The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Small things that seem to resist change

    It is only intellectual and moral midgets in public authority that can relish ignoring their mistakes, more so when such errors damage the career of innocent citizens

    Despite what some people have called Nigerians’ impatience about change, there are some big things that are being changed almost imperceptibly. For example, names that used to instill fear in the minds of many of the innocent among us are now being picked up by EFCC for investigation and in many cases for detention until such politically ‘oversize’ men and women are able to meet bail conditions. However, many acts of impunity and sloppy management of serious matters are still being condoned or ignored by those in charge of the political machine of change.

    One such avoidable act of impunity is the reported refusal of the Police Service Commission to reverse itself on errors in recent retirement of senior police officers. According to a news report, Femi Ogunbayode, AIG, who was retired for being a senior to the newly appointed Acting Inspector-General, Ibrahim Idris, was in fact a junior of the new IGP. A very disturbing aspect of the news is that a source who pleaded not to be identified had noted that the Police Service Commission refuses to address such egregious error that is capable of demoralising many in the police force and also of scaring citizens in other government employment.

    If this kind of behaviour on the part of any regulatory agency had happened during the era of military dictatorship or even during the regime of impunity that just got replaced through election of a government of change in 2015, most people would not have taken any notice. Such acts would have been regarded as normal in the fashion of ‘business as usual.” Impunity was not strange under military rule and even under civilian regimes that chose to act in the style of military dictators that they succeeded. But, any failure on the part of the Police Service Commission to review the retirement of AIG Ogunbayode can undermine the change agenda. It is true that whoever feels wronged can go to court, but such court process will be a waste of the nation’s resources, just as it will dampen the spirit of voters for change while also embarrassing minders of the machine of change.

    All government agencies are human creations and are thus not expected to be perfect or infallible. But it is a sign of moral irresponsibility for leaders of public agencies to act as if they are omniscient and omnipotent to the point of easily getting away with wanton destruction of innocent citizens. It is a gross misconduct in humane societies for those who have power of oversight over public institutions to disregard the consequence of their mistakes. It is only intellectual and moral midgets in public authority that can relish ignoring their mistakes, more so when such errors damage the career of innocent citizens.

    Generally, individuals and institutions who are used to a culture of impunity often find it difficult to own up to their mistakes. But such failure is an illustration of poor leadership. Good leadership requires that leaders own up to their mistakes and with such choice earn more respect as leaders. A good example is the decision of the British Prime Minister to resign after the BREXIT referendum. David Cameron showed exemplary leadership by accepting responsibility for calling a referendum that appeared to have embarrassed him and his supporters. It is not every mistake by a leader that should lead to resignation. More often than not, just mere acknowledgement of such mistakes and acceptance to undo them is what is expected from good leaders in civilised ethos.

    Another seemingly insignificant aspect of our political culture is the hiring and firing of ghost workers. Recently, spokespersons for federal and state governments have been beating their chests for unearthing and stopping payment of salaries to ghosts as examples of serious effort to cut costs. But Nigerians have been hearing about ghost workers for decades and of efforts by successive governments to kill such ghosts and add their salaries to the nation’s savings. What had never happened and should have happened immediately ghost workers were discovered under the watch of a government under President Buhari of global anti-corruption fame is identification and prosecution of the financial institutions, bank staff, and government officials responsible for paying ghosts. If the federal government is as active as it has been in respect of big corruption cases, there is no reason why the government or any of its agencies should treat stealing of public funds through hiring and paying of ghosts with kid gloves. “Firing’ ghosts from government payrolls is not the best a government can do. Identification and prosecution of creators of ghosts to facilitate stealing of public funds is what is most needed, if the practice of hiring and paying ghost workers is not to recur as it had for the past few decades.

    Still on business-as-usual or casual governance, the recent increase of public holidays for this year’sEid-el-Fitri from the normal two days to three cannot but surprise believers in the government of change. Many years ago, the public holiday for this important religious festival was one day. It grew to two days on account of the case made by military rulers for balance between the two major imported religions: Islam and Christianity. It was argued that the two days for Easter: Good Friday and Easter Monday are Christian holidays and even that Christmas day and Boxing day are also in honour of Christianity. The philosophy in most of the other Islamic countries is to give a full day of rest to Muslims who have fasted for 30 days and thus allow them to celebrate such rest day without job-related encumbrances. Granted that lunar calendar is not fixed, it should have been enough to limit the two-day holiday to Tuesday and Wednesday initially announced by the federal government. Since the real day of festivity is Wednesday worldwide, nothing would have been lost if Nigerian Muslims had been asked to make do with the eve and the day of Eid-el-Fitri. It is an avoidable paradox to ring the bell of economic productivity to the countries of the world and then suddenly relapse into the Manna economy of petroleum that makes commitment to the culture of productive economy un-necessary. Apart from absence of production for three days in the past week, such an extended holiday also has the tendency to overburden celebrators of Eid-el-Fitri. It is too soon to give the world the impression that we are incapable of outgrowing the awuff economy of oil.

    One other practice in the days of ‘business-as-usual’ governance style is the belief that anyone regardless of expertise can serve as public relations make-up artist for the president. At a recent celebration of President Buhari’s appointment of Cross River and Akwa Ibom men and women to federal positions, those who tried to help burnish the image of the president, though with good intentions, chose the wrong packaging for their message. For example, in response to charges of lopsided appointments by the president in the security sector, made prominently at a recent alliance talks between self-characterised leaders of Yoruba and Ijaw nationalities, the Head of Federal Civil Service, Minister of Niger Delta, and Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters dodged the issue in contention. They focused on appointments that are not related to the claim of Ijaw leaders from Bayelsa, Rivers, and Delta at the Eko Hotel meeting about appointment by the president of 14 out of 17 security heads from the North, leaving three to the South. The argument that Nigeria is configured not in terms of North and South but in terms of states only skirts the issue. Such interpretation of the constitution has not put to rest the allegation of lopsided appointments, given the fact that there are only 19 states in the North and 17 in the South. Such intricate matters are better left to professional public relations experts in the presidency.  To have attempted to appeal to those who feel aggrieved that Federal Character principles have not been violated because the appointments were made on merit does not help matters. Is this an admission that the other states not given such appointments lack people of merit? It can be counter-productive to give the impression that the talent to do any type of work in the country is region- or state-specific. It was the need to prevent born-to-rule or born-to-administer syndrome that stimulated the Federal Character principle, at a time that some regions had less trained manpower than others.

  • APC and the Edo/Ondo governorship elections

     “Our attention has been drawn to the latest statement by the PDP spokesman, Olisa Metuh, alleging that President Muhammadu Buhari is ‘demarketing Nigeria’. “We restate for the umpteenth time to Mr. Metuh and his ilk that their attempts to distract President Buhari from the job he has been elected to do will fail. “President Buhari will remain true to the virtues of honesty, integrity, sincerity, incorruptibility and plain-speaking, which endeared him to Nigerians and made them prefer his leadership to that of a lying and deceptive PDP administration. “The president will not, in the guise of ‘marketing’ the country, refrain from telling Nigerians and the world, the emerging truths about the abject state in which years of plundering by a PDP leadership has left the Nigerian treasury and economy.  “President Buhari will not in the name of ‘marketing’ or ‘attracting’ investors, follow in the footsteps of the ousted PDP administration and its discredited officials, who shamelessly lied to Nigerians and the world about the buoyancy and vibrancy of an economy they had bled dry for personal gain, when it was very obvious to the discerning, that the Nigerian economy was headed for serious trouble.” -Presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina

    At his first coming as military Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari presided over a thoroughly precarious Nigeria. The economic situation would have been tough enough even if he wasn’t surrounded by a slew of over ambitious military officers – amongst them a consummate tactician and strategist, popularly known as the evil genius – all of who coalesced as fifth columnists and finally unhorsed him.  He has come back, in his latest re-incarnation as president, to meet a far more debilitating economic circumstance. When you add the Nigeria’s high level of insecurity and a National Assembly leadership far gone in infamy, and as dangerous as the fifth columnists of yore, you are forced to ask under what kind of stars the General was born. Far worse, however, is the fact that, completely unaware that his predecessor was presiding over what was essentially a shell of a country, with its entire finances in shambles (no thanks to the colony of predators Jonathan surrounded himself with) incoming President Buhari and the APC had, on the hustings, presented to Nigerians, a manifesto that would quite easily have freed them from the consequences of PDP’s suffocating 16 year strangle hold. To that dire circumstances must be added the massive drop in the price of crude oil, the one product the country depends on for its economic survival, from over 100 dollars per barrel to slightly over 30 dollars; a situation which led the president and the party to take a second look at the promises they made when they had no idea what PDP kleptomaniacs have done to the country.

    I have gone to all this length to let Nigerians know that PDP, not Buhari nor the APC, is the cause of Nigerians’ current pains. They, of the PDP, had literally stolen more than the owner and, had President Jonathan won his re-election bid, Nigeria would today have been far worse than Venezuela where citizens now queue for the commonest food item for survival. Without a doubt, PDP in Edo and Ondo states would, ahead of the governorship elections, like to roll up their sleeves recounting how they believe President Buhari and his party have deceived Nigerians but with no thought as to what led us to where we are.  However, before they do that, I would like them to remember the limitless ways in which they stole Nigeria blind; ways in which they shamelessly pocketed billions that were meant to kit our fighting forces against a truculent Boko Haram. Had they allowed that to happen, we would have lost far less number of soldiers and save thousands of our compatriots from becoming widows and orphans. Nor would we have the daunting task of having to take care of millions of internally displaced persons made up mostly of women and children.

    I am addressing this piece primarily to citizens of Edo and Ondo states where gubernatorial elections are due very soon. They must not make the mistake of taking the tree for the forest. Whether in the two states or in the country as a whole, PDP has no record of achievement on which it can campaign for victory at any election in Nigeria today.  They will, therefore, attempt to build their campaign around what the miserable party claims are the failings of the Buhari administration. They will attempt to poo-pooh the anti-corruption war and sing panegyrics  to their claim that it is selective; their leadership, dressed in uniforms on which  is emblazoned their tattered umbrella, will tell the people something like, as  I  read elsewhere: “Buhari promised to reduce the pump price of  petroleum products, but raised it by the highest margin ever, he promised to steady power supply but we have far less supply at a higher tariff, Buhari and his party promised not to devalue the naira but ended up imposing the worst foreign exchange rate on Nigerians etc”. It will be unlike them to remember that they stole 15 billion dollars meant for arms; they won’t remember that they had oil mafias  to which they awarded millions of barrels of crude  but for which not one dollar was paid into the federation account nor would they mention anything about how Boko Haram established enclaves in many local government areas where they flew their flags  because of  a futile attempt by the Jonathan administration to ensure that elections did not hold in the Northeast where they  knew  they did not have a ghost of a chance. PDP must also be reminded of how 16 billion dollars was spent on electricity and power generation with nothing to show for it. So corrosive and barren was the PDP record in all of its 16-year stranglehold on the country that the party cannot, in all conscience, hold up much as achievement. On the hustings in Edo and Ondo, the APC must make a sing song of all these lest PDP ‘gang rape’ the electorate again. The people must be made aware that PDP chieftains are sitting on billions of stolen money with which they will attempt to sway them. These smart Alecs must be rejected, and stopped in their tracks, whatever the inducement.

    It must, however, be borne in mind that the greatest effort towards achieving victory in the two gubernatorial elections rests with the APC leadership which must ensure that the process of electing the governorship candidate in both states is unimpeachable. The primary election must be open and manifestly transparent. APC must work with history in mind. The leadership must bear in mind, the various instances, in which the party had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory simply because of imposition of candidates. With a transparent and an unimpeachable process, whoever lost would know that he/she had not been fraudulently outsmarted and would, therefore, not back away from supporting whoever emerged. Happily, Edo State primary is over with the more popular candidate emerging. But the party leadership, under the sterling lead of  the  governor, must go further to smoothen whatever rough edges remain and, as already suggested by Comrade Matthew Omiohe,  a chieftain of the party in the state, Governor Adams Oshiomhole must consider no sacrifice too much in the effort to ensure  that the party goes into the election as a united and indivisible family. He has done so much for the state than to see a revisionist party wangle its way to victory to undo all he has achieved. Great care and a very high sense of responsibility must be brought to bear in Ondo State where very many contestants are involved. Given the contending forces, the party must ensure a level paying ground for all lest they play into the hands of the PDP which, incidentally, is the party in power in the state. The party must do everything possible to avert any post-primary crises. PDP, whether in states or nationally, has so self-destroyed by the way it ruled in the past 16 years that victory in both Edo and Ondo should, be a certainty.

  • There was a time before neoliberalism; will there be a time after neoliberalism? (1)

    There was a time before neoliberalism; will there be a time after neoliberalism? (1)

    Note: The texts of this week’s and next week’s columns come from a keynote lecture that I delivered at the 2016 National Delegates’ Conference of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at the University of Uyo on May 16, 2016. These texts are being made public in this forum for the historical records.

    Comrade President, members of the National Executive of our great Union, delegates, invited guests, ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to be among you today, not only to give this keynote lecture but also to be a participant in the open sessions of the Conference. Two years ago, I was also a participant in the National Educational Summit in Abuja. I mention that occasion now because it marked the first occasion of what I hope will be my return to an active, elder’s participation in the affairs and struggles of our Union. For the youngest of those present at this Conference, I would like to draw attention to the fact that it was about thirty-five years ago that I became the National President of ASUU. Thirty-five years may be – and is indeed – a long time, but I assure you that to me, it is as if it was only yesterday! This is because becoming ASUU National President was a big, life-changing experience for me and I dare say for all those who succeeded me as the Union’s National President. For this and many other reasons, any occasion that brings me back to our Union is laden with memories of how and where this extraordinarily formative experience with ASUU came about.

    By a rather interesting coincidence, the coming of neoliberalism to our country and our continent was a crucial world-historical background or context for that period of my presidency of ASUU. In other words, neoliberalism, the theme of this Conference, had a lot to do with what has been described as the emergence of a clearly ideological ASUU under the leadership of the first five or six National Presidents of ASUU starting from 1980. Of course we did not initially know that neoliberalism was the driving ideological force underpinning our struggles and the struggles of African peoples and other peoples throughout the developing world- and even the struggles of workers and poor people in the rich countries of the global North. However, by the middle of that decade of the 80s that awareness, that knowledge had penetrated the deepest and innermost recesses of our individual and collective consciousness and we had absorbed the lessons of this knowledge.

    Comrade President, permit me to make what I am stating here obvious and it is this: the theme of this Conference has a rich resonance for me and I dare say for all of us who were in leadership positions in ASUU during that decade of the 1980s. It is this resonance that influenced the choice of both the title and the contents of my talk this lecture. This title is: “There was a time before neoliberalism; will there be a time after neoliberalism? – Nigerian and African Perspectives”.

    My unambiguous answer to the two parts of this question is of course, yes, there was a time before neoliberalism and there surely will be a time after neoliberalism. At the risk of oversimplifying things but as a sort of opening move in my talk, permit me to succinctly summarize the essential ideological character and political economy of the time both before the high tide of neoliberalism: In that period, it was still possible to articulate and struggle for alternatives to the domination of our national economy by foreign and local oligarchs to the detriment of the vast majority of our peoples. Moreover, these alternatives to the combined forces of local and foreign oppressors could be found not only in the usual location at the far Left margins of the public sphere but right at the center of mainstream politics in Nigeria and the developing world. However, with the emergence of neoliberalism and its rise to global hegemony, alternatives to foreign domination and local oppression were all forced intoa retreat from which they have never recovered, a retreat to apoint where they almost completely disappeared in our national affairs, especially with regard to ruling class party politics. As this will be a crucial point in this lecture, permit to repeat this observation, this ideological and theoretical claim: before neoliberalism, both capitalist and non-capitalist alternatives to domination and control of our national economy by local and foreign oligarchs were very visibly and actively promoted; with the rise of neoliberalism to dominance in virtually all the nations of the planet, a world within which there seemed to be no viable alternatives to global, regional and national free market capitalism became a norm, a sort of end-of-history port of arrival for our planet and its nations and peoples.

    Comrades, let me repeat: the world, our world was very different in 1980 when I became ASUU National President and this is why I have chosen to speak in terms of generational experiences in my reflections on the world before and after neoliberalism in this talk. At the most easily perceptible levels, both capitalist and non-capitalist models of development could be easily found in our country’s ruling class party politics in the period. Perhaps the most telling examples are cases like the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) that was liberal and welfarist in its programs and the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) that was radically social-democratic in its ideology and policies. As a matter of fact, and from the historical record, let us recall that in the mid to late 1970s before ASUU became ideological, trade unions, students’ organizations and independent movements of radicals in the professions were militantly proactive in their opposition to the control of the national economy by local and foreign oligarchs. Ife;ABU, Zaria; BUK; Nsukka; Benin and many other campuses were vibrant with an activism that defined patriotism in terms of national unity, social justice and the pursuit of the common good.

    Beyond these overt and dynamic socio-political processes, I am actually more interested in an ethos, a culture in which neoliberal ideas and policies were so strange, and ran so counter to the general tendencies of the period that people who spoke for them and acted on their presuppositions were not only in the minority but were extremely defensive in their pronouncements and activities. For instance, the brazen and militant gospel of prosperity of the megachurches of the present period would have shocked nearly everyone in the country’s political and ‘ethical’mainstream in the late 70s and early 1980s. Similarly,quintessentially neoliberal articles of faith of the present period like the privatization of every single one of our public enterprises and deregulation of controls meant to protect public and national interestswould have been totally out of place in the period under review here, the period before neoliberalism became hegemonic. As a matter of fact, one of the then newly ideological ASUU’s most popular monographs of the time before the hegemony of neoliberalism was a study with the revealing title, “Nigeria Is Not for Sale”. And perhaps most portentous of all, when the regime of Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida conducted a nationwide referendum in 1985 on whether or not Nigeria should take a loan from the IMF that would bring the country under the heel of the notorious SAP instrumentalities, the referendum overwhelmingly recorded an opposition to the IMF, its loans and the specter of debt peonage which it presented to our country. No, Nigeria then was not for sale. Except that in the eventuality, against the verdict of the referendum, Babangida took the IMF loan, massively devalued the naira and placed the country more firmly under the control of foreign domination with the invaluable collusion of the country’s nascent oligarchs with their base in the looting of the state.

    It would of course be convenient to blame it all on either the Babangida regime alone or in combination with the military dictatorships that came after him. But in reality, the factors that made neoliberalism triumphin Nigeria were more complex than that. In other words, neoliberalism would not have recorded its far-ranging ideological successes if all that it had to fall upon to become ideologically dominant and “ethically” persuasivewas military autocracy and our thieving, barawo political elites. I suggest that it would be more productive for us to look carefully into the reasons why having once been very popular and attractive to millions of people in our country, elite and non-elite, ideas and policies like public ownership of key and sensitive enterprises and utilities andregulatory instruments to protect public and national interests in trade, commerce and industryall eventually fell to the dominance of neoliberalism. In making this suggestion, I have in mind the subtitle of the theme of this conference: “Neoliberalism: Ending the Conspiracy”. So was there a ‘conspiracy’ that worked in Nigeria and many other countries in Africa and the developing world to make neoliberalism hegemonic?

    I think the answer to this question is yes – if by that answer you spell out what the “conspiracy” was and how it has worked so effectively. In my opinion, one way in which this could be usefully accomplished is to take seriously the ultimate locus of the claim of the superiority of neoliberalism in efficiency, competitiveness and the pursuit of the social good over opposing ideas like public or state-owned enterprises; strict regulation of trade and commerce in the national interest; and investment in public sector services, utilities and institutions. This locus is the financial services industry of contemporary capitalism which is also known by the technocratic lingo of “financialization”. In other words, beyond military autocracy and the ideological opportunism of thieving political elites, it was “financialization” that more or less effectively brought neoliberalism to Nigerian capitalism. For this reason, it provides our most objective and useful tool for critically deconstructing the truth claims of neoliberalism and exposing the tissue of lies and half-truths on which it is actually based. To do this, permit me to draw specifically from collective experiences of academics inthe Nigeria that we knew and in which we struggled before neoliberalism became dominant as ideology and above all else, asan ethos.

    It was one of the most unpleasant, if not the most harrowing encounters that we, academics,used to have with Nigerian bureaucracy, this being the business of obtaining foreign exchange for professional purposes of diverse kinds. These included travel abroad to attend vital conferences; buying books and equipment from the convertible currency countries of Europe and North America and having them shipped to Nigeria;getting approval for payment of stipends and allowances during extended stints of study abroad. In each single instance, after getting the support and approval of your own institution’s Registry and Bursary, you had to make day-long or two-day trips to Lagos where you had to go for approval in each of the following arms of the federal bureaucracy: the office of the Secretary to the Federal Government; the Ministry of Finance; and the Central Bank. I remember distinctly that apart from the physical exertions, it was also a soul-wearying experience that demanded of one supreme patience with civil servants who apparently took perverse delight in lording it over academics, no matter how fleeting this exercise of power and authority was.

    Stories and anecdotes from this period of severe protectionist regulation of transactions between our national currency, the naira, and the convertible currencies of the world now seem like tales from another epoch, another lifetime. In place of those harrowing trips to Lagos, anytime that I am in Ibadan these days I don’t even have to travel out of my own neighborhood in the city, Oke-Bola, to remit and receive funds to and from abroad. More crucially, far beyond the issue of the personal or individual convenience of neoliberalism-inspired banking services in Nigeria, the benefits extend to all segments of the economy, including small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs), numerically the largest and most vibrant sector of our national economy. Thus, strictly in terms of technocratic efficiency and the benefits that derive from the connection of our national economy to global circuits for the movement of capital across the whole world to make businesses and enterprises grow and prosper, the protectionist regulations and practices of the pre-neoliberalism period in Nigeria are uncontestably inferior to the facilities and services offered by the “free trade” financial services of the present period. This, in a nutshell, was what secured the hegemony of neoliberalism in our country. As we shall see in next week’s column, this was and is not the end of the story.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Buhari presidency needs fresh thinking

    Buhari presidency needs fresh thinking

    SINCE the appointment of Acting Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, analysts, politicians and columnists from the Southeast have been exasperated with President Muhammadu Buhari over his seeming deliberateness in disregarding and excluding Igbo representation in the country’s security (military and paramilitary) apparatus. They are right to feel incensed. It is indeed hard to imagine that the president assembled his security team and omitted Igbo representation by accident. If indeed it was accidental, then it is a reflection of the quality of his kitchen cabinet; a cabinet this column has thrice taken to task for its structural insularity. But if the security team was assembled with careful and, as the presidency appears to argue, meritorious deliberateness, then it is even more baffling and provocative, a reflection of something much more insidious in the presidency, something more calculating, more subverting of national ethos.

    Shortly after the president began to assemble his kitchen cabinet last year and showed a predilection for parochialism, this column warned that it presaged a dangerous trend that might disallow the president from enjoying a broad perspective of ideas, suggestions, viewpoints and philosophies that conduce to national cohesion and stability. The column also warned that if no one leaned on the president to change tack, the narrow base from which he was recruiting his close staff, not to say the wider cabinet, could get even narrower and ideologically insular. But the presidency’s response to the fears and criticisms was one of impatience. The public should wait until the entire cabinet was assembled, presidential aides growled. Now both the kitchen cabinet and the general cabinet have been assembled, and neither gives any indication that the president appreciates the political, nay, democratic, imperatives of his team, nor of the country. Worse, as it is now evident, even the country’s security apparatus does not reflect the country’s diversity, religion and geopolitics. Is no one embarrassed?

    Presidential aides will want to respond testily to Igbo allegation of alienation, for even the president himself seldom reacts to such matters with the urgency and liberal disposition the controversy calls for. The refrain is often that the president would select only those he trusts, and that in any case, members of his team, or teams, merit their appointments. Perhaps, too, presidential aides would suggest that the shape, structure and colour of the security team are a safeguard against unforeseen circumstances that may be triggered by the president’s tough and unsparing measures to sanitise Nigeria, and a reflection of the intensity and quality of the work he plans to do to revamp Nigeria. Both responses would not only be misplaced, they would be insensitive and wrong-headed. For a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society like Nigeria, the conclusion many have drawn is that the president’s kitchen cabinet, general cabinet and security team are polarising, unrepresentative and damaging of national ethos and cohesion.

    The first and indeed most significant consequence of these skewed and absolutely indefensible appointments is that it definitely constricts the representativeness of the president’s policy options. This column gave this warning last year at least three times. But at the time, many top government officials read meaning to the warnings, believing self-servingly that this column, though not being this paper’s editorial, spoke the minds of the paper’s owners. Today, after the composition of everything there is to compose, it is evident that the Igbo have virtually been shut out. If they complain, the president has a duty to regard the complaints as sensible and justified. The complaints are to help him make solid and meaningful adjustments, and lay an even solider foundation for Nigeria’s future. Nigerian unity, as he must be painfully aware, is not cast in granite. It must be serviced, nurtured and groomed.

    Given the unfortunate skewness of the president’s appointments and the general inappropriateness of his policies, not to talk of their ad hocism and disregard for ethnic fairness and social justice, it is beginning to look like even the ongoing anti-corruption campaign is nothing but a smoke screen to rally people behind the president. As this column has maintained, the anti-corruption war is still a battle against the symptoms of corruption, not a systemic attempt to tackle the malaise from its very roots. Had it been a well-structured battle, one that is underpinned by an uplifting, coherent and structured philosophy, the collateral damage being witnessed would have been feeble and short-lived. Had that structured philosophy been identified and enunciated, it would have led to a wider and more encompassing campaign to remake the country and put it on a sound, stable, peaceful and solid footing to compete with other nations in the 21st century. The anti-corruption war, which is virtually the only serious campaign being waged by the Buhari presidency, would have been just a subset of the whole, organised and executed brilliantly, perhaps more effectively and without distractions and fanfare.

    Had that structured philosophy constituted the government’s policy framework, an overall picture of where the Buhari presidency wants to go or where he wants to take the country would have been evident. That philosophy would have averted or destroyed the impunity of unlawfully sacking 12 vice chancellors and their councils last February, not to talk of the embarrassing appointments of at least three of their replacements from a single university and region. Irrespective of the internal politics of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), it would also have made the unlawful sacking of its governing council also impossible. That philosophy would have made the meddlesomeness and deliberate perpetration of injustice inspired by certain forces in the federal government and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the Kogi governorship election conundrum unthinkable. That philosophy would have keenly recognised the lopsidedness of the country’s security appointments and redrawn a more viable, inclusive and lasting security structure for Nigeria. Furthermore, the sensitive portfolios in the general cabinet would have been widely distributed to eschew any feeling of alienation and, conversely, exceptionalism.

    Apart from obviating the danger of alienating almost the entire south from the key and inner workings of the Buhari presidency, that structured philosophy would have engendered fresh thinking on the economic, social and political crises facing the nation. Notwithstanding the best efforts of the Buhari presidency, it has failed to recognise that there is a desperate economic emergency that must be tackled with new and brilliant ideas. It now seems that an economic emergency may never be declared, for the president apparently appears fascinated with jaded economic ideas, many of which he has startlingly repeated in flagrant disregard of economists’ advice. He has, for instance, grudgingly allowed market forces to determine the value of the Naira. But a few days ago he still wondered aloud about the efficacy of a measure he loathed and publicly denounced.

    That structured philosophy simply does not take cognisance of the horrifying social dilemmas the country is also facing. Anarchy is overwhelming the country, and whole regions and communities are unsafe, some as a result of poverty and hunger for which no methodical and lasting policies are directed, and others as a result of the government’s pussyfooting over herdsmen attacks. Cultists, kidnappers, impersonators of security officers (which by itself is a reflection of the consistent abuse of power by the government and its agents), and all manner of perversions have taken over the country. Worse, by its misinterpretation and misuse of the constitution, the federal government and its agents are stoking political disharmony in many areas of the nation, including Ekiti, Kogi and Rivers. It presumes rightly that in some of the states governed by execrable characters, the public would support its unconstitutional moves.

    In short, the absence of a structured philosophy of government has created a vision vacuum, subverted or weakened the justice system, begun to crowd out free speech and dissent, and is failing miserably to tackle the urgent existential problems confronting the country. It is clear that even this government will fare worse in terms of laying a solid foundation for democracy and the rule of law. It lacks the requisite temperament, discipline, patience and brilliance. It wrongly believes that if it somehow stabilises the economy — a feat that is looking increasingly doubtful — it would have succeeded in its assignment. Nothing could be wronger.

    If President Buhari did not directly orchestrate the deliberately skewed arrangements being complained of by the Igbo and other groups in the south, he should take the complaints and criticisms against the skewness of his appointments seriously. He has the power to right the wrongs. He should exercise it. His predecessors refused to lay the needed foundation for democracy, economic rejuvenation and rule of law; but he should assemble a team of economists and advisers to bring about the new ethos he promised the country, an ethos which is now sadly being pursed superficially by a crowd of presidential aides and ministers whose perspectives are coloured by a single and insular idea. Things should not get worse than they already are in order for alienation not to breed defiance.

     

  • FRSC and expired tyres

    FRSC and expired tyres

    If we punish motorists who can’t afford imported tyres, what happens to those who killed our local tyre makers?

    It was while flipping through the papers on Friday in search of what to write on that I stumbled on a story in one of the national dailies titled “Churches, new tenants of old industrial estates”. There was a particular quote in the story that attracted my attention: “Churches would have taken over the entire complex by now. There is no month pastors do not come to ask whether there are vacant spaces. Even when you tell them that we do not allow churches to open here, they will continue to come”. The dominant pictures on the story, well positioned in the centre-spread were those of an abandoned plant of Dunlop Nig. Plc and a section of the premises now occupied by a church.

    This is the story of the ‘new Nigeria’, where churches have almost completely taken over most warehouses left by major industrial giants of old. Ordinarily, it would have been a plus, but it has turned out a minus because the proliferation of churches (and mosques) has not reflected positively on the attitudes of many Nigerians. In fact, one would not be wrong to say the more churches (and mosques) we have, the more sins our people commit. What we would have gained by way of spiritual rejuvenation due to the death of those industrial giants of the past we also lost because the churches and mosques are not as much concerned about salvation as they are about prosperity. Even in mosques where this does not sound so pronounced, it is evident in the way the leaders eulogise those who can honour Allah with their substance.

    Anyway, this is not my focus today.

    My focus, rather, is on the experiences of many Nigerians in the hands of Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) personnel in their campaign against expired tyres. I heard of some of these experiences on radio and had also read some in the newspapers. Interestingly, in the process of researching into the issue, just as I was about putting this piece together on Friday, I stumbled on a report credited to the FRSC Head of Media and Strategy, Bisi Kazeem, to the effect that the commission had not started to ticket people for using expired tyres and that all it is doing is sensitising motorists to the dangers of using expired tyres. This was a big relief; not in the sense of encouraging Nigerians to use expired tyres but at least to the extent that the commission is still at the enlightenment stage on the matter. “We do not issue tickets for expired tyres. Our focus for now is to improve advocacy. That is why we have organised series of awareness campaigns across the country. We are still engaging the motoring public in this direction. The FRSC operational guidelines have not changed. We do not ask motorists for waste basket; that allegation is also wrong,” Kazeem said.

    Without doubt, the FRSC means well by asking us to go for tyres that have not expired. Many of us know the importance of tyres to vehicles and to safety, particularly as they are the only contact the vehicles have with the roads. Many who did not know before are beginning to know, thanks to the enlightenment campaigns of the FRSC and some media stations on this. So, no one in his or her right senses would go for expired tyres if there is the means to get the ones that have not expired. It costs about N50,000 (minimum) to buy five new tyres for a car at a go, including the spare tyre. How many people can spend such amount on tyres in our shrinking economy? If it is this expensive to get new tyres for a car, then how much would it cost to have for commercial buses, trucks, tankers, trailers, etc?

    Unless we want to deceive ourselves, this is huge, considering our wage structure and the state of the country’s economy. That is why all I do whenever this point is raised on radio about expired tyres is chuckle when the presenters tried to let the callers know the cost in terms of accidents. Sometimes, I see the presenters making such point too trying to say it because they could not have said otherwise, lest they be seen as promoting the ‘wrong’ values. There is no conviction even from some of the presenters because they know what things look like out there. How many of them with cars can boast that some or all of their tyres have not expired?

    The sad aspect of it all is that we used to have two functional tyre manufacturing companies in this country – Michelin and Dunlop. That is how the introductory part of this piece comes in. Today, they are no more. Although some might say Dunlop still exists, those who knew Dunlop in its heyday would know that what we have on Dunlop premises today in Ikeja, Lagos, is only a caricature of the Dunlop Nig. Plc proper. What is particularly distressing is the fact that some people led the country to the situation where many companies had to leave here for more conducive environments. Most of these people who brought the country to this sorry pass are still walking our streets free; many of them are carrying the country’s merit awards and national honours. Many of them do not have to go through what the ordinary man is going through on the streets in the hands of overzealous or corrupt FRSC officials who are taking advantage of what is perhaps a not-too-clear directive from the commission’s authorities as to what to do to motorists with expired tyres. Even if the FRSC officials are able to stop the ordinary Nigerian to inspect the state of his tyres, these people who led the country into the situation where we now import tyres would not be victims because of their statuses in the society, irrespective of whether their tyres have expired. Moreover, many of them must have stolen public funds to last a lifetime that would not make buying of expired tyres their portion. So, where do we go from here? It is the ordinary man on the streets who contributed nothing to the problem that will pay the price and get punished for the crimes of some irresponsible leaders. If we had functional tyre manufacturers in the country, and even if the price is high, we would at least know that it is our economy we are growing when we buy locally-made tyres.

    The case of Dunlop is particularly distressing because a few years before it went comatose, it had obtained billions of Naira syndicated loan to upgrade its facilities. I remember the fanfare that attended the commissioning of its new All Steel Radial Truck Tyre Expansion Project on which it spent a good portion of the loan. Successive ministers of trade and investments assured the company all would be well; yet did nothing to bring that to fruition.

    But it is not only expired tyres that cause road crashes; there are also bad roads to contend with; another result of bad leadership. If the government is saying that it does not have the means to fix all roads at once, should the same government now hold it against people, who also for lack of means, can only afford expired tyres?  Worse still, we have seen situations where brand new tyres had burst due to bad portions of roads in many instances. Can the citizens sue the government for this because it is the duty of government to ensure that roads are motorable? It is the same logic.

    But nothing here suggests my support for expired tyres. However, what I would urge the FRSC to do is to continue its enlightenment campaign on the dangers of using expired tyres and how to know them because of the antics of some tyre sellers who change the dates on the tyres before selling to unsuspecting customers. Moreover, the commission would do well to let Nigerians know that the fact that a tyre is new or looks new does not mean it could not have expired or that its expiry date is still far away. I have seen people, knowledgeable people for that matter, who bought brand new tyres and the tyres burst within days of purchase.

    Again, the commission should not rush to the defence of its officers and men when members of the public accuse them of some untoward behaviour. This is common among our uniformed agencies. The truth is; some of the officers and men are either themselves ignorant of their briefs or are overzealous or even deliberately get mischievous in order to extort members of the public. What the commission should do, as in the case of expired tyres, is to carry out ‘sting operations’, especially in areas where motorists’ complaints about abuses are frequent. They will be surprised at the result. The same thing happens at licensing offices or when people want to collect driver’s licence. Extortions go on daily in many of these centres. Yet, when the senior officials of the concerned agencies are confronted with these abuses in the media, they deny and make those who made the allegations look like liars. It is not always so.

  • Democracy and fear mongering

    Democracy and fear mongering

    Instead of seeing separation of powers as mechanisms for checking and balancing the three branches of government in a presidential system, many senators are calling for opposition of powers.

    There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.—Lord Acton

    Like everything else about our country, no institution is guaranteed the stability, most especially under the watch of those charged to nurture it. Even democracy, under the new government of change, is already being turned into a problemat the hands of persons empowered by electoral democracy who, for personal reasons, feel compelled to become fear mongerscommitted to replacing agenda setting with distractions.

    The new army of warriors for democracy in the country via fear stoking has many battalions. One group is of lawmakers not at ease with the executive’s notion of change. Another is a grouping of Christian propagandists from various denominations. And another is a band of ethnic leaders not openly avenging any wrong but just only acting to strengthen a dare-devil enclave of self-proclaimed avengers. As starkly different as these groups are, one thing connects all of them. Each of the groups presents itself as the country’s post-Jonathan patriotic vanguard for democracy and justice. All the groups have a flair to see the intention to destroy democracy on the faces of those who may disagree with the view that venality in government in the last four years is something that should be expunged from the agenda of a government voted for citizens’ hunger for change.

    Top lawmakers in the 8th Senate are already building fears in the minds of citizens about threats to our democracy, largely on account of efforts by the executive to fulfill one of its main functions: law enforcement, crime detection, and prosecution. Although simmering for months since the Buhari’s change agenda started with identification of individuals who, in the words of Chinua Achebe in AMan of the People, had taken too much from the nation’s tilly for the owner not to notice, massive fear mongering broke out when two principal officers in the senate got mentioned in a charge of forgery of rules used to select senate’s principal officers. The struggle to save democracy from the executive branch now appears to be full blown to inspire (or incite?) citizens to take their democratic country back from abusers. Currently, a new battle line has been drawn by senate gladiators to fight what they consider as hidden agenda on the part of the executive to destroy the principle of separation of powers.

    Senators who were initially content with accompanying the senate president to court in a show of solidarity on an earlier charge of false declaration have now thrown all cautions to the wind by proclaiming that the legislative branch would stop cooperating or supporting the president. Some have pledged to suspend approval of the president’s nominees for ambassadorship and other assignments while a few went further to stop supporting the president’s war on corruption. It did not stop there with senators at war. Many top senate officers and their supporters are making strenuous efforts to redefine the concept of separation of powers. To them Locke’s and Montesquieu’s preference for a government with three separate branches to check the power of each other gets a new definition. Instead of seeing separation of powers as mechanisms for checking and balancing the three branches of government in a presidential system, many senators are calling for opposition of powers. What was designed as political effort to achieve public and social order is fast becoming in the hands of some senators as a war to appropriate powers constitutionally reserved for the executive branch. The offence that calls for senators’ decision to frustrate the president from now on is failure on his part to discourage his attorney-general from enforcing the country’s laws, with respect to the integrity of the rules under which some senators obtained authority as principals of the 8th senate. Under the new interpretation of opposition of powers, senators have started to harass the attorney-general with summons to appear before them to explain why he chose to accuse the country’s “co-presidents in the senate” of such ridiculous action as forging any rule.

    As expected, media owners must have been smiling to the banks from revenue generated by sensationalising in the past few days of the war to save democracy from murderous hands of the executive. Citizens who have little training in critical reading must have been scared to death that the country’s democracy is under serious attack. As is often the case with the Nigeria factor of everything around here, rumour about attempted coup d’etat became a popular theme at bus stops and beer parlours. Consequently, leaders of the armed forces felt obliged to re-assure citizens of stability and commitment of the armed forces from top to bottom to abide by the function given to them by the constitution: protect the country’s territorial integrity, citizens from external attacks, and the government elected to govern the country and its people.

    On another front, some Christian leaders are sending text messages to citizens to warn them about the danger in what they see as marginalisation of followers of Jesus by the government of a president who follows Mohammed but rules with a vice president who is a respectable Pentecostal evangelist. With conflicting views of separate Christian leaders, the community of followers of Jesus in the country appears divided at present. Some pastors are giving assurance in the media that they are in support of President Buhari’s war on corruption. Yet another group is warning citizens through text messages and media announcements about imminentArmageddon on account of marginalisation of Christians in federal appointments by Buhari.

    Worse still, even nationalities that are not known for complaining about marginalisation on account of their own exaggerated opinions of their achievements are already in the news as engaging in diplomatic shuttles across regions to negotiate with other nationalities perceived to be fellow victims of marginalisation, without reference to co-members of such nationalities who are outside the cartels for power. Incidentally (or coincidentally?), some of such leaders also accused Jonathan of marginalisation during his administration until President Jonathan then quickly did the needful. For example, when some leaders arranged to meet Jonathan on the matter of marginalisation four years ago, they had on their agenda the percentage of persons from their nationality appointed into juicy MDAs by Jonathan, not direly needed repair of the federal roads on which hundreds of their fellow men and women die prematurely on account of lack of repair. Today’s focus is not on demands of specific nationalities or regions for de-marginalisation.

    It is about deafening distractions from self-appointed warriors for democracy in our country— lawmakers who may have acted to get noticed by warriors against corruption, failed politicians and self-appointed cultural and community leaders aspiring to obtain political power or influence. Citizens need to be helped to know that fighting corruption is not tantamount to corroding democracy.

    There is a short Yoruba folktale that those engaged in distracting attention from the war on corruption can get some wisdom from. It goes thus: Olongo and Tiintiin were close friends in the avian world. Tiintiin travelled out of his town for one year and left his wife in the care of Olongo. When Tiintiin came back home, he noticed that his wife was pregnant and showed his surprise at the development. His wife confessed that she was pregnant for Olongo, listing all the reasons for succumbing to Olongo’s entreaties. Anytime Tiintiin approached Olongo to discuss the state of his wife, Olongo engaged in theatrics of distraction by acting insane. Tiintiin then urged elders to join him in singing to his friend thus: Siwin Olongo, Olongo sinwin, kio to sinwin, o tan oranyinaa o, siwin Olongo,Olongo sinwin (Get mad Olongo for as long as you want, but before you go insane, just let us settle this matter first). Lawmakers with interest in supporting their colleagues, spokespersons for ethnic militant groups, and organisers of marginalised nationalities should just wait for the government branch charged to call to order persons those who had stolen from the country’s treasury, before they all go crazy with the country’s renewed theatre of distractions.

  • President Buhari’s appointments and the federal character concept

    President Buhari’s appointments and the federal character concept

    Not since Abacha has the North so completely dominated all the three arms of the Nigerian government.

    The amalgamation, by fiat, of the Southern  and Northern parts of Nigeria was done based largely  on  a 1914 letter from Lord Lugard to the Secretary of State for the Colonies part of which read as follows: “For some time it has been realised that the total isolation of the North from the South cannot continue indefinitely. The North has no access to the sea except through the South. Its revenue is insufficient to maintain its administration and deficits have to be met by annual grants from the South and the imperial treasury. It is expected that the unification of the North and South would relieve the imperial treasury of the necessity of making such yearly contributions”.

    The amalgamation consummated, it became inevitable that genuine efforts be made to ensure that no part of the country is left behind. These efforts finally culminated in what  is known  as the  Federal Character Concept which, by “virtue of the provisions of the Third Schedule, Part I-C paragraph 8(1) of the 1999 Constitution, is to give effect to section 14 (3) and (4) of the Constitution which states that the composition of the government of the federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the Federal Character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that government  or in any of its agencies.”

    Given Nigeria’s multi-ethnicity, therefore, this is a constitutional provision no Head of State, who wants to succeed, will treat with levity.

    Unfortunately, these provisions have been observed mostly in the breach especially in federal ministries and agencies. For instance, I weighed in on this same subject on an occasion when INEC was becoming something of a Northern fiefdom. In: WHAT GAME IS THE NORTH UP TO  AT INEC? , The Nation September 23, 2012, I wrote: “Can Professor Jega, a celebrated academic and former University Vice-Chancellor, double as an ethnic bigot?  Is the ‘famous’ Professor Oba, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, working in tandem with Jega in his historic role  of a northern irredentist? Or is it as simple as the Federal Character Commission becoming comatose or completely blind and toothless wherever in the Nigerian polity the North wields an unfair advantage?”  To his eternal credit, Professor Jega subsequently effected some changes though not in the appointments which had become a ‘fait accompli, but in the membership of key INEC committees which were strategically put under the control of directors of Northern extraction.

    That ethnic control of federal agencies was one of the shenanigans Nigerians believed they would see discontinued in Buhari’s CHANGE administration .Unfortunately, we are daily seeing evidences of more of the same. So unfair, and very rampant has it become that I have come to the conclusion  that those around the President are not  being  honest  in letting him have the  feed backs  arising from his appointments  most of which have gone to the North with hardly any consideration for the Southern part of the country. It started with his earliest appointments  of  those generally referred to as  his kitchen cabinet  which many Nigerians believe  can very easily  conduct  its business in the  Hausa language.  However, if those around the President have decided to cocoon him, barring him from hearing  negative  comments, I have no doubt, whatever, of my having personally  earned the right to tell the President the truth. This is because, long before his party’s  Presidential primaries  which he won, I have cast my lot with contestant Buhari and was so gun ho in my support for him that Professor Tam David West,  his  very good friend and supporter , readily quoted me where I had written in an article that “Nigeria needed Buhari more than he needs Nigeria”. I did not limit my support for him to my own views only but went further to quote from my readers’ responses; views that were very supportive of his candidature.  I am sure I won him, not a few Nigerians who ended up voting for him at the election proper. While I am impressed with his anti- corruption war which, amongst other things, has exposed the Nigerian army as an institution far worse now than when it was described, by its one time Chief of Army staff, as an army of anything goes, the President has hugely disappointed with his very insular, North-centric appointments.  Or could it be a benign disrespect for the South  as alleged by those who claimed that the President is on record as  saying  that he should not be expected to treat Southerners who voted him 5% the same way as Northerners who voted him 95 %? I can only hope that this is more than a fabrication. His appointments are so unerringly disdainful of   the South that  one begins to think  that the President has been captured by a cabal – a Katsina Mafia – as Dr Junaid Mohammed  suggests, who is dictating who to appoint to where.

    Much as I hate the comparison, these appointments very uncannily mirror what we had during the reign of the goggled general when  you  couldn’t  name  four  Southerners in  the topmost  20  positions in the country. It is extremely sad that we could have in Buhari’s administration, anything  that bears this striking similarity to what  operated  under  Abacha.  It will cheapen this column to start listing the many appointments that are circulating in the social media, all going to Northerners as if the Federal Character Commission and the law setting it up have been abrogated. And the silence, from the Presidency to the allegations goes a long way to confirm their truism.  I will be very surprised if  the otherwise hardworking pair of  the President’s  spokespersons  can, in all honesty, claim not  to have read the NIGERIAN VILLAGE SQUARE, where it quoted TheNiche’ interview with Dr Junaid Mohammed, a one time supporter of President Buhari, wherein he  said, inter alia: “Muhammadu Buhari’s relatives are the ones dictating policy in Aso Rock for 170 million Nigerians,  thus  adding nepotism to the festering allegation of narrow mindedness levelled against the president who critics say surrounds himself with Northerners in running national affairs”. This is not one allegation in which silence will be golden because Mohammed went on to name at least seven relatives of the president who are the power behind the throne in the Villa – this in addition to the heads of ALL vital security agencies who are from the North.  Dr Mohammed did not shy away from naming them  and  describing their blood relationship  with the President. He even went further to say that two of these seven are already plotting the ouster of the Acting chairman of EFCC for touching somebody  they consider  a sacred cow. I sincerely hope they won’t dare Nigerians who are still largely supporting the President because they know he did not cause their suffering.

    A troubling consequence of these appointments is that whether in the Executive, the legislature or the judiciary, the dominance of  the North is so overwhelming  and  unmistakable.  Their conquest of the leadership of the judiciary is such that a Southerner can hardly be appointed the Chief Justice of the Federation in the next twenty years and that will be in addition to decades of their complete domination. Not since Abacha has the North so completely dominated all the three arms of the Nigerian government.  I have heard not a few Yoruba  say  that  we have been sold  cheap to the North and much as  I reply by saying that  we were  divinely sent  to save Nigeria  from President  Jonathan’s brood of kleptomaniacs ,  I think  I must say that  President Buhari  owes  those of us who literally carried him on our heads, even when all we relied upon was his integrity,  an obligation to  govern fairly  and with due  respect to all parts of the country.  That is the only way he can have a lasting positive legacy.  We, in turn, owe him a duty of  always reminding  him  that   the Federal Character provision has  not  been  edited out of the Nigerian constitution.

