways of doing things, and of influencing and affecting the lives of their peoples. Nigerian leaders view speeches as opportunities to bore the public with homilies and statistics of their economic policies, and to blame the people for the country’s woes and read them the riot act. Nigerian leaders are unable to summon the passion and deep conviction, not to say the long and hard thinking, necessary to really affect the lives of the people for the better and make them believe in themselves and their country. It is not surprising that their speeches are nearly entirely the products of the exertions of speechwriters. Unfortunately, by nature, speechwriters cannot place themselves in the shoes of the leaders.
    What great leaders need are clerical assistants and researchers, for no speechwriter can sufficiently possess the moral or political or even ideational universe of the leader, or imbue them with the peculiar vigour and passion of his vision. No speechwriter could have helped the iconic US president Abraham Lincoln pen his famous 1863 Gettysburg address, one that was at first universally vilified, but which became one of the best ever with that memorable line that seems to define and encapsulate very simply what democracy is all about. Who else but a genuinely convincing Winston Churchill could have penned in 1940 during the Battle of France that equally famous and defiant peroration about fighting on the beaches, landing grounds, in the hills, in the fields and in the streets, and never contemplating surrender? And who but a Churchill could have given that inspiring and sublime line in August 1940 about the huge sacrifice of Britain’s airmen who were far outnumbered by German airmen during The Battle of Britain in World War II? “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”, Churchill had said.
    No Nigerian head of state has made or written a memorable speech, though the occasion had often presented itself. Ex-head of state Murtala Mohammed’s “Africa Has Come of Age” speech was written by a bureaucrat. Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Patrice Lumumba and a few others managed to offer posterity a few inspiring elocutionary mementoes. What Nigeria has got from its leaders, nearly all of whom were neither convinced nor practicing democrats, were drab and soulless speeches propounding autocratic and short-termist ideas which future generations will not take the trouble of remembering. Until true democrats are voted into the presidency, that is, cerebral leaders with fresh and daunting ideas about remaking society, there will be no memorable speeches, only speeches regurgitated by disinterested politicians and redacted by detached and unfeeling speechwriters. It is indeed the tragedy of Nigeria that since the return to democracy in 1999, no leader worth the name has been produced.

  • How about one for the road?

    How about one for the road?

    The drama in the senate this past week over a bill asking for special privileges for Lagos as a megacity must concentrate the mind of those interested in the health of party formations in the Fourth Republic as well as the evaporation of elite consensus in the nation.  Anybody watching the hostile and rather intemperate put-down of the Bill can be forgiven for thinking that it was a victim of a bitter inter-party collision.

    But it was not a case of the APC and the PDP duelling in the senate over Senator OluremiTinubu’s bill. It was the APC openly imploding with all the attendant fireworks and fiery crackers. Taken together with the savage intrigues and poker-faced power-play that have embroiled the ruling party, it is clear that a major ruling party rumpus has once again berthed on these shores.

    It all reminds one of a gaily dressed fuddy –duddy couple who had arrived for a party only to be met at the entrance by the host who promptly turned them away with the immortal send forth. “Welcome, you are welcome, how about one for the road?” For the couple, the party was over before it began. One is beginning to have the sinking feeling that the ruling party wilted before the commencement of full play.

    Like AyiKweiArmah’sAboliga the man-child who grew to manhood the very day it was born only to die the same day, APC appears to have packed so much into its short eventful life— including a case of regicide and multiple attempts on the political life of its crowning prince—that it can be forgiven for collapsing so dramatically in the sweltering heat of bitter and agonistic contention. Nothing lasts in the tropics. They grow so fast and die so fast, like Aboliga. In any case, the truly great tend to die young before sweet innocence is deflowered by bitter experience.

    So the possibility that the APC is headed for the morgue should not cause any consternation, or alarm for that matter.  Neither must it precipitate undesirable panic. One must learn to take these things with equanimity. In Nigeria, party goes and party comes but the polity remains. It is in the nature of post-colonial politics.

    If parties are built to last, if they have durability and staying power, how will the moveable feast go round, how will the feeding frenzy revolve? Pounded yam cannot be padded. The modern world is not constructed like the world of those ancient fellows in Things Fall Apart who began a mountainous meal of pounded yam and could not see who was on the other side until three days after.

    We have said it several times on this page that we do not have political parties in the truly organic sense of that word. What we have are special projects platforms.They are designed for specific power projects after which they tend to lose their raison d’etreuntil a more catastrophic occurrence put them out of their misery. As products of specific conjunctures many of them survive as long as the conjuncture that throws them up subsists. For example until last week, who would have thought that the A.D was still alive and in fine fettle?

    But the A.D is back and with a hint of subtle transformation, too. Originally conceived by its founders as the perfect opposition and counterfoil to the looming PDP juggernaut, it was cynically seen by the military power-masters as the perfect miniscule opposition to provide legitimacy for the PDP electoral heist. Mum and dumb is the word about mummies and dummies for now.

