The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Dahiru and the cadets

    Dahiru and the cadets

    A poor boy in the hands of two Air Force cadets

    I had thought of writing on the new electricity tariff approved for our electricity distribution companies (DISCOs) by the Federal Government today. Somehow, what you are reading pushed that forward. That may come up next week, God willing. What I am looking at today is  Citizen Dahiru Lawal and two air force cadets.

    For me, Dahiru is one of the luckiest persons in 2015. Barely 48 hours to the new year, the poor boy had an encounter with two Nigeria Air Force cadets, Abdullahi Fahad and Peter O Solomon at the Mile 12 area of Lagos. Mile 12 has become more notorious not only for the presence of the market there but for the chaotic traffic situation that has become a regular feature of the place. But people in the area were treated to something bizarre when on Wednesday, last week, the two Air Force cadets locked up Dahiru in the boot of their car. But for the intervention of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State, only God knows what would have been Dahiru’s fate by now. But my guess is, he might have passed on to the Great Beyond because there is a limit to how long a human being could stay alive while locked in the boot of a car after being dragged on the ground.

    According to reports, the cadets said they put Dahiru in the car boot for trying to escape after breaking the windscreen of their car. “What happened is that the boy broke the windscreen in front of my car. When I stopped, I asked him to come, the boy ran away. We have to drag him back and put him in the boot”, Solomon said, when asked to narrate what happened. He added: “I kind of threatened his boss that he is working with and when his boss came and looked at what he did to me, that was when I put him inside the boot, but I did not lock the boot”.

    Fahad more or less corroborated this story. He said he and his colleague were at Mile 12 after visiting a friend when they heard a sound on their windscreen and they saw Lawal attempting to escape … “We now ran inside the market and dragged him (Lawal) down. I was even asking for who he is working with because I wanted to see his oga since I know he cannot repair my damaged windscreen. I want to see the man he is working with so that we can settle everything with him. I now told my colleague that we should hand him over to Air Force Police at the Air force Base”, Fahad added.

    Dahiru states his own side of the story. He said he mistakenly broke the windscreen with the load he was carrying and that he took to his heels for fear of what the cadets would do to him. “I ran into the market and they pursued me and caught me inside the market. They started beating me and dragged me to their car. The pleas of my boss and other people around fell on deaf ears. The policemen there, according to reports, also came to plead with them to open the boot but they insisted on taking me away and it was at this point that the convoy of the governor arrived to rescue me from the boot of the car where they kept me”, he said.

    Why would the cadets want to take the boy to Air Force base when there were policemen around? Although the cadets claimed they did not lock the boot of the car after puting the boy in it (a claim Dahiru said was a lie), that, for me, is immaterial. Why put a human being in the boot of a car at all? Now, even if what they wanted to do was drive him to their Air Force base, would they still have left the boot open while driving to the place? How many people would break the windscreen of a military personnel’s car and wait, knowing full well the repercussion? This is not to justify what the boy had done, though. Despite being a boy, he already knew what to expect from the cadets after breaking their windscreen. Moreover, it does not seem to me that the boy deliberately broke the windscreen. Even when the boy’s boss arrived, there was little he could do seeing that the people that his boy offended were military men. If he said what they did not want to hear, he could end up receiving lashes of koboko (horse whip) and end up in the boot with his boy. So, the best he could do was plead with the cadets, realising that even the policemen around could not get the boy off the hook.

    Indeed, this is where I am going. At the time the policemen on ground there intervened, the military men ought to have handed over the boy over to them, granted that they wanted their windscreen replaced (a not too illegitimate demand). But that is what due process and rule of law demands. It was wrong for them to contemplate taking the poor boy to their base because that could not have been a substitute for a police station. It was a civil matter which should be reported at the police station.

    Apparently too, the policemen there were helpless because if they tried to insist on taking up the matter, things could go awry between them and the cadets on the one hand, and the cadets and onlookers on another. Before one could say Jack Robinson, the entire place would start boiling and we may begin to record casualties by way of deaths or injuries. Reinforcements would come from nearby military barracks upon mere speculation that some bloody policemen have manhandled two Air Force cadets. It was probably to avert this that the policemen there chose to plead with the cadets and when they saw their pleas were not heeded; they abandoned the boy to his fate.  Thank God for the governor’s convoy that was passing at the time. That is why I say Dahiru is a very lucky boy. If not, why did the governor arrive at the very point that the boy needed a superior authority to free him from those who were too powerful for those around to rescue him from?

    The point is that some of our military officers need to learn how to relate with members of the public. In fairness to some of the officers, they are somewhat  courteous while dealing with civilians. But some of these boys joining the military have a different idea about what the institution is all about. They see their uniform as something that entitles them to bully others and cow people into submission. If mere cadets could put someone who broke their windscreen in the car boot, what punishment would they mete out to him if they were officers in the Air force? To even think that the cadets are from what many of us see as the elite arm of our military, the Nigerian Air Force! It is bad enough that in this case, the boy was at fault. But I have no doubt in my mind that if the case had been otherwise, the same cadets would want to bully their way through, perhaps without offering an apology to their victim.

    Did it cross the minds of the cadets that Governor Ambode could have ordered them put in the boot of one of the cars in his convoy because he too had superior powers, even if this would have attracted condemnation later from some citizens? Yet, some would have seen the ‘punishment’ as a well deserved comeuppance for the cadets who did not realise that where their own power ends, someone else’s begins?

    Our military authority must teach their officers and men how to deal with civilians. They must know that we are now in a democratic era and there is no room for raw or brute application of power or authority. In a sense, Dahiru is a Yoruba equivalent of ‘Ayorunbo’ (someone who has died and returned to earth). Reports said he was already gasping for breath when the governor arrived and ordered that he be freed. Thank God he is free indeed!

  • Nigeria in 2016: The moment of truth

    .  The president obviously believes Nigeria can spend its way out of a looming recession at a time we should be deliberately deflating the economy through massive cuts in cost of governance, reducing salaries and allowances across board and eliminating waste by drastically cutting back expenses on luxury items. 

    “The states face three tasks which present significant and debilitating obstacles to their economic revitalisation. First is that they all must regain fiscal sanity by ensuring that revenue matches expenditure. There must be massive cut in cost of governance and focus more on essential public services, particularly in public schools and primary health care delivery. Most states need to ramp up their internal revenue drive, achieve right balance between recurrent and capital budgets and seek to achieve value for money, avoid contract inflation and institute effective price monitoring and public procurement policies” – Senator Olubunmi Adetunmbi

    Aan tan ra oni je i rure’ is a popular Ekiti saying which means you do not/can never, profit from self-deceit.  Unfortunately, that, precisely, is what has been happening here in Nigeria for ages but never as  deleterious  to our collective well-being  as when President Goodluck Jonathan’s men were ‘obtaining, siphoning and running’ the public purse dry, pilfering millions and billions  of naira, when poor Nigerian workers,  most of them on no more than a meagre  N18, 000 monthly  salary,  were being owed  for months  until  President  Muhammadu Buhari extended  a bailout  to  the states  and  approved  the restructuring of their humongous bank loans.  Worse  is that  the  Nigerian  Governors Forum is now toying with the idea  of  either reducing  that intangible salary or laying off workers with nary a word as to how they will  cut down on the stupendous cost of governance.

