The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Zuma as ANC’s nemesis

    Zuma as ANC’s nemesis

    The party must move against the president if it wants to continue to be relevant in SA’s history

    Nobody needed to be told that South Africa would get to the destination it is today, with a man like Jacob Zuma in power. But it can only get worse, for as long as Zuma continues to occupy that office of president of a country that is the black man’s hope. Nigeria that used to be the beacon of hope lost that title many years before. But I do not think it lies in our mouth as Nigerians to ask the question of how Zuma could be sitting pretty on a seat that Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela left about 17 years ago because the average South African too (while appreciating the fact that this is true) would also be wondering how many of Nigeria’s successive leaders are better than their current president. So, how did they too get to the top of political positions in the country, given the talents that abound here, many of them international stars?

    With the African national Congress’ (ANC) 53.9 percent of the aggregate national poll in the August 3, 2016 municipal elections, down from 61 percent in 2011, this is the first time since 1994 when apartheid ended in that country that the ANC would score less than 60 percent of such votes. Even in Pretoria, the ANC was defeated by the opposition Democratic alliance (DA). Although the ANC still commands huge support across the country, the fact is; that support is waning. It can no longer take it for granted that the black majority will blindly follow it. Take for instance the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality; it was won by the DA, which has a rich history of anti-apartheid struggle. Indeed, its new DA mayor is Athol Trollip, who is white. It is that bad.

    One can only imagine what would have been going on in the mind of the average South African as they skipped the symbol of the ANC that they had known for years to affix their thumbprint on that of the alternative DA. I could imagine the tears that would well up in their eyes because it is indeed a painful experience. But such experience must come if they are ever to regain their lost glory before it is too late; that is if it is not too late already.

    The truth is; the ANC has been more than arrogant; its officials largely corrupt, and what has been happening, particularly in the Zuma years, was a gradual reversal of every good thing the country used to stand for. Zuma himself is corruption personified. We are yet to know what the ANC would do to Zuma who remains a local champion among his Zulu kith and kin, who form a quarter of the country’s population, despite the multiple scandals hanging on his neck. He once had about 783 corruption charges that South Africa’s High Court had ruled far back as May that the prosecutor should reinstate against him, having been dropped a few years ago. He was tried for rape in 2006, even though he was freed on the grounds that the act was consensual. Moreover, revelations that President Zuma upgraded his private home with $20m of public money caused an outcry and the Constitutional Court recently instructed Mr Zuma to reimburse the state $507,000.

    The developments in South Africa are also particularly distressing because of the political hiccups that are likely to follow. The country would now be forced to go into coalitions since hardly is there any single political party that can form a government on its own, even at the municipal level. The ideological and personal differences that exist among the political parties will make these highly fragile and will likely require repeated re-negotiation over budgets and other issues.

    But the election still reflects something of note for us, especially Nigerians. There seems a consensus by the generality of South Africans that there was the need for change in voting pattern. That the ANC has not fared well was acknowledged by majority of the people who therefore decided to vote for change because what is not good is just not good; there can be no other name for it; irrespective of the creed or colour of those behind it. Things were so bad that not even the ANC could contest the outcome of the polls because the party must have seen it coming. Within South Africa and even beyond, many people had been wondering how South Africa begot the presidency of Zuma. If the ANC could lose elections in South Africa, then any political party can be defeated in Nigeria because there is no political party that Nigerians are as sentimentally attached to as the South Africans were to the ANC. Since the death of the Second Republic, we are yet to see any such party.

    An online commentator summed the South African tragedy all up thus: It’s not even a wake- up call … its utter stupidity to continue to support this crooked self-serving scum under the guise that you are supporting the party and not the man … Even bloggers here use same excuse … The party should always be bigger than one man … Now a white monopoly party has taken votes from the ANC … It will be difficult to regain these votes … Zuma is a sell-out … sold this country to the Guptas and has sold the ANC to the DA.”

    This is the tragedy of the South African municipal elections. Perhaps the other surprise is that, since within the ANC no president is untouchable, why has the party not moved against Zuma despite the bags of woes trailing him. After all, the same party removed Thabo Mbeki from party leadership and the presidency. Yet, Mbeki was a much more urbane president as against Zuma, a parochial bigot, who was a bitter rival to Mbeki, and for whose sake the party removed Mbeki to pave the way for his (Zuma’s) presidency.

    Mandela must be moved to tears in his grave that this is what they have turned South Africa, a country over which himself and others toiled and were incarcerated for decades, to rebuild, less than three years after his death. Mandela died December 5, 2013. But that has always been the Black man’s curse: leadership. When it seems an African country is about getting it; something happens that drags the hands of the clock back several years. Only a few countries on the continent have succeeded in breaking what seems like a generational curse. Even, given that these countries are still evolving, it is too early to say categorically that any African country has crossed this Rubicon.

  • Budget padding sails into definitional labyrinth

    Budget padding sails into definitional labyrinth

    ABDULMUMIN Jibrin, the bitter and combative House of Representatives member from Kano State, has continued his unrelenting attack on 13 of his colleagues, including Speaker Yakubu Dogara, whom he accused of budget padding and other crimes. For Hon Jibrin, the definition of the crime in question is simple. The 13 members put pressure on him when he was Chairman of the Appropriation Committee, to surreptitiously allocate funds to certain projects particularly in their constituencies. He resisted the pressures as much as he could, he said, but was eventually sacked because he thought the exercise excessive, unlawful and indefensible, and loudly remonstrated against the pracice. Since the scandal broke, a scandal some House members have described as a storm in a teacup, Hon Jibrin has shed more light on what he terms an unlawful exercise and provided documents and petitions to virtually all the law enforcement agencies in the country.

    Hon Dogara, however, argues that there is no crime called budget padding. The legislature is empowered by law to examine the revenue and expenditure estimates submitted by the government, and where necessary reduce or add to them. He has relied on a very narrow technical definition of budgeting, and dares anyone to contradict him. Hear Hon Dogara: “The Constitution talks about the estimates of revenue and expenditure to be prepared and laid before the National Assembly. The Constitution does not mention the word budget. And the reason is very simple. Budget is a law. Going by the very pedestrian understanding of law, which even a part one Law student can tell, is that the functions of government is such that the legislature makes the law, the executive implements, and the judiciary interprets the law.

    “The budget being a law, therefore, means it is only the parliament that can make it because it is a law. And I challenge all of us members of the media and civil society organisations  (CSOs) to look at our law and tell me where it is written that the president can make a budget. What I am saying is further reinforced by Section 80(4) of the Constitution which says that no money shall be withdrawn from the Consolidated Revenue Fund or any other fund of the federation except in the manner prescribed by the National Assembly. I want this thing to sink so that we can understand it from here and perhaps it may change the ongoing discourse.

