The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Now, a masquerade nails the masquerade

The Nigerian political theatre often resembles the most outlandish scenes out of the fevered imagination of the masters of the genre known as Magical Realism, particularly the late Columbian genius, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Whenever actual reality trumps magic, that is the stuff of magical realism.

For over three decades, this writer has been contending that in Nigeria you don’t need to read any novel when you are living in the real thing. Nigeria is a perpetual movie. All you need to do is to sit back and enjoy the moveable feast of surreal politics in the land of living ghosts.

The travelling theatre of political absurdity has now berthed at the magical confluence of the two great rivers that define modern Nigeria: the Niger and the Benue.Lokoja used to be a pleasant serene place frozen in colonial memorabilia. Lugard lived there. It was a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic paradise in line with the most benign vision of a multi-nation country.

But not anymore. Things have fallen apart. Everybody seemed to be angry with everybody and everybody seemed to be in court against everybody. The ruling party seems to have shot itself in the foot through sheer carelessness. Beware of the careless habits of accuracy, Oscar Wilde famously warned.

Matters seemed to have come to a head last week when the entourage of the governor’s wife decided it was time to pay a visit to EkinrinAdde, the homestead of James AbiodunFaleke, the once and future governor-presumptive of the state. The governor’s wife, despite all the paraphernalia of modern state power, was put to flight by a dreaded local masquerade which suddenly appeared out of nowhere literally spitting fire.

But the governor, Yahaya Bello, is having none of that nonsense. He has reportedly ordered the local council chairman to produce the masquerade or forfeit his monthly subvention. Now, now, isn’t that a tall idea? In Yoruba culture, the masquerade is known as araorun kin kinkin or he that has his abode in heaven. Since the masquerade has presumably gone back to where he came from, would it not amount to asking the council chairman to fall on his sword by asking him to produce the errant masqo?

In Yoruba parlance, an ayorunbo is somebody who steals back to earth from heaven. While growing up, snooper knew one that smelt like a skunk and kept a sealed lip to the bargain. Since the governor is very adamant, the embattled council chairman should consult an ayorunbowho would lead him to heaven and back. Or let him request for Amos Tutuola who knows something about the land of the unreturnable.(Orunaremabo).

May 1, 2016
Is presidential kinship the Fulani herdsman’s new intoxicant?

Yes, Buhari is not Obasanjo but must he always turn the other cheek or has presidential powers been diluted since he took over on May 29, 2015?

My dear aburo, the engaging essayist, Louis Odion, it was who first adverted his mind to this question when he wrote: “Now is the time for President Buhari, himself a cattle farmer, to go beyond the normal call of duty to stave the dangerously growing perception that seeming official lethargy – if not indifference – to the continued killings is dictated by the spirit of kinship he shares with the rampaging herdsman or that the normad’s renewed audacity, this genocidal reflex, feeds on the opium of expected solidarity from the top”. For confirmation of the above as the reason for this resurgent ‘post-Boko Haram pestilence’, as Professor Wole Soyinka described it, seek no further than the totally arrogant article: “Ranches Or Prisons For Herdsmen”, written by one Sale Bayari, the self-described Secretary-General of Gan Allah Fulani Development Association (GAFDAN) and published in The Nation of 27, April 2016. Increasingly, these fellows make one sound like a bigoted ethnicist.

But no matter the risk of being so accused, it is important to let them know that Nigerians are no fools. In the impish, thoroughly insulting and arrogant article, just a day after more than 40 indigenes of Enugu State were mercilessly mowed down by the murderous horde of Fulani herdsmen, with the day’s newspapers awash with pictures of a weeping governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State, this guy comes out taunting, blaming the victims, lambasting everybody from the farmers to journalists and quoting profusely from the Nigerian constitution on freedom of movement and allied matters. Not once in his silly defence of the herdsmen’s right to murder and mayhem, did he quote that portion of the constitution which permits these men with scanty cloths on their backs, to slaughter Nigerians like rams because of some cultural inanities. In vain did I search his thoroughly insensitive article hoping to see him empathise with the bereaved families. No, not Bayari, just as we have never seen the big men who arm these poor souls, who they hardly look after, apologise for the murders; responsibility for which Allah will hang vicariously on them, no matter how important they think they are. Nor did Bayari thought it fit to suggest a reasonable way out of this new ‘Boko Haramites’.

All that concerns him is the rights only of the Born To Rule. For ease of reference, let us quote from Bayari’s absurdity: “It appears the Nigerian Constitution is under an unprecedented attack and assault by farmers, their academic and media sons and daughters. Not only is the Nigerian Constitution under an aggressive, brutal and savage affront but also the government and all those law abiding citizens that seek to protect the country and its constitution. These fiendish and scurrilous attacks are all geared towards the herdsmen’s freedom or its curtailment in an effort to make their lives worthless. As much as Nigerians love freedom, both local, national and international, when it comes to the rights and privileges of the Nigerian herdsmen, constitutional freedoms and rights can go to hell.” See the illogicality: just because non-Fulani Nigerians cry out against Fulani herdsmen’s totally unprovoked murders, the Nigerian constitution is now under unprecedented assault? How illogical, but that exactly is how arrogant some people can be. I am aware that for a very long time Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa, Taraba and Niger had been their killing fields but for their misadventure in Ondo State where they laid their filthy hands on a traditional chief, the highly regarded Chief Olu Falae, they have never been this aggressive, as we just saw in Enugu, in the South which naturally leads one to believe that their employers must have told them they can now get away with murders, however gruesome.But concerning this government, is President Buhari overwhelmed? As Professor Soyinka wrote: “It is not merely arbitrary violence that reigns across the nation but total, undis-puted impunity. Impunity evolves and becomes integrated in conduct when crime occurs and no legal, logical and moral response is offered. I have yet to hear this government articulate a firm policy of non-tolerance for the serial massacres which have become the nation’s identification stamp. I have not heard an order given that any cattle herders caught with sophisticated firearms be instantly disarmed, arrested, placed on trial, and his cattle confiscated.

The nation is treated to an eighteen-month optimistic plan which, to make matters worse, smacks of abject appeasement and encouragement of violence on innocents. … I have yet to encounter a terse, rigorous, soldierly and uncompromising language from this leadership, one that threatens a response to this unconscionable blood-letting that would make even Boko Haram repudiate its founding cleric.”

And one needs say with all the emphasis at one’s disposal, that this is sorely needed, not only in the herdsmen’s case but in all the theatres of the absurd we see all over the country like we do not have a superintending authority: when APC members are not being slaughtered in Wike’s Rivers State, they are being expelled from Ogoni land, being asked to self-deport from their villages as if this is not an APC government; the shenanigans in the judiciary are legion, like we did not see President Jonathan deal with even upright jurists, suspending them at will. Today, judges who received bribes for judgment, from lawyers, are still there giving their tainted decisions. No, it is not like I don’t understand that President Buhari is operating on a Change mantra, but for God’s sake must people who saw him to victory be at the receiving end of these illegalities, even in his administration? Must APC members feel like orphans in many parts of the country, even when they can claim they are in government? No, I perfectly understand what a pain in the neck Saraki and his G.77, who are most probably sworn on oath are to Buhari, and I am not blind to what a mess a man being tried for corruption is making of both the budget and the judiciary with lawyers as his pawns? But for Christ’s sake, is President Buhari obliged to tolerate these inanities? Yes, Buhari is not Obasanjo but must he always turn the other cheek or has presidential powers been diluted since he took over on May 29, 2015? Nigerians, especially his party members, are waiting and watching as he works towards seeing the APC snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, come 2019. I am not asking him to be a dictator in a democracy but why, for instance, are fraudsters who illegally tampered with the senate standing orders not already on trial? Why is the Attorney-General shielding them or can President Buhari claim ignorance of this brazen illegality of protecting felons after Police investigation has confirmed same? What is happening for Christ’s sake? What exactly is this government seemingly afraid of? If it is the threat of impeachment, then this selfish senate must be ready for the mother of all battles with Nigerians.

RE: THE 8TH SENATE

“Although Dokun Adedeji text did not say so, perhaps his vilification is not directed at me personally as Orebe alluded. Perhaps!

Hence, I apologise to Dokun, Femi Orebe and others whom I have disappointed for taking the issues so personal. We live and learn”. That is the concluding part of Senator Sola Adeyeye’s very mature reaction, published first on Sahara Reporters and later in The Nation of Thursday, 28, April 2016 to my article of Sunday, 24 April in which I literally made him carry the can for a very unfeeling senate. There, I think the matter should end except to add that a subsequent, very long telephone discussion with the senator conclusively proved that I could never have imagined half the pain he endures being a member of the 8th Senate. Having thus been convinced he spoke to Dr Adedeji out of frustration, not indignation, I can say without mincing words, that Professor Adeyeye is certainly an exemplar in that senate, always permanently counting with the few voices of reason, on the side of moderation and responsible behaviour. For the sake of all Nigerians, I pray that his tribe may increase in our overall national politics, not just at the senate.

May 1, 2016
Megabanks, megachurches, mega-looters: neoliberalism at home and abroad in the world (3) [Random thoughts and notes]
In this closing piece in the series that began two weeks ago, let us begin with the question with which we ended the discussion in last week’s column: How did we move from Sabo Bakin Zuwo to Sambo Dasuki? Let us recall the contents of this question. When tens of millions of naira were found in his bedroom after the coup of 1983 that terminated his incumbency in the Kano State executive governorship, Sabo informed the police detectives that since the money was “government money”, Government House was a logical place in which to stock the money. Moreover, Sabo later vehemently denounced the detectives who carted the stolen loot from his bedroom for underreporting the amount they took away from “Government House”. Last year, 2015, when millions of monies in dollars and other foreign, convertible currencies were found in Dasuki’s house, what did the former National Security Advisor to Goodluck Jonathan say? Well, we don’t know exactly what he said to the EFCC operatives that found the monies in his house; all we know is that in his place, his lawyers, a phalanx of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), have been speaking for him in the law courts. So far, these lawyers have said little or nothing about either the monies found in Dasuki’s home or the immensely vaster sums of the billions of dollars lodged in both Nigerian and foreign banks. To the contrary, Dasuki’s lawyers have been fixated on consolidating the terms of his release on bail so that he can travel out of the country for medical attention.

What points, what lessons concerning looting in the age of neoliberalism am I making in this matter of the move that we havemade in our national economy from Sabo to Dasuki? First point: compared to the monies found in Dasuki’s home in 2015, the loot found in Sabo’s house in 1983 was, as the Americans would put it, peanuts. Second point: the loot found in Sabo’s bedroom was all in naira, not in dollars or any other foreign currencies. Third point: although Sabo’s puerile explanation of government money in Government House fooled nobody, it is significant that he found it necessary or convenient to invoke the government as the real owner of the money. Fourth point: Sabo did not speak through any lawyers, any SANs; he spoke in his own voice, as raucous and impudent as that voice was. Fifth and final point: Sabo launched a counter-offensive on the police detectives that carted the monies from his house by alleging that they, too, had stolen “government money” by not reporting the actual sum they took from his bedroom. Well, let me add a sixth point which, I admit, is mere speculation on my part: Sabo was keeping the stolen loot in his bedroom in readiness for the time when he could convert the millions of naira to foreign currencies on the black market and then have them smuggled out of the country in suitcases.

For readers under the age of forty to whom, I imagine, this whole scenario of Sabo and “government money in Government House” might seem so strange as to come from another age, another era, this was in fact how the disposition of looted monies from our national coffers typically organized at that stage of our post-independent economic history. In other words, Sabo’s case was not an exception, not an aberration: government and those who looted monies from its coffers confronted each other directly; and the government was the undisputed superior protagonist in the confrontation.As strange as it may sound now, there was a widespread or common assumption that government money did belong to the government, just as there was a belief, an expectation that “government” mattered and could and would act to protect the monies held in trust for all Nigerians. Dear reader, if you know nothing else about the extraordinary changes that neoliberalism has wrought in our country and many other countries of the world in the last four decades, please know this one particular fact: government did matter as the trustee, the guarantor of our commonweal, of the health and justness of the institutions and processes that make our collective experience as Nigerians safe, secure and dignified.

Yes, “government” very often not only often failed to deliver on these assumptions about its place in our collective existence, it was in fact sometimes turned into the very antithesis of these expectations. But these were aspects of, or enclaves within “government” – like the military and their rapacious self-serving coups; or the civilian politicians and their nepotistic political parties; or the civil services of the federation and the states in their entrenched practices of using administration to feather their own nests; or especially the police and the notorious “wetin you carry” expropriations that they tirelessly make from the already meager resources of the Nigerian masses. No, typically government has been far from perfect, in our country and indeed in most countries of the world. What neoliberalism did was to go far above and beyond the imperfections of government to more or less perpetrate a massive retrenchment or displacement of “government” in favour of something called the market or market forces. In other not to lay myself open to the charge of distorting neoliberalism in its relationship(s) to the government of our country and the governments of the nations of the planet, let me put this point in the language of neoliberalism’s own self-understanding, its own ideology: “the business of government is not business”.

Of course the apostles of neoliberalism and the warriors of its policies and programs never quite clearly come out to say that they are intent on the complete retrenchment of government. Their keywords and phrases are “privatization” and “deregulation”. Their favorite slogan is free trade devoid of so-called protectionist distortions. Their choice targets are trade unions, both public sector and private sector unions. They also do not care much, if at all, for governmental or state investment in public sector institutions, services and utilities like education; physical infrastructures like roads, highways and bridges; and human enrichment projects like health care delivery, public sanitation and waste disposal and the care of the young in state supported preschool and kindergarten programs. But dear reader, think of this crucial fact: about the only enclaves of the government from which the apostles and warriors of neoliberalism have, at least so far, not extended their mega-project of privatization and deregulation are the armed forces, the police, and the prisons. We could add the three arms of government – the executive, the judiciary and legislature – to this list, but everyone knowsthat for neoliberalism to do this, it would have to bear the cost of maintaining these institutions that, for the most part, are not income-generating “enterprises”. Moreover, neoliberalism is in its essence a global and globalizing phenomenon; it is content to leave the “business” of governance in every nation in the world to these three arms of government – the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. But with this comes what we might regard as the real cleverness, the true genius of neoliberalism: national governments are made everywhere to take a back seat to market forces. And in turn, the powerful and the wealthy control and manipulate these market forces.

Dear readers, please do not just take my words, my testimonies at their face value in these matters. Look deeply and carefully at the innumerable manifestations of these things that I say in this series in our country in the last two and half decades. Look especially at the triad of megabanks, megachurches and mega-looters that I have made the prime exemplars of neoliberalism in our country and our national economy at the present time. Each one of the three seem so strong, so impregnable that they seem to be above the Nigerian government as a national government, a government of one country and one country alone. For instance, the vast majority of Nigerians rather naively thought that the mega-looters would flee the country in their private jets with the Second Coming of Buhari, but did this happen? Have the mega-looters not stayed and fought back, in defiance of the wishes and aspirations of the Nigerian government and peoples?As for the megachurches, have we not seen how much influence, how much authority their proprietors have on politicians at home in Nigeria itself and across the whole of the West Africa region? And is the whole world not the hunting and haunting ground of these megachurches, with branches and franchises as far away as in Eastern Europe and the Asian Far East, not to talk of Western Europe and North America? Did not one of the eminencies of these megachurches boast that their intention is to have a church within five minutes of walking in every city, town and village in the developing world and within five minutes of driving in every city in the developed world?

What of the megabanks? Ah, the megabanks, great tidings of joy! Just this week, a friend from home in Nigeria visiting me in Cambridge, Massachusetts, rather proudly showed me his credit card from one of the megabanks at home that he has been able to use quite easily without any fuss in ATMS across America. As I reflected on this information, my mind went back to the 1980s around the time of Sabo Bakin Zuwo’s “government money in Government House” wahala. At that point in time when I was still teaching at Ife, if you wanted to get forex for your naira to enable you to go to conferences abroad, you had to go all the way to Lagos where you would go for approval from first, the office of the Secretary to the Federal Government; then to the Ministry of Finance; and finally to the Central Bank.In most cases, the amount did not or could not exceed $500. And of course, at that time there was nothing like domiciliary or dollar accounts in Nigerian banking. If you were desperate enough, you smuggled forex that you got by any means possible concealed somewhere on your person. Or in suitcases if you were one of the looters. In that period, that age, what is known in the jargon of neoliberal economics as “financialization”, the most important, the most dominant and hegemonic sector of contemporary global capitalism, had not yet made its way into Nigerian banks. In our closing piece in the series next week, we will start with how this came to the Nigerian banking system without the slightest beneficial impact on the poor but to the great benefit of the very wealthy, especially the mega-looters and the megachurches.
- Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
May 1, 2016
Nigeria’s constitution, police, and cattle farming

One thing that has remained amazing about Nigeria in my adulthood is the country’s readiness to create tension and distraction from the most important job at hand for the country’s political and administrative leaders. If it is not sudden introduction of Sharia jurisprudence to rattle secular governance; it is popularization of militants committed to obtaining some measure of social justice for a few beneficiaries of petroleum amnesty. If it is not Boko Haram forcing the country to spend (or steal in the process) about one-quarter of its annual budget on fighting a few Islamists desirous of a having an Islamic caliphate, it is some inexplicable fixation on the part of government leaders and their pundits on how to manage nomadic cattle ‘farmers.’ One thing that is clear about the ongoing crisis arising from periodic killing of tree, shrub, herb farmers in the central and southern part of the country by cattle farmers from the northern part is the unflagging enthusiasm of leaders and their supporters to chase shadows.

Fulani nomads have been raising cattle for centuries. As a person raised in colonial Nigeria, I grew up to see Fulani nomads (referred to then as Darandaran(shepherds) in my part of the country) bring cows to our town to be sold and killed for festivals and regular consumption. It was rare in the 1950s to see itinerant cattle farmers go through villages and towns with their cattle without any concern for the health and integrity of their hosts who were plant farmers. Even during the short period of Awolowo’s cattle farming with Erinla/Kete and similar breeds imported from Argentina, nobody saw those animals unless he or she went to the farm settlements to buy eggs or milk. Farmers raising the southern tsetse fly-resistant cattle were fully ‘sedentarized’. But the story changed radically in the last few decades, especially during the military era. Just a few months into the post-military tenure of Obasanjo, General Buhari had to lead a delegation to late Governor Lam Adesina to discuss the problem of fight between Fulani herdsmen and Yoruba farmers.

It was during the administration of late President UmaruYar’Adua that the federal government threw its weight behind policy discussion about creating cattle grazing zones in different parts of the country to facilitate the work of nomadic cattle farmers. This column joined the debate then and said that such policy was tantamount to preferring in the 21st century a mode of agriculture that was the most pragmatic in the 18th century. This column also cried foul when the 2014 Jonathan Conference recommended creation of cattle grazing zones, calling it a poster boy for retrogressive thinking with respect to agricultural-extension services in a country that should be in a hurry to join the comity of modern nations practicing modern methods of agriculture: ranches and feedlots powered not by grass but by soy, corn, and wheat.

All of these interventions were before Fulani herdsmen started to carry K-47 to kill, abduct, and even rape tree and vegetable growers, and before it became fashionable for police and even senators to quibble about number of Fulani herdsmen from other West and Central African countries. If the herdsmen had access to corruption funds, one would have argued that the recent killing of Agatu and Igbo farmers must have been stimulated by corrupt leaders who wanted to embarrass President Buhari as a Fulani man. Even if all the herdsmen involved in the recent murders in Benue and Enugu states were foreigners, it would still have been insensitive on their part as Fulani to act in the way they had acted, knowing that it is one of their own that has just been elected to govern the country on the platform of change. But that is a subject for another time. Let us get back to harping on distraction as a strategy to prevent Nigerians from asking the right question about how to sustain a multicultural society.

This is not to say that those accusing the president of keeping quiet unduly on the volatile matter of Fulani nomads killing Agatu and Igbo farmers or those thanking him for ordering in unequivocal terms that those involved in the recent murders be identified and brought to just are off the cuff. There is also need to avoid focusing on effects at the expense of causes. Why should the police need to feel the heartbeat of the president before preventing Fulani herdsmen from other countries from entering the country with their cattle and guns? There is nothing in the ECOWAS protocols that allows citizens of another country to enter any country with herds of cattle and weapons on their shoulders. Why should the Nigeria police (as federal as it is) need to know how the president feels before stopping Nigerian cattle farmers on the prowl with guns and arrows on their shoulders?

Furthermore, why should any minister or government leader think that the country should deal with the menace of Fulani nomads for another eighteen months while political leaders search for solutions that are available in most cattle producing countries of the world? Our leaders and pundits must know by now that there is nothing in our constitution that says the federal government should create grazing zones to assist one set of farmers at the expense of another set. Even though agriculture is on the concurrent list, there is still nothing that authorizes the federal government to create policies to help animal husbandry at the expense of those involved in plant and vegetable farming. Our constitution does not even allow the federal government to seize land from states for the purpose of assisting private business of any form. Cattle rearing is carried out by private businessmen and does not qualify for reserved land in states for nomads that raise cattle for their overlords.

The reasonable thing to do at this point is to look for why it was not necessary for Fulani herdsmen (from Nigeria or Niger/Mali) to bring their cattle from their communities to destroy the farms of other communities in the days before the first military coup d’etat. There is no doubt that the Sahel has been expanding in the last few decades, thus limiting the amount of space available traditional livestock pasture. But it has been possible in the same northern states to embark on irrigation that has enabled significant vegetable farming in okro, tomato, pepper, beans, maize, millet, soybeans, etc., that Fulani herdsmen coming from the far north are not allowed to destroy, because they are also considered to be economic crops that are as profitable to their growers as cattle to their farmers. How would it sound to Fulani cattle owners if people in aquaculture in southern Nigeria starting digging fish ponds in northern communities, particularly in the areas that have accessible groundwater at the expense of those who need the land to grow grass for cattle?

The way out of this mess is not to temporize on when to start modern animal farming. Canada is a beef exporting country. Yet it is hard for people to see cows running around cities, towns, and vegetable farms in Canada as they do in Nigeria. Our political leaders should realize that modern agriculture has gone beyond creating grazing to encourage nomadic cattle farming. Most countries that export beef, milk, and cheese today, do not have nomads that move across countries with bows and arrows to assist cattle or goats to forage for food. Most modern countries create ranches which employ workers and make such workers members of settled communities. In addition, this is the time to implement policies that can mitigate desert encroachment: afforestation and shift from use of firewood to gas. These are some of the policies that need to be embarked on now, while those responsible for murdering hundreds of farmers in different parts of the country are probed and punished for criminality.

May 1, 2016
May Day! May Day! Our DISCOs have not come to take us to the disco!

Every worker has a right to return to his house, after a hard day’s work, and have access to electricity without having to go up and down in search of petrol to put in generators they have to fiddle with in order to have a few hours of electricity.

I have always seen May Day, the day set aside for celebrating labour matters, as a day for serious reflections on how to negotiate to eliminate work and keep the pay. I tell you, the day this is achieved will be remarkable indeed. But I despair of that ever happening, when I remember that work has this nasty habit of never doing itself. For instance, has anyone been able to figure out how to get food into the mouth without belabouring the hand? I thought not.

In spite of the seriousness of the May Day mission, it has managed to attract its own body of jokes to it. I think the jokes are to help us to swallow the bitter truth that the likelihood of work ever being eliminated, so that the worker can be free indeed, is very slim.

‘May Day! May Day! I am in a plane and the pilot just died. What should I do?’, radioed a lady to Ground Control. ‘Don’t panic, Madam, we’ll talk you down. What is your height and position?’ replied Ground Control. ‘I’m 5’2’’ and I’m sitting in front,’ replied the lady. That is just one of the many May Day jokes flying around. I’m sure you’ve heard it.

Truly though, these days, you have a hard task distinguishing between the May Day set aside for celebrating the hardship that we workers endure to build the state and the ‘May Day!’ cry for help by damsels-in-distress in small planes. The same way, these days I can hardly distinguish between the ’70s discos I used to sneak to at night when I was young (never mind how far back or near that is) and the DISCOs that are now in charge of distributing electricity to the country. And, man, I need that distinction.

To start with, discos are very interesting, the dance arenas that is, not the electricity companies. The thought of an approaching disco often lifted our sagging shoulders, made our steps more nimble and had us looking forward to sweating out life’s unanswerable questions on the dance floor. In short, on the disco floor, life assumed meaning.

These other DISCOs are simply life-sapping, the electricity companies that is, not the dance arenas. They have done nothing about the darkness they inherited from NEPA. There is a photograph going around of a group of doctors and nurses contributing light from their phones to do surgery. Our DISCOs have increased the darkness, and are making me pay through the nose for this privilege. Imagine, the last bill brought to my house read N25,000.00! What for, I ask; the few bulbs I use? For days now, I have been going around mumbling ‘N25, 000.00 bill!’ to anyone who cares to listen. What kind of madness is this???!!!

Yet, when these DISCOs took over the duties of old, ailing and beleaguered NEPA, everyone thought deliverance had come for the masses from lengthy hours of darkness and torment. Indeed, everyone had the romantic notion that just as the country was rescued from the grasping hands of NITEL with the privatisation that brought in the GSM, the DISCOs would dispel the country’s darkness.

Not so; as things are proving. It seems that our DISCOs have come to entrench darkness. To start with, my house does not have electricity ten evenings out of seven. (Please don’t tell me I cannot count; this is serious business. It is no time to give me a test in primary school mathematics.) This means I get electricity a few hours during the day, when I am not at home, and when my gadgets and implements are completely at their mercy to wreck and to ruin. It also means my evenings are spent listening to noisy and fume-spewing generators from all around.

The other day, I came home to find many of my gadgets and implements frothing heat at the mouth. Again please, this is no time to split hairs. They had been burnt to cinders by an unusually high current that turned out to have been caused by electricity wires twisted by high wind. The result is a blown transformer, which has left me holding my implements, and staring at lots and lots of darkness.

I am not alone, people tell me. In my vicinity alone, there are people whose transformers conked out earlier, making them sit in darkness. Welcome to the queue, they tell me as I sit by them, to wait for our transformer to be replaced. My number is in the double digit of waiters. Someone said his area had been sitting in the dark since the first day of this year; another mentioned a date that sounded suspiciously close to Noah’s era. I don’t want to sit that long on this queue; I am too busy for that.

From the reports I have gathered on the matter, it seems to me that these DISCOs have been operating like our politicians – making like pirates on the land, plundering at will and taking no quarters! I have heard that they have no plans to purchase transformers to replace ailing ones. They are only interested in collecting money from everybody, and even from their partner, the federal government. That is what I heard. I don’t know how true these reports are but what I observe are communities waiting for transformers while these mammoth-sized, hefty bills keep coming to them even though the last I heard was that the DISCOs had no right to increase bills without first seeing to increase in services. Well, good news: there are no services and we are paying!

So, clearly, our DISCOs have not come to take us to the discos. No sir, they have come to take us to the cleaners, to shave our heads, and put us all in sackcloth. By the time they are through with us, I predict that even the sackcloth will look too good for us. To me these DISCOs are giving good ol’ disco a bad name.

However, we can take ’em DISCOs to task. The Labour Day theme for this year is Celebrating the International Labour Movement. I not only celebrate the movement, I salute it for all the things it has achieved on behalf of us the hapless ones. But for them, many among us would just keep working like Boxer in Animal Farm, thinking always ‘we must do better’ until it is time to be taken to the knackers. So, I really salute them.

This is why I would like the Nigerian Labour Unions to put a lot of thought to their demands. For instance, I hear that the unions are going to push for a N56, 000.00 minimum wage and I am thinking that much of it will be spent on buying generators and fuels to put in them. So, someone else is getting richer. I think that the unions should emphasise that our service providers must work. I think every worker has a right to return to his house, after a hard day’s work, and have access to electricity without having to go up and down in search of petrol to put in generators they have to fiddle with in order to have a few hours of electricity.

As of now, I have not gained from the DISCOs. I have not got from them the kind of relief that GSM brought to Nigeria. Only the DISCOs are gaining from this transaction; and they are getting lots and lots of money for no services. Nevertheless, I am starting my own Bring Back My Transformer movement (#BBMT – Day 1). Feel free to join me.

May 1, 2016
Megabanks, megachurches, mega-looters: neoliberalism at home and abroad in the world (2) [Random thoughts and notes]

Has Nigeria in the last two decades either gone too far or not gone far enough in embracing neoliberalism? As I stated in the conclusion to the beginning essay in this series last week in this column, since this question does not interest me in the least, I will not address it at all in this series. However, to avoid the impression that I am avoiding the question because I have no effective response to the champions and defenders of neoliberalism in our country, let me briefly give the reason why I have chosen not to address the question. Very simply, here is the reason.

All over the world, the debates between those for and those against neoliberalism is a perpetual and never-ending debate, including the United States, the heartland of both global capitalism and its current phase of neoliberalism. Nigeria is one of the few states in the world – indeed perhaps the only state in the world – where the champions of neoliberalism feel that this crucial debate, this elemental struggle between neoliberalism and its opponents is over, and the champions of neoliberalism have won the battle. As I write these words on Friday, April 22, 2016, three of the five remaining candidates in the U.S. presidential primaries are waging a fierce battle of words and ideas against neoliberalism. These candidates are Bernie Sanders on the Left, Hillary Clinton at the Center and Donald Trump on the Right. In varying degrees of passion and varied ideological hues, all three are vigorously challenging fundamental policy and ideological postulates of the free trade agreements that the U.S., in its moment of unbridled neoliberalism, imposed on itself and the rest of the world. In other words, economic nationalism, in form of ideas pertaining to protectionism and regulation, the double-headed ultimate nemesis of neoliberalism, is making its way back into the mainstream of American debates about the economic fate of the country in general and in particular, the hardship and suffering of the majority of Americans.

I do not make reference to this important feature of the current U.S. presidential primaries to imply that if the Americans are at last challenging the central ideas of neoliberalism, this should serve as a legitimating catalyst for us in Nigeria and the rest of the world to begin to question neoliberalism. The premise of my arguments in this series goes much deeper than that and it is this: from its inception in the mid to late 1970s, neoliberalism has faced fierce opposition everywhere in the world, Europe, America and Japan included. On this account, what we are seeing now in the U.S. presidential primaries is no more and no less an indication that the U.S. is at last catching up with the rest of the world in the sustained and fundamental critique of neoliberalism that is at the heart of the economic history of the world in the last half century. And this is happening in America right now because at last, the issue is being raised as to who has benefitted enormously and who has suffered unconscionably in the wake of the world hegemony of neoliberalism.

Nasir El Rufai, articulate and zealous apostle of neoliberalism, unwavering champion of complete privatization of all our public or state-owned enterprises especially the NNPC, are you listening, are you reading these words? Neoliberalism, the late 20th and early 21st century version of mid-19th centurylaissezfairecapitalism, has created unprecedented levels of growth around the world, but only on the basis of the greatest economic inequality in modern history wherein a tiny minority of the populations of the nations of the world grow enormously wealthy while the rest of the population in nearly every country in the world sink more and more into poverty and destitution. This is why I am completely uninterested in whether we have fully embraced neoliberalism or not gone far enough. The central issue is and has always been who gains, who loses; whose bellies are full to bursting and whose bellies are bloated because of the kwashiorkor political economy of the criminal justice system as it pertains to the prosecution of mega-looters in Nigeria.

Dear reader, what I am arguing here may be unusual, but it is easily demonstrated and it is this: neoliberalism is at the heart of the looting of our national coffers on the scale in which we have seen it in so many unbelievable cases but particularly incases like the oil subsidy mega-scam of 2010 and Dasukigate of 2015, cases that posed grave threats to the survival of the nation. In the oil subsidy mega-scam, the sums involved were much bigger than the total amount in the nation’s budget for the year in question. In the Dasukigate mega-scam, the sums were diverted from their intended, budgeted use: procurement of arms for the army in the war against the Boko Haram insurgency. In the oil subsidy case, not a kobo of the stolen loot has been recovered and no one has been penalized for the crimes. And with regard to Dasukigate (and all the other fresh cases currently being tried in the law courts), we are seeing the incredible spectacle of the prosecution and the entire country being forced into lame, defensive positions as lawyers, magistrates, judges and pundits mount arguments and devise tactics and strategies rooted in the Nigerian legal superstructure and its institutions in support of the rights of the looters. Welcome to looting in the age of neoliberalism!

Of course, this is not to say that large-scale looting, and more generally miasmic corruption, started with the inception of neoliberalism. That is not the case. Looting is as old as human social and economic history itself; and corruption is endemic to basic moral failings of humankind that will always be with us as a species. But the scale and kindof the looting of our collective wealth that we are dealing with now in the law courts in Nigeria is nothing but the underside of the freewheeling, deregulated (or indeedunregulated) brand of capitalism that neoliberalism brought into being. Against this historic backdrop, there are three things to bear in mind with regard to looting in the age of neoliberalism: first, it must be pitched at a colossal scale, dwarfing all “normal” or previous levels of looting in the country and the world; secondly, it must be unregulated or indeed be unregulatable; thirdly and finally, starting from Nigeria but going far beyond the borders of the country, it must be able to travel around the globe, traversing all the economic regions and currency zones of the planet. Let us look briefly at these fundamental preconditions of looting in the age of neoliberalism as they apply to Nigeria at the present time. As we do this, please bear in mind, dear reader, that neoliberalism does well what it is meant to do around the world because of the massive institutional and moral distortions it brings into being in the public affairs of nearly all the nations of the world.

Mega-looting in our country as the product of a (falsely) triumphant neoliberalism would have been impossible without the introduction of interlocutory injunctions and stay of proceedings into the administration of the criminal justice systemin Nigeria. As I have remarked countless number of times in this column,we are the only country in the world where this takes place; in all other countries in the world, interlocutory injunctions are applied only to civil cases. To this observation, I now wish to add two new observations that take us into the heart of neoliberalism. First, the diversion of interlocutory injunctions from its exclusive and normative restriction to civil cases to extensive application inthe criminal justice system in our country is an extremely costly affair; money changes hands on a colossal level, in both local and foreign currencies. Secondly, this in effect means that the loot must be big, it must of necessity be super-scale, for there are many SANs, many magistrates and many judges to “settle”. To these now add the following element and the circle of the neoliberal paradise enjoyed by Nigerian mega-looters and those who live on surplus extraction from their loot is complete: the megabanks must be there and willing to move the stolen loot around the capital markets and safe havens of the financial services industries of the world. Stolen loot in Nigeria used to be moved around throughthe smuggling of suitcases packed with foreign currencies into and out of the country. But that was before the global ascendancy of neoliberalism with its central dependence on megabanks that are able to electronically move billions and trillions of financial capital around the world.

Of course, allegedly, hundreds of thousands of foreign currencies of diverse denominations were found in Sambo Dasuki’s house in Abuja. But this is not comparable at all to an earlier time when the same kind of loot was found in the home of former Kano State Governor, the late Sabo Bakin Zuwo, of laconically comicand sardonic memory. To the police detectives who found the loot in his bedroom, Sabo was alleged to have said with deadpan composure: “What you find here is government money; where else do you expect to find government money if not in Government House”? We have come a long way from Sabo to Dasuki. The space between them is marked by the movement from a time, an age when local and national priorities still mattered, still mediated market forces to the present neoliberal age in which these same local and national priorities have become very tough to defend and sustain against looters who, in contrast to what many Nigerians naively expected, did not run away in their private jets in the wake of Buhari’s Second Coming, looters who indeed stayed and are fighting back, aided by seemingly invincible forces within and outside the judiciary. How this movement was consummated will the starting point in next week’s continuation of this series.

Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.

April 24, 2016
The futility of zoning

Next month, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will be holding its national convention in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, despite rumours the interim chairman, Ali Modu Sheriff, may be angling for either an extension of that date, and thus his mandate, or the position of national chairman. As part of the intense jostling ahead of the convention, there were indications not too long ago that the party had already zoned plum offices. Party leaders have denied any zoning took place anywhere. The rumour should be disregarded, they said.

What is not in doubt is that a convention will be taking place either on the stated date, or any other date not too distant from the first date. What is also not in doubt is that the dynamics in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have compelled the PDP to announce, without giving the matter much thought, that the presidency had been zoned to the North. The APC’s Muhammadu Buhari is from the North, and given the irrepressible parochialism of Nigerian politics, the PDP believes it would be suicidal to swim against the tide. Should the APC present a northern candidate in the next presidential poll, the PDP would be sailing near the wind not to look north for its own candidate, party leaders concluded.

Nigerian political parties loath taking risks. If they were minded to dare, they would discover that no candidate is unbeatable, for the dynamics that shape Nigerian presidential elections are not what the voters often think they have identified. Moshood Abiola did not win in 1993 simply because he was a Muslim, Yoruba or, as it seemed, a progressive. He won because, among other reasons, he had an extensive network of friends all around the country and had won the admiration and trust of Muslims and Christians alike for his warm, idiosyncratic politics. In addition, his opponent, Bashir Tofa, was staid, detached and unpopular even in his own state. What is more, Chief Abiola and his party outspent the opposition.

It is doubtful whether ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo won in 1999 just because he came from the Yoruba stock, which the power brokers in the country were trying to mollify over the murder in detention of Chief Abiola. Among other things, he won because the power brokers distrusted Chief Obasanjo’s opponent, Olu Falae, whom they thought had not transcended his Yoruba worldview. Chief Obasanjo had deferred to the North considerably in his first tour in 1976-1979, and the brokers thought he would be amenable, indifferent to ethnicity , and remain predictable because of his military background and network. Above all he was not an insufferable purist or an ideologue like Chief Falae.

Two main reasons accounted for President Buhari’s victory in 2015. He was able to strike an alliance with the Southwest; and ex-president Goodluck Jonathan bungled too many things, including the insurgency problem and the irresponsible manner he left the treasury door ajar. Had both these two conditions not been present in 2015, neither the former army general’s military antecedent nor his asceticism would have proved lethal enough. After all, both attributes were noticeable in him when he ran for the top office in 2003, 2007, and 2011. More importantly, as Dr Jonathan’s victory in 2011 showed, the highly intriguing geopolitical dynamics of Nigerian elections indicate that to win, a candidate must take at least three zones out of the six and handsomely share a fourth.

Therefore, zoning the presidency to the North, as the PDP has desperately done, is a reflection of their superficial understanding of the emerging dynamics of Nigerian politics and a safe and easy resort to simplistic electoral permutations. It is safe because they imagine that if they can split the North with President Buhari in 2019 by at least taking a half of one of the three zones, take the very safe South-South and Southeast, and possibly take the Southwest which they seem to believe is disgruntled, they would win. That chance, as far as analysis goes, exists. But the devil is in the detail. Technically, contrary to its calculations, the PDP may in fact be undone by its insistence on picking a candidate from a particular region before the party and country can determine his popularity and national acceptance. In 2015, the APC knew it could not hope to win by picking anyone from the South to slug it out with Dr Jonathan despite his unpopularity. It had to pick someone from the North, not just because he was from the North, but because his appeal to that region as well as his charisma had sufficiently matured to deny the PDP candidate a share of the votes capable of producing a hung election.

Mercifully for the APC, the PDP is engaged in lazy politics. As this column has maintained, the PDP must come to terms with why it lost the 2015 polls, and especially embark on a purge of its leadership in order to present a fresh face to the country. The party still pretends that the corruption it allowed to fester very badly under Dr Jonathan can be glossed over by rhetoric and grandstanding. It pretends that the corruption came about because of extenuating electoral spending, and that the APC is also guilty of that crime anyway. The party of course has its strengths; but it is its weaknesses that the public prefers to focus on, and it is those weaknesses that it must find absolution. It must show penitence for the great moral wrong it did to the country, and show proof that its new men, if it can find them, are so principled that they would forswear such unhealthy and destructive practices in the future. And they must show that contrition convincingly. Merely picking a northern candidate through zoning will not redress the wrong nor assuage the feelings of a country still hurting very badly.

Contrary to what the APC thinks, it is still very vulnerable despite the PDP’s lack of sense and deftness. For a number of reasons, the ruling party can be beaten in the next polls, even if it makes the economy grow at a stupendous seven to 10 percent between now and 2019. Regardless of the fate of the economy, a number of factors are forcefully shaping national discourse and politics, chief among which are (a) the issues of devolution manifesting grimly, for example, in the Biafra polemics and Fulani herdsmen aggravations; (b) human rights problem manifesting in the increasing and untamed brutality of security agents such as was evident in the Army/Shiite clash last year in Zaria; and (c) bitterness over the skewness of national appointments. The party better able to seize upon these subjects and frame them in a manner that resonates with the electorate will likely have the upper hand. So far, the APC is dithering, unable to manage its victory with half as much daring and surefootedness as it summoned at the beginning of the 2015 electoral joust; and the PDP is pussyfooting, unable to come to terms with its 2015 defeat.

Believing that it is wisely starting early in order to stand a chance of success in the 2019 polls, the PDP has zoned its key offices. The APC, also believing that it won office on a groundswell of electoral goodwill that cannot be gainsaid, assumes an enigmatic posture of false indomitability. Though 2019 appears far away, in fact so distant when compared with the over two-year plan that fetched the APC victory in 2015, neither of the two leading parties can be sure of victory or defeat. The country is a little exhausted with all the zonings and ethnic shenanigans of the past few decades, zonings that brought nothing but stagnation and engendered mediocre leadership. Given the grinding poverty and lack of national cohesion and ambition, it may be time for a really charismatic and brilliant nationalist of the first rank to aggregate the yearnings of the people and confidently take Nigeria from the depths of despair to the apex of glory. It is time for someone to break all ethnic, religious and social barriers. It is time to weld a national identity. It is time to rouse all Nigerians for greatness before the fissiparous tendency in the land takes over completely. Whoever can do these deserves all the support.

April 24, 2016
The coy mistress of Comrade Yuan

There is historical romance in the air. It is love in Peking, or better still Love in the time of The Yellow Peril. As a film buff of the old Odeon and Metro cinema variety, snooper prides himself as an authority on the arcane stuff of oriental romance. Ever heard of the film, The Bride of Fu Manchu? Or better still, the epic, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? But if this is light-headed stuff, try the classic sonnet by Andrew Marvell, the marvellous genius of Metaphysical poetry, To His Coy Mistress.

As far as rainbow weddings go, the recent nuptial in faraway Peking between the ailing Nigerian Naira and the macho Chinese currency, Yuan Renminbi, must rank as one of the most significant fiscal developments in global political economy in modern times. It has set off tremors in international financial circuits from Iceland to New Zealand comparable only to a major earthquake. Both the seen and unseen regulators of western economic dominance as well as the over-pampered and over-indulged Bretton Wood institutions are in a state of shock.

It is said that beggars must not be choosers. But this is a case of a beggarly nation choosing its own destiny and vowing to stick and stand by the choice. It is gradually dawning on Nigeria that it is a beggar by choice and by elite vocation. A nation of such stupendous and staggering natural and human resources ought not to be seen in international circles begging for miserable alms if its political class is up to scratch.

For the Nigerian authorities, it is an act of courage and immense daring which deserves applause and a standing ovation. In its declaration of national will and intent, it is comparable only to the famous “trade by barter” of Buhari’s first coming. It is not easy to look the internal regulators of global peonage in the eye and tell them to take a walk. In his first coming, the retired general from Daura was economically court-martialled for his rude rebuff. He may yet suffer the same fate if he does not take immediate steps to protect his political and strategic flanks.

The attempt to hitch the vandalized Nigerian economy to the rampaging wagon of Chinese global ascendancy sets off several historical echoes all at once. It is the Yellow Peril, the military confiscation of Hong Kong, the Boxers’ Uprising, the Long Trek, the collapse of the old Chinese ruling feudal caste and the perpetual duel between westernization and modernization all rolled into one. The Chinese people have suffered immensely in the hands of the west in psychological particular, but they have managed to turn the table on their tormentors.

But before we get carried away in typical African emotional incontinence and post-nuptial self-adulation and self-congratulation, it is good to look at the dotted lines and the fine letters of the union. The Chinese are a mercilessly meticulous race. They do not leave anything to chance like us, and their infinite patience can be awesomely ensnaring.

First, let us look at the disclaimers as enunciated by the bridegroom ironically through the bride in the typical gnomic wisdom of the oriental savants. According to clarifications offered by GeoffreyOnyeama, the Nigerian Foreign Minister, this is not exactly a currency swap. The Chinese are not about to exchange their potent currency wholesale for the prostrate naira. Comrade Yuan may marry Madam Naira but there is nothing like joint assets and joint liabilities in this kind of union. Everybody must carry their own can. A nuptial toga is not an excuse for profligate walk-about.

What the Chinese have done in response to the international pressure to “float” the Yuan and make it globally convertible in the currency trenches as an interchangeable storage of value is to give it limited convertibility as an exchange medium by freely choosing who to exchange with. By so doing and by this economic sleight of hand, they have retained the initiative to protect and insulate their national currency against the prowling dollar and other western currencies waiting to capitalize on a catastrophic slip from the Chinese. When all has been said, the dollar remains the alpha currency of the civilized world.

From the foregoing, it can be seen that the principal interest of the Chinese in these matters remains principally Chinese. This is the way of all wise nations. The people are too disciplined, too focused and too self-reliant to have a sanguinary view of any laggard nation. The modern Chinese nation is a product of blood, sweat and tears. Any nation that cannot lift its people by the bootstraps should be encouraged to disappear.

The advantages of the wedlock are however enormous and historic. First, and in a rather indirect and circuitous manner, the interest free loan and other incentives will ease the unbearable pressure on the nairaby making it possible for Nigerian business concerns to access Chinese markets without going through the dollar as an intermediary median of exchange. The manic and frenzied dollar hoarding and speculation will decline because it will become unprofitable with appropriate overriding veto from the CBN.

Second and as a medium term strategy, it will encourage the Nigerian economy to begin to look inward and produce what it must consume rather than relying on the current lazy regime of the wholesale importation of western perishable and consumerist goods at the expense of our indigenous products. Any nation which cannot internally source its own need and produce its own technological wonders should disband its political elite as a matter of urgent necessity.

Thirdly, the Chinese dalliance provides intellectual anchorage and conceptual scaffolding for our brainwashed western ideologues to view the debate about modernity from a new illuminating perspective. Having been fed on the staple diet of automatic western superiority, our intellectuals are programmed to confuse westernization with modernization. Yet there are competing and countervailing modes of modernization.

Western modernity is only one of these and there is nothing preordained about its current hegemonic pre-eminence. Anybody who has studied the dynamics of modernity from the emergence of Portugal as the first true nation-state at the end of the thirteenth century to the rise to economic superstardom of the Chinese in the twenty first would discover that it had been a ding-dong affair with empire-states and state-nations rising and falling in the unceasing march of history.

It is however good and beneficial to look at the obverse of the coin and see what the Chinese nuptial will not do for us. First, it will not prevent the perennial and perpetual trade imbalance between Nigeria and China. On the contrary, it will accentuate and accelerate this in the short run. Except oil and some precious mineral resources, Nigeria does not produce anything the Chinese desire in abundance at the moment. This is the dungeon of underdevelopment we have found ourselves through the lack of visionary political elite.

Second, and flowing from the first, this nuptial will not stop the Chinese from flooding the Nigerian market with sub-standard goods. But if we are complaining about sub-standard goods, where is our own? The Chinese do not claim to be economic angels or technological super-geniuses, they are also on the make. We are viewing Chinese goods from the lens of western standards which we have no economic or technological rights to covet in the light of our own primitive predicament. Sub-standard goods are a good reflection of the sub-standard politics and the internal configuration of the end-user country.

The wise and inscrutable Chinese will not try this with America or any of the civilized countries of Europe. But that is only because the powerful currencies of western nations afford them instant alternatives from other accessible markets. In Nigeria, enemy nationals collude and conspire with Chinese industrial barons to produce under-strength medication and deliberately dumbed down goods to maximize profits. In China, such enemy nationals would have been summarily shot for economic treason.

We have now come to the heart of the matter. No amount of Chinese loan or incentives can help a politically dysfunctional nation. The Chinese wisely refrain from commenting on the internal politics of Nigeria. But it is not by accident that in China, corrupt officials are summarily shot. In China, a corrupt and deeply diseased l institution like the current national assembly would have been summarily disbanded by a popular uprising. We may yet get to this point if Nigeria is to be redeemed.

This is why President Buhari has his political work cut out for him in spite of his heroic economic initiatives. In order to minimally heave forward, this hobbled giant of a nation requires political, intellectual, economic and spiritual revolutions or a combination of these in whatever order. The retired general from Daura should be prepared to conduct a national referendum to determine the political destiny of the nation. Otherwise, the current tremors may eventuate in a major political earthquake, despite President Buhari’s honest and patriotic intentions. All the way from Peking, it is economic nuptial in the time of political dystopia.

April 24, 2016
Softly, softly CCT chair Danladi Umar

CCT chair Danladi Umar needs to take a cue from Prof Attahiru Jega’s uncommon patience when dealing with the (then) falling Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) as INEC was collating the result of the presidential election last year. Godsday Orubebe (remember him?) was the man appointed to play the party’s last joker. We saw how hard Orubebe tried to scuttle the exercise in anticipation of getting Jega annoyed, thus creating a stalemate that would have made the announcement of the election result inconclusive. But Jega showed uncommon composure, which over time wore out Orubebe because that was not what he and those who sent him anticipated. It was an exhausted and disappointed Orubebe that was whisked away from the venue before Jega took the microphone and gave him a thorough tongue-lashing. Orubebe might have apologised for his folly, but that would not erase what he did. So, while we take judicial notice of his apology, generations unborn will still get to know that he did what he did.

In the same vein, those creating the drama that we are seeing in the Dr Bukola Saraki matter know what they are doing. They want the judge (Danladi Umar) to lose his cool so as to make their case that he cannot be fair to Saraki look real; no more, no less. Not many of our lawyers, including some of the very senior ones, are well grounded in the law these days; many are experts in technicalities rather than substantive innocence or guilt. So, when it seems technicalities are no longer selling, they are like fish out of water. We know where Saraki’s supporters are coming from and where they are going. They won’t mind going for the leg having missed the ball. We have heard what they are saying, even though they have not uttered a word.

As Chinua Achebe once said, “an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb”.

So, softly, softly, Justice Umar!

April 24, 2016
Still missing the point in Zaria judicial panel

Despite Shiite misgivings about the Justice Mohammed Garba-led judicial panel probing the Zaria, Kaduna State, clash between the Army and members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, it will be inappropriate to dismiss the exercise as barren. Some good may still come out of the probe irrespective of the circumstances of its conception or the malevolence of many witnesses. Two weeks ago, after two Kaduna State officials testified about mass graves, this column cautioned the panel to explore other areas of inquiry rather than come to hasty conclusions. Hopefully, the panel will enrich its report by looking at the missing links in all the testimonies it has so far received.

Based on last week’s additional testimonies by a few very public but non-state officials, it may again be necessary to admonish the panel to pay close attention to the evidence being put before it by witnesses who appeared determined to redirect the panel into arcane and philosophical realms. Two main strands of testimonies were evident last week. One involved those who, rather than testify about what transpired on the days of the clash, came out to justify the actions of the troops. According to these traditional and religious authorities in Zaria, the Shiites were not only bad and aggressive neighbours, they had virtually constituted themselves into a state within a state. The second strand of evidence came from the Sharia Council whose soothsaying secretary-general, Nafiu Baba-Ahmed, testified that Shiites had a potential to be deadlier than Boko Haram. The clash with soldiers in which the Shiites took a mauling, he concluded, was divine retribution.

It is important for the panel to sift through these testimonies in order to reach a fair conclusion and come nearest to satisfying its terms of reference. The terms of reference enjoin the panel to inquire into the remote causes of the probe. The history, structure and general disposition of the Shiites all form a part of that remote background. But it must not be overlooked that the real reason for the judicial panel were the killings and destruction that accompanied the clash. The panel must, therefore, ask whether any of those remote reasons justify the level of violence inflicted on the Shiites by soldiers, and whether Nigerian laws permit the disposal of the bodies in a mass grave under such conditions. The panel will also determine whether any suggestion of the future trajectory of the Shiites, such as was argued by the Shari council, has probative value.

Once again, this column will remind the panel to dig deep and determine whether Nigerian laws do not prescribe a course of action the government should normally take to meet such exigencies as Shiite activities and provocations presented in Zaria before and during last December’s clash, and whether the same laws do not prescribe punishment for those infractions, if any. On their own, many witnesses have established a cause and effect between Shiite intransigence and the killings. If the panel will come to that kind of far-fetched conclusion, it should set out the principles and justifications for it. Those principles and justifications will, however, be debated comprehensively in the months and years to come, for the killing and burial of so many people, including, emotively, women and children, will reverberate for much longer than anyone imagines.

Witnesses and stakeholders testifying before the Justice Garba panel may not appreciate the gravity of the Zaria killings, more interested as many of them are in the behaviour of the Shiites and their foreign sponsors; but the panel will look at the wider legal and moral issues surrounding the clash. The panel members are sensible enough to know that the consequences of the killings will not be limited to Nigeria, considering that the matter has already been internationalised. It will be helpful if the panel and the government should take charge of the matter, and dispense justice with firmness and sensibleness. If they do not take the right and firm steps, sadly, the world will take over, as indeed they are itching to do, being more relentless and patient, but infinitely unsparing.

April 24, 2016