ON the day he was arraigned in court in Bayelsa, the man accused of abducting the then 13-year-old Ese Oruru exuded calmness and confidence. No one knows whether the composure of the accused, Inuwa Dahiru, more popularly called Yunusa or Yinusa, was prompted by what he believes to be his innocence or whether he simply couldn’t grasp the weight of the crimes alleged against him. Or perhaps he was too young and idealistic to care. When the story of the abduction and forced conversion of Miss Oruru first broke, the impression noised in many quarters was that Mallam Dahiru was probably in his 30s taking paedophilic advantage of a very young, devout and impressionable southern Christian girl just clocking teenage. Soon, the alleged abductor, whose photograph was yet to be published anywhere, was made out as a 28-year-old man. Eventually, when one newspaper spoke with his father, the elderly Dahiru revealed that his son was 25 years old. Shortly before the suspect was dragged to Abuja for interrogation, some newspapers disclosed that he was actually 22 years old. Then finally, on his charge sheet, the prosecuting authorities managed to transform him, according to a newspaper report, into an 18-year-old teenager.
Nothing exemplifies the exasperating complexity of this controversial case as the manner in which Mallam Dahiru became progressively younger in the space of a few weeks. One or two newspapers had late last year presented the news as a case of elopement involving an older Hausa trader, who was also a tricycle operator, and a younger and outgoing Urhobo girl living in Yenagoa with her parents. At the time, whatever crime was insinuated into the escapade was believed to be mitigated by the adventurous willingness of the two so-called lovebirds to travel to Kano for an idyllic existence. The police, however, faced a conundrum separating the wheat from the chaff. But by late February, the story had become a definitive one of abduction, clash of cultures and religious bigotry in which the police and Kano’s emirate and religious authorities were complicit. The matter was compounded by pussyfooting police hierarchies, from the Bayelsa Command to the Kano Command, and disapprovingly thence to the Police Headquarters in Abuja.
Though there were too many missing pieces in the story when it took on force in February, the news nonetheless went viral locally and internationally, lathered by emotive reactions all round, from what was alleged to be a complicit Kano Emirate authority, specifically the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, to what police authorities in Abuja feared were dithering Kano Police officers, and finally to the state’s religious authorities, the Sharia Commission, and the religious police, the Hisbah. It was tough for a dispassionate analysts to navigate the treacherous waters of the alleged abduction. Indeed, it was safer for everyone who mulled over the story to simply conclude that the accused, Mallam Dahiru, being true to the northern type, forcibly took Miss Oruru from her parents, perhaps through hypnosis or other superstitious means, converted her against her will to Islam with the connivance of typically northern Jihadists, had carnal knowledge of an underage girl, and put her in the family way.
But by the time the legal fireworks will have settled, the abduction story may quake with doubt, as Mallam Dahiru himself hinted on the day he was charged in court. Miss Oruru’s stories, including how she got to Kano, and her relationship with the suspect, will indeed be put to the test, destabilised by its numerous gaps. What will not be threatened, irrespective of how old those involved in the saga are, is that the young girl left Bayelsa without parental consent, and the sex between the two, whether it was consensual and predated the alleged abduction, as Mallam Dahiru argued, or was coerced as the victim’s mother suggested, was between an older man and a minor. In the weeks ahead more light will be shed on the story and the public’s mood will doubtless fluctuate as the story ebbs and flows between facts and fiction.
The story and the ensuing court case will once again offer Nigeria the opportunity to grapple with the dark areas of national life which it has preferred to downplay for decades. If the country’s leaders appreciate the complexity of the issues involved, they will see it as an opportunity to take another look at the political, cultural and religious fissures distorting development and jeopardising ethnic and religious amity in the country. The fissures are indeed worrisome, and the periodic eruptions they have triggered over the decades should instruct Nigerians that living in denial is not an option. For instance, when the Kano State Shariah Commission orchestrated the sequestration and conversion of Miss Oruru to Islam despite her age, they easily played into the hands of those who suggest that at bottom some northern public officials unthinkingly harbour destructive jihadist instincts, which they are eager to indulge in in flagrant disregard to the country’s constitution and without a care as to its disruptive, divisive and incendiary potential.
Those who masterminded the said conversion also give the impression they are a law unto themselves and, if Kano State Government’s denial of knowledge of the Oruru case is to be believed, do not report to anyone. It may be time to set out exactly how local laws and edicts relate to the constitution in a secular society, and what level of deference to traditional and religious authorities law enforcement agents can demonstrate.
Even if parental control was lax in the Oruru case, as many commentators have argued, and the Child Rights Act is yet to be domesticated in many states, especially in the North, it may be time to examine afresh the difficult and complex attitude in these parts toward sex. That attitude, to put it mildly, is deeply troubling. Except Mallam Dahiru’s age can be truly established to be 18 as claimed in the charge sheet and by his lawyer, thereby narrowing the psychological and physiological divide between Miss Oruru and the accused, sex with minors is rather more pervasive than many care to acknowledge. Former Zamfara State governor, Ahmed Sani, idiosyncratically lent political and religious weight to the disturbing trend of viewing sex as an epicurean pastime, with the procurer of sex almost completely detached from the object of sex, akin to what obtains in the animal kingdom. The way the world views sexual preferences is morphing considerably; who can tell whether in time paedophilia would not become lawful just as gay relationships, marijuana use, and other habits the world frowned at many decades ago have managed to compel the obliteration of barriers?
Not only will there never be a consensus on the topic of sex as far as many religions and cultures are concerned, with spatial differences manifesting in disturbing hues, the issues of divorce, rape, marriage — whether monogamy, polygamy, polyandry or gay union — will, with the aid of technological advancement, increasingly elicit fundamental changes in the people’s attitude to sex in ways never anticipated. Younger people have access to pornographic media unlike at any other time in human history, and are in consequence altering their behaviour, if not their biology, along clearly hedonistic lines. Crazy selfies, sexting, not to talk of lowering the age of consent, for which the laws and sometimes religions may be compelled to play ignoble catch-up, have been thrown into the dangerous mix. Mallam Dahiru suggests he had had sex with Miss Oruru even before they travelled to Kano. It is not yet clear whether the victim will be put in the dock, nor how it will established the accused is telling the truth. However, teen and even pre-teen sex, including child grooming for sex, are more rampant than many believe. The whole thing is a crazy obsession.
The constitution and the laws of the land can to some extent help Nigeria make sense of the problems associated with sexual and amorous relationships, notwithstanding the cultural differences between the North and South of Nigeria. But they will in the long run prove ineffective in regulating sexual preferences, including lowering the age limit of sexual experience. The problem is uniquely human. With the ubiquitous availability of mobile and explicit images on various media platforms, the availability of a whole pharmacy of drugs and aphrodisiacs employed to push sex beyond unimaginable frontiers and inhibitions, and a cornucopia of shifting attitudes to sex — lawful or not — unmitigated by ethics of any kind or origin, there will be more stories like that of Mallam Dahiru and Miss Oruru, if not worse. It is not for nothing that the oldest profession in the world is prostitution in which both man and woman — not just woman, as is often portrayed — are customers.
The Ese-Yunusa abduction trial will likely peter out into fatuity, of course after some salacious details have been revealed. Perhaps the SUV, and the identities of the accompanying two police escorts, which ferried Miss Oruru to the emir’s palace when the case was listed for hearing would be unearthed. A few policemen will be punished for dereliction of duty, and perhaps Kano State may be also be forced to re-examine the relationship between some of its statutory bodies and the constitution even in a defective federalist set up. But neither the abduction/elopement story — depending of course on what the courts find out — nor the trial itself will have any consequence on ossified and prevalent social attitudes and cultural and religious stereotypes.
There will be intensified calls and demand for greater activism to persuade more states to domesticate the Child Rights Act, and the laws on marital relationship, rape and domestic violence may be strengthened. Even then, Nigerians may have to moderate their optimism, for as everyone knows, the country’s problem is not so much the absence of laws as the incompetence and lack of will in enforcing them. Until the country can make up its mind what kind of society it really wants to be, competently define its personality, which is at the moment seemingly bipolar, and cast in granite the rights and obligations of citizens even within the purview of their cultural differences and antagonisms, little will be gained by any effort to redress grave moral wrongs.
Category: Sunday
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Ese, Yunusa and the vulnerable
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I repeat: there are limits to the power and the reach of journalistic punditry, compatriots!
In this column last week,I don’t think I could possibly have been more forthright, more insistent in my assertion that no matter how truthfully, powerfully or movingly we columnists write in the cause of making meaningful change to happen in our country, we confront limits set by the ontology of the medium in which we write. In other words, in last week’s column I argued – forcefully, in my opinion – that the tides of change, progress or revolution don’t happen on the pages of newspapers and newsmagazines; they happen in the real world. I was particularly insistent that the ONLY way in which the limits that we confront as journalistic pundits can be overcome is for we columnists and those who read us to ACT on what we write about. Naturally or obviously, this pertains readersthat are convinced or moved by what we write, what we urge. Given these loud and clamant assertions in last week’s column, imagine my surprise when I received many email responses continuing to extend the illusion that punditry has no limits! One person wrote to inform me that the real problem that we face in the country is that of language, specificallyour official lingua franca, the English language, that the masses of our peoples don’t use or understand. Another reader wrote to say, forcefully, that our real problem is what he deems spiritual backwardness. Yet another reader wrote to suggest that the problem is with our leaders, insisting that the leader who will do the citizens’ bidding has not yet been born, let alone come to power in our country.
My first response to these and other readers of my call in last week’s column for concrete action over and beyond perpetual commentary and punditry in newspapers was to make a decision, solemn but matter of fact, that until I myself, acting alone or with others, take action for the propagation of the urgent causes that I espouse in my column, I will no longer ask any readers to go beyond debate and argument on the pages of newspapers. In that case, my collective response to all who wrote me on last week’s column is quite simple and straightforward: until you are moved to act, until you are willing to show your countrywomen and men that you intend to back your words with your deeds, please don’t write me in the hope of continuing the conversation on who or what is responsible for the bleak prospects for real and meaningful change in our country. To the reader who wrote in particular that the most fundamental problem we face is with the English language and its elitism, I ask: who is restricting you to act, to protest, to demonstrate only or even primarily in English? Who says the masses of our people do not speak their own variety of English, this being what linguists call Nigerian Pidgin? Isn’t this unofficial national lingua franca of ours in fact used throughout the country and used to great effect by our peoples when the meet collectively to work together in their own interest?
My second response to my readers who continue to clothe journalist punditry in the garb of potential or actual hero and/or tribune of the peoples’ cause and the nation’s salvation is even more basic, more fundamental: just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the proof of punditry is how well it stacks up against concrete action. No piece of journalistic illumination or brilliance can survive what happens to itin the sphere of consequential action. Let me put this observation, this claim in language that may be more easily appreciated: ideas expressed on the pages of newspapers, especially ideas about change and progress, are only as useful and as durable as the transformation they effect in people’s lives and prospects. Using myself to illustrate what I am saying here about the consequential limits of punditry in the arena of action, I have long wondered how some suggestions I have made repeatedly in this column about Buhari’s war against corruption in the law courts might work in real life, in the context of what is done or not done in the law courts to make the battle against the looters the resounding success that most Nigerians want it to be. For instance, I have for a long time and repeatedly suggested that Buhari, the AGF and the whole slew of advocates prosecuting the alleged looters should vigorously insist that the Administration of Criminal Justice Act of 2015 (ACJA) be the juridical basis for trying the looters since, in fact, it is the law of the land. Now, I happen to think that if this suggestion is vigorously pursued, many of the blockages that the looters’ supporters in the Bar and the Benchhave mounted against timely and successful prosecution of the looters would have failed and failed woefully. But so far at least, this remains merely or only the suggestion of a columnist who has not, for even a single day, been there at the law courts in a concrete show of action to back up his suggestion.
Writing about one particular sort of limitation of journalistic punditry that nearly all the respondents to last week’s column completely ignored requires a bit of tactfulness on my part. This is because it seems nothing short of arrogance or even churlishness not to respond at all when people write you and express great admiration for you as they ask you to write back to them to continue the debate. How can you say I can’t and won’t write back because we, the columnists and our readers, have done too much talking already and it is time to act, time to match our wordswith our deeds? But that is precisely my view, my position! Another way of putting this is to say, quite emphatically, that I left the intellectual universe of the literary and debating societies of my secondary schooldays more than a half a century ago! In that discursive universe, there was hardly ever any possibility that the debates and controversies that raged between the teenage “pundits” could ever even remotely be held up against the benchmark of the reality check of actual, demonstrable impact on society, especially on the lives of the poor, the forgotten, the looted about whom most of us had only the vaguest awareness.
Perhaps all I have been saying in this piece boils down to one essential point: life itself poses the most mundane but at the same time the most formidable limit to punditry, just as it does to just about everything else. It may seem banal to say this, but it is worth saying: each pundit conducts his or her punditry within the confines and the limits if his or her life. Obviously, I make this observation with the lived realities and pressures on my life on my mind. In concrete terms, my journalistic writings constitute only a small part of my life, only a small portion of the lived realities of my life. In concrete terms, every Friday morning when I sit down to write the piece for the week, I do so against the backdrop of a full-time, weekly academic work detail that leaves Friday as the only day of the week in which I have any chance at all to write the column and write it well. Moreover, and this is very crucial, the lived realities of my life leave me no room, no space for responses to readers who write to me with the expectation, the hope that I could and will write back. As this has been the single greatest limitation that I have felt about writing this column, I should express what I am saying here clearly, unambiguously: after I have taught and mentored my undergraduate and graduate students and administered the records of their academic progress, there is barely any room left for me to maintain an active, mutually sustaining contact with those among my readers that take it upon themselves to write me, for the most part as admiring interlocutors. A column, and even punditry itself, should never be a monologue! I say this to myself all the time even as I find it impossible to do anything about it. To this, add the fact thatwith not a little trepidation, I anxiously await the next time I will come into contact with a reader who first expresses great admiration – but only as a prelude to the complaint of not having heard back from me when he or she wrote.
Am I hinting in this piece at the likelihood of a farewell to journalistic punditry? Most definitely not! I think that for the most part, I am writing against the complacency of the pundit and his or her readers, against what I feel is a general tendency to greatly overrate what pundits and punditry can achieve and indeed have achieved in our society. And there is also this: mine is a reasoning about limits and limitations that comes from philosophical traditions in which limits are in fact for the most part seen as the other face, the reverse image of possibility andrenewal. In other words, without limits, without constraints, there is little inducement to maximal use of what you are allowed. Conversely, in the face of limits, your passion for change and progress and justice draws immensely from the creative resources of the imagination.
So: I will continue to write this column, even if the punditry does not immediately ignite the masses’ burning aspiration for deliverance, even if what I write, at least for now before my retirement from full-time employment as an academic, seems like a monologue – which it is most definitely not. But if it is after all a monologue? Call it the monologue of a conscientious interlocutor whose challenge to his readers does not leave him free of the insidious lure of complacency…
Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
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Okon reinvents himself
Darkness has become as visible as daylight. This column once noted that darkness can be very enthralling indeed. As the historic darkness and crippling fuel shortage enter the second week, all kinds of outlandish characters from outer space began crowding the vision. It has been noted by scientists that when you suffer the loss of one critical faculty, the remaining faculties tend to overcompensate.
So in the dead of the night when the generator had completely degenerated and all pretences to civilization had vanished, malarial hallucination takes over as the sweltering heat pounds the bravest of humanity into submission, you begin to imagine yourself trapped among some man-eating troglodytes. You get a sense that a titanic battle is going on out there between the forces of darkness and utter evil and the forces of light and regeneration. Con artists abound and so do secret sharers of national unhappiness.
You can trust the punitively proactive Okon to cotton in on the act. After being lightly let off the police hook in connection with the shadowy organization that he was fronting, the crazy fellow has promised to be of good behavior. Snooper gave a long lecture about what was expected of a good citizen, but the rogue was not going to be fazed by such hoary exhortations.
“Öga, na true you dey talk. I don learn lesson for dis yeyekontri. When dem Ibo and Yoruba cause trouble, na minority man dey carry dem can. I don learn dat one from Papa EyoIta”, the mad boy snorted.
“Eyoitako, Eyoinuileni”, the deranged Baba Lekki hollered with drunken gusto. The following day, yours sincerely was confronted by a most arresting sight. The entire house and Boys’ Quarters bristled with all sorts and manner of jerry cans for siphoning fuels. In addition, there was a whole assortment of magic lanterns from Taiwan which reportedly supplied light from solar energy. Okon claimed to be the sole distributor in the country. It was a cruel hoax. Okon’s lantern required total darkness to function.
“Okon, what is the meaning of all this nonsense?” snooper screamed at the boy.
“Ha oga, I dey Oil and Light business now, Market force don turn everybody to market by force”, the crazy boy sniggered as he gave instructions to some ruffians and ragamuffin who were hailing him.
“But I thought they have banned the sale of petrol in jerry cans. What type of a country is this?” snooper raved at the boy.
“Ha ogadat one na market force again. When you ban all dembannable you must to unban all demunbannable. I no sabi grammar but I sabi common sense.” The crazy boy retorted.
“This country has gone to the dogs”, snooper lamented.
“OgaOkon no be dog. I never touch woman for three weeks. Ask Sikira. All dis grammar no go help. If you wan buy fuel come meet me for Alapere under dem bridge. Na direct fuel from Arepo”, the impish rogue slammed and sauntered away with his retinue of brigands leaving snooper stranded and speechless. In black humour, snooper remembered Fela’s immortal lyrics: Overtake don overtake overtake.
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Nostalgic Obasanjo badgers EFCC with Ribadu legacy
Former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s matchless candour came to the fore once again while celebrating his 79th birthday. In his short speech, he suggested that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had lost focus after the exit of Nuhu Ribadu, its pioneer chairman. A newspaper was careful to observe and publish that Chief Obasanjo made the controversial and tendentious remark as Mallam Ribadu made his way into the hall where the birthday celebration took place. Said the former president: “As all know when Nuhu Ribadu was handling the EFCC, he handled it in such a way that people coined the saying that the fear of Ribadu is the beginning of wisdom. And the thing you will ask is, how did we go down? How did we lose that… Nuhu Ribadu is still here, he is still alive, the institution that we started together is still there, what made the institution to become a toothless bull dog? We need to work things out so that we don’t take two steps forward, one step and three steps backward.”
Chief Obasanjo has been roundly condemned for that statement. He deserves it. For while Mallam Ribadu’s style may have been jettisoned by his successors, most of them were nonetheless effective. In fact, the current chairman, Ibrahim Magu, has been as driven and propagandist as Mallam Ribadu was. And though this column has criticised Mr. Magu, as he also denounced Mallam Ribadu many years ago, he acknowledges that the current chairman has engaged himself productively and fearlessly in tackling the problem of graft. Of course, there are excesses, such as skirting dangerously on the periphery of extralegal measures, but Mr. Magu has done as well as Mallam Ribadu. The only difference, it would appear, is that more Nigerians shocked by the extralegal steps taken by Mallam Ribadu as EFCC chairman are unwilling to indulge the current chairman should he wish to deploy unethical methods in fighting graft.
Chief Obasanjo’s outburst appears to be a reflection of his disenchantment with his rapidly fading legacies. It is balderdash to expect Mallam Ribadu’s successors to adopt his style. While some of his methods were appropriate, others were quite provocative and illegal. In his frenzy to fight corruption, Mallam Ribadu engineered the impeachment of one or two governors, aided no doubt by Chief Obasanjo’s own lawless predilections. That style will today not only be denounced vehemently, it will be successfully challenged in court. Whether Chief Obasanjo admits it or not, the archaic world he envisioned many boisterous years ago has changed considerably. Worse, it is precisely because of the atrocious methods he inspired and facilitated in the EFCC and other federal agencies, including the executive branch, that his legacy is being diminished.
By the time he returned to office a second time, Chief Obasanjo’s achievements had been virtually wiped out. Had he learnt his lessons, he would have taken care to emplace programmes, policies and projects that would sustain his legacy. He either refused to do that, or he was unable to do so. Whatever the case, he now appears to feel the burden and humiliation of his legacies being wiped out a second time in the space of a little over eight years. Despite the hysteria of Governors Nyesom Wike of Rivers and Ayo Fayose of Ekiti, there will be no crazy impeachment as Chief Obasanjo imperially inspired and directed, and the EFCC, notwithstanding the instigation of the former president, will not be allowed to enact a similar subversion of the constitution.
There is no truth in Chief Obasanjo’s claim that the EFCC has lost focus. Mallam Ribadu’s current successor may not be perfect, and can indeed improve and, with help, criticism and advice, entrench a great anti-graft institution. What is actually wrong with Chief Obasanjo’s perspective is that his mind is playing tricks on him. Mr. Magu should be encouraged to firmly and intelligently carry out his tasks within the ambit of the law. He has no reason to panic. Let him indeed eschew propaganda, exhibitionism and short-termist approach to a great task, the kind Chief Obasanjo appears to be enamoured of and is sentimentally and cruelly instigating.
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Who should head government agencies?
If government organisations are to be well managed, the right persons have to be appointed to head them. Instead of compensating just any member of the ruling party at any level by appointing them to head government agencies and be boards members, it necessary to ensure that only those who have the necessary experience and competence are chosen.
I don’t have any problem with party members who worked hard to ensure the victory of any political office holders being compensated, but they should be assigned to where they have the capacity to deliver on campaign promises.
I want to assume that this is probably the reason why the federal government is taking its time to replace heads of various agencies appointed by the Jonathan administration who have been relieved of their positions.
Those recently sacked should be grateful that they were not given the boot the week the new government took over as it was the case in the past. It would have been unwise to retain most of them considering their partisan relationship with the last administration.
So far, there are indications that those who have been appointed to head some agencies have what it takes to live up to expectations. What the appointees must realise is that much is expected of the new administration that has promised change and it cannot be business as usual in the way they go about their assignments.
The revelations about how the agencies were run under the Jonathan administration are mind-boggling and everything necessary has to be done to redress the situation through efficient management and respect for corporate governance.
While the government should not hesitate to replace any official found wanting, caution must be exercised in some instances where the present heads of parastatals yet to be removed, are capable of sustaining the progress made over the years.
Some parastatals have suffered from indiscriminate changes of leadership; that care has to be taken not to repeat the mistakes of the past where the credentials of some appointed ‘outsiders’ are questionable.
A veteran journalist, Olu Ayela, in a recent article expressed concern over the speculated lobby for the replacement of Engineer Saleh Dunoma as Managing Director of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN).
Ayela’s concern is that the removal of Dunoma, who joined the organisation in 1980 and rose through the ranks before his appointment in March 2014, will truncate the smooth running of the agency since he took over.
Normally, experts like Dunoma who have requisite in-house and wide experience in their industry should be allowed to head their organisations instead of disrupting the system by bringing outsiders who may not have the required expertise.
One of the ways we can guarantee that staff of government agencies are committed to their jobs and demand excellent performance from them, is to ensure that they can aspire to the highest position in their organisations.
For us to be taken seriously in international circles, heads of critical major agencies should not be changed too frequently based on political considerations.
Except where they are found wanting in the discharge of their duties, security of tenure should be guaranteed for such chief executives to enable them face their assignments without any fear of being removed for no just cause.
Those who should be appointed or retained to head government agencies, like in the private sector, should be round pegs in round holes.
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Averting another Babington Macaulay!
Lesson we must learn from the abduction of ‘Ikorodu 3’
But for matters of urgent national importance that have been in the news in the last three weeks or so, I had wanted to comment on the erection of a new fence for Lagos Baptist High School on Ota Road in Agege, Lagos. I have known the school for more than 15 years and I have never liked it. Why? Because the school fence had virtually collapsed, making its students vulnerable to all kinds of negative influences from undesirable elements that are usually taking advantage of the dilapidated fence to gain entry into the school compound.
But, if more pressing issues had been postponing my comment on the fence at Lagos Baptist High School in the last two weeks, the abduction of three students at Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary in Ikorodu on February 29 has made it compelling for the piece to come out today. The girls were rescued last Sunday. Indeed, I was in the church when one of the pastors announced that the father of one of the kidnapped girls who had been told of the prayers in the church for the safe rescue of the girls came to say thank you, even before seeing his daughter. Unfortunately, the man had left before the pastor made the announcement. Otherwise, I would have loved to have a chat with him. I must confess though that one of my former neighbours told me last Sunday too that the school is good. But the shortcoming has been the low fence which is not suitable for our kind of environment. I learn low fences are common in Ghana; but we are in Nigeria.
One of the points that made it easy for me to suspend the write-up on the Lagos Baptist High School fence is because it is not time-bound. In other words, it could come up at any time. Mercifully, the girls’ abduction which also became a national issue has made it imperative because there is a nexus between the two. And that is the role of fence in security. We learnt from media reports that the job of the abductors was made easy as a result of the low fence in the junior seminary. The good thing is that the school authorities have corrected that by raising the fence and have also done a few things to make the school more secure.
Back to Lagos Baptist High School. The school compound has been used for multi-purpose activities, from the sublime to the most ridiculous. I had cast my vote there at least on two occasions. Indeed, it is home to many polling wards and units during general elections. I also noticed that members of the Christ Apostolic Church, Agbala Itura, which is just opposite the school, park their vehicles there on Sundays when they come for service or any other religious activities. Then, it also plays host to many local footballers in the area that come there to practice. Of course, the school also had its share of social parties holding there until it was banned by the government
I have nothing against any of these.
My main problem is with the horde of shady characters that are usually in the school to smoke Indian hemp and probably plan or commit crimes there. Whenever I pass through the school, something always tells me that many students’ lives and future must have been irredeemably ruined as a result of the easy access that these anti-social elements have to the school. Until recently, it was common seeing students of the school, male and female, roaming about the streets during school hours in their uniform. At times, you find it difficult to distinguish them from ‘area boys’, with some of the boys sagging their school trousers or knickers.
But, about two weeks ago when I was at a filling station near the school, someone that I discussed with there when I saw the new fence being constructed told me that things are now looking up in the place. I am impressed not just by the fact that a government has come to recognise the danger posed to the school and the society by its lack of a good fence, but more importantly, by its quality. Without being unduly sarcastic or sadistic, it is the kind of fence that befits the school, given the menace that its porous nature had constituted in the past few years. It is now high enough to prevent its being climbed with ease by miscreants who had hitherto seen the place as home, even as it is protected by some iron barriers to deter people that may still want to climb it. The fence is as solid as it should be. But, I am neither a structural engineer nor a bricklayer; so, that is my layman’s assessment. But, as I was taking pictures at the school yesterday, I heard one of the workers complaining about materials not flowing as expected. I also overheard a passerby telling his colleague that 12 coaches cannot survive serious rainfall. I hope the government would take note of these observations.
Before now, I have always asked myself whether education inspectors come to that school at all and whether they ever reported about the need for the government to give the school a befitting fence to protect the students from undue external influences.
While I commend the Akinwunmi Ambode government for this marvelous job at the school, it is apposite to say that there are probably many other schools in the state requiring such attention. I wonder how learning could have been conducive in the kind of atmosphere that the school had been in these past years. I won’t be surprised if the school’s academic performance begins to witness gradual improvement as a result of this gesture. Learning is not only about having quality teachers and learning aids. The totality of the environment matters. I guess that was one of the reasons why the Fashola administration banned using residential buildings for schools. How will pupils not be distracted by the aroma of ‘egusi’ or ‘edika ikong’ soup from the kitchen in the same premises that serves as their school? In the same vein, how can students in a school where Indian hemp is smoked as routine concentrate without having a feeling that hemp is good; or without actually going ahead to have a taste of it? I never knew what hemp looked like as a child. But I have a feeling many of the students in the school would already know not only what it smells like but what it looks and (probably) tastes like. I won’t also be surprised if some of the students have taken to cultism because the porosity of their school makes it also a good breeding and recruiting ground for cultists.
So, as the state government is investing on study aids and teachers in its schools, it should also spare a thought for a thing like good fence for schools that need one and have an arrangement whereby it begins to focus on this aspect in phases, if financial constraints would not allow it to go the whole hog. Its investment in security was one of the things that gave it the record result in the rescue of the Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary’s abducted students. If the government adequately secures its schools, it would be on a stronger moral pedestal to ask private school owners to do same. Such investment in little things that matter can equally produce astounding results in education.
It is gratifying that the abducted Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary students have all been safely released. It is also gladdening that the school authorities have made the school more secure. But we do not have to wait to discover other schools with similar shortcoming before running helter-skelter in search of solution. God gave us brain so He can rest. Let’s engage our brains by doing the needful. As doctors say, ‘we care, God heals’. Let’s first of all care and then allow God to secure.
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Is fuel subsidy ideologically inevitable?
If indeed fuel subsidy assists the low-income and the unemployed, it is not to the extent that it benefits the middle-class
“What we have simply done is a reorganisation. We have five business entities focus on business: Upstream, Downstream, Refineries, Gas and Power that are there before.
“There is also Ventures that captures all our little companies that were not having proper stewardship. They are run by individuals who report to the GMD.
“The NNPC is still a whole. There is nothing new that has happened”.—Minister of State for Petroelum.This article had appeared on this page before. It is being republished in view of the new resurgence of labour unions’ interest in the governance of the country at large, all in the name of protecting the interests of workers and the poor. Just last night, the Minister of State for Petroleum had to be seeking semantic refuge in a forced distinction between unbundling and reorganizing of NNPC. Apparently, this linguistic struggle on the part of the Petroleum Minister for State must have been made in order to appeal to striking PENGASSAN union members who were up in arms to stop unbundling of the NNPC. Admittedly, labour unions do in a democracy have the right to protect the interests of their workers, but they do not have the right to prevent those elected to govern the country from doing their job. If there is a serious danger that government’s decisions can threaten the welfare of citizens at large, it should not be just labour leaders and workers in a particular company that should block implementation of such government policies. Such fight should be between citizens who have delegated their power to govern themselves to representatives. Efforts to fight fuel subsidy, increase in electricity tariffs, unbundling of NNPC or any other government agency should not be made by labour unions alone. They need to be inclusive to the extent of calling for a referendum that allows citizens to indicate their preference. And citizens should not be just those who are lucky to have jobs and thus become eligible to belong to unions, but all other categories from farmers to the unemployed. The struggle of PENGASSAN against unbundling of NNPC is reminiscent of the opposition of other labour organisations to fuel subsidy removal a few weeks back, hence the return of this article to this page today.
Many cases are being made in the traditional press and the social media in support of cancelation of fuel subsidy in the country. Some pundits base their position on evidence of corruption in the handling of the subsidy scheme, citing examples of revelation of irregularities in various reports of committees established to probe the country’s subsidy scheme. Examples of financial irregularity are drawn from Farouk Lawan Committee’s Probe in 2012. This report claims that N232 billion on subsidy was paid to marketers for PMS in 2011 for fuel that was not supplied. The same committee also established that, contrary to the claims of marketers that 60 million litres was imported for each day in 2011, only 31 million litres per day was accounted for.
Some commentators focus on the Nuhu Ribadu Probe in 2012 to argue for cessation of subsidy on the ground of lack of transparency. They draw attention to the report that NNPC deducted subsidy-related expenses before payment to the Federation Account in 2011. This group argues that NEITI’s audits from 1999 to 2011 also confirmed that NNPC deducted a total of N1.40 trillion for subsidy. Similarly, the Presidential Committee on Verification and Reconciliation of Fuel Subsidy (2012) is cited by anti-subsidy commentators to illustrate that 197 subsidy transactions worth N229 billion were illegitimate and that actual expenditure on subsidy was higher in the same year than appropriated sums for fuel subsidy.
Economic thinkers of the free market persuasion also argue that natural resources are finite and attract largely time-limited revenues, more so if such resources are sold in the international market where the exporting country has no control over price stability. This group posits that it is not rational for any government to prefer fuel subsidy for citizens across the social spectrum to promoting sustained inclusive economic development through investments that can have multiplier effects on sustainable empowerment schemes for the underprivileged. This group calls for an end to fuel subsidy which its spokespersons believe to be a non-sustainable way of allocating natural resource revenues.
On the other hand, trade union leaders and self-defined advocates of the poor argue passionately in favour of continuing with fuel subsidy. The trade union’s claim includes the need to view fuel subsidy as a non-negotiable poverty-alleviating policy. This school of thought calls on government to accept the need to make every Nigerian enjoy the fruits of a natural resource that under a unitary system of government is viewed to belong to the entire country, regardless of the damage the exploitation of such natural resource does to the economy and ecology of the communities in which such resources are located.
Another line of thinking within this group is that underpaid workers, poor, and unemployed citizens need fuel subsidy to mitigate the knock-on effect of their poverty. The same group also argues that it is unfair for the federal government to stop fuel subsidy until the government is able to create the type of transportation infrastructure that exists in more developed countries, where fuel subsidy is discouraged as a policy. They add that the government must repair existing refineries and construct more to bring the price of refined petrol for domestic consumption down to the point of making fuel subsidy unnecessary. The Jonathan government accepted the thinking of labour leaders by creating another bureaucracy, Sure-P, to pacify workers and labour leaders, after agreeing to peg the price of petrol at N97 per litre. Just like the subsidy scheme itself, it did not take a long time for Sure-P to become another trick to occlude financial mismanagement by the country’s venal political elite.
The position of trade union leaders and believers in social democracy appears unassailable. In a country where there are not many social assistance programmes for citizens at the bottom of the economic ladder, there should be nothing wrong with calls for special assistance to underpaid and unemployed citizens. In terms of fine ideological thinking, trade union leaders and their social democratic supporters are making respectable arguments. But the hard question that needs to be asked and answered by radical social and economic thinkers is whether fuel subsidy is the best way to assist the poor in our country.
Despite the social democratic credentials of this author for over half a century, I do not believe that there are no better ways to assist the poor than the current fuel subsidy that is as enmeshed in the culture of political and bureaucratic corruption as it can ever be in any human space. In a country in which political parties do not openly embrace any noticeable form of social democracy, just as in countries such as Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and Norway, where social democracy is a fact of life, there are hundreds of ways to assist the poor without having to attempt to pay some of the cost of fuel for them. In these social democratic systems, the line between the middle-class or middle-income and low-income groups is made clear when policies of social assistance are being crafted. It is not so in the case of Nigeria’s fuel subsidy scheme, which allows upper-middle class professionals to enjoy fuel subsidy that should have been reserved for the underprivileged.
The argument that fuel subsidy in Nigeria is to protect the poor is spurious. Out of the 145 vehicles per 1,000 citizens in Nigeria, 85 of them are cars belonging to middle-class members of the society. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is the car-owning middle-class citizens that benefit largely from fuel subsidy. If indeed fuel subsidy assists the low-income and the unemployed, it is not to the extent that it benefits the middle-class. Definitely, there are better ways to assist the poor and the under-paid than for labour unions to play the role of opposition to government policies, more so when such policies have no direct bearing on the conditions of work and service in their place of work. Unbundling or reorganising NNPC without loss of jobs to existing workers appears not to have any direct bearing on the situation of the country’s downtrodden.
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Are these people truly learned?
Unfortunately the more you look at their new behaviour, acts or what they say, you begin to wonder if the word ‘learned’ has not taken a new meaning
Writing in his column of 6 March, 2016 in this newspaper, Biodun Jeyifo opined: “almost without exception, most newspaper and news magazine columnists – the commentariat – nurse the illusion that what they/we write collectively has a decisive role to play in the fate of the nation, especially with regard to the terrible condition of the masses of the poor and the underprivileged in our country. He went further to suggest that about the only way for columnists to meaningfully impact society is “if what we write as pundits move the masses to act, to intervene…” I have always known that between columnists and successive Nigerian governments, it has always been a dialogue with the deaf, and that is if they read you at all. In recognition of this, I have many times directed my exhortations on these pages to the Nigerian people directly: a good example being my no less than three articles about” STORMING THE BASTILLE” in which I exhorted the Nigerian hoi polloi which Jeyifo describes as -“the bottom layers of the socio-economic order, the truly disadvantaged, “the wretched of the earth” – to move against a thoroughly anti-people National Assembly, with its members ever desirous of milking the country dry as in its on-going effort to amend the constitution to gift themselves hundreds of millions in pension payments, after many of them, as former governors, had thrown their states into an intractable debt peonage. Beyond what we write moving the masses to act, Jeyifo did not prescribe that columnists should, willy nilly, also be at the barricades. With the help of hindsight, therefore, the failure of the Leaderless Russian revolution of 1905, Jeyifo’s suggestion would then imply that there is a need for an intervening corps of activists to eventuate postulations by columnists since the masses appear incapable of acting of their own. Fortunately, we do not lack such activists in the country; they will only have to add this to their repertoire anew.
However, in order to ensure that I do not indulge in any sterile punditry today, I am directing this piece to a group/ individuals that we have been led, all this long, to believe, are learned. Unfortunately the more you look at their new behaviour, acts or what they say, you begin to wonder if the word ‘learned’ has not taken a new meaning. Take for instance the interesting case of some money which the EFCC insists was paid to a judge’s bank account. Not only was the agency reportedly told, initially, that the money was an assistance by some unnamed friends towards the burial of the judge’s relation, the same source would later come round with a “superior affidavit” to the effect that the account to which the money was paid was, indeed, not the judge’s, but somebody else bearing the same names. That should remind us of one of Ibori’s many cases. Nor was that all. In explaining another allegation, we were told that monies paid to another judge, by the same person or his chambers, were for ‘client recruitment’ services, rendered by the now serving judge when, aeons ago, he was a member of that chamber. And this money kept rolling into the judge’s account from 2012 to 2015? Where is the logic, or ‘knowledge’ in all these or really, where is the learning? And, Pray, what do they take Nigerians for, fools?
But the above pales into insignificance when one hears Olisa Agbakoba, a highly regarded member of the Nigerian bar and member of the Nigerian Judicial Council, to boot, weigh in on the issue of corruption in the judiciary as he says judges could not be blamed for taking money from lawyers because many of them are in financial difficulties and cannot meet most of their needs. This he attributed to their poor pay asking whether Nigerians expect a judge whose mother is dying of a terminal illness to be thinking of the Code of Conduct. This has naturally elicited reactions from many quarters. I quote below one of such reactions in the hope that these ‘learned’ people will benefit from the views of we, their ‘unlearned’ compatriots, learn to respect us and also, as a group, strive for much needed moral re-armament amongst their ilk.
“I am hugely disappointed and terribly scandalised by these comments from Mr Olisa Agbakoba. Does it mean that we have over-estimated these guys these many years? Now, the chicken is coming home to roost. The wind is blowing and showing the rump of the chicken! Statements like this, if made by Ricky Tarfa? or his donating friends, one will not bat an eyelid but coming from an Agbakoba, it is as ridiculous as it is worrying. Should we then ask that his accounts be scrutinised too? Is the judiciary the only poorly funded organ in Nigeria? Does this ‘excuse’ permit corruption? Selling justice should then be justified? Are judges the only poorly paid public officers in this country? Would Mr Agbakoba excuse an armed robber who gives a seemingly pathetic story which he claims warranted his action? And would Agbakoba ask that he be freed because of the extenuating circumstances surrounding his criminal action? What kind of country and people are we turning into? Where are the values that formed the bedrock of our growing up years? Somebody, please tell Mr Agbakoba that he goofed, and badly, too! Why worry about corruption if we can give excuses for some perpetrators? How much of consideration will Mr Agbakoba give the Nigerian worker earning the pitiable minimum wage whose child needs a kidney transplant and goes to rob his millionaire boss and kills him in the process? What a sad day today has become?!!There are two great teachers of lawyers I sympathise with in this season of anomie – Professors Oyebode and Sagay. I can only imagine their pains! Oh, we don’t seem to know what good looks like anymore!
How sad and shameful!”
‘ABOVE WHISPERS’ DEBUTS
It took my meeting Erelu Bisi Adeleye -Fayemi at the 15th Annual Lecture of Women in Business, Management and Public Service (WIMBIZ) where Dr Kayode Fayemi, her loving husband, and Minister of Solid Minerals, was the Guest Speaker, in Lagos this past week, to remind me that I had long wanted to ‘announce’ the arrival of ABOVE WHISPERS’ blog, whose debut emerged a few weeks back. Erelu Bisi Fayemi needs no introduction, nationally or internationally, in the areas in which ABOVE WHISPERS will concentrate its emphasis. An expert in Gender Studies, she is an activist, writer and fundraiser in feminist and human rights movements. She co-founded the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), the first Africa-wide grant-making organisation supporting women’s movement in Africa and served as its first Chief Executive Officer. Between 1991 and 2001, Erelu Fayemi was a Director of Akina Mama Wa Afrika (AMwA), an international development organisation for African women, based in the United Kingdom and with offices in Uganda and Nigeria. She is a former First Lady of Ekiti State, Nigeria.
Before it debuted, Erelu was kind enough to have invited me on board as an ‘occasional guest blogger’, writing on anything I may wish.
The blog will serve the following purposes:
- An opportunity for people to engage in discussions on politics, social justice, development, financial security, women’s rights, health, entrepreneurship, faith, parenting, relationships, etc.
- Learning from experienced people in various fields of expertise who will share their knowledge as guest contributors.
- A forum to find and engage with other people in an atmosphere devoid of rants or passing judgment on others.
- Showcase some of the unique ways we build communities in Africa through our personal and collective philanthropy that don’t get told in the international media.
- A place to mentor younger people as we share advice and experience.
- A safe space for women to: ‘exhale’ by telling their stories (in person or anonymously) so that we can learn from their triumphs and challenges, and in return, they will know that they are not alone.
Above Whispers went online first week, February 2016, and I’m trusting compatriots to tap into what is sure to be a goldmine of information, education and mentoring.
– Kudos Erelu.
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Conference on the economy?
Perhaps heeding the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s call for a national conference on the economy, the Muhammadu Buhari government has promised to hold one in the coming weeks. Rather than read Prof. Soyinka’s call as a show of concern for their lack of activism on a plummeting economy, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) interpreted the call literally to mean the usual jamboree of talking shop in the entertaining and elaborate manner Nigerians have become fanatically accustomed to. But even if the professor were to mean his advice in that sense, it would still not detract from the conclusion that he felt sufficiently worried about the very little being done to salvage the nation in the face of a collapsing economy, immiseration of the people, festering crime on a nationally unmanageable scale, and general paralysis.
However, from the general direction of the 2016 Budget, the government seems to have made up its mind on the key controversial issues of the economy, thereby making any discussion or debate nugatory. The president is implacably and even emotionally opposed to any talk of devaluation, but it is hard to see any conference not putting that issue at the heart of the debate. The government is not opposed to borrowing to finance its budget deficit, especially at a time of declining oil prices. That will also come up for debate should an economic conference hold. Indeed, for any conference to succeed, unlike the disdain and abrasiveness with which the federal government often approaches constitution-making and amendments, the Buhari government cannot afford to enunciate no-go areas.
President Buhari incongruously agreed to hold a conference when what will come up for scathing review and debate will be his government’s economic programme or lack of it. If any conference should hold, it should be organised and led by the private sector. The government should of course attend, take notes, correct or sharpen its own paradigms, and sensibly promise and pursue reforms or amendments. Indeed, it must be settled from the outset that the federal government has no business organising an economic conference even before the ink runs dry on its budget estimates, let alone before running the now controversial document through the vetting gauntlet of the National Assembly. But if it chooses to hold a conference, it is hard to see the outcome enjoying less neglect than the ruling party’s own manifesto which intelligently adumbrates plans to reinvigorate the national economy on a scale the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) never dreamt of when it held sway.
More germanely, President Buhari’s willingness to hold a conference signposts his and the APC’s inattentiveness to their own economic programme. (A part of the programme is excerpted in the box below as a general reminder). While it is true that the manifesto did not anticipate every distortion in the economy, especially given the rapidity with which key indicators are changing, often for the worse, it is still flexible enough to accommodate modifications, no matter how drastic they are. The manifesto is broad enough. It indicates an eight-point programme that places emphasis on “war against corruption, food security, accelerated power supply, integrated transport network, free education, devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health care.” Unlike the PDP, it even more engagingly enunciates a philosophical foundation for its economic plans, the intangible driving the tangible, the abstract inspiring the real. Said the party: “Our guiding philosophy will derive its impetus from these seven principles: Belief in, and the fear of God; upholding the rule of law; preserving national unity; pursuit of a just and egalitarian society; building of strong institutions; commitment to social justice and economic progress; and promoting representative and functional participatory democracy.”
The main problem, it seems, is not that the APC does not have elaborate plans for the economy, an economy that was already showing aggravated signs of distress during the Goodluck Jonathan years, or that those plans are not flexible enough to withstand shocks and fluctuations, or that party apparatchiks do not have sufficient understanding of the fundaments of the Nigerian economy. What ails the economy, nay the Buhari presidency, is that the president, for understandable reasons, can’t seem to find the composure to drive his party’s economic programme. And if, as everyone knows, he has shortcomings in the area of economic management, why has he neglected to find someone who can drive his economic plans? It would have been greatly helpful had he acquired the policy and theoretical wherewithal to marshal the efforts needed to revamp the economy, for then the radicalism the process would need, and the daring policy leaps the change his party talks about and the country needs, would not be threatened by the appalling ethnocentrism and sectarian bigotry that often obfuscate fundamental change and deep societal re-engineering in Nigeria.
In the alternative, considering his own shortcomings, the president should have more responsibly identified someone, or a small and effective group, with the capacity to think through the morass and moraines of the country’s declining economy, and come up with far-reaching and farsighted policy frameworks and designs to pull Nigeria out of the confusion and decay the PDP consigned it. But rather than pay attention to this great need, the president assembled a restrictive kitchen cabinet with whom should he deign to meet minds would sometimes obsequiously pander to his whims. Rather than satisfy that great need, he also took the circumlocutory route of first deprecating ministerial work in favour of the civil service, until disillusionment set in. And finally and more bewilderingly, he then partitioned the cabinet in such a manner that it was obvious the philosophical exactitude which the APC manifesto pretended to embrace had become inappropriate, irrelevant and appeared designed to accomplish other purposes than the desperate task of revamping the economy.
Many critics have slammed the president for entrapping himself in a political and economic time warp. They are probably right. He is struggling to respect the rule of law instead of internalising it and making adherence effortless. He has embraced and still nurtures fairly jaded ideas of politics contrary to the ambitious provisions the APC’s campaign manifesto indicated. And his economic ideas have quizzically not progressed beyond what he projected as military head of state. Thirty years out of power and 12 years trying to regain office have apparently not led him to rejig, refine and develop new and radical ideas about politics and economy, let alone the minor but important aspects of the structure and objectives of government. When he was in the wilderness, it would have been tremendously beneficial had he studied the policies that led to China’s rebirth and economic modernisation, not to talk of the great leap achieved by Brazil and the Asian Tigers in the late 60s and 80s. The lessons of those economic miracles are clear and unambiguous, and the identities and orientations of those who midwifed the changes are also not hidden.
Instead of calling an economic conference, and seeing that the he can’t offer more than the assets of personal discipline and integrity in addressing the economic crisis, it is time the president found someone with the intellect and chutzpah to shoulder the responsibility of conceiving and effectuating the change his party talks about and the country urgently needs. Given the apocalyptic pace of Nigeria’s economic decline, and the imminent and terrifying plunge to social chaos exemplified by the upsurge in crime rate, the president should appreciate that neither he nor his party can afford the luxury of pussyfooting. He does not have an economic team in the rigid sense of the phrase, and it does not make sense to expect that either the Budget and Planning minister or the Finance minister can step into that role. They will not, partly because they were not appointed to perform that role nor were they given that brief. Nor is it clear that even if they were given that brief they would be able to accomplish the huge task. If the president can’t be like China’s Deng Xiaoping, then let him look for someone like Ludwig Erhard in Konrad Adenauer’s post-war Germany’s cabinet that designed and accomplished that country’s economic reconstruction often referred to as the Wirtschaftswunder or economic miracle.
President Buhari is fighting corruption, but he must be mindful of doing (not talking) it within the ambit of the rule of law. He must build and strengthen institutions, which could run without powerful men flaunting credentials of integrity and honesty instead of visionary and philosophical accoutrements. He must also administer Nigeria in the expansive and unifying sense of incorporating Nigerians from all ethnic groups into the task ahead contrary to his present idiosyncratic inclination towards exclusion and perhaps inadvertent insularity. And while firmness and unyielding inflexibility have their advantages in a society long used to indiscipline and laxity, he must deliberately acculturate to the democratic nuances of consensus, persuasion and debate which some of his men in the secret service and the EFCC are repudiating under the guise of public safety and public good.
The task before him is difficult and enormous, and President Buhari has not even started, seeing how he has limited himself to just two tasks out of a myriad. And if he can’t seem to find his way around the stalagmites and stalactites of economic crisis, how can he, and when will he, address the desperate political problems truncating the country’s peace and progress? In many ways, economy and politics are interwoven, and sorting out one requires virtually the same philosophical foundations and tools as making sense of the other. If the president can’t succeed in one, it is hard to see him succeeding in the other. But he needs to succeed, for failure is not an option. Let him, therefore, demonstrate the capacity, the liberalism and the courage to change Nigeria in the substantial sense that even ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo could not fathom, nor Dr. Jonathan ever contemplate. But going by all the events of the past few months, and the crowd around the president, this column has his fears.