    “If you say the National Assembly doesn’t have the powers to tinker with the budget; that we just pass it. When it is prepared and laid we turn it into a bill. If it is a bill how do other bills make progression in the parliament in order to become law?…The budget is a law and nobody can object to the fact that only the legislature can make law, so it is only the parliament that can conclude it.”  Hon Dogara then concludes that no lawmaker can be investigated or prosecuted for a crime such as budget padding, which he argues does not exist.

    Former speaker Ghali Umar Na’Abba appears to toe the same Speaker Dogara line of argument. Hear him waffling about padding: “Well, it all depends from what angle one is looking at it. The responsibility for appropriation in this country belongs to the National Assembly, So, there is no way the National Assembly can vote anything and it will be called padding. If you are talking about padding, which I believe is generally accepted to be illegal, it must be a situation whereby certain members of the National Assembly will add certain items of expenditure behind their colleagues. If any item of expenditure is added behind the backs of other members, then that item can be said to be illegal and it can be called padding.”

    In sum, there are about four definitions of budget padding mesmerising everyone out there. One, that there is nothing like padding. Hon Dogara and his co-accused subscribe to this definition. Two, that if it is done surreptitiously behind the backs of fellow lawmakers, then it becomes padding. Otherwise, it is not an offence. In this group is former Speaker Na’Abba. Three, that it is padding when funds are allocated unlawfully and specifically by essentially presiding officers who have now been described as a camorra. Here Hon Jibrin stands regally. But what if the revised estimates, whether openly done or covertly done, were nonetheless passed by the House in plenary? And, four, that any expenditure not included in the estimates by the executive could not be added by the legislature, and certainly not secretly. Here the public stands. But what if the executive saw the additions and nonetheless assents? And why couldn’t legislators assume the same responsibility in adding to the estimates as they do subtracting from the estimates?

    Obviously, the country is unnerved by a definitional crisis. It will not be easily resolved. In the implausible opinion of Hon Dogara, the law enforcement agencies, who in responding to the petitions of Hon Jibrin have begun investigations, will meet a brick wall sooner rather than later. What is not in doubt, however, is that quite some secrecy accompanied the reworking of the estimates submitted by the executive, and either because of collusion or carelessness, the altered figures were passed by the lawmakers in plenary, up to the Senate which has appeared to maintain a deafening silence, and assented to by an executive wearied by public grumblings. If the legislature thinks it is not confronted by a crime in the ordinary and open meaning of the word ‘padding’, it nevertheless faces a moral quandary regardless of the lessons lawmakers have presumably learnt from the fiasco. Overall, neither the legislature nor the ruling APC can pretend that the controversy can be wished away or resolved as long as those who voted them into office remain disgruntled and befuddled.

  • On the imperative of modernization

    On the imperative of modernization

    (Political barbarism versus economic vandalism)

    According to optimists of ultimate state redemption, Rome was not built in a day. All empires and nations take quite some time getting into their stride. They do not just get up and start walking. On the other hand, it is also known that mighty empires and nations do not always succumb to a single major wound. Like the Roman Empire, they perish from a thousand wounds, a great elephant besieged by a determined pride of lions.

    Sometimes in late1984, Dr Lasisi Olusola Soile, a much adored former teacher turned colleague of this writer, came to the office to lodge a stern complaint about the state of the nation. Before one could offer a word of solace, this most unflappable and unruffled of men sank into a nearby chair to continue his jeremiad. “At least the Roman Empire lasted about a thousand years. But in our life time, we have witnessed the rise and fall of Nigeria”, the late scholar rued on.

    This was a time when the foraging for essential commodities had turned men of timber and learning into testy and rowdy children on endless queues. Thirty two years after, the queues have disappeared even though Nigeria still runs a primitive economy which does not produce enough milk, eggs and sugar to feed its populace. Essential commodities have become non-essential. The professoriate has been thoroughly pulverized. The nation itself has descended several notches in the ladder of decay and desuetude but it is still miraculously hanging on against all existential odds.

    Fortuitously, it was the general from Daura who was in charge of cleansing the Augean stable left by a corrupt and dissolute political class then just as he is currently in charge grappling with a more humongous mess left by a diseased and debauched political elite.  That time, General Buhari came as a youthful, lean, angular, no-nonsense implacable military autocrat whose word was law.

    But this time around, it is as an aging, weathered civilian and bloodied veteran of several judicial combats who has gone to hell and back and whose word is no longer law. As this column has repeatedly cautioned the general, you cannot step into the same river twice. A Heraclitean flux is in operation. Time does not stay still.

    A few months into his first tenure, General Mohammadu Buhari paid a scheduled visit to the Sokoto Caliphate, the seat of modern Nigeria’s dominant power masters. In royal banter, an exultant and effusive but infirm Sultan Abubakar famously inquired about his august and distinguished guest: “Ina dogo? (Where is the tall one?) Today, many Nigerians are beginning to ask the same question.

    But it is not the man from Daura that is actually missing in action. What is missing is a Nigeria that has failed to significantly modernize its political and economic parameters. Given the momentous discovery that the security branch of the executive turned money meant for the procurement of arms for the defence of the territorial integrity at a most critical point of national vulnerability to an all-comers bazaar of political gamesmanship, given the current scandal of padding that has engulfed the House of Representatives and the alleged forgery of standing rules in the senate, it should be obvious that what we are dealing with is a primitive and pre-modern mode of governance that has no equivalent anywhere in the world in its sheer lack of modern rationality with its ethical mooring.

    A vandal is a primitive member of an ancient Germanic tribe that exults in willful destruction and wanton desecration. If we categorize those fellows in the creeks who wantonly and willfully destroy pipelines and oil installations as vandals, then what do we call members of the political class, particularly the National Assembly, who destroy our economy through mindless looting and who desecrate our politics through electoral violence and the violation of the sacred legislative rule of procedure?  It is a case of economic vandalism cancelling out political barbarism.

    This is why the cries for restructuring are a coded signal for the swift modernization of the nation’s economic and political categories. Such a modernizing imperative is not just about outer “structure” but must entail a stringent internal restructuring and the structural modification of the character and psychology of the Nigerian political class which will make them amenable to the institutional rationality which undergirds the governance structure of all modern societies no matter how they arrive at political and economic modernity.

    Whether we choose to restructure first or we choose the more revolutionary imperative of comprehensive modernization which will sweep away all the cobwebs and limpets of feudal anachronism and political barbarism from this land is now beside the point. We just cannot go on like this without the turbulent contradictions overwhelming the creaking structure. If care is not taken, it is actually the uneven nature of political consciousness among different sections of the country which we wish to will away and the sharply differentiated modes of economic production among the diverse components of the country which may eventuate in a violent and forcible restructuring of the nation.