    To  further worsen matters,  the president,  in stimulating the  struggling economy  consequent  upon  collapsing oil prices , decided to go ballistic,  presenting a  N6.08 trillion ($30.8 billion) budget for  2016;  an increase of  20 percent  above that of 2015 and by a large measure, Nigeria’s biggest ever budget.  The deficit will, at N2.2 trillion, more than double that for 2015, representing 2.16 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).  It projects a N1.84 trillion borrowing, half of it expected to come from outside.  The president obviously believes Nigeria can spend its way out of a looming recession at a time we should be deliberately deflating the economy through massive cuts in cost of governance, reducing salaries and allowances across board and eliminating waste by drastically cutting back expenses on luxury items.

    I am the farthest person from Economics but I have the word of the prodigious Professor Sam Aluko of blessed memory to the effect that there is nothing without an alternative. He said that some three decades ago as Ibrahim Babangida was dribbling the entire country with his SAP programme. This time around too, it  appears  President Buhari has failed to inject the right antidote to  an economy that is guaranteed to worsen  given  the  way  oil prices  continue to  crash. The ideal paradigm out of the looming economic crises should have been, in addition to those already mentioned, developing alternative sources of revenue e.g.  Solid Minerals, Agriculture and Innovation;  investing  maximally in infrastructure procurement and  emphasising  human capital  development especially  in the sciences and  other  selected areas. The budget should have encouraged social infrastructural development: building of schools and colleges, hospitals, providing increased access to pipe borne water and establishing farm settlements  where the  use of  the latest  equipments  will be the norm. These and more Chief Obafemi Awolowo did in the then Western Region to great effect, culminating in the highly justified slogan: First in Africa, given the region.. Unfortunately, as you read this, even Niger Delta, on which the country depended for its survival for years, remains almost completely  denuded  of  these  infrastructural and social facilities. What  we  have seen, instead  are, amongst others:  proposals to buy a fleet  of new exotic cars for the Presidency – BMW cars for principal officers costing about  N3,630,000,000, N189.1m  for tyres for various types of vehicles – bulletproof and plain Mercedes Benz cars, Toyota cars, trucks, Land Cruiser Sport Utility Vehicles , Prado SUVs, Hilux pick-up vans, Peugeot 607 and 406 cars etc .

    You can only begin to imagine all these in a budget that has the highest ever deficit in our history; one that should be encouraging productivity rather than consumption. This, for me, is wrong headed given the country’s present economic circumstances. Those who were happy that  the National Assembly budget was being reduced by a whooping N5B would now know they were simply being had. You get the real import of this misstep when the dire straits in the states are factored into the discussion. As you read this, it has been reported that 11 states would not be able to pay workers’ salaries last December but that is only the tip of the iceberg.  As Senator Olubunmi Adetunmbi painted it in his wide ranging interview from which came the epigram to this article, below is the reality in the states:” The problem of states is beyond cash depletion. The cash flow crisis in states is suggestive of a prolonged inability of state governments to address the structural imbalances in their annual budgets. Like the federal government, many states have no medium or long- term economic plans that can form the basis for annual budget. Consequently, this has led to inefficient spending both in recurrent and capital budgets. Most of the capital investments are in non-revenue assets that stimulate economic activities therefore tying down state funds without a substantial current cash returns. These include unviable airports, stadia, state capital beautification, palatial government houses, dualisation of roads to nowhere and governors’ lodges in Abuja”.

     He was not done:

    “Additional bridging loans, federal  bailout or the conversion of bank loans into long term bonds, do nothing to solve the state’s underlying structural imbalance between revenue and spending.  Rather, to address the fundamental budget problem, states must develop long-term, realistic plans to correct their chronic structural budget imbalance. Any short or long term borrowing, including bonds, to address the states’ deficit without dealing with structural fiscal imbalance would only further increase the already high debt burden of states”.

    With  our states in this economic conundrum, and the federation being an aggregate of the states, the following are the  minimum steps  I think President  Buhari  should  waste no time in bringing to the front burner of political engagement  if Nigeria  is not to remain, like forever, on this revolving barber’s chair; presaging a thoroughly uncertain future:

    1. An urgent re-arrangement of the country which will allow states undertake only those things they can conveniently afford. For instance, it is not only anachronistic that Federal authorities negotiate salaries with workers on behalf of states; it is the height of the illogic, that states, irrespective of their financial standing, pay same salary to their workers. Otherwise, some workers will remain unpaid for upwards of 12 calendar months and, like former Governor Suswan of Benue, governors would be right in saying that they cannot print money. And, by the way, a new revenue formula is a desideratum. With  synergy between the executive and the legislature, the proposed  re-arrangements should not be an impossible task. Senator Adetunmbi elegantly put what the states should do as follows: “States must of necessity right-size their public service; this could mean all or a combination of shedding jobs, outsourcing, cutting pay, trimming benefits and other creative ideas. There are models for managing labour unions during such drastic reforms to ensure collaborative rather than antagonistic labour relations. Singapore did it and interested states can draw from that experience. In most Nigerian states, public service to population ration is as low as 0.2 per cent to the highest of three per cent in Zamfara and Bayelsa respectively. Yet, the public service consumes 60-120 per cent of total revenue in some states”. This state of affairs is most unfair to majority of the citizenry who have no decent jobs of their own as it completely hinders infrastructural and social development.
    2. In case this is not feasible in the short run, salaries and allowances, across board, that is, from the lowest worker to the President, should be reduced progressively by between 10-40 per cent. Whoever cannot survive on that should simply resign his/her position.

    Nigeria has walked this accursed route for far too long with nothing tangible to show for it. Most Nigerians know that our present circumstances call for a daring do,  and that should we miss it  now, under about the only Nigerian many believe, with considerable justification, can be our Moses, we would most probably have lost it forever and it may soon be to your tents O Israel..

  • BJ@70: greying of a virile tradition of intellectual activism for social democracy?

    For decades, BJ was largely a self-funding NGO by himself and along with others for
    the purpose of improving his society and immediate community.

    All men are intellectuals. But not all men have in society the function of intellectuals. —Antonio Gramsci

    As readers of this column read this page today, a large number of West Africa’s literati in particular and lovers of social democracy in generalwill be moving in the direction of Kankafo Inn in Ibadan, to participate on Tuesday, January 5 in paying tributes to a man who has for over half a century stood out as one of Africa’s (and the world’s) stellar thinkers for and on behalf of social justicenot only in Nigeria but wherever he finds himself on the globe. This page will be devoted today to paying tribute to Biodun Jeyifo (BJ) for using his mind consistently for the past   50 years of his adult life to assist others to understandthe need for them to think and act in pursuance of creating unfettered environment for realising their humanity to the fullest.

    Writing almost fifty years before the birth of BJ, Antonio Gramsci drew a line between traditional public intelligentsia and organic public intelligentsia. He described organic intellectuals as conscious members of society who must be developed to think and act on behalf of the working class, in contradistinction to the traditional intelligentsia composed of “men of letters, philosophers, professionals, etc” who are intimately tied to the dominant culture and therefore compromised and limited in their own capacity.” In his own case, BJ refused to be limited by the skills and knowledge he had acquired in precolonial and postcolonial Nigeria and in other parts of the world of advanced capitalism.  He chose (and still does at 70) to spend the rest of his post-baccalaureate years as an organic intellectual in pursuance of freedom and social justice for the people.And he has performed this role over the years without risking the quality of contributions of a highly endowed mind to human progress through knowledge expansion.

    At 70, BJ is understandably and expectedly greying and doing so graciously. He, like many others with similar intellectual bent before and in his generation, is greying in a way that should make those who see him as an enviable role model and those looking for a role model to take advantage of the festival of encomiums that will occur in both traditional and social media on the occasion of BJ’s entry into the septuagenarian phase of life.

    Rather than do what most people who knew my relationship with BJ at the University of Ife: would readily expect: focus on his teaching, research, and professional publications, I will focus in this 1400-word space at my disposal on some of his qualities as intellectual-activist and activist-intellectual.With BJ’s over 50 professional publications that include such magisterial works as The Yoruba Traveling Theatre of Nigeria, The Truth Lie: Essays in a Sociology of African Drama, Marxism and the Criticism of African Drama, Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, and Post colonialism, Wole Soyinka: A Voice of Africa, 1958-2008: Things Fall Apart; Things Fall Together, Africa in the World and the Worldin Africa: Essays in Honour of Abiola Irele, using this small space allotted to me today to summarise tomes of high scholarship may amount to an understatement. Doing so may also rob average mass readers of newspapers the opportunity to obtain an insight into the contributions of an expert who chose to connect his fertile mind to the life of average citizens in whatever clime BJ has found himself in his professional years.

    As a young scholar, BJ joined the ranks of several scholars in the country to interrogate the assumptions of postcolonial Nigeria. While scholars like Bala Usman of Ahmadu Bello University and Segun Osoba of the University of Ife were busy promoting a new historiography about social justice and nation building, and social scientists like Ola Oni and Bade Onimode were interrogating economic theories fueling and hobbling the new postcolonial states in Africa, BJ turned his intellectual tools on connecting the continent’s symbolic discourse, in particular literary production with economic production and reproduction. BJ found a good company in this venture with scholars like Omafume Onoge and Femi Osofisan at the University of Ibadan.Although BJ and I had crossed paths at conferences within and outside Nigeria in the mid-1970s, I was not privileged to observe from close quarters his dexterity at multitasking until I joined him at the University of Ife’s department of literature in English, where I also came to see how loving and loved he was (and still is) despite the stoic mien of a man continually in deep thought. And what I saw of him over three decades ago at Ife in terms of depth of commitment to social justice  in all climes and to wellbeing of associates, friends and family has been growing ever since.

    The activist-intellectual bloomed at Ife, where he was characterised by military dictators as one of “those teaching what they were not paid to teach.”His pedagogy of mobilisation and ‘conscientisation’ grew with him at Ife. In a decade of disequilibrium in almost all spheres of modern life in the country, BJ became the President of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) with the remit to secure academic freedom and obtain respectable working conditions for the professoriate.He drove in his old Volkswagen Beetle across the length and breadth of the country to consult with various branches of the union and to attend negotiation meetings with representatives of the Shagari government. Not surprisingly, BJ still found time to meet his onerous teaching responsibilities and postgraduate supervision by teaching longer hours to make sure students were not disadvantaged by his union-related activities.

    The impact of BJ’s ASUU presidency on the university system in Nigeria is a legacy with a template that has been an abiding aspect of labour unionism ever since.  As a member of the executive committee of ASUU at that time, I was privileged to observe BJ’s sincere identification with and support for the demands of non-academic staff unions and the union of junior workers in the university system. He became a spokesman for these other unions at ASUU meetings, thus using the power of example to provide leadership in neutralising tension on many campuses of what many academics perceived then as issues of no concern to the demands of ASUU.

    BJ has at every point in his 50 years of professional life been very active in the three major areas of intellectual activism: demanding solutions to problems through taking oppositional stances to mainstream policies created by an existing hegemony; undertaking actions which manifest in the creation of alternatives to the dominant system through construction of new ways of social behavior; and revolutionary activism that is preoccupied with fundamental change of society and its major institutions.

    For example, BJ was a leading member of an agriculture and food cooperative in the Ife area, with the objective to pass new methods to local farmers and assist them to improve their productivity through sharing of responsibilities. On the surface, this affiliation of BJ with farmers looked like unnecessary demystification or trivialisation of high knowledge while to the farmers and other perceptive observers, it demonstrated BJ’s desire to assist under-tooled farmers to construct a new ethos of equality and social justice, an illustration of his proclivity to marry theory and praxis for the purpose of stimulating an egalitarian spirit among people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder in a young postcolonial state.While his profession took him to North America, he initiated a weekly anti-poverty conversation with the mass reader through the publication of Talakawa Liberation Herald, which readers of this newspaper musthave been reading religiously on account of its unfailing brilliant analyses. More recently, he also started an Anti-Poverty Initiative headquartered in Bodija part of Ibadan to share some of his post-retirement energy and resources with people in need in a country that should have been overflowing with milk and honey.

    The purpose of this piece is not just to celebrate a colleague and friend. It is also to make a connection between BJ’s 70th birthday and the ageing of what used to be a vigorous struggle via words and action for social democracy in our country.  For decades, BJ was largely a self-funding NGO by himself and along with others for the purpose of improving his society and immediate community. As ever before, the need for BJ-like commitment to organised struggle for social and economic justice in our country continues to grow, more so now that struggle for social justice has been left to professional NGOs funded largely by external donors with their own vision of Nigeria.ABIJE, as Nike and Femi Osofisan, Shade and Yemi Ogunbiyi, and Kole Omotoso prefer to call you, Bi eegunba se rere, biieegunba se ibi, aa fi onaigbalejii. Eegun tire ti se rere o. Igbaodun, odunkanni

  • Okon is Father Christmas

    A few days into the Christmas celebrations, snooper witnessed a most outlandish and unforgettable sight. It was Okon fully kitted in Father Christmas costumes being borne along the streets by Baba Lekki and the usual retinues of hangers on all chanting “Feliz navidad” in a rowdy and raucous manner. Boy, the whole place smelt like an abandoned ogogoro factory. The crazy boy was obviously in high spirits, no pun intended, and appeared in fine fettle.

    Very soon, the riotous crowd was joined by urchins and other urban vagabonds turning the whole thing into a carnival-like procession of the dispossessed. It was at this point that a drunken solitary policeman attempted to arrest Okon for impersonating Jesus.

    “Sebi you say you be Jesu, abi? Na sergeant go settle dat one when we reach station”, the drunken cop guffawed as he pointed his Mark 4 rifle at Okon. To everybody’s surprise, Okon brushed aside the fellow with disarming familiarity.

    “Yellow, I give you one minute to run for your life with your Shakabula gun or you will smell your mama’s yansh”, Okon roared. The policeman, now recognizing who it was, jumped through the restive crowd and took to his heels.

    “Yeepaa, na dem Esu boy from Calabar . He don beat me well well before before”, he screamed as he tore through the adjoining street with the crowd cursing at his heels.

    The train soon stopped in front of an abandoned warehouse as Okon settled down to distributing rice pilfered from an upended trailer even as Baba Lekki began smoking prohibited weeds from his prodigious pipe.

    “Dis one na ma own contribution to dem National Pension scheme, or baba abi na pension scam as you dey call am?”, the mad boy began with an expansive flourish.

