The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • In a fair world…

    • Devolving power from the centre to the states would simply be moving the poor masses from the gripping arms of one drunk to another brute. There would be too many emergency dictators

    The days are coming on me something thick now they make me feel like one beleaguered nation, and I am thinking this is not fair. When the IBEDC-enforced darkness is not enveloping me in one cold, dark embrace, the government is conspiring to assassinate me by sending the sniffles through the weather. So, everyone I know is going around now sniffling and coughing and sneezing into one handkerchief or the other. Luckily, the government has not got me yet.

    To add to my embarrassment, I find that the price of the dollar is now rising like some bread dough filled with yeast so that I can no longer buy a bunch of plantain for the old expensive price. More, the price of fuel is taking a climbing hike into the mountains until I am almost using my mouth to suck the last drop out of the pump to get value for my puny money.

    More worrisome though, I find that everyone I know is no longer also going around complaining about the country. And that’s a bad sign. Previously, where two or three were gathered together, the country’s deeds and misdeeds were sure to be in their midst. Now, it is either that people are past talking about the country or they don’t know where the talk should begin. Now, I find that when they do talk they always start from this angle: ‘We know that Buhari did not cause the problem we’re all in now, the PDP ate the country dry; but we wish he would hurry up and do something about it. People are dying.’ Humn.

    I cannot speak for Buhari. I am sure the man has a whole lot of people employed just to do that. Under the circumstances, though, it is difficult to cut anyone any slack when news reports keep telling us things like ‘people are now stealing pots of amala off stoves’, ‘families are stealing pots of amala only to eat it with palm oil’, ‘people are stealing bags of semovita off other people’s stalls to feed their families with,’ ‘families are now going three days without getting a single meal to eat’…

    I think we all know the poor man inherited a very ungainly country tottering on its unstable legs and undulating like a drunken cow. Our failure to do something about this clumsy giant of a country before now is what has brought us to this sorry pass.

    I have always been a firm believer in the axiom that what a people wants, a people gets. The citizens of this country have not been fair to themselves and the rest of the world in not making up their minds early enough just what to do with the strange baby the colonial power handed over to them. Should they smother it quickly before it embarrassed itself and the rest of the world like you would like to do to some of your relatives? Or, should they adjust and settle down to negotiate for more space from the world? They did neither. They, instead, waited and watched to see how it would grow or die a natural death. Unfortunately, it has done neither too; it has just been running round and round in circles, like a dog chasing its own tail.

    So, one way or the other, Nigeria is embarrassing itself. What do you mean ‘how’? Well, first, there was corruption, then there was the Niger Delta (ND) problem, then there was Boko Haram, and then there was corruption again, then the ND militants again, then unpaid salaries, then father-son politician-thieves, then ever shrinking housekeeping funds, then corruption…! Me, I have taken a look at all these, thrown up my hands and have exclaimed, I’m getting off this country as soon as I finish my dinner. Who needs all these aggravations? Not so other people; they are thinking something can still be done. I would envy them if they weren’t such optimists.

    And what are they thinking? Some are thinking restructuring. They say, and we all know and have said, that the centre is too strong, inept, inefficient and ineffective. Actually, one is enough to kill it, but we need all four adjectives. So, they also say that because of the powerful centre, assets end up being unfairly distributed. The ND region, they say, is a veritable source of weeping and gnashing of teeth for its awfulness. Naturally, that kind of neglect and others leave the others aggrieved and discontented. This discontent, they say, is what erupts mostly into militancy.

    Restructuring, people say, would involve redefining the way this country is run. Mostly, running everything from the centre does not pay, just like crime. It does not allow individual components to grow at their own pace. Incredible amounts of talents are allowed to go to waste because of the present clumsy arrangement. States are financially hampered and not allowed to do so many things, including their own police or even sing, and that is why many of them are nigh comatose now.

    Well, that sort of leaves me wondering, how come then that so many of them are able to purchase private jets? In fact, someone told me that in the heydays of the Jonathan era, a subvention collection time of the month was also a private jet convention time as state governors flaunted and compared notes on their private flying toys in Abuja. So, if they were that hampered, how did they manage to purchase those toys?

    Don’t get me wrong; I am for restructuring if this entity is not to be dissolved altogether since it is clear we cannot go on reeling left and right forever. However, devolving power from the centre to the states would simply be moving the poor masses from the gripping arms of one drunk to another brute. There would be too many emergency dictators.

    This I guess is why some people feel that the problem of the country has been poor leadership. The country has been rather unlucky in her choice of leaders, rather like one being unlucky in love. Since her birth, she has been blessed mostly with a succession of the poorest materials as head, with the exception perhaps of the present company and one or two others. For this rudderlessness, lawlessness has been allowed to reign, sacred cows have been allowed to roam and you and I have to sleep with two eyes open now.

    In a fair world, many of the people Nigeria parades as former heads should never have smelt power. I would list them now, but for the fact that they have not struck any deals with me yet, unlike the federal government’s never-coming list of alleged looters. When we talk, I assure you, you will hear.

    So, in a fair world, the head of the country will always be a man of vision who will know that the ND region, like others, needs development, not palliatives like amnesty. As someone said, negotiate with so-called Avengers today and tomorrow, another group will come up. In a fair world, I tell you, I would be the Queen of the richest country on earth, and a small dispensable item like a handkerchief would not have twelve letters while the all indispensable dress would have five letters only. It’s not a fair world, though, I’m telling you.

    Clearly, restructuring is the answer. Much of what the federal government is holding onto now like a baby to its toy should rather go to regional governments. An efficient region is a lot more effective governmentally than an efficient state. It would keep these mini dictators in check. It would also be a way of bringing the centre closer to the people and the country can stop chasing her own tail.

  • In a fair world…

    Devolving power from the centre to the states would simply be moving the poor masses from the gripping arms of one drunk to another brute. There would be too many emergency dictators

    The days are coming on me something thick now they make me feel like one beleaguered nation, and I am thinking this is not fair. When the IBEDC-enforced darkness is not enveloping me in one cold, dark embrace, the government is conspiring to assassinate me by sending the sniffles through the weather. So, everyone I know is going around now sniffling and coughing and sneezing into one handkerchief or the other. Luckily, the government has not got me yet.

    To add to my embarrassment, I find that the price of the dollar is now rising like some bread dough filled with yeast so that I can no longer buy a bunch of plantain for the old expensive price. More, the price of fuel is taking a climbing hike into the mountains until I am almost using my mouth to suck the last drop out of the pump to get value for my puny money.

    More worrisome though, I find that everyone I know is no longer also going around complaining about the country. And that’s a bad sign. Previously, where two or three were gathered together, the country’s deeds and misdeeds were sure to be in their midst. Now, it is either that people are past talking about the country or they don’t know where the talk should begin. Now, I find that when they do talk they always start from this angle: ‘We know that Buhari did not cause the problem we’re all in now, the PDP ate the country dry; but we wish he would hurry up and do something about it. People are dying.’ Humn.

    I cannot speak for Buhari. I am sure the man has a whole lot of people employed just to do that. Under the circumstances, though, it is difficult to cut anyone any slack when news reports keep telling us things like ‘people are now stealing pots of amala off stoves’, ‘families are stealing pots of amala only to eat it with palm oil’, ‘people are stealing bags of semovita off other people’s stalls to feed their families with,’ ‘families are now going three days without getting a single meal to eat’…

    I think we all know the poor man inherited a very ungainly country tottering on its unstable legs and undulating like a drunken cow. Our failure to do something about this clumsy giant of a country before now is what has brought us to this sorry pass.

    I have always been a firm believer in the axiom that what a people wants, a people gets. The citizens of this country have not been fair to themselves and the rest of the world in not making up their minds early enough just what to do with the strange baby the colonial power handed over to them. Should they smother it quickly before it embarrassed itself and the rest of the world like you would like to do to some of your relatives? Or, should they adjust and settle down to negotiate for more space from the world? They did neither. They, instead, waited and watched to see how it would grow or die a natural death. Unfortunately, it has done neither too; it has just been running round and round in circles, like a dog chasing its own tail.

    So, one way or the other, Nigeria is embarrassing itself. What do you mean ‘how’? Well, first, there was corruption, then there was the Niger Delta (ND) problem, then there was boko haram, and then there was corruption again, then the ND militants again, then unpaid salaries, then father-son politician-thieves, then ever shrinking housekeeping funds, then corruption…! Me, I have taken a look at all these, thrown up my hands and have exclaimed, I’m getting off this country as soon as I finish my dinner. Who needs all these aggravations? Not so other people; they are thinking something can still be done. I would envy them if they weren’t such optimists.

    And what are they thinking? Some are thinking restructuring. They say, and we all know and have said, that the centre is too strong, inept, inefficient and ineffective. Actually, one is enough to kill it, but we need all four adjectives. So, they also say that because of the powerful centre, assets end up being unfairly distributed. The ND region, they say, is a veritable source of weeping and gnashing of teeth for its awfulness. Naturally, that kind of neglect and others leave the others aggrieved and discontented. This discontent, they say, is what erupts mostly into militancy.

    Restructuring, people say, would involve redefining the way this country is run. Mostly, running everything from the centre does not pay, just like crime. It does not allow individual components to grow at their own pace. Incredible amounts of talents are allowed to go to waste because of the present clumsy arrangement. States are financially hampered and not allowed to do so many things, including own their own police or even sing, and that is why many of them are nigh comatose now.

    Well, that sort of leaves me wondering, how come then that so many of them are able to purchase private jets? In fact, someone told me that in the hey days of the Jonathan era, subvention collection time of the month was also a private jet convention time as state governors flaunted and compared notes on their private flying toys in Abuja. So, if they were that hampered, how did they manage to purchase those toys?

    Don’t get me wrong; I am for restructuring if this entity is not to be dissolved altogether since it is clear we cannot go on reeling left and right forever. However, devolving power from the centre to the states would simply be moving the poor masses from the gripping arms of one drunk to another brute. There would be too many emergency dictators.

    This I guess is why some people feel that the problem of the country has been poor leadership. The country has been rather unlucky in her choice of leaders, rather like one being unlucky in love. Since her birth, she has been blessed mostly with a succession of the poorest materials as head, with exception perhaps of the present company and one or two others. For this rudderlessness, lawlessness has been allowed to reign, sacred cows have been allowed to roam and you and I have to sleep with two eyes open now.

    In a fair world, many of the people Nigeria parades as former heads should never have smelt power. I would list them now but for the fact that they have not struck any deals with me yet, unlike the federal government’s never-coming list of alleged looters. When we talk, I assure you, you will hear.

    So, in a fair world, the head of the country will always be a man of vision who will know that the ND region, like others, needs development, not palliatives like amnesty. As someone said, negotiate with so-called Avengers today and tomorrow, another group will come up. In a fair world, I tell you, I would be the Queen of the richest country on earth, and a small dispensable item like a handkerchief would not have twelve letters while the all indispensable dress would have five letters only. It’s not a fair world though, I’m telling you.