    As it is at the moment and no matter the veneer of modern governance,  the Nigerian political system is largely powered by a primitive will to corner and accumulate power for its own purpose without the will or the urge to use such power to re-engineer the society or a visionary impulse to ameliorate the sorry plight of hapless citizens, while the economy is driven by a primordial and anti-modern will to appropriate the entire fiscal patrimony and resources of a country for ignoble reasons.

    This combination of political barbarism and economic vandalism explains why the Speaker of the House of Representatives in a twenty first century Nigeria can blithely and openly declare that budget padding is not a crime. Let Malam Yakubu Dogara, who is said to be a lawyer, be informed that although budget padding is not a crime and is consistent with established practice in the most advanced democracies, it is flagrantly criminal for a few representatives to gather together to pad a budget after it has been assented to by the entire house.

    This is criminal forgery and an attempt to oust and usurp the authority of the house reeking of felony and treason. Can anybody imagine what the civilized world will make of this shameless bêtise? It is improbable that the speaker of the American lower house having been implicated in such criminal perfidy will not summarily fall on his sword.

    But we must not leave the real ailment to procure treatment for its ephemeral and superficial manifestations. This infraction is a mere symptom of a deeper malady and must have been going on for quite some time until the advent of the rogue whistleblower. Illegal padding is symptomatic of uncoordinated and slipshod budgeting which is not tied to definite national planning or a visionary economic grid. It is opaque, chaotic, open-ended, whimsically arbitrary and lacking in rigour and rationality. It is what the Yoruba call “ wa mu tire” or “bosikona”  budget, a shorthand for the political economy of primitive accumulation.

    If the presidency cares about the reputation of the government and the ruling party, it should steer clear of this messy matter. It is not for the government to aver that it has not uncovered any evidence of padding. That is presumptuous, pre-emptive and an open contempt for the law-enforcement agencies. It is an unfortunate usurpation of the rights of a critical arm of government and it bodes ill for the much storied crusade against corruption.

    With tempers flaring on the streets, on the social media and in desperate homes about current economic hardships and with sundry groups taking up arms against the fatherland, this is a critical moment for the Buhari administration. It may also become a defining watershed for an administration that rode to power on the cusp of much goodwill and national euphoria. Trapped between the political expediency of regime and party survival and the ethical imperative of doing what is right and proper for the nation, APC has opted for grim self-preservation.

    Yet the only lesson taught by this is that in bitterly divided and polarized countries, the struggle for restructuring is an important plank of the battle for modernity. But while restructuring, shorn of unprincipled opportunism, is basically an intra-class contention in which a hegemonic faction of the ruling class faces relentless pressure to share power and responsibility from marginalized and probably more visionary fractions of the superintending class, the battle for modernization is an inter-class power struggle in which the whole society rises against the control of its political, economic and spiritual destiny by an oligarchic cabal.

    This struggle against absolute sovereignty, enacted in different theatres across the globe at different points of history and with society-specific means, has been the most important step humanity has taken toward the modern and modernist society. It shows why modernization is not synonymous with absolute westernization although in Africa given the mode of colonial rationalization some modes of westernization are inevitable in the construction of modernity.

    It is often left to individual societies to find the inner strength and resilience to confront their internal demons in the journey to self-actualization. After the Russian Revolution Vladimir Putin has had to confront the rogue oligarchs. In China after the triumph over the feudal warlords, the battle for the liberalization of political and economic space began even as Mao himself lay prostrate inside the Forbidden City. In South Korea, the entire populace rose to subdue the oligopolistic chaebols and the rampaging generals. Ditto for the Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, Cuba and the Latin American political volcanoes.

    In any society where meaningful steps to modernity and political rationality have taken place, the people have never been passive objects of history but active subjects and participants in the perpetual drama of human existence. In post-independence Nigeria all the meaningful steps taken towards emancipation and the journey to self-actualization have taken place when the entire society or significant sections rise in fury against their tormentors. This can be seen in the battle against civilian autocracy in the First and Second Republics, the intellectual siege against military despotism as encoded in the struggle to entrench the will of the people after June 12, 1993, and the struggle against a corrupt oligarchy and nascent ethnic hegemony culminating in the historic election of 2015 which dethroned a ruling mafia.

    No matter what anybody says or thinks, the election that has brought General Buhari is an important milestone in Nigeria’s journey to self-actualization. But a milestone is not a terminus. It is only a crucial and historic reference point in a long slog to freedom. In General Buhari himself we see a classic manifestation of the contradictions and cunning of history: a man who was part of an oppressive band leading a vanguard of the oppressed. History is still unfolding and it is not over yet. This is why the retired general and the APC must undertake a constant reality check. The only favourite of the forces of modernity is relentless modernization.

  • Politics of padding and evasion

    Politics of padding and evasion

    Nobody from the legislative to the executive should be afraid of investigation of the issues raised by Jibrin who acknowledged his own participation in the act of padding

    If Nigerians were not the optimists they are, their country would have been raped to death by the venal and brazen men and a few women that find their way to political office in all forms and at all levels. When citizens are not being entertained by news of bureaucratic corruption, they are being embarrassed by reports of the tricks of budget making. If they are not being confused by the inordinate adjournment of cases of corruption involving top politicians and bureaucrats, they are being confounded by reports of display of omniscience by their leading lawmakers, to the extent that words imbued with value are emptied of the wholesomeness the word signifies.

    Although there are many “top lawyers’ in the National Assembly according to the Speaker, fortunately, there are other professionals: doctors, engineers, accountants, academics, all of whose disciplines do not allow them to see human actions as value-free, the way Speaker Dogara spoke of law in relation to allegation of padding after his recent visit to President Buhari. There may be a clear line between legality and morality, in most democracies in the Anglophone world in which there are more lawyers in their legislatures than we have in Nigeria, politicians are still expected to act in a way that shows that they have value for morality in public affairs.

    Still in the Anglophone world to which Nigeria was drafted by colonialism, to pad is a value-laden word. In communication in particular, padding means to add unwholesome, undesirable, superfluous, misleading matter to a material. Even the Webster dictionary has not outgrown the definition that to pad is a word that kicks against indiscipline: “to expand or increase with needless, misleading, or fraudulent matter.” So, padding of budget is not the opposite of what a backbencher in the Commons once warned fellow British MPs against, “rubber stamping tablets of stone handed down by the executive of the day.” It is legitimate for legislators to engage in pork barrel politics, as it is done in many other democracies. But in doing so, lawmakers are supposed to engage in lobbying fellow legislators and the executive to site projects in their constituencies, not for personal interest but for community growth and verifiable public good. Pork barrel politics does not include arranging for special constituency allowance to be managed by lawmakers; nor does it allow lawmakers engaged in scrutinising budget to insert their own pork barrel projects directly in the budget. This has to be settled with the executive before the budget is presented to the legislature before all representatives of the people.