    Yet it should be obvious to political augury that as it was in the beginning so it is proving to be at the end of the beginning.  The NPN was conceived as a broad national platform to ease the military back to the barracks. When Augustus Meredith AdisaAkinloye, with the next bottle of his personally branded champagne in sight, joyously proclaimed that there were only two parties in Nigeria, many thought he was hallucinating. But the NPN turned out to be a mere holding device for the military.

    Like its old forebear, the PDP was also conceived as a broad national platform for demilitarization with ease and without questions asked. Having completely exhausted their national goodwill, having reached the limits of theirhistoric and political possibilities, the military power brokers were frantically looking for a way to return to the barracks without giving the impression of a precipitate retreat and without paying substantial indemnity to Nigerians for the trauma they have inflicted on them.

    How the immutable logic of history andimplacable social forces often mock puny human calculations forcing them to derail or to be outwitted in the heat of exertions. It is not as if these choices are crassly naïve or lacking in strategic mettle. But going forward, they often turn out to be the very opposite of what is needed for the precise conjuncture.

    What makes the tame and sober AlhajiShehuShagari a great choice for holding the political class together also made him a very poor choice when it comes to the political discipline and fiscal restraint needed to protect democratic rule. What makes the wily, calculating and implacably combative General Obasanjo a brilliant choice for the project of demilitarization also made him a very poor choice for deepening and nourishing the democratic project. What makes one thing possible makes the other impossible. Even a foreman is not four men.

    In the case of General MohammaduBuhari and the APC, history is still unfolding before our very eyes. But the omens are very dire. Suffice it to say that while his charismatic populism and messianic one-upmanship make him a perfect choice for regime change in a bitterly divided and polarized multi-ethnic nation, they also come with a severe baggage. When General Yakubu Gowon hinted last Monday at the launch of John Paden’s biography of President Buhari that Buhari took over Aso Rock like a combatant, he was providing evidence that in the game of elaborate bluff and counter bluff which saw Goodluck Jonathan ousted from the presidency, some military muscling came to play.

    But going forward, it should be obvious thatBuhari needs more than messianic populism and an authoritarian cast of mind to move Nigeria away from the precipice. If what happened in the senate to Senator OluremiTinubu’s Bill about a special status for Lagos is anything to go by, it means that those who claim not to understand what restructuring is all about could smell its deadly embrace from a mile despite its feminized charms and seductive prowess. But if this is the mind-set of the dominant legislative segment of the APC, then God help the party in the old West from now on.

    It may well be that what we are witnessing once again is a looming collision of cultural altars.Progressive forces that are itching for the radical and accelerated development of the country must learn of the dangers of crashing the gears of history or short-circuiting its dialectics. In a bitterly polarized nation, a lot depends on the aggregated consciousness of the entire people, the balance of forces actually on ground and the disposition of political and social troops. You may have to get to a particular point before you can reach other points. Radical futilities only lead to radical political suicide.Let no one claim they were pushed to jump when they are already tottering.

    In a bizarre twist to the restructuring rumpus which speaks volumes for the disaggregation of national consciousness, AlhajiTankoYakasai has dismissed the whole debate as a Yoruba red herring which dates back to 1959and the inevitable Chief ObafemiAwolowo and his Action Group fellow travellers.

    Obviously enjoying a respite from the EFCC which has asked him to explain how money meant for arms procurement found its way into his commodious pockets, the old bruiser from Kano and veteran of retrogressive causes, noted that restructuring was the Yoruba way of expressing hatred and envy for the superior political advantage that the north enjoys from its humongous land mass and population.

    According to Yakasai, Awolowo, having gifted his people with superior knowledge production which resulted in quality professionals in virtually all the fields of human endeavour, suddenly began to covet the hegemonic virility and superior power production of the north in a futile and frantic bid for power at the centre which he felt he could not realize without the strange bird of restructuring.

    The unintended irony of Yakasai’s outburst is that it has brought to the front burner the fact that we are confronting a crisis of knowledge production as an integral part of the much vexed National Question. It is better for a society to be founded on the power of knowledge than the knowledge of power.  In America, the federalist papers with their unremitting intellectual rigour and illuminating insights set the tone and template for how the new nation should be governed.

    The most sober and sane solution to this impasse is for power to collaborate with knowledge for the betterment of the entire society. In a multi-ethnic nation with clashing systems of knowledge production when those who have found their way to power and hegemonic domination acknowledge that those they are bent on permanently excluding from power are far more knowledgeable, the stage is set for a violent collision of altars and a duel unto death. Despite the naivete and strategic carelessness, this is a negation of the driving spirit behind APC.

    Whether the current party formation can contain the turbulence and the tumult arising from this is a question that will be answered in the coming months. But all is not lost. In the meantime, let those who suddenly find the entrance door of the party firmly shut against them not wait for the proverbial “one for the road” should the door remain firmly shut. As General Alexander Madiebo famously observed with tragic insight, it may turn out to be one for the grave.