  • Kogi State govt: active, indulgent and retrograde

    Kogi State govt: active, indulgent and retrograde

    KOGI State under Governor Yahaya Bello is probably the most feverishly active state in Nigeria. But it is also probably the most incontestably retrograde of states, full of paradoxes, and heading fatefully in the wrong direction. There is of course the legal conundrum the state is yet to untangle, a huge moral burden occasioned by the brazen usurpation of both election victory and justice perfected by forces almost wholly outside the state. The witless Mr Bello is just a pawn in that unfortunate game. But there is an even more horrendous problem the state will battle with as long as justice eludes the state over the last governorship election won conclusively, despite the election tribunal ruling, by the duo of Abubakar Audu and James Abiodun Faleke. That horrendous problem is the open and indisputable clumsiness of the governor.

    Though a famous pastor recently visited the governor and described his assumption of office as divine, perhaps in the same way the emergence of Adolf Hitler and other dictators and bloodthirsty rulers in history were divine, it is also true, if not truer, that Mr Bello assumed office emotionally unprepared and without a developmental programme of any kind. His inaugural address, as this column noted after he was sworn in, was kindergarten, and his delivery burdened by the troubled conscience of someone making away with another man’s goods. He is beholden and besotted to Abuja from whence his legitimacy derives, and indifferent to his state where he imposes his practiced and consistent tomfooleries. When he took office in January, the superstitious Mr Bello swooped on the main arterial road in Lokoja, the state capital, particularly the roundabouts, and uprooted them, supposing them to be demonically possessed.

    Then he took on the House of Assembly, and with the brilliant mathematical support of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), the military and the police, subverted that citadel of lawmaking by emplacing five legislators over 15 of their colleagues. Mr Bello has, in short, proceeded from one fumbling policy to another, desultorily, hesitantly and braggingly. It is estimated he has collected about five allocations of about N2.5bn each from the central purse and added that to some N20bn first tranche from the bailout fund Abuja made available to mendicant states. He then added these to a fair amount of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of about N500m, and thereafter inflated himself with the illusion of wealth without responsibility, splurging on birthdays and official cars in the most spendthrift of manners. Despite these sizable sums, it was only two weeks ago or less that he reluctantly paid some of the outstanding salaries to some (not all) workers, some of whom he paid 30 percent of their salaries. Civil servants have not been paid.

    Even the simple task of paying what he owed to a few has become a very complex and challenging problem to him. He wrecked  the screening process through which he aimed to discover ghost workers, and has now attempted to herd primary school teachers and local government workers to open accounts with Access Bank, and civil servants to patronise Zenith Bank. A confirmed and exuberant polygamist still thirsting for more, the 41-year-old is generally despised in the state as incapable of managing the state’s affairs, especially with his coterie of sybaritic fortysomethings in the cabinet.

    Worse, because some of the Kogi workers were reluctant to open these new accounts, the banks themselves went ahead to perform the operations on behalf of the workers. Other banks are protesting the government’s unorthodox practices, just as organised labour has also embarked on strike. The state is not only frothing with instability under Mr Bello’s administrative, legislative and bureaucratic excesses, it is also enduring the governor’s untrammeled penchant for travelling. Despite the state’s ethnic configuration and the thin-ice politics upon which they cavort, it is doubtful whether his ethnic group would feel proud to have him as their representation in the salutary dynamics of power shift. Nor is it clear his imperious and obstinate federal supporters, some of whom could very well become his in-laws, would feel exultant to have such an undignified and vacuous politician become their pawn in the convoluted chessboard of national politics.

  • Is it the same thing to be against Brexit as to be against the breakup of Nigeria? Yes, but…

    Is it the same thing to be against Brexit as to be against the breakup of Nigeria? Yes, but…

    Interestingly, the first returns on the night of the Brexit vote on Thursday, June 23, were for the “Remain” campaign, not the “Leave” irredentists. As a matter of fact, by the time that I went to bed around midnight, it was still far from clear that “Leave” would eventually have the massive victory that would stun the whole world the next morning. I of course did not wait until the next morning to find out how the referendum had gone; not being able to sleep without knowing how things were going, I woke up around 2:00 a.m. to the startling confrontation with a trend that indicated clearly, unambiguously that “Leave” was on its way to victory.I think it was at that moment that I began to reflect on both the clear and the rather fuzzy, obscure reasons why this Brexit referendum meant so much to me, specifically why I was so shocked, so troubled by the victory of the “Leave” side. Nearly a week later, this essay is a resumption of the thoughts that began to form in my mind in the early hours of the morning after the referendum, Friday, June 24, 2016. Out of the these diverse, multiple and intractable thoughts, I wish to focus specifically on thoughts that pertain specifically on how large-scale, integrated and unifying national and transnational supra-states and institutions may or may not endure in the context of either capitalist or post-capitalist modernity. In other words, this focalization of my thoughts on Brexit rest ultimately on our country, Nigeria: will it or should it endure as a federation, a political and institutional integration of the many peoples, many ethno-nationalisms that constitute its being-in-the-world and being-in-time-and-history?

    For starters, some caveats in making this comparison are in order here. Like the European Union, Nigeria may be a pan-national federation of (ethno)national groups, but our constituent groups do not have the long historical and institutional self-consolidation of the member nations of the EU. Until fairly recent times, virtually all of the ethno-national groups in our country did not think of themselves as one unified, ethno-national community. More concretely and decisively, we do not have the wealth, the standards of living, the great historical head-start in nation formation that the each and all of the European countries have.  More pointedly, like the European nations, we may have had centuries of internecine warfare between and within each of the various ethnic and sub-ethnic groups in our part of the world, but we differ fundamentally from the Europeans in not having had the opportunity, the advantage or the will to plunder, despoil and colonize other people and continents on our way to becoming modern, capitalist nations. This of course does not confer any quotient of rectitude or humaneness on us over the Europeans; it only means that tragically, we were and still are at the receiving end of modern capitalism’s use of colonialism and imperialism to confer wealth and dominance to the European nations in particular and the West in general. Certainly, in the course of our brief encounter with and participation in capitalist modernity, we have done everything we could to match the Europeans in the barbarism and heartlessness of capitalist relations of production, without the benefits, the ameliorations, the reforms.

    If the careful reader has noticed that in these observations and reflections I have placed a great emphasis on modern capitalism, let me hasten to confirm that this is actually my intention. This is because both Brexit proponents and the defeated opponents take their political and ideological cues from crises in contemporary global capitalism, more precisely the intense antagonisms between capitalism and distinct, if as yet inchoate post-capitalist currents of politics, society and economy. Almost without exception, this dimension has been missing in virtually all the reporting and musings on Brexit that I have read in our newspapers and newsmagazines including one of the best, written by a friend and an old comrade, Jibrin Ibrahim in The Premium Times online. In plain language, what has been missing in many of the reports and reflections is the historic and institutional context of the EU and Brexit itself in neoliberal globalization and its fundamental discontents nearly everywhere in the world, our world: wealth is being generated on a totally unprecedented scale at the very time when poverty, hardship and insecurity are being produced within the ranks of the vast majority of the peoples of the planet. In institutional terms, the contradiction pertains to the struggles between regulated and unregulated capitalism. More concretely – and specifically in social terms – the fundamental struggle is over redistribution, the unique feature of the present historical period being the emergence and deepening of levels of poverty, joblessness and insecurity in Europe, in the West that, hitherto, we used to see only in the Third World. And in specifically, cultural terms, the antagonism is between, on the one hand, rising and expanding currents of transnationalism and cosmopolitanism and, on the other hand, revanchist, nostalgic and xenophobic dreams of a “Great” Britain, a Europe when the “foreigners” were in their own parts of the world, in their own countries. Lest we forget, let me remind the reader that the campaign for “Remain” in last week’s referendum in the U.K. for transnational integration and cosmopolitanism, though defeated, got a solid and quite respectable 48% of the vote. I for one would like to believe that this vote represented the collective voice of those who see present and future developments in Europe and the world tending towards a post-capitalist world.

    Will the vote for Brexit lead to the breakup of Britain? No one knows and no one can make a safe and reliable prediction on the matter. What is not in doubt is the fact that the historic and structural conditions under which the peoples of Britain became fellow citizens of the supra-state that is the United Kingdom are beginning to unravel in the wake of the Brexit referendum and things will never be the same again. No referendum has of course taken place or is likely to take place soon on the Nigerian project as a conglomeration, a federation of many ethnic nationalities. But we are perpetually on the brink of coming unstuck and going our separate ways, are we not? Even if Abuja and Aso Rock are not exactly comparable to the integrative powers of either Brussels or Whitehall in London, still no center of political and administrative authority and indeed, sovereignty, is as strong and entrenched as the oil-rich and oil-doomed Nigerian state. At any rate, the demands for devolution and re-federalization in our country have never abated in the entire 102 years of the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria. Indeed, these demands have become much louder and more insistent since the return to civil rule and formal democracy in 1999. Brexit, I suggest, provides an opportunity for exploring aspects of this issue that are hardly ever mentioned, let alone vigorously and honestly discussed.

    At a superficial level of comparison, neoliberal globalization is wreaking the same havoc in Nigeria with regard to vastly unequal distribution of wealth as in Europe and other regions, other zones of global capitalism in the world. This is because like the big, integrative emporiums of Brussels and London, the strong center in Abuja is the bedrockof theconsolidationof the wealth of the thousandsof haves at the expense of the tens of millions of the have-nots. Seven out of every ten Nigerians live below the absolute poverty line; if you expand this to include relative poverty and insecurity, the ratio jumps dramatically to nine out of ten Nigerians. But this level of comparison of neoliberalism in Nigeria with neoliberalism in the European Union is extremely imprecise and unhelpful. Whatever its critics may say about it, wealth in the EU is actually generated; in our country, it is simply consumed by and through unequal distribution. And quite remarkably, this is hardly ever brought into discussions of and agitations for devolution and re-federalization in our country.Because this is a crucial point, permit me to briefly and concretely expatiate on it.

    Whatever else we may miss in comparing Brexit and the demands for true federalism and the reduction of the strong center in Abuja and Aso Rock, we must not miss the total absence in the Nigerian case of a complete lack of interest in linking either the unity of the country or its devolution into loosely associated regions and zones with reform of neoliberal capitalism. Let me state this in unmistakably clear terms: all the actors and interest groups in our country, whether they want a strong center or a loose federation, are more or less invested in keeping the present economic and political inequality between the haves and the have-nots in place undisturbed and unreformed. The three key demands of the “federalists” in Nigeria are creation of more states; sharing of oil revenues on the basis of derivation and resource control; and the transfer of responsibility for things like education, the police force and customary affairs from Abuja to the regional zones and the states. Please note that this programme completely excludes reform of economic and structural inequalities between the wealthy and the poor, the powerful and the downtrodden throughout the country.We cannot, must not shrink from the terrible implication of this situation: under present conditions, whether the masses of our peoples throughout the length and breadth of the land live under a state with a strong center or a federation with a weak center, they will live under conditions of great economic and social injustice. This is the great difference of our Nigerian project with Brexit – even though we share the social and economic ravages of neoliberal globalization with the European Union.

    Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                                                             bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Of popularity, notoriety and renown

    The Nigerian seems to have one credo. Make some noise and people know you are there. Then, what happens? Oh, before you know it, you become the governor of a state.

    The more I write these few lines for you each week, dear reader, the more I have found that the popularity ratings of the column has grown. Not because the lines are good (if you say so, I don’t mind though) but because they are insistent on being heard. I thank you indeed for tolerating me the way you tolerate a mosquito. If you pretend long enough that it isn’t there, it might actually go away. So I find that many read me to get me out of their way and promptly settle down to ignore me. That is how the column has earned its popularity.

         Notoriety though I find comes mostly through politics. No, I don’t hate politics. I just don’t consider myself as being very politically conscious, more like a political somnambulant. Half of the time, I have no idea how many states in Nigeria have governors. Heck, half of the time I have no idea who indeed is the governor of which state. The other day, I heard that someone called Gov. Something had been removed as governor of a state in Nigeria by a tribunal. Who, I asked, is that? Which State is he governing? Someone said he is/was a governor. Yes, I read that, I replied, but who the heck is he? Everyone looked at me like I had lost it. The economy has finally got to her; they were thinking; a governor is someone everyone should know. And I went away thinking, how do they know all these governors when they seem to change every minute?

         The problem, I reasoned, is that many of my fellow citizens do not set out in life to be anything more than notorious. The Nigerian seems to have one credo. Make some noise and people know you are there. Then, what happens? Oh, before you know it, you become the governor of a state, a Representative, a Senator, a principal, a…. On what platform? The platform of noisemaking! But what has he achieved?

         So, there you are, I do not know politics, just like I do not know maths. Why, the other day, someone gave me a poser that sounded like one of those Satan uses to determine those bound to go to hell with him if they pass it. The test asked if someone were to offer to buy a goat for the sum of N2, 000.00 and the seller agrees to the price and the buyer brings out the money to pay for the goat but the goat leaps up and snatches the money and eats it, then how much has the goat become? For reply, I made only one gesture: Cuckoo! Why should I give him the privilege to know I did not know maths, I reasoned?!

            So, you can imagine my horror when I heard yesterday that a senator had been taken to another court. I was really horrified. Please, I begged, don’t tell me I did not know that the senator was in one court in the first place. The fellow looked at me like I had mutated to some unrecognisable being. This is his second court and who knows how many more courts before he is through with us, I was told. I sat down in great mystery, wondering: where had I been all my life?

          Seriously, reader, you can’t blame me. I have been too busy tracking where all of Nigeria’s money had gone to. First, I was reading that some two point something billion dollars had been shared among a few Nigerians who happened to belong to a political party. Naturally, my head had been swimming round those figures with me wiping my face many times a day to make sure I was not dreaming. Then I began to hear through confessions how the money was disbursed to various agents of the party; and the offers some of them made to return it, either through coercion or remorse. Naturally, I wiped my face some more trying to imagine which bank would contain enough storage space to receive these vast sums when they are converted to our very worthy naira.

            That was when I began to hear stories of how a few top people in one of the armed forces had somehow contrived to convert hundreds of billions of naira, meant for the upkeep of their own arm of the armed forces, to their own personal use. As I was told, they went as far as constructing an underground pit or latrine or soak-away (the story is not very straight around this corner) in the house of one to keep some of the monies while some nestled comfortably in the accounts of the wife of another. As these revelations were coming out, you can imagine that my face wiping had grown alarmingly to reach some worrisome proportions. I found I had begun to wash my face to be sure I was not dreaming, and also to be sure I wasn’t Pilate. I also wanted to see if the water would tell me why my fellow citizens would persist in settling only for notoriety when they could go for renown.

           Then I read about one DJ Obi, really known as Obi Ajuonuma, who had set out to etch his name in the Guinness Book of Records by ‘djing’ for a record two hundred and forty hours straight out. I wiped my face once more to be sure I was not dreaming. Could it be that there really is a Nigerian interested in actually making something of himself that did not put money first? Could it be that such an unnatural element who considers achievement over unnatural enrichment exists? Could someone be actually more interested in renown over popularity and notoriety? I say, I saw the picture, so I believed. I became encouraged.

          You see, it appears that most Nigerians are only interested in scrambling for loots. We all therefore seem to have forgotten that loots do not make a man. They make a man a common thief, less than the soil underneath an honest labourer’s slippers. We have said it again and again on this column that what makes a man is not the number of houses he owns (whether honestly acquired or not), or the number of private jets he owns (acquired properly or not), or the number of women or men they are able to sleep with.

          True, you have heard many people preach again and again that you cannot take it with you. Well, I’m here to tell you something different. You can take it with you. The only thing is that what you have here gets converted to a different currency when you die. The man who has worked only at stealing from the country may get to enjoy his loot here but when he dies, the loot gets converted into his name which will become synonymous with notoriety. The man who works at actually achieving something may or may not enjoy his proceeds on earth; but when he dies his name gets converted also into something akin to renown.

          What matters most in this world is what we do for a living, how well we do it and what we are able to achieve through it, no matter how little or how big. Achieving something through one’s efforts is a greater success than any amount of money that one can steal. It not only brings out the truly noble thing in one’s character, it enables a man to touch the lower tip of the universe. That man is able to reach beyond himself; that man is also the man who has been able to conquer his lowest instincts. Here’s to rooting for DJ Obi; hope he’s able to win his renown.