    Padding may not be illegal in Nigerian jurisprudence, but it is offensive all the same.  A lawyer friend of mine told me that if a budget document sent by the president to the national assembly for approval benefited from added materials in the open during plenary session of the house and the added material got approved by the whole house after such open debate, such may not be a crime. However, any padding that takes place in camera or when many lawmakers are not within earshot, is not just unwholesome but patently criminal. The criminality of such addition is larger than uttering and forgery, it may also be treasonable, as it misrepresents the will of parliament, by presenting materials unknown to parliament as originating from parliament.

    However, it is too soon for anybody to talk about criminality in respect of allegations of padding until a thorough investigation is conducted to determine the sequence of events from President Buhari’s submission of the 2015 budget to the National Assembly to the point that the approved copy of the parliament was sent to the Clerk of the House and the final copy delivered to the president as approved copy from the House. The two documents that require rigorous scrutiny are the copy of the document sent to the clerk immediately after the approval and the copy of the budget that finally got to the president. It may not be just the lawmakers that Jibrin had described as agents of padding along with himself that need to be investigated, the bureaucracy of the house should be investigated, just as it was in the case of forgery of the Rules of the Senate. But attempts by top members of the ruling party to settle the matter as internal affairs of the party are not helpful in promoting politics of change. Nobody from the legislative to the executive should be afraid of investigation of the issues raised by Jibrin who acknowledged his own participation in the act of padding. Probing the allegations do not amount to attempts by the executive to intimidate the legislature; it may very well turn out to strengthen the legislature, once the facts of Jibrin’s allegations are laid bare for all to see.

    After thorough investigation by the police, EFCC, or ICPC, the allegations much touted by Jibrin may become just serve as an exercise of purification for all concerned, especially if nothing criminal is not established. The Yoruba saying: enitikoba se nnkanitofikiiboju wo ehinkule, (those who have not done anything that sparks suspicion need not look beyond their shoulders) is apt to assure those resisting investigation to remain calm, if they have nothing to feel uncomfortable about. What threatens to offend moral sensibility of citizens is the sudden polarization of the House into pro and anti-Dogara groups, especially claims by hundreds of legislators that Jibrin’s allegations are politically motivated. This kind of herd instinct by House members sounds similar to the response of senators to charges of perjury and forgery against the Senate President when senators gladly shut down the senate in order to accompany their president to court and the stridency of claims by senators loyal to Saraki and Ekweremadu that any allegation against the two is tantamount to an indictment of the senate as an institution. These are matters that should be of urgent concern to the new engineers of state from status quo to change.

    Sensitive and sensible citizens ought to get worried about the legislative culture of the country even in the post-Jonathan presidency that had been perceived as the epicenter of venality in governance. It is unfortunate that every time since beginning of this administration the fighters of corruption act right, something happens in the legislature to suggest that its principal members prefer to gravitate to the left on the moral spectrum. This development should worry patriotic or change-loving citizens. Worse still, public discourse is being reduced by the day to 9th grade level, especially by legislators who are eager to spin the narrative of executive persecution of the second branch of government anytime the former moves to invoke the principle of ethics and public morality, particularly in respect of members of the National Assembly.

    The Speaker has already announced that no institution has a right to probe the House because it has not done anything beyond its power to tinker with the budget: tinkering with the budget. In the last one year, citizens have been psychologically assaulted by incessant news of individual and institutional corruption, particularly during the preceding administration. Now that Jibrin has alerted the nation about acts of budget padding under the new administration and persons Jibrin has accused of padding have said unequivocally that there was no such thing, investigating the claims of accuser and accused will help reduce citizens’ anxiety, even if all the probe can achieve is to establish the innocence of those fingered in Jibrin’s claims. Doing this will go a long way to remove the perception (or misperception?) outside the houses of power—legislative and executive—that the country’s political leaders see governing Nigeria essentially as an enterprise to profit from, rather than as a service to perform in the interest of public good.

  • This paddy called padding

    This paddy called padding

    ur representatives must have been natives or inhabitants of Ireland because these are the people known as paddy. Paddy also has to do with rice. But, in Nigeria, when you say someone is your paddy, it is generally understood to mean a friend or an ally; someone in whom one has infinite confidence; probably a confidant. That is why I am surprised that people are castigating Dogara for saying padding is not an offence. Since when has anything reprehensible been an offence in Nigeria’s high places? Those talking about morals must have forgotten that it is the Dogara-led House of Representatives that is looking for immunity for the principal leaders of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Even in the eras when we really thought this country had totally lost its moral compass, not a whiff of such was seen or heard from those chambers. The way things are, one is now being forced to swallow one’s reference to the David Mark’s years as senate president as corrupt and inept. Something much more putrid is probably in the offing from Dogara’s House of Representatives. So, when Dogara is looking for immunity for the principal officers of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, we thought he did not know what he was doing. As I often say in such situations, it is only a man who knows what spittle is used for that spits on the ground and quickly rubs it with his foot.

    What Dogara is saying is that the padding, as it stands, is not yet an offence; perhaps when it becomes ‘fantastic padding’ we may begin to activate the process of taking action against the speaker and his clique. For now, we should be satisfied with the speaker’s analysis. Padding is not an offence; it is only a paddy. And a paddy in need is a paddy indeed!

  • RIP my father, my inspiration

    RIP my father, my inspiration

    Last Wednesday, August 11, I got an early call informing me of the sudden death of my dear father, Chief Adebisi Otufodunrin who among many other things inspired me to become a journalist.

    In this excerpt from my new book, Journalism of my life, I recalled my journey to becoming a journalist, thanks to my father.

    When I sat down on the three-seater in our family living room in my village, Imagbon, Ogun State, that Wednesday afternoon in December 2013, all I wanted to do was to relax.

    After the journey from Lagos with my wife and children for the New Year celebration, I was a bit tired and would have loved to fall asleep on the chair.

    However, as I saw the pile of newspapers and magazines on and under the centre table, I couldn’t resist the temptation of flipping through some of them. I was particularly attracted by copies of The Compass newspapers which I didn’t get to read regularly like other national newspapers. I reasoned that I might just find something interesting I had missed. I did.

    In a back-page column by the former Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper, Biodun Oduwole, he lamented the lack of investigative reports by journalists in the country in recent years.

    He noted that journalists were easily satisfied with official statements and didn’t try enough to verify claims by those who issued them. He recalled a case of how some years ago he checked a police claim about someone said to be an armed robber only to find out that the accused person was innocent of the accusation levelled against him.

    I was very pleased by his counsel for journalists that I tried to call him immediately on the contact phone number on the column, but I couldn’t get through. I composed a long text message which I sent to the same number to let him know how valid I thought his observations were. Too didn’t go through and I gave up any efforts in that regard.

    A first time visitor to the living room in our country home would most likely have been surprised to find many old and current copies of newspapers and magazines – the village has no newspaper selling point.