    “Go on my boy, your head never knock. Him still get engine oil”, the crazy old crook nodded with warm approval.

    “Baba no be say Okon thief rice. Na trailer jam and Okon come jam rice, baba abi no be so?”, the crazy boy drawled.

    “Na dat one dem they call ijamba for Yoruba”, the old devil concurred.

    “Why dem trailer dey carry only rice and no currency from ONSA?” one fellow snorted from the crowd. Like a practiced operative, Baba Lekki immediately picked the dangerous train of thought.

    “Dangote no dey transport currency. Na Seriki  mai-rice. Onsa means he dey run for Yoruba.”. Baba Lekki crowed. But the damage had been done. It was the turn of one sturdy-looking man who flatly refused the offer of rice.

    “Give me one Dasuki”, the man bellowed rather threateningly.

    “Wetin be one Dasuki?” Okon asked the irate fellow.

    “One billion, period!” the man screamed and stormed away.  A hush fell on the crowd. There was an awful silence everywhere. Even Okon appeared momentarily lost. Then he seemed to have regained his old confidence.

    “Baba, see me see trouble. You no see how the yeye people I wan help dey disgrace me?  Dem no wan chop rice rice again na money dem wan chop”, Okon rued like a lost soul.

    “Okon, rice sweet but money sweet pass am”, the crazy old man whispered.

    “Baba, you come dey sound like dem old TAN people. Abi you don obtain sef?” Okon chortled.

    “Ha Okon, stealing no be corruption and obtainment no be stealing” the old man crowed.

    “Na God go punish dem wuruwuru fisherman. He come turn dem obodo country to Kalokalo machine. As dem thing come dey vomit money dem come dey carry go”, the crazy boy lamented.

    “Okon I don tell una say father Christmas pass father Christmas. Make we dey go home”, Baba sneered.

    “Baba, I never know say stealing dey dem Nigerian constitution”, Okon rued.

    “Okon dat one he depend on dem intendment of dem framers of dem constitution”, Baba Lekki noted with a jocular frown.

    “Baba he be like if say dem don frame dem framers for dis time. Na iron frame dem must to put for Kirikiri”, Okon screamed.

    “Okon your brother Bode come say na jara dem gave am, so na jara jail he go go dis time”, Baba Lekki sniggered.

    “Dat one him head no correct at all”, Okon spat.

    It was at this point that a madman who had been snoring through the proceeding suddenly roused and screamed, “rice ooo compatriots”. Before anybody could make any sense out of this, he seized a cudgel and began attacking everybody and everything in sight.

  • Now then, where is the ‘Happy’ in the Happy New Year?

    To start with, how on earth can we greet anyone Happy New Year, when there are thousands of nuclear arsenals in several countries pointed at every single throat on the planet and controlled by psychopaths and sociopaths who go by the misleading epithet of leaders?

    I’m glad you breasted the tape into this New Year. I did too, but only just. I am tempted to ask how you did it. I know, many of you will say you just slept, woke up and found yourself in the New Year. Someone said he slept, woke up and thought he found himself in December again. Honestly, what with all these fuel shortages, bombs going off anyhow, unpaid salaries and rising cost of living, can you blame him?

    Everywhere I go now (and I bet this is also happening to you), people greet me, Happy New Year, till it has felt like people are throwing pebbles at me! Not the ones that come from you though, dear reader; those ones I really appreciate. Generally, my greeters are so cheery and all smiles; and I am thinking, hey, they really mean it! They are happy because they have no problems; poor lucky blokes!; they actually wish me to be happy!

    Seriously, my face is practically pockmarked right now with all the pebbles of New Year greetings. Yet, I am convinced that most people really have no idea what that greeting is saying. If they did, methinks they would not choose to say it; they would rather choose to greet their friends with perhaps ‘Kind New Year’ or ‘Hopeful New Year’! Those ones capture more the desires and dreams of most of parts of me right now. But throwing out Happy New Year like confetti at a wedding is getting to be a little too much for my stomach these days.

    According to my research and you can join me on that search on the net, a Dean Burnett somehow beat me to the tape of questioning where the ‘happy’ in Happy New Year comes from. He said ‘…The greeting is illogical and unreasonable … a more elaborate form of the statement would be “the New Year is here, and it is a happy one” … (It is often) shouted a few seconds after midnight … by people … intoxicated enough to believe they are (happy)’. So he asks, how can one decide that the remaining 31, 557, 590 seconds of the year will be happy when you subtract the ten seconds it will take you to say those words to someone? The problem, dear reader, is that after those ten seconds, the New Year remains but the ‘happy’ somehow evaporates. Where does it go to?

    Before we decide that, let me quote what Einstein is reported to have said when consoling the family of a deceased friend: ‘For us who are convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent.’ Like I said, I am only reporting and I certainly do not want to get into an argument with the old man or my physicist friends. I will not win and I like them too much to drop them.

    So, on the one hand, one might be tempted to agree with Einstein, as I have been hard put to it to find the difference between this exact moment yesterday, today, last year, or even tomorrow without their corresponding events which may now make them to be relative to the other. In short, all of time is but one big moment. Seriously? Yet, on the other hand, there are my many wrinkles to show that if something is not passing by me, I am at least passing through it, cause I sure cannot account for them else — my diet; the climate? Nah, it’s the time of life all right, and if it were all but one gigantic moment, believe me I would, like the Biblical Joshua, ask it to stand still – in my youth of course. I tell you, these blessed wrinkles are real enough.

    So, how did we get into this argument? Oh yeah, we were looking for the blunderer who initiated the Happy New Year greeting. Let’s see who the first optimist was to say it. Would you believe it – I cannot find the guy; he is lost to history. All I can find is the history of the change of the Roman calendar to the Julian calendar and the institution of the January 1 date as the beginning of the year… Lucky for that optimist; I would have hung, quartered and executed him/her all over again for being so intrepid as to give us a greeting that is at once ‘illogical and unreasonable’, not to add annoying.

    To start with, how on earth can we greet anyone Happy New Year, when there are thousands of nuclear arsenals in several countries pointed at every single throat on the planet and controlled by psychopaths and sociopaths who go by the misleading epithet of leaders? How can anyone greet anyone else Happy New Year when people are being murdered, kidnapped, robbed, or destroyed all over the world even as we speak (so to say)? How can we shout Happy New Year when fuel queues are killing off old men and women in Nigeria?

    Yes, everything around us has successfully conspired to remove the ‘happy’ in Happy New Year. Let’s just forget it and find other prefixes that go with the times. Let’s see now. I can wish you a Hopeful New Year – you’ll need plenty of it. You’ll need hope to overcome this acute fuel shortage. When it started, no one knew what was happening. All we heard was that some monies were not paid, some monies were paid; there was panic buying; there was no panic buying; but we had no fuel. So, since we do not know where we are coming from, there is every likelihood we might not know where we are going or when we will get there. Reader, you and I will need all the hope to believe that this too shall pass.

    I also wish you a Kind New Year! Too many people will greet you Happy New Year these days and stick a knife at your back next minute. Oh, yes sir; the petrol attendant who sells you short of the amount you ordered; the market woman who has a false bottom on her measuring can; the policeman who uses his gun to stop you on the road and coax his ‘season’s greetings compensation’ from you; the civil servant who ‘kidnaps’ your file that you must ransom from under his feet beneath the carpet; the nurse who is busy attending to her nails or boyfriend, or the government doctor busy at his own hospital in the city, while you are languishing on the government bed… Need I go on?  All of these are knives daily thrust into our backs in this country.

    Above all, I wish you a Peaceful New Year! Ah! That is the neat one, you’ll say. What with boko haram in the north, Biafra agitators in the east, and the combined team of police and army running from one end of the country to the other these days, our lives appear to be worth only as many as the psalms we can recite each morning. I wish you the kind of calm you can only get from knowing that you can’t die twice, even though they say that cowards die many times before their death. I honestly do not know what that means, but look, if you and I are still alive now in spite of Jonathan’s rule or misrule, Buhari’s clean up campaign, Dasukigate, boko haram’s suicide games, Biafra games, Aregbesola’s no-salary games, etc., chances are we will still be alive sixty or more years to come. Can I hear a loud ‘Amen’ to that? Thank you.

    May the year bring you love from many kind hearts.

  • All hail the Asiwaju of Okeho

    Snooper wishes to felicitate with our fellow columnist, former colleague at the iconic Faculty of Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, and fellow member of the Board of Trustees of the Obafemi Awolowo Institute of Government and Public Policy, Professor Segun Gbadegesin on his retirement and installation as the Asiwaju of Okeho.

    A man who detests self-promotion in all its forms and manifestations, it is rare to find an academic these days who is not sold on fake honours and false distinctions. In all his heroic stirring at the behest of his nation and beloved Yoruba race, Gbadegesin has applied himself with uncommon nobility of purpose and much humility and calm equanimity. Long after the charlatans have been evacuated from the stage, the example of this quintessential Yoruba omoluabi will remain as a beacon of hope and inspiration to younger generations.

    Having served his profession, race and nation so meritoriously and with such distinction, the notable Professor of Philosophy has now quietly retired to his Oke Ogun rural paradise as a leader of his community. Such a class act! Here is wishing this philosopher-statesman many more years of productive services to his people and nation at large.

  • Zaria killings and el-Rufai’s impetuousness

    Zaria killings and el-Rufai’s impetuousness

    In their response to the bloody Shi’ites/Army clash in Zaria on December 12, the Northern Governors’ Forum led by Borno State governor Kashim Settima expressed confidence in the way Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State handled the crisis. They were hasty in their pronouncement. The 19-member forum, all of whom were anxious to prevent a reenactment of the kind of religious cum socio-economic revolt that morphed into the intractable Boko Haram insurgency, praised all the steps taken by el-Rufai in responding to the clash. But rising from the meeting, and perhaps emboldened by the vote of confidence passed in him by his colleagues, the Kaduna State governor indicated that the Shi’ite leader, Ibraheem Yaqub el-Zakzaky would be prosecuted.

    Then, in a statewide broadcast in which he announced his decision to set up a judicial panel to investigate the clash, Mallam el-Rufai addressed some of the issues that triggered the horrific Zaria killings. Incredibly and insensitively, he attributed all the triggers to the serial malfeasances of the Shi’ites. He accused them of forcibly appropriating the lands of their neighbours, attempting to take over mosques they had not built, and building without permits at their Hussainiya headquarters. He appeared unwilling or impatient to let the judicial panel probe the remote and immediate causes of the clash, and to come to independent assessments and conclusions. Indeed, as a spokesman of the Shi’ites said, the governor had appeared to take sides, and had indicated which of the two parties was guilty.

    There is hardly any commentary on the clash that has not accused the Shi’ites of strong-arm tactics, of disrespecting, flouting and circumscribing the law and the constitution, and of provoking and inconveniencing their neighbours, far and near, within or outside their city base. These infractions cannot be glossed over, and must of course be comprehensively addressed by the judicial panel. But it was not only unwise of Mallam el-Rufai to have made the kind of insensitive broadcast attributed to him, he was even more shockingly insensitive to the scale of the tragedy that had befallen Zaria in particular, and the state as a whole. If he knew he had all the facts of the clash and possessed the courage to declaim on the crisis as peremptorily as he did, and did not need a panel to probe it, he should have gone the whole hog to talk of the casualties sustained essentially by one party to the clash.

    The Northern Governors’ Forum should have avoided passing a vote of confidence in the Kaduna State governor. They had responded well to the crisis by summoning a meeting to address the matter in Kaduna. And they did well to fear the worst. But they should have limited their involvement to empathisisng with the state and the victims, and warning of the need to avoid a replay of the Boko Haram crisis. Unfortunately, both the governor and his sympathising colleagues failed to address the two most crucial parts of the crisis — the need for justice; and the need to divorce the provocation by Shi’ites from the content and character of the army’s response. On these two aspects hang the future of Nigeria and the integrity of its constitution.

    Mallam el-Rufai’s broadcast should have been more nuanced. He needed rightly to be worried about the Shi’ite provocation, but to begin railing against the sect’s lack of building permits and their constant disagreements and frictions with neighbours seems to make the governor anxious to justify the mass killings. In the broadcast, the governor did not give indication he knew much about the concept of justice, its beauty, its many sides, and its contribution to stability and peace, let alone understand how to achieve that peace. The northern governors may have connived at his style, and underscored their anxiety not to worsen the crises in the North by their adulatory statements; but neither they nor the governor seemed to appreciate that the brutality that hallmarked Boko Haram and the conflagration it triggered were given fillip by injustice.

    Importantly, too, while the Shi’ites could not by any stretch of the imagination be absolved of blame, it was however more crucial to worry about the nature and temper of the army’s response. There will always be provocations and infractions; but the security agencies and other law enforcement bodies must respond according to the dictates of, and within the confines of, the provisions of the law and constitution. It is that kind of sane response that sets the civilised community apart from violent and anarchic groups. In the Boko Haram case, extra-judicial killings were initially the order of the day, with the army citing the extenuating reasons of the insurgents’ own cruel and barbarous standards. Against the Shi’ites, surely the country has learnt enough lessons not to countenance, in any circumstance, and no matter the intensity of provocations, a resort to self-help. No one is sure of the casualty figures. But estimates range from 60 or 70 to a couple of hundreds, some say as many as about 300. Neither Mallam el-Rufai nor the northern governors showed appropriate concern over such an alarming figure, nor what it portends for the region.

    Worse, even the presidency has been bewilderingly reduced to prevarications and whispers. It was of course not expected that they would condemn outright Malam el-Rufai’s faux pas or his intemperate reaction, but given the involvement of the army, which controversially went beyond the rules of engagement to reinforce its troops and launch fresh attacks against the Shi’ites, the presidency should have paid more than a passing interest.

    And so while it is incontestable that the Shi’ites habitually infringed on the rights and privacies of others and disrespected lawful authorities, it is even more damnably true that Mallam el-Rufai was insensitive and unwise in his broadcast, the northern governors curiously detached and ingratiating, and the presidency slow, unresponsive and unable to properly deconstruct the issues involved. Nigerians must have no doubt about what should be done. The Shi’ites must be made to answer for any law they break on a general basis. But in the case of the Zaria killings, in which unlawful and disproportionate force was applied, the judicial panel must separate the provocation from the response, and everyone, including the top brass of the army, found culpable must be made to face the law.

    Nigerian laws expect infractions, including very severe and horrendous breaches; but they also recommend that punishment must be aligned with legal and constitutional provisions in order not to promote anarchy. The Zaria killings must be made a test case, notwithstanding the aloofness of the presidency, the connivance of the northern governors, and the churlishness of Mallam el-Rufai. Public focus on the judicial panel must be intense and unrelenting. If the panelists do not have the character, wisdom and temperament to ensure justice, the public, both local and international, must force the reconstitution of a new panel until justice has been done and seen to be done. The scale and one-sidedness of the killings demand nothing less, for it may be any other group’s turn tomorrow in the hands of nervous and excited security agents flouting and dishonouring the constitution under the guise of punishing crime and promoting peace and order.

  • For a politics of reasonable as compared to desperate and perhaps hallucinatory hope: scattered end-of-year reflections

    For a politics of reasonable as compared to desperate and perhaps hallucinatory hope: scattered end-of-year reflections

    Hope springs forever in the human breast  – Alexander Pope

    The observations and reflections in this piece come from my strong feeling that in our country and our world at the present time, there is a great, pressing need to distinguish a politics of reasonable and realizable hope from a politics of desperate and perhaps delusionary hope. At the heart of this strong feeling of mine is an intuition that with the coming into power of the Buhari administration, Nigeria recently became one of the best expressions of a politics of desperation, a politics of hope against hope that dominates our collective global or planetary community at the present time. What are the indications, the signs of this convergence or similarity of a politics of desperate hope in Nigeria and the world at large?

    Everyone knows that, to put it mildly, all is far from being well in our world. Nonetheless, against powerful negative forebodings, there are enough signs that give us real hope, even if the hope often seems desperate. Thus, although billions still live in dire poverty, for the very first time in world history we actually have the resources and the capacities to end mass poverty forever everywhere on the planet. Additionally, just as we left the Stone Age behind us not because we ran out of stone, there is now a distinct possibility that we can also leave the age of the dominance of fossil fuels behind us, not because we have run out of oil but because we have wisely and effectively moved to the use of clean and renewable sources of energy before succumbing to a looming global catastrophe in which life-destroying emissions and pollutants end life as we know it in our planetary home. Finally, even as deep and crippling divisions continue to divide regional and national communities throughout the world, we are all waking to the fact that the world is really a global village in which our destinies are as indissociably linked as they had never been before at any previous stage of world history.

    As in the world at large, all is also far from being well in Nigeria. But unlike many other places in the world, desperation is far more tightly woven around hope in our country. Indeed, until quite recently hope of any secular, non-religious or non-metaphysical kind seemed impossible in Nigeria. The departing PDD/Jonathan administration left not only an empty treasury, it also left an utterly looted and ruined economy and polity. For this reason, the level of the desperation of hope in the post-PDP Nigeria is infinitely much higher than in the world at large. In other words, although the level of euphoria with which the Buhari administration was ushered into office is fast diminishing, I don’t think that we are as yet willing or able to make a distinction between hope that is reasonable and realizable and hope that continues to be desperately euphoric. This is why although deep down the vast majority of Nigerians are not (yet) convinced that the Buhari administration will defeat the Boko Haram insurgency as expeditiously as everyone wishes and as the administration itself has promised, Nigerians continue to hold dearly to the expectation that quite soon we would have heard and seen the last of the Boko Haram jihadists. We are a bit less desperate in our hopes for the success of the war against corruptionbut in my opinion, that’s only because like the Buhari administration itself, most Nigerians, at least so far, place great value on the rhetoric of the war against corruption.

    At this point in the discussion, it is necessary to emphasize that perhaps the most crucial observation that I wish to make in these reflections is our need for a politics of realistic and realizable hope, together with the recognition that such a politics does exist and has been practiced in many nations and regions of the world. This observation leads directly to the most serious or portentous claim that I wish to make in these same reflections, this being the assertionthat, wittingly or unwittingly, the new Buhari administration is stoking the same fires of the politics of desperate, delusionary hopes that brought it into power. To get to the essential distinction that I am urging here between a politics of realistic and realizable hope and a politics of desperate and hallucinatory hope, it is perhaps helpful to first of all make a prior distinction between a politics and a theology of hope.

    Fortunately for us, Nigeria being one of the most endlessly God-obsessed countries in the world, this is a distinction that we can indicate with a maximum of concreteness and precision in our particular national context. Thus think, compatriots, of the fact that churches and mosques constitute the fastest growing institutions and enterprises in our country because it seems so easy, so effortless for any self-proclaimed and oftentimes self-ordained priest or cleric to give hopes of deliverance to uncountable flocks of followers. Here, one must, it seems, bow to the inscrutable and the ineffable: I do not know how it works, but I do know that the theology of hope works extremely successfully in Nigeria, perhaps more than any other country in the world.

    I have said that I do not know how the theology of hope works so successfully in Nigeria; I must now state that I do have some ideas as to why it worked so well, particularly during the reign of the previous ruling party, the PDP. One factor is so obvious that its very obviousness might serve to hide it from us. This is nothing other than the fact that every one of the three PDP administrations during the party’s sixteen-year reign considerably encouraged Nigerians to pray, to fast, to look to religion for the answers to both national and individual problems and crises. At the risk of being too blunt, let me state this point more forcefully: all the three PDP administrations massively used the theology of hope as a tool for diverting mass or public pressure away from politics and politicians for the satisfaction of both the material and non-material needs and aspirations of the people.And there is the additional factor of the unwillingness of any administration that was/is as corrupt, mediocre and aimless as any of the PDP administrations to base its policies and actions on the politics of realistic and realizable hope. In that predatory looters’ republic, it would have amounted to political suicide for any of the three PDP administrations to have attached itself to goals and objectives on which the Nigerian people could have tied the party’s grip on power.

    If a reliance on the theology of hope has not yet clearly and indisputably emerged as a decisive aspect of the governance style and the policies of the new ruling party, the APC, that is probably because the party is yet to settle down into governing in its own name and right and not merely by default as the aftermath of the PDP era. Meanwhile, everything hinges on the charisma, the mystique, the larger-than-life expectations that have coalesced if not calcified around the personality of Muhammadu Buhari. He is like the Chosen One, the Leader, the Avatar. Not since Murtala Ramat Mohammed has the country had a leader on whom so much of both the realistic and apocalyptic hopes and aspirations of the Nigerian masses been pinned so exclusively on one man and one man alone. Wittingly or unwittingly, Buhari has been satisfied to play to these expectations, to talk the talk if he is yet to walk the walk. Listen to his famous first words after his electoral victory: “I belong to everybody; I belong to nobody!”More spectacularly, he has publicly given the Nigerian military a deadline of this very month, December 2015, for a decisive crushing of the Boko Haram insurgency. He is making pronouncements on what the war on corruption will achieve, even as the country’s criminal justice system is showing clear and unambiguous signs that it is still stoutly on the side of looters.Buhari’s hands are still tied to constitutional and institutional principles and forces that make it near impossible for him to significantly cut down on the colossal cost of governance in Nigeria, but not to worry, Sai Buhari will take care of things. And he seems particularly fond of foreign travels, together with a penchant for making policy or action statements abroad that it would make far more sense for him to make at home. The list goes on and on, seemingly interminably: the politics of hope, yes, but it is desperate, hallucinatory hope.

    If in these observations and reflections I have seemed to be disparaging of both the theology of hope in itself and the politics of desperate, passionate and even delusional hope, I now hasten to say that this is in fact not the case. Hope, all manner of hope, will always be lodged deep in the human heart and imagination. And there is a place for even the most “irrational”, the most phantasmal kind of hope, especially against forces that deploy mystification and unjust social arrangements to prey on human weaknesses and frailties. Nigeria is home to the world’s most extensive and outlandish expressions of the theology of hope precisely because it is also home to so much of the world’s assemblage of looted lives. My emphasis in these reflections on a politics of realistic and realizable hope is an attempt to redress the imbalance between the two kind of politics around hope as a powerful vector of human life, individual and collective. Above all else, my concern is with the tendency of the politics of desperate hope to place agency exclusively in the lap, the subjectivity of the Leader, the Chosen One, the Avatar. Beside Him, there are the technocrats and bureaucrats. This seems to be the APC formula for success. Well, the politics of realistic and realizable hope adds a crucial third element: the Nigerian peoples, acting for and on behalf of their own interests and aspirations, not watching idly and passively from the sidelines of history and politics.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • About some Nigerian demons (2015)

    About some Nigerian demons (2015)

    Why the Igbo would be more pained by President Jonathan’s electoral loss than the Ijaw nation completely beats my imagination.

    It will be worth our while, this last Sunday of the year of our Lord 2015, to recall some words that speak to the very depths of some of our country’s many demons. Before  that, however, let me, most profoundly, thank my very dedicated readers, beginning from those  with whom I started, gingerly, a decade ago in the COMET newspapers, and those who have since joined us on the voyage. Without mincing words, you have not only been wonderful, your being ever there has been a source of great encouragement to do this unfailingly, week in, week out. Certainly not as easy as it seems, and, not a few of you have, indeed, suggested that the offerings on these pages be committed into a book; something which, God willing, could see the light of day in 2016. If that happens, you will, of course, be a ringside guest at the public presentation. In its relatively short life, the column has never held back from talking truth to power, nor can I ever forget an entire Ekiti Council of Obas, under the then chairmanship of the Alaaye of Efon-Ekiti, calling an emergency meeting of the council a bare 48 hours after an article, critical of some of its members, appeared on these pages. Members  not only threatened fire  and brimstones, they were, in fact,  going to sue,  until a distinguished, learned member, indeed a former Chief Judge of the state, told them that would be an exercise in futility as  there was nothing to sue for in an article  in which  the author cleverly praised the entire council to high heavens. Of course, more critical articles were aimed at even the federal government. The interesting thing though, is that none of such articles was adversarial; rather they were intended to point some people in the path of rectitude. Although the column declared, unabashedly, long before he emerged APC’s presidential candidate that Nigeria needs Muhammadu Buhari more than the obverse, it will not think twice, if there is justified cause, to call the President’s attention to any faux pas. That will just be in the columnist’s character.

    Here then are some of those words on marble

    “A good politician needs not be an intellectual but he should be able to explain without seeking to seduce; he should humbly look for the truth of this world without claiming to be its professional owner; character and integrity should be more important to him than academic brilliance; he should alert people to the good qualities in themselves, including a sense of the values and interests which transcend the personal, without giving himself an air of superiority and imposing anything on his fellow humans; he should not yield to the dictate of public moods or of the mass media, while never hindering a constant scrutiny of his actions – Dr John Kayode Fayemi in:  Intellectuals in Politics-African perspectives (Accra, Ghana, July, 2015)

    “* Incontrovertibly, Bishop Kukah has lost it. It is tragic that some people can’t purge themselves of their innate weaknesses. That a man is acknowledged as a good public speaker is not a licence to profess divisive tendencies. Barely six months into a new administration and with the sordid revelations, I expected Kukah, a member of the National peace Committee, to propose a more reasonable approach to the subject of human rights. Some people waited out the terrible marginalization of the Jonathan administration. The Yoruba, for instance, was pushed to the wall but survived it. This time  around, when all hands are on deck to reposition a nation that was brought down on its knees by  Kukah’s friends, he is now supporting someone who has given more hate speeches against non Igbo ethnic groups than was recorded in the build up to the Rwandan genocide.

    One thing stands out here: the President’s resilience to allow democracy at its fullest. If this blackmail is about demands for appointments, it is another misguided adventure to destroy the Igbo political future. Very soon, the sponsors of the insurgence will be unmasked. Already, the Sultan and some Emirs have tried their best to ensure that there are no reprisal attacks after mosques were attacked and a Dangote vehicle destroyed somewhere in the East.  We expected Kukah to use that occasion to join in the plea for peaceful approach to individual or group agitations. Certainly, this Kukah has gone beyond Catholicism. He is now absolutely self serving. Since that Presidential debate, where he could not hide his disdain for Buhari, till now, it is obvious his motive is beyond Biblical traditions. His is now cassock ethnocentrism. The Catholic Church remains a vibrant institution for justice, peace and development. The Church has never compromised. More than any other religious institution, it has remained exemplary in terms of timely, appropriate and constructive engagements on issues of governance and peoples’ rights. This profile is  far too salutary than be permitted to  be stained  by anybody, even a Bishop –  Dr Sikiru Eniola on Bishop Matthew Kukah’s  support for  Kanu  on his  hate- spewing  agitation for a state of Biafra (December, 2015)

    As if the  writer, a university don, were a prophet, the sponsors are already unmasking themselves as  some Igbo leaders, in a classical demonstration of  the quip that we  never learn  from history  except as tragedy,  showed  up this past week,  Ojukwu-like  again,  leading  a landlocked Igbo against its own best interests. Under  a retired Justice Eze Ozobu-led  governing council,  with Dr Dozie Ikedife, Brig. Gen. Joe Achuzia, yes, the same Achuzia of the Biafran war fame, Eze Iheanyi  Nwokenna and others as members,  rather than counsel their restless youth,  announced the formation  of  what they called a  CUSTOMARY GOVERNMENT of Indigenous People of Biafra  which they,  very disingenuously, conflates with the establishment of Sharia,  a religious tenet, in the North a few years ago. In this their government, they claim to have ministries and liaison offices in all parts of an indeterminate Biafra land – the current  Biafra map spreads as far as Igala land  and  includes the entire  South south despite the disclaimer by the Rivers State government.  Yet they claim not infringing on any Nigerian laws. Now that some Igbo elders are sowing the wind, one hopes that before the entire Igbo race again begins to reap the whirlwind, others, especially their elected officials, will point them in the path of rectitude. Why the Igbo would be more pained by President Jonathan’s electoral loss than the Ijaw nation completely beats my imagination. It, however, speaks more to self-love than any sympathy for the former President  – who has since responsibly settled down into  respectful international engagements –  as if these people were living on planet Mars when Igbos and their extracts  were ministers of the most powerful ministries and headed more than 90 per cent of Nigeria’s regulatory agencies.

    “A country which cannot refine its own crude oil, produce electricity from gas which it flares or produce toothpick from wood, certainly does not deserve to have credit/debit cards that function outside its borders. It is that simple – A commentator on CBN’s Ban on the Use of Naira Credit and Debit Cards Abroad (December, 2015)

    “We live in a society that hardly employs scientific methods in the advancement of its national well being. When Obama came to power he promised that the US would cease to be at the mercy of oil producers before the end of his tenure. Today, the US is a net exporter of oil. This was achieved through a scientific programme, driven by appropriate government policies  which led to the production of more fuel efficient vehicles, the development of technologies that  enhanced prospecting for hydrocarbons at deeper levels under the ground, and processing of sand oil that has hitherto been regarded as commercially unviable. Here in Nigeria, those in authority think only of sharing money, rather than using our resources to mobilise the productive and creative energies of our people for development. No wonder we are now falling on our faces in our dependence on a resource whose exploration and processing we have made no conscious effort to master. Compare, for instance, the NNPC with PETROBRAS, its Brazilian counterpart, and get a picture of the utter cluelessness of our political leadership – Ayo Omowumi on why Nigeria remains consigned to underdevelopment. (December, 2015)

    Till we meet in 2016, God willing, here is wishing all a Happy New Year.

  • As we finally enter the regime of change

    As we finally enter the regime of change

     In the manifesto that Buhari and his party waved as contract with the electorate last March, the section on Reform states unequivocally the commitment of Buhari and his party to bring fundamental changes to the way governance is organised in the country.

    Our change slogan is not a campaign gimmick but a promise that must be kept. We are determined to bring about tangible changes in the lives of our people.—President Buhari

    With a new budget that is fully Buhari’s and his ministers already in the saddle, Nigeria appears finally poised for change that is expected to bring the country’s dark past to an end. And with clarity of evidence of serious efforts of the Buhari presidency to fight Boko Haram and to recover stolen funds from corrupt public officers, other areas of Buhari’s manifesto that are yet to be given attention deserve to be highlighted by citizens. Today’s piece is an effort in that direction.

    As this column had observed several times in the past, it is not Jonathan’s regime that created the culture of corruption, despite the reality that Jonathan’s administration worked to become the poster child for venality in governance across the globe. While it may be a waste of resources—financial and emotional—to go and probe every government that had ruled the country since 1960, it is proper for those holding the levers of power to address political and social behaviours that have brought Nigeria to its current state of anomie.

    But as the Buhari regime sets out to reconfigure our institutions in a way to make corruption unattractive, this column seeks permission of its readers to bring back a recurrent theme that has been discussed almost ad nauseam in the column: re-designing the architecture of governance in a way that will bring more input from citizens into the way they are governed. Using the end of 2015 to repeat or re-open the discourse of re-federalisation may not be out of place at a time that the country’s Change Regime is poised to be at full throttle.

    It is entertaining and also depressing to learn about Dasukigate and Rice-gate that capture nuances of how big men charged with the responsibility of securing the country as members of executive or legislative branch of government wantonly rape the country. Citizens seem to be enjoying the naming and shaming drama of Dasukigate in particular while some are salivating ahead of what is likely to come out of the new revelation about a new crisis: promoting rice farming through rice smuggling. It is one thing for citizens to take joy in the naming, shaming, and even jailing of those who have been caught for sabotaging the country in various ways in the last four years. But it is another thing for citizens to be encouraged to worry about how our country came about this mess and how to get out of it.

    Surely, citizens in large numbers are already expressing support for no holds-barred attack on corruption and corrupt individuals. There is no day that citizens and groups do not express support for the efforts of Buhari’s government to fight corruption. Such support may be in a way a reflection of citizens’ anger and desire to get back at those they have perceived to have functioned more as enemies than leaders of state and its citizens. Just as it is with circuses, citizens are also likely to get tired of watching the video of corruption or of trial for corruption before long. They are likely to get more ‘long-termist’ in their search for solution to a problem that has been an abiding aspect of the political culture of the country for about half a century. Indeed, citizens are already asking why they are ruled under a political system that is centralised to the point of robbing the average citizen of the space to participate in how they are governed, especially at the grassroots level. They are worrying about a political system that has taken the opportunity of easy revenue from petroleum to alienate them from governance at both local and state levels.

    It is instructive at this point in Buhari’s administration to recall sections of his manifesto that are designed to make the country better governed than before. In the manifesto that Buhari and his party waved as contract with the electorate last March, the section on Reform states unequivocally the commitment of Buhari and his party to bring fundamental changes to the way governance is organised in the country. The section on Reform includes several visionary statements: We will not only clean up our government, we will reshape it—reforming and strengthening the law enforcement agencies…. We cannot achieve these reforms without strengthening our public institutions away from the “Strong Man” model, which has devastated our economy and institutions. In another statement, the manifesto says: We will devolve more revenue and powers…We pledge to bring the government closer to the people through fiscal and political decentralization, including local policing. And with special reference to the constitution, the manifesto adds: APC government at the federal level will initiate action to amend our constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties and responsibilities to states and local governments in order to entrench true Federalism and the Federal spirit (My emphases).

    Quoting copiously from Buhari’s contract with the electorate is to demonstrate that President Buhari in his manifesto gives as much attention to the structure of governance as he places on national security, corruption, and national development.  The recent decision of the 8th Senate to establish a special committee on constitutional amendment signals that the legislature is also ready to move to the governance component and constitutional aspect of the APC manifesto. It is instructive that the Senate’s decision to re-open the issue of constitutional amendment was made on the day that the federal government announced its success in ending the territorial thrust of Boko Haram’s terrorism. This move by the Senate appears indicative of the APC government’s readiness to focus on the Good Governance component of the Buhari/APC manifesto. As the Senate moves in the direction of amending the constitution, it is necessary to invoke the call by Buhari in his manifesto on the need for “all Nigerians to collectively chart our future as a people and our destiny as a nation,” by providing a space for participation by citizens in creating a constitution that citizens will feel happy with across the length and breadth of the country.

    The process of amending the constitution under the federal government of APC must be different from what obtained under the PDP regime. Citizens were not sufficiently included in having input in the process when the two houses were dominated by PDP members. There was a public hearing in six regional centres for half-day interaction between lawmakers and citizens who could afford to travel to and pay for accommodation at such centres. Even when President Jonathan convened a national dialogue, the PDP-dominated legislature was not able to provide any covering legislation for the national conference before and after. In fact, Jonathan’s party did not openly endorse the conference, delegates to which were handpicked by Jonathan and his supporters who were largely not openly affiliated with the PDP. In addition, the PDP refrained from making any formal reference to the 2014 national conference during and after the exit of Jonathan from power. If anything, it was groups and individuals that were not in the PDP that have been promoting recommendations of the Jonathan conference since the last election.

    Since amending the constitution “to entrench true Federalism and Federalist spirit” is a noticeable part of the Buhari/APC manifesto, it stands to reason for citizens to expect that the party of change will take the opportunity of being in power to encourage an inclusive process for constitutional amendment or review. Citizens at the level of federal constituencies should be mobilised by the ruling party to get involved in making suggestions to their legislators on what type of federalism they desire. It is up to citizens to choose the method they prefer for preparing suggestions for their representatives before constitutional amendments are forwarded to state assemblies by the federal legislature. Similarly, state assemblies should give their constituents opportunities to think along with them before ratifying such amendments.

    Unlike the former ruling party, APC came to power with a clear manifesto to devolve power to the states and local governments and in the process enhance the process of citizen participation in governance at the grassroots. Consequently, APC has no reason to be afraid of adding options of referendum on critical matters to the new constitution, as it is done in advanced democracies.