    Clearly, restructuring is the answer. Much of what the federal government is holding onto now like a baby to its toy should rather go to regional governments. An efficient region is a lot more effective governmentally than an efficient state. It would keep these mini dictators in check. It would also be a way of bringing the centre closer to the people and the country can stop chasing her own tail.

  • The increasing call for restructuring Nigeria

    The increasing call for restructuring Nigeria

    We need an impartial  body  that  would proffer  genuine ways  to  properly reconfigure Nigeria  from what it presently is – a totally unworkable and, therefore, not working  ‘geographical expression’ as Chief Obafemi Awolowo called it.  

    It could not have been a surprise that the dominant theme of this year’s June 12 anniversary revolved around the matter of restructuring Nigeria. Literally everybody who spoke at the various events  marking the day  had something  to say about the subject and once they had  finished eulogising  Chief MKO  Abiola’s sacrifice for democracy,  it was the next  important  topic they  launched  into.  Restructuring is that important, if Nigeria is ever to get it right, that the Buhari government must ensure it takes it serious enough not to commit the mistakes of earlier administrations especially in the composition of the conference membership. Any attempt to pack such a conference would mean that nothing good can come from it.  We need an impartial  body  that  would proffer  genuine ways  to  properly reconfigure Nigeria  from what it presently is – a totally unworkable and, therefore, not working  ‘geographical expression’ as Chief Obafemi Awolowo called it.  The many flashpoints we are confronted with as a nation today irrefutably confirms that description. Apart from  the impossibility of wishing restructuring  away, President Buhari’s  inelegant claim that the report of the 2014 confab will rot away  in the archives, has massively upped the  ante  of  the  demand for it.  Although I did not support the conference  because  I saw it as a product of  crass political opportunism, I  have expected  that  since his inauguration, President Buhari  would  have read through the report or be properly briefed  about  it  as the recommendations cannot, in totality, be bad for the country, given the calibre of people  at the conference.  Arising  from the trenchant, negative reactions  to  his  disclosure about how he treated the report , therefore,  I think  the  president  should create the time to  study  it. He should, in fact, thoroughly study, and internalise, the reports of all the conferences that have been convoked towards finding a solution to the national question. He is guaranteed a profitable learning curve about this ‘amalgam of nations’ called Nigeria as doing so will provide answers to many of the demons presently tearing us apart.  In case he is too busy to do this personally, the president  should  empanel  a small, but smart  group  from within  his cabinet to  do a summary of the reports and,  in bullet form,  extract  the  key recommendations, especially those on which all the conferences  are ‘ad idem’. These he could effect, via executive powers, and fast track others through executive bills to the National Assembly.

    Historically, some parts of the North have constituted the greatest opposition to restructuring, but that position is beginning to change. Before the recent  call by  former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar,  suggesting that “restructuring and renewal of our federation will make it less centralised and less suffocating, elder statesman, Alhaji Ahmed Joda, had  lent  it a ringing support  when he wrote as follows: “Our country has passed through difficult times, including a civil war and has survived. We must, however, not mistake the fact of our survival to anything like military might; rather it was because ordinary Nigerians overwhelmingly desire to live together in one united country, but under some acceptable arrangement”.

    At this year’s anniversary of June 12, some highly regarded Nigerians, among them the Lagos State governor, Akinwumi Ambode, Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu (retd) and Ayo Opadokun also threw their weight behind restructuring which they said is a must if we want to overcome our national challenges. While the governor said that what “we owe Nigeria today is nothing but true federalism, Opadokun believes that Nigeria will not get out of the woods until it restructures its skewed federal structure. At another event, this time at the 17th Annual Convention of the Igbo Youth Movement, former Vice President Alex Ekwueme; Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Prof. Jerry Gana, amongst others, also vigorously canvassed restructuring and concluded that it is only  when we have done this  that Nigeria  can have peace.

    A lot has been written about how beneficial to Nigeria restructuring would be that we need not repeat them here. Our various theatres of mini wars, North and South of the country, have turned restructuring to an urgent matter. However,  given our  current  economic and security  challenges – the naira has just been pummelled to submission – I believe  that the immediate problems confronting the  Buhari administration  should be  how to fix  the economy as well as conclusively rout Boko Haram, not convoking a national conference. The last one, we were told, gulped a princely N9Billion. If that was possible when oil was selling for more than 100 dollars per barrel, our current economic circumstances which has rendered 27  out of 36 states literally comatose, should warn us against any undue haste abut restructuring, important as it certainly is. I wish to suggest, therefore, that President Buhari should not be unduly harangued about restructuring before his 3rd year in office when we expect that the economy should have been sufficiently stabilised and Boko Haram, hopefully, no longer a major threat.

    An ideal time to begin the process of restructuring should, in my view, be during  the first quarter of  President Buhari’s  third year in office when he should pronounce the establishment  of  a Constituent Assembly whose members  would emerge from an election to be  conducted  on  a  zero party basis. In the Ahmed Joda model, the National Assembly would constitute the .Assembly but I think Nigerians have seen enough of the 8th Assembly to ever leave such a huge responsibility in its hands.  As suggested by the  elder statesman, “there should be  no representation in the Assembly for special interests because of the abuses that could engender, and  serving members of any legislative body should  not be eligible just as interested public servants must resign their posts and contest.” The Assembly should have full powers to comprehensively review the Nigerian Constitution bearing in mind, as Joda posited,  the fact  that “there is, in the extant one, too much concentration of power and resources at the centre, thus stifling the country’s march to greatness as well as threatening its unity because of  the abuses, corruption and reactive tensions  which over-centralisation generates.”

    The Assembly should have about six months to work, and present its report to the president. From this point on, in my opinion, the conference report should, at a formal national event, be handed over to the political parties to study and make to their party manifesto for the 2019 general election. This should then be regarded as the respective party’s contract with Nigerians on the basis of which each would campaign for the election. This is about the only way to cure the current constitution’s lie about ‘we the people’. It will also eliminate the controversy about whether the current constitution permits a referendum or not. Whichever party wins the general election should, ipso facto, be deemed to have secured the peoples’ mandate to begin restructuring Nigeria with effect from 29 May, 2019.

  • Romeo reps?

    Romeo reps?

    God forbids! America should stop this rude joke!

    Without prejudice to the outcome of the House of Representatives’ inquiry into the alleged sex scandal against three members of the house, said to have occurred in faraway United States; and without prejudice to whether our honourables actually did it or not, it is surprising that America that is supposed to be busy thinking about the next level for the world, has time for a mundane thing as some adults wanting to get down while in a faraway country; that is, assuming the accusation is true in the first place. Anyway, America should know that in our country, an accused is presumed innocent until proven otherwise by a competent court. So, if their intention is to discredit our dutiful lawmakers, then the Americans should know they have a lot of hurdles ahead. For instance, they have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that one of them actually committed ‘touchery’ while the other two were about committing whatever offence they were about to commit. This is apart from contending with the snail speed at which justice travels in these shores, especially when ‘big people’ are involved.

    Just listen to what Mr. James Entwistle, America’s ambassador to Nigeria, said in a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, on June 9: “It is with regret that I must bring to your attention the following situation. Ten members of the Nigerian National Assembly recently travelled to Cleveland, Ohio, as participants in the International Visitor Leadership Programme on good governance. We received troubling allegations regarding the behaviour of three members of the delegation to the US Government’s flagship professional exchange programme.

    “The US Department of State and the Cleveland Council on World Affairs received reports from employees of the Cleveland Hotel, where the representatives stayed, alleging that the representatives engaged in the following behaviour: Mohammed Garba Gololo allegedly grabbed a housekeeper in his hotel room and solicited her for sex. While the housekeeper reported this to her management, this incident could have involved local law enforcement and resulted in legal consequences for Representative Gololo. Mark Terseer Gbillah and Samuel Ikon allegedly requested that hotel parking attendants assist them to solicit prostitutes.”

    How can a country that is supposed to be thinking for the rest of the world have time to take ‘judicial notice’ of the alleged sexual advances of a Nigerian big man to a hotel housekeeper and an alleged amorous request to parking attendants by two others? I now understand why some people are beginning to see light at the end of the Donald Trump’s tunnel that the man has already succeeded President Barak Obama as America’s president; and that the forthcoming U.S. election is a mere formality. What do you expect when a country that the world looks up to as leader begins to poke nose into small issues like this? How can a whole America descend so low?

    One would have expected that the American authorities would chastise their citizens (allegedly) approached by some ‘big people’ from the ‘Giant of Africa’ for turning down such privileged requests, if ever they were made. Indeed, they should consider themselves lucky to be approached by our big men. In Nigeria, their betters fall like pack of cards for our lawmakers in Abuja, Lagos and other cities. As a matter of fact, many of our sophisticated ladies would go to church the Sunday after they were asked for what America claimed their ladies refused from our lawmakers, to give testimonies of how God has shown them uncommon favour, and ask the congregation to pray that the new honey pot would endure! So, what’s so special about American girls?

    Honestly I am angry, and only those who knew how fouled my mood was on Friday (to the extent that I was about asking the Sunday Editor to fill this space today until this story broke), can appreciate how strongly I felt about this nonsense from America. It is good though that it ended up being an elixir for me because this is not an issue that should be treated with levity. Our legislators accused of this so-called scandal should understand that they are not alone; we are in this together.

    These were people who travelled to the US for International Visitor Leadership Programme on Good Governance organised by the US Government. Shouldn’t the Americans have showered such international visitors with unspeakable hospitality, the type the visitors would continue to remember long after returning home from the trip, and would even want them to look forward to such trips over and over again? America did not do that; and I am sure the legislators did not count that as a sin. Now, it is the same America that is accusing the visitors of self-help! America might be the world’s policeman and what have you, but this incident has shown that it knows next-to-nothing about tourism and hospitality.

    Here in Nigeria, it is not unusual for our big men to find beautiful ladies in their hotel rooms during such privileged tours. As a matter of fact, such is taken as given; without which the package is incomplete. In fact, I hear there is allowance for it, tagged man no be wood allowance. It is embedded (does that remind you of something?) in the estacode that the public officials collect for such tours. If America says our legislators are not entitled to such ‘facilities’ for which they are now being castigated, how do they retire their man no be wood allowance when they return to the country? Should they return such allowance as unspent funds? So, where is America’s sense of enterprise?

    Again, here in Nigeria, I hear many press and public relations managers owe their promotions and sack to how well they were able to satisfy the big men with beautiful ladies on such tours. So, why is America making an issue out of nothing? Isn’t this simply a case of one man’s meat is another man’s fish? But I still make bold to say that, for our ‘big people’, such charity may begin at home, it is doubtful if they will take it abroad.

    What I am saying is that we know what our lawmakers can do. If America had said they were in some of their car marts looking for the most exotic jeeps and bullet-proof cars, Nigerians would readily believe. If America had said the lawmakers were shopping for some of the best household items and clothes in that country, Nigerians can understand. If America had said our lawmakers held a party at which they sprayed dollars as if that is going out of fashion, Nigerians would still have understood. Indeed, if America had charged our legislators with exchanging fisticuffs over nothing, still, Nigerians would understand. All these are necessary to enable them make laws for good governance in the country. But, to say one of them grabbed a female housekeeper while another two solicited the help of parking attendants to help them get prostitutes? Haba, this is taking a rude joke too far! At any rate, why did the U.S. keep the scandal under wraps from April till now?

    Honestly, our House of Representatives and indeed, every member of our National Assembly should protest this accusation by deleting America from their countries of choice henceforth, whether for the kind of training that has led to this unfair accusation, or for vacation, or even medical tourism. It’s not worth it.

    I join our representatives in the centre of all this to demand the release of the video of the so-called scandal. “Seeing”, they say, “is believing”. We want to see how Honourable Gololo ‘wrapped up’ the housekeeper. Did he do it Lagos style, or Abuja style? Or was it in his native Bauchi State style? From the front or the rear? I mean was the ‘grabbing’ professionally done or was it amateurish? And Honourables Gbillah and Ikon, how did they tell the parking attendants that they needed prostitutes? Did they use sign language or they spoke in fantastic, impeccable Queen’s English? How one handles these fragile matters of the heart in a permissive society like America counts; and would indeed go a long way in deciding whether the advances would pass or fail.

    However, until we have video evidence, whatever America claims remains their housekeeper’s and parking attendants’ words against our honourables’. And if the legislators know that there is no truth to the allegations, they should sue the hell out of the American government; first to clear their good names already soiled by the unnecessary allegations, and that of Nigeria, and again, to press their fundamental human right to the American visa. You don’t deny the Nigerian big man anything; otherwise he goes to court to press for his fundamental human right; his exclusive preserve. The Americans would do well to understand that.

    Coming barely weeks after the British Prime Minister whispered on video to the Queen’s ear that Nigeria is a ‘fantastically corrupt’ nation (whereas all that happened here was mere stealing), Nigerians must unite to resist these orchestrated attempts to cast their country in bad light. And, perchance our legislators are found guilty eventually, the only problem I have with them is stooping so low. Even then, there is nothing new under the sun. After all, it was before our very eyes that an incumbent American president admitted not having sex but “inappropriate relationship” with a common intern. This thing they call love, e get as e be o … Mercifully, the Americans did not tell us that anything happened under some ruffling sheets. So, our legislators did not even travel far; they did not get deep down to the level of ‘inappropriate relationship’ before they were stopped. So, I urge their wives to go about their conjugal responsibilities without fear or suspicion. Nothing spoil yet.

    But we will surely get to the bottom of this.

     

  • Kogi election petition: A most perverse judgement

    Kogi election petition: A most perverse judgement

    Last week, Palladium promised that the June 6, 2016 judgement of the Kogi State Election Petition Tribunal would be subjected to close examination. Here it is. This column is today donated to Bimbo Adewole, LL.M. to raise pertinent questions from a judgement that neither pretends to embrace logic nor dispense justice.

    1. Augustine, the ancient philosopher and theologian once said: “[t]he ignorance of the judge is the calamity of the innocent.” G.F.G. Mathison expatiated upon this immortal statement by saying that “an ignorant judge brings the law into contempt and will press and hurry on to judgment, so as to stifle all fair inquiry; but an able judge will detect the sophistry of advocates, and prevent its being made the cause of oppression”. Nothing validates these statements better than the judgment of the Kogi State Election Petition Tribunal in the case of James Abiodun Faleke v. INEC & Anor. (2016, unreported).

    On Monday, 6th June, 2016, the tribunal gave its much awaited judgment in the case. With a bang, the tribunal surprisingly upheld the election of Alhaji Yahaya Bello as Governor of Kogi State. Not a few Nigerians were shocked by the judgment. Indeed, the judgment of the tribunal can best be described as a judicial coup d’état as it has subverted some fundamental elements of our Constitution and principles of law.

    The judgment of the tribunal brings to light, once again, issues relating to the quality and capacity of some men and women who now adorn the sacred temples of justice in this country. The 1999 Constitution of Nigeria (as amended) is an organic document. It is necessarily dynamic and has the ingredient of a document that shows progressive tendencies. Therefore, it is expected that judges should be seen to be in the vanguard in expounding the horizon of the contents of the Grundnorm to give meaning and life into it without fear or favour. It is expected that the judges should use their awesome power to assuage the yearnings of the people who hope for a society where no one is oppressed or unjustly treated by the powers that be.  Such conceptualization envisages a judiciary that galvanizes brilliant minds  minds that are open to reasonable application of intellect to exploring or finding a remedy or solution to a problem that besets anyone who comes to seek refuge before them. Judges are to adjudicate based on the tenets of the constitution as epitomised in the nature of their oath of office. The judiciary, as established by the constitution, is to exercise its judicial powers to give strength and teeth to the notion and prescription that it alone is to state what the law is.

    The judgment of the Kogi State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal headed by Justice Halima S. Mohammed exemplifies clearly the decline in the intellectual quality of our judges. The direct effect of this trend is the inevitable calamitous tendency of witnessing a spectacle of miscarriage of justice in many instances. After reading the judgment, an objective mind is bound to go away with a lingering question: “Did the tribunal really understand the case that was brought before it?” There is nothing to indicate that the tribunal understood the facts and issues presented before it. To put the matter most gently, the judgment is simply flabbergasting. The judgment is lacking in depth of knowledge, robust consideration of issues, scholarship, courage and independence of mind. It is, with due respect, an advertisement of gross ignorance and incompetence. In a most horrifying and disgusting manner, the tribunal adopted hook, line and sinker, the submissions of the respondents’ counsel and transformed same as its judgment. It did this at the expense of the dexterous submissions of the petitioner’s counsel. What can be seen is nothing short of a voyage in judicial adventurism where the substance of the case brought before the tribunal was deliberately ignored and the tribunal chose to pursue shadows.

    The President of the Court of Appeal, Hon. Justice ZainabAdamuBulkachuwa, who constituted the tribunal, must now, surely, be ashamed of the quality of the judgment that emanated from the tribunal she set up, especially having regard to the serious nature of the constitutional issues involved and the attention the case attracted not only in Kogi State and Nigeria but the whole world. Indeed, the judgment is nothing to write home about as it diminishes the Nigerian Judiciary in no mean measure. My task here is to examine some of the issues discussed in the judgment, the decisions of the tribunal on them and attempt to analyse them against the settled principles of our law. This is by no means a herculean task as a mere fleeting reading of the judgment reveals that virtually every pronouncement of the tribunal is erroneous and appealable. It is nauseating.

     

    BACKGROUND FACTS

    Hon. James Abiodun Faleke, the petitioner, contested the November 21, 2015 Kogi State Governorship election as a deputy-governorship candidate on a joint ticket with the late Prince Abubakar Audu (the governorship candidate) on the platform of the All Progressives Party (APC). At the end of the polls, the joint ticket of Audu/Faleke scored majority of lawful votes of 240,867. They (Audu & Faleke) also satisfied the constitutional provision of section 179 (2), by scoring the highest number of votes and not less than one-quarter but of all the votes cast in all of, not just two-thirds, the local government areas in Kogi State. Significantly, the results in all the 21 local government areas were announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). INEC, however, declared the election inconclusive on the sole ground that the margin of win between Audu/Faleke’s 240,867 votes and Wada/Awoniyi’s 199,514 votes was 41,353, which votes were less than the number of registered voters in 91 polling units where votes were cancelled for various reasons. The returning officer stated that by INEC guidelines, no return could be made for the election until a supplementary election was held in the areas where election was cancelled. It is to be noted that INEC never attributed the inconclusiveness of the election to Prince Audu’s death. Meanwhile, the supplementary election held on 5th December, 2015 where Alhaji Yahaya Bello’s name featured as a governorship candidate of APC, he was made to substitute the late Prince Abubakar Audu. At the end of the day, Alhaji Yahaya Bello was returned as Governor of Kogi State after winning just 6,885 votes in the supplementary election. He contested the election without a deputy governorship candidate.

     

    HON FALEKE’S CASE.

    The case of Hon. James Abiodun Faleke is simple and straightforward. He filed a petition seeking a declaration that election to the office of Governor of Kogi State, held on November 21, 2015 was already conducted, completed and concluded by the INEC. He further sought to declare that INEC’s proclamation that the governorship election held in Kogi State on November 21,2015 was inconclusive is unconstitutional, illegal, unlawful, arbitrary, null and void and ultra-vires the power of INEC. The fundamental question before the tribunal for determination, therefore, was whether or not the election of November 21, 2015 was conclusive. The petitioner predicated his assertion of the conclusiveness of the election on the following facts established in evidence:

    • That all the results of the 21 local government areas in Kogi State were duly recorded in the requisite forms and declared by INEC. Form ECA8Cs that contained all the results of the local government areas, duly filled, signed and certified were tendered and admitted as Exhibit P19
    • That the joint ticket of Prince Audu/Hon. Faleke already scored 240,867 votes as against Wada/Awoniyi’s score of 199,514 votes with a margin of 41,353 votes.
    • That in the 91 polling stations where election was cancelled, there were less than 38,000 eligible voters which cannot alter the success already recorded by Audu/Faleke ticket.
    • At the end of the supplementary election, less than 15,000 votes were recorded for all the parties.
    • That the scores announced by INEC at the November 21, 2015 election satisfied the provision of section 179(2) of the constitution which already deemed Prince Abubakar Audu as duly elected.
    • That INEC ought to have applied the provision of section 181(1) of the constitution that entitled him to be sworn in as Governor, following the demise of Prince Audu.

    It is compelling here to note that INEC, against who allegations in the petition were made, called no witness to proffer evidence in rebuttal or denial of the facts stated by the petitioner. The commission also never controverted nor contradicted the petitioner’s evidence. The position of the law is clear in such a circumstance. The petitioner would be entitled to judgment, the effect being that, INEC’s averments in its reply would be deemed to have been abandoned while the petitioner’s averments deemed admitted. (See: section 132 of the Evidence Act and Ndayako v. Dantoro) (2004).

    Essentially, the issue as to whether or not the election of November 21, 2015 was conclusive was the fundamental point the tribunal was called upon to determine. The way the tribunal resolved this crucial issue is, however, shocking. It simply held that:

    “There is no evidence before the tribunal that the said election was concluded… The implication of the election of 21/11/2015 being declared inconclusive by the 1st Respondent is that no declaration nor return was made as to the winner of that election; hence in the absence of a declaration or return the petitioner remained a deputy governorship candidate in the inconclusive election and no right can be said to have enure to him nor can he benefit from the provisions of section 181(1) of the 1999 constitution which provides for stepping into the shoes of an elected candidate as he claims”.

    It is easy to see how the tribunal muddled up issues here. The fact that the judgment was not based upon a sound appreciation of issues and arguments is also manifest. It is also clear that the evidence of the petitioner, particularly, Exhibit P19 (Form EC8Cs) the results of the local government areas never came up for consideration. The tribunal shut its eyes against the undisputable and unassailable evidence of the petitioner. The tribunal avoided section 197 (2) of the constitution like a plague, let alone giving any consideration to its application. It simply jumped to section 181 (1), without any foundation. It is, indeed, most disappointing.

    A judgment of court or tribunal, for that matter, ought to demonstrate that the court or tribunal understood the case before it, and elicit an open and full consideration of the issues properly raised by the parties on their pleadings, as supported by evidence. The conclusions reached ought to reflect and justify such an exercise. Once a court or tribunal has misapprehended the nature of the case in respect of which it is required to give a dispassionate and rational decision, the chances are that the decision, otherwise reached will be perverse, as it is in this case. This is because when an adjudicator fails to discern the real question which he or she is to consider and decide or answer, his or her reasoning will inevitably be addressed to  collateral matters which are irrelevant, or to an aspect beside the point in issue. Such an adjudicator is said to suffer from “ignoratio elenchi”. This is the fairest assessment of what happened at the Justice Halima Mohammed tribunal. I proceed to consider few of the issues.

    LOCUS STANDI.

    The tribunal held that the petitioner had no locus standi to institute the petition. In coming to its warped decision, it declared:

    “Contrary to the conten    tion of the petitioner, the       provisions of section 181    and 187 of the 1999 constitution to our mind do not enure to the petitioner. As the petitioner not having presented the petition as a deputy governor-elect within the provisions of section 181 of the constitution cannot be properly defined as a candidate within the meaning of section 137 of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended) the election being inconclusive”

    Still on locus standi, but for another reason, the tribunal held as follows:

    “Having analysed as above and the reasoning in the above cases, it is therefore this tribunal’s considered view that the Petitioner who has not been shown to have participated as an aspirant in the primaries of the APC for the choice of a gubernatorial candidate for the 21/11/2015 and 5/12/2015 elections lacks the locus standi to challenge the nomination, sponsorship and substitution of the late gubernatorial candidate of the APC with the 2nd Respondent”.

    From a legal standpoint, the tribunal’s stance on locus standi is ludicrous. The petitioner contested the November 21, 2015 election as deputy governorship candidate. Indeed, it is laughable that a candidate who contested an election would be held to lack locus standi to challenge the person wrongly declared winner of the election. Locus standi is no longer an inscrutable concept to be twisted and convoluted as the tribunal did. Locus standi simply means “an interest in a suit” (Inakoju v. Adeleke (2007); Thomas v. Olufosoye (1989). And, it is well known that the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria does not require a deputy governorship candidate to undergo process of primaries. He is to be nominated by a governorship candidate as a running mate and associate (Section 187(1) of the Constitution refers). For the tribunal to have imposed an additional burden on the petitioner to acquire locus standi smacks of travesty of justice.

    The petitioner’s locus standi is located both in the Constitution and the Electoral Act. First, section 137(1) of the Electoral Act stipulates the persons who may present a petition. They are: (a) a candidate in an election and (b) a political party that participated in the election. Second, the locus standi of a deputy governorship candidate to institute a petition is also clearly established under section 187 of the Constitution, which acknowledges a deputy governor as a candidate in a governorship election,without whom a governorship candidate cannot be duly elected. There was evidence before the tribunal that the petitioner was the associate/deputy governorship candidate in the November 21, 2015 election. Going by the provision of section 187 of the Constitution, two persons must jointly contest a governorship election, one as governorship candidate and the other as deputy governorship candidate. The constitution and all INEC forms recognise and acknowledge both of them as candidates. Indeed, the constitution describes a deputy governorship candidate as “another candidate”. (Section 187 (1) of the constitution refers)

    What is more, there are judicial authorities which have affirmed that a deputy governorship candidate has locus standi to present a petition. One of such authorities is Waziri v. Danboyi (1999), where the Court of Appeal unequivocally held that a deputy governorship candidate had locus standi to present the petition in that case. It is curious to note that all the judicial authorities were cited before the tribunal, but the tribunal did not do as little as mentioning them, let alone allowing itself to be guided or bound by them.

    Furthermore, logically, the reason why the tribunal stripped the petitioner of locus standi is the very basis upon which his locus rests. He contested an election that he believed was conclusive but which INEC declared inconclusive. He felt aggrieved and approached the tribunal. Good enough, the tribunal affirmed that election tribunal was the proper venue for him to complain but illogically held that because INEC declared the election inconclusive the petitioner cannot complain!  INEC is not omnipotent. It is a statutory body which actions and declarations are subject to challenge.

    It is also baffling that the tribunal denied the petitioner locus standi because he did not present the petition as a deputy governor-elect. There is no law which says that a petitioner must be declared deputy governor-elect before he has a right to present a petition. It is sufficient in the eyes of the law that he is a candidate in the election. In Sunday v. INEC (2008) the Court of Appeal explained:

    Locus standi in election petitions is statutorily defined and leaves no room for hide and seek. Election petitions are sui generis, distinctively from other civil proceedings. The right to present petition under the unique procedure is sensu stricto as provided by the relevant statutes. A petitioner’s locus standi is established by averments in the petition showing prima facie evidence that the petitioner falls within the class of persons entitled to present an election petition. A court or tribunal is therefore bound by the averments in the election petition as the sole source and only avenue for determining the petitioner’s locus standi.

    In paragraphs 2, 3, 4, of the petition, the petitioner deposes as follows:

    “2.Your petitioner was qualified to vote, and did vote; had a right to contest and did contest for the governorship election of Kogi state, as the Deputy Governorship candidate of the APC at the Kogi State Governorship Election held on 21st November, 2015 on a joint ticket with Prince Abubakar Audu (now deceased).

    1. Your petitioner was a candidate at the said election pursuant to section 187 (1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended).
    2. By virtue of section 187(1) of the Constitution and section 137 (1) (a) of the Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended) your petitioner has a right to present this petition having contested and participated in the said election on November 21, 2015 Kogi State governorship election.

    The pertinent question here is, if in the face of these laws and facts the petitioner is held not to have locus standi, who else has?

     

    ISSUES OF NOMINATION, SPONSORSHIP, SUBSTITUTION, INTRA-PARTY DISPUTE AND PARTY PRIMARIES.

    In its bid to arrive at a pre-meditated destination, the tribunal kept veering off from the track by pronouncing on issues relating to nomination and sponsorship of candidates; substitution of candidates, party primaries and intra-party disputes. On a general note, the point must be made here that these issues never arose from the petition. With due respect, the petitioner did not raise issues of sponsorship, nomination or intra-party disputes in his petition. The tribunal was, therefore, without jurisdiction to formulate issues outside his petition. In Ahmed & Anor  v. Idris & Ors (2014) the Supreme Court unambiguously stated that  it is the case of the plaintiff/petitioner that determines the jurisdiction of the court.

    It is elementary law that a tribunal like a court is bound by the claim of the petitioner. The generosity or charity of a tribunal must be confined to the facts in a petition very strictly. The rationale behind this is that it is the petitioner who knows where the shoe pinches him and, therefore, knows the limits of the complaints he brings. It is not for the respondents or tribunal to expand or enlarge the scope for him. The tribunal is supposed to be an unbiased umpire and cannot claim to know more than the petitioner. It is not for the tribunal to embark on a voyage of discovery. The tribunal is not Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese explorer, who discovered the sea route to India. The tribunal is not Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer, who made four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean and discovered the New World, the Americas, when he landed on an Island in the Bahamas archipelago. Coming nearer home, the tribunal is not Mungo Park, the Scottish explorer, who led the failed expedition to find the source of River Niger. It is the duty of the tribunal to inquire into facts placed before it. The law forbids the tribunal from going outside the petition, in the absence of a cross-petition, in search of more facts with a view to discovering greener pastures for the 2nd respondent (Alhaji Yahaya Bello).

    Tagging the petition as intra-party or pre-election matter is the height of ignorance or mischief of the tribunal. It demonstrates the length to which the tribunal went in supporting the case of the respondents and supplanting the case of the petitioner. It also shows how deeply the tribunal misconceived or misunderstood the petitioner’s case. The tribunal overlooked the simple fact that the petition was, essentially, directed at the declaration of the returning officer that the election of November 21, 2015 was inconclusive. No dispute arose and no complaint was lodged against the nomination or sponsorship of the candidates to the election. Indeed, the fact that the APC sponsored both the late Prince Abubakar Audu and the petitioner as candidates at the election is not in dispute.

    The complaint of the petitioner against the 2nd respondent was that, apart from the fact that the supplementary election was unconstitutional, the 2nd respondent was not qualified to contest same without a running mate. How the tribunal interpreted that to mean an intra-party dispute is extraordinarily astonishing. And, for the tribunal to have come to the conclusion that the petitioner had no cause of action, in the face of the facts presented before it is remarkably startling and stunning. There is nothing esoteric in the term ‘cause of action’. It simply means a cause of complaint. The Supreme Court, in Afolayan v. Ogunrinde (1990) summarizes what is involved in cause of action: “A dispute in respect of which a court of law is entitled to invoke its judicial powers. It consists of every fact which it would be necessary for the plaintiff to prove if traversed, in order to support his right to judgment” Certainly, there were facts before the tribunal that called for adjudication. So, the petitioner had a cause of action, contrary to the jaundiced view of the tribunal.

     

    PARTY PRIMARIES.

    The hub or gravamen of the decision of the tribunal is based on the fact that, because Alhaji Yahaya Bello participated in the primaries in which he was the runner up, he was the appropriate person to take over from him. In the words of the tribunal:

    “…It is the tribunal’s considered view that the 2nd Respondent participated in the APC primaries and was the 1st runner-up as shown in exhibit R2(8) to the late Prince Audu, the gubernatorial candidate of APC, participated in the 5th December 2015 election, and not having been disqualified by the conditions as stated above to contest the said election, it naturally follows that on the exigency of death of gubernatorial candidate of the party, the party’s 1st runner-up in its primaries in the person of the 2nd Respondent will be an appropriate choice of candidate to substitute its deceased candidate in the circumstances, more so when APC was invited by INEC to substitute its candidate” (underlining mine).

    The first remark to make here is that the decision of the tribunal on this point is not based on law or any section of the constitution but nature.                        Apparently, the tribunal is unmindful of the purpose and scope of political party primary elections. A primary election is not valid for all purposes and at all times. It is circumscribed in scope and purpose. The Supreme Court was categorical on this point when it held in CPC v. Ombugadu (2012) that “the sole purpose of a party’s primary election is the emergence of one of the contestants as the party’s candidate at the election”. It follows that once the primary election has produced a candidate, its purpose is served. There is no law, or any section of the constitution for that matter, that permits any political party to revert back to the result of a primary election to pick “a first runner-up” for a supplementary election. As a writer once put it, “it is jurisprudentially unthinkable that a primary election would be made to produce two candidates at different times”. The truth is that, while political parties are allowed to substitute their candidates, this right is only exercisable before the commencement of an election. Aspirants who flunked at primaries are dropped and remain so.