    The visitor would have been more surprised that the main occupant of the house for most part of the year is a septuagenarian grandfather who relocated to the village some years ago from Lagos.

    But the visitor would probably not be surprised if only he knew that the old man, Chief Japheth Bisi Otufodunrin, my father, is so addicted to reading newspapers and magazines that living in a village about a few kilometres to Ijebu-Ode where newspapers are sold is not enough to prevent him from getting his regular supply of the publications through any means possible.

    Before leaving Lagos that morning, he had called to inform me not to forget to buy him copies of the day’s newspapers and bring along some copies of the weekly ones. Minutes after our arrival, he asked us for the papers he requested.

    I grew up to find my father reading newspapers with so much relish. When I became old enough to run major errands for him, buying newspapers was one of my assignments. The vendors usually stopped by our residence on Bale Street in Ajegunle, Lagos. Whenever they didn’t arrive early enough, I had to walk down to the main selling point in Boundary Bus-Stop to get the papers.

    With regular access to newspapers very early in life, my father soon infected me with his addiction which gradually stirred up my interest in becoming a journalist. I remember reading some fiery columnists in The Tribune newspaper, which was my father’s favourite paper then. Columnists like Seyi Awofeso of ‘Ink in my Blood’ column fame piqued my interest in the profession and I then began to look forward to being able to write like them someday.

    My father didn’t expose me to reading only newspapers; he also regularly gave me copies of literature books to read and summarise their contents during holidays. Reading the books, which I found out later were texts prescribed for students in higher institutions, reinforced my interest in writing which I started doing in any way I could.

    The authorities of Government College, Ibadan (GCI), which I attended for my Higher School Certificate, must have noticed my interest in reading and writing. I was appointed Library Prefect and Editor of ‘Swanston Echo’, the house magazine for Swanston House.

    By the time I was to choose the course to study in the university, Mass Communication was a natural choice to learn all I needed to know to fulfil my dream of becoming a journalist of note like the ones I had been reading about in those newspapers and magazines, thanks to my father.

    I probably wouldn’t have been patient enough to get admission to study Mass Communication in the university and would therefore have opted for another course which could have steered me off the terrain of journalism. My father insisted that, though he had no university education himself, he wanted all his children to be university graduates.

    When the result of my first West African Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), which I wrote in 1979 at Christ Apostolic Grammar School, Iperu-Remo, my father’s Alma Mata, was released, it was not good enough to get admitted into a university. My father took me back to the school the same week the result was released and got me re-enrolled in the final class as a regular student.

    It was not funny that I had to repeat the class with juniors who used to call me Senior Lekan. There was the option of coming back to write the exam as an external student, but my father would hear nothing of that.

    I returned to school, wearing the uniform again. Some of my classmates who came to check their results were shocked to see me and wondered why my father, as they put it then, subjected me to such humiliation. After all, as they reasoned and as I also had thought, I could have attended private lessons in Lagos and come back to write the examination. My father obviously knew better than we did and he saved me from taking a wrong decision early in life.

    Even when I could not get university admission with my second WASSCE result, my father refused to accede to the option of attending Advanced Teachers College at Ijebu-Ode, now College of Education. He wanted a university admission and nothing else. Not even a polytechnic, he insisted, if he was to pay the fees.

    In 1980, I got admitted for HSC at GCI to qualify for direct entry into the university. I again wrote the University Matriculation Examination (UME), conducted by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), after my Lower Six, the first of the two-year HSC programme. Yet, I did not secure admission.

    Some of my classmates got the required marks for the courses they chose in the UME and got admitted. Some were so desperate to get admitted that any course was good enough for them.

    I tried to get admission into The Polytechnic, Ibadan, for Mass Communication with the hope that my father would change his mind about having university education or nothing but failed – I didn’t apply early enough.

    Realising that the HSC exam was my last chance of getting admission into the university, I was determined to give it my best shot. I enrolled for the external General Certificate of Education (GCE) exam ahead of the final HSC exam after the Upper Six class.

    I read for the GCE like my life depended on it and didn’t want to disappoint my father who was obviously not happy with my inability to get admitted into the university. I read every text I could lay my hands on for the three subjects – History, Literature, and Economics – that I registered for.

    I checked bookshops for every useful book I could find. I remember buying a book on A Level Economics past questions written by an author who had marked the subject for over 10 years. By the time I finished reading the book, I was so confident that I would score very high in at least Economics, no matter hard the questions might be.

    The author of that book gave detailed explanations on how to answer GCE questions, using sample questions from past examinations. While writing the Economics paper, I kept remembering everything I read in the book and by the time the paper was over, I knew I had done extremely well and expected nothing less than a ‘B’ grade.

    When the result was released, I scored ‘A’ in Economics, ‘C’ in History and, poor me, ‘F’ in Literature. Nonetheless, I became a star of a sort among my classmates and other students. With eight points, my result was good enough to get me admitted for Mass Communication, even before writing the final HSC exam. I eventually got admitted with the GCE result because my aggregate score in the HSC was seven points.

    When asked who inspired me to become a journalist, it’s usually not hard for me to respond. The answer is obvious – my father, the Balogun of Imagbon, whom God used to expose me early in life to newspapers, encouraged me to read and write, and ensured that I scaled the hurdle of university admission.

    While by God’s grace my father was my inspiration for journalism, my mother, Rachael Jolade Otufodunrin (nee Ekisanya), was my all-round guardian angel whose motherly care, love, discipline and prayers kept me going from birth.

    At crucial moments when I needed to pass the WASCE and HSC exams, Iya Lekan, as she is fondly called, never failed to encourage and assure me that I would make it and become what God wanted me to be.

  • Okon pads his budget and heads for Iyanfoworogi

    As the economic hardship bites harder in the land turning hitherto strong men into human fiascoes, snooper has devised a series of stringent austerity measures to stem the steamrolling tide of economic adversities. In addition to physically tape-ruling yam tubers and monitoring the outflow of foodstuff from the pantry like some ancient teacher, yours sincerely has stopped the unbudgeted inflow of country bumpkins and upcountry yokels to the house by cancelling existing visas. These days snooper tells his agrarian folks that he prefers to visit them, which is what the Americans call immigration control at source.

    But trust Okon to find his way round the severe economic blockade. Unknown to snooper, in addition to his petty pilfering of foodstuff and moving the yam tape whenever his master chose to be away, the crazy boy has resorted to the twin strategy of padding and anticipatory approval of emergency expenditure. Playing on his master’s failing and fading memory, Okon conspires with market women to pad the budget and inflate price without any decorum or discretion. One morning, the pyramid scheme collapsed on the mad boy.

    “Okon, we budgeted ten thousand for meat, why has it turned to fifteen thousand?” an irate snooper demanded.

    “Oga na me pad dat one. Market and kitchen don catch fire”, the mad boy whined with a sheepish smile which further infuriated yours sincerely.

    “And what is padding?” snooper growled.

    “Ha oga, you no sabi padding? Where you come dey for obodo? Everybody dey do am, dem house, dem soldiers, dem judge. Even dem  Dogara boy come say padding no be crime. We come dey paddy paddy kontri, abi no be so?” the crazy boy snorted.

    On that note, snooper elected to sue for peace from the implacable loony. But the kitchen erupted again.

    “Okon, where is the omelet?” snooper thundered .

    “Ha oga omelet o ma late ooo”, the crazy boy sniggered with venomous relish.

    “Then you give me scrambled egg”, snooper raved.

    “Oga even dat one dem done scramble. And dem don poach dem poached egg.  Even dullard sabi say when dem dollar don climb over 400 to one naira, egg must to disappear”, Okon retorted. At this point, snooper opened the steaming dish gingerly placed on the table by the mad boy and was confronted by something that looked like boiled unripe pawpaw instead of yam.

    “Okon what is this nonsense?” snooper stuttered in implacable rage.

    “Ha oga na new yam be dat. I go market and dem women tell me say no yam, but dem say if I wan buy new yam, make I go dem Iyanfoworogi village. I come reach dem village near Ife and dem old man come tell me say for dem village yam dey grow for tree. Him come show me dem tree with dem  obonge breadfruit. Na him I come buy one sack. Oga dem say him good. Boku  vitamin C, D, A, K, L P G dey there. Efen Viagra sef he dey there”, the mad boy whooshed and winked.

    “Don’t tell me that nonsense! Okon before I come back you must leave this house”, snooper thundered and stormed out.

  • Bringing back WAI will not help Nigeria right now

    The present government led by President Buhari seems serious about righting the wrongs of the past and what do we do? Complain, naturally; forgetting that pills that will cure malaria must be bitter as a matter of course

    Today, I will not talk with wrath; I will only look back in anger. Take a look. Practically every face you meet these days tells a story of woe. Many tell of diseases they and their families can no longer cope with alone so they have to bring them to the streets: tumours, cancers, hunger… Oh yes, in many lands, hunger is a disease.

    Many other faces tell of deprivations and hopelessness on account of the fact that ‘things are hard’. According to reports, it’s got so that people are now eating amala (what dish has my imagination soaring) with water or palm oil (what has my imagination wobbling). Reason: — we live in a land of unpaid salaries.

    Of the olden times, it was said that life was short and brutish. Of Nigeria, it can be said that life is snarling and brutally hard. In truth, the general consensus is the acknowledged truth that President Buhari is not responsible for the state of the economy. This, however, has not stopped many from pointing fingers at his throne, because he is the one they can see sitting at the head of the table.

    The foundation for what we are witnessing today was laid right from the time of Gen. Gowon, sealed tight in the time of Gen. Babangida and came into full maturity in the time of President Jonathan. Oh yes, it has a history, an unsavoury one too. The good thing is that we are all still alive, minus a few loved ones, to witness the results of the decades of fake and self-serving socio-political engineering foisted upon us in this country by past leaders.

    Let us be clear about one thing. All the so-called programmes pronounced by governments fore and governments past were just mouthed pronouncements. If there had been any social engineering, there would have been a more solid foundation for Nigeria’s economy. Since we all were content to dwell in the relative safety of those times with only a murmur, then we should all be man (and woman) enough to take responsibility for our collective irresponsibility.

    Now, the present government led by President Buhari seems serious about righting the wrongs of the past and what do we do? Complain, naturally; forgetting that pills that will cure malaria must first be bitter as a matter of course. The poor man’s fight is even more hampered, I hear, by some within and without his government, mostly those who want the old ways of irresponsible accounting to continue. Indeed, it is said that many of those who helped him get to the state house are among those who should be parleying with the EFCC right now but are instead enjoying his innocent protection.

    This irresponsible accounting seems to have so pervaded the entire society that even a child born today is feared to be tainted by corruption. Corruption has become a virus that has infected everyone; even foetuses still in the womb. People do not want to wait their turns anywhere but would use whatever ‘leg’ is available to them to reduce their waiting time. Lately, I have caught myself jumping right to the head of the queue in the bank and smiling extra hard at the cashier in the hope that she will notice me and cut my banking time. Any favour will do to prevent me joining the queue.

    Worse, people want to live on the extra money extorted from those they are supposed to wait on at their job posts while their salaries provide the chicken change used to buy maggi cubes and salt in the house. These days, I have grown tired of hearing stories of how small bit accountants or directors or clerks in one government agency or the other have grown so rich they have built hotels in different cities, married new wives and maintained fleets of girlfriends and have cars … Or is it the other way round now? Naturally, I usually have one or two questions. Why am I not the girlfriend, or at the least, why am I not that accountant?

    In this situation, chaos and confusion, despair and hopelessness are reigning. I reiterate quoting myself, ‘Courtesy is dead, charity is in a swoon and chivalry is entombed in this country’.

    So, quite exasperated by all these revelations, the government I hear is thinking of bringing back the old War Against Indiscipline (WAI) in the hope that it would once again work its magic and whip the people back in line, physically and metaphorically. Well, I do not know by what permutations the government came to the realisation that resurrecting the old WAI and wearing it in new garments would solve some of our problems. I am thinking otherwise.

    The faces I see on people do not tell me that their problems revolve around the absence of WAI; in fact, I don’t think they are thinking of WAI. I think they are thinking of how to make the little money they have borrowed stretch as far as possible, considering that everything is now on the double, pricewise. They are thinking of the electricity they do not have in their houses to power their businesses like pepper and flour mills so that they can make a little money to take care of the corn meal they require for breakfast. I think they are thinking of the water that is not running in their taps and how to sanitise the little they can collect from the rains and leave the dry season to God Almighty. Our problem is more deep rooted than one that a small brigade band of boys holding whips can solve.

    Our problem is the endemic callousness of our leaders, which group, by the way, the WAI brigade boys dare not touch. Recently, I watched as one documentary showed as a float (an elaborately decorated vehicle used for display dragged through the streets in a ceremony) glided by effortlessly on the streets of a western country as people lined both sides of the road and cheered. I immediately had this wicked thought that this float should come and attempt to glide like that on Nigerian roads. Within a few metres, the whole thing would topple into one nice looking pothole.

    The reason is not just that our roads are bad; the roads are innocent. It’s our leaders who are in charge of the roads that are bad. I understand that now it costs as much as $1b to asphalt a kilometre of road in Nigeria. No, the road does not eat much; it’s the corruption of the people in charge of the work that has to be fed. Their corruption has got really greedy over the years.

    Recently, I obtained a video of the opening of the world’s longest bridge at 26 km somewhere in a region I presume to be in China. The bridge does not only link the mainland with several islands, it looks super beautiful, super long and super cool to boot. The total cost of the bridge was $1.05b! Let’s see now, I thought when I saw the video, that money should give us some two-kilometre-pot-filled road! And this is what we want to apply the WAI stick to? It’s too late for that sir, too late.

    I think what we require now is some serious state intervention in the economic difficulties people are facing. Let our energy sector be righted in both urban and rural areas; let the government’s farmlands and our farmlands sprout food for our stomachs and let the waters spring forth from our taps and you will not need WAI. As I always say, the people themselves will rise up to defend a system that works.

  • Angry judges endure tough governmental challenges

    Angry judges endure tough governmental challenges

    FOR some time to come, Nigerians will remember the Muhammadu Buhari presidency for, among other things, its uneasy relationship with the judiciary. The times are unusual, and to remedy the damage done to the country by those who have exploited loopholes to destroy the country’s financial system, the government and its law enforcement and anti-graft agencies have felt impelled to enact and execute desperate remedies. In its response to these desperate remedies, the judiciary perches on the horns of a dilemma. They are aware of the popularity of the government’s desperate measures, but they are also sworn to dispense justice in accordance with the law, whether that law is weak or not, adequate or not. The government is not similarly discomfited. As this column noted many months back, its leading lights know how popular their measures are and have remained. More keenly, they also recognise that many provisions of the law, which they privately scorn, are unable to accommodate the strong-arm tactics needed to compel suspects to disgorge the loot they have ferried away with freakish, cartoonish delight.

    How the judiciary and the Buhari presidency resolve this irritating dilemma will determine how successful the campaigns against financial malfeasance are, and what lasting impact they would leave on the future of Nigeria in terms of social, financial and political stability. So far, if signals are not misread, there is little to indicate that the impact would be lasting or salutary. Both arms of government would therefore need to find common grounds anchored on the constitution and the law to develop and fine-tune approaches that would have such salutary impact. If they do not find that common ground, the conflict between the two arms will continue, and probably fester to the point of damaging the polity and encouraging self-help, an attitude already evident in most parts of the country among various competing and conflicting ethnic and religious groups.

    In July alone, three judges demonstrated how angry they were at the manner some government agencies were carrying out their constitutional responsibilities. Case one involves an aide of Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, Abiodun Agbele who was detained between July 1 and July 21. Arrested around June 27 by the EFCC for his alleged role in laundering N1.2bn on behalf of the Ekiti governor, according to reports, he was awarded five million naira as damages for wrongful and illegal detention. An angry Justice Olukayode Adeniyi of the Federal Capital Territory High Court condemned what he described as EFCC’s ‘gross abuse of powers’ and ‘arrogant display of executive might’. The EFCC in turn described the judgement as curious.

    Case two involves retired Air Commodore Umar Mohammed who was ordered remanded in prison custody by Justice Nnamdi Dimgba of the Federal Capital Territory High Court. The retired air force officer, who was a member of the presidential committee on arms procurement, had been arraigned for money laundering and other charges. But instead of keeping him in prison custody, the Department of State Service (DSS), which arraigned him, kept him in their own custody for days presumably to complete some paper work. An incensed Justice Dimgba lashed out at the DSS, saying: “I take a strong exception to this type of behaviour; when the court orders that someone be kept in prison custody, the person ought to be kept in prison and not in the office. If the people at the DSS want to become judge and do their job as well, I am ready to vacate my office for them, but as long as I am still here, I take an exception to them flouting the orders of the court. Once processes have been filed in court, it is no longer in their hands, and the order of the court must be obeyed.” There was no punishment meted out to the DSS operatives who flouted the order, not even a censure, nor a query, nor a slap on the wrist.

    Case three is strictly speaking not a part of the arms scandal trials. It was a regular corruption case which drew the ire of the trial judge, Justice Oluwatoyin Ipaye of a Lagos State High Court, Ikeja. She also had very harsh words for the EFCC and the commission’s lawyer, Babatunde Sonaiki. “It appears that you are keen on taking the laws into your hands,” she told the EFCC counsel. “Why would you go before another court for this kind of order (a forfeiture order) when the matter is before me? This kind of action is what is giving the judiciary a bad name.” The EFCC had recklessly engaged in what the judge described as forum shopping to get an order it was unable to secure from her court.

    Another earlier case involving Col Nicholas Ashinze, an aide of the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col Sambo Dasuki (retd), outraged a judge. This column drew attention to it last May. The colonel had been admitted to bail, but the EFCC ignored the order and kept their quarry. Furious, Justice Yusuf Halilu, the trial judge, blurted out: “The EFCC is a creation of the law. The court will not allow it to act as if it is above the law. It is remarkable to note that the motto of the EFCC is that nobody is above the law, yet they are acting as if they are above the law. The EFCC Act is not superior to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The respondents in this matter have not behaved as if we are in a civilised society. They have behaved as if we are in a military dictatorship, where they arrest and release persons at will. The respondents, I must be bold to say  the EFCC and the Army  have behaved like illiterates.”

    The anger of the judges is not surprising. They were not wrong to feel besieged by the government’s brusque manner of relating with a judiciary they had at various fora and in trenchant words described as equally corrupt as the suspects they were defending. If lasting and impactful progress in the anti-graft war is to be achieved, the government must find a better way to fight the war lawfully. After all, the executive arm has the leeway to propose a welter of reforms in the judiciary to expedite court processes, engender efficiency in the courts, and remunerate judges in such a manner as to sustain them above the proverbial suspicion of Caesar’s wife. The government can’t hope to put the cart before the horse and expect a miracle.

    Just as the legislature is not perfect and is in need of urgent reforms and cleansing, both the executive and the judiciary also share in the blame of poor justice delivery and destabilisation of the country’s economy and politics. Rather than engage in blame game, the Buhari presidency must be persuaded to recognise the limits of throwing caviar to the general as it has unwisely done so far. With the people on its side, sensibly or otherwise, and with the legislature fairly amenable to passing relevant laws to quicken the pace of justice delivery, the government should seize the opportunity to formulate policies and programmes that are capable of sustaining the effort to bequeath a better and cleaner judiciary to future generations. But should the government and its agents keep on seeing the struggle with the judiciary as a sanctimonious fight for the upper hand, they would only succeed in passing the nuisance on to coming generations.

  • The fall in the value of the naira is like the fall in the standing of the APC, no be so?

    The fall in the value of the naira is like the fall in the standing of the APC, no be so?

    The observations and thoughts in this piece were in part provoked by an unusual sort of “compliment’ in an email that I received from a reader of this column this past week. It so happened that the person concerned had been a classmate of mine in secondary school for five years whom I had neither seen nor heard from since 1964 when we both finished our high schooldays and went our several ways on the high road of life. First, my former classmate wrote to inform me that he had just been rereading one of my columns, precisely TLH 96, published on December 28, 2014. And he said that he “marveled” at the accuracy of my “predictions” in that piece on the amount of suffering that lay ahead of the masses of ordinary Nigerians in the wake of the sharp decline in the conversion rate of the naira against the dollar and the other convertible currencies of the world. Then after informing me that with the recent devaluation of the naira and the current unending freefall of our national currency he was afraid that things would perhaps even get worse than my “predictions” of December 2014, my old classmate wished me well and hoped that life was treating me well.

    Since I am not a hypocrite, I confess that it did give me some sort of intellectual solace that my “predictions”, such as they were, had proved to be accurate, according to my old classmate. However, since all of my adult life I have done everything I could to contribute my share toeffortsand movements to make life better for the masses of our peoples everywhere in our country, it is of course also extremely distressful to me that “predictions” by me of unending hardship to our peoples should come to pass. Those familiar with the story of Cassandra in ancient Greek mythology know that this was indeed the “curse” of that unhappy avatar of prophetic insight: every prophecy of Cassandra warned of tragedy and sorrow ahead that neither the prophetess herself nor the people to whom she told her prophecies could do anything at all to avert precisely because Casandra’s warnings always went unheeded. It is also very much like the plot of a novella by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Columbian Nobel Literature Laureate for 1982, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a novella in which from the very beginning of the fascinating narrative, most people in the town know that Santiago Nassar, the protagonist, is going to be killed; moreover, everyone knows who will kill the poor man, but for one reason or the other, no one, including the police, does anything with the knowledge and in the end the poor man is brutally killed as foretold.But what exactly do these examples – the myth of Cassandra and the unhappy story of Santiago Nassar in Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold – have to do with the title and content of this piece, this being the suggestion that the current freefall of the value of the naira is a mirror image of a freefall in the standing of our new ruling party, the APC?

    As incredible as it may seem, the lesson of both Cassandra and Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold is quite simple and uncomplicated and it is this: no prophecy, no dire warning of doom and catastrophe ahead will save a man, a ruling party or – heavens help us! – a society that is completely sunken into slothful, benighted complacency! Nothing that you tell a person or a people of a looming disaster will help him or them who is/are too lazy, too complacent to do anything about the warning. In other words, he; or she; or a ruling party; or a people;or a nation that the gods wish to destroy they first make immovably complacent. Please note the careful calibration of self-destructive complacency that I am making here: from the individual and deeply personal level to the most general and all-inclusive levels of entire peoples and nations. The Cassandra story in Greek mythology both separated and linked these private and communal circles of the complacent because those to whom Cassandra directed her prophecies were dynastic rulers on whose personal destinies the fates of the entire culture and civilization depended. But in the Garcia Marquez novella, though we confront diverse individuals who do nothing to prevent the threat to the life of Santiago Nassar, when the poor man is eventually killed, he is the only one destroyed, though of course everyone has to live with the consequence of his or her complacency.

    Only complacency of this mythic, exemplary kind prevents the new ruling party from seeing that when you devalue the naira therebybringing tremendous pressure to bear on a national economy that is overwhelmingly dependent on foreign imports, your standing will plummet with the fall in the value of the naira when you choose this particular moment toconsolidate and even increase the humungous payments, emoluments and allowances normally paid to our legislators. It is important to make this observation because, understandably, the Buhari administration is doing everything it can to convince the nation and the world that the decision to devalue the naira was forced on it by the combination of the fall in world prices of crude petroleum and the emptied, looted national treasury that was inherited from the Jonathan administration. Incidentally, this happens to be true; however, it is by no means the whole story. This is because to the devaluation of the naira must be added many other factors that reveal that the same kind and level of complacency that finished the erstwhile ruling party, the PDP, is already at work corroding the last ramparts keeping the APC credible as a political force that will be different from the PDP, that will bring change tothe living conditions of the masses of ordinary Nigerians everywhere in the country. What are some of these factors?

    Many states are incapable of paying the wages and salaries of workers when due and in many instances, both in the public and private sectors, employers are saying that they are incapable of paying the national minimum wage of N18,000 per month. However, at this very same time, we are reading of former and presently serving public officeholders enjoying huge pension packages the likes of which are not seen or heard of in any other part of the world. N300,000,000 (three hundred million naira) a year; six brand new cars every other year; a house each in the state capital and the national capital in Abuja, both maintained year-round at the state’s expense; paid annual vacations for the entire family abroad. No one knows exactly how many of the ex-governors of the thirty-six states of the federation are collecting these obscenely “generous” pension packages at the expense of the people, but this much we know: some of them are states in which ex-governors who are big chieftains of the new ruling party, the APC, were chief executives, Lagos and Rivers States being quite notable in this respect. As a matter of fact, this particular factor in the complacency of the new ruling party is so crucial that we must name names here. Thus arises this particular, billion-naira question: Are Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers) and Bola Tinubu and Babatunde Raji Fashola (Lagos) also collecting these universally hated and condemned “golden parachutes” pension packages? If so, what justification can they give their supporters and well-wishers, especially now when, with the devaluation of the naira, the leaders of the APC are calling for sacrifices from workers in particular and the masses of Nigerians in general?

    There isn’t, indeed there shouldn’t be any logical link whatsoever between, on the one hand, the fall in the value of the naira and, on the other hand, a fall in the standing, the credibility of the Buhari administration and the ruling party as a force for change and progress. In many other countries in Africa and the developing world, when a link does emerge between the devaluation of the national currency and the political standing and fortunes of the ruling party, the link has always been structural and practical, the effect of policies, actions and attitudes that promote wasteful, unregenerate and unfair misuse of the national wealth and patrimony. Let me state this carefully, if only in the interest of clarity and to show an appreciation for the complexity of the issues being discussed in this piece:by itself alone, devaluation does not automatically condemn a nation and its economy to stagnation and manipulation by foreign economic and trading forces. The dangers are there; but they are not insurmountable. Any government in our country and indeed anywhere else in the developing world, that takes careful measures to make wise, generative and rational use of resources can blunt the blows of devaluation and can sometimes turn these into surprisingly beneficial ends. But not if the wasteful, greedy and unjust ilabe of the prevailing order not only persists but is further entrenched and consolidated.

    One in fact wonders: why is Buhari silent on these humungous payments, emoluments and allowances from, to and for our legislators? Does he know how much these things anger, embitter and alienate Nigerians in their tens of millions? How can leaders of the APC like Tinubu, Amaechi and Fashola be complicit in collecting these extremely obscene “golden parachutes” pension packages? Do they think that their complacency is so broad, so capacious that it spreads over and across millions of Nigerians in their poverty and suffering? Finally: is it the case that we are perhaps really talking here of a complacency of words, of language, of the scions of a commentariat that like Cassandra, always foresee and warn of the catastrophes ahead but are condemned to see them happen anyway because no heed is ever given to their warnings and they themselves have no programme of action to back their words and give teeth to their bite?

    Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                                                             bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu