The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Turkey’s Erdogan loses mind

    Turkey’s Erdogan loses mind

    AS far as coups go, the July 15 coup d’etat in Turkey allegedly inspired by cleric Fethullah Gulen is the most half-hearted ever. Mr Gulen, who has been in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, has denied involvement. He was an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when both battled the hitherto impregnable combination of Turkey’s secularists and the military. After emasculating the military, both President Erdogan and Mr Gulen turned on each other, with the president eventually having the upper hand. The Gulenists, as Mr Gulen’s followers became known, are very influential in Turkish society with a string of schools, hospitals and media institutions, among other activities and investments within and outside Turkey. President Erdogan has nursed a long-standing determination to root them out of Turkish society because he fears their influence.

    It is within this context that the latest crackdown begun by President Erdogan shortly after the coup failed must be understood. The crackdown is not new. In February, the president inspired a vicious crackdown with ramifying impact on all sectors of the Turkish society, including the media and educational institutions at all levels. It never abated until the recent coup. Now, almost as if it had been scripted, the new crackdown, so vicious as to be considered insane, is purging Turkey of all influences traceable to the Gulenists and to some extent the secularists, including the so-called Kemalists, named after those in the military and civil life influenced by the six multipronged principles and philosophies of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938).

    So far, according to Turkish media, the purge has engulfed the following: 15,200 teachers and other education staff had been sacked, 1,577 university deans were ordered to resign, 8,777 interior ministry workers were dismissed, 1,500 staff in the finance ministry had been fired, 257 people working in the prime minister’s office were sacked, the licences of 24 radio and TV channels accused of links to Mr Gulen have been revoked by the media regulating body, more than 6,000 military personal have been arrested, nearly 9,000 police officers sacked, and about 3,000 judges have also been suspended. The purge makes sense only in the context of President Erdogan’s fanatical and fascist acquisition of more power than the constitution would permit. He has not heeded foreign counsel; and egged on by his supporters, many of whom will sooner or later rue that support, he is determined to fashion Turkey into a one-voice, unilinear society.

    Last week, even before the full scale of the tragedy that hit Turkey on July 15 unfolded, Barometer had warned that the country stood the risk of being irreparably and irredeemably fractured. Because of Mr Erdogan’s intransigence and obsession with unlimited power, that fracture will ossify dangerously until the next explosion. That next explosion will come, for the president has a distorted view of democracy, human rights — which he has declared inimical to peace and order — and regional power equation and vision. Footages of soldiers being maltreated and subjugated by the police, and civilians inflicting corporal punishment on prostrate coupists, will haunt the military for a long time and create multiple layers and templates for future disturbances.

    Mr Erdogan had often addressed Turks and the media below a banner of Mr Ataturk’s portrait. But he has spent all his active political years and career repudiating the principles that ennobled Mr Ataturk’s rule. More, he has appeared to fashion his political career in competition against the founder of modern Turkey’s style and ideology. The military which used to see itself as protector of the Ataturk legacy is being remoulded by Mr Erdogan into something very different, very hollow, very emasculated. On the one hand, Mr Ataturk was a modernising ruler, a thoroughbred secularist who disavowed any religious frills or accoutrements. Mr Erdogan is on the other hand an Islamist, or as some have argued, someone who uses Islamic symbols for power accretion. Whatever the case, Mr Erdogan has neither shown the wisdom nor the restraint needed to govern Turkey or focus on the right priorities. It is unlikely his legacy will endure.

    But far more than the tragedy unfolding in Turkey, a tragedy of such cataclysmic and apocalyptic impact that both Mr Erdogan and his supporters seem blithely unaware of the consequences, are the lessons for Nigeria. Of course the demographics of Nigeria make it almost impossible for the Turkish tragedy to be replicated here. However, it is not impossible for Nigerian rulers to seize upon strange symbols and causes to attempt enthroning the illiberal and stifling politics and regimen of Mr Erdogan. Sadly, the rift between the more wily and autocratic Mr Erdogan on the one hand and the more idealistic and internationalist cleric Mr Gulen on the other hand lured Turkey into complacently dividing themselves along conflicting lines. Nigeria is not immune to such a division, whether along ethnic and regional lines, or along religious and political lines. Nigerians must move cautiously to ensure that such divisions do not become a pretext to stifle democratic principles, as indeed signs are beginning to manifest.

    Like Mr Erdogan, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), through a few top government functionaries, have repeatedly complained of the role of the media, legislature and particularly the judiciary in the anti-corruption war. This trend is dangerous if not moderated properly. A pretext is already being laid; and in fact, the EFCC chairman had recently wondered whether human rights should not be de-emphasised in order to make haste in the anti-graft war. Once allowed, the country could begin a slippery descent into government inspired self-help, unofficial suspension of constitutional provisions and checks, tagging of dissenters and critics as agents of corruption, legitimising pressures on the courts and the justice system as a whole, and possibly rousing the populace to engage in self-help against those labelled as corrupt. The problem with such tactics, as history has shown, whether in Europe (Hitler’s Germany against Jews) or U.S. (McCarthy communist witch-hunt), is that such crackdowns are often a pretext to silence the opposition everywhere, including in academia and media.

    Nigeria will of course not be able to show concern about the illiberal atmosphere overwhelming the Turkish society, let alone give voice to such concerns. But Nigerians, unlike the beguiled Turks, must jealously guard their democracy. Turks were presented a Catch 2-2 situation in the July 15 coup, and they had to decide whether to support military takeover or defend Mr Erdogan despite his warts. In the end, damned they were whether they did, and damned they were whether they didn’t. Nigerians must avoid such harmful Hobson’s choice. They must hold their government to account for every step and action taken. The laws of the land and the constitution may not be perfect, but everyone should insist the government must not dare to embark on self-help. Instead, let the constitution and the laws be amended and updated to take care of unanticipated needs and modern challenges. Better to err on the side of caution if Nigerian democracy, which is already under attack for a host of reasons, is not to be scuttled. The irony today is that those who did not participate in the struggle that brought APC to office, and who have no deep convictions of democracy, are the loudest in issuing careless calls for illiberal and illicit tactics to entrench hurtful government policies.

  • Trump and racist, xenophobic rejection of neoliberal globalization in the West – a hopeful portent? (1)

    Trump and racist, xenophobic rejection of neoliberal globalization in the West – a hopeful portent? (1)

    It is the early hours of Friday, July 22, 2016 and as I have been doing in the last three days, I have been sitting up late into the early hours of the new day watching television broadcast of the Republican Party’s National Convention on the CNN channel. Because I am in Berlin, Germany that is six hours ahead of the Eastern Standard Time (EST) of the United States, tonight as in each of the last three nights, I have to persevere till the wee hours of the morning. This is unusual for me as the only thing that I normally watch on television this late is tennis and then only when it is one of the four so-called “Opens” – Australian, French, Wimbledon and American. So what is there in the Republican National Convention that has kept me so bewitchingly glued to the television for hours on end? The answer to this is simple and unambiguous: the coming American presidential election in November 2016 is so portentous, both for the United States and the rest of the world, that I want to see and hear everything that leads to it. More on this point concerning the portents of this year’s American presidential election for the rest of the world later.

    For now, it is difficult for me to hide my gladness that many things have gone wrong with and in the Republican Convention, from the deliberate and en massabsence of most of the “heavyweight” leaders of the Party; to the widely discussed plagiarism ofMichele Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic Convention by Melania, the wife of Donald Trump,in her speech at the Convention on opening night; and the refusal of Ted Cruz, who was one of Trump’s rivals during the primaries, to endorse Trump in his speech last night at this Republican Convention.One of the much touted claims of Trump in his electoral campaign is that nearly everything in America is broken and only he, Donald Trump, can fix things. Well, how come then that so many things in his Convention are so broken that it is not only embarrassing for his Party but calls into question his claim of heroic, superhuman and technocratic deal-making efficiency? Can a man who cannot run a Party Convention smoothly and efficiently run an entire country, that country being the richest and most powerful nation in the world?

    Above everything else in this Republican Convention and far beyond the sheer noise and spectacle that we get in all Conventions, I have been struck by the extreme level of mob and herd instincts driving the thousands gathered at the Convention. It is nothing less than what you would get at a mass, open-airprayer meeting of one of our evangelical denominations, especially the sort of Dionysian frenzy that you see and hear at a gathering of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles – halleluiah!Last night, one of the featured speakers, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, drove the crowd at the Convention into an apoplectic frenzy of violent rage against Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, with shouts of “Jail Her! Jail Her! Jail Her!” that sounded very much like “Kill Her! Kill Her! Kill Her!” I solemnly swear that the last time that I saw an electioneering gathering get driven into such a paroxysm of hate, anger and violent words and expressions was in my childhood in the early 1950s in colonial Nigeria when electoral politics was no more and no less than the continuation of warfare in the domain of politics. This observation leads directly to the theme of this piece, this being the portentousness of this year’s American presidential election for the rest of the world, particularly the West.

    Many things are by now so well known all over the world about the demagoguery, xenophobia, misogyny and racism of Donald Trump that there is no need to restate them here. What is of relevance here is one particular issue that though it has not been ignored, it has garnered far less attention than it deserves. Permit me to state it very clearly if only because of its novelty: in Donald Trump we see the kind of extreme and uncompromising rejection of free-trade neoliberal globalization that for the most part, we have seen only in the Third World and hardly ever in the Western countries. Let me be very specific and unambiguous about this point. Xenophobic and anti-immigrant anti-globalization is quite common in the rich countries of the West and it has been so for about a decade now. As a matter of fact, this is the ideological and political fuel that powers the nationalism of many of the extreme, far-right parties of Europe. What is perhaps unique of Trump and the mass movement that he has fostered is a very plain, very explicit rejection of free-trade globalization and its many transnational practices, protocols and treaties, so much so that he has openly and vociferously stated that if elected, he will rescind all the free-trade treaties that Obama and the Republican presidents before him have signed with partners in Europe, North America and Asia. Trump has in particular singled out China in his tirades against currency manipulations that underwrite indebtedness and huge trade deficits of America to that country. And he has stated that as President, he will reinstate open protectionist policies to reinvigorate industrial factory production to create hundreds of thousands of jobs for American workers. Sounds like demands you usually get from the anti-neoliberal Left in Africa and many other parts of the developing world? Unquestionably so, except that this is a candidate of one of the two major ruling class parties of America, the heartland of neoliberal globalization, making these demands.

    There is an even more uncanny similarity of Trump’s anti-neoliberal globalization to the ideological views of progressive activists in the developing world and this is to be found in Trump’s claim that while neoliberal globalization has generated unprecedented quantities of money wealth, the lion’s share of that wealth has gone to a few rich thereby immensely widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots.The careful regular reader of this column might have noticed that this was indeed a point that I made again and again in my recent two-week series on global political economy before and after neoliberalism. On this particular point, let me say again that while our peoples in Africa and the developing world have been continuously SAPPED (SAP – Structural Adjustment Programs of the IMF) for close to three decades now, the middle class, the working people and the poor of the rich countries of the global North have been experiencing SAP only in slightly less than one decade. All the same, SAP is SAP and Trump is the first major aspirant to very high office in a Western country with a chance to win that has articulated a fierce opposition to neoliberal globalization in terms that seem uncannily similar to what we have been saying in the global South for a long time now. Is this a hopeful portent? I don’t think so, especially if one considers the fate of Bernie Sanders during the Democratic Party primaries to that of Donald Trump in the Republican primaries.

    At the risk of oversimplification, I would argue that Bernie Sanders, whose anti-neoliberalism was at least as passionate as Trump’s if not more so, could and would not connect his anti-neoliberalism and economic nationalism to racism and xenophobia as Trump did and this is why Sanders was defeated by Clinton. In this respect, the fate of Sanders is very much like the fate of progressive European opponents of neoliberal globalization who have consistently stopped short of attaining lasting or even sustained electoral victories precisely because demographically, those marginalized or altogether excluded by globalization in Europe are nowhere as numerous as in the Third World. In other words, in one part or region of the world, the wealth generated by and from free-trade neoliberal globalization has in many places left as large as 70% of the population desperately poor and marginalized, while in another part or region of the same world, the percentage of the truly disadvantaged and poor is (only) 25% overall. Of course, for many countries of the global North 25% of desperately poor people in the total population is a historical high, but so far this has not been sufficiently weighty enough to tilt the balance in the direction of an all-out assault on neoliberal globalization as we have it in Donald Trump. Which is why we have to zero in on the dimensions of xenophobia, racism, fascism, Islamophobia and misogyny as the factors that finally secured the electoral victories for Trump that eluded Bernie Sanders.

    As I listened to Trump’s acceptance speech faraway from America in Berlin in the early of this morning, his fascism and xenophobia seemed to me the most insistent, the most clamant dimensions of the economic nationalism that is the core of the appeal that he potentially holds for white, blue-collar workers in the so-called “rust belt” region of the country. Fascism also once rose like a titanic force here in Berlin less than a century ago; and also, its hordes of frenzied supporters such as those at the Republican Convention, were drawn mainly from tens of millions of deeply disaffected blue-collar workers and déclassé middle class white-collar professionals. Is this a portent, a frightening portent of what lies ahead of us? No, I don’t think so. This will be our starting point in next week’s continuation of the series.

    Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • What inspired President Buhari’s security architecture?

    What inspired President Buhari’s security architecture?

    Is it true that these herdsmen are now to be guarded by members of the Nigerian Civil Defence? Can President Buhari truly approve that public funds be spent on this lucrative private business?

    I write this piece with considerable pain not only because, as happened to Professor Segun Gbadegesin, some admittedly serious readers could, albeit, set out to ask one totally illogical questions if they read you questioning positions you took before the last Presidential election – in Gbadegesin’s case, he had  argued,  quite rightly, that you could not reasonably postpone a democratic election just so you could debate restructuring – but because I remain convinced that  contestant Goodluck Jonathan was no viable option to APC’s Muhammadu Buhari  even as President  Buhari has since committed what I consider some major gaffes.

    Trust some people, therefore, to say: serve you right.

    Once convinced that Buhari was Nigeria’s only reasonable choice – no thanks to the country’s parlous circumstances occasioned by 16 unbroken years’ of PDP’s planless-ness and indescribable corruption – all I had to do to canvass contestant Buhari first, as APC’s ideal Presidential candidate, and subsequently Nigeria’s best, was to present to Nigerians, in fine detail, how low PDP had taken the country. I did not limit this to my opinion alone. Rather, I leaned on the views of some highly regarded elder statesmen like Ambassador Dapo Fafowora and that of some young Nigerians whose future the PDP was unashamedly mortgaging. I did this in a trilogy of articles which ran on these pages between 19 September – 30 October, 2014 and was captioned: Periscoping APC’s Ideal Presidential Candidate 1 – 3.

    In addition to presenting a foretaste of what the EFCC has subsequently shown the world of a viscerally corrupt PDP, I also took the opportunity to state the unique selling points of candidate Buhari which made him indisputably preferable to his main opponent in the election. It may be pertinent to mention that most of the challenges President Buhari is faced with today, sans some of his appointments, are all legacies of PDP’s 16 years’ stranglehold on the country. As I will show below in quotes from the referenced articles, Nigeria generated more megawatts of electricity in 1999 than it does today. And that was after the Obasanjo regime claimed it spent 16 billion dollars on power. That 27 states out of 36 cannot pay salaries today must be put squarely at the feet of both President Jonathan and Diezani, his Petroleum Minister, who, between them, ensured that billions of crude oil money was never paid into the federation account and the fact that Boko Haram became a sinkhole, as well as a ferocious terrorist organisation, must be hung on military officers who decided to steal funds meant for arming our soldiers against the well-armed bandits. It is therefore, not only funny but ludicrous, seeing people, who literally stole Nigeria blind, criticising President Buhari for our current circumstances.

    Writing in his column in The Nation of Thursday, September 25, 2014, the highly regarded Ambassador Dapo Fafowora clinically dissected one of the evil consequences of PDP’s screaming corruption.  On why Nigeria is no longer respected at the international fora, he wrote:  ‘It is because of the widespread corruption in Nigeria which has continued to undermine economic and social development. Virtually all the state institutions, including the executive, legislative and the judiciary, have broken down completely. The other day the Chief Justice of the Federation was reported as complaining that the judiciary was rotten, with many judges openly taking bribe to distort justice.” The bench too, he went on, is believed to be equally corrupt. Quoting a columnist with The Nation, I wrote: As  Gbogungboro  of The Nation  reminded us this past week, no thanks to the PDP, Nigeria is now one of the foremost contributors to poverty in the world and , according to  him, quoting from  a World Bank Report,  Nigeria ‘will by 2030,  be one of  the main contributors to global poverty’.  On the   Human Development Index  which  is a measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development, Nigeria has, since 1999 occupied the lowest of the three categories of  high, medium and low, placing between 147 -182 in company of lowly countries like Djibouti, Lesotho and Swaziland. Nigeria actually currently ranks 158.  Rather than deal decisively with corruption, PDP prefers to romance it, serially dropping corruption charges against its members”.

    In contrast to the PDP record,  however, it was all thumps up for candidate Buhari about who Fola  Aiyegbusi, a young Nigerian patriot wrote as follows: “Today in Nigeria, General  Buhari stands out as an epitome of incorruptibility, very  much unlike the rest. As Head of State  between  1983- ‘85 , his  government  gave a monthly account of  crude oil lifted, how much it was sold for, and what  government was going to do with the revenue generated . As a Military  Head of State, he  was not obliged to do it  but because of  his  innate  transparency  and  that of  his Chief of Staff, General Tunde  Idiagbon,  they  opted to lead by example. Today under a PDP administration, reports of unremitted oil revenues are legion. Rather than openness in the Nigerian extractive industry,  it is corruption galore  and  we now daily hear  of millions of barrels of  stolen crude oil in spite of sweet heart , multi-billion  pipeline  security contracts awarded  to  some of the president’s  Ijaw  compatriots.

    About the most fascinating testimony to candidate Buhari’s integrity would, however,  come from a distinguished, elder statesman, Chief Oladeji Fasuan, a retired Permanent Secretary, who  quoted on page 337 of his book:  ‘SCALING ACCIDENTS OF LIFE , a letter  he addressed to Governor Fashola of Lagos  on 1 June, 2011.  The letter read as follows: “Dear Governor, during the last elections, I voted for a non-existent Buhari/Fashola ticket. Some of my friends (notably Afe Babalola SAN) laughed at me. I pity them because until there is, a Buhari/Fashola ticket, or something containing the characters of these two men, Nigeria will continue to tumble and stumble till we get the right national leadership. Know what these two represent? BELIEF, COMMITMENT, RAW DETERMINATION plus CAPACITY, WILLINGNESS and TRANSPARENCY”’.

    Now to the crux of this article. If my views about President Muhammadu Buhari have been so well attested to by distinguished Nigerians, young and old, what led him to appointing a literally all North/Muslim heads of Nigeria’s security agencies? I am personally too scandalised by the appointments to include them here. I also fear they could go viral, which, for me would be counterproductive.  That said, why has President Buhari not conclusively dealt with the murderous Fulani herdsmen question particularly given that he is already on record as saying that these are foreigners, all the way from Libya, who had been shedding so much Nigerian blood without a single one of them arrested even when they attack in numbers? Is it true that these herdsmen are now to be guarded by members of the Nigerian Civil Defence? Can President Buhari truly approve that public funds be spent on this lucrative private business? Being Fulani himself, and in the business, how does he expect Nigerians to see this especially as none of the herdsmen had even been taken to court to answer to the grievous charge of murder? At the last count, states like Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa, even Ekiti, have collectively lost over a thousand lives to these outright predators.  Even as tough as things are for Nigerians today, and even though a negligible few have called for a return to the era of unmitigated corruption, President Buhari is celebrated, at home and internationally, for his anti-corruption war. Nigerians are with him in this titanic battle against corruption.  But it was not for nothing that Igbos met, upper week, to tell all and sundry that they are an integral part of this country and would not stand aloof to be trampled by any other Nigerian ethnic group.  Fortunately, Presidential spokesperson, Femi Adesina, has always spoken glowingly about this administration being a listening one. It will therefore be gratifying to see President Buhari rethink these burning issues.

     

  • “Fellow Turks”; “Fellow Nigerians”

    “Fellow Turks”; “Fellow Nigerians”

    Turkey coup and Nigeria’s coup rumour in focus

    Less than a month after the reported rumour of a coup plot by some top military officers against the Muhammadu Buhari administration, some misguided soldiers struck in far-away Turkey, against the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on July 15. Although the attempt failed, thanks to the Turks who rallied round the president and denounced the assault to democracy. As far as the Turks were concerned, they could not stand a return of the generals for the fifth time since the 1960s. Even the opposition parties were not in support of the coup in spite of their differences with the government. Given the massive resistance by civilians, it was clear the putschists were living behind time. How on earth could any soldier worth the profession have thought of coup in this age when military rule has been seen globally as an aberration?

    As the world is still trying to figure out the likely impact of the coup in Turkey, particularly the iron fist response of the Erdogan government, one should also be baffled that some soldiers in the Nigerian Army would think Nigerians would clap for them if they roll out the tanks today to topple Buhari’s government. One “General” Akotebe Darikoro, on behalf of an organisation which calls itself the Joint Niger Delta Liberation Force (NDLF) had on June 21 alerted the nation that some top officers of the Nigerian Army had approached Niger Delta militants to step up their bombing of oil installations as a prelude to a coup to oust President Buhari. According to the organisation, the militants however declined the proposal because it ran counter to their own objective, which they say is political and can only be resolved politically. The militants therefore warned President Buhari to be wary of some military officers who are trying to topple his government.

    Expectedly, the military authorities denied this alleged plot, saying it was baseless, unfortunate and a dangerous distraction from their fight against insurgency in the country. One wonders what the war against insurgency has to do with coup plot; and why, in the first place, this must become the point of reference whenever the military authorities have to speak to Nigerians on critical issues. The same allusion was made when the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Tukur Buratai, was accused of corruption over ownership of some property in Dubai. The response was that it was Buratai’s detractors who are unhappy with the military’s successes against Boko Haram who are behind the allegation to remove him from office. The army has pledged its support to the Buhari government even as it promised to fish out those behind what could pass for a wicked rumour.

    More than one month after, we are still waiting for the result of that probe. Although the president has been characteristically silent on the matter, something ought to be telling him that he must keep watching his back in view of his tough stance against corruption and the plundering of the country’s patrimony. In a nation where people suddenly become entitled to millions paid into their accounts monthly because of their official position in the military, and such is not only stopped but one of the beneficiaries has been asked to refund the loot, such people cannot be happy with the president. A nation where all sorts of crooked fellows find their way to the top of public office and they are being seriously challenged, there must be resentment cloaked in different garments, either kangaroo impeachment or coup attempts.

    The point is, even if the coup succeeds, the soldiers would not be able to rule, for obvious reasons. Nigerians have had the worst and the best of military rule and they know that democracy is still better than the most benevolent military dictatorship. Even military generals who had served in military governments in years past, including General Theophilus Danjuma and former Head of state, General Yakubu Gowon, have said the military’s involvement in government is not only an anathema; it creates a big problem for professionalism. So, why would any soldier think it is time for the country to be under the jackboots again, 17 years after we sent the soldiers away from political limelight?

    But, as I always argue, we cannot put anything beyond our elite, whether political or military. Coups, even in the past, were often instigated by civilians and were indeed sometimes funded by them. This had been corroborated by those who should know. Given this experience, the Buhari administration would have been vulnerable to coup/s if it had attempted what it is doing today in the past. Catching high-profile thieves is no mean task. Indeed, it takes the relatively untainted to attempt such a thing in our kind of clime. Lest we forget, many of the personalities we have been recycling in government have known no other job but government appointments. They have remained ‘government pikin’ all these years because they have learnt the secret of how to befriend AGIP (Any Government In Power). And the reason they have always wormed their way into the hearts of the powers-that-be at any point in time is because of the cheap funds being in government offers; not necessarily because they want to serve.

    Unfortunately, the taps to those free funds have been shut; first by the sharp fall in crude prices, then by the change of government; the tough fiscal stance of the incumbent government at the centre only happens to be the last straw. For these privileged Nigerians, this is bad enough. To worsen matters, the government is mopping up some of what they had thought was pork that could last generations unborn that they stole from our common patrimony. Without doubt, this would not have gone down well with them; seeing the doggedness with which the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is squeezing them to vomit that which they illegally acquired. Some of them who had earlier thought it was a joke and had been grandstanding have suddenly become calm and cooperative with the government, seeing that they could not have their way as in the past. They are now asking for plea bargain. So, it is not unlikely some people might want to try something funny; probably a coup, or at least give rumours of it, to feel the pulse of Nigerians. They might want to take advantage of the relative hardship in the country to embarrass or scare the government, if not to change it outright.

    Was it not in this same country where, about two weeks ago, we heard threats of impeachment of President Buhari? Although this has also been denied; that counts for little because if such was not suggested somewhere, it probably would not have become public knowledge. What do we think is behind all these? The answer is simple: there are no free funds to share again, pure and simple! Buhari would have been a very good president to our national lawmakers if he had allowed the little money that is coming into government’s coffers go the way government’s money went in the past, without caring what the impact would be on the voters that the lawmakers are supposed to be representing.

    But those soldiers who might want to say “Fellow Nigerians …” now would have to tell us where they were when the country was being bled to death by mindless high profile thieves, including army generals, who were calling the shots yesterday. In essence, Nigerians know where such soldiers are coming from, and by whom sent. It is needless saying that the kind of resistance to such coup would be such that would make it too late for the putschists to regret their action.

    All said, what is important is for President Buhari to be mindful of the various sentiments in the country and tailor his projects, programmes and even his utterances, body language and all, towards satisfying the greater majority because there is no way he can please all. What is happening in the country with regard to anti-corruption has not happened on this sustained basis before and it should be expected that corruption, especially “fantastic corruption” that the Nigerian variant is, must always fight back. No one can deny the fact that the situation on ground is bad enough, but coup cannot be the answer because the present government did not cause the problems. We may not be happy with the way it is addressing them, but military rule is not the answer. That is a lesson we must have learnt 56 years after independence, the better part of which was under military dictatorship.

  • On sovereignty and restructuring

    On sovereignty and restructuring

    The noise about the structural viability of Nigeria and how this affects sane governance has now assumed a shrill ferocity. While the traditional ramparts of restructuring are still warming up, new converts have seized the battlefield.  There is a gradual hardening of positions with fears masquerading as facts and with prejudice pretending to be the unassailable truth.

    Yet one thing driving the debate which is not obvious to the partisans on both sides of the divide, is the fact that whether we choose to restructure or not, the base of leadership recruitment in the nation is too narrow and constricted, too hamstrung by ethnic bigotry and partisan pettiness to power the aspirations and manifest destiny of the greatest conglomeration of Black people anywhere in the world.

    While President Buhari has insisted times without number that the unity of the nation is non-negotiable and the sovereignty of the state inviolable, his opponents have dismissed this as mere executive daydreaming which is out of sinc with actual reality. There is no human conglomeration or national community whose unity is non-negotiable or fixed for all times, they insist.

    There is sense in which these contrasting positions once again reflect abiding geo-ethnic fault lines in the country.  While General Buhari’s position is backed by the main north and its dominant political tendency, significant sections of the South South, the South East have taken umbrage even as the South West, the old intellectual epicentre for the radical restructuring of the country, watches with quiet animation.

    Those who approve insist that restructuring is the only way forward for the nation even as the opponents maintain that it is just a decoy or mere shorthand for the precipitate dismemberment of the country. Once again, the nation is at the mercy of centrifugal forces. It is important to wade through this thicket of confusion. But first, a historical detour.

    As the new paradigm of nation-states gradually supplanted the old notion of traditional or religious fiefdoms and empire-states, the sovereignty of rulers was extended to the sovereignty of their territories.  Like the old rulers of yore whose reign was inviolable, non-negotiable and attributed to divine ordination, the new nations came to assume an inviolable, non-negotiable and almost religious aura and awe.  In some nations, the worship of the nation almost came to supplant actual religion itself. It was pious fiction; a necessary hoax. To nudge them higher telos, humanity must always believe in something.

    Since it preceded the myth of the inviolable and non-negotiable nation, it was the myth of the inviolable and non-negotiable ruler that had to go first. It exploded in memorable bloodbath as humanity hitherto thought dormant and docile rose in murderous rage to reclaim sovereignty for the people in historic confrontations which have shaped the contours of modern history. Such was the venom and vitriol of these momentous upheavals that thereafter no ruler dare to claim that he was the sum total of the state. As it was to happen in Russia, so had it happened in England, France and the Austro-Hapsburg Empire. In the case of America, the feudal order of succession was summarily banished from the constitution.

    Next to go was the myth of the inviolable and non-negotiable nation as hitherto powerful nations fell to the military might of less fancied nations and as many powerful human communities were supplanted in political and economic ascendancy by seemingly weaker and newer nations. In the process, the sun has set on many empires and nations that had thought that their God was superior to other national Gods. By this token, some nations disappeared never to be seen again while new nations appeared on the scene from the embroiled and embattled wombs of older nations.

    It is a grim irony of history that African nations that are nothing but dreadful caricatures of their colonial foster fathers often invest themselves with the toga of inviolability and non-negotiable sacredness even without the sterling attributes of their heroic European forebears.  The coups, violent seizures of government, persistent armed critiques, summary executions of incumbents and dismemberments of many African nations that have characterized the post-colonial history of Africa should put an end to such grand illusions.

    The enemy in Africa is largely within.  The central contradiction of colonial nationhood in Africa stems from national armies that originated as instruments of internal pacification and rigid enforcers of the territorial integrity of the nation. In the absence of a genuine nationalist political class, the national army often stands between the nation and chaos and as the last bulwark against state disintegration in the face of unyielding fissiparous tendencies.

    But under immense historical pressures, the army often falters, relapsing into its originating summons as an army of internal occupation and instrument of extractive predation preying on national resources. In many African countries, the colonial army had to be disbanded and reconstituted for the nation to move forward. This has been the case in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote D’Ivoire, Rwanda, Uganda, Guinea, Mali, the old Zaire, Ethiopia, Somalia etc.

    As a sterling and exemplary product of the old missionary military, General Mohammadu Buhari  is surely within his right and historic brief to insist that the sovereignty of Nigerian state is inviolable and the unity of the country non-negotiable. For a civil war veteran, this is at it should be. Whenever Nigeria gets into a rough patch, the old military master class have always thrust the reins of power into the hands of one of their own.  The patriotic ardour and firmness of purpose with which the retired general has brought back the ailing Nigerian state from the edge of death in the past one year is an eloquent testimony to this superiority of will.

    Unfortunately, the sovereignty of a state and the non-negotiable nature of a country end when it is confronted by a sovereign ailment that can overwhelm it if care is not taken. This is the situation in which we have found ourselves and it requires much more than military will but creative and visionary statesmanship. Twice, General Buhari has been summoned at such critical conjunctures to bail the nation out with his political skills failing him the first time around. Care must be taken that history does not repeat itself, for the National Question has been exacerbated in the intervening thirty years.

    All nations in the course of their journey towards self-actualization are often confronted by impossible historical and political conundrums which sorely test their will and ability to survive. The talented statesmen and visionary thinkers who framed the American constitution knew what was tormenting them when they spoke to the possibilities of a “more perfect union”. It was an arch and awkward phrase which hints at the troubling tension between actuality and future possibilities. This is not just a semantic quirk but a historic aporia.

    Professor David-West was surely right when he noted the ungrammatical and quaint nature of the phrasing. But nothing can be perfectly perfect.  Under the relentless pressure of history and political developments, the perfect becomes less perfect and it is left to visionary human agency to make it more perfect. The founding fathers of America could not have imagined how the addition of gargantuan land masses of turbulent Texas, the West Coast, Florida, parts of Hispanic Mexico and even Russianized  Alaska would have gelled with the original brew, or the epic contradictions of a country transforming into a continent-nation.

    President  Buhari needs not be afraid of restructuring, but he should be wary of those who use the slogan of restructuring to preach hate and the summary dismemberment of the country. He should also be mindful of those who scream against restructuring as a strategy of keeping the nation in fossilized underdevelopment and Stone Age depredations simply to perpetuate an unjust system and its entrenched privileges.

    All countries, if they are not to perish, must undergo periodic restructuring as an ironic reaffirmation of their sovereignty. This is what has been happening in Nigeria since colonial amalgamation. For a long time after amalgamation and until the run up to independence, Nigerian was ruled as a unitary harshly centralized state in which the South did not know what the North was up to and with subsequent perilous consequences for national unity and cohesion.

    It was the first coup, the civil war, the sudden explosion in oil revenues and the military’s morbid fear of centrifugal forces which terminated the experiment with regional governance and fiscal federalism. In their notion of the nation as they understood it, and no doubt coloured by the rigidly centralized and harshly regimented vision of a vast garrison, the Nigerian military simply gathered the reins of power under a federal command.  This authoritarian regime with its abhorrence of indiscipline and querulous bids for Bohemian independence no doubt resonates with a section or sections of the country that find comfort in the certainties and orderliness of centralized feudal rule and its mutants.

    But a nation is like a growing organism and there can be no permanent quick-fix solutions to its ailments. As history progresses and as the iron law of uneven development overtakes a chaotic colonial amalgam like Nigeria, new pathologies surface and new nation-disabling infirmities emerge which can only be contained by prising open the draconian iron cage which restrains centrifugal forces no doubt but which also bottles up the creative energies of our diverse people.

    Ironically enough, the greatest enemies of restructuring in Nigeria are the political elite who reduce this vital aspect of national reengineering to partisan and execrable political gaming. When they are in power they keep mute about restructuring. But once they are outside the loop of power, they keep shouting restructuring from the rooftop as a rearguard rally for unaccountable power all over again. What is lost on them is the fact that just as federal elections in a multi-ethnic nation cannot be won by hateful ethnic jingoism, the successful restructuring of a post-colonial polity requires substantial elite consensus which involves the intricate negotiations and arduous elite pacting that more organic nations take as already given.

    Meanwhile as this political gaming and zero sum grandstanding take the central stage of our existence, many sections of the country are hurting badly in the iron cage of national disorientation. A federation must not become an instrument of flagellation. There can be no doubt that the ravaged Niger Delta requires a conceptually impregnable New Deal which must be sustained and incorporated into a new federal constitution.

    The siege on the urbanized South West coming through the labyrinthine maze of creeks and the phenomenon of urban terrorism that has infiltrated the area from all directions as a result of those fleeing rural poverty and biblical misery speak to the need for the urgent decentralization of our police force or at the very least the setting up of special security forces in the area answerable only to the respective local authorities.

    In the north, particularly after Boko Haram and the miscarried Arab Spring, it is now mandatory to set up a Special Border Guard to ward off the phenomenon of religious, economic and political terrorism coming through our porous, ill-secured borders from the larger Maghreb and the Sahelian Desert. This must be in place with an equivalent of the American Coast Guard which contains maritime threats to the nation’s territorial and economic sovereignty from source. The current trend of involving the army and the navy in purely internal security operations portends danger to nation and national institution.

    It is the prayer of many Nigerians that General Mohammadu Buhari must find within himself the inner reserves of courage and resilience to rise above petty political partisanship and ethnic bigotry in order to do what is needful for the country at this perilous conjuncture. This government has done many things right. But it has also committed unforced errors and made strategic mistakes in the political and economic sectors.

    The post-colonial state in its current incarnation in Nigeria is too weak and dispirited to attempt a radical surgery on the nation without losing the patient to the forces of ungainly and bloody dismemberment.  Nobody ever thought the rot was this humongous and deeply systemic. It is not helpful to the current Global Order for Nigeria to go down in smoke and chaos. They will do everything within their power to prevent this even if it means radical surgery of their own.

    But once the nation is economically stabilized and morally sanitized, the Buhari administration must confront the crucial and critical need to revisit the current anomalous structure of the country. If however it chooses to be a one-issue government and mono-agendum intervention, it is absolutely within its democratic prerogative——until 2019 that is.

  • Don’t panic; the economy is in recession!

    I promise you truly that most brains will also go into recession; so you are likely to find people sitting down, moaning about the recessed economy, and crying ‘Nigeria is finished and I have not got my own to steal’!

    This morning, I woke up to three great earth shattering news: that the dollar, which once sold for N.70 in this my beloved country, now sells for N377 (as of today); that the country is officially in recession; and I’ve run out of my favourite snack, bananas. I tell you when it comes to banana, I’m quite the little monkey. This is why I am in a panic over it; I never run out of banana. This situation reminds me a little of a film I once saw, I don’t know if you did too, in which an airplane-full of people is told that the plane is about to crash but there is no reaction from the people. When the announcer gets to the fact that the stewards have run out of coffee though, there is a full-blast panic that pushes the dial to past maximum! But then, that was a comedy, and so is this.

    Seriously, I am not trying to make light of this problem. Come to think of it, I am trying to make light of this topic if only to still my own fears because I don’t want to go into a panic. If I do, I tell you, this country will not contain you and me, and I promise you, you will find me most insufferable on account of my moans. I tell you, a banana recession is no laughing matter.

    What brought us to this sorry pass is not our focus today; rather, we want to deliberate on what you and I can do to make sure that the naira falling from the sky does not come crashing down on our heads. To start with, the PDP umbrella is in tatters, so that cannot save us. On the other hand, the APC broom is still very busy sweeping out the debris from the last administration, so I rather think they have their hands full. One cannot hold a broom over the head to shield it from falling debris anyway. So, it’s up to you and me to salvage the situation in our own environment so we can at least be comfortable in our sunken, upholstered chairs.

    You know what a recession is, don’t you? Economists say it is when the economy is in decline and there is a fall in retail sales. Translated, a recession is when you take a suitcase of much devalued money to the market and you don’t come back. Reason: everyone runs after you to get their hands on that suitcase. That’s when you go missing, you know, trampled upon. Money is that scarce in a recession, sir. Sometimes, you’re lucky if you come back with a basket of fruits with all that money.

    Governments try as much as possible not to get their countries into a recession. When, however, you have an entire nation made of different peoples of every hue and creed smitten with kleptomania as happened to Nigeria, recession is bound to happen, sooner than later. So, we can say that our previous governments tried their best to get us into a recession. They finally succeeded.

    Reading the shattering news, therefore, has forced me to revaluate my recession preparedness. In other words, how prepared am I (and is Nigeria) to fight this war of attrition (i.e. the gradual drying off of spending power) thrust upon me and her by past recklessness? I would say, hardly at all. The country has neglected to save for a rainy day not because it was not warned but because our politicians were too deaf and unconcerned by the little thing called ‘tomorrow’. To them, tomorrow never comes to haunt our today, but today it has.

    There is no point dredging our brains for panacea to the problem. To be sure, majority of them brains have gone into recession. The government must therefore find ways of persuading the people to turn their faces away from Abuja where they have been hacking at the tills to the lands where they must now hack at it to till it. I promise you truly that most brains will also go into recession; so you are likely to find people sitting down, moaning about the recessed economy, and crying ‘Nigeria is finished and I have not got my own to steal’. Were all to be well, one could not blame them, but all is not well, so we cannot afford to sing these dirges about finished countries and unfinished businesses.

    There is no doubting the fact that the larger bulk of our recovery can come from agriculture. Tilling the land will not only provide food for us and make my banana available in an unending supply; it will also provide jobs for people. I tell you, the teeming number of youths this country has produced may not even be enough if a well-planned agricultural scheme were to be put into place. Sure, it will take a lot of planning and execution skills, but it can be done.

    I hear the government has given marching orders to the banks of Agriculture and Industry in Nigeria to make their services more readily available to farmers and farming hopefuls. This is good, but not enough. Their services must be made more readily available in the rural areas where majority of the farmlands are situated. More importantly, there must be ways the government can monitor the practices of these banks to eliminate the accustomed corruption associated with giving loans.

    By far the biggest consideration should however be what happens to the end products of these farms once the scheme is put in place. There must begin to be planned now how these products will be disposed of or stored. If we’re really serious, there must begin to be built now the large-scale storage facilities that would be required for these end products. If this is not done and farmers find themselves consuming their own products, there is likely to be discouragement that will certainly lead to a discontinuation of the experiment. Farmers must continue to be encouraged.

    This is why it is important to revive the agricultural extension workers scheme. They are the experts who know best how these things can be approached. Farm implements, farming tools engineering and all kinds of knowledge are within their grasp. Corruption sidelined them in the first place but the government needs to bring them back.

    In the meantime, to make sure that the economic tremors shattering the economy does not translate to full-scale recession in my house, I have decided that the little patch behind my window should be enough to hold a few grasses of vegetables. What previously spent its days in leisure as an ornamental lawn should now begin to sprout a few things that can pass through the mouth. More importantly, I have decided that what I cannot imagine myself growing will not be eaten around me. If I can imagine myself growing yams, then it shall continue to be eaten in my house. Luckily, I have a vivid imagination.

    Honestly, my country going into recession is not so much my problem as the panic that it is engendering in me. My fear is that everything around me may go into recession. My dog may begin again to show symptoms of mental recession while my car may show symptoms of metal recession. And if I’m not careful, even my eyes may begin to show signs of recessional appreciation by bringing out water. They are called tears. I do not want that. So, I would beg the government and the managers of the Nigerian economy to please find their ways clear to clear the rubble depressing the economy quick, quick, fast, fast, sharp, sharp.

  • The Atiku-Ribadu jigsaw

    BOTH former vice president Atiku Abubakar and former EFCC chairman Nuhu Ribadu are politically footloose. They have oscillated like a yo-yo between Nigeria’s main political parties in the past few years it is a miracle they are not dizzied by their peregrinations. In this republic, Alhaji Atiku started out in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), where he rose to become a governor-elect and then vice president. He then joined the Action Congress (AC) in 2006, before shuffling back to the PDP after the 2007 elections, and finally and giddily transiting to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2014. There is nothing cast in granite to indicate that Alhaji Atiku would still not return to the PDP, for the party really remains his first love. He has denied he is moving anywhere. But he has managed to become so unpredictable that nothing can be ruled out.

    Mallam Ribadu is also a veritable political nomad. As EFCC chairman, he was of course not a card-carrying member of the PDP, but he worked for a PDP government, and his soul and body seemed knit with the then ruling party. But frustrated out of the EFCC by the Umaru Yar’Adua presidency, he soon found himself in the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), which gave him the presidential ticket, for he always exuded progressive instincts and mannerisms. His bid was, however, doomed from the very beginning because he seemed to have been thrust too quickly into a role neither his mind nor his ideas  had settled into. But just when many analysts began to see him as a future prospect for the country’s highest office, he jumped expediently into the strange and inimical habitat of the conservatives, the PDP. It turned out that he wanted to be governor of Adamawa State.

    Using Adamawa as a turf war, both Alhaji Atiku and Mallam Ribadu have begun to joust and shuffle their feet. Mallam Ribadu is back in the APC, perhaps to bid for the governorship of Adamawa State or something even higher; and Alhaji Atiku is rumoured to be eager to offer leadership to the decapitated PDP. The truth of these suppositions will manifest in the coming months, perhaps next year, when the dithering and insular Buhari presidency will become embroiled in intricate politics on its way to becoming the earliest lame duck presidency ever.

  • Nigeria awaits Buhari, el-Rufai over Zaria Shiite panel report

    RESPONDING to criticisms over their handling of last December’s Shiite disturbance in Zaria during which hundreds of lives were lost, both President Muhammadu Buhari and Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, appealed to Nigerians to wait for the outcome of the judicial probe of the crisis. Despite the urgency of the matter and the unquantifiable pains the disturbance inflicted on hundreds of families, interested parties managed to exercise the requisite patience. Finally, and even though the report has not been officially released, the media have published glimpses of the conclusions and indictments contained in the report. Headed by Justice Mohammed Garba of the Federal Court of Appeal, Port Harcourt, the 13-man panel confirmed 349 dead, probably all Shiite members, and one soldier killed. The panel indicted the General Officer Commanding Nigerian Army Ist Division, Kaduna, Oyeniyi Oyebade, a major-general, and a certain A.K. Ibraheem, a colonel, for mishandling the crisis and using disproportionate force.

    According to witnesses, some of them government officials, victims of the massacre were buried in two mass graves, with some of the corpses conveyed in military trucks. Yet, the army said it counted only seven people killed. The public will now wait for government’s response to the very damning report, the first coming from Kaduna State government, the second from the army, and the third from the federal government. Given the way they initially approached the crisis, all three will be uncomfortable in responding to the obvious crimes against humanity committed by the soldiers. The army, it was clear, used excessive force when, according to the panel, it could have chosen alternative routes for their commanders to pass through Zaria. Until the report is released officially, it is not certain what the panel found out concerning the army’s theory that Shiite members planned to assassinate the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai.

    The second responder, Kaduna State government, also mishandled the crisis abysmally by prejudging the Shiites and demolishing their headquarters after the massacre. The religious group did not have building permits, the governor had said. Then finally, the Buhari presidency, basing its conclusions on unstated intelligence or findings, condemned the Shiites for attempting to set up a government within a government. There can be only one government, the president bristled during a media chat shortly after the disturbance. Commentators had noted immediately after the clash and the attendant massacre that the army’s disproportionate response and the state and federal governments’ connivance were fuelled by their hubristic interpretation of the powers of government and their inchoate appreciation of the fundamentals of democracy and the power of the ballot paper.

    It now remains to be seen how both Mallam el-Rufai and President Buhari, in that order, will respond to the panel’s report. The judicial probe has called for the prosecution of the two named officers and other senior officers who participated in the massacre. Though the panel also blamed the government for its lack of proactive response to malfeasant and troublesome groups, including the often obtruding and disruptive Shiites, the main quandary the government will face will be how to disengage the officers and prosecute them. Much worse, the Kaduna State governor himself condoned the killings by his insensitive statements shortly after the clash and then took steps to, as it were, erase the presence of the Shiites in their Zaria redoubt. The president and the governor will obviously find out soon that the loathing they claimed the neighbours of Shiites in Zaria harbour against the religious group has no evidential value in mitigating the atrocities committed against its members. They will also discover that mass burial and the lack of records of victims constitute obstruction of justice.

    It will not be enough for the Kaduna State government to release a White Paper on the crisis. The governor must come to terms with his comments and attitude over the clash. He will need to show remorse and offer a full apology. Next, the president himself must show remorse for the very biased and casual manner he dismissed the clash and prejudged the Shiites. He needs to issue a full apology as well. Then they must go on to make full amends for the oppressive and atrocious manner they have treated the leader of the movement, El-Zakzaky, whom the Department of State Service has detained unlawfully for many months. If they are smart, they must open talks with the Shi’a Movement and discuss compensation. Otherwise, armed with the report, whenever it is issued, the Shiites will exact a terrible price from the government. And if the government decides unwisely to bury or distort the report, the International Criminal Court (ICC) will be petitioned to retrieve the report and call the government, including those not indicted by the panel, to account. The federal and state governments, and the army are in unwinnable positions. The sooner they realise it, the better.

  • The Akwa Ibom rape case

    For reasons hard to understand, incidents of rape have continued to be on the rise. I have read so many rape stories, including bizarre ones like fathers sleeping with their daughters and instances where men raped even toddlers that I never reckoned that I would be shocked by any other case.

    However, I have found it difficult to get over a report last week about a Police Inspector in Akwa Ibom who raped a secondary school girl at gun point.

    The 15-year-old girl, according to her account, was returning from a Church service when she was accosted by a police team. The Inspector reportedly pointed his gun at the girl and threatened to shoot her. He subsequently led the girl away from other team members to a dark area along the road and raped her.

    After being raped, the Inspector took the girl to the police station and detained her for some days before her uncle came from Abuja to bail her after paying N10,000.

    I know policemen are capable of all manners of abuses of the members of the public they are supposed to be protecting, but this incident beats my imagination considering the ease with which the Inspector committed the atrocity and his audacity to even detain the helpless girl until she was bailed.

    I have a daughter and can’t imagine her being subjected to the kind of dehumanisation the victim in this case has gone through. Without any inhibition, a police officer saw nothing wrong in raping a girl and detaining her.

    Chances are that the Inspector and other members of his team have been indulging in this criminal act for long and would have gotten away with this case but for the demand for justice by the girl’s uncle.

    As demanded by the uncle, the Inspector should be made to face the full wrath of the law to serve as a deterrent to other policemen who are not better than criminals they are supposed to apprehend.

    I would like to give the State Commissioner of Police, Muritala Mani, the benefit of the doubt that this case will be thoroughly investigated and the Inspector penalised.

    There have been instances where offending policemen got away with light punishment not commensurate with the offences they committed.

    Any punishment less than dismissal and prosecution will not be good enough for the irreparable damage the Inspector has done to the girl. He clearly abused his position and cannot be trusted to continue to perform the sacred duty of being a law enforcement officer in any capacity.

    The new Acting Inspector General of Police has a lot to do to redeem the image of the police in the country. Much as their condition of service may not be good enough, indulging in criminal acts will only continue to reinforce the already dented image of the police.

    Bail is supposed to be free according to police authorities and yet as much as N10,000 was collected to free a girl raped by a police officer. What kind of a friend is the police when many policemen cannot perform their duties without demanding bribes?

  • On President Buhari’s fight against waste in government

    On President Buhari’s fight against waste in government

    The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission should be re-invented to do proper cost benefit analysis before allocating funds to politicians and civil servants, if waste is to be curtailed and equality and social justice are to be achieved

    Just a few days ago, President Buhari reaffirmed his commitment to fighting not just corruption but waste in government. Given the alarming nature of cases of political and bureaucratic corruption, it is understandable that the presidency, the media, and even the citizenry seem to have focused more on corruption than waste control. Yet wasteful spending of the common wealth of the country is believed by many to have the capacity to raise eyebrows of the average citizen, if as much information about the disproportionate share of the nation’s resources passed to political appointees and public servants has been available to citizens as the volume of information about graft.

    Waste as attempts to squander or use resources carelessly has been a part of our country’s governance culture for a long time. It just got worse with time as more resources accrued to the nation’s treasury from sale of petroleum. Generally, knowledge of waste in government and by government officials—policymakers and civil servants—falls into two types: one is open to the general society through government policies and the other is popularised in the informal media in the fashion of urban folklore. However, both types have basis in the reality of what accrues to politicians and public servants in every state of the federation. The first type is illustrated by periodic acknowledgement by governments since 1966 of existence of ghost workers in government employment while the second is captured in urban stories about what is generally hidden from the public, such as conjectures about the income of lawmakers.

    Variants of the first type is as old as colonialism in the country. In the days before independence, persons serving in the colonial service from the United Kingdom took all sorts of allowances that included Bush or Inconvenience allowance for leaving their country or leaving Lagos or the provincial headquarters in which they served for short assignments in other towns and villages. Expatriates in colonial government even earned more money than their Nigerian counterparts doing similar jobs. The policy about gratuity in addition to pension started during the colonial era as a way to thank members of the Civilising Mission that came to serve the natives.

    Our own leaders at independence adopted and eventually added to such benefits, having been convinced that they were the new white masters over their people and thus deserved special privileges. British colonialists were not under any obligation, as they were at home, to do proper cost and benefit analysis of any policy they made in respect of their compensation. It was assumed that leaving the comfort of Britain to work among the natives carried a lot of risk and hazards for which they must be properly compensated. This was the formation of the Nigerian political and public service elite, a special group of citizens that had to be pampered disproportionately for the work they do, regardless of the cost-effectiveness of such benefits.

    I still remember when I started as a young clerk in the Federal Office of Statistics in Obalende in 1963 and had to be transferred later to the Ibadan office in Mokola. I was asked by the accounts officer in Lagos to list what I needed to carry to Ibadan on the train. I told the man, “just my box.” He laughed and said that to compute my entitlements profitably I should have a few things.When I received my allowance for my train ride to Ibadan, I was awarded money for bicycle, boxes, and many other things I cannot remember now. Counting the money in the envelope, I looked puzzled and the man in the cash office reminded me that that was the benefit of going to school to qualify for such jobs.  Elite or those being prepared for that status had to dress differently from other people in the country; they had to eat more extravagantly than them as illustrated by serving undergraduates then a quarter of chicken on Sundays when an entire family had to make do with one chicken. Grooming the elite in Nigeria after independence was on the model of the expatriate coloniser. The post-colonial elite was organised and nurtured till this day to illustrate exploitation of the many by the few.

    Since the example of structure of compensation for colonial administrators, Nigeria had not had time or reason to rethink and adopt rational cost and benefit approach to compensating its politicians and public servants, particularly those considered to be special by the compensating agency which invariably include those who also receive the prizes of being special citizens. For example, our lawmakers’ access to outlandish benefits that set them apart from others is a bastardisation of the remuneration system inherited from colonialism. How else does one explain wardrobe allowance for men and women in the legislature, special allowance for houses, cooks, drivers, domestic assistants, etc., given the fact that many of such lawmakers did not even have any respectable livelihood before they were selected to contest elections? What makes the job of lawmakers in the NASS any more rigorous than the job of medical doctors in our hospitals? In terms of outcomes, what indicates that the lawmakers add more value to the society than teachers of mathematics in our colleges and universities?

    Extravagant compensation of people in the public service is not only in terms of cash compensation. For example, the new IGP implied in his complaint against his predecessor for vacuuming 24 cars that four cars should have been enough for anyone (meaning retiring IGP) to appropriate as he or she leaves office. Urban folklore is also overflowing with stories of many governors and their deputies being entitled to one two houses built for them after leaving office and three or four cars provided for them periodically free of charge. Even local government chairmen are believed to take with them cars bought for them to use while in office. Urban folklore also tells stories of governors and deputy governors who take with them the furniture provided for them while in office, to tide them over before they receive the new ones for their new homes built for them from public funds. Should anyone be surprised that lawmakers are asking for similar perquisites?

    Even as we speak, former ministers and members of the legislatures who have been paid generous severance benefits, after failing to be re-elected or re-appointed are still going around with three or four police escorts in a country where police-citizen ratio is more than 1 to 1000 citizens. Worse still, even ministers under Obasanjo and under former military dictators are still accompanied by policemen in a country that is not at war. Retired senior civil servants are still receiving free diesel to power their generators as part of non-cash gratuity for donating their talent to the nation.  Many ministers and top civil servants were rumoured to have complained about Buhari’s austerity measure regarding restricting our top men and women in politics and bureaucracy to travelling in business class, instead of the first class that they had been used to. Although all of these may not come under corruption, they are certainly graphic illustrations of a culture of waste that favours the elite while their counterparts in public service not considered special are quickly forgotten after send-off parties.

    Of course, feudalisation of the economy and polity (despite constitutional avowal of equality, equity, and equality to all citizens) through over compensation of political officers and bureaucrats would not have happened if there had been no huge flows of petroleum to make such irrational compensations easy for policy makers. Whatever rents political leaders—military and civilian—were able to collect was always enough to justify policies designed to pamper a few members of the post-colonial feudal class all over the country, for as long as the concept of their special status is made difficult for non-elite members to contest.

    Now that the source of easy funds is dwindling fast, and President Buhari and his party have reaffirmed their commitment to create a just society and reduce poverty, there is no better time for the president to re-commit to bringing waste or squandering of national resources without any consideration for cost-effectiveness, like corruption, under the radar for reform. The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission should be re-invented to do proper cost benefit analysis before allocating funds to politicians and civil servants, if waste is to be curtailed and equality and social justice are to be achieved.