     

    NON-JOINER Of APC

    The tribunal turned the law upside down when it held that the failure of the petitioner to join APC was fatal to the petition. In coming to the decision, it rationalized that the presence of the party “will assist this tribunal in effectively and effectually determining the dispute between the petitioner and the 2nd respondent.” The tribunal relied on Green v Green (1987). But the decision of the Supreme Court in Green v Green (Supra) is quite distinguishable from the petitioner’s case. One distinguishing feature between the two cases is that Green v. Green (Supra) is not an election petition. It has been said times without number that election petitions are sui generis, bearing their peculiar characteristics, very much unlike ordinary civil or criminal proceedings. (Onnoghen, JSC in Hassan v. Aliyu, 2010). One of the peculiar characteristics of election petition is that the parties that constitute them (petitioners and respondents) are statutorily prescribed. Section 137 (2) of the Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended) prescribes who the respondent in an election tribunal shall be. It stipulates:

    Section 137 (2):

    A person whose election is complained of is, in this Act, referred to as the respondent.

    By this provision, the only statutory respondent that is required to make an election petition properly constituted is the “person whose election is complained of.” A petitioner is neither obliged nor obligated under section 137 of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended) to make a political party a respondent as the law does not consider it a necessary party. In Bello & Anor v. Mohammed & Ors (2008), the Court of Appeal stated that: [t]here is no authority for the proposition that a victorious political party whose candidate was successful at an election is a statutory or necessary respondent. By operation of law, the Tribunal was right to have struck out the PDP from the petition in its judgment”. The Supreme Court in Buhari v. Yusuf (2003 held that political parties are not necessary parties to an election petition. Also, the Court of Appeal in Ngige v. Obi (2006), held that it is not necessary to join a party when no complaint is made about it.

    The pronouncement of the Supreme Court in Buhari & Anor v. Yusuf & Anor (supra) is instructive. The apex court said:

    “It is manifest that Section 133 of the Act places no obligation on a petitioner (s) to make any candidate who lost an election, or any political party, whether of a candidate elected or returned or a candidate who lost or which may not have fielded any candidate for the particular seat, a respondent other than the statutory respondent envisaged under subsection (2) as identified in this judgment. As a matter of strict adherence to procedure, all such persons or political parties can neither be respondents nor are they necessary parties.” (Uwaifor JSC)

    From the foregoing, it is clear that it is now a matter well established that the petitioner is not bound to join the APC as respondent. In any event, under cross-examination, the petitioner explained that it was not necessary for him to join APC that sponsored him for the November 21, 2015 election as he had no relief against the party.

    One can go on and on highlighting and analyzing the bizarre, farcical and incongruous judgment of Justice Halima Mohammed tribunal without end. Before I am done, let me quickly bring out one of the many outlandish conclusions of the Tribunal. The Tribunal held that there was no satisfactory evidence produced by the petitioner to show that the election was conclusive.  The tribunal came to this conclusion  because:

    “…the petitioner having not scored the alleged highest votes and ¼ votes cast in all the local government (sic) of Kogi state cannot be legally correct since there are available facts to show that  the election was declared inconclusive…..” P. 147

    The farcical reasoning of the exceedingly biased tribunal is that the petitioner could not have won majority of lawful votes and ¼ of all the votes cast in all the local government areas of Kogi State. Apparently, the tribunal was referring to the provision of section 179 (2) of the Constitution. But then what the tribunal stated is not what is contained in that section. The relevant section of the constitution specifies two conditions to be satisfied in order to deem a candidate as duly elected. They are (i) scoring the highest number of votes where there are two or more candidates and (ii) having ¼ of all the votes cast in 2/3 of the local governments of the State and not in all local governments as stated by the tribunal. In any event, Audu/Faleke ticket won ¼ of all the votes cast in all the local government areas in Kogi State.

    The tribunal stated that there was no satisfactory evidence produced to prove this. Nothing can be further from the truth. Exhibit P19 that contained all the results of the local government areas was before the court.  For reasons best known to the tribunal, it refused to look at it. Since it did not look at the said document, it certainly does not lie in the mouth of the tribunal to say that there was no satisfactory evidence produced by the petitioner.  Interestingly, the same tribunal had earlier quoted the pronouncement of the Supreme Court affirming the authenticity of  results declared by a returning officer. The tribunal quoted the Supreme Court thus:

    “It is trite that there is a rebuttable presumption that any election result declared by a returning officer is authentic and correct and the burden of rebutting that presumption is on the person who is challenging it. See the case of NGIGE V. INEC (2015) 1 NWLR (PT. 1440)317 318 paras H-A ABUBAKAR V. YAR’ADUA (2008) 18 NWLR 9pt. 1120)1.

    The pertinent and germane question here is, why did the tribunal not hold the results of the Kogi State Governorship election held in November, 2015 that were presented before it sacrosanct, authentic and correct as required by law, in the absence of any rebuttable evidence?

    Finally, if there was ever a petition devoid of understanding, proper consideration, dispassionate and rational reasoning and conclusions, the case under consideration is one. The facts presented before the tribunal now cry to high heavens for justice!

    • Adewole is a legal practitioner

     

  • June 12 Plus

     Many others see June 12 as a fitting time to repeat the demand for restructuring while others would rather not be bothered for calling for the kind of change that restructuring entails

    A well-deserved ritualisation of June 12 took place last Sunday. As usual, this year’s ritual of remembrance of the period of loss as a device to engineer reform went well in most of the Southwest states, leading to public holidays in some states, street marches in others, calls for  symbolic and substantive compensation in others, and reinforcement of twenty-three-year old call for true federalism in others. Today’s piece, ‘June 12 Plus’ is to remind readers of what the June 12 struggle failed to achieve and the new thorns thrown on the road opened by June 12 to re-federalisation and full democratisation of Nigeria.

    Historically, the June 12 struggle had three goals: restoration of MKO Abiola’s presidential mandate given to him by the fairest and freest election in the country’s history; de-militarisation of the country’s polity; and return of federal system of governance to the country. After the death of Abacha and later of Abiola in circumstances that continue to raise questions till today, the struggle lost its first goal. The second goal was partially won at the time General Olusegun Obasanjo became president at the end of General Abdusalami’s transition to democracy in 1999. But Obasanjo’s presidential election was not guided by any visible constitution to let citizens and candidates know what they were bargaining for. And the third goal, re-federalisation of the polity, had been hanging in the air ever since. Even after four post-military presidential elections, Nigeria is still saddled with a constitution crafted behind closed doors by military rulers.

    Surprisingly, seventeen years of elected governments have not alleviated the problems that arose from June 12. On the contrary, the period of post-military rule has aggravated the unsolved problems left behind after Abiola’s death and the transition to civil rule that followed it. Interestingly, the narrative of re-federalisation had not died even 23 years after annulment of Abiola’s election, but its retelling has been hobbled by confusion arising from several quarters. NADECO at home and abroad suffered some gradual haemorrhaging since some of its members came to political power in the Yoruba region. Only a few of the governors/lawmakers elected since 1999 and a few NADECO leaders remained vocal in calling for re-federalisation, either in terms of fiscal federalism or true federalism.

    The frustration in the course of realising the goal of re-federalisation has taken many forms. NADECO became war weary after the death of Abiola and the promise of return to democratic rule by the Abdulsalami Abubakar government. Others found selling re-federalisation to politicians as a stratagem to mobilise for electoral support by politicians of their liking to be fashionable and profitable. Some found creation of mushroom organisations as vehicles for calling for federalism stimulating and rewarding as a means of staying politically and socially relevant in their communities. Many others see June 12 as a fitting time to repeat the demand for restructuring while others would rather not be bothered for calling for the kind of change that restructuring entails.

    Ironically, a former chieftain of NADECO-abroad, now leader of the All Progressives Congress, opened a hydrant on the fire of re-federalisation a few days before this year’s June 12 anniversary when he announced that federalism is not a priority of the new administration. Many who voted for a New Nigeria in 2015 are already feeling confused by the pronouncement of the chairman of APC and President Buhari’s media assistant who characterised the call for federalism as a distraction from the ruling party’s priorities. But the following statement in the highlights of APC manifesto: Initiate action to amend our Constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties and responsibilities to states and local governments in order to entrench true Federalism and the Federal spirit, does not suggest that an item in the highlights of the party’s manifesto is not a priority item. From information available to the electorate, the manifesto of APC emphasises re-federalisation or reforming the existing largely unitary system through amendment of the 1999 Constitution. If the spirit to do what was promised is no longer there, it is important for the party to say so. And I believe doing so should go beyond an ex-tempore assessment of Buhari administration’s priorities by the ruling party’s chairman.

    More than two decades after NADECO’s struggles for democracy for universal and cultural democracy, Nigeria is still largely at the same point that it was after the election of the first post-military government of Obasanjo. The partial de-militarisation achieved through election of Obasanjo as a civilian and of subsequent civilian presidents and lawmakers remains as limited as it was in 1999. The constitution that presents a unitary system as a federal one is still intact. And the largest chunk of the nation’s revenue is still going to the central government that has no direct constituents to service while states and local governments that house and provide direct service to citizens receive much less than the central government. The imbalance between subnational and national governance is even getting worse as the golden eggs of petroleum start decreasing. States are now leaving on bailouts and loans, instead of being empowered constitutionally to produce what they consume, all in an effort to sustain the old system of fragmented states that have to be nurtured as subordinates rather than coordinates of the central government.

    ‘June-twelvers’ who have remained committed to the ideals and goals of June 12 deserve to be congratulated for not becoming despondent after another two decades of a constitution that is afraid to come to terms with the demands of managing a culturally diverse country. Since 1966, Nigeria has been trying to find its way to the map of modern development. Rather, it has been moving from one crisis to the other, a situation that had made nonsense of the lives of millions of people who had died while waiting for justice and progress and of the chances of many others still alive to have a good life in a country whose progress is undermined politically and economically by its flawed structure. There is, however, danger in allowing the government spawned by a party popularly known as A New Party for a New Nigeria for the purpose of Building a New Nigeria which we voted for massively in 2015 to be derailed by what looks like right wing interpretation of the platform presented by General Buhari in 2015.

    In addition, ‘June-twelvers’ and others genuinely committed to bringing federalism back to the country should not be contented with gathering every year to remember the injustice of the past. Remembering Abiola and June 12 must include working towards realisation of the missed goals of the NADECO struggle, not just through gathering of motley associations, but through a return to a cohesive organisation to revive the struggle for true federalism. At present, there must be in the Yoruba region alone hundreds of groups working towards restructuring with very little communication or cooperation among them. If truly, the Yoruba desire a return to the federal system, they need to know that a calendrical ritual of remembrance of a period of democratic loss may not be enough to galvanise the rest of the country to accept the inevitability of change through re-federalisation. For example, it is important to recognise that true federalism cannot come from the obsession of alumni of Jonathan’s national dialogue with recommendations of the conference that Jonathan himself was reluctant to implement. Believers in the demands of the June 12 struggle, especially in full de-militarisation of the polity and restoration of federalism through a people’s constitution need to remember the old saying: There are no shortcuts to any place worth going. Confusing recommendations of Jonathan’s conference with restructuring that Nigerians have been calling for since the 1990s is akin to preferring to find a shortcut to taking time to identify a place worth going.

  • I went to church today and tremendously enjoyed the service, would you believe it?

    I went to church today and tremendously enjoyed the service, would you believe it?

    It is Thursday, June 16, 2016 as I write these words. Femi Osofisan is 70 today and the church service to which I refer in the title of this piece was held at the Chapel of Resurrection, University of Ibadan. Ordinarily, there should be nothing remarkable at all in my going to a service of idupe, of thanks, for my friend’s attainment of the age of “three score and ten years” that the Christian bible makes so much of in its wide-ranging reflections on our allotted time in this life, this existence. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that there should be nothing remarkable at all in a non-Christian tremendously enjoying a church service held to give thanks for the gift of long life for a close friend. For ordinarily, there should be nothing remarkable in an atheist, an iwalesin secularist joining Christian brothers and sisters in a worship to celebrate the life of a beloved friend. If the service had been at a mosque, I would have been there, at least if I am allowed to be there. If it had been at a synagogue of Judaists, I would have been there. Ditto for the places of worship of Buddhists, Hindus, Orisa devotees and other faith communities. In my understanding and practice of a quite robust secularism, ritual and symbolic expressions of thanksgiving for the gift of life take many forms, religious and non-religious. For this reason, participation in all or any of these traditions of expressing thanks for human life should be truly ecumenical. In other words, it should nothave been surprising for anyone to have seen me in church today joining the Christian community in the thanksgiving service for my friend. But that is not what happened.

    Ah, BJ, you will come back to Christ, many who saw me in church today said to me after the service. When I said in response that seeing me in church and even observing me sing lustily did not mean that I am on my way back to Christ having left Christianity more than four decades ago, these friends and relatives asserted knowingly that I may not know it yet, but Christ is at work and against my knowledge and will, he will bring me back into the rapturous band of the saved. Now, I should perhaps add here that a good number of these interlocutors were being rather teasingly playful: they did not in the least expect that sooner or later I would someday be back in the fold. But quite a few were dead serious: either I would come back to Christianity one day and be”saved” or my eternal soul is headed for perdition. As a matter of fact, this was the theme of the sermon preached very vigorously at today’s service, this radically anti-ecumenical notion that on a planet in which the non-Christians overwhelmingly outnumber the Christians, all the non-Christians will not be “saved”.And there was no doubt that this fate was reservedespecially for those like me who, having once been Christians, left the fold.

    Now it occurs to me as I think of these issues that as much as Christians, many secularists like me might as a matter of fact also come to the conclusion that my going to a Christian service of thanksgiving for the gift of life is an indication that I might indeed be making unconscious but inevitable steps toward a return to Christianity.  For such secularists and atheists, this is the pertinent question:  since all the songs and hymns, all the sermons and exhortations, all the poetry and sentiments evoked and expressed at the service today were aimed at affirming the majesty and grace of God, how can an unbeliever like me ignore this combined and overwhelming play of the sacred and the divine at the service? This question can be rephrased more piquantly: for the secularist, the non-believer, to whom and how might thanks for the gift of life be expressed if not to God and in the idiom of a religious service?  Another way of expressing the same question is to ask pointedly if atheists and secularists have their own non-religious ways of expressing thanks for the gift of life. Since indeed there are secular, non-religious traditions of expressing gratitude for life in virtually all the cultures of the past and the present, these questions boil down to the following central issue: is there really an unbridgeable divide between secular and sacred, “Christian” and “non-Christian” ways of celebrating life and giving thanks for happiness and longevity?

    My answer to this question might shock both religionists and secularist and it is this: reverence for life and gratitude for its enrichment and longevity is not the exclusive, sovereign space of religionists and/or secularists! During the three days of the festivities for FO’s 70th birthday that I attended and participated in, there were innumerable secular rites of song and dance, poetry and performance, narratives and jests all expressing thanks for his life and work. In the secular sessions, there were moments imbued with intimations of sacred or divine motivation by the performer, orator, dancer or poet. And in today’s church service, as much as the sermon heavily proselytized for those not yet “saved” to stand up for Christ, there were many moments of mundane, secular expressions. One instance of this stands out in my mind: after the officiating pastor asked us all congregants to give handshakes of solidarity and peace to those closest to us, as I shook hands with Emeritus Professor Ayo Bamgbose, he remarked to me, “Biodun, so mo itumo e?” I was startled by this knife-edgepiece of good humor that I translated as “Biodun, you incurable and unrelenting ideological warrior, I hope you know the meaning of a peace gesture!” And at a moment in the service when most of the congregants had already sat down when we all ought to have remained standing – worshippers do develop tired feet! – and the pastor said, “you may be seated” one man behind me said loud enough for those of us seating three rows away from him to hear what he said, “we are already seated”! And indeed, who does not know that sarcastic and even ribald humor often encroaches willfully into the space of the sacred and the divine in church services?

    There are of course atheists and secularists who will never do anything that would make them to be found anywhere near a church, not to talk of actually being seen in one participating in a service, regardless of the occasion. To such souls I say everyman and everywomanto his or her moral and spiritual scruples! But we secularists of all stripes have it hard in our society and no more so than at the present time when a fanatical, simplistic and superstitious religiosity dominates nearly all our faith communities. I speak from both direct personal experience and deep and sustained reflection over the course of several decades. Atheism and secularism remain not only very poorly understood but also repressively and self-righteously sanctioned in our society. Here is a sample from a litany of dismissive barbs usually thrown at all self-declared secularists in our society: Ha, how can you say there is no God? You are lying, you do not really believe it; you’re only saying it because you thinkit makes it seem like you know a lot! If there is no God, who made you? Did you make yourself? Isn’t atheism a Western, foreign invasion that we Africans knew nothing about and did not practice at all before the colonial age in our part of the world? Show me a single Nigerian, a single African who calls himself or herself an atheist who did not pick it up from Western, foreign sources! At the bottom of everything is the fact that you so-called atheists are arrogantly and blindly setting yourselves against God! And so on and so forth….

    Within intimate circles of friends and relatives, I made a breakthrough against the psychological and intellectual ostracisms of such anathemas against atheists and secularists when I shifted the bone of contention from either the affirmation or the denial of the existence of God to the iwalesin principle: the crucial thing is not your belief or unbelief in the existence of God, it is how your Being, your values and acts enhance and enrich life and existence. If your belief in God drives you to live and act in consistency with values that enrich and ennoble life, then I have absolutely no religious or moral quarrel to settle with you. Similarly, if your unbelief is based on the rejection of the great variety of mystifications in virtually all the religious faiths in the world that use worship of God to keep billions of the faithful in penury and hardship while few live in obscene opulence, then your unbelief is very much like mine and I have no quarrel with you. Here I should perhaps emphasize that one type of unbelief to which I am totally opposed is that which pits all secularists against all religionists. In my life, I have met many fellow atheists with whom I had greater disagreements than with believers whose moral and spiritual values I found more compatible with mine. Logically, belief may be the radical opposite of unbelief, but in the real world, that is not always the case.

    Yes, I stopped being a Christian, a believer about 50 years ago, but this hasnot stopped me from sometimes attending a church service when the bonds of friendship and community demand it – as I did today. And I have not needed these infrequent, occasional returns to church service in order to retain the richness of ritual, festive and symbolic idioms for the celebration of life that I had when I was a Christian. As a matter of fact, the reverse is the case: I now have access to a much wider range of religious and non-religious, Christian and non-Christian festive and ritual idioms for the celebration of life than I did when I was a Christian. Expressed in concrete terms, if the service for FO today had been conducted in ANY of the religious traditions of the world, I would have been there. That would not have been the case when I was a Christian, a religionist. This is not true with the vast majority of Christians I know and have met in our country: had FO decided that part of the service today be conducted in the ritual and festive idioms of Orunmila, the muse of his artistic genius, the great majority of the Christians in church today would have assertively and ostentatiously absented themselves from the service.

    I take my cue in this matter from both Marx and our own indigenous traditions of a secularism that is robust without being dogmatic. Most secularists like to quote only one half of the quotation from Marx that forms the epigraph to this piece: Religion is the opium of the people. But I do not ignore the other half of the quote: (religion) is the soul of a soulless world. I think of this and my mind goes to the many, many historical instances when religious humanism and utopianism served to liberate millions of people from the shackles of material exploitation and spiritual mystification. Which is why in my intellectual and spiritual adulthood, I was immensely fortunate to have (re)discovered the iwalesin principle which, for me is nothing if not vigorously and superbly secularist.

    I sang lustily in church today at the service celebrating FO’s 70th. Having read this piece, I now ask the liberated Christians who were also at the service today to join us if and when we continue the celebrations at the shrine of Orunmila!

    Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                                                                 bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • How not to be a Parent

    • Unless we end this new culture of indulgent parenthood, parents will be unwittingly signing their own extinction warrant

    Early this month, the world marked the international day of parents. I guess the world was trying to tell us something; such as it’s not easy to raise a Cassius Clay and bend, twist and tumble him into a Mohammed Ali. It was saying that it is not easy to bring an Albert Einstein into the world, watch him tumble and squirm through all his early exams and then bring out the theory of relativity out of him. It is definitely saying that all those people out there still trying to bring the Einstein out of their little thugs should not despair; there is hope. Einstein almost didn’t get it, but he did, finally.

    There is a saying that children will be the death of those who have them and also the death of those who do not have them. It took me a while to understand that; you know how famously slow I am. When I did come to understand it though, of course I disagreed. As far as I am concerned, parents are quite capable of killing themselves. In fact they have started to do just that, but guess where – in their children.

    Naturally, it can be daunting to find oneself the only thing standing between this wee bundle and the deep floors of River Granges. I tell you, you need nerves of steel to prevent yourself from panicking, calling 911 and immediately tendering your resignation.

    One woman in America was said to have been so lacking in these nerves of steel she took one look at the world, another one at her five children and decided that if they lived on the floor of the river in her town, the world could not reach them with all its drugs, failures, murders, politics and … and badness. So, she drowned them. Another one slit the throat of her four children, also because she was so afraid the world would ruin their angelic looks and character. Naturally, these women were jailed, but the children were safe.

    Honestly, it’s got so bad many parents do not know what to do with their children anymore. If they, the parents, killed the children in their childhood, they would go to jail. If they let these children grow up, it does not favour the parents. To start with, the girl child soon discovers boys, and her voice. That’s when she discovers that her parents are unreasonable and belong to the old school whose candlelight went out long ago. This stage has led many parents to commit murder. Un hun.

    On the other hand, the boy child soon discovers friends, guns and drugs, in that order. His voice comes later to give a million reasons why he should be allowed his freedom to play with all three as he pleases. That is also when he discovers that the very house that gave him shelter from sun, rain and armed robbers has become restrictive and he needs his freedom. This stage has also led many parents to commit disownment. Un hun.

    Please believe me when I tell you that once, the oldest woman in the world was asked if she still had any worries at her age and she replied, ‘not since my youngest child entered the old people’s home.’ Oh, I’ve told you this before? Good, I was afraid I was repeating myself. Obviously, the job of a parent is to have children and worry sick over them.

    ‘Have children; will do things’ has become the credo of many a parent around here though. As an alternative to calling 911 and tendering his/her parenthood resignation or drowning the troublesome tykes in River Granges, many Nigerian parents have found ways to… err, raise the little buggers. First, they tolerate them for around a year till they can totter around on their little trotters, and then they, wait for it, enrol them in lessons, in order to give them an advantageous start in life!

    Clearly, we have finally arrived at the age when parents are ready to do anything for their children. This means that children, not the parents, are wearing the pants in the house now. There was only one pair of pants in my house, and you could immediately see who was wearing them by the size (much bigger than all of us), by the colour (definitely not in our hues) and by the shape (it uses a belt). Now, fashion has come round and round and parents and children are struggling for the same pair of skin-tight pants, and guess who’s winning – the children. How do I know this? Wait.

    In the not too distant past, examinations were a way to measure a child’s abilities in many things. If he passed, he was applauded all round. If he failed, he was excommunicated from the comity of nations in the family – no food, no new clothes and no new smiles from all. Now, examinations have taken on a new character. They are a way to measure the parents’ attention deficit disorders. Many parents, not having time to spend with their children in order to bring them up properly, over-compensate by lavishing on them such things as money, material items, admissions bought from the stores and new ways to cheat in examinations just to be sure they passed.

    Imagine the horror of this nation when the news reported sometime last year that a set of parents impersonated their children in an examination! Before then, all we heard was how parents would organise to have their children register in examination centres that were well below the radar so that they could pass. We knew how parents in a community would come together to take very good care of invigilators sent into their midst, being after all, strangers. But to actually sit for an exam in the place of a child beats my imagination hollow because I have been wondering honestly: what did they do for uniforms? How did they manage not to let their wrinkles stand in the way? I would really like to know because I have a few lines on my face I want to get rid of for reasons slightly related to theirs. I would like to go back to school to read the course of my dreams: Loxodontology, the study of elephants. I want to know how to make them dance the waltz, on one leg, on the beach, while I am lying on the sand, counting the palm leaves…

    Thanks to parents now, examination malpractice has gone way past the manageable level. I wrote here sometime ago that there are few things wrong with our educational system that curing the parents would not cure. I nearly got roasted, alive! But for the grace of God, I tell you, I would have been singed to my eyebrows. Really, parents have unfortunately forgotten their primary duties.

    The primary duties of parents to their children are clear. Instead of teaching their children to cheat, parents should be teaching RESPONSIBILITY. Instead of plying their children with earthly materials and rousing their appetites for the moon, parents should be teaching PROBITY. Instead of teaching self-indulgence, parents should be teaching SELF-KNOWLEDGE. Armed with these, a child would better appreciate the true issues of life. Then, more theories of relativity will ensue. Unfortunately, they cannot be picked up by the wayside; they must be taught by parents.

    Unless we end this new culture of indulgent parenthood, parents will be unwittingly signing their own extinction warrant. Putting power into the hands of children, the weak heads that they are already, is a most dangerous thing. Take warning for I am telling you that very soon, children may decide that they no longer want or need your parenthood; they can parent themselves. Perhaps then, the children will do a much better job at parenting their parents even.

  • Kogi’s unending absurdities

    Kogi’s unending absurdities

    On February 21, and for the second time in about nine years, Palladium donated his column to an ardent reader incensed at the desecration of the fine arts of politics in Kogi State. The youthful Governor Yahaya Bello was busy upending common sense in the state, lawmakers were divided in two, with one part, the majority, fleeing to Abuja with the mace, and another, just five of them, turning electoral arithmetic on its head. The ordinary Kogite watched in great perplexity, unable to comprehend how the simple act of voting peacefully for the late Abubakar Audu/Abiodun ticket had turned into a farce orchestrated by both the ruling APC and INEC. Last week they expected that their distress would end; instead the absurdities, thanks to the inexplicable tribunal judgement, promise to continue for some time. Here is a repeat of Mr Adeola’s intervention, published again to set the context for next week’s dissection of the judgement.

    KOGI State has been in the news for the wrong reasons of late. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) dealt a devastating blow to the state when on 22nd November 2015, it announced the result of the governorship election held on 21st November 2015 as inconclusive. On Sunday, 22nd November 2015, Kogites had stayed glued to their televisions to watch how the elections results from the local government areas were trickling in one after the other. Many Christians amongst them missed Sunday church services as they stayed back home to monitor the results of the election. The Returning Officer of the election, Professor Emmanuel Kucha, Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, finally announced the scores of the candidates in all the 21 local government areas of the state after the collation of the figures. Kogites became agitated when Professor Kucha announced that the collation officers were proceeding on a short break. Little did anyone know then that something miserable was afoot.

    On his return from break, the professor announced that Prince Abubakar Audu (now deceased) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) scored 240,514 votes, while Capt. Idris Wada of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) garnered 199,514 votes. He said that the margin of votes between Messrs Audu and Wada was 41,353. He, therefore, further announced that the election was inconclusive because the total number of registered voters in 91 polling units in 19 local government areas where election was cancelled was 49,953, which according to him was higher than 41,353 votes with which Audu led Wada. The returning officer added that, by INEC guidelines, no return could be made for the election until a supplementary election was held. The supplementary election held on 5th December 2015 at the end of which Alhaji Yahaya Bello, who never participated in the main election, was declared the winner by “supplementary votes” of 6,000. It was not until 24th November 2015 that INEC owned up to the demise of Prince Audu.

    The conduct and announcements of INEC on Kogi polls have since set Kogi State on the path of absurdities, legal and political. The Kogi state Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, now sitting in Abuja, is being called upon to resolve the legal absurdities. These include:  (a) The declaration by INEC that the election of 21st November 2015 was inconclusive after it had announced the results of all the local government areas; (b) The choice of INEC to use its guidelines as against applying the provisions of the Electoral Act and the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to declare the election inconclusive; (c) The propriety or otherwise of INEC conducting a supplementary election on an election that had been won and lost going by the figures INEC itself announced; (d) The constitutional basis or otherwise of INEC allowing Alhaji Yahaya Bello to contest an election without a running mate; (e) The propriety or otherwise of INEC merging the votes scored by the late Abubakar Audu/Hon. James Abiodun Faleke with the supplementary votes of Alhaji Yahaya Bello and the law that permits such a merger.

    There are many other issues that the Tribunal will be called upon to determine. All Kogites and the whole world are anxiously waiting for the decision of the learned Tribunal.

    Alhaji Bello was inaugurated as the fourth civilian governor of Kogi State on 27th January 2016. He was sworn in without a deputy. This act is unprecedented in Nigeria. Kogi State is fast becoming notorious for earning the first position in every bad political occurrence in Nigeria. In 2007, it became the first state to have the election of its governor upturned by an election tribunal. In 2011, it became the first state to have three governors in one day: the then outgoing governor, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris; Capt. Idris Wada sworn-in by the President of the State Customary Court of Appeal; and the Speaker of the then State House of Assembly, sworn in by the Chief Judge of the State. The state is also now on record as the first state in which the candidate who won an election died before being sworn in, calling for the application of section 181 of the Constitution.

    Alhaji Bello has spent three weeks as the governor of Kogi State. A period of three weeks may be considered too short to assess the performance of a governor. It is, however, sufficient to come to a decision on what type of governor he would make. A careful study of the actions and utterances of Alhaji Bello, as governor of Kogi State, clearly shows that he is an intemperate and sometimes unpredictable person, imbued with extraordinary energy and youthful exuberance, almost bordering on the bizarre. He has sufficiently demonstrated that he is someone who would take an action first before thinking over it. The consequence of this is that he has had to reverse himself on several issues relating to the policies he announced within the first few days of his tenure. He lacks the experience, maturity, insight, shrewdness and astuteness required to govern a state like Kogi or any state for that matter. He is naturally self-conceited and not reflective.

    Upon his inauguration, the first thing he did was to abandon Kogites and proceed to attend the meeting of the Northern Governor’s Forum. The meeting was more important to him than the plight of his people, particularly the workers of the state civil service who had been on strike for non-payment of salaries that had accumulated for four months. Alhaji Yahaya Bello returned from the meeting and announced that the hungry workers would have to undertake an elaborate screening exercise before they were paid October 2015 salaries. The exercise would have taken another one month or more to conclude. Kogi State chapter of the Nigerian Labour Congress rose up to the occasion and alleged that he acted mala fide and betrayed the trust reposed in him. The Congress reminded him that it was to honour him that they agreed to call off the strike. It threatened to resume the strike within seven days if the governor failed to reverse his decision on the screening exercise. The Congress had wondered how the workers would cope with hunger for another one month. The governor immediately reversed his decision.

    Alhaji Bello promised to pay one month salary arrears to the workers. As at the time he announced this decision, he did not know the amount of money in the coffers of the government to determine whether or not the money would be sufficient to cover the wage bill. He was not even sure what the wage bill was when he made the announcement. It was a whimsical decision to score political points.  He was later faced with the stark reality as he met only N2.5 billion in the government’s account, whereas the wage bill was N3.5 billion. But he went ahead to deplete the N2.5 billion he met by first taking care of his security vote and awarding a contract of N100million for the renovation of his office, amongst other huge sums of money he had withdrawn for some other so-called state reasons. The resultant effect of all this was that almost half of the number of the workers have yet to receive their October 2015 salaries as at the time of writing this piece. And, there is no hope of them receiving their pay as no arrangements are being made in that regard. Meanwhile, he is said to have incurred some huge hotel bills at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, and another whopping sum at Reverton Hotel, Lokoja.

    Alhaji Bello knew that he needed the cooperation of the members of the State House of Assembly. He, however, approached the matter in an arrogant manner. He demonstrated his lack of skill, finesse and diplomacy on the issue. After securing the approval of the lawmakers for his nominee for the office of the Deputy Governor, Hon. Simon Achuba,  in a subterranean manner, he invited them into his private residence and addressed them roughly. He did not leave any of them in doubt that he had become the Governor of Kogi State and would remain so for the next eight years. His coarse language angered the members, majority of whom are of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). His immodesty made him lose control over the Kogi State House of Assembly, notwithstanding the unlawful manner he wooed them.  By the time he attempted to impose his stooge as the Speaker, the exercise ended in fiasco as only five of the twenty members were available to do his bidding. They, nevertheless, went ahead with their unconstitutional acts with the strong backing of the military and police who were deployed that day to give the five members protection. One really wonders the business of soldiers from the Army Records in Lokoja over a legislative matter that is purely civil. Perhaps the commander of the unit or the Chief of Army Staff would be in a better position to explain this. Meanwhile the governor is yet to explain to Kogites why he had to conduct the swearing-in ceremony of the Deputy Governor under a secret cover in his sitting room rather than the Confluence Stadium or any other open place. The arrogance of Alhaji Bello has also been visibly demonstrated by his decision to block the road that passes by his personal residence beside the Government House, Lokoja, thereby causing  pains and inconveniences and logjam for road users.

    The governor has exhibited ignorance of the clear provisions of the constitution. This has led him to commit unconstitutional acts and impeachable offences. He does not appear to have knowledge of the limits of his powers as a governor. He imagines that he has absolute and unfettered powers to do anything he wants. He has dissolved the Local Government commission without regard to the fact that it is unconstitutional to do so except at the expiration of its stated term. He abrogated the joint account of Local Government Councils and the State without repealing the law establishing it. He has issued directives to Universal Basic Education and Pension Bureau contrary to the extant laws and rules guiding them.

    Alhaji Bello also announced that he had granted autonomy to the local government councils, apparently, without any understanding of the implications of such a fundamental policy decision. He places no structure on the ground either by legislation or guidelines upon which such autonomy can operate. It is a blanket power conferred on the local government council chairmen to conduct the affairs of their councils as they desire. Finances and the staff salaries and welfare of the local government councils are now at the whims of the council chairmen. Indeed, the crucial question agitating the minds of right-thinking Kogites is whether or not local government autonomy can be granted by mere irrational verbal pronouncement of a governor without any legislative or constitutional backing. Given the penchant of the governor at reversing himself, it will not be surprising to hear, in the next few days, that he has reversed the decision again. One interesting aspect of the autonomy granted the council chairman is the fact that few days after the announcement of the granting of the so-called autonomy, the Governor himself proceeded to suspend all the Directors of Local Governments (DLGS) and cashiers for one month without consulting the chairmen. Right now, all permanent secretaries in the state civil service, directors of finance, deputy accountant-general and staff of accounts sections of all ministries and parastatals are being placed on one-month compulsory leave.

    His hatred for the Okuns is brewing and manifesting. He ensured that his cronies who impeached the Speaker did not give the slot to an Okun man even when it was zoned to the western Senatorial District. He also ensured that a Lokoja man got it. Furthermore, he ensured that an Okun man who was the deputy accountant general did not act for the accountant-general when the latter was sacked. He is said to be planning to bring an Ebira from Lagos to be the accountant-general of the state, a civil service position.

    Right now, Kogi State is in the hands of two amateurs and inexperienced administrators. Yahaya Bello, the Governor, and Edward Onoja, the Chief of Staff, who have demonstrated lack of capacity in governance and administration. Both of them have no political or administrative pedigree and acumen. Alhaji Bello served as civil servant at the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission for only twelve years. He never became a director to direct any affair. He is today a multi-billionaire. Edward Onoja worked in the banking system for few years before he was eased out. Both of them, regrettably, are calling the shots in Kogi courtesy of INEC’s manipulations against the will of the people of Kogi State, freely expressed at a peacefully conducted election of 21st November 2015 where nobody complained of any malpractice. Until the Tribunal rules, the absurdities in Kogi are bound to continue. Hopefully, this won’t be long.

    • Adeola writes from Lokoja

     

     

    • First published February 21, 2016
  • And why are we so blessed? – the uneasy mix of grace and truth in friendship [For Femi Osofisan @ 70]

    And why are we so blessed? – the uneasy mix of grace and truth in friendship [For Femi Osofisan @ 70]

    Eni t’olorun o pa, eda to le paa ko si. FO t’olorun o pa, FO fun’ra e ko le paa! [S/he that has the protection of God, nobody can cause to die before his/her time. FO that has the protection of God, FO himself cannot kill before his allotted time!]
    The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk G.W. F. Hegel

    No, I have not suddenly become religious with the ripeness of age. The words in the first of the two epigraphs to this tribute come from an absolutely terrifying experience that I had in what I believe was the very last ride that I took with Femi Osofisan (FO) on a long journey in his car. The time was the early 1980s and we were travelling from Ile-Ife to Benin. For a long time after the start of the journey, I sat completely speechless as my friend broke all speeding records flying through space and time between 130 to 140 km per hour, absolutely without regard to whether or not we were travelling over smooth tar surfaces or broken, pitted patches of dirt road. When I could no longer take this experience in silent terror, I asked my friend in feigned nonchalance so he would not register my fear why he was speeding so recklessly. To my surprise, FO casually said, “you think all this time I haven’t noticed how tense, how fearful you have been? Relax, my friend!” Well, straight talk begets straight talk and so throwing all my pretended nonchalance to the winds, I answered back: “Relax? When you are going to get us killed?”

    After that journey, FO went on to have one more child – our Sisi. As a matter of fact, he went to achieve artistic and professional accomplishments that only few writers and academics ever achieve in the course of a lifetime: one of Africa’s preeminent playwrights and a dramatist whose plays are produced and studied in virtually all the continents of the world, both for the delight they give and the light they shed on the human condition in our continent and our world; more than 70 plays, novels, collections of poetry and essays; a much deserved reputation as one of our continent’s foremost theatre scholars, researchers and administrators; and the winner of the Thalia Prize for 2016, arguably the most prestigious prize for theatre scholarship, criticism and theory in the world.  Obviously then, we did not perish on that journey to Benin. But it was my last journey in a car driven by FO. For the truth is that, at least at that period in our lives, the man apparently felt in the bone marrow of his Being that he was indestructible! I have the testimonies of other friends and acquaintances to back me up on this idea. For after apparently having had the same kind of experience on long journeys with FO, such friends and acquaintances came to me pleading, “BJ, you are the only one he will listen to; he is going to kill himself and kill others with him as well!” To such people, I would give a forlorn answer, “you think I haven’t tried, you think I haven’t spoken with him on the matter time and time again? He thinks he is indestructible!”

    For those who might think that I am exaggerating, that I am blowing things out of proportion for rhetorical purposes in what is after all a tribute, let me say that I am in dead earnest in this matter of FO’s belief at that period of our early adulthood that a special grace from providence was looking out for him and protecting him from the perils of the road and of life itself. At least, that was what I thought initially. For instance, in this same period, in countless travels over all parts of Nigeria as ASUU National President, I survived only one horrible road crash. By contrast, FO survived at least half a dozen more horrific crashes! And what was truly amazing is that in every single instance, he escaped virtually unhurt. Why wouldn’t such a man come to feel that that he had a special access to the inscrutable benevolence of grace from the powers that govern the universe?

    But things were a little more complicated, as I eventually found out from the case of his and my confrontation with – high blood pressure! For it turned out that ore ofe, grace, had come to abide with FO not in a simple manner but complexly. Here, I must emphasize that I am publicly telling this particular anecdote for the first time ever in this tribute. This pertains to the time when the combination of our genes and our restless, manic lifestyles began to make us prone to hypertension. After an illness that nearly took me away, I began to very dutifully take my prescribed anti-hypertensive medications in order to stay alive. Again by contrast, for nearly a whole decade, FO completely ignored my desperate pleas with him to pay attention to his high blood pressure crisis. Whenever my endless pleas made him relent a bit, he would take his medications, but for a short period only after which he would discard the pills again with the absurd “explanation” that he could tell by intuition when the high BP was there and when it wasn’t there! On at least two occasions, one of them far away in Sri Lanka, he had violently explosive, migraine-like headaches that required emergency medical treatment. And still to my great despair, my friend remained incredibly nonchalant about his high BP crisis. It took me a long time to gradually fathom the cause of this sublime dalliance with early demise as a sort of semi-conscious fatalism. Both his father and his uncle had died in middle age and apparently, FO felt doomed by the law of genetic inheritance to have the same fate. But he did not have that fate and has lived beyond the age when his father and uncle departed by two decades – and still counting!

    I have gone into this lengthy narrative of that period of our young adulthood in order for me to say, quite simply but in great gratitude, that FO and I, we are extremely lucky to be alive today. By the law of averages and the logic of probability, we should have passed on decades ago. This “luck” that is of course more profoundly a matter of grace, is indeed generational. All of our great and dear friends and companions that are still alive today are also incredibly lucky – Kole Omotoso; Yemi Ogunbiyi; Eddie Madunagu; Odia Ofeimun; Ropo Sekoni; John Ohiorhenuan; Niyi Osundare; Niyi Aiyegbayo; Kunle Akanbi; Olu Ademulegun; Siji Adelugba; Tokunbo Dawodu; Olu Obafemi; Bode Lucas; Chima Anyadike and others. We have all lived far beyond our country’s life expectancy rate of 52 years. Moreover, for about half of the time that we have lived, some of us have lived as if we were wired to fulfill that national life expectancy rate of 52 years! We were of course not indestructible; we were only lucky. We were and are the beneficiaries of a grace that we not only did not earn but actually did everything not to deserve.

    Here, Hegel’s famous words, as expressed in the second epigraph to this tribute, come to mind. By the owl of Minerva that only spreads its wings and flies at the end of the day, Hegel metaphorically asserts that unhappily, wisdom and insight come to most women and men at the twilight of their lives, too late to have had the chance to shape and transform the course taken by their lives. But going against the grain of Hegel’s thought, I say that if you are still alive if and when wisdom and insight at last come to you, then all is not lost. I’d like to express this idea both playfully and in all seriousness: failing to perish on the roads in the 70s, 80s and early 90s as much as he tried to, FO began to drive carefully by the middle of the 1990s! Similarly, all of us who have lived past that putative, statistical national endpoint of 52 years, from the chastened experience of our years and decades of recklessness and daring, we have much in knowledge and fortifications of the will to leave to those who will come after us!

    The ultimate mark of grace is of course the gift of life itself. Not bare, exigent life but life lived in dignity, unburdened by the terrible scourges of poverty, insecurity and abuse by the rich, the powerful, the enemies of all the values that sustain and enrich human life. Bearing in mind all these caveats to the celebration of life itself as a mark of grace, I am immensely grateful for the life of my friend, FO. I say this because it is through his life and the lives of two or three other friends that I came to understand that friendship is a great gift, one of the most precious manifestations of grace that we have as human beings. Blessed immeasurably by the friendships of FO and these other few friends, I have often wondered: Why am I personally and all of us collectively so blessed in and through our friendships?

    Grace is of course a part of the answer to this question: in a country and a continent where lack of the simplest but most basic necessities of life is so deep and widespread, we have been lucky, we have been blessed not to be among the ranks of the wretched, the forgotten, the betrayed. But truth is also a part of the answer to the question, perhaps even more portentously so than grace. For FO and I and all these other friends, we have never hidden truth from ourselves, most of all the truth of our divergent and often conflicting perceptions of what needs to be done to extend the “blessings” of our own personal and professional successes to the underprivileged of our society and our common earth. Indeed, of all my friends, FO perhaps stands alone in this fact that he and I are keenly and deeply aware of the truths of where we agree and where we differ on what needs to be done to extend our own “blessings” to all of our peoples and all of the denizens of our planetary home. Here is another way of putting across what I am trying to say here about truth and friendship or more properly, truth in friendship: a true friend is one whom you love and trust so completely that you are sure that everything you have, including your life, is safe with him or her; on another level, a true friend is she or him from whom you never hide the crucial things about which you do not see eye to eye, things indeed on which you may have conflicting differences. Of all my friends living and departed, FO stands alone as the one with whom there is a near perfect balance of these two dimensions of the close, intimate and very uneasy relationship between truth and friendship.

    The grace and the truth, they walk together in a friendship that has been one of the most treasured things in my life. So, okunrin ogun, cherished husband, father, grandfather, sibling, cousin and friend to so many to whom your life has been a rich harvest of blessings, take this salute of your friend (and elder!) as I bid you welcome to our midst, those of us who did not die young and hope to live the rest of our days in a land, a world where the blessings will spread all around, boundlessly and bountifully.

    Ire o! Ire aiku ti se baale oro!

    Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                                